The boys cut looks at me, but none of them answer.
“Keep? Darrad?” The instructor looks from a skinny, dark-haired boy to a slightly older boy with close-cropped hair the color of a persimmon.
Darrad. For half a breath, I’m sure he’ll recognize me. He belonged to one of the dyegirls. Four turns ago they said he was dead—killed in an accident on his first trip groundways. All the wives held his mother’s hands while she wept.
The boys stay silent, arms folded, eyes on the table. None of them so much as look at me.
The instructor sighs. “Amon?” He looks to the frail, white-haired boy beside him, who is chewing on a nail. He’s young, younger than all the others around him.
Amon glances nervously from the instructor to the other boys. He looks in my direction, but his gaze floats somewhere over my head. “Pleasetomeetyoumiss.”
“Very good,” the instructor says. “And now, what’s next?”
“I’mAmonNauwhat’syourgoodnameplease?”
“Ava,” I say.
Darrad’s head snaps up, his face a mix of confusion and suspicion, but he doesn’t say anything.
“How can we help you, Ava?” the instructor prompts. He smiles too wide.
“I’m looking for someone.” I turn from one boy to another, but they all keep their eyes down, even Amon now. “His name is ther Luck. He’d be about nineteen turns now. Black hair, blue eyes.”
None of them answers me, although I can tell from the way the dark-haired boys shift in their seats and dart furtive looks at me they know exactly who I mean. Luck was their captain’s firstborn son, after all. And who am I? A stranger. A girl.
The instructor scratches his chin. “We don’t have anyone that old here right now.” He looks at Howe. “Have you taken her to look at the records up Vina’s?”
“First thing. She—”
“Please,” I break in, addressing the boys. My search can’t end here. This can’t be it. “If any of you know anything . . . if you’ve ever heard anything of Luck . . . I’m begging you, please tell me.”
The boys exchange looks and go back to staring at their hands or the tabletop. None of them says anything.
I stare at the ther boys, my eyes burning. “Please.”
One of them shakes his head ever so slightly.
“Come on.” Howe touches my shoulder. “They’re not feeling talkative today.”
I back away.
“See you in biome five this afternoon, guys,” he calls as he leads me toward the door.
The sound shield closes behind us. Some months earlier, I might have left steaming with anger that the boys clung so hard to their crewe ways, that they wouldn’t deign to talk to me. But now, looking at them, I only feel sad. How will they ever make their way in this world if they can’t bring themselves to talk to anyone but men? And how alone they are. At least I have Miyole and Soraya, and maybe Rushil.
I lie awake in the seed bank’s guest quarters, worrying the edge of the scratchy blanket. Some hours ago, Howe’s voice came over the coms. Ten o’clock. Lights out.
Was there something the ther boys weren’t telling me? Was there something I missed?
Blue eyes, dark hair, I tell myself. But I can’t make Luck come alive in my memory the way I used to. I can’t make myself believe he’s lying beside me.
I roll out of bed and pace the small room. Maybe there’s something more in Vina’s files. Maybe she overlooked something. Or chose not to tell me. Maybe she wants something out of me first, some trade. My face, the story of my life, for news of Luck? But if so, why wouldn’t she come out and say it?
I chew on my lip. Perpétue would have tried to get Vina talking with a flash of her knife and an arched eyebrow. Rushil would bribe her. Soraya would appeal to her reason or, failing that, call in her lawyer. But what can I do? I don’t have Soraya’s lawyer or her way with words, I don’t think the knife would work this time, and the one thing Vina seems to want from me is the last thing I want to give.
I pull on my boots and go to the door. It whisks aside for me, revealing the darkened hallway. No locks for me here. Moonlight slants up the walls and silvers the pear trees on the other side of the glass.
I creep along the corridor toward Vina’s office, pausing to listen at every doorway. Nothing but silence. The boys and all the staff are long asleep. At least, I think they are. This place mimics a crewe ship in other ways; it might have its own Watches and night Fixes patrolling the grounds as well.
