The shade on their apartment’s single grimy pane was closed as far as it went, leaving a hand-span of New Vancouver Spaceport’s artificial illumination to streak the dirty floor. Despite constant daylight beneath the city’s shield, daily routines still mimicked natural cycles from distant Earth. Five floors below, a siren cut through the nighttime noises of shouted curses and pub music.

Mary lay on her side on the stained couch cushions, staring at a three-second video clip projected from her wrist communicator: a gaunt, smiling woman with her arms around two children. The woman’s hair was pale blonde, like the boy’s. Mary’s hair in the video was mousy brown.

An interior light switched on as Rachel, her mother, stumbled from the apartment’s single bedroom to the cold storage, a half-empty cupboard beside a scratched plastic table that occupied the other side of the room from Mary’s couch. Rachel rasped out a song she must have heard in the bar, though it was difficult to determine a tune in her off-key slurring. She belted out the chorus and hummed in place of lyrics she didn’t remember. Her skintight red wraparound was wrinkled from having slept in it, and her shoulder-length brown hair hung in tangles.

Mary rolled over on the cushions, avoiding the stiff edges of a burn hole, and pulled a foil blanket over her head. Although the city’s Level 1 shielding kept temperatures at a constant 20 degrees Celsius beneath its blue ceiling, a cheery student in an orange vest had been handing out blankets on the street corner last week, and Mary had snagged a couple. Her purple jumpsuit was easy for all-purpose wear but did little to keep her warm when she slept.

She wrinkled her nose as her movement dislodged odours of stale vomit and cigarette smoke from the sofa. Its failing ability to conform to body shape left her neck twisted sideways. At least the foil blanket blunted the sound of Rachel’s singing.

An orange tabby cat, a stray that Mary fed with scraps on days when there was food on the table, jumped onto the sofa, kneaded the foil with a rumbling purr, and curled up behind her knees.

Beneath her blanket tent, Mary cupped the video clip projected above her left wrist. Slowly she reached a fingertip toward the image. Leah’s eyes were shadowed with lack of sleep and overwork, but her smile was tender. One arm was around her son, Finn, and one around Mary. Despite her fatigue, those arms had been strong, their muscles strengthened by carrying serving trays and scrubbing tables and floors. Mary ached to feel that grip again, hugging her tight.

In the image, the three of them sang a silly chant, two childish refrains interrupted by giggles and Leah’s musical voice. Fifteen years ago, Mary and Finn had been ten or eleven years old, and Mary already called Leah “Mother.” It was the longest she had ever lived in one place.

Abrupt banging on their apartment door rattled the unwashed dishes in the sink. Rachel swore. The cat leaped off the sofa, its hind claws slashing into Mary’s legs. She killed the video clip, then lay perfectly still beneath her blanket, though she itched to turn over so her back wasn’t exposed.

“We have authorization to search these premises.” A deep male voice reverberated from the hallway.

Rachel swore again. Something landed on the apartment floor with a crash.

Mary’s stomach somersaulted. She squeezed her eyes shut, mentally counting the number of illegal plants in Rachel’s window garden. More than two hundred. Rachel’s next prison sentence would be measured in years instead of months.

The locks on the hall door released, and it swung inward. Mary kept her eyes squeezed shut, breathing shallowly. The cat hissed and scrambled across the floor.

“What the hell?” the deep male voice shouted.

A tazer powered up with a whine.

Mary tossed off her blanket and bolted upright. “It’s just a cat.”

Two broad-shouldered officers in red uniform jackets, each with an official badge tattoo on his right cheek, blocked the apartment’s single exit. One man had blond hair and one black, close-cropped and thinning on top. Their tattoos glowed with alternating red and blue, and a flat voice repeated “officers conducting official business” from their belt communicators. Both stood with feet braced apart; one pointed a tazer at the hissing cat, and the other rested a hand on his holstered weapon.

“It’s just a cat,” Mary repeated.

They turned their attention to her, and at their identical glowers, fear curdled in her gut. She crossed her arms and stared back, trying to ignore how far up she had to look from her position on the stinky couch.

