“You know you managed to show up at the worst possible time,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
Daphne shook her head. “We’ve got three towers down, and this is the best part of the day to fix them, before the winds pick up again.”
Esme didn’t say anything, but she couldn’t imagine the winds being stronger than they were when she walked across the dirt.
“So, what is it?” Daphne said. “And it better be worth it, because—”
“Dad’s dying.”
Daphne’s mouth hung open, and in that expression of shock Esme saw the little girl Daphne had been before.
“How?” she finally whispered.
“Galazamia.”
Silence. The house creaked. Then Daphne said, “He couldn’t fucking tell me himself?”
“Would you have let him?”
Daphne fell silent. She looked away, toward an electric painting on the wall. To Esme it looked like nothing but smears of light, shifting in subtle strokes on their plastic canvas.
“You haven’t talked to him in years. If he called you up, would you have answered?”
Silence, louder than any wind.
Finally, Daphne said, in a small voice: “No.”
“Exactly.” Esme straightened. She felt like she was in a business meeting and not a meeting with her sister, and that made her almost sad. “He sent me because he wants me to convince you to come home and see him before he dies.”
Daphne looked sharply at her. “What?”
“He wants to see all of us. Adrienne and”—Esme’s voice wavered—“Isabel.”
A pause. Then Daphne laughed, sharp and cold and bitter. “That’s not going to happen.”
Esme didn’t say that she thought the same thing. “Don’t worry about whether it will happen or not. Will you come home?”
“If I say no, then it’s definitely not going to happen, right?”
“You can’t say no.”
Daphne blinked. The electric painting shifted into a hurricane swirl. All the lights in the room dimmed, like the sun going behind the clouds.
“You see?” Daphne said. “No light, slow wind. Best time to fix the turbines.”
Esme knew she had overstepped her bounds. Daphne was pulling away. “Look, you don’t have to answer right now. I have some business in Dasini—”
“Dasini? What’s going on Dasini that they would send you?”
“Nothing,” Esme said quickly. “Please, Daphne, could you just think about seeing him one last time? I’ll be here for a few days, and we can talk about it more—”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t mind seeing you, but I don’t want to see him.”
They looked at each other from across the room. Esme knew Daphne was slipping away. This was pointless. She wondered what her father would do if she failed him at this. He wasn’t one to tolerate failure.
“I really need to get out there,” Daphne said, and she stood up, crossed her arms over her chest like she was warding off Esme. Or warding off their father. “Where are you staying in Dasini? At the hotel there?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Well.” Daphne gave a little half shrug. “Maybe I’ll call you. We have parties on the weekend. You can come, if you’re not too good for us.” She peered down at Esme. “And as long as you promise not to talk about him.”
“I’d like that,” Esme said, promising nothing.
Daphne nodded. Then she left the room, leaving Esme sitting on the sofa.
At least it hadn’t gone as badly as she feared.
• • •
Esme flung herself on her bed at the hotel in Dasini. Her body felt wrung out from being battered by the winds out on Daphne’s farm. At least here in the city, the walls kept things calm.
She had a meeting with the city officials in a little under an hour, a dinner in the restaurant on the top floor of the hotel. She needed to shower and change and look over her notes, but instead she stayed on her bed, listening to the wind whistling outside her window. She felt unmoored. Talking with Daphne had not gone as badly as she had worried. But it had still been a failure.
She rolled off the bed and grabbed her lightbox and sent an update to Will, letting him know what had happened with Daphne. If she couldn’t even convince her, she had no hope of convincing the others.
She told herself it wasn’t worth thinking about now—that she needed to focus on her meeting, on the work to be done there in Dasini. On the surface, it looked like PM work—-a pay dispute, workers at the weapon factory complaining that their job was too dangerous. They worked closely with Radiance DNA; there had been some disruptions. Dreams, from what Esme understood. Miguel thought there was a chance that, if the Radiance did have human help, it was there in Dasini. That was one thing the Coromina Group had learned during the last breach: that the Radiance had ties to all four worlds.
