Starglass (20 page)

“Oh.” I was still being careful to look disinterested.

“They know of my feelings about child rearing and marriage. I can’t
imagine why anyone would be interested in such things, but you know how gossip travels through these halls.”

I nodded.

“I always tell them that Mara Stone’s never been much of a joiner. Movements are for people who can’t move themselves, that’s what I’ve always said.”

She cocked her head to one side, looking at me for a long moment. It was the sort of scrutiny that would have normally made me blush—but I was too spent for that. “Really, I’d expect no different from you. You
are
my
talmid
, after all.
P. pungens
?”

I squinted at her. She held her palm out. “The
Picea pungens
sample, Terra. You know,
some
of us still have work to do.”

I turned to one of the long boxes of finished slides that waited on my desk. As I ran my finger along the glass edge, I heard Mara make a strange noise—a rumble low in her throat, like she was trying to get it clear but couldn’t.

“Funny thing,” she said. It seemed she spoke more to herself than she did to me. “I can’t remember the name of the woman who first asked me to join the Children of Abel. I do remember the smell of her, all yeasty. And there was flour on her shirt. I believe she was a baker. Yes, that’s right. A baker. Now, what was her name? You know, it’s been years since I last saw her. I wonder whatever became of her.”

I swallowed hard, but it didn’t do anything for the lump in my throat as I handed Mara her slide.

“Oh, well,” she said, taking it from me. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter now. Does it, Terra?” Though the words seemed casual, her gaze was piercing, pointed. Like she was sharing a secret with me.

That’s when the pieces fell into place. The journal. Mar Jacobi. The bakery. Mara’s words.

Momma was a Child of Abel. A rebel. Like me.

“No, it doesn’t matter,” I said quickly, and though my lips lifted in a giddy, exhausted smile, we both ignored it. “It doesn’t matter at all.”

A
few nights later I came home to an empty house. I couldn’t be sure where Abba had gone—out drinking or wandering the streets. But I was relieved to find our quarters silent and peaceful. I’d just begun fixing Pepper his dinner when a knock came at the door.

It was Koen. When I saw him standing in the doorway, his smile broad, I felt my heart swell in my chest.

“I have something for you,” he said, and held the journal out to
me. I snatched it from him, and hugged it to myself. Then I laughed a little. I must have looked foolish, clutching the leather book to me like it contained the spirit of my mother in its pages.

“Thank you,” I said sheepishly. “Would you like to come in?”

My pulse raced as I said it. Now that we shared the rebellion between us, I wondered if Koen would finally take me in his arms, touching his lips to mine. He glanced into the dark galley behind me.

“Sure,” he said.

We went up into my room together. Pepper soon appeared, wrapping himself around Koen’s ankles. I waited in the doorway to see where Koen would sit. Maybe he would settle into the nest of tangled sheets on my bed. If he did, I would sit down beside him and press my leg against his. But, to my disappointment, he sat in my desk chair instead. I tried not to sigh as I sat on the end of my bed alone, drawing my knees up against my chest.

“So what
is
that?” he asked, pointing to the journal that he’d carried for me across the dome. My fingers caressed the smooth leather cover.

“Van didn’t tell you?”

At this, Koen flushed lightly, scratching at the back of his neck. “Um, no. I didn’t ask him.”

“It belonged to one of my ancestors. She was one of the first passengers, but she wasn’t like the signers we learned about in school. She was an agitator.”

“Like us!” Koen exclaimed, his grin broadening. I couldn’t help but smile back at him. I had liked the way it felt to chant along with the fieldworkers in the library, to touch my hands to my heart in salute and have it mean something for once.

“Yeah,” I said. “She wouldn’t have been happy to know that five hundred years down the line we still live under the Council’s thumb.”

“Can I see it?”

I passed it to him. He began to fan the pages, but then a scrap of paper that had been pressed between the cover and the first page fell out. It fluttered to the floor. Koen bent to pick it up.

“That’s Van’s handwriting,” he said, frowning. He handed it back to me.

