Chapter 43
Forty-Three
Holly lay in bed and stared at the ceiling she had come to know so well that she could imagine falling upwards, right into it. Disappearing. Into oblivion.
She had been here for three days. Or maybe four.
She’d lost track. Without the firehose of tasks, her body and mind simply said “enough,” and sent her into a mix of rest and depression.
She got up to use the bathroom, to eat NuProd porridge that tasted like wallpaper paste and defeat, then shuffled back to bed.
Her wrist comm was off. She had powered it down on the first day, left it in the living room, and hadn’t touched it since.
People had come by. She’d heard knocks on the door, but didn’t know who unless they also called through it.
Harry had delivered a muffled speech through the door about mushroom tea and its restorative properties that Holly had listened to without moving.
Mish had come, telling her that she was thinking about her and something about people being worried.
She’d announced that she was leaving a container of soup outside the door.
Holly had not opened the door or the soup.
Luv had retrieved the soup and tried, unsuccessfully, to get Holly to eat it.
Alyce had come twice, bellowing for her to get her ass outside or she’d have Luv reprogrammed to sing old Earth show tunes in falsetto.
Luv had grumbled about that, but hadn’t refused to submit to it.
The Homeboti seemed to be worried about Holly, and demonstrated this by somehow making her rollerball squeak again, and complaining that if she had a body, she wouldn’t waste it by lying in bed all day.
But Holly was exhausted inside and out. Her body felt like it was subject to the gravity of a neutron star. Everything hurt.
Everything.
Her muscles ached and not the good ache from productive work, but from the deep, grinding soreness that came from pushing a body and mind past its limits for too long, then stopping cold.
Her shoulders burned when she moved. Her hands were stiff.
Even her jaw was sore, from clenching it through all those hours in the control tower.
And then there was her heart, which was the most battered of all.
Bean had not left her side except when Luv took him out.
He slept beside her, or on her, or pressed against her back, a warm, constant weight that asked nothing and gave everything.
He seemed to understand that something was wrong.
Her parents always said that dogs understood more than they were given credit for.
Holly couldn’t argue. Bean’s response to her stress was to simply be there, which was more than Holly could manage for anyone else.
She rolled onto her side and pulled the blanket higher.
In her mind, she’d drafted four separate messages to Beenan and Sol-Arc Industries, requesting reinstatement. The first was professional and contrite. The second was long, rambling, and a little desperate. The third was adversarial and demanding. The fourth was just the word please.
She sent none of them.
When her mind went soft, it wandered to more pleasant time, like swimming in the pools.
If only she’d carved out more time down there.
The mineralized water had felt wonderful on her skin.
The soft light, and Rasker moving through the water like a being that belonged in that element.
It had been beautiful to witness, as much as being carried through it in his arms had been. That was magic.
And then there was the festival. The cupcakes selling faster than she could frost them.
The Gardran traveler who closed all four of his eyes.
Mish’s children dancing in the lounge, weird and synchronized and beautiful.
Harry leaning toward Vittor with a light in his face she’d never seen.
Alyce dancing after drinking a glass of wine.
The woman in the flight suit who’d said she’d be a customer whenever she was in the sector.
Her mind drifted, again, to the night after.
Rasker’s hands and his mouth and the way he’d said only if you want to and meant it.
She had never felt more at home anywhere in her life since living with her parents as a child.
The station, the people, the man. All of it had fit, the way a key fits a lock, the way she had never fit at Sol-Arc no matter how hard she tried.
And then there was how easily Rasker had left.
How quickly the consultant had replaced the man she’d fallen in love with.
How his face had gone still and professional and blank when she’d told him she was selling, and how he’d said, I’ll be in touch with your lawyer, as if the past weeks had been a transaction that was finally reaching its natural conclusion.
She pulled the blanket over her head.
Luv’s squeaky rollerball announced her arrival before she spoke. The sound moved from the sitting room into the bedroom doorway and stopped.
“I’m here for Bean,” Luv said.
Holly didn’t move.
“It’s his evening walk. I’ll need you to unbury the dog, please. He’s somewhere in that pile of blankets and self-pity.”
