“I do not know how you reached the conclusion that the Surgeon and I are engaged in a relationship of a sexual nature, but I can assure you our dealings are entirely platonic,” she replied, carefully modulating her tone so that it did not come out defensive.
“Your sort can’t help but to lie. It’s a sickness.”
“I’m not lying. And I would not seduce or take advantage of the Surgeon in the manner you suggest. Even if I were to try—and I wouldn’t—he is too good to ever succumb.” She had feelings, but she had not and would not act on them, not so long as Theo didn’t want her to.
“Even those whose faith in the Heavens is unending have their moral failings. I certainly do,” said Lieutenant, clipped, short.
“Maybe the Surgeon is of stronger faith than you, because he would never carry on an affair the way you’ve described.”
Lieutenant’s eyes narrowed into sharp darts. The muscles in his neck and throat contracted as he swallowed. He was a subtle man, small gestures and fine movements, and if Aster had blinked, she’d have missed the way his teeth grit and clenched, visible only for the minute twitch in his cheek. “Apologize,” he said.
Aster let her head drop forward like a sack of something dead. “I am sorry,” she said, hating herself as much as she had when she was a child and couldn’t figure out how to speak. “I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I didn’t mean that. Of course you are of unwavering faith and of course you are good, and compared to me you are practically God and I am filth. Forgive me.” She hadn’t rehearsed these lines, and they weren’t pretend. She couldn’t have faked contrition if she’d tried because she’d never been a good liar. Aster meant each pathetic panting plea for mercy. “I am sorry,” she said once again. She couldn’t take any more pain. She still felt the bruises on her back from last night.
Her groveling seemed to amuse him. He poured himself more coffee. There were the beginnings of a smile on his face. “And are you sorry about the little present you left me?” he asked, cool again, his feathers smoothed back into silken elegance.
“It was—it was supposed to be a reminder that the cold has real consequences. Flick was just a child,” she said, unsure now why she’d left the foot for him. It had been a meaningless gesture.
“Of course the cold has real consequences. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t have done it,” he said.
“Consequences for what? What did that child do that made her deserve that? What did I ever do to you but break curfew a few times? I do not understand your reasoning. I am trying to, but I cannot.”
“Of course not. You can’t see the big picture, only the petty, small, meaningless pleasures and pains of your tiny lives. Mating and drinking and carrying on no better than the draft horses who stubbornly refuse to work when they’ve got a sore ankle.” Lieutenant’s lips snarled. “We have a purpose. Matilda has a purpose. We are on God’s path, and we mustn’t stray. It has been centuries, and it will be centuries more. All we can do is live well. Live good, according to the Heavens’ will.”
Aster wondered if it was a speech he’d given before. The tirade had a practiced fury to it. She imagined him in front a mirror, wrinkling his eyebrows at just the right angle, widening his eyes at the climax of the diatribe to signal his intensity. Lieutenant was a man who would not let himself be misunderstood.
“What is my punishment, sir?”
She saw from the way his face fell into a disappointed frown that it was not the response he expected. “I can offer you no real punishment. You’ve had countless opportunities to mend your ways.” Lieutenant took another sip of coffee, sucking air between his teeth because it was still too hot to drink smoothly. “You were confused about my intentions, and now I have clarified them. That was my only wish. Think of this as clearing the air.”
“Then I am dismissed?”
“Yes, pigeon,” he said, and she turned to leave without another word. When she grasped the handle of the hatch, he called out to her: “Pigeon?”
“Yes sir?” She did not turn to face him.
“It’s a kindness that there are few mirrors in the lowdecks—for your own sakes. You’d kill yourselves if you knew, if you were faced with your faces over and over again. As it is, I don’t know how you stand to walk through the corridors among yourselves, seeing what you see.”
Aster kept her face to the door as she listened.
“I have six pit bulls, the same shade of brown as you, a dark burned-maple color. And they are graceful, fierce, beautiful creatures. How is it that a four-legged beast with a snout for a nose, that doesn’t bathe itself—how is it more beautiful than you? Where is the fairness in that?”
