Aetherbound

by E. K. Johnston

  It took a moment for everyone to understand. Tanith looked blank. She was not surprised and was being very careful to keep her reaction to herself. The boys were immediately interested. Morunt kept her eyes on her plate, and the rest of the galley staff appeared similarly disinterested. The older cousins, the ones who were Lodia’s age or older, looked at her with vague concern or interest, depending on who they were. And Pendt finally realized what they had stopped to trade at Alterra.

  The food she had consumed to survive regrowing her fingernail had been recouped, purchased by the use of her mother’s body for the growing of another Harland. That’s why Lodia’s calories had been increased, and that was the change Pendt could feel in her now. There was going to be another sibling. Another chance for a star-mage pilot. At the cost of Lodia’s autonomy for nine months. And Tanith, old enough to carry children now, was relieved.

  Gene-mage.

  The words had haunted Pendt for the last few years, since the captain had declared her useless until she turned eighteen. For the first time, Pendt had a glimmer of understanding what her aunt’s plan for her was. She looked at the doctor, meeting Morunt’s gaze across the mess. Morunt’s face was as carefully blank as Tanith’s, but she gave Pendt a small nod. She was right. What was happening to Lodia right now loomed large in her own future. She looked at the trays in the galley, ready to go out into the mess for her mother and aunt.

  Pendt had work to do.

  5.

  TALBOR HARLAND WAS BORN nine months later, just before Pendt’s tenth birthday. He had ten fingers and ten toes, blue eyes, no hair to speak of, and he screamed all the time. Pendt was not terribly impressed with him. He felt the same as her brothers, though she couldn’t have put words to what that meant.

  “There’s no real way to tell if a child is a star-mage or a gene-mage until they’re old enough to talk to,” Morunt explained while Pendt gave her her breakfast portion. It was almost as if the doctor was speaking to herself, but Pendt knew by now that it was the doctor’s way of telling her to keep her thoughts to herself.

  Pendt already knew that much. Captain Arkady had waited until Pendt was five years old to test her, after all, and she still had the blue eyes that marked her failure to reach the stars. She had known she wasn’t an electro-mage by then, though: She couldn’t play Spark.

  All they could do was wait for Talbor to grow up and either electrocute something unintentionally or learn to talk and reason, whichever came first. It gained her nothing to report her suspicions, so she didn’t. Pendt was mostly unaware of the way time passed. She got older, and once in a while the computer informed her she was another year closer to being a legal adult. Now that there was a child to watch, though, Pendt became aware of all sorts of changes. Before, growth had been a nebulous thing, something that made her brothers more dangerous. With Talbor, it was much easier to mark the passage of time.

  He held up his own head. He sat up without falling over. He crawled. He stood. He walked. Each change earned him an increased number of calories, and Arkady’s continued surveillance. Eventually, he spoke. “More” and “Sir” and “Lodia,” all in a garbled baby-soft voice that Pendt barely understood. She realized that she, too, must have had a first word, and that no one had cared to remember what it was.

  When Talbor was two years old, he answered the question everyone had been not-asking since his birth. One day at lunch, he finished his allotted portion and screamed for more. None was to be given, of course, and so Pendt ignored his cries. He was old enough to sit and eat with his brothers now, strapped into a booster chair so he could reach the table and close enough to self-sufficiency that he was expected to practice. He was still a messy eater, by Harland standards, but he was already starting to learn that if he was careless, his belly went short.

  When Pendt came to collect the empty trays, he stabbed her with his fork, blaming her for his hunger. He wasn’t strong enough to hurt her, or at least he shouldn’t have been. Pendt saw the whole thing in slow motion: the descent of the fork; the arc of pure electricity that jumped to her skin; her mother’s private anguish; and her aunt’s immediate disappointment.

  “Ouch!” Pendt spoke reflexively, and immediately blinked to force the tears out of her eyes. Harlands didn’t cry for this sort of thing.

  “More!” demanded Talbor. He was capable of sentences, but rarely used them with Pendt.