“ ‘Terra,’ ” I read aloud, holding the scrap of paper between my middle finger and thumb, “ ‘we need extract of common foxglove. Stone will have in herbarium. Bring to next meeting. Van.’ ”

I, too, frowned. “Did you know he was going to ask me for this?”

“No!” Koen said, and from the way that his eyes went wide enough to show the whites, I believed it. “What would they want with some plant?”

“I don’t know,” I said, biting my lip, “but I don’t think I can help them. It’s not like I’ve even seen the herbarium. Mara’s the only one who goes in there.” I’d seen the door at the rear of the lab but never even stepped past the threshold. And Mara wasn’t eager to help the
rebels. She’d made that much clear. So I crumpled the sheet into a ball and tossed it down to the floor. Pepper pounced after it, batting it as if it were one of his catnip mice. I smiled at the way the cat’s tail furled and unfurled in slow waves. But then I saw that Koen wasn’t smiling anymore.

“What?”

“You should do what they ask,” he said. I was surprised to hear a note of fear in his voice, bright and clear. “From what Van tells me, they’re not . . . they’re not the kind of people you want to make mad.”

On the floor Pepper took a running dive toward the paper and chased it underneath the bed.

“I’ve proved my worth to them. So why should I be afraid of people I can’t even see?” I glanced at my intended. “Why should
you
?”

“You’re not the only one who’s had to do stuff for them.” Koen raked his hand through his hair. “They asked me to watch your father, Terra. And report his activities back to them.”

“My father? Really?” It was hard for me to imagine what sort of threat my drunken father might pose to the Children of Abel.

“I don’t even know why. He never
does
anything. He mostly seems . . . kind of sad.”

“My father is no friend of Abel,” I said, an echo of Van’s voice in my melancholy words.

“I guess he isn’t. But he doesn’t seem dangerous, either.”

Silence stretched between us. Desperate to fill it, I slid down onto the floor and gathered Pepper in my hands. The cat leaned his body into mine, drawn to its warmth.

“I don’t really understand how you got involved with them, Koen,” I said softly. To my surprise, Koen set the journal on top of my desk. He came to sit beside me, his knee knocking mine. Pepper stretched slowly, then tiptoed over onto Koen’s legs. I watched my intended run his fingers along the bony ridges of the cat’s back.

“I used to always hang out in the library. Reading about the way the dome works. The changes of the seasons, all of that. Van started talking to me one day. We hit it off. He’s just so passionate about everything. This was last year. I was worried that the Council would stick me with some job I didn’t want. I don’t know. Once I had my vocation, I thought things would change. That I’d lose interest in the whole thing. But I didn’t, not after Van dragged me to a meeting. The way people talk there . . . it was so easy to get swept up in it.”

I thought of the jumble of voices that had filled the library rafters, rattling the dust and the cobwebs from the corners. I thought of how I’d moved my fingers to my chest in salute without even a second thought. I’d felt proud to be part of something for once. Like it wasn’t so bad that I was different—because there were other people here on the ship who felt as odd and ill fitting as I did. I could understand
how someone could get caught up in that. But not Koen.

“I thought you wanted to be normal.”

“I do,” he said. “Of course I do. But . . .”

“But what?” I asked.

“But when it comes down to it, I don’t think I ever will be.”

I didn’t know what to say. By then Pepper had settled in on Koen’s lap. Koen’s big hand rested between the cat’s shoulder blades. His knuckles were bony, and blue veins lined his skinny wrists. Despite their size, they were fragile, delicate-looking hands. When I reached out and finally put my dirty, work-hard hand on top of his, our hands presented a strange contrast. Koen didn’t turn his hand over, didn’t take my fingers in his, squeezing them tight. But he also didn’t draw his hand away.

“That’s okay,” I said gently. “I don’t think I’ll ever be normal either.”

•  •  •

Two days later we entered the edge of the orbit of Eps Eridani, our new sun. The captain decreed it would be a feast day like the harvest, even though the weather was cold and the times were lean. We were excused from our duties and given extra rations, and the little kids all wore their best winter clothes—fur coats and velvet dresses and ribbons in their hair.

