I stood there for a moment, watching her type. Generated on one monitor was a picture of two ribbons, intertwining each other. I watched as they slowly rotated.
“I hate it when people read over my shoulder,” she said. I didn’t answer, only watched as the ribbons twirled around and around. They were linked together by short chains. It looked almost like a ladder.
“What is that?” I asked.
Mara punched a key. After a moment the image changed. It was a single stalk of wheat—a familiar enough picture. On the end the long grass parted to reveal the spike, lined with fine hairs. But there was something strange about the proportions. The chaff was much rougher and thicker than that which encircled the wheat out in the fields.
“I call it Triticum mara,” she said in a grave, important voice. I looked at her—and burst out laughing.
“Mara’s wheat?” I asked. “You’ve designed your own wheat?”
She glowered at me, then punched another key to make the screen go blank. “Of course I have. I’ve based the gene sequence on einkorn wheat. Salt tolerant and hardy, but I’ve adapted it to the cold weather conditions we’ll find on Zehava. Assuming Zehava’s molecular environment is even compatible with our own. We’ll find out soon enough, when that damned probe returns.”
“I didn’t know you were making your own plants,” I said quietly. Mara frowned at me, her eyebrows low.
“Of course I’m making my own plants. What do you take me for, a gardener? We’ll have a colony of hungry mouths to feed soon enough. Now, back to your desk, girl.”
“But, Mara—”
I don’t want to hear it!”
“But, Mara, I want to learn!”
My own words surprised me. But after all these weeks spent wallowing in the gray space of my mind, I felt desperate—starved, even—for something, anything, to fill that hole inside. There were tears in my eyes again, threatening to spill over—easily, as they often did those days.
“Please, show me what those ribbons are?”
Mara stared at me for a long time. At last she sighed and turned the computer monitor on. The two spiraling structures returned. “Fine,” she said. “Pull up a chair. But no more laughing at my work. Someday, Terra, your life might depend on it.”
• • •
Over the days that followed she taught me about RNA, about chromosomes and genomes and recombinant DNA. A few days into this second, stranger phase of my training as a botanist, we visited the hatchery—not to see the eggs, which hung empty now in preparation for our arrival on Zehava, but instead to speak to the genetic engineers. They not only manipulated human life on the ship but would also someday create the crops that Mara had designed to seed the fields and forests of the alien planet. One of them was a young woman, dark haired and kind eyed, who, when I asked her what her job could possibly have to do with mine, grinned at me.
“Nearly every single Terran organism had the same number of genes,” she said, glowing at the prospect, “about twenty-five to thirty thousand. It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it? To look outside at the grass in the dome and realize it has as many genes as you do.”
I expected Mara to roll her eyes at this, but instead she nodded fiercely. So I thought about it for a moment longer, the similarities between me—a girl, grown in one of the now-fallow eggs down on the hatchery floor—and the wheat we ate, and the wine we drank, and the flowers that would someday blossom across our new home.
“Thank you,” I said, before Mara and I turned and walked out to the dome.
In the lab and at home over dinner, Mara told me how she planned to build crops that might save us from ever going hungry. Fortified rices and quinoa and soy, nutrient-dense food that would sustain us even if our population of livestock failed. For the first time in a long time—perhaps for the first time ever—I felt my mind begin to spark, stretching to accommodate these new ideas. It wasn’t that I forgot about Abba, or what I’d lost. Of course not. On most days my heart still felt heavy and lonely in my chest. But now my mind swarmed with thoughts of the plants we might build on Zehava—strange plants, like the ones I dreamed about, whose leaves and stalks had never been seen on planet Earth.
Once, I had told my father that his job was like an art. For the first time I realized how Mara Stone was an artist too. Sure, her work would never hang on gallery walls. But it would fill up our bellies and be carried on the wind. It would shade us from the alien sunlight, and its leaves would paint the ground a thousand colors in autumn too.