Aster could not answer his question because she did not accept his initial premise.
“More than anything, I pity you. We try to tame you, but there is no taming vermin. Tell me, how would you feel if a mouse joined you at the supper table without explanation, without apology? Would you not recoil? Would you not chase it away and lay traps for it? Often, a mouse will lose a limb in a glue trap. And is it not for the best?”
He seemed to be done now, and Aster thanked the Heavens for that. “There is a breed of mouse that existed in the old place,” she said. “Spiny mouse. Acomys spinosissimus. They could regrow entire limbs after losing them. I read about them in the Archives.”
“Hmm,” said Lieutenant. “Dismissed.”
She left quickly and shut the hatch before her, not wishing him to call out to her again.
Lieutenant was not a merciful man. Any leniency he gave was so he would have something to take away later. She didn’t know what her punishment would be, but it was certainly coming.
xix
Lieutenant hadn’t been sovereign long, but he’d already changed Q deck. He made the women walk in lines. He ordered raids on their cabins. He deemed the food they ate unhealthy, and switched them from meals of spicy meat stews to simple broths and hot cereals. He hadn’t yet instituted a uniform on Q, but there were rumors that he had on W.
Aster supposed the newly imposed rigidity was what made everyone so excited when they were told to report to the Field Decks during what had become their newly required devotion hour. A spot of sun appealed more than religious recitations and quiet, mindful prayer.
“Are you coming?” Aster asked Giselle.
The rest of the women were already on their way. Quarry Wing was mostly empty but for the two of them.
“I’m tired,” said Giselle from where she lay prone on her bed. She’d barely moved from it since the night in the brigbox. Several guards had tried to rouse her for shifts, but she could not be moved. Their threats of punishment did nothing but make her shrink more into herself. A priest had declared her too ill for work, though her illness was in her mind, not her body.
“I don’t want to leave you here alone,” said Aster.
Giselle had grown more and more suicidal, and every time Aster said goodbye, she wondered if it was the last time. She’d made this happen. She’d brought this.
“It’s not safe out there,” said Giselle. “I’m not safe in this.” She gestured to her nightgown, but then Aster realized she meant her body. “I need a new one. I gotta shed the old one so I can get a new one.”
“Will you eat some of the fruit I brought you?” Aster asked. Giselle continued to stare blankly at the wall. “Did you see I brought you some more of Lune’s journals to read? I know how much fun you have picking through them.”
Giselle didn’t respond.
Sighing, Aster put on her hat. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She was glad she’d moved the rifle to the botanarium. She’d also taken to keeping all of her serums and medical blades in a locked box.
Aster caught up with her bunkmates as they made their way to the Field Decks. They’d be gathering in the potato field. Aster realized when she got there that it was because it was so flat, perfect for a large gathering. It was mostly Quarry Wing that was there, though there were some Aster didn’t recognize. They were crowd
ed around a large stage set in the middle with a single chair on it.
Out of nowhere, she felt him grab her hand, his fingers twined with hers, cold and soft. She knew from the feel of the palm that it was Theo. “We must go,” he said, and pulled her toward the corridor, only stopping when she pulled back.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, as surprised as she was glad. She hadn’t seen him since the day she’d abandoned him in Evening Star.
“You can’t see this,” he said. His hair was ruffled and his shirt sleeves were rolled up. He’d been searching for her through the crowd, who knew for how long. “For once, trust me. We must hurry.”
“You hurry. Leave me here alone if you must, but I’m not going anywhere.” She removed her hand from his grip, dreading a return to her cabin, to Lieutenant’s newly enforced drudgery. She’d not had a single moment to go to the Shuttle Bay. She could no longer get passes to travel freely. She’d barely made it to her botanarium.
“Listen to me,” he said.
“No.” She turned to get lost in the crowd.
