Today's story works as an epilogue to ‘La Folie’, a long sci-fi story I published last year, and on which I have removed the paywall.
La Folie
It was unusually quiet in the office, with the customary Brussels drizzle tapering down outside, and this general air of tranquillity was broken only when the pulse in her ear sounded, the one whose activation almost inevitably made her emit a small wince of pain. At least she didn’t have to make a hasty exit from a conversation with a colleague – calls…
Clarice was always working. When Upsilon was spinning close, when the others were heading out for their holiday cruises, when the storms forced the station down to basic functions, it was always her in this shabby office, clocking up the hours. It wasn’t that she came in earlier than the others; it wasn’t that she stayed after the working day. It just felt to her that the mere existence of ten holiday entitlements in her contract did not make her feel obliged to take them.
She did in fact take the odd day off but rather than as seemed to be the case for others that this led her to fascinating and even station-leaving excursions, for her it entailed dropping to almost imperceptible levels of productivity and watching ‘Days of Oil and Rockets’. On such days, she would make herself some popcorn in a small steel pan.
She wouldn’t say hers was a plain life. Clarice just seemed to have a certain lack of ambition or flair compared to many around her. An introvert in Andromeda. Daley, for example, who told her the year before he was absolutely sick of Customs and Processing and that he was going to get out onto the missions and was duly assigned after six months of lobbying and to be honest seducing to mineral harvesting in Lacerta. By all accounts it was going very well for him there and he had credible prospects of promotion, tho he still struggled to afford more than a ten-minute Blackspace call back home.
But then of course there were cautionary tales like Carl, once an effective customs clerk, who’d volunteered to run crate deliveries near Keppler’s brassic moons and had ended up being found stuffed in a crate beside an airlock. Outside of trusted contexts, things could go wrong and fast. People just didn’t know the codes.
It was at least home, Kerebus, this rusty and scrappy station of 20,000 circulating souls. It was home in as much as it presented a known number of given quandaries which might well be worse elsewhere. It was home in the sense of ‘I accept this particular constellation of problems.’ Is home ever anything more than that?
She was attempting to accept her frumpy, neglected, single self as she headed towards 40. Instead of seeing it as defeat, she learnt to embrace a quotidian happiness, assisted by her readings of the station’s histories in all their privations. (In loyalty to her roots, she read them in German). When you realized Kerebans had lived off white rice and poppy seeds for a nearly a decade, when you realized how close the early station generations had been to being its last ones, the travails of a dull customs job paled into comparison.
She’d have liked a girlfriend tho.
It was during one of the regular dockings of, all things, Styxian shrimp, these latter arriving in big grey pots – the Feest of Endurance was fast approaching – that she was called by the recognizable name of an old friend.
Her name was Cera Petter. She was fresh from an off-world mission and so, the rumour circulated, as on Kerebus rumours generally did, not doing terribly well of late. Depression and earthy airs. To look at her, Cera was giving off her usual studied clarity but in her expression there was a new touch of genuine human concern.
‘Cera, how are you?’
‘Hello Clarice. Am I disturbing you?’
‘I have time. What about you?’
‘Well, as you can see I’m back from earth.’
‘Oh yeah, you were doing research right?’
‘Surveillance, yes.’
‘What were you surveying?’
‘I wouldn’t be a very good spy if I told you now would I.’
‘But would you be a good spy if you told me you were a spy?’
‘I just did, didn’t I?’
‘Are you a good spy?’
‘Generally, yes.’
‘How?’
‘Nice try,’ Cera said, smiling for the first time on the call.
‘Well, so far today it’s all been shrimp. Which I suppose reduces the risk of kickbacks; where would I put the stuff? The little critters go off within a couple of hours.’
‘They’re cute tho. That unusual colour. Anyway, speaking of kickbacks -’
‘Are you going to bribe me Cera? I didn’t think you cared.’
‘Ha! No, not trying to bribe you. I phoned to ask if I might have the pleasure of your company.’
‘Well, you know, I’d have to check my completely empty schedule. Oh wait, it’s free. Forever. When would you like to meet?’
Cera smiled and quickly stopped doing so.
‘I do have an ulterior motive.’
‘Again, I didn’t know you cared.’
‘There might be something coming thru, you see.’
‘Something coming thru?’
‘Yes, on board. Something unusual. Something it might be a good idea for you to know about.’
‘I’m free Thursday,’ Clarice said.
‘Ah, I have my calisthenics then. Could you do Friday?’
‘I could, yes.’
‘Wonderful. Shall we say Bar 14? They’ve just redone it, I believe.’
‘We can say that.’
’19.00?’
’19.00, that works.’
‘I’ll see you there. I must admit I’m intrigued, Cera.’
‘Don’t get too excited,’ said her old friend.
