But I’d visited a few times already in the year I turned sixteen, tagging after Ronen and Hannah to see the fishy, globe-eyed creature that would one day be my niece. I hadn’t exactly become accustomed to the antiseptic smell or the sight of the babies, bumbling through the nutritive fluid, but it seemed important to act like I was. After all, only children were uncouth enough to blush when they stepped through the doors of the hatchery.
I did my best to keep my expression fixed ahead as I sat on one of the narrow sofas in the busy observation lounge, but it wasn’t easy. Koen’s hip pressed into mine, the lean line of his leg paralleling my own. Our shoulders nearly touched. Sitting beside him, I was acutely aware of his body. It didn’t help matters any when he turned to me, smiling shyly.
“Mara is a very strange woman,” he said. From beside the observation glass I heard my father let out a low chuckle. I just stared down at my hands. They looked awkward against my knees.
“She’s different,” I agreed. But when I spoke the words, they felt wrong, like a betrayal. So I added: “But I’m learning a lot from her about how the ship works. And what will happen at landing, and—”
“You shouldn’t believe everything that Mara tells you.” My father turned to face us. His expression was stony. “She thinks she’s special. She thinks the rules don’t apply to her.”
Beside me, Koen’s dark eyes flickered, revealing a faint glimmer of something I couldn’t quite read. “What do you mean, sir?”
“Oh, like being a mother, for instance. She asked for two dispensations from Captain Wolff to delay having children before they finally forced her a few years ago. Said that her work was too important to deal with the ‘inconvenience of motherhood.’ ” My father’s nostrils flared at the thought. After all I’d learned about Mara, it didn’t surprise me. But I knew how my father felt about those who put selfishness before tikkun olam.
Koen didn’t speak for a moment. His thin lips were pressed flat, like he was turning something over in his mind. But I had no idea what.
“It’s despicable,” my father concluded.
I felt my heart squeeze out a labored beat. Mara hadn’t made these last few weeks easy—I’d spent enough time hating her myself. But for some reason a bright flame of protectiveness flared up inside me. I attracted enough of my father’s ire. I didn’t want anyone else to catch it, not even Mara.
“She does her job well,” I said, my words shaky but clear. “She really cares about the good of the colony, about doing all she can to ensure its success. Haven’t you always said that that’s a mitzvah?”
For a long time my father didn’t answer. Silence grew between us, intercepted only by the sounds of the celebrations that raged across the observation deck, and the bustle of the hatchery beyond—the shouts of the workers, the cries of new children. I didn’t look my father in the eye as he stared at me, but I didn’t move, either. I couldn’t speak or breathe. I didn’t want to risk inciting his wrath even further.
That’s when Koen slid his hand in against mine. His fingers were cool and dry against my clammy palm.
“Yes, sir,” he agreed. “You have said that. Our work as specialists elevates us above ordinary workers. That would be true for Mara, too, wouldn’t it?”
My father didn’t answer. But he looked down at our interlocked hands. I saw a smirk, self-satisfied, lift his upper lip. Finally he looked toward the glass.
“It’s beginning,” was all he said. Hesitating only a moment, wiping my palm against my knee, I went to my father. His talmid followed, taking long, firm strides. There was a small crowd of people behind us—jovial workers, downing their wine rations together in celebration. But the three of us stood in solemn contrast. I saw our reflections in the glass: my father’s muscular figure; Koen, lanky and lean; and me, between them, looking gaunt and pale. Then my father indicated something below with the angle of his chin, and my vision shifted.
The new parents milled beneath the eggs. You could tell which couples had been through this before. They knew what to do. They knelt under the eggs, slicing them open with shining surgical tools and letting the infants coast out in floods of pink-streaked fluid.
I found my brother in the sea of blue cotton scrubs. Ronen bumbled behind the doctors. He hovered over Hannah. When he finally took the surgical knife in hand, he dropped it, and Hannah had to stop him from fumbling around on the floor to find it.
Instead she snatched the new tool right out of the hatchery worker’s fingers. Kneeling beneath the swollen egg, she sliced the artificial womb open in one brisk motion. Ronen hardly made it over in time to help her catch the slippery child in his arms. Beside me, my father let out a hiss of air at the sight. Ronen held their daughter as Hannah wiped the blood from her nose with a clean rag. I felt a quick flash of joy, strong enough to tighten my throat as they leaned their heads in to take their first look at their baby, a little girl so wrinkled, she looked like a shelled walnut.
Maybe Koen was touched too. Maybe that’s why I felt the weight of his hand, sudden, heavy, against my lower back. A gesture didn’t mean anything, I told myself. But I couldn’t stop my spine from going stiff as I turned my attention to our reflections in the observation glass. Koen’s eyes were wide, showing no hint of tenderness—but his hand made slow, firm circles on the small of my back. Goose bumps lifted over my arms.
Then Ronen and Hannah burst through the door, their scrubs splattered with blood, and Koen’s hand fell like a deadweight. It left nothing but a gap of air at the back of my sweater. I pushed the memory of his palm from my mind. This was the time for me to do my duty as a sister: to embrace Ronen and to smile down at the little mewling girl in the tangle of blankets.
“We’ve named her Alyana,” Ronen said as Hannah set the baby in my father’s arms. My brother’s tone was hushed, tear racked. “To help us remember.”
I stared down at the baby. Up until this moment, I’d told myself I didn’t care a whit about what Ronen and Hannah were doing with their lives. I’d never really thought about how my niece would be a little person. But she was, with dark hair pasted down to her perfectly round head, and minuscule fingernails tipping each of her ten tiny fingers. I watched her let out a yawn as she nestled in against my father’s chest. Everyone laughed, and I found myself joining in. She was wrinkled and strange but somehow exquisitely formed—a whole, tiny human being.
But then I heard a murmur of sound. My father was speaking. Not to the child, not really. But to Momma.
“Alyana,” he said. “Our time here is nearly done. We’ve waited so long to be free of this ship. So, so long.”
He bent over and pressed a dry kiss to the baby’s forehead. Then he handed her to my brother.
“You’re a mensch, Ronen,” he said, squeezing his shoulder. “Without this child I would have never achieved tikkun olam.”
My father went to stand beside the glass, gazing through it solemnly. But I was the only one who watched him now. All other eyes were on Ronen, cradling the child. Hannah reached down and caressed her cheek. Then Hannah’s parents spilled through the double doors, raising their voices in greeting.
“Mazel tov!” They rushed over, laughing. “Congratulations!” They bent in to see her, cooing and speaking in gibberish. Hannah’s face was streaked with happy tears. My brother turned to her and pressed kisses into her shining cheeks.
No one paid any attention to my father. He stared through the glass, holding his hands behind his back. As he murmured to himself, his breath fogged the pane. I was the only one who heard it, the only one who was listening.