Jenna Starborn (43 page)

A soft laugh of complete exasperation. “I'll do what I can. Somebody bring me a beer or something.”

Scraping noises as if a piece of furniture was being dragged across the floor. “So. Your name is Jenna, they tell me. That's pretty. Jenna. Well, Jenna, I guess you don't remember much about your life. Let's see, what did you tell me when we were on Fieldstar ... Oh, I know! You're a technician! Specializing in—now what did you say—nuclear science applications, I think that was it. So that means you can—what does that mean you can do ... Service generators, sure, that would be one thing. I guess you could work on a ship, if you wanted, or at a utility company. Appalachia's got two, three big power stations that supply most of the energy to the settled parts of the planet. Bet you could get a job there, if you wanted. I'm assuming you want a job. Got to take care of yourself somehow.

“Let's see—I guess you don't know much about Appalachia, do you? Well, it's nothing like Fieldstar. See, I know how much you wanted to leave Fieldstar, so you can just relax about that. Appalachia's very different. Big planet, only a fraction of it colonized. Oh, and it's got an oxygen atmosphere too, so you don't need all those domes and forcefields like you did on Fieldstar. That's good, right? Breathable air. You'll like that. It's mostly aggie-based, so the colonists are setting up these huge tracts of land and starting to farm. Trouble is, they haven't quite figured out the best crops for the native earth, because the standard grains and legumes don't do so well there. They're still analyzing the soil makeup, trying to figure out what will grow. 'Course, some people are approaching the problem a different way and importing shiploads of premixed dirt with all the nitrogen and what all in it that your basic cash crop requires. I don't know too much about it. If you were a biologist or agriculturist, now, you'd be in high demand here.

“But, you know, I think you could get just about any kind of job. Just have to be willing to work hard. And—hey!—if you're an
enginee
type tech, well, there's all sorts of equipment here that needs constant maintenance. Somebody would snap you up right away if you could fix things. Got a whole mess of sophisticated machines out here, doing some of the farm work—and cyborgs too, if you know robotics—”

A long wail of heartbreak and distress that seemed to go on for hours. The sounds of running feet, sharp questions, disclaimers, medical equipment beeping at a more urgent frequency—and behind all this, the endless forlorn sobbing. It seemed to creep closer, grow sharper, become more localized until at last—with great suddenness—it turned both internal and external and I realized not only who I was but that I was the one screaming.

 

 

T
he next ten days passed in such a painful blur that more than once I wished that I had died during my yearlong voyage. The effort of walking from my bed in the monitoring room to the gym a few hundred yards away exhausted me so much that I could scarcely perform the exercises that Colyo and the other technicians demanded I attempt. Eating was a nightmare, for the scent of the meals prepared in the vast cafeteria made me want to vomit, and my stomach refused food the first three or four times I actually chewed and swallowed. The other passengers from the cold storage facility had been relocated to utilitarian but rather more inviting accommodations, but I returned every evening to my bunk in the observation unit so that I could be hooked up to medicine and nutrients. I had never felt so weak. I had never felt so ill. I could not imagine ever regaining my full strength of body and mental focus. Had I known how to do it, I believe I would have locked my glass lid from the inside and curled up in my little coffin to die.

But I was not allowed this luxury. Each morning, Colyo roused me, ruthlessly prodded me to the gym, strapped me aboard various exercising machines, and forced my muscles to perform. She also bombarded me with a series of questions about math, science, literature, current events, and spatial geography which caused my head to hurt as I attempted to answer. Yet I did answer—I dredged from some remote spot in a long-disused portion of my brain the information she required: calculations, definitions, politicians, historical sequences. With each successful response, I felt my synapses grow more energetic; I could almost sense the electric buildup like an aura around my head. When I closed my eyes now, I saw pictures of star charts and public edifices and powerful dignitaries, whereas for so many months now I had seen only a blank whiteness. Slowly, with infinite anguish, I was remembering what it felt like to be alive.

