Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

“What?” My voice rings out.

“Hsshh.” One of the older women shushes from the bunk below us.

Soli drops her voice even lower. “I’ve seen girls do it before. I had already got the baby, and I knew some sure my father wouldn’t drop me on a port somewhere or let me go around the ship unmarried. So the next time I was in the cleanroom, I let my mother catch sight of me and of course she went and told my father. He called us into the meet room. Then Ready, he confessed it in front of everyone, and they had us bound the next day.”

“Wasn’t your father angry?” I ask.

“Some sure.” Soli picks at the inside of the blanket. “He wanted to push Ready out the airlock at first, but then he decided he’d rather have a legitimate grandchild, so he only had him flogged after the binding instead.”

“Soli,” I whisper, not sure what else to say.

“I got my way, didn’t I?” She turns her head to me.

I nod. Soli strokes her belly absentmindedly.

“What about Ready?” I ask. “What if he comes calling for you tonight?”

“He won’t,” Soli says, eyes still closed. “Not till after the baby’s born and I’m healed up.”

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

“What, having a baby? I’m guessing so from all the screaming the other girls do.”

“No,” I say. “The other thing.”

“Oh.” Soli rolls heavily on her side to face me. “At first, but not so bad if he’s careful. And it’s much better after that. Are you worried?”

I tuck my chin into my chest and hug my arms. I nod.

“Don’t.” She rubs my arm. “When we heard you were coming as a bride, I figured you might be for Luck, so I told him how he’d better not hurt you or I’d break all his toes. He’ll be careful. You’ll see.”

I smile at her, even though we can barely make out the whites of each other’s teeth in the close dark. Soli rolls on her back again, and I turn to the wall. She’s asleep in a few slips, her breath falling slow and regular. I lie awake, rubbing the smooth surface of my data pendant. Iri and Hannah snore lightly in the bunk below us. Some of the smallgirls whisper and break out in patters of giggles, but those peter out too, leaving only breath and the lulling hum of the air scrubbers.

I sit up. The heat coming off Soli is too much, even with cool air wafting in on us through the ventilation slits. I slide to the bottom of the bunk and sit there, my legs dangling with the extra weight of my bands. The air is wonderful fresh. It brings me awake, makes me almost giddy. I glance around at the other women in their bunks. How can anyone sleep with the air so pure? How can they expect me to sleep? My new home is beckoning me. There are rooms to explore, corridors and serviceways to memorize. And as much as it shames me to say it, I want to put some distance between myself and Soli’s belly.

I drop lightly to the floor. I leave my outermost skirt, with its clacking, flashing mirrors, but tie on my plainer inner skirts and move quietly to the door. Like all the doors I’ve seen aboard the Æther, this one shows a shaded view of its other side—an empty hallway. The door doesn’t have a pattern lock, but it doesn’t have a manual handhold for pulling, either. I feel along the door’s edges and on the wall where a control panel should be. Nothing. I kneel. A thin, red-lined square glows where the handhold might be. I press my palm to it experimentally. The door slides up with a silent swish of air, and I jump back, stifling a cry. The Æther crewe doesn’t even lock its women in at night. Strange.

I step into the hall and touch a matching square on the other side, sending the door hushing down behind me. An empty silence cottons the corridor, and deep in my veins I feel the familiar thrill of being the only one awake. I go left, away from the ship’s galley and entryway, into a section of the ship I haven’t seen yet. My feet pat-pat along the cool floor.

I pass a run of rooms lined with man-high tanks for trapping gas and tabletop centrifuges, miniatures of the one I’ve seen from afar in our engine room. I stand with my hand pressed to the waist-high glass, taking in the sterile order of the rooms. Diagrams crammed with mysterious writing paper the walls. I tiptoe on, past more workrooms. Then comes the men’s training room, with all the weight equipment sleek and new, not rust-speckled and wrapped in brittle sealing tape like aboard the Parastrata. I smile. Won’t Soli’s mother be shocked when she sends me off on some errand and I already know my way?

Beyond the training room, the floor slopes up gently. The air thickens with humidity and the smell of earth. Hydroponics. But when I reach the darkened room at the end of the corridor, I hesitate. This is nothing like Hydroponics on our ship, squeezing as much produce from as little nutrients and water as possible. I peer through the clear insulating curtain stretched across the door. Fog lies over a carpet of tender grass stretching all the way to the back of a room near large as the Parastrata’s outer bay. Dense shadows gather beneath the lemon trees staggered along the green. The far wall is one long window, looking out on the stars.

I kneel and lift the edge of the curtain so I can run my fingers over the grass. It tickles, but soft, the way a cat’s whiskers do. The men say down groundways people grow it simply to walk on, like a living rug, but that seems almost a sacrilege. I lean close and smell. Worms and crickets, like the ones in our compost bale. The soft, rich scent of rot.

I stand and pull the curtain aside. The grass is wet, and I can’t explain it, but I smell water in the air. Not the dead, boiled kind I’m used to, either, but something fresh, near live, steeped in gently pulped leaves and loam. I look up. Misters hang from a frame of girders above, alternating with darkened sun-glow lamps. I hesitate. Do the thers truly walk on something living? But they must, or else how could they reach those lemons? And if they don’t harvest the lemons, what’s the point of this room?

I put one foot over the threshold. The grass is soft, like a baby’s hair. I recoil, thinking maybe it’s as delicate too, maybe I’ve crushed it with my weight. But the shoots spring back the moment I pull my foot away. I take a hesitant step, and then another, letting the curtain fall closed behind me. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to walk on the old silk tapestries hanging in the Parastrata’s meet rooms, and now I think I know. This is luxury. This is Earth. I think I see a tiny piece of why Saeleas wept to leave it behind.

A curious tang from the lemons sweetens the air. I’ve heard the oldgirls say lemons are sour and only good for medicines, but my mouth waters all the same. I stop beneath a tree and lift one of the small, bright fruits. It fits perfectly in my palm. For a moment I picture myself snapping the lemon from its branch, sinking my teeth past its waxy skin, drinking the juice inside. But no. These aren’t my lemons, not yet. And even if they were, it would be none proper to take a whole one for myself.

When I reach the window, I press my palms against its cool layered glass and look out on the vast spill of stars. The skyport stretches beneath me, seeming to angle down from where I stand, even though I know up and down are only tricks of the ship’s gravity field. Bright repair patches stand out on the station’s skin, ships cleave to its sides like sucker fish, and clusters of antennae jut from each docking station, all of it bathed in the blue-white glow of the nearby moon.