“The girl—” I couldn’t meet her eyes. “The enforcers. The man. He called the enforcers, and—”
“Not your fault. We knew the risks, and I had my own small army coming after me.” She laughed, and her metal necklace caught the light, glinting. I loved the way the blue stripe through the center of the rings looked against the aluminum and her white skin. She was beautiful, especially now.
Damn it.
“I’m just glad we made it out,” she said. “We’re okay for now.”
“Did we get the parts?”
“Not all of them. Ovie’s been reviewing what we have to see if we can still manage the repairs. He probably needs your help, but—”
I struggled against the pain and sat up. “How is Marre? Is she holding on?”
“Whoa there, lady!” Tev placed her hand on my chest and gently pushed me back down. I resisted at first.
“I need to help Ovie and see Marre.”
“You need to recover. You’re no good to me all broken in half like this.”
I couldn’t help laughing a little sarcastically. “No good to you, huh?”
“That’s right. I need both my engineers in one piece.”
My engineers. Tears threatened to well up in my eyes but I held them back. I just nodded and smiled, but I could tell she saw my attempt to keep myself under control.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No!” I laughed a little. “Absolutely not. I just never thought I’d make it here. To being someone’s engineer. And until you said that just now, I hadn’t realized how badly I needed to hear something good.”
“You never thought you’d be someone’s engineer? I find that a little hard to believe coming from someone who tucked herself inside a crate in my cargo bay.”
My face grew hot, but luckily I didn’t blush easily. I wonder whether she knew it was Slip who’d encouraged me to stow away. “I guess I always thought my dreams were a little foolish.”
“Then so are mine.”
I shook my head and looked at her no matter how much it twisted my heart. “Tev.”
“You don’t have to think that way any more. You’re part of my crew.”
I closed my eyes and fought more tears. My heart bled out before her and there was nothing I could do to mend it. “You don’t understand. Good daughters are the ones who grow up to achieve something respectable. Good daughters don’t grow up to be sky surgeons. Good daughters go to universities and pinch at their souls until they become spirit guides. They don’t skip classes to work in their aunt’s repair shop. They don’t fail out of school because their fingers are too slippery with grease to tap out the answers to an exam.”
I fell quiet, thinking of my family, of how Lai spent all that time with me while my parents were on the research station and Nova was away at guild training. Lai, who gave me a chance to do something with my passion for science and engineering. I never heard the end of it from Nova, who assured me that good, respectable daughters didn’t come home smelling like ozone and metal. Good daughters embodied wisdom, trailing their hands over the hunched backs of the hungry masses, promising them a better life through prayer and manifestation. They guided souls through mystic journeys, beckoning them toward enlightenment with delicate fingers, bones like spun sugar.
Good daughters certainly didn’t take on blue-collar jobs tinkering with plasma coils, and they didn’t live on the dust-covered fringe of Heliodor. Good daughters bathed in coils of incense and lived in albacite-lacquered high-rise buildings.
Maybe these experiences had changed all that. Maybe Nova saw me for who I was, now. Instead of who I wasn’t.
“What you’ve achieved means something,” Tev finally said after a prolonged silence. “It means something to me, anyway. Look at what you’ve done for us.”
“Caused a fire in your cargo bay before destroying it? Or almost getting us arrested? Or do you mean that I stole from a poor family just so we could take a stab at repairing all the damage I’ve caused—”
“Stop it.” She didn’t meet my eyes. “Alana, you were right about what you said before, on the bridge. If it weren’t for you we wouldn’t have Nova, we wouldn’t have gotten that device off the hull, and you didn’t destroy my cargo bay even if you’re the one who detonated the device. If you hadn’t done it, Ovie would have; we had no other choice. You’re the one who’s convinced Nova to cooperate for Marre. We’d be lost if it weren’t for you. That’s the thing about a crew: it doesn’t work without all its parts.”
