“Well?” she said at last. I gestured to the book. She spun the volume around and opened it, eyebrows ticked up in annoyance.
“Good . . . good . . . no, this isn’t right. Neither is this one. This is M. intermedia, not M. struthiopteris.”
Mara pulled my clippings out, tossing them down at her desk. She scattered them over the mess of papers. Then she hefted the book in one hand and passed it to me. I extended a hesitant hand, taking it from her.
“I’ll do better tomorrow . . .,” I said, my voice trembling; I almost instantly regretted how weak I sounded.
“What you’ll do is go back out there and find them.” Mara’s voice was firm.
“But the time . . .”
She didn’t say anything. Instead she just stared me down, flaring her nostrils.
I pressed my lips together, trying to stop my chin from trembling. Then I shuffled down the hall.
Two hours later I was finally finished—each clipping carefully pressed between the rumpled pages. My back ached from crouching low all day in the bushes; my eyes felt heavy and watery. There was a long rake of scratches across my arm from where the thorns of one plant had dug in. I dragged my muddy boots against walkway floors, so tired that I could hardly lift my feet.
But I straightened a little when the door opened and I found the once-bright lab dark. At the rear of the room, I found a torn scrap of paper taped to the dim computer monitor. I held it up to the light that spilled in from the corridor.
Couldn’t wait any longer.
it read in thin, jagged script.
Will see you tomorrow.
Promptly at nine.
I clutched the heavy book in both hands, feeling rage swell my rib cage and crest in my throat. For a moment I considered slamming the field guide down against the desk, letting the legs shake, sending her papers and her precious slides flying.
But I didn’t. I only stood there for a moment, breathing, shivering. My anger faded from a prickly mass of light within me to a dull, tired gray lump. I tossed the book down on Mara Stone’s desk and headed home.
There were two ways I could have walked home that night: I could have cut across the pastures, then through the commerce district. It was probably the way I should have gone—the most direct route and the safest.
But it was late and I was tired. I knew the streets would be crowded with shoppers at this late hour—I’d see people I knew there, who would try to prod me into small talk about my new job.
So I went the other way, past the greenhouses and labs and down the lift, then across the second deck of the ship. There forests edged the fields of purple and yellow. The overgrown dirt paths were practically empty now except for the crickets that called to one another, their song echoing beneath the ceiling.
At the edge of a field, a scuffed wall rose up out of the soil. A single door was cut into it, and it formed an imposing rectangle of black. Inside were the engine rooms and the long corridors that looped around the now-silent machines. The dark hallways led to the large central lift, which went straight up into the districts. This section of the ship wasn’t off-limits, not exactly, but it was the type of place you didn’t venture off to alone except on a dare. For one thing, our parents always warned us that the engine rooms might be dangerous, all those skinny pathways suspended above the ship’s inner works. For another, the engine rooms were spooky. They seemed like the kind of place where you might stumble across a ghost—if you believed in ghosts.
But I didn’t. I was almost sixteen. Soon I’d be earning a wage, finding a husband, living on my own. I had no reason to be afraid of the hollow, echoing corridors. So I stepped through the narrow doorway.
When I was little, I’d been scared of the dark. I wasn’t anymore. Still, these hallways were so quiet. The only thing that I heard was my footsteps.
Momma told me once about her great-grandmother who remembered the days when the main engine still ran. She’d hear the vibrations all the time, even at night, humming through the thin walls of her quarters.
But now we only coasted to our destination. They’d shut the main engine off ages ago, when Great-Great-Grandma was still a girl. Someday soon they’d activate the reverse thrusters, stopping us completely. But that was months away. Now everything was quiet, and there were no workers left littering these rooms. Just me and my noisy boots, shedding mud against the hollow floor. Alone, or so I thought.
Until I heard a scream.
It came from the far end of the corridor. The lights here were dim, and they flickered, bathing whole sections of the hall yellow, then black. It looked like I was alone, but there was a scramble of movement in the distance, then a shout.
“Grab him! Don’t let him get away!”
I don’t know what made me run toward the distant voices, but I did, turning a corner and making my way down the narrowing corridors. At last I reached the end of the hall, then spilled down a step into a wide-open space. I barely managed to catch myself with my hands. Beneath my weight the metal grate swayed. I could see massive tubes spiraling down into the darkness through the gaps in the metal. They hugged the frozen engine tight, holding it aloft. There was the sound of wings fluttering from one end of the darkness to another. Apparently, bats had taken up residence there.
“What was that?” A woman’s voice pulled me out of myself. I pushed my hands against the grate, scrambling to my feet.
“Nothing!” A second voice—a man’s—answered. “It’s nothing! Hold him down!”
The rail that bordered the walkway was thin and precarious, lit only by a series of amber lights. I took hesitant steps, following the curving pathway around the massive central column. And then I stopped, peering forward.
In the flickering light stood Aleksandra Wolff. Her wool-clad shoulders faced me. She held her hand against the hilt of her knife like a silent threat, watching as two of her comrades wrestled a man to the floor.
I crept forward. Past Aleksandra and the scuffling trio, there was another pair of men in the shadows—another guard who held a man against the ground. Long red locks hung in the citizen’s face. I noted the white cord on his shoulder. Academic class. A flash of recognition lit my mind. It was the librarian’s talmid. Vin or Van or something.
That’s when I realized who his companion was. Benjamin Jacobi. The librarian, who’d spoken to me about my mother in kind tones only the day before.
He was on his knees. One of the guards held the blade of a knife against the soft underside of his jaw.
“The names! Give them to me!” the man on his left shouted.
But it was Mar Jacobi’s student who answered.
“Leave him alone!”
I watched as he struggled toward his teacher, stepping into the feeble light. He was hardly even an adult. Though his compact body was covered in lean muscle, there was a curve of adolescent softness to his features.
“Get back, Hofstadter!” Aleksandra snarled. “This isn’t your business!”
And then I heard Mar Jacobi’s voice. It was soft, gentle. “Van, it’s all right.”
The boy gave an uncertain nod. But then his gaze ambled up through the dark. His eyes were green, and they seemed to glow even in the dim light. He’d seen me watching in the shadows. He mouthed words to me, forming the syllables silently with his trembling lips: “Run. Now.”
Before I could obey, I heard Mar Jacobi’s gentle voice rise up one last time.
“Liberty on Earth,” he said. I saw the guard’s blade glint as it lifted. “Liberty on Zehava!”