Starglass

by North, Phoebe

  It was like he’d found a seam in my skin and torn it open with his fingernails; all my breath came out in one long hiss.

  But then Koen spoke up. “Van! You promised.”

  Van glowered. But Koen wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at me.

  “Don’t worry, Terra,” he murmured. His voice almost broke. I’m sure if I spoke, mine would have too. “Van promised me that he wouldn’t do anything. I told him you wouldn’t tell anyone else, that you can be trusted. Right?”

  My cheeks burned. My mind was filled with a cacophony of questions and not a single answer.

  “I don’t understand. Why can’t we tell someone?” I demanded. But when my gaze swept between the boys, I saw how closely both watched me. Van’s eyes smoldered, silently threatening. When I spoke again, my words came out high and weird. “I won’t tell anyone. There’s nothing to tell anyway, right?”

  I saw Koen crack a thin smile.

  “See, Van?” he said. “I told you we could trust her.”

  The corner of Van’s mouth twitched up. He pushed the books toward me across the counter. I grabbed for them.

  “If you say so,” he said. Then he turned away from me.

  I gave Koen a small, brave smile. He solemnly looked back. Hefting the books in my arms, I started for the second floor, where the study desks waited. But their voices trailed after me as I made my way up the spiraling staircase.

  “If she told you,” Van was saying, “there’s no telling who else knows.”

  I felt my grip on the books tighten until my knuckles turned white. He didn’t trust me to keep a simple secret—and why should he? I was nothing but a weak little girl. A snitch.

  Shaking my head at myself, I hurried up the stairs.

  • • •

  Over supper that night I watched as my father forked potatoes into his mouth and chewed slowly, the way that sheep in the atrium fields chewed the long grass. Pepper circled the legs of my chair, meowing incessantly, but we both ignored him. I waited for my father to speak. When he didn’t, I set my fork down at the edge of my plate and cleared my throat.

  “I saw Koen today,” I said, desperate to find any words with which to plug up the silence. “In the library.”

  He didn’t look up. “What were you doing in the library?”

  “Mara sent me to do some research.”

  My father took a long drink from one of the dented metal tumblers, set it down again, took another bite. I let out a sigh. Without Koen around, talking to Abba was like slogging through some sort of muddy field—I wanted to move forward, but the soles of my boots kept getting stuck.

  My father finally paused in his chewing. “I gave him the day off. I suppose that Stone was trying to get you out of her hair as well? I saw her skulking around the captain’s stateroom.”

  “That’s right. She said you were getting probe results in today. From Zehava.”

  My father wiped the back of his broad hand against his lips. “That was the plan. Captain Wolff said that there’s been some sort of delay in the probe’s return. They’re sending out a second one.”

  I stared at him, thinking about how Mara had said she’d been waiting for the results—waiting her whole career, from the sound of it. “That’s strange,” I said.

  My father shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe there were storms on Zehava. Maybe the original coordinates were incorrect. There’s no telling.”

  I nodded uncertainly. My father narrowed his eyes at me.

  “The library. I hope he wasn’t schmoozing with that librarian again.”

  “Van Hofstadter?” I said faintly, fixing my hands to the edge of the table. But their grip felt uncertain; my palms had begun to sweat. “Why, what’s wrong with him?”

  My father didn’t answer. He only picked up his fork again, then rapped the tines against the table—one time, two, three. The gesture was made all the more nerve-racking by the way the vein on his forehead bulged.

  “There have been rumors,” my father said. He spun his fork around, stabbing his overcooked potato with it.

  “Rumors?” I asked. But my father only grunted through a mouthful of mushy tubers.

  “I forget sometimes,” he said at last.

  I almost didn’t dare to breathe. “Forget what?”

  “That you’re not your mother.”

  With that, my father put down his fork and rose on heavy feet. He crossed the galley and came to stand just behind me. Reaching down, he touched the blue cord on my uniform. His trembling hands moved slowly.

