Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

“Don’t move too much or you’ll pull out the IV.” The captain reaches behind her back to pull the ties on her leather apron. “You want some water? Something to eat?”

“Water.”

The captain nods to the smallgirl, Miyole. She scurries off and brings back warm, bitter-tasting water in a pewter cup.

“It’s the quinine,” Miyole says quietly as I drink. “So you don’t catch blood sickness from the mosquitos.”

I sip, trying to ignore the bitterness and the cramp spreading all through my stomach. I can’t remember the last time I ate, but it might have been the feast my first—and last—night aboard the Æther. Miyole watches me drink, serious faced, and takes the cup away when I’ve finished.

The captain loops her apron on a nail and wipes her hands on a rag. “I’ve got to make a run up to Bhutto station and then to Cuzco, but we’ll talk when I’m back.” She looks to the smallgirl. “Try to keep her awake, Miyole. The longer she sits up, the better.”

“Wi, Manman.”

“Come and hug me,” the captain says. She kneels down and holds out her arms. The smallgirl runs into them.

“Be careful,” Miyole says. “Promise, Manman.”

“Wi, ma chére.” The captain touches her head to Miyole’s. She starts for the door.

“Please,” I say. There’s so much I need to ask her. Where exactly I am and why I’m so weak and why I’m not dead altogether. And I should thank her. And I don’t even know . . .

“It can wait,” the captain says.

“But I don’t even know your name.” I don’t recognize my own voice.

“Perpétue.” She gives a funny half bow, half salute. “Gyre Parcel Service. And my daughter, Miyole. But believe me, Ava, the rest can wait.”

I close my mouth and let my head fall against the wall. I nod. With a wave, Perpétue disappears out the back door, and a few minutes later a high whine fills the air, followed by a thrumming whum-whum, like the giant fans deep in the Parastrata’s innards. The shriek and roar of the mail sloop’s burners build and lift her away.

“Watch,” Miyole says. She runs to the window on the other side of the room and points up to a bare patch of bleached sky.

I squint as the sloop races by, up and away into the blinding sun. Its engines judder and fade. A chorus of sharp squawks erupt from the roof.

“What’s that?” I whisper.

“Manman’s chickens.” Miyole drops down beside me and crisscrosses her legs. “Manman said you could have soup. You want soup?”

I clear my throat. “Please so.”

Miyole hops up and darts to the kitchen on the other side of the room. She sings a little song under her breath in that other language as she unfolds a portable stove, balances a heavy stew pot on top, and draws two fresh, fat fish out of the plastic cooler shoved against the wall. My eyes widen. We have our biolumes, of course. And once my father made a trade with the Nau crewe for cases on cases of tiny fish preserved in salt and oil, but I’ve never seen any like this. I didn’t know they could grow so big. Miyole scrapes the scales from the meat. Then, with a few deft turns of her knife, she hacks off the heads, slices the fins away, and slits their bellies.

“. . . si li pa dodo, krab la va manjé . . .” Blue flames flare beneath the pot.

When she’s done, Miyole carries a fragrant bowl of broth to me, taking tiny, careful steps to keep it from spilling. She presses a spoon into my hand. Small chunks of tender white meat float in the broth. I could near cry, it smells so good. But the spoon feels like a length of rebar, heavy and unwieldy. My hand shakes as I lift it to my mouth.

Miyole watches me as I struggle with the spoon. “My manman says you were off planetside too long, and that’s why you’re sick and your muscles don’t work right.”

I clamp the spoon in my mouth. The soup is mild and thick. I thought the fish might be salty, but instead it’s light. It eases my stomach.

“Were your people punishing you, keeping you off gravity like that?” Miyole asks.

I shake my head, sip another spoonful.

“Why, then?”

I hesitate. And only men will bear its touch. But if that’s so, how can Captain Guiteau and Miyole manage? My head hurts. I’m not hungry anymore.

“I don’t know.” I put the soup aside and let the spoon clatter down into the near-full bowl.

Miyole hugs her knees and sticks the end of one braid in her mouth. She stares at me. “Why’re you so pale?”

“Pale?” My eyes pop open. Me, pale? All my life, I’ve only wished to be lighter, more like the rest of my crewe. “Most of my crewe doesn’t have any color to them.”

“Really?” She scrunches up her face as if she doesn’t believe me.

I nod. “I’ve got more than most on account of my mother’s father.”

“Was he a spaceside person like you?”

I shake my head. “He was from here, from groundways. He was a so doctor.”

“Why didn’t he make them keep you on gravity?”

“He died.” My throat aches from talking. I close my eyes. “My mother too.”

A few slips of silence tick by, and then Miyole jostles my knee. “Hey, miss. Hey, Ava.”

I open my eyes.

“My manman says to keep you awake.”

“I’m awake,” I say. “It hurts . . .” It hurts to talk, I try to say, but my voice fails me.

Miyole rocks, hugging her knees and sucking on her hair. “You want me to read to you?”

“You can read?”

Miyole gives me a funny look. “Course I can.” She stands.

“Please so, then.”

Miyole runs to an ancient chest of drawers, pulls a metal key from beneath the neck of her shirt, and fits it into top drawer lock. She tugs it open. A moment later, she returns with a piece of clear plastic folded into a neat square. As she unfolds its leaves, they lock open and seal together into a thinner sheet. The moment they join, the sheet lights up from within, as if she’s holding a little shard of sky in her hand. Pictures and symbols pulse across its surface, playing bright colors over Miyole’s hands and face.

“Okay,” Miyole says. “You want a true story or a made-up one?”

I stare at the light sheet, mesmerized. “A true story,” I say finally.

Miyole sees me staring. “What, haven’t you got tablets where you come from?”

There’s no point lying. I’ve seen screens lit and all the men gathered round, but only from the doorway to my father’s quarters. I always sneaked glimpses as I arranged the cups of rice wine and then scurried out again before I could be noticed, but I’d swear we had nothing like this.

“No,” I say.

Miyole shrugs. “My friend Kai doesn’t have one either. My manman says we’re lucky.”

“It’s some pretty,” I agree.

Miyole gives me a long, measuring look. “You can use it if you want. But you can’t touch it with sticky fingers, okay? My manman says that’ll break it.”

I want to smile, but I hurt too much. I can’t even muster the strength to tell her I wouldn’t know how to use it anyway. I nod instead.

“Okay.” Miyole returns to the tablet, all business. “We haven’t got a network signal here, so there’s only what my manman loaded up the last time she went on a run, but there’s lots to choose from. Did you already learn about the Floods in school?”