Starglass (5 page)

“Stand up straight,” my father commanded before turning to Hannah’s father.

The ceremony was over. I held a plate of pickles and chopped liver out in front of me as if they could shield me from the horrors of small talk. My classmates all seemed to move easily through the crowd, laughing and chattering with one another. Even Rachel had drifted away, flirting with Silvan in the corner, leaving me here with my family—and sinking fast.

“We thought we’d all go down to the hatchery,” Hannah said. I could feel her pointed gaze upon me. “And visit your niece.”

The thought of being around all those wires and bio-conduits
made my stomach flip-flop. “No, really, thank you,” I muttered in a low tone. “I promised Rachel’s parents I’d eat with them.”

“The Federmans are merchants,” my father said, pursing his lips as though the idea tasted bad. Beside him, my brother cast his eyes to the floor. He wasn’t much better than a merchant—only a carpenter. But the gold thread in his cord meant that we pretended he wasn’t. “But the Meyers are Council members. And you’re a specialist now, Terra. You shouldn’t—”

“I
promised
,” I said again, my words hotter this time. I could feel how Hannah’s family stared at me, waiting to see if I’d crack. I decided that I would spare them that. I shoved my plate into Ronen’s hands and turned on the heels of my boots. “I’m out of here.”

“Terra!” my father called as I went to grab my bag from the coatroom. “Terra, come back here!”

But I ignored him, leaning my hands against the heavy doors, hustling down the long hall toward the lift. Who did he think he was, anyway? Rachel was my
friend
, my oldest friend. I slammed my palm hard against the lift’s lock, waiting in the dim light for the doors to come shuddering open.

Footsteps sounded down at the far end of the hall.

“If you’re here to lecture me . . .,” I began, turning. But my words puttered out when I saw that it was not Abba who hustled toward me. It was Benjamin Jacobi, of all people. The librarian.

“Mar Jacobi,” I said. My words sounded thin, annoyed. I suppose that I was. “What are you doing here? Don’t you already have a
talmid
?” I thought he did, at least. A redheaded boy. He’d been in Ronen’s class.

“I always attend on Vocation Day. It’s a mitzvah, you know.” His dark eyes sparkled like he was making a joke. But I didn’t get it.

“I know,” was all I said.

And then there was a burp of awkward silence. Mar Jacobi reached over, pressing his hand to the lift panel—as though I hadn’t just done so myself. “Do you mind if I join you on your trip down? I hate all of this chitchat. I’m really very eager to get out of here.”

I couldn’t help but smile at that. I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding. “Oh!” I said. “I hate it too.”

“I suspected you might,” Mar Jacobi said as the door at long last dinged open. He held it open for me. “You’ve always been
remarkably
like your mother.”

Momma!
I felt a stab of emotion. She’d seemed so composed, so charming. Nothing at all like me. We stepped into the huge lift. Our voices echoed against the walls.

“She hated small talk too?” I asked. Mar Jacobi let out a chuckle.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Of course, you would have never known it at first. But she used to say that you can’t really get to know a person until you’ve broken bread with them.”

“You must have known her pretty well,” I said, less a question than
a statement. I remembered him there, of course, on the night of her funeral.

“Alyana was . . .” He stumbled over his words and was able to recover only after swallowing hard. “A dear friend of mine.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I nodded.

“She would be so proud. I’m sure you’ll be able to do great things as a botanist,” he offered at last. I gave my shoulders a shrug, clutching my bag in front of me like my life depended on it. I hadn’t given any thought to my new vocation. I wasn’t sure what a botanist even
did.

“How, planting flowers?”

“Perhaps.” He gave a grin. His teeth were yellow and crooked. When I didn’t smile back, he added: “I think you’ll be truly working toward
tikkun olam
. Are you familiar with the term?”

I let out a snort. “It’s all Abba—I mean, it’s all my father ever talks about.”

“Duty always was important to Arran,” Mar Jacobi said. He leaned back on his heels, staring up at the lights set into the ceiling. “But you know, Terra, there are many ways to do your duty, to work toward carving out a place in the universe for humanity.”

