Athena City, One Way

The thunder cracked across the sky four months after Elmo was born. Samantha was certain it was them, there not being a cloud above as far as she could see. Her father was at the Hershberger farm, consulting on the proper way to plant corn. He would stay for dinner, the usual payment for his services. Once, she might have joined him. But the invitation had not been extended to her. The shunning was over and yet it remained.

When the thunder boomed Samantha sat alone, the children sleeping in their cribs. She held her well-worn copy of Athena City Life and studied the same pictures she had pored over for half a year, searching it for any new detail. The whole issue was dedicated to some annual celebration. That much she could decipher. The longest article, which she still could not read, was about people her own age.

Samantha fixated on one girl in particular. Through basic pattern recognition, she determined the girl’s name to be Sevda. Sevda Behar. And Samantha loved everything about her. Her hair was black, so black that it blended into the felt robe and square hat she wore in her picture. And though her skin was dark her smile was bright, full of careless ease. She looked relieved, as if there were nothing left to worry about, and Samantha envied that. She didn’t know why Sevda’s picture had been taken but to look so young and be so free was something Samantha would do anything for.

Through a similar process of pattern recognition, Samantha determined that life perfection was within Athena City. She sounded out the word “Athena” until it sounded familiar, her German pronunciation rendering it into “a-teena”. Wherever it was, Athena City was a glittering place of glass towers reaching to the stars, surrounded by a brilliant blue sea. Samantha had never dreamed the like. She was a native of Gelassenheit, having been born after the exodus, and small wooden houses and farm work were all she knew.

The Ordnung dictated that a person should live a simple life. Technology was not in itself evil, but it interfered with one’s commune with God. Her whole life, simplicity had been emphasized along with the perils of pride and outside things. Athena City, it appeared, thrived on the opposite.
When the ship entered the atmosphere around Gelassenheit, breaking the speed of sound and sending a clap across the moon below, it served as an alarm clock Samantha hadn’t known she set. She leapt from the wooden rocking chair and grabbed her father’s leather satchel hanging by the door. He used it when traveling to carry his tools and Samantha figured it might serve her just as well.

She took from the dresser two blue dresses and rolled them up on the bed. She stuffed them into the satchel with a handful of socks and all the undergarments that would fit. She stole a bar of soap from the cupboard, adding that as well. Her copy of Athena City Life went on top. Samantha smoothed its worn and tired pages with care before tying it closed.

With a grunt, she slung the bag over a shoulder. Her hand was on the door–freedom inches away–when Elmo burped in his crib, a hiccupping little sound. She paused, waiting a moment but she heard no further noises. But it reminded Samantha of her children and she stood frozen, mind racing through a series of intertwined and branching thoughts.

Since Isaac was born, Samantha had labored to convince herself that whatever bond she felt with her children was no more than animal instinct, like how a sow cares for her piglets. But, right then, looking at her youngest son’s sleeping face, she wasn’t so sure. She had carried them each for nine long months and then fed them of her body once they were born. She had held them and soothed them with quiet songs. Was she so certain there wasn’t more.
Samantha closed her eyes, praying to God for an answer. They were just babies, pure and innocent despite the horror of their origin. The fault lay not with them. And the outline of a plan to bring them along began to percolate in her mind when the strap of the bag made the decision for her.

It cut into Samantha’s shoulder and she could feel the heavy pull. She was already overloaded. She realized that only a slim chance existed of making it on her own. Two children would reduce it to the remotest of possibilities. The traders came on an irregular basis. If she didn’t leave now, she feared she would be pregnant again next time. And, the time after that, three children would be impossible to take. No, she decided with pain piercing her heart. She had to go. Now.

Samantha opened the door with the lightest of squeaks from the wooden hinges and squeezed herself out onto the creaky porch. She surveyed the area to ensure no one was watching and leapt off the porch in a dead sprint. Samantha dove into her father’s barley fields, her short legs churning the packed soil. She ran through corn then wheat, keeping her distance from any house or barn. She ran until her legs burned and her vision was filled with black spots, dissolving into a kaleidoscope of colors.

The sun was just moving behind the gas giant and long shadows stretched across the fields still to be crossed. It was too early for night but the orbit of Gelassenheit around its planet made for odd sunsets several times a month. They were predictable and several men in the community tracked them but Samantha did not have access to their calendars.

She collapsed onto crossed legs between stalks of corn, panting and waiting for her breath to return. Her fingers trembled with a mixture of adrenaline and fear. She still wasn’t far enough that her father couldn’t catch her on horse. And, with night falling, he would soon be home and discover her missing.

Samantha picked herself up and continued on, the silhouette ghosts of corn stalks pointing her way. She walked at a more even pace but one that still brought sweat dripping down into her eyes while navigating the uneven terrain. For six hours, long after the sun had disappeared, she kept her north-eastern direction, switching the satchel from one shoulder to the other and back again as it grew heavy. Only after her legs refused to carry her another meter did she stop, falling into the dirt, asleep in an instant.