Still, Esme doubted the workers were responsible for the breaches. That was why she wanted to come speak to the Dasini officials herself. Confirm it was just some workers’ overactive imagination. Maybe bump up their pay rate. Turn a security check into a Planet Maintenance job.
PM had been her first internship, all those years ago. She had loved it, loved the responsibility of keeping the system running, of making sure all of the Coromina Group’s citizen-employees were content. And the truth was, she missed it. The Genetics work, the subsequent weapons design and manufacture—sometimes, she could feel it eating away at her insides, like a parasite.
She went into the shower and rinsed the Catequilian dirt out of her hair. Then she sat in the soft, silky robe provided by the hotel and scanned through the file on the Dasini factory, the information projected by holo over the crisp hotel bed. The factory and the town were both new; they had developed in the aftermath of the war as the Coromina Group began mass-producing the R-Troops for the private militaries. The R-Troops had won the war. Both of the wars, really—the war against OCI, and the war against the Radiance.
Esme switched off her lightbox and changed into the dark, fashionably cut CG Vice President’s uniform. She pulled her hair back into a chignon, slipped on a pair of high heels. Then she gathered up her lightbox and went up to the restaurant. She felt calm now, calmer than she had after seeing Daphne. This sort of thing, she knew how to do.
The restaurant was nearly empty, and the lights were turned down to make it easier to see the view outside. The walls were nothing but windows. From this high up, Esme could see the city in miniature and, beyond it, the sweeping, empty plains made desolate by the constant winds.
A host approached her, his cheeks flushed pink. “Ms. Coromina?”
“Yes.” Esme couldn’t take her eyes off the window. She wondered if she would be able to see all the way to Daphne’s farm.
“It is such an honor to have you visit us here in Dasini,” the host said. “I hope your stay has been enjoyable?”
Esme turned to him, gave him her best smile. “Dasini is marvelous,” she said. “All of us at CG are impressed with what you’ve been able to build in the last ten years.”
The host beamed, as if he had himself had built the city. “I can take you to your table,” he said. “Mayor Singh Ryvka is waiting for you with the others.”
Esme dipped her head in agreement and then followed the host as he led her through the restaurant. They must have closed it for the meeting, she realized. A chance for city officials and her to talk in private.
The city officials were sitting at a table in the back of the restaurant, in front of a view of the weapon factory. It was made of the same dark stone as Daphne’s farm, a sprawling structure that ran up to the city’s wall.
“Ms. Coromina!” Mayor Singh Ryvka stood up as Esme approached. “It’s such an honor to have you here with us. Please, sit. We’ve already ordered a bottle of wine. I hope you like red?”
“Red is fine.” Esme sank down into her chair. She recognized all the officials from their files. The mayor, Olivia
Singh Ryvka, wore her black hair draped over one shoulder, a jeweled clip glittering above her left ear. The city commissioner, Eleanora Dixon, sat to her left. She was older but had taken the same rejuvenation treatments Esme’s father had, so she looked so much younger, in her early twenties. A child, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked. And on the right was Terence Stone, the CG factory manager, dark-skinned and handsome. Both Terence and Eleanora had a glossiness to their features, a kind of unnerving perfection. One of the marks of rejuvenation.
“When I was assigned to Dasini,” Olivia said, “I never expected that I’d be sitting down to dinner with Esme Coromina! I can’t thank you enough for choosing to come all the way out here and help us with our concerns.”
“Agreed,” said Eleanora, who promptly lifted her wine glass. “To Ms. Coromina.”
“To Ms. Coromina,” the others said, glasses clinking. Esme just smiled politely. They were laying this on too thick, she thought. Which meant they were scared. They probably thought she was here to shut them down, the factory or the entire town, rather than dealing with the unrest of factory workers. They weren’t highly ranked enough to have received the security breach alerts. They didn’t even know about the Radiance.