The blond officer gestured at Mary with his tazer for her to join her mother. Rachel stood in the kitchen, shifting her weight from one foot to the other as if deciding which way to run. She froze, glassy eyes wide, when the officer’s glare switched to her.

Eat shit. You can’t tell me where to stand. Mary’s jaw clenched. Then she pushed herself slowly to her feet, holding the officer’s gaze while she shuffled toward Rachel.

The black-haired officer took his hand away from his weapon. His tattoo identified him as L. Senger. His gaze flashed to the window, then to Rachel, and his scowl shifted to a sly grin. “Looks like your garden’s doing well, Rachel.”

She shrugged, swayed, and grabbed the edge of the plastic table, her palm landing in a grease dribble from the food Mary had brought home after her shift. Her hand slipped, and Mary caught her elbow to steady her.

Senger nodded his chin toward the window. His blond partner, B. Wentwig, holstered his tazer and sauntered toward the collection of hallucinogenic mushrooms, growing in planters piled around the window and clamped to the ledge outside with rusty wire. He nudged one planter with the toe of his polished boot, making a show of looking over the collection. His blond eyebrows rose beneath his wispy hair, and he looked over his shoulder at Senger. “Quite a few here. Think she’s facing six years, minimum.”

Rachel whimpered. Mary grimaced under her sagging weight.

Senger tsked. “Rachel, you promised no more of this the last time you were paroled. Plus it’s a breach of conditions to live this close to your distributer.”

Mary ground her teeth together. This apartment was near her work. It would be impossible to commute from any other place they could afford.

“Not to mention that you’re not allowed to be in possession of any organics.” Senger dipped his chin and shot them an exaggerated look of sympathy. “If there were fewer than two hundred plants here, at least it would only be a minor offence. But as it is…” He lifted his hands, palms out.

Anger and fear burned the back of Mary’s throat. Her part-time job, plus casual work at the repair shop, provided less income than she needed for both rent and food. Without Rachel, she’d have to give up either the apartment or eating. There was nowhere else she could go. Leah’s absence stung as much as it had after her death four years ago. Mary clamped her lips to prevent their trembling.

The officers watched Rachel.

She pushed away from Mary and stood upright, swaying only a little. “I’m sure there’s fewer than two hundred plants. That’s all I have.”

Identical grins formed on the two officers’ faces. “Then that’s all we found. We’ll remove these ones that you don’t have.”

Wentwig crouched to fill his arms with half a dozen planter boxes. “Give me a hand,” he snapped at the two women.

Rachel took one step, then faltered and grabbed the table again.

“Never mind,” Senger said. “Mary, help him. He’s doing your mother a favour.”

Fuck you. She’s not my mother—Leah was. Stiffly, Mary went over to the window and bent down to collect more planters. She should toss them all on top of each other. Why would she care if the plants were crushed?

Wentwig scowled at her. She picked up three boxes, as much as she could carry carefully. The bottoms were coated with damp soil. Her nose wrinkled. She hated the cloying smell of dirt; she hated dirt under her fingernails.

Outside, fumes from overhead trains clouded the air beneath the shield’s steady daylight. Glimpses of its bright blue underside were visible high above the towering, soot-grey buildings and crisscrossing tracks. Stoop-shouldered workers in drab, durable jumpsuits headed to work. Labourers, like her grandparents and the half-million others who had taken low-paying, temporary work to build this spaceport.

The sleek, red and blue official transport was anchored just above the trash-strewn street, a glowing rectangle of colour in the perpetual grey shadow of plasticrete buildings. Its transparent upper half was set to maximum tint, a one-way mirror that reflected the surrounding high-rises and their rows of close-set, dirty windows.

Wentwig piled his load of planters in the cargo hatch next to a brown tarp, and Mary dumped her three beside his. Then Wentwig spun on his heel and led the way back up to the apartment. Brushing her hands against her purple jumpsuit, Mary followed.

On their way out of the apartment with a third load, Wentwig paused in the doorway. “That’s enough for us. We’ll officially log what’s left and call in a team to confiscate them.”

Senger glanced at the remaining planters around the window, then nodded.

