Survival Tactics Read online

Jessica sat in one of the wide, comfortable armchairs they provided for relatives in the infirmary, and watched Pella sleep. Pella had been tranquilized after her fever had driven her to delirium, half an hour before they’d contacted Jessica’s guards.

  Pella had been unconscious before Jessica had gone in swimming. Drugged when Jessica had spoken to…someone in the shallows of the Rian Sea.

  James and Hazel continued arguing behind her, their voices low and strained. Part of Jessica wondered if Alder James had ever, even when he was young, expressed concern with anything other than anger. The rest of her studied Pella with her short lifetime’s worth of clinical skill, fighting panic, searching for signs of hope. Pella’s breathing was steady, but her color was concerning: her skin, light pink thanks to Tengri’s endless sunny days, had an odd yellow-green cast, as if her blood wasn’t quite making it to the surface.

  Jessica had lost siblings throughout the years. The last time she’d lost a parent, she’d been too young to remember.

  Pella had to survive this. There was no other option.

  “Jessica.”

  She looked up, abruptly aware James had been saying her name for a while. He stood over her with his usual stiff formality, his expression back to its usual mask, but she thought, now that she was looking for it, the skin underneath his eyes looked vaguely bruised.

  Something in those eyes relaxed a little, and it crossed her mind he might be feeling sorry for her. “If you’d like,” he said, his voice as close to gentle as she’d ever known it, “you can stay here. Just tell your security detail if you need to leave the room.”

  So this is what her sentence would be like, even when one of her parents was dying.

  Now you choose how you’ll atone.

  “Thank you, Alder James,” she said, and surprised herself by meaning it.

  He left shortly afterward, and Jessica curled up in the chair next to Pella’s bed, lost in a swirl of worry until the day’s events tugged her down into sleep.

  “Come on, Jessie,” whispered a voice in her ear. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Jessica woke, blinking in the darkness of the dimly lit ward. Tierney stood next to her, only it wasn’t her Tierney. It was Tierney at six, cherubic and sparkly-eyed, expression perpetually cheerful. A dream, then, and Jessica felt a wave of relief; nothing that happened in a dream could hurt Pella, or her, or anybody else.

  Small!Tierney’s round fingers closed over Jessica’s wrist and tugged. “It won’t take long.”

  Jessica looked over at Pella. Her chest rose and fell with reassuring steadiness. In my dream, at least, she’s stable. Reluctantly, she got to her feet, and let Small!Tierney grasp her hand.

  The child pulled Jessica out of the infirmary and down through the wide forest road to the habitat clearing. Only it wasn’t the clearing Jessica knew: there were houses missing. Alder Neryssa’s big multi-storey complex, put together for her never-ending supply of children, was instead a grove of sickly overshadowed pneumo-trees; Alder Cait’s open cottage—no walls, no bedrooms, only the baths shielded from general view—was absent, the spot it would be built on covered in low-growing lavender root. Invasive stuff, Jessica recalled; it had taken Cait’s cohort three years of aggressive weeding to kill it off.

  The past, then. Six years ago at least.

  Small!Tierney steered them unerringly toward Jessica’s house, one of the oldest structures in the habitat. Two storeys only, all the rooms small; but the roof line was all uneven angles and curves, providing the children the best hide-and-seek in the colony. Small!Tierney climbed the leatherroot vine on the outside of the house, and Jessica clambered up after them, trying not to remember she was far too big to be doing this now.

  Small!Tierney let them in through the upper landing window, turned long enough to hold a finger up to their lips, then crept out into the hall. Jessica followed.

  Sitting on the landing, her feet threaded through the balusters, was another child. Light skin, small nose, thick eyebrows edging toward each other as she frowned; hair, curly and red, escaping in wild tendrils from two haphazard pigtails. Taller than Tierney, still; the last season that would be true. Her feet swung, just a little; she was silent, her eyes on the light from the room below.

  “It’s all right,” Small!Tierney said. “She can’t see you.”

  Jessica crept forward, then lowered herself down next to her childhood self.

  Voices came up from below: adults arguing. She recognized Pella’s voice right away, and then the other, deep and stern: Alder James.

  Her stomach rolled over. She knew what night this was.

  “No,” she said, and moved to get up.

