THIRTY-TWO

Some Months Before in New Mexico

“My name’s Trip,” the florid man said, “an’ I been havin’ a real hard time.”

“Hello, Trip,” sang the mostly court-mandated choir.

The alien occupation had made Trip feel small, wiped out his career, cost him the love and respect of his wife and kids. The wife had moved north, taking the kids and the dog. Trip mopped his face with a bandanna while he talked. Sans job, family, or independent wealth, Emigration didn’t see much need for him. Soon as the courts ruled on the new policy, which Trip allowed might take years, he’d be on a ship to Venus.

Thanks for sharing, Trip. Hello, Marianne. Hey, Don. Hi, Billy. ’Sup, Blake. Afternoon, Suzie. What’s shakin’, Macon.

At the break, the facilitator refilled his mug with twice-brewed tea. Coffee was way too expensive to waste on a small-town support group. The doughnuts were a day old when he’d bought them the day before. He smiled at a man who’d painted his face gold. “Ain’t said nothing in a while, Ed. Feel like sharing today?”

The golden man shook his head. “Not today.”

The facilitator frowned. Ed was supposed to “actively participate” in the group as part of his plea deal.

Brooklyn, although the others at the meeting knew him as “Chuck,” didn’t share anything either. His sentence didn’t require him to. He just had to show up for eighteen months.

After the meeting, their armor patched, the warriors trooped outside to smoke shitty hand-rolled cigarettes and wait for rides. Trip sparked a kitchen match off the wall and lit the twist of paper he’d stuck in the corner of his mouth. He shook the match dead and caught Brooklyn’s eye. “What’s your line, kid?”

The anonymity of the meeting pretty much ended at the sidewalk. Out there, they were all just people with the weight of the future bearing down on them. “Computers.” Brooklyn picked a shred of tobacco off his tongue.

“Didn’t think they were making ’em new anymore.”

“Why they pay me to fix the old ones.”

Trip nodded. “Make the world go ’round.”

Nope, they were barely holding it together, running one or two steps behind on who was still on the planet and trying their best to make sure everyone remaining got their checks every month.

“Guess you ain’t from ’round here,” Trip said.

“Been here ’bout as long as I been anywhere.” Though why the hell he’d picked New Mexico was something he still asked himself.

“Surprised you haven’t emigrated,” Trip said. “Young guy like you. Skills. Looks like you can handle yourself. Don’t see a ring on your finger. You could write your own ticket.”

Brooklyn rubbed the butt of his cigarette out against the wall and dropped it on the ground. “Want my ticket, Trip, it’s all yours.” He stepped off the sidewalk to meet a battered pickup truck. The passenger door squealed open, and he dropped onto the worn upholstery inside. The driver was mostly aluminum, one of the exosuited multi-armed conquerors who’d come second place in the battle for Earth. Humanity had come in a distant third, but that was all right. Life went on.

“Did you have a good time?” The jelly gurgled with laughter. Her real name was unpronounceable, but translated to something like ‘Blood on the Water’. She went by ‘Float’.

Brooklyn pulled his sunglasses out of the overhead visor and slipped them on his face. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

The aging truck took the road out of town too fast, the result of leaving the driving to someone who’d grown up at interstellar speeds. At least Float had a license, which was more than could be said of Brooklyn, who’d lost it to the same judge who’d ordered him to attend the support group.

He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a jar of moonshine. “What’d I miss?”

Float reached for the radio volume with a steady metal hand. “Cooper bought two gallons. Cash. Like you told me. He still owes from the last time, though.”

“No more ’til he pays off.” Brooklyn took a swallow of the shine. He’d only been tagged for drunk driving because he spilled a similar jar all over himself and veered off the road in surprise. He hadn’t fought it because he wasn’t sure his fake ID would hold up.

Float had laughed her ass off when the jar spilt. A little splat of wet was hysterical to a critter whose biggest fear was being dry. Or maybe it had been Brooklyn’s reaction to the whole thing. Weird what a medusozoa thinks is funny.

Brooklyn turned the radio back up and punched the presets in hopes something worth listening came up. “Thought you were gonna throw a new radio in this thing. Something with a cassette deck.”

She lifted one hand from the wheel and twisted its wrist. “Get me one, and I will.”

Brooklyn turned to the jar again. “You need anything at the bait shop?”

