Salvage (27 page)

The woman holds up her handheld, a shiny, berry-red machine the size of her palm. “Your crow,” she repeats, as if I'm slow. She looks me over. “And see if you can't pull together some more professional clothes. You look like you stumbled off a waste freighter.”

“Right so.” I take the card.

“Welcome to the workforce, Miss Parastrata.”

“Thank you.” I clutch my ID tag and the employment card to my chest as I hurry past the line of people waiting for jobs and out into the afternoon sun.

I spot Rushil sitting in the shade of a tree, thumbing through his handheld—I mean crow—and I can't help but smile. Because the tag worked. Because I'm going to pay him back. Because finally, finally, something is going right.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

A
chai wallah turns out to be a type of servant who runs tea to everyone too important to leave his or her post, some like the man with the tray I saw on the train when Miyole and I first got here. I'm not the only one at Powell-Gupta, which has an entire black-glass tower to itself on the outskirts of south Mumbai. Each floor gets its own chai wallah, dressed in white pants, an acid-green shirt, and a saffron neckerchief, the company's banner colors. At least the woman at the employment office ended up being wrong about needing to buy new clothes. I tuck my data pendant beneath the scarf and leave my street clothes in the narrow hall where we workers can store our things during the day.

“You make the tea, you set up the cart, you bring the tea.” Ajit, the senior chai wallah, leads me though the kitchens in the basement. He can't be too many turns older than me, but all his teeth have gone brown. “You see if they want anything else, and if they do, you get it for them quick as you can.”

Dayo, an older woman with dark skin and a lilting touch to her words, looks up from her cart. “What Ajit means is, you do whatever anyone says and you don't foul up.”

Ajit glares at her. “Do you want to do the training?”

“I'm only telling her how it is.” Dayo raises her hands in mock surrender.

“How about you get up to fourteen and do your job instead of trying to do mine?” Ajit says.

Dayo shakes her head and continues setting out the thick glass cups on her cart.

Ajit gives me a cart of my own, complete with a silvery urn of tea, cups, a warming compartment full of damp towels so the people I serve can clean their hands, and a data pad where I can take down any requests.

“I'm giving you twenty-seven,” Ajit calls over his shoulder as I trundle after him to the service lifts. “That's an easy start. When you're done we'll check your times and see if you're ready for something more challenging.”

“You're timing me?” I pause midstep. The cart squeaks a meek protest.

“Of course.” Ajit turns. “Pay scale's based on your efficiency rating. Didn't I say that?”

I stare at him warily. “No.”

Ajit shrugs. “Chop chop, then. Clock's running.”

My cart and I ride the service lift up to the twenty-seventh level. The tiny block of numbers at the bottom of my data pad climb higher and higher with the seconds. How long is too long? I hate leaving Miyole alone, even though she's some used to it. This city feels different from the Gyre, as if it might eat her up when I'm not looking. But we need money. We can't keep living off Rushil. I can't afford to be slow.

The lift doors open on a glare of light and a waft of cool air. A wide room with an expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows spreads out in front of me, crammed with a maze of desks and man-high frosted-glass partitions. A man or woman sits at each post, poised above a data entry screen, fingers flying, or talking into the onscreen feed receiver bolted upright at each station.

“Finally.” One of the women spins around in her chair and eyes my cart. She waves me closer. “Miss! Miss?”

I wheel my cart over to her. “Tea, missus?”

“Of course I want tea. Why do you think you're here?” She narrows her perfectly painted eyes.

“Right so, missus.” I fill a cup from the urn and hold it out to her.

She stares at me as if I'm offering a handful of goat-fouled hay. “Aren't you forgetting something?”

I cut my eyes sideways to the cart.

“The towel.” She huffs. “Don't they teach you people basic etiquette?”

“Oh.” I put the cup down on her desk and slide open the lid of my cart's warming compartment to fish out a moist, neatly folded linen square. “Right so.”

