The Settlers (28 page)

The thought occurred to me.

What are you going to do?

I don't know.
I could start a revolution.

I bet a lot of people have tried that.

You think?

It's scary how much they know about you already.
 

They probably know I'm not feeling their little utopia, I guess.

Not feeling it at all.

In fact, they're probably watching me right now.

Watching you sleep?
Probably.

Is that what I'm doing?
Sleeping?

You thought there was another way we could be talking?
 

I didn't buy the Dreambake.

Good.
Infomercial products are garbage.
It probably would kill all of your brain cells at one time.

But this is the conversation that I would have dreamed of if I had.
 

Maybe.

Maybe?
 

You weren't living in an oppressive cage at the time.

You could argue that my grief was a cage.

Yes, but you made that cage.
 

I was oppressing myself.

You were sad, Micah.
 

I
was
sad.
 

I know.
If it had been different, I would have been sad, too.
 

I couldn't believe that you were gone.
And that I wasn't with you when it happened.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, too.

What are you going to do now, Micah?

Probably not start a revolution.
I don't think I'd be very good at it.

You could marry again.
Have space babies.
 

I can't even think about that.
I don't look at women like that.
Nobody is you.

They don't have to be me.
They just have to make you happy.

They don't.
 

What does?
 

I don't know.
The beach house didn't even work after you died.

You haven't been happy in seven years?
 

Seven years and one terrible argument.
 

That's awful, Micah.
It's my fault.

It's mine, too.
 

So we're both responsible for your life being tragic.

Yes, I guess so.
 

Chivalrous of you to take all of the responsibility.
 

Hey, you did kind of run away to Tokyo.

I did.
So I guess you're right, it's kind of my fault, too.

I'll settle for that.

So.
What will you do?
 

Argus City dazzles in the darkness.
Constellations of light, the flicker of pods darting between the spires.
Sparkling towers constructed from seamless transparent steel catch the moonlight and throw it around like fine china that splinters and turns.

Micah is alone tonight.

It's not even night.
It's two in the afternoon, but the sun has dropped behind the Earth, and only the faintest golden glow breaks the planet's crisp horizon line.
 

If he closes his eyes, can almost convince himself that he's still on Earth.
His ears reproduce the soft, papery surge of the waves.
He can feel the damp wood planks of the pier beneath his feet.
He remembers the most important voices that he ever heard in exactly that spot.
His grandfather's, telling him that one day they would build a boat together, and that if it sank, then they would build a ship in a bottle instead.

And Mae's, closer, her breath on his neck, simply saying good morning.

Mae.
 

Mae.

Micah fits his arms into the bodyjet, and steps back, clicking his feet into the heel clips.
The exoskeleton feels kind of nice against his limbs.
A cradle for his fragile human body, perhaps.
 

What does one say in a moment such as this one?
 

He settles for nothing at all.

What did you think?
When you first saw me?
 

That you were the most handsome man I had ever seen.

Bullshit.
You didn't think that at all.

You're right.
 

Am I?
Damn.
I don't like being right.

You're right.
I didn't think anything, because you put my brain into a coma.
 

That was pretty mean of me.
 

Oh, I don't know.
It's been a fine coma-dream.
 

The finest, Mae.

I miss you.

I love you.

Micah steps across the red line.
 

He hangs there, suspended, just a couple of feet from the safety and artificial gravity of the observation deck.
 

I could go back
, he thinks.
 

He looks down.
The great petal narrows as it falls away beneath him.
Hundreds of windows, some of them dimmed, most glowing with activity.
He wonders if anybody is looking outside, looking up.
Does anybody see him up here?
 

The city swims away beneath him, bursting with activity.
 

The zoo.
 

He glances back at the observation deck and is startled to see a face in the window.
It belongs to the hostess from a few days ago.
He meets her gaze, and she lifts a hand.
He offers a smile.
 

She looks upward, at the blackness beyond the ring of petals.
 

He follows her gaze.
The ten towers, like points of a crown.
The doorway to beyond that exists between them.
 

The hostess smiles back, and waves once more.
Then she turns from the window and is gone.

Mae
, Micah thinks.
 

He fires the tiny attitude jets, turning his back to the tower.
 

The sun is beginning to rise.
 

He turns his face into its warmth, fires the jets, and rises with it.

Argus City recedes.
 

Micah approaches, and then passes the ring of petals.

The sun is warm, but everything else is so cold.

Mae
.
 

His closet is full of sweaters.
 

