Salvage (36 page)

“Right so,” I say.

“You don't need to wait, then. Soraya can take care of me.”

I step back. “Are you sure?”

Miyole nods. “I talked to her already. She says we can stop and I can try kulfi on the way back. I asked Vishva about it, and she says it's this sweet thing, but it's cold.” She's so excited she near forgets to blink. “I've got to go. Vishva and Aziza said we get to build our own bird glider in biomimetics.”

I leave Revati Academy alone. The rail, with its mash of people and suffocating heat, feels less foreign and luxurious now. I've stopped looking out the window. Instead of riding it all the way up to Soraya's house, I step off early at the Salt.

The fence around Rushil's shipyard is whole again, a section of it patched over with metal sheets. His trailer sits quiet in the corner of the lot, flanked by ships docked for repair or salvage. I picture his garden with its cucumber vines, and him and Miyole sitting together, trying out the metal burner. I close my eyes and lean against the gate. It wasn't his fault the Wailers came that night, not any more than it was mine for needing a work tag.

“Hello?” I call.

Pala barks somewhere deep in the lot. I hear the uneven scuffle of his paws before he rounds a skiff and hobbles up to the fence to sniff me. I wait, eyes on the line of ships, but Rushil is nowhere in sight. I should slink away, go back to Soraya's house, but now that I'm so close to the ship, I want nothing but to crawl up into its cockpit and sit in silence. Maybe Rushil will have found some tubing for me. I can apologize for blaming him and for the way I disappeared with Miyole, and we can start fixing the ship together again.

“Hello?” I call again.

But no one answers, not even Shruti. The heat warps the air above the shipyard's white concrete and dirt. Some few lots down, a pack of dogs set each other off in a fit of baying.

Like I was never here
.

I don't know why I do it, but before I can think too hard, my hands are unknotting the leather cord holding my data pendant around my neck. I slip off the disk and stow it in my pocket, then loop the cord around the gatepost and tie it in a bow.

I was here
, I think.
Maybe he'll see this and remember. Maybe he'll know I came back. Maybe he'll know I'm sorry
.

I'm walking back to Sion station when the plan hits me.
Khajjiar
. I stop in my tracks. There's a sleek new tablet at the bottom of my dresser what should more than cover the price of a ticket once I've hawked it to a street vendor. Would anyone even notice I'm gone? Miyole doesn't need me now, much less Soraya or Rushil. I'm worthless—
remedial
—at Revati. I can't wait any longer. If there's even the smallest chance Luck is out there, I need to find him.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

M
y crow has been chirping nonstop for the last two hours. I pull it from my pocket and check the screen.
SORAYA
. Outside the train window, trees and small villages flash by in the last light of day. The man across the aisle looks up from his tablet and glares at my crow as if he wants to shove it down my throat.

I take a deep breath and flip it open. “Hello?” I was going to have to answer sooner or later, anyway.

“Ava? Thank god. Miyole and I have been worried. Where are you?”

“On a train.”

“A train?” Soraya sounds confused. “Are you on your way home? When will you be here?”

“I don't know.” I glance across the aisle. The man is staring at his tablet, pretending not to listen in. “There's something I need to do, something important. I'm sorry I didn't say anything before I left, but I promise I'll tell you when I get back.”

“And when will that be?”

I wince. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow . . . where are you going, Ava? What's so important you have to disappear without any warning?”

“Khajjiar,” I say.

“Khajjiar,” she repeats. “That's all the way up in Himachal Pradesh. What are you doing? Did you even bring a coat?”

A coat? I look out the window. The land is flat, sandy scrub. I doubt I'll need Perpétue's old jacket, much less a coat. “I'll be fine. I'll explain everything when I get back. I promise.”

“Ava—”

“Tell Miyole not to worry,” I say, and snap the crow closed before she can answer.