I was having trouble communicating this anguish, as I was having trouble communicating anything. My speech was slow and scarcely coherent; my mouth had trouble forming the words that my brain remembered. At first, only Colyo could understand me, but gradually the other technicians, and a few of my fellow passengers, could catch the drift of my conversation. Not that any of these talks were extensive. I shunned the company of the others until Colyo forced me from my bed into the communal areas. I felt stupid, clumsy, embarrassed, alien and terrified. Although I remembered the events that had led me to this place, I still had trouble understanding why I was here and why I had suffered so greatly. I could not summon any of the courage or strength of will that I remembered I had once possessed. And so I cowered, and fretted, and very slowly improved.

I was not nearly recovered by the time we fell into orbit around Appalachia ten days after I had come to my senses. This was a fresh terror, for Colyo had made it plain that I had no haven here on the Anniversary. I had signed up to be delivered to this planet, and this was where I would be left, no matter how ill-equipped I was to navigate a completely foreign environment.

“For we have a full passenger list signed up for the next schedule, and no extra beds—not that I'd put you back in storage again after what you went through this time—and we've no need for more technicians, I'm sorry to say. But you'll do well enough on Appalachia. These remote colonies are always the best place for people like you.”

“People like me?” I repeated faintly, for I could scarcely catch my breath. I was pumping my legs on the gravicycle, and the effort was using up every ounce of strength I possessed.

“People who don't have anywhere else to go,” she amended, seeming a bit embarrassed. “The colonies always need bodies and they need every kind of skill. And nobody asks too many questions.”

“I will—hope to—fit in, then,” I panted, and she made no other observations.

It took the better part of a day to deboard the ship, because the tug could only handle twenty people at a time, and the round trip between the
Anniversary
and the docking bay on the spaceport took several hours. I was in the last group to climb aboard the tug, and it was with great trepidation I seated myself on the little shuttle in the company of fifteen complete strangers with whom I had shared the most bizarre voyage of my life. One or two I recognized from the cafeteria or the gym, but I had not exchanged a word with any of them before, and I could not think of an observation to make now. I sat there—freshly washed, holding my pitiful little canvas bag on my lap, and owning not a single scrap of credit—and thought dread would shatter my heart.

It did not—and neither did the intense gravitational pressure that weighted my head and all my limbs as we dropped closer to the planet's surface. After we landed, I came shakily to my feet and staggered down the ramp behind my fellow travelers. I emerged into a huge echoing dome of a building that served as the spaceport's hangar. Just so did hangars look in docking ports all over the universe, and for a moment I had the eerie sensation I had not left Fieldstar at all, but merely slept away a year in orbit above that planet. Surely not—surely not all this harrowing travail had been for nothing.

I took a few steps forward, into the bustle and the crowd, and wondered what in the name of the Goddess I should do next. It was midday, as evidenced by the sunlight pouring in through the skylights overhead, and so employment offices stood a reasonable chance of being open. My first priority would seem to be to find a post of some sort, preferably one that came with lodging—and that could not be accomplished by standing in the middle of this noisy dome, assaulted by the aviation noises above and buffeted by the human current below. I must take charge and move forward.

I therefore spent a wearying few hours inquiring the direction of an employment office, receiving conflicting information, wandering about the crowded streets of the spaceport in confusion, and fighting off an overwhelming despair. Even the mild, springlike air and the flirtatious afternoon sun could not lift my mood—and the oncoming night merely darkened it.

By the time I found the Appalachia New Transfer Job Opportunities Office, it had been closed for the day. A sign on the door proclaimed that it would open in the morning, twelve long hours away. I had no money to buy an evening meal. I certainly had no money to pay for a night in a hotel. I had nowhere to go at all.

I stood for a few minutes, stupidly trying to decide what to do. I did not think I would starve, at least not right away, for Colyo had rather brusquely handed me a few wrapped packets of food with the gruff admonition to eat carefully for a few more days. I just needed a place to sit and wait, where I would be reasonably safe from both human and environmental peril.

