To Plant Bones on Europa

Stress coats the halls of Commerce & Labor like plasticized rubber. Greasy and resinous on my tongue. Young and elderly alike squat on the floors, desperate for work. I pass the unskilled-labor waiting rooms. Body odor slides under the glass doors. Sour. Thick.

The time-worn yellow walls are covered in advertisements: retire early with an admirable career in the radiation drives; get paid to adventure the system as a deep-planet miner; spend your drink credits at the bars; apply for financial assistance to plant.

The poster outside the engineering waiting room depicts a young woman holding a bundle of bones. Small seedlings sprout from cracks in the collagen framework. If she doesn’t plant soon, the seedlings won’t make it past vegetation. Let alone bud into organs and tissue. In front of the woman, a Planting Commissioner holds out a plastic chit: clearance to plant and a contract outlining the Commission’s right to siphon her income. The legally binding promise that she won’t reproduce. Won’t leave the planet.

That’s just to regrow men. Regrowing women requires a lottery ticket. Can’t have too many breeders in the system.

My knuckles clench. Teeth grind. Hands push open the door. I find a seat on a poorly reupholstered chair pulled from an old cruiser yacht. The seat used to be leather. Used to cradle bodies privileged to travel the system at leisure. Traded in for something new and passed down to the Lowers. Everything here gets traded in once it’s worn and used.

Seats. Ships. Water. People.

Someone’s carved “Regrowth for All” and “Bones in Deep Pockets Don’t Expire” in the armrest of my seat. I trace the letters with my finger until my mind settles into a comfortable apathy.

“Ceres Olivier.” The clerk’s voice floats through the din. She’s tall and slender, with the sunken cheeks of Earth’s microgravity station.

I raise my hand. Rise to greet her. Wonder, not for the first time, what she’s doing out here in the gas giants.

“You’re back,” she says. Sharpened black nails click against her LED backlit keys. Purple, then green, then blue.

“Looking for work transfer,” I say. “To Europa.”

Words and images scroll by in the reflection in her glasses. My picture. Social status. Mechanic license and job on the docks. My brother’s death certificate.

“All the midnight shifts you’ve been picking up have lifted your flight restriction. That’s good. You can work on any dock in the system. Just not Europa.”

I run a hand down my face. Inadvertently smear grease from forehead to chin. Stand taller. Try to look bigger. “How ‘bout a hazard job? Put me in the radiation drive of the transport ship.”

Click. Pink-painted lips purse. Click. Click. Downturn to a grimace. “The next retirement is in five months.”

“Five months?” I squeak, losing all sense of distinguished-woman voice.

She gives me a pitying smile. Knows why I’m really here. “I’m sorry. Truly, I am.”

I swallow the lump pressing on my trachea. Sharp as a framing nail. Puncturing on the way down.

“There’s gotta be exceptions for planting.” My voice cracks like the spines of ship mice I’m forced to club on midnight shifts. “The seeds will expire by then.”

“You know there’s not.”

“What good is any of this if it’s always too late?”

She throws her hands up. “I ask the same thing all the time.”

I’d like to commiserate with her. Complain about the failures of our governance. But I’m too busy sniffling back the loose snot that comes right before tears.

“Ceres,” she says, like a quick and fleeting touch. “Ceres.” Like a command. “The shuttle leaves tomorrow. Interplanetary Transport is your last option.”

I bite my lip. Shoulder tears off my cheeks.

Outside the Commerce & Labor building, Cassini Station’s false sky glitters crystal blue. The Uppers gaze at synthetic clouds while the rest of us go hungry. Below, where blackened ice and polished metal are all we see. We colonized the solar system and still there’s not enough resources. Not with vacation manors on Mars.

Well-dressed government workers bustle by in silk suits and linen trousers. I pull my polykevlar maintenance jacket tight over my chest. Try to hide the holes in my white t-shirt. Pit stains and grease spots.

Heels click on steel plates. The pink-lipped clerk calls after me. A few people crane their necks as she catches up.

She looks around. Leans in, voice lowered. “Don’t tell Interplanetary Transport you’ve got bones. Say you’re on a pilgrimage to Io’s temple district. Get there as quick as you can and try to moon hop from there.” She grabs my hand. Squeezes. “You don’t want them to think you want to go to Europa for planting.”

She says something else, but it doesn’t register. I’m staring at my hand in hers. My nails are the wasteland of Earth. Jagged. Dirty. Impossible to tell where grime stops and human begins.

When I was a little girl, my mother would sit with me before the holovision and paint my nails opalescent blue. Shape them square.

Long, long ago.

