Captive Girl by Jennifer Pelland

Captive Girl
    By Jennifer Pelland
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Also by Jennifer
Pelland
    Copyright © 2006 by Jennifer Pelland
First published at Helix Issue 2, 2006
    Cover image Copyright © Passigatti |
Dreamstime.com
Cover design Copyright © DeAnna Knippling
    Published by Apex Publications at
Smashwords
    Jennifer Pelland is a short fiction writer
whose work has earned multiple Nebula Award nominations (“Captive
Girl” and “Ghosts of New York”). “Captive Girl” was also
shortlisted for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. Jennifer lives
outside Boston with an Andy, three cats, an impractical amount of
books, and an ever-growing collection of belly dance gear and radio
theater scripts.
Find out more at:
www.jenniferpelland.com
    “Her already-glowing reputation may still be
just a hint of promising light on the horizon of those who like
their fantastic fiction smart, imaginative, and driven by the
mysteries of the human spirit, but each new story as brilliant as
‘Brushstrokes’ and ‘The Last Stand of the Elephant Man’ brings her
inevitable future even closer. Trust me on this: Jennifer Pelland’s
star has only just begun to rise.”
—Adam-Troy Castro, author of Emissaries From the
Dead
    “Jennifer Pelland is addicted to writing
short stories. She’s written an essay about this addiction but you
don’t need to read the essay to know it’s true. Each of the tales
in this collection is a testament to her love of story-telling, and
her imagination. She has a keen sense of irony, and a gift for
juxtaposing images and events in a way which enables her to extract
emotion at crucial moments from her characters and from the
reader.”
—theshortreview.com
    “Jennifer Pelland is a very good writer. She
can evoke a setting, an environment, a mood in just a few
sentences. And she does it so intensely that the reader really
feels the fear of touching any potentially diseased subway riders;
feels the thirst of a world without water; feels the aloneness that
comes behind the metal mask.”
—SFScope.com
    ***
    Captive Girl
by Jennifer Pelland
    In the choreographed chaos of space, she
searches for patterns that do not fit. She listens to the hiss and
murmur of the interstellar winds; she peers into the visible
spectrum and beyond. Whistling particles stream by, and her mind
sizes them up, then discards them as harmless background radiation.
Just flotsam on the solar winds. Wait, that light— No, it’s just a
weather satellite catching a glint of sun. Too close, anyway. She
does not let anything approach the planet without
scrutiny.
    Motion.
    She zooms in, listening hard.
    “ A-s-t-e-r-o-i-d,” she types out.
“Possible collision course.”
    There is a scroll across the very bottom of her
vast vision. “We see it. Calculating now.”
    She looks away. The team is on it. This
asteroid could simply be a distraction, and she does not want to be
caught unawares. There will be no repeat of last time. Not on her
watch.
    “ It’s a miss,” the scroll says.
“Shift’s over. Come on back.”
    And her mind contracts, sinking down, down,
plummeting back to the surface of the planet, past the colony
domes, into the bunkers, deep underground.
    Alice gasps through her chest tube as she
crashes back into her body.
    Mittened hands grope at the metal mask welded
to her face, and she’s shocked to realize that they’re hers. She
sags forward onto her walker, resting the mask on the padded bar
that rings her. She is too tired to call up any video, any audio,
and surrenders her overextended senses to nothingness. She
struggles to walk forward a few steps, but the seat/body interface
chafes, and she works her mouth in a silent gasp behind the
metal.
    Soft hands are on her back, and she
trembles.
    With a faint volley of static, her earpieces
switch over to internal audio. “It’s all right. Just relax. You’re
with us again.”
    With her tongue controls, she types out,
“Marika.”
    And the hands move to the back of her bare
scalp,