Her arms aching, Mary followed the blond officer down in the lift one last time. After she had deposited her planters beside his, she scrubbed her hands vigorously on her pant leg, trying to remove the last bits of soil. A shred of mushroom had stuck to her chest. She picked it off and tossed it onto the ground, on top of a discarded, mud-soaked rag that might once have been a jacket.

A light blinked above the vehicle’s cargo door, counting down to the automatic close. Behind the planters, the tarp had been partially dislodged. Silver gleamed under its brown folds.

Mary glanced toward the apartment building. Wentwig had disappeared inside, leaving her on the street. She nudged a dirt-crusted box, further dislodging the tarp and revealing a silver briefcase, studded with climate-control indicators and warning symbols. Pharmaceuticals.

Mary’s breath caught in her chest. Biochemicals were banned planet-wide, for use only in strictly guarded facilities by licensed pharmacists. Not even enforcement officials were allowed to carry them around. But there were always people who knew how to get what they needed, or what someone else needed enough to pay dearly for.

The cargo door began to close.

A few pedestrians were making their way along the narrow walkway to night shifts in warehouses or eateries. A trio of youngsters wearing sparkly, multi-coloured tube tops and thigh-length skirts hung onto each other, giggling, as they stumbled down the street. One person in a ripped jumpsuit talked loudly to no one, waving his arms as he headed in the opposite direction. Across the walkway, in a crevice that had probably been an architectural adornment when the wall was built, a figure lay curled up beneath a foil blanket, eyes closed.

Nerves skittering along her spine, Mary glanced toward the stairs that led up to the nearest train platform. A two-minute walk. Her heart pounded against her ribs. She looked again toward the apartment building. No one waited in the lobby. The lift was probably still on the fifth floor.

Her fingers curled around the comm on her left wrist. Leah was gone, but Mary knew where Finn was. She could find him without any traceable search.

The hatch was nearly closed. She slipped her hand inside and felt for the factory safety latch, a finger-sized indentation to the left of the hatch. Her forefinger slid into the divot just before the cargo door closed on her hand. With a chime and a blue flash, the hatch popped open again.

Mary’s gaze swung back and forth, the chime echoing like an alarm between her ears. Across the street, the person beneath the blanket lay still. The workers climbed the stairs to the station. The three youths entered a building across the street, arms around each others’ shoulders, laughing together. The man talking to himself had turned a corner.

Still no one appeared in the apartment lobby.

With shaking hands, she reached for the silver case. One of the planters tilted and spilled. Her heart stuttered. Then her fingers touched the ribbed side of the case and fumbled for a handle. It rattled as she grasped it. Her gaze darted sideways. Was the lift coming back down? How close were the two officers? They’d have to read Rachel her rights and log the plants they were officially collecting. How much time?

Her gut twisted in knots. She gripped the case’s handle with all her strength and yanked it out through the open hatch, scattering bits of mushroom. It glimmered, reflecting light from the shield’s bright underside. The case’s control indicators hummed faintly, numbers and gauges backlit with green, yellow, and orange.

Blood pounded in her ears. How to hide the case? There was no way she could walk onto a train platform with this. Could she put it back before the officers returned?

The case fell from her nerveless fingers onto the dirty walkway. It landed with a muffled thud on top of the muddy, ragged jacket. She looked down, then scooped up both case and jacket and wrapped the torn fabric around the silver casing, so that she could carry the whole bundle like a load of clothes. It stank of vomit and urine. Mud streaked her hands and jumpsuit.

She hugged it tighter, then spun on her heel and hurried toward the platform stairs as fast as she could without running.

Mary awoke to the slight rolling of the train compartment as they braked. She had made it all the way to the Saskatoon outpost. Her wrist remote dinged, offering the standard greeting about local amenities, directions to dining and accommodation, and the station’s security protocol: there was an ewallet scanner but no biometrics and no criminal-record check. Some of the tension that lay coiled in her spine eased.

The thirty-hour, cross-planet trip was the longest she had ever spent on public transit. She’d slept in bursts, her head resting at an awkward angle against the plastimesh seat. Now she wiped a bit of drool from the corner of her fuzzy-tasting mouth, rolled her aching neck muscles, and ran a hand through her fuchsia-coloured hair. The one blessing of straight, limp hair was that it needed only a quick finger-comb to be tidy.

