Chapter 40
Ver

Over the four and a half hours of the spaceship ride, repressed memories, fears, and hopes surge out of me. My mind is a crumbling old mansion overgrown with weeds. Together, Aryl and I clear out and explore the many rooms, one at a time—circling back to the ones with the strangest, loveliest things inside.

Aryl invites me into her mind too. Although she appears to be in optimal health, she tells me that she has sustained dozens of dance injuries. The click in her right shoulder needs laser surgery, which she cannot afford. She has dreamed of becoming a professional dancer all her life but has chosen to pursue science, a more reliable path—and learned that her two passions could intertwine. One takes place second by second. The other unfolds over months, even years. Both are subject to the forces of nature. Both occupy every corner of her heart.

I tell her about my mother. The woman who built friendships with our neighbors so we would have a place to hide when rival drug distributors came for my father. Who took on the burden of his scathing words to protect me and eventually banished him from our home. Who watched over my shoulder as I studied and took tests and studied again so I could escape Three.

The conversation meanders, stream-like. Swelling and waning, sometimes to a trickle. But it never dries.

By the time the yellow curve of G-Moon Three appears, I am thrilled to see it. Never mind that we are here in a hopeless push to clear our names. Never mind that I might get sicker with every kilometer we cross. Never mind that if we fail, we will be thrown in the freezing penal colonies clustered near the moon’s icy poles.

I let myself believe that together, we can find the answers we have been hunting. And maybe walk away with our freedom.

The Mercenary touches down behind a rocky outcropping a hundred meters from the Honey Crater residential bubble. According to the standard clock, it is early evening, but darkness shrouds this side of G-Moon Three. Typical for my home moon: no correlation between the time and whether it is light out.

I am used to shadows. Used to the walls of the crater casting them over the hermetically sealed town within. The sight is familiar, but it has never made me this sad before. Because I have seen so much more now.

Aryl and I board the Mercenary’s oblong hoverpod, detach from the ship, and pilot across the sandy yellow expanse to the nearest airlock, just over the lip of the crater on the west side of town. We go through the first door and scan in the Mercenary’s access code. I hold my breath, releasing it slowly as the second door opens. The Mercure vehicle is a licensed craft.

We step out into a town frozen in time. The triangular blocks of buildings are made of glued-together particles of the same yellow sand that covers the moon’s surface.

Cheet! Cheet! A tram whistle blows. The tracks, traversed by dingy, rusting cars, carry people back from the looming factories on the outskirts of the residential bubble.

“Wonder which one of those belongs to Paion,” I say. I speak to the hoverpod, calling the mothership’s AI. “Hello, Mercenary.”

“Your inquiries are welcome,” says the sophisticated female-coded voice.

“Where is the Paion Prostheses factory? Can you take us there?”

“Searching now.” After five long seconds, the AI emits a descending series of beeps. “There is no structure known as the Paion Prostheses factory.”

“Did you check every database? Try different spellings.”

The ceiling lights up with moving yellow dots as the AI ponders. “I’m coming up blank after searching fifteen regional and moonwide address databases.”

Disappointment seeps into my belly, though I knew this was likely. “Thank you. Go back to sleep.”

The AI logs off with a tinkling melody.

“You didn’t expect it to be that easy, did you?” Aryl says.

Sighing, I let my head droop onto her shoulder. “It may not exist anymore,” I say. “It could have moved or been buried by the sand. We will have to ask Ma. She has worked in so many factories during her life, met so many people. She must have heard of Paion.”

Aryl’s mouth twists. “Didn’t you say your mom’s always flying on something or other?”

“Not always,” I say. “And just patches.”

“Just patches,” Aryl says, disbelieving. “Don’t they affect her memory?”

I shake my head, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Not the long-term memories. She can remember conversations we had when I was five—things I forgot long ago—but she forgets what she ate for dinner last night. Even if she knows nothing about a Paion factory, though, she has older coworkers who might know. She can point us to them.”

“Okay, let’s go. I guess we can’t take this shiny little pod—it’d be too obvious. Right?”

“We can walk,” I agree, trying to keep my voice steady.

We abandon the pod near the airlock, camouflaging it behind a sparkling gray asteroid and activating the electrical security feature. Until we scan our irises and deactivate the shield, anyone who touches it—trying to rip off parts or steal the whole pod—will be electrocuted. An awful way to learn to keep your hands to yourself.

