An Unkindness of Ghosts

by Rivers Solomon

  At five and six, a child began work proper, helping her meema divide harvests by weight in barrels to send off for processing. A girl of ten knew addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, percentages, basic probability, and how to make equations even on both sides. She knew the life cycle of a plant. She knew how gears rotated the Field Decks beneath Baby.

  She knew basic medicine craft: how to suture a wound, set a bone, prevent infection with special creams. She knew which medicines she had to steal from upperdeck dispensaries for which ailments, how to make medicine from crops grown in the Field Decks, and how to grow medicinal plants in vents and ducts where guards couldn’t see.

  Certainly, Aster’s education in medical botany began in the Field Decks with the guidance of various Quarry Wing caretakers and elders, but it was only more advanced study that allowed her to craft medicines as expertly as she did now. She cobbled together a curriculum from healers, from discarded books, from medical journals on genetics and biochemistry. In the early days, Aint Melusine stole them for her. Working the upperdecks as a nanny meant she could sneak her way to the Archives. Later, the Surgeon wrote Aster passes to go to the Archives herself.

  Aster experimented, learned what she could from experts on plants, many who lived on Q deck and hybridized new, wondrous species in their wing’s kitchens or air ducts, often under an overseer’s nose on the Field Decks themselves. In addition to quarters, U deck and V deck held Matilda’s manufacturing plants. There, lowdeck workers synthesized chemical materials for the ship during their shifts. Expert chemists, they funneled all of Matilda’s waste down into the Bowels and processed it into mineral blocks that could be used to make everything from sodium hypochlorite to the peroxide from which the Tide Wingers made their starjars.

  Lune must’ve sought an extended education for herself too, one like Aster’s. Full of stolen books, journals, and workbooks. Tutorials with experts in the craft. Aster couldn’t fathom how else Lune came to know so much. More than Aster. More than Theo. More than anyone on Matilda, Aster reckoned.

  These are things I like to tell my mother, Lune wrote in her coded journals. That phrase indicated that the passage was highly secret. It took Aster a bit of time to get that, but she knew on Y deck, the affectionate word for mother wasn’t meema or meem, but mumma or mum. Next, Aster needed only to recall what her language teacher Ms. Beeker used to say when telling her to keep quiet about their secret lessons: Mum’s the word.

  When Aster put the two memories together, she knew that things I like to tell my mother was code for a secret. Lune had many secrets, most of them about Baby. Aster was headed to the Nexus now, where hopefully she could uncover some of them. Lune had worked there near every day of her life, monitoring Baby’s function, directing her electrical output.

  Aster presented her pass from the Surgeon to the three guards on patrol outside Baby’s access tunnel, keeping her head down. Pain medicine unsteadied her. She’d given the last of the nondrowsy variety to Theo for his leg and needed to make more.

  “Go ahead,” said one of the guards. Aster pressed forward but then stopped when he called her back. “What do you say to me?”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Look at me when you speak.”

  In precisely measured steps, Aster turned toward him, then lifted her gaze to his. “Thank you for letting me through, sir,” she said, wondering if she’d accidentally slighted one of Lieutenant’s watchmen. She’d been feeling his presence more heavily lately but knew it was just her imagination. From the moment Theo first informed her that his uncle was slated to replace Nicolaeus, Lieutenant had been a constant anxiety.

  “That’s better,” the guard said. Aster waited for an explicit dismissal before carrying on. The guard waited several seconds before gesturing her forward.

  She was glad the poppyserum she’d taken for her shoulder had a sedating effect, lest her insolent nature get the better of her. Now was not the time for an altercation. If she was taken into custody, she wouldn’t be able to keep searching for Giselle.

  Aster peered through the glass hatch at the end of the access tunnel onto what resembled the inner workings of a complex radio. Spools of copper wire transformed electrical signals across an expansive network of circuits while small red lights flashed on lacquered wooden control boards. Machines that looked to Aster like some sort of typewriter-telegraph hybrid spat out reams of hole-punched cardstock. Aster didn’t know what the pattern of dots meant, but she assumed they were a record of the Nexus’ informational output.

