Chapter Nine
I got up before first brightening that morning with one mission: save one more life from Dorian’s menagerie.
I’m pretty sure my dad had come home and was still asleep. So, Orange-Cat, Stripey-Cat, and Brownish-Cat could all be back in the house.
Chameleon, a comfortable motley of green splotches matching the plastic leaves I’d glued to my erector-kit tower on my bedside table, snoozed quietly where I’d left him last night.
His safe place lay on the floor next to my red carbide-toed boots where he could climb to it quickly enough if anybody opened my door in the night. I thought of the construct I’d made for him as an anti-cat defense system. When he was inside the dense cross-hatching of small plastic interconnectable builder-kit sticks I’d borrowed from Susu and Babu’s immense grandkids’ toy chest, he was safe. The entire mass was actually light enough that Chameleon could push it around on tile floor himself, since, yes, I had a set of eight gimballed wheels attached to the bottom of it. But neither freakishly long-armed Orange-Cat, nor Brownish-Cat (who’d once held the name of Lady Princess SweetPaws The Fluffiness despite all his scarred tomcat glory) could get at Chameleon deep inside. And they had tried more than once during my walk back home from Susu and Babu’s.
I opened my door a crack and made sure the sign on my door was still up. It was. And the words were still clearly legible with no adjustments: “Do not open. Absolutely no cats!”
I snicked my door shut again.
“Don’t worry, Chameleon. I’ll get you someplace safe,” I promised.
I dragged my wheeled tool case out from under my bed and, with a clunk louder than I liked, opened the first latch. For a long moment, I waited for too loud meows or signs that any of the easily misplaced four-footed members of the household had heard me, but for once no ruckus sounded off. I opened the remaining three latches much more slowly and managed to make almost no noise.
Nobody had ever gotten around to giving me a specific curfew, but Jules had one, and I was pretty sure both Mom and Dad assumed that Dorian and I were also subject to those rules. I didn’t want to wait for the center light to get up to full brightness though. The slow brightening took about an hour, and while it was dim, a kid could scamper along from shadowy place to shadowy place and go have a quiet conversation with a friend about a Chameleon without having the conversation in front of grown-ups who’d say “no” if asked, but probably just accept it if you arranged everything for them so that a “yes” was actually their easiest answer.
My old kit’s tools all had handgrips in florescent pink sized for much smaller hands, but I hadn’t won any design awards like certain other Sadou kids had, so maybe it hadn’t occurred to any grown-ups that I’d like to have some tools that fit my bigger kid hands.
(And also, I could always borrow stuff from Susu, so it wasn’t like I didn’t have great tools available.)
It’s just when I was trying to do something sneaky in my room and my brothers had already left with all their tools that mine being a bit too small was an issue. But what I was doing didn’t take award-winning genius. Even if Jules and Dorian were the ones who’d taught it to me.
My window, big and opening out to the jogging loop and curtained with looping ABC print fabric (destined to be handed down to the next cousin to have a baby but then left behind in my room when two cousins in a row opted to decorate with baby animals—which I would’ve liked for myself—and with giant robots—which I also would’ve preferred—instead). My window was alarmed.
A simple electrical circuit contact separated if it was opened, and then a soft beep chimed for two minutes followed by an earsplitting shriek at minute three, unless you entered a code (which I knew) at the pad by the front door or in my parents’ bedroom. Or you could just keep the circuit connected. There were two bare spots on the wires at the bottom of the sill where a cousin had sliced off the coating. I pulled on my thin electrician’s gloves, touched a new wire end to the bare spot and pressed a bit of kid’s modeling clay against it to hold the wires securely together. I repeated the process with a bit of wire on the other side of the window.
