I can’t open my eyes.
I’m not where I thought I was. I try to call out again, despite the burning in my throat.I’m coming! I’ll save you!
Clatter of hard polycarb on hard polycarb, ringing and rolling. A whirring hum.
When I open my eyes, the world looks no different.
I’m blind.
Ting-ting buzz.
I haven’t been blind—I have been in the absolute dark. Now there is light.
“Is someone there?” I ask, blinking against purple burn.
A voice comes on. I recognize it. “There has been anaccident, Ambrose. You have been in a coma. I’ll let you know when you can move.”
“Mother? Where are you?” My voice sounds like a sob. She’d hate the weakness of it.
“I am not your mother, though I may sound like her,” she says. “I am using her voice skin.”
Voice skin. Ship. Right. I’m on theEndeavor. “You’re the operating system,” I say. My eyes jerk around in their sockets. White polycarbonate walls, “04” printed in large block numerals beside a doorway. There is no sand. This is not a place for sand. I’m on my mission. “Give me an update on my sister.”
My mother—my operating system—needs no time to think. Her words begin before mine end. “You are on a mission to retrieve Minerva, or Minerva’s body.”
“I know that, OS,” I spit. “I asked you for an update.”
The floor hums. An image returns: my parents, my brothers and sisters, frolicking on our Cusk-branded pink sand, Minerva splashing through waves of steaming seawater in her white racing suit, my mother yelling “Faster, Minerva, you can go faster,” my molten bronze fingers searching the scorching artificial grains for a seashell. My family’s spaceport is distant in the blue, radio arrays wheeling. Pleasure satellites haunt it.
“Are you delaying because you have no information, or because Minerva is dead?” I say. I want to add more, butspeaking hurts too much.
“I will fill you in once you are ready.”
I manage to shake my head, vertebrae grinding. “That’s not how this works. You’ll fill me in now.”
“The launch had complications, but was ultimately successful,” OS says. “You are on board theCoordinated Endeavor, weeks past Earth and its moon. We are well on our way to the Titan distress beacon. There has been no change in her signal.”
Of course my sister is alive. Dying would be a failure, and Minerva Cusk doesn’t fail. I try to swallow, but I have no saliva. “Water,” I croak.
“At your bedside,” OS says.
My eyes zoom out of focus and then narrow in on a hand. It’s my hand, but I watch it like it’s someone else’s as it knocks into the polycarb tray beside me.I like my hand,my blipping brain decides.It’s a beautiful hand.A cup of water is there, far and then suddenly too close. I miss my mouth, water pouring down my cheek. My arm muscles knot tight as the cup drops and rolls away. I manage to say a word in the midst of the pain. That word is “ow.”
A whine from the next room, then a robot skirts along the wall. It looks like half of a white basketball. The robot gives a delicate whine before composite pliers emerge from an opening, pinch the cup, and right it. A nozzle emerges from another opening and sprays in more water. “Hydrationfor when you are able to manage it,” my mother says. No—my mother is back on Earth. I won’t let myself make that mistake again. “You might want to limber up before you try to drink more.”
I stretch my other arm, which turns out to be attached to an IV. Its muscles cramp, and the arm falls to the bed. The gurney. My muscles pinch harder, and I gasp. I can’t bring myself to try to drink again.
There is a lightness to the world, like I am back with my fellow spacefarer cadets that one afternoon when we took a bottle of PepsiRum into the woods, goading, daring, slurping, drunk before we knew we were getting drunk. I kissed four of them that day, before I sneaked away to run laps. But I can’t be drunk after a coma.You only feel drunk.“My blood pressure...,” I croak, wincing.
“Yes, your blood pressure is still low. Do not stand until I give you permission, Ambrose Cusk.”
“A coma is impossible,” I say, blinking at my own stupidity. Not at the words I said, but at having tried to speak, having willingly rubbed the inside of my throat against the sand.
“I cannot let you rest long,” Mom-not-Mom says. “By taking off under such rushed conditions, the safeguards meant to protect you were ineffective. You passed out before your shuttle even left Earth’s atmosphere. Please just accept that fact. We are behind schedule.”
Rushed conditions? I try to ask the operating system what that means, but only croak. I try to say that Ambrose Cusk doesnotpass out, but only croak.
I’m not exactly living up to my big sister’s standards.
