Salvage

by Duncan, Alexandra

  I recognize some kind of test in that, even if I don’t know what it is exactly.

  “Never.” I lock my spine straight and look at her evenly, drawing on my imitation of Modrie Reller. “Firstwife Æther, I’m not some changing girl. I won’t go shifting on you and yours.”

  She watches me with eyes half lidded. All around us the looms clack softly, and the other women peer sideways at us over their handwork.

  Finally Soli’s mother nods. “Right so, then.”

  I let the air out of my lungs. I’ve passed. The other women return their attention to their weaving and murmured conversations. Soli rises and picks her way to me. My jaw drops. Soli’s long red skirt swells over a soft, rounded lump at her waist. She’s gotten herself pregnant.

  “Soli, when? Who?” I grab her hand as she eases down beside me. I want to throw my arms around her, I’ve missed her so, but the older women wouldn’t stand for such a display. I settle for squeezing her hand tighter. “Tell me everything.”

  “Let me hold your thread for you, sister,” Soli says aloud, but her face is bright to bursting with news, her cheeks flush. She leans close as she unwinds the skein. “His name’s Ready, the requisitions officer. We had our binding close on half a turn past.”

  I glance down. I’ve seen lots of women pregnant on the Parastrata, and even some births. Soli looks too far gone for half a turn. “That’s some fast.”

  Soli giggles, sounding a moment like the smallgirl I remember. “But I got my pick, didn’t I? That we have to talk on later, without all these stuffed-up oldgirls hanging round.”

  “He’s nice?” I ask. I stop my weaving and look up. “He’s not old, is he?”

  “Nah.” Soli shakes her head. “Only five turns older. Perfect.”

  “Oh.” I look down.

  Soli nudges me. “Don’t chew on it. Talk I hear says you’re getting an even younger one.” Soli’s eyes shine so I almost think they’re wet.

  “How’d you . . . ,” I start to ask.

  “Come, Ava, it’s clear as empty you’re still sweet on Luck,” Soli says. “And he’s sweet on you, too. Couldn’t stop staring at you on the dock today.”

  That rush of heat sweeps through me again, and I fumble with my thread. If only my bridal bands weren’t making me so slow and clumsy.

  “Think, you’ll be my sister and our babies can play together.”

  The warmth changes to pure fire in my cheeks. They say a baby makes a new, small world all your own, and then the Earth will stop calling to you. That’s what I want, but . . . But I’ve only begun fixing the idea of being a wife in my head, trying on Luck’s face as the man snapping the coins from my bridal veil, the inside of Luck’s wrist bound to mine. And now babies. Of course I knew that would come. It’s what my body is made for, but . . . Soli’s belly stares at me. It’s one more piece too real. And it makes me some uneasy the way things are raveling up exactly how I dreamed, and so fast. It makes me worry I’ve left something out.

  Soli and me lie face-to-face on her bunk in the women’s quarters. It’s not something married girls usually do, but all the Æther women know we were friends as smallgirls, and what with me about to be married, they’re willing to let us pretend we’re children a few nights longer. The air blows cool and fresh through the vents, and the dimmers carry us gently into ship’s night.

  “Ready’s some strong,” Soli whispers under the blankets. She lies on her back with her head turned to me. “He can pick me up, even with the baby, and he’s always slipping me nice things from requisitions. Like the other day, he gave Hydroponics some extra grams of nutrient soak, and they held back an orange for him, so he gave it to me.”

  I suck my bottom lip. My father gave me a slice of orange once when I was a smallgirl, and even now I can taste the sweet bite under my tongue. “Did your father pick him for you?” I ask.

  Soli shakes her head and grins. “Ready and I picked each other.”

  I raise my eyebrows and open my eyes wide, trying to make out her face in the near dark. Crewes hardly ever let a love match through, especially when it’s the captain’s daughter up for marriage and her husband might end up heir to the captaincy.

  “How’d you fix it?” I ask.

  Soli runs a hand over her belly. “I let them catch me.”

  “What?” My voice rings out.

  “Hsshh.” One of the older women shushes from the bunk below us.

