These Broken Stars

FIFTEEN

TARVER

SHE STAYS CRUMPLED ON THE BLANKET, and I deliberately putter around, giving her a little time to pull herself together. If I’ve learned anything about Lilac LaRoux over the past few days, it’s that she doesn’t like to fall apart in front of people, even when it’s justified. I find the razor in my grab bag and shave, clawing a couple of steps back toward civilization—a comfort to her, maybe. The rough rasp of the blade on my skin keeps me focused, and the silence draws out.

There’s some good news among the bad. The plains make for easier walking, the ground even and flat. I’m confident we’ve left our feline friends behind in the forest. I’ve found burrows that tell me something will end up in my snares for sure, and the armful of unfamiliar plants and grasses that I foraged is bound to yield up something edible. I’d hoped that giving Lilac a break from the ration bars might cheer her up.

But now there’s a horrible weight in the pit of my stomach that won’t shift. I saw how she was shaking, sweating, how dilated her pupils were. Hallucinations can be a sign of a number of things, but I can’t help thinking that in Lilac’s case, it’s simply all too much. I just need her to hold on long enough to make it across the mountains to the Icarus.

“Give me an hour or so, and I might be able to get some variety into your diet, Miss LaRoux,” I say briskly, running out of things to pretend to fiddle with and sinking down beside her. “When they terraform, a lot of the flora that goes in is edible, more or less. Once you’re on a steady diet of ration bars, your definition of ‘edible’ changes pretty radically, I’d say.”

Her gaze flicks up to me, still blank, glazed. I know that our ongoing battle isn’t what she needs right now, and in the face of such misery, I try the only thing left that I can think of. I offer her a small smile—and though she doesn’t quite smile back, she looks at me, absorbing the human contact.

“I’ll test them,” I continue, “and if any of them are edible, we can gather up some extras and have a proper meal tonight. These aren’t the standard plants I usually see come out of terraforming, but I can’t see why the principle wouldn’t be the same. There’s enough grass here for a tiny fire, so we can heat up the canteen for some soup, at any rate.”

She nods, which is a small improvement. My efforts are beginning to calm me down, as well. I set to work, breaking open the first stalk of grass—a stout, woody thing at the base, green and juicy at the tip, about the same thickness as one of her fingers. I don’t want to highlight to her how strange it is that I don’t recognize these plants—terraforming flora and fauna are completely standard. The corporations don’t mess with a formula that works…but the plants here are only tangentially related to the ones I’m used to. As the sap on the broken grass stalk begins to appear in tiny beads, I rub it across the sensitive skin on the inside of my forearm.

“What are you doing?” She’s still subdued, but at least she’s looking at something other than the ground in front of her.

“Checking for an allergic reaction. If it doesn’t make me red or itchy, then it makes it through to round two, the taste test.”

She nods, watching my forearm for a moment, then looks away.

I try again. “There’s a dip in the land to the east, looks like a river. We’ll cross over and follow it across the plains so we’ve got plenty of water. We can even wash, if you like, make ourselves presentable for when the cavalry arrive.”

She bows her head and takes a deep breath. “I expect you to check it thoroughly for me, Major. Knowing my luck, there’ll be space crocodiles hiding in it.”

Pay dirt, it’s a joke. I’m grinning like an idiot, more than her attempt at humor deserves. She doesn’t seem to notice. “Space crocodiles are no problem,” I say. “You just tickle them under the chin and they roll over. I was posted to New Florence last year, and I met a guy who kept one as a pet, shipped it home from his posting in his luggage. He punched airholes in his bag, and the croc made it just fine.”

She treats me to a faint smile. Now we’re getting somewhere. If I can find a way to sustain it a little longer, we can leave the voices behind. She can get some rest, some sleep, and we’ll keep walking. That’s what matters. Getting home.

There’s a sudden stab of longing at the thought of home—it’s why I need to try not to think about my family. I’ve always known something might happen to me in the field, but I never saw it happening like this, with time to remember my mother’s face when they came to tell us about Alec.

“Smuggling crocodiles. What adventures you’ve had, Major,” she murmurs, sounding oddly wistful. The smile’s fading out.

“Well, I’ve seen plenty of places in the last couple of years, but not many as beautiful as the plain out there.” I sort through my piles of plants. “Look at these.” I hold up a handful of small, delicate flowers with purple petals that stand out unevenly against a brilliant yellow center. Their underside is the same gray-green as the grass of the plains, so that when they close as the sun goes down, they can hide. “Just like us, a little rumpled, but still doing all right, yes?”

She breathes out slowly as she reaches for them. “It’s hard to believe these things are just growing here.” She picks one flower out of my hand, her fingertips brushing mine as she does. The one she’s chosen is warped, two of the petals growing together, asymmetrical. I realize she’s probably never seen the imperfect beauty of the natural world.

“I’ve been to cultivated gardens before,” she continues, “but to see such precious things here, with nobody to care for them, simply growing. It’s hard to fathom.”

“My mother lets nature just come right up to our cottage. She plants flowers, but they grow among whatever else shows up.” I have no idea why I’m telling her this, but she’s listening, intent on my words in a way she never has been before. “There’s a huge field of poppies by the house, a sea of red. Flowers grow all over the house on vines. It inspires her.”

