Nebula Awards Showcase 2013 (38 page)

Lizzie pulled herself around the station in an exhausted haze, her arms aching, trying to make herself a moving target. The station seemed to expand and contract at will, the sign of some malicious intelligence; at times it felt like a vast dock and she was a bat, fluttering madly around inside emptiness. Other times it was all walls, and the space outside compressed in. Sometimes she'd fall asleep in mid-pull and not even realize it until the next
ponk
woke her up.

Ponk
. She'd survived. Again.

She had 99,000 cubic feet of lightless air to protect. Her universe was reduced to patching. Her universe had always been patching.

There was no time for sleep; everything was a coma-fugue. She had nightmares about patching horrible, howling holes, then realized she was awake. Once, she fell asleep mid-weld and woke up with her hair on fire.

The station hissed like a boiling kettle.

All the while Daddy and Momma and Themba and Gemma and all the Web and Gineer commanders floated behind her like balloons on a string, babbling in languages that made no sense. They told her the war was over, and everyone went home. They told her to give up, the station was dying and so was she. They told her that all her memories were dreams—there was just her in these stripped-out hallways, blind and numb, forever and ever.

Lizzie was dust. She was air. She was the taste of cabbages.

A flare of light came from the observation deck, so bright it filled the station. She floated over to see, her eyes tearing up; Dad was there, pressing his collapsed face against the window, telling her that it was okay, a meteor was coming to end her misery . . .

. . . And it was the catastrophic clang, the big one, a huge sound like a hammer smashing all the metal in the world. Lizzie was flung into the wall, bathed in light, enveloped in such pain and terror that she shrieked and shrieked and kept screaming until Daddy split in four and hauled her down to hell.

 

* * *

 

She opened her eyes. It took an effort.

She was blinded by the soft glare of fluorescent lights. A repetitive beep changed pitches, keeping time with her heart.

Turning her head to peer at the monitors raised a sweat underneath the stiff blue robe she was wearing. She tried to slide her hand up off the starched bedsheets, but only managed to make her heart monitor spike. Gravity held her tight to the bed.

At least her vitals looked good.

“It's
my ship
,” Lizzie protested, using all her strength to lift her head off the pillow. “My
home
.”

“We know that.”

Lizzie jumped. A nurse was dressed in a close-fit Gineer uniform with a blood-red cross-and-sickle emblazoned on the front, his long hair slicked back under a nurse's cap. He had a friendly smile.

“'My ship, my ship,” he said, placing a cool hand on her forehead. “That's all you'd said when we pulled you from the wreckage. And after everything you went through to secure that glorious lifestyle of yours, Elizabeth, our most profound generals decided that we couldn't remove it from you. You are a hero.”

Hero?
Lizzie thought. She hadn't done anything but survive.

But the nurse called in a couple of Web commanders, older women with sad eyes, and they told her that she'd been in an induced coma for almost two months while they restimulated bone growth and removed excess radiation from her body. In that time, her story had been transmitted to all corners of the galaxy—the discovery of a small girl working diligently to keep her home alive for her family. Elizabeth “Lizzie” Denahue, they said, was now known as an example of the tenacity that only family loyalty could generate.

“But I'm not Gineer,” Lizzie protested.

“Doesn't matter,” said the nurse. “It's a nice story. After all the consternation, people ache for a comforting tale.”

She thought about the word “nice,” and logically there was only one reason they could possibly think this was nice.

“So where's Momma?”

“Smart girl,” one of the commanders said affectionately. “She's back on the station, refitting it with donated equipment. We almost snuffed you out in towing it back, you know; we thought no one could be alive inside that, it had drifted so badly out of orbit. We were just looking to refurbish it . . . But you were in there, Elizabeth. There was barely any air left, but you were there.”

Lizzie nodded weakly. “Can I see Momma?”

“Of course, sweetie,” said the nurse. “We just have to fly her in from the station.”

Momma came about an hour later, looking haggard and scared and more beautiful than Lizzie could have imagined. They hugged, though Momma had to help lift Lizzie's arms around her waist.

“They told me what happened, Lizzie,” Momma said. “We were on our way back, I swear—Gemma had to take a down-planet contract to pay for emergency supplies. But the folks at Swayback were
real
helpful once I explained what happened. We owe them a big one, Lizzie.”

Lizzie flipped her wrist at the room around them. “So why are the Gineer . . . ?”

“The war's over, Lizzie. The Web was using some real unconventional weaponry, and the Gineer did something . . . Well, equally unconventional to end it. Something so big they've had to restructure the whole jumpweb around it. On the bright side, that means there's lots of contracting work building stations. What you're in right now is a rescue and refit ship designed to find stragglers like us.”

“The war's over?”

Momma smiled and put a cool cloth on Lizzie's head. “Yep.”

“Who won?”

Her Momma sighed. “Does it matter?”

Lizzie thought about it. It didn't. She squeezed Momma's hand, happy to have what counted.

 

* * *

 

There was a lot of cleanup to be done.

Lizzie was still weak from being weightless for almost two months, but the Gineer had muscle treatments—so as soon as Lizzie could walk within a day or two, Momma put her to work. Internal circuitry had to be replaced, the hull had to be reinforced, the hydroponics rebuilt, the air scrubbed. Thankfully, Momma and the charity mechanics had done the real work of getting the central gyros up and running; rebalancing a station was a job for ten people, not two.

It was hard. The starvation and weightlessness had marked her permanently; her eyes now had deep hollows underneath them, and her arms sometimes went numb, especially when she was using a wrench. Her legs swelled up fierce for no reason.

But now, when she went to bed, Momma combed her hair. That was the only luxury she needed.

