Caliban’s War

Chapter Seven: Prax

The security center was on the third layer down from the surface. The finished walls and independent power supply seemed like luxury items compared with the raw ice of other places on the station, but really they were important signals. The way some plants advertised their poisons by bright foliage, the security center advertised its impregnability. It wasn’t enough that it was impossible to tunnel through the ice and sneak a friend or a lover out of the holding cells. Everyone had to know that it was impossible—know just by looking—or else someone would try it.

In all his years on Ganymede, Prax had been there only once before, and then as a witness. As a man there to help the law, not to ask help from it. He’d been back twelve times in the last week, waiting in the long, desperate line, fidgeting and struggling with the almost overpowering sense that he needed to be somewhere else doing something, even if he didn’t know what exactly it was.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Meng,” the woman at the public information counter said from behind her inch-thick wire-laced window. She looked tired. More than tired, more than exhausted even. Shell-shocked. Dead. “Nothing today either.”

“Is there anyone I can talk to? There has to be a way to—”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and her eyes looked past him to the next desperate, frightened, unbathed person that she wouldn’t be able to help. Prax walked out, teeth grinding in impotent rage. The line was two hours long; men and women and children stood or leaned or sat. Some were weeping. A young woman with red-rimmed eyes smoked a marijuana cigarette, the smell of burning leaves over the stink of close-packed bodies, the smoke curling up past the NO SMOKING sign on the wall. No one protested. All of them had the haunted look of refugees, even the ones who’d been born here.

In the days since the official fighting had stopped, the Martian and Earth militaries had retreated back behind their lines. The breadbasket of the outer planets found itself reduced to a wasteland between them, and the collected intelligence of the station was bent to a single task: getting away.

The ports had started out under lockdown by two military forces in conflict, but they’d soon left the surface for the safety of their ships, and the depth of panic and fear in the station could no longer be contained. The few passenger ships that were permitted out were packed with people trying to get anywhere else. The fares for passage were bankrupting people who’d worked for years in some of the highest-paying material science positions outside Earth. The poorer people were left sneaking out in freight drones or tiny yachts or even space suits strapped onto modified frames and fired off toward Europa in hopes of rescue. Panic drove them from risk to risk until they wound up somewhere else or in the grave. Near the security stations, near the ports, even near the abandoned military cordons set up by Mars and the UN, the corridors were thick with people scrambling for anything they could tell themselves was safety.

Prax wished he was with them.

Instead, his world had fallen into a kind of rhythm. He woke at his rooms, because he always went home at night so that he would be there if Mei came back. He ate whatever he could find. The last two days, there hadn’t been anything left in his personal storage, but a few of the ornamental plants in the parkways were edible. He wasn’t really hungry anyway.

Then he checked the body drops.

The hospital had maintained a scrolling video feed of the recovered dead to help in identification for the first week. Since then, he’d had to go look at the actual bodies. He was looking for a child, so he didn’t have to go through the vast majority of the dead, but the ones he did see haunted him. Twice he’d found a corpse sufficiently mutilated that it might have been Mei, but the first had a stork-bite birthmark at the back of her neck and the other’s toenails were the wrong shape. Those dead girls were someone else’s tragedies.

Once he’d assured himself that Mei wasn’t among the lists of the dead, he went hunting. The first night she’d been gone, he’d taken out his hand terminal and made a list. People to contact who had official power: security, her doctors, the warring armies. People to contact who might have information: the other parents at her school, the other parents in his medical support group, her mother. Favorite places to check: her best friend’s home, the common-space parks she liked best, the sweet shop with the lime sherbet she always asked for. Places someone might go to buy a stolen child for sex: a list of bars and brothels off a cached copy of the station directory. The updated directory would be on the system, but it was still locked down. Every day, he crossed as many off the list as he could, and when they were all gone, he started over.

From a list, they’d become a schedule. Security every other day, alternating with whoever would talk to him from the Martian forces or the UN on the other days. The parks in the morning after the body checks. Mei’s best friend and her family had made it out, so there was nothing to check there. The sweet shop had been burned out in a riot. Finding her doctors was the hardest. Dr. Astrigan, her pediatrician, had made all the right concerned noises and promised him that she would call him if she heard anything and then, when he checked again three days later, didn’t remember having spoken to him. The surgeon who’d helped drain the abscesses along her spine when she’d first been diagnosed hadn’t seen her. Dr. Strickland from the support and maintenance group was missing. Nurse Abuakár was dead.

The other families from the group had their own tragedies to work through. Mei wasn’t the only child missing. Katoa Merton. Gabby Solyuz. Sandro Ventisiete. He’d seen the fear and desperation that shrieked in the back of his head mirrored in the faces of the other parents. It made those visits harder than looking at bodies. It made the fear hard to forget.

He did it anyway.