Aside from the odd shuttle ride, Clarice had never once been off the station. She was the kind of kid whose fascination with the environment was micro-focused on girder and porthole. Her ambitions in life were only to do the best for her nearest and dearest which basically meant her parents. No siblings. There was never a lack of love or even flair in her childhood, which she partly attributed to her parents embrace of their German heritage, first buying a spätzle maker, explaining what spätzle were, then making spätzle, those delicious chubby noodles.
Her sexuality was never an issue for them either; twenty years-five back was a relatively prosperous - the emphasis here on relative - period for Kerebus, and there hadn’t yet been the rise of the Assertive Party which had made the middle of her 20s so difficult to live thru, with their scourging of the ‘childless’ lifestyle and the duty of every woman to provide at least three new Kerebans. As if things weren’t bleak enough for those already here.
At virtually every moment of her life, tho, she felt that she had chosen the safer way. Or had she just been smart enough to know her own limits?
The blankness of space terrified her and, despite her situation in life, she had no particular desire to explore new worlds; she was, to all intents and purposes, an intergalactic homebody. What she wanted was to sit up with late into night with two or three salty stationers who had travelled and listen to their very best stories. In the old days, Cera had been of those confidantes, and Clarice had been present as an observer, of great frustration, of her bisexual phase.
Cera was there when she arrived, sat at the bar in a black natural-fibre jumper, a cocktail glass on the bar ahead of her. She looked up.
‘Clisa,’ she said, using the old nickname. ‘You came.’
‘Of course I did,’ she said friendlily. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘This is a Negroni.’
‘Do you want another one?’
‘I’m only half-done with it. It's strong. But let me get you something.’
‘Well then, I’ll have a Piper’s. Big glass.’
The bartender set the big glass of beer in front of her and some potato chips. There’d been more of the latter about recently, for some reason.
‘So, let me guess,’ Clarice said, ‘You’ve finally decided to come out.’
Cera laughed. ‘The question only remains as what.’
‘Well, we’re on our annual recruitment drive.’
‘I’m afraid it might be a touch late,’ Cera said. ‘I have become rather serious with someone.’
It seemed a touch early to get to the point, and Clarice rather hoped they’d have circled around it a bit more, that the fantasy of some kind of new connection – and she had after all worn her best T-shirt to this date – could have been maintained a few minutes more. But when the point was there it was unmistakable.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘Well, it relates to my request. I have a favour to ask you.’
‘A favour.’
‘Yes. Will you help me?’
‘Well, that’s a bit open-ended isn’t it? You could be asking anything.’
‘I have a package to deliver.’
‘Styxian Shrimp?’
‘No, not that. Nor any form of crustacean. It’s a larger package. It should arrive in two weeks.’
‘Well, that’s no problem. I’ll handle it personally, and take special care that it’s intact.’
‘Yes, well it’s a little more complex than that. You see, the package might not be strictly legal.’
Clarice looked at her.
‘What is it Cera – drugs?’
That would after all be one explanation for the rumours of her old friend’s scattered moods of late.
‘No, not drugs. The package originates from earth.’
‘Well, you must know what the rules are on that – oh.’
And there the second point, or perhaps the telling detail about the first, presented itself.
‘It’s an earthling! You want to smuggle an earthling onto the station.’
Cera made a small, decisive nod.
‘Cera,’ Clarice said, ‘Why on earth would I help you do something like that? For you it’d mean life in the Low Brigs at best and, because I’d actually be violating my sacred oath as a Customs Officer, which I do take seriously, they’d put me out the fucking airlock!’
‘And the package,’ said Cera.
‘Yes – and the package.’
‘And me.’
‘If they found out it was you, yes.’
‘They’d find out.’
They looked at each other.
‘Alright,’ said Clarice, ‘What’s the guy’s name?’
Cera told the story.
She was precise with her language, and despite the vivid feelings she described her language always retained a whiff of bureaucratese. But there was also a fresh emotional intensity in there, in an extra pause on a word or two, such as her confusion in the Brussels Botanical Gardens, and moments of almost regret when she enunciated the words ‘Chronically depressed wife’. Something had happened to Cera beyond what Clarice knew or even felt desirous to know about what went on in life; it had nothing of the solidity of an oil beer perched on a fire hydrant, or a generator clattering back online.
‘But how on earth did you convince him to come?’
‘He finally got divorced. And I think he was looking for a new challenge.’
‘Here?’
‘Well, obviously it took a little explaining.’
‘And you trusted him enough to explain it to him?’
‘I’d trust him with my life. His word is adamantine.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Very hard.’
‘When will he arrive?’
‘In a week.’
Clarice looked at Cera; yes, this did explain a lot about how she was acting. But at the same time, what a position of power to have been put in. She looked at Cera in her silver shirt as if through the crosshairs of a gun.
Looking at her, Clarice wondered what she might ask for in return. An insistent voice proposed the obvious – it had after all been a while, and she was pretty sure Cera would. A brief image of them kissing flashed before her eyes, not unpleasantly.