But if night came too soon, so did dawn. She awoke with the first rays of orange light striking her face, blinking away the dew. It was a struggle to stand, her legs refusing to cooperate and feeling as stiff as timber. Her back and neck ached from the hard ground and a general feeling of nausea swept through her. Samantha fought through it and began again her forward march, determined to find the traders.

The Calculus sat alone in a field of weeds bent and broken by the thrust of vertical take-off and landing jets. She was a late-model Tomcat and her hull reflected twenty hard years of service. The thick biphasic steel plating under her keel was scarred and burned by hundreds of reentries, many at speeds exceeding Rayo’s operating guidelines. The charring drew up her sides like a shadow until fading into the factory standard bronze coloring. Her systems were shut down but, sitting in the field, the Calculus radiated an aura of a lonely but stoic work ethic.

Around the ship, pressure-sealed crates littered the landing site. Each was as long as a person and about as wide, looking no different than the kind of box a touring musician might carry equipment in. The outsides were molded plastic with grooves in the top and protrusions in the bottom for secure stacking. The insides contained three centimeters of protection between the plastic and storage space but were otherwise fancy boxes that, when closed, were air tight.

Each crate cost five thousand Colonial Dollars but the crew of The Calculus used them as makeshift benches. They were arranged into informal circles, some around a fire pit that still smoldered from the previous night’s barbeque and others lay beside the jury-rigged table.

The skipper of the Calculus did not chide his crew for their misuse of the ship’s equipment. Instead, Jonas Buckle sat on his own, running over a spread-sheet on his pad, trying to determine how full his ship needed to be to turn a profit. The result was not pleasing and Buckle’s stomach rippled in waves over his belt with each grunt.

He set down the pad and rubbed hammy fists into his eyes. There was a lot of sleep to wipe away, from the boredom of waiting to the mind-numbing analysis of numbers trending red. Buckle saw the weight telling on the crew as well. They were used to days and weeks of confinement aboard ship but the quiet serenity of the backwater moon was too much. The cribbage games had become less enthusiastic and they were searching for projects to occupy their idle time. Ayame Oka spent an entire day inspecting the hull for micro-breaches leaking water. Buckle couldn’t imagine a less interesting task.
He stood and stretched his stocky legs, scratching the wild gray-and-white beard growing across his face. He considered the possibility of shaving but dismissed it as he had every day for fifteen years. Without it he had the appearance of a fat child.

Buckle turned in a small circle, searching the drastic horizon of Gelassenheit for any sign of impending customers. It was a shallow line and any heads that appeared would be standing in front of him within the hour. But there was nothing, just undeveloped grassland in every direction. He circled again when movement caught his eye. A speck in the southwestern began to bob over the low horizon. A minute later it he could see a white bonnet.
Buckle whistled and his crew sat up like a pack of dogs called to attention. Oka and Martin Lam ran to their skipper. Oka was a head shorter than Buckle and more than two shorter than Lam and she stood on her toes, balancing on the tips to see the same horizon as the others.

“It’s a girl,” Oka said.

“You sure?” asked Lam. “She looks grown up to me.”

“She’s wearing blue,” Oka said. She leaned forward, searching for more detail but Samantha was still too far away.

“Well,” Lam said. “If she’s old enough to be out here by herself then she’s old enough for me.”

“Ass,” Oka coughed.

“Like the skipper isn’t thinking the same thing.”

A momentary smile appeared under Buckle’s beard but his mirth faded as they could make her out more clearly. Even from this distance he could see that she was no stunner. She was too short, and a little thick through the middle for his tastes. She was like every other woman Buckle had been able to afford. He focused instead on the bag she carried.

“She’s not here to trade,” Buckle said. He pushed through Lam and Oka and returned to his box, leaning over and picking out two small pebbles from the thicket of weeds.

“So?” asked Lam. “Maybe we can engage, you know, other services.”

“She’s Amish, dick,” Oka said. “They don’t have whores.”

“There’re always whores,” said Lam. “They just go by other names. Like mechanic?” He rubbed the ink black hair of Oka’s buzz cut like an older brother. Oka pulled away and shoved him back onto his heels. Lam reached out and grabbed her with lanky arms and the two grappled, Oka smaller and able to handle herself but Lam wiry and with a surprising strength.

“Fuck off,” she grunted, escaping.

“Will you two quit it?” Buckle said. He tossed a pebble at each of them. “If she’s not here to trade then she means nothing, okay? It’s money we need. Or goods we can sell for money. Otherwise we have a ship full of shit that no one wants and no capital to buy the shit people do.”

