Mark Dunn - We Five

The ground, after nearly a minute of violent convulsions, settled itself into still and stationary complaisance, the rumbling silenced, replaced now by the sounds of human misery upon a very large scale, expressed by those who had been battered by falling things, had lost loved ones to collapsed chimneys and toppled oriental sculptures and architectural appurtenances that now rubbled the cobbles of Dupont Street. The teahouse was still aright, though it seemed none too safe to remain inside, and so the six hastily removed themselves from it and stepped out into the gloaming that preceded the dawn to find a city that no longer resembled itself and which would soon be further ravaged by a fire of epic proportions.

In Tulleford, the citizenry calmed itself and came ruefully to their senses and were abashed and repentant over everything that had transpired in the preceding hour of madding pandemonium — an hour that certainly gave God Himself pause to wonder why He created man without any thought to the potential flaws in the human machine.

G Station, 4 thQuadrant, Tesla Terranium, Ante-Equinoctial, 2177 CE

If only the Exto Carapace Air Lock had been breached, We Six would have had seven and one half minutes to evacuate the chamber and move into one of the unbreached adjacents. But instead, the storm had delivered to Chamber 17 a double punch— two different meteoric strikes, both of which had penetrated both the Exto and Inner Carapace Air Locks which, upon emergency engagement of the manual Aeropositer, left only a scant one minute and sixteen seconds of chamber equipressurization before the cell functionality was permanently compromised and any remaining occupants permanently de-extanted.

In other words, We Six were very lucky to have gotten themselves out of the chamber in which they were hiding, with their lives intact.

But there was consequence to be borne, and it was the fact that Lyle was now exposed to the human interveillance of the Office of Incident Investigation. Because in the course of learning, consequent to the meteor storm which had struck the Tesla Terranium, that a chamber which had been registered as un occupantal did indeed have human occupants hiding therein (who were awaiting stowage on a Parenthian merchant ship as an extralegal means to departure), the O.I.I. discovered that one of those occupants was none other than a prime suspect in the murder of a Crewer’s Mate by the name of Tom Cates, who had been intentionally de-extanted six diurnals earlier in the sanitroom of his living quarters.

As Lyle was being escorted to the transport ship that would take him to a cell in the Tesla Penal Holding Center, where he was to await trial, there was a tearful exchange between Carrie and her new lover to which all were witness (including two android processitors whose emoticapacitors had been freshly re-actualized following complaints from human analogues that the processitors had been too bureaucratically impassive in their dealings).

In other words, the robots cried just as much as Carrie and her sisters did.

And in a most amazounding turn of events, something very nearly identical took place three quadrants removed in the First Quadrant in which Maggie’s mother and Molly’s father had been hiding and awaiting similar breakflight: their chamber was identically breached and it was likewise discovered that the chamber’s unauthorized occupants included a man who was also suspect in a recent murder. This one involved the gruesome shrusting of one Pat Harrison, also a Crewer’s Mate, down the G Station Rubbish Chute from which no human had ever emerged unscissored and unserrated and not in a de-extanted state of unrecognizable man-shreddage.

A freak accident, to be sure, since to fall all the way down the chute to the tooth wheel, Crewer Harrison would have had to plummet down the chute at precisely the moment all three of the upper mesh gates had been retracted, which by tragic coincidence all three had.

In other words, Crewer Harrison died because three different top-level residents of the G Station dormitower chose to shrust their garbage at the very same time.

Molly would not learn of her father’s capture for two diurnals. A most difficult time lay ahead for her, due not only to the reality of his incarceration and likely conviction, but also to the guilt of her earlier feelings that he deserved whatever punition was dealt to him.

Carrie sat for a moment after Lyle’s wrist-clipped departure and wiped away the last remnant of lachtrickle from her cheeks. She took a deep breath and raised her eyes to look at her four sisters, who smiled the smiles of the well-intended, and gathered about her, Jane sitting the closest in sisterly communion, for Lyle was her brother, and she’d always loved him, but never more so than now, for he had come of late to be the upwardman she’d always hoped he would one day be, only now to find himself whisped off to live the rest of his human analogue life behind transparabars.

“Well, I really see no need at this junxten for us to go to my Uncle Whit’s planetoid, do you?” asked Maggie with a brave smile. Though the statement was made in black jest, her companions nonetheless nodded agreement. “So what happens to us now?”

“Colthurst will take us back,” said Ruth. “It’s too soon for her to have replaced us.”

“There may be charges filed against us,” said Jane, standing at the observaportal and watching Ramses as it began its final eclipse of Cleopta for that diurnal, the two satellites orbiting one another like dancing dervishons. Jane turned around. “But I think we can convince the judge advocate that it would be a waste to lock us all away when we can be more useful in civic service. Lieutenant Colthurst knows the judge advocate, and can probably put in a good word for us. She’ll also remind him that We Five are perhaps the best cooks in the Fourth Quadrant.”

Carrie was sitting in the corner of the room staring at the Manipubox spindled to her chair, but keeping her hands from insertion into its plasmatter. Maggie walked over and sat down next to her. She put her arm around her friend. “You’re thinking of your mother, aren’t you?” she asked.

Carrie nodded. “And you’re thinking of your mother too, aren’t you, Maz?”

“They’ll lock her up just like Molly’s father. For how long is anybody’s guess.”

Carrie swiveled the Manipubox Screen out of the way. Though her face registered a great, nagging sadness, there was a glimmer of a smile upon her lips. “I think it’s funny how I ended up as a Quadrant cook, considering how claphanded Mama always was in our own galley.”

“And to end up as one of the best to boast!” added Ruth, whose hands were dipped into her own Manipubox, though her manipulation of the holographic images that floated there was more mindless fidget than purposeful arrangement.

A silence followed, broken only by the periodic beep of the vitometer in the corridor outside the Interview room. A few moments later, an older woman entered and said, “You’re all free to go now. We’ll have each of you in over the next two diurnals for further inquiry. Within half a mensal we should have some idea what the judge advocate intends to do with you.”

We Five nodded thank-yous for their release and started down the corridor to the transportation artery. “I don’t want to go home,” said Molly.

“Nor do I,” said Jane.

It was agreed that no one wished to return to their respective living quarters (though the Mobrys would have been happy to see Ruth restored to their loving embracement).

“So what do we do?” asked Maggie.

“I’ll say what I’d like to do,” said Carrie. “It’s been months since we’ve taken a walk in the Outland. Let’s suit up and go.”