“Your broken eyes don’t matter because space means nothing to the Pale.”
Businesslike, the instructor had continued the pilots’ orientation like she hadn’t rocked Kim’s life to its foundations. Soona Luukanen-Kilde had milky eyes in a jagged face. She’d looked like he’d felt watching the stars roiling above the orphanage. Kim returned to her class the next day, and the next. He stayed while other cadets shattered; it wasn't a choice.
At graduation, Soona presented him with a blue velvet box holding the relay compass of their trade. Before she let go, she’d held Kim’s gaze and he knew she’d seen a ticking clock.
Now– for a given value of ‘now’– Kim Kitsuragi sails through rippling paths of brilliant nothing. The Pale cradles the aerostatic like a swelling cloud, its currents immeasurable, its warmth a cool wind at his back. In Mundi and Insulinde and Seol, he watches, calculates, decides. Here, his hands do the thinking.
Kim has felt the ground beneath his feet in every land in Elysium: one night, three nights, two months, a season. Once, he spent a lifetime there. Now, he only stays when he must. The pilots know how to spot when a comrade hasn’t fully left the Pale. They confine each other to solid rooms with living things: green plants by sturdy chairs, colorful blankets rich enough to remind you that seasons exist.
Kim knows why they do it. He's been flying for long enough that indulging them is easier than escaping. The food is good and the leaves flickering green in the early autumn sunset feel warm and soft over his skin. He admires the sunset and spends the sleepless nights listening to the loons, frogs, and crickets. It's only here, in the end and beginning of the universe, that Kim allows himself to slip into the quiet tide of dreams.
Sometimes, he has company.
Hi Kim, says the man from the radio.
Hi Harry, he says back.
How’s it going, big guy? Whatcha got today? A friendly thread of stars has drifted into the co*ckpit. They settle warmly about Kim’s shoulders and he hums.
Oh, you know. Some contract freight of metallurgists’ equipment. Wholesale shipment of herring tins from Graad. Couple boxes of microfiche. Think there’s some mail.
What brand?
The herring? Jolly Vanya’s.
Jolly Va– KIM! You might as well be hauling emerald caviar for the Suzerain’s mistress, Kim! Are you a class traitor? Do I need to stop talking to you now?
Now, now, Harry. Didn’t you say there’s no ethical work under capitalism?
Huh. You’re so right, Kim! Guess I need to think before I start hurling accusations, huh?
Kim huffs a laugh and thinks about the clink of porcelain and laughter that the Pale sent him days ago. A whiff of mandarin oranges.
I’ve been hearing about my mother. Seems she made a pork neck stew so good our neighbors cued up the hall to drink it.
No kidding. She must’ve been a hell of a cook.
My father seems to have thought so. He was better at sewing.
Did you sew your jacket?
Ah, no. I can fix clothes but I'm not much of a tailor. We salvaged these from the Antecentennial Revolutionary Air Corps uniforms, if you can believe it.
Bet you don’t talk about that in front of the Coalition handlers.
Kim chuckles and lifts his chin into the glow. Turns his face to the side, lets the soft lights settle in the shell of his ear.
What they don’t know won’t hurt them.
How’d you get so cool, Kim?
The stars flicker with merriment and drift into his lungs on the inhale.
When’re you gonna come see me? The man from the radio affects petulance, like his fingers aren’t caressing Kim’s chest from the inside out.
You see me all the time.
I mean see you see you. Like out here, see you. There’s so much stuff to show you! I met a giant praying mantis thing that makes you forget your name, except it doesn’t work on me because been-there-done-that I guess. She says she climbed onto a raft after the bombs blew up Revachol West and doesn’t mind it out here. The papers would pay gold for a photo of this thing. Get your name in the headlines and everything. We’d be famous!
They do tell me I have a good voice for radio.
Exactly, Kim!
Kim entertains the idea of broadcasting his voice into the heart of the Pale.
During a rare fit of benevolence in '22, the Moralintern had gifted every orphanage in Revachol a Build-Your-Own crystal radio set to encourage practical skills for productive careers in exciting new fields such as Telecommunications, Supply Chain Logistics, Information Infrastructure and Electronics Engineering.