“Stopped on the way here.” Float had a taste for waterdogs, and a pound of the weird little things lasted about a week. She’d drop a few in her tank every night, catch and eat them while she and Brooklyn watched television. Mostly she stuck to minnows, though, because the dogs gave her gas. “Filled up the cooler.”

Brooklyn rolled another cigarette and lit up. He didn’t really want it, but it was the only way he’d found to deaden the dog-like sense of smell he’d recently developed. The surrounding desert didn’t smell like much, but his roommate whiffed like a dirty aquarium.

Float signaled the turn into their long driveway, the aircraft hangar they lived in gritty and gray in the distance. It was surrounded by desert.

The Purple Lady was playing house again, a lavender apron layered over a purple dress, and cooking something foul on the range top in the kitchen. “Just in time for dinner!” She looked a little like Brooklyn’s ma as she’d been in the mid ’50s.

Brooklyn set the empty jar on the counter. “What is it?”

“Just something I threw together.” She waved her hand over the table like a spokesmodel. The surface was liberally dusted with flour, the bucket Brooklyn used to change the oil on the truck empty in the table’s center. Two sleeves of Saltines had gone into the meal, at least six eggs, a baby-food jar of rusty screws, and a Brillo pad. “It’s meatloaf!”

“That ain’t meatloaf.” Brooklyn stepped up to look at the mess on the stove. “An’ you ruined the pan.”

“It’s not? I did?” She shot her eyes wide then twisted her mouth to make a sitcom face. “Guess I’ll just have gin!”

In her defense, there weren’t a lot of groceries to work with. Brooklyn turned off the burner and moved the pan to the brick he used as a trivet.

“I have something important to tell you,” her face fell, “but I can’t remember what it is.”

The Purple Lady was the groupmind of Mars, all the highly evolved plant-based natives of the Red Planet in one purple telepathic package. Not purple; that’s just how my brain reads it. It was a wonder she functioned at the human level at all. “It’ll come to you. Ice?”

She smiled. He poured straight gin into a martini glass. “So,” she slumped into a seat at the table and slurred, “what sort of trouble have you been getting into?” The alcohol had absolutely no effect on her, but she’d been watching tipsy humans for about three-hundred-thousand years – not to mention the ones she’d seen on television – and sometimes faked it for fun.

“Doin’ it too soon,” he said. “Give it a drink or two.”

She straightened and dropped the act. “The question remains.”

Brooklyn took the seat across from her. She looked and sounded wholly human and smelled like catmint and forest floor. “Workin’, mostly.”

“Is it a job worth doing?”

“Computer shit, nothing you’d be interested in.”

The Mars born had never needed computers. From the beginning, they’d been networked naturally, communicating through a shared root system and growing into sentience together. When it came time to leave the planet millions of years later, they’d done that together, too, leaving the atmosphere in a great cloud of quantum-linked spores. Brooklyn had attracted their attention by getting high and letting some dude stick needles into his chakra points during a festival. Cosmic consciousnesses aligned, and the Purple Lady suddenly had someone new to talk to.

“Hot out,” she said.

Brooklyn nodded.

“Read any good books lately?” she said.

“Naw. You?”

She gulped her drink and looked like she might be about to put on the tipsy act again. Brooklyn felt guilty. She’d wanted someone new to talk to and ended up with him. A disappointment all around. “How ’bout TV?” he said.

She launched into a rundown of her favorite shows. Brooklyn had a lot of experience half-listening to people when they talked about such things and was able to drink steadily, fill her glass, nod and smile in the right places, and wonder if the pan was salvageable.

“Well, I guess that’s it!” She put her glass on the table. “Until next time.”

She disappeared with a sort of frying sound – a sizzle – releasing the stray molecules she used when she wanted to manifest a physical body. Brooklyn got up to clean the greasy-soot-ash powder she left behind on the chair. It went into the trash with the wasted flour and, after a little consideration, the pan.

Float came in. She lived on the other side of the hanger in her own cordoned-off apartment. Wasn’t much in there but a TV and a big fish tank, but she called it home. “Yarrow messaged. Said she’s ready for a pickup.”

Brooklyn grunted. The usual go-to-Venus checklist flickered in his mind, in the middle of which was a note to bribe the support group’s facilitator to keep reporting him as present. “We’ll head up in a couple of days.”

