SuperMoon Page 7

  “Castor!” she shouts, and like an idiot, she runs toward me, rather than away.

  “No!” I scream, and motion at the small river running toward the wall. “Go! Go!” But Talitha’s too caught up in saving me to turn around and run for the only exit. The SecuriBot I knocked down is up again and cuts on the diagonal toward Talitha. The other shoots out a thin steel cable that hooks onto my wrist. Pain shoots up my arm as it spins me, reeling me in until I’m wrapped tightly with my arms pinned against my torso, like a fly caught in spider silk. I struggle, but I know I’m not going anywhere.

  “Watch out!” I scream at my sister. “Go back!” Before she can turn around, the other SecuriBot shoots out a metal tentacle that attaches to her ankle. Talitha falls face-first into the soft grass.

  “Help!” she squeaks as she’s dragged backward, fingers clawing at the perfect lawn. The SecuriBot picks her up. Every Yoobie has stopped to gawk at our capture. I wrench around, trying to hide my face, then I catch sight of Mundie, standing stricken in the pale light of the pool deck. He starts to run toward my sister, but then stops short, chest heaving and hands in fists at his sides. He remains there, motionless, face slack, as if he doesn’t care that red SecuriBots are carrying us away.

  “Coward,” I hiss at him, but he doesn’t hear.

  Talitha calls out for me, her voice high-pitched, desperate, and alone.

  “I’m here!” I shout as the robots wheel us through a large door into the Pink Palace.

  UMA JEMISON

  MOON UTILITARIAN SURVIVAL COLONY

  KEP AND I swim back toward the airlock on the wall. My heart races—I’m certain we’ll be busted for breaking and entering the core. If Fornax didn’t already think I was a miscreant, this will surely seal the deal. When the door whooshes open, we pull ourselves inside and hover over the floor, shoulders bumping, while the airlock reengages. Our feet hit the floor, and to our surprise, the small room we’re inside zips forward, carrying us away from the center. I startle and grab for something to keep me steady.

  “This isn’t the direction we came from,” says Kep.

  The ride is quick, and the gravity comes back fast. I’m nauseated when the doors on the opposite side of the capsule open, but I swallow it down as I peer into a small room that’s vaguely familiar.

  “We must have gotten turned around and come out the other side,” says Kep. “Let’s go back.” He shrinks inside and commands the door to close, but I put my foot over the threshold to stop it.

  “Wait,” I say. “I think I know where we are.”

  “Wherever it is, we shouldn’t be here.”

  “This is in the main Shuttle loading bay. But it’s not how I remember it.”

  “Remember what?” Kepler says, one foot in the airlock and the other in the room.

  “This is where the Shuttle docks,” I whisper.

  “Whoa,” says Kepler. “I’ve never been in here.”

  “My family came through when I was little.” I marvel at how small everything feels all these years later. “I don’t remember much. I was half asleep when my dad carried me off the Shuttle. It seemed so much bigger and scarier then.”

  I leave the airlock and walk to a large rectangular window on the exterior wall. “There it is,” I whisper as I gaze out at the Shuttle’s nose, sleek and silver as a seal, docked on the port beside us. SCIENCE WILL SEE US THROUGH is written in bold script below the MUSC logo across the rear flank. I have to look away because the blur of stars and the Earth passing by makes my stomach lurch.

  “I would have been boarding soon,” I say with a sigh.

  Kep stays at the window. “Look at that! He points to a robotic arm taking cargo from the Shuttle’s belly into another open bay on our station. “A delivery! Wonder if there’s anything good.”

  “Like a DeShoppingCart HoverTread & Foot Spa?” I joke.

  “As if Dr. Fornax would ever let that on board!”

  “I would have brought you one as a souvenir.”

  “Now I’m really sad your trip got canceled,” Kepler says.

  Once the cargo is removed, a buzzer sounds and the door on the other side of the bay wheeshes open. Kepler and I scramble back against the far wall as a group of people file into the room.

  Passengers, please prepare for boarding, a cyber voice announces.

