“Be silent,” said Aster in a whisper, tossing a pair of balled-up socks at her bunkmates. The sweat-damp cotton had become frosty and stiff sometime in the night and left an icy, moist residue on Aster’s palm.
“Hatch won’t open,” the guard called out from the corridor, slurring.
Aster had wedged a pipe beneath the handwheel every night for the past several weeks, a countermeasure against such middle-of-the-night intrusions.
“You don’t open this hatch right now, I’ll wait here till morning and arrest you one by one.”
Aster’s cabinmates turned toward her, the whites of their eyes glowing.
“Open this goddamn door right now.”
Aster pulled off blankets and tiptoed to the hatch, removed the metal bar, then scurried back to bed.
At least they were awake. At least they were prepared. Better that then waking with the point of a baton pushing into your temple, or ice water poured onto your face.
The guard stumbled inside, his boots making all manner of racket. “Wake up!” he ordered, his speech booze-slick. He clicked on his flashlight, and the beam glided over each of the six bunked cots, stopping only upon the last one, where two women, Mabel and Pippi, lay on a single mattress, embracing tightly.
“You two. Up. Out of bed. I see what you’re doing,” he said. When at first they didn’t stir, he jostled them by their shoulders, afghans and quilts falling off their bodies onto the floor.
“We weren’t doing anything sinful. Promise, sir, only trying to keep warm,” said Mabel. A half lie. It was a reason. Not the only. Mabel searched around for her glasses and coughed as she confronted the guard.
“You sin more by lying to cover up your nastiness. I said get up!” This time the guard swung his baton against the frame of the cot.
Aster watched her bunkmates scramble from the bed before squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her face into the mattress. She pressed her palms over her ears to blot out the noise, but it was no use. She knew these sounds by heart. The metal clink of a guard undoing his belt buckle, the swoosh as he tore it from the loops, then finally, the loud smack of leather against skin.
Both women cried. Aster imagined Mabel’s glasses fogging up. Every few smacks, another fit of coughs overtook her.
“Get back in your own beds,” he said when it was over, his breaths heavy. “You should thank me.”
Aster knew where this was going, one of those Sovereignty speeches about redemption and justice. How beatings were good. How each strike undid one sin. If Aster’s eyes weren’t forced shut, she’d be rolling them. Why guards quoted this nonsense to justify themselves was beyond her. The whole point of occupying a position of power was that you got to do what you wanted with impunity. It seemed a waste of time to bother with rationalizations.
“You,” the guard said. His light flashed over to Aster. She pretended to sleep, bit the dirty cotton of her pillowcase to still her shaking body. “I said you.” The guard jammed his baton into her ribs, twisting it between numbers six and seven. He stank of ale.
Aster covered her eyes with the back of her hand to block out the glare of white light, and she heard him click it up a notch, the beam brightening painfully.
“Why are you intruding?” she asked, turning her head toward him and squinting. “It’s the middle of the night, and we must be well rested for our work shifts tomorrow.” The pudginess of the guard’s face gave away his youth. Aster guessed he was a few years younger than herself. Twenty. Twenty-one.
Aster sat up, pulling the blanket to her shoulders. She flicked on an oil lamp and found her leather medicine bag, removed the pass she’d used to get access to T deck for Flick’s amputation. The guard snatched it from her, squinted as he read: This badge allows Aster Grey, Q deck, Quarry Wing, Q-10010, assistant to Surgeon General Theophilus Smith, free passage to Tide Wing for the purpose of collecting blood samples for Smith’s research. She had one for every lowdeck. The guard shined his light on the symbol on the card, then to the identical inked mark on Aster’s neck, confirming her identity.
Aster grabbed the pass from his hand and slid it back into her bag. She stood, creating a shield between him and her bunkmates. “The Surgeon wouldn’t like it if something were to happen to any of us. I will not report you at this juncture, but if you don’t leave, I will. What are you? A junior inspector, if that? He outranks you.” Aster didn’t know if the Surgeon would actually support her in this matter. According to their exchange earlier, she and the Surgeon were acquaintances. One didn’t pull strings for acquaintances.