One night, as Artemis snored in the bed above me, I reached for my pencils and carried them downstairs. For the first time in weeks, I cracked open my sketchbook. Sitting at the Stones’ galley table, I began to sketch. Now I didn’t just draw what I saw in front of me—the trees in the dome, the flowers or the vines. I drew whole new flowers, brand-new trees. As I rubbed the pigment into the rough-hewn paper, I felt myself wake to life.
I could have been happy like that, working with Mara, working, for the first time, toward tikkun olam. But I wasn’t allowed. If there’s one thing that I learned from the Children of Abel, it was that happiness was fleeting—my happiness most of all.
• • •
I tried to escape the Children of Abel, but I couldn’t. No matter how I tried to push them into the back of my mind, no matter how hard I tried to forget it, the truth was that the world around me had changed. One night after dinner a knock came on the Stones’ front door. Mara was hunched over her research at the galley table. I was helping Artemis clear the plates, scraping the food off their dented surfaces and into the composter, dropping them into the sink and letting the murky water run over them. When knuckles sounded against the front door, Artemis spun on her heel, her dark braids flying behind her.
“I’ll get it! I’ll get it!” she exclaimed. She was at that age when the idea of visitors was thrilling.
But when she answered, she stood there frozen for a moment in the open doorway, blocking my view.
“It’s the . . . librarian?” she said, her perplexed voice lifting at the end. “And the new clock keeper?”
From outside I heard a loose, familiar laugh. Koen’s laugh. And then his voice came tumbling in with a gust of air. “We’re here to see Terra.”
I dropped a dish into the sink. It echoed against the steel sides.
Mara barely suppressed a smile as she rose from the table. Standing behind her daughter, her firm posture was somehow menacing despite her stature.
“Come in, gentlemen,” she said. “Make yourselves comfortable.” She put her hand down on Artemis’s shoulder, drawing her daughter away.
“Let’s go, Artie.” It was the first time I’d heard the little girl’s nickname, but Mara’s tone was more wary than fond. “We’ll go upstairs and let Terra talk to her . . .” A pause. Her eyes flickered over the men as they moved inside. Koen and Van were all bundled up, stamping the cold from their boots. Finally she concluded: “Friends.”
Artemis protested, but it didn’t do any good. Mara dragged the girl upstairs, leaving me alone with Koen and Van as the sink water dripped from my pruney hands.
“Close the door,” I said finally. “You’re letting all the cold in.”
For a moment Koen only stared at me, his hands deep down in his pockets. Then he let out a laugh. That strange, familiar bark of laughter, like he knew no other way to fill the silence. It hurt me to hear it, like a knife sliding down into my gut.
“Sorry!” He pressed the door closed with his hip. I exhaled. I thought that the long, slow release of air would still the way my heart was beating. It didn’t, but if the men noticed my barely concealed panic, they gave no indication. They only stood there, fat in layers of clothing, smiling at me.
“If you’re going to stay,” I said, “you can take off your coats.”
Before they could answer, I turned away from them. I thought if I kept my hands busy, then they wouldn’t see how I shook. I fetched three mugs, put a kettle on for tea, and then began to cle
ar the table, still half-scattered with supper plates and Mara’s books. The men peeled off their layers, unwound their scarves from their throats. I could smell the cold rising up off them, and beneath that the musky scent of their bodies. Cedar wood and old pages. Dust and something else. I saw an image in my mind: their bodies pressed together in the forest. Ashamed at the thought and the strange, muddled way it made me feel, I sat down, with my hands in my lap.
“So what do you guys want?”
“What?” said Van. He pulled out a chair at the far end of the table and draped himself across it. “We’re not allowed to come visit our dear friend Terra?”
I glowered up at him.
“I came looking for you after the funeral,” Koen said. At first I could hardly hear him. He spoke in whispers. “First I went to your house, then your brother’s, then Rachel Federman’s. When someone told me you were staying with Mara Stone, I figured you didn’t want to be found.”
“Maybe I didn’t,” I said, not wanting to think about the deeper truth behind his words: that he’d looked for me. That I’d been on his mind. Koen stared down at his cold-chapped hands spread out on the tabletop.
