“How long?” I asked, though it was more a reflexive thing than conscious, a way to let quantum uncertainty rise to entanglement, a way to buy myself some time to process the worst news a mother can get.

“There’s still so much we don’t know about the Kitui virus, Gail,” Dr. Abraham said, “we know less about it after ten years than we did about HIV in its first decade.” She leaned across the arm of her chair and cradled my hand in hers. “We aren’t yet sure what triggers the onset of symptoms. It could be years before Beth shows even preliminary symptoms.”

“And when she does? How long then?” Outside, a crow squawked and was answered by its friends. What a racket. I hate those birds. Dirty, filthy, noisy, greedy. I snatched my hand back.

“Depending on how strong her immune system is, and how careful you are with her nutrition, anywhere from six to sixty months.” The doctor’s eyes searched my face. I could feel them on me, digging into my brain. Peeling back the layers of hair, skin, tissue, and bone until she could steal the thoughts right out of my head.

“Can I take her home now?”

A soft sigh. “We need to bring her temperature down a bit more and get her fully hydrated. It’s best if you leave her here overnight, and if she responds well you can take her home in the morning.”

I jumped up. “Thank you, Doctor.” I couldn’t look at her. “How long before my GP has all this?” My eyes burned with pending tears, and I needed to get away, to be alone. By the time she answered me, I had tapped my thumb pads against my middle fingers from the second knuckle all the way up to the pad, then all the way back down.

“It usually takes two business days for updates to reach practitioners, as long as they run updates every night.”

I remembered to aim a nod in her direction before I bolted. I didn’t quite make it to the emergency stairs before the dam burst, but at least I was able to hold onto the sobs. Beth, my darling little girl, just five years old. The door clicked shut behind me and I fell to my knees, the sobs ripping through me as if my lungs wanted to fly away, taking my heart with them. How could this happen? It was unfair in the extreme, she was just a little girl! It should be some bad guy who got sick and died in pain from an incurable illness. Good people deserved good things, and Beth was good. Good, dammit! I sobbed and raged, pounding my fists against the wall until I’d bloodied them. It was wrong, so very wrong, for a mother to bury a child. I could not let this happen.

This morning is not good, like yesterday. Mr. Jones is unwell. He hasn’t been well since we came here. I am sad about that. I am a wife, Mary, Mr. Jones’s wife. I used to call him ‘Bob’, but everyone here calls him ‘Mr. Jones’, so I do too.

Mr. Jones and I have been here for three months. We came here after hospital, when he had his stroke. Mr. Jones can’t do much for himself anymore, so I help him. I wash him, I feed him, I take him to the toilet, I change his clothes. Doing these things is good. It makes me feel good. I love Mr. Jones.

In the afternoon, Mr. Jones seems better. So I dress him in his suit, and he goes down to the lounge to meet the others. Of course he doesn’t go by himself. I wheel him down. And when he is there he can’t speak or talk to the others. But he looks smart in his suit, supported by the cushions, and I am proud of him. He looks at me sometimes. I am sure he loves me.

There are only old men in this place, men like Mr. Jones who can’t look after themselves. The old women are in another place. I don’t know why they don’t have them together, just like outside. I said this to Matron once. But Matron just smiled, and said, “You’re a strange one, dear.”

There are the other wives, of course. Today, Samantha is standing next to me. Her husband is very old. “I like your dress,” I say to Samantha. The green goes with her blonde hair. “Thank you. I like yours, too,” she says, and she smiles. We usually say this to each other, and it is true. Our dresses don’t change.

At five o’clock there are visitors to the lounge. I like this time, there is so much to see and listen to. Men and women come in, even children. Some of them smile at me.

Mr. Jones has a daughter called Sue who visits every week. She says thank you to me. I like her. her hair goes behind one ear. Once she brought me a bracelet. I’m wearing it now. Sue is a wife, but she is a visitor-wife. She lives outside. Her husband never comes, though.

Sue talks to Mr. Jones – oh, the things she talks about! I didn’t know there were so many things in the world. She talks about cooking, food, her children, her boss, holidays, her husband, so many things! I could listen to her for hours. And I think Mr. Jones likes it too. I wish I could talk like Sue, it would help him.

Mr. Jones’s son Byron doesn’t visit often. When he comes, he doesn’t say much to his father but just looks around the room, at the wives, mostly. He looks at me too, in a not-good way. But I must be nice to him. He is Mr. Jones’s son.

The days are good here. It doesn’t take me long to recharge. Downloads come through smoothly, I have more capabilities now. But Mr. Jones is getting worse, and I am sad about that. What will happen to him? What will happen to me?

It was Brazil, he had to keep reminding himself. Variations of green and brown, and lakes, rivers, and far on the horizon, the indigo edge of the ocean pressed upon his eyes in sharp detail. He stared at it for hours at a time.

