Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (22 page)

For the last several days, Aria had hiked the
vast empty range, meeting up with Hank to trade goods and using his tips to
find and gather kwai fruits and katellis and sumnas on her own. And looking,
always looking, for any sign of Ethan.

The fruits were so abundant in the mountains, and
she so enjoyed gathering them, that she found herself with overflowing baskets
of them on the table and counters. She had dropped some off at Kaia’s, at Luis’s,
at Silas’s and Yi Zhe’s, and many of the other passengers of Ship 12-22 who
were still in Coriol, but she still had more than she and the children could
eat. And the fear that she might never find Ethan was growing, so she fought to
find things to keep her busy.

She found herself reaching out more, trying to
keep the grief at bay by bringing help or hope to someone. Today, she had come
to the industrial district to find Daniel Rigo’s family and share with them the
delicious fruits she’d gathered.

But now she was lost in the street and growing
anxious. The press of people on the street in the baking late afternoon sun
made Aria feel claustrophobic. She had brought the stroller, and both Polara
and Rigel rode contentedly, unaware of her growing discomfort.

She couldn’t wander like this any longer. The
crush of weary workers coming home from work swirled around her like eddies in
a stream as she stopped and turned toward the crowd. She stopped several
people, but though they were polite, no one knew the Rigos. Just as she was
about to give up, she spotted a woman whose hair and face were smudged with the
fine dust of the Yynium refinery and whose eyes looked kind.

“Excuse me, my name is Aria Bryant. Do you know
where I might find the Rigo family?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. Aria felt a surge of
hope. This was not the blank stare she’d received from everyone else. “What do
you want with them?”

“I just—” How to explain? “I met their son Daniel
the other day and I wanted to give them a gift.” She reached under the stroller
and produced one of the juicy purple katelli fruits. It was heavy and full in
her hands, and the vibrancy of its color was a sharp contrast to the drab and
dusty crowd flowing around them.

The woman half-reached for the fruit, then
stopped herself. She nodded. “They live in my building. That’ll be good for
those little ‘uns.” She gestured. “I’m Joyce. C’mon with me and I’ll show you
where they live.”

They wound through the streets of the industrial
district, and the crowd began to thin out. Aria felt the presence of the huge
cement buildings on either side of the street like looming giants, gobbling the
people a handful at a time until there were only a few dozen left trudging
home. The buildings effectively blocked out the horizon and most of the sky,
except for a thin long strip of blue running along like a ribbon above them.

“These sure are big buildings,” Aria said.

“Not big enough,” Joyce said. “Too many people to
fit in them all.”

“Didn’t you get cottages when you came?” Aria
asked.

Joyce scoffed. “We got cottages,” she said
bitterly, “way out on the other side of the city. It took me an hour each way
to get to the mill.” Joyce shook her head. “I couldn’t leave my kids all the
way out there for that long. So, we moved in with my brother’s family in the G
building. That was six years ago. We’re still there.”

Aria couldn’t think what to say. It surprised her
that people had moved here because they wanted to, that it wasn’t directly the
Saras Company making them live here.

“Couldn’t you use the sol train?” she asked. “To
make the trip to the mill quicker?”

“Fare or food?” Joyce asked, a hard tone in her
voice. “Can’t have both.” She looked up at the towering buildings beside them. “Two
families in one apartment gets a little tight.” Joyce’s eyes were distant. “Even
after my husband died, we still don’t have enough room.”

Aria’s stomach twisted.
After my husband died.
Would she be saying that someday? Thoughts of Ethan rushed to her, though
she fought them back, as she’d been doing all week.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” she managed. “What
happened?” As soon as she said it she was sorry, but there was no taking it
back.

Joyce didn’t seem to take offense. “Dustlung,” she
said simply. “Although the doctors wouldn’t ever admit it. Said he brought a
virus with him from Earth. Said the conditions here brought it out of latency.
But that’s a lie. Tamir was never sick a day in his life on Earth. Worked in
the mill for three years and started coughing, day and night. Couldn’t stop. I know
it was the dust. By the end, he was blue nearly all the time. Couldn’t get
enough air.”

“I’m sorry,” Aria said again.

“Not your fault,” Joyce said. “Probably what we
can all look forward to.”

For the first time, Aria noticed the dry coughs
of the people around her. Coming and going, men and women, their occasional
explosive breaths punctuated the crowd. And, she noticed, some of them had
purple marks on their necks or cheeks.

“What are those marks?” Aria asked Joyce in a low
voice.

“Minean fever,” Joyce replied, shaking her head
sadly.

Aria glanced nervously down at the children. Why
had she brought them here? Were these things contagious?

They made a turn into one of the gray doorways. “This
is it,” said her guide, “you’ll find them up on the sixteenth floor. Apartment
B. Just above mine.” She turned toward a wide electronic bulletin board just
inside the door, where people were crowded, reading a scrolling screen. “Guess
I’d better see if I have a job tomorrow.”

Aria forgot her fears for a moment. “Is there
trouble at the mill?”

Joyce reached to the wall, where a thick pad of
the little Taim plants was growing, and swiped her hand through it, smearing
them in a sweeping crescent shape.

“These’ve got into the mill,” she said
disgustedly, wiping her hand on her overalls. “Gummin’ up the machinery and
spreading like bad news.” She gestured at the board, “Management has been
sending cleaning crews to the worst spots. But they grow like crazy. Seems like
the more people working at a station, the more of these grow.”

Aria remembered how she had speculated that the
Taim liked to be where people were. A companion plant. Only philodendrons never
caused this much trouble.

Joyce was still talking. “You never know if your
station is down or not. Gotta check morning and night. No use going out there
to stand around. And Saras don’t pay if your station is down.”