Before long, I come to the green door. I kneel and press my ear against the wood. No voices, no music, no clinking of cups and plates, not even the soft beeps and trills of a tablet or a crow. I reach up and try the knob. Locked.
Damn.
There has to be another way inside. There were other rooms in Vina’s house, but I only saw the kitchen and her office, both looking out on the garden and the greenhouses. . . .
The garden.
I creep back along the hallway, past the guest quarters, past the training rooms and the boys sleeping in their bunks, to where one of the greenhouses joins up with the rest of the complex. Inside, stark white lights hang over the rows of plants. I keep to the walls, out of the glare.
I am nearly to the door on the other side of the greenhouse when it bursts open and Hena and Howe tumble in. I duck below the nearest table, out of sight.
“I couldn’t wait to see you.” Howe’s voice. And then—kissing? “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”
Hena laughs. “Me too. I was worried you weren’t going to come back from Vina’s alive.”
They stumble against one of the tables, and Hena stifles a shriek. “Careful.”
“No, you be careful,” Howe says. And then he gives a playful growl.
I twist around, searching for a way out. And then I see it. A long, low window built into the side of the greenhouse at the floor level. I push against the latch.
“What was that?” Hena says as I roll out into the night air.
I push the window closed behind me with a soft click.
“Probably just one of the cats.” The glass muffles Howe’s voice.
I pick myself up and shiver. Night creatures chirp and chitter in the grass. The moon is full, bringing out the harshness in everything’s shadow. I move from tree to tree.
A light shines in Vina’s window—buttery, low, not at all like the greenhouse lamps. I drag one of the wooden chairs beneath the window and climb up. Vina sits at her desk, poring over her tablet. Every now and then, she makes a mark in the book. As I watch, she pauses and rubs her hands over her eyes.
I jump back down and crouch against the side of the house, hugging my knees. After a time, the light goes out.
I count to one thousand and then climb back up. The window beside Vina’s desk comes up easily, thank the Mercies. I boost myself up into the opening and pause, listening. Silence.
I slide in headfirst and manage to make only a muffled thump as I land. I hold still, hidden by Vina’s desk, and count to five hundred. Still nothing. I peer out of her office into a sitting room at the front of the house. To one side, a staircase climbs up to a second floor. To another, a latch door leads out onto a covered porch, and then the moonlit wild.
Right so. First, Vina’s tablet. I find it on her desk, half covered by a file marked SUPPLEMENTARY FUNDING. At my touch, the machine springs to life with a faint chime. I stiffen and glance toward the sitting room. Nothing moves.
I turn back to the screen. A small box flashes in its center—PASSKEY CODE.
Nine hells. I look up. What would Vina keep as her code? I know nothing of her, except the work she does.
Khajjiar, I try.
INCORRECT.
I look for the right symbol for ther, but I can’t find it. Parastrata, I type instead.
INCORRECT.
Nau. Makkaram.
INCORRECT. INCORRECT.
Seed bank, I try, desperate.
INCORRECT. ACCOUNT LOCKED DUE TO MULTIPLE FAILED
LOGINS.
I stifle a groan. There has to be something here. Some clue. Something, anything. If I can’t get into Vina’s tablet, at least I can go through the files filling the shelves behind her desk.
I pull down RESIDENT INDEX and hold it in the moonlight by the open window. I start from the beginning, scanning each page for any mention of the thers. Their crewe has left plenty of boys behind, but none in this past turn. I linger over the last boy’s name. ther Keep, age thirteen, left a little over a turn ago. Did Luck know him? Did he wonder where the younger boy had gone? Was he on landing party that left Keep, or was he back on the ship?
If he was on the landing party, did that mean he knew about leaving the boys behind?
No. Not Luck. He would never have stood for it if he’d known.
But even if he did know, what could he have done about it? another part of me asks. He couldn’t even stop his own father from leaving him behind, or worse. . . .
I don’t let myself finish the thought. I can’t think on Luck being dead, not when there could be a trace of him here in Vina’s papers. I leave the log open on her desk and pull another bundle of files from the shelf. BHUTTO TRANSFERS. SOCIALIZATION PARAMETERS. WORK-STUDY RELEASE. VOCATIONAL WORKSHOPS.
