So that’s how it got its name.
* * *
—
Marley Layton is a Hella-year older than me. A smidge more than that. Her parents came out on the ninth voyage, mine came out on the tenth. Marley was born here. Mom popped me out two months before docking orbit. So Marley acts like she’s better than me, like it counts extra being here-born. Except she’s not truly here-born. She was grown in a bottle—one of the first bottle babies after the human wing of the nursery was opened. Pregnancy is supposed to be easier in lighter gravity, but I never heard anyone say it was easy, so that’s why they imported the nursery.
Jamie says that Marley was grown in a bottle because none of her three moms wanted to carry her for 280 Earth-days. Like they knew ahead of time what she was going to grow into. But me, I think she’s the way she is because her family always told her that she was special and made such a big thing of it that she believes it’s really true, and that’s why she acts the way she does, everywhere.
Marley is also a half-meter taller than me. Taller than everyone almost. She’d be bigger than that, except they finally turned off her growth hormone. Her primary dad calls her a “Hella Dolly.” I guess that’s supposed to be funny. That’s something else I looked up. That’s silly too.
When there’s nobody around to see—except the cameras, which nobody looks at unless there’s a reason—Marley bumps into me, hard. She hits and punches too. Mom knows I don’t like her, but I don’t think she knows why. She keeps telling me I have to be nice because her dad is a third-term administrator and we need him to be friendly to us. I don’t understand, but Mom says it’s important, so I try to keep out of Marley’s way as much as I can.
Only thing is, Marley acts like privileges are inherited, not earned. She has lousy scores in all the service domains, so even though she’s six years old, Hella-years (that’s sixteen Earth-years), she still hasn’t gotten to go outside, not even a ride-along with her dad. And I guess she resents that. Everyone else her age is already pulling time.
So that’s why Marley bumped into the table and accidentally-on-purpose dumped my dinner in my lap. “Oops,” she said. “I’m sorry. I am sooo clumsy.” She used that really snotty voice that meant she was anything but sorry. But she made a mistake. She did it in front of Mom. There’s a lot of things Mom will put up with—but this wasn’t one of them.
“Go clean up,” she snapped at me, and then she had Marley by the arm, dragging her out of the cafeteria and off toward Admin. Marley wailed the whole way. “I didn’t do anything—”
A shower and a clean longshirt later, I was back in the cafeteria line. This time I skipped the smashed potatoes and gravy. I wasn’t really hungry anymore, but if I didn’t eat I’d hear about it from both Mom and Captain Skyler.
Jubilee Pershing slid into the seat opposite me, clattering her tray onto the table. I don’t hang out with Jubilee, she talks too much, but she seems to know everything about everyone, so she’s interesting that way. “So while you were freshing—” she began. “Your Mom took Marley straight to the Councilor offices and registered an official complaint. Deliberate public assault. And they have to accept the complaint because there’s a video record.” She nodded toward the ceiling camera. “In fact, your mom—she’s so cool, you are so lucky—demanded a search of all the video records to prove a pattern of assault against all the littl’uns.”
I didn’t say anything. I just took another bite and chewed slowly. This was a trick I learned from Mom. You’re not supposed to talk with your mouth full, so if you take a bite and chew slowly, you have lots of time to think. I took a big bite.
Finally, I said, “Hm.”
Then I took a drink of water. “That’s going to be interesting.” That was another trick I learned from Mom. Don’t volunteer anything. Let the other person do all the talking. Most people can’t stand silence, so they have to fill it up with their own words.
Jubilee liked talking anyway, so she didn’t notice that I wasn’t saying anything. She went on happily. “You know, they’ll have to restrict her. They’re certainly going to take her off the soccer team. First, she breaks your brother’s leg, then she—oh, you didn’t know about that? She was fouling him the whole game. She got thrown out finally, but not before she pushed him over a bench—”
“Marley broke his leg?” Jamie didn’t tell me that. “Why?”
“I dunno. I guess she had an extra big bowl of grumpy-flakes this morning. I heard she wanted to go out on some big ride-along, but even her dad said no. She didn’t have enough points and your brother had seniority anyway and—I guess she was angry about that. Jealous.”
Oh. Now it made sense. I didn’t say it aloud. If Jamie gets hurt, she’s next in line. Except it didn’t happen that way, I got chosen instead. Marley got mad, and I got a lapful of dinner. And Mom probably knew the whole story. Jamie’s dad too. And certainly Captain Skyler. That’s probably why he skipped over Marley in the first place.
I decided I wasn’t hungry anymore. I put my sandwich down so I could think. The noise wasn’t a lot of help. But I was getting better at figuring out these kinds of things.
This wasn’t about the ride-along anymore. It was about me now. Whatever punishment the Councilors might give Marley, she would blame it on Jamie and me and Mom.
But it wasn’t just us. Some people thought that Marley might be responsible for a lot of other bad behaviors. There had been vandalism and theft all summer long but always out of camera view so nobody could prove anything. But also, maybe if anyone actually knew anything, they might be more afraid of her dad than her.
Jubilee stopped talking long enough to drink her fruit juice. “You didn’t hear this from me, but some people are already talking beyond restriction. They think Marley’s going to end up an exile. She is sooo out of control.”
“That would be very hard to do,” I said. It’s the kind of thing I say when I don’t know what else to say. I wondered if I would vote to put her outside. Yes, I was upset about having to wash my dinner off my lap, but that wasn’t bad enough for me to vote to put her outside. I knew what Jamie would say. He’d make a joke. It would be too dangerous—for Hella. Our local predators would get food poisoning.
Sometimes people say that there’s another colony somewhere in the northwest, maybe in the jumble just beyond where we send our drones. Supposedly, they’re people who went missing and are now living in caves. Supposedly they’re eating local fish and fruits. Nobody knows if it’s true, or if it is, nobody will say, but if someone is actually surviving outside, without any resources except their own brains, that would be important, wouldn’t it? So I guess a lot of people want to believe it’s possible, because they want to believe that human beings are essentially meaner and nastier than anything Hella can throw at us.