Authors: Maya Shepherd
“Maybe they’re hungry,” says the man with the nice green eyes.
“Bad luck.” The other voice is cold. I freeze and remember a conversation that might have been real or somewhere in my imagination:
“She’s not with them.”
This is the same voice, I’m certain of it. Suddenly I’m not so afraid of him any more and I stretch my head to see him properly, but the door is closing already.
“Outcasts,” hisses D276, just as disgusted as the stranger was when he had to wipe up the bile.
My eyes go wide with surprise. That has to be it. But how long have they lived here? Why are they holding us captive? Do they want revenge on us—are they crazy enough for that?
“The Legion will rescue us,” says D389 quickly and nods as if to convince himself.
“They would have to know where we are,” argues D276.
“They have locator devices. They’ll find us.”
“But we’re contaminated with radiation.”
“They can cure us.”
“We’re going to die.”
It’s hopeless. Even if the Legion finds us, they won’t be able to save us. What will they do with us?
F701 starts to tremble again. Her body shakes so much that she keeps bumping against me. Her wailing makes a return and she sways again, back and forth, back and forth.
“Stop that,” hisses D456. “Don’t behave like a crazy person.”
But F701 can’t stop. Her sobbing just gets louder. D456 looks away. The others seem clueless and no one knows how to make F701 be quiet if we don’t have the right medicines.
Strange sounds come out of her throat, sounds that make me hurt on the inside. It’s like the sadness of the angry man. It causes a reaction in my heart. I’m not angry at F701, and I’m not scared of her, because I know she’s only scared herself. I lay my hand on her small arm, like D523 once did to me.
But unlike me on that faraway day, F701 isn’t frightened. She calms under my touch. Her big eyes stare at me. There’s a dampness shining on her dirty cheek. Almost automatically I lay my other hand on her face and wipe away the wetness. Her lips quiver and she tries to understand what’s happening. I don’t understand it any more than she does. Why did I do that? But the fact is, it helped her. She’s not sobbing any more, and her trembling has stopped.
Even though we’ve been kidnapped by the outcasts and our future is uncertain, there’s one positive thing I can find in all this: for the first time in my life, I can see a starry sky, or at least a tiny part of it, through the hole in the ceiling of our cell. The stars shine brighter than I ever imagined. They lie on the dark blue sky like sparkling stones, restful in their slow movement. They remind me a little of my home in the safety zone, where each day’s repetitive cycle protects us. Sometimes I found my life boring, but now when I am in fear of dying, I long for the regularity and predictability of the Legion.
Everything was so easy and uncomplicated. Maybe the Legion commanders kept some secrets from us, but I’m sure they had a good reason for it. They never warned us about the outcasts, but who would have guessed that these madmen would invade the safety zone and kidnap us? We would only have worried needlessly. It was right that the commanders didn’t tell us about them, although we always knew it was possible to be cast out if we caused too much danger for ourselves or the community.
The next morning, the heavy iron door opens again. The man with the lovely green eyes enters. In his hands he holds a big brown lump. This lump is giving off a strange but wonderful smell. I can’t describe it, because it’s not like anything I know.
The man holds out the lump towards us, while his other hand holds a silver canteen. “Breakfast!” he explains, grinning, but gets only questioning looks in reply. Breakfast—what’s that?
He shakes the canteen and we hear the familiar splashing of water. My mood improves. Breakfast must be something like morning rations.
F701 seems to have the same idea, because she reaches her hands towards the water bottle. The green-eyed man smiles and passes it to her, and at the same time, he presses the brown lump into my hand.
It is soft and warm. The smell rises into my nose and makes my mouth water. It must be edible. It smells delicious.
I raise the lump before me and begin to inspect it from all sides while the others watch me. F701 seems to be just as curious as I am, but the other prisoners are behaving more stand-offishly. This lump is strange to them, and during educational training, we always learned to fear what is strange because it could be dangerous.
The man observes our baffled behaviour and kneels down in front of me. He takes the lump in his hand and breaks off a piece. The shape emits a small cloud of steam that rises into the air. The inside of the lump is light brown.