The old ship rocked, the forces of re-entry buffeting and scorching. Most of the tell-tale lights on the control surfaces blinked to yellow. Too many stayed that way. Brooklyn tapped one of the more important ones, and it flickered reluctantly back to green. If only he could do the same for himself. Fifteen words. Fifteen fucking words that change everything.

Overhead, a conifer-shaped air freshener danced on the end of a string and lost ground to hot circuits, baked dust, and the salty, clam-flat miasma of the copilot’s breath.

“You check the thing?” Brooklyn said.

“Did.” The copilot was wearing a bulky exosuit. Inside it, her mouth, arms, and tentacles moved languidly through a chilly, fishy brine that mimicked her natural environment.

“You check it, check it, or just look at the lights?”

“Jelly Tech doesn’t break.”

Do you know anythin’ ’bout this?

About the message? No, the Purple Lady said in his head. Perhaps you should focus on landing.

It was hard to stay in the moment long enough to worry about that. Two decades living under a sword, millions dead, millions more displaced, billions terrified. The First Cathedral of the Cosmos still loomed over the planet. Barely functional scavenger ships labored daily to sweep human garbage from orbital space. The latest fleet of evacuation ships was being stitched together near Eisenhower Station…

The landing, Brook.

Okay. Okay.

“Split a piece of cake?” Brooklyn said. “I’d say we could go back to my place for a nightcap, but just remembered I don’t have a place.”

Carmen sighed. “I should get back to New York. We have a new dog. Rosa. Steve’s good with her, but I’m better.”

“I bet.” Brooklyn swirled melting ice in the bottom of his glass.

“Never figured you for a spaceman, Brook, but it suits you.” She smiled. “You’ve grown up.”

Does she miss me? Want to sleep with me? Is she giving me a signal?

The Purple Lady peered at him over Carmen’s shoulder. A mental projection, visible only to him. She hadn’t bothered with a body. She doesn’t miss you. It’s just nostalgia. She’s not interested in sleeping with you.

It’s the eyes. A woman’s compassion could look a lot like love to the hopeful and stupid. Brooklyn was no longer one of those. “Still twenty-eight.”

“On the outside, maybe, but you were always sort of an old soul.”

“Crossed with a toddler.”

“Yeah.”

I remembered what I was going to tell you, the Purple Lady said. Your Sun is going to explode.

The first time she’d delivered that particular warning he’d been concerned. The sixth or eleventh, not so much. She saw sideways sometimes, backward and forward, and counted in eons. All right, thanks.

“You ready to settle down with me, Lamontagne?” Evelyn grinned.

I like her. The Purple Lady looked like Tina Turner in the fringed “Proud Mary” dress. She was ready to dance on stage next to Eddie. She’s good for you.

So’s a salad. Not sure it’s whadayacallit… mutual. Brooklyn leaned against a lamppost and looked at Evelyn’s left shoulder “Not too good at stayin’ in one place,” he told it. “It gets… I don’t know. Stay someplace long enough, people think they know you. Hold up this idea of what you are an’ you gotta live up to it. It’s complicated.”

Evelyn pulled her jacket collar up around her neck. “Not a big fan of complicated.”

“Don’t blame you.”

“Not a fan of how much you drink, either. More you drink, more I drink, and I don’t want to go back there.”

She’s worried about getting hurt.

She should be.

“Not sure I’m ready to leave,” Evelyn continued. “I can still see Earth from here, you know? All my shit is there.”

“Gotta a lot of shit there myself.”

Most of the adhoc buildings bore a mural or two, and Brooklyn stopped to deface one of the new ones. A purple woman, framed in a “holy” light and stars, a cosmic Madonna. It had been inspired by the one he’d drawn in the Victory’s cockpit in the days before his third death twenty years before. His rescuers – neighbors and friends from Mexico – had taken a picture of the image and brought it to Venus after their lucrative press tour. The drawing and the rescuers’ story, Brooklyn’s Lazarus-like return, had taken on a life of its own. A church was born, and, for a time, parishioners had sought Brooklyn out to bless babies and weddings. Surliness had put an end to the petitions, but the weird little faith had refused to die. Bet you think that’s pretty damned funny.

I miss seeing the babies and the happiness at weddings. Both are so fleeting. She paused. This mural is the best so far. You should leave it.