  Soli drops her voice even lower. “I’ve seen girls do it before. I had already got the baby, and I knew some sure my father wouldn’t drop me on a port somewhere or let me go around the ship unmarried. So the next time I was in the cleanroom, I let my mother catch sight of me and of course she went and told my father. He called us into the meet room. Then Ready, he confessed it in front of everyone, and they had us bound the next day.”

  “Wasn’t your father angry?” I ask.

  “Some sure.” Soli picks at the inside of the blanket. “He wanted to push Ready out the airlock at first, but then he decided he’d rather have a legitimate grandchild, so he only had him flogged after the binding instead.”

  “Soli,” I whisper, not sure what else to say.

  “I got my way, didn’t I?” She turns her head to me.

  I nod. Soli strokes her belly absentmindedly.

  “What about Ready?” I ask. “What if he comes calling for you tonight?”

  “He won’t,” Soli says, eyes still closed. “Not till after the baby’s born and I’m healed up.”

  “Does it hurt?” I ask.

  “What, having a baby? I’m guessing so from all the screaming the other girls do.”

  “No,” I say. “The other thing.”

  “Oh.” Soli rolls heavily on her side to face me. “At first, but not so bad if he’s careful. And it’s much better after that. Are you worried?”

  I tuck my chin into my chest and hug my arms. I nod.

  “Don’t.” She rubs my arm. “When we heard you were coming as a bride, I figured you might be for Luck, so I told him how he’d better not hurt you or I’d break all his toes. He’ll be careful. You’ll see.”

  I smile at her, even though we can barely make out the whites of each other’s teeth in the close dark. Soli rolls on her back again, and I turn to the wall. She’s asleep in a few slips, her breath falling slow and regular. I lie awake, rubbing the smooth surface of my data pendant. Iri and Hannah snore lightly in the bunk below us. Some of the smallgirls whisper and break out in patters of giggles, but those peter out too, leaving only breath and the lulling hum of the air scrubbers.

  I sit up. The heat coming off Soli is too much, even with cool air wafting in on us through the ventilation slits. I slide to the bottom of the bunk and sit there, my legs dangling with the extra weight of my bands. The air is wonderful fresh. It brings me awake, makes me almost giddy. I glance around at the other women in their bunks. How can anyone sleep with the air so pure? How can they expect me to sleep? My new home is beckoning me. There are rooms to explore, corridors and serviceways to memorize. And as much as it shames me to say it, I want to put some distance between myself and Soli’s belly.

  I drop lightly to the floor. I leave my outermost skirt, with its clacking, flashing mirrors, but tie on my plainer inner skirts and move quietly to the door. Like all the doors I’ve seen aboard the Æther, this one shows a shaded view of its other side—an empty hallway. The door doesn’t have a pattern lock, but it doesn’t have a manual handhold for pulling, either. I feel along the door’s edges and on the wall where a control panel should be. Nothing. I kneel. A thin, red-lined square glows where the handhold might be. I press my palm to it experimentally. The door slides up with a silent swish of air, and I jump back, stifling a cry. The Æther crewe doesn’t even lock its women in at night. Strange.

  I step into the hall and touch a matching square on the other side, sending the door hushing down behind me. An empty silence cottons the corridor, and deep in my veins I feel the familiar thrill of being the only o
ne awake. I go left, away from the ship’s galley and entryway, into a section of the ship I haven’t seen yet. My feet pat-pat along the cool floor.

  I pass a run of rooms lined with man-high tanks for trapping gas and tabletop centrifuges, miniatures of the one I’ve seen from afar in our engine room. I stand with my hand pressed to the waist-high glass, taking in the sterile order of the rooms. Diagrams crammed with mysterious writing paper the walls. I tiptoe on, past more workrooms. Then comes the men’s training room, with all the weight equipment sleek and new, not rust-speckled and wrapped in brittle sealing tape like aboard the Parastrata. I smile. Won’t Soli’s mother be shocked when she sends me off on some errand and I already know my way?