  “You’ll get none,” Arkady said.

  Even at two, Talbor knew to shut up when the captain spoke. He threw his fork on the table but gave no further evidence of tantrum.

  No one said anything else. If Arkady was angry, she didn’t take it out on anyone. She looked at her sister and shook her head. Lodia stared at the table. Pendt’s skin burned, but she stayed quiet too.

  “Well, at least you’ll be able to work in the engine room,” Arkady said before the horrible silence dragged on too long. “Welcome to the Harland, Talbor.”

  Pendt had not been welcomed.

  * * *

  • • •

  After that, the changes in Talbor were harder to keep track of, and Pendt stopped bothering to try. He was never going to love her, any more than anyone else in her family was going to love her, and she didn’t really know how to try and make him love her anyway. His calories increased and she gave him his portion three times a day, and that was the extent of their relationship. He stayed in Lodia’s quarters and Pendt stayed in her closet, and she wasn’t miserable, at least.

  After Talbor was seven or so, and Pendt was almost seventeen, two things happened on board the Harland that Pendt did keep track of. The first was personal: She started her menses. She had terrible cramps the first time, and thought was she was getting sick. She’d been afraid to tell anyone and had tried to do her job as normal, even though she was nearly doubled over by the pain. By now, she was a master of keeping her feelings to herself, but when the blood started, she finally had to go to the medical bay and see Morunt.

  “Well, I suppose it was inevitable” was all Morunt said. “One more step.”

  Pendt hadn’t expected any comfort but was relieved to know that her journey through puberty had been accounted for in the calorie allocations. For the first time in a while, her food ration was increased. It wasn’t enough to allow her to do any magic, but it did grant her an awareness of her body that she soon came to appreciate. She couldn’t make any changes to herself, let alone to anyone else, but she could see the pattern of her genes and think about possible changes, and that was the most practice she was likely to get.

  Morunt gave her a painkiller and a shot of something that suppressed her bleeding until “it was time.”

  The second thing happened a few months later, when the Harland came into another colony. This one was definitely full of pirates, and Arkady kept the whole ship on lockdown as a result. She was willing to trade with them, of course, but they sure as hell weren’t going to steal from her.

  It was after lunch when Arkady returned from the port. The boys had spent the meal with the usual chatter of whether the passengers below had disembarked or been dumped as so much dead weight. Usually, Tanith would shut them up, but she didn’t this time, no matter how disgusting their speculation got. Lodia had come in only briefly for her portion, as had each of the adult cousins, before returning to the bridge. This port wasn’t entirely safe, and all the grown-ups remained at their duty stations. Tanith should have to, Pendt thought, though it was possible that her mother had assigned her to keep her brothers from doing anything stupid.

  When Captain Arkady walked into the mess, all conversation ceased immediately. The boys looked curious. Tanith looked at her plate. Pendt continued cleaning and sterilizing the food preparation surfaces in the galley but did her best to listen while she worked.

  “Tanith, Pendt, with me,” Arkady said.

  Pendt nearly dropped the cleaning supplies. Instead she hastened to put them
away. Arkady said nothing else to her daughter or her niece as she led them from the mess and down the corridor to the medical bay. Tanith moved woodenly, like her body was no longer hers to control. Pendt was too busy wondering why she was being brought along to give it much thought.

  In the medical bay, Dr. Morunt stood by a cot that was prepped for one patient. A thermo-sealed canister sat next to the bed, along with a tray of medical tools.

  “Strip,” Arkady said to Tanith. It was definitely the captain speaking. There was no sign of anyone’s mother.

  For one horrible moment, Pendt thought her cousin would refuse. No one ever refused Captain Arkady. But then Tanith jerked to movement, peeling away her jumpsuit and underclothes until she was naked.

  “I don’t know why you wanted Pendt,” Arkady said to Morunt. Her tone was almost casual as Tanith got onto the cot and lay down, clearly beyond uncomfortable. Morunt injected her with something, and after a few moments, Pendt felt something shift in her cousin’s body.