  I brace myself for a First or Second Gen in the group to ask what we’re doing here, but they’re all so caught up in the Streams playing in their minds that they barely notice us.

  Kepler grips my arm. We have to get out of here appears on my Lenz. But I can’t move. This was supposed to be my flight. I was supposed to board with these people. I watch each of them step through a scanner beam that confirms their identity, then they each remove one of the personalized blue and white flight suits hanging on hooks by the window.

  Look. I point to a suit with my name and number embroidered across the front. Last month I was measured for the suit, which was made to fit me exactly.

  You should take it, Kep thotz to me.

  A souvenir of the trip I never took?

  He nods.

  As I move toward the suits, the cyber voice comes onto my Stream. Welcome, Uma Jemison. Please step into the body scan and prepare for departure.

  I freeze.

  What’s wrong? Kep thotz.

  I open my Stream to him. The message repeats. On my Lenz, I see that Darshan has connected to the system. The system still thinks I’m on this Shuttle, I thotz to Kep.

  He snorts. Hello, irony!

  I scan the flight info on my Lenz and my heart pounds.

  Dr. Fornax didn’t cancel my trip!

  It takes a moment for my message to sink in. Kep looks at me. But she told you not to go.

  But she didn’t cancel it, I repeat, and a shiver crawls over my entire body as I realize what’s happening.

  His eyes cut toward the one remaining flight suit hanging on the peg.

  Boarding will begin in thirty seconds, the cyber voice announces out loud. The others congregate next to the airlock where the Shuttle is docked.

  I swallow hard. What should I do?

  I don’t know. I see the excitement and fear in Kepler’s eyes and wonder if I look the same.

  I think I should go.

  Back to your domicile?

  No, to Earth.

  I take another step toward the suit. He bites his bottom lip.

  The boarding door wheeshes open. The others make their way through the door one at a time.

  Should I do it? I ask him. I bounce from foot to foot. Another passenger disappears into the belly of the Shuttle.

  “Go!” Kep says out loud. The two remaining people glance at us but quickly lose interest.

  I jump and grab the suit. Kep watches me, mouth hanging open as I whip off my blue and white tunic and step out of my blue pants, then shimmy the flight suit up over the silver antimicrobial long underwear we all wear. I wriggle my arms in, tucking down my undershirt, and zip up. My whole body shivers with anticipation.

  What should I tell your mom? Or Deimos? Or Dr. Fornax?

  I don’t know! Any moment the doors will close and my chance to go will be over. Don’t tell them anything. Tell them you didn’t know I left! Or tell them the truth. Tell them I went to Earth, but I’ll be back.

  Promise?

  He stands beside me then. The top of my head comes to the top of his shoulder—the perfect ratio for the best hugs. The last passenger marches through the door, which means if I want to go, I have just enough time to throw my arms around Kepler’s shoulders. He slips his hands around my waist. I sink my cheek into the tender spot between his collarbone and chin. He lifts me up so my toes sweep the ground as if I’m floating again. The airlock door starts to wheesh. I wriggle free.

  “I have to go!” I say out loud. I leap like a bug to kiss him on the cheek before I run for the closing door.

  Once I’m through, for a few seconds, I am the only one between the station that has been my hom
e for ten years and the Shuttle that will carry me back to my birthplace. I take a breath, debating whether I should turn back. But then the doors behind me close and the airlock ahead of me opens. I see inside the Shuttle where the other passengers are strapping into place. This is it. My only chance. Quickly, I step inside.

  Please take your seat and engage restraint system, the cyber voice instructs me.

  I do as I’m told with shaking hands. Surely some camera or human-recognition bot has caught my movements. Surely I’ll be busted any moment. But I don’t stop. Because maybe, just maybe, nobody will notice until it’s too late. I sit, quaking in my harness, looking out the small circular window to my left. Kepler presses one hand against a docking bay window a few meters away. I place my hand against my Shuttle window as if reaching for him again. The countdown to launch begins, and my device pings.

  I’m almost afraid to look at who it is. My mother? Deimos? Dr. Fornax calling me back? Darshan shimmers into view and says, Kepler has sent you an audio message.

