Starglass (12 page)

“You’d think they were dying because I won’t give them the iceberg lettuce their parents fed them,” she said, finally turning to face me. “But what do they want from me? It’s nutritionally worthless.”

“I know,” I said. And I did. I’d heard Mara grousing about it enough times to be more than familiar. Mara cracked the slightest smile.

“You know, we still have access to all those crops. None are lost. Not even sugarcane. We have thousands of seeds in cold storage, not to mention cell samples, DNA. Our ancestors worked hard to preserve as much life as they could. Even plant life.”

“That’s why you’re so excited about the probe, isn’t it?”

She let out a soft grunt of agreement. “We have some idea about the climate. We know it’s a cold place, based on orbit and distance from Eps Eridani. But we don’t know the details. Soil composition. Air quality. Once we find those out, we can engineer cultivars we can plant on Zehava’s surface. It might be a chance to reinvigorate species that haven’t been seen for
centuries
. Or to invent whole new crops—better crops. Crops that can feed us and sustain us better on our new home than they ever did back on Earth.”

Talking like this, Mara seemed almost like a kid—not at all like the strange, brusque little woman I’d grown to know.

“I’ll tell you what, Terra,” she said, reaching her age-veined hands toward me. Hesitantly I placed my hands in hers. The gesture felt ill fitting, odd. “Come with me to the atrium. We’ll walk around. See if there’s anything this old fool can teach you about your vocation.”

It was the first time she’d offered to teach me anything. At last I’d done something right. “Okay,” I agreed, not even trying to hold back my smile in return.

•  •  •

In the silence we strolled along the lower paths, past the rivers and the fountains. What had once been a green, busy jungle had now given way to felled trees and scrubby bushes. Yellow grass swallowed the cobblestone. We walked down into the pastures. To my surprise, as we moved past a flock of scattered sheep, Mara let out a strange bleat of sound. She held her hand out to one. It ambled close, answering her.

“As a girl I wanted to be a shepherd,” she declared, not looking me in the eye. I frowned at her. This was the first thing I’d ever learned about Mara’s personal life.

“Always did like animals more than people,” she said. Her fingers massaged the creature’s black face. “They’re easier to talk to. Easier to understand.”

The sheep let out another belt of sound, then butted her head against Mara’s hand. It was a massive ewe, body swaddled in yellow wool. But Mara petted it like it was a kitten, running her nails over its knobby head.

“I wanted to be an artist,” I whispered. I hadn’t thought my words through—and hadn’t planned on sharing them either. I lifted my hand to my mouth, but it was too late. The words were already out, hanging there in the clammy air. But Mara only gave a laugh.

“I know,” she said. She gave the creature’s ear one last caress, then started out again across patchy fields. I followed. “The Council told me
all
about that little book of yours. I tried telling them that no fifteen-year-old would put together an amateur field guide, but I suppose they thought they were being clever, recommending you to me. They didn’t want to listen.”

Walking beside her, our hands almost touching, I felt a rash of heat go to my face. I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d said about my drawings. “You knew? And you still chose me?”

Laughter flickered in Mara’s eyes. We’d reached one of the pasture fences. She set her hand on the splintered wood. “Your scores were solid. Much better than any of your classmates. And your instructor said that you had . . . How did he put it? An unusual enthusiasm for any subject that interested you, at those rare times when he could get you interested. I thought we might make a good match. If you’ll
pardon the expression, I didn’t want some little sheep who’d swallow anything I told her.”

It embarrassed me to hear her say it, that we were alike in some ways. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. I think it embarrassed Mara, too.

“Anyway,” she said, and thumped her hand against my shoulder. “What I’m saying is, I know you wanted to be an artist. I won’t hold it against you.”

And with that, she launched her small, wiry body right over the pasture fence and took off down the brick path that waited on the other side. I let out a burst of laughter, scrambled over the wooden rail, and followed.

•  •  •

We walked through the dimming light together, winding our way toward the labs. A few black-limbed trees still clung to their leaves, which throbbed like green-yellow hearts over our heads. Mara pointed out how skinny pines pushed their way up between the broad oak trunks.