  Beyond the training room, the floor slopes up gently. The air thickens with humidity and the smell of earth. Hydroponics. But when I reach the darkened room at the end of the corridor, I hesitate. This is nothing like Hydroponics on our ship, squeezing as much produce from as little nutrients and water as possible. I peer through the clear insulating curtain stretched across the door. Fog lies over a carpet of tender grass stretching all the way to the back of a room near large as the Parastrata’s outer bay. Dense shadows gather beneath the lemon trees staggered along the green. The far wall is one long window, looking out on the stars.

  I kneel and lift the edge of the curtain so I can run my fingers over the grass. It tickles, but soft, the way a cat’s whiskers do. The men say down groundways people grow it simply to walk on, like a living rug, but that seems almost a sacrilege. I lean close and smell. Worms and crickets, like the ones in our compost bale. The soft, rich scent of rot.

  I stand and pull the curtain aside. The grass is wet, and I can’t explain it, but I smell water in the air. Not the dead, boiled kind I’m used to, either, but something fresh, near live, steeped in gently pulped leaves and loam. I look up. Misters hang from a frame of girders above, alternating with darkened sun-glow lamps. I hesitate. Do the thers truly walk on something living? But they must, or else how could they reach those lemons? And if they don’t harvest the lemons, what’s the point of this room?

  I put one foot over the threshold. The grass is soft, like a baby’s hair. I recoil, thinking maybe it’s as delicate too, maybe I’ve crushed it with my weight. But the shoots spring back the moment I pull my foot away. I take a hesitant step, and then another, letting the curtain fall closed behind me. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to walk on the old silk tapestries hanging in the Parastrata’s meet rooms, and now I think I know. This is luxury. This is Earth. I think I see a tiny piece of why Saeleas wept to leave it behind.

  A curious tang from the lemons sweetens the air. I’ve heard the oldgirls say lemons are sour and only good for medicines, but my mouth waters all the same. I stop beneath a tree and lift one of the small, bright fruits. It fits perfectly in my palm. For a moment I picture myself snapping the lemon from its branch, sinking my teeth past its waxy skin, drinking the juice inside. But no. These aren’t my lemons, not yet. And even if they were, it would be none proper to take a whole one for myself.

  When I reach the window, I press my palms against its cool layered glass and look out on the vast spill of stars. The skyport stretches beneath me, seeming to angle down from where I stand, even though I know up and down are only tricks of the ship’s gravity field. Bright repair patches stand out on the station’s skin, ships cleave to its sides like sucker fish, and clusters of antennae jut from each docking station, all of it bathed in the blue-white glow of the nearby moon.

  “Parastrata Ava?”

  I whip around. A man sits beneath the low-hanging boughs of the lemon tree behind me. My breath stops. His hands reflect the milky light of the moon, but the rest of him is too far in shadow to see. My heart shudders. This is it, the kind of mistake Llell warned me against. But I didn’t listen, and now here I am, caught and vulnerable, at the whim of a stranger who can overmatch both my strength and my word.

  I dart from the window. I try to dodge past the tree, but my bridal bands drag down my steps. The man ducks out from beneath the boughs. I hobble left, but he catches me around the waist. I cry out. He claps a hand over my mouth.

  “Ava, don’t fight.”

  I struggle in his grip, try to pitch myself forward onto the ground.

  “Ava. It’s me, Ava.”

  He lets go, and I sprawl on the grass. I roll over, ready to kick him away, and finally get a good look at him. Luck. My head feels heavy and light all at once. Oxygen drunk. I drop my head against the soft grass and laugh. It’s only Luck.

  He reaches a hand down to me. “You’re going to get us caught.”

  “Sorry.” I take his hand and pull myself to my feet. “I didn’t know you were you.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” I look down at my naked feet and try to brush away the clips of wet grass stuck to my skirt. What was I thinking, walking out alone in a strange ship? What if it hadn’t been Luck underneath that tree? And what must this boy . . . this man, who’s supposed to become my husband, think of me, walking his ship half dressed at night? Did he see me thinking on stealing his crewe’s lemons?

  “I’m sorry. I’ll go.” I try to step around him.

