Starglass

Koen squatted on the ground in front of ?Van, murmuring to him in low tones. I hustled toward the stairs. But Rebbe Davison stopped me before I could make my way down the spiraling staircase.

“Terra,” he said. I felt an old familiar fondness in his gaze. This was my teacher—he’d watched me grow up, hadn’t he? A smile lifted my lips.

“Hello, Rebbe Davison,” I said. He let out a soft laugh.

“You’re an adult now. Call me Mordecai.”

“Mordecai,” I repeated, though the name felt uncertain on my tongue.

“I’m so glad you’re here with us,” he said. Then he looked down at the book he clutched between his fingers. He pressed it into my hands. “Here, take this.”

“A history of the ship’s contracts?” I asked, wrinkling my nose as I flipped through it. The pages were as thin as an onion skin and nearly as translucent. Black, blurry text covered them.

“A bit dry,” Rebbe Davison admitted with a reluctant smile. “But perhaps you’ll find some inspiration in it.”

Before I turned down the stairs, Rebbe Davison touched two fingers to his heart.

“Liberty on Earth,” he said. I held the book to my chest.

“Liberty on Zehava,” I said proudly back.

* * *

I stayed up late that night, Pepper dozing across my ankles. I balanced the heavy book of contracts over my head, leafing through the pages until all the blood drained from my arms. My hands went cold. My ears were filled with the steady, nearly silent buzz of my bedroom lights. Still, I read.

Every contract was longer than the one before it. Each new article was initialed by the hand of the ship’s captain down through the ages. And every one expanded the powers of the Council. In school, history seemed like a straight line, running from the original passengers right down to us. Rebbe Davison had made it sound like there hadn’t ever been a hiccup. He had always taught us that once we landed, life would continue, confined and regimented, as it always had.

I supposed that he never really believed it. Because it was right there, in the pages of that heavy book. The truth was written in the first version of the contract, and the second, and the third. Article 4.12. The dissolution of the vocation system upon arrival on Epsilon Eridani S/2179 D, ensuring that our descendants, in full acknowledgment of their liberties, may explore for themselves the potential of their new home and their new lives. Or Article 9.14. The restoration of reproductive rights. So that our descendants may reclaim their full biological potential and multiply and bear children, or not, according to both their wishes and their needs. The script was tiny and square, but clear.

Sometime near the start of the new day, I rose from my bed. Pepper gave a meow of protest, then stretched, exposing his white belly to me. I smiled at him through my exhaustion, but I didn’t stop to lace my fingers through his silky fur. Instead I walked to my desk and sat down, opening my sketchbook to the first blank page.

“Who would I be if it weren’t for the Asherah?” I wrote in jagged, loopy script. “Who did my ancestors want me to be?”

And then, with my inky pen, I sketched myself—my eyes, wide set with heavy lids; the slightly off-kilter line of my nose; my thin mouth; the long line of my neck. But I didn’t know what to draw around me. What kind of world would I live on soon? I had no idea. For all I knew, it would be the same world. The sky above me would be shaded by the same dome, even if it was nestled beneath an alien sun.

With my pen I drew hashmarks. Jagged lines. Shadows all around me, impenetrable, inscrutable.

* * *

I streamed into the lab, hoping that Mara wouldn’t notice my late arrival. No such luck. As soon as I dropped my bag beside my work desk, her voice called out to me.

“You’re late, Fineberg,” she said, hardly looking up from her work ledger. Mara’s gaze was as chilly as the ice that now coated the dome rivers in thin sheets. I felt the determined line of my mouth soften.

“What would you like me to do today?” I finally asked.

She had me doing slide prep—slicing leaf samples down into translucent slivers and fixing them onto the tiny slips of glass. It was exacting work, and I couldn’t steady my hand that morning. In fact, my mind raced, swarmed with words.

As I set out another tiny rectangle of glass, listening to the hum of the lights overhead, I thought about how our society had survived these five hundred years. By swallowing our lumps and doing what we were told. Even if it bored us—even if we hated it. I used my eyedropper to squeeze out a bead of fixative onto the slide. Then I lifted my blade again.

I wasn’t looking at my hands or the leaf shredded to pieces beneath them. Perhaps that’s why I sank the razor blade right down the side of my index finger.

Pain burned its way toward my bone. I let out a cry, doing my best to close the wound with the hem of my lab coat. But blood had already begun to gush out.

“Terra?” Mara called. In a moment she was beside me, her eyebrows lifted. Beneath her usual veneer of impatience, she was actually concerned. She pried my fingers away, revealing a thin cut that ran from the side of my knuckle to the tip of my index finger. “Put pressure on it. I’ll get a bandage.”

Mara wandered off to her desk. She seemed to be taking her time rummaging through it, whistling to herself. Finally she returned with a glass bottle of antiseptic and an adhesive bandage.

“Let’s see,” she urged, easing my hand away again. She splashed the antiseptic over it, and I drew in a sharp breath. But when I looked up, Mara was grinning.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she said as she wrapped it. I watched the blood pool beneath the surface of the bandage, congealing in a brownish, squished-down spot.

“Easy for you to say,” I said. I could feel how Mara studied me.

“Terra,” she said at last, “you’re not your usually sunny self this morning.” I glowered at her. But she was unperturbed. “You know, I heard there was a little gathering last night. In the library, hmm?”

I felt the blood drain from my hands. Even the cut seemed to throb a little less.

“How did you hear about that?”

Mara waved her hand through the air. “They invited me. They always do. I keep saying no, but they just never get the picture.”

I didn’t know what to say. But apparently Mara didn’t expect me to say a thing. In a delicate tone she just rambled on.

“You need to understand,” she said, “that historically there have been many rebellions. On Earth there were the peasant uprisings of France. The American revolts—three civil wars could be blamed on revolutionaries there, in fact. There were the Jacobite Risings. The Boxer Rebellion. The Indian Mutiny of 1857. So it’s unsurprising that we’ve seen uprisings on the Asherah. One might say that such acts are a part of human nature. Like teenagers”—she made no effort to conceal the laughter that hid beneath her cool expression—“we all must eventually rise up against our parents.”

I just stared at her, still holding my injured hand out in front of me.

“It’s happened on the ship several times. The largest was the uprising that coincided with the deactivation of the ship’s engines. That was . . . a dark time in the Asherah’s history. Without the sound of the ship’s engines to drive them, many passengers felt lost. For the first time in their lives, they saw how empty their lives were. You know, before the uprising all marriages were chosen by the Council, as vocations are today.”

“I know,” I said. But I couldn’t imagine it. At least Koen and I got along, mostly.

Even if he still wouldn’t kiss me.

“Terra . . .” Mara spoke carefully.

“Yeah?”

She let out a deep sigh. “In the event that your tardiness this morning does indeed have something to do with the Children of Abel . . .” My ears pricked up at the name, but I did my best not to let it show. I only kept my mouth tight. “You should know that every single time they’ve approached me, I’ve turned them down.”

“Oh.” I was still being careful to look disinterested.

“They know of my feelings about child rearing and marriage. I can’t imagine why anyone would be