“There’s a benefit to that,” Fisher said. “After your birthday, we won’t have to keep you a secret anymore. You can have free run of the station and tell anyone you want who and what you are. You can even train with our gene-mages, if you like.”
“That would be amazing,” Pendt said.
A chime sounded softly, and Ned groaned. The boys still had to go to operations for their shift every day.
“It’s only for a bit longer,” Pendt said. “Then I’ll be able to take your place, or at least help out.”
When the boys were gone for work, the best part of Pendt’s day began. She liked the Brannicks, and not just because they talked to her like she was a person, but when they left her alone, she was able to fully embrace what it meant to be a gene-mage.
She carried her breakfast tray to the calo-recycler. The boys had already put their trays through. Doing her own dishes on a full stomach wasn’t so bad. Also, this model was much more advanced than the one on the Harland. All Pendt had to do was put the tray inside, close the door, and press a button. The whole galley in the boys’ apartment was like that: clean, new, and easy to use. It was so different from what Pendt had grown up with that it didn’t trigger any bad memories.
She snagged a few pieces of cheese out of the refrigeration unit on her way out of the room. Ned was correct: It was the best. Pendt had read about it the first morning after the boys left. It used to be made with the lactation products of large bovine animals, but early space travelers had learned how to make it without bringing the cow. Pendt appreciated their priorities.
Her favourite room in the boys’ apartment was the greenhouse. It was a small enclosure off the lounge, sealed because of the high temperature and humidity. It was, Fisher told her, nothing compared with the station’s hydroponics, which Pendt was welcome to visit as soon as it was safe to do so, but in the meantime, she was more than satisfied.
She chewed the cheese and swallowed it. It wasn’t the best source of calories, but Pendt didn’t care. She had options now, and her actual breakfast had been more than enough to give her enough fuel for the day. Anything else she ate was, at this point, entirely for her own use. And the greenhouse called to her.
It had only been a few days, but Pendt had learned more about the æther and her powers with it than she had in the entire time she’d been on the Harland. Ever since she was small and had been denied access to the ship’s hydroponics, Pendt had wondered about plants. Now, with full access to them, she surrounded herself with greenery and just breathed it in.
Plants on a spaceship had two functions: They produced oxygen to supplement what the carbon scrubbers recycled, and they were a source of food. On Brannick Station, there was a third function, one that Pendt was coming to appreciate more and more every day she spent here. On the station, plants were also just plants. They were decorations or something to fiddle around with when a person was off shift. There were flowers that were pretty to look at and several herbs that provided no additional caloric value to food but did enhance its flavour. There were tiny trees that Fisher said his mother had tended and shaped, and something called a tomato, which Ned promised her would be ready in a few months.
In the greenhouse, Pendt was free to practice. She learned the genetic pattern of each plant and was quick to identify if any of them were in danger of getting sick. Most of the plants were clones, which made sense given the remote location of Brannick Station, and that meant that a weakness in one of them would quickly spread to the others. Pendt didn’t find anything dire, but she was able to shore up the plants’ defenses.
With the extra slices of cheese on hand, Pendt went deep into one of the little trees’ genetic code. She knew from reading that trees were usually large, too large for a small apartment greenhouse. She wanted to see the part of the pattern that made the tree small. It took her a few minutes, but she saw it soon enough. It was like a switch had been flipped in the tree’s childhood, making it small enough to stay in the Brannicks’ home. It didn’t cause the tree distress—if anything, constant babying had made the tree ludicrously healthy—but Pendt could see the spot where growth was stopped as clearly as she could see her own hand.
The difference with plants was that Pendt could change them after they had achieved maturity. She didn’t just diagnose and shape; she altered, the æther flowing from her fingers as she worked it. With the calories to power her magic, it was almost easy, and she reveled in it.
“I wonder why I can change plants and not people?” she’d mused the second evening after giddily reporting to the boys what she’d learned how to do.
“Maybe there’s a difference between being alive and being, well, alive,” Fisher had theorized. “I don’t think plants mind if you change them, but people are different. More complicated.”
It was the best idea any of them had come up with, and it allowed Pendt to practice manipulating genetic code. This was the biggest change she had ever attempted. She’d made sure to ask permission—she knew the trees were special and she wasn’t entirely sure what would happen—and both Brannicks understood why she needed to try.
Most of the plants in the greenhouse were young, newly grown in the past few months or perennials that reemerged every cycle. The little trees were old. Catrin Brannick had received them when she was a girl, and they’d been old then. It was the most complicated change Pendt had ever tried on purpose.
“I’m going to do my best,” Pendt whispered to the tree.
Then she sank back into its code, found the switch that stopped it from growing. When she reached for it, there was no warning from her body that she was about to overextend or put herself in danger. There was only surety, a sense that this was what she was made for.
Pendt flipped the switch.
The tree didn’t suddenly grow eight metres of new branches or anything. Externally, it was entirely undramatic. The leaves didn’t even shake. But inside, Pendt could see the effects of what she’d unleashed. The tree flooded with light and water, making food for itself to support a growth spurt. It would still take time, since branches and trunk had to be reinforced to support each new inch, but the tree would grow, if she left it.
Pendt ate another slice of cheese and went back into the tree’s pattern. She found the switch and flipped it back. The tree instantly went back to its former state, and Pendt checked for any lasting effects. As far as she could tell, there was no damage. The tree would probably grow a little bit, since it had expended the effort while Pendt was studying it, but aside from that, it was unchanged. Not only had she done the magic to alter the tree, she had correctly calculated how many calories she would require to put it back.
She pulled herself out of the tree and leaned against the wall of the greenhouse. It wasn’t very comfortable, but she was tired. This too was a new feeling for her. She’d been exhausted before, pushed to the brink of system failure by a lack of calories, but this was different. This was the kind of tired that meant good things had been done, and that she would be able to do them again tomorrow. Her body was learning to rest normally, not because it was out of fuel.