Pebblecakes

By Rowena Zahnrei

In my mind, I still see her.

Whenever I close my eyes, allow my thoughts to drift, I see Holly in the morning light, two water buckets drooping from the plastic pole she'd slung across her shoulders. She flashes me a grin and I hear that happy lilt in her voice as she calls: "Happy three-monthiversary, Xander! When you've collected enough pebblecakes, meet me in PriShelter-1 for the party!"

'Pebblecakes' was Holly's word for the pebble-looking mushrooms that grew wild on that sun-forsaken asteroid of hers. Holly had a lot of made-up words like that.

Guess that's what comes of growing up alone on an isolated space rock.

I don’t know how long Holly had been alone before I got dumped there. I do know her colony got wiped. From the bits and pieces she let slip in conversation, I gathered she'd been pretty young when it happened. Vast sections of rubble and wrecked shelters covered half the asteroid, all overgrown with spindly stick bushes that broke off and rolled around like sagebrush in the wind. The only building Holly and I ever used was PriShelter-1. The rest of the ruined structures we left to the bug-like nightfliers and screechcrawlers that scuttered along the prefab walls.

That day…the day we held our last party… I hefted my sack of pebblecakes and stood gazing across the rough landscape, so different from my home back on Io. There, Jupiter dominated the sky, its glow lending a deep red-orange hue to the yellow domes of the mining camp where my mom and dad - my real dad - ranked private quarters.

I hadn't planned to run away from home. It's just… My stepfather. His diamond-sharp eyes, the drone of his voice. The smug, bearded smirk that makes me so furious—!

My real dad had been chief mining inspector. He died in a big tunnel accident when I was six. It’d been my dad who spotted the shift in tunnel pressure. My dad who raised the alarm, made sure everyone got out before the main blast. My dad who was still there, still shutting things down, diverting the gas flow away from the main colony when…

My mom runs the colony’s hospital. She said they tried everything to save him. But the burns… They were just too much. And he died a few weeks later.

My stepfather was only a junior back then, but he wasted no time taking over my dad’s job. He schmoozed his way into our lives, spreading himself around everything I cared about - my mom, our hut at Dome’s Edge.

But he couldn't get me.

"You don't have to like your stepfather, honey," my mom said, "but you should treat him with more respect. He’s been so kind, so caring."

I doubt ‘kindness’ had anything to do with it. He liked the status, the money, that came with my dad’s job. All that ‘kindness’ stuff was a total act, to keep my mom on his side. And, the worst thing was, it worked. She backed him over me in fight after fight until I couldn't take it anymore. At Jupiter-rise, I caught the red-eye shuttle to the docks, then sneaked aboard a merchant freighter headed for Mars.

It's not unusual for teenagers to run off to space, especially colony kids. Sure, most of them are seventeen or eighteen and I was just fourteen, but at the time I didn't see why that should make a difference. I guess I imagined the crew would take me in, show me the ropes, like the kid-heroes in those old holo-adventures my dad and I used to watch together. I pictured myself working my way up the ranks, taking the officer's exam at sixteen, earning my own command by twenty. The pride on my mom's face when I showed up at her door, tall and imposing in my captain's uniform, would be worth all the hardship and loneliness of growing up a spacer.

For three days, I laid low in the freighter’s cargo hold, surviving off snack machine protein cakes and keeping out of sight until I was sure we'd gone too far to easily turn back. Then, I made my way to the bridge. I smoothed back my hair, swallowed my fears, and presented myself to the captain.

But, did she listen? Did she take me under her wing, let me explain why I’d come, why I needed this chance?

Crack, no! She said I was a missing person. Claimed it’s illegal for merchant ships to transport minors, let alone hire them. She then told me, since she couldn't afford to be late with her shipment, I’d be dropped off on some sun-forsaken asteroid colony. A patrol ship would pick me up there in a week or so and haul my truant butt back to Io to face the cops, my mom…

And my stepfather.

Well, a week passed on that freezing rock, and no patrol ship came. By then I was down to the last three survival ration packs the captain had been kind enough to spare me. I waited a few days longer but, when it came to a choice between staying put or starving, I decided to leave my emergency tent and brave the cold, bug-infested desert in search of food. Two days later, I stumbled into PriShelter-1...where I met Holly.