  “If you’re a good girl, Terra,” he began. His voice sounded strained, pinched. “If you stay out of trouble and do your duty, and if you’re kind to Koen and treat him well, then I’m sure everything will be fine.”

  There was a long silence. A lump was rising in my throat. I didn’t want to try to dislodge it. I thought doing that might break the spell.

  “Koen’s my student,” my father went on. It was hard for me to hear his words over my thrumming heartbeat. “And you’re my daughter. I care about you both, very much.”

  “I know,” I lied, my voice a hollow rattle in my chest.

  “You need to be careful of who you get mixed up with. Both of you.”

  “Okay.”

  He lifted his hands off my shoulders. One of my own hands darted up, rubbing the warm, clammy spot where his fingers had been.

  “Good,” my father said. Even though his plate was still half full, he started toward the stairwell. Then he paused at the bottom, grimacing. I couldn’t be sure if he was talking to me or to himself.

  “I won’t lose you too,” he said.

  “Lose me?” I asked. But by the time my words moved past my throat, my father had disappeared upstairs, Pepper padding up into the darkness behind him.

  • • •

  The next morning Mara was a whirlwind of fury. I watched from the doorway as she stomped from one end of the lab to the other, pulling books from their shelves, then tossing them over her shoulder. They spun, then landed on the ground, splayed open. Her heavy boots trampled right through a tray of seedlings, but she didn’t even seem to notice.

  “Good morning?” I called as the door shivered shut behind me. Across the room the little woman let out a desperate laugh.

  “I wouldn’t call it that!”

  Mara’s forehead was a mess of wrinkles. She rubbed her hand over her brow as if her fingers could smooth them out.

  “It’s not you, Terra. The probe didn’t come in yesterday. Or so the captain says.”

  “I know,” I said. I hung back by the door, feeling more than a little afraid to come close. “My father told me. They’re sending out another one. I’m sure it’ll be okay.”

  She laughed again, but there was no humor there. “I’ll bet you a million gelt that that one goes out and doesn’t return either.”

  “They pay you well.” I snorted. “But not that well.”

  I expected Mara to laugh. It had happened before—well, not laughter. Not quite. But I’d gotten her to smile at me once or twice. Now, nothing. Silence crackled between us.

  “I don’t have time for this, talmid,” she said at last. She riffled through the papers on her desk. “Take a sick day. Go home. You’re not wanted here.”

  I started to turn toward the sliding door. But I stopped halfway, peering over my shoulder at the botanist.

  “Diet,” I said, softly but clearly. I saw her angle her chin up at that, saw how she was listening. So I went on. “You had me read those cookbooks to demonstrate the variety of diet on Earth. It was nothing for them to have animal proteins in their recipes all the time. So obviously they weren’t just slaughtering their goats and chickens when they were old, like we do. And sugar—I had to look that one up, but cane sugar was in everything. We use honey. Because the bees do a double duty, helping us pollinate, too. It saves us field space for protein-rich vegetables. They had all sorts of stuff I’d never even heard of. Food was abundant for them. They could just go to the mark
et and get whatever they wanted, whether or not it was in season. And they had no idea.”

  Mara’s back still faced me, but her shoulders sagged a little. Like my words were softening her resolve.

  “It’s like you were saying on my first day,” I continued, “about the fruit salad. As our botanist, you do a lot more than figure out what trees they should be planting down in the atrium. It’s diet and it’s balance, and you have to think about climate and soil and oxygen and what kind of wildlife we need to help carry the seeds. And the funny thing is that people who are cooking—most people—don’t even think about it. They don’t even realize how our food has changed since we left Earth, except for complaining that they can’t get anything besides potatoes down at the shops.”

  From behind I watched as Mara’s shoulders shook. At first I had the terrifying thought that she might be crying. But then I heard her dry, hiccuped laughter.

