Short Story: Hanging Day

The boy’s execution was scheduled for the afternoon, around shift change, to allow as many colonists as possible to witness the event in person. Attendance was optional, of course, but Gagarin was a small enough settlement that any absence would be noted and remembered.

That’s why Harlan had made sure he had a good excuse to be somewhere else when they’d hang his friend.

As noon approached, Harlan grabbed his work pack and headed for the outskirts of the settlement. Gagarin had been built outwards from a core of prefabricated modules, ugly, squat things, designed to withstand being dropped from low orbit, at the same time aerodynamic and blocky, pockmark scars telling the story of humanity’s turbulent arrival on this world. He adjusted the straps of his backpack as he made his way through the warren of interlocked prefabs, pointing his steps toward Gagarin’s southside and trying to stay out of people’s sight as best he could.

Eventually, the prefabs gave way to the habitats dating back to the second phase of colonization. Looking vaguely like eggs laid by some gargantuan creature, they’d been constructed in situ by feeding local rocks and dust into building-sized 3d-printing equipment that had come down with the prefabs. They were the first structures built by humans on another planet. Harlan’s father had been one of the builders. The eggs offered shelter, but not much more. In Aspera’s long and humid summers, the heat inside would climb to unbearable levels, while the planet’s brutal winter storms made the eggs howl in the icy cold. Remembering the last blizzard season, Harlan was grateful for the day’s heat.

Paved paths wound their way past and around the eggs, converging in one main traffic arterial commonly known as Tereshkova Promenade. Harlan stepped out of the way as a cargo tricycle rolled past him, its rider grunting a muffled greeting as they pedaled along. The smell of fertilizer caught his nose. Terraforming this world was a slow and often smelly process, the work of generations. But the colonists stubbornly marched onward toward progress. What else was there to do?

Walking down Tereshkova Promenade at a brisk pace, Harlan left the eggs behind him. He passed the greenhouses and the water treatment plant. A thickly sweet, slightly burnt smell hung in the air. Accompanied by the distant sound of sawblades, it told Harlan that the morning shift was currently processing pseudotrees at the mill. Probably trying to get one last batch ready before everyone headed back to the town center for the day’s big event.

His destination lay at the top of a small hill. As a trueborn child of Aspera, Harlan’s body had never known anything other than this planet’s harsh gravity. His father had often joked that Aspera liked to hold her people extra close. But those who survived her challenge, she rewarded with strong hearts, thick muscles, and dense bones. An offworlder adult might look at this hill and sigh with exhaustion at the mere thought of the climb, but Harlan just resettled his backpack and kept moving along a worn dirt path that snaked up the slope.

Rainbow grasshoppers chirped in the tussock grass. The strange, iridescent creatures were natives, but the plants they used as shelter had grown from seeds that had been scattered across the continent to identify regions with soil that was compatible with Earth’s plant life. Identifying targets for settlement with this deliberate act of contamination had been one of mankind’s earliest sins on this world, and far from its last.

As Harlan approached the hilltop, the solar array came into view. A field of hundreds of solar panels baked in the midday sun, soaking up the light of Aspera’s F-type star and filling the air with a low hum. Gagarin’s first solar array had been built much closer to the original drop site, before the settlers understood the bizarre migration patterns of the local pseudotrees. Whatever panels had survived being in the path of the first documented forest march had been relocated to the hill where they were safe from any wandering trees.

Harlan put his work pack down and wiped his brow. His shirt was sticky with sweat, and he wanted to let at least some of it evaporate before he moved into the shade beneath the solar panels. Besides, he was in no rush to get started. Taking his time was kind of the point, he reminded himself.

He took a long sip from his water pouch and admired the view. Gagarin lay north. From this distance, the prefabs looked like toy blocks stacked by some titanic toddler. Further north and to the east, the mottled grayish-green forest stretched into the distance towards the mountains. Collins, the nearest settlement, had been established in the foothills of those mountains at the same time as Gagarin. Harlan had never been, but his mother had promised to take him when he was older. How much older was a question Harlan had yet to receive a concrete answer to.

