Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book One)

Chapter Nine

I followed him into the galley, where he showed me the waste disposal, the water tap, and the basin designated for my dirty dishes. When we'd cleaned up, we headed for the cargo holds, into which my gear had been deposited seemingly at random by Vethna and Ahnir. Organizing my equipment took all afternoon. My medical supplies had to be transported to the clinic, my food to the galley, and my personal items to my quarters. It would have taken at least a full day to carry the crates by hand, but Zey taught me how to use the hoverlifter, which looked like a thin metallic sled. It was placed on the floor and loaded with heavy items, then activated by touching a control on one edge, at which point it rose slowly to waist height and hovered in place. When aloft, it could be steered through the air with the lightest touch.

Afterward, as promised, we stopped by hydroponics. The bay was long and narrow, and every inch of it was filled with Vardeshi plants in orderly profusion. They climbed the walls and burst out of elaborate tiered hangers extending from floor to ceiling. My imagination had conjured the lush greenery of an Earth hothouse, but as I stood looking around in amazement, I couldn't spy a single green plant. Instead I saw strangely shaped leaves and vines in a hundred shades of blue and red and gray. The warm air was heavy with fragrances, some sweet, some astringent, all unfamiliar. We had only been in the room for a few moments when something made me sneeze. I turned to Zey and saw my own panic mirrored in his face. He grabbed my elbow and dragged me bodily out into the corridor. I had been right about one thing: the Vardeshi were stronger than they looked.

"That was a bad idea," he said when the door had closed behind us. "I never should have taken you in there. I'm calling Daskar."

"Don't," I said quickly. "Not yet. I think I'm all right. If I were having an allergic reaction, the symptoms would be getting worse. Just give me a minute."

He frowned and tapped a command into the screen on the cuff of his left sleeve, but did as I asked. I fumbled through my bag and extracted the EpiPen Anton had instructed me to carry at all times. Then we waited. For good measure I took a couple of puffs from my handheld oxygen inhaler. When it was clear to both of us that I wasn't going into anaphylactic shock, Zey heaved a sigh of relief. "Sigils, that was close. I could have gotten you killed. Both of us, actually—if you die on my watch, my father will flay me alive."

I smiled. "He'd have to do it intergalactically. Isn't your father on Vardesh Prime?"

"He'd find a way. He'd get my brother to do it."

"Saresh? He seems so nice. I don't think he could flay anyone."

"Hathan could," Zey said grimly.

"I still think he doesn't like me," I said. "This morning, in the axis chamber, he didn't even look at me."

"He wasn't ignoring you. He's a navigator. We were getting ready to leave orbit. He was doing navigator stuff." Zey looked back at the door of the hydroponics bay. "Promise me you won't go in there again. Please."

"I promise I won't go in there again," I said wistfully. My glimpse of Vardeshi flora had been tantalizingly brief. There must be some piece of technology, either in my gear or in the Pinion's medical supplies, that would let me explore the room safely. Maybe Daskar could refit an oxygen mask to filter out pollen. If nothing else, I could borrow a pressure suit and breathe canned air.

We weren't technically late for evening briefing, but we were the last to arrive, and it would have been impossible to enter the axis chamber discreetly in any case. No one commented on our near-lateness, but as we took our seats I saw Hathan, who was seated across from us, fix Zey with a look of cool reproach. Zey ignored him, apparently absorbed in accessing the meeting agenda on a thin semitransparent tablet he seemed to have conjured into existence while I'd been looking the other way. I glanced around. Most of the others were holding similar tablets, but a few people seemed to have accessed computer interfaces built into the surface of the conference table. Saresh, sitting to my left, was one of them. As I watched, he flicked the fingers of his right hand, and an array of luminous orange and white glyphs slid down the table and came to rest in front of me. I recognized it as a digital copy of the agenda in front of him. "Thanks," I whispered. His answering smile was brilliant and swiftly gone.