Nothing in any of them, nothing about Luck, anyway.
I pull more. REFERRALS. BEHAVIORAL THERAPY. PHYSIOLOGICAL REHABILITATION CHARTS.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Vina’s desk overflows with folders. In desperation, I pull down GRAIN INTAKE, even though I already know what I’ll find. Nothing but columns of numbers. I let the last file fall on her desk. But then I spot a thin book near buried beneath the mess. Hardly a book, even. A tiny paper thing, even smaller than the ones Miyole would pick out of the refuse piles for me to practice reading on. I fish it out. On the Cultural I . . . dio . . . syncra . . . sies of Trans-Celestial Merchant Tribes, by Dr. Vikram Hertz.
Vikram Hertz. That’s my grandfather’s name.
A stack of papers unsettled by my rifling begins to slip over the side of the desk. I lunge for them, but they slither to the floor with a thwap, thwap, thwap, like fish hitting a deck.
A light flicks on at the top of the stairs. “Hello?”
Vina. I freeze, and then bolt for the front door. I throw back the lock and plunge out into the darkness, out into the cold, the fear in my blood pushing me fast, faster. Past the greenhouses, past the pond, up the hill, into the utter darkness of the forest. It isn’t until I’m well down the footpath to town that I stop running and realize I still hold my grandfather’s book in my hand.
Soraya meets me on the train platform. The sky is hazy black beyond the station lights, and she wears a sober brown-and-blue striped scarf.
“Khajjiar,” she says. Her lips have all but disappeared in the firm line of her mouth. “They have a state home there for boys who’ve lost their crewes?”
“Right so,” I say.
Soraya nods. Her eyes flicker to the trains behind me, lost for a moment, and then find me again. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“I won’t.” All I want to do is sleep and sleep. Luck is gone. I don’t have any fight left in me.
“You had us worried sick.” She grips her scarf to keep the light wind from pulling it away.
“I know. I’m sorry, and true.”
Her face looks raw, vulnerable. “If you don’t want to live with me, Ava . . .”
“I do,” I say. “I only . . . I had to find out . . .” I stumble to a halt, on the verge of spilling everything to Soraya—Luck and the coldroom and Iri with blood on her teeth.
Her face softens. “Was he there? The one you were looking for?”
She can’t know who Luck was, but she knows the shape of things—my being here, the data pendant, and what there is in Khajjiar.
“No,” I say. “He wasn’t.”
She holds out an arm, and I let her gather me under it. Then we turn and make our way home.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER .35
“Who can name for me two of the unintended consequences of Partition?” Our Historical-Literary Connections instructor, Mr. Pallavi, gestures to the smartscreen at the front of the classroom, where his projected drawing of a triangular blob labeled INDIA is separated from PAKISTAN by a zigzag line.
No one answers. I pretend to mark down a note on my tablet, which Soraya replaced after the Khajjiar incident. I had to agree to come to Revati every day, and then be home to Soraya’s before dark.
I’m only supposed to be able to write on the tablet’s note screen, but Miyole showed me how to trick it so I can draw, too. I’ve been thinking more and more on fixing the sloop again. It makes more sense than my lessons, so I spend my time in class sketching out schematics for rerouting the cooling conduits. I can’t make it so they won’t ever leak again, but maybe if I isolate them, a leak won’t short out the other components. . .
Mr. Pallavi sighs. “Let’s back up. Ava . . .”
I look up, heart pounding. Dr. Lata had a talk with all my teachers on not calling me out in class until my reading is better, but Mr. Pallavi sometimes forgets.
“What year did Partition take place?” he asks.
“I . . . uh . . .” I stare down into my tablet, throat tight. Miyole and I read this last night. I remember what Partition is, when India and Pakistan split off from each other, and I remember about all the bloodshed that happened before and after it, so why can’t I remember the year?
Prita jumps in. “1947.”
I knew that. Why couldn’t I get it out? I clench my teeth together.
