This Dusty Way To Galaxies Beyound

Julia K. Patt

Raena wakes an hour earlier than she must. Already she has to rise well before the sun to pack the cart and begin the long ride around the Drytown markets.

But the hour before that, this hour, is hers. This is when the launches happen.

She wiggles out of the bed without rousing her adopted siblings, a scraggly group of eight orphans the fruit sellers have plucked from all over Drytown. The room smells like them, their dusty hair and baby breath and the sticky soles of their feet, still dark with berry juice.

She would sleep on the outer edge of the room if she could, but Hiri and Nunks have trouble holding their bladders through the night and so they take priority. Raena hops carefully over Nunks’ outstretched hand, then does a clumsy pirouette on her good foot around Hiri before she can escape.

She keeps her metal foot and hand in the hall outside to keep the littles away from them. The foot is especially heavy, made of recycled scrap metal, and a running little could easily trip over it and fall. It also makes it easier to slip out in the mornings.

Raena buckles the pieces onto her stumps, both on the right side—she still doesn’t know why. She oils the joints carefully so they don’t squeak, but it’s impossible not to make that th-thump th-thump noise as she walks. Her prosthetics are ungainly, but they’re all the fruit sellers can afford and she will not ask for more.

Outside, in the gray-blue night, she rides her cycle away from the little house and through the conical structures where the fruit grows, the vines and squat bushes and top-heavy trees greening the metal skeletons. In a few hours, when the sky lightens, the misters will start, letting the plants get their moisture before the risk of evaporation increases.

She pedals away from them and out of Drytown to the very limit of Tern, the great city on the edge of the desert. She looks out into the dark expanse, the stars still glittering down, the planet’s seven moons shining bright. The massive field of solar panels is still dormant, so it’s easy to see the bright orange lights of the launch station out there on the Travelers’ Plateau.

Raena stands, holding her breath, quietly counting down. When she hits one, a flash of light explodes on the horizon; then it ascends upupupup and away from Tern into the near-morning sky. Another team flying out into the nothing, to see what they can find among the stars beyond. What she wouldn’t give to join them, one day, foolish as it feels to dream.

She cannot afford to dawdle, but she pedals as slowly as time will allow on the way home, her mind’s eye tracking the arc of the rocket into space.

• • •

The fruit sellers are awake and waiting for her with breakfast when she returns. She knows not all of them approve, but they voted a while back and the majority see no harm in her hobby, as they call it.

They have made her the usual fortified protein porridge today with a generous portion of stewed fruit over the top to cut the meal’s musty flavor. Neither she nor the littles have tired of the fruit yet; it is still novel to be able to eat as much as you want of something—well, the bruised and unsightly specimens anyway—and all of the children have gone over plump in the year since they were adopted.

There are always some fruit sellers to see her off in the mornings. A collective of seven, they send most of their wares to the Waterside markets and restaurants, but they save a portion to sell to their own neighborhoods in Drytown, where the fruit is an important source of hydration. So while planting, cultivation, picking, and packing falls to the collective and the littles, Raena has her own unique job of taking a cart full of fruit to the markets every day.

Outside, the fruit sellers help her hitch the fully loaded and secured cart to her cycle and steady it as she climbs onto the seat, making sure her metal foot locks into place. They’ve attached her saddlebags, full of lunch and precious water-buds—succulent pods bursting with moisture. One of them, Gorse, pats her on the head before she departs.

“Blessings go with you, child,” he murmurs.

• • •

The morning market is uneventful. She sells most of the spiny fruit early because they bruise easily and tend to look pulpy and brown by the end of the day otherwise. The berries never last for the midday market; expensive as they are, the few bunches she carries almost always vanish right away. Parked between Queemy, who sells nuts, and Loola, who does spices, she can do a brisk business and does.

Here, in the heart of Drytown, it’s hard to image the rest of the city, luminous and green with its stories of thriving gardens and the reviving breezes from the bay and the sea beyond. Tern itself is a bright crescent hugging the water, with Drytown clinging to its back like a sick, thirsty child. The original settlers were the builders who constructed the solar fields; some of those stayed with their families, unable to find more work, but mostly the poor and indigent moved into their abandoned shelters, making what was meant to be temporary something permanent. Now, Drytown keeps growing but can’t expand beyond the solar fields, so little shacks pile up and up, stretching towards the sky in a dusty imitation of Tern’s platinum towers.

