Dove Arising (3 page)

Tinbie darts between my brother’s feet and circles the boy—almost a man—who faces him. Our visitor wears the ultramarine robes of the Kappa complex and the white cross badge of a Medical assistant. His hair shines like a roll of copper wire. And his right hand is fastened onto the left arm of my indignant little mother.

I’ve always thought of her as little, regardless of my own size. Not only is she small compared to other adults, but she has a petite nose and the hands of a child. After years of pressing her lips together, sucking them in as if worried she’ll say something she shouldn’t, her mouth has become tiny too, a pink contour framed by deep creases in her skin.

“Mom’s
not
sick.” Cygnus’s voice cracks in his agitation. “Don’t take her away.”

“It’s a passing bug,” Mom insists, annoyed. “On its way out. Don’t squander a Medical room on me.”

The Medical worker glances at the floor. “I’m sorry, Ms. Mira, but my supervisor told me that another assistant marked you as an infectious threat. Your handscreen sensor indicated that you had a fever of 310.7 Kelvin this morning. We’ve got to quarantine you.” His diminutive voice has a slight rhythmic lilt and a slow, muffled quality; he sounds like he’s talking through cotton balls.

“No.” Anka grabs Mom’s limp hand. “You’re making that up.”

As if taken aback by Anka’s impertinence, Tinbie tucks himself under the kitchen table, his vacuuming duties finished. Cygnus scrambles to put Anka’s meaning in gentler terms for the benefit of the Committee’s handscreen eavesdroppers.

“Mr. Medical worker, there has to be a glitch in the system. She’s
fine
.”

Frowning, Copper Head applies an adhesive thermometer to Mom’s forehead. His vertebrae are stacked one on top of the other, ironing out the natural arch of his back. But I notice he pulls back from Cygnus. Maybe he’s as nervous as we are.

“She’s at 311 Kelvin now . . . no glitch, sorry to say.”

This morning, I thought Mom was simply fatigued. But upon closer examination, I see that her breath is too fast and her complexion too pink, as if all the blood is trying to escape the surface of her skin. Why doesn’t Copper Head let her sit down? I compress my eyes and lips into a glare in his direction.

Whoosh
. The doors to our apartment slide open. I gasp, even though extra visitors shouldn’t come as a surprise after Anka’s outburst. My sister yelps; Cygnus shrinks away from Copper Head. Umbriel edges in front of me, chest squared to the new arrivals.

“Is there a problem here?” In stride two Militia corporals, their special rank denoted by the yellow patches on their jackets. Their boots clack in unison as they finish walking. The shorter holds a glossy handgun by her side, her finger on the trigger.

Copper Head looks bewildered by the Militia’s intrusion, but like the rest of us, he should have expected it. “I—I didn’t require backup. . . .”

The taller soldier draws his finger across his throat, silencing Copper Head.

I’ve never been this close to Beetles before, let alone officers. In the midst of my panic, what strikes me most is their cold efficiency, developed over years of patrolling, prodding, and pummeling. Not only have they survived Militia training, during which many initiates die of exhaustion, decompression, or sabotage, but they’ve either outplaced dozens of their former peers or fought their way to a higher rank. Maybe they’ve even traveled off the Moon in the name of serving the Committee.

The taller corporal’s featureless head swivels as he takes in his surroundings: our bare walls, plastic furniture, spotless floor.

“Ah!” When he spots Tinbie, he hurries to the table, squats beside the robot, and rubs the top of his cubic head. Tinbie emits a series of clicks. “Cute. I haven’t seen one of these since I was a trainee.”

So much for efficiency. I will the corporal to continue indulging his penchant for antique robotics, thankful that we never saved enough money to replace Tinbie with a newer model.

Across the room, Mom kisses the top of Anka’s head. My sister begins to whimper, and the corporal, forgetting Tinbie, swings around to point the handgun at her throat.

I let out a hiss. How could anyone show more compassion to a robot than a human girl?

Mom takes Anka in her arms, turning her back to the soldiers. She looks over her shoulder at them, teeth bared.

“Usually we aim at the forehead.” The corporal’s pronunciation is distorted, his vowels too narrow. Although a helmet masks his face, I know he’s smiling. “I want to take out the brat’s voice box instead.”

Cygnus jams a hand over Anka’s mouth, his face sallow and still.

The corporal sends a violet laser beam into the wall by their heads. When my siblings hold each other closer, eyes shut tight, he cackles.

“Beaters,” Umbriel whispers in my ear. The revulsion in his voice sets that word aflame. My throat convulses with disgust.

Beaters—Militia members, usually higher-ranked officers, who adjust too well to positions of power—are a Lunar legend. No one starts out cruel, I’ve heard, but after years of answering to hardly anyone, these soldiers grow sicker than anyone they’re assigned to quarantine or imprison.

“Every minute this quarantine is delayed,” drawls the shorter corporal, “heightens the danger surrounding Mira Theta as an infectious threat. Medical needs two or three months to treat her.”

Umbriel squeezes my shoulders tighter, keeping me upright. The Committee quarantines sick people for treatment because in the cramped bases, infection spreads quickly. As Medical can fix anything else in a matter of hours, extended stays are reserved for life-threatening cases.

The shorter Beater continues, “Her children may not see her or speak to her during treatment. Mira, come quietly.”

“Ow!” Cygnus cries.

Fighting to reach Mom, Anka has bitten Cygnus’s finger, but he grabs her again. Mom yanks her arm out of Copper Head’s grip and stumbles toward her youngest child. But before she can come within a meter of Anka, the corporals grasp her elbows. While Mom squirms, the taller soldier rams the butt of his gun into her belly. The other presses the tip of her weapon to Mom’s forehead, yanking on her earlobe with her other hand. The agony distorting Mom’s sharp face indicates that if she could do more than whimper, she would scream.