“I appreciate the welcome,” Esme said. “But really, it’s my pleasure to be here. I want to ensure the safety of everyone in the Four Sisters.”
A line of tension smoothed itself out from Olivia’s forehead. The others were stolid, too rejuvenated for her to read.
“The chef is preparing a special menu for your visit tonight,” Terence said. “They should be bringing the meal out shortly. But please, if you have any questions about our little problem”—he spread his hands out over the table—“feel free to ask.”
“Well, I’ve read through the files.” Esme folded her hands on top of the table. “But I’d like to hear what you have to say on the matter. Company reports can be so impersonal.”
“So can company interrogations,” said Eleanora. Terence shot her an angry look, but Esme just smiled broadly at her.
“This isn’t an interrogation,” Esme said. “I’m sorry if I gave that impression. Think of it as”—she looked at each of them in the eye in turn—“a conversation.”
“A conversation,” Olivia said, smiling a little. “I like that.”
“This isn’t exactly company protocol,” said Terence.
“I think we can go off-book just for the evening.” Esme lifted her wine glass and took a drink. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
The three of them all laughed, thinly, and took drinks themselves.
“Now,” Esme said. “Let’s have this conversation.”
She settled back into her seat as Terence began to explain the situation. It was the same information she already knew: Dasini the town had grown up around the weapons factory and existed only to support it; without the factory, all thirty-five thousand of Dasini’s citizen-employees would have to be relocated. Things had been going very well in the years after the war, as they had for all of the Four Sisters—it was here that Esme took a longer drink of wine than she should, thinking first about the months of the war itself, and the last time she had seen Isabel, the air thick with smoke from the fires burning Star’s End. But the factory workers were unhappy about their latest assignment. Bioengineering. Genetic weapons.
“It’s the DNA,” Olivia said, leaning forward over the table. “The Radiance DNA.”
Esme nodded.
“They think it’s dangerous,” Terence said. “They’ve developed—superstitions around it.”
Here it was. The possibility of a breach. “Superstitions?”
A bell rang from somewhere deep in the restaurant. It was the chef, announcing that the first course of his special menu was ready for serving. The table fell silent as a line of waiters paraded out with the bowls of steaming soup. Esme oohed and ahhed over the course, as was expected of her. It was a Catequilian fish soup, a specialty of this world. She’d had it before. But all the while, her thoughts were on that one word. Superstition. The report had only mentioned unusual dreams. Superstition implied that they had made a connection between those dreams. That they were attempting to puzzle out the truth.
When enough time had passed, Esme balanced her spoon on the edge of her half-finished bowl of soup. “I would very much like to hear more about these superstitions,” she said.
“It’s nonsense,” Terence said, stirring his soup around. “The sort of thing that tends to crop up among the lower classes.”
“I wouldn’t be quite that dismissive.” Eleanora looked straight at Esme. “They say the DNA speaks to them.”
Esme went cold all over. She did not move. She hoped she gave nothing away in her expression.
“And you don’t call that nonsense?” Terence asked. His voice sounded a thousand miles away.
“They don’t understand what they’re dealing with,” Eleanora said. “And we can’t explain it to them.” Her eyes bore into Esme’s. “The company keeps too many secrets.”
Of course they did. The exact nature of the Radiance DNA was Level Ninety-Nine. To the rest of the people of the Four Sisters, to these three city officials sitting across the table, the R-Troops were powered by a synthetic DNA strand, a blend of cloning and genetic manipulation. If they knew what had won them the war against OCI, what had vaulted the Coromina Group into the top echelon of corpocratic systems in the galaxy—there would be panic and outrage and, worst of all, disorder. Esme had seen that happen at Star’s End. She had seen it happen within her own family.
“Have there been any incidents,” Esme asked, “that might lead the workers to develop these ideas?”