“Are there?” I glanced down at the polished floor. There was something hungry about his voice, like he’d been waiting for this conversation for a long time. I didn’t like the intensity behind it. It made my cheeks warm.

“Well,” he said, “when our ancestors left Earth, they thought they were saving mankind. The Council will tell you that the way to fulfill that mission is to do your duty, to work hard and marry and raise happy children and obey the captain.”

Behind him the door dinged open, revealing a fury of green, tangled space. A rush of air wafted in, perfumed by the clover from the pastures and the wildflowers from the forests below. Neither of us moved.

“Yes,” I said sourly, “I know. They taught us that in school. How we have to do mitzvot for the good of the ship or it’ll fall out of space or something.”

Mar Jacobi’s eyebrow ticked up. He was looking at me closely now, the pupils in his brown eyes shrinking down to pinpricks. “I used to talk about
tikkun olam
with your mother. She always thought there were other ways. Alyana said we needed to protect our liberties, too. Otherwise mankind was never worth saving.”

“What do you mean, ‘our liberties’?”

Mar Jacobi stepped aside, offering the open door to me. After a moment I stepped through. “I’d be happy to discuss it with you sometime. If you’ll stop by the library, I could give you some books to read. I’m sure it would do your mother proud to know that you’re considering what’s truly necessary to work
tikkun olam
.”

My lips tightening into a frown, I trudged past him. “All right,” I said. But I felt uneasy as I walked out into the dome.

The librarian only waved a hand at me. “Mazel tov, Terra,” he offered. I saw him press his hand to the button, and then I watched as the door slid shut again.

“Thanks,” I mumbled in return. But a thin birdsong was the only thing that answered.

•  •  •

I found a mossy incline spread out between a pair of trees. The artificial daylight was feeble, spotty; the ground muddy from the latest rain. Everything seemed cool and brown. But near my feet there was a flash of purple: a crocus head pushing up between the gravel. As I fumbled for my pencils, I gave the flower a wistful smile.

A spring flower
, I thought.
But it won’t last long. Spring will be short this year.

I turned to a blank page near the back of my book and ran my hand over its bumpy surface. When I first started drawing, I tried to draw people: Ronen and Rachel, my father. Momma. But in the dim light of my room, their faces looked all wrong—the eyes uneven, the mouths too wide. So I’d given up on that. It was only away from home, in this solitary space, that I had begun to look—really look—at the flowers and branches in front of me. Now my hands and my pencils confidently sketched the right shapes. I found my mind clearing, my heartbeat growing steady again. There was only color. Violet with yellow undertones. A touch of green where the
petals picked up the shade of the moss around it. And I found myself happy, or something close to it.

I drew the crocus—how the petals folded in on themselves like the pleats of a purple dress. The way the green stem was thin and delicate and stately, like a woman’s slender neck.

I worked until it was too dark in the forest to draw anymore. In the distance the clock bells rang out. I pulled myself to my feet, tucking my pencils back into my bag. In the fading daylight I squinted at the image of the flower one last time. There it was, preserved for all time inside my book. I smiled, touching the crosshatched shadows with my index finger. Then I closed the cover and stumbled back toward the lift.

•  •  •

Dinner at Rachel’s was always an improvement over dinner at home. Though her quarters were the same shape as ours, they were different inside, warm and comfortable, decorated with paintings of fruit and lit with glass-shaded lamps. Her parents chatted amicably as they cooked together. Rachel and I poured drinks and set down plates. Even her little brother helped, laying out the tarnished silverware, chanting, “The spoon and knife is husband and wife.” He didn’t even complain about it. I don’t think Ronen had ever helped with dinner without whining.

It was nice, really. It let me forget about the weird run-in with the librarian, if only for an hour or two.

Before we ate, Rachel’s mom took down a pair of electric lights from her cupboard and set them in the center of the table. It was something that was done once a week in her household. Her mother was so grave about it, serious. When we were little, Rachel had asked me if my mother did the same thing. I’d only frowned, given my head a shake. Momma hadn’t done
anything
like that. Rachel said that it was something that the women in her family had always done.