To the west, the trees gradually gave way to the shores of Tsiolkovsky lake, one of the largest on the continent and the origin point of the Korolev river, which wound its way into the grasslands south of Gagarin. Somewhere in the deep south was Armstrong. That was all anyone would tell Harlan about Armstrong: it lay south beyond the summer steppes, it was Aspera’s first settlement, and it had failed for reasons unknown. 

Harlan grabbed his tablet from its pocket. The panel he was looking for was designated 12G, meaning the seventh panel in the twelfth row. He shouldered his backpack, folded up his tablet, and walked into the shade beneath the panels.

The first commandment of the colonists was a simple one: Be useful. Everyone was expected to chip in, and being a child was no excuse to not lend a hand. Harlan had attained his electrician’s class-A certification six months ago, which meant he was cleared to service Gagarin’s electrical systems. The day Harlan had received his cert was one of the few times his mother had shown something close to resembling approval. Harlan was old enough to understand that she was just a person, and people were complicated, and she had a lot of responsibilities, and just because she had a hard time expressing emotions that didn’t mean she didn’t love him, but he was also young enough to still care deeply about his parent’s approval.

He had noticed the panel’s dip a few days ago, but he hadn’t logged it until this morning. This was his out. He’d been lucky that no one else had caught the small malfunction and deprived him of this perfectly valid reason to miss… whatever they were going to do. Harlan shook off the thought. He needed to focus on the maintenance procedure.

At this point in time, as far as the colonists knew, no one in the universe was making new solar panels. Keeping their current stock in working order for as long as possible and minimizing waste was crucial for the survival of the colony. The importance of working slowly and methodically, of following the proper procedure closely, was drilled into every electrician from day one, so Harlan took his time examining the panel before him.

The panel itself seemed fine. He could see no obvious signs of damage to the photovoltaic sheet, which was good news. That narrowed down the potential sources of the malfunction.

Checking the inverter, Harlan spotted a glittering, iridescent blob that covered some of the inverter’s air intake. The grasshopper-analogs went through several stages of metamorphosis, and sometimes they would attach their cocoons to electrical equipment. Most of the time that didn’t cause any issues, but in this case the decreased airflow had probably caused the inverter to overheat.

Probably.

Sticking to procedure, Harlan grabbed a pair of electrician’s gloves from his work pack and put them on. He examined the cocoon more closely, gently prodding it with a screwdriver. The thing was well hardened, and he figured he could probably scrape it off and clear the vents.

Probably.

Instead, Harlan grabbed a small knife from his pack and began to gently pry the cocoon loose, taking care not to damage what was inside. After a few minutes of careful prodding it came free, and Harlan placed the cocoon in the shade beneath another panel.

The inverter’s status display remained dark. Not just airflow, then. Harlan disconnected the unit from the power grid, then removed its outer casing. He took out a multimeter from his pack. These inverters had powerful capacitors, strong enough to give an unsuspecting electrician a nasty jolt. Using the multimeter, Harlan confirmed that the capacitors did indeed still hold a charge, so next he grabbed a resistor from his pack and connected it to the inverter to safely bleed off the charge. This would take a while, so Harlan sat down and waited.

He could tell who it was before she spoke by the cadence of her footfall and the smell of lavender.

“I thought I might find you here.”

Harlan didn’t turn around.

“I saw you logged the outage this morning. Rotten timing, don’t you think? On a day like this?”

“I guess.” Harlan leaned forward to read the multimeter. “Gotta make sure it gets fixed though. You know, those are the rules.”

“Yes, I do know those are the rules,” said Harlan’s mother, kneeling down beside him. “I helped write them.”

Harlan glanced at his mother. She was studying him with her stern gray eyes, performing some kind of mental calculation that Harlan could never fully understand. Her narrow, angular face, never quite smiling, never quite frowning, always leaving people guessing where they stood. As an offworlder, born on Earth, hundreds of lightyears away, Aspera would never be her home but an alien world that constantly challenged her with her unrelenting pull, her glaring star, her foreign sounds, her ferocious seasons, her hostile soil. Sweat beaded against his mother’s skin where her forehead met her short, silver gray hair, and even though he knew she’d paused to catch her breath before she had approached him, Harlan could tell her heart was pounding in her chest.