Raena rides her cycle with its somewhat lightened load to the midday market, which stands closest to the city median, the boundary between Drytown and the rest of Tern. There’s no fence or tangible boundary between the two, and yet the people of Drytown are as fully separated by the dividing line as they would be by a one hundred-foot wall. Beyond, the buildings might be shabby by Tern standards, but in Drytown they would be coveted palaces.

Raena takes a corner where she can best look into the city, and more than one customer catches her daydreaming. She’s thinking about the Needle Tower, where the space travelers train, only a few miles from here. Old Jex, one of her regulars, waves a hand in front of her face.

“Never really with us are you, Raena,” he says, not unkindly, and drops his money into her metal palm. “Wishing don’t make it so. Better settle.”

“Better settle” is something of an unofficial motto among Drytowners. She hates it. She hates that when they look at her, they see a damaged child with little chance at a future. Without the fruit sellers she’d be a beggar, no doubt, fat little cripple, they say, as if she doesn’t deserve their care. Those full cheeks would sink, that round belly collapse.

One time, a group of boys kicked her bike out from under her in the midday market and they all laughed, even the adults, while she was pinned under it, trying to disengage her metal foot from the pedal. There are better worlds than these, she tells herself often, but she doesn’t know if she will ever reach them.

She’s giving Jex his change when a murmur goes through the market. There, in the sky above Tern, is a plume of bright blue smoke. Excitement grips Raena’s stomach. A new space traveler has completed their training.

• • •

She listens to the wireless with the littles that evening after dinner and nighttime chores. Aura Mayana is the newest space traveler to clear her testing protocols, even though she’s only been training a few months. She’ll go up in the launch with Ersten Yong and Joedi Blaze in three weeks.

“They’re having a parade for her!” Raena tells the fruit sellers after, when the littles are getting ready for bed. “It’s going to include Drytown, too. People will want snacks—shouldn’t I bring the cart?”

The fruit sellers exchange looks. They came to Drytown not for wealth but to care for green and growing things. They sell their wares in order to survive, but Raena knows they are not very business-minded, for all that everyone, including her and the littles, calls them the fruit sellers. Gorse, whom the others particularly respect, is a member of a religious order which dictates he live among the needy. All of them share similar philosophies.

“Please,” she begs. “Everyone else will raise their prices. We can at least sell water-buds so that people don’t get dehydrated. It will do some good, I promise.”

Gorse strokes his beard. “It’s for you, too, isn’t it? So you can see this woman, this Aura Mayana, who will go to space?”

Raena nods, worried he will chastise her for being selfish.

“See that you do not forget to actually sell some fruit.” His dark eyes crinkle at the corners as he takes in her smile, her excitement.

• • •

The parade route winds around the perimeter of Drytown until it turns down the street where the evening market usually sets up, the widest road back into Tern. Raena rides her cycle to the corner of this street and converts the cart into a stand with more enthusiasm than she has ever mustered. The littles wanted to come with her to work today, but Gorse and the others said they would have to make do with hearing Raena’s stories. “As will we,” he added, winking at her.

It is early, but already people have begun to gather at the parade route. As the crowd grows, she begins to worry that she won’t be able to see much. Her foot drags and scrapes as she climbs up on a concrete block next to her cart. There, she can see the street and keep track of her wares. Already, she spots some urchins weaving through the crowds, dipping their nimble fingers into bags and pockets. Raena squeezes the money pouch around her neck for reassurance. She’ll give the thieving children some leftover fruit at the end of the day at the fruit sellers’ direction, but she doesn’t have to trust them.

It’s nearly midday before the shouts and rumble of engines announce the parade’s approach. No one in Drytown—indeed, no one in most of Tern—owns mechanized transport except for the city government, and even they must be discrete with their fuel usage or face extreme criticism and recalls. The space travelers, however, are worth it, and Raena sees her first glimpse of them standing in the back of a squat flatbed truck and waving.

In her excitement—is that Aura Mayana in the front? Is she getting down from the truck?—she loses track of the cart for a moment, moving her steadying medal hand so she can get a better look at the figures on the truck. That’s when it happens: a small tussle breaks out in the crowd as people fight to see. One of the combatants crashes back into the little cart, overturning the whole thing and scattering fruit everywhere.