  “I need her to confirm fertilization,” Morunt said. “She’s a bit more sensitive to that sort of thing than I am, I think, and since this is Tanith’s first time, I wanted to be extra sure.”

  “Just get it done,” Arkady said. “We’ve all got work to do.”

  Two tears leaked out of Tanith’s eyes as Morunt made the insertion, but she made no noise at all. It must have been cold, at the very least, and Pendt couldn’t imagine that it was comfortable, yet her cousin took it like a Harland.

  “Well?” Arkady said.

  “This method can take some time, Captain,” Morunt said. “It’s not like an implantation.”

  Pendt reached out, focusing her senses on Tanith’s belly. The shifted thing she’d felt earlier was an egg, like the one she herself would release every cycle were she not taking suppressants. The injection must have unsuppressed Tanith. It was time.

  Pendt felt other genes in her cousin’s body, unfamiliar ones. That was what Morunt had inserted. Rather than a fertilized egg, like Lodia had received for Talbor, Tanith was simply being inseminated, and Pendt was there to confirm when it took.

  “I don’t have all day,” Arkady said.

  “Then you should have brought me a zygote,” Morunt said. “But at this colony, we both know it’s too dangerous for eggs to leave the ship, so you’ve done the next best thing, exposed the Family to less risk, and now we have to wait.”

  Arkady did not answer, but she didn’t leave either. Instead, she stood and watched her daughter on the cot. Pendt wondered if maybe Tanith wanted someone to hold her hand but was not foolish enough to suggest it.

  The minutes dragged by, and Pendt wasn’t sure she would even know what it was she was supposed to sense. She could feel two halves, this time two halves that wanted to join with each other. She could tell the moment when they did, but even that wasn’t the result Morunt was after. Arkady paced and Pendt was almost afraid to breathe. Still, Tanith made no noise and released no further tears. She didn’t even shiver, and Pendt thought that she had to be cold by now. The medical bay was always a few degrees cooler than the rest of the ship, and Tanith was still naked.

  And then it happened: implantation. Pendt knew it immediately, and inhaled sharply. Morunt put a hand on Tanith’s belly and nodded. Pendt could see a vague shape of what the baby would look like but couldn’t tell what, if anything, its æther connection would be. All she could feel was electro-sense, and that was what Tanith herself possessed. Arkady would not welcome that piece of news, and Pendt had no intention of being the one who told her.

  “It’s been successful,” Morunt announced. “You can get dressed.”

  Arkady was looking at Pendt, and Pendt felt seen for the first time in years.

  “You could tell immediately?” she asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Pendt said.

  Arkady asked no more questions, and Pendt did not volunteer any additional information. Tanith dressed quickly, and Morunt updated her calorie allotment.

  “You’ve done well, Tanith,” Arkady said. There was no warmth in the captain’s tone. It was a performance review and nothing more. “I am pleased.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said quietly. She looked like she wanted to vomit. “I’m glad I can serve the Harland.”

  “Teach Jerrus how to run the engine room,” Arkady said. “You will be off for at least a week when the child is born, and someone will have to fill in for you.”

  With that, the captain left the medical bay. Tanith waited a few moments, and then went back to work too. She looked a little unsteady, but there was nothing wrong with her. Pendt waited until it was just her and Dr. Morunt.

  “Did you know when I did?” she asked.

  “No,” said Morunt. “I didn’t know until you gasped, and then I knew where to look. I always thought that you were stronger than I am, and now we know you are. I can only find things when I know where to look, and a lot of medical ‘things’ are very, very small.”

  “Can you fix them when you find them?” Pendt asked. She could clearly see the shifts in the pattern she’d have to make to change the baby to a star-mage. The scope of it frightened her too much to mention it, though.

  “Not the way you can,” Morunt said. “Or, at least, the way I think you can. I couldn’t change my eye colour with all the food on this ship in my stomach. You’re going to be able to do a lot of things I can’t, but I wouldn’t be in a hurry to tell anyone about that. I said you’re stronger at detection, and you are, but you’re stronger in other ways too. And you’ll be better off if no one knows that, either.”

