The Settlers (34 page)

She remembers the way Zita defended her once at school.
Even then, she didn't sound like this.
 

Zita, Poppy starts.

The nice thing about fingers, Zita says, is that when they're broken, you realize how helpless you are.
How alone.
How cut off from everything around you.
 

Zita, she says again.

If you come near him again, Zita says.
That's what I'm going to do.

Zita, listen --

But Zita is gone.

Zita exhales slowly.
 

Her fingers, flexed like claws, soften.
 

She feels the adrenaline drain away.

Her eyes are closed.
 

She measures her breathing, slows each breath.

Then she opens her eyes.

Zeke stands in the door, staring at his wife.

Zita smiles at him.
 

What do you say?
she asks.
Shall we go out for breakfast?
 

And she glides past him, into the closet, to dress.
 

When the window is taken away from him, he cries.
 

He has been on the block for -- he doesn't know how long.
Perhaps years.
Perhaps a few very long minutes.
 

This is how it is on the block: nothing exists.
 

He only feels the walls of his cell when he bumps into them.
His cell is large, and he rarely finds the walls.
 

All of the cells are large.
He is no one special.

His cell is neither warm nor cold.
 

There is no light.
 

When his guards feed him, they first lower the oxygen content of his cell.
When he passes out, he is fed intravenously.

When he wakes, it as if nothing has happened.
 

He never sees another person.
 

His voice is his only company.

His voice scares him.
 

He has never seen another prisoner.
 

He cannot see his hands if he holds them up.
 

Eldon has never been this alone.

The window is small and square.
He does not always know where it is.
No light comes through the window.
 

Inside his cell it is as black as space.

Outside his cell is space.
 

He is dimly aware that he is imprisoned on a space station.
 

Space stations rotate.
 

They orbit.
 

They orbit around planets.
 

Now and then he remembers.
 

Outside, somewhere, is Earth.
 

He was born on Earth.
 

When Eldon finds the window, he presses his face against it.
 

He opens his eyes as wide as he can.

They might as well be closed.

The darkness chews at his skin until the boundaries between his body and the darkness are erased.

He is the darkness.

The darkness is him.
 

He blinks at the window, hungry for light.
 

But there are no stars.
 

No moon.
No Earth.

No sun.

Before the space station turns towards Earth, the window slides closed.
 

Once, Eldon's hand was pressed to the glass when this happened.

The tiny, heavy window-door trapped his finger, and he cried out.
He pulled and pulled at his hand, unable to free it.

Then the light came.
 

It had been foreign to him, this hard white stripe that opened in the dark.

It was like a needle to his eyes, and he blinked furiously.
The afterimage of the light tricked him, and he saw tiny stripes of light peeling open the walls in all directions.
 

When his eyes adjusted, they were full of tears that spilled down his cheeks.
 

He stopped pulling at his hand and blinked into the light.
 

The white stripe resolved into a shape.
It was curved, and not white at all, but pale blue.
 

Eldon had opened his mouth to speak.
 

Then the window shade had suddenly clapped shut, taking the tip of his finger from him.

He had wept for days.

Not for his finger.

For the light.

The window remained closed for a very long time after that.

When it opened again, Eldon did not notice.
 

There was no light.

He stumbled across it some time later, and clung to its edges as if it were a raft.
 

Then it had closed again.

When Eldon sleeps, he floats.

The prison cells are gravity-free, like deprivation chambers.
 

Once, on Earth, prison took a man away from the world.
Stripped him of the things that were his.
Claimed ownership of his body, if not his mind.
 

In space, prison takes a man's mind.

It starts with his senses.
 

The cells are dark.
A man cannot see.
 

The cells are climate-controlled.
When the walls and the air feel the same, a man cannot feel.

The cells are full of heavy, dense air.
A man talks, and can barely hear his own voice.

A man cannot smell.
He never eats.
 

His identity erodes.

He becomes a raw nerve, aching for the light.
 

And the light is kept from him.

When he sleeps, he dreams of light.

He dreams of the Earth, rising in his little window.
 

The Earth is brilliant.
It is blue, and green.
It is a jewel.

The Earth sings to him.
His bones vibrate with joy.

He stretches out his hands.

The Earth lifts him into its embrace.

Shhh, the Earth says to him.
 

It's okay now.
 

Everything is okay.