Gemma was stuck back on Mekrong for the time being. Until the station was fully functional again, they needed cash. Gemma was doing her part for the family by taking contract work and sending the money back home. Lizzie wrote emails every day, and the charity ship tightbeamed them back for free.

But eventually the charity ship left and the ships started docking again. The folks travelling now were odd mixes that Lizzie had never seen before; gladhanding carpetbaggers looking for new opportunities, grieving families on their way back to homes they weren't sure still existed, scarred soldiers-turned-adrenaline junkies.

Gineer and Web folks mixed uneasily in the waiting rooms. Sometimes shouting matches broke out. And when voices were raised, Lizzie would limp in, and every person would go fall silent as the Angel of Sauerkraut Station glared at them.

“Your war's done enough to me,” she said.

They stopped.

Some folks wanted to meet the little girl who'd survived in vacuum for nine weeks, and seemed disappointed when she wasn't more visibly scarred. Lizzie asked about that, and Momma got out the filthy gray coveralls they'd found Lizzie in.

“If you wear these,” Momma said, her face unreadable, “People will hand you their money.”

Lizzie looked at the rags. They stank of memories.

“Not for all the money in the world,” she said.

Momma hugged her proudly. “Good girl.” And she tossed the rags into the incinerator and pushed the “on” button.

But Lizzie did notice that Sauerkraut Station was now being called Survivor Station. Momma left up a few of the sturdier hull-patches Lizzie had made, and put plaques over them that noted where Elizabeth Denahue had made these patches to survive during her nine-week ordeal in the asteroid belt. She also put donation boxes below them “To help rebuild the station.” They filled up nicely.

A few weeks later, the prisoner exchanges started up, and station was once again filled with soldiers—this time miserable-looking wretches who barely spoke. The handful of survivors had been kept in POW camps, and now they were being shipped back like embarrassing refuse.

They were suffering from scurvy, lice, malnutrition. Most were too weak to move. Lizzie wished she could have done more, but mostly what they needed was clean quarters and a steady supply of food. Neither looked likely in their futures, sadly enough.

She was in one of the prisoner ships, wearing a newly-bought HAZMAT suit and using a viral scanner to double-check the POWs for communicable diseases, when she saw Themba.

He was curled up underneath a pile of bigger kids. She was surprised to find him older—but where Lizzie had grown, Themba had shrunk. His neat cornrows were crusted with sores, his fine robes replaced by a gray prisoner's suit.

She pressed her hand against his forehead; she could feel his heat through the suit.

Themba was delirious, muttering something unintelligible over and over as though it was the only thing keeping him sane.

She hugged him, then turned angrily to the Web captain. “What's he doing here?” she demanded. “He was a hostage! You were supposed to take
care
of him!”

The captain shuffled uncomfortably. “Of that, I know nothing,” he said, consulting the records. “This says he's an orphan. We're shipping him back to the collective. They'll find him a good home.”

“They most certainly will
not
,” Lizzie said, and thumbed open the airlock. She took Themba in her arms, terrified by how easily she could lift him, and carried him off the ship. She brought him to the single cot that passed for a medbay these days, got a cold water rag for his forehead.

Momma stormed in. “Lizzie, what in blazes are you doing? After everything we've been through to stay neutral, we're
not
getting involved in politics
now
!”

“Momma,” she said, “It's
Themba
.”

“Think I didn't know that? We're not a charity ship, Lizzie. We're barely making enough to refit the station as it is. Another mouth might put us under.”

“His dad's dead! Where's he gonna go?”

“Back to the Web. That's where he belongs.”

“With strangers?”

“
Think
, Lizzie. The boy is—
was
—a diplomat's son. Outsiders are trouble on space stations. They're used to having endless space, used to having endless air. They have all
sorts
of problem with a life like ours. If they don't make—make some dumb mistake that gets their ass killed, then they spend the entire time feeling cooped up and desperate. I know you think you're doing him a favor, Elizabeth, but trust me. He'll hate it.”

“He loved it here.”

“For a day. A few months and he'll beg us to leave. And even if he doesn't, we'd have to train him from scratch to teach him to survive—and even then he'll never be as good as us . . .”

“He's not that way, Momma—he—”

They were shouting—but somehow Themba's high, whistling voice cut through the air, desperately repeating what he'd been muttering since he'd been put on the POW ship:

“
two heads sliced cabbage, fennel, salt water . . . two heads sliced cabbage, fennel, salt water. . . .
”

Momma stopped, and her face scrunched up with a strange mixture of sorrow and happiness. Then she turned to stare at the undecorated metal wall of the medbay—but Lizzie finally realized that Momma was staring
past
the walls, past the station, stroking her wedding band as she looked to the stars for an answer.

Momma swallowed, hard.

“I suppose this is the way of things,” she said, her voice so soft Lizzie could barely hear her. “All right. He's crew.”

Momma knelt down, kissed Themba on his forehead. Then she walked out of the room to bribe the captain, which would deplete their meager savings further—but Lizzie didn't care. She hugged her best friend, feeling the warmth of his skin on hers.

His eyes refocused, looked at her—and he laughed.

“Welcome home, Themba,” Lizzie whispered, not letting go. “Welcome home.”

For longer than anyone could remember, the village of Yiwei had worn, in its orchards and under its eaves, clay-colored globes of paper that hissed and fizzed with wasps. The villagers maintained an uneasy peace with their neighbors for many years, exercising inimitable tact and circumspection. But it all ended the day a boy, digging in the riverbed, found a stone whose balance and weight pleased him. With this, he thought, he could hit a sparrow in flight. There were no sparrows to be seen, but a paper ball hung low and inviting nearby. He considered it for a moment, head cocked, then aimed and threw.