The guard pulled his hand back to strike her, but Aster grabbed his wrist before he could swing. She held on tight, adrenaline feeding her muscles. “You don’t do that again,” she said. Her cabinmates gasped, and the sound of their shock emboldened her. She liked to impress them. She liked to show them her gall. Earlier, Giselle had doubted her commitment to rebellion. Let her doubt it now.
“Enough,” said Mabel with another cough, but Aster did not heed the warning. She would tussle with this man if she had to. She could smell the liquor on him. It made him foolish and weak. She couldn’t win a fight against Lieutenant, but this man she could beat.
He went for her with his free hand and she blocked it. He was able to wrestle her down into the bed, but she got enough leverage to knee him in his lower abdomen. As he groaned, she rolled him from atop her and down onto the floor. “You are drunk and worthless. Get out,” she said.
He stumbled to get up then vomited onto his own shoes. “I’ll tell—”
“And I will tell the Surgeon,” she cut him off. “You saw the pass yourself. I’ve known him for ten years. Even if I were just his pet rat—ten years—don’t you think I’m maybe worth something to him?”
“Daft animal,” he responded, looking pathetic with his belt loose.
“Indeed. Now leave,” she said.
Aster didn’t know what it was that made her feel so brave. The ghost of her mother, enraged for having been misunderstood for so long, possessing her temporarily?. Flick’s insistence that she was weak?
“I won’t forget your face, your cabin number,” said the guard.
“You will.” She pushed him into the corridor, shut the hatch behind as he faltered forward on his feet. She hoped she was right, that he would forget. She hadn’t seen him before. He’d probably gotten drunk after his shift and stumbled to the wrong corridor, perhaps the wrong deck altogether.
“Aster, you are without a doubt completely and utterly unhinged,” said Mabel, her tears dried but her bronchial distress evident. Clutching her chest, she wheezed and hiccupped.
“Come on, stand up,” Pippi told her. “Walking will help.” She was dark and graceful, where Mabel was stubby, anxious, and bespectacled. Splotches of eczema roughened her skin. Matted tangles turned her curls into a beehive.
Pippi led Mabel in a slow pace back and forth across the cabin. They both limped, raw from the guard’s belt. Aster tossed off her blanket and got up.
“Where are you going?” asked Giselle.
“Move,” Aster said, and pushed past her to the cabin’s sink basin. Mabel needed oxygen. “Come.” She gestured for Pippi to lead Mabel over to the wooden stool. “Go get the face mask I made.” She handed Pippi the key to her trunk.
After the sink basin filled, Aster emptied a box of powdered soda inside. There were two more packs in the crate, and she hoped it’d be enough to keep the water conductive.
“Here’s the battery you made,” said Giselle, a 100-volt in her hand.
“I can’t breathe!” Mabel cried out as Pippi returned with the oxygen mask from Aster’s trunk, pulled it over her nose and mouth, and adjusted the strap around the thick bundle of her hair. She reached for the tube connected to Mabel’s mask and fixed it up next to the basin.
Aster tore the battery from Giselle’s grip, used a node to feed the current down into the sink. “There we are,” she said, the water starting to bubble. Electricity sliced the oxygens right
off from the hydrogens, funneled them into a tube that went straight to Mabel’s mask. If they kept the water running, they’d get a decent amount of air out of it.
“Feel it, hon?” Pippi asked. Mabel wheezed assent. “She’s getting worse and worse.”
Aster nodded and went to her trunk to retrieve the cloak that Flick’s great-grandmeema had given her. She wrapped it around Mabel. “It’s the cold.”
“I keep thinking God’s going to fix it,” Pippi said.
A sharp gurgle tumbled from Giselle’s throat like a laugh. “The Sovereignty’s God. Guards are God. So unless you think one of them is going to fix it, you’re calling on the wrong folk. They ain’t gonna turn it back on.”
“It’s not a they,” said Aster, eyeing the bubbles in the sink. She wanted to swish her fingers through the water as it electrolyzed, so her heart would pump hot as lightning.
“What are you talking about?” asked Pippi.
“Hmm?” Aster said.
“You said not they just now. What’s that supposed to mean?”
