Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (7 page)

“Wish I could what?”

He wanted to say that he wished Zella and he
could have time to spend together that wasn’t rushing to the next shift or
dragging home from the last one, but there was too much invitation in the
words. He didn’t say them, just looked away.

Zella, still clinging to his arm, lifted a hand
to his cheek and turned his face to her.

“Daniel, we can be . . .” She
paused, searching for the right words. “Together. My parents like you. Your
mama likes me. We could, you know, get married and start a life.”

Daniel let himself remain in her arms for one
second, then pulled gently away, disentangling her hands from his arm and
pushing her hand gently away from his face before standing and leaning on the
stair railing.

“Zel, I—” How to assuage the hurt in her eyes? “It’s
not that I don’t want to be with you—I do. It’s just that, you know, with my
mother and my sisters—” He fumbled. “With my dad dying—I don’t think I can . . .
take care of anyone else right now.”

Her eyes flashed and she stood. “That’s not what
I want, Daniel. I’m not looking for someone to set me up in a life of luxury.
Did you ever think I might be asking because I think maybe you could use
somebody who would take care of you?” Zella stomped up the stairs and went into
the building. He wouldn’t see her again tonight.

He was speechless as he watched her go. He hadn’t
known the depth of her feelings. He took a step, trying to form words, but the
dry taste of Yynium dust choked them back.

***

Kaia noticed that
something was different about the junkyard as soon as the hovercar dropped her
off. She couldn’t see the junk from outside the corrugated metal fence that
surrounded it. The last time Kaia had visited, and all the times before that,
the refuse from the mines and refinery had lain in twisted, tangled lumps. The
junker had bulldozed anything and everything into a big pile in the middle,
dumping at the edges and bulldozing around it in a big circle, pushing the
trash into an uneven heap that folded in on itself and rendered inaccessible
the center of the pile, which was where Kaia suspected all the good stuff was.

In fact, the junker had told her that somewhere
in the middle the Saras Company had dumped all the old ship parts from the
first exploration missions they’d sent to Minea. Kaia would like to get her
hands on some of those first drives. She had read about them in the manuals.
Called Octagon drives, they held potential in their cores that Kaia felt had
been overlooked in the rush to redesign them. All the parts from the old ships
were rumored to be in here somewhere. Buried under ever-increasing loads, they’d
become nothing more than refuse, dumped in this unused corner of the city
behind the spaceport, and covered with concrete rubble, old hovercars, and
tangled mining equipment.

But now, as Kaia entered, the junkyard was
inviting. Flowing arcs of piled metal gave way to smooth lines of old boards.
The pathways between the towering piles of junk had been neatly swept, and
small columns of smooth stones dotted the intersections, offering navigation
through the maze. She was here looking for a set of gears and anything she
could use for the body of a little robot she was making for Polara and Rigel.

She glanced toward the middle, where the enormous
mountain of junk had shrunk considerably. Around it were smaller piles,
obviously being reorganized into small groups of similar items. She took a few
steps toward it, wondering if any early items had been uncovered, then glanced
at her missive to check the time. There was a new message from Aria, seeing if
they could move their lunch date back an hour. She swiped it, and sent a yes.
Calculating how much time it would take to get back to the housing district, she
knew she’d have to see if she could find the old ship stuff next time. She didn’t
want to be rushed through exploration like that.

Kaia started today’s project by sorting through a
pile of old sanitizer and disposer parts, stepping over to a pile of light
fixtures and a row of broken mining tools. She made a little pile on the blue
dirt of possible pieces. In addition to a steel ball, a shiny silver plate, and
a bell-shaped copper light shade, she had found several rusty rods and a smooth
cylinder of metal. It gleamed next to a rectangle coated with flaking rust and
a bright red chip of unbreakable glass. She stepped back to consider which
pieces might make the most interesting torso, which might be good for
decoration, and which would go best with the tarnished copper cube she had
chosen for the head.

She was holding up the cube, positioning it over
each piece, when she heard the voice of Yi Zhe.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

Kaia glanced up. He was one of her passengers, a
young man whose dark hair and eyes were especially kind. His wife, Jin Feiyan,
and their little son stood behind him. Kaia hadn’t seen them for several
months, not even at the gatherings of the passengers of Ship 12-22 that she and
Ethan tried to have once in a while.

“Yi Zhe!” She leaned in for a friendly hug. “What
are you doing here?”

“I work here now. I could find no other work,” Yi
Zhe said, shaking his head sadly. “My skills seem to be useless here.”

Kaia looked around the junkyard. Quiet pervaded
the pathways and piles. Similar objects were grouped together, gears over here,
ball bearings there, large rusted metal pieces and small rusted metal plates
farther down the aisle, and shining chrome pieces reflecting the overall
harmony of the place. She’d never seen a junkyard like it. It was a pleasant place.
Of course. It had Yi Zhe’s fingerprints all over it.

“The change is remarkable.” She couldn’t help
digging a little. “Did you learn anything about the history of the place when
they hired you? I’ve heard some interesting rumors that there are some old ship
parts around here.”

Yi Zhe looked thoughtful. “A few,” he said, “but
I think many of them were stolen early on. At first, the junkyard was unmanned,
but from what I heard, too many people started carting off Saras’s junk and a
little junk trade started. The parts weren’t being manufactured here yet. When
Saras needed something, they had to pay to get their own junk back. So, they
hired a junkyard manager. He ran the place for years, but he died a few weeks
ago and I got the job.”

Yi Zhe glanced down, moving the robot parts on
the ground into a staggered diagonal as he spoke.