  “You’d think they were dying because I won’t give them the iceberg lettuce their parents fed them,” she said, finally turning to face me. “But what do they want from me? It’s nutritionally worthless.”

  “I know,” I said. And I did. I’d heard Mara grousing about it enough times to be more than familiar. Mara cracked the slightest smile.

  “You know, we still have access to all those crops. None are lost. Not even sugarcane. We have thousands of seeds in cold storage, not to mention cell samples, DNA. Our ancestors worked hard to preserve as much life as they could. Even plant life.”

  “That’s why you’re so excited about the probe, isn’t it?”

  She let out a soft grunt of agreement. “We have some idea about the climate. We know it’s a cold place, based on orbit and distance from Eps Eridani. But we don’t know the details. Soil composition. Air quality. Once we find those out, we can engineer cultivars we can plant on Zehava’s surface. It might be a chance to reinvigorate species that haven’t been seen for centuries. Or to invent whole new crops—better crops. Crops that can feed us and sustain us better on our new home than they ever did back on Earth.”

  Talking like this, Mara seemed almost like a kid—not at all like the strange, brusque little woman I’d grown to know.

  “I’ll tell you what, Terra,” she said, reaching her age-veined hands toward me. Hesitantly I placed my hands in hers. The gesture felt ill fitting, odd. “Come with me to the atrium. We’ll walk around. See if there’s anything this old fool can teach you about your vocation.”

  It was the first time she’d offered to teach me anything. At last I’d done something right. “Okay,” I agreed, not even trying to hold back my smile in return.

  • • •

  In the silence we strolled along the lower paths, past the rivers and the fountains. What had once been a green, busy jungle had now given way to felled trees and scrubby bushes. Yellow grass swallowed the cobblestone. We walked down into the pastures. To my surprise, as we moved past a flock of scattered sheep, Mara let out a strange bleat of sound. She held her hand out to one. It ambled close, answering her.

  “As a girl I wanted to be a shepherd,” she declared, not looking me in the eye. I frowned at her. This was the first thing I’d ever learned about Mara’s personal life.

  “Always did like animals more than people,” she said. Her fingers massaged the creature’s black face. “They’re easier to talk to. Easier to understand.”

  The sheep let out another belt of sound, then butted her head against Mara’s hand. It was a massive ewe, body swaddled in yellow wool. But Mara petted it like it was a kitten, running her nails over its knobby head.

  “I wanted to be an artist,” I whispered. I hadn’t thought my words through—and hadn’t planned on sharing them either. I lifted my hand to my mouth, but it was too late. The words were already out, hanging there in the clammy air. But Mara only gave a laugh.

  “I know,” she said. She gave the creature’s ear one last caress, then started out again across patchy fields. I followed. “The Council told me all about that little book of yours. I tried telling them that no fifteen-year-old would put together an amateur field guide, but I suppose they thought they were being clever, recommending you to me. They didn’t want to listen.”

  Walking beside her, our hands almost touching, I felt a rash of heat go to my face. I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d said about my drawings. “You knew? And you still chose me?”

  Laughter flickered in Mara’s eyes. We’d reached one of the pasture fences. She set her hand on the splintered wood. “Your scores were solid. Much better than any of your classmates. And your instructor said that you had . . . How did he put it? An unusual enthusiasm for any subject that interested you, at those rare times when he could get you interested. I thought we might make a good match. If you’ll pardon the expression, I didn’t want some little sheep who’d swallow anything I told her.”

  It embarrassed me to hear her say it, that we were alike in some ways. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. I think it embarrassed Mara, too.

  “Anyway,” she said, and thumped her hand against my shoulder. “What I’m saying is, I know you wanted to be an artist. I won’t hold it against you.”

  And with that, she launched her small, wiry body right over the pasture fence and took off down the brick path that waited on the other side. I let out a burst of laughter, scrambled over the wooden rail, and followed.