Aster took a seat next to Mabel to monitor the rise and fall of her chest before explaining herself. “Giselle said that they weren’t going to turn the heat back on. I am saying that it is not a they; it is a he—a specific man behind the energy rations. And while it’s true he represents a larger power, wherein a plural subject would be appropriate, I think—”
Pippi, one arm still around Mabel, raised her hand to interrupt. “Stop. Please, stop,” she said, her voice breaking like she might start sobbing again. It was late. They were tired. It was too cold to sleep.
“You sought clarification,” said Aster.
“I know,” said Pippi. “It was my own fault for asking. Your version of clarifying never actually clarifies a thing.”
Mabel pulled the mask away from her lips. “So if it’s one he, one person, who is it?” she asked.
Aster didn’t say Lieutenant’s name out loud. Doing so might summon him. Instead, she shrugged.
“Can’t y’all go back to sleep?” Vivian asked.
“Too awake,” Giselle said. She walked to Aster’s cot and flopped down. Once Mabel was stable, Aster joined her there.
“I’d like . . . I would like to talk to you,” Aster said. She and Giselle didn’t have a chance to discuss matters earlier. They’d had to leave the botanarium in a hurry to make curfew, then there was headcount. When their bunkmates fell asleep, it seemed rude to stay up chattering.
“Of course you’d like to talk to me. You want to know about Lune’s code.” Giselle smiled and slid off the mattress, ran to her bunk to grab the notebooks she’d taken from Aster’s botanarium. She lifted the oil lantern from the trunk it had been sitting on and set it on the bed so they could read.
“L deck refers to your meema, of course,” Giselle explained, sitting cross-legged next to Aster. “I suppose she picked it for Lune. Kind of obvious if you ask me. I’d’ve chosen something a little less recognizable and explicit. A cipher, you know.”
“That’s it?” Aster replied. “That’s all you’ve got to go on? L is for Lune? That’s your entire basis for this fabled code?”
“Honestly, it just didn’t make sense how bad L deck was. It’s a middeck. I can imagine there’d be occasional issues, but every other day something was wrong with it. So I reviewed all the entries and notes that mentioned L deck and organized them by date. Seemed odd that precisely every twenty-nine days there was a leak in Laurel Wing’s pipes that she always fixed five days later.”
Aster pressed her hands into her mattress, grasping the sheets and squeezing the fabric tight. “You believe my mother was referring to menstruation?”
“I didn’t know it for sure until one entry, marked nine days after when the so-called pipe should’ve leaked, she says Laurel Wing’s pipes had strangely sorted themselves out for the time being.”
Aster didn’t understand.
“She was pregnant with you, nitwit. The date of that entry is thirty-eight weeks before your birthday, Aster. Really, I thought you knew all this. How could you not know? Your mother wasn’t even assigned to L deck. She worked on Baby, right? In the Nexus?”
Aster had noticed the discrepancy before but hadn’t thought much of it. The Guard shifted workers around quite regularly.
“L deck refers to your mother generally. It’s what she says instead of I. Sometimes, she’ll use specific wings for particular topics. Laurel Wing is always about her blood cycle, sex, her pregnancy. Leaf Wing is about her work—her actual work on Baby.”
Then Aster saw how Giselle saw. “The clock! It’s Baby!”
Giselle smiled. “Yes.” Lune wrote of a beautiful clock that sat on the mantelpiece of a Leaf Winger. Whenever its gear work malfunctioned, she’d been charged with sorting it.
Aster didn’t know how she’d missed such obvious clues. She grabbed one of the notebooks and reread the passages Giselle had shown her earlier with new eyes:
Maintenance required in various L deck systems. The speakers blare static despite a lack of sonic input. Happens sporadically but still worth further investigation.
There are some obvious issues in L deck’s wiring, I suspect severing its connection with the electrical grid. The speaker static continues. Additionally, the light and heat sensors are shot, showing incorrect readings. So far, not a maintenance priority, but to be looked at in more depth.
Aster could see why Giselle thought Nicolaeus’s symptoms resembled the issues Lune had described. The blaring speakers without sonic input: auditory hallucinations. The sensor malfunctioning with incorrect readings: visual hallucinations. In a later entry, she discussed peculiarities in L deck’s light fixtures—a tiny, barely perceivable divot in the metal of one, and a more noticeable W-shaped cut in the bottom of the other: the botched-up irises. Were it just the hallucinations, Aster might’ve thought it a reach, but the description of the fixtures felt more conclusive.