How many times have the corporals performed this maneuver, amused by the helplessness of their prey? If these are the lower-ranking officers, the malice of their superiors—who take orders from the Committee and no one else—must be even more repulsive.

Copper Head turns to me for the first time. His irises have the gray sheen of cold steel; they send shudders down my spine. He mouths,
I’m so, so sorry.

Stop apologizing
, I want to snap. But I refrain—I don’t like talking to strangers, because my high-pitched voice makes me sound fragile. It might give the Beaters more ways to amuse themselves.

Mom opens her rough, dry lips for the first time. “Just wait,” she rasps to me.

Of course
I’ll wait for her to come back. My siblings and I have never gone a day without seeing her. Now she’ll be away for at least two months.

The officers drag Mom out of our home. Struggling against them with the remainder of her strength, she kicks Tinbie by accident. He topples over, clicks twice, and powers off. The yellow radiance vanishes from his eyes.

Copper Head follows the Beaters, hands behind his back, eyes on the ground. Before the group passes through the doors, Mom gives me a hard stare, her dreamer’s eyes bloodshot. “You’ve always been ready for this,” she says. Then she’s gone.

I begin my life without Mom by looking backward. For nine years, this feeling has been first on my list of things to forget: impermeable stillness, a gnawing hollow between my lungs.

Dad’s hands were rough when he showed me how to swing a chisel-tip hammer—against Mom’s wishes—but his arms were soft when he hugged me after I got it right. He brought home surface samples from his Geology Department lab and pointed out all the glittering crystals you could see if you held a rock up to one eye and closed the other. He spoke of the little things in our world people too easily overlook: the ever-changing clouds that blanket distant Earth, the spread of colors that appeared on a wall when he held a test tube of water to the sun. Rainbows without rain, and he made them just for me.

He died. When he went to the Far Side to excavate the misnamed Love Crater, a ten-minute long, 5.1-magnitude moonquake tipped his supposedly first-rate topographical utility vehicle, shook and shook the thing until its pressurized interior burst. I was six.

When we got the news via handscreen message, it felt like this. Only Mom and I remember that time—but I try not to, and she pretends not to.

Anka interrupts my thoughts with a wordless wail.

“We’re all sad, Anka.” Cygnus’s voice wavers. “Don’t make it worse.”

“Yeah, and don’t
you
either.” Umbriel catches Anka’s hands mid-flail and kneels before her. “We’ll be okay. Your mom will be okay.”

I approach them, unsure how to comfort my sister.

“No, we won’t!” Anka sobs.

“Shh,” Umbriel coos. “Phaet’s thinking hard. . . . She’s the smartest girl I know. She’ll come up with something. We’ll forget this whole Medical deal in a few months. Right, Anka? Right?”

When Umbriel sees me hanging my head, his hand wraps around mine. My index finger traces circles around the new blister between his thumb and palm. He’s so accustomed to my presence, and to getting blisters, that he doesn’t notice.

“Sorry,” Cygnus sighs through pursed lips. “I was being mean. . . .”

“You’re
always
mean.” Anka’s voice has stabilized, to my relief.

“Stop bickering and come over for dinner,” Umbriel says. “With Ariel and my parents. We can fix everything. Well, we can fix
some
things.”

After our quiet trek to the Phi building, the circular, white elevator opens onto their floor. In their apartment, Caeli Phi, Umbriel’s mother, cries loudly and wetly. Tears spill over her creased tan skin, giving it the sheen of polished wood. Her long arms set bowls and silverware on the table, repeatedly hug Cygnus, Anka, and me, and whirl with her body as she multitasks. She’s the closest thing to a hurricane we’ll ever see.

Ariel, Umbriel’s twin brother, and Atlas, Umbriel’s father, stand dry-eyed in the living room, just out of the storm’s reach.

“Oh dear, look at your hair.” Caeli’s a tall woman; she riffles through my mane with stubby fingers. “Even more gray. Ay, poor Mira—your poor mother . . . and no one to write the news, or cook, or watch over little Anka!”

Atlas circles the kitchen table, pulling out stools for everyone. “Sit, sit, and we can talk this through.” A mid-level counselor in the Law Department, he’s accustomed to calming people in a civilized fashion, the first step of which is to have them take a seat. Atlas is tall, like his sons, but more solid; he serves as a human buffer when Caeli tells the boys off. Although the hair on the top of his head has seen denser days, he has the same thick eyebrows as Umbriel. I’ve never seen him use them to intimidate people, but I suppose he might in court.

Everyone sits on a stool, covering their handscreens, except for Caeli. She bustles about, spooning onto each plate a mash of celery, carrots, and apricot-colored potato fortified with beta-carotene.
After the storm comes the harvest
, Dorado would say. Cygnus’s foot bounces with no predictable pattern; Anka squirms and sniffles in her seat. My siblings’ fight-or-flight reactions still haven’t run their course.

Through a mouthful of potato salad, Atlas asks, “Have you three gotten an official notification from a department yet?”

I shake my head. When a family’s situation changes—a death, an arrest, unemployment—its members receive instructions on how to proceed. Our message, when it arrives, won’t be pleasant. Without Mom’s work in the Journalism Department, we have no income but my pitiful earnings from Agriculture, two hundred Sputniks per month. Mom writes—she
wrote
—for the Opinions section of the Committee-funded
Luna Daily
. The Committee dictates which opinions suit the newspaper’s needs, so Mom never had to think on her own. No wonder they paid her only 1,200 Sputniks per month.