  • • •

  We walked through the dimming light together, winding our way toward the labs. A few black-limbed trees still clung to their leaves, which throbbed like green-yellow hearts over our heads. Mara pointed out how skinny pines pushed their way up between the broad oak trunks.

  “These were planted last year,” she said, kneeling in the mud to touch one of the prickly branches to her palm. Then she turned to me. “Even though we arrive on Zehava in less than six months. Why?”

  I chewed on my lip, scanning through my memories, through years of school lessons where I’d barely clung to consciousness.

  “Um, we need oxygen until we establish orbit?” I offered at last. But even as I spoke, I suspected that my answer was the wrong one.

  “Terra,” she said, thinning her lips, “there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to actually live on the surface of Zehava when we get there.”

  My frown deepened as she stood, dusting her hands against her trousers.

  “What do you mean, there’s no guarantee?” My voice wavered, betraying my emotions—fear, and a hot flash of anger, too.

  But Mara ignored the frantic crescendo of my voice. “What are they teaching you kids in school these days? I told you. Almost everything we think we know about Zehava is based on conjecture—we can guess certain things about a planet based on how far it is from its sun, and the gravity it exerts on other bodies in its system, and how long the orbit is, and the rotation. But things like atmospheric composition? The presence of water? And whether it can support life? And more, life like ours?”

  The hard look over her features finally softened. “You should know this. Our ancestors sent out many ships to many planets—because there was no guarantee we would make it and no guarantee that any of these places could support life.”

  “What happens if it can’t?” I demanded. A thorny tangle of anger grew inside me. “What happens if we get to Zehava and can’t even live there?”

  Mara gave me a toothy grimace. “Well, then we detach the ship’s dome. And land it. And remain within the glorious prison of the Asherah.”

  I searched for the ceiling between the broken boughs. I’d never thought of the Asherah as a prison before—in fact, I hardly ever thought about her at all. She was home, just like my family’s quarters or my room. I paid her as much mind as I did my hands or my feet.

  But I’d thought ahead plenty. In school, staring out the window at the atrium as Rebbe Davison droned on and on, I’d thought about life on Zehava. I thought about things I’d heard named only in songs or in books. Thunderstorms. The ocean. The desert, yello
w and endless. And sky—real sky.

  I’d thought about unknown continents. Sometimes I’d even doodled maps in the margins of my notebooks. I’d always known that someday some other world waited for me. Some better life.

  Mara stared at me, letting her words sink in, and I thought of what my life might be like if that future were taken away. The anger inside me swelled. I wanted to bang my fists against the ceiling that glowed false twilight in the distance. I wanted to break out.

  “The probe,” I said, almost spitting the words. “The probe wasn’t just supposed to tell you what kind of plants to make. It’s supposed to tell us whether we can live on Zehava.”

  Mara reached out, fixing her wrinkled hand against my shoulder. And gave it a squeeze.

  “Good,” she said, her whispered voice rough, as coarse as the nettles that were tangled over the ground. “Good. Now you understand.”

  9

  Our faces were mottled red from the cold, our lungs breathless from the day’s walk. The unusually easy conversation of the day had given way to an equally easy but no less unusual silence. I rounded the corner of the long hallway that led to the lab, Mara following close on my heels. Then I stopped short.

  “Dad?” I called. “Koen? What are you doing here?”

  They stood together beside the door. Koen looked like a shadow of my father in his dark boots and skinny trousers, though his broad shoulders were slouched where my father’s were squared. I felt my face flush. After the incident in the library, I wasn’t quite sure how to act around him.

  “Terra,” my father said, pulling me out of myself. “You were supposed to meet me at the hatchery this afternoon. It’s time.”

  I winced at the sound of my father’s voice, tight with anger. I’d forgotten all about it. That explained why the domes were so empty that day—the workers must have departed to the hatchery to observe the birth of the final generation of ship-born Asherati. I looked to Mara, but she was busy jamming her fingers against the door panel. When I followed her inside, my father and Koen trailed after.