Sound

by Alexandra Duncan

  I study him. I never thought of Rubio having a father and mother before. I guess I thought he sprang fully formed from the ether to annoy me.

  “Apex,” I say. “Isn’t that one of the company-states?”

  Rubio nods, eyes still on the barrel, even though he’s done replacing the seal.

  “How’d you get out?” I’ve heard about the company-states before. Almost everyone born there ends up working for them their whole lives.

  Rubio looks at me for the first time. “We had overages in my year. My mom knew someone on the board, and she convinced them Apex ought to be represented on DSRI missions.”

  We stand in silence for a moment. “I guess they’re going to be pretty pissed when you don’t come back, huh?” I finally say.

  “Who knows?” He looks away, his face unreadable. “I’m sure DSRI will find a way to compensate them.”

  A shiver of pity moves through my stomach. Something about the way he says “compensate” makes me think he means exactly that. As if he’s a commodity—a valuable one, but still something with a price.

  “Wait . . . so this stuff, it’s legal?” What’s going on here? “Why are we transporting it all secretively, then? Why not contract with a licensed freight captain?” Unless the issue isn’t so much what we’re shipping as who we’re shipping it to. That might explain why Sweetie doesn’t want to give us port coordinates yet. If we’re stopped along the way, we can’t tell what we don’t know.

  Rubio raises his hands in surrender. “It’s your boat. I’m only the hostage here.”

  I nod. But it’s not my boat. It’s Sweetie’s, and the only one of us who knows enough about him to guess what’s going on in his head is lying in a bunk, recovering from head trauma.

  I make for the gangway leading out of the cargo hold.

  “Hey,” Rubio calls after me. “Don’t you want your new gear?” He holds up one of the thermal jackets.

  “I’ll get it later,” I shout over my shoulder. For now, I have some things to straighten out with Cassia. Like who the hell needs cryatine smuggled to them on Enceladus? And what else is Sweetie going to ask of us before he finally lets us go?

  The junker’s cargo hold stands on the opposite side of the ship from the sleeping berth, so I have to cross the sad common room with its stained set of couches splitting at the seams. The mechanical access doors clang under my feet as I pass down the corridors. I’m so twisted up in my thoughts, I don’t notice the armored sentry outside the sleeping berth until I’m nearly on top of her. Warning flares spark in the back of my head. Something is wrong.

  “You can’t go in.” The guard lowers her rifle.

  Very wrong.

  “Like hell I can’t.” I shove the rifle up, grab the door handle, and roll it aside.

  Cassia is propped up on pillows in the widest bunk, her hair tied back in a braid. An osmotic bandage hugs her temples, slowly leeching painkillers into her system at the same time it heals the gash on her forehead. Sweetie sits beside her, one arm across her body, trapping her in the bed. His free hand cradles her wrist. Cassia sits pillar straight, every muscle in her body tense. Her eyes find mine as I enter the room.

  “. . . know it would be better for everyone.” He strokes the back of her hand with his thumb. “I only want to make life a little easier on you and your family.”

  I bristle. Whatever it is he’s offering Cassia, it’s not sitting easy with her. A sickening mixture of anger and fear chokes me. I clear my throat.

  Sweetie turns, his hand still clamped around Cassia’s. “Ah, the government girl.” He smiles. “Come in, my dear. Cassia and I were just discussing some business.”

  I clench my jaw. Sweetie still scares me more than anyone I’ve ever met, and I don’t want him to see me shaking. I narrow my eyes at his hand.

  Sweetie glances down, and then back and forth between us, confused. Suddenly he throws his head back and laughs.

  “Oh, I see.” He winks at me, but his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t like me moving in on your territory, do you, my dear?”

  “Cassia’s not territory.” I ball my hands and dig my fingers into my palms. Stress response in humans increases cortisol production and suppresses immune function. “She doesn’t belong to anyone.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I steal a small kiss.” He looks at Cassia. “Will she, little tinker?” His hand tightens around hers, and I remember the sensation of bones grinding together when he asked my name.

  Cassia blanches. “I . . . no,” she says quietly. Her eyes are too wide when she looks at me again. Her chest moves fast and shallow.

