Search & Recovery: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel (2 page)

Her mother’s smile vanished. “You need to make time to talk with me. I don’t think this can wait any longer.”

Drama. Her mother was all about drama—happy drama, but drama nonetheless.

Her mother must have seen the reluctance on Berhane’s face. She patted Berhane on the leg.

“Tell you what,” her mother said. “I’ll stop at the Shenandoah Café and get that cinnamon coffee you like. I’ll bring it to your favorite table in the quad in, what? An hour?”

Berhane resisted the urge to roll her eyes. That was what she got for telling her mother her exam schedule. She could almost hear herself blithely nattering last night:

I’m not worried about the first exam, even if it is at 6:30 in the morning. It’s Poetry of the New Worlds, which is going to be an essay exam, graded on creativity, which just means repeating the lectures the professor gave that he obviously thought were brilliant…

“I thought you had a meeting,” Berhane said, trying not to sound desperate. She hated heart-to-hearts with her mother. “That was what you told me last night.”

Her mother’s smile was wide and warm, deepening the creases around her eyes and making her seem even more cheerful than usual.

“I do have a meeting,” her mother said. “It’s with you.”

Berhane felt a surge of irritation. Her mother always manipulated her like that. But before Berhane could say anything, her mother stood. The train was slowing. Her mother headed to the nearest exit, along with two Peyti, three Imme, and a short woman who didn’t quite block Berhane’s view of her mother’s face.

Her mother smiled at Berhane, then waggled her fingers. Berhane gave her a reluctant shake of the head. Her mother knew that Berhane was annoyed at her—and in typical fashion, her mother didn’t really care.

The train stopped, the door eased open, and the group of seven from this part of the car stepped onto the outdoor platform—although nowhere in Armstrong’s dome was really outside. Outside was the Moon itself, with its own gravity and lack of oxygen. Berhane had gone out there several times in an environmental suit, generally with her father on business, and it had always freaked her out.

The platform glowed golden in light from Dome Dawn. Her mother’s hair had reddish highlights from the fake sunlight, and her matching black pantsuit glowed reddish as well. She walked to the side of the platform, heading toward the stairs, as the train eased forward.

Berhane felt a longing for cinnamon coffee. The Shenandoah Café made the best in Armstrong. Her mother definitely knew how to bribe her. And after this stupid final, Berhane would want some kind of refreshment, even if it meant letting her mother harangue her.

The train sped up, heading across the famed University shopping district with its funky stores and fantastic restaurants (including the Shenandoah Café), before it reached the first of five University stops. Berhane didn’t settle in. She would get off on the second stop and walk less than a block to get to her exam.

Berhane felt annoyed. Instead of focusing on the exam (which was going to count for 75% of her grade), she was thinking about whatever it was that her mother wanted. And it had to be something important (life-changing, her mother had said) to merit cinnamon coffee and a forced meeting.

The train slid sideways.

Berhane’s heart rose and her breath caught.

Trains weren’t supposed to slide sideways. They couldn’t slide sideways.

Berhane felt a surge of alarm.

Then the train car toppled backwards, and the people near the door flew toward her.

A big man landed on her, knocking the wind from her. Screams echoed around her. Beside her, a Peyti—its face grotesque and strange—gasped. It had no mask. It was on its side, groping for its mask with its twig-like fingers. Somehow Berhane managed to grab the mask and give it to the Peyti, all without dislodging the big man on top of her.

More people had landed on him, and the screaming continued.

Then another
thump
occurred, making the car jolt upward as if nothing held it down, not even the weight of the people inside. The car had gone dark.

She managed to catch a thin breath, although it hurt. Then she realized that the air tasted of chemicals. Burned chemicals. She peered through the window, which was now above her, and saw a blackened dome.

The car hadn’t gone dark—or maybe it had—but the dome had gone dark too. Domes didn’t go dark. That meant the power was off, the environment was no longer being filtered, and everyone would die.

They would all die.