“Will you join us, Terra?” her mother asked now. “My mother always said it was a mitzvah for a woman to welcome in the end of the week.” I glanced over at Rachel’s father, who hovered over the kitchen counter, smiling. Rachel’s brother watched us too. Everyone was waiting for me.

“Sure,” I said, the heat spreading over my cheeks. I watched as her mother flicked the switch on the bottom of the lights.

“Blessed is the universe,” her mother said, veiling her face with her hands. Rachel did the same, lifting her long fingers to her face. So I did too, even though I had no idea why. “And the commandment to kindle the light in the darkness.”

We dropped our fingers, watching the bulbs flicker. Their yellow light danced across the dinner table.

“Well, now that that’s done with,” her father said, smacking his hands together. “Let’s eat.”

•  •  •

But by the end of dinner, Mar Jacobi’s words were weighing heavy on me again.
Alyana said we need to protect our liberties.
I gnawed at the dried fruit that was our dessert, thinking about his words. I hadn’t realized how quiet I’d become, until Rachel slipped her hand in mine under the table, squeezing my pinkie finger tight.

“I don’t think we’ll be having any tea, Mother,” she said, standing and pulling me along. “We have a
lot
to talk about.”

She gave me a wink as she dragged me up the stairwell. But when she shut her door behind her, she turned on me.

“What’s with you?” she demanded. And then, before I could answer, she broke into a grin. “Is this about a boy? Do you
like
someone?”

“What? A boy? No.” I fell against her bed. The sheets were pulled taut, tucked neatly under the mattress. Rachel made her bed every morning. I
never
did. “It’s about the librarian.”

“The librarian?” In the dim circle of light cast by her bedside lamp, Rachel wrinkled her nose. “You . . . you
like
Mar Jacobi?”

“No! He stopped me in the lift after the vocation ceremony. He said he has books for me.”

“That’s so weird. You know, he always kind of creeped me out. Every time I go in there, he’s all, ‘What books would it please you to read today, Ms. Federman?’ Like he thinks we’re chums.”

“Lies,” I teased. “You don’t
read
, Rachel.”

She threw one of her pillows at me. I caught it easily. Then I froze,
looking down at the tiny floral print sewn into the pillowcase.

“He said he knew Momma.”

“So? Who doesn’t know everyone else on this ship?”

“I don’t know. It just seemed . . .” I trailed off. A frown was playing on Rachel’s features, just below the surface of her smiling eyes. “It just seemed strange,” I said at last.

“I think that’s just how he is,” she said. “You’re being paranoid.”

“Really?” I finally passed the pillow to her. She took it, tucking it behind her head.

“Really,” she said, in a tone that told me there would be no more talking about it. Then she sat up straight. “Besides, we have more important things to talk about.”

“Such as?”

“Our new jobs, silly. Botanist! That was a surprise.”

I groaned, hiding my face in the crook of my arm. But Rachel didn’t want to hear it.

“It’s not so bad! A specialist position. Your dad will be happy.”

I bit down on the inside of my cheek, thinking about it. “Maybe. You should have seen him after Ronen got his assignment. It was bad enough that Momma had a service job. I think he’d just about
die
if both of his kids did.”

Something hardened inside Rachel. I realized too late how I’d misspoken. A merchant was ranked
lower
than a service worker. “He
must have known it was a possibility. It’s not like everyone can be a specialist.”

“Of course! And it’s not like everyone
should
,” I assured her. But my words didn’t help. It was like a door had closed inside her and I was standing on the other side. “You know it’s my dad’s issue, not mine.”

“Oh, I
know
that!” She forced a high, weird laugh. “I guess I just hoped we’d get a chance to work together. Despite what your father thought.”

“
I
always hoped—” And then I stopped, pressing my mouth shut. I’d never told Rachel about my plans to become an artist. After the way it had gone with the counselors, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

“Hoped what?”

“I thought maybe I could be an artisan. A portrait artist,” I finally concluded. Rachel’s eyebrows lifted.

“A portrait artist? Since when did you care about art?”

“I care!”

But Rachel just gave a sort of vague shake of her head. “Terra, I’ve never known you to care about
anything
.”