“Good,” Mr. Pallavi says. “Chennapragada to the rescue, once again.”
The class laughs, and I sink behind my tablet. I’m not made for this place. Dr. Lata and Soraya and all of my instructors talk about sculpting my mind and cultivating me, as if I’m some piece of clay or a spot of ground ripe with seeds, when really I’m more like plastic that’s already cooled and hardened into its mold.
I put my head down and wait for geometry. Geometry is the only part of my day what doesn’t make me feel like screaming. I have it in a sunny room on the school’s top floor with Miyole and a handful of other girls midway between her and my ages. It’s figuring, but put to things that matter in the real world. Height and volume, buildings and fuel, how many meters of tubing I’ll need to thread all the way around a circular tank. Our instructor lets me and Miyole sit together and help each other with the puzzles she sets us.
But come the end of the day, Miyole stays behind for special studies with Dr. Lata and Biomimesis Club, while I’m cast out into the city alone. I’ve been past the shipyard a few times on my way home, but I haven’t seen Rushil. I haven’t gotten up the courage to go in and apologize.
That night at dinner, Soraya sets down her glass and eyes Miyole across the table. “Dr. Lata’s been telling me things about you, little one.” Her hair is down, spilling in black crescents over the shoulders of her yellow blouse.
Miyole stops midchew and stares at us with her cheeks full of potato. I duck my head to hide a smile.
“She says you placed into the accelerated program. You’ll be done with Revati and have a few college credits under your belt by the time you’re fifteen.” Soraya raises her eyebrows and points her fork at Miyole in mock seriousness. “I hope you’ve thought about what you want to do for college, young lady.”
“I have,” Miyole says.
“Oh?” Soraya sneaks a look at me, winks, and sips her tea to hide it.
“Yes,” Miyole says, all seriousness. “I want to be a Deep Sound bioengineer.”
Soraya nearly chokes on her tea. “Really?” Deep Sound is what the people at Revati call long-range voyages into the Void, like the ones my crewe made. “Oh, Miyole. Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Miyole says. “I was reading about it, and Shushri Veer said
they need people like me out Deep. Did you know bees go into stasis the minute they’re out in the air on Titus? And, oh, did you know you can engineer a spider to spin self-sealing thread for Deep suits and ship hulls? We hatched a whole bunch of them in our class.”
Soraya shudders.
“Besides, the Deep’s not dangerous anymore.” Miyole looks to me. “Right, Ava?”
I pause with a glass of sugared lime juice halfway to my mouth. What do I say? The Void is dangerous. Full of solar storms and rock belts and the odd stripper ship waiting to latch on to unsuspecting traders and sell the crew and cargo piecemeal. But then again, groundways is dangerous, too. It has its storms and its wars and its droughts. Besides, if Miyole goes as some kind of engineer, they’ll most likely stick her on one of those mile-long research vessels what dwarfed our Parastrata when we passed under their shadows. She’ll have a good hull and maybe even soldiers or trained guards to keep her safe.
“Depends,” I say.
Dismay creeps into Miyole’s face.
“But it’s not too dangerous if you’re smart.” I reach out and pinch her arm playfully. “You’ve got no problem being smart, do you?”
She grins and shakes her head.
“Well, you have plenty of time to think it over, anyway.” Soraya raises her glass. “To our scholar.”
Miyole and I clink our glasses with hers.
“I wish I didn’t have class tonight.” Soraya sighs and reaches out to straighten a stray piece of hair over Miyole’s eyes, then pretends to steal her nose.
Miyole giggles and bats at her.
Suddenly, the sight of the two of them, how close they’ve come, it hits me bittersweet. How fond of Miyole Soraya is. How Miyole uncoils whenever Soraya’s near. But it’s undercut with sadness at what Miyole lost to bring her here and at the lonely stretch of years Soraya must have come through to meet us in this place. And me, what would my life have been if my own mother had lived, or if my grandfather had stayed with us? What would it have been if Luck and I hadn’t been caught? Or if Iri had gotten away with me? The pull of all that sadness is too much. It sucks me away from our happy table, into the realm of ghosts.
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