My memories steer us home. Each spot in the desert that surrounds the town is unique to me, marked by its own sand colors and dune shapes. In the windless habitat, the hills and valleys stay put. Footprints never fade—they only get trodden upon. I might have left small shoeprints of my own when I played here as a child, running and throwing sand, Ma looking on and smiling. But I don’t go looking for the marks I made. They would remind me too sharply of a life I miss.

As we walk toward the nearest tram stop, we see a dozen of the oldest ladies in Honey Crater on a flat spread of sand, dancing silently. Not Aryl’s sort of dancing, all agile leaps and turns. Here they sway, sway, step, step, each lady never straying from her spot in her row. Shiny black bonnets protect their faces from Pangu’s weak rays. People here are afraid of their skin darkening—afraid of looking like the field laborers on Two.

“What’s their dance about?” Aryl says.

I shrug. “This is their daily exercise. It means something different to each of them.”

As we pass, Aryl smiles at the ladies, but they ignore us. I feel sad, looking at them. They are in their sixties and spend time together out of necessity. Most of their partners and other friends have died.

Side by side, Aryl and I cross the swinging footbridge across the deep gorge of Lightning Park, Aryl holding my cane while I use the handrails for support. I look down into the crack in the earth, marveling as I always have at the stripes of ferrous and ferric iron, which over time have painted the landscape’s sediments orange, red, and brown. If I am hungry, the land reminds me of the inside of a peach. If I am hurt, it looks like blood in various stages of drying. But most often, it looks to me like fire.

Ahead of us looms the tram stop on the edge of town. I smell grease and chilies and fried canned meat from the row of food stands in front of the station. Few people are present. There is one family—three children, their black hair dusted with sand. Perhaps they were playing by the park, like I used to, but none of them are talking now. The children fearfully clutch their parents’ legs.

A sense of danger sets in. This station is patrolled by drug ring members, laser guns flashing at their belts. I make out three older men as well as a young woman wearing high-heeled boots that come up to her thighs—all armed. Aryl stares, petrified.

“Do not look at them. We should be fine,” I say.

Click chugga click click! An inbound cargo tram cruises through the station without stopping. Each car is blinding white—the bottom halves collecting dust—with EXSAPIENS printed in huge letters at their tops. And below that, the spinning DNA helices and the familiar motto: Optimizing the human body, faster than evolution.

“ExSapiens transports stuff through your town?” Aryl asks.

I squint, puzzled. I have never seen their freight trams here. “They do now, apparently.”

An outbound passenger tram pulls in, grabbing our attention. Factory workers stumble out of the rust-colored cars, weighed down by heavy, falling-apart bags and soul-deep exhaustion. Beside them, the primary school students bounce home in their neon discdisc uniforms or off-white school clothes, the brightness faded from wash after wash. Seeing the children makes the adults smile. I am not sure how to react, since I am right in between.

“I dressed like that,” I say, pointing to the students. “Just six months ago.”

Aryl smiles and watches a group of three girls, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old. “They’re holding hands,” she says.

“People do that here,” I say, thinking of my friends at school, who would thread their arms through mine as we walked. I thought nothing of it then, but on One, the first thing I noticed was the physical distance between people. Like everyone was worried they smelled bad or would catch some infection.

“It’s sweet,” Aryl says.

Without thinking, I grab her long fingers. Her hand spasms in mine, but she does not let go. Electricity courses up my arm. It is almost too much to take when she presses my palm to her cheek.

I go dizzy, overwhelmed that she feels something too.

“Ver . . .” she whispers, stepping closer. What does she want? What will she do?

Whoosh. The rumble of the tram as it leaves the station reminds me that we are here, in public, on Three. We need to be careful.

“Shh,” I say, my whole body heating up. “Not now.”

“Okay.” Aryl lets our intertwined hands fall to our sides. We walk in silence, but her presence lends me bravery.

As we approach the apartment bloc, our feet stir up yellow dust clouds. I fix my eyes on the concrete buildings, whose small windows are made to keep the sand out. Ma is at home in one of those buildings! My heart reaches out for her.

There is the savory pancake vendor, Eli, just outside the gate. He has known my order since I was eight. Even though he is closing for the day, the air around his cart still smells of scallions and crispy, oily dough.

Tattooed young men, dressed in the signature black of the drug rings, are clustered around his stall. They must be burning their tongues on the hot pancakes, but they keep eating.

