Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

“You ladies after some company?” He takes a wavering step toward us. The sour reek of alcohol wafts from his soiled clothes. “I got a room here if you want some company.”

Iri shakes her head and presses me forward.

“One drink? We’re friends, aren’t we?” the man calls after us. “We can be friends.”

We stride away as fast as we can without running. The hall goes on and on, smeary windows narrowing into infinity. I think the roof must be slowly sloping down on us, and any minute I’m sure another door will swing open, someone worse will block our path. The Parastrata’s wives are full of stories of girls who’d wandered away from their crewes being robbed or raped or cut up in tiny pieces and fed into nutrition recyclers.

Finally the hall ends in a round metal service door. Iri pulls it open and steps into the dark. I try to follow, but the moment I put my foot down, the ground shifts, as if I’m wheeling into a fall. I cry out and reach for Iri’s hand.

“Here, Ava.” Iri catches me.

The wheeling stops as suddenly as it started. I look around. We’re standing in a long service shaft. The lights above us fizz on, but behind us and ahead, the shaft fades roundly into blackness. I turn to my right, to the door that brought us here. The dim corridor with its grimy windows has flipped on its side, so all the windows now lie where the floor and ceiling should be.

“What . . . ,” I start to ask.

“It’s the gravity,” Iri whispers. “The stationmakers changed its direction to make it easier to move things between levels.”

“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say. I never knew men could change gravity. I thought it was only something that was.

“Forward or back?” Iri asks.

“Forward,” I say. The Parastrata’s tier hangs somewhere ahead or above us, but I don’t want to think on what might be lurking in the tiers even lower than where we are now.

We walk. As we reach each new section, the lights click on before us and snuff out behind. Our footsteps echo into the dark. Each tier has its own door, with its own narrow window looking out onto the tipped level. Someone has bolted vinyl plates stamped with symbols beside each doorframe. I stare at them hopelessly, praying the trick of reading will come to me if I stare long enough. After we’re bound, I’ll show you how to read. . . .

My Luck. Have they sent him out to meet the Void? He’s the captain’s own son. Surely his life must be worth more than mine. Someone on his crewe will save him, as Iri saved me. Or maybe if we tell the right people, they can help us. We can save him ourselves.

How many more levels above us? How far have we come? At last we peek through a door and find a concourse stretched broad in front of us, bustling with people lugging bags and pushing hover trolleys of small crates. I crack the door to get a better look. The sweet smell of well-scrubbed air rushes in, along with the crackle of advertisements from nearby speakers and handhelds. This level is some like the Parastrata’s, with its vendors and food stands, but brighter. Boxed holograms of ferns and flowers extend down the center of the concourse, flanked by white benches.

“The passenger tier,” Iri breathes in my ear.

“Security alert.” A cool, toneless woman’s voice interrupts the stream of advertisements. I shrink back. The voice echoes up the shaft. “Sixteen year-old girl reported missing. Last seen in the company of an older female relative, believed to have abducted the girl. Both have red hair, of merchant tribe descent. Please report to the nearest security station if you see these individuals. Code five-two-nine.”

Iri and I stare at each other, wide-eyed. Damn. I slam the door shut. How did they do that? How did they know? Jerej or my father must have talked someone into helping to hunt us down. They must have told them what I did. No one will help us now. I slump against the door, my heart choking me. I have to push the thought of Luck away, or I’ll lie down here and never get up again. We have to keep moving.

I clear my throat. “What now?”

Iri kneels at the center of the shaft. “I thought on that.” She turns out her pockets and produces rolls of homespun cloth, copper handspools, dull, greening coins from a bridal headdress, seemingly anything of value she could fit in her pockets before she fled.

“For trade,” she says.

“Trade?” I echo her dumbly.

Iri nods. “I know someone what could help us groundways.”

“You know someone groundways?” I gape at her, the danger of Jerej and the Watches momentarily forgotten. She might as well have said she knows some Void zephyrs.

“I do.” Iri sets her mouth in a line, as if she’s unsure how much to trust telling me.

I crouch down next to her and finger one of the corroded coins. “Who?”

“You remember,” Iri says slowly. “You remember when your mother went on to the Void, how the so doctor’s daughter came aboard to sort things with your great-grandfather Harrah?”

Her strange figure, with only her hands and face uncovered, passes before my eyes like a ghost. Turrut and Hah. Maybe she’s come to snatch you ’way.

“I remember.”

Iri stacks the coins. They click-click-click like dripping water. “I knew her some.”

“Knew her?”

“Yes,” Iri says. “If we reach her, she’ll help.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

Iri looks up. “Because she helped before.”

Something in Iri’s tone tells me not to press. Whatever the so doctor’s daughter helped her do, it’s something that can’t be spoken aloud, even now, some ten turns later.

“Do you know where she is?” I ask instead.

“Groundways,” Iri says.

“But groundways where?”

“Earth. Mum—” Iri stumbles over the word. “Mumbai.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know. A city, I think.”

I think on the colonies and outposts the men have come back telling us about. Little clusters of airtight buildings surrounded by fields of solar panels, nitrogen pumps, and domed dioxide converters. Even with Earth close packed as it is, could it be so hard to find a person once you’ve got it narrowed down to a single city?

“We send out a call to her?” I ask. “Is that what you’ve got in mind?”

Iri looks uneasy. She shakes her head.

“What then?”

Iri hesitates.

“You can’t mean . . .” I recoil. I think I know what Iri means to do. “Oh, no.”

“Only for a little bit, Ava.”

“No.”

“Don’t you hear? They’ve got the whole station looking for us. They could be listening if we send out a call. The only way to reach her safe is to go there. Go groundways. I heard some of the men talking once on how you can rent out a slot on a ferry ship. You can pay to keep your name hidden, even.”

“No,” I say again. “Iri, what are you thinking? We can’t.” As if in warning, the lights above us power down, leaving us in darkness. We’ve been still too long.

“Look how we are without the ship,” I say. Winded and lead boned, ready to cave to the Earth’s call. “Going groundways might kill us.” Or worse.

“The so doctor’s daughter bears it,” Iri says quietly. She knows the Word as well as I.

But who knows what living groundways has done to the so doctor’s daughter, how it’s changed her? Is she still even a woman, or do you have to become something else to bear the Earth beneath your feet?