  Women operated massive switchboards, running to and fro between panels lined with neat rows of rotors and cogs, buttons and knobs. From the Field Decks, Baby appeared self-sustaining. She hovered in the sky, a great sphere of indomitable light. From here, Aster could see her strings. Her puppeteers.

  The Nexus, a large glass ring surrounding Baby, wasn’t much like what Aster’s mother had described in the journals. Her code hadn’t allowed for precise depictions. Lune’s goal hadn’t been quantitative accuracy. She’d meant her notes to be references for herself. No need to paint a picture of what she knew by heart.

  A woman on the other side of the hatch waved her forward, shouting several commands, but Aster couldn’t hear her through the soundproof barrier. Realizing her error, the woman opened the hatch and poked her head through. “We don’t got all day. We been expecting you.”

  Aster hadn’t heard Y deck spoken out loud in years, and she had to translate word by word in her head. Different sentence order.

  “Put one of those on,” said the woman, pointing to a wardrobe. Several sets of protective gear hung from the brass hooks, each containing a jumpsuit, a pair of goggles, and over-the-ear headphones. “My name’s Jo. You’re Ms. Aster, right? Surgeon said you’d be doing our radiation tests this month in place of him. You’re a few days late.”

  “My sincere apologies,” said Aster. This was the first opportunity she’d had, too distracted by Giselle’s recent disappearance.

  “Just get to it now that you’re here,” said Jo.

  Aster nodded as she pulled the jumpsuit over her clothing, exploring the fabric with the pads of her fingers. It was made of thick linen, and a small hole in one of the seams revealed an inner layer of something metallic and woven, unfamiliar to Aster. The inside lining was soft, stretchy, and absorbent. A knit jersey, maybe. It felt wonderful, and she loved buttoning herself up into this protective cocoon. It was heavy and present, putting deep pressure on her joints and limbs. She’d have to see about getting some of these coveralls for herself, though they’d be too hot to wear in most Field Decks.

  Once inside, Aster rushed to pull on her goggles, hoping she’d done it quickly enough to save herself from blindness. She’d never seen anything so bright before. The glass on the hatch must’ve been strongly tinted.

  “Maud will show you where to set up,” said Jo, then ran off to attend her console. Aster didn’t know who Maud was, and Jo made no move to inform her.

  Aster took the opportunity to observe Baby, awed by her clockwork.

  “Pretty, ain’t she?” said one of the workers, arms crossed over her chest as she stared at the fusion reactor beyond the wall of glass. “I’m Maud.”

  “Aster.”

  “What?” Maud tapped on her earphones.

  “I said I’m Aster.”

  Maud tapped on her earphones again. “What?”

  “Aster!”

  Maud smiled with a nod. “Good to meet you, Nestor. I’m gonna set you up in the break area. You about ready to get started?”

  Aster shook her head, hands stuffed into the pockets of the jumpsuit, and made sure to speak as loudly as possible. “I’m not ready at all. I am transfixed. I want never to move from this spot again.”

  Maud laughed and put her foot up on one of the chairs in front of a console.

  “Is this what a star looks like, then?” Aster asked. Ainy’s stories hadn’t done the night sky justice if there were billion
s of Babies studded into its black fabric.

  “I like to think she’s even prettier,” said Maud, gazing proudly upon the sphere of bubbling light, like she was its mother and had designed it herself. “Of course, I can’t say for sure.”

  Squinting, Aster tried to make sense of Baby’s parts, but physics wasn’t her area. She couldn’t tell the difference between this and conjure. Finally seeing it this close up, she half-believed Baby was the work of a coven of lowdeck soothsayers.

  Maud punched several red keys on one of the panels, and Aster wished she had a notebook to write in. She wanted to look busy, important, at work, like the rest of the women in the Nexus. This was where she was meant to be. Not a Q deck fieldworker, but a Y-decker tending to the sun.