Basia Merton—Katoa Daddy, Mei called him—was a thick-necked man who always smelled of peppermint. His wife was pencil thin with a nervous twitch of a smile. Their home was six chambers near the water-management complex five levels down from the surface, decorated in spun silk and bamboo. When Basia opened the door, he didn’t smile or say hello; he only turned and walked in, leaving the way open. Prax followed him.

At the table, Basia poured Prax a glass of miraculously unspoiled milk. It was the fifth time Prax had come since Mei had gone missing.

“No sign, then?” Basia said. It wasn’t really a question.

“No news,” Prax said. “So there’s that, at least.”

From the back of the house, a young girl’s voice rose in outrage, matched by a younger boy’s. Basia didn’t even turn to look.

“Nothing here either. I’m sorry.”

The milk tasted wonderful, smooth and rich and soft. Prax could almost feel the calories and nutrients being sucked in through the membranes in his mouth. It occurred to him that he might technically be starving.

“There’s still hope,” Prax said.

Basia blew out his breath like the words had been a punch in the gut. His lips were pressed thin and he was staring at the table. The shouting voices in the back resolved into a low boyish wail.

“We’re leaving,” Basia said. “My cousin works on Luna for Magellan Biotech. They’re sending relief ships, and when they put off the medical supplies, there’s going to be room for us. It’s all arranged.”

Prax put down the glass of milk. The chambers around them seemed to go quiet, but he knew that was an illusion. A strange pressure bloomed in his throat, down into his chest. His face felt waxy. He had the sudden physical memory of his wife announcing that she’d filed for divorce. Betrayed. He felt betrayed.

“…after that, another few days,” Basia was saying. He’d been talking, but Prax hadn’t heard him.

“But what about Katoa?” Prax managed to say around the thickness in his throat. “He’s here somewhere.”

Basia’s gaze flickered up and then away, fast as a bird’s wing.

“He’s not. He’s gone, brother. Boy had a swamp where his immune system should’ve been. You know that. Without his medicine, he used to start feeling really sick in three, maybe four days. I have to take care of the two kids I still got.”

Prax nodded, his body responding without him. He felt like a flywheel had come loose somewhere in the back of his head. The grain of the bamboo table seemed unnaturally sharp. The smell of ice melt. The taste of milk going sour on his tongue.

“You can’t know that,” he said, trying to keep his voice soft. He didn’t do a great job.

“I pretty much can.”

“Whoever… whoever took Mei and Katoa, they aren’t useful to them dead. They knew. They had to know that they’d need medicine. And so it only makes sense that they’d take them somewhere they could get it.”

“No one took them, brother. They got lost. Something happened.”

“Mei’s teacher said—”

“Mei’s teacher was scared crazy. Her whole world was making sure toddlers don’t spit in each other’s mouths too much, and there’s a shooting war outside her room. Who the hell knows what she saw?”

“She said Mei’s mother and a doctor. She said a doctor—”

“And come on, man. Not useful if they’re dead? This station is ass deep in dead people, and I don’t see anyone getting useful. It’s a war. Fuckers started a war.” There were tears in his wide, dark eyes now, and sorrow in his voice. But there was no fight. “People die in a war. Kids die. You gotta… ah shit. You got to keep moving.”

“You don’t know,” Prax said. “You don’t know that they’re dead, and until you know, you’re abandoning them.”

Basia looked down at the floor. There was a flush rising under the man’s skin. He shook his head, the corners of his mouth twitching down.

“You can’t go,” Prax said. “You have to stay and look for him.”

“Don’t,” Basia said. “And I mean do not shout at me in my own home.”

“These are our kids, and you don’t get to walk away from them! What kind of father are you? I mean, Jesus…”

Basia was leaning forward now, hunched over the table. Behind him, a girl on the edge of womanhood looked in from the hallway, her eyes wide. Prax felt a deep certainty rising in him.

“You’re going to stay,” he said.

The silence lasted three heartbeats. Four. Five.

“It’s arranged,” Basia said.

Prax hit him. He didn’t plan it, didn’t intend it. His arm rolled through the shoulder, balled fist shooting out of its own accord. His knuckles sank into the flesh of Basia’s cheek, snapping his head to the side and rocking him back. The big man boiled across the room at him. The first blow hit just below Prax’s collarbone, pushing him back, the next one was to his ribs, and the one after that. Prax felt his chair slide out from under him, and he was falling slowly in the low g but unable to get his feet beneath him. Prax swung wild, kicked out. He felt his foot connect with something, but he couldn’t tell if it was the table or Basia.

He hit the floor, and Basia’s foot came down on his solar plexus. The world went bright, shimmering, and painful. Somewhere a long way away, a woman was shouting. He couldn’t make out the words. And then, slowly, he could.

He’s not right. He lost a baby too. He’s not right.

