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Fiction

Nothing to Declare

By Anabel Enríquez Piñeiro
Translated from Spanish by Hillary Gulley
Listen in original language
 
 

Father traded his life savings for this hole in the waste-recycling compartment. Of course there’s not much space. Anela, Soulness, and I are getting cramped arms and stiff necks, we’re steeping in each other’s hot breath. But we couldn’t have asked for more from our old man. Trembling, he placed the two mega-credits in the spaceport attendant’s gloved hands. He trembled because he feared our trip would be thwarted and we’d have no chance at a second escape; he trembled because his dream of sending us away from that hellhole and back to the origin was finally coming true; he trembled because his mining fever was consuming his peripheral nerves.

He couldn’t even say good-bye to us. The day before the freighter left, they shipped him off with his team to the new mines some seven miles north of the old mining homestead, where earthquakes had ripped open fresh veins of tin. Fortunately, no one will ever make us “lick” them again. We no longer have to fear the eruptions on Io’s mining farms that scorched our skin, or the plumes of sulfur that burned our eyes and soured our lungs.

Now Io is below us, behind us, like the spherical prison of a thousand famished dragons locked in a never-ending battle. This freighter is wrenching us from its jaws forever . . . and away from Father’s never-failing goodnight kisses. We’re bound for Earth to see for ourselves that it’s not just some fairy tale we’ve heard since our eyes opened to Io’s red sky. As descendants of settlers turned slaves, of slaves turned “automats,” cheaper and more vulnerable than the cyborgs, we have no way out of this flaming nightmare other than in the waste compartments of freighters that transport minerals and prime materials from the outer colonies to Earth.

Earth, the object of our great-grandfather’s delirious nostalgia after he abandoned it for his pipe dream of prosperity. His sole legacy to us was the constant struggle to survive in a world forever collapsing beneath our feet. And the same nostalgia. Over and over, Anela draws a city with white towers and streaming flags set on a green lake, she fills the sky with birds as if they were snowflakes. She says that’s how our great-grandfather described it to Grandfather, and how Grandfather described it to Father, and how Father described it to her; it’s just like where our ancestors lived, the place we’ve been longing for.

Anela is sleeping now, nestled against my shoulder, and from time to time she murmurs, repeating the word she can’t forget, even in her dreams: snow. The snow on Earth, white like the commander’s teeth, cold like methane crystals. Now Soulness is telling me that Anela is very hot, hotter than lava, and that instead of talking in her sleep, she might be delirious. She’s hungry, I say. We have just enough food for one ration a day. My belly is rumbling, too. I try to distract Soulness and Anela by talking about that thing Father heard about from his grandfather, a kind of snow that you eat—I think it’s called ice cream. We’ll buy some for Anela with our first paychecks, I say. The Production Ring encircling Earth has people from every colony, including Io. I know someone will help us out, just like Father promised. But Soulness seems restless, and starts to complain that he feels sick, like he’s about to throw up. He’s only a child, after all—the two years between us make a big difference. He asks if we can find a place with more air. He thinks that if we can find other “slick fish” they might be able to give us some medicine. I say it’s more likely that they’ll rob us blind and kill us, simply out of fear of being discovered. But Soulness whines and whines and my temples are about to explode.

We leave the recycling compartment and carefully follow the path the commander showed us before sneaking us into our hiding place. We’re scared the freighter is infested with cyber-guards controlling the corridors, that they’ll detect us and alert the helm. Up there, the clean, well-fed voyagers are enjoying a view of our slow approach to Earth. One day I’ll be the commander of a freighter—or even better, a civil cruiser. And I’ll always be the first to see her, robed in blue and white like the bride of the heavens. But for now, we’re stowaways, and no slick fish ever travels in first class. The freighter is carrying iron, tin, and sulfur to the Production Ring. It’s a regular shipment, so there won’t be any customs checks. Nothing to declare. Just the goods and us, holding fast to the moving containers. I hope our old oxygen masks will hold up for the one-hundred-and-thirty feet of void during ejection to the warehouses.