Exit lights flashed green, accompanied by a serene, recorded voice: “You have arrived at the Town of Saskatoon. Please disembark through the rear exit.” The message was repeated in scrolling text along the floor in standard, international standard, and a local dialect.

The other passengers, a dozen faces she had avoided looking at since they’d left the New Vancouver spaceport, collected their baggage from the overhead bins and shuffled past her. Mary took her time pulling the canvas bag out from between her feet. She had picked it up at a thrift store, along with a change of jumpsuit and underwear, and discovered a convenient tear in the bag’s lining. She brushed her fingers against the spot, reassured herself that the hidden ewallet was still there, then slung the straps over her shoulders and let the weight of her worldly goods rest on her back.

When she set foot on the platform, she halted, gaping at the train. Its nose was pressed against a plastisteel barrier, ready to head back the way they had come. She had never seen the end of a train line. In New Vancouver, every train continued on to somewhere else, traveling in endless loops around the spaceport that housed ten million people beneath its dome. This train, apparently, retreated.

Had Finn really stayed here, beyond the limits of civilization, for more than four years? The few communications they had exchanged since he left the city suggested that he was content, but it was difficult to gauge feelings through a communicator.

Mary wrapped her fingers around the comm on her left wrist. A pang of grief stabbed her chest. It had been four years, three months, and twenty-three days since Leah died, and almost that long since she’d seen Finn. She hoped that he would be glad to see her—and that he would offer her a place to stay for a little while. A few months. Six, tops. Just long enough to outlast the search. Then she could return to the city, buy a place of her own, settle down.

She followed the exit signs, ignoring the history lessons and advertising images that flashed on the walls of the smallest and emptiest station she had ever walked through. There should have been a loud, smelly crowd trading glares with those who pushed through too quickly or walked too slowly. Instead, people chatted in groups and called best wishes to each other in a manner that suggested in-person, face-to-face familiarity. It made her nerves twitch.

The exit corridor opened onto a plaza. To her chagrin, two uniformed enforcement officers watched as the new arrivals passed through the security check. It was rare that officers were present at a station. Unease fluttered in her stomach, but she walked forward, meeting their gazes above their red and blue tattoos. Don’t stare too long. Don’t avoid their eyes.

She clutched her ewallet—the registered one she carried openly—in a sweaty palm. Her account balance was sufficient to assure officials that she was no transient but also not rich enough to be suspicious. Ignoring an urge to check her canvas bag again for its secret bulge, she shuffled forward and forced her fingers to relax their grip on the shoulder strap.

The couple in front of her ran their ewallet beneath the purple glow of the countertop scanner. Three quick beeps sounded, and the glow flashed orange.

An officer glanced at the display. “Sorry, we have to check your bag.”

Mary’s heart jumped. What if the scanner malfunctioned and they had to manually check everyone’s bags? Would the lump in the lining be noticeable? If they felt inside…

The woman in front of her laughed lightly and held out her case. “No problem. We’re in no hurry.”

Mary kept her breathing slow as she watched them exchange small talk. The woman flipped open her case, and the officer ran a hand around the inside. Mary’s stomach dropped. How could she explain a hidden ewallet? I just bought this bag secondhand, never checked. Keep a straight face.

The officer smiled and passed the couple through. They said friendly farewells.

Mary stepped up to the counter. She passed her ewallet under the purple glow. A green light and a soft musical tone animated the scanner. No need to check her bag, unless they chose to ask for her identity marker. She let her breath out and nodded pleasantly at the two officers. As long as you were respectful, they’d let you pass.

The younger official gave her a narrow-eyed once-over before his gaze skipped away. The other, a tall woman, offered a polite smile before waving Mary past.

In another minute, she was through the station and onto the street. She paused to breathe in and out, slowly and deeply. Then she looked around. Walkways branched out in four directions, lined by buildings barely two stories high. She craned her stiff neck to stare up at the climate shield that covered the town. It was more grey than blue, and she could make out a hazy spot that probably marked the sun. Level 3 shielding at best. Probably the temperature underneath fluctuated along with the light levels. How did Finn survive, practically exposed to the elements?