The cabin lights come on as the sky darkens, replacing my view of the countryside with a wan reflection of the train car's interior. The man with the tablet, an old woman asleep with noise-dampening pads over her ears, my ragged haircut and hollow eyes. I look like a ghost of myself. If only Rushil were here with me. He would make up a terrible, ridiculous nickname for the eavesdropper across the row, help me keep from worrying over Luck with talk of the ship and how we're going to repair it. I switch off the overhead lamp, wrap myself in my jacket, and curl up with my head against the window. The night rolls out dense and black, broken only by a scattering of distant lights, as the train carries us to Khajjiar.

I blink awake to hills, misted and blue in the early morning light. My forehead aches with cold where it rests against the glass. I sit up. Jagged white mountains range across the horizon, so high they pierce the clouds. The trees and valleys are green but dusted with frost. My breath clouds the window.

We pass clusters of houses, their rooftop solar panels glinting bright with the sunrise, and then elegant white wind turbines staggered across the hilltops. The light melts over the snow-capped mountains like buttery ghee.

“Tea, miss?” A woman pushing a cart stops beside my seat and leans in close so as not to wake the other passengers.

“Thank you.” I hand her a square of pay plastic and sit sipping my tea as the train slows through the mountain passes. We pull up to a station. Past the terminal, a town rises on the gentle slope of a hill, closed in on the back and sides by a dense green forest. Most of the other passengers are busy gathering their bags and stowing away their tablets. I wrap Perpétue's jacket tight around me and step out onto the platform.

The wind bites, but the sun burns off the morning chill some as I make my way into town. I stop at a store that sells pakoras and sit down to eat them at the counter.

“Have you heard of a home for boys around here?” I ask the white-haired woman who owns the shop. “A state boarding school?”

The woman frowns at me. “Eh?”

“A home for boys without families.” I point up. “From spaceside?”

The woman says something in a language I've never heard before. Not Hindi or Marathi or any of the other dialects I've heard in the Salt. I squint and lean forward, as if that will help me suddenly understand.

“Kyaa aap hindi boltii hein?”
I ask in halting Hindi.
Do you speak Hindi?

“Wait,” she says in English and holds up a knobby finger. I stand beside the counter feeling foolish as she hobbles away, and then returns with a girl some few turns older than me wiping her hands with a dish towel.

“You speak English?” the young woman asks. She wears a long-sleeved plaid shirt rolled up to the elbows and a scarf loose wrapped around her neck.

“Right so.” I nod.

She nods with me. “Go ahead. I know it.”

I clear my throat. “I heard there was a state home here for boys from spaceside who got left behind. I was wanting to know if either of you knew where it was, exactly.”

“Oh, the pale boys.” The girl's eyes go wide. “At the seed bank farm. It's about an hour's walk on the trail leading west from here.”

The shopkeeper interrupts her with a pat on the arm and adds something.

“It's the only building out that way this side of the lake,” the girl says. “You can't miss it.”

“Thank you,” I say to her, and then again to the shopkeeper.
“Dhanyavad.”

I follow the trail out of town with my jacket buttoned up to my neck and my boots crunching the gravel. Cool, damp air soaks under my collar, but I know I'll warm up as I go. Only an hour of walking and I might see Luck again. Only an hour and I might touch him, hold him. Late-morning mist clings to the path. When I see him, will I run to him, or will I stand watching him, ticking down the seconds until he sees me? Will he know me, changed as I am? A bird calls from somewhere in the trees, a small, sad sound. What if he's not there? What if Doya was right and all the boys are younger? What if he was never there, and all I have left is his ghost? Will Soraya take me back after all the trouble and burden I've been, especially if I return empty-handed? I try to jog, but the air is thin and leaves me winded after a few strides. I settle for walking as fast as I can.

At last I crest a hill and look down on a farmhouse in a rolling green pasture. A stable some like the one at Revati stands across from the house, beside a small pond. Behind the house, a sprawling complex of greenhouses and gleaming white windowless buildings forms a hexagon in the center of the valley. As I watch, a figure walks from the stables to one of the greenhouses, carrying something.

I half walk, half stumble down the hill.
Oh, Mercies, please . . .
The person—a man, I can tell for certain now—shifts his burden to one arm and reaches for the door.