And yet, his mother held her head high. Not with pride, but defiance, as if to say, “Look at me, world; despite your best efforts, I survive.” 

Catherine Starkweather bowed to no one.

She turned her gaze to the inverter, with its guts exposed.

“What is your diagnosis?”

“There was a grasshopper cocoon covering the air vents. I’m thinking that made the inverter overheat, and with these units when that happens they sometimes blow a MOSFET, so I was gonna check that next.”

“And if it is a blown MOSFET?”

“Well, then I’ll have to replace it.”

“That means you will need to disassemble the whole unit.”

“Probably, yeah.”

“Which will take a long time.”

“I guess.”

“Enough time to miss the hanging.”

Harlan flinched. Whatever calculation she had been performing reached its inevitable conclusion. Catherine stood with impossible grace, defying gravity as she stretched her tall form to its full height.

“Unless we work together.”

Harlan knew there was no point arguing with her. Once his mother made a decision, it would take a titanic effort to convince her to change course. 

The multimeter confirmed that the capacitors had been drained of charge, so Harlan unhooked the resistor and began to undo the bolts holding the inverter’s control boards in place. His mother grabbed another screwdriver and did the same with quick, methodical movements. It didn’t take long for them to fall into a wordless, studied rhythm, making short work of the task of taking the inverter apart and spreading its pieces on a tarp Harlan placed on the ground.

“I know he is your friend, Harlan. But you understand why it needs to be done.”

There was no place in the whole universe where Harlan wanted to be less than in this moment. He bit back the words that were coming to him, knowing where they’d lead.

“Do you want me to go over the particulars of the case again?”

Harlan picked up the inverter’s heat sink, carefully examining the circuit board attached to the metal block. There was nothing he wanted less.

“Sure.”

“Gregor, Arkady, and a handful of their friends were out past the perimeter after curfew, where they were not supposed to be, drinking moonshine they were not supposed to have.”

Catherine used the multimeter to methodically check each control board one by one as she continued to lay out the case with a prosecutor’s cold detachment.

“According to Gregor, Arkady started getting angry and attacked him. When Gregor pushed him back, Arkady tripped and fell, hitting his head on a rock. By the time they got Arkady back to the colony, he was already dead. One witness confirms this version of events. A tragic accident.”

Harlan turned the heat sink over. There were scorch marks on its underside.

“However, other witnesses who were there claim it was Gregor who started the argument, not Arkady. Additionally, doctor Yoshida’s analysis of the skull fracture suggests Arkady was struck, and did not fall.”

Tracing the scorch marks, Harlan found a set of burnt-out transistors connected to the heat sink. Dead MOSFETs, just as he’d suspected.

“Under cross examination, Gregor’s brother confirmed that Gregor was jealous of Arkady, specifically because Arkady had been assigned as Alexandra’s mate. This provides the motive: Gregor wanted Arkady out of the way, hoping he could take Arkady’s place as Alexandra’s mate.”

Harlan set down his board and picked up a screwdriver. He began to remove the heat sink from the transistors, then retrieved a small case containing a soldering kit from his work pack.

“When Gregor invited his friends to get drunk, that provided the means and the opportunity to take out his rival. Motive, means, opportunity. He was tried, found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and convicted. These are the rules, Harlan. These are our laws.”

Harlan had heated up the soldering iron, getting ready to unsolder the burnt-out transistors from the board, but he found that his hands were shaking. He lowered the soldering iron.

“But what if we’re wrong?”

“The evidence speaks for itself. I am confident we made the right call.”

“Did you? Are you?”

Harlan knew that had been the wrong thing to say as soon as he said it. The look on his mother’s face confirmed it. 

Oh well. No point in holding back now.

“First off, and I know I’m not supposed to say bad things about dead people, but everyone knows Arkady was an angry drunk. Him starting a fight is the least suspicious thing about this story.” The words kept coming faster now, like a dam had broken. “And second, your motive is all backwards, because Gregor didn’t need to be jealous of Arkady. Alexandra was going to petition for an exemption to be allowed to choose Gregor instead of Arkady. Gregor invited everyone out to apologize to Arkady, not to kill him!”