“This is bread. Try it,” he suggests, and puts the broken-off piece into his own mouth. He chews and swallows it down. “Delicious!”
I hesitate and look around at the others, asking for help. They all shake their heads as if in a panic, but F701 reaches over and does as the man did. She tears off a piece of this “bread” and sticks it in her mouth. An expression of happiness appears on her face and the corners of her mouth pull up with enthusiasm. Hungrily she reaches for more, even while her cheeks are still full. She chews and swallows, and her eyes glow with joy.
“Are you coming? Or do you want to feed them yourself?” growls someone from beyond the iron door. It’s HIM again. There’s so much hate and disgust in it that I would recognise it anywhere. His coldness gives me a chill although the temperature here is warm. Maybe it wasn’t really sadness I heard in him?
The man stands up and gives me an encouraging nod, then goes out and locks the cell behind him.
“Take a piece, it’s better than anything you ever ate before.” F701 is trying to convince me, all while continuing to stuff her face with the bread.
Warily I watch her eat. She’s a small child, maybe eight years old, at that age people rarely lie. And why should she?
“You don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s dangerous.” D276 is sceptical.
“It tastes even better than the pink tablets,” says F701 firmly, her mouth still full. I know how much she likes the pink tablets.
I run my hands over the bread’s hard crust. Under my fingertips I can feel the fine texture and the slowly fading warmth. If I press it, the bread gives way.
“Maybe they want to kill us with it. It might be poisoned,” D276 warns me again.
“So what? We’ll die of radiation anyway,” hisses back F701 in a rage. I’m surprised how loud she is. We’re not used to raising our voices to each other. That means unrest, which is a predecessor of war. “I’d rather die with a full stomach than die from hunger,” she continues. So contrary. I’m impressed. On the one hand I think this little girl must really be mad, and the best place for her is sickbay. But on the other hand she reminds me of D523: both full of life, their reactions unpredictable, a surprise every time.
I tear off a tiny piece of bread and place it in my mouth before I can change my mind. The warmth spreads across my tongue and palate. It’s almost as if it spreads through my whole body. I close my eyes and enjoy the taste on my tongue. It tastes only very distantly similar to a cereal cube. Much fuller, much more intense. I chew on the bread and it spreads around in my mouth, filling it completely. When I swallow, it slides easily down my oesophagus. It’s soft, not like the tablets and capsules. I don’t need water to wash it down, but I take a drink of it anyway. Even the water tastes different here—cool and somehow fresher.
I offer the others water and bread several times, but when they continue to refuse, F701 and I eat all of it by ourselves. It would be easy to eat and drink this forever. When we’re finished, we feel like our bellies could burst.
A sigh comes out of F701’s throat. She lays her head on my shoulder and falls asleep. I envy her that, because I didn’t sleep the whole night, and I don’t feel I could now, either. Too many questions and fears are tumbling through my head. Lost in thought, my fingers stroke F701’s head. She’s something special. Although she’s still so small, she’s what I’d miss most here.
Maybe it’s because I’m dysfunctional. I should not have eaten the bread
When the door opens the next time, F701 leaps up in shock. She seems confused and it distracts me for a moment, before my gaze can return to the door. I hold my breath and stare in disbelief at the strange face. He’s young, maybe my generation, but the deep wrinkles between his eyes give him an angry expression. His eyes are blue, but not at all like ours. They shine bright and then dark, depending on how the light falls. Although he’s angry, everything about him is lively and wild. His hair too, shimmering like gold, falling in uncontrolled waves around his head.
“Where is D523?” he roars at us with a voice of pure ice. I swallow and remember how I took her place. She should be here, not me. But why?
No one answers him, and this only increases his contempt for us. “What’s up? Can’t you speak? It can’t be that hard.” His angry shouting makes F701 tremble again. Even though she herself raised her voice today, she too knows the meaning of threatening words. Something terrible is going to happen.
“Leave them. They can’t tell each other apart. Everyone is all the same to them,” says Green Eyes, trying to calm the young man. For the first time I hear contempt and disappointment in his voice, too. I’d like to tell him that’s not true, but I don’t dare.
