In Her Name

“There is not much to it, really,” she said at last, embarrassed at the rapt attention the others were giving her and saddened at having to recount her recent past, “but I will tell it to you, if that is what you wish.”

She paused for a moment, her mind caught on the realization that she had never really related to anyone what had happened. No one had ever asked or seemed to care, outside of establishing the simple fact that her parents were dead. The adults saw Nicole as just one more burden to be tended by the state until she was old enough to take care of herself or serve in the government or the military. The looks and rote lines of compassion she had received from the endless bureaucratic chain had once been sincere, she thought. But after hearing the same stories and seeing the same young faces thousands of times over, the orphans had become a commodity of war, and the compassion the administrators might once have felt had long since given way to weariness.

Yet here, in this group of children, total strangers with only tragedy to bind them together, she found an audience for her grief, and it was almost too much to bear.

“I come from La Seyne,” she began, her eyes fixed on the table before her, “one of the provincial capitals of Ariane. It is a pretty place,” she said, briefly glancing up at the others and giving them a quick, shy smile, as if they would hold the claim of her homeworld’s beauty against her. But their attention was rapt, their minds already far away from Hallmark, imagining to themselves what such a place might be like, a place that to them was equivalent to the paradise of the gods. “The Kreelans have never successfully attacked it, though they have tried several times.

“Papa is…” she bit her lip, “…was a master shipfitter, and he decided that we should have a vacation away from home this year, to get away from the yards for a while. He told Mama that we should go to Earth. He wanted us to see Paris, a place he always talked about – he had grown up there – but we had never seen it, Mama and I having been born on La Seyne. He never stopped talking about the wonderful tower, La Tour Eiffel that had been built before the days of artificial gravity and load lifters. He spoke of the lights at night, of the buildings that dated back to the times of great kings and queens. And so we boarded a starliner for Earth. There were three other ships in our little convoy, two merchantmen and a light cruiser.”

Reza saw her eyes mist over, her gaze somewhere far away. God, he thought, how many times have I had to see this? And how many more times before I can leave this godforsaken place? Under the table, he sought out one of her hands and took it in his. She held it tightly.

She nodded as her mind sifted through the images of times she wished she could forget. “We were only two days out from La Seyne when the convoy was attacked. I do not know how many enemy ships there were, or exactly what happened. I suppose it does not matter. Our ship, the Il de France, was badly hit soon after the alarms sounded, and Papa went aft to the engineering spaces to try and help them.” Her lower lip trembled as a tear streaked down her face. “We never saw him after that.”

She paused a moment, her eyes closed as she remembered her father’s parting hug to her and her mother before he ran down the companionway with the frightened young petty officer. “The ship kept getting hit like it was being pounded with a great hammer. Either the bridge was destroyed, or perhaps the speaker system was damaged, because the order to abandon ship never came, even though we knew for sure that the hull had been breached in many places. Mama, who herself had never been on a ship before, did not seem scared at all, like she had been through it all many times in her head as she worked in the kitchen at home, making Papa’s supper. When the normal lights went out and the emergency lights came on, she said only, ‘We are leaving,’ and took me by the hand to where one of the lifeboats was still docked.” A sob caught her breath, but she forced herself to get on with it. “But the boat was already filled, except for one seat. But the aisle down the middle was clear. ‘Look, Mama,’ I told her, ‘there is plenty of room for us.’

“But I did not know that these boats had no artificial gravity, and that anyone not in a seat might be killed during the launch. I did not hear the warning the boat was giving in Standard. There was so much noise coming from our dying ship, and Mama spoke only French. She made me take the seat and she knelt in the aisle, praying, when the door closed. I… I blacked out after that. And when I woke up, she… she…”

Nicole collapsed in wracking sobs, the guilt and loss that had been eating away at her heart finally exposed. But a part – be it ever so tiny – of the burden had been lifted from her shoulders. She felt the comforting touch of caring hands as the others extended their sympathy, and Reza wrapped his arm around her shoulder, drawing her to him.

