Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

I shake my head.

“No?” She taps the tablet again. “What about the Third Library of Alexandria? The drowned city of Lanai? The subcontinental levee program?”

I shake my head.

“Ooh, no, wait. Terraforming.” She looks over her tablet at me and grins as if she’s found a sweet in her pocket. “I’m learning about that in the lessons Manman bought me on geosciences.”

I nod and close my eyes.

Miyole clears her throat importantly. “Terraforming is a lengthy process by which planetary bodies are rendered fit for human habitation through the infusion of gases . . .” She stops and giggles, then sneaks a glance at me and puts on her serious face again. “. . . and the release of geothermal energy. Though scientists have long sought a more ex . . .” She stumbles, then rights herself. “Expedient method of terraforming potentially habitable planetary masses, the process still requires the dedication of multiple generations of colonists to achieve an atmospheric balance that will allow life to flourish where it previously did not. The lifeblood of these colonies is the fleet of government-funded and commercial trading ships whose crews volunteer years of their lives to the service of pro . . . provisioning the colonies. Each flight can take years to reach its destination at sublight speeds. . . .” She sounds some like the oldgirls, reciting their stories, reading the air, their words stiff and formal in their mouths.

And as she reads, I’m back aboard the Parastata, watching the silent mass of a red planet misted with green slide beneath our hull. I can almost see the stars beyond the thin stretch of the planet’s newborn atmosphere.

“Ava. Hey, Ava.” Miyole has stopped reading. Her voice is gentle. “Wake up.”

“I’m awake,” I say. I force my eyes open. “I was remembering. We had a route over the red one. Mars?”

“You’ve been there?” Miyole bounces up on her knees and hugs the tablet. “I want to go when I’m grown. I’m going to enroll in a flight academy so I can see Mars and Titus and all the little colonies starting up, but my manman says I have to have to keep my math up if I want to do it.” She pauses for breath. “Did you really go?”

“No. Well, some. I’ve been above it, but women don’t go down on groundways duty.”

“Why?” Miyole cocks her head at me.

“We . . . we . . .” I wave my hand heavily in front of me. How can I explain? It would sully us? Leave us crippled, as I am now? “Don’t. We just don’t.”

Miyole frowns.

“We can’t,” I say, but even as I say it, I know it makes no sense, when the weight of this world is nothing to her.

I give up and fold my hands over my knees. Miyole reads more, about nitrogen balances and something called the cascade effect, but the words run through me as if I’m a sieve. Am I really a husk of skin and bone, while my soul floats lost somewhere above the atmosphere? Is that why I hurt so? Can I get it back if I go up to the stars again, or is it burned up, turned to dust in the flare of our entry? And what of all these groundways women, walking and working and having children, all under the Earth’s sway? Are they soulless, too? And Luck . . .

Thinking on Luck is too hard. It makes my chest hurt.

I put my hands to my belly, suddenly remembering Soli’s roundness and what Luck and I did in the pool. My own flesh slopes in slightly below my ribs. But it could be early still, I remind myself. The thought moves my heart to pounding and fills me with a mix of dread and hope. It could be, I think. My head feels light. I know I didn’t deserve Iri’s sacrifice, but if I have Luck’s smallone, that might make it worthwhile. Maybe some part of him can live on that way. Is it possible to want something and not want it at once?

When she finishes reading, Miyole serves herself some stew and sits at the table, swinging her legs. She stares at the light tablet, stopping to tap it every once in a while and swallow another mouthful of soup. When she’s finished, she cleans her bowl, then neatly folds the tablet back into its square and places it carefully in its drawer. She draws out a sheet of cut metal, along with welding goggles and a little handtool. She sits cross-legged on the floor, twist-clicks the end of the tool so it buzzes to life, and leans over the metal sheet.

“What are you making?” It still hurts to talk, but it’s better than thinking.

“Hmm?” Miyole looks up at me through the goggles.

“The hangings.” I gesture around. “You’re the one what makes them?”

“Oh. Yup.” She holds the piece of metal up so I can see. “This one’s going to be a fish. My manman sells them on her flights sometimes to help buy my lessons.”

“They’re beautiful,” I say.

Miyole shrugs, but I catch a small smile at the corner of her mouth.

I lie on my cot and pretend I can feel Luck’s arms around me as I watch Miyole turn the blank, jagged piece of metal into a scaled fish with lips and eyes and striated fins. The smell of burned metal curls the air. I close my eyes and picture the smallone, Luck’s child, tucked in me. I see Iri again, falling. Blood on her teeth.

In the high window, the sky goes from pale, hot white to deep, creamy blue. All the sounds below us grow louder: the lap of waves on wood, motors gunning, roosters calling, cats scrapping and yowling, people shouting. Wherever we are, it sounds bigger than I imagined. It’s as if someone has settled a cook-pot lid over us, and all the noises are trapped inside. Miyole runs up to the roof to start the generator, then back down again to flick on the ceiling fans and the single tube light suspended over the kitchen table. I doze.

The whum-whum roar of the mail sloop vibrates overhead, waking me. Miyole dashes to the window. From my cot, I watch Perpétue’s ship lights whip overhead and listen for the sigh of the burners winding down. A loud metal bang sounds, and a few seconds later Perpétue’s feet beat up the outer stairs. She breezes in, humming to herself, untucks the knife from her belt and drops it on the table alongside a handful of irregular metal scraps.

“Manman, look!” Miyole holds up the fish, its scales shimmering orange in the low light.

Perpétue takes it and holds it at arm’s length, careful of the pointed fins. “Lovely.” She smiles at Miyole. “Sharp and lovely, like its maker.”

“Did you get me more?” the girl asks.

Perpétue tilts her head to the scraps. “On the table.”

Miyole skips over. She sifts through the metal while Perpétue takes a yellowed plastic jug of water down from a shelf.

“How are you, fi? Any better?” Perpétue calls over her shoulder as wets her hands from the jug, then pumps soap into them and rubs them briskly together.

“So,” I say, even though I’m not sure.

Perpétue turns to her daughter. “Did she eat?”

“Yes, manman,” Miyole says. “I read her my lessons.”

Perpétue splashes water over her hands and dries them on a rag tied to her belt. “That’s good, ma chère.” She kisses her daughter’s head. “Did you eat?”

Miyole nods.

“Good. Go and wash up for bed.”

Perpétue heats a bowl of soup for herself, then breaks down the portable stove and stows it beneath the table. She brings her bowl over and pulls up a chair across from my cot.

“You’ve been sick.” She takes a bite and talks around it. “Your friend, that woman who was with you on Bhutto station, she said you have family planetside?”