Starglass (26 page)

I’ve fulfilled my duties. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve grown obedient.

Seven years into our journey I noticed how listless and sad the other citizens were becoming. Purposeless. I petitioned the Council to let us use animal DNA from storage.

At first they denied my request. “What need do we have for pets?” they asked. They called the idea frivolous. I explained to them all the ways that animals could be therapeutic—how caring for creatures has long been known to lead to longer life spans, better health. They denied me again. I was enraged. This was my vocation, my job—the job they had given me. And they wouldn’t even let me do it.

Finally your father intervened. He started a petition. Staged protests. Soon citizens were visiting us to speak of the animals they’d left behind. They were so lonely without little Barney, without Sampson, without Tilly, that good old mutt.

Daughter, you might scoff. It may seem like such a minor thing to you. Pets. At first the Council thought so too. Until we stormed the Council antechamber with our demands.

Only then did they give in. Of course, even then they insisted that these creatures be useful in other ways—pest control.

At long last we awoke fat calicos. Rat terriers. Dachshunds. Companions. Creatures we could care for and care about. Creatures that would depend on us and give us something to look forward to on every new, dark, stifling morning.

Daughter, heed my warning when I say this: Don’t trust the Council.

Every comfort you’ve had was one for which we had to fight—even Alfalfa, your yellow dog who curled at the foot of your bed every night until he was old and gray-muzzled. If the Council had their way, we would live a life of bread and water and nothing else. They’ll tell you that they have your best interests at heart. I’ve come to suspect that they truly believe this. They can lie to themselves. Please, daughter, don’t let them lie to you.

I
slept on the floor in Mara’s daughter’s room. Her name was Artemis and she was only eight, and she talked in her sleep every single night, calling out for her mother, who never came to comfort her. Pepper was able to sleep through it, but I never could. I stared up at the ceiling, counting my breaths up through the thousands. There was no one left for me to call for.

In the morning I ate breakfast with them. Mara’s husband, Benton, was a dark-skinned man with bone-white hair, and he read books
every morning at the table through a pair of tiny spectacles. Artemis was more like him than like Mara—dark and soft-spoken and polite and largely distracted. But Apollo, who had just been bar mitzvahed, was cut from the same cheap cloth as his mother. At the rare times I tried to speak to him, he’d just roll his pale eyes or let out exasperated syllables. Once his father chastised him when the boy called me “a speck-brained fool.” Mara smiled wryly at that, even as she let her husband scold him.

It was the only time I ever saw her look pleased to be a mother. After scarfing down her breakfast, she’d leave her dishes steeping in the gray water for her husband to wash, and rush off to work before I’d even finished my coffee.

That didn’t matter, though, because I’d stopped going to work when my father died. I didn’t ask to play hooky, and Mara didn’t offer. It just happened. Every day she rushed off. Benton bundled up his kids and then went to work himself. He was a fieldworker. I couldn’t believe that. The Council had paired Mara Stone with a
farmer
. I was left alone to consider that every morning at their kitchen table.

I developed a kind of routine. After breakfast I fed Pepper. Then I’d go up to Artemis’s room and curl up on my sleeping roll. I wouldn’t shower; I almost never changed my clothes. I’d take the ancient journal from my basket of belongings, clutch it against my body, and sleep.

I hoped to dream of Momma. I wanted her to take me by the hand, walk with me through the dome, and tell me what to do now that I was alone. I wanted her to give me answers: Why had my father taken his life? What had she been doing with the Children of Abel?

She never came. Instead I would be plunged into whiteout storms, the snow piling deep and burning cold around my bare knees. My dreams always started the same way: I’d stumble forward barefoot, lost, the wind doing a fickle dance around me. And then, just as I was sure I’d be swallowed up, a hand would reach out, grasp mine, and pull me forward. Lips would meet lips, and it was summer inside me, the smell of clover and magnolia sticky on the air. In my dreams we burned the winter away.

I woke only when Artemis stumbled into her room after school to put away her bag.

“Oh,” she’d say, giving me a polite smile as she ducked out. “Sorry.”

