I push away and carry my dishes to the kitchen. Soraya follows me a few minutes later, shrugging into a jacket. “Are you okay putting her to bed?”
I nod and concentrate on carefully feeding my dishes into the cleaner.
“Ava,” Soraya says in a way that makes me look up. “Are you okay?”
I nod again. For some reason, it feels better to be alone with my ghosts, like if I told someone about them, they might vanish, and then I might forget. “I’m fine.” I slip my hand into my pocket and worry my data pendant with my thumb. “Just tired.”
Soraya gives me an awkward one-armed hug. It’s quick and hard, as if she’s afraid I might catch her on fire if she touches me too long.
“I’ll be back at ten.” She steps back and tries to smile.
“Right so.”
I put Miyole to bed and practice reading to her from my tablet. I’m getting better. I hardly ever get so stuck I have to ask her to look at a word for me anymore. After we’ve done an article about storms at an Arctic research station, I wave my hand to dim the light and switch on the air-cleaning machine Soraya brought up to scrub out the musty smell. It fills her room with a steady hum.
“Ava?” Miyole says.
I turn. My eyes haven’t adjusted yet, and I can’t find her in the dark.
“Will you be upstairs or down?” Miyole asks this every night.
“Down,” I say. “Till Soraya gets home, at least. I’m going to practice reading a little more.”
“Okay.” Her voice relaxes, and the dim outline of her head drops against the pillow.
I slip out of the room. The distant whirr of air pumping through the vents and all the house’s tiny clicks and beeps leave me jumping in my skin. This house is so big. Whenever I’m alone, I start to imagine someone creeping around after me, pale-skinned crewemen peeking through the windows and men waiting in the shadows with knives.
I walk soft to my own room, reach under the mattress, and pull out my grandfather’s book. A shiver of guilt passes through me. I’ve been waiting for a night like tonight, when Soraya is gone and Miyole fast asleep, to try and read it.
I drop my crow on the kitchen charger and stand at the back window, listening to the dish cleaner gurgle and looking out at the dark leaves of Soraya’s tree lifting in the breeze. Miyole took a picture with her crow and had it tell us what kind of tree was. Japanese maple. Saved from one of the drowned islands west of here before they went under.
I mean to switch on the lights and curl my feet up under me on one of the plush couches, but as I pass the downstairs hallway, the heavy oak door at the far end catches my eye. We don’t talk about the door, not even Miyole and me. Soraya pretends it isn’t there, and so we do, too.
I pad toward it, one arm out before me, the other clutching my grandfather’s book. The eyehole glints down at me dully, and the brass handle is cold under my palm.
I crack the door open. Dank and must hangs in the air. I edge into the dark. I don’t know what I expect. A sealed room of rare books, or cold, humming machines like the ones in Pankaj’s house. But as my eyes adjust, all I make out is a broad, dark wood desk in a sea of white carpet. The picture window on the right side of the room looks out on the garden and the maple. Empty bookshelves line the walls.
I shut the door, walk around the desk, and pull out the leather chair. Its skin crackles softly as I sit. The house keeps quiet here. None of its little life noises reach past the heavy door. I snap on a lamp. Buttery light floods the room. Across from me, a red-and-gold-spotted chair waits, empty. I run my hands over the desk’s wood top, feeling the grains and pits and places where the veneer has worn off after years of use.
Whose desk was this? Not Soraya’s. She never comes in here. But I can read the desk’s battered top like the back of a tapestry. Someone sat here, wrote here, read here every day. My grandfather Vikram, whose book I hold even now? I rub my finger against one spot on the desk’s edge where it’s worn down to yellow wood. The worn place fits the width of my finger perfectly. Did my grandfather rub that spot unconsciously as he fell lost in reading every day? Did he drink tea here? Did he think on my mother here? My grandmother?
I tug open one of the desk’s drawers. A deep smell, something rich and smoky sweet, floods out, but the drawer itself is empty. It smells indefinably old, as if whatever made the scent has been trapped there for years. I try the next drawer below it. Nothing. Then the two drawers on the other side. Still nothing.
