Star's End

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  She shouldn’t be there. Not just because she was no longer the sort of person who could come to parties like this, but because there was a chance that the breach was very real. But in this moment, standing in the farmhouse, the Radiance felt unimaginable.

  She draped the veil around her neck like a scarf and walked up to the front door. It hung open, party sounds spilling out into the nighttime. Music, conversation, laughter. Esme stood on the outside, listening in. Two hours earlier, she had sent a report to the Coromina Group central campus, requesting that the Dasini factory workers be given a raise before launching a more thorough investigation, and that Eleanora Dixon be detained immediately as a possible Radiance contact. One kindness, one cruelty.

  She pushed the door open and went inside.

  Those color-changing lights flooded the hallway, blue washing over her and then fading to a sickly, thin green. She followed the melancholic beat of the music into the living room, where people who were nothing like her gathered together with drinks in their hands. The room was soaked in red light, then orange, then yellow. A rainbow washing over all of them.

  “Esme! You made it!” Daphne ambled over. She had fixed her hair so that it fell in waterfall curls over her right shoulder, and for a moment, she looked the way Esme had remembered Adrienne, and Esme felt a sharp, sudden pang in her chest. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  Yes, thought Esme, but she shook her head. She needed her thoughts clear tonight. If she could convince Daphne to come see their father, then she could leave this place, she could go back to Ekkeko and focus on stopping the containment breach.

  “Oh, at least have some goddamn punch,” Daphne said. “No alcohol. I know you’re probably afraid we’re gonna get you drunk and pull a bunch of company secrets out of you.”

  Esme heard the mockery in Daphne’s voice. She sighed. “Fine. Punch would be fine.”

  Daphne breezed off to a table set up across the room. Esme shifted her weight, aware of how much she stood out at this party. She wore civilian clothes, not the Coromina Group uniform, but she knew they were all wrong anyway. The material was too expensive, too precious. You wouldn’t wear handspun silk on a windfarm in Catequil. She watched the other party guests, taking in their threadbare clothes, their wind-tangled hair, and thought for the first time in years about the parties she had gone to in the village when she was younger. They had always been on the beach, a bonfire raging to light up the night, but otherwise they were identical to this one. The same kind of music, the same kind of people.

  Esme pressed herself against the wall. The air in the room was very still, no fan, no climate system circulating it through the house, even with all these people milling around. Maybe it was because the farmers were in wind all day, and so they wanted stillness when they were inside.

  “One punch for the CEO of the company.” Daphne shoved a glass of ruby-colored liquid at Esme’s chest.

  “I’m not a CEO.” Esme took a long drink of the punch. “Just a vice president.”

  “Oh,” said Daphne, rolling her eyes, “just a vice president.”

  Esme drank her punch to keep from replying. She didn’t know what to say. Everything she thought of was too corporate. A business proposal, as if she were luring a new employee from a rival company, and not trying to convince her sister to come home to her family.

  But then Daphne said, “Thanks for coming, by the way.”

  “What?” Esme looked over at her. Daphne was staring out at the party, the changing colors sliding across her features.

  “I didn’t think you would.” She drank from a bottle of cheap beer, the sort you could buy from Coromina Group grocers. “Figured you were too good for this kind of thing.”

  “I don’t think that,” Esme said softly, and she realized she wasn’t lying.

  Daphne shrugged, sipped at her beer. The changing colors made Esme’s head hurt.

  “You want to talk about Dad, don’t you?” Daphne said.

  Esme didn’t answer.

  “I can tell. You were never as subtle as you thought you were.”

  Esme smiled. “I never thought I was subtle at anything.”

  Daphne laughed, tossed back her beer. “Guess not.” She paused for a moment, and Esme waited. It was more like a business meeting than she wanted to admit. Never talk first, as her father always said.

  “So, let me guess,” Daphne said, watching the party. “He was an asshole when we were kids, but he’s different now, right? He’s relented? He’s a changed man? Maybe found some religion or another?”

  For a moment, Esme considered lying. She considered telling Daphne what she wanted to hear, what she thought would bring her back to Ekkeko. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “No,” she said.

  Daphne blinked in surprise.

  “He hasn’t changed at all. He’s still an asshole. He doesn’t—” She took a deep breath and steadied herself. “He doesn’t regret what he did. Especially the—you know.”

  Daphne did not look away from her. She knew. It was the reason they left, the reason all of them left, one by one over the course of two years. All of them except for Esme, who was a coward.

  “So, why should I go see him?” Daphne said. She leaned toward Esme, beer bottle dangling from one hand. “Convince me, Ms. Vice President.”

  “He’s dying,” Esme said.

  Daphne frowned, slumped up against the wall. The lights turned a murky blue-green and it was as if they were underwater, it was as if they were drowning.

  “That’s all you’ve got?” she asked. “He’s dying?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Daphne looked at her. “You never tell the truth.”

  Esme looked away, her cheeks stinging.

  “I mean, none of you in the company. That’s how you get things done, isn’t it? We’ve got a representative we have to deal with once a month, whenever we go into town to sell the energy loads. He’s a real dick. Smarmy. I never believe a word he says.”