“Harlan.”

“Gregor’d never do something like this! He’s a good guy!”

“Harlan!”

He caught himself. Harlan couldn’t remember when he’d gotten up, or when he’d taken off his gloves and tossed them aside. 

Or when he’d started crying.

“Please. Gregor’s my friend. There’s gotta be something you can do.”

“You know as well as I do that there is not.”

The softness in her voice caught Harlan off-guard.

“But why? Why can’t we just…”

“Let him go? Is that it?”

“Well… yeah.”

Catherine carefully placed the board she’d been checking and the multimeter down on the tarp. 

“I know about Alexandra and Gregor. Teenagers are not nearly as sneaky as they think themselves to be.”

“Then you know this whole thing stinks!”

“Harlan, Alexandra was never going to get that exemption.”

“How do you know that?”

“Her mother and Gregor’s mother are sisters.”

“So?”

“Do you really need me to spell it out for you?”

She didn’t. Harlan knew all about Gagarin’s strict laws around marriage and parenthood designed specifically to, as his mother liked to say, balance out the settlement’s limited gene pool until their population was large enough to relax these restrictions. 

“So that’s it, then? We’re killing an innocent kid for the crime of falling in love with the wrong person?”

“Every child that is born on Aspera—”

“—is another chance to continue the story of humankind, I know. You’ve only told me a million times. But then why are we okay with killing one of those children? How does that make sense?”

“Gregor has three younger brothers, who are all very healthy. His genes are well preserved.”

“Oh so what about me, then? I’m an only child, and with dad gone I’m not gonna have any brothers or sisters anytime soon, so does that mean you’d let me get away with murder?”

Now it was his mother’s turn to flinch. Part of him had known the reaction mentioning his father would produce, but part of him instantly regretted this small act of cruelty. And yet, his mother held his gaze. Wounded, but not defeated.

“Yes. Yes, I would, because I believe in our mission. It is the most important thing in the universe, more important than me or you or our sense of justice and right and wrong. All of our futures hinge on what we do here, right now, and the choices we make. Whatever future humankind will have, it begins with us.”

Silence filled the space between them. To Harlan, it felt like he was seeing his mother, truly seeing her, for the first time in his life. The weight of the world on her shoulders. Her pain. Her determination. Her unbending certainty that she was right. That her cause was righteous. It occurred to him then how strange it was to love someone and to mourn perhaps not the person before him, but the idea he’d once had of them.

He sat back down, picked up the soldering iron, and found that his hand was quite steady now.

They passed the rest of the repair in silence. As Catherine had predicted, working together sped up the process considerably, and the inverter hummed back to life a short while later.

“I’ll pack up, you go ahead. Wouldn’t want to miss your big day.” Harlan began to place his tools back into his work pack, also bagging the defective transistors from the inverter he’d removed and replaced. The second commandment of the colonists was “Waste not, want not,” after all.

Catherine wiped her hands on her pants as she rose.

“I know you are angry and hurt. That is only understandable. But in time, you will understand.” She squeezed his shoulder. “I will see you there.” He wasn’t sure whether that was a question, an order, or a prediction; knowing his mother, Harlan assumed it was some degree of all of these.

“Yeah, I’ll see you there.”

Another calculation behind her eyes, and another result he could only guess at.

He watched as she strode down the hill, back towards Gagarin. Sliding the final screwdriver into his pack, Harlan glanced over where the alien cocoon lay on the ground, glittering in the afternoon’s half-light. 

It moved.

Harlan edged closer. With great effort, something inside was straining against the membrane, trying to break free. He held his breath. A tear formed in the cocoon’s side. Spindly, segmented legs emerged from within, feeling their way to freedom. Then a head, dotted with tiny eyes and ending in an elongated proboscis, followed by a narrow torso with six sets of glittering wings. The nymph stage of the grasshopper-analogs.

Like Harlan, a true child of Aspera.

The grasshopper-analog gradually unfolded its wings, catching the light of the alien star overhead. It would be another hour or two before it could take flight. Who knew where the wind would carry it.

Harlan understood then what he had to do.

He shouldered his backpack and began the long walk back to Gagarin.