“No, no!” Raena cries as grapes and spiny fruit get crushed underfoot around her. Abandoning her cycle and toppled cart, she goes scuttling into the street after some rolling apples, snatching them up and stuffing them into her pockets as she’s able. There’s a commotion and the sound of a truck horn. Certain she’s going to be hit, Raena extends her metal hand in what defense it can offer—and then she’s crouching nose to nose with Aura Mayana.

The traveler, seeing the mess, has bent down to retrieve an apple. Now she straightens, impossibly tall as the travelers always seem to be. Maybe they need those long limbs to pilot the ships? But unlike Ersten Yong and Joedi Blaze, who stand behind her looking bemused, the newest traveler is not lithe and fine-boned, but heavyset and round-faced.

“Hello,” she says to Raena a little shyly. “Are you alright? We seem to have made a mess.”

“It’s fine,” Raena says, still staring. “I should have kept hold of the cart.”

There’s a murmur up ahead, people wondering why everything’s stopped, and then a man with a stunner comes back to check on them. “Are you okay here, Mz?” he asks. “We really ought to keep going.”

“Just a moment, please,” the space traveler says. “Ersten, Joedi, some help?” And the three of them in their shining, silvery jumpsuits step into the crowd to retrieve Raena’s cycle and cart, the latter now dented on one side, the former bent at the front wheel. Raena and Aura Mayana deposit what fruit they could recover into the cart. But it’s now irreparably dusty and bruised—she can’t sell fruit like that and looking at it makes Raena want to cry.

“Where are your folks?” Aura Mayana asks once they’ve put everything to rights, as much as they’re able anyway. Ersten and Joedi regard her with good-natured patience while the guard stutters again that they should keep going. “Or—are you alone?”

Raena shakes her head. “They’re…” Well, it’s complicated, isn’t it? “My family lives out by the solar fields,” she explains. “We grow fruit,” she adds unnecessarily and winces.

Aura Mayana laughs. “So I see. Well, we’d be remiss if we didn’t see you home, wouldn’t we? What’s your name?”

“Raena,” she whispers, but Aura Mayana hears her perfectly.

“Raena,” she repeats.

Her name, in the mouth of someone who will travel among the stars.

• • •

She can’t imagine what the fruit sellers must be thinking as the rumbling flatbed truck approaches the little house. They’re taking a break from the midday heat with the littles, passing around water-buds and fallen fruit. When the truck pulls into the yard, they jump up. Gorse and the other adults rush forward, lifting Raena, her cycle, and the battered cart out of the back. They’re already peppering her with questions—“What happened? Are you hurt? Did someone do this?”—when Aura Mayana swings down from the passenger side and approaches them. The fruit sellers fall into silence, staring. If her shining uniform didn’t give her away, the space traveler’s emblem on her collar surely did, a rocket arcing into the stars.

“There was a small incident. Entirely our fault, I assure you. We didn’t anticipate we’d draw such a large crowd in Drytown,” she says, taking the fruit sellers’ hands one by one. “Hello, I’m Aura Mayana.”

“Well, we know, of course. We’re the Drytown Collective,” Gorse tells her, which is what the fruit sellers call themselves. “Thank you for bringing Raena home…can we offer you something eat?”

The travelers look around at each other and shrug. The guard makes a small, frustrated noise, but says nothing. “That would be lovely,” Aura Mayana says. “Thank you.”

• • •

Which is how three space travelers happen to be sitting in the fruit sellers’ yard with Raena and the littles, the littles bouncing around and peppering them with questions. How does the rocket work? Are they scared to go into space? Excited? What color are the stars? Where will they go?

“Okay, okay,” the fruit sellers tell them after the umpteenth question. “It is time for afternoon rest. Upstairs, please, and give us a moment’s peace.”

For a moment, Raena is sure they will send her to lie down with the littles, but they don’t. Her siblings troop away in a chorus of groans while the travelers laugh and wave to them.

“It’s amazing you’ve been able to take in so many,” Ersten Yong tells Gorse. “Are they all from Drytown?”

“All except our Raena here,” her guardian replies. “The orphanage found her at the ports in Waterside when she was an infant. They think a stowaway must have brought her to Tern, but we don’t know much more than that.”

“Ah, a fellow traveler,” Aura Mayana smiles down at Raena.