Prax rolled over, forced himself up to his knees. There was blood on his chin he was pretty sure came from him. No one else there was bleeding. Basia stood by the table, hands in fists, nostrils flared, breath fast. The daughter stood in front of him, interposed between her enraged father and Prax. All he could really see of her was her ass and her ponytail and her hands, flat out at her father in the universal gesture for stop. She was saving his life.

“You’d be better off gone, brother,” Basia said.

“Okay,” Prax said.

He got to his feet slowly and stumbled to the door, still not quite breathing right. He let himself out.

The secret of closed-system botanical collapse was this: It’s not the thing that breaks you need to watch out for. It’s the cascade. The first time he’d lost a whole crop of G. kenon, it had been from a fungus that didn’t hurt soybeans at all. The spores had probably come in with a shipment of ladybugs. The fungus took hold in the hydroponic system, merrily taking up nutrients that weren’t meant for it and altering the pH. That weakened the bacteria Prax had been using to fix nitrogen to the point that they were vulnerable to a phage that wouldn’t have been able to take them out otherwise. The nitrogen balance of the system got out of whack. By the time the bacteria recovered to their initial population, the soybeans were yellow, limp, and past repair.

That was the metaphor he used when he thought about Mei and her immune system. The problem was tiny, really. A mutant allele produced a protein that folded left instead of right. A few base pairs’ difference. But that protein catalyzed a critical step in signal transduction to the T cells. She could have all the parts of an immune system standing ready to fight off a pathogen, but without twice-daily doses of an artificial catalyzing agent, the alarm would never sound. Myers-Skelton Premature Immunosenescence they called it, and the preliminary studies still hadn’t even been able to tell if it was more common outside the well of Earth because of an unknown low-g effect or just the high radiation levels increasing mutations rates generally. It didn’t matter. However she’d gotten there, Mei had developed a massive spinal infection when she was four months old. If they’d been anywhere else in the outer planets, she’d have died of it. But everyone came to Ganymede to gestate, so the child health research all happened there. When Dr. Strickland saw her, he knew what he was looking at, and he held back the cascade.

Prax walked down the corridors toward home. His jaw was swelling. He didn’t remember being hit in the jaw, but it was swelling, and it hurt. His ribs had a sharp pain on the left that hurt if he breathed in too deep, so he kept his breath shallow. He stopped at one of the parks, scrounging a few leaves for dinner. He paused at a large stand of Epipremnum aureum. The wide spade-shaped leaves looked wrong. They were still green, but thicker, and with a golden undertone. Someone had put distilled water in the hydroponic supply instead of the mineral-rich solution long-stability hydroponics needed. They could get away with it for another week. Maybe two. Then the air-recycling plants would start to die, and by the time that happened, the cascade would be too far gone to stop. And if they couldn’t get the right water to the plants, he couldn’t imagine they’d be able to set all the mechanical air recyclers going. Someone was going to have to do something about that.

Someone else.

In his rooms, his one small G. kenon held its fronds up to the light. Without any particular conscious thought, he put his finger in the soil, testing it. The rich scent of well-balanced soil was like incense. It was doing pretty well, all things considered. He glanced at the time stamp on his hand terminal. Three hours had passed since he’d come home. His jaw had gone past aching into a kind of constantly rediscovered pain.

Without her medicine, the normal flora of her digestive system would start overgrowing. The bacteria that normally lived benignly in her mouth and throat would rise against her. After two weeks, maybe she wouldn’t be dead. But even in the best case, she’d be so sick that bringing her back would be problematic.

It was a war. Kids died in wars. It was a cascade. He coughed, and the pain was immense and it was still better than thinking. He needed to go. To get out. Ganymede was dying around him. He wasn’t going to do Mei any good. She was gone. His baby girl was gone.

Crying hurt worse than coughing.

He didn’t sleep so much as lose consciousness. When he woke, his jaw was swollen badly enough that it clicked when he opened his mouth too wide. His ribs felt a degree better. He sat on the edge of his bed, head in his hands.

He’d go to the port. He’d go to Basia and apologize and ask to go along. Get out of the Jovian system entirely. Go someplace and start over without his past. Without his failed marriage and shattered work. Without Mei.

He switched to a slightly less dirty shirt. Swabbed his armpits with a damp cloth. Combed his hair back. He’d failed. It was pointless. He had to come to terms with the loss and move on. And maybe someday he would.

He checked his hand terminal. That day was checking the Martian body drop, walking the parks, checking with Dr. Astrigan, and then a list of five brothels he hadn’t been to, where he could ask after the illicit pleasures of pedophilia, hopefully without being gutted by some right-thinking, civic-minded thug. Thugs had children too. Some probably loved them. With a sigh, he keyed in a new entry: MINERALIZE PARK WATER. He’d need to find someone with physical plant access codes. Maybe security could help with that at least.

And maybe, somewhere along the way, he’d find Mei.

There was still hope.