Star's End

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  It was all blocked.

  Esme cursed, even though she had expected it. She supposed now she would have to drive down to the records office and throw her weight around, convince the clerk there to break the law for her. She leaned back in her chair and stirred her eggs around. The files swam through the air like fish, all of them struck through with a red line. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked.

  Esme sighed and deactivated her lightbox. She hoped the Amanan offices would have something useful. They’d probably have more than what Will was able to find. Individual worlds kept their own records; it was easier that way. Made for less clutter.

  She entered the code for a driver to come pick her up, changed into a suit, and went outside to wait. The cool breeze rustled through the trees, all as prefab as the houses. The air smelled different there, on Amana, cool and smoky and faintly metallic. Esme wasn’t sure if she missed the scent of the ocean or not.

  The car pulled into the driveway. A different driver than yesterday. His eyes glowed from behind the windshield, watching her as she made her way down the drive. She could have waited for the shuttle, but she was a Ninety-Nine and the daughter of Philip Coromina. Thirteen years ago, she would have waited. Not anymore.

  “I need the records building,” Esme said to the driver. “I’m not sure if it’s on the main campus or not.” She arranged herself in the backseat, strapping herself in, smoothing down her skirt.

  “Of course, Ms. Coromina.”

  They drove through Santos. The Coromina Group campus was perched on the top of a hill at the city’s center, looking out over the landscape like an ancient Earth castle. The car had to slow down in order to reach the top, winding through the narrow, curving roads. Esme felt like they were driving up to the sky itself, still and flat and cloudless. Coromina I hung in the west, half in view. You couldn’t see the storm as well from this world.

  “Approaching Records Office,” the driver said. The campus there was newer than the one on Ekkeko: it had been built after the terraforming, and like Adrienne’s house, it was mostly glass and plaster. Unfamiliar fir trees filled in the gaps between buildings. Esme stared out the window like she was a little girl again, seeing Undirra City for the first time.

  “We’ve arrived,” the driver said.

  “You’re very formal,” Esme told him.

  He glanced up at her in the mirror. The glow hadn’t faded from his eyes. “It’s part of my job.”

  She smiled at him and climbed out of the car. Wind slapped across her face, colder here on the top of the hill than it was down in the valley. She hugged herself and darted forward. She should have brought a heavier coat.

  At least it was warm inside. The glass amplified the pink-stained sunlight and turned everything in the lobby rosy. Esme asked the receptionist for records and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. Her new status as CEO gave her priority: she pressed her thumb against the sensor and the other people waiting for the elevator shuffled and sighed and moved back, tilting their heads low so they didn’t meet her eye. It seemed the rumors of her decision to shut down weapons manufacture hadn’t made it there yet, either. Good.

  The records office there was smaller than the one on Ekkeko and much less busy. A man sat behind the receptionist’s desk, fiddling with the control to his holo.

  “Excuse me,” Esme said, and her voice made him jump. “I need to speak with—” She checked the name on her lightbox. “Ms. Rosemary Silvers.”

  The man peered up at her. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “I don’t need one.” Esme reached across his desk and grabbed the sensor he had sitting in the corner, next to a stylus. She pressed her thumb against the sensor, and her blood activated the white hazy glow that signified she was not only a Ninety-Nine but CEO.

  “Oh,” the receptionist said. “Oh, I’m sorry, of course, I should have been paying attention to the elevator—” He fumbled around on his desk. Esme stepped back and watched him with her arms crossed. This was what she did to people now. She made them fumble.

  “You can go on in.” He tapped a pattern on his holo and the image flickered. He grinned at her. “Ms. Silvers is waiting, Ms. Coromina.”

  “Thank you very much.” Esme stalked away from him, keeping her head high. Voices silenced as she walked past. He must have sent word: a Ninety-Nine is here. Philip Coromina’s daughter.

  Esme felt hollow.

  Ms. Silvers’s office door was open. Esme knocked on the frame to be polite, then peered in. Ms. Silvers sat at her desk, although she stood up the moment she spotted Esme. “Ms. Coromina!” she cried. “I heard you were onworld. But I didn’t realize you would be making—a—a visit.”

  “I’m not.” Esme knew that when Ms. Silvers said visit, she meant audit. “I’m here about a citizen of Amana who has placed a diplomatic block on her personnel files.” She cleared her throat. “I need access to them.”