She’s never heard this version of her story before; the orphanage at the city median makes up her earliest memories. The caretakers there never made it sound like she came from anywhere but Drytown; most orphans come from Drytown.

“Your own travels begin soon, don’t they?” Gorse asks. “Where does your mission take you?”

“The Goatherder Nebula. It’s a funny name, isn’t it? It’s amazing what our astronomers find in the cosmos…and what they decide to call them.”

The adults sit and talk more about the mission, about the traveler programs and how long they spend in the stasis before they can journey among the stars, collecting samples and data for Tern back home. Aura Mayana is a pilot, so she will spend the journey in a half-suspended state, a kind of lucid dreaming.

“Quite a sacrifice,” Gorse murmurs.

“It is taxing, yes,” Joedi Blaze agrees. “That’s why they only pick the toughest candidates as pilots. You need an exact combination of hardiness and mental acuity to do it.” Her voice brims with pride, rather than envy, as she talks about her teammate.

Aura Mayana blushes. “Really, Joedi, as if being a science officer on a spaceship is anything to sneer at.”

Joedi shrugs. Her skin is darker than Gorse’s, and Raena remembers vaguely that Joedi Blaze is originally from the Southern Coast, many hundreds of miles from Tern. “Not that I ever doubted you, even after the accident.”

“Joedi,” Aura Mayana warns. “You know we’re not supposed to talk about that.”

The other traveler rolls her eyes. “These are smart people, Aura. They understand that the traveler program has its risks. Besides…” she nods at Raena, an exaggerated gesture. “The kid might like to know.”

Aura Mayana looks at Raena for a long moment. Her face is thoughtful. Finally, she reaches down and rolls up one silvery pant leg. There’s a neat, almost surgical looking scar at her knee. Below that, there’s not skin, but a fleshy silicone.

Raena stares.

“Everyone thinks I just started the traveler program, but the truth is I only just came back to it a few months ago. I’ve been rehabilitating. We had a simulation that didn’t…didn’t go so well.”

“Aura’s been training and getting back into condition for about a year now,” Ersten explains. “She was originally in our traveler cohort, which is why we’re so glad she finished in time to join us as our pilot. She’s one of the best there is, you know.”

Aura Mayana blushes again and shakes her head. She reaches down to take Raena’s good hand and squeezes, just once.

The guard appears at the edge of the yard, looking pointedly at his watch and clearing his throat. Gorse gets to his feet. “I suppose we’ve kept you for long enough,” he says.

“Not at all.” Ersten shakes his hand. “Thank you for your hospitality. Your home is beautiful—so full of life.”

“I’m glad we got to see some of the real Drytown,” Joedi agrees. “We’ll tell the others how many supporters we have here.”

Aura Mayana only says, “Thank you all,” before the three of them follow the guard back to the truck. But Raena can still feel the warmth of her hand on hers, long after they leave.

• • •

It’s the talk of the neighborhood for months, how the space travelers came to visit the fruit sellers and broke bread with them. The adults smile at the silly rumors, but they’re happy to distribute more of their wares to the curious. More food and clothing for the littles.

It doesn’t help the gossip that about a week after the incident a replacement cycle arrives for Raena, shiny and brand new, with a two-wheeled cart that hitches to the back. With it are a set of data discs and a note from Aura Mayana: better start studying now. The discs are comprehensive: physics, astronomy, chemistry, engineering, advanced calculus. Everything you need to know to travel the stars. She’ll get the littles started in their learning, too, she decides.

The night before the next launch, Raena can barely sleep. She’s up well before she needs to leave and slips down the stairs, no longer so pained by the sound of the th-thunk, th-thunk of her scrap metal foot. Once she learns enough, she can build and design her own; this is a temporary measure and she appreciates the fruit sellers and their efforts.

Her new cycle practically flies to the edge of the solar fields, the desert beyond as cool and gray as an alien world. She waits in the dark, half-dreaming of her own ascendance to the top of the traveler rockets, just her and the steady tide of her own breath in her suit, the journey’s way seared into her memory as surely as her own neighborhood. The seconds tick down and the explosion of jet fuel seems especially bright as it lifts Aura Mayana and her crew up and into the air, through the atmosphere, and to the stars beyond.

Someday, Raena knows, she will follow them.