Lam stuffed his hands into his pockets and kicked at the ground, fine dust carrying off in the wind. When his penance in silence had been paid, he stole a glance at the horizon hoping there might still be a chance.

---

Samantha approached in awe, with hesitant steps as one would toward a sleeping god. As the Calculus rose out of the distance, she thought at first it was a sculpture dropped on the moon, left for its meaning to be deciphered. It was more boxy than she imagined of a ship from space. The few pictures of such things in her magazine showed cleaner lines, curving joins. Instead the Calculus was a ship of drastic angles and sharp protrusions, an unlikely thing to be able to leave the ground.

Three English watched as she pushed through the wild grass. Samantha straightened despite her load to make a better impression. She knew it to be vanity but she ran fingers through her tangled hair, smoothing it anyway. She realized only the day before while drinking from a small pond that a brush was not among the items she packed.

The people of the ship were not dressed like anyone Samantha had known. Her clothes were pinned together or tied with knots. Theirs had zippers and buttons everywhere. There also seemed to be a fair amount of leather worn between them in jackets and boots. But the material was different than anything she’d tanned. It reflected the sun with the power of a mirror. Samantha was uncertain whether to be embarrassed for herself or for them and the conflicting emotions bubbled up into a nervous smoothing of her grass-stained and sleep-wrinkled dress.

She plodded through the weeds, switching the satchel from one shoulder to another every ten paces until standing before them. Samantha searched their faces until finding one with feminine features but dressed so much like a man it took a moment to realize she was a woman. She dropped her bag at Oka’s feet. Lam and Buckle exchanged curious looks.

“Can you take me to Athena City?” she asked in Deitsch.

“I heard Athena City in there,” Oka said. She scratched her head. “But I missed the rest.”

Oka spoke over her shoulder in the mongrel English of the Colonies, the lingua franca among fifteen worlds with little else in common. The words, when not mixed with Spanish or Chinese, were the King’s English but the accent was not. Letters had new sounds and pronunciations different from on Earth.
“She wants something,” Lam said.

“Yeah, thanks. I got that.”

Buckle moved up next to Oka and urged her on with a wave of his hand.

“You don’t speak their language?” Oka asked.

“Do you?”

“No,” Oka said. “But I thought you’d traded with these people before.”

“Athena City,” Samantha said. There was frustration at their lack of understanding but it was lost in her heavy accent. She pointed at herself and then into the sky. “Athena City.” Buckle grinned and stepped forward.

“You. Want. To go?” Buckle asked, pausing between each word as if understanding was all about pace. He emphasized each with a large gesture reserved for the foreign and the retarded. “To Athena City?”

Samantha nodded at the sound of her destination. It was clear the fat man was in charge. “Athena City,” she said.

“That’s a long way away, hon,” Buckle said. “And you don’t look like you’ve got the clusters.”

Samantha shook her head in confusion. She tried to make sense of the words but their meaning would not come. She pointed at herself and toward the Calculus.

Buckle pursed his lips and shook his head. “Nein, Athena City,” he said.

That, Samantha understood. She turned away, fighting back tears as she looked up into the sky. Just a few hours before it had been dark and the gas giant hung in the sky like a red paper lantern. The daylight had returned it to its paler state, its looming presence feeling oppressive. Its color warning her how much time had already passed.

Samantha swallowed hard before swinging around and facing Buckle again. Oka stood with him, chewing the skin around her fingers but silent. Samantha looked Buckle up and down before making her decision. She took Buckle by the hand, leading him up the loading ramp to his ship. Buckle followed like a little boy, quiet until inside the cavernous cargo bay.

“I can’t let you stay,” he said. “This doesn’t mean you’re going anywhere.”

Samantha hesitated before unpinning her collar, opening her dress and revealing a swollen breast, still full and aching with Elmo’s unsuckled milk. She brought his hand to it and felt his calloused fingers as they danced over then pinched a tender brown nipple. Samantha watched Buckle, her face frozen even as his mouth fell open in unconscious appreciation of what was happening. Her eyes took on a glassy sheen as if she had gone elsewhere. She returned when he squeezed her too hard and she winced. Samantha stepped back, covering herself.

“Athena City,” she said, face hard and cold.

Buckle was frozen in time, drool ready to slide over his drooping lower lip, hand still outstretched. He snapped back and devoured the sight of her. Samantha’s breast re-awoke something dormant. His mouth twisted into a lusty grin, more menacing because of the wild beard, eyes narrowing into calculating slits.

“You’re going to need to give more than a titty twist, darling, if you want to get off this rock,” he said.

Samantha brought her hand to her breast then slid it down to between her legs. She pointed at him and he took a shuffle step as his trousers got tight. Samantha pointed toward the cargo bay doors, waving them away then poking him in the chest and speaking in Deitsch.

The meaning clear, Buckle nodded as she thrust her finger into his breastbone. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, no one else. Got it.”