Soraya was right, I think. There’s nothing here. Only one left, the thin center drawer above my lap. It sticks, but I tug and jiggle it, and finally, with a tooth-rending screech, it opens.
A smooth, palm-size device, dark as stone, sits alone on the right side. I pick it up. It’s cold, heavy in a pleasing way, as if it’s meant to rest in a hand or the bottom of a pocket. I smooth my thumb over its surface, and it flickers to life. Light and color resolve themselves into an image. A youngish man with delicate lines of gray threading his beard leans down to put an arm around a lovely, dark-haired woman with warm brown skin, wearing a pink checkered scarf much like one of Soraya’s. A smallgirl in a yellow dress perches on her lap, all big dark eyes and black curls. Behind them, the purple-black leaves of Soraya’s maple reach down into the frame. I lean closer to the screen. Who . . . ? But then it comes to me. My grandfather. Him and his firstwife and . . . Soraya. Soraya is the smallgirl.
I brush a finger over her cheek. At my touch, the picture jumps and dissolves into a different image. A girl near my own age, hair a pale flame and shell-white cheeks cracked with burst capillaries, lies propped in a birthing bed, a rose-skinned baby in the crook of her arm. I recognize the room and the arched doorway beyond her bed. It’s the Parastrata’s birthing room. And I recognize the baby’s dark hair. It’s the same hair as little Soraya’s, the same as mine. The mother-girl smiles out at me, so drunk with love it pierces the screen and all the time in between that moment and this.
Maram, my grandmother. And my mother, Ete, the baby.
I lower the picture to my lap. Gingerly, I untuck my grandfather’s book from beneath my arm and lay it flat on the scored desktop. The paper crackles as I open it.
FOREWORD
In the course of my study on the trans-celestial merchant tribe Parastrata, or crewe as they prefer to be called, I was required to take extraordinary measures to gain their trust and complicity. Some contend I have strayed beyond the line of proper scientific inquiry. To them I say, what is propriety compared to the pursuit of knowledge? In modern sociological research, one must, at times, set aside one’s own societal norms in order to collect the most accurate data. Without my transgression of our scientific community’s rather provincial taboos, the fascinating culture of the Parastrata would remain a mystery to this day.
I frown. The most accurate data? Fascinating culture? I read on, glad for the practice I’ve been getting at Revati. I don’t know all of the words on sight, but my grandfather’s meaning is clear. Maybe school isn’t completely wasted on me.
During my time aboard this vessel, it was requested of me by the captain, Parastata Harrah, that I marry his youngest daughter, Maram. Had I refused, the entire course of my research would have been thrown into jeopardy, as I would have been required to disembark at one of the terrestrial outposts or orbital stations along our route, rather than completing the crewe’s traditional two-and-a-half-year circuit with them.
Thus, I entered into merchant crewe society not as a mere observer, but as a participant in its unusual and vibrant cultural life. From this vantage point, I was able to document the peculiarities and superstitions that make up the everyday interactions of merchant crewes, as well as their most sacred rituals, which would normally remain closed to outsiders. Through my marriage to Harrah’s daughter, the birth of a child, and my young wife’s unfortunate demise shortly thereafter, I witnessed the unique customs surrounding the ceremonies of betrothal, birth, and death. Lest my critics accuse me of heartlessness, note that
, although I have completed my period of observation aboard the Parastrata, I continue to maintain a relationship with the crewe and support the issue of my short-lived marriage through the regular provision of gifts.
The issue of my short-lived . . . ? My eyes widen. My mother. He means my mother. It’s no more than I already knew, but the way he puts it is so cold.
