Chapter 23
Joey and Stan yelped. When they turned, an old man walked toward them, holding his hands wide in a nonthreatening gesture. Stan wasn’t convinced. He backed away. But Joey stood staring. It was only the second time he had seen someone with wrinkles so deep.
The man was not tall, barely taller than Stan. Like others in the crowd, he wore a pressure suit but no helmet. The suit was clean but stained and worn from years of service. The soles of the boots were thin and rounded. The ring joints at the wrists had much of their anodized color worn away, and the shell had many frayed holes in the outer layer. Not even Olly let his suit get that old.
There was a pause in the singing; the sudden silence was broken only by the micro thruster firing from Joey’s and Stan’s AGLS, and from the man’s. Nervously, Joey met the man’s gaze. Below his kind eyes, recent tears had cleaned tracks through the coating of dirt. Joey glanced over to the crowd. Someone was speaking now, but the voice did not carry.
“What are they doing?” Joey asked.
“It’s a funeral,” the old man said. “Please do not disturb it.”
Everyone knows words I don’t.
“What is that?” Joey said, hoping the answer wasn’t related to cooking.
The old man gave Joey an understanding smile.
“It’s a ceremony for when someone dies,” he said.
Joey nodded. He looked at Stan. The older boy was a statue, with his eyes fixed on the old man like he expected to be attacked.
The sad song erupted again and Joey wanted it sung at his funeral, and his dad’s, and Stan’s. Everyone’s.
A tear rolled down the old man’s cheek as he looked back toward the funeral. He sung silently. Joey’s throat was thick with emotion.
The OxDome started to hum. Their ears plugged as the dome throbbed outward, growing larger in pulses. When it stopped, the edge of the energy field was now ten meters farther out, revealing a patch of ground surrounded by a perimeter of rocks. The throbbing subsided.
The procession moved toward the rocks. The men lowered the body into an open pit, and more people stepped forward and shoveled dirt over it. Joey looked to Stan but there were no answers in his confused face. The old man chuckled.
“She was too old to eat,” the old man said. “Meat’s too dry.”
Stan choked and began coughing. The old man let out a warm laugh. Joey laughed and patted Stan on the shoulder. The old man gave Stan a compassionate smile.
“Sorry for the gallows humor, kid. Don’t believe everything you’re told.”
“Well, what have you got here, Orbison?” a tall woman said as she walked up.
“Couple lads out for a nice stroll,” the old man said.
Joey gawped. She was beautiful. Like nothing he had ever seen. The woman’s face was lined with fine wrinkles, and she too had tear streaks that cut through the dust on her cheeks. But under the grime, her lips were full and the curves of her face were soft. Joey looked at Stan and saw only distrust in his eyes.
Joey’s eyes were drawn back to her. He had never seen a woman, and he didn’t understand what he saw. She was utterly alien to him, and yet as familiar as anything. What he felt as he looked her up and down was even more confusing. Her clothes were loose-fitting quilted layers with occasional tighter bands ringed with micro thrusters. The thrusters were fed by hoses that ran along her sides to the same boxy pack he had seen on others. The clothes might have been the same cream as Joey’s sleep clothes once, but they were all the colors of asteroid dust now.
The woman looked at the two boys, appraising them. Her eyes lingered on Joey. There was a touch of sadness in them. The funeral, maybe, Joey thought. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Her smile dropped as she turned a hard gaze on Stan.
“Taking your pet for a walk,” the woman said.
“Hey!” Stan snapped. “Don’t talk about Joey like that.”
The woman smirked.
“Oh, you think I was denigrating him, do ya? The pet is the innocent in the equation here, friend.”
“Joey, we need to go,” Stan said. He had looked scared earlier. Now he seemed to be on the verge of panic.
“I don’t know what the two of you are up to,” the woman said, “but you’re welcome to recharge your suits. I even have some food if you need it.”
She held out something wrapped in a cloth. Joey’s stomach growled. He hesitated, his mind filled with what body parts might fit in the fist-sized bundle. Maybe a fist?
He reached for the bundle and unwrapped it like a rat might leap out. It was a slice of irregular-shaped bread and a chunk of cheese. Joey showed it to Stan. The older boy made no move to remove his helmet.
Joey lifted the food to take a timid bite, but as soon as the smell of fresh bread hit his nostrils, he ate greedily. Biting the cheese and the bread together made him smile so broadly he could hardly keep his mouth closed while chewing.
“When he finishes, kindly get the fuck out,” the woman said, focused on Stan. “We don’t need to have whoever might be out looking for you find you here. They will not assume anything good about our intentions. They’ll just use it as more agitprop.”