  Small!Tierney patted her shoulder, and in the way of dreams, Jessica’s limbs were abruptly weighted with lead. “It’s okay. It won’t be what you think.”

  Of course it would be.

  “You can’t do this to her,” Pella was saying. She sounded angry, passionate; Jessica hadn’t remembered Pella being so out of control. “Do you know how much she’s lost?”

  “We all know how much she’s lost.” Alder James’ voice was infuriatingly calm. “That’s not the point, Pella. We only have room for one more this year, and we’ve already acquired enough from her genetic line.”

  “‘Genetic line.’” Pella spat the words out. “What about her heart, James? We’re all so good at telling everyone their loss is for the good of all, but when it comes time for us to take care of each other, we’re all about chemicals and DNA.” Jessica heard the clink of glasses; Pella was pouring drinks. “You’ve known Clara all her life, just like I have. She needs a baby. Even with all the ones she’s lost, she’s always been at the front of the volunteer line. And she cares for all of her children, even the ones she didn’t birth. You can’t say that about everyone around here.”

  “Indeed.” Alder James sounded vaguely amused, and Jessica wondered if Pella was glaring at him. “I’m not trying to hurt Clara,” he said, and his voice had softened, just a little. “But we can’t alter reality. We had a bad harvest last fall. It’s going to be a near thing with the children we’ve already allocated. My other choice was no new babies at all, but with the summer flu so bad…” He trailed off, and there was silence for a moment. “I’ll tell her myself,” he said at last. “In the morning.”

  “No.” Pella’s voice was calm now, but Jessica couldn’t remember ever hearing her so weary. “I’ll do it. Let her be angry with me. Let her think I used my influence to take her place. But next year, James, I want her first in line.”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  “But you’ll try.”

  There was another long silence. Jessica looked down at Small!Jessica; her lower lip had extended. She’d never been much for tears when she was younger, she recalled; most of her sorrow had taken the shape of anger. Like Alder James. She wondered when that had stopped.

  “Thank you for the drink, Pella,” he said, and then Jessica heard footsteps. The pair appeared in the entryway below them; Pella’s hair was longer, her corkscrew curls pulled into a long dark plait down her back, but even eight years younger James was already gray. To Jessica’s surprise, he bent down as they reached the door, and Pella kissed him, not entirely begrudgingly.

  Well that’s news.

  The door closed behind Alder James, and Pella stood with her palm against it. And then she said, “You can come down now.”

  Beside her, Small!Jessica kept frowning; but she pulled her legs back through the balusters and got to her feet. Jessica followed suit, glancing at Small!Tierney, who was watching the entire scene with delight. Tierney’s family had had two new children that year, Jessica recalled; both had lived through the winter, but only because PSI had shown up with a supply of fresh produce they needed to unload before it spoiled. Or that’s what they’d been told; Central’s colonies weren’t supposed to appeal directly to PSI for help, but it wasn’t like people on Tengri didn’t have plenty of ways to send an untraceable message. Jessica h
ad honed her hacking skills with the best in the sector.

  Jessica trailed Small!Jessica, who was in no hurry. Pella was watching the little girl with a patient smile on her face. Jessica hadn’t remembered how different Pella had been back then: still tall and straight, but rounder, softer, more relaxed, less guarded. Small!Jessica took each stair in two steps as if steadying herself, although Jessica remembered being perfectly agile at the age of six. When Small!Jessica made it down the stairs, Pella crouched in front of her. “Are you all right, little one?”

  Small!Jessica kept scowling. “Scottie’s dead.”

  That had been his name: Scott Aloysius Haigh, and hadn’t they all laughed at such a big name for a small baby. The summer flu had run late that year, and he’d caught it at the end, when they’d all thought it was done, when nobody worried anymore about quarantining the small ones or keeping them inside.

  Pella’s face grew sad, and she reached out, tucking a coiled lock behind Small!Jessica’s ear. “I know, honey. I’m sorry. I know you loved him.”

  “We all loved him.”

  Watching, Jessica felt a wave of rage. They’d been taught that phrase from birth, all of them, like a mantra: death was a shared experience. Grief was never exclusive, and it was never private. It was true, always true, but the phrase had always left Jessica wanting to dive to the bottom of the sea and scream until she ran out of air.