She gasped for air again, her chest aching. The air burned its way down her throat.

She willed herself to think—not about dying, but about surviving. She needed to survive. She needed to live. If she thought about dying, she would, underneath the big man who smelled of sweat, in a closed car filled with screamers, and near a Peyti clutching its mask to its bony little face. Its eyes met hers, and in their liquid depths, she thought she saw panic.

She wouldn’t panic. She couldn’t.

The car hadn’t shifted any more. Whatever had happened was over—at least for the moment.

She moved her arms under the big man, finding his back or his shoulders or some solid part of him, and she shoved.

“We have to move,” she said.

She could barely hear herself in all the screaming. The Peyti was still staring at her.

She shoved again.

“Move!” she shouted at the big man, and he did, somehow, sliding toward the seat behind her.

A tangle of people and a Disty tumbled on top of her and she kept shoving.

“Move!” she yelled again, and this time, her voice cut through the screams. The fact that someone (she) had taken charge seemed to galvanize everyone.

People started picking themselves up, rolling away from each other, asking questions instead of screaming.

“Anything broken?”

“You okay?”

“Can you slide this way?”

Berhane tuned out the words and managed to pull herself upright. She was now standing on the window of the car, her back against the ceiling. The train had derailed, something she hadn’t thought possible. Weren’t they built so that they couldn’t derail? She remembered hearing about that in one of her classes. Something about magnetized couplings and nanobots and—

She wiped a hand over her face, and took another deep breath of the chemical-laden air. She was in shock, or sliding into shock, and she didn’t dare, because they were trapped in this car. Judging from the smells around her—those chemicals, the stench of burning—something had gone very wrong somewhere, and she couldn’t know if it was the train itself or if it was the dome.

The Peyti grabbed her leg. She looked down at the thin gray fingers wrapped around her pants.

“Please,” it said.

She reached down, and helped it up. Its other arm dangled at its side, clearly broken. She’d always thought the twig-like Peyti looked fragile. Now she knew that they were.

“Thank you,” it said.

“There’s something in the air,” she said because she knew the Peyti, with its mask, couldn’t smell what had gone wrong. “Something bad.”

The Peyti nodded and surveyed the area around them. Other survivors were moving, shuffling toward the side of the car.

The Peyti said something in its native language and looked back at her.

“What?” she asked.

It shook its head, a movement that looked very unnatural. It clearly worked among humans and had learned their movements.

“The dome sectioned,” it said.

She frowned. “How do you know that?”

“Do not look north,” it said.

She didn’t even know where north was. She was completely disoriented.

“Oh, my God.” The big guy was standing on the seat back beside her. “We got cut in half.”

Berhane didn’t understand him at first. She was fine. Except for broken bones and bleeding, everyone else seemed fine too. She glanced at the big man, then started to turn toward the direction he was looking in, but the Peyti grabbed her arm.

“Do not look,” it said. “The dome bisected the train.”

Her breath caught. “It can’t do that.”

“Not under regular circumstances, no,” the Peyti said. “The trains must stop when the dome sections, but clearly this is not a regular circumstance.”

The dome only dropped its sections when the mayor ordered the dome to get segmented off. He had done so during the crisis surrounding the Moon marathon. He had sectioned off one part of the dome, so the disease running through the marathon didn’t infect the rest of the city.

But that was the only time in her memory that the dome had sectioned.

And that sectioning had been
ordered
. Trains had stopped in time. Cars hadn’t been able to get through the area. People had been instructed to move away from the section before it came down.

Not this time.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“Something bad,” the Peyti said.

The something bad had happened in the forward compartments.

Then Berhane realized she was turned around. The sectioning had occurred behind her.

Where her mother had been.

“No,” Berhane said.

She scrambled past the people still picking themselves up, and climbed toward the door. It was half open, something that shouldn’t have happened either, or maybe that was a fail-safe when the train derailed (only it wasn’t supposed to derail).