She shifted her pack higher on her shoulders and checked her wrist remote for directions to the Lavallie farm. A twirling star on the tiny display-projection marked her destination. She blinked, then rechecked the most recent coordinates she had for Finn’s location. The comm’s calculation was correct. Her destination was 190 kilometres away, and the train went no further than Saskatoon. Finn literally lived beyond the reach of public transportation.

She squinted up at the thin climate shield. She would have to travel outside the safety of the dome during her trip to the farm, with only a transport’s thin shields between her and open sky. Her stomach heaved. Perhaps she should have told Finn she was coming and made arrangements to meet him in Saskatoon.

Except then there would have been a record of her communication with him.

Should she find a place to stay in town and hope that no one pinged her identity marker, or go back to New Vancouver and turn herself in? It would be impossible to hide in the city, when the officials had access to everyone’s data.

Heaviness weighted her limbs. This was crazy. She would never get away with this. She should let them find her, make a deal with the funds she had left. All she’d spent so far was the cost of the train ticket, a couple of hot meals, and the ratty canvas bag.

Her hands clenched at her sides. No. She’d gotten here. If she kept her head down for a little while longer, she could return to the spaceport and find a nice place to live, where there was artificially green turf and space between neighbours. Maybe meet a nice guy to share it with her and have kids—kids she’d raise herself.

She straightened her shoulders. Keep going.

Behind her, the two officers exited the station. The tall woman gave Mary a curious glance. Mary smiled politely and returned to the plaza, heading straight for the transport rental kiosk. She resisted the impulse to look over her shoulder. No footsteps followed her inside, and no one called for her to stop. Thank goodness this place lacked biometric screening; her heart rate alone would have attracted attention at this moment.

Only a few of her fellow passengers remained inside, talking and laughing as Mary did a quick search of the transport rental inventory. She grimaced at the poor choices and selected the best of the lot. Then she transferred the required funds and accepted the starting code for her temporary personal transport.

After enduring a mandatory safety training, she drove the drab, aluminum-coloured box far enough to get beyond sight of the town—a distance longer than it should have been, due to the wide-open, uninhabited space all around her. She shuddered at the view through the vehicle’s transparent upper half: nothing but knee-high plants as far as she could see.

Behind the transport’s controls was the smooth indentation of a concealed factory-access panel. Eight months of working with grabby-hands at the transport inspection facility had been less than lucrative, but it had furnished her with a master-code wand for a selection of hatches, panels, and inspection plates. She slipped the thin, finger-length tool from her pocket and tapped it on the access panel—three times, pause, twice, pause, three more times.

It tinged. Her wand glowed green and fed maintenance codes to her wrist comm. The transport’s fluids were low, but nothing essential to locomotion or life support. It would get her to the Lavallie farm.

This story has been at the back of my mind for decades and was finally put into words in 2019, shortly after I returned to my childhood passion for writing. Originally, it was set in the fictional Old West, but it ended up feeling more comfortable as science fiction. While a love story remains the heart of the novel, themes of found families and anti-colonialism, as well as critical criminology, have woven their way into the world-building.

After stealing from corrupt enforcement officials, Mary needs a place to lie low, far from the slums of New Vancouver Spaceport. She runs to Finn, an old friend from the city streets and the only person she feels connected to, who is now living on a remote farm.

After his mother died, Finn, Mary’s surrogate brother, found a home with his birth father’s widow and half-siblings. With her own addict mother in custody and her surrogate mother deceased, Mary is fascinated by the wealthy Lavallie family’s closeness. In spite of her discomfort with the farm’s frontier vastness and her prejudice against the family that left her friend destitute in his childhood, she is drawn into their circle. She is also drawn to Finn’s elder half-brother, Jacek.

She becomes deeply enmeshed with the family, using her skill with machinery to tackle a rabbit plague threatening the farm’s livelihood and, at the same time, falling in love with Jacek. She feels increasingly guilty about using their home as a hideaway, but just as she decides to take a chance on their new relationship and tell Jacek the truth, the law catches up to her.