In case I came back in a rush, I put my tool kit back away under the bed and stuck my electrician’s gloves into the drawer of my bedside table where they wouldn’t be immediately obvious but where I could grab them quickly. There was nothing to be done about disguising the wire rerouter. My modeling clay bits were super bright as many marketed-to-kids things are. The only wire I had long enough to reach from one side of the window to the other was coated in cherry red plastic, and if I rearranged my bedroom furniture to have something hiding the whole front of my window, that’d be immediately suspicious, and also it would take too long and be too loud.
Time to move.
I picked Chameleon out of his sleeping place, gently stroking his tail to get him to release a final hold from the toy structure, and I tucked him into the big pocket in my coveralls. They were my shops clothes from when I’d been building and rebuilding Ladybug for the Ringskimming run that turned so poorly yesterday. My efforts had meant that one sleeve was tattered at the hem, the other arm had a burn all the way through it (with matching scald and bandage beneath)—soldering accident, don’t ask—and it was liberally spotted with all sorts of by-now-unidentifiable materials. It hadn’t looked quite so grimy last night when I’d hung it on the wall instead of putting it in the laundry where it would be noticed and I’d have to answer questions.
Now I had a different scheme. Fourteen months is a long time to ask someone to keep a secret, but I thought I could count on my best friend, Xavier.
The rod at the center of Chawla Station had that faintly purply-pink tinge that meant it would be brightening from night-dim to full-day-bright within the next hour. A good sign since it meant the motion detector streetlights would no longer be turning on, but center light wouldn’t be so bright that everyone could see me.
I mostly didn’t want Omaara to see me. She lives Dockside but Xavier’s place is on Curve One, about as close to Dockside as you can get without being in a Dockside apartment. That means Omaara’s got a straight-line view of the path between my parent’s place and Xavier’s. If she lived across from the axial line of the station from us, like Susu and Babu do, there’d be no trouble. But of course not. She lived where she could see my parents’ place, and her house even had skylight windows.
Omaara is horrible, yeah. But she’s not a person who’d try to get a little animal killed horrible. The rule-following tattletale gets under Xavier’s skin. And mine. But for him…
Okay, Caly, be real.
She doesn’t just annoy Xavier. He has outright hated her ever since she tattletold on him to his guardian, Ms. Dreya, for playing games during Prof. Azul’s more boring lessons.
Still, this plan would only work if Xavier was in a good mood.
Looking after Chameleon would be a big ask. Xavier wasn’t the biggest fan of either of my brothers, but he especially disliked Dorian’s interest in animals. The Rockworths keep animals for biological early warning about atmosphere toxicity issues as has become traditional with many other spacers, but they definitely don’t see them as pets. Xavier doesn’t have much patience for the way Dorian will still cry sometimes about the animals who didn’t survive the accident.
I arrived at Xavier’s doorstep with a detailed scheme for how Chameleon could stay with him, but I needed his help for how to convince Ms. Dreya to also accept that.
Xavier was on his front step doing his stretches and getting ready for a jog just like he did almost every morning. With his size advantage from genetic dwarfism, he was born to pilot giant mining rigs for the family company, but life in zero gravity took a tremendous toll on muscle mass if you had too little to start with. He was fourteen and a half.
In my mind, Xavier will always have the gap-toothed grin he had when we first met, but his teeth now are the straightest and whitest perfection of orthodontics possible. He’s four foot three, which is very tall for a Rockworth. His family only has IVF babies, and they screen to only gestate the kids with dwarfism. They likely screened for other stuff like high IQ and higher than usual muscle mass, but if you ignore his height, Xavier is otherwise unremarkable. He’s got average medium tan skin tone just like me, sandy brown hair, and a face that usually is all wrinkled up in concentration.
Xavier is really bad at running with his short legs, but he loves doing it. He ought, according to my grandpa Babu, to be lifting weights and wrestling instead of running, but Xavier is stubborn. His spacer exercise prep was okay anyway, I hoped. I mean, none of the exercise need to be focused on fighting, it was all about convincing muscles to be powerful relative to his own body mass and developing robustness in his heart and lungs so he could tolerate the physical stresses of low gravity.