Yet that was too crude, too calculated, and tho she imagined even under duress it would be enjoyable she didn’t want her old friend to even engage with the thought even in jest. At the same time, it seemed odd to be trusted like this and not to make something of it all. After all, things had been very dull recently.
She had to do something with it.
‘You really like this guy.’
‘I believe this is what they call love.’
‘And what does that feel like?’
‘Well, it’s difficult to say being so close to it. At the moment it’s like having an extremely sharp stone in my shoe. Other times I weep at the sheer beauty of it. It’s like there’s magic in someone else’s voice. Like every word vibrates in you. But you must know this – haven’t you ever been in love yourself?’
‘I don’t think so.’
In truth, Clarice had long longed to fall radically in love. She had even, in the interests of full disclosure, felt something like you might just about call that for Cera herself once, who had always been so remarkably put-together. And so remarkably open compared to most Kerebans, who were a stoic lot. Albeit Cera was oddly undramatic with it; she always seemed to speak about her own problems like a doctor would.
Clarice for her part had drunk herself into a sort of social decommissioning. At the depot, her male colleagues felt comfortable enough to make sexual comments around her but wouldn’t have dreamt of making them about her. Besides, her sexuality was known and unproblematic. She dressed in chords and grey T-shirts.
Her latest affair was one or two odd evenings with Anana, a travelling engineer who swept in every now and then on the Equinox and introduced her to a cocktail she called ‘black hole sap’. But the Equinox didn’t come round often and to be honest they were already at the stage where their lack of contact seemed both permanent and apt.
Funnily enough, what struck Clarice was that, for all that her own life was a procession of containers and metrics and clearances – milk supplies to Kerebus were up 25% year on year, a fact which she was strangely proud of – that she was so clearly inclined to come to Cera’s aid. This was despite it being bad for the station; after all, if everyone started smuggling their loves on board where would it all end? Oh, Cera had picked the right person to ask for all that. God knows what Chibo would have made of it all.
Despite having lived her entire adult on a space station where a few tropospheric malfunctions stood between everyone she knew and mass death, despite the infinite coldness that could be seen on the monitors above, she was faced by an opportunity to let love bloom. Love, you know, the stuff they spoke about in the old incomprehensible songs, the thing which animated her favourite book, Die Stürmhöhe.
Cera was prepared to break the law in order to have her relationship with a man; Clarice had a singular opportunity to exercise power, and it seemed strikingly attractive to serve the individual over Kereban convention.
‘How would it work?’
‘I’ve got him a fake ID. Placed a fake biography on WorkScan. You don’t need to worry about the practicalities.’
‘Won’t people tell from his accent?’
‘I’ve put him as a distant mooner, fresh from a teaching position near Quadron. He’s German originally; his is not the kind of accent people will have already heard. Then once he’s in nobody’ll ask; you know how people are if someone makes themselves about town. He’ll be dancing at the Feest in no time.’
‘That’s the plan?’
Clarice looked at her.
‘Did he… know?’
‘About what.’
‘About the New Worlds.’
‘No.’
‘Not many do, do they, on earth.’
‘There are rumours.’
‘How did you tell him?’
‘I wrote him a letter. I left it before I left earth.’
‘A letter? My old ducts, if that were ever found, you’d be miles out in space before you knew it. What if he’d leaked it?’
‘I asked him not to.’
‘And that’s good enough, is it? He could have been a spy!’
‘Udo’s not a spy. He’s far too honest for that.’
‘So you think you really know him.’
‘I know I really know him.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He’s on a raw materials ship called the Estevanico working his way across the system.’
‘And what about when he gets here. Does he have any idea how hard it is here? It’s not all water and oxygen round these parts!’
‘He knows it’s a hard life here. He knows it’ll be tough on his body, too, and that he’ll probably end up with a shorter lifespan as a result.’
‘And he’s alright with that?’
‘Certainly on the shorter lifespan,’ Cera said. ‘He wrote me a letter back. Got it me via a repatriation. He said it had been exactly the same for him as for me these last years, waiting for me to get in contact. What more proof could I need that the man was prepared to go to the ends of the stars for me to show that this is very real?’
‘I know a lesbian who went to Pluto for a date,’ said Clarice.
‘Well, it’s a small community,’ said Cera. ‘As we both know.’
Clarice paused. Perhaps Cera’s comment was an appeal to solidarity.
‘Oh how exciting.’
‘That means you’ll help?’
‘I’ll check his ID through. If someone else raises it, if any part of your planning is fucked, I’m not responsible for that.’
‘But that’s exactly what I’m asking you to be.’
‘And if I’m asked to grass you up I’ll do it in an instant.’
‘I accept that. I’ve already made my choice – it’s this or nothing for me.’
Clarice took her time to react.
‘Well, I can try to make sure most of the processing is done by me personally. Actually, you know, I can definitely make that happen.’
‘Thank you.’
‘There is something I ask for in advance tho.’
‘What, Clisa? If I can do it I will.’
‘Fetch us two shots.’
A few days later in the early afternoon the Estevanico arrived.