Back to the spaceport hangar, then. I knew it would be open and full of activity around the clock. There would be little real rest there, but I could find a place to sit, perhaps to sleep, before I tried my luck on the following day. I trudged back to the dome in the gathering dark, and wondered if I had finally reached the lowest point in my life.

 

 

T
he next morning, having tidied myself as best I could in one of the public rest rooms at the hangar, I made my way back to the Job Opportunities Office. This time, since I knew the way, it did not take nearly so long, but at the office itself, I suffered a series of checks. First was the long line that moved as slowly as I had feared. Second was my impaired speech, which made it difficult for my assigned clerk to understand me. I had been directed to the room of a pale, heavy, exasperated man who was barely visible behind his computer terminal and a stack of manuals, and I had attempted to inquire for work.

“Your name is
what
? What's your citizenship status? Did you come to Appalachia for a job or on spec? What are your credentials? Lady, I can't understand a word you're saying.”

Eventually I took a piece of paper and a pen and wrote my name and my educational background on a piece of paper, and handed it to him.

“Oh. Nuclear
technician
,” he said, as though he thought I had claimed to be a nuclear
reactor.
He turned to his monitor and typed in a few codes. “Well, you'd think there'd be something, but I don't have any listings—now, chemical technicians, I've got a few slots open—”

“I only have a little educational background in chemical reactors, enough to fill in my class requirements—”

“Say
what
? You know, I speak half a dozen languages, but you're just not being clear in any of them.”

Despair washed over me. What would I do, what could I do, in this place where I could not even be understood? I jumped to my feet, intent on rushing from his presence before I burst into tears, but the move was completely ill-advised. The blood sang in my ears and I felt my body crumple. I could not stop my faint or my fall, and I felt myself land heavily on the floor.

I did not quite lose consciousness, for I heard the clerk's cry of alarm and the sound of footsteps running to the room. There were questions and sullen replies, and then someone administered a cold patch to my face. Some sort of adrenaline jolt, for I felt the ragged panic surge through my veins, and I struggled to a sitting position.

“Who is she? What happened to her?” a dark-haired woman was demanding from her post at the door. She looked severe, serious, and completely in charge. I guessed she was the top official at this facility.

“I don't know! She stood up and then she fell down! You can't hardly understand her—got a speech impediment or something—”

“She looks like she's half starved,” said the voice of a woman who was out of my range of sight.

“Says she's looking for a job. A nuclear technician,” the clerk said.

“Well, we can't have her lying around on our floors, no matter what skill level she possesses,” the official said coldly. “Call for Public Aid and have someone come get her. If nothing else, maybe they can give her a meal or two.”

“Thank you—I think I do need some aid—” I tried to say, but the dark-haired woman merely rolled her eyes and disappeared from the doorway. I heard the large clerk behind the desk speaking into a transmitter of some sort, asking for a transport for a displaced person. Heedless of the official woman's acid comment and my own considerable pride, I lay back on the floor and waited for someone to come fetch me.

 

 

A
n hour later I was seated in the most hospitable environment I had seen since leaving Thorrastone Manor. (Must not think of that; close your mind; must not, must
not.
) It was a small, rather worn waiting room furnished with battered chairs and rose-colored walls, and the late-morning sunlight came dancing through the open windows like a blonde girl in a blue dress. I was sitting, quite exhausted, in a high-backed chair, watching a smiling young woman set up a tray of food on a table at my left hand.

“The people at the Job Op Office said you fainted from hunger, so let's feed you before we try to do anything else, shall we?” she said in a soothing and pleasant voice. She looked to be a year or two older than I was—in her late twenties, perhaps—and she had gorgeous auburn hair caught back in a very businesslike bun. She was dressed almost as plainly as I was, in natural-fiber coveralls that were so faded they might originally have been any color. Her hair was her only true ornament; her face, though open and friendly, was quite plain—but somehow more trustworthy because of that. I liked her instantly, though I was usually more guarded with my approvals. Or perhaps I needed her so desperately at that moment that I was prepared to like her no matter how crass or cruel she might turn out to be.