Pills and Starships (21 page)

Meanwhile, my dad sat there with the full vase on his lap. He said the names of the flowers slowly. “Iris. Iris. Paradise bird, bird of paradise. Look down in them, you can go right in . . . into the bird of paradise. Deeply.”

Finally Sam got tired of jiggling his leg and watching, and he got up and snatched the vase away. A little harshly, I thought.

My father just smiled up at him.

After the flower thing, sitting on the couch as we sat in our armchairs, they just gazed at us with their daffy grins on, not saying anything at all but rocking their heads or tapping their feet a little or swaying to the music, and Sam or I would have to actually get up and pretend to be thirsty or say we had to go the waste room or something, just to escape from the totally weird awkwardness. It was stone freaky how they would gaze, smiling, just on and on and on.

In the middle of dealing with this lovey-dovey stare zone we were in, I was getting more and more nervous about what was coming. I was glad we hadn’t run into any service corp people so far, I was very relieved about that, but I was also wondering what the plan was, how the people from the camp could ever rescue Mom and Dad at the last minute, whether they’d given up on it, or what the deal was.

I was so anxious that at one point I had to excuse myself and go into my room and count slowly to try to calm myself down. I sat on the bed jiggling my feet like Sam did and trying to get back into the mental space I’d been in before any of it started, with the camp and the escape and that whole outside world I hadn’t known till then. Back when I believed the service corps actually meant what they said, even if they were lame. Before I’d heard LaTessa speak in a voice I never knew she had.

I remembered how I had basically trusted my parents’ decision and bought into the idea that it was the best for them.

I talked to myself in my head, trying to train myself to be okay with them dying because it was their choice and what they wanted. And maybe it was just selfish of me to want to keep them here—the same thing I used to think about Sam, that he wanted them here for
our
sakes, not theirs. I used to think that was just immature and greedy.

I reminded myself they were pharmadrones now anyway. And what if the pharms they were on had changed them for good? And even if they did somehow survive, which seemed impossible to me, maybe they wouldn’t ever be the people they’d been.

Because even contracts who changed their mind at the last minute always ended up signing on again. And maybe that was because they were changed, they were hardwired for Happiness by then.

I sat there arguing with myself in my head. But no matter how much back and forth I did, or how much sense I thought my own arguments made, being okay with their dying was just harder for me now than it had been.

I’d been in the bedroom maybe five or ten minutes when Sam came in. “You better come out. They have to go really soon.”

I just looked at him, still jiggling my foot, really strained.

“I know, Nat,” he said. “But it’s out of our hands now. Don’t worry. One way or another, I swear, we’ll get through it.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked.

“I have to be.”

And in a completely non-Sam way, he reached out his hand. And I took it and shakily stood.

They hugged us—the same kind of hugs as before—long and awkward, and then did what they were supposed to. They left.

We stood outside the open suite door and watched their backs disappear as they walked down the hall to the elevators.

And I felt flat empty and lost too, but still somehow I couldn’t bring myself to cry. Sam and I went back into the suite and waited until the digital clock numbers were right, according to the plan, and then we left too.

By this time the sunset colors were out, striping the sky pink and orange, and then above the stripes was a billowing vagueness of rounded shapes, all full of the colors leaking in behind them, the purple tinged with pink, the gray with bloodred. You couldn’t have asked for a more glorious sky. There was a light breeze, and when we came out onto the deck where we were supposed to watch from, I saw the sun in its low lurk behind some clouds, and boats out on the ocean with their sails reflecting creamy-white over the dark waves.

There was a roof garden on the Observing Deck—palm trees in clay tubs, long tubular plants that looked a little like cacti and bore labels like
False Ocotillos
and
Night-Blooming Cereus
. The palm fronds swished in the wind, and a few stray hummingbirds were divebombing some red hanging feeders.

And there were some corp workers. Including, I noticed right away, LaT.

She was wearing one of her princess robes and moving around gracefully like a high-end waitron, bearing a tray of small drinks. The light sparkled through them, made the liquid inside glow golden and bright.

“This is the first test,” said Sam, very low next to me. “When you take your bevvy, don’t look at her till you step back with it. Till then just focus on the cup and lifting it, that’ll seem pretty natural. Three feet.”

I hoped the mikes weren’t sensitive.

I saw Xing then, leaning on the rail and peering out, holding a drink of her own. I thought, if I can get next to her I’ll feel safer.

Then LaT. was in front of me and I had to struggle to decide where to look.

“Sam, Nat, bless Happiness,” she purred.

“Bless it,” I said, my voice catching a little in my throat.

“Welcome to Observing . . . a comforting herbal bev?”

“Thanks,” said Sam gruffly, and took one.

I couldn’t decide if he looked natural or not. I had my eyes on LaT.’s face to see if she studied him closely; in that one glance I didn’t see her paying abnormal attention to his eyes, but I wasn’t quite sure.

“Nat, over here,” came Xing’s voice, and so I was able to look up at her as I took my own bevvy off the tray, instead of looking at LaT.

I passed LaT. and walked to Xing at the rail, and we stood there together, my heart beating fast.

“There they are,” she said softly, and pointed down.

I told myself I was safe for now, I’d made it past LaT., I could calm down . . . and there was the Happiness Place, near the cliff edge. It was a cluster of white chairs on the green grass, very simple, between some hedges to the left and right, maybe so the Place was hidden from other people on the ground down there.

I’m not so great at measuring distance, but it was close enough so we could recognize them, I figured.

“Here they come,” said Xing.