I have elected to allow my daughter by Maram to remain with her crewe. Though I myself may be willing to alter my own cultural framework in the interests of scienctific inquiry, I have no desire to disrupt the pattern of life among the objects of my study. Thus, I have seamlessly inserted and removed myself from the course of crewe life with a minimum of disruption. My tactics may prove unorthodox, but I have not acted without moral consideration for my subjects’ welfare, and thus I remain confident in my methodology. Everything I have done, I have done with the pursuit of knowledge foremost in my mind.
I lower the book, my grandfather’s words ringing behind my ears. Objects of my study? Seamlessly . . . with the pursuit of knowledge foremost in my mind. Seamlessly? What about my mother? What about me? And Soraya, all alone in this house until we came? His choices are still echoing through us, even so many generations later. Shouldn’t we have mattered more than knowlege? Everything I knew of my grandfather—the gifts for my mother and how good and kind he was to my grandmother, how he supported our crewe from afar, how he wasn’t a meddler—shatters. I pick up the book again, heat flooding my cheeks. I flip through and stop on a random page.
. . . found gender roles to be strictly divided aboard crewe ships. The Parastrata is typical in this regard. Women shoulder the brunt of the most basic functional work, putting in long hours dyeing cloth, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, and caring for animals and children. Their hands are never idle. Even in their spare moments, they are always weaving cloth or mending ripped seams. Virginity is highly prized, and thus, girls are married off as early as thirteen to ensure paternity and maximize each woman’s effective childbearing years.
I should stop reading, but I can’t. I slip my hand inside my pocket and grip my data pendant without looking away from the page.
Meanwhile, the work of navigation and repairing the electronic and mechanical components of the ship is reserved for men, as are trade negotiations. These often must be conducted planetside. As a result, it is necessary for men to maintain the physical capability to withstand the increased gravitational pull exerted by large planetary bodies. To counteract the painful and potentially damaging effects of transferring from the crewe ship’s relatively low gravity field to a high-gravity environment, the men and boys engage in daily strength training and periodically spend time in compression chambers that simulate the effects of one full G of force, equal to the gravitational pull of Earth.
From examination of early crewe records reviewed in preparation for my field research, it became apparent that, early in their history, crewes required gravitational acclimation training (GAT) for both male and female members. Captain Harrah and the other senior men aboard the Parastrata insist this is not so, and that part of the reason the crewes originally left Earth was to spare their women contact with “the impure world.” One must presume the practice of allowing women to participate in GAT changed gradually over time and became incorporated into the crewes’ shared origin mythology. The long-term effects on crewewomen’s health are unclear, but warrant further research.
I draw in a sharp breath. He knew. I lower the book and blink into the yellow light. He knew what staying on the creweship would do to my mother and to me. He knew we would spend our days weaving and baking and cleaning until our fingers blistered, that we would be married off to produce baby after baby. He knew what would happen to our bodies if we ever tried to leave. And he left us there.
“I thought you’d come here sooner or later.”
I jump and reach for my knife.
Soraya stands in the door. She lowers herself into the chair across the desk and holds out her hand for the book.
I let go of the knife and push the book across to her. A red crescent moon marks my palm where my data pendant dug into my skin.
“Where did you find it?”
“Khajjiar,” I say.
She sighs, a heavy sound. “To be honest, I’m surprised you haven’t run across this before now.”
“Is it . . .” I’m not sure how to say what I mean. “Have a lot of people read it?”
Soraya nods. “My father, your grandfather, built his reputation on this book, this research.” She rests it carefully on the edge of the desk. “He was a controversial man. What he did, that’s not how research is done. There was the scandal over his marriage to Maram—my mother left him over it—and so of course everyone wanted to read it.”
“Is that what I am?” I look down at the book. “Is that all we were to him—my mother and grandmother and me? Research?”
I think on Modrie Reller talking up how the so doctor once sent us a pair of cats, a queen and a tom, so we could breed them and sell their offspring to other ships or outposts overrun by rats. So generous, all the oldgirls agreed. We could make good money that way. Now I look around at the wealth of this place—water so plentiful we can use it to bathe, and machines to do the cooking and washing—and it’s clear that was nothing to him. Those cats were likely strays plucked off the street or bought for the cost of a cup of tea, an afterthought.
