“Koen. Shouldn’t you be at work?” I squinted at him, wondering what that broad smile was doing lighting up his face.
“Shouldn’t you?” he asked, letting out a small, awkward laugh. I stared at him. This was no time for laughter.
“Yeah,” I said. “I suppose I should.”
Van’s fingers were still curled around the doorknob, but it seemed he couldn’t make his feet move forward. Finally his eyes darted up at me, sharp and hard.
“Remember what I said, Terra. You’re a child. You didn’t see anything.”
With that, he threw the door open and slammed it behind him. Koen watched him leave.
“I wonder what that was about,” he said. I looked at him, at his rumpled hair and his jangly smile. He had the sort of kind, open features that made you want to tell him all your secrets. It was a dangerous sort of face.
“I have no idea,” I said, and hustled down the empty street.
7
My second day at work was hardly any better than my first. Mara kept me running through the greenhouses, snipping branches, pressing them between the pages of the field guide. I kept turning down the wrong corridor. Before I knew it, I stood lost in a hothouse full of fruit trees, or an enclosed field of purple grains. After only a few hours sweat poured down my face in little rivers. Thorns had worked their way into the weave of my lab coat. That morning, after the dreams, and the funeral, and my visit to the Jacobis’ home, I was exhausted, too, and it felt like my head was wrapped in cotton gauze. When I stopped inside the lab before lunch, offering Mara the heavy tome, I almost didn’t notice how she looked at me—her close-set eyes narrowed, as if she’d been chewing over some idea.
“Did you know him?” she asked, tossing the book onto her desk without looking at it. It fell with a heavy thud.
“Know who?”
“Jacobi. You know.” She waved her hand at me. “The dead guy.”
Her thin lips curled, showing her pale gums. Her pointed jaw was tight. I wondered if this might be a test, sent by Van Hofstadter himself. But I knew that was a ridiculous idea—what use would Mara have for someone like Van? She hardly had any patience for me.
“No, not really.” It wasn’t a lie, of course, so I shrugged and shoved my hands down into the pockets of my coat. Mara studied me.
“Good,” she said at last. “Good. You’re young, Terra. There’s no telling the kinds of wind that might sweep you up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jacobi and his ilk. Rabble-rousers, all of them. Convinced the golden light of justice shines right down on their empty heads.” Mara snorted laughter. Deep inside my pockets I dug my fingernails into my palms, trying to stop myself from remembering the impassioned words that had spilled, quick as blood, from Mar Jacobi’s mouth.
Liberty on Earth . . .
“Don’t worry,” I said, though my throat and lips felt dry, my tongue huge and awkward in my mouth. “I’ve never been much of a joiner.”
“Good!” Mara said, and she gave my shoulder a hearty thump. I swayed on my feet from the force of it. “A woman after my own heart.”
I was surprised to come home that night to find our quarters bright and busy, clouded by the perfume of frying onions and garlic and spice. Hannah stood behind the stove, stirring something into a pan of hot oil. And my brother was at the galley table peeling pale carrots.
“Terra!” Hannah said, smiling wide at my arrival as I hung up my bag by the door. Pepper didn’t run to greet me like he usually did, begging for food as though he might starve to death at any moment. Apparently, his belly was already full—he’d curled up to sleep at the end of the table.
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked. I peeled off my mud-stained lab coat and draped it over one of the chairs, watching my brother as he sliced a long, gnarled root in two.
I’d intended my words for Ronen, but he didn’t even look up at me. Instead Hannah gave a happy hum and answered for both of them.
“We thought we’d come by and make you two dinner. Thought you might need it, after what happened this morning.”
My mind drifted to the memory of Mar Jacobi’s body swaddled tightly in white cloth. As if I could forget it for even a moment. “Oh,” I said. “That.”
Hannah looked at me meaningfully. Then she brought over a bowl of ground lamb and set it before me.
“No one eats free in my kitchen,” she said with a wink.
This isn’t your kitchen, I thought. But I went and washed my hands anyway.
I worked bread crumbs into the raw meat, mashing it all together with my hands. The rhythm of work felt almost soothing. For a moment I could believe that Momma was still alive, that she, instead of Hannah, stood at the counter kneading bread. But the tenuous peace was soon broken.
“How do you like your job so far?” Hannah asked.
I grunted, letting my hands fall still in the bowl of meat. “I don’t know,” I said. “How do you like your job?”
My brother stopped chopping carrots. “Terra!” he said, but Hannah just let out a laugh.
“Oh, it’s no big deal, Ro. It’s not like you loved your vocation when you were fifteen.”
“You didn’t?” I frowned, but he only stared down at the cutting board. Hannah sauntered over to him and scraped the cut carrots into a dented metal bowl. She let her fingers alight on his shoulder, then gave her eyelashes a flutter.
“Of course not. Your brother whined about it for months. It wasn’t until he started earning his wages that he seemed to see any use in it.”
Ronen’s shoulders lifted, tense. I watched as he squirmed under my gaze. I had never heard him complain about his job, but we hardly ever spoke back then. Not that we spoke much now, either.
“What about you?” I asked, turning to look at Hannah. She was stirring the carrots into the pan, her full lips pursed and thoughtful.
“What about me?”
“Do you love your job? Did the Council find you your true calling and all of that?” I regretted my words almost as soon as I said them. Hannah’s father was a Council member. I should have known better than to disparage his judgment. But she didn’t seem to care. She just shrugged.
“At first I hated it. Cartography, you know? What kind of job is that? I wanted to design clothes, like that rubbish uniform they gave you.” She nodded toward the long lab coat that hung from the chair. “But after a while I came to like my work. I’ll be one of the first humans to set foot on Zehava. That has to be worth something, right?”
“Sure,” I said softly. “I guess.”
“Don’t worry, Terra,” Hannah said, walking over. She took the bowl of ground lamb out from under my hands, leaving my greasy fingers frozen over the table. “You’ll come to like your job. It’s not easy for any of us at first.”
I was about to protest that it wasn’t true—that so far as I knew, Rachel had fallen into her new job duties just fine. And what about Silvan Rafferty? Surely taking on Captain Wolff’s mantle was no struggle for him. But before I could, our front door burst open again, and my father came clattering through.
His steps were clumsy, hard against the metal floor. He’d been drinking. But he wasn’t alone. Koen Maxwell stepped past him, setting a steadying hand on Abba’s arm.
“Easy, there,” Koen said. And then he lifted his soulful brown eyes, smiling at us. “Hello!”
I rushed over to the sink to wash my hands again, rubbing the sliver of tallowy soap between my palms. We all watched, silent for a moment, as Abba stumbled forward. He surveyed the scene.