All this time, Lune had been talking to Aster, trying to tell her something important. She kept notes as obsessively as Aster did. They were a record of who she was and what she’d done, and Giselle was right. Somewhere inside was the reason she’d killed herself.
“Notes on Lake Wing is more personal stuff. How she’s feeling. How her day’s been,” said Giselle, pointing to the last few pages of one of these notebooks. “At least, I think so. There’s a lot I still don’t understand. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense until I hear or see something. Like what happened earlier with the Surgeon. When he was saying all those things about Nicolaeus, that entry just came to me.”
Aster read Lune’s commentary on Lake Wing. It wasn’t that difficult to make sense of once she understood how it worked. Lune had been anxious, stressed, and worried in her last few entries, but more than anything, encouraged. Her notes exuded optimism. She’d found something that gave her tangible excitement. Aster could feel the enthusiasm sloughing off the pages: I don’t know if it will work, but if it does, hallelujah, one thousand hallelujahs! A sentiment at great odds with her suicide note.
The obvious answer to the question of her suicide was that her plans hadn’t worked out—but what could be so calamitous a failure that she’d commit the act of self-murder over it?
Aster had ignored her mother’s attempts at communication for so long, and here it was, another chance. Sovereign Nicolaeus’s illness was a sign. She didn’t believe in the supernatural the way other Q-deckers did. If there was another world where Ancestors walked freely, that was all well and good, but what did it have to do with her? She couldn’t see it. She couldn’t interact with it. The Spirit World was as much a myth as a planet or a real star.
Signs, however, didn’t rely on the existence of the supernatural. History wanted to be remembered. Evidence hated having to live in dark, hidden places and devoted itself to resurfacing. Truth was messy. The natural order of an entropic universe was to tend toward it.
That’s what ghosts really are, Aint Melusine had said, the past refusing to
be forgot. She’d been helping Aster scrub down X deck with ammonia and bleach, a failed attempt to rub out the stink of what had happened there. Ghosts is smells, stains, scars. Everything is ruins. Everything is a clue. It wants you to know its story. Ancestors are everywhere if you are looking.
Lune’s ghost was pointing Aster to Sovereign Nicolaeus now. She knew his illness was something hidden trying to show itself, desperate to be seen.
Aster smiled as she remembered another sign—Flick holding the starjar. Look, they’d said. You looking?
Yes, Aster was looking. Couldn’t Lune see her eyes?
v
Aster and Giselle huddled together on the cabin floor, Lune’s notebooks and papers spread out before them. They’d spent the last few nights up until dawn studying on a pallet made of cardboard, newspaper, quilts, and afghans. The fort of blankets tenting them reminded Aster of adolescence. Sleepless nights accompanied by comic books and stolen jars of preserves.
“Watch it,” Aster said as quietly as she could for the sake of her slumbering bunkmates. Morning bell and headcount were in a quarter of an hour. She wanted Mabel and Pippi to enjoy their last fifteen minutes of rest.
“What is it?” asked Giselle.
Aster pointed to the oil lantern on the verge of toppling. It sat on a corner of blanket and moved every time Giselle stirred. Aster wished to avoid a repeat of last night. A whole notebook ruined. The flame hadn’t caught but hot oil blurred the ink into incomprehensible smudges. The two of them had already decrypted most of the notes but Aster hated how easily the reference material had been blotted out of existence.
“Doesn’t matter no way,” Giselle said, wide awake despite having been up the whole night through. Her eyes, enflamed from oil, smoke, and wear, bulged as she scanned a page of chemical equations that were not actually chemical equations, but schedules of guard shifts. “Everything burns up some time or another, even God Herself. That’s how She made the Heavens. She a phoenix. Like me.” To prove her point, Giselle ripped off a piece of her nightgown and held it over the uncovered flame until it came alight. The fire spat onto her hands as she cupped the burning fabric. Not once did she cry out or flinch from the pain. She reveled in the spiky peaks of flame.
An Unkindness of Ghosts Page 5