He grabbed her hand again, this time clutching over her fingers from the outside instead of intertwining them. “Come with me, now. That is not a request. It is an order from a general to a civilian. Heed what I say, Aster.”
She’d never heard him raise his voice like that, not ever, certainly not at her. The way he said her name, like it was a swear word. “Do not speak to me like that ever again.”
He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight so the lids wrinkled, his fingers still cluthing hers. “Forgive me. Please, please forgive me. But we must go. I can’t let you see this.”
A small group of people watched them curiously, some pointing to the Surgeon with confusion in their eyes. They were trying to place who he was. Aster slipped away in the moment Theo wasn’t paying attention.
The crowd hushed as Lieutenant held up his hand, taking the stage.
“On behalf of the Sovereignty, and by extension the Will of the Heavens, and your fellow passengers of His Sovereign’s ship Matilda, I ask that you maintain composure as we herald in a new age. The wrath of the Guard falls heavily and appropriately, and it is for this reason that today we are responsible for carrying a life from this world into the next, where the Judges will punish her according to her wrongdoings. With humble hearts, we say—” and the crowd joined him in chorus, “Hallelujah. Blessed be.”
“It’s an execution,” someone said. Mumbles and cries filled the audience of onlookers. They’d been summoned here to watch someone die.
“Silence,” Lieutenant called.
Theo spotted Aster and weaved his way back toward her. “Please. There is still a chance for us to leave. I promise you this is nothing you need or want to see.”
“What is it? Who is it? Just tell me,” Aster said, whispering as quietly as she could.
“Once I tell you, it can’t be untold, and you will want it untold. I am begging you with every bone in my body to come with me. I will do whatever you ask of me, and I mean it. You are my new master, not the Heavens, if you leave with me at once.” He knelt in front of her, as in prayer.
“What is it, Theo? Just tell me what it is.”
In the very next moment, she found out. The person Lieutenant led out in chains to be executed was Flick. They made them walk on their still-healing little leg, blood coming through the bandages, their wails so loud that at that moment Aster knew gods weren’t real, because if they were, they’d end this now. All of humankind. A snap of the fingers.
“My God, she’s only a baby,” someone said not far from Aster, as two guards pushed the cuffed executionee along.
“I do not understand,” said Aster.
She tried to move but Theo held her still. He gripped her hand hard and squeezed over and over. She squeezed back in an alternating rhythm.
“This is my punishment,” said Aster.
“This is not your fault. It’s not too late for us leave.”
“It is. It is my fault.” Aster tried again to move away, only to be thwarted once more by the strength of Theo’s hands over her thighs, holding her there as he knelt. “I have not yet made them their new foot.”
Lieutenant read the charges out loud to the gathered crowd, and they were minor, so minor, almost nothing. Insubordination. Talking back to a guard. A full circle of guards surrounded the stage, all of them armed with batons. Some had cans of gas, which they would not hesitate to release onto the lowdeckers if anyone tried to stop the proceedings.
“Under the previous regime you lived in a fantasy of wickedness and sin. Today you will learn this is what it takes to appease the Heavens.”
“What’s happening? I’m sorry if I did something wrong,” Flick cried out. “Where is my great-meema? She will explain.”
One of the guards cuffed the child’s ankles to a chair, strapped their arms.
“Aster, do not leave from this spot, do you hear me?”
“Aye.”
“Please, Aster. Swear to me.”
“I swear to you. I swear to you. I swear to you,” she said, wanting to say it more, but stopping herself.
“You swear what?”
“I swear to you I will not leave from this spot.”
The Surgeon squeezed her shoulder, then jogged on his limp leg toward Lieutenant and Flick.
“Do not do this, Uncle. It is not the Heavens’ will. Such a thing as this is beyond even God’s brutality,” Aster heard him say. Flick continued to cry, their face soaked with tears.
“It is time you stopped being a woman about these things,” said Lieutenant.
A young man held a silver case. Aster knew there were syringes inside.