I called out to him as I drew close:
“Xavier, I’m so glad to see you!”
“Not today, Caly.” He turned and started stretching his other hamstring. Something about the twisting motion reminded me of the cartoon fighting robot shows we used to watch together when we were younger.
A patter of feet behind me warned me that my stealth attempt hadn’t been sneaky enough.
I turned and was unsurprised to see a panting and out of breath Omaara come up the trail. Her quick glance over her shoulder at the lights still on in her apartment windows betrayed that she hadn’t come on her own accord.
Mr. Ulbadine was continually hoping that we’d all be great friends. Ideally, we’d be the sort of buddies who’d be useful for Omaara when she was a grown-up if he or Mrs. Ulbadine were unable to gain share-owner citizenship for her during their lifetimes.
“Just let me walk with you two around the corner into the park,” she said with undisguised misery. “I’ll tell Dad tomorrow that you won’t let me play with you. Just let me have one day, please? He’s really stressed out today.”
Xavier looked ready to punch her, but her dad was only easygoing where it didn’t involve his daughter. He would try to press charges and try to get an advantage for her if Xavier hit her, so I put an arm around Omaara’s waist and walked her around the corner.
Xavier followed fast enough that I was pretty sure he hadn’t done all of his stretching routine.
“You won’t believe what they sent me this time,” he burst out.
I gave him the warning look reminding him that Omaara was still right there.
“Like I care. Tell all the contractors all my dirt. It doesn’t matter, nothing matters.”
Omaara held both hands up eyes wide. “Never. Not a word, I promise.”
I actually believed her, but it was clear that Xavier was too mad to even care what she’d follow through with or not follow through on.
“Not that I can trust you either.” He hurled the words at me, and I just gaped at him not knowing what he might possibly be mad at me about.
He was Xavier Dupont Rockworth IV, an inheritor of genetic dwarfism like his parents and grandparents, and everyone in the Solar System including him, expected him to go forth and do great things operating the mining machines of the Jovian asteroids.
“They saw my last machinery lab test results,” he hissed at me. There were actual tears forming in his eyes.
“You did great,” I said, confused about what might have disturbed his perfectionist family members. They cared a lot about how he did in schooling, but they’d also left him behind here in a loosely supported distance learning program while they’d gone off for a mixture of on-site tech assist work back in the Belts and their new Jovian holdings.
They visited him here only every couple years claiming they couldn’t take so much time away from work. But they often took trips to stations around Earth and on Luna where there were more exciting vacation options than offered by those here in Saturn’s Ring system.
When Xavier didn’t answer, I was surprised to see understanding and horror flash across Omaara’s face.
“It’ll never happen again!” she said. “I promise. Absolutely never.”
“What?” My mind raced through possible nastiness Omaara could have done, like when she’d used an image generator to put Prof. Azul’s face on a flying pig. She hadn’t done anything to Xavier besides get a better score than him on that last test which was bound to happen sometime. She studied hard.
When he just growled wordlessly Omaara added, “I’ll tell Prof. Azul I cheated. It’ll get dropped from the grading chart.”
“What?”
“You didn’t cheat.” Xavier rolled his eyes. “Besides, it’s done. I’m leaving for home a year early, it’s been decided.”
“Seriously?” I’d finally figured it out.
Xavier and I go back and forth with test scores. It’s not exactly that we take turns on who gets the highest score on the engineering exams, but it can feel like that. Last time I’d gotten the top score, by one point. And Omaara had tied me, for her first time ever. And that meant Xavier had been ranked third. Out of about a hundred people who’d taken that particular exam, including adults. So his results remained pretty impressive for anyone who was paying attention to the whole context, but if there was anything Rockworths didn’t do where their children were concerned, it was pay attention to the full context.