I didn’t have anything nice of my own, only a green knit dress
that had once been Momma’s. It was too big, but I tried to look presentable, rolling the sleeves up around my elbows, knotting one of her old scarves around my narrow waist. It felt strange to be wearing something other than my lab coat and trousers—I almost didn’t feel like
me
. But when Abba peered in and saw me staring at myself in my bedroom mirror, a smile lit up his weathered face.

It seemed I was becoming my mother in more ways than one.

The two of us went to Koen’s quarters for an early supper. Koen’s dad made an orange-colored curry and dry, flat loaves of bread that were so different from what we ate in our own household that it was hard to believe they were made from the same species of wheat. But I forced a smile as I chewed and washed it down with a big gulp of my rationed wine. Not that anyone was paying much attention to me anyway.

Koen’s parents spent the whole meal fighting. I might have had the good manners to refrain from commenting on the food, but Koen’s mother apparently didn’t.

“I can’t believe we wasted our protein rations on
this
,” she said, tossing her napkin down over her nearly full plate. Koen’s eyes widened in horror.

“Well, then
you
should have spent all morning in the galley!”

“Don’t even start with me! You know I was busy with Stella!”

Koen’s sister was dressed in layers of navy velvet. Her dark hair had
been curled into spirals. As her parents argued, she looked somehow pleased, a wicked smile curling up the pretty bow of her mouth. Koen buried his face in his hands. I thought he might start crying, but instead he just stayed there like that, frozen through the rest of the meal.

The only gap in the Maxwells’ argument came during dessert. After Koen’s mother slammed a plate of steaming pie down in front of her husband, she spat, “There!
You
serve it!” and then collapsed in her chair again. Before her husband had a chance to respond, my father rapped the tines of his fork against his cup.

“I’d like to make a toast,” he said.

Five pairs of eyes swiveled over to him. I think we’d all forgotten he was there. My father lifted himself solemnly to his feet. I watched as Koen’s mom looked to her husband, shrugged. Reaching for our cups, we all stood.

“To my daughter,” my father said. His voice was rough at the edges, a little sloppy. I wondered how much he’d had to drink that day even before this glass. “And to Koen, as they join our families together. To the promise of their lives ahead. To life, and to Zehava.
L’chaim.
”

Everyone clinked glasses. I only sucked in my cheeks. Then I felt my dad set his hand between my shoulder blades. I could feel the pressure of his wide fingers on my spine as he leaned in close.

“Your mother would be so proud of you,” he said.

I gasped down the last mouthful of bitter white wine and said,
“L’chaim.”

•  •  •

We all gathered in the field beneath the clock tower. The grass was blue with frost and seemed to glitter with a thousand diamonds even in the evening’s fading light. Everyone was bundled up in their heavy coats and hats and gloves. Though I’d layered myself as best I could, I could still feel the cold straight through my wool stockings.
This
was why I hated wearing dresses.

“You’ll feel better when we get the heater going,” Koen assured me, hefting the electric device.

“We could have sat with your family,” I said, looking wistfully at the children who huddled around the heaters, warming their hands against the heating elements. We’d left his parents to bicker at the starboard edge of the field. Koen turned to me, one side of his mouth edging up.

“And we could have sat with
yours
,” he replied. He was right—I hadn’t given a second thought to dropping my father off with Ronen and Hannah and little Alyana not far from the clock tower. Abba had settled among them, his wrinkled face drawn and serious. I winced at the thought.

“Good point,” I said. But the wind still cut through the weave
of my dress. I clutched my hands around my shoulders, rubbing them for warmth. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“I told Van and his wife that we’d sit with them.”

At that, I stopped where we stood. Koen glanced over at me, his tangled hair falling into his eyes.

“What?”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked, dropping my voice to nothing more than a murmur. “After all, you said that Van’s not the sort of person you want to make angry, and I still haven’t asked Mara about the foxglove, and—”

“Terra!” Koen reached out and took my hand in his. Even through his nubby mittens his fingers felt like ice. “I didn’t mean
Van
. He’s fine. I meant the people he reports to.”

I thought about the way Van had looked at us in the alleyway, how his green-glass eyes had sliced into me.