“It would inspire anyone,” Lilac agrees with a soft sigh, finally distracted. Her face has softened, and for the first time in days—the first time since we met—she’s unguarded. I want to bring her smile back. When she smiles, she looks like somebody I could know. We both need this.

I reach for my grab bag, sifting through the cable, the ration bars, past the first-aid kit and the solar-powered flashlight, and the toughened leather of my notebook full of half-scribbled poems. I’m looking for the small, metal case I know will be at the bottom. It’s cold when my fingers close around it, about half the size of my palm, almost as thin as the plastic sheet inside it.

“Does your mother spend much time in her garden?” she asks, and I know she wants to continue the distraction—this cease-fire between us—as much as I do.

“Every day.” I pull out the case. “My mother’s a poet, my father’s a history teacher. I grew up surrounded by sonnets, and spent most of my time climbing trees and falling into rivers. Turned out to be pretty good practice for joining the military.”

“Sounds lovely,” she murmurs. “Is your mother published? I’m not sure I remember reading anything by a Merendsen, but I might have done.”

“That’s my father’s name,” I say, opening the metal case and pulling out the picture. Now I have to speak a little more slowly, spacing out my words to keep my tone even, because my throat wants to close looking down at it. A wave of homesickness rises up inside me like a physical force. “Her name’s Emily Davis.”

I look down at the picture in my hand. It’s home, the image slightly dog-eared after two years in various grab bags and holdalls. There’s the house, white walls covered in the blue flowers she loves, red poppies stretching away in the background. There’s my mother, small and fair, hair falling out of its bun as usual, glasses—one of her many eccentricities—perched on her nose. There’s my father beside her in a waistcoat as always. There’s Alec, gangly, and me on his shoulders, holding on to his hair. If you don’t know better, it probably looks like he’s smiling, not grimacing. I ache, looking down at them.

“You’re not serious.” Her smile is in her voice, and when I look up, her gaze is waiting for me. When she sees my expression, her amusement falters. “Emily Davis?” she’s saying, as though perhaps I got it wrong.

“If I’d known you cared, I’d have said so right away.” Except I wouldn’t have. I reach for the next plant to break open a broad leaf and check it against my arm. I know my mother’s name impresses, but I refuse to use her as a password. It was one of the reasons I agreed to that stupid public relations trip—they said they’d keep her name out of it. I don’t want to be acceptable because of who my parents are, or have her garden invaded by paparazzi. I guard the secret of our connection as fiercely as I guard my own writing. Nobody who looks at me sees poetry there. But somehow this moment with Lilac is different.

I look down at my arm. The third plant is stinging a little, and I carefully pour water from the canteen over the spot, watching as the skin reddens—not too much, though, not too bad.

Lilac’s still staring down at the picture of my family. “I love your mother’s poetry,” she whispers, almost reverent. “I had a book of her poems when I was a little girl, a real book. There was one about a lilac bush, and you know how you love things with your name in them when you’re a child. But I got older, and the words…they’re so beautiful and sad. She weeps, perfumed and pale, at summer’s end.” She looks up at me, eyes shining. “Is there really a lilac bush?”

“Hell yes, there is.” I ignore the stinging on my arm. It’s already fading. “I nearly killed it when I fell off the roof and landed in the middle of it, but it was tougher than it looked. Kind of like another Lilac I know.”

The words come out before I can stop them, the compliment bypassing my better judgment entirely. But she smiles instead of brushing it off as condescension. It feels like the first hint of warmth all day, and suddenly I’m talking again. I want to keep her smiling.

“People come to our house to see things from the poems. Half the time the fence is broken and the shingles are falling off the roof, but my father puts the visitors to work helping him keep the cottage in one piece until my mother’s done working for the day. Then she comes downstairs to see them.”

She’s coming to life as I watch, laughing in her delight. “Oh, Tarver.”

It still feels strange to hear her say my first name. Not strange—thrilling. It’s as though I’m in an actual conversation for the first time in days.

She’s shaking her head. “I can’t believe it. Wait, no! The one about the tin soldier boy. Tell me that’s not you, I’ll die. I learned to recite it!”

I shake my head, leaning forward a little to look down at the photo she holds. “That was Alec.” And perhaps because I’m looking at the photo, I can smile when I say his name. I point to him. “That’s him there in the picture, with me on his shoulders.”

“He’s in the military too?” She leans down to get a good look at his face.

“He was,” I say, quieter. “He was killed in action.”

She looks up at me, eyes wide. “I’m so sorry.”

In this moment I know that this is what I wanted. This is what I wanted that night in the salon, and it’s what I’ve wanted every day since then.

She’s not looking at me and seeing a guy brought up on the wrong type of planet. She’s not seeing a soldier, or a war hero, or an uncultured lout who doesn’t understand how hard this is for her, or an idiot who knows nothing about the right kind of anything.

She just sees me.

“The two of you were becoming closer.”

“And?”

“You confirm it?”

“You made a statement, I thought you already knew it was true.”

“Can you elaborate on how that came about?”

“I thought the purpose of this debrief was to discuss my impressions of the planet.”

“The purpose of the debriefing is for you to answer whatever questions we choose to ask you, Major. We’re asking about Miss LaRoux.”

“What was the question again?”

“Never mind. We can come back to it.”

“I’ll look forward to that.”