“What?” I asked. My voice cut through silence. A few of my classmates tittered. When Rachel spoke, it was through laughter too.
“Terra! That’s you!”
“Oh!” I felt my cheeks grow hot. Everyone had turned to me, watching and waiting. I took clumsy steps toward the podium. I don’t even know what she said! I thought in a panic as I took the rolled paper in one hand and barely touched the captain’s fingers with the other. I noted the color of the bow. A blue thread. Blue. So much for art. A specialist position . . .
“Congratulations,” the captain said. Her tone was droll as she snatched her hand away from mine. I guess I’d held on a moment too long. She wiped my sweat off her hand by pressing her fingers to her wool-wrapped hip. I watched, frozen at first. Then I hurried to slip in again beside Rachel. At the front of the room, the captain continued to call my classmates to her. But I tuned her out again, scrambling to peel away the seal with my nail.
I scanned the lines of black calligraphy. The date was at the top. My name was inked below it. Then there was the captain’s name, and her title, and a long line of words—On this sacred day and so on and so forth. I skimmed to the bottom of the page.
I couldn’t help but spit out the word that I found there.
“Botanist?”
It tasted bad on my tongue. Before I could turn to Rachel, to whisper to her of my confusion, I heard a sibilant shhh of air rise up from the audience. I looked out across the jumble of smiling faces, searching for the source of the sound—until my eyes fixed on a familiar glower.
My father glared at me across the sea of heads. His jaw was set firmly, his lips pursed. I felt the searing burn of blood rise up across my cheeks and throat. Blushing furiously, I crumpled the paper into a ball in my fist.
“Stand up straight,” my father commanded before turning to Hannah’s father.
The ceremony was over. I held a plate of pickles and chopped liver out in front of me as if they could shield me from the horrors of small talk. My classmates all seemed to move easily through the crowd, laughing and chattering with one another. Even Rachel had drifted away, flirting with Silvan in the corner, leaving me here with my family—and sinking fast.
“We thought we’d all go down to the hatchery,” Hannah said. I could feel her pointed gaze upon me. “And visit your niece.”
The thought of being around all those wires and bio-conduits made my stomach flip-flop. “No, really, thank you,” I muttered in a low tone. “I promised Rachel’s parents I’d eat with them.”
“The Federmans are merchants,” my father said, pursing his lips as though the idea tasted bad. Beside him, my brother cast his eyes to the floor. He wasn’t much better than a merchant—only a carpenter. But the gold thread in his cord meant that we pretended he wasn’t. “But the Meyers are Council members. And you’re a specialist now, Terra. You shouldn’t—”
“I promised,” I said again, my words hotter this time. I could feel how Hannah’s family stared at me, waiting to see if I’d crack. I decided that I would spare them that. I shoved my plate into Ronen’s hands and turned on the heels of my boots. “I’m out of here.”
“Terra!” my father called as I went to grab my bag from the coatroom. “Terra, come back here!”
But I ignored him, leaning my hands against the heavy doors, hustling down the long hall toward the lift. Who did he think he was, anyway? Rachel was my friend, my oldest friend. I slammed my palm hard against the lift’s lock, waiting in the dim light for the doors to come shuddering open.
Footsteps sounded down at the far end of the hall.
“If you’re here to lecture me . . .,” I began, turning. But my words puttered out when I saw that it was not Abba who hustled toward me. It was Benjamin Jacobi, of all people. The librarian.
“Mar Jacobi,” I said. My words sounded thin, annoyed. I suppose that I was. “What are you doing here? Don’t you already have a talmid?” I thought he did, at least. A redheaded boy. He’d been in Ronen’s class.
“I always attend on Vocation Day. It’s a mitzvah, you know.” His dark eyes sparkled like he was making a joke. But I didn’t get it.
“I know,” was all I said.
And then there was a burp of awkward silence. Mar Jacobi reached over, pressing his hand to the lift panel—as though I hadn’t just done so myself. “Do you mind if I join you on your trip down? I hate all of this chitchat. I’m really very eager to get out of here.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that. I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding. “Oh!” I said. “I hate it too.”
“I suspected you might,” Mar Jacobi said as the door at long last dinged open. He held it open for me. “You’ve always been remarkably like your mother.”
Momma! I felt a stab of emotion. She’d seemed so composed, so charming. Nothing at all like me. We stepped into the huge lift. Our voices echoed against the walls.
“She hated small talk too?” I asked. Mar Jacobi let out a chuckle.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Of course, you would have never known it at first. But she used to say that you can’t really get to know a person until you’ve broken bread with them.”
“You must have known her pretty well,” I said, less a question than a statement. I remembered him there, of course, on the night of her funeral.
“Alyana was . . .” He stumbled over his words and was able to recover only after swallowing hard. “A dear friend of mine.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I nodded.
“She would be so proud. I’m sure you’ll be able to do great things as a botanist,” he offered at last. I gave my shoulders a shrug, clutching my bag in front of me like my life depended on it. I hadn’t given any thought to my new vocation. I wasn’t sure what a botanist even did.
“How, planting flowers?”
“Perhaps.” He gave a grin. His teeth were yellow and crooked. When I didn’t smile back, he added: “I think you’ll be truly working toward tikkun olam. Are you familiar with the term?”
I let out a snort. “It’s all Abba—I mean, it’s all my father ever talks about.”
“Duty always was important to Arran,” Mar Jacobi said. He leaned back on his heels, staring up at the lights set into the ceiling. “But you know, Terra, there are many ways to do your duty, to work toward carving out a place in the universe for humanity.”
“Are there?” I glanced down at the polished floor. There was something hungry about his voice, like he’d been waiting for this conversation for a long time. I didn’t like the intensity behind it. It made my cheeks warm.
“Well,” he said, “when our ancestors left Earth, they thought they were saving mankind. The Council will tell you that the way to fulfill that mission is to do your duty, to work hard and marry and raise happy children and obey the captain.”
Behind him the door dinged open, revealing a fury of green, tangled space. A rush of air wafted in, perfumed by the clover from the pastures and the wildflowers from the forests below. Neither of us moved.
“Yes,” I said sourly, “I know. They taught us that in school. How we have to do mitzvot for the good of the ship or it’ll fall out of space or something.”
Mar Jacobi’s eyebrow ticked up. He was looking at me closely now, the pupils in his brown eyes shrinking down to pinpricks. “I used to talk about tikkun olam with your mother. She always thought there were other ways. Alyana said we needed to protect our liberties, too. Otherwise mankind was never worth saving.”