Echea

The light above was artificial, built into the dome itself. If I looked up, I could see the dome and the light, and if I squinted, I could see beyond to the darkness that was the unprotected atmosphere. It made me feel as if I were in a lighted glass porch on a starless night. Open, and vulnerable, and terrified, more because I couldn’t see what was beyond than because I could.

People crowded the roadway and huddled near the plastic buildings. The buildings were domed too. Pre-fab, shipped up decades ago when Earth had hopes for the colonies. Now there were no more shipments, at least not here. We had heard that there were shipments coming to Colony Russia and Colony Europe, but no one confirmed the rumors. I was in Colony London, a bastard colony made by refugees and dissidents from Colony Europe. For a while, we had stolen their supply ships. Now, it seemed, they had stolen them back.

A man took my arm. I smiled up at him. His face was my father’s face, a face I hadn’t seen since I was twenty-five. Only something had altered it terribly. He was younger than I had ever remembered him. He was too thin and his skin filthy with dust. He smiled back at me, three teeth missing, lost to malnutrition, the rest blackened and about to go. In the past few days the whites of his eyes had turned yellow, and a strange mucus came from his nose. I wanted him to see the colony’s medical facility or at least pay for an autodoc, but we had no credit, no means to pay at all.

It would have to wait until we found something.

"I think I found us free passage to Colony Latina," he said. His breath whistled through the gaps in his teeth. I had learned long ago to be far away from his mouth. The stench could be overpowering. "But you’ll have to do them a job."

A job. I sighed. He had promised no more. But that had been months ago. The credits had run out, and he had gotten sicker.

"A big job?" I asked.

He didn’t meet my gaze. "Might be."

"Dad-"

"Honey, we gotta use what we got."

It might have been his motto. We gotta use what we got. I’d heard it all my life. He’d come from Earth, he’d said, in one of the last free ships. Some of the others we knew said there were no free ships except for parolees, and I often wondered if he had come on one of those. His morals were certainly slippery enough.

I don’t remember my mother. I’m not even sure I had one. I’d seen more than one adult buy an infant, and then proceed to exploit it for gain. It wouldn’t have been beyond him.

But he loved me. That much was clear.

And I adored him.

I’d have done the job just because he’d asked it.

I’d done it before.

The last job was how we’d gotten here. I’d been younger then and I hadn’t completely understood.

But I’d understood when we were done.

And I’d hated myself.

"Isn’t there another way?" I found myself asking.

He put his hand on the back of my head, propelling me forward. "You know better," he said. "There’s nothing here for us."

"There might not be anything in Colony Latina, either."

"They’re getting shipments from the U.N. Seems they vowed to negotiate a peace."

"Then everyone will want to go."

"But not everyone can," he said. "We can." He touched his pocket. I saw the bulge of his credit slip. "If you do the job."

It had been easier when I didn’t know. When doing a job meant just that. When I didn’t have other things to consider. After the first job, my father asked where I had gotten the morals. He said I hadn’t inherited them from him, and I hadn’t. I knew that. I suggested maybe Mother, and he had laughed, saying no mother who gave birth to me had morals either.

"Don’t think about it, honey," he’d said. "Just do."

Just do. I opened my mouth-to say what, I don’t know-and felt hot liquid splatter me. An exit wound had opened in his chest, spraying his blood all around. People screamed and backed away. I screamed. I didn’t see where the shot had come from, only that it had come.

The blood moved slowly, more slowly than I would have expected.

He fell forward and I knew I wouldn’t be able to move him, I wouldn’t be able to grab the credit slip, wouldn’t be able to get to Colony Latina, wouldn’t have to do the job.

Faces, unbloodied faces, appeared around me.

They hadn’t killed him for the slip.

I turned and ran, as he once told me to do, ran as fast as I could, blasting as I went, watching people duck or cover their ears or wrap their arms around their heads.

I ran until I saw the sign.

The tiny prefab with the Red Crescent painted on its door, the Red Cross on its windows. I stopped blasting and tumbled inside, bloody, terrified, and completely alone.

I woke up to find my husband’s arms around me, my head buried in his shoulder. He was rocking me as if I were one of the girls, murmuring in my ear, cradling me and making me feel safe. I was crying and shaking, my throat raw with tears or with the aftereffects of screams.

Our door was shut and locked, something that we only did when we were amorous. He must have had House do it, so no one would walk in on us.