I track the letters on the clerk’s nametag. “Thanks, Elisa.” Regret waiting so long to roll her name across my tongue. “Guess you already know I’m Ceres.”

“Yeah, I’ve had to look you up each time you came into Commerce & Labor over the past four weeks. I know your ID numbers, address, how you eat the same turkey-flavored pea protein every day for lunch.”

“That hardly seems fair,” I say. Scratch my nose to hide my budding grin.

Elisa combs a hand through her black hair. Makes a noncommittal hum. “I like having the upper hand.”

I want to say something clever, but words have never been my tools. I open my mouth. Close it. Watch Elisa watch me struggle.

“Okay,” I say, densely.

“Okay,” she parrots with a feline smile, her faux-flat tone the percussion of my heartbeat. Turning on her heels, she sweeps back inside the golden walls of Commerce & Labor.

Her absence drills reality into my temples. Cassini Station, momentarily breathable, returns to the cage I know it for. I wasn’t born with the luxury of flirting. It’s best not to forget that. Where you were born. What you were born with. Because as soon as you forget, as soon as you start dreaming of something more or different . . .

I let my jacket fall open and set my feet to Interplanetary Transport. I am Ceres Olivier. Mechanic. Saturnian. Born of Level Three in Cassini Station’s silicate slums. We didn’t have the money to regrow Father. Didn’t get the lottery clearance to regrow Mother. But I will regrow you, Kuiper.

* * *

“I’m on a pilgrimage to Io’s temple district,” I say to the receptionist at Interplanetary Transport.

“Io, huh? You ever been out that way?” Suspicion is thick in his voice.

“Got an aunt there.” The truth, however stretched. Aunt Hatina is dead. Never met her. She hated my mother. But her body is there, on Io. Decaying remains feeding yellow pea fields.

The receptionist pats his shoulder. “You have to be sponsored for a pilgrimage to Io.”

Broiling dread rolls through me. I force my forehead smooth as glass. “Never heard that before.”

“Yeah, well, a few weeks ago they passed a new rule. Got tired of mourners sneaking through on their way to illegally plant.”

I bite my cheek. Recalibrate my plan. “Have anything going to the other Galilean moons? Maybe my aunt can meet me on Ganymede.”

The receptionist eyes me up and down. “Not a thing. Do you have bones you need to register, ma’am?”

Dread liquifies to anger as it stirs in my crucible. Can’t let it show. “I’ve been working hard to get flight clearance. I’m allowed to go anywhere in the system.”

“Not the Galilean moons,” the receptionist says coolly. Flicks my name and ID off the holoscreen.

“Please, my aunt is sick,” I lie.

The receptionist’s hand hovers over the red security button. Fingers brush fading letters. “Will that be all?”

I shake my head and turn on my heel. Tail between my legs. Just like we’re taught.

* * *

I stand outside Elisa’s office at Commerce & Labor for eight minutes. She was wrong. Interplanetary Transport wasn’t my last option. She is.

At twelve minutes, my feet grant me forward.

* * *

Elisa’s long fingers flip through the digital ledgers. An almost-silent motion, save the light tap of her nail on the screen. It’s dark in the bar. Palitinus, it’s called. A tri-level cantina with an interior of marble columns and gold leaf trim. I can’t tell if it’s expensive or gaudy. It’s the only bar close enough to Commerce & Labor for the smuggled tablet to work. A week at the docks and I wouldn’t have the drink credits to come here. But Elisa has enough for us both. Says she never spends hers. We huddle in a dim corner booth like lovers, our bodies so close I fantasize we might be.

Electronica pumps through the speakers. So loud I barely hear her when she hush-shouts, “Got it!” and tilts the tablet towards me.

A woman in her forties blinks on the screen. She looks tired in the photo. Dark rings circle her eyes. Mirrors of my own.

“Who is she?” I ask.

Elisa taps again, file after file popping open. No family. Middle class. Eight priors. Two arrests: aggravated assault and premeditated murder of a silicate slummer. Did some time in the cell but was released last month. Right back into the system where she works as a Sollight Security guard on the Galilean Bay.

My file’s cleaner. Kuiper’s is, too. Only five priors between us. All theft for food packs. Except for when I bashed that slaver’s knees in until I saw stark white femur.

“What will you do?” Elisa whispers, saucer eyes pleading me to lie.

“Nothing.”

She nods and sips her drink but leaves the tablet open on the file.

I memorize the address.

Cobalt Zone. Level 4. Block 52. Door 388.

Cobalt Zone. Level 4. Block 52. Door 388.

Cobalt Zone. Level 4. Block 52. Door 388.

I feel no sorrow for the woman. There’s no room. Not when I have to plant the seedlings sprouting from Kuiper’s bones before they expire.

* * *

The knife is heavy in my perspiring hand. I peel her wrist implant from under the skin. Sew it into the sleeve of one of her clean work jumpers. Leave her tied and bleeding. Gagged and unconscious. My clothes are caked in sweat. Splattered with blood. I crawl through the maintenance tunnel to Cobalt level 3. Burn my clothes in the garbage incinerator. Stand naked and watch the flames dance. Watch the synthetic threads of fabric melt into plastic puddles. Watch the smoke snake through the manufactured air until it clogs my lungs.

When all is said and done, I drag myself home through the tight tunnels and sob on my bathroom floor until the morning bells ring.

* * *

I leave my polykevlars at home and dress in the woman’s Sollight Security jumper. The bag slung on my back holds all my precious things: Father’s old torque wrench, Mother’s lucky coin, Kuiper’s planting box, my databank, the forgettable gray t-shirt and cargo pants I wear on rare days off. Trinkets and bones. The legacy of my family.

I am the last alive on both my mother’s and father’s side. No one will mourn our line when we perish. They will grind me to fine powder and celebrate another dead slumgirl. Dismiss that we build their ships and haul their oil. Mine their ice and mill their ore.

The Sollight Security entrance is old and unmanned by any living, breathing thing. One swipe of my jumper-covered wrist and I’m through to the Galilean Bay. Figure I got less than twenty minutes before someone reviewing the morning scans sees that my face doesn’t match my implant.

The Wailing Siren has seen better days. Her thrusters are mottled with chalky gray oxidation. Radiation exposure coats her nose in yellowed hues. I spot six different safety hazards at my first passing glance. Count three more when my eyes trail past the crowd of travelers. A mix of expensive perfume and synthetic lubricants saturates my lungs. At the ramp, a stout captain calls names from her databank.

“Steve H. Davis.”

A man with wiry blue hair steps forward. The captain scans Davis’ wrist, then waves him aboard.

The further down the list, the more desperate the voyagers.

Icarus Peshko has a wooden leg and missing left arm. Bet he sold the prosthetics to fund his planting. Probably a rock burrower. Miners never retire with all their limbs.

Zara Bayat can’t be more than fifteen years old, clutching a plastic vacuum bag of bones to her chest. The sproutings are wilted. Those seeds will never take to soil. Never plump with fat or balloon with tissue and blood. Her loved one is long gone, but no one has told her. Not until the captain turns her away and calls the next name.

The Sollight guard stationed at The Siren looks up at the crowd. Spots me. Saunters from his post. Right on time for his break.

A pause. A held breath.

Give him a nod of approval. Returns it with a wink.

Watch him head towards the security booth. Into the attached bathroom. I approach the ship as casually as I can, circling the hull.

Cruisers like The Siren have hatches along their bellies. Work on enough and you know the templates. I’m so close I’m dizzy with giddy delirium.

All I need is to—

Shrill bells resound through the docks. The alarm system blares to life, orange lights flashing in the rafters. And my name, through the speakers. Must have picked up my double wrist implants.

I don’t hesitate. Swinging my legs over the ship clamps, I propel myself off the dock’s grated platform. The captain shouts as I roll under The Siren. Kuiper’s planting box jabs into my back, pack crushing against my weight. I pay it no mind; I’m already dragging myself forward on my stomach.

Flashing lights paint the underbelly of the ship black, then orange. Someone is yelling through a megaphone. The Siren shields me from it all, her belly a hardened womb. I find the engineering hatch and roll up my sleeve. Release the pressure hold with a scan of my bare wrist. Input my eight-digit work code, and I’m in.

Sollight Security guards board The Siren above me. They give themselves away with heavy footfalls. I pull myself through a vent and into the cargo bay. Nothing but a loading area with crates secured to the hull by bolted straps.

Crouching low, I use them as cover as I make my way to the emergency locker. Pull a ballistic blanket from the tactical pack inside. High-G pills and water from the E-kit. Bust open and crawl into an equipment panel. Seal it shut with white knuckles. Wrap myself, head to toe, in the kevlar. The chemical scent might make me nauseous, but it’ll block my heat signature if they bother to look that hard.

After a time, the stomping ceases its vibrations. The Siren is readying for takeoff. Swallowing the high-G pill, I brace myself for gravity’s war on my flesh and bones.

I wonder where my twin will want to live once he’s regrown. Always said we would travel the system together. Dreamed of worlds yet unknown. Dangerous, having dreams. Funny how we cling to them anyway.

Somewhere around the second hour, fatigue takes me, and consciousness slips through my clenched fingers.

* * *

Evenfall bells chime. Day three in transit ends like the rest. I can’t stay in the equipment panel any longer. My feet throb. Can’t feel my hands.

The Siren is quiet when I emerge from my burrow. Shed the jumper and change into clothes more familiar. The air recycling system is old, pumping the corridors with artificial citrus so potent my eyes water. I make my way through the passenger quarters that lead to the galley. Hunger cramps coil my intestines into springs ready to break. I’m at the last narrow hall of gray doors when I catch sight of the captain. She rounds the corner, head down, eyes on her databank.

Panic sweeps up my legs. Presses down on my shoulders. I wobble on my feet. Feel for any unlocked door. Tumble through the second on my left. Close it as quietly as I can. Turn and find myself face to face with a man holding a zero-gravity mug.

In an instant, Father’s torque wrench is in my hand. Arm cocked to swing.

“Whoa. Hello to you too, stranger,” the man says, arms raised in surrender, feet backing him up. He wears a threadbare tailored suit. Bit loose in the chest, the legs. Cuffs fraying. Reminds me of my mom, at the end. Defiance and pride.

“I’m Leo . . . and you are?”

“Hitching a ride,” I say.

“Ah, a stowaway.” He doesn’t move to press the red emergency button above the bed. Instead, he pulls a flask from his breast pocket. Pours amber liquid into his mug, sips it. Grimaces. “Bit too much whiskey.”

“What else is in it?” My body aches for real rye. This man, this Leo, with his pocket square and thick-framed glasses, looks like he’d drink naturally grown grain whiskey. Likes the finer things, even if he can’t afford them.

Leo considers the mug, then says, “Ice, mostly. Maybe a little bit of sipping chocolate from last night. Will you put that down?” He gestures to the wrench.

I keep blocking the exit. He has nowhere to go in this tight room. Basically a cubby with a bed and a locker.

Leo sees me eyeing the button. Shrugs. “Don’t worry, I won’t. I have a feeling I’d be dead by the time the guard comes around to check on me. And you’d be long gone somewhere in the . . .” he trails off. Considers me. “Bone storage bins?”

Shake my head.

“Pantry? Though that would be quite cold. No? Air ventilation? Your lip twitched. I’m close. I’ll keep at it, but in the meantime, care to tell me what your plan is here?”

I don’t want to hurt anyone else for Kuiper. Guilt is a lead weight dragging me into the cosmic void.

“I need to plant my brother.”

“Brother? Now that’s a word you don’t hear very often.”

“Twin,” I add.

“Quite incredible.”

The tech to regrow our loved ones came at the cost of our reproductive freedom. The word sibling is all but foreign now. Each family is allotted one child, even if they’ll never get to plant.

“How did your mother do it?” Leo asks.

“Gave birth to us at home in secret under a veil of sickness. Presented Kuiper to the Census Bureau. Better to have a son than a daughter. For twelve years, my parents took no visitors. Locked me in the house. Just in case.”

In my comfortable prison, Father passed down his mechanic skills. Mother taught me to fight. By the time I was twelve and past legal euthanasia age, I knew the difference between side milling and facing. Had opinions on isogrid usage. Could run laps around any fresh face who thought they could be a metal basher just because they had muscle.

Father debuted me to the Census Bureau in a flourish of worth and they begrudged me beneficial to society. Gave me a government name and ID. Sent me to swing hammers on the docks. Metalwork in my blood.

But not before they made me make an example of Father.

Said he didn’t need a tongue to work the docks. They forced me to rip it out with stripped pliers. It tore in half like thermal foam board. Spurted like Capitoline Square’s fountain. Saw blood every time I closed my eyes for weeks.

“It must have been a shock when you saw the station for the first time.”

“My brother would sneak me out sometimes. Late at night when  everyone was sleeping.”

Cassini was beautiful when I was young. All her levels and zones. Hundreds of micro-worlds on one metal planet. Black markets and dance clubs. Alive, even at night. “I was in awe. At first.”

“And now?”

“Not what I thought it was.”

“Humanity is, or at least I’ve found it to be, rather self-important,” Leo says. He gestures around the room again. He likes his hand gestures. “Not the best leg room in the house, but we can make it work. Bunk up like old uni pals.”

He sits on the bed with a lopsided grin. “This isn’t a con, so stop looking around. It makes me uneasy. Will you sit? Have a drink?” He points to a nutrient bar on his bed and adds, “Hungry?”

I slide down onto the floor. Back against the door. Nod, and all but drool as I catch the protein bar. Chuckle when I read the wrapper: turkey-flavored PeaPro. It’s grainy and hard. Tastes like everything I’m leaving behind. Whole lot of nothing.