“You’re still one of us, you know,” he whispered. I studied his face. It didn’t feel true, not anymore. If I’d ever held anything in common with the Children of Abel, it had disappeared that night in the dome.
“Look,” Van said. “We’re not here to see you for the pleasure of the experience. There’s something we need to talk to you about.”
I looked over at him. Koen did too, a sort of dread lurking beneath his eyes. But Van just glared at me, his arms crossed firmly over his chest.
“It’s time that you pay up on your promise. We need the foxglove.”
“No!” I cried, looking between them. “I can’t!”
“Can’t?” Van asked. “Or won’t? You wanted to be one of us, didn’t you? To do justice to your mother’s memory and the memory of your ancestors?”
“Van . . .,” Koen said, a warning in his voice. Van’s lip trembled, but he went on.
“You want liberty? This is how we achieve it. Not through meetings or whispered conversation but by taking action.”
I stared at them, my heart falling to pieces in my chest. But then there was a rustling on the stairwell and tittered laughter. I swung my gaze over to the librarian. “There are children here. That’s your rule, isn’t it? That we don’t involve children?”
Van glanced up the stairs. For a moment his mouth was a hard line. But at last his lips softened. He sighed.
“Fine,” he said. “But this isn’t over. Come on, Koen.”
Together they rushed to put on their coats and took harried steps toward the door.
Van went quickly, ducking out without another word. But Koen paused for a moment on the front steps, holding the door open. His brows were furrowed up so high that they disappeared beneath his bangs.
“I’m sorry, Terra,” he called. “I told him this was a bad idea.”
I went to the door. The air outside was sharp, and I could see how the blood was rising to Koen’s pale face.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. I didn’t have the strength left to spit the words. Koen nodded. Then he stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned toward the darkening street.
I shut the door behind him. As I finally went to fetch the kettle from the stove, I spotted movement on the stairwell. It was Apollo. He stood at the top of the stairs. His sister sat two steps below him. She was holding Pepper tight against her chest. Both watched me.
“Want some tea?” I asked cheerfully, and poured the three mugs full of steaming water.
23
Most mornings I took my time, milling through the crowded streets even after the clock bells rang out nine. It was the last luxury of mourning Mara still allowed me—or maybe she knew it wasn’t worth a fight, I don’t know. The day that the second probe was due was no exception, though the energy on the ship was different, jangly and electric. As I neared the lab buildings, I had to duck around white-coated specialists as they laughed and drank. They spilled right out the sliding doors, crowding the fields, trampling dead plants.
“It’s really crass, isn’t it?”
A voice reached out to me from across the path. It was Silvan Rafferty. He sat on the rail of the footbridge that led to the labs, idly swinging his legs. “Doesn’t take much to excite them.”
I frowned, reaching down to jostle the seeds in my pocket. “Well, sure,” I said. “The probe results are due today. Aren’t you excited?”
Silvan gave a shrug. Then he pushed off the rail. He landed with surprising grace—moved with it too. He swaggered toward me.
“Some might be excited by the mystery of Zehava.” His black eyes glinted as he spoke.
“But not you?” I asked.
“No, I’m more interested in our actual arrival.”
Silvan stepped closer. He stood only an arm’s length away, smelling like jasmine flowers and clean hair.
“Why?” I asked. Silvan’s mouth twitched up. He had a dimple—just one—in his left cheek.
“Because it’s our destiny to inherit an entire planet, Terra. It will all be ours. Doesn’t that interest you?”
“Sure. I guess. As much as anything interests me.” I spoke fast, all flustered. I didn’t want him to know about the drawings I had hidden in the sketchbook in my bag—about the things I’d learned from Mara. I didn’t want him to know how I’d changed, softened. So I spoke quickly. “Mara’s waiting for me.”
Silvan held his strong chin up. “Sure,” he replied. “Wouldn’t want to keep the botanist waiting.”
A sly smirk lurked behind Silvan’s eyelashes. I couldn’t stand to look at it any longer. I spun on my heel, rushing past him on the bridge and through the sliding doors.