  Play, I command.

  Over the whir of the robotic loading arms gently pushing us away from the dock, I hear a faint melody. From the window, the strip of darkness widens between our tiny ship and the MUSC station where Kepler watches me leave.

  I hear the rockets rev and the loading arm engage, cocking back to fling us headlong into space when the station’s rotation reaches the farthest point from the surface of the Moon. Any moment we’ll be catapulted into a trajectory toward the Earth.

  Just then, the melody of Kepler’s audio message becomes clear. It’s an old song, one that he loves because it appears in lots of the Earth movies we watch. Something about an astronaut named Major Tom. I can’t remember the name of the song or who sang it first. The man who fell to Earth with a lightning bolt across his face is all that sticks in my mind. Is that me now? Am I some kind of space oddity?

  I look out my window, toward the stations jutting up from the surface of the Moon like the spinning pinwheels of my Earth memories. Somewhere down there, my mother’s working in a helium mine, and on the other side, my father’s silver-wrapped body is tethered in the field of the dead. Wish me luck! I think to my parents, but I don’t send the message.

  I grip the armrests, preparing for the thrust as the rocket boosters rev and we’re catapulted away. The singer tells me that the stars look very different today, and he’s right. Everything is strange. Right then, I know it’s true—planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do but hold on tight because finally, after ten years of living on the Moon, I’m on my way back home.

  CASTOR NEVA

  ALPHAZONIA, EARTH

  THE SECURIBOTS DUMP Talitha and me in a small narrow room with one tiny window somewhere high up in the palace. The room is bare except for two white chairs, a small table, and a wall screen playing the D’Cart Stream.

  As soon as the bots leave and lock the door, I pick myself up off the floor and straighten my clothes. “At least they didn’t take our devices.” I walk around the tiny space looking for a signal, but no luck. “Damn,” I say. “Blocked.”

  Talitha is shaking so hard she can’t stand up, so she stays put on the floor, where she hugs her knees close to her chest. “I can’t believe this happened. I told you we’d get caught, but you wouldn’t listen!” she keeps repeating.

  “Don’t get upset.”

  “How can I not!” she shouts. “This is terrible. My worst nightmare! I told you it would go wrong.”

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “You don’t know that,” she snarls at me.

  Half of me wants to shake her and tell her to pull herself together, but I know that doesn’t work. What she needs now is reassurance. Not my strong suit, but I gather up my patience to comfort her.

  “Talitha,” I say calmly, and squat in front of her. I reach out and put both hands on her shoulders so we’re looking at each other eye to eye. She is my mirror image. “Breathe,” I say, and squeeze. “We’ve been in tighter spots before. Remember when we stole all those rare orchids from the flower district and that weird guy with a wheel for a foot chased us into an alley?”

  “And we had to climb a wall to get away.”

  “Yep. And the first time I ever tried to Jack-a-Pod?”

  “Only there were already people inside of it?” she remembers, and almost grins.

  “Yeah, they looked like this when their car pulled up and opened its doors to us rat-faced urchins in dirty pants.” I twist my face into shock, fear, and disgust, the same as the Yoobies.

  Talitha nods, trying not to laugh.

  “We got out of those tight spots and a lot of other ones, too, so we’ll get out of this one.” I massage her shoulders to reassure her.

  “No, this is worse.” She pushes my hands away. “You got greedy.”

  “Yeah, well…” I stand up. “You’re right. I did. But I’m not going to apologize for trying to get what I deserve.”

  “No one deserves any of this!” She tosses her arms out wide.

  “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” I mumble, then I turn away and stare at the wall screen. On the Stream, D’Cart winks and sips the Gem Water. “Hey, look at that,” I say. “There’s a time delay. That was at least five minutes ago. I bet they’ll edit out what just happened.”

  “If we’d only gotten out earlier—” says Talitha.

  “Shush,” I tell my sister. “I want to hear what she’s saying.” I command the sound louder.

