29
DESTINED TO REPEAT
I JUST SPILLED MY guts and ugly cried on the least sympathetic shoulders on the station, Mallory thought as she walked past Stephanie. The Gneiss was perfectly still and holding a sack.
The only thing saving her last shred of pride left was knowing the Gneiss probably hadn’t realized how vulnerable she was being.
“Excuse me,” she said politely as she edged around Tina, who almost entirely blocked the door. Tina stepped aside.
And Mallory was inside.
She entered the room with long strides, eyes fixed ahead, projecting confidence. Not that ancient dozing rock people would read that about her, but it made her feel better to pretend anyway. It’s true I don’t have much left, but I’d rather not think getting squashed is my only solution.
Confidence was not easy to project. Gone was the sleepy room with gently growing ferns. Now the room seemed full of the undead.
Gneiss lumbered around, some missing legs, some missing arms, and some of those missing limbs slithered around as if looking for a body. Eyes glowed in attached and severed heads, looking around eagerly.
Even the pebbles that littered the floor rocked back and forth as if looking for another pebble to hang out with and maybe make a bigger pebble.
They slowed to a stop when Mallory stepped among them, all focusing on her, obviously awake but unthreatening. This seemed scarier than when they were walking around.
“Passing through,” she said to no one in particular. “I need to check out my shuttle. Won’t be but a minute.”
She neared the airlock where a few cubic Gneiss who had ascended to become spacecraft sat. She couldn’t tell if they were awake yet or not.
The floor was humming, she realized, but it wasn’t the station shuddering in pain or the angry Sundry hum. She realized it was the secret language of Gneiss that they only used with each other. It felt like everyone had something to say.
Speaking of Sundry, some had flown in here. She spotted three silver and two blue, staying apart from each other. The blue hovered over a Gneiss that was missing an arm, and the silver had landed on one of the ships.
After she passed, the ship began to hum, a familiar engine warming sound.
Whatever Stephanie was going to do had really made them angry.
A GNEISS BEGAN to move when she got close to the airlock, and Mallory pulled up, worried. But the one-armed Gneiss simply put her hand on the button for the airlock, and it slid open.
“Oh. Thanks!” she said.
The Gneiss ignored her and stayed where she was, motionless.
The medical team’s ladder remained propped against the damaged shuttle. Mallory was not the first one there, since several more Sundry had arrived first. These were mostly blue, but a few silver were among them.
“I thought only Gneiss were allowed in here.” She didn’t expect a response and didn’t get one. “Someday you’re going to have to tell me the differences between you two and where the rivalries lie.”
The Gurudev equivalent of economy class was a shambles, with plastic bottles, books, mobile phones, purses, and more everywhere. The door to the cargo hold in the back of the shuttle had come open, several suitcases spilling out of it.
As usual, she didn’t know what she was looking for, but she knew she would when she found it.
Lovely had said she sat in the front, while Sam sat in the back. Mallory looked at the back of the seating area and found a black backpack wedged under his seat. Inside were two fat books: collections of her own work, three novels bound into each edition. She pulled one out and flipped through it.
Every page. Every single page had notations in the margins.
“He really was obsessed,” she marveled, flipping through. He had flagged the clues, marked the red herrings, and even had a special notation for the parts of the narrative she had made up (since technically they were fiction based on her life and reality wasn’t as neat as fiction was. Usually.).
Every memory Mallory had written from her childhood was highlighted. She had included happy memories of her mother, how she’d tickle Mallory with her old-fashioned feather duster that Aunt Kathy had complained was dirty even though Mom never used it to clean. The time she had stepped on a bee on her birthday. How Mom had died soon after that.
She wondered what Mom would think of her now, self-exiled on a space station, her only friends unsympathetic rock people, and still surrounded by murders. She sat down and kept flipping. Something gnawed at the back of her brain, and her tinnitus started acting up. “I don’t have time for a migraine now!” she groaned.
She got up and carried the book with her over to Aunt Kathy’s seat, where her purse was stashed. Many bottles of sleeping pills. Far too many to need on a short trip. She carried a mug with a picture of the family on it: Kathy, Uncle Dez, and Desmond. Mallory remembered this picture. She found the upstairs curtain of her room, pulled aside just so she could see them take their family photo for their Christmas cards.
When Mom found out, she’d been furious to be left out, mainly for Mallory’s sake. Aunt Kathy had calmly explained, “You are guests. Welcome guests who can stay as long as they like, but guests. My husband and son are my family.”
And now they’re gone and you’re desperate to bring home whatever family is left, even if it’s the ones at the bottom of the barrel.
A loud buzzing caught her attention, and she looked down. A silver Sundry worker was writhing on the carpet.
“Shit, did I step on you?” she asked, bending down and reaching her hand out. But the Sundry stopped writhing abruptly and took wing. She watched it, puzzled. It had looked like the bee she’d stepped on when she was young.
She did a cursory look at the luggage. Nothing stuck out at her except the hard musical instrument case. Lovely had said she didn’t know if she could play again. She’d probably want this.
Mallory shouldered Sam’s backpack and Lovely’s case and climbed down the ladder. She reached the airlock door just in time to see Stephanie walk out to the center of the ossuary, hold the fabric sack in her hands, and start vibrating.