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Freya slumped on the bed. “No night-time ever? It doesn’t get dark?”
“I’m sorry. My planet only had short days. It’s been hard.”
“How long have you been here?”
Tally shrugged. “Many, many bells. I’ve lost count. Best not to count.” She waved goodbye and closed the door behind her, shouting, “Lock it, just in case.”
Freya slid the bolt across before stumbling back onto the bed. She was too tired to worry about anything. The only daydream that revisited her sleep was the striking image of the governor—Marco. Would he remember her? Or was she an easy-to-forget thrill on his first day?
* * *
The bell was more like a siren. It lasted for ages, forcing the sleepy Freya awake and into the shower. The tepid water sprayed her body in a feeble fashion and the hard soap stung. She’d no towel, but the warm air quickly dried her skin. The overall was too long in the legs and she rolled up the hems. She slipped on the flat sandals—they at least had some style.
She managed a few crackers and something that resembled an orange, but not as sweet. The juice squirted down her chin.
Somebody was knocking at her door. She drew back the bolt and peeked through a crack—Tally.
“Hello. I thought I’d walk you to work.”
Freya smiled, relieved to have company. “Thanks. Where do you work?”
“In the bakery, where those crackers are made from corn.” She pointed to a distant building. “It’s roasting in there too.”
Freya blinked in the sunlight. One sun. The other was behind the horizon. It wasn’t as hot as when both suns were in the sky. All around her the others were heading off to work, whether in the fields to produce food, or the factories that turned basic resources into products. Tally had explained many raw materials were shipped in from other colonies and the finished products sent back out again. All produced for nothing. A free workforce that only needed feeding.
She parted company from Tally and having been allocated a press by Otto, she entered the designated room. The noise was intense and unending. The rollers, huge cylinders, were tracking back and forth, flattening the clothing, which had been laid out. It was a rudimentary setup, lacking in automation. Two women stood on either side, whipping the ironed clothes off and laying out crumpled ones. Steam billowed up.
One of the women hit a button and roller stopped. She jerked her head at her coworker.
“Hello. I’m Freya. I’m supposed to work in here.”
“Good. We lost somebody last week.”
“Lost?”
“To the washroom. They’ve a new vat in there. We’re down a person. You need to fold the clothes into batches. These are overalls for males. Three sizes. Keep them separate.”
Freya received a quick lesson in how to fold the clothes and which baskets to place them in. She also learned her new coworkers’ names and she approximated their strange names to English varieties: Jean and Abby. Jean’s eyes were bright and her hair trimmed short, whereas Abby had hers bundled into a bun. Both of them were shorter than Freya, which meant they had to move quickly over the press to position the cloth. The speed was relentless. Other than brief breaks for drinks or bathroom visits, they didn’t stop until lunch.
More dried crackers and chewy meat sticks. The addition of a cabbage-like soup nearly retrieved the meal from being totally tasteless. She managed to winkle out of her two companions that they came from distant planets that had been conquered by the Vendu, one a long time ago, the other more recently. Both women had arrested for robbery, although they claimed it was necessary for survival. Unlike Earth, where the Vendu lived independently, on other planets, they mixed with indigenous population and treated them like second-class citizens.
“We were hungry. So I robbed a store. I thought the gun was fake, but it turned out to be real and I let off a shot, nearly hit the shopkeeper. That’s a life sentence—using a firearm,” Abby explained. Jean had a similar tale, although she admitted it had involved a gang and she wasn’t proud of the desperate measures she’d taken to feed her sister’s family.
“A few here are killers, the worst kind. But most of the prisoners are classified as rebels. Ordinary people, non-combatants, but they’re all the same to the Vendu—insurgents.” Jean stirred her soup and ducked her head down, hiding her eyes. The sadness in her voice was obvious.
Back at the presses, the noise of the machine and the heat of the room made speech impossible. The day passed achingly slowly. By evening, she wanted to do nothing but sleep. With the light switched off, she was grateful for the pitch blackness, but not the oppressive heat. She slept in the nude.
* * *
The next day and the day after were similar and uneventful. Four days after Freya had arrived, she no longer needed Tally to escort her to the laundry. She knew her way with her eyes half-open. The drudgery was mind-numbing. What about books, films, and music? How would she survive without them?
On the fifth day, she noticed Abby was hobbling about and seemed loath to put her weight on one leg.
“What’s up with your leg?” she asked during one quiet spell when they switched off the machine and drank some brackish water.
“I caught it on something sharp. The cut has gone bad.” She rolled up the leg of her pants. A nasty cut streaked across her calf.
Freya crouched down and winced sympathetically. “That’s infected. You need medicine.”