  Pendt was already keeping secrets, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to add this one to the collection. She’d seen her cousin exposed and pliant; she was in no hurry to let anyone do the same thing to her.

  6.

  THE HARLAND’S BRIG WAS cool and dry and close enough to the engine room that the cyclers provided a constant, soothing hum. There was nothing to do there, which was part of what incarceration meant, but there was also nothing to do, which meant while you were in it, your time was your own.

  Pendt’s semi-regular confinement to the brig was not a new development. Before the fingernail incident, she had been considered her mother’s to discipline. Now, if she was very lucky, she was locked in her room. It was barely big enough for her narrow cot and the cabinet that held her change of clothes and toiletries, but it was hers, and she could lock the door from the inside too.

  The downside was that the air circulation was so poor, Pendt often woke gasping in the middle of the night, desperate for more oxygen. Her rank on the Harland didn’t entitle her to any repair allotments, so she just had to bear it.

  “A rat hole for the galley cat,” said Kaeven. Lodia made him check the environmentals after the fourth time Pendt was found passed out in the hallway that led to the toilets, but he did a cursory job at best. “It’s no better than you deserve.”

  Her brothers all lived in a bunkroom across the hallway from her closet. Lodia had a small room, though hers was much nicer than Pendt’s, and then there was the toilet facility. There was no common area. If they wished to socialize, they did it in the mess or the crèche-turned-gym. Pendt rarely wished to socialize.

  The lights in the galley were dim, only lighting the workspaces the minimal amount to assist with food preparation. Pendt had been released from confinement a few minutes before the pre-dinner shift began and told to report for duty. There was no doubt that this was still part of her punishment, though. At lunch, she had mistakenly licked her fingers after getting vege-matter on them instead of putting her hands in the calo-recycler. The cook had reported her, of course, and Lodia-the-Officer had ordered Pendt to the brig. Her presence now was at the behest of her aunt, who never missed the chance to remind Pendt what she was worth to the Harland.

  Pendt’s brothers sat on one side of the long Family table. Lodia sat at the foot a
nd Pendt’s cousins sat with their backs to the galley. The elder generation of cousins, who had no offspring, were at the other table. Pendt looked out at the sea of light brown to white-blond hair she could see through the galley cutaway, and then turned her attention back to the task. Her aunt meant for her to hear whatever was about to happen, but not see it. Her stomach rumbled very softly.

  “Talbor,” said Arkady.

  Pendt’s younger brother stood and saluted: “Yes, sir?”

  “Today you are eight, and ready to learn your place on the Harland,” Arkady said. “You will have to work extra hard to make up for your family’s lack, but I know you will do better than your best.”

  Pendt didn’t need to see the room to know how everyone would react. Lodia would stare straight ahead, unflinching. Her brothers would look at their plates, and then up at their aunt like hopeful children. Her cousins would smirk. Everyone else would pretend not to know what was going on. Pendt tallied rations, counting calories into allotments to be given out at the next meal.

  “I will, Captain,” Talbor said.

  And now Talbor, born of a trade with a mining colony that had resulted in a single fertilized egg for each party at the table, officially outranked her. It was difficult to keep track of time on the Harland, but if Talbor was eight, then that meant Pendt herself was almost eighteen, and they must be getting close to Brannick Station. Pendt’s hands shook, and she steadied them before the cook could notice. The last thing she needed was more trouble, even if the brig was basically a vacation from the torture of working around so many calories all the time, knowing what she could do with them, and not being permitted to eat them.

  Pendt lifted up several trays and headed out to distribute them, starting with the captain and working her way down the ranks. As she made her runs past the table, Talbor used his Spark deck to shoot little flecks of electricity at her arms. She’d rolled up the sleeves of her jumpsuit while she worked—he wouldn’t have dared damage that—and each contact burned her skin with little marks she’d never be allowed to heal. She did not give her brother the satisfaction of responding. She was used to discomfort.