She seems to take my slack-jawed silence as approval, and hands over the flashlight, politely turning to face the doorway so I can pick out some clothes for myself. I spare a thought for the man whose fatigues I find, but I’m most comfortable in khaki, and he was about my size. I find a new pair of pants and a T-shirt and ease into both using one hand, then call out to her so we can gather up some spares and extra layers.
I show her how to tear up a sheet to make bandages—I can’t use my hand for much at all now—and we make up a better dressing for my gash. She works carefully, using a pillowcase to wipe the blood away, then emptying what’s left of the tiny bottle of antiseptic over my palm. We’ve used most of it on scratches and scrapes, and now I’m regretting that. Once she’s finished, she sets another pad gently against the gash, then swathes my hand in bandages, so my fingers poke out the top.
We fill the canteen from one of the water tanks in the laundry, then find big white bags and fill them to bursting with spare clothes and a pile of sheets to make up our bed, carrying one each as we make our way back out to the hallway.
“Do we have enough for dinner tonight?” she asks. “I guess we’ll eat the rations you got out of the pod, then we can make camp. It’s getting dark.”
I follow her gaze and realize she’s right—the daylight coming in through the cracks in the ship’s hull is fading out. I should have been the one to notice that.
She starts toward the doorway dragging her bag of laundry, but I swing the flashlight over to where she changed her clothes. “Want me to grab your dress?”
Her eyes follow the beam of the flashlight toward the pile of dirty green satin. The corner of her mouth lifts in a rueful smile, and then she shakes her head briskly. “Leave it,” she decides, turning her back on what’s left of her old life.
We push and pull our laundry bags through the service chute once more and find a place to camp in the lee of a huge, twisted sheet of metal outside. There’s a stream nearby, and if the wreckage has contaminated the water, the canteen’s filter should take care of it.
We haven’t seen any sign of a living soul, but I dig our fire pit deep anyway, trying in vain to keep my hand clean. It’s still throbbing. Lilac busies herself making an elaborate bed, sorting the clothes into piles, then covering her efforts up with a sheet. After a moment’s consideration, she stuffs a few items into the white laundry bags and makes us pillows.
We don’t have a lot of fuel—a little we carried in, and a little we find nearby—but it’s enough to heat a canteen of water and make ourselves some weak soup, and it helps make the ration bars a little more of a meal.
We talk about the things we want to try to salvage from the ship—medical supplies, food, warmer clothes, even a cooking pot—and study the silhouette of the wreck against the stars. I wonder whether we can climb her to get a better look at the terrain around us.
Lilac falls asleep with her head on my shoulder, and I carefully tug the sheets up over us, trying not to use more than two fingers.
No sign of the whispers. I can’t help but wonder what it means. In coming to the wreck, have we done whatever they were trying to communicate? Or are they still watching, waiting? I don’t understand—or trust—their intentions.
I suppose something could be preventing them from reaching us. Maybe now we’re on our own.
“Significant parts of the ship were intact?”
“You’ve got the recon pictures.”
“I’m asking a question, Major.”
“You’re asking a lot of questions you know the answers to. Is there a purpose to that?”
“Is there a purpose behind your refusal to cooperate?”
“I’m cooperating. Is that water coming anytime soon?”
“The ship. Significant parts of it were intact?”
“Parts weren’t incinerated, but I wouldn’t say they were intact.”
“You conducted salvage without incident?”
“I cut my hand. That was about as exciting as it got.”
TWENTY-FOUR
LILAC
EXPLORING THE SHIP IS A MIND-NUMBING TASK. Even though huge portions of it broke apart during its descent or were crushed on impact, it was originally large enough to hold fifty thousand people, with room to spare. Getting through just a fraction of it will take days. For every room we find with useful supplies there are dozens where everything is smashed, or where a fire swept through and left only shriveled plastene and unidentifiable char behind.
Tarver’s been hiding his hand from me. At first, I assumed he was protecting me from the fact he’s not invincible, for fear I’d fall apart.
But the morning of the second day, I know something’s wrong. His face is white, with spots of red on either cheek, and his eyes take longer to focus than they should. He’s too quiet. He’s moving slowly. He doesn’t even comment now when I turn his own foul language back at him. Just grunts and keeps moving.
We break for lunch deep inside the ship, sitting on an overturned cabinet in what was once an administrative office of some kind. There’s no daylight, and we can see only with the help of the flashlight. He gives me two thirds of the ration bar. I give back the extra and he shakes his head, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his head drop between them.
“Tarver,” I start cautiously. “We should take a rest day, maybe. We’re low on rations, but not so low that we can’t put off finding food here for a little while longer.”
He shakes his head again, not bothering to lift it.
“Like we did on the plains, when I needed a break. We took a half day.”
This time he does lift his head, and his eyes wander before coming to rest on me. “No. We need to keep moving.”
“Tarver.” This time my voice is firmer. I don’t think I can bully him, but I have to try. “You clearly need rest. We should take a break, and I’ll go find some of the grasses you showed me on the plains, and we’ll eat those to stretch our food supplies.”
He doesn’t answer this time, but I can tell by the set of his jaw that he’s determined to keep going. Then the fingers of his right hand tug at the grubby bandage covering his left, and suddenly realization hits me.
It’s not the food stores he’s desperate for. He needs to find the sick bay. He needs medicine.
I look at his hand again. It hangs uselessly off his wrist, fingers puffy and stiff. The color on his cheeks is visible in the half-light, and despite the chill in the air, he’s sweating.
“Go back.” I’m speaking fast, white-hot fear driving me. “Tarver, go back to camp right now. Go to bed.”
This summons the first smile in hours. “Sound like my mother.”
For once, I’m not in the mood for his jokes. “I mean it. Move, soldier.” Though I can’t quite inject the barking tone he employs when trying to jolt me into action, I hope the words will be enough.
He looks at me, hollow-eyed, then tightens his jaw as his gaze drifts off again. “Not going to let you wander around here by yourself. You get hurt, there’s no one to help. It would take me ages to find you, if I did at all.”
I get up and kneel on the floor in front of him, reaching up to turn his face toward mine and forcing him to meet my eyes.
“And I’m not going to let you get sick from an infection because you’re too stupid to take care of yourself. I’ll be careful.”
His mouth twists, for all the world like a child refusing to take his medicine. He knows my chances of making any headway by myself are slim. If he weren’t here I’d have died any one of a thousand deaths already on this godforsaken planet.