Again a lump grew in my throat that I had to choke back before speaking. “You know, at age three, Nova could already project her consciousness two streets over, where her aetheric body had tea with one of our elderly neighbors and her cockatoo. She’d said Nova’s presence manifested as ‘the loveliest shade of lavender.’” I huffed a laugh at the memory. “The most I did as a child was wreck half my street with one of my experiments. By the time Nova was twenty, she was coaxing entire colonies into giving up gluten and meditating for the poor. I never understood how meditating would help bring food and medicine to the lower classes, but don’t tell her I said that.”
“Have you ever thought that making your own life about Nova might be taking something away from yourself?”
I clenched my jaw. She was right, but I couldn’t talk about the real reason I had such a hard time with Nova. I couldn’t talk about all the privilege she so ignorantly possessed, and how much I hated how flippantly she threw that away when she talked about wanting to vacate her body. She’d won the genetic lottery, and I hadn’t, yet she was the one who squandered that health by starving herself. She was born healthy, I was born sick, and that was the end of it. Not that I’d have given her my Mel’s Disorder if I could have, no matter what her faith entailed.
“You are my engineer,” Tev said, her warm hand still firm on mine. “You’ve found a second family here.”
I laughed sarcastically. “You sure you want a family member like me? I seem to cause a lot of problems—”
“I wouldn’t take back the moment we met for anything.”
Before I could respond, she leaned over, pressing her warm mouth against mine, shocking me into silence. Even in my drugged state, I felt desire rising in me as she pressed her palm against mine and entwined our fingers, her mouth hot and full of sweetness, as if she’d been sucking on candy. She tasted as wonderful as I had imagined.
Slip’s face kept creeping into my mind, her kind voice echoing over and over again. But my passion for Tev collided with the parts of me that protested, overriding them, desperate for this small moment of release. I slipped a hand beneath her shirt and slid it along the curve of her waist, pulling her to me. She felt good, so good I didn’t care how badly my ribs hurt. Even that pain was sweet under the weight of her.
She resisted and pulled back, biting her lip. She shook her head with a small grin and ran a hand through her hair. “I have to stop or you’ll never heal.”
“I don’t mind.”
She laughed. “I’m sure. Alana, about Slip—”
I reached up and entangled my fingers in the hair at the back of her neck, pulling her down onto me, kissing her deeply. It was wrong of me, but I didn’t want to know. Not yet. I just wanted this moment. I could hear the Tangled Axon between us, charging every touch, humming and singing in the space between molecules, between atoms, between electrons and quarks. She sang with us as our need for each other spun out and in, deep and abiding. The pain from the pressure of Tev’s body was excruciating, but when the sharp stabbing sensation throbbed in my chest with each pulse of my blood, tingling beneath the Tangled Axon’s hum, it only ignited me further. There was no way a partnered woman would kiss me like this, not someone as honor-bound and loyal as Tev. Maybe she’d been about to tell me she and Slip weren’t together anymore.
I knew it was an empty justification. I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Again she pulled away, this time gently extracting herself from my grasp. �
�We have to wait,” she breathed, flushed with desire. “I’d be angry at myself if I hurt you, and I need to talk to Ovie and Marre about the repairs. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Tev.” I kept my hand on hers. I thought of the plants I’d rescued from her charred room. “I need to give you something. It’s in my quarters.”
“Later.” She squeezed my hand and started to get up, but then paused, leaned over and kissed my cheek, letting her lips linger before pulling away. I wanted to grab her and pull her down onto me, ribs be damned.
“Thank you for your devotion to this ship,” she said.
I needed to ask about Slip. My brain circled in on itself, debating over what was right and what was easy. Instead, I said, “I’m really sorry about the man on Valen—”
“It’s not your fault. The guy would have gotten us arrested if you hadn’t stopped him. We’d be halfway to a penal colony by now. Ovie said the damage looked awful, but he took care of it. The shuttle’s fine. I’m just glad you two could make it back.”
The shuttle? What was she talking about?