  She paused. In the slowly shifting light, she looked older than she should. The party went on around them, people laughing, the music shimmering. Esme tried not to think about the meeting with the Dasini officials, the report she’d sent afterward.

  “I believe this, though. Dad just wants to see me because he’s dying. I guess even someone like him starts feeling nostalgic once in a while.” Daphne laughed bitterly. “You know what I expected you to do?”

  Esme shook her head. With all the business negotiations she’d done for the last twenty years, she’d learned to recognize early on whether one would end in her favor or not. But right now, with this negotiation, she had no idea.

  “I expected you to spin some long sob story about how Dad wanted to beg our forgiveness or that he regretted what happened. The usual sort of nonsense. But you didn’t.” Daphne nodded. “I appreciate that.”

  Esme’s heartbeat surged. “Thank you.”

  Daphne shrugged. “It’s nothing. You could have bullshitted me and you didn’t.” She leaned up against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. Laughed sharply. “I can’t believe you came all the way out here to tell me he’s still an asshole.”

  “I figured you wouldn’t believe me even if I did lie,” Esme said.

  “Probably.” Daphne took a drink of her beer. “After you left yesterday, I was thinking about what you said. About going to see him one last time.”

  Esme listened.

  “I figured if I invited you tonight, you’d ask again, and I’d need to answer. A definite answer. And I thought about it the whole time I was out there with the turbines. Just me and the wind and this worst decision I’ve probably ever made.” She looked at Esme. Her eyes were dark and serious. “I decided if you showed up, and you didn’t bullshit me—I’d do it. I’d go see him.”

  Esme exhaled a long breath. It had been a long time since the truth had been the best approach.

  “For you,” Daphne added. “I’m going to see him for you. Are we clear
on that?”

  Esme blinked, taken aback. She couldn’t imagine any of her sisters doing something for her, not even Daphne. But she managed a nod.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Daphne looked grim. “We talk sometimes. Me and Adrienne. I try to tell her you’re not as full of shit as he is. She doesn’t buy it, though.”

  Another surprise, although Esme thought Daphne was probably wrong. Eleanora Dixon’s face flashed in her memory.

  “I’m just telling you this so you know I’m the only one you’re going to convince.” Daphne looked hard at Esme. “The only one you’re even going to find.”

  Esme knew better than to say anything.

  “And I’m not telling you where they went.”

  “I didn’t expect you to.”

  “Good.” Daphne drained the last of her beer and tossed the empty bottle across the room. It landed on the sofa. For a moment, the two of them stood in silence. To Esme, the party felt like an entirely different universe. She wondered if this was what it was like for the Radiance when they peered between the boundaries of the two dimensions.

  “I can arrange your travel,” Esme said.

  Daphne shook her head. “Not necessary. I can do it. I’m not a complete failure.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  Daphne sighed. “I know you didn’t.”

  They stood in silence.

  EIGHTEEN YEARS EARLIER

  It was the first day of the rainy season and the first day of my new position in Genetics. I arranged for the car to pick me up early, hoping I could make it to my office before anyone else did. I’d been working at the Coromina Group for the last five years, ever since I was seventeen, and even though I didn’t want this transfer, I knew by now how to play the game. Get there early and leave late. I never learned that in tutoring, but I learned it well enough from Dad and from experience.

  Rain pummeled against the roof of the car. I stared out the window at the banana trees lining the road. The sun hadn’t risen yet and everything shone yellow from the floating lamps, and although I was familiar with this road and those trees, in the light and rain and early morning haze it all looked brand-new.

  We left the village and sped past the corporate enclave, an enormous swath of land set aside for high-ranking employee-citizens. I could see some of the houses from the road. A few of them had lights on in their windows. Most were dark.

  I turned away, switched on my lightbox, set the holo into privacy mode. I’d skipped breakfast—it was too early to eat—but my stomach roiled anyway. Nerves made my skin jangle like I’d been struck with electricity.

  I reread through the debriefing files I’d been sent over the weekend. Genetics’ big focus was on the soldiers manufactured on Quilla and Catequil, and my taking over the department at such a young age was a major coup for my career. Most of the Coromina Group’s profits came from Genetics and the soldiers. It’d been that way since Dad first shifted the focus away from terraforming and into weapons manufacture, long before I was born.

  The car pulled onto the Coromina Group campus. I hadn’t looked out the window since the road, but I could tell because we slowed down and the light coming through the window changed from the yellow of the highway lamps to the soft white glow of the Coroshine lights that the company manufactured as a subsidiary of Planet Maintenance, where I’d spent the last five years.

  I locked down my lightbox and slid it into my bag. The car pulled up to the main building and I waited as the driver came around the side with his umbrella. It was raining harder now, sheets of water falling across the dry soil.

  “Gonna be a bad one this year,” the driver said, his voice muffled by the roaring of the rain. He was young and recently hired. I was pretty sure his name was John.

  “Is that what they’re saying?” We walked side by side to the building’s main door. Light bounced off the curving orgo walls—the building hadn’t actually been built but grown, back when Ekkeko was being terraformed, and its shape was organic enough to give its origins away.