It used to annoy me, how much Holly knew. Basic survival stuff, like how to filter the coppery water that bubbled yellow from the ground, how to tell a pebblecake from a rock, where to dig for sugar roots, how to light the firestones for cooking. This weird girl with her weird way of talking was probably a year younger than me, but she seemed more independent, efficient, and responsible than any adult I'd ever met.

"Xander, the sugar-roots are boiling!" she’d shout from the shelter. "This will be the greatest Xander party. Last month was good, but the sugar-roots weren't grown then, and now we can mash them fancy for the feast! Need help with the pebblecakes, Xander?"

The monthiversary feasts were all Holly's idea; sort of her way of celebrating not being alone. Mostly, she did that by saying my name as often as she could, as if trying to prove I was real. But for me, those 'monthiversary' things were mostly reminders of how long I'd been there.

Still, that last time, the celebration felt a little different. Maybe I was getting used to the place. Maybe I'd realized I actually liked Holly's weirdness. Whatever it was, as we worked together side by side, slicing and mashing and preparing our feast, I looked over at Holly smiling and babbling and laughing, and I realized I was happy.

We were happy.

Holly and I went to our cots that night full to bursting and still giggling from our silly story game – the game where one of us started a story off and the other had to finish it. I remember thinking as I drifted toward sleep…maybe the patrol ship forgot about me. Maybe I wouldn’t have to go back…

A violent jolt startled me awake. I rolled off the cot and and followed Holly outside, where huge fireballs rained from the sky. Impact after impact rattled the shelter.

Holly screamed and thrashed, her brown hair a wild tangle, wet with tears. I ran to her, but she pushed me away, a wretched huddle of screaming terror, and I realized - this must have been what happened. This was how her colony had been destroyed. A meteor shower in an asteroid field.

The meteors kept raining fire and rock and I added my screams to the noise. Holly grabbed my arms. I held her close and together we screamed out our fear, our anger, our desperate need to stay alive.

The next morning, I woke to a strange, silent calm, only to see Holly's dirt-streaked face beside me. She opened her eyes and smiled at me and, when we sat up, she slowly leaned closer...

The ground rumbled again, but not with the rattling violence of the meteorites. This, I recognized as the deep, bass thunder of engines.

Holly and I shared a look and I raced to see a red patrol shuttle land on the hill beside our shelter. Two patrol agents climbed out and headed straight for me, squishing pebblecakes under their boots.

"Alexander Zebidian?" one of them said, his voice muffled by his filter mask.

"It’s Xander," I told him. "My Dad called me Xander."

"It's him," the second patroller said. "Come along, kid. Time to go home."

"If I go, you have to take Holly too," I said. "She's been alone here since the meteors wiped out her colony."

The patrol agents looked at Holly, then at me, then at each other.

The second patroller crouched down and lifted her shades, trying to look me in the eye.

"Listen to me, kid,” she said, “our orders are to take you. Only you. Not some holo-sprite."

"You should clean your visors," I said. "Holly's not a hologram, she's a girl. And I won't leave without her!"

"Kid, I've seen these things before," the first patroller said. "They're robots, programmed to recite what happened to lost colonies like this. Hopefully so new colonists don't make the same mistakes. Now, either you come willingly or we knock you out and carry you."

"No!" I shrieked, dodging as the patrol agents reached for me. "Holly! Tell them who you are! Tell them you're real!"

But Holly just stood there, staring at the adult intruders with an odd, blank expression. Something else was off too, but before I could figure out what, the first patroller strode to the back of the shelter and kicked through a narrow door I'd never noticed before.

"It's a holo-emitter all right," he called out. "Pretty badly damaged. Let me just..."

Light flashed, and Holly's features blurred and faded, leaving only a white, plastic frame.

"Holly!" I screamed, but the second patrol agent grabbed me from behind and the pair of them forced me into the shuttle. They strapped me to the seat, muttering it was all for the best, but I refused to speak to them. Instead, I stared out the window where, to this day, I swear I saw Holly – the real Holly – staring after us as we lifted off into space.