I lie suspended.
The sea and sky are one, the horizon obscured by the utter black of night. The ship is a hand, cradling me and the people I care most about. To my right lies my little sister Ceres, long lost and only now recovered. Inside me is my baby, my child, one half of myself. And across from me, my...
What is he?
His name is Shale Underwood. He was my Husband back in a world where Husbands were assigned, a world where my sole purpose was to be a vessel to the tiny life that now grows inside me.
But now...now we are nowhere, certainly not in New Amana and not yet in China. After the Great War nearly 70 years ago, China emerged as the world's default superpower. Though it is nowhere as wealthy as it was before the War, it is still habitable, which is more than can be said about many nations, including New Amana. Called the Great Land by its citizens, China is where we hope to build ourselves a new life.
As if he can feel my gaze, my thoughts plucking fitfully at him, Shale shifts in his sleep, throwing one arm over his eyes. In the near dark, the whites of the bandages tied so tightly around his middle glow like phosphorous.
I smooth back a strand of black hair from Ceres's small, thin face. I can hear the sea outside, the waves sloshing against the sides of the great ship. We rock gently back and forth, a motion Ceres always insists is soothing. In my pregnant state, the motion has me perpetually nauseated.
Down the passageway with its peeling paint, in another small, musty cabin, lie Lucas, Sara, and Alexander. They are our friends from New Amana who were known as Nukeheads—second-class citizens with deformities from nuclear radiation.
The ship rolls to the left, and I feel my stomach roll with it. I sit up, one hand across my middle. We have been on the ship three weeks now. They tell us we will dock in China in the next twenty-four hours. Ceres is afraid, but sometimes I catch her golden eyes shining with hope. She is only thirteen, still a child. At twenty-one—my birthday passed sometime on our journey—I feel so much older. And not nearly as optimistic.
Our goal looms on the horizon; a labor camp in mainland China. I've heard the camps are tough, but not nearly as tough as survival in New Amana was. Since the Chinese value the constant stream of cheap labor from New Amana, we are viewed as a necessary evil. At any rate, it's better than the constant fight for basic necessities in the choking air of our home country.
After another glance at the two of them, I make my way carefully to the door of our cabin. When I cannot sleep, I sometimes sit on the deck, letting the sea breeze whisper and the ocean waves sing to me. It is a peaceful thing, to sit quietly, surrounded by nothing but sky and water. The stars aren't as obscured here as they were in New Amana. Our ancestors used to imagine shapes in the stars—hunters and bears and bowls—and sometimes I try to see them, too.
I take a seat on a rusty metal chair and wrap my wool blanket tightly around my shoulders. The temperature in China will be near freezing, they say, much colder than we are used to. It is December, the end of 2078. We stand on the precipice of something new in so many ways.
The breeze grabs a hold of a strand of my raven hair, blows it in my face. I smooth it back. When I'm able to see again, Shale is beside me, looking at me with an expression I cannot place.
"Hello." My tone is formal. I do not want to be so hesitant, so awkward with him. We have shared so much. But yet, it is different now. We have no Ceres to rescue, no men shooting at us with guns, no panic and purpose. In this peaceful cradle I am unsure of where we stand at all. Shale hasn’t given any indicators that he still feels for me what I once imagined he did. He was too ill the first week to do much talking. And after that he simply refused to speak about us, as if the words had withered and died. "Couldn't you sleep?"
His face is too thin, his cheekbones too prominent. His dark eyes, a deep and beautiful brown, are shadowed. He grimaces and grasps his side as he sits in a chair beside me. I automatically reach out to him—to comfort or soothe—and pull back. When he turns to me, the expression he had earlier—that look that said he had something to tell me, but didn't know where to start—is gone. "No. I saw that you had left, and I decided to join you. I hope that's all right."
"Of course." I pull the blanket tighter around me and glance at him out of the corner of my eye. "Your wounds...They don't seem to be healing quickly."
"They will once we have access to proper medicine." Then he looks at me. "I'm more worried about you. And the baby."
"I'm fine. And so is she." I put my hand on my stomach.
Shale's fingers twitch, as if he's resisting touching it with everything he has. "She?"
"Perhaps just an instinct," I say, looking out toward the sea.
"Oh." The word is a sigh.
I want to ask Shale what he means, and why his forehead is creased like that. That expression again, as though he has so much to say, but doesn't know how to say it. It is like our time together never happened, as if all that we went through while we were apart has erased the conversations, the touches, the words from before. As if we have become different people.
But I don't have the chance to mention what I'm thinking. We hear footsteps, rushing toward us. We swing our heads around to look, wondering who is up at this hour, when only wounded men and pregnant women haunt the decks. Two Radicals round the corner, their faces pale as moons, their mouths tight and grim.
Shale and I stand up, and he barely winces at the pain this time. "What is it?" he asks, his voice steady. "What's happened?"
Because it's obvious that something has happened. Something that will change the course of our lives. Even in the moment, I am sure of this fact. I am sure.