“Who are you?” Stan said.
“We are refugees,” she said. “Sorry. Reffies. Defectors. Castaways. We are Olly. Whatever you want to call us. Just move on. The recharger is over there.”
The woman pointed the way to the recharge station.
Joey finished the bread and was trying to swallow the last of the cheese when he picked up his helmet. He tried to brush out the base of his suit’s neck hole and moisture collectors. He didn’t want to have bread crumbs floating in front of his face for the next couple days. With his helmet under his arm he walked to the recharge station.
Stan hesitated, then walked. The old man and the woman followed. Their gaze never left the boys.
As Stan had figured, the recharge station was old. It was smaller than the unit at the colony. The insulating blankets were torn in places, revealing the layers of Mylar and hex mesh inside.
Singing erupted again from the funeral. It struck Joey at that moment that when Felix died, there was nothing. No songs were sung. No burial of the body by his friends. Other than the scraps of conversation he overheard, Felix was just gone. Like a page torn out of his notebook. The only thing left was the thin strip of paper caught in the spiral binding to remind him the page had been there. Someday that piece would fall out too. It would be as if Felix had never existed.
Stan closed the vents of his suit and connected the one functioning hose. He never took his eyes off the two reffies. As the rush of air fogged the inside of his dome, Stan darted his eyes around nervously.
Joey stepped up to the hose. Before he replaced the glass dome that would silence the sounds of the village, he turned back to the beautiful woman and the old man. The villagers. He decided they were villagers now. He would not call them reffies anymore.
“My name is Joey…Joseph Junior,” Joey said. “Can I hear your names?”
The woman raised an eyebrow. It was brief, barely noticeable.
“Arabelle,” the woman said.
“Orbison,” the old man said.
“Can I ask who died?” Joey said.
Arabelle swallowed hard. It took her a moment to speak.
“Her name was Elizabeth Westing,” Arabelle said. “She was a dear friend who loved reading.”
“She was also my dear friend. She loved painting the building in the village and making it colorful,” Orbison said, his voice shaking. He smiled as a tear slipped from his eye.
“I’m sorry. Thank you for your help,” Joey said.
Joey lowered the dome over his head, flipped the latches, and closed his vents. He plugged the hose into his suit. The rush of air was cool and musty. It filled his mind with memories he could not place.
When the fog cleared from Joey’s dome, Orbison bowed his head and walked away. Arabelle smiled at him.
“Now,” she said, “please. Joey, you can’t stay now, not with him here. But come back if you can. You will be welcomed.”
She turned a pointed gaze at Stan again. “Go, before we reffies get the reputation as kidnappers of slave masters and their pets.”
“What?” Joey said. He was lost. But the tension between Arabelle and Stan swelled.
“Ask him,” Arabelle said, pointing at Stan. “Oh, and watch for the dark ships cruising around here. They’re slave traders looking for people from our village, or yours. I promise you they are not as nice as your current masters. Either of you.”
“I think we saw one,” Joey said. Please, I want to stay. “It was boxy. It was old and rusty looking. Stan said it was an old troop ship.”
“That’s it,” she said and held up her hand to stop any further conversation. “You must go now.”
Joey wanted more time with them. He wanted to learn about their lives. He wanted his dad to meet them.
As they headed out of the village, Joey watched as the last shovelfuls of dirt were thrown on the grave. He could see now that there were many graves, each with a block of stone at the head. Two men carried a new block of stone forward and placed it at the head of the freshly filled pit. Elizabeth Westing was roughly chiseled into one side. Evidence this woman had existed would last for years. Maybe a thousand years, like the fancy people in the tomb. Felix had been erased from The Mining Society, and a refugee who liked reading and painting would be remembered. Someone dying should mean something, Joey thought. They should be remembered.
The crowd turned back toward the village and broke into song again. It was thin through the AGLS speakers, but this song was a celebration. A celebration of Elizabeth Westing. It was a raucous melody that filled Joey with as much joy as the other song had filled him with sadness. He tried to make out the words but could not. But the melody was a permanent fixture in his memory until the end of his days. He hummed it softly to himself, not wanting it to carry over ShortComs.
At the edge of the pink OxDome membrane, Joey turned to wave to Arabelle, but she was not there. He thought he saw her merging with the lively procession but he could not be sure. He wanted to see her again, and Orbison too. But they would not be at TMS when he got back.
Joey pushed through the OxDome membrane and the world was silent again.
Cold again.