Fine. But if that holy roller shit starts up again…

It won’t. There’s not time.

“I’ll throw you a goin’–”

“I’m leaving today. In just a few hours. To the Belt first, then outward.”

She loves you. She was in the tank with Float. A purple mermaid. And she doesn’t understand it. The feeling is very different from the ones she has for her school.

“I’d give you a goodbye hug bu–”

“It would probably kill you again.” Her tentacles swayed gently. “Thank you for finding me in the desert.”

It’s been fun.

She’ll miss you, too.

A shadow seemed to pass over the bones on the table, making it look they were covered in gray, leathery skin, a visor of cartilage jutting out over the wide-spread eyes to shade them from the sun. Brooklyn shuddered. Humid heat, a slack mouth flapping in a place that smelled like mildew.

That’s how I remember them, she said. I think I liked them at first. She laughed. I liked the First… at first.

He’d drunk too much mushroom tea, maybe. Let himself get drawn a little too far into the purple space. “Think I need to lie down.” He swayed. “Feeling a little funky.”

“We can go back to my tent,” Professor Yarrow said. “Likely you just need some water.”

Brooklyn forced his hands open again.

How many times? he’d asked Demarco.

Six or seven I know about.

What did I do?

Only know for sure about one time, and I can’t say about that.

The Purple Lady was poking at the disassembled computer on the table. Do you think Float knew?

She woulda said something. The Jellies were brutally honest with each other and with friends. Brooklyn brewed a pot of strong tea, the professor’s so-called warrior blend. Focus, sharpness, and just a little lens flare. Perfect for fine work. No booze, no booze for a long, long time.

He knows about me. A little. He knows you talk to someone.

Did you know?

I don’t think so. I’m not with you every minute. Mostly when you’re–”

Fucked up. Yeah.

He’d barely punched the “enter” key when the answers came back. The Jelly navigational software was beyond anything humans had, and its precision would save time and fuel with every trip. His fingers, healing from solder-iron burns and stained with flux, ran through his hair.

You should sleep. She looked like someone’s ma again. A cosmic caregiver.

Might be time for a nap. It’s been… days, I think.

Longer for your mind. You’ve been half in, half out as you worked. The tea.

“The tea.” He glanced at the empty pot.

A series of numbers appeared on the screen. A basic equation, Intro to Algebra, at best. Brooklyn entered the answer, and a new one appeared, slightly more difficult. You’re not s’posed to do that.

Her eyes narrowed. This is something new. It feels like, she held her hand near his chest, this.

“You gonna be okay, man?”

“First time I killed someone.”

“Well–” Demarco paused. “Prob’ly not the time fo’ that.”

Brooklyn slurred something that could have been taken as “fuck off and let me sleep”, and Demarco went to his own bed, missing the tears that filled Brooklyn’s eyes and ran across his cheeks into his hair.

She sat beside him and stroked his forehead. I’m sorry, Brook.

Sorry for me or them?

Both, of course.

“Brook, we got a problem. Om’s having a… a fit… or something,” Demarco said. “It won’t fly the ship to the rendezvous.”

“We’ll come to you.” He pointed the way he had come. “Beth, head that way. Listen for instructions.” He traded weapons with Andy and urged her to follow Beth. “Demarco, Beth is on the way, and she’s ears for Andy. Keep ’em on track.”

Let them help you. She was wearing a purple vacsuit, old-style, like something from an ’50s sci-fi show. Stop fighting them.

Okay. Brooklyn bent his knees and pushed off hard. He gave his emergency thrusters a goose, gaining more speed and altitude, and spun in space to point his rifle back the way they’d come. Eight– no, nine exos aimed their weapons his way. This is going to suck. Every shot would change his velocity and alter his course. He took aim and fired anyway, absorbing the recoil the best he could and letting his reflexes and nanobots handle the shooting.

Below him, Andy raised the plasma blaster and twisted to fire. The blaster had far less range than the rifle, but what it lost in usefulness it made up for with a distracting light show. Brooklyn’s suit flared with alarms. Oxygen leak, decompression warning, plumbing and electrical malfunction. “Think I’m hit!”

Sky, Mars, ground, sky, Mars, ground. He was tumbling. Flashes of light in his eyes that almost looked like numbers and letters. Fire thrusters in…

Trust them.

Brooklyn, it’s time to–