The hard seal on the door between the hold below and the rest of the ship was her biggest obstacle. She found a plan of the ship and located an airduct that passed from one part of the ship to the other. It was very, very small, but so was Pendt. It wasn’t like she’d be carrying anything with her.
The day came when the Harland arrived at Brannick Station. Everything went exactly as Pendt imagined, except the part where she ate the twenty-eight grams of protein she’d been hoarding. Nothing could have prepared her for the surge of power she felt rush through her body as it dealt with so much excess for the first time in her life.
When the engines cut, Pendt headed for the airduct. She had picked the one in her mother’s room because Lodia would be gone and Tanith would be in the engine room, running maintenance. No one would see the open duct until much later, hopefully until after the Harland had already left. It was a tighter fit than she was expecting, but Pendt was very determined. Despite the skin it cost her, she shoved herself through the duct, and into the vent that would lead her to the other side of the seal.
The hold below was not what she had been expecting. After so many years of passenger freight, she thought it would be dirty and full of waste and garbage. Instead, it was pristine, so clean it would have met Dr. Morunt’s sterilization protocols. Any evidence of human habitation had been scourged. Beds lined the walls, stacked three high. Almost a hundred people could have lived here, Pendt realized. She thought it was more like thirty. Nothing about it made sense, but Pendt had no time to wonder about it. She had to make it through the doors while they were open.
When she crossed the airlock, she found a large empty bay. Like the hold, it was almost too clean to imagine that a group of people had passed through it, but the clock was still ticking, and Pendt still had to move.
She crossed the bay and the doors opened automatically at her presence. A nondescript corridor waited for her on the other side. Pendt took a deep breath and crossed into the unknown.
8.
PENDT WASN’T USED TO the weight of this much hair. It pulled at her scalp and ghosted along her neck, and even though she’d done her best to make it grow straight, she hadn’t known what to do with it when she had it. She wasn’t exactly in style, but she hadn’t known what style was when she started this, so there wasn’t really anything she could do about it. Almost everyone she’d ever seen before had the same hair: short, blond, and eminently practical. It’s one of the reasons she’d picked something more elaborate for her escape attempt, and she didn’t regret it for a second, even if she had no idea what to do with it.
She also wasn’t used to this much sound. The Harland was an old ship, but it was solid and well constructed, and it ran smoothly, thanks to generations of gifted engineers. The engines’ hum could only be heard in certain parts of the ship, and the walls were enough to mute raised voices and all but the most disastrous of mechanical failures. Here, there were people everywhere, crushing through the corridors as they walked between the docking ports and the service area on the station. She’d never seen so many kinds of bodies. They came in all shapes and sizes, and it was hard not to stare at the un-Harlandness of them all.
Most were dressed in jumpsuits, though the colours of these varied widely, and most had the same short hair Pendt was used to seeing on the Harland. There were a few, though, who were different. The women wore clothing cut to highlight the shape of their bodies, and then men dressed with sharp lines and hard corners, as though they could change their shape with fabric. They were clearly not on their way to buy engine lubricant or barter for additional berth-space on the docking ring.
The station boasted any number of places where food, alcohol, and various entertainments were peddled, and Pendt imagined that it was to these places the interestingly dressed people were headed. Looking down at her plain jumpsuit, she realized that she would stick out if she followed them, and since sticking out was the last thing Pendt wished to do, she withdrew into a corner to consider her options.
She was not going back. She didn’t care how she was dressed in comparison with everyone else. They would get her back on the Harland when she was dead, or they would drag her kicking and screaming. She had already crossed the line, hoarding her rations and expending them on her hair and nails. That would earn her the punishment to end all punishments. There was nothing else they could do to make it worse.
Her calculation had been very precise: enough change to look different, but enough saved that she could change herself back. That was the first rule, and the one by which the Harland flew, only spending what a thing was worth, and never a fraction more. Food, oxygen, clothing, it didn’t matter. She had only ever had exactly what she needed to survive. She could alter herself further, she had the calories for more æther work, but then she’d be stuck unless someone bought her a drink. Pendt did not like to rely on other people. Other people were usually awful.
Or, at least, her family was awful. Maybe here it would be different. She could smile and make conversation and hope for the best. Pendt wasn’t used to hoping for much of anything at all, but, well, she had already come this far. She could go a little further.
She looked out at the crush of people walking past the little oasis she’d found in the corridor. They were all moving quickly, eyes forward, target acquired. No one was watching her. She could do whatever she wanted. So she closed her eyes, and reached inside.
The jumpsuit was made of plant fibre, harvested from the hydroponics bay and treated so that it was tear-proof and fire-retardant, but it was still a plant. She tightened the weave of it around her stomach, hips, and below her knees. It was nowhere near as eye-catching as the people she’d seen, but at least she no longer wore a shapeless bag. Next, she changed the colours: deeper green for the bottom half and lightening until the collar around her neck was white. She detached the sleeves and stuffed them into her bag; it went against her nature to discard things.
And then, using the last of her expendable calories, she added the slightest tinge of green to her newly darkened hair. It was ridiculous, a useless reason to put forth the effort, but she found she didn’t care.
Pendt rejoined the crowd and followed the crush down to the level where the entertainments were. Down was an awkward concept for a space traveler. It was possible that she was traveling sideways and standing on the wall. Still, her mother had once told her that it was best to take advantage of direction while she had it. Pendt usually ignored most of her mother’s advice, but this particular idea would probably prevent an existential crisis, and Pendt was all about preventing crises today.
Brannick Station thronged with people. They were loud and they had little respect for one another’s personal space as they jostled through the wider colonnades of the station’s public market area. Pendt knew from the blueprints she had stolen out of her brother’s desk that the station had more than one public sector. This one was simply for the most itinerant travelers. If you wanted to stay, you needed to go up a few levels and submit an application. If you were rich, there was another level altogether.