I look at Soulness again. He’s sweating buckets and his labored breath is hot against my ears. Anela squirms in my arms and whimpers. I can feel the weight of her four years, even if she’s mostly bone; her little brown face is drenched in sweat. I, on the other hand, feel a deep chill and a weariness that keeps my feet pegged to the floor. Soulness squeezes my arm and says he gives up; he’s too weak to go on. I say we can rest, but I won’t open another food packet. I’m the oldest, and I have to enforce our schedule. Speaking of enforcement, I’m surprised by the low lighting in the corridors, by the lack of cyber-guards, and by the fact that we haven’t come across any other slick fish after nearly an hour of wandering this labyrinth. Soulness seizes up, doubles over, and vomits. We know nothing about the effects of this journey, but they say it’s normal for first-timers to get sick. Anela is still limp in my arms and doesn’t even try to join in when I sing one of her favorite songs: Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow . . . Or was it a little calf? Same thing. Anela sleeps and whimpers. Soulness, white as a sulfur plume but feeling relieved, wants to try his luck with the door at the end of the corridor. He thinks it might lead to the bodegas where we can find provisions. He goes off to investigate, led by his little blinking flashlight, while I cover Anela with my jacket. Blue circles are forming under my sister’s eyes. My heart is seized by something frigid, and I recognize the cold fingers of fear.

After a while Soulness staggers back, his eyes like the double full moons of Jupiter in Io’s sky. His dirty and trembling body seems twice as old as its eight years. I barely manage to pry the words from his lips, which are rigid with terror. They’re all dead in there . . . the four slick fish kids who were traveling in the hygiene compartment. They’re decomposing, and their bones look like they’re melting, and their skin—Shut up, I whisper through my teeth. Don’t scare Anela. But he knows I believe him and that our sister isn’t listening. Her little face with its absent expression is fading into the darkness.

I thrust Anela into my brother’s arms. I’m going to find someone from the crew. Let them send me back to Io or some other extraction colony. I just want to save my sister. To save us all. Soulness lets out a moan and I snarl back at him. I grab him by his collar still wet with his own bile, and my fingers get caught in his long hair. A chunk of it falls out in my hand like a strand of shadow. I have to go find help.

I race through corridors barely lit by the reflection of some hidden source against the synth-metal that converts the darkness to shadows. At the helm there’s no navigator—just a cyber-console—and all the seats are empty. There’s not a single human on the ship besides us. There aren’t even automats, or food, or medicine, because there’s no crew that would use them.

I go back for Anela and Soulness. Just as I’m passing what looks like the doors to the bodega, a reflective red sign painted on the synth-metal catches my eye. I don’t know how to read—none of us do—but I recognize the shape of old propeller blades inside a triangle, the foreboding barred circle with a black skull. Now I understand: this isn’t a freighter loaded with metal and byproducts bound for Earth. We’re traveling with toxic waste from the other colonies to another planet . . . probably Venus, the solar landfill. I suddenly remember all those times I saw freighters dock at Io and take off with slick fish from the satellite’s Equatorial Station. They, like us, would never know whether Earth is as blue as people say.

Anela and Soulness are still conscious. Anela looks at me with eyes like lunar eclipses and stretches out her arms. I help Soulness to his feet and support his trembling body against my shoulder. Let’s go to the helm, I say. Soulness murmurs something about finding help. We’ll be OK up there, I tell him, it’s the best place to receive our welcome from Earth, robed in blue and white like the cosmic bride of Time. Soulness barely manages to force his purple lips into a smile. Anela has fallen asleep again, maybe for the last time.

At the helm, I help Soulness into a seat. I sit beside him, with Anela in my arms, and hold his icy hand. Maybe this is where the commander used to sit, back when this freighter brought life to Earth. I imagine myself as him, delivering my brother, my sister, my father, and all of Io’s children to the city with the white towers on a green lake. I fight the permanent sleep that’s overtaking me. I want to see Earth . . . just long enough to wink at her . . . We’ll be passing by . . . with nothing to declare.

“Nada que declarer” © Anabel Enríquez Piñeiro. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2016 by Hillary Gulley. All rights reserved.

English Spanish (Original)

Father traded his life savings for this hole in the waste-recycling compartment. Of course there’s not much space. Anela, Soulness, and I are getting cramped arms and stiff necks, we’re steeping in each other’s hot breath. But we couldn’t have asked for more from our old man. Trembling, he placed the two mega-credits in the spaceport attendant’s gloved hands. He trembled because he feared our trip would be thwarted and we’d have no chance at a second escape; he trembled because his dream of sending us away from that hellhole and back to the origin was finally coming true; he trembled because his mining fever was consuming his peripheral nerves.

