S-O-R-A-Y-A H-E-R-T-Z
Columns of words and pictures spring up and crowd the screen. I sigh. This is going to take some while.
I tick through the links one by one. I hate how slow I am. By the time I figure one link is talking on a dead woman long gone, and another on a girl my age who’s known for her skill at racing a huge beast called a horse, I’ve already chewed up precious minutes. But then, far down at the bottom of the page, I spot a word in the tangled mess of the link. Mumbai. Mumbai! I open the link.
A small, grainy image of a woman standing before a seated crowd spools across the screen. A lavender scarf drapes neatly over her head and around the shoulders of her tailored shirt. A small, dark triangle of hair shows where her scarf pulls back from her brow. I raise my hand unconsciously and touch the ragged tufts of my own hair.
Is it her? Letters float beneath the woman as she speaks.
Dr. Soraya Hertz. My heart leaps. That D-R, that’s what Miyole says I should look for, what groundways folk use to show a person’s a so doctor.
There’s more. The first word is easy. Mumbai. But the next? Un–Univer—Univer-sit—y. University. Mumbai University. I take a deep breath and push on. At, that’s an easy one, but I trip over the next. Kal . . . Kalina. Kalina, it’s no word I know. My heart knocks in my chest. A place, maybe?
“Mumbai University at Kalina,” I whisper aloud. “Dep . . . Depart . . . men—”
“Hey, kid.”
I spin around. Someone thickset—a man, I think at first—stands behind me, thumb hooked under the strap of a traveling bag. Bristly red hair sticks out beneath his short-brimmed hat.
Parastrata. Run.
No. His skin is chapped with windburn. He’s groundways. And then I look again. It’s not a man, but a woman hidden beneath the rough traveling clothes. I’m leaping at shadows. I grip the back of the chair.
“What?” I say.
“You can’t be here ’less you’ve bought something.” She points to the line of people waiting near the commissary kitchens. “That’s the rules, don’t you know?”
“Oh.” I glance at the frozen image of Soraya Hertz. I still have twenty minutes left on the port. “Sorry, so. Thank you. I’ll be straight back.” I stand, pocket my pay plastic, and hurry to the line. I pick out a cup of something that ends up being sweet, spiced tea, too hot to drink just yet, and slide my plastic through a reader, mimicking the people in front of me. But when I get back to my carrel, the red-haired woman has planted herself in my chair. She sits with one leg sprawled out in the aisle, tapping her thumbs against the keyboard.
“Pardon, so missus?” I say quiet.
She doesn’t look up.
“So missus?” I touch her shoulder.
She whirls on me. “What?”
“Can I have my seat back?”
“What, this?” She pulls an innocent face.
The balanced feeling hisses out of me, like air from a pneumatic lift. My first thought is to slink away, but I try to think what Perpétue would do.
“Right so,” I say. “I was looking at something. I claimed that port.”
“Did you now?” She makes a show of looking the terminal up and down. “Now how do you figure that?”
“You’re using the time I paid for.” Precious money what could go to cooking oil or replacement parts for Perpétue’s ship, burning away under this woman’s fingers, and me childish fool enough to fall for her petty trick.
“You accusing me of stealing?”
She’s used to getting away with this, I realize. I wet my lips. “Right so I am, missus.”
Anger ripples over her face, but then she swallows it and smirks. She turns back to the screen. “I guess we’ll see what you can do about it, then.”
I wish to the Mercies I had a knife like Perpétue’s. Then no one would rip me off or step on me or push me aside as though I were windblown trash. No one would grab my face or drag my body where I’ve no want to go. My insides wouldn’t go to jelly when someone yelled at me. I press my nails into the teacup’s soft cardboard sides. Not again. Never again. I dash the cup forward. Its steaming contents splash over the back of the woman’s neck. She screams. The galley goes silent around us.
“Bitch!” she shouts. “I’ll have your guts, you little psychopath!”
I stand still as carved wood. The empty cup hangs from my hand, dripping steaming liquid over my fingers. What have I . . . And then I bolt. Away, dodging tables and pillars, stumbling over chairs, down the corridor to the lifts. It’s only when the door is sliding closed and I’m jamming my finger against the button for tier thirteen that I realize no one has come after me.
I race back to Perpétue’s ship, head down, ignoring the crewmen calling at me. I activate the ship’s cargo doors and crawl up into her dark berth. What have I done? I press my palms over my eyes and sink down against the wall. The woman’s scream still echoes in my head. She wasn’t my father or Jerej or even Modrie Reller. She was a stranger, happy to cheat me the same as that rice broker tried to cheat Perpétue. Only Perpétue never tried to burn his skin off, so far as I knew. Maybe I was wrong to think some bud of my soul was left, that it might be growing back. Else, how could I do something like that?
“Ava?” Perpétue squints into the dark. “I’ve been looking everywhere, fi.”
I can’t stop the awful, animal sound that falls out of my mouth. I turn away from her.
“What’s wrong?” She hurries to kneel by me. “Did someone hurt you?”
“No,” I say, choking on a sob that won’t come. If only that were all it was.
“Tell me, fi, tell me.” She pulls me close and rubs my arms, as if it’s cold I’m suffering from.
I shake my head. “No. You’ll hate me.” I can’t let her see what kind of girl I really am.
“Did you steal something?”
“No.” I wipe the wet blur away from my eyes. “I think I found my modrie. She’s at a place called Mumbai University at Kalina. There was more. I almost had it, but this woman tried to chase me off, and I threw hot tea and burned her.”
Perpétue stares into my face as if she’s waiting to hear more. She blinks. “Is that all?”
I nod, miserable. Thank the Mercies I didn’t have a knife.
Perpétue laughs, then quickly stifles it. “Guess we know you’re no angel, then.”
“It was bad, Perpétue. What with . . .” I stumble. “The way . . . If I know what it is to hurt, doesn’t that mean I should know better than to bring that back around on someone else?”
“No.”
“No?”
“All this suffering.” Perpétue looks deep and unblinking at me. “It doesn’t make us saints, fi. It only makes us human. You understand?”
I shake my head. I don’t know if I believe her. “You would never have done that.”