  Pella’s hand strayed to Small!Jessica’s cheek. “We did,” she agreed. “But…it’s okay to be sad, honey.”

  The child’s scowl didn’t shift. “I’m not sad.”

  Pella’s lips quirked again. “It’s okay to be angry, too, you know.”

  And at that, Small!Jessica’s lower lip started to tremble, and she burst into tears, and Pella wrapped her arms around the child and held her close.

  What Jessica had not seen all those years ago, when Pella let her grieve a baby she had barely known, was Pella’s own eyes squeezing shut, her silent tears falling into Small!Jessica’s unruly hair.

  3.

  Jessica woke to Alder James’ voice behind her. “She’s looking better,” he said.

  Jessica stayed still, feigning sleep. James still sounded worried.

  “We’ll see how she fares in the morning,” said Hazel.

  Jessica considered opening her eyes, seeking company, comfort. Instead she curled tighter into the chair and kept her eyes closed.

  The night was cooler, but the humidity was picking up, and Jessica’s skin prickled indecisively. This had to be what was bringing on the dreams; she never slept soundly when the weather turned odd. She’d heard of colony worlds that were cooler, which didn’t appeal at all; but she thought, sometimes, she might like someplace a little drier. Earth, they said, was drier, at least away from the vast oceans. She’d never studied it. She’d never thought about going anywhere else at all.

  She was standing in the main town road. Next to her stood Alder!James, dressed in the same somber, formal suit he’d worn at her sentencing, fingers flexing with impatience. Before them was the flat-roofed council center, and she wondered who would possibly choose that staid, dull building at this hour.

  “It’s common for us to gather here at night,” Alder!James told her. “It's cool, and it's easy to talk. Come and sit. And be still; you must listen as well as watch.”

  They passed through the wide main door, and the night’s humidity vanished, dissipated by the building’s dehumidifiers. There were still chairs set up from the last town meeting, row after row, straight as if they’d never been used. Near the center dais, there were three people clustered around one of the big cooling units. One was Alder James—the real one, it seemed, whatever that meant in this dream—leaning back in an armchair, legs crossed, still and silent. Alder Sarah sat next to him, elbows on her knees, hands balled into fists. Before both of them paced Alder Ceredig, tall, spidery-thin, and uncharacteristically animated. As they drew closer, Jessica could hear Ceredig’s voice, sharp and angry.

  “That was utter foolishness,” Ceredig said, and even before she and Alder!James sat in the chairs opposite the trio, she could see Sarah’s knuckles go white.

  “It’s the law,” Sarah told him. “She’s still a child. She gets a choice.”

  Jessica decided she liked dreams better when they were not about her.

  Ceredig stopped pacing and turned on Sarah, his glare so fierce Jessica found herself drawing back. “Yes, Sarah. She’s still a child. We’re not finished raising her. And what have we just told her? We’ve told her we don’t want her anymore.”

  “Don’t be absurd. Nobody wants her to leave.”

  “Then what was the point of telling her she could?”

  Alder James broke into their argument. “It’s the choice that’s the point,” he said, but his tone was distracted, as if his mind wasn’t really on the conversation. “She’s smart, Ceredig. Smart and healthy, and bored out of her mind. She needs adult responsibilities, so we gave her one. We let her choose her fate.”

  Ceredig turned his ire on James. “And what if she’d told us she was leaving?” Ceredig asked. “You’d just let her go?”

  “That's never going to happen,” Sarah snapped.

  “You’d better hope it doesn’t,” Ceredig declared. “Do you know how few in her cohort have been as resistant as she is to disease? We need—“

  And that, it seemed, was enough for James. “We need,” he clarified, “better quarantine protocols. This strain wasn’t even that virulent, and we still lost twenty-seven children. Or have you forgotten?”

  Jessica drew a breath between her teeth as Ceredig’s expression froze, his complexion washing with ash. Ceredig’s cohort had lost an entire generation, all their children between nine and seventeen, before the flu had even reached full strength.

  Ceredig swallowed and turned away from the others, and Jessica could see his face shift from anger to haunted grief. His hands began to clench like Sarah’s. “Tell me, James,” he said, his voice calmer, “has there ever been anyone in your life you haven’t manipulated?”

