Aetherbound

by E. K. Johnston

  Sometimes, Pendt’s life felt like an eternity of peeling back lids and scooping out the nutritious matter inside. The rational part of her knew that it had only been a few years and that she had too many more to get through to be thinking so defeatedly, but occasional irrationality was her only escape, and so when her job was particularly boring, she let herself drift while she was doing it.

  The spatula scraped against the bottom of the container Pendt was holding, and she added it to her stack of empties. There were enough to put through the recycler—a machine that extracted the last bits of edible calories from the packaging and sent them to hydroponics for use as fertilizer—so Pendt added that to her rhythm. As they started to emerge from the recycler, Pendt placed the sanitized containers into the compressor, the last time she had to worry about them. Her attention split between the trays, the recycler, and the compressor, Pendt did not anticipate the danger she was in until it was too late.

  She reached a fraction of a centimetre too far into the compressor or maybe she withdrew her hand a fraction of a second too late. She never knew. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that her index finger got caught in the gears that controlled the speed of the machine.

  Time seemed to slow down, and she was aware that what was about to happen was going to hurt. A lot.

  Her finger was crushed between two pieces of metal and she screamed. She pulled her hand back, but the nail caught on a jagged edge, and tore all the way off. She turned away from the trays, determined to bleed only on the floor, and cradled her hand against her chest. Her jumpsuit turned red and the cook and the other galley workers were screaming at her, but she couldn’t understand them. All she knew was pain.

  It was in her hand, in her finger. It was dripping out of her onto the floor and soaking into her shirt. The pain was everywhere, but it was also laser-focused in her fingertip, and her fingertip was something she could reach.

  Without meaning to and beyond all control, Pendt sank into the code she usually worked so hard to ignore. She found the part of her that hurt and saw the magic that would make the hurting stop. It was behind a wall. A barrier she wasn’t strong enough to climb. Pendt thought about giving up, about letting the pain take her, but the temptation to fix herself was too much.

  Pendt smashed through the wall. It took everything she had, and she dropped to her knees. Her hair withered against her scalp and her skin felt raw and dry. On the other side of the wall was her fingernail, whole and new. Pendt put it on her hand, wincing as the new growth cut over the forming scab.

  Her blood rushed through her, and now it all stayed in her veins like it was supposed to. This was what it felt like do magic. This was how her aunt felt when she touched the stars. The cruelty of her denial stung even more now that Pendt felt what she was missing. It was euphoric. It was incandescent. It sparked through her like fire and whispered to her soul like smoke.

  It was the last thing Pendt thought about before she collapsed on the floor of the galley, the pristine food trays ready for lunch and the carnage of her accident spread out around her.

  * * *

  • • •

  “—has to control it!” Arkady was raging. Pendt stayed very still, her eyes firmly shut. “We can’t have her growing fingernails every time she hurts herself. She’s wasting too much energy.”

  Without seeing, it was hard to tell where she was. Everywhere on the Harland smelled the same, thanks to the air recyclers. There was a quiet beeping sound, just loud enough for Pendt to hear. That meant she was in medical.

  “She can’t help it, Captain,” Morunt said. Definitely medical. The doctor rarely went into the mess, much less ate there. “Instinct took over the moment her pain centres overwhelmed her logic. She’s too young to let herself hurt when she knows how to stop it.”

  “Then stop her,” Arkady said sharply. “Your caloric allowance only goes so far, Doctor. You might as well help her to avoid extending yourself.”

  Pendt drifted out again, and when she woke up, she was alone. There was an IV in her arm, dripping calories into her body at a truly astounding rate as she recovered from the stress of what she’d done. Her hand was fine; the nail looked exactly like it had before she’d injured it. Her head was cold, and when she touched it with her free hand, she found that she was bald.

  “You took all the energy you had,” Dr. Morunt said from nearby. “It killed the roots of your hair. They weren’t exactly gentle bringing you down here, and most of it fell out by the time you arrived.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Pendt said. Her head felt like it was stuffed with insulation and her whole body ached, but she knew that was she alive because Morunt had done her job. Then, because this was all the sympathy she was likely to get, she added: “I don’t understand what I did.”

  “You used your gene-sense to regrow your fingernail when you tore it off,” Dr. Morunt told her. “You must be very careful to avoid injury. You’re too young to react sensibly to it, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to bring you back again.”

  Morunt looked pale, and Pendt understood from what she’d heard Arkady say that the calories pumping into her body had come out of the doctor’s own rations. Pendt was glad she’d been unconscious for the part where her mother and aunt debated whether or not she was worth treating. There were things about her family she didn’t ever need to know.

  “I won’t do it again,” Pendt said. “I don’t want to burden the Harland in any way.”

  There were more calories in her IV than Morunt could afford to give. They must have come from somewhere, and Pendt didn’t want to know. She’d find out if her cousins cut it out of her skin later, she supposed, or when she was punished for what she’d done.

  “I can show you, if you like?” Morunt said. “I can help you dull the instinct to use what you have.”