And there were the contracts, a line of them in their robes with their backs to us, winding out of the hotel buildings beneath. I counted twelve in all—six couples.

“My parents are up front,” said Xing.

It was the first time it struck me to wonder: Were her parents on some plan too? Were they also supposed to come with us? Or was it too late for all of them?

“My parents are ready,” said Xing, in a gentle tone. As though she’d read my mind. “My mom is a hundred and two, and my dad is a hundred and eight.”

“They had you so late,” I said.

“Yeah, she was sixty-eight. Almost the upper limit.”

So that meant Xing was thirty-four. I’d thought she was younger, in her twenties; her skin had no lines at all.

“My parents love the ocean,” I said, after a minute.

“Mine too,” she replied. “They grew up in a fishing village, on an island. Swamped now. Their whole island was moved, the whole population did a forced relocation back in the early 21st c. My mother used to dive for pearls, when she was a young girl. She was what they used to call a pearl diver.”

“Wow.” I’d never heard of that but it sounded romantic.

“It was dangerous,” she said. “But lucrative, if you were good at it. She was good enough, but mostly she was desperate. Her family was extremely poor, you see.”

The contracts were standing in front of their chairs now, in the exact order they’d come out of the hotel. I saw my parents last in line, at the other end of the chairs from Xing’s—my mother’s hair curled on the top of her head, my father with his upright posture, shoulders back, that always distinguished him. When he was a young man he’d been in the navy, where they taught them to stand straight.

My stomach was nervous. I drained my comfort bevvy, wondering if there was any pharma in it.

Sam was at my other side then, gazing down with us. “So this is what Happiness looks like,” he said.

“A lovely evening for it,” said Xing. “Look at that light play in the clouds.”

And it was true—there were long sunbeams striking down from gaps in the clouds, making lighter patches on the surface of the ocean that glittered against the darker ones.

Then Xing’s parents turned around to face the Observing Deck, and both of them looked up at her and raised their hands—sort of a wave, sort of a salute.

Xing smiled at them and blew a kiss. I saw her eyes shining.

Then they turned back around again, and the next couple turned around.

Again, perfectly organized and choreographed. They waved up at the deck too, and a ways along to our right the meathead guy from our early healing session raised his hand and waved back at them. He looked zoned.

And then the next couple, and the next. And finally it came to my parents, and they both turned. But they didn’t wave, just looked at us. I could faintly make out the expressions on their faces, though, and they were smiling.

I grabbed Sam’s hand and I raised it up, so they could see our arms in an upside-down V. It wasn’t planned, it definitely wasn’t a V for victory, that’s for sure, but it was just what I did.

And they turned away again.

So then it was me and Sam and Xing, I didn’t even think of the others, and then those little white chairs and the ocean. The contracts sat down, again in order so it was like a ripple, end to end.

A beige-robed figure appeared—one with black hair, carrying a tray. I couldn’t tell who it was. The figure moved from Xing’s parents down the line, slowly and with a kind of ceremonial grace, handing them little white packets.

We couldn’t see their laps or what their hands were doing, but when the figure walked off that’s when they must have opened their packets. And took their Quiet Pharma pills, and relaxed back in their chairs, which had these little headrests on them.

The sun was very low over the sea. I saw my father turn to the side and kiss my mother on the cheek. And she reached out and took his right hand in her left one.

And then their heads were on the headrests, and they were all very still.

We stayed there at the rail, watching as the sun sank. I kept wondering:
Is this the exact moment they’re dying?
This
moment? Or
this
one?

A strange green ray struck up into the sky from the sunset point, just for a second, and was gone.

And then the sun was gone too.

D
AY
S
IX

S
EPARATION
& G
RIEF

Theme of the Day: Missing

I haven’t had time to write. It’s been nonstop action around here in the Twilight zone.

LaT. led the whole group of us back to our rooms after the Happiness Observing, making the dropoffs one by one at the different suites. It was a quiet procession, almost blasted by silence, you might say, except that—luckily for Sam and me, because it meant we didn’t get much unwanted attention—there was one survivor who was sobbing and a mess. Maybe her pharma hadn’t taken or something, because the rest of them were zomboid.

Anyway, the girl didn’t have any brothers or sisters to help out, like most of them she was an only child, and LaT. had to walk the whole way with her arm around her to keep her from falling. LaTessa doesn’t usually touch, it must be against protocol, but she kind of had to in this case because the girl was like a human puddle. LaT. held her with a mixture of delicacy and what I personally suspected was revulsion.

The puddlegirl’s suite was on a floor above ours so we had the benefit of a distracted LaTessa all the way home. She barely even nodded at us when we got up to our door. We went into the suite, where we had one hour of Personal Time on the plan before we were supposed to meet in the Twilight Lounge for dinner and an evening healing. I leaned back against the door after I closed it and let out a long breath. I didn’t see any of my parents’ stuff around, which was a relief, but also alarming. It was like someone had come and cleaned it out, because I was pretty sure they’d had a few things sitting around. But I didn’t have the heart to go into their bedroom yet.

We went out onto the balcony, and I hid Sam from anyone who could be watching from the outside by blocking his body with my own and chattering as he checked the light fixtures and corners and railing for bugs. When he decided the area must be clean he turned to me.

“So here’s what you do next. We’re separating for a while. You take the things you can’t stand to leave behind and stuff them in your shoulder bag—no extra clothes or anything. Change out of that robe into the loosest, darkest clothes you have. Then go to the waste room—give it five minutes after we finish talking—and wait there.”