There's one of almost every color, one for almost every year of a fifty-year marriage.
 

Some are scratchy.
Some are silky-smooth.
Some don't fit so well.
Some feel like home.

Bernard's sweaters are a metaphor for his marriage.
 

There hasn't been a new sweater in six years.
 

He hates today.

Today he must choose one sweater.

He'll wear that sweater for the rest of his life.
 

Angelika waits for him to come to her bedroom each morning.
He tells her that she can get up and play, or pour a bowl of cereal, that she doesn't have to wait for him, but she does.
He reminds himself that she has lost more than he has, and comes to her room each morning with a smile and kind eyes.

This morning she is sitting up in bed.
Clutched in her arms is a stuffed dragon with googly eyes.
She calls the dragon Sir Patrick, but Bernard doesn't know why.
 

Good morning, Angelika, he says.
 

She doesn't say anything, but then, she hasn't spoken in months.

He holds out his hand.

Angelika climbs down from the bed.
She is so small in her nightgown.
 

She takes his hand, and they go downstairs.

Do you remember what today is?
he asks.

Angelika sits at the enormous table and stares at Sir Patrick.
She doesn't answer.

Bernard scrambles some eggs.
Today, he says, is the day you and I go on a trip together.
 

Still nothing from the little girl.
 

Bernard stands back from the stovetop and looks at the kitchen.
The cabinets that he restored twenty years ago are in need of restoration again.
He was never much of a carpenter to begin with.
 

He closes his eyes.
He can still imagine Marguerite chiding him.
 

These doors, they barely close
, she would say.

I did the best I could, he would reply.

Oh, I know you did.
But couldn't you have done a little better?
It's I who has to use them every day.

He misses her.

The new settlers, unlike the first hundred waves, are permitted small bags of things.
Space is precious and finite aboard Station Argus, he is told, though he has seen photographs and videos that prove it is the most vast of palaces

He packs Angelika's bag with her clothing and shoes and books.
 

As he puts things into her bag, he says, Angelika, is this important to bring?
 

But she would only look at him with her big, sad eyes.

In the end, he packed her bag with all he could, and then packed his own with more of her things.
 

For himself, he packs only a rubber-banded stack of letters that Marguerite wrote to him when he was in the war, years and years and years before.
He smiles at the idea that she would spritz the paper with her perfume before she mailed them to her.
He has sniffed at them so often that the scent is gone.
But still he breathes deeply whenever he opens them.

Angelika still bears a fine scar on her brow from the day she stopped speaking.
Each time she looks at Bernard, he is reminded of the day.
He had collected her from the hospital.
 

Angelika and her parents, Jared and Sara -- Bernard's daughter -- had been admitted together.

Days later, Angelika had been discharged into Bernard's custody, alone.
 

He did not attend the funeral.
Angelika was barely sleeping, and though she did not speak, she was distraught.
He felt if he left her, she would implode.
And to carry her to the funeral was beyond consideration.
 

So Bernard missed his daughter's burial ceremony.
 

The house felt somehow emptier afterward, as though all of the memories that Sara had created within its walls had been sucked away at the moment of her burial.
He missed the sounds of her laughter and footsteps, the shadow of her ballet routines cast on the wall by the living room fireplace.

For a few weeks, he slept on a bed roll on the floor beside Angelika's bed.
He wanted to be there when she woke, upset.
Eventually she slept through the night without interruption, but Bernard still lay on the floor, awake well into the night.

He had wished to move to a smaller house in recent years, now that Sara was grown and moved away, and with a baby of her own.
But Marguerite would not hear of it.
 

This home is my skin now
, she had said to him.
It's my happiness, my nest.
I won't leave it.
 

It's so big, he had argued.
It's bigger than we need.
And we can't keep up with all of the repairs forever.
 

But she would not discuss it more after that, and he had finally let it go.

He is grateful now for this.
He cannot imagine enduring life now in a strange place, one with carefully-painted walls and cabinets that don't stick or jerk around.
 

In the morning, he and Angelika will travel.
 

He peeks into her room and sees that she is asleep.
Sir Patrick has fallen to the floor.
 

Bernard creeps across the creaking floor and puts the toy dragon on the pillow beside her.

Angelika sighs in her sleep.
 

Angelika, he says.
Do you have your bag?
 

She walks over to the hallway and points.
He looks down the hall and sees her bag resting beside the door.
 

Okay, he says.
Are we forgetting anything?
 

She just looks up at him, then points.

He looks down.
 

Right, he says.
My sweater.