“Focus on feeling better,” she said. “We have just under two weeks until we get to the breach, and we’re cutting it close. Marre calculates we’ll be there with half a day to spare before she really starts struggling to hang onto herself.” She ran her thumb over my palm. “Get some rest. We’ll talk later, I promise.”
On her way out, I heard her speak to someone. I couldn’t hear what he said in response, but I could tell from the voice it was Ovie. They laughed, then I heard their footsteps heading in opposite directions—hers down the corridor, his toward me.
He folded the bedside chair out from the wall and sat, resting his elbows on his knees, surgeon locs draping over his shoulders. That wolfish face gave me an appraising stare. I felt diminished in his presence. Exposed.
Before he could speak, I asked, “What did you tell her about Valen?”
“I told her what happened.”
I stared at him, but he didn’t blink. “And what happened?”
He opened his hands as if to say the answer was self-evident, then leaned back in his chair. “You tackled the owner of that shop when you caught him sabotaging the shuttle. Banging it up, messing with the engine. Then I defended you when he started banging on your head instead.”
“Why?” I whispered. “Why would you cover for me? I was stupid, and—”
“Yeah.” He leaned forward again. A beat later, his wolf-shadow leaned with him. “You were stupid. But just like you were that kid once, I was you once. I’ve been in those Heliodor streets, collecting old parts for metal or money. I lived on the fringe. I’ve stared down the barrel of going back there after getting a taste of the Big Quiet.”
“But that’s not why you helped me.”
He smiled, fangs and all. “No.”
I rubbed the spot on my wrist where Tev had touched me, but I said nothing.
“Tev deserves to be happy,” he said. “She doesn’t need to know about you talking to that girl. She’s had a hard time of it, with Marre’s condition. You having a moment of weakness shouldn’t get in the way of what she’s found in you.”
“And what’s that?”
“Potential, I think.” He scratched behind his ear, locs bouncing over his hand as he looked thoughtfully to the side. “For a fresh perspective in this family. For new life. Everything’s been all fighting to stay somewhere, fighting to keep something, fighting to withstand some pressure. She deserves to have something worth adding to her life instead of just struggling not to lose everything.”
“Ovie? That man . . . ”
“He’ll be okay. I just scared him and knocked him out.”
I exhaled. “Good.”
I wanted to ask him about Slip and Tev, but I knew if I did, I wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye. I could barely look at him now, with the taste of Tev’s lips still lingering on my tongue. Say something. Tell him. Be honest with someone for once.
“Thank you,” I said instead, awash with guilt. “You didn’t have to lie for me. About the repair lot.”
“I didn’t do it just for you.”
“I know. Thank you anyway.” I reached my hand out, and after staring at it for a moment, he took it.
“Ovie,” I said. “I have to talk to Slip. I have to—”
“May I join you?”
Ovie and I looked toward the doorway, where Marre stood, small and barefoot as ever.
“I was just going,” Ovie said, letting me go. Marre hadn’t waited for a response—she just stepped quietly into the infirmary, holding a glass spoon and a small glass jar filled with golden honey. Her hair draped over her button-down shirt like silk.
“Thank you, Ovie,” she said with very little intonation.
“Remember what I said.” He looked at me, stern. “Don’t waste your opportunities.”
I nodded, and he left.
“It gets lonely on the bridge,” Marre said quietly, sitting down in the chair in his place. Her bare legs were so thin I couldn’t help thinking of my anorexic sister, and wondered what Nova thought of this time-frozen woman. Did she see Marre edging toward the veil between lives? Did she see something of herself in her? Why did she frighten Nova?
“I don’t socialize,” Marre said, barely above a whisper.
“Sometimes you come to see me, though.”
The fingers of her left hand disappeared—first skin, then fat, muscle, bone—along with the flesh and hair on the right side of her head. The air around her rippled slightly, and the buzz returned, plaguing my tired head.
“You’re staring again,” Marre said.
“I’m looking, yes.” No point in lying.