Aria nodded as the woman moved into the crowd. “Good
luck, Joyce,” she said. Turning away, she remembered the abundance of fruit in
the stroller. “Joyce!” she called.

The woman turned back, deep lines around her
eyes. Aria bent and gathered four of the slippery fruits from the basket and
piled them in the arms of her guide.

Joyce’s eyes welled with sudden tears, but she
blinked them back. “Thank you,” she said simply.

“I’ll bring you more next time I gather them,”
Aria promised. “Thank you for helping me.”

It was a long elevator ride up to the sixteenth
floor. A suspicious silence hung over the elevator, and the tenants of the
building kept shooting uneasy glances toward the woman and the stroller. Yynium
dust hung in the air, and the ever-present coughs shook the workers as they
rode.

When she finally got out, Aria breathed a sigh of
relief. Apartment B was easy to find, and two little girls answered her knock.

“Is your mother home?” Aria asked. “Or your
brother Daniel?”

The children ushered their visitors into a stark,
drab room with one worn sofa against the far wall and a scattering of bedding
piled in a corner. The only bright thing was the detailed drawings covering one
wall. They were designs for beautiful hovercars, powerful machinery, and ships
with smooth, arcing lines. Daniel’s name was written neatly in the corner of
each one. Aria had seen enough of Kaia’s drawings to know what skilled designs
looked like, and she was impressed. She’d have to introduce Daniel to Kaia
someday.

The thick, pasty smell of Saras mush, made from
the cheap ground grain known as brakkel, something akin to Earth’s oats, filled
the apartment. One of the little girls left to get Daniel, and the other one
gravitated to Polara, who was playing with the doll Hannah, the doll maker from
Ship 12-22, had given her.

“I’m Merelda,” the little girl said. “That’s my
sister Nallie. What’s your name?”

“Polara.”

“I like your doll.”

“Thank you. I like your—” Polara looked around
frantically. Aria could see that she was taking in, for the first time, the
barren walls, the dirty carpeting, and the grimy windows, which let in a sickly
gray light. Polara searched for something to say. “Eyes!” she finished
enthusiastically.

The little girl smiled. She did have remarkable
eyes. They were blue-gray, nearly violet.

Daniel flashed his broad smile as he came into
the room, and his mother rushed past him and unabashedly threw her arms around
Aria, murmuring in the same unfamiliar language that Daniel had used when she’d
given him the rangkors that day.

“Dama, dama, dama.” Though Aria wished Ethan was
there to tell her what the language was, there was no mistaking the meaning of
the soft words.

“You’re welcome,” Aria said.

“This is my mother, Marise,” Daniel said
affectionately.

As the woman released her, Aria bent and
retrieved the basket of katelli.

“I gathered these,” she said, holding them out, “and
I thought you’d like some.”

Daniel translated for his mother, who suddenly
looked scared. She smiled politely, but shook her head.

Aria was surprised. The children looked at the
fruit longingly. They obviously needed it.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

Daniel’s mother spoke in her native language
again, and Daniel translated for her.

“She says the wild fruits can make people sick.”

“Ahh.” Aria nodded. The Health and Human Services
campaign was still propagating that myth. Their brightly-illustrated posters
lined the clinics and showed up on bulletin screens across Coriol, but the
premise was so incorrect that Aria had long ago dismissed them. Besides, she
suspected the campaign had more to do with the Market District’s desire to keep
its monopoly on fruit than it did with actual medical facts.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Aria assured them, “these are
perfectly safe.” She brought one to her mouth and took a bite.

Daniel’s mother waved her arms. “No, no, no, no!”
she repeated, rushing to Aria and snatching the fruit. She disappeared into the
kitchen and Aria heard the waste disposer activate as she swallowed the bite.

Daniel was apologizing as his mother came back
into the room, speaking rapidly. He fought to translate quickly enough.

“She says that the sickness is spreading and we
can’t take chances and your children are beautiful and they need you and you
shouldn’t be—” he hesitated and offered his mother another word in their
language, but she shook her head.

“Tubba,” Marise said obstinately.

Daniel sighed, an apology in his eyes. “That you
shouldn’t be stupid.”

Aria fought a smile. She admired Marise’s
boldness. But she also longed to see the pale, thin children bite into those
juicy fruits. They needed the nutrition. Saras mush was nothing to feed growing
children on for long.

“I am a plant scientist,” she said. “I know they’re
safe.”

Marise shook her head. She started to speak, but
waved an impatient hand and reached for Aria, pulling her toward the door.

“She wants you to come with her,” Daniel said
helpfully.

“I gathered,” Aria said, resisting. “But my
children—”

Marise followed her gaze to the stroller and
spoke quickly to Daniel. “I’ll watch them,” he said. “She says don’t bring them
with you.”

Aria hesitated, but her curiosity was piqued, and
Polara and Merelda were chattering happily about the doll, so she figured it
would be all right to leave them for a moment.

Marise led her down the hall, past apartments 35,
36, 37, and 38. When they arrived at apartment 39, Marise entered without
knocking.

A woman, lying on the sofa, turned as they
entered. Aria bit her cheek to keep from gasping. Huge purple bruises covered
the woman’s face, neck, and arms. They were iridescent, ranging from pale
lavender to deep violet, fading at the edges to a sickly blue-green. The woman
shifted, her face a mask of pain. Fever burned in her eyes. She groaned a
greeting to Marise in the Rigo’s language, and Marise gestured to her, speaking
rapidly. The woman spoke, then looked at Aria, making a gesture of eating and
then shaking her head emphatically.

Was it possible that this came from eating the
fruits? The thought of the blighted crops at the farm came back to Aria. Could
the two be related? Aria felt dizzy. Her shock must have shown on her face,
despite her best efforts, because Marise waved to her friend and ushered Aria
back to her own apartment.