  Maud pointed at Baby, then made a wide sweeping gesture with the same arm. “At the very core you got a supercharged electromagnet. That’s what creates what I like to think of as fertile soil. It makes the right environment for the reactions to happen. The magnetic field confines the hydrogens and gets them hot enough to collide. You can’t see it, but there’s a small pipe that feeds her deuterium. When their nuclei fuse, some of the mass turns into energy.”

  Aster understood the basic principle, if not the fertile soil analogy.

  “See that glass sphere around her?” said Maud. “She holds the water. The excess energy from the hydrogens combining to heat her up.”

  Aster knew the rest. High pressures in the glass sphere kept the water from turning to steam. That water went on to heat yet another body of water, which then did turn to steam. The steam spun the turbines, which generated Matilda’s electricity. The reason for the two bodies of water: to protect the ship from the irradiated water right next to the fusing deuterium.

  “Aren’t you worried the glass will break?” asked Aster, curious about how it all stayed together, and Maud laughed so hard that several women in the Nexus turned to stare. Aster felt mortified for having shown her ignorance to the women who would’ve been Lune’s peers. She respected and admired them; she wanted them to respect and admire her in turn. “I can leave, if that’s best,” she said. It was rare for her to meet people so far above her own capabilities. This was what people meant when they said she intimidated them, and here it was, turned back on her.

  “I’m so sorry, love,” said Maud. She threw her arm around Aster and pulled her in close. “I thought you were joking. It’s not like the glass from a cup of water, is it? Think of the hardest glass you can, and this is harder. I suppose it’s not even glass at all. Just what we call it because of how it looks. Don’t you worry, Nestor. If it fell thousands of feet, that glass would stay solid.”

  It all sounded quite suspect to Aster, but she wasn’t a materials engineer. She had to trust Maud’s analysis.

  “Come on. I’ll show you where you’re going to set up.” Maud led her through the Nexus, explaining different areas every few feet, showing Aster the additional magnets on the outer layer of Baby. “Those provide the torsional vibrations needed to properly confine the hydrogen into a sphere. That way it doesn’t touch the glass. Well, the not-glass,” Maud said, smiling. “Through here, love.” She spun the wheel to open a hatch, revealing a small room with folding tables. “We take our meals here. The girls know the routine so should you have any questions, you just ask one of them. You can take off your goggles and headphones, but best to leave on the overalls. I’ll be out there if you need me. And I’ll be seeing you soon enough when it’s time for my break.”

  The sounds of the break room bowled Aster over when she removed the earphones, as what was usually a quiet hum roared in her ears. The women all had radiolabes, each of them ticking and tocking a steady pulse. Aster’s, of course, remained silent. Broken. Dead as Lune.

  “Don’t look so flummoxed, girl,” said one of the workers on break. “You only got to be concerned when they really get going fast. There’s always gonna be a little bit of the harmful stuff getting through. We’re in the hot zone.”

  Aster thought of that aphorism Aint Melusine always said, something about heat and getting out of the kitchen. She began to set up her station the way the Surgeon had instructed. She was here under the guise of collecting blood samples for traces of radiation damage. These examinations were done monthly, usually by Theo himself, but this was the only way he could think to get her a pass into the Nexus.

  “I’d like to go first,” said a young woman—girl, really—with fairish brown skin and a mess of freckles, head shaved almost bald. Square jaw, square shoulders, square hips. Her lips, though, those were round as apples. Plump too. She was pretty, and something about her reminded Aster of Theo. Harsh and neat. Eyes like wilderness. More superficially, it was her light skin mixed with features Aster usually associated with dark skin.

  Aster waved the girl over and found her name on Theo’s charts. Jay Lucas, sixteen years old, Yarrow Wing. The box marked High Risk was ticked. Aster guessed it was something to do with her pale skin. She had several visible brown blotches that looked potentially cancerous and a few scars where moles had already been removed. There was a note next to her record in Theo’s fine cursive: Achromatosis. Albinism.

  “I’ve got difficult veins. You’ll have to go for my hand,” said Jay, dark eyes fixed on Aster.