  Pendt was still young enough that all adults were considered old. For the first time, she realized how much older than her mother Dr. Morunt was. Surely a doctor would have a family somewhere, and yet here was Morunt, indentured on a generation merchant ship.

  “You’re stronger than I am, little cat,” Morunt said. “In every way, I think. You’ll be better at all of this than I was.”

  Morunt gave her needles that dulled the call of her power and taught her methods of pain management that didn’t involve regenerating body parts. It was the first formal education in the use of her own power Pendt had ever received, even if it was based around not using æther at all. Neither of them ever mentioned it to the captain. Pendt soon grew proficient at inventing reasons to spend her sparse free time in the medical bay.

  Arkady locked Pendt in the brig for a full week and removed her from her mother’s quarters. Now Pendt lived in a small cubicle that had been a storage closet, and Tanith moved in with Lodia.

  In the galley, Pendt no longer daydreamed. She had nothing to dream about, in any case. And she learned that she could hear what was being said in the mess if she stood in the right place and was quiet enough. That was how she found out the ultimate cost of her survival.

  “Your argument was strong, Lodia,” Arkady said. “I agreed to it in the heat of the moment, but I won’t let you use Tanith or Donalin for this. None of their brothers can take over either of their jobs in the engine room. We can’t run the ship without them right now, even if we limit the amount of time they spend off shift. It’ll have to be you.”

  “It will be as you say,” said Lodia.

  Pendt didn’t put all the pieces together until the ship came into Alterra, a mining colony in a gaseous nebula near an asteroid belt. She had wondered how the calories would be regained. She worried that the captain would change her mind and sell Pendt off ahead of schedule after all.

  Instead, Captain Arkady traded the second-most valuable thing on the ship, and that is how Pendt got a baby brother.

  4.

  THE ALTERRA MINING COMPLEX had been on
its last legs the last time the Harland had been there. That was almost two decades ago. There were countless rumours: The complex had dried up; a new asteroid had been located; pirates had taken over and used the mining tunnels as a base of operations. Arkady Harland ignored them all. It didn’t matter who lived on Alterra these days, she pointed out. They’d need the supplies the Harland carried, and Arkady would buy anything that wasn’t nailed down, if they let her. Especially food resources, to replace what Pendt had used up so recklessly just to save herself from pain.

  Pendt was not privy to the captain’s decisions, of course, but her cousins and siblings made sure to discuss it loudly when she brought them their meals. They weren’t subtle enough to be vague about it, but they too lacked any real knowledge, so they speculated all manner of terrible fates for her as the ship closed in on its destination.

  “We always dump passengers at Alterra,” Rheegar said with all the authority of someone who had heard it from an adult. “Maybe they’ll dump the galley cat too.”

  “Mother is going to keep her,” Tanith said. She always sounded absolutely sure when she made this sort of declaration, though Pendt had not yet figured out why she was so certain. “We’ll leave passengers, of course, or at least off-load some of the bodies, but the cat will stay.”

  There was grumbling at that. Her brothers and cousins usually mirrored the way the adults treated her. It had only been a few months since the fingernail incident, but most of them had switched from deliberate indifference to outright pretending she didn’t exist. The younger family members were slower to change. They were too accustomed to having a reliable punching bag. They might have squabbled about Pendt’s fate until the end of time, except that the Harland finally arrived at its destination, and they all found out.

  Alterra was an asteroid. According to the stories passed around the complex, the mining colony was on its sixth or seventh asteroid out of the nearby belt. As each rock was exhausted of minerals or became unstable due to so much digging, it was shoved away, and a new asteroid was procured. Pendt did not really believe this. The asteroids were huge, and she’d never heard of that kind of magic. It would take a huge amount of fuel, and it would be very difficult to stop the asteroid once they got it moving.

  Still, the complex was impressive. The Stavengers had built it, once upon a time—a giant spider of a construct, legs wrapped around stone—and the miners had done their best to keep it going. Even Pendt could look that up in the Harland’s database. There were diagrams of how the port operated and maps detailing where merchants and their ships could dock. She did her best to picture the complex in her mind, but Arkady didn’t encourage imaginative thinking, and so Pendt was mostly limited to memorizing the files in the brief moments of her day when she wasn’t busy.

  There was very little technical information in the files. Pendt didn’t know what the complex was made of or how many people lived on it. She didn’t know how the ore was extracted or where the miners were quartered. Only information pertinent to trading goods was provided, and even then, there was no indication of who, exactly, the captain would be trading with. Pendt didn’t think to ask who owned the mine these days. In her mind, everything operated like the Harland, and people were born to wherever they were meant to work. And no one would have answered her anyway.

  They came into one of the docking clamps slowly. It was the first time Pendt had ever done anything but move forward in space. She couldn’t feel the minute changes in direction, not really, as Arkady brought the ship into port, but she could hear the engines rev and thrum with a new rhythm as the captain did her manoeuvres. Pendt wished she was important enough to be on the bridge, near her aunt’s porthole. She wanted to see. At least her brothers were also stuck in the windowless engine room. They wouldn’t be able to hold that over her.

