Crescent (31 page)

The fingertips of one hand trailed down between her breasts, across her flat stomach, and found the tender spot between her legs. She closed her eyes and applied the slightest bit of pressure. Ina wasn’t in the mood, but the slow crimson that pulsed behind her eyes was insistent. The Red had surfaced just enough to urge her on. It allowed her to do the driving, but would not let her stop until she climaxed. When Ina came, the Red slinked back into murky depths of her subconscious, taking the nausea away with it.

She tried to sleep. She begged for sleep, but no matter how Ina tossed and turned, sleep would not come.

Finally giving up on rest, she climbed out of bed and began to dress. The window panels
glowed
a warm orange.
Sunrise,
she mused. Once she was clothed, she crept into her father’s room. He was sound asleep. The tray was still on his lap, although it was now balanced at a precarious angle that threatened to spill both the terminal and the cold bowl of soup onto the duvet. She removed the tray delicately, careful not to wake him. Ina drew the shades down, obscuring the wall panels completely, and then clicked off the bedside lamp, setting the room to darkness fit for sleeping. She kissed her father’s forehead. It was cool. His fever was finally gone.

The bazaar was quiet. Everyone Ina passed looked deeply weary. Even the children moved in listless packs. Ina looked up at sun globes that shone a fierce orange. She should have felt warmth on her face, but it was as cool as it had been for days. Her gaze dropped from the globes to a group of five or six men and women dressed in matching black tee shirts, cargo pants, and boots. Ina knew who they were: the
Aphotic
.

Ina thought she recognized the owner of Heathen’s in their midst.

She turned down an alley to avoid
them,
glancing behind her several times as she went to be sure she wasn’t followed. She continued
on,
and soon the air became heavy with the scents of cooking. Grease and spices—the odor made her mouth water and her stomach growl. She let her nose lead the way to a dwelling that seemed to have grown out of a tarnished and charcoal stained back alley wall. The bulkhead was opened wide. Ina stepped over the threshold without even thinking.

“Hello, young lady.” The voice was like sandpaper. An old woman stood at the stove and monitored the steaming contents of a big, metal pot.

“I’m so very hungry and whatever you’re cooking smells delicious. You must share it with me,” Ina said, a bit shocked by her own brazenness.

“If you like cat, then by all means,” the old woman cooed.

Ina took a step back and placed a hand over her mouth. The crone cackled. She turned then, showing a face that was older than the void itself. The old woman’s wrinkles were set so deep that they appeared to go right through her head. Her mouth was an ‘o’ of laughter, showing a few rotting stubs of teeth.

“I’m only
kiddin
’ dearest. No cats.
Pork.
Not fresh. They’re not
sellin
’ fresh pork this week. Apparently, the livestock down at the Farm is getting sick. And I
ain’t
surprised. They
gonna
be dead soon, the whole lot
of’m
.”

Though Ina was relieved the pot’s contents were not feline, she was so hungry she might have considered eating cat all the same. She glanced about at the antiques that filled the home. Trinkets spilled out of crates and were stacked on just about every surface, save for an old table with a big and rusted metal base. She reached into a nearby crate and retrieved a replica of a pointy looking spaceship—wiping away some of the dust that covered it revealed the word ‘Viper’. Ina tossed the Viper back in the crate. In another box she spied an old fashioned
holo
-projector and something called an 8-track cassette player. A fortune lay in the small space.

“Don’t mind all that junk. Jus’ things I’ve picked up along the way. I don’t have the heart to get rid
of’m
. Now, sit my dear. It’s almost done.” The old woman gestured to the table. “My name is
Naheela
.”

“I know who you are,” Ina said.

“And I know you are Ina,”
Naheela
paused, “of the Red.” The crone looked back over her shoulder at the girl, and winked one cataract-milky eye.

Ina sat and contemplated the title.
Ina of the Red,
she thought, and chuckled.
Makes me sound like a Viking.
Naheela
filled a plastic bowl to overflowing with thick, brown stew. Some of the liquid splashed out as she set the bowl down on the table in front of Ina, but
Naheela
didn’t seem to mind. Judging from old stains on the table and floor, spills probably happened often in this home and were just as often ignored.

“Eat while it’s hot. It’s best while it’s hot,”
Naheela
said.

Ina believed her without question and took the spoon that stuck out of the steaming broth. She began to suck the stuff down. It was delicious. A plethora of spices, only a handful that she could identify, made her mouth sing. Ina looked up and smiled as she chewed. A trickle of stew ran out of the corner of her mouth when she grinned, but she didn’t care. She returned her attention to the bowl, and it was soon half empty. She continued to eat.

“I know you didn’t come here for stew. But you wouldn’t have even spared my humble home a glance if you hadn’t smelled the spices. And aren’t you a lucky
lil
’ thing that I happened to be making it.”

Ina nodded. She wished she had a piece of bread. She was already foreseeing the need to clean the bowl entirely. Would it be out of line to lick it? She glanced around the disheveled living area. It probably wouldn’t matter if Ina licked the bowl; she certainly questioned the receptacle’s cleanliness, but she found she didn’t care.
What bliss
! Ina thought.
Not to care about anything
.

“You want to know, eh? Old
Naheela
, she knows the way of things. She always does and always has,”
Naheela
said. She sounded sad.
“The life that stirs here.
You call it the
other.
Some call it the Three
.
I call it the
clusterfuck
of the universe.”
Naheela
laughed; there was no humor in the sound. “You’re not the first to be touched.” The crone shook her head and clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Stray strands of greasy gray hair fell across her ruddy cheeks. “It’s been right here a long time, Ina. Longer than this station. Longer than that planet out there and longer than that star. So, the knowing of one little girl doesn’t really amount to that much in the grand scheme of things. But yes, it’s been here all along.”