  James should have looked insulted; instead, a look Jessica couldn’t identify flashed briefly across his face before his expression closed again. “I don’t manipulate, Ceredig.” He got to his feet and took a step toward the older man. “We protect who we can here. Jessica doesn’t need our protection anymore.”

  Ceredig swallowed, and Jessica saw his eyes brighten.

  Behind the two men, Sarah threw up her hands. “You’re both hopeless,” she said, getting to her feet with them. “Of course we need her. And of course she needs our protection. You’re both wrong, and I hope you’re happy.” She strode past Jessica and Alder!James, and her footsteps faded behind them.

  James and Ceredig stood silent for a moment. Ceredig blinked and straightened, and when he finally spoke, his voice didn’t tremble at all. “Sarah’s got it backward, you know,” he told James.

  Alder James nodded. “It doesn’t matter. She’s chosen.”

  “I hope you’re wrong.”

  And Alder James did something Jessica had almost never seen—he laughed, although Jessica didn’t think he’d found anything Ceredig said amusing. “I hope I’m wrong, too, Ceredig. I’m selfish enough for that.”

  Ceredig coughed out a laugh as well, and Jessica was left wondering what the hell they were talking about.

  4.

  Jessica stirred at the sound of a sheet being pulled back. She opened her eyes to find Alder Hazel standing over Pella, gently and methodically changing the bedsheet out from under her.

  “Do you need help?” Jessica asked.

  “No, thank you, dear,” said Alder Hazel.

  Jessica’s stomach tightened. Hazel never called anyone dear.

  She drew the back of her hand across her eyes. Hazel wasn’t one to invite confidence, but there was no one else to talk to. “I don’t want her to die, Alder Hazel.”

  Hazel sighed. “There’s always hope, Jessica. Until there isn’t.”
r />   She turned and left, and Jessica curled up again, watching Pella’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall.

  The room was illuminated by bright white moonlight, and Pella’s bed was empty.

  Jessica blinked once, and unfolded her legs out from under her. She knew the feel of it now, the odd hyper-reality directed by something outside of herself, and she got to her feet, looking around for her escort. She’d never seen the moonlight so bright, at least not that she could remember; perhaps it was the hour, or perhaps—she turned to the window, and Pella was standing there, her back to Jessica, her dark hair haloed by the light. Beyond her was the treeline, and in the sky hung Tengri’s three moons in a row: Umé, Cleite, and Erlik, smallest to largest, although Jessica remembered, vaguely, that Erlik was nearly as small as Umé, just much closer.

  A tri-moon. There were no tri-moons due for twenty years.

  Pella’s hair floated around her head as a breeze skittered its way through the room, tickling Jessica’s skin, carrying the strong odors of compost and needle grass. Spring, then, before the summer heat wave, before the most deadly of the flus were due to arrive. Tierney always said spring breezes made them feel hopeful. The breezes always filled Jessica with dread.

  She got up from the chair and moved next to Pella. The breeze had stilled, but Pella’s hair kept floating. Jessica glanced at her profile. The monochrome lighting cast her skin silver-gray, but her expression was calm, contemplative, as if Jessica had caught her mid-idea. Without meeting Jessica’s eyes, Pella turned and began walking toward the back of the hospital, her feet not making a sound.

  Jessica followed her.

  The rest of the hospital was empty, each bed made up neatly, none of the monitoring systems activated. The calm before the storm. Jessica shivered, and had to run to catch Pella, who was ignoring the empty ward and heading for the hallway to the research center.

  The future research center was nearly unrecognizable. The square banks of shadow-and-stripe memory were gone, replaced by a set of domes clustered in the corners of the room, humming with a tone nearly too low for Jessica to hear. Much of the room was empty space, although Jessica knew in a few weeks it would be full of researchers poring over genome and chemical data on whatever the latest summer strain was. They’d parse and experiment and study each patient who came in, whether they lived or died; the data would be aggregated into conclusions about prevention and treatment and inoculation and shipped out to Central Gov for distribution to all Six Sectors. They saved lives, every year, all over the galaxy. Sometimes millions. Tengri Colony existed to find ways to save people. They did it by watching their own die.