  Aster wrapped a rubber cord around her wrist and instructed her to squeeze and unsqueeze her fist. Aster saw a good vein right across the center, and she rubbed the spot where she’d poke the needle for the blood draw. “This will—”

  “Pinch. I know.”

  “You remind me of the Surgeon,” Aster said as blood filled the first tube.

  Jay smiled, and Aster felt proud that she was the one to bring it on. Jay didn’t seem the sort to smile much. “I was going to say the same about you. You act just like him. All business. Proper and funny-talking. But he’s nice.”

  Aster nodded. “He is. And he’s good.”

  Aster wanted to say, He is my friend, but she wasn’t here to chat about Theo, much as he was on her mind these days. It felt good to be seeing him again. It felt good to know that if she’d radio him, he would answer and be by her side.

  “You’re smiling and biting your lip,” said Jay, grin wider now, seeming so much younger than she had half a minute ago. Like a proper sixteen-year-old. Ready for gossip. Ready to talk about who liked whom. There was nothing harsh in that happy face. She was just a little girl, and in this moment it was impossible to believe she would die from cancer in a few years.

  “I am neither smiling nor biting my lip,” Aster replied, but she was, goodness, she was. Everything was wrong, but she was giddy. So close to her mother here. In Lune’s cathedral made of artificially generated light and heat. And the poppyserum. And Theo. “We are all done here,” she said, and Jay nodded and went to have her lunch at one of the other tables. Aster could hear her giggling with some of the other women, but unlike with Maud earlier, she felt in on the joke.

  Aster had intended to use this time to ask questions, but she was too taken to speak on anything significant until Maud herself came to have her blood drawn. “Thank you for showing me Baby,” Aster said.

  “It’s my pleasure. She is my pride and joy, after all.”

  “It’s a shame that something so beautiful is dying.” Aster cleared her throat. She didn’t know how to be subtle with these things. The words sounded false and put-upon. She hated it and longed to say what she came here to say.

  “Don’t you worry about Baby. She’s doing just fine,” said Maud.

  “People say she’s ill. What else could explain the blackouts?” Aster asked, though she could think of a number of things. Poor wiring, for one.

  “You sound like the Sovereignty, always on our asses, demanding answers. All we know is, Baby is acting just how she’s supposed to act. We’ve kept her fueling consistent. The quality of the deuterium has not deteriorated. She continues to put out the same energy per day as she has for hundreds of years,” Maud explained, her initial warmth and frie
ndliness turning suspicious, wary.

  “I’m of the opinion someone’s using electricity who’s not supposed to,” said a young woman—almost all of them were young. Y deck women who worked the Nexus didn’t tend to live much past forty. Maud and Jo were the oldest at thirty-nine and forty-four, respectively, according to Theo’s charts.

  “Mhmm,” said someone else. “I heard they’re putting an ice rink in the upperdecks. That would certainly explain it.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Aster, and all the women turned to face her. She didn’t see any chastisement in their expressions, so she continued: “The upperdecks have had an ice rink for many years. It certainly draws a lot of power, but it’s nothing new and therefore wouldn’t be responsible.”

  “Oh, and how do you know that? You go ice-skating there on the weekends?” said Maud.

  Aster knew from a story Theo had told her. As a child, he’d begged his mother for ice-skating lessons not long after he’d begun recovery from his polio. He told her he wanted to feel graceful again, and with one leg half gone, the ice was one of the few ways that was still possible. He’d used the words the only way to glide. His mother had relented, but when his father found out, he’d beaten Theo with one of his skates.

  “The Surgeon informed me,” Aster said.

  “I still say an EMP is the best guess for these kind of readouts,” said Jay, scratching her shaved head. “What else could wipe power like that?”

  “What, somebody’s hiding electromagnets in their pockets? Under their bunk? Even if they were, to be big enough to suck that much power, they’d have to be Baby’s,” said Maud. “And, uh, we’d know if they was acting up, even if only for a split second ’fore we all blew up.”