Bean’s nose emerged from the bedding near Holly’s hip. His tail gave a single, tentative wag.
“There he is.” Luv rolled closer. “Come on, you little menace. Let’s go.”
Bean didn’t move. He looked at Holly, then at Luv, then back at Holly, clearly weighing his loyalty against his bladder.
“Go on, Babybean,” Holly murmured in a rusty voice, using one of the dozen nicknames that had manifested since becoming his person.
Bean wriggled free of the blankets and jumped down from the bed. Luv clipped the leash to his collar, then turned her optical sensors back to Holly.
“You need to get up,” Luv said. “Go outside. Get some air, even if it smells like a recycling plant.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are not fine. You haven’t washed in days. You’ve eaten nothing but porridge. Your hair looks like a beezle has nested in it, and I’m grateful I lack olfactory sensors because I can’t imagine what you smell like.”
“I don’t smell,” Holly mumbled, but lacked the energy to explain the procedure undertaken by nearly all humans in puberty that eliminated sweat odor.
Luv’s sensors flickered. “Holly. Get up.”
“Later.”
“You said that yesterday. And the day before.”
Holly rolled over, putting her back to the robot. “I’ll get up tomorrow.”
Luv was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “If you don’t get up and out of this unit, I will stop walking Bean.”
Holly didn’t open her eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would. And you’ll be the one cleaning his messes off the floor.”
“You would never do that to Bean.” She yawned and covered her face with the blanket. “He’s a good boy.”
Luv’s silence lasted three full seconds.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “I wouldn’t do that to him.
But Holly.” The robot’s voice dropped, losing its edge.
Losing everything, actually, except concern.
“People are worried about you. Everyone has come and knocked, even Tyer, if you can believe it. Harry left you a flask of tea that’s still sitting outside your door.
Mish sent food. Alyce really is thinking of making me sing show tunes. I don’t want to, you know.”
“I know.”
“Do you also know that you’re becoming exactly what Charles was? A person who shuts the door and refuses to come out?”
The words hit harder than Luv probably intended. Or maybe exactly as hard as she intended. With Luv, it was difficult to tell.
“I’m not Charles,” Holly said, but the words came out thin.
“No, you’re not. Charles shut himself in because he didn’t care. You’re shutting yourself in because you care too much.” Luv rolled toward the door, Bean trotting beside her. “There is a difference. But the result is the same.”
The door opened. The door closed. The rollerball squeaked away, growing fainter.
Holly lay in the silence and let Luv’s words sit with her, about as comfortable as a stone in a shoe.
She pulled the blanket tighter and closed her eyes.
A few more days passed.
Holly had started to get up and move around.
Her body was restless, but her mind was still not ready for people.
She heard sounds through the door. Movement.
Voices with all ranges of emotion from urgent to soft to angry.
She’d taken to listening to the thruster burns of transports lifting off from the spaceport.
It was probably everyone clearing out. Finding passage on departing ships, packing what they could carry, saying goodbyes she wasn’t present for.
The thought hollowed her out each time it surfaced.
She should be out there. She should be standing in the square, shaking hands, apologizing, thanking them for giving her a chance.
For believing in her. For showing up to a festival and clapping when Mish’s children danced and buying cupcakes and sitting on Sam’s bench, looking out at a gas giant.
She should tell Mish she was sorry. She had promised not to sell, and she was selling. She had looked Mish in the eye and said she would save this place, and she had failed.
When she finally did go outside, most residents would be gone. They needed homes, now that Moone’s Landing was going to turn into a Rest ’N Recharge, complete with oversaturated advertisements on every surface.
Mr. Binn had likely sent a new offer from Rest ’N Recharge to her comm by now.
She’d need to read and authorize it, and the thought of doing so made her stomach turn.
There’d be terms and conditions and the final, miserable act of handing over her great-grandfather’s life’s work to a corporation that would abandon it and build a plastoid eyesore in its place.
Charles would get his statue. A petty monument to a man who had loved nothing and no one and had made sure his legacy reflected that. She hoped Rest ’N Recharge “displayed” it in a storeroom.