“You can’t help staring at a woman whose body forgets to be.” The rest of her face and hair flashed back into existence.
I tried speaking, but only managed something between a word and a grunt; I’d wanted to say, “I’m sorry,” but knew it would be both inadequate and inaccurate.
“Don’t worry. No one knows how to act around me. Except Tev. What can anyone say in response to the mad ravings of an eternal youth?” She smiled and looked down at her now-floating jar of honey, encased by one invisible hand. The other held the glass spoon like a child, fisted tight. She looked far more fragile than I think she really was.
“This is why I don’t leave the bridge. I have forgotten how to talk to other humans if we aren’t discussing navigation or ship operations.”
I took a risk and reached out with my right hand, covering the cold, unseen fingers that held the jar. Translucence rippled up her arm as if she were made of water and my touch were a stone dropped into her. “I want to hear anything you have to say, Marre. I’d like to get to know you. You should come see me more often.”
“The crew likes you.” She offered the barest hint of a smile. “That is something. They’re important to me. And you love this ship.”
“Yes. I do, very much.” It felt good to be close to her. Once I got past her appearance and eccentric demeanor, something about her made me feel at home. “How are you feeling? Are you going to be able to last until we get to the breach?”
She shrugged one shoulder, sucking on her spoon. Slowly, she took it out of her mouth, licked it a few times, and put it back into the jar. “It’s difficult to say. Difficult to hold all the pieces together at once. May I eat my honey now?”
“Oh. Sure.” I backed off and tried to think of something to say. “Did you want anything else with that? I think Slip has some bread.”
“That isn’t necessary.” She dipped the spoon into the jar, retrieving a viscous ribbon of amber. “Ovie likes honey too. He’s a good wolf.”
Even having seen the shadow trailing Ovie, he still made no sense to me. The other crew members referred to him as a wolf, but they accommodated the human space he took up when he walked by. They watched him use his opposable thumbs when he worked on the engine, just as I did. He ate with silverware and spoke with his human tongue. The
crew responded to these things, so they clearly perceived Ovie as human, just as I did.
Yet the wolf lingered, revealing itself to me in pieces.
The ship is lending you her eyes.
“You see parts of him, don’t you?” Marre examined her jar, playing with the honey dripping from her spoon like thread. “You see the shadows but you still see the man.”
I nodded slowly.
“The ship likes you too.” Marre’s dark eyes flicked toward me, locking their gaze on mine, that hollowness drawing me in like a gravity well. “She’s letting you see the real world.”
“It was really you who showed me, wasn’t it? Not Nova.”
She smiled. “Of course. I’m the pilot.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do.”
I shivered at the sight of her. The jar was no longer full of honey, and her skin was no longer tattooed, no longer dappled with translucent patches. Buzzing swarmed my ears, sizzling and popping, melding with the song of the ship, weaving into a choral echo that swelled into me, aching. I watched the spoon dissolve around her hand, coating it, until her flesh was made of glass from finger to collarbone. In lieu of muscle and sinew, she was all wire and electricity beneath a crystalline surface. Tiny supernovae glowed where her eyes should have been—stars that lived and died in moments, lived and died . . .
The honey jar was now full of plasma, and it erupted into flares like a sun.
Chapter Sixteen
Marre haunted me night after night as I recovered from my broken ribs and near-relapse, sitting by my hospital bed with her jars of honey. Mostly she asked me questions about my childhood—she wanted to hear the story about the baby Greenbelt. I think she may have laughed, but it was too like a sigh to tell, and too drowned out by the buzzing and electricity. Such a strange way to pass a drug-laden couple of days.
During the day, Nova read to me from one of the books she had brought with her on a transparent imprint. Terrible story, really. Something about a spirit guide who fell in love with her instructor during guild training. Still, I was grateful for the gesture, and more than once Nova held my hand. My big sister, being my big sister, filling in the gaps in my heart that grief had carved. I wondered what Lai would say if she could see us like this.
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