  “Yeah. Lots of flooding this year.” We made it to the door. John pushed it open for me and grinned. Raindrops sparkled down the left side of his body.

  “Have a good day, Ms. Coromina,” he said, and I nodded at him and went inside.

  The lobby was empty and clamorous from the rain beating against the glass skylights. I went to the elevator and almost pressed the button for five before remembering that no, I was going all the way to twenty-seven now.

  My stomach twisted. Up I went.

  The elevator doors slid open a few seconds later, revealing the Genetics lobby: the administrator’s desk tucked away in the corner, the big crystal light fixture that had been designed to suggest strings of genetic code. I’d only been up there a handful of times, for my interviews.

  All the lights were off.

  “Coromina 825,” I said, to switch them on. They came to life immediately. Then I strode past the empty administrator’s desk, past the rows of offices where the technicians and the salespeople spent their days. There was something about an empty office that always made me feel lonely, and that loneliness was amplified today by the rain and by my own anxiety. In Planet Maintenance, I had been Assistant Director, second to Celina Hen, the Vice President of Operations and the person in charge of overseeing the concerns of the citizen-employees of the four planets of the Coromina I system. When I started my first internship, a few months after the flu outbreak, Assistant Director to the Vice President of Operations was the job I wanted. I climbed my way up so quickly because no one else in the Coromina Group cared about Planet Maintenance. It was a nowhere track. Not enough glory in it, they said.

  I didn’t care. Planet Maintenance was where I’d always wanted to be. The reality didn’t exactly line up to my teenage daydreams—because of the company’s focus on weapons manufacture, it was much more frustrating and difficult to make any real progress. But I still loved it. Loved working there, listening to the concerns of the people of the Coromina I system. I flew all over Ekkeko, from city to village to town, meeting with the local franchise representatives and drawing up compromises so that they could get their new road or their school or their medicine and the Coromina Group wouldn’t lose any money in the process.

  Then Dad started Project X.

  I didn’t know what Project X was. No one did—or at least, no one in my clearance level, and my level was pretty high. When people did talk about it, they did so in lowered voices, like they were discussing a taboo. Rumors circulated; I pretended to ignore them. There was the usual talk of sentient aliens, that myth that had followed humanity as we delved into the stars. A lot of people still held out hope, although I was of the opinion that if we were going to find aliens, we’d have found them by now, considering how deep into the galaxy humanity had gone. Some people thought it was tied to the flu outbreak six years before, and to me that seemed the more plausible choice—an alien, but not the kind people want. That flu outbreak had haunted my family for years, and the only way Dad had of dealing with a ghost was monetizing it.

  In the end, though, it didn’t really matter what Project X was, only that it existed. When Dad started it up, he called me into his office on the top floor. I stood in front of his desk and looked out the huge picture window that rose behind it, revealing the glittering expanse of the ocean.

  “I’m transferring you,” he said.

  “What?” I looked away from the ocean, startled. “Transferring me? Why? I told you I wanted Planet Maintenance when I started, and you—”

  Dad scowled. “Planet Maintenance is a bullshit department. You deserve better.”

  “It’s responsible for the well-being of the entire system.”

  “It’s a legal requirement. You’re supposed to be CEO, Esme. If you while away your time in PM, it doesn’t matter what my fucking will states; Adrienne is going show up with a squadron from Spiro Xu and dispose of you before my body’s even started to cool.”

&n
bsp; I sighed, tapping my fingers against the arm’s chair. Adrienne had some interest in the company, it was true, but hiring out a military wasn’t her style. Wasn’t mine, either. Besides, my father’s death seemed a million years away; I wasn’t, in fact, certain he could die.

  “You’re not taking this seriously.”

  “I want to stay in Planet Maintenance.”

  “Too bad.” Dad leaned forward. He looked older in the sunlight, his hair shining gray and the thin lines in his skin deepening. “I’m starting up something new. Clearance Level Ninety-Nine, so don’t bother asking questions. But I need someone I can trust in Genetics—”

  “You want to put me in Genetics?”

  “Yes.” Dad nodded. The ocean scintillated behind him, out of place next to the quiet rage currently simmering inside me.

  “I don’t know anything about Genetics.”

  “You didn’t know anything Planet Maintenance, either. Your job is management. It doesn’t matter where I put you.”

  I glared at him. It did matter. I actually cared about PM. I cared about keeping the system inhabitants happy. I didn’t want to manufacture soldiers.

  “Anyway, the project has a bit of overlap with Genetics, so I’ll have men dipping in and out of the department as I see fit. That’s why I need you. You’re one of the only people in this company I can trust.”

  My cheeks burned. In that, he was right. He could trust me. He was my father.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I said.

  “You’ve made that abundantly clear, but I’m afraid you don’t have much say in the matter.”

  “I could just quit.”

  Dad looked at me. “You’re not going to quit.”

  I glowered. Of course I wasn’t going to quit. I didn’t want to be completely on my own—the likelihood that anyone in the Coromina I system would hire me under the table, even as a pearl diver or a tour guide, after I’d left the Coromina Group was so small, it was basically nonexistent. I’d have to go to another system; I’d have to lie about my background.