Orbits

Klabe & the Meal, featuring a Mystery

The suitcases were stacked in an orderly pile by the door, largest at the bottom. Their shapes varied from deep-set rectangles to triangles to stars, and beneath the glow of the uranium lamps, which made everything look hand-painted and delicate, all the fabrics seemed to vary within the greens, and shine green-yellow or very deep blue. They were filled with a lot of things the family would never use (really, the family would never use them) yet had felt like packing anyway, to be doing something. No one remembered what those things were, and there were no bulges to facilitate a guess. Just a stack of suitcases that might as well be empty.

It was strange.

The house had been cleaned out from top to bottom, from side to side, from angles—the result of weeks of don't-walk-here and don't-touch-that and please-help-me-with-this. The washing and scraping had been strangely intensive: this day Klabe's father mopped the spotless living room floor; that day Klabe's mother hosed down the roof and the sides of the house, when neither needed hosing; another day Klabe himself was dispatched into painting the "faded" red door, although it was common knowledge the door was far from faded, because the red burned so bright it seemed to have been set on fire.

Yes, it had been strange.

If any dust gathered there again, Klabe thought, surveying the perfect sitting room, it would probably gleam.

But no dust would ever gather there again, oh no. The very idea of dust had long been swabbed away.

"Let's eat," Klabe's father said. He sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out a container and took out their final meal (lead burgers with arsenic sauce). His thick arm moved like a whip. "We can spare the time," he said, when nobody moved.

"All right," Klabe's mother said. "But we shouldn't spare too much time."

She didn't speak idly. Every moment, the air thickened and a new blossom of sweat sparkled on their foreheads, to be wiped away by a weakening hand. Every moment, the earth turned a shade closer to brown and their knees wobbled in fear. Every moment, the sky drifted closer to blue and their hearts turned heavier and drooped. One more week and the planet would be completely unliveable. (Right now it was only tolerable at best.)

Klabe fell into a seat. He felt dizzy but didn't say it.

Smiling tightly, Klabe's father pushed a plate in front of him.

Klabe did not want to eat at all. He stared at the meal and wrung his gas-coloured hands. Did not take a single mouthful. He was absolutely certain that if he did eat, the food would be expelled through vomit. And vomit tasted much worse than lead burgers with arsenic sauce.

"Make a little effort," Klabe's father said, quietly, to the others, although he, too, had not begun to eat. "Soon we'll all be sleeping on a ship, and we won't be able to spend time together."

But there was a stretched silence, and it wasn't broken up by chewing.

"I'd rather not leave," Klabe answered. He was staring at the suitcases, trying to remember what they'd put in them, because the things within might matter. "I'd rather stay home."

It was a strange thing to say, but Klabe's father and mother didn't seem too surprised by it. They didn't exchange a glance. They didn't shrug. What happened was that Klabe's mother opened her mouth as if to speak, and simply didn't, while Klabe's father made no such gesture (his mouth was suddenly full of burger, and speaking would be uncouth).

"Any place can be a home if we treat it as such," the table said. It had sensed a great lull in the conversation and hoped to end it.