Her words were small comfort. But I worked to remain strong. Something told me that my childhood had suffered an abrupt ending, and the sooner I acted like a man, the better.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Ummm… Did you watch the news these past few months?”
“No.”
“There was… They… No, maybe it’s better if I don’t explain it. Honey, someone started a war. A very terrible war.”
“Why?”
The woman paused, her eyes un-focusing and her frowned lips beginning to tremble.
“I have no damn idea,” she whispered.
Then the woman seemed to remember who she was speaking to, apologized for cursing, and went back to recording information. She took down where we’d lived, the names of extended family, what we liked to eat, if we had any favorite videos we liked to watch, and if we had anything special the adults on the ship would need to know.
“I don’t have my chair,” I said.
“Pardon me?”
“On the ground, I can’t move without my chair.”
I pantomimed using the little joystick that commanded my electric chair, without which I couldn’t move except to drag myself across the floor with my arms.
“You’re a paraplegic?”
“Yes.”
The woman’s lips quivered again, and she reflexively reached out and stroked a lock of hair off my forehead.
“I’m okay,” I said. “When there is no gee, I don’t need legs. It’s one of the reasons Mama was at the conference. She thought she’d get a job with one of the settlements in the asteroids, where I’d probably never have to worry about a chair again.”
“Of course. I’ll pass it on to the captain. Can you handle your sister, or should I see if one of us can take her?”
“I want Mirek,” Irenka said, not looking at the woman and reflexively wrapping her arms so tightly across mine, I thought there was nothing more that needed to be said.
The woman stood up, her special shoes gripping the floor, and affectionately stroked my hair one more time.
“If you need any help, press the blue button on the seat in front of you. My name is Elaine, and I am one of the crew. Otherwise, the screen below the button is a computer you can use to look at shows or play games.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But what I really want to know is, where are we going?”
“We’re not sure. The captain has to decide. The war didn’t happen only at Earth.”
Our ship was a common interplanetary liner. The kind that is so common, they don’t have names, just numbers. The captain did his best to inform us of what was going on, but I don’t think he was used to talking to kids, so I had to keep asking Elaine to explain it to me. She said that the captain had decided to take us to Jupiter, where we might find other refugees at the Jovian space settlements.
There was near-constant thrust because we had to go as fast as we could to get away from the war satellites that were still hunting between Earth and the moon.
This meant I had to spend the first half of the trip on the couch to which Irenka and I were assigned, which would have been fine except that I needed Elaine’s help whenever I had to go to the lavatory. Some of the younger teenagers laughed and called me a baby when Elaine carried me up and down the aisle. I could handle that. You don’t live life as a child cripple and not get used to the fact that a lot of other kids are always mean.
But when they started picking on Irenka, I knew I had to do something.
I waited until we were at mid-point, when we got a few hours of freefall before deceleration. It was the one time during the trip when the other kids were awkward, and I felt comfortable. I’d spent the previous months onboard our station using the zero-gee exercise rooms in the station’s hub, in preparation for Mama’s hoped-for assignment to the asteroids. Now I used these skills to maximum advantage.
A few black eyes and fat lips later—both theirs and mine—and the troublemakers and I reached an understanding.
When Elaine found out, she scolded me hotly, of course. Adults always have to do that, so that it seems to everyone like they’re not taking sides. But when we were thrusting again and I was back to needing Elaine’s help to use the lavatory, she quietly told me she was glad I’d stuck up for my sister, and that some of the rowdier kids had stopped being so rowdy.
There was no more teasing, and the people who had been bothering Irenka didn’t say another word.
Which was good enough for me.
Jupiter was gorgeous outside our liner’s cabin windows. The huge planet had hung there for a week now, growing steadily larger while we adjusted and burned in order to drop into a rendezvous orbit with one of the Jovian stations the captain had spoken of shortly before we fled the inner system.
I’m not sure what all of us were thinking. The Jovian settlements had grown into a sort of mythic destination in our minds, and we’d all begun to place various—and later, I would think, unrealistic—expectations on the place. Irenka especially seemed fascinated with Jupiter.
I felt bad, having to keep reminding her that Mama and Papa wouldn’t be there at the door to greet us when we got off the ship. Every time I did it, Irenka got mad at me and told me she hated me because I was happy that Mama and Papa were dead, so that I could take Papa’s place and boss her around. At which point she’d take off for the little indoor playground the crew had built in the lower cargo hold, and I wouldn’t see her for an hour. Then she’d come sulking back to our couch, apologize for being mean to me, and we’d end it with a great big hug.
Irenka was up front using the lavatory when the lights in the cabin went red and the klaxon sounded over the speakers.
The captain’s voice roared, temporarily drowning the screams of the other kids.
“WE ARE UNDER ATTACK BY AN AUTOMATED DEFENSE SATELLITE! BUCKLE IN AND PREPARE FOR SEVERE GEE!”
My immediate thought was of Irenka, stuck in the bathroom. I used my arms to propel myself out of my seat, but was promptly shoved back down from behind by Elaine’s hands on my biceps.
“Do as you’re told!” Elaine yelled at me.
“But my sister!”
Elaine looked to where I stared wide-eyed at the lavatory, then nodded once and said, “You stay here, I’ll go get Irenka!”
The older woman almost ran down the aisle, her grip shoes making rip-rip sounds as she went. I managed to get my harness buckled around me when the gee kicked hard. We all slammed from side to side, up and down, screams and shouts and crying filling the cabin. Elaine stayed upright through all of it, and I saw her reach the lavatory door and use the special key card on her lanyard to open it. She vanished inside for a moment, then emerged with Irenka, whose eyes were searching frantically while her legs kicked in the air. Elaine was yelling, “Calm down! Calm down, honey!”
Another series of violent maneuvers battered the occupants of the cabin. I saw one girl come loose from her partially-buckled harness and crash into the ceiling. She floated limply for a moment before being catapulted over my head and out of sight, followed by a sickening thump.
Elaine held Irenka tight, however, and began making her way back to my couch when there was a horrific concussion that made my teeth rattle, following by groans and shrieking from beneath the floor.
My ears suddenly felt like they might pop, and in an instant I realized that the ship had been hit. Elaine and Irenka simply looked at me, their mouths forming twin O-shapes while their hair ruffled in the rush of escaping atmosphere.
Then the orange decompression shield slipped out of its compartment on the headrest of my couch and dropped down over me like a shroud, sealing at the edges.