“Right here?”
Ina asked and looked around. Her head became foggier with each spoonful she took, but she couldn’t stop eating.

“Not right here,
ya
fool.
Just on the other side of the glass.”

“The other side of the glass,” Ina said.

“You think this is all there is?”
Naheela
spread her hands out. “The void and crap that fills it?”

“No. I know what you’re saying,” Ina set the spoon down as she spoke. “There could be an infinite number of dimensions in our universe.
Parallel universes, even.
I took more than one quantum philosophy class in my time.”

“Blah
blah
blah
.
Can your smart-talk, girlie. It only makes ye sound daft.
There
ain’t
nothin
’ parallel about it.”
Naheela
reached into the pocket at the front of her ratty dress and revealed two scraps of paper: one brown and one white. She held them up. “Ye see? Ye see these pieces of paper?”

Ina nodded.

Naheela
crumpled them together and tossed them on the table. She smiled a satisfied grin.
“
Lookit
that for a bit.
Really
look at it. So you understand what you’re
lookin
’ at.”
Naheela
got up from the table; her joints popped as she moved. The old woman shuffled away and soon Ina heard her rummaging through some mess or another. Ina eyed the crumpled ball of brown and white paper. Two separate pieces of paper.
One ball of crumpled paper.
The folds and creases overlapped in places. She poked at it with a fingertip and wished she had more stew.
Naheela
returned and watched her for a moment before speaking.

“You’ll get more stew in good time.”
Naheela
shuffled away again. When she came back with no stew, Ina was deeply disappointed. The crone tossed a shard of deep red stone onto the table, so dark it was almost black.
Sanguinite
.
The muted light reflected in a trail along the curve of the polished piece. The stone had been carved into a dagger—a beetle-shaped dagger. Ina felt her senses clear at the sight of the object.

“Ye know what that is?”

“
Sanguinite
.
Yes. We found some…
 
”

“On the planet.
Three-quarters of that rock is full of the shit. Maybe the whole planet is made of it,”
Naheela
said. She was slurping on something now. Ina smelled menthol. “Did ye study that piece of garbage?”

“Yes. I understand what you are trying to explain to me.”

“If ye
understan
’ so well, then tell me.”

“You’re saying the universe—
existence
, maybe—is different dimensions all crumpled up on top of one another. No uniformity, no pattern.”

“Existence.
Very good.
You’re smarter than you look, then,”
Naheela
beamed. “I’m old, girl.
Older than you think.
I
ain’t
wastin
’ my breath to tell you something you’ve figured out on
yer
own. This is the way of things. Do you believe it?”

“I believe that anything is possible,” Ina said.
Naheela
nodded approvingly.

“Between the folds, where worlds come close together, the boundary is like glass. In some places you can see through to the other side; in some places, you can only see through one way, and in most places, you can’t see
nothin
’ at all. Ages of friction have made some spots weak.
And in the weak places there is always this.”
Naheela
held up the smooth
sanguinite
carving.

“What happens at the weak spots?” Ina asked.

“The life on the other side can touch us. These things can influence us in small ways.”
Naheela
nodded.

“Life?”
Ina asked.

“Not like you know it, but yes, for lack of a better word.
Life.”

“Can this weak glass break?” Ina asked.

“It’d be bad for the likes of you and
I
if that ever happened. Damn bad for sure.”

“This life, from the other side.
Can it ever come through without the glass breaking?”

“There are ways,”
Naheela
said and clicked her long, curled fingernails on the tabletop.
“Foolish ways.”

“How?”

Naheela
glanced around with a frown. She raised her gaunt shoulders in a shrug and stared at Ina’s stomach for an instant. Then
Naheela
folded her hands over the
sanguinite
—when she opened them again, it was gone.

“More stew now?”
Naheela
asked.

“How can they come through?” Ina didn’t want the stew anymore. Not now that her head was clear. She leaned forward in her chair. It creaked beneath her. “Please.”

“You are a stubborn girl,”
Naheela
said and sighed through her nose. She left the table and came back with a handheld video recorder. The thing looked as if it had been thrown down a flight of stairs, submerged in water, and then buried for a century.
Naheela
cleaned off the small LCD with the hem of her ratty sweater and then handed the device over to Ina.

Footage played in the small window. Ina held it close to her face. Right away she knew she was looking at the geological storehouse down on
Anrar
III. The footage appeared to be slowed down—people hardly moved. Ina was unable to take her eyes of the pregnant woman’s swollen belly.

“The vessel was too mature,”
Naheela
commented as Ina watched.

On the screen, a fissure opened in the woman’s flesh and red and violet light poured out of her in twisting streams. Next, came a living shadow—a serpent of pure night.

“The
Other
became Three,”
Naheela
went on. “And those very Three are now here on Crescent. Back then in that damned colony, essence already filled the intended vessel. It had a soul. The
Other
couldn’t rest there and became stuck, halfway here and halfway there.
A painful state of being.
It killed all of those poor people who tried to help it. That was a long time ago. Crescent was just a babe, and was left unfinished. The science crew on Crescent
trapped
the Black in the part of the station you know as the Vault,
and there it slept.”
Naheela
thrust a finger in Ina’s direction.
“
Until
you woke it again.
You and the other girl.”
Naheela
shook her head. “And you now you and your belly have given it its best chance.” Ina covered her stomach protectively.
The fetus growing in her womb; it was the new vessel.