“It’s all right,” he said softly. “It wasn’t your fault–”

“But the warning,” she gasped angrily. “I knew Standard! I should have listened! I could have saved her!”

“And where would that have left your mom?” asked Tamil, an acne-scarred girl with hair cropped close to her skull. “Back on the ship to get spaced when the hull gave way?”

“I would have stayed with her!” Nicole shouted defiantly. “At least we all would have been together.”

Tamil shook her head. “She wouldn’t have let you, girl, and you know it.” While she was not very old when her own mother had died, Tamil remembered her mother well, and how she had saved her daughter’s life at the cost of her own. “She would have knocked you over the head and strapped you into that last seat to save you, if it came down to it. She loved you. She wouldn’t have let you die.”

That remark was met with nods and murmurs of agreement from the others.

Nicole suddenly understood that a consensus had been reached, and the look of sympathy in their eyes was joined by something akin to forgiveness. It was a tacit understanding that Fate was to blame. There was nothing she could have done to avert the tragedy that had taken her family away. More than that, they had accepted her. She was one of them now, if she wanted to be. Thinking back to what Muldoon had done, she gave thanks to God for her good fortune.

“Listen,” Reza told her, “the pain… never really goes away. But you learn to deal with it.” His voice was nearly lost in the background banter and clatter of nearly a thousand spoons scraping the remnants of the evening meal from the trays of House 48, her new home. “You have to, if you want to get out of this lousy place in one piece. If you don’t, people like Muldoon and some of the kids here will use you and throw you away like a toilet wipe. And you’ve got friends now to help.”

“Besides,” said a short, stocky red-haired girl two seats down from Reza, “you’re a short timer. What are you, fourteen, or so?” Nicole nodded. “Jesus, Nicole, you’ve got less than a year here until you’re fifteen and you can apply for one of the academies. You look like you’re pretty sharp and in good shape. They’ll probably take you. If you don’t,” she shrugged, “you’ll just have to wait it out until you’re seventeen.”

“Fifteen,” she lamented. “It is forever.” The thought of spending the next six months here until her fifteenth birthday was appalling, but having to wait until she was seventeen was simply unbearable. Strangely, applying to one of the academies was a thought that had never occurred to her in her former life. La Seyne was very traditional, clinging to many of the ancient Western traditions brought by its early settlers. Most of the women born there spent their lives caring for their husbands and raising their children, any thoughts of becoming a “professional” being scorned as sacrilegiously self-serving. But, to get out of here in six months instead of two and a half years, she was more than willing to abandon tradition.

“It’s a lot less than I’ve had to spend on this rock,” Reza said darkly, his pre-pubescent voice carrying the resignation of the damned. His eyes blazed so fiercely that they burned her with shame for thinking that the paltry time she would have to spend here was unendurable. Reza had been here for some time before she had arrived, and would still be here after she had gone.

“Please,” she choked, suddenly flushing with empathy for him, for all of them, “forgive me. I did not mean it that way.” She reached out and gently stroked his cheek with her hand. “Mon Dieu,” she whispered, “how horrible.”

Reza shrugged, his face dropping its melancholy veil. “It could be worse,” he said. “At least it’s not like for some of the really little kids who came here without even remembering or knowing their parents, like little Darrow over there.” A tiny black boy a few seats down nodded heartily and gave her an enchanting smile. “At least we knew our parents and can remember them.”

Nicole nodded thoughtfully as Reza turned his attention back to the others.

“Does anybody else have anything?” He looked around the table like a chairman of the board or councilman, his eyes intense pools of jade. “Okay, that’s it, then, except to remind you that we’re on alert for Muldoon and his slugs. Nobody goes anywhere alone, so stay with your blockmates. Jam your doors when you go to sleep and don’t open them again until your team leader – Thad, Henson, or Charles – comes to pick you up in the morning. Little