  Sure enough, the scene by the pool switches. Now D’Cart is superimposed on a beach at sunrise with her arms outstretched. Behind her, the morning moon is faint in the salmon-colored sky. Our tussle with the SecuriBots is nowhere to be seen.

  “Yep,” I say, and laugh. “Edited.”

  “So our followers didn’t see us get carted off?” Talitha asks.

  “No,” I say. “That’s a bit of luck at least.”

  “No it’s not!” Talitha whines. “It means nobody knows we’re here.” She sniffles.

  I don’t mention that Mundie knows exactly where we are. That’s not what Talitha needs to hear right now.

  On-screen, D’Cart says, “I’d like to take a moment to pay homage to some fallen heroes.”

  “This oughtta be good,” I say, and drop into a chair.

  “Let us remember the brave individuals … mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers who fight for us in the Central Valley Water War to protect our way of life…” A low, mournful oboe accompanies a scroll of smiling soldiers parading across the screen.

  “What the…” I say, then trail off to watch the weirdness unfolding in front of me.

  “Through their hard work and sacrifice, these fine people help secure our water rights…”

  A proud, lantern-jawed, gun-wielding soldier who could have been our father winks and nods from his perch atop a tower at Silverwood Lake in the San Gabriel Mountains. I know that lake, of course. I diverted water from it to irrigate my mother’s land in the foothills down below.

  “They protect our power sources,” D’Cart says over images of wind turbines and solar farms patrolled by armored tanks. “And help us rebuild our city.”

  A ReConstruction worker with pretty eyes and corkscrew curls takes a break from clearing rubble to wave at the camera. She looks nothing like the tired woman we watched board the bus earlier tonight.

  “Some of these brave people have lost their lives in an attempt to secure a better future for all of us.”

  Talitha snorts. “Not all of us.”

  A crying woman and two waifs stand over a coffin draped with an AlphaZonian flag.

  “Hey, look,” I say. “It’s us!” I laugh.

  “Not funny,” she says, still pissed at me.

  “These fine people served us bravely,” D’Cart says. “Shouldn’t they be allowed to die with dignity instead of being sold off like chattel to the Moon once their usefulness on Earth has expired?”

  “Like our mother had a choice?” Talitha m
utters. “She needed money to raise us, not a postconscious husband.”

  “It’s a travesty when the Moon Utilitarian Survival Colony buys the ravaged bodies of these once-proud soldiers.” D’Cart’s voice is full of emotion.

  Talitha and I look at each other. “Am I hearing this right?” she asks, and I shrug.

  “Did you know that MUSC merges the bodies of these soldiers with machines,” D’Cart asks her followers, “then connects CPU boards to their limbs in order create a cadre of technoslaves they call ExploroBots?”

  Your father is a kind of astronaut now, Mom told us when she sold off Dad’s damaged body. He’ll fly up to the moon, she said. Will it hurt? we asked, and Mom said, No, he can’t feel anything anymore.

  “The MUSC ExploroBot program is a calamity!” D’Cart proclaims.

  I lean forward, captivated. “Is RayNay DeShoppingCart, the queen of insipid product placement, taking a political stand against MUSC?” I ask.

  “Maybe she’s going to launch her own Space Bot program and doesn’t want the competition,” Talitha mumbles.

  “You could be right,” I say.

  But D’Cart is on another trajectory right then. “Don’t those brilliant scientists on MUSC know that the mind and body exist on different planes?” She pauses for effect. “The earthly body, the astral mind.” A silvery holo outline of herself is projected behind her on the screen. “Think about it,” she implores her followers. “If you replaced each part of a person’s body, one by one, over time … a leg…”

  Her right leg disappears. It’s replaced by another leg.

  “An arm…”

  Then her left arm is replaced. Her right ear, her nose. She continues naming body parts until her entire form is another human being, but her voice remains the same.

  “Who do I become when my body no longer exists but I am still here?” She waits, as if allowing everyone to ponder this deep thought before she supplies them with her answer. “When the body dies, the soul lives on.” The silver holo of her original form floats up to hover above the stranger’s body with her voice.