This was the moment where Aster should stand, say, Take me instead. But she couldn’t speak. She watched silently as a doctor slid a needle into Flick’s arm. She watched silently as Flick died. She was not one of the crowd members who tried to storm the stage, but she got caught in the spray of gas all the same. As she felt her body hit the floor, she hoped she wouldn’t wake up.
* * *
The day Aster learned to speak, eight years old, Aint Melusine was doing a puppet show for a group of girls about Little Silver—so named for the stripe of shimmering gray in her otherwise dark hair. She had six elder sisters, all married to the king, and Silver was next in line. Not wishing to marry him, Little Silver rode to the swamplands, where the water waifs lived, and sat herself upon the muddy bank, saying, “As I am not to marry the king until I turn fourteen and am declared a woman, make me remain thirteen forever.”
A rousing murmur from the swamps—and it was settled. Little Silver should go back to her village, but they would grant her request on the eve of her fourteenth birthday, which would give them time to learn the magic necessary to do what she bid.
“This story is boring,” Giselle had interrupted. She sat on an overturned basket of freshly folded laundry.
“Shut up,” said Ainy, and Aster was glad for it, as she wasn’t in the mood for Giselle’s back-talking that night. Aint Melusine snapped a long, thin branch over Giselle’s forearm, and waved it as a warning to anyone else who thought to say something smart. Then she carried on with the tale.
“Now, on a warm, summer evening—”
“What’s that?” a little girl named Nella asked.
Aster knew all about it. Summer was when—well, first, to understand, you had to know that a long time ago there was the Great Lifehouse. It twirled and twirled like a ballerina, trying to impress the Great Star. One twirl was equal to a day. One dance, which was lots of twirls added together, was equal to a year. The year had four quarters, and when the Great Star shined greatest and longest (its way of telling the Great Lifehouse she favored it), that was known as the summer quarter.
“Aster, you got something you want to say?” Aint Melusine had asked from up on her stool.
Aster rocked, bit her lip, stared at the little puppet theater Ainy was using to act out the story for the children.
<
br /> “Come on then. Say it. Just open up your mouth and say a sentence.”
Aster had hummed a gurgled, low-pitched noise, and Nella began to laugh. She got nipped with Aint Melusine’s switch, little welts appearing on her arm.
“Do I laugh at you even though your face is ugly as sin?” Ainy had asked Nella, and hit her again with the branch, till Nella started to cry. “I asked you a question.”
“No, ma’am,” said Nella.
“It’s not right to make fun of someone for the way the Heavens made them. Do the stars laugh at the planets? The bee at the sunflower? And so forth? Huh, child? No. So stop taking joy in the plights of others. Like the bad men. You a bad man?” She had clutched the switch so that her pink palms turned white.
“I ain’t,” Nella said.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. I ain’t like them. I’m nothing like them.” She’d stopped crying by now. Her chest puffed out like the breast of a hen.
“So what do you say?” asked Ainy.
Nella regarded Aster with wet eyes. “What’s the point of saying sorry? She’s too dumb to understand, anyway.”
So Aint Melusine beat her full on, right on her bare bum in front everybody. Nella’s drawers bagged around her knees, and her shirt hiked up, and it was like all the choked silences inside Aster unchoked themselves at once.
“No,” she said between smacks.
Attention shifted from Ainy and Nella to Aster. One of the older girls, Junebug, had to restart the braid she’d been working on in Mae’s hair.
“I knew you was always faking it,” said Giselle, “to get out of reciting verses.”
Aster, satisfied that her utterance had achieved its desired goals—Ainy had, indeed, stopped beating Nella—spoke again: “Please cover her, as she clearly doesn’t wish to be so exposed, and it’s impolite to make someone be naked.”
Ainy held fast to the switch, but helped Nella off her lap. “Get dressed,” she said. Nella pulled up her drawers, stockings, and skirt, readjusted her blouse. She ran out the cabin, pushing past the others.
“Now, for the rest of the story,” Ainy had said.
An Unkindness of Ghosts Page 22