Tam ducked through the threshold, blinking as daylight changed to fluorescent. Through the carefully netted stacks of cargo containers, he saw Teal drop into one of the passenger chairs and sit there as rigid as a statue.
His feet made no sound on the dirigible’s skidproof flooring as he walked up to the small cluster of chairs. Teal did not look up when Tam sat beside her. “I’m sorry.” He spoke the words carefully, as if trying them out to see how they sounded.
Teal blinked, seemed to reach a decision, and looked at him. “For what?”
“For your mother, for your sister.” Tam’s head bowed under the weight of the thoughts that filled it. “For everything that has happened to you.”
Teal waved his words away. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is.” It felt good to confess his wrong. Teal was not his family, but she was of a family. He had done her wrong and now he would speak about it. That surely was right. “I was supposed to protect you and I did not.”
“I said, it’s not your fault.” Teal spat the words. “You didn’t bring us down here, put us in that fishbowl, Mom did.”
No. That was wrong. “Your mother loved you. Parents sometimes make mistakes out of love.” You’ll be special. His own mother’s voice reached him across years of memory. It will be your job to take care of the entire world.
Teal made a rude gesture that Tam had sometimes seen used between children in the village. “What do you think you know?”
“I watched you. It was my job. I watched you in the village, and I watched you in the hothouse. I spoke many times with your mother. She just wanted to finish her contract and take you away.” Tam rubbed his hands together. “She did her best according to what she knew, just like you and your sister did. She failed, but that was all. What happened was not her fault.”
“Look,” said Teal, even though she kept her eyes fixed straight ahead of her. “I really don’t want to talk about my screwed and blasted family with you.”
“I know.” Tam closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, exhausted from the effort that had brought him to this place. It was all right. He had done what he needed to, and spoken the right words. He could sleep now and for a little while hear no voices at all.
Teal sat there watching Administrator Tam’s chest rise and fall. Even in his sleep, he twitched and sweated. She closed her own eyes, suddenly tired beyond words. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. She could not believe she was trusting him. She could have made a break for it across the field, but instead she had walked in here with him, and he might do anything. Anything.
She had never meant to see any part of Pandora again, especially not the admission center, where the whole hideous mess had begun. The stark, straight white walls shrank her back down to a ten-year-old and her hand kept trying to reach out for Chena or Mom. Except Chena was back in Offshoot, and the person beside her wasn’t Mom.
What’d they do to you? And you’re one of theirs, even. Teal looked away, her hands clutching her knees.
What if it was true, what he said? What if Mom, what if Chena, had just been doing their best? Teal’s whole body clenched against the idea. Because if it was true that all Mom and Chena did was try and fail, Teal would have to find some way to forgive them, and she wasn’t sure if she could.
“Careful with her.”
Someone lifted Chena up. She whimpered and tried to get her body to struggle, but it just lay there, limp as an empty sack. They carried her toward the fence posts that lined the boardwalk and Chena heard someone mewl pitifully. It was her, of course, and she had enough mind left to be embarrassed. But they passed her between the posts and nothing happened. The hands rolled her body up onto the board-walk, and again there was no pain. Relief made her even weaker.
Three people climbed up beside her. In the light of a moon just past full, Chena saw two strangers, and, she thought, the square man who had pushed her off the walk in the first place. They grabbed her shoulders and ankles again and hoisted her up. There was a confused moment before Chena realized she was being curled up into something small and stored like a bag of rice. The walls of her new prison prick-led against her skin and parted in places to let in a little light. It was a big market basket, with a tight-fitting lid.
The basket was lifted and Chena was bumped and rocked as it moved. She didn’t care. As long as she didn’t have to move herself.
Chena lost track of time then. Maybe she passed out again. She wasn’t sure. But now she lay on her side, her knees pressed up against her chin. The lid was being wrestled off the basket.