Kim had made sure he'd be the first in line to get his hands on the kit. He'd been four years from legal adulthood, and already knew he liked boys. In the dead of night, he'd climb up to the rickety shingles of the eastern roof and tune in to Saturday Suzette and the Back Alley Girls. From one to three in the morning, Suzette, Nadej, Jeannie and a rotating series of guests gossiped about boys, clothes, dancing drugs, the right-wing politicians in the clubs sporting their "upstanding reputations ifyouknowwhatImean." They only stopped to play the latest mixes from the DJ they affectionately called "fa*gotty Jim."
"We're gonna go take a fa*g break of our own now," Suzette would croon, "Hold your horses, mes petites putes, just the boring kind at least for today. So cuddle on up to the smoke stack in your life and we'll be back in a jiffy after this little ditty that'll smoke his brains clear out until he's belched his industrial airborne chemicals all out on your titt*es."
"What the f*ck, Suzie."
"Tend thy lips to my Astra like a good little whor*, Jeannie. Ta ta, girlies!"
The western side of the roof blocked the broadcast, but Kim could still hear the music. A mirror signal bounced back from the Pale. It played in counterpoint time and the melody hit minor notes and slid down chromatic scales where the original made you want to dance. When the Pale gave Suzette back to him after her cigarette, she’d whisper about sadness and how when she was his age, she’d wanted this family so badly that the hurt took the city away from her. Her vision blurred, the buildings and the streets lost in static. All she could see, when she could see, was a distant dream beyond the place her hands could reach. The edges were in focus, even with the details too far away to make out.
"But I found them, Kim," she said, "Even Nadej and her ill advised stick-on rhinestones. I forgot to eat because even sugar tasted like dust. I had a roof over my head, sure, but why would you feed yourself when you don't have a home? Kim, I'm telling you now because it took me too long to realize, and you don't need to starve yourself. You're gonna find a place that wants you." Kim had cradled the radio to his ear and nodded. He'd remembered to eat his greens the next day.
Kim. You still want me, right?
Harry sounds hesitant, now. Kim was quiet for too long. He feels another man’s anguish wash into him and lifts his hands from the steering levers, hugs himself.
Yes, Harry. I want you so much. You can't possibly know how much. Even from inside my lungs, you can't know. It’s... it's easy to say but still not easy to go.
Every time he leaves the Pale, it gets harder. He watches the last silver vapors of nothingness blow clear from his co*ckpit's window and wishes he could follow. These days, Instructor Luukanen-Kilde’s hair is gray and her eyes are blank, but she meets Kim in the hangar just like every time before and receives his reports with a critical brow. She knows it’s coming and he knows that she knows. She won’t stop him. One day, she’ll walk into the mist, too, and trusts that the pilots will tender her the same courtesy.
I know, Kim. Harry’s voice is completely earnest. I know you gotta come in your own time. It’s really not like dying, though. It’s all kinds of fun out here! Some places, it’s still The New and the streets play disco all night long. It’ll be even better with you. I can show you my moves.
Next time, Kim decides. Next time, he’ll pull his goggles down over his white, white eyes and power up the aerostatic, feel it hum through his bones and never stop. He will see the whole world over his shoulder one last time as he flies into the Pale. He will unlock the door and Harry will sweep him away in his laughing, laughing arms. Kim wonders if he’ll have hands, if he’ll have lips. If Harry’s eyes will be green like he told Kim they were in Insulinde, if the two of them will have eyes to see at all. Next time, the Pale will welcome him home like a lover. Next time, the radio will tell him he’ll never be alone again.
What do you want to listen to until then, Harry?
Well, Kim, you know I’m a Guillaume Le Million man first and foremost, but the kids in Martinaise have this whole “anodic music” thing going on that makes my atoms shiver something electric. Wanna listen?
Do you even need to ask?
Kim leans back and lets the beats of Arno van Eyck lead him into the clear dull sky of bright gray, white, Pale, nothing. His heart is full of Harry and his mind is full of dreams.
Next time. Next time. Next time.