A red barrel slid past the window, smooth and big as a ship, blocking his view. Jerrel noted the numbers as they slowly slipped by: 7… 0… 5… 1… A. The 7 meant that it was from San Francisco, but he knew that already because it was red. Every barrel was at least half windowed, by law, unless it was a nuclear one. Black bags and plastic bottles were crushed against the windows that were smeared with black mold. This matched the stated contents of the manifest: trash. It traveled up the cord. A few seconds later it picked up speed and would be released when it reached geosynchronous orbit, in a few hours.

7051A content confirmed. Trajectory TBD.

The ISS zoomed above him, Jerrel barely glanced at it. It was as ordinary as the hand of a clock, marking every hour and a half. Marking every time he would kiss the picture of his daughter. This started as a tool to help him cope with being alone, but now if he missed the kiss because he didn’t notice the ISS, he panicked. Only kissing the picture 20, 30, 40 times would calm him down again. This concerned him, but he couldn’t stop.

The barrels came about every hour. He was to visually inspect the contents and confirm that they matched the manifest. This one was a Dallas White. These were less rusty than the reds; their barrels were newer because they had not been allowed to use the Vator until about a year ago. 4… 3… 8… C… 3. Liquid, unspecified type. Dallas won the right to keep the exact content of their barrels private, after years of failed negotiations, during which thousands of citizens died from the nuclear waste in the water supply. Finally, the North American Elevator Corp decided they needed Dallas as a customer more than they needed to know what was in their barrels.

438C3 content confirmed. Trajectory TBD.

It was hard to be vigilant, knowing that the barrels had already been checked three times further down the tube. Jerrel was not doing anything that a computer could not do, mostly. They used to not check at all, except on the loading dock, of course. Windows were required back then, but you could just pay the fine and send a solid barrel up no problem. That was before the Heist of ‘89, where five nuclear waste barrels came crashing back down to earth and it took countless billions to repair the elevator. So now, lots of checking. At the ten mile high station, every barrel was checked. At twenty they were checked again. Jerrel was at the third and last station, fifty miles up, and he was required to check twelve barrels in each 24 hour period.

A blue barrel came into view. New York. A nuclear one without windows. The counter embedded in the wall of the barrel showed high levels of radiation. Content confirmed.

Jerrel was doing a three week shift. The intention was that he would work for twelve hours and rest for twelve. There were five TVs permanently set to ‘ON’ for twelve hours per day to ensure this. Jerrel could neither change the channel nor the volume. Three were entertainment channels, one was the weather, the other was North American Elevator Corp’s station. At first he watched the NAEC station a lot. He was excited about his new job and wanted to learn all he could about the company. The station had a running ticker of barrel prices, speeds, trajectories and contents. Sometimes a person would talk about statistics like how many tons of nuclear waste and plastics had been removed from the Earth, or which city had removed the most waste per capita, or how NAEC’s performance compared with the other two elevators belonging to China (in Congo) and Australia (in Indonesia).

7051A trajectory 5.50:Delta:2300, according the computer. The magnetic satellite successfully deflected the barrel with opposing high field pulses to keep it away from the satellite rings, not to mention itself, and send it safely into dead, blank space.

Every night at ten p.m. he NAEC TV told him ‘Thank you and good night!’ and went black, but did not turn off like the other TVs did. Jerrel had tried to follow the designated routine for a while, but he could only sleep for two hours at a time. So after a few days of only two hours per night, he needed the freedom to nap. He cut the wires to four of the TVs. He didn’t touch the NAEC TV. The fact that it never turned off worried him.

The paycheck for this job was extraordinary. A year’s worth of salary down below, for three weeks of work. He had been on the waiting list for this job for two years, and now that he was here, he could not understand why it paid so much. It was true that he was not allowed to contact anyone on Earth by any means. There was not a keyboard in the entire station. It was hard being away from all human contact for three weeks, certainly, but not that hard. He was showing signs of being stressed, such as insomnia, losing weight and doing that kiss-the-picture thing, but it really wasn’t that bad.

The only people he could contact were the guys in the stations below, but that was only in case of emergency. He had access to top-secret company intelligence, and it needed to stay that way, is what they said, or else he would lose all salary. What that special intelligence possibly could be, Jerrel didn’t know. The contents and trajectories of all the barrels were broadcast to the world on the NAEC station.

438C3 trajectory 2.31:Alpha:2692. Another safe ejection.

Jerrel was heading to the rack for a nap when the turd alarm went off.

Those fucking SF barrels. The SF people mixed the exterior paint with repulsion mag powder to make them extra fast, was the thinking. What really happened was they all got stuck to each other and came up the pipe in long lines like a turd. This had never actually been a problem, though if there was too much constipation it could destabilize the Vator, so he was required to observe and report. So far, the long turds always broke up and found their random trajectories just like all the other barrels.

This turd was mostly trash. Flies buzzed around the windows, craving the light of his station. It was a short ride, only about ten hours from the bottom, so there was usually enough air for living things to breathe.

7… 5… 1… N… 6. Content confirmed. Trajectory TBD.

7… R… 2… 0… 2. Content confirmed. Trajectory TBD.

