The Outcasts of Heaven Belt

Ranger (in transit, Lansing to Demarchy) + 290 kiloseconds

Bird Alyn moved slowly through the green light of the Ranger’s hydroponics lab, her frail body twitching with the effort of standing upright in one gravity. She hummed softly, oblivious to discomfort, pulled into the past by the cool constant moistness and the smell of apples, the hum of insect life. Shadow-dapples slid over the tiles, merging and breaking with the drift of canopied leaves, showering sparks of veridian fire over the viscous liquid inside clear, covered vats.

The setting was strangely alien, like everything in the bountiful alien wonderland of this starship. But a fern or a tree were always the same, no matter how gravity or its lack contorted them. They were living things that required her—that rewarded her care and attention with a leaf or a blossom or fruit to give her people life. The only living things that willingly absorbed all the love she could give them, that never turned away from her because she was an ugly, ungainly cripple…

Bird Alyn drew the dipstick out of another vat, studied the readings, shook it down. She sighed and slid down the vat’s side to sit on the floor, massaging her swollen feet. They prickled, with the sluggishness of poor circulation. She leaned back, looking up through the shifting green; imagined she saw the milky translucency of the Lansing shroud and Shadow Jack working as a spinner, instead of the banks of fluorescent lights.

She had counted the kiloseconds, the very seconds of every Lansing day, until Shadow Jack came down to join her for the day’s one meal. Silent, moody, filled with futile anger—he was still the one person in her world who responded to her, who pushed out of his own shadowed world each day long enough to show her kindness. Sometimes she wondered whether he was kind out of pity; never caring whether he was. She was simply grateful, because she loved him, and knew that love had no pride.

From childhood she had understood that she would work in the surface gardens; through all of her life she had seen why—that she was different, deformed. Her parents had trained her to use a computer, because they had accepted that she would have to work at a job where the radiation level was high; they had equipped her to work on a ship, to do the best she could for the survival of her world. But beyond that they had withdrawn from her, as people withdraw from a mistake that has ruined their lives, as they withdraw from the victim of a terminal disease.

And she had never questioned her own inferiority, because Materialist philosophy taught her that every individual must accept the responsibility for his own shortcomings. She had gone to work on Lansing’s surface almost gladly; glad to escape from the world of normal people, glad to lose herself in the beauty of the gardens, solitary even among her fellow defectives.

And then she had discovered Shadow Jack sitting dazed and frightened in the grass at the entrance to the tunnels… Shadow Jack, who had grown up used to a normal life of security and acceptance. Who had been told, suddenly, that he was not normal, and cast out into an alien world, ashamed, abandoned. She had comforted him, out of compassion and her own need; his need had bound him to her, and made them friends.

But as they grew older she began to want more than just his friendship; even though she knew that it was wrong, and impossible. On the Lansing surface the mores of the tunnels were distorted by neurosis, or by need, until each person became literally responsible for his own actions, and endured whatever consequences followed. She had seen things that would have appalled her parents, and learned to see that they did no one any harm; to see that that was the only real criterion for what was right or wrong. And there were things that had made her afraid, once she understood them, and grateful that Shadow Jack slept beside her every night in the sweet cool grass or between the sheltering pillars of the abandoned state buildings.

But Shadow Jack would never touch her, never let her ease the anger and the helpless resentment that never let him go. And helpless in her own futility, she kept her silence, knowing that it was wrong for a defective to want a husband; impossible, that Shadow Jack could ever love an ugly, clumsy cripple…

Bird Alyn saw someone draw aside the insect netting and enter the lab, brushing aside grasping shrubs and vines. She struggled to her feet, trying to make the figure into Shadow Jack… heard a woman’s voice call softly, “Claire?”

Bird Alyn stood on tiptoe, fading against the flowers in her green shirt and blue jeans. “What?” She teetered and almost dropped the dipstick. She clutched it against her side with her crippled hand. “Oh, Betha.”

Betha stared at her in return, shook her head, bemused and disconcerted.

Bird Alyn smiled, glancing down. “I—I thought it was Shadow Jack. He said he was goin’ to come watch me work…” Her smile collapsed.

“Pappy’s got him cornered; he’s showing him around up in the shop.” Betha touched a fern, pulled off a yellowed frond, pulling the dead past loose from the present She looked back, concern showing on her tired, pale face. “Are you sure you want to do this, while we’re still at one gee?”

Bird Alyn nodded. “It’s all right. I sit down a lot, and just—watch, and smell, and listen. It’s so long since I worked in the gardens. Do you mind?”

“No… no. You don’t know how much I appreciate it. There’s enough work on this ship for seven people. And—Clewell’s not as young as he used to be.” The captain’s eyes left her, searching the green shadows. “You have the perfect touch, Bird Alyn… I almost took you for a dryad when I came in.”

“What… what’s that?”

“An enchanted forest spirit.” Betha smiled.

“Me?” Bird Alyn twisted the dipstick, laughed her embarrassment. “Oh, not me… These plants take care of themselves, really, it’s easy… not like Lansing… they look so different here, so thick and squat…”

“These?” Betha looked up.

“On Lansing things keep growin’ up, they don’t know when to quit; it’s tricky, the root systems have to go down to bedrock and catch hold… and with the mutations…” Bird Alyn faded, suddenly aware of her own voice.