The three city officials exchanged glances with each other. Esme leaned back in her chair and waited.
“No,” Olivia finally said.
Inwardly, Esme flushed with relief. Outwardly, she did not move.
“It’s just a ploy to get more money,” Terence said. “They came up with this bullshit about the DNA being dangerous so they’d get paid more.”
“Yes,” Esme said. “I saw that in the files.”
The bell rang, the next course was announced, the waiters marched in. Esme had a moment to consider her options then. The easiest solution would be to give the workers the money they wanted—the company certainly had the income for it. But if she gave in too easily, it would suggest that the workers had a reason to worry about the DNA. Perhaps they did.
But Esme could not reveal that to anyone ranked below Ninety-Nine, could she? The exact nature of the Radiance must remain a secret, hidden away in the multilayered fabrics of reality.
“You can see our conundrum,” Olivia said, when it was polite to speak of business again. “We insist and insist that the DNA is safe, but the workers don’t believe us.”
“We’ve heard rumors of a defection,” Terence said. “Nothing substantial, but the threat is there.”
“That serious?” Esme said.
“I told you it wasn’t just nonsense,” Eleanora said. Olivia hushed her.
“It’s a high-ranking factory,” Olivia said. “The threat of defection is always there. We’ve never had trouble before.”
“Yes,” Esme said. “I suppose that’s true.” She wondered what the workers had heard. What they had seen, what images had materialized inside their thoughts. She had found nothing at Hawley Lab, but it seemed she and Will had been looking in the wrong place. They were going to have to investigate Dasini further. She and Will would have to speak with some of the workers, at the very least. Find out if Miguel was right, if the Radiance had found human aid inside a weapons factory.
But first she would have to soothe the worries of the Dasini officials.
“I glanced over the financial reports for the last quarter,” she said breezily, poking at the pile of sautéed root vegetables draped across her plate. She couldn’t eat any more; all her food tasted like ash. “The factory has done tremendously well for the company.”
“Yes.”
Terence beamed at her. “We’re routinely ranked among the top five factories of our type in the system.”
“Well, there you go.” Esme lifted her wine glass in a halfhearted toast. “I imagine the company will have no trouble unearthing the funds to give the workers the raise they want. We find that’s the most effective method for quieting rumors of defection.”
“Of course,” Olivia said, and Esme wondered if the defection rumors were true, or if they had just been a ploy to get the raises. Not that she cared; it was a useful fiction. The company could afford it; it would make the workers happier as the company launched its more in-depth investigation. And higher wages meant easier investigations.
“So, it’s settled,” Terence said. “We give them the raise.” He clapped his hands together. “Excellent.”
But Eleanora didn’t celebrate with the others. She stirred her vegetables around, her eyes downcast. Esme’s chest tightened. Eleanora believed the workers, then. Perhaps she’d seen the whispers from the Radiance herself.
As soon as dinner was finished, Esme would have to go back to her room in the hotel and send an encrypted message back to the Coromina Group main campus. It would identify Dasini as a place of interest, and it would list Eleanora’s name, too. If there was even the smallest chance that the Radiance’s influence had crept up that high in the company’s infrastructure, Esme was required to act, and quickly. Workers and new recruits were one thing; officials, even minor city officials, were another.
Esme studied Eleanora as the meal continued on, Terence and Olivia’s chatter fading into the background. With that one message, Eleanora would be removed from her position and placed in prison, under surveillance. Just in case.
This was the universe they lived in now.
• • •
Daphne’s farmhouse at night looked like a light painting. The windows glowed from within, mutable colors that streamed one from the next at the same rhythm as the howling of the wind. As Esme approached, she caught the sound of faint strains of music, a low, soft melody that seemed at odds with the wild, screaming wind. She ducked in through the gate and peeled off her goggles and shook the sand from her veil. A couple stood kissing in the corn. They didn’t notice her. She was glad for that.
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