The angry man’s gaze wanders around the room and stops on me. He’s probably noticing that I’m the only one from D523’s generation. His eyes narrow to slits. “You! Where is she?”
He steps closer to me. I feel threatened. Just like F701 I am trembling from fear. I can’t do anything to stop it. He seems so huge, standing over me while I cower against the wall.
Now the other man enters the cell, too, and lays a hand on this one’s shoulder. This gesture seems to calm people, because the young man stands still while his shoulders remain tense.
“They’re scared, don’t you see that? They’ll tell us nothing for sure. We wouldn’t tell them anything either, would we?” says Green Eyes.
The other man’s shoulders relax somewhat. “Then we’ll make them talk!” he hisses, and leaves me alone. His finger points at D276. “We’ll start with you!”
D276 shakes his head in a panic and presses himself even farther back against the rough rock wall, but the young man is merciless and grabs him roughly by the arms. Instead of fighting back, D276 cries desperately, “No, please no!”
The outcast only pulls at him more roughly. He pushes the old man out of the cell, and none of us would go to help him. The door closes with a loud bang.
D456 has her hands on her ears so as to stop hearing the cries. The others stare at the ground. Only F701 can’t be calm. She gasps for air and again makes that sobbing, heart-wrenching sound. Water drips from her eyes and ears, and she wipes them away with her small hand. “They’re hurting him!” she wails desperately, while more and more water spills out of her eyes—which have gone all red. I’m so sorry for her, and there’s a big lump in my own throat that gets bigger when I look at her.
When Green Eyes laid a hand on the angry man’s shoulder, he calmed down. The last time I touched F701, she calmed down too.
I lay my hands carefully around her heaving shoulders. That’s all it takes—she throws herself trembling and shaking against my chest. I feel the dampness from her eyes soaking through my dirty suit. Like she rocked herself back and forth before, I do the same with her now. “It’ll be okay,” I whisper in her ear, and F701 relaxes in my arms. I only hear quiet sobs now. I don’t know why I said that, but I won’t give up so easily. These outcasts are still alive, after all. Maybe there’s a chance for us.
The door opens and I’m happy to stare into green eyes again, but I’m horrified by his next words: “You two, come with me!”
F
701 holds my hand tightly. Her little fingers almost disappear inside mine, but the firm press of her hand gives me strength. We’re not alone. We have each other.
Our new cell is hardly any different from the previous one. The rocks have different shapes and the hole in the ceiling is nearer the wall, rather than being in the middle. It’s hard to say how long we’ve been isolated from the others. 45 minutes, or maybe 55. I find it hard to count the seconds and minutes in this place.
I don’t know what these strangers want from us and why they separated us from the others. We didn’t do anything wrong, quite the opposite—we were the only ones who even tried their bread. If I’m honest I’d actually like more bread now. Now that my stomach has had some food, I can feel how starved I really am. It’s like a drop in a bucket.
F701 is too frightened to be hungry. Her eyes dart around the small cell and she spits out one question after another, but I can’t answer any of them.
“What are they going to do with us?”
“Will they kill us?”
“Will they give us more food?”
“How many of them are there?”
“Are there any little children that are outcasts?”
“Do you think the Legion is searching for us?”
My answer, again and again, is “I don’t know.” At the same time I ask myself if I should hope to be found by the Legion. We are contaminated with radiation, so we are a danger. What would they do with us? What would I do in their place?
Footsteps pass by our door. That’s new. We’ve never heard anything from outside the cell before. The walls must be thinner here.
Curious, I get up from the floor and step towards the opposite wall. My fingers touch the rough surface and the red sand crumbles in my palms. When I look closer, I see many tiny holes in the wall. Through one of these I peer out. It’s so small I can hardly see anything. Something black in front of the hole is blocking my sight. But then it’s gone, and at the same time the door opens.
To my dismay it’s not the friendlier man with the green eyes—but the other. When he sees me so close to the door, his eyes widen for a moment. He probably didn’t expect that. Warily he peers around the cell and then looks me up and down as if I’ve done something wrong. The angry wrinkle between his eyebrows becomes even deeper. His eyes narrow to slits, reminding me of the layer of ice we put on some machines to keep them cool.