Even when the doors closed behind me, I could practically feel him there, standing on the path with his hands on his hips. I jogged down the hall and, when I reached our door, pounded my palm against the panel.
I was greeted by the clatter of a clay pot striking the wall. Soil scattered across the floor. Then Mara’s terse voice came calling.
“Terra, is that you?”
“Who else?”
“You’re late,” she said. “As usual.” I heard another crash of terra-cotta, another shatter. I edged toward the rear of the lab.
She stopped throwing things for a moment and stooped over her desk, rubbing soil into her eyes with dirty hands.
“What’s going on?” From the sinking feeling in my stomach, I could have probably guessed the answer.
“The probe! The probe!” she cried, casting her head back. I was afraid for a moment that she’d throw something again, but instead she just clutched her hands in the air.
“Bad news?” I asked. “We won’t be able to land there? Stuck in our happy little prison forever?” I wanted to shudder at the words, but treating them like they were a joking matter somehow made them easier to say.
“No, Terra. No news. That’s the problem. There is no news. Again. Once again. They’ve lost the probe.”
I felt a stab of pain just above my gut, like someone had kicked their boot into my stomach. But I didn’t want Mara to see. So I just leafed through the papers on my worktable, looking distracted. Then a flash of realization went through me. I turned to Mara, my mouth tight.
“That explains why Silvan Rafferty was outside,” I said. “He was gloating over the specialists.”
“I’m sure.” Mara paused. She rubbed her hand over her forehead. “You know what they propose to do? Send a shuttle of specialists to study the surface.”
I sucked in a breath. “But if they destroyed two probes . . . They wouldn’t sacrifice a shuttle full of citizens for their plans?”
“Who knows what Wolff will do? She’s power hungry. She’d throw her own children to the wolves if it would secure her place. It was one thing to stand and watch while she diverted my work. But now . . .”
“What?” I
prompted.
“People, Terra. People. She’s not just destroying machinery or work. She’s going to murder her own citizens.”
She was watching me closely. I could feel my defenses rising, like a second skin was lifting up over my own. “Well, we can’t do anything about it,” I said, speaking quickly. “Botanists aren’t joiners, right? It’s not my problem.” I turned toward my work desk, staring down at the sketches of adapted plants that were scattered over it. But I could feel Mara’s eyes on my back.
“She’s done it before.”
“Yes, I know,” I said, speaking in a rush as I turned. I was being messy, not watching my words. “Mar Jacobi. I was there. I saw him die.”
Something behind Mara’s gaze flickered. “They killed the librarian, then? What, was he threatening to incite the population with his books?”
I lifted my hand to my mouth, speaking through a net of fingers as if I hoped to catch my words and pull them back in. “Oh. Oh, I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t worry, girl,” she said. “I won’t go spilling your secrets, even if you do. But I didn’t mean the librarian.”
I thought back to the funerals my father had dragged me to over the years. All for older citizens. There was nothing out of the ordinary there. Old men and women had died in their sleep. Except for one. I dropped my hand. It fell against my hip like a deadweight.
“I hoped I’d never have to tell you this. I thought I could just teach you how to do good work and keep you out of this rebellion rubbish.”
“Tell me what?” I was still trying to pretend that I was very interested my own drawings—trying to pretend that I didn’t already know them by heart. I felt Mara come closer.
“Years ago I found a flower in the atrium. Buried beneath a hedge. I thought, ‘That’s odd. What’s that doing there?’ I knew that I hadn’t planted it. Digitalis purpurea. Foxglove. It shouldn’t have been there. I certainly hadn’t gone spreading it through the dome. Far too dangerous. And I’m the only one who has access to the herbarium. But the doctors, now, they have several of the plants.
“I realized—” Mara paused a moment to take an echoing breath, then began again: “I realized that a member of our senior medical staff must have planted it. A foxglove plant that wouldn’t be missed if he chose to utilize any of its parts. And I remembered something. A recent death. A very unusual death.”
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