“These were planted last year,” she said, kneeling in the mud to touch one of the prickly branches to her palm. Then she turned to me. “Even though we arrive on Zehava in less than six months. Why?”

I chewed on my lip, scanning through my memories, through years of school lessons where I’d barely clung to consciousness.

“Um, we need oxygen until we establish orbit?” I offered at last. But even as I spoke, I suspected that my answer was the wrong one.

“Terra,” she said, thinning her lips, “there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to actually live on the surface of Zehava when we get there.”

My frown deepened as she stood, dusting her hands against her trousers.

“What do you mean, there’s no guarantee?” My voice wavered, betraying my emotions—fear, and a hot flash of anger, too.

But Mara ignored the frantic crescendo of my voice. “What are they teaching you kids in school these days? I told you. Almost everything we think we know about Zehava is based on conjecture—we can guess certain things about a planet based on how far it is from its sun, and the gravity it exerts on other bodies in its system, and how long the orbit is, and the rotation. But things like atmospheric composition? The presence of water? And whether it can support life? And more, life like ours?”

The hard look over her features finally softened. “You should know this. Our ancestors sent out many ships to many planets—because there was no guarantee we would make it and no guarantee that
any
of these places could support life.”

“What happens if it can’t?” I demanded. A thorny tangle of anger grew inside me. “What happens if we get to Zehava and can’t even
live
there?”

Mara gave me a toothy grimace. “Well, then we detach the ship’s dome. And land it. And remain within the glorious prison of the
Asherah
.”

I searched for the ceiling between the broken boughs. I’d never thought of the
Asherah
as a prison before—in fact, I hardly ever thought about her at all. She was home, just like my family’s quarters or my room. I paid her as much mind as I did my hands or my feet.

But I’d thought ahead plenty. In school, staring out the window at the atrium as Rebbe Davison droned on and on, I’d thought about life on Zehava. I thought about things I’d heard named only in songs or in books. Thunderstorms. The ocean. The desert, yellow and endless. And sky—
real
sky.

I’d thought about unknown continents. Sometimes I’d even doodled maps in the margins of my notebooks. I’d always known that someday some other world waited for me. Some better life.

Mara stared at me, letting her words sink in, and I thought of what my life might be like if that future were taken away. The anger inside me swelled. I wanted to bang my fists against the ceiling that glowed false twilight in the distance. I wanted to break out.

“The probe,” I said, almost spitting the words. “The probe wasn’t just supposed to tell you what kind of plants to make. It’s supposed to tell us whether we can live on Zehava.”

Mara reached out, fixing her wrinkled hand against my shoulder. And gave it a squeeze.

“Good,” she said, her whispered voice rough, as coarse as the nettles that were tangled over the ground. “Good. Now you understand.”

O
ur faces were mottled red from the cold, our lungs breathless from the day’s walk. The unusually easy conversation of the day had given way to an equally easy but no less unusual silence. I rounded the corner of the long hallway that led to the lab, Mara following close on my heels. Then I stopped short.

“Dad?” I called. “Koen? What are you doing here?”

They stood together beside the door. Koen looked like a shadow of my father in his dark boots and skinny trousers, though his broad
shoulders were slouched where my father’s were squared. I felt my face flush. After the incident in the library, I wasn’t quite sure how to act around him.

“Terra,” my father said, pulling me out of myself. “You were supposed to meet me at the hatchery this afternoon. It’s time.”

I winced at the sound of my father’s voice, tight with anger. I’d forgotten all about it. That explained why the domes were so empty that day—the workers must have departed to the hatchery to observe the birth of the final generation of ship-born Asherati. I looked to Mara, but she was busy jamming her fingers against the door panel. When I followed her inside, my father and Koen trailed after.

“Mara Stone,” my father said, his words weighted with a familiar note of reproach. “Surely you’ll let my daughter leave her duties early to see her brother’s child’s birth.”

“You can come too, Mara,” offered Koen. “After all, it is a mitzvah.”

Mara, her back to us, had begun to take off her coat. But at Koen’s words she froze. I saw a wince tighten her profile. She spun to face my father. The lift of her mouth was wicked. It reminded me of the sort of look an older sister might give a naughty little boy.