  Sweetie raises one inked hand, gently brushes his knuckles against Cassia’s cheek, and grabs her by the back of the neck.

  “Ow!” Cassia winces and tries to jerk her head back, but he only tightens his grip. His lips close in on hers.

  “Stop!” I shout.

  Sweetie stops. He swivels his head toward me, a grin spread out over his lips.

  My whole body vibrates. “Let her go.”

  “You see?” He points at me, that same cruel smile still in place. “Territory.”

  I don’t answer. Sweetie stands and straightens his shirt. He laughs again, but there’s something dark in it.

  “Best of luck to you, girls. Try not to get yourselves killed. And little tinker . . .” He smiles at Cassia. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” He saunters from the berth, letting the door roll closed behind him.

  Relief floods Cassia’s face. She pulls the hand Sweetie held up to her chest and closes it into a fist.

  I hurry to her side. “Are you okay?”

  She looks as if she’s about to cry but draws a trembling breath and pulls herself together. “He wants to set me up as his go-to girl after we find Nethanel. He said he’d let my family keep this ship if I’ll stay with him on Ceres.”

  “Stay with him?” I say. “Like his mistress?” My voice squeaks on the word. I don’t know if Cassia has any idea how I feel about her, but I’m too shaken up to do a good job of hiding it.

  Cassia nods, then closes her eyes and leans her head back against the wall. “Maybe I should have said yes. We need the ship.”

  I huff in exasperation. “Don’t you think you’re worth more than a chirkut junker?” I snap.

  Cassia winces. “Don’t yell, okay? I’m only talking it through.”

  “Sorry.” I pick at the pilled woolen blanket covering Cassia’s legs. “It’s just . . . you don’t want that either, do you?”

  Cassia laughs, not bitter, simply tired. “I didn’t want any of this. But here I am.”

  “What, you’d do it?” I give her a look that says I think she’s crazy.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. If it means my whole family can keep trading . . .”

  “That’s stupid,” I say. “You act like you’re some bargaining chip.”

  “Not a bargaining chip.” She shakes her head. “I’m the queen.”

  “What?”

  “The queen. Like in chess,” Cassia says. “Do you play that where you’re from?”

  “I guess.” I wobble my head from side to side. Some of Soraya’s colleagues from the university used to come over to our house to play, but I only ever watched.

  “The queen can move the farthest and the fastest, any direction she wants.” Cassia draws a diagonal line across the blanket. “But if winning means giving her up, you give her up.”

  “I never got that,” I say. “Why can’t you end the game with the queen in charge?”

  “That’s just the rules, Miyole.” Cassia sighs.

  I poke her in the leg. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah,” Cassia says. “But what’s the point if you’re all alone?”

  I look away. This conversation is cutting too close. “Well, if you decide to take his offer, I’ll have to get you a metric ton of breath mints for a wedding present.”

  Cassia cracks a smile and whaps me with one of the pillows. “
Stop it.”

  “I’m serious. Have you seen his teeth? We could scrape some samples and use them as biological weapons.”

  “Shut up,” Cassia says, but she doesn’t stop smiling. “He’ll hear you.”

  “Not if we get out of here,” I say.

  Cassia wrinkles her brow. “Are you sure you can fly this thing alone?”

  “I was thinking Rubio could help me,” I say, trying to keep my tone light and carefully studying the chevron pattern of the blanket.

  “Rubio?” She narrows her eyes. “Doesn’t he want to stay behind and get rescued?”

  “I think he’s not too impressed with the hospitality on Ceres.” I remember the rat boy leaping on his back and smile to myself. Now I know Cassia’s not dead, it’s a little funny.

  “Well, it’s not my fault if he ends up getting himself killed.” Cassia folds her arms and hunches her shoulders.

  “I think as long as you two stop trying to give each other concussions, he’ll be safe.” I grin.

  Cassia hits me with the pillow again.

  “Rest,” I tell her. “I’m pretty sure Rubio has a healthy fear of me now.”

  “You are terrifying,” Cassia agrees.