She wipes her long fingers delicately and tosses the towel back at me. I catch it against my chest.

“Will there be anything else, missus?”

“Now I'll have my tea,” she says.

“Right so—I mean, of course, missus.” I gesture to the cup I've already poured for her, waiting on her desk.

“No.” Her voice is sharp. “That one's gone cold. I'll take a new cup.”

I pick up the cup I've just poured. There's no place to stow it except on the top of the cart, so I cram it beside the clean glasses, slopping sticky milk tea down in the process. My stomach knots up and my hands shake with the strange mix of fear and anger. I pour a fresh cup and try again. “Will there be anything else, missus?”

“No.” She flicks her hand at me, and for a moment I see Modrie Reller. All she needs is a fan. “That's all for now.”

I push the cart around the room, stopping at each post. Not all of them are so awful, but they all want something.

“Take these cups downstairs, would you?”

“Could you see about getting me a mango lassi from that
tapri
around the corner?”

“You're going by accounting on your way down, right? Would you drop this scanner back with Dipak and tell him thanks for me?”

“Do you have any caffeine pills on you?'

“And what about some pakoras if you can round them up?”

I try to scratch out everyone's orders as best I can on the data pad, but by the time I round the last desk, my cart is littered with dirty cups, wrappers, a used finger bandage, and the uneaten edges of some fried, crusty bread, all swimming in a shallow layer of tepid tea.

“You know, you shouldn't have started with Nandita,” the last man I serve says as I fill his cup. “She's only been here seven months. You should start with the senior employees first.”

“I'll try to remember, so,” I say politely, though by this time I feel close to screaming.

I truck the cart back to the lift and ride down to the kitchens, where Ajit is waiting for me.

“There you are.” He's in the middle of inspecting two newly returned carts. “Try to pick it up a little next time. Your rating's not too bad for the first day, but still. Try to pick it up.”

Then he sees my cart. “What's this?”

“I . . .”

He snatches up a dirty glass, dripping with tea. “Why didn't you stow this in the used glassware bin?” He picks up the crusty bread between two fingers. “And why didn't you use the compost container?”

“I . . . I didn't . . .” I feel myself shrinking again, all the strength the Gyre gave me gone. I'm back with my crewe, bowing my head and scraping and terrified. I can't bring myself to look Ajit in the face. “I didn't know they were there.”

Ajit laughs. “You're kidding, right?” He presses a seam in the cart's side. It swings open to reveal a sliding compartment perfect for dirty glasses. He pushes a button on the cart's handle, and a compost chute slides out from the back of the cart. “Now you know.”

I wish the floor were water so I could sink down into it.

He turns to my data pad. “At least you took some orders while you were up there.” He squints at the pad, and then holds it out for me. “What does that say? M-A-G-O-L-A-S-I. Magolasi?”

“Mango lassi?”

“Not exactly the top of your class, were you?”

I stalk away. My eyes blur as I burst through the kitchen doors, into the hallway where I've stowed my things among the other chai wallahs' crows and lunch bins. I sit down on the narrow metal bench bolted to the wall and drop my face into my hands.

A few moments pass, and then the door squeaks. Someone crosses the floor and sits next to me. “You okay, love?”

I look up. Doya smiles back at me.

“I mucked it all up,” I say.

“Don't worry.” Doya pats my back. “It's only your first day. No one's first day is perfect.”

“I served everything all out of order, and one of the upstairs women yelled at me, and I used the cart wrong, and Ajit couldn't even read my writing.” My voice breaks. For some reason that hurts worst, that my hard-won writing isn't good enough.

“I'll tell you something.” Doya leans back against the wall. “You know why they have us?”

“No,” I say into my hands.

“All those people upstairs, the ones you fetch things for, they aren't allowed to leave their desks for more than a few minutes. They've got efficiency ratings to keep up with, too. Their bosses have us around so they can't leave off working and run down the street for a nice beer or some tea. You understand?”