But there were other days. Dark days. Days when I couldn’t sleep, much less escape into dreams. I’d leave that ancient book sitting on the floor, and let Pepper sit on the pages, and wheeze out tears. There were no kisses. There was no love. There wasn’t even snow. All that was left was me, and I was alone.

On those days, on those low, dark days, Artemis would open her door, hear my sobs, and let it shut again, leaving me to my pain.

•  •  •

One afternoon Mara came home early.

I didn’t hear her come in. It was one of my good days, and I’d been dozing, flashes of lilac and fuchsia exploding beneath my eyelids. Mara grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard. I let out a cry. The space inside my covers was warm and welcoming, while both the air outside and Mara’s grimace seemed dangerously cold.

“No,” she said, gripping my shoulders, pulling at the fabric of my shirt. “Wake up, Terra.”

I tugged the blanket over my head. But Mara just snatched it down.

“Hey!” I whined. I tried to wrestle the blanket from her clutches. But she held on tight. At last I sat up, staring at her. “What do you want, Mara?”

“It’s time for you to get up.”

“My
father
died.” I spat the words at her like they were made of acid. But she didn’t even flinch.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s time for you to get up and tend to your duties. It’s been two weeks. You have work to do.” When I didn’t answer, crossing my arms square across my chest, she gritted her teeth.

“What’s that term your father was so fond of, girl?
Mitzvah?
”

I could feel it, how my gaze flickered when she said it, how tears suddenly stung my eyes. But I didn’t want to give in. I couldn’t! I couldn’t imagine going out there and facing the light of day. “What good works can I possibly owe the people on the ship?” I asked
through my scowl. “Why should I help them fix the whole damned universe? What did they do to stop my father from—”

I stopped midsentence, unable to make the words move past my mouth. For a moment, too long a moment, I sat slack-jawed. Then I found myself bringing my hand to my cheek and smearing away a long stream of tears.

“Oh, Terra,” Mara said, tipping her head to one side. I hadn’t wanted to do this in front of Mara. So far, other than that the first night, I hadn’t. But here I was now, weeping openly while she forced a smile of sympathy across her sour mouth.

“I don’t know why it happened to him,” I said at last. “And Momma. I don’t know why. No one else’s parents . . . It’s not supposed to happen here. Every other family is just perfect. A mother. A father. Two kids. Even
your
family. But he . . .” I sucked in a sharp breath.

“You know, Terra,” she began, speaking slowly. “The founders of our society were very careful to control for certain things. So you’re right. What you’ve faced in life is rare—in our entire history few Asherati have ever had one parent struck down before they’ve reached marrying age, much less two. But no matter how carefully the original passengers were selected for resilience, no matter how many counseling sessions I’m sure they made your father attend after your mother’s death, you can’t control for sadness, not totally. You can’t control for grief.”

“Or cancer,” I said, not wanting to mention that my father had
stopped attending counseling after only a few weeks. He’d pulled me and Ronen out too.
We’re fine
, he’d told them.
I know what’s best for my family
. “Momma’s cancer. They couldn’t control perfectly for that, either, right?”

Mara pressed her lips together. “Mmm,” she said. After a moment she reached up and cupped her fingers around my chin. Part of me wanted to squirm away, escape her touch.

But I didn’t. I let her run her thumb along my tear-slick jawline. “You’ve lost something. We can’t deny that. But this loss will make you a stronger person.”

“No!” The protest came out weak, shaky. Mara squeezed my jaw a little more firmly with her fingertips.

“Yes, it will.”

With that, she stood, staring down at me. I wanted nothing more than to sink down in bed, snuggling into the blankets and closing myself to the world. But I couldn’t—not with Mara watching me.

“Now,” she said. “We’ll start slowly. You’re going to get up. Shower. Get dressed. And then come to the lab with me. That’s all you have to do. Come to the lab.”

She spoke easily, but we both knew that it wasn’t a suggestion. It was a command. I
had
to obey. Without another word Mara turned and walked out. I waited a moment, sighed. Then I stumbled to my feet.