He couldn’t even say good-bye to us. The day before the freighter left, they shipped him off with his team to the new mines some seven miles north of the old mining homestead, where earthquakes had ripped open fresh veins of tin. Fortunately, no one will ever make us “lick” them again. We no longer have to fear the eruptions on Io’s mining farms that scorched our skin, or the plumes of sulfur that burned our eyes and soured our lungs.

Now Io is below us, behind us, like the spherical prison of a thousand famished dragons locked in a never-ending battle. This freighter is wrenching us from its jaws forever . . . and away from Father’s never-failing goodnight kisses. We’re bound for Earth to see for ourselves that it’s not just some fairy tale we’ve heard since our eyes opened to Io’s red sky. As descendants of settlers turned slaves, of slaves turned “automats,” cheaper and more vulnerable than the cyborgs, we have no way out of this flaming nightmare other than in the waste compartments of freighters that transport minerals and prime materials from the outer colonies to Earth.

Earth, the object of our great-grandfather’s delirious nostalgia after he abandoned it for his pipe dream of prosperity. His sole legacy to us was the constant struggle to survive in a world forever collapsing beneath our feet. And the same nostalgia. Over and over, Anela draws a city with white towers and streaming flags set on a green lake, she fills the sky with birds as if they were snowflakes. She says that’s how our great-grandfather described it to Grandfather, and how Grandfather described it to Father, and how Father described it to her; it’s just like where our ancestors lived, the place we’ve been longing for.

Anela is sleeping now, nestled against my shoulder, and from time to time she murmurs, repeating the word she can’t forget, even in her dreams: snow. The snow on Earth, white like the commander’s teeth, cold like methane crystals. Now Soulness is telling me that Anela is very hot, hotter than lava, and that instead of talking in her sleep, she might be delirious. She’s hungry, I say. We have just enough food for one ration a day. My belly is rumbling, too. I try to distract Soulness and Anela by talking about that thing Father heard about from his grandfather, a kind of snow that you eat—I think it’s called ice cream. We’ll buy some for Anela with our first paychecks, I say. The Production Ring encircling Earth has people from every colony, including Io. I know someone will help us out, just like Father promised. But Soulness seems restless, and starts to complain that he feels sick, like he’s about to throw up. He’s only a child, after all—the two years between us make a big difference. He asks if we can find a place with more air. He thinks that if we can find other “slick fish” they might be able to give us some medicine. I say it’s more likely that they’ll rob us blind and kill us, simply out of fear of being discovered. But Soulness whines and whines and my temples are about to explode.

We leave the recycling compartment and carefully follow the path the commander showed us before sneaking us into our hiding place. We’re scared the freighter is infested with cyber-guards controlling the corridors, that they’ll detect us and alert the helm. Up there, the clean, well-fed voyagers are enjoying a view of our slow approach to Earth. One day I’ll be the commander of a freighter—or even better, a civil cruiser. And I’ll always be the first to see her, robed in blue and white like the bride of the heavens. But for now, we’re stowaways, and no slick fish ever travels in first class. The freighter is carrying iron, tin, and sulfur to the Production Ring. It’s a regular shipment, so there won’t be any customs checks. Nothing to declare. Just the goods and us, holding fast to the moving containers. I hope our old oxygen masks will hold up for the one-hundred-and-thirty feet of void during ejection to the warehouses.

I look at Soulness again. He’s sweating buckets and his labored breath is hot against my ears. Anela squirms in my arms and whimpers. I can feel the weight of her four years, even if she’s mostly bone; her little brown face is drenched in sweat. I, on the other hand, feel a deep chill and a weariness that keeps my feet pegged to the floor. Soulness squeezes my arm and says he gives up; he’s too weak to go on. I say we can rest, but I won’t open another food packet. I’m the oldest, and I have to enforce our schedule. Speaking of enforcement, I’m surprised by the low lighting in the corridors, by the lack of cyber-guards, and by the fact that we haven’t come across any other slick fish after nearly an hour of wandering this labyrinth. Soulness seizes up, doubles over, and vomits. We know nothing about the effects of this journey, but they say it’s normal for first-timers to get sick. Anela is still limp in my arms and doesn’t even try to join in when I sing one of her favorite songs: Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow . . . Or was it a little calf? Same thing. Anela sleeps and whimpers. Soulness, white as a sulfur plume but feeling relieved, wants to try his luck with the door at the end of the corridor. He thinks it might lead to the bodegas where we can find provisions. He goes off to investigate, led by his little blinking flashlight, while I cover Anela with my jacket. Blue circles are forming under my sister’s eyes. My heart is seized by something frigid, and I recognize the cold fingers of fear.

After a while Soulness staggers back, his eyes like the double full moons of Jupiter in Io’s sky. His dirty and trembling body seems twice as old as its eight years. I barely manage to pry the words from his lips, which are rigid with terror. They’re all dead in there . . . the four slick fish kids who were traveling in the hygiene compartment. They’re decomposing, and their bones look like they’re melting, and their skin—Shut up, I whisper through my teeth. Don’t scare Anela. But he knows I believe him and that our sister isn’t listening. Her little face with its absent expression is fading into the darkness.

I thrust Anela into my brother’s arms. I’m going to find someone from the crew. Let them send me back to Io or some other extraction colony. I just want to save my sister. To save us all. Soulness lets out a moan and I snarl back at him. I grab him by his collar still wet with his own bile, and my fingers get caught in his long hair. A chunk of it falls out in my hand like a strand of shadow. I have to go find help.

I race through corridors barely lit by the reflection of some hidden source against the synth-metal that converts the darkness to shadows. At the helm there’s no navigator—just a cyber-console—and all the seats are empty. There’s not a single human on the ship besides us. There aren’t even automats, or food, or medicine, because there’s no crew that would use them.

I go back for Anela and Soulness. Just as I’m passing what looks like the doors to the bodega, a reflective red sign painted on the synth-metal catches my eye. I don’t know how to read—none of us do—but I recognize the shape of old propeller blades inside a triangle, the foreboding barred circle with a black skull. Now I understand: this isn’t a freighter loaded with metal and byproducts bound for Earth. We’re traveling with toxic waste from the other colonies to another planet . . . probably Venus, the solar landfill. I suddenly remember all those times I saw freighters dock at Io and take off with slick fish from the satellite’s Equatorial Station. They, like us, would never know whether Earth is as blue as people say.

Anela and Soulness are still conscious. Anela looks at me with eyes like lunar eclipses and stretches out her arms. I help Soulness to his feet and support his trembling body against my shoulder. Let’s go to the helm, I say. Soulness murmurs something about finding help. We’ll be OK up there, I tell him, it’s the best place to receive our welcome from Earth, robed in blue and white like the cosmic bride of Time. Soulness barely manages to force his purple lips into a smile. Anela has fallen asleep again, maybe for the last time.

At the helm, I help Soulness into a seat. I sit beside him, with Anela in my arms, and hold his icy hand. Maybe this is where the commander used to sit, back when this freighter brought life to Earth. I imagine myself as him, delivering my brother, my sister, my father, and all of Io’s children to the city with the white towers on a green lake. I fight the permanent sleep that’s overtaking me. I want to see Earth . . . just long enough to wink at her . . . We’ll be passing by . . . with nothing to declare.

“Nada que declarer” © Anabel Enríquez Piñeiro. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2016 by Hillary Gulley. All rights reserved.

Nada que declarer

Padre entregó toda una vida de ahorros a cambio de este hueco en la cámara de reciclaje de desechos. Cierto que es mínimo el espacio. Anela, Soulness y yo sentimos calambres en los brazos, tensión en el cuello y la respiración caliente de uno sobre los otros. Pero, qué más pedirle al viejo. En las palmas enguantadas del capataz del espaciopuerto sus manos depositaron, temblando, los dos megacréditos. Temblaba porque temía que se frustrara el viaje por algún imprevisto y perdiéramos toda posibilidad de un segundo intento; temblaba por la emoción de cumplir su sueño de vernos partir de aquel infierno y retornar al origen; temblaba porque la fiebre de las canteras consumía sus nervios periféricos.

No pudo siquiera despedirnos. El día antes de la partida del trasbordador fue llevado junto a su cuadrilla hacia las minas recién abiertas, unos diez kilómetros al norte de la granja, donde los sismos habían reventado nuevas vetas de estaño. Por suerte ya ninguno de nosotros volverá a “lamerlas”. No tendremos que temer a las erupciones que chamuscan la piel, ni a las fumarolas de azufre que queman los ojos y pudren los pulmones en las granjas mineras de Io.

Io queda debajo, detrás, como una esfera que encarcela mil hambrientos dragones en perenne batalla. Este carguero nos aleja para siempre de sus fauces . . . y del beso de buenas noches que nunca nos ha dejado de dar Padre. Vamos en el carguero rumbo a la Tierra, a comprobar que no es tan sólo el mito del que hemos oído hablar desde que abrimos los ojos al cielo escarlata de Io. Como descendientes de colonos convertidos en esclavos, de esclavos convertidos en “autómatas,” menos costosos y más desprotegidos que los ciborg, no tenemos otro modo de salir de la pesadilla ardiente si no es en los resquicios de los cargueros que transportan minerales y materias primas desde las colonias exteriores hasta la Tierra.

La Tierra, nostalgia delirante del bisabuelo, la que abandonó por una quimera de prosperidad. A nosotros sólo nos dejó por herencia la continua lucha por sobrevivir en un mundo que se deshace constantemente bajo los pies. Y la misma nostalgia. Anela dibuja, una y otra vez, una ciudad de torres blancas con banderolas sobre un lago de agua verde, y llena el cielo con aves como estrellas de nieve. Dice que así le contaba el bisabuelo al Abuelo, y éste a Padre, y Padre a ella, y así era el lugar donde vivían nuestros antepasados y al que los tres añoramos volver.

Anela duerme ahora, recostada en mi hombro, y algunas veces habla dormida, repitiendo la palabra que tanto le fascina, aun cuando duerme: nieve . . . la nieve de la Tierra, que es blanca como los dientes del capataz de la cuadrilla y fría como cristal de metano. Soulness me distrae con la insistencia de que Anela está muy caliente, “más caliente que lava”; y que tal vez no habla en sueños sino que delira. Es hambre, le respondo. Nuestras reservas de alimentos están justas para una comida diaria. A mí también me percuten las tripas. Trato de distraerlos hablándole de esa cosa que Padre escuchó de su abuelo, que parece nieve y que se come . . . creo que lo llaman “helados”; le compraremos uno a Anela con nuestro primer salario. En el Anillo de Producción que circunda la Tierra hay gente llegada de todas las colonias, incluso de Io. Seguro que nos tenderán una mano, tal como nos prometió Padre. Pero Soulness parece aburrirse, y empieza con la letanía de que siente mareos, con vómitos a punta de labios. Después de todo es sólo un niño: dos años menos cuentan. Me pide que salgamos a un lugar más ventilado. Cree que si encontramos otros “peces pegas” nos ayudarán, si tienen, con alguna medicina. Yo le recuerdo que lo más probable es que nos quiten lo que llevamos y nos maten, por el simple temor a compartir el riesgo de ser descubiertos. Pero Soulness canta y canta y mis sienes están a punto de reventar.

Salimos de la cámara de reciclaje y tomamos con cuidado el estricto itinerario que nos indicó el capataz ante de colarnos en la nave. Tememos que el carguero esté infectado de cibers vigilando los corredores, y que nos detecten para los del puesto de mando. Allí los navegantes, limpios, bien alimentados, disfrutan la experiencia de ver acercarse despacio la Tierra. Algún día yo seré el comandante de un carguero . . . mejor, de un crucero civil. Y seré siempre el primero en verla, arropada con su traje de espuma azul y blanca como si fuera la novia de los cielos. Pero ahora somos polizones, y ningún pez pega viaja en primera clase. El carguero lleva hierro, estaño y azufre para las obras del Anillo. Como carga programada entrará sin problemas ni chequeos en aduana. Nada que declarar. Nosotros con la carga, asidos a los contenedores autónomos. Espero que nuestras viejas máscaras resistan el paso desde la esclusa hasta los almacenes, unos cuarenta metros de vacío.

Soulness vuelve a distraerme. Suda a mares y siento su incómoda respiración quemando mis orejas. Anela se mueve inquieta entre mis brazos y gimotea. Sus cuatro años me pesan, aunque sean casi puro hueso; su carita morena está salpicada de sudor. Yo siento sin embargo un frío intenso y un cansancio que me pega los pies al suelo. Soulness, apretando mi hombro, suplica una tregua, dice que está muy débil para seguir. Acepto el descanso, pero me niego a abrir algún blister de alimentos. Soy el mayor y debo velar por los horarios. Y a propósito de velar, me sorprenden las pocas luces de los corredores, la ausencia de robots celadores y el no habernos tropezado con ningún “pez pega” después de caminar casi una hora por este laberinto. Soulness tiembla, se aprieta el estómago y finalmente vomita. No sabemos nada sobre los efectos del viaje, pero nos decían que son malestares normales para los novatos. Anela sigue desmadejada, y ni siquiera intenta seguirme cuando canto una de sus canciones favoritas “ . . . Mary tiene una ovejita . . .  blanquita como la nieve . . . ” ¿o era una vaquita? Da igual. Anela duerme y se queja. Soulness, pálido como vapor de azufre pero más aliviado, quiere probar suerte tras la puerta que cierra este pasillo. Piensa que conduce a las bodegas y que tal vez encontremos provisiones. Se aventura finalmente con la pequeña linterna de pulsos, mientras yo arropo a Anela con mi chaqueta. Bajo los ojos de mi hermana crecen ojeras azules. Una mano helada me estruja el corazón y reconozco los dedos fríos del miedo.

Un rato después Soulness ha vuelto, trastabillando, los ojos como un doble plenilunio de Júpiter en el cielo de Io. Sus ocho años parecen haberse duplicado sobre su cuerpo sucio y tembloroso. Apenas logro arrancarle las palabras de la boca, rígida por el terror. Están muertos, allá adentro . . . los cuatro chicos  “peces pega” que viajaban en el compartimiento de higiene . . . Están descomponiéndose y sus huesos parecen derretidos, y la piel . . .  Cállate, digo en un susurro ahogado, asustarás a Anela. Pero él sabe que le creo y que nuestra hermana no nos escucha. Su carita se desdibuja en la oscuridad con expresión ausente.

Dejo a Anela en brazos de mi hermano. Estoy decidido a presentarme ante la tripulación. No me importa que me regresen a Io o a otra colonia de extracción. Lo único que quiero es salvarla. Salvarnos. Soulness solloza y yo le gruño. Lo atajo por la solapa, húmeda de su propia bilis, y enredo sin querer mis dedos en sus largos cabellos. El espeso mechón queda en mis manos como una hebra de sombra. Tengo que ir por ayuda.

Corro por los pasillos sin luces, apenas alumbrados por el reflejo del sint-metal desde alguna fuente indeterminada que convierte la oscuridad en penumbras. Donde debe estar el puesto de mando no hay ningún navegante, sólo la consola de un cibernavegador y todos los asientos vacíos. No hay humanos en el carguero, únicamente nosotros. Ni autómatas, ni alimentos, ni medicinas, porque no hay tripulación que las necesite.

Regreso por Anela y Soulness. Durante la difícil carrera de retorno sobre mi corazón restallan los látigos del miedo. Al cruzar cerca de las puertas que identifico como las bodegas un signo hecho sobre el sint-metal con pintura roja luminiscente me detiene. No sé leer, ninguno de nosotros sabe, pero reconozco el dibujo que parecen las aspas de un extractor de hélices antiguo cercado por un triángulo, y también el círculo con la tachadura que prohíbe y amenaza, y la calavera negra. Comprendo ahora que no es este un carguero de metal y subproductos en viaje hacia la Tierra. Vamos junto a los desechos tóxicos de todas las colonias hacia otra parte . . . Venus, con seguridad: el Vertedero Solar. Por mi mente cruzan los muchos momentos en que he visto a estos cargueros atracar en Io y despegar con tantos “peces pegas” desde la Estación Ecuatorial del satélite . . . Ni ellos, ni nosotros, comprobaremos si es tan azul como cuentan el cielo de la Tierra.

Encuentro a mis hermanos todavía conscientes. Anela me mira con sus ojos de luna en eclipse y me tiende los brazos. Ayudo a levantarse a Soulness y apoya contra mi hombro todo el temblor de su cuerpo. Al puesto de mando, les digo. Soulness murmura algo sobre encontrar ayuda. Allí estaremos bien, le respondo, será el mejor lugar para ver la bienvenida que nos dará la Tierra, vestida con su traje azul y blanco de novia cósmica del Tiempo. Soulness apenas se sonríe con sus labios violáceos. Anela ha vuelto a dormirse y tal vez ya no despierte.

En el puesto de mando acomodo a Soulness en un sillón. Yo a su lado, con Anela en brazos, sostengo su mano helada. Pienso que tal vez era éste el sillón del comandante del carguero que alguna vez llevó vida a la Tierra. Y me creo que yo soy él y que llevo a mis hermanos, a mi padre y todos los niños de Io hacia esa ciudad de torres blancas sobre un lago verde… Lucho contra el sueño definitivo que me aplasta. Quiero verla aparecer. Quizás no tenga tiempo para guiñarle un ojo . . . El carguero pasará de largo sobre ella . . . Sin nada que declarar.

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