“They’re less scary this way,” Aryl whispers as we pass. Still, we trace a big loop around them.

We are here: the building in which I grew up. My eyes crawl across the checkerboard of windows until I find our unit. Fourth floor, second from the right. A hint of pale-yellow curtain makes my heart leap.

We approach the gated entrance, each step seeming to take a lifetime. I feel in my pocket for the keycard. Heart pounding, I lift it up to the reader outside the building. Go in. Resign myself to climbing the stairs, as there are no elevators. Walk up the concrete steps, Aryl’s hand in mine. I run out of breath three times on the way, but I have more nervous energy circulating in me than ever.

Apartment 408.

When I enter, I still hold Aryl’s hand for comfort. The room seems to have contracted, become even smaller than I remember. The window is shut. The lacy, pale-yellow curtains hang still. Our red foam couch is a mound on the floor. Two beds: at night, Ma and I slept stacked one on top of the other, me on the bottom bunk, her just a meter above. She has not thrown out my cot, even though it would give her extra space.

For privacy, a sliding plastic panel seals each bed off from the rest of the room. I used a razor to carve slender oval leaves on mine, to Ma’s annoyance. But to me, the beauty was necessary amid the clutter. One wrong move could set off an avalanche of dirty clothing, plant bulbs, shoes with flapping soles that we had tried too many times to fix.

Across from my cot, a three-pronged metal stand is mounted on the wall. Because we had no home AI, I created this out of spare metal from shop class, used it to get dressed. Put the edges of my underwear on the bottom two prongs, stepped through, and pulled it up around my bum. Or I would raise the contraption, hang my shirt on it, tug down . . .

With a jolt, I hear the door open behind us. I turn to see the person who has made me feel the deepest joy and the fiercest pains.

My mother looks at me, at Aryl, at our entwined hands, at me again. After a long moment, a whirlwind carries Ma into my arms.

“Baobei,” she says, her voice heavy with emotion. Precious baby. She does not let go of me. “Have you eaten?” She pauses, looks at my body, and corrects herself. “You’re hungry. Let me steam some dumplings I made yesterday. If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve made them fresh.”

“Ma, there is no need. Really,” I say into her shoulder. She can be aggressive with her hospitality, especially if she wants forgiveness.

Ma sounds grounded now. Not far away, like when she is flying. But she is too thin. I watch her more carefully. Happy Patches suppress appetite. Since they adhere to the roof of the mouth, you cannot eat while using one.

Aryl lurks near the doorway, sheltering herself from Ma’s burst of activity. She rolls one ankle in circles but is otherwise still. Watching, listening.

As Ma bustles about the kitchenette, she keeps curling and uncurling her fingers, which are always in pain. Crick, crunch! as she cracks her knuckles. Her torso bends at an angle to her legs—a postural problem from decades spent sitting at the textile factory looms. Patches of gray creep over her long black hair like an invasive species.

I wonder irrationally if I should have stayed for her. Even though for sixteen years, she was pushing me to go.

Because of pain, neither of us is completely functional alone. Together, we had a life. Just not the life we wanted.

“Tell me the real reason you came back home, Ver-xin,” Ma says—my heart. She leans across the table on her elbows, her face propped in her hands. Like I do, sometimes. “Are you here to hide? To wait out the storm? Because I know you didn’t cross two moons just to see your old mother.”

“Well, no.” I feel my face flush with guilt. “But it is good to see you, Ma.”

Ma looks through her curtain of gray-black hair at Aryl. “Why did she come?”

Aryl’s fingers curl into fists at her side.

My words get stuck in my throat. “Aryl is also . . . accused of—”

“Murder.” Ma slaps a plate of boiled cabbage dumplings on the cluttered table. “I’ve been following the case. This girl’s already here, though, so I suppose it’s too late to take your mother’s advice.”

This is too familiar. Ma gave her opinion on each of my friends when I was in primary school: they had perfect grades or a parent with an addiction or a sister who did sex work, too much money or too little. To her, every person in my life was an example for me, good or bad. She expected me to imitate some and take warnings from others, to become the person she wanted me to be: smart enough to escape Three and strong enough to endure far from home.

How do I make Ma look long enough at someone—at Aryl—to see the person inside? To see what I see? To realize I do not want to be the girl that I brought here tonight; I just want her.

I have no appetite for the dumplings. I pass the plate to Aryl. Defiance burning in her eyes, she picks up two with her fingers and swallows them whole.