T
hat day in the lab I sat behind Mara as she fiddled with her microscope and entered numbers into her computer terminal. At first I felt nothing but anger at my return to the messy, cramped laboratory. The only place I wanted to be was deep under the covers, hiding myself away from the world. But Mara didn’t push. In fact, she didn’t even speak to me. Instead she went about her work in silence, pecking steadily away at the keys.

“You’re not going to give me something to do?” I demanded.

Mara didn’t lift her eyes from the screen. “There are always slides to prep.”

I had no desire to prep slides, and Mara knew that. But I went to my work desk and began to set out my supplies anyway, making a show of slamming my desk drawers, hard, rattling the tools within them. I stooped over, blade in hand, and set to work.

Soon my anger receded. But it was only replaced with interminable boredom. Setting my knife down, I rolled my head on my neck, counting the rivets on the metal ceiling. I turned to stare at Mara’s bookshelves, trying to make poetry from the titles on the spines. But there was no poetry to be found in
Varieties of Lichen in Eurasian Boreal Forests.
At last, unable to stand it anymore, I pulled myself to my feet and dragged myself over to Mara’s desk.

I stood there for a moment, watching her type. Generated on one monitor was a picture of two ribbons, intertwining each other. I watched as they slowly rotated.

“I hate it when people read over my shoulder,” she said. I didn’t answer, only watched as the ribbons twirled around and around. They were linked together by short chains. It looked almost like a ladder.

“What is that?” I asked.

Mara punched a key. After a moment the image changed. It was a single stalk of wheat—a familiar enough picture. On the end the long grass parted to reveal the spike, lined with fine hairs. But there was something strange about the proportions. The chaff was much rougher and thicker than that which encircled the wheat out in the fields.

“I call it
Triticum mara
,” she said in a grave, important voice. I looked at her—and burst out laughing.

“Mara’s wheat?” I asked. “You’ve designed your own
wheat
?”

She glowered at me, then punched another key to make the screen go blank. “Of course I have. I’ve based the gene sequence on einkorn wheat. Salt tolerant and hardy, but I’ve adapted it to the cold weather conditions we’ll find on Zehava. Assuming Zehava’s molecular environment is even compatible with our own. We’ll find out soon enough, when that damned probe returns.”

“I didn’t know you were making your own plants,” I said quietly. Mara frowned at me, her eyebrows low.

“Of course I’m making my own plants. What do you take me for, a gardener? We’ll have a colony of hungry mouths to feed soon enough. Now, back to your desk, girl.”

“But, Mara—”

I don’t want to hear it!”

“But, Mara, I want to
learn
!”

My own words surprised me. But after all these weeks spent wallowing in the gray space of my mind, I felt desperate—starved, even—for something, anything, to fill that hole inside. There were
tears in my eyes again, threatening to spill over—easily, as they often did those days.

“Please, show me what those ribbons are?”

Mara stared at me for a long time. At last she sighed and turned the computer monitor on. The two spiraling structures returned. “Fine,” she said. “Pull up a chair. But no more laughing at my work. Someday, Terra, your life might depend on it.”

•  •  •

Over the days that followed she taught me about RNA, about chromosomes and genomes and recombinant DNA. A few days into this second, stranger phase of my training as a botanist, we visited the hatchery—not to see the eggs, which hung empty now in preparation for our arrival on Zehava, but instead to speak to the genetic engineers. They not only manipulated human life on the ship but would also someday create the crops that Mara had designed to seed the fields and forests of the alien planet. One of them was a young woman, dark haired and kind eyed, who, when I asked her what her job could
possibly
have to do with mine, grinned at me.

“Nearly every single Terran organism had the same number of genes,” she said, glowing at the prospect, “about twenty-five to thirty thousand. It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it? To look outside at the grass in the dome and realize it has as many genes as you do.”

I expected Mara to roll her eyes at this, but instead she nodded
fiercely. So I thought about it for a moment longer, the similarities between me—a girl, grown in one of the now-fallow eggs down on the hatchery floor—and the wheat we ate, and the wine we drank, and the flowers that would someday blossom across our new home.