You should be grateful he thought of you at all, Modrie Reller’s voice scolds at the back of my head. But he didn’t. He didn’t care to think on what would become of my mother and me. I always believed he did, that he cherished us from afar. But we were worth no more to him than those cats. He wasn’t alive when my mother died, still so young, or when my father tried to trade me off to ther Fortune, but he knew what our lives would be when he left us behind, and he didn’t lift a finger to stop it. It’s all there in black and white.
I push the chair back and turn to the window. I didn’t understand before how mere marks on a screen could cut and ricochet. I didn’t understand the power they could have. Suddenly it seems too dangerous to be cooped up here, neatly folded inside when I could burst into flames any minute and bring this whole house, this whole world, down around me.
“I need to go,” I choke out.
“Ava.” Soraya stands, steps between me and the door.
“Please. I can’t be in here right now.”
“But it’s late.” Soraya wavers. “It’s dangerous, a girl out alone at night.”
“Soraya, please.” I hear the desperate, wavering whine in my voice, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. No one has ever cared what happened to me, and right now, I don’t either. I only know I need to be away, out of this house, alone. I bolt for the door. Soraya steps aside at the last slip, before I knock into her. I grab my crow from the kitchen charger and stuff it in the pocket of Perpétue’s jacket, wrap the leather tight around me, and throw open the front door.
“Ava, wait!” Soraya calls as I duck past the rosewood trees.
But I ignore her. I shut myself down, double my steps, and barrel forward into the humid Mumbai night.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER .36
I tramp down from the quiet residential paths, house lights winking behind thick shrubbery, to the lev train stop. I ride until I reach the edge of the city and hop off at a random station. The streets teem with people and a whirl of neon and colored signs—JUICY pow! GET SOME NOW!—RAM’S DREAM—HOT, HOT HOT! I thread through narrow streets, dodging a pack of kids staging a water-gun battle and a group of women parading one of their number, a twenty-something girl with hennaed hands and a T-shirt reading KISS THE BRIDE, ahead of them. They sing at the top of their lungs. The close buildings and the haze of streetlamps muzzle up the sky and cast everything in a perpetual half day.
Then the buildings
part on a footbridge and it rises into view, the Salt, with its water pipes and its light-studded hill looming above me like a great circled hive of lamps and people and buildings. I didn’t know where I was going until I was here.
I step quick, half to keep away from the men smoking in alleys and drunks stumbling down the side ways, and half because I can’t bear to stand still. All that anger and fear and hate packed tight in me radiates as it burns. The drunks step out of my path and the smokers slip their eyes past me, looking for other girls giving off less heat.
I rattle up against the fence of Rushil’s lot. Perpétue’s—my—ship curves sleek under several layers of protective sheeting on the other side. I hang against the fence. Now all I feel is empty and old, full up with yearning for something familiar. I key in the number-lock code, slip inside, and race across the darkened lot to the cool, familiar hulk of the sloop.
One sharp tug and the protective sheeting falls around my feet. My ship. My home. I punch in half of the code to open the hatch before I remember Rushil and I never finished wiring in the new couplings or the refabricated power cell we gutted from an old fission-powered two-seater. I could open the door manually, but not without enough metal shrieking to wake the entire block.
“Damn.” I bang the sloop’s side with my fist and scan the yard. There, beside a black clipper, a simple steel ladder. I drag it over, lean it against the sloop, and climb the rungs to the top.
Scorch marks from past atmospheric entries streak the tiles, and they still hold the day’s heat. I push myself up onto the sloop and sit. From here, I can see all of the Salt and the taller spikes of the city proper beyond, wreathed in a mist of saltwater and light. I wish Perpétue were here to see it. And Luck, him too. The city goes blurry before me. I was wrong. It’s not true that no one ever cared for me. It’s only that anyone who ever did is gone.
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