I nod.

“So every time one of them screams at me, I think,
You're stuck here with yourself all day, but in a minute or so, I can walk on
.”

I nod again. “Right so.”

We sit in silence for a moment.

“Where are you from?” Doya asks.

I hesitate. “Come how?”

“That funny way of talking you have,” Doya says. “I know I've heard it someplace before, but I can't place it.”

“I was born on a crewe ship.” The words are out before I can think on them too much.

“Ah.” Doya's eyes light up. “The ones that run supplies out to the colonies and outposts?”

“So,” I agree.

“I knew it.” She frowns. “But you don't look like most of the crewe folk I've seen. And I've only ever seen the boys.”

“The boys?” I repeat.

She nods. “My daughter, she's an instructor at a state boarding school. They've got a whole wing of boys from crewe ships who've been dumped off on Bhutto station or left behind down here. Strange things. Pale.” She looks me over. “You sure you're one of them?”

“Right so,” I say. “But . . . they got left behind?”

“Mmm hmm. My daughter says their old men marry up all the girls, and there isn't anyone left for the boys, especially the ones from less powerful families. So they dump them off here. Awful.” She looks at me. “No offense.”

I shake my head. Some boys I knew died on their first journeys groundways, but Earth and its outposts could be dangerous places, like Modrie Reller and my father always said. And once Soli told me about a boy who had been banished from the
Æther
after some bad matter came over him and made him stab his friend. But nothing like that ever happened on the
Parastrata
. Surely that was never something we did. Was it?

A sick feeling creeps over me. “Do any of them . . .” I swallow. “None of them have red hair, do they?”

“Oh, sure.” Doya shrugs. “All colors. Red, brown, white, yellow, black.”

My head reels. I lean back against the wall. For a heartbeat, I'm back aboard the
Parastrata
, ten turns old and watching Llell's mother sink to her knees before Modrie Reller.
My Niecein. Couldn't they bring back his body?
That night I had laid awake, thinking of Niecein's soul gone to dust and thanking the Mercies the men were the ones to brave the Earth instead of me. But now . . . Have all those dead boys been here the whole time?

And there was something else Doya said, something prickling at the back of my mind.
Red, brown, white, yellow, black
.

Black. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.

I sit up straight. “Are any of them my age?”

She frowns and leans back as if she can see me better from farther away. “Maybe,” she says uncertainly. “They're mostly younger. Twelve to fifteen, maybe?”

“But
mostly
, right so? You said
mostly
.”

Doya tilts her head. “I guess. I mean, I only visit once a year for Holi.”

“So there could be some older?” My skin is electric.

Doya frowns. “I've never seen any, but—”

“But maybe since you visited last, they found more boys.”

Doya purses her lips, and then nods. “My daughter says they're always finding new boys, so I guess it's possible. Maybe.”

“Where is this place?” I lean forward. “The one where your daughter works.”

“It's up in Khajjiar, in Himachal Pradesh.”

Khajjiar, Himachal Pradesh. Khajjiar, Himachal Pradesh
. I try to write it in my memory. “Is that far?”

“Why?” Doya raises an eyebrow. “You're not thinking of going there, are you?”

“No,” I say quickly. As kind as Doya is, I'm not spilling all my sadness and shame for her. “I mean . . . I don't . . . I was just wondering. I thought maybe one day I might. To see if I knew any of them.”

“Ah.” Doya shrugs. “It takes most of a day on the bullet train. Not too bad if you're going to stay awhile, I guess.”

“Thank you, Doya.” I squeeze her hand and stand.

“You ready to go back to work?” she asks.

I'm not. I want to run out of here right now and climb aboard the bullet train, but I can't. I have to stay here, be faster, do better. Ajit and the upstairs folk can shout at me all they want, because as soon as I'm paid up with Rushil and see that Miyole has what she needs, I'm taking that train to Khajjiar to see if Luck is one of the boys who was left behind.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE