Page 62 of To the Moon and Back
STEPH EMERGENCY
That night, I heard sirens.
I waited to hear the others get up and do something, to hold me back from undoing what I’d set in motion. Allison knew what I had done. Nadia would guess. But to Aziz and Jed and Adisu, I hoped to appear innocent.
Downstairs, Allison stood by the door. She was dressed and alert, with her hair in a tight, low braid. She looked out the window, walkie-talkie in hand. She spoke into it, her voice firm and clear. Calm.
Lights flashed blue and red; they shot through the porthole and across our walls.
I ran for the porthole. I cupped my hands against the glass, like binoculars. Beside me, Allison described the scene to mission control.
Outside the hab, the protesters were outnumbered.
The police wore armor and helmets, gas masks, and they looked out through the scratched polycarbonate of five-foot shields.
They stood in front of the entrance to the hab, blocking our solar panels with a line of police cars, a fire engine, and a tanker truck.
They walked into the line of protesters, forcing them back.
Where was my sister? What had I done?
I heard a door slam at the top of the stairs. Adisu. Soon my crewmates would be all around me, telling me what to think. His pajama shirt was wrinkled. He looked exhausted. “Steph, not again,” he said, like I’d invited guests.
Outside the hab, the protesters faced the police. They held their hands up in the air and chanted, or sang, or maybe prayed.
An officer gripped a megaphone. He said, “Stand back, stand back. We don’t want anyone to get hurt tonight! Stand back.”
I looked past the police, at the people who gave most of a year for this. I saw the children they’d brought with them, and two elders in camping chairs sitting quietly at the edge of the crowd. I hated that they’d brought children, who hadn’t really had a choice.
The protesters moved in practiced rows. Stepping forward, gaining ground, till the police pushed them back again. They fell back, then stepped forward again.
Someone threw a rock. It clicked against a police shield, low and heavy.
There she was, my sister, dressed for battle.
Her arms were protected in a black leather jacket, her legs hidden in the folds of a red ribbon skirt.
She had pinned her hair close to her head.
The triangle of a floral silk handkerchief was tied over her nose and mouth.
For a moment she stood quietly, touching foreheads with Diana.
I tensed at that, how Diana gave my sister a comfort I never could. But so many people had. It must not have been such a hard thing to do.
In another life, I could be standing at my sister’s side, shoulders bumping on the front lines, watching over her.
I could have a daughter, most realistically with the physicist; she could be six by now.
Reading age. Safe at home. But if she were here, somehow, I’d take her elbow and hold her body behind mine.
She’d look up at Kayla, her aunt; she’d hold the hand of Felicia, her cousin. We would all step forward together.
In this life, real life, I was a still, dark shape blocking yellow light from a porthole at the bottom of a dome.
Allison was a few feet to my side, eyes focused and arms crossed, still speaking into the walkie-talkie.
Adisu and Jed and Aziz and Nadia, even Nadia, huddled together on the other side of the hab. The farthest possible point from me.
I pressed my head closer to the glass. I held my palm against it.
A shadow passed over the blue-red light of the sirens. There was a firetruck, then the turning of a crank against its side.
I heard the roar of water, and saw it shoot through the crowd. People fell. They shouted for it to stop. They pulled one another to their feet and fell down again. They stood again. They ran in all directions.
My sister did not run. She linked arms with people who were strangers to me. The strangers screamed into one another’s faces. Eyes closed, mouths open, chests pushed back with the force of water.
Behind my sister, behind a wall of women, I found her. Felicia crawled forward on her knees.