A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2)(31)

Jane chewed. She chewed and chewed and chewed until the food turned to mush. She swallowed. She coughed, but it went down. ‘It feels real weird,’ she said. She put her hand on her stomach. It growled even louder.

Owl smiled. ‘You’re doing great. Have some water. I believe that helps wash it down.’

Jane tore open the corner of the squishy packet and took a sip. Even the water tasted different, almost like plex or something. She didn’t care. She’d never needed anything as bad as that water. She sucked down the whole thing at once, and breathed real hard after. Her lips felt better. ‘Can I have another one?’

Owl looked weird. Almost scared, but not quite. Like she was thinking about something that might be bad. ‘Yes, but let’s be smart about it. How many of those packets were in there?’

‘Lots.’

‘Ten? More than ten?’

‘More than ten. Lots of tens.’

Owl nodded. ‘I think you should have as many as you need right now. But the rest you’ll have to be more careful about. There’s no way for us to get more.’

Jane went back into the pantry and got three more water packets. She drank half of one all at once, took another bite of the bar, and washed it down with more water. She got through half of the bar before she had a new problem. She was still hungry, but her jaw was getting tired from so much chewing, and her stomach wasn’t sure about what she’d put in it.

Owl noticed. ‘You don’t have to eat it all right now.’

‘But I’m hungry.’

‘I know, honey. But this is going to take practice. Give your stomach a little rest, then have more later if you’re feeling okay.’

Jane thought that was a good idea. Her stomach was making weird sounds, and it kind of hurt. She folded the wrapper around the food she hadn’t eaten. ‘Can I finish the water?’ she asked, holding up the third packet.

‘Yes. You don’t have to ask me for permission, Jane. I can’t give it to you anyway. I don’t control you.’

That was an interesting thing to think about. Jane looked at the packet in her hand. ‘So . . . I can have this water.’

‘Yes,’ Owl said, her smile real big now. ‘You can.’

Jane looked around as she drank. It was easier to get a good look at the ship now than it had been when she got there. Nothing was chasing her, and that made thinking better. ‘What’s this room for?’ Jane asked.

‘It’s for relaxing and being together,’ Owl said. ‘The people who were here before you called it the living room.’

Jane thought that was a weird name, since you could live anywhere in the ship. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to the space next to the pantry. There was a thing built into the wall that she didn’t know, with cupboards around it, and a sort of workbench that stuck out.

‘That’s the kitchen,’ Owl said.

‘Kitchen,’ Jane said, feeling the word in her mouth. ‘What’s it for?’

‘It’s for preparing food. Making meals.’

Jane had never thought about what was in meals before. Meals were just meals. You got them twice a day. ‘What are meals made out of?’

‘Plants and animals.’

Jane felt tired. More things she didn’t know.

Owl’s face had a warm, good sort of look. ‘I’ll explain in more detail later. Don’t worry, I’m keeping a list of things you’ve asked about.’

That was good to know. Owl was good at answering questions, and she seemed to like explaining to Jane what all the stuff was. Beside the kitchen, there was a small storage room with a big machine in it called a stasis unit. Owl said ‘stasie’ was a better word for it. She said you could put stuff to make meals in there and it wouldn’t go bad. Jane didn’t know what going bad meant, so Owl put it on the list.

There were other storage spaces, too – mostly empty, but some had weird tools and other junk. There were clothes also, the biggest clothes Jane had ever seen. You could fit a girl twice Jane’s size in those clothes. More than twice. Owl looked kind of sad when Jane found the clothes, but she didn’t say why.

The biggest space was the cargo hold, which filled up the back of the shuttle. There was a lot of scrap and thrown-away things in there, all tossed around and fallen over. Owl said it would be a good task, at some point, to go through that stuff and see what was there.

There was a short stairway in the cargo hold that went into the underside of the ship. That’s where the engine was kept, and also the core that Owl was installed in. Out of everything, that place made the most sense to Jane. She could see circuit boards, fuel lines, power junctions. She touched the engine, finding all the little bits.

You like little bits, Jane 64 said in her head. You’re real good at them.

Jane went fast back up the stairs, feeling almost like she was being chased again.

‘Hey,’ Owl said. ‘You okay? Was it too dark down there? I know some of the globulbs are broken.’

Jane found a corner and sat in it, arms around her knees.

‘What is it, Jane?’

Jane didn’t know how to answer. Nothing was making sense. One minute, everything was new and interesting and there were words like kitchen, and the next, Jane 64 was in her head and the things outside were chasing her. And it was her fault.