“Wait!” I'm out of breath and clammy with sweat.

He turns and I see his face. And he's tall. And he's pale.

But he isn't Luck.

His eyes are brown, his skin a freckled tea-with-cream color, and his face makes him some turns older than Luck. Twenty-something, maybe even thirty. I stop midstride, as if I've run into a wall. “Oh.”

“Can I help you?” He takes a step closer to me. “Are you lost?”

“This is the state boarding school, right so? The one for boys what got left by their crewes?”

“It is.” He shifts the box from one arm to another, wary. “What do you want with us?”

I take a deep breath. I have nothing to lose. “I'm looking for someone. Someone from the ther crewe.”

“The ther crewe.” He frowns. “How did you say you heard about us, again?”

“This lady I used to work with told me.” Even as I'm saying it, I hear how cagey I sound.

“A lady you used to work with,” he repeats. “Uh-huh.”

A drip of cold sweat runs down my back. “Please so, if I could only come inside—”

His eyes go wide, and his whole expression changes from guarded suspicion to full-out shock. “Who are you?”

“I . . .” I hesitate. “I was only looking—”

“Are you . . . ” He shakes his head. “But they don't leave the girls behind. And you don't look . . .”

I draw myself up. “I'm Parastrata Ava.” The name sounds strange on my tongue. How long since I've said it? Half a turn? More?

“Parastrata?” He squints at me. “Aren't they the ones with the red hair?”

“My grandfather was from groundways,” I say. “From here. That's why . . .” I guesture at my hair and skin.

He chews his bottom lip in thought.

“Please so,” I say again. “I won't bother you long. I only need to know if someone's here and then I'll be on my way.”

“Hold on.” He unhooks an old crow from his pocket and holds it up to his mouth. “Hena?”

“Go ahead,” a woman's voice comes back.

“I have a visitor here who says she's looking for an ther boy. Is Vina in?”

A pause on the line. Then, “A visitor? Very funny, Howe.”

Howe looks at me sidelong. “We don't usually see anyone who isn't a social worker or a government inspector.” He raises the crow again. “I'm not kidding, Hena. We have a real live visitor. Can Vina see her?”

“You know she doesn't like to be disturbed,” the woman replies.

Howe eyes me. “I think she's going to want to talk to this one.”

The woman sighs. “I'm down in the southwest biome. I'll run up to the farmhouse and see.”

“Cheers, Hena. Out.” He clips the crow to his pocket again and pulls open the greenhouse door. “Come with me. Hena's gone to check if the director will see you.”

“Thank you.” I follow him inside.

The air shifts instantly from damp cold to muggy. Waist-high tables covered with rows of delicate green shoots fill the room. Cucumbers, tomatoes, yellow squash, okra, and young carrots reach up for the clouded glass roof. I unbutton my jacket and turn in place, taking in the sea of green around me. And this is only one of the greenhouses I saw from the top of the hill.

“What do you do here? Why do you have so many plants?”

Howe stows his box on a shelf and brushes the dirt from his shirtsleeves. “We're a self-sustaining outpost. Some of it we eat. But we also run a seed bank here, the oldest one in Himachal Pradesh.” He opens the door to a white-tiled hallway and holds it for me. “This way.”

I step through. “A seed bank?” The woman back in town called it the same thing.

“We grow different plants and harvest their seeds to distribute to farmers.” He closes the door and waves for me to follow him. “You know, so the whole tomato crop doesn't get wiped out by disease. If one kind gets blight or something, we make sure farmers have other varieties to fall back on.”

“Oh,” I say, even though I'm not sure I understand completely. The right side of the hallway looks out on a garden, boxed in by more greenhouses on the far side. A blank wall, broken only by identical white doors and reinforced windows, runs along the left. We walk in silence past a sterile-looking dormitory, another greenhouse, and then a training room full of the same sort of equipment the men used to keep up their strength aboard the
Parastrata
. It strikes me how much this place looks like a crewe ship, and I wonder if it's on purpose to make the boys here feel more at home.