  It isn’t until later, when I’m up in the cockpit testing the systems, that I realize I never asked her who would want so much cryatine.

  Cassia sleeps through takeoff, so it’s Rubio and me in the cockpit when Sweetie’s air lock rumbles open onto the dwarf planet’s hundreds of abandoned mine shafts. Past the rough-hewn rock, a circle of stars waits for us.

  “Good luck, Miss Guiteau.” Sweetie’s voice crackles over the Mendicant’s failing coms. “Tell Cassia my offer still stands. And remember, bring my ship back or don’t come back at all.”

  “Good riddance,” I say to myself. If we make it that far, if we find Nethanel, Sweetie can have our shuttle. Cassia is never crossing his threshold again if I have anything to say about it.

  The coms aren’t the only shoddy thing about the ship Sweetie’s saddled us with. It’s slow as a snake in summer, and instead of self-healing nacre, a collection of overlapping composite tiles makes up its skin. If one of them breaks, we’ll have to put on pressure suits and climb outside to complete the repairs. There’s rust in the water recycling system and mildew in the air scrubbers, not to mention the holes in the inner walls. Half of them look like mods or repairs abandoned midway, and the other half are clearly the work of rats and rust. Tibbet finds them endlessly fascinating. He’s already brought us the carcass of one of Sweetie’s spy-eyed rats.

  We edge out into the black. I push the ship into the vector Sweetie recommended for us, the path out of the asteroid field with the least debris, and wish for the millionth time I was back in the Ranganathan’s shuttle, or even Ava’s tiny sloop.

  “You sure you don’t want me to fly?” Rubio glances over at me from the copilot’s seat.

  “No.” I make a show of checking the readouts so I don’t have to look at him. Rubio may have stopped trying to brain us with things, but that doesn’t mean I trust him to control the ship. We’ve come so far. I don’t want to wake up one day to find us en route back to the Ranganathan.

  “You know flying’s what I do, right?” Rubio says. “It’s my job.”

  “It’s only till we’re past the debris field.” I look at him. “Then we can set it to autopilot.”

  Rubio’s eyes widen and lock on the viewport. “Memsahib—”

  “What?” I snap, and follow his gaze.

  A jagged piece of rock the size of a lev train car spirals toward us, its ice and mineral deposits glistening in the far, faint sun.

  “Vaat,” I curse, and throw my whole weight behind the vector bars. The ship turns sluggishly, veering out of the asteroid’s path with mere millimeters to spare.

  To his credit, Rubio keeps his mouth shut as I maneuver our ship back into Sweetie’s lane.

  I clear my throat. “Right, then.”

  Rubio raises his eyebrows at me.

  I fiddle with a strip of synthetic leather that’s come loose from the bars. “Maybe you should have a go at it.”

  “Are you sure?” Rubio puts on his most earnest face. “Because if you need another chance to try and kill us—”

  I punch him in the arm and stand to give him the pilot’s seat. “Don’t push it.”

  He laughs and rubs the spot where I hit him. “Good thing you don’t have a pack of mangy kids to hold me down this time.”

  “It was just one kid,” I point out.

  “Yeah, but he had the element of surprise on his side.” Rubio sinks into the pilot’s seat, flexes his fingers, and takes the bars. “Plus, he was part feral. So he was really more like a pack.”

  I snort. “Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

  As much as I hate to admit it, Rubio flies well. Better than well, actually. Our clunky ship skirts the drifting clumps of rock and trash with the grace and ease of a pack elephant navigating Mumbai’s dense inner-city streets.

  “Where’d you learn to fly?” I ask.

  “Apex,” he says, gently nudging the ship over a spray of spiky pebbles I didn’t notice until we were almost on them. “I trained to be a crop duster.”

  “You’re good,” I say grudgingly.

  Rubio smirks. “I know.”

  “Of course, not at everything.” I lean forward and pretend to check the oxygen saturation levels. We’re almost past the debris field. “I mean, I know loads of people on flight crew who haven’t had their asses handed to them by a research assistant.”

  “You know, memsahib, if you really are intent on suicide, I can recommend some more effective methods—”

  I punch him in the arm again and check telemetry. “Field’s clear,” I say. “We’re good to switch to auto.”