Betha sat down in a tiled bench, reached out for the strangely shaped thing half-hidden under a fall of vine. “Claire’s guitar. Claire used to run hydroponics, and she used to play for the plants. It’s a musical instrument,” seeing Bird Alyn’s puzzled expression. “We all used to come down here in the evenings, and sing. She used to claim the plants enjoyed the music, and the emotional communion. Of course, Lara would claim it was just the carbon dioxide they wanted… and Sean said it was the hot air.” Her mouth curved wistfully. “And Eric—Eric would say that it was probably a little of everything…” Her hand rose to her face; Bird Alyn counted four plain golden rings, surprised, before it dropped again.

“How… um, how does it work?” She had known a girl once who had a whistle made from a reed.

“The—guitar, I mean.” She leaned back against a heavy wooden shelf, pushed up onto its edge with an effort.

“I can’t really give you a proper idea, Claire was an artist; I only know a few chords. But it’s something like this…” The captain settled the guitar across her lap, positioned her fingers on the strings. She stroked them tentatively.

Bird Alyn shivered. “Oh…”

Betha smiled; her fingers changed position on the strings and the shimmering water of sound altered. She began to sing—almost unconsciously, Bird Alyn thought—in a warm, clear voice merging with the flow of music:

Bird Alyn felt her throat tighten, looked down at her twisted hand, blinking hard.

She heard the captain take a long breath, caught in her own memories. “I’m sorry.” The clear voice strained slightly. “I should have found something a little more cheerful.”

“Please… will you—will you do some more?” Bird Alyn looked up.

Betha’s face eased. “All right. . . they aren’t much, just some old folk tunes. But it’s a strange thing, the effect that everyone singing together has—the bond that grows between you, the feeling of unity. It gives you the strength to carry on, when things are hard. And it’s hard to hate anyone when you’re singing with them; hard to be angry…

Bird Alyn leaned forward, like a flower leaning into the light. “Morningside must be a beautiful place!”

Betha made a sound that was not quite a laugh. “No, it’s… Yes. Yes… in a way. In its own way.” Her fingers brushed the strings again.

“I wish I could do that… Do you… know any love songs?” The captain looked up sharply; Bird Alyn realized that somehow she had said the wrong thing.

“I’ll be glad to show you what guitar chords I know, Bird Alyn, if you want to learn to play. Maybe the plants miss it.”

Bird Alyn folded her arms. “I—I don’t think I have enough fingers…”

The captain’s face froze with a second’s embarrassed awkwardness. “Oh. Well, I think I can reverse the strings for you; I’ve seen a guitar played left-handed before. If you’d like me to?” She smiled again.

“Oh, yes!” Bird Alyn slipped down off of the shelf, left the dipstick hanging absently in the air. It slid through her nerveless fingers and clattered to the floor. Instinctively a long bare foot stretched to pick it up; she lost her balance, and fell. “Lousy luck!”

Sprawled on the floor, she fumbled after the rod, shook it and checked the readings, while a familiar hot flush crept up her face.

The captain came to her, caught her arms and lifted her effortlessly to her feet. “Are you all right?”

Betha’s hand brushed her arm reassuringly, as a mother might have touched her. “It takes a while, doesn’t it, to break the habits of a lifetime.”

Bird Alyn looked down, confused by her solicitude. “Does anybody ever get used to this? If you’re not born used to it, I mean…”

Betha stepped back. “In time. Morningside’s pull is less than one gee, but we’ve been at one gee on the ship for three years, and we don’t even notice the difference any more. I’ve read some Old World studies on one-gee adaptations from low gravity. It’s possible, but it takes about a year—thirty or forty megaseconds—to get back to the minimum endurance you had at zero gee. And there are long-term stress effects on the body. But they decided that you’d last, with good medical care, if you wanted to go through with it.”

“I think I’d rather go home,” Bird Alyn said.

“Me too.” Betha nodded.

But you can’t. Bird Alyn glanced down at her, blushing again. “I mean… I always say the wrong thing!”

“No. It’s all any of us want, Bird Alyn. And we’re going to do it.” Betha studied the pattern of gleaming rings on her hands; they tightened suddenly.

Bird Alyn listened to water dripping somewhere, thought of tears. She heard someone else enter the lab; recognized Shadow Jack this time.

Betha smiled, a pleased, private smile, following her glance. She turned back to the bench, picked up the guitar. “I’ll change the strings for you, when I get the chance. But now I’d better get back to work. We’re almost into Demarchy space; you won’t have to put up with gravity much longer.” She started away toward the door, spoke to Shadow Jack as she passed him. Bird Alyn watched his own gaze fix on her, follow her, with admiration that was almost adoration. Bird Alyn felt envy stir, turned it inward habitually. Her mouth tightened with pain as though she had turned a knife.

But Rusty struggled in Shadow Jack’s arms, meowing with sudden impatience as they caught sight of her. Shadow Jack let the cat drop, still half afraid of its strangeness. Rusty trotted ahead to butt against Bird Alyn’s bare ankles; Bird Alyn leaned over and picked the cat up, and a pink tongue sandpapered her chin joyfully. Rusty settled, purring, onto her shoulder. She thought of the embroidered hanging in the room that was hers now: a cross-stitched portrait of Rusty, and the words, A HOME WITHOUT A CAT MAY BE A PERFECT HOME, PERHAPS—BUT HOW CAN IT PROVE ITS TITLE? Bird Alyn let herself imagine an entire world filled with living creatures, and music; not a fruitless dream, but reality. The kind of world Lansing must have been, in the time she had never known; the kind of world it could never be again.

“I thought Rusty was looking for you,” Shadow Jack murmured, self-conscious. “I’ll bet if there were ten animals on this ship, every one would want to be with you.”

She met his eyes hesitantly, forgetting everything in the miracle of his smile.