Somehow she pried the doors open and squeezed through.

The air was thick with the smell of burnt rubber and fried circuits. Her eyes watered.

She could see the dome behind her, set against the famed university shopping district, but it looked wrong.

Black. Rubble. Smoke, billowing everywhere. Some of it near the sectioned dome, but most of it behind the protective barrier.

She climbed on top of the car. The train was twisted too. Cut in half. Sort of. Because in the back, past the section, she couldn’t see a train at all.

She couldn’t see anything she recognized.

“Mother,” she whispered. And then she shouted, “Mother!”

Her mother never shouted back.

ANNIVERSARY DAY

TWO

BERHANE TOSSED HER engagement ring at Torkild Zhu’s retreating back. The ring missed by a good five meters, and bounced on the blue carpet of Terminal 20’s luxury departure lounge.

Three employees of the Port of Armstrong stared at her as if she were the crazy one. A little girl ran toward the ring, glinting on the carpet, and her father caught her arm. A Peyti watched, eyes glittering above its mask.

But Torkild didn’t turn around. Of course not, the bastard. He probably didn’t even know she had thrown the ring at him.

She wiped the back of her hand over her wet cheeks, then blinked, afraid the tears would start again. She doubled over, her face warm. It felt swollen, and her eyes ached.

Damn him. Damn him all to hell.

It was just like Torkild to pick the departure lounge of Armstrong’s port as the site of their break-up. He couldn’t have done it in the car when she brought him here, or in her apartment.

Or in bed—

Good God, the bastard had made love to her—
screwed
her—just that morning, even though he had known what he was going to do. But he hadn’t told her he loved her. He hadn’t said that at all, even though she had pressed herself against him and declared her love for him loudly, so that he couldn’t ignore her.

At least, in that moment, he had had the decency to look away.

Bastard. Bastardbastardbastard
bastard
.

Somehow her cheeks were wet again, but she wasn’t sure if the tears were anger or frustration or humiliation or actual grief.

No, she knew they weren’t actual grief. She’d felt grief before. She knew grief, and it hadn’t felt like this.

Someone tugged on her arm.

Berhane looked down. The little girl, advertising-cute with her black pigtails, coffee-dark skin, and button black eyes, held the ring in her thumb and forefinger.

“’Spretty,” the little girl said, slurring the words together. “Daddy says ’spensive too. Shouldn’t throw it.”

Out of the mouths of babes.

The little girl’s father was standing just to the side. He gave Berhane an apologetic shrug of his shoulders, as if he couldn’t control his daughter.

He probably couldn’t.

What father could?

“Thank you.” Berhane took the ring gently from the child, biting back all of the nasty words she would have said if Torkild were still standing there.

It’s not expensive,
she would have said.
It’s a cheap ring from a true asshole, and he knew it even when he gave it to me.

Back then, she hadn’t cared. Not even when he apologized as he gave her the ring.

I know you can probably afford to buy a million of these,
he had said earnestly,
but this is what I can get us on a student’s budget. I hope you don’t mind.

Mind?
she had replied like the lovesick suck-up she was.
That makes the ring even more special
.

The little girl hadn’t moved. She was still looking at the ring, as if she wanted it for herself.

“You okay?” the little girl asked. She was biting her lower lip, and actually seemed concerned as her gaze met Berhane’s.

Berhane wondered what the girl’s father would do if Berhane gave the child the ring. Probably make her give it back. That was what Berhane’s father would have done. But not for the same reason. He would have done it because it was a cheap ring, not worthy of his daughter.

This man would probably give it back because it was the right thing to do.

Still, Berhane was touched that the child asked about her well-being. Berhane gave the girl a watery smile that felt completely insincere.

“Yes, thank you,” Berhane said. “I’m fine.”

The little girl looked at the ring. “You gonna put it on?”

“Not now,” Berhane said, and closed her hand around it. The sharp metal prongs holding the half-carat ruby-like stone in place bit into her palm.