His wife, Jin Feiyan, broke in, thrusting a
wrapped packet—Yi Zhe’s lunch—into his hand. “I told him before we left Earth
that there was no use for him here. I told him there was a mistake that he was
chosen to come to the colony. What use is there on a mining planet for a master
of balance and harmony? None.” She scoffed. “If my parents had known he was
going to end up a junkyard man, he would never have been my husband.” She kicked
at the robot parts, scattering them, before gathering her little boy’s hand and
leaving the junkyard. Kaia got the feeling that she didn’t spend any more time
here than necessary.

“She’s worried,” Yi Zhe apologized, leaning down
and gathering the parts. “I’ve been out of work a long time. Just little jobs,
here and there. We have the cottage to live in, of course, but buying food and
paying for electricity is hard some months.”

Kaia nodded.

“And everything I know is unimportant here. No
one pays attention to the flow of qi or the balance of their lives.”

Kaia thought of the dusty miners, their crowded
apartments, the shouting on payday, and the desperate look in the eyes of the
women at the market. “Your skills may be more needed than you realize.”

“Oh, I realize how important they are,” Yi Zhe
said, “and how much Coriol needs them. But no one else does. A lot of us from
Ship 12-22 are noticing, Kaia,” he gestured toward the spaceport towering above
them, its elevators shining in the afternoon sun, “our ship was not supposed to
get here, and neither were we.”

“But—”

“No, think about it. Everyone else who has come
to Minea has had work waiting for them when they arrived. They were carefully
chosen to fill their roles here and make the society work. Think about your
passengers. What is Silas’s great gift? Motivational speaking. What, is he
going to talk the Yynium out of the ground? And Minz? Who needs a laundry
manager when there’s a sanitizer in every home?” Yi Zhe’s voice was tinged with
bitterness, as if his wife had left behind a germ of it and he had become,
suddenly, infected.

He sighed heavily and Kaia, still not skilled at
interpersonal communication after all her years alone, simply shook her head.
She wanted to tell him that he was needed, that they all had important parts to
play, but she knew their reality was contradicting that. Many of her passengers
had left Coriol, and she didn’t know what they were doing, but of those who had
stayed, none were doing what they were known for back on Earth. Some had gotten
work in the mines or fields; some were starving, scraping by on odd jobs or
charity. She’d given some of them scrip herself.

She knew she was lucky that her father had his
work in the military. She knew she was lucky that once in a while Saras Company
would ask for her skills as an engineering consultant. She knew that she was
lucky to have the scrip they brought in. But until that moment in the junkyard,
she hadn’t realized how lucky she was that her passion, her life’s work, was
valued by the creators of Coriol. That this allowed her to continue to do it
and to contribute in the way she chose to society.

Yi Zhe had rearranged the robot parts on the
ground, and when she looked down, she saw exactly the ones she needed. Only one
line of parts he had made seemed complete. The round head, the rectangular
body, the rods, the shiny plate, and the chip of glass all came together to
form in her mind into a perfect little gift for the children.

As she gathered them, Kaia checked her missive
again. If she left now, she would have just enough time to swing by the
Employment Office and still make it for lunch. She paid Yi Zhe, thanked him,
and reminded him of the importance of his skills. He shrugged off the praise
and took the scrip.

Kaia thought about his words all the way home.
Were her passengers useless? She thought through the ones who had stayed in
Coriol, thinking about their gifts, their contributions back on Earth, catalogued
in the applications they had submitted to be considered, which she had read
over and over again when she was fighting the loneliness of her journey.

They didn’t have a neat slot to fit in when they
arrived. There was no movie industry to welcome the actors, no galleries for
the artwork of the painters and sculptors, no laundries or newspapers or professional
sports leagues where their skills were needed.

Kaia sat heavily on the bench in the sol train
station. She called it the “sahl” train, but most people in Coriol pronounced
it “soul” train. Though most of them had never heard of the old Earth show that
she had watched from the ship’s archives, it still always made her smile. She
set the bag of robot parts down beside her. She saw now why there had been such
an eclectic mix of professions on Ship 12-22. The delegation in charge of
appeasing the Alorans had chosen humanity’s sacrifice carefully, sending people
they didn’t need. Her passengers were expendable.

She got off at the next station and switched
lines, heading for the Health and Human Services District. Among the hospitals
and clinics there was the Saras Employment Office. Though she’d never been
there, she knew they knew who she was, and perhaps she could put in a word for
her passengers there. Surely there was some work for them, somewhere.

She stretched as she stood on the platform,
holding her bag of robot parts. Her aches were getting worse.

When Kaia rounded the edge of the building, she
was shocked to see a line of dejected people that stretched around the edge of
the Employment Office building. She walked past them and into the reception
area. It was filled with people. The three rows of chairs were full, and the
rest of the room was choked with people standing up. In the front was a counter
with a desk behind it. At the desk, she saw a young man with an unruly shock of
jet black hair. He glanced up at her, his feelings indiscernible behind a pair
of dark glasses.

“You’ll need to fill out a job request and get in
line, ma’am,” he said.

Just as Kaia was about to answer, three men in
dusty red jumpsuits came in the front door. One of them was carrying a stack of
coveralls. Another stepped past Kaia and laid a sheet of paper on the desk in
front of the kid. He looked it over and then stood up, tapping a microphone.

“Good news, folks. We’ve got six mining spots
available. Disability restricted, health restricted, age restricted.” Several
people scrambled forward and formed an impatient line at the desk. Kaia stood
aside and watched as the kid reviewed each paper.

“I said age restricted,” he said to a man whose
hand shook slightly as he reached to take the paper back from the kid, who
spoke over his microphone again.

“Age restricted, people, means that nobody over fifty-five
is fit for these jobs.” Kaia watched the shaky man walk back to where he’d been
standing against the wall.