  “Wait.” Luck catches me by the arm. The warm grip of his fingers on my skin turns my whole body live, magnetized. I gasp. I stop. For the first time, I notice his feet are bare, too, and his hair rumpled.

  “I couldn’t sleep either,” Luck says. “I go out walking sometimes when I get that way. Or swimming.”

  We stare at each other, linked up skin to skin.

  “My father asked me to come with him to the meet room tomorrow,” Luck says. “I figure you don’t have to guess much to know what that’s about.”

  “With me here as a bride, you mean.” I keep my head down and finger the copper bands on my wrist, already greening my skin beneath their wires.

  “Right so.” He loosens his grip on my arm and stands up formal and straight. “I’m sorry for touching you before we’re bound, Parastrata Ava. You were always some proper and . . .”

  “I’m not.” My eyes flash up to meet his and—there—they find a place to rest safe again. It’s exhilarating, this feeling of doing something dangerous and right, all wrapped up together in my chest. I step closer. “I’m not only some proper. Not always.”

  Luck looks down at me. He blinks into my face, as if he’s trying to figure out how to mesh me with the smallgirl he knew five turns past.

  I fumble for his hand and fold my fingers around his, trying to press what I feel in through his skin. “I’ve been practicing those fixes Soli taught me. The ones you said I could learn. You remember?”

  He laughs. “What, still? After all these turns?”

  I drop his hand, hurt. “I taught myself others.”

  “No, I mean . . . I’m only surprised, is all. That’s none proper for a so girl, from what I saw on your Parastrata. I thought you’d be too busy with Priority. But I’m happy. I’m glad.” He reaches out and squeezes my fingers lightly.

  “Me too.”

  “Do you think . . .” He stops and glances at the entrance to the garden room. “Have you ever been swimming?”

  “Swimming?” The word curls strange around my tongue. When we were smallgirls, Llell dared me to go floating in the water converter’s desalination pool. We’d heard about some of the older boys sneaking down there, how the water was supposed to float you some like the Void would, but some not. More like a giant hand holding you up, one of them had said. But Modrie Reller caught us ankle deep in the filter reeds and made us drink from the salt pool until we vomited brine. Llell and I never went back.

  I shake my head.

  “Come on.” Luck tugs my hand. “I’ll show you.”

  “I don’t know. . . .”

  “You’ll be all right,” Luck says. “I swear. I know this ship backward. I know when the night Fixes come and go.”

  I hesitate.

 
“You trust me,” Luck says. “Right so?”

  I frown. “You swear it?”

  “I swear it.” Luck smiles. “Don’t you want to live some before we’re bound?”

  I think on it. In another few months I might be weighted down with a baby like Soli and busy learning to manage the women at Luck’s mother’s side. But tonight, no one is looking for me. No one will notice I’m gone from my bed. It is the last night before I am fully a woman.

  And so I let him lead me from the garden.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER .6

  I follow Luck through a corridor that forks near the workrooms, and then down a laddered hatch into the hanging serviceways in the bowels of the ship. Heat rises on the wet air, reminding me of the dyerooms on the Parastrata. We walk single file above the humming tops of the generators, bathed in smudgy orange light.

  A man’s voice rings out in the echoes ahead. “. . . go and double back to get it.”

  Luck freezes in the middle of the gangway.

  “Night Fixes?” I whisper.

  Luck nods.

  “I thought you said—”

  “Hsssh.” He pulls me after him, back the way we came. We round a corner, and Luck points soundlessly to a double-doored service locker built into the wall. I nod. He pulls both doors open with a faint squeak. Heart knocking, I step over a scatter of loose fixers and dead wires and wedge myself behind a crisscross of rebar, deep in the shadow of the locker. Luck jumps in after me and pulls the door closed. We crush together against the back wall.

  “Stay still,” he whispers.

  His shoulder presses into my nose. He smells of pulped grass and faint sweat masked by soap, some kind of indefinable Luck smell that lights me up to my heels. I let my hand rest where it’s fallen on his chest and breathe slowly, trying to muffle the sound against him so the night Fixes won’t hear us.