Omaara’s eyes were bugging out of her head now. Not a good look for her. She had a naturally pretty face, when you could see it under the makeup. She usually had a general sense of composure not usually present in teenagers, but right now she looked even more ghastly than Xavier, and she wasn’t the one being shipped off to places she didn’t want to go with no good chance of ever returning.
I’ve read that in the old days, back on Earth, maybe your parents might move your whole family to another country on the other side of the planet. But it seemed like once you turned eighteen or at least a few years after that when you got training in something useful, you could earn enough to move yourself back to where you wanted to be.
When it came to travel within the Solar System, that wasn’t really so.
Sure, if you were someone like Omaara you could do some kind of indenture or contract work agreement to include travel.
But if you were somebody like Xavier or me, no reputable firm would allow you to sign on with them without first checking with your family. And even then you’d have to answer a lot of questions about why your family wasn’t buying you a ticket for your travel outright or why you weren’t working your family’s business.
“Maybe there’s someone to appeal to?” I tried. “Someone like my Babu in your family?” Babu had to spend a lot of time helping Susu with the beginnings of sunsetters. But Susu had always been very absentminded when she was deep into designing something. So her getting confused was just normal and probably not really sunsetters at all. But anyway, the Rockworths were a big family. They should have a Babu or someone like him. Every family should have a Babu to appeal to.
“Your Babu married in, and your Susu has sunsetters,” Xavier snapped at me, which was a pretty rude thing to say, even if he was under stress. “My family doesn’t get sunsetters.”
“You’re right,” Omaara said. “Do you screen out susceptibility for that somehow?”
And with that even ruder question I turned to glare at Omaara and didn’t speak fast enough to keep Xavier here and pitch the pet support scheme.
He pushed off from his porch and pounded down the trail on his morning run.
I could’ve followed. I could even have had an easy time talking at him while he pushed himself at that panting out-of-breath pace that was the best his much shorter legs could manage.
Instead, I dropped down on the stoop and tried to think of another solution. Even when Xavier finished his run and came back to apologize, as he probably would, for talking bad about Susu, who’d never done anything mean to him ever. Even then, I wasn’t going to ask him to take charge of Chameleon. It wouldn’t matter if he wanted to help me. He was going off station too. He couldn’t watch out for the little creature.
I was out of good chameleon sitter options.
Omaara plopped down next to me.
Big wet tears were running down her face. She was so annoying. What did she have to cry about? She got to stay here. And my chameleon was going to die, which was awful in itself, but it would also be way too hard on Dorian right before he went on a scary trip.
Oh right, Mom and Dad would find better words to use to be gentle about it. Chameleon would be put down. Euthanized. Go to the farms. For good.
It wasn’t Chameleon’s fault that a contractor had, as best as I’d been able to sleuth out, brought him along on a whole ten-ish month trip out here, breaking the rules the whole time, and then, on discovering that whatever that unknown contractor’s work life here was going to be involved a bit of inconvenience for having a chameleon, they’d chosen that final moment to stop breaking the rules and had deposited Chameleon neatly in the “biologicals amnesty box” as if he were a leftover dried apple from ship’s stores that may or may not be carrying mold spores.
Through a number of miracles I hadn’t at the time known to pray for, the chameleon had been put through a careful decontamination and allowed to join stationer life as a pet. And being interested in small animals, Dorian had gotten the creature for his birthday last month.
But now Chameleon was no longer a fascinating new thing that people liked to come look at. Now Chameleon was an inconvenience, and technically, not one of the animals allowed as a pet or one of the animals allowed as part of Chawla’s closed and oh so carefully managed ecology.
And so, without a resident on the station who would commit to care for him and then actually do it, he wasn’t going to survive the next fourteen months until I got back. And no, I didn’t think I’d be successful at sneaking him onto the ship with me. I’m a kid. We get watched for that sort of thing with a lot more suspicion than adults do.
“Omaara, please go away. I need to talk to Xavier about pet sitting, and you being here won’t help.”
“No,” she sniffled.
We both waited on Xavier’s return.