“You know,” Mara began. I let out a silent breath—from her tone, and from experience, I knew a lecture was coming on. “There was a time when women carried children in their bodies like ewes bearing lambs. Squeezed them out between their own legs, even. But there’s
something wrong with human babies. Their skulls are much too big. Even in wealthy nations childbirth was always risky business. And it was much too risky for our intrepid founders to lose women of prime childbearing age when they could work like good little drones.”

I buried my face in my palms. My cheeks were burning, searing hot against my hands. Through reddened ears I heard my father’s response.

“I had no idea you were a student of animal husbandry too, Mara. Are you planning on getting a special dispensation for
that
, going to whelp a few pups yourself?”

Mara let out a snort. I peeked through my fingers at her, watching as she pulled her rusted shears from her coat pocket and pretended to prune one of her trees.

“Certainly not, Arran,” she said. “I’ve had my babies, just like every other sow on this ship. One of each, a boy and a girl. Brilliant way to control population, isn’t it? But I consider it my duty—all of ours, really, even if most of the ship’s inhabitants distract themselves with mitzvah and
tikkun olam
and other hogwash—to be educated about our past. You know, that’s where we get our ‘bar mitzvah’ for our boys.” She paused long enough to wave her shears at Koen. “A week out of school, a little snip snip”—she sliced through the air with them—“and behold, men out of thirteen-year-olds! Wouldn’t want them to go knocking up our precious workhorses, after all.”

With that, she winked at me. I was dying inside, but Mara just let out a cackle of laughter.

“Thank you
so
much for your invitation, young clock keeper, but I’ll be fine without paying a visit to the hatchery tonight. All that blood. It just turns my stomach. But . . .” She stopped short, studying my burning face. At last she forced her wicked smile to soften. “Oh, well, if you
must
go, Terra, be my guest. But please, no war stories tomorrow. I don’t want to be up all night with nightmares.”

“Thank you, Mara,” I muttered, rushing to follow my father and his
talmid
from the lab. I couldn’t bear to look at her, but Mara’s high-pitched laughter echoed down the hall after us.

•  •  •

When I was eleven, Rebbe Davison brought us all to the hatchery to see “where life begins,” a phrase that made everyone giggle, even the boys. Back then we all felt squeamish at the sight of the glistening eggs, dripping from the tubing like tomatoes on a vine. Their pinkish shells bulged with veins. The memory of the strange clumps of flesh had haunted my dreams for years.

But I’d visited a few times already in the year I turned sixteen, tagging after Ronen and Hannah to see the fishy, globe-eyed creature that would one day be my niece. I hadn’t exactly become accustomed to the antiseptic smell or the sight of the babies, bumbling through the nutritive fluid, but it seemed important to
act
like I was. After
all, only children were uncouth enough to blush when they stepped through the doors of the hatchery.

I did my best to keep my expression fixed ahead as I sat on one of the narrow sofas in the busy observation lounge, but it wasn’t easy. Koen’s hip pressed into mine, the lean line of his leg paralleling my own. Our shoulders nearly touched. Sitting beside him, I was acutely aware of his body. It didn’t help matters any when he turned to me, smiling shyly.

“Mara is a very strange woman,” he said. From beside the observation glass I heard my father let out a low chuckle. I just stared down at my hands. They looked awkward against my knees.

“She’s different,” I agreed. But when I spoke the words, they felt wrong, like a betrayal. So I added: “But I’m learning a lot from her about how the ship works. And what will happen at landing, and—”

“You shouldn’t believe everything that Mara tells you.” My father turned to face us. His expression was stony. “She thinks she’s special. She thinks the rules don’t apply to her.”

Beside me, Koen’s dark eyes flickered, revealing a faint glimmer of something I couldn’t quite read. “What do you mean, sir?”

“Oh, like being a mother, for instance. She asked for
two
dispensations from Captain Wolff to delay having children before they finally forced her a few years ago. Said that her work was too important to deal with the ‘inconvenience of motherhood.’ ” My father’s nostrils
flared at the thought. After all I’d learned about Mara, it didn’t surprise me. But I knew how my father felt about those who put selfishness before
tikkun olam
.