“Why would you help me?” I ask.

“A woman so desperate to plant her twin brother that she wrestles her way onto a planting ship and hides for days in a . . . maintenance shaft?”

I nod. Close enough.

Leo claps his hands together, whiskey sloshing above the mug. “How could I not help? Yours is a story! I never plant anyone half as interesting.”

I rock back against the door. “You’re with the Planting Commission?”

“No, no. I’m a gardener.”

He takes a long drink. Eyes closed, sigh deep.

Gardener. This man nurtures seedlings into human flesh. Stem cells into heartbeats. Our loved ones flourish or wither under his fingertips.

A tether floats before me, offering to pull me back in from the void. I store Father’s wrench in my bag. Whisper, “I was selfish in the womb. Siphoned more nutrients than Kuiper. He was sick because of it. Because of me. No one past level six can afford that kind of medicine.”

I hold out my hand. Welcome the whiskey. “He never blamed me, but if my parents had just gotten rid of me when I was still cells . . . he could have grown to be anything. Go anywhere. I never made enough to pay for the good meds. Always saving for them, but the cost kept rising.”

I finish the booze in one gulp. It’s expensive. Still burns all the way down.

* * *

“I have my PhD in regenerative medicine,” Leo says on our fourth day together. “I used to work in the designer genetics labs on Mars, but it brought me little joy. I transferred to Europa because I wanted to garden. To bring people back to their families.”

“Will you really plant him?”

“I will watch over your brother as if he were my own.”

“Why?”

“My daughter was three when the Census Bureau found her,” he says. Opens another bottle of whiskey. Doesn’t bother to pour it into a mug. We’re lips to bottleneck now. His throat bobs. Releases a pleasurable exhale.

“I remember the way her fingers wrapped around my thumb. All five! My thumb filled her whole palm, you see? She was born small. Not enough nutrients to go around. Just like your Kuiper. But she was perfect. The Bureau took one look at her and said she was a burden. A burden! Can you imagine? Something so little and full of joy? They don’t understand joy. They think it’s progress, but it’s not. It’s tiny fingers around thumbs. And so, I will plant your brother, Ceres. And you will come to visit, now and then, as he grows. He’ll hold your thumb in his fingers, stem in the ground. And you’ll promise me you’ll never let him go.”

“I promise.”

“When he grows,” Leo says again, with a hiccup.

* * *

Europa is a planet of module domes. Each geodesic structure connected by clear tubes that gaze at endless space. Saddled up to The Siren, our transit tube keeps the oxygen in.

No one spares me a second glance as we line up to exit. Stoic and solemn. This is a mourner ship, after all.

The captain absently nods at passengers as they go by. Busy chattering with her crew at the bottom of the ramp.

My palms grow slick with sweat. I shuffle out the boarding doors. Down the ramp.

If she looks. If she notices . . .

Her eyes skim over me. Don’t stick. My heart jolts up my throat.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Into the tube. Seen so many ads for planting I can picture myself in the gardens. Imagine the loamy smells of growth.

“You there, halt!”

I freeze in place. Know the order is for me. Leo’s head turns. Just enough to see over his shoulder. I will him to leave me behind.

“That’s her! She’s got illegal bones!”

Security swarms me in seconds.

I take a blow to the back of the leg. Down on my knees. Pushed, face to the synthetic ground.

They cuff me. Search my pack. Find nothing but empty bottles. No trinkets or bones.

Leo disappears through Europa’s entry doors.

* * *

Elisa paints my nails opalescent blue. They shimmer like young stars, burning bright in their nebula nurseries. She pulls her sweater tight around her shoulders. It’s always cold in Cassini’s penitentiary.

She kisses my palm when she finishes. Says what she always says when our time is up. “Same time next week?”

“You know where to find me.”

She passes me a letter with a wink. Leaves the tin sentry to guide me through ill-lit corridors. My cell is nothing but a mattress and a hole for excrement. I lay back on the bed and unfold the paper. Cramped, messy letters tell me Kuiper is four feet long. All his organs in place. Sometimes things look a little different when you’re regrown. Broad nose instead of button. Few inches taller or shorter. But Leo assures me Kuiper is healthy. This next phase is the hardest, though. Memories gotta sort themselves out through the databank.

But with time, he will wake.

No sickness. No ties to Cassini Station. To me. Maybe he’ll salvage debris in the outer asteroids. Or rise above our station and fly transports on Titan. Stay on Europa and garden with Leo.

Soon, he will wake.

And he will be free to dream of worlds yet unknown.