  The most unnerving moment was when the engines cut. Pendt fought off a wave of panic. In space, dead engines meant dead everyone. She’d imagined what quiet might feel like, but she wasn’t ready for the absence of sound in her ears or the stillness of the deckplates under her feet. The airlock must have connected. The storage bay doors might even be open by now. Pendt could be breathing the first molecules of new-to-her oxygen in her life.

  The clock in the galley chimed, pulling her thoughts away from such ridiculous fancies. It didn’t matter where they were. Pendt’s job hadn’t changed, and it was almost time for dinner. Arkady would be gone, at least. The captain and her first officer would go to the complex for negotiations. Everyone else would go about their day almost as usual. There might be a bit less to do in the engine room, but there was never any possibility that Arkady would allow a single extra Harland off the ship.

  Dr. Morunt appeared in the galley door. Pendt wasn’t entirely sure how to behave. The doctor had started eating in the mess more frequently, but she mostly left Pendt alone, which made her the nicest person on board. Lodia had gone to see the doctor that morning, just before leaving the ship, and carried a thermo-sealed case with her when she left the medical bay. Pendt had seen her only briefly, but it was enough time for her to be curious about what her mother was up to. The case had made Pendt uncomfortable. She sensed two halves that could never be the same whole, similar to each other and yet different in key ways that she could not identify. Lodia had taken the case off the ship. Whatever was in it, Arkady must be willing to trade with Alterra.

  “Your mother has new caloric requirements,” Morunt said with no preamble. “Please ensure her portions reflect the changes.”

  She handed Pendt a datachip, which Pendt inserted into the galley computer. It was true. Lodia Harland’s ration had been increased. There was no reason given, of course, but Pendt would not have asked questions anyway. She memorized the number automatically, instantly aware of how much food it represented. The computer readout told her that the difference would best be made up from the protein rations, not the vege-matter, but Pendt already knew that.

  It wasn’t the same as when she’d changed her eye colour or regrown the fingernail. That was a powerful surge, a sense of rightness and being that she couldn’t deny. This was more of a comfort. A hug, if she’d ever received one. A reminder of what she could do, someday, and a reassurance that she hadn’t lost the ability from not using it.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Pendt said. “I will make the necessary adjustments.”

  Morunt looked at her with that close examination Pendt always found unnerving. It was like the doctor was waiting for her to figure something out, and Pendt wasn’t thinking fast enough. If it was important, like Lodia’s calories, Morunt would just tell her. Pendt was smart enough to realize that the doctor’s reticence meant the information was, at least, a little illicit, and that it was up to her to put the pieces together. She couldn’t expect Morunt to put herself out. So she did what she always did: She filed the information away, along with all her cousins’ slights and her brothers’ abuses, the hints she gleaned from the kitchen staff, and her own common sense, until she could figure it out.

  “Do you want your meal now?” Pendt asked.

  “Thank you.” Morunt held out her hand. Pendt handed over the protein packet and the doctor’s allotment of vege-matter, barely thinking as she measured it out. Morunt watched her as she scrupulously put the correct number of calories on the tray.

  Pendt was about to ask a question, something inane like how long the doctor thought they would be at the station. She didn’t get many opportunities for polite conversation, and Morunt was the only one likely to talk to her without speculating about her death. Before she could, the doors to the mess opened, and her brothers came in, looking for their meals as well.

  Morunt retreated to the far corner of the mess, and Pendt turned her attention to making sure her brothers got the right food. Tyro was always hungry these days, wanting more than he was given. There hadn’t been a change in his allotment, however, so Pendt quietly delighted in watching him covet
what he couldn’t have. She wasn’t stupid enough to eat in front of him—no one would stop him if he tried to take some of her portion—but she did enjoy not being the only Harland who was miserable.

  Tanith came in behind the boys, and Pendt gave her cousin her meal as well. They would never be friends, but as Pendt got older, Tanith seemed to pity her more, and that was better than scorn. Tanith looked at her plate, the portion measured out same as always, with an odd air of relief about her.

  “Did Lodia get a calorie increase?” Tanith asked.

  “Yes,” Pendt said. Everyone would know the first time her mother came in for a plate, so there was no sense in hiding it.

  “Good,” Tanith said. “Better her than me.”

  That made no sense at all. She hadn’t had a portion increase since she stopped growing. Anyone on the Harland would have welcomed more food.

  Pendt considered it while she watched the others eat. The boys amused themselves by luridly speculating if the passengers down below had disembarked to work on Alterra or if they’d been off-loaded as corpses. The weight in the passenger compartment was down significantly, in either case. Pendt didn’t like to think about it.

  Finally, when her brothers and cousins were running out of excuses to hang around the mess, the doors opened and Arkady and Lodia came in. Everyone straightened; it was undoubtedly the captain who was about to address them. Lodia looked a little pale, and Pendt was immediately aware of something different about her, even though she didn’t know what.

  “You’ll all be happy to know that I have secured a trade deal,” Arkady said. “Not only have we replaced the food resources we lost”—here everyone glared at Pendt except the captain, who ignored her—“we have replenished our supplies enough to accommodate another Harland on board.”