7… 3… 4… 6… P. Content confirmed. Trajectory TBD.

He couldn’t see very far down the elevator, all the equipment was in the way, but the alarm said there were five more to go. Jerrel completed the report and went to take his overdue nap.

Before the old church doors, in the warm darkness of the vestibule, Sabine’s mother stooped down to look her daughter in the eyes.

“What you were is past.”

She swept aside the veil of the girl’s communion dress—a billowy thing like a crown of unspooled gauze—and blotted her tears out with a thumb. Shrill music crept in from the sanctuary, dissonant chords from a heat-warped organ.

“What you will be is yet to come.”

Smiling wide, she held her child’s face in calloused hands. Her daughter, her anxious little girl on the threshold. Sabine was frightened by a simple ritual; that was good—it meant she’d done her motherly duty, protected the child from those things to be truly feared.

For now, at least.

Somewhere high above the stone ceiling, the great chrome shape of the Teardrop hung silent in the sky. Soon the first Greys would appear at the marketplace in Croix-des-Bouqets, slender bodies towering above the crowds.

---

Sabine’s dinner has gone cold.

So it was you. You killed our world.

“Not me, ch’atha—” Her husband extends a spindly arm, straightened at both joints to cross the length of the kitchen table.

She slaps it away. Turns in her seat to face the cupboards, the sink, the kitchen window—anything but him: Don’t call me dearest. Not in your language, not in mine.

Sabine rubs her forehead with a hand that comes away wet and clammy, fingers trembling. In her mind’s eye she pictures it: herself, her body, unraveling like the end of a frayed rope.

“I understand this must be difficult,” he says. Rehearsed. Sanctimonious. Typical Grey fashion. “You’ve lost a great—”

You have no idea what I’ve lost, she snaps. You can’t begin to fathom.

---

Forty-three, forty-four, forty-five… rows of tomato plants flew by the car window, all green blur and flashes of red earth where the furrows showed through. Almost too fast for Sabine to count.

“There used to be more than just tomatoes”—her mother said, laying out across the back seat—“Peppers, and leeks, and eggplants. Remember eggplants, sissy?”

Sabine’s aunt only grunted, hands on the steering wheel, eyes on the road.

Mother shrugged. “I always hated eggplants.” She let out a chuckle that became strained, gave way to a fit of coughing. Auntie clicked her tongue disapprovingly.

Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine… Sabine could only think of how old her mother looked, spasming under a light blanket, hair plastered to the car seat, mouth twisted by an unseen pain. Her skin strewn with pocks and blisters and jagged outgrowths.

It weighed heavy on Sabine’s mind, even at eleven years old: the idea of her mother as someone mortal, someone who would one day die.

She did her best to shut it out.

Seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three… The coughing fit subsided and the grimace faded from Mother’s face. She forced a smile and craned her neck to appear, beatific, in the rear-view mirror.

“See, sissy? No harm done.” Her voice was hoarse.

Auntie grunted, unconvinced.

What happened? With the egg-plants.

“Well… the sun got too strong.”

“Same reason your mum got sick, Sabine” Auntie said sharply. “Same reason you suit up when you go outside.” She kept her wet red eyes fixed ahead, always ahead.

The clinic came into view, a squat blue building on the slopes of the Mountain where Greys would come and go, flitting up and down between the earth and the Teardrop like angels on a ladder. People said they worked miracles there.

But Mother’s miracle didn’t exist on this planet, only theirs.

The tall Grey doctor explained, Sabine only catching a few words between the thump-thump-thump in her eardrums: “to the lungs”… “don’t have the equipment”… “can ease the pain.” Her mother nodding solemnly; the color draining from Auntie’s face.

On the drive back home, Mother sleeping in the backseat with a dream-band around her forehead (“this will keep her comfortable”), Sabine squirmed, fidgeted in her seat because she didn’t know what else to do. Twisting, turning, opening, closing—she found a roadmap faded and folded in the glovebox. Had there been more to the world than the Town and the Road and the City and the Mountain?

What’s this?

“Put that away, honey,” Auntie said, small-voiced. “Just reminds you of all that’s lost.”

---

“But Ch’atha—”

What did I say about calling me that?

“It was a miscalculation made by the expedition planners; a side-effect of interstellar travel.”

You could have told me this sooner…should have…

“They knew that decelerating from the superluminal threshold would release energy; of course they did—the entirety of Drive Theory was based on this… bubble of contracted space-time, moving from star to star, picking up charged particles. They just didn’t anticipate how big the release would be… What it would do to the planet.”

On her feet now, she scrubs furiously at the remnants of that night’s dinner, dried tomato sauce on heavy plates. The kitchen window looks out on pitch night, glass reflecting the image of Sabine at the sink and her husband behind, compound eyes pleading. She does not meet his gaze.

“Ch—” He stops short. “Sabine.”

How long had he carried this secret between them? Had he hoped she’d never ask?

“Sabine, what are you thinking?”

He doesn’t deserve to know.