  Rubio gives over the pilot’s seat again, and I program in the trajectory lane Sweetie gave us, then activate the autopilot system. I stand and point at him. “Don’t mess with the vectors. I’ll be right back.”

  “Where’re you going?” Rubio asks.

  “To check Cassia’s bandages.”

  Rubio sobers. “Tell her I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to—”

  “She knows.” I start down the steps, but Rubio calls out behind me.

  “Hey, memsahib!”

  I turn.

  “What you’re doing . . . I get it.”

  I raise an eyebrow at him. Seriously?

  “I mean it,” Rubio says. “You know? I don’t know anyone who’d do this kind of thing for me.”

  “What, beat down a DSRI pilot?”

  Rubio flinches. Immediately I regret my words. He’s saying something real for once.

  “Give up the thing they’re best at to help someone,” he says. “The thing that matters most to them.”

  Milah flashes through my head, signing to Cassia with her tiny fingers, and Cassia holding herself together as she signs back.

  “The DSRI isn’t what matters most,” I say.

  “You know what I mean.” Rubio waves my words away. “If I couldn’t fly anymore, if I were grounded, I wouldn’t know what else to do. I’d probably pull a Hwang and try to off myself.”

  I turn away. “Don’t say that.” I know my career with the DSRI is over, but I haven’t really let myself think about everything that means. I’ve been living in increments of minutes and hours. There is no future, only the past and present, mistakes and the chance to make them right.

  “Memsahib—”

  “I said don’t!” I shout. I don’t want to talk about it. Not with Rubio, not with anyone. Not even with myself.

  I find Cassia asleep again, the blankets twisted around her legs and her curls stuck to her cheeks. I stand in the doorway a moment, watching her breathe deep and even, Tibbet curled up at her feet. I hate to wake her. I want to sit beside her. I want to hold her like I can heal everything broken in her, inside and out. I want to bend down and press my lips against hers, like in those storybooks. . . .

>   I stop. I’m not going to kiss someone who’s unconscious. Besides, Cassia needs me as a medic now, not a . . . A what? A girlfriend? An obsessive mooner? My face flames. For the first time since the Ranganathan took flight, I wish I was back in Mumbai and things were simpler. I don’t want Cassia hurt and bleeding, scouring the Deep for her brother. I want us to be able to spend the afternoon lounging on the levee wall, buying fruit drinks from the vendors set up in its shade. I want to hear her laugh and hit me with pillows again. I want to get to know those parts of her that are her when she isn’t scrapping in terror for her brother’s life.

  I kneel by the bed. Maybe after. But will there be an after? Or will Cassia immolate herself along the way?

  Cassia cracks her eyes open. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” I try to smile. “Can you sit up?”

  She pushes herself upright and winces.

  “Your head?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “It’s hurting again. And everything’s spinning.”

  “Here.” I unwrap the old bandage and fish a new one from my med kit. “Do you know where you are?”

  She sighs. “I keep telling you, I don’t have brain damage.”

  “Maybe, but you do have a brain injury.” I finish wrapping the new osmotic bandage around her head. “Humor me.”

  Cassia closes her eyes. “I’m Cassia Kaldero, I’m aboard the Mendicant, and my brain is working fine.”

  “Excellent.” I sit back. “Is it kicking in yet?”

  Cassia slumps against the pillows and stares up at the ceiling. “I think so.” She moves her head a degree side to side. “Oh. Yes, there it is.”

  “Good.” I smile. “Maybe now you won’t be so cranky.”

  Cassia fakes a glare. “I’m not cranky. I have a brain injury.” She looks at me, and a moment of true worry flits across her face. “Miyole . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Am I going to be better in time?” Her eyes widen with anxiety. “If I’m not—”

  “You’ll be fine,” I interrupt. It’s not a lie, exactly. Injuries like Cassia’s can take anywhere from a few days to a few months to heal. We have three weeks until we reach Enceladus. It might be enough time, but if it’s not, Cassia doesn’t need to know. Not now, anyway. “You need rest, that’s all.”