  “Oh, I see.” Ms. Silvers’s smile flickered. “I’ll see what I can do. Can you give me a name?”

  “Adrienne Lanka.”

  Ms. Silvers danced her fingers across the lightscreen, pulling up the files. She stopped.

  “Everything’s blocked,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s anything I can do—”

  Esme pressed her palms against the desk and leaned forward. She looked Ms. Silvers in the eye, and Ms. Silvers leaned back, her skin going pale.

  “I understand that I’m asking you to do something untoward,” Esme said in a soft, quiet voice. She smiled a little. “But I’m sure you can manage it. Just this one time. We aren’t dealing with the main company files, after all.”

  Ms. Silvers closed her eyes. “No,” she said. “I suppose not.”

  Esme sat back in her chair. She didn’t dare do this before. But she was CEO now. She could break laws.

  “If I’m found out . . .” Mrs. Silvers began.

  “You won’t be,” Esme said. “I swear that to you. As your new CEO. It hasn’t been officially announced yet, but it will be.” And she pressed her hand against her heart and smiled. Ms. Silvers gave her a fluttery sort of look, her cheeks pinkening. She turned back to the lightbox.

  “Of course, Ms. Coromina,” she murmured. Esme sat with her back very straight as Ms. Silvers dove into the files, her fingers flying across the air. Esme felt a vague twinge of guilt—I’m exploiting her. But she needed that information. She needed something to find a way to Adrienne.

  “Adrienne Lanka,” Ms. Silvers said softly. “I’ve spoken with her husband once or twice. They’re great patrons of the opera house here.” She gave a strained smile. “I do hope there’s no trouble.” Her eyes widened, as if she realized she’d overstepped her bounds.

  “Oh no,” Esme said. “It’s nothing like that.” She paused. The glow from Ms. Silvers’s holo tinted her vision blue. “A personal matter,” she said.

  “Of course.” Ms. Silvers tilted her head demurely. She worked in silence for a few moments more. Then she sighed, brushed an invisible strand of hair away from her forehead.

  “All right,” she said. “There we are. Shall I add them to your lightbox?”

  Esme nodded and pulled it out of her purse. It didn’t take long for the files to transfer.

  “Thank you, Ms. Silvers.” Esme stood up. She attached her lightbox to her wrist; she wanted to keep it in sight. “I’ll see to it personally that this doesn’t come back to you.”

  Ms. Silvers just nodded. Her hands were shaking.

  Esme left the records office. In her empty elevator, she waited until the door slid shut before she leaned against the wall and gasped for air. She was struck by a dizzying wave of sadness. She thought she might start crying. Was this how it started for her father? Asking for favors, small things to help fix family matters? Was that why he wound up torturing his own daughter, her own sister?

  “No,” Esme whispered to her reflection in the elevator. “No, no, no.”

  When the elevator deposited her on the ground floor, Esme rushed through t
he bustling lobby to get back outside, into the crisp, clear Amanan air. She ran her fingers over her lightbox, as slim and delicate as a bracelet, and took a deep breath. The trees rustled around her. The sun was pleasant on her skin. Her thoughts cleared, and she no longer felt weighed down by her own sorrow.

  A line of cars waited at the end of the drive, each of the drivers’ eyes glowing. She climbed into the nearest car. “Home,” she said, and pressed her hand against the sensor. It read her blood, and whispered the address through the cables of the car, into the driver’s ear.

  “The Lorna Street Enclave,” the driver said. “I’ll get you right there, Ms. Coromina.”

  She slumped back against her seat and fiddled with the lightbox dangling around her wrist. All of Adrienne’s secrets wrapped around her like jewelry. And she realized, as the car zipped along the wide streets of Santos, that she wanted to know what the files said, and not just to convince Adrienne to come home. She wanted to know more about Adrienne. When her sisters disappeared, it had hurt like she’d lost part of her own soul.

  “Privacy,” she said, and the privacy screen buzzed into place. She pulled up the files, spreading them out across the back of the car. OCCUPATION. FAMILY. ARRESTS & CITATIONS. TRAVEL. POLITICAL AFFILIATIONS. She touched ARRESTS & CITATIONS: Adrienne had gotten involved in politics at university. She’d been picked up at an anti-corpocracy rally in Etzin, and then, a few months later, issued a citation for passing out non-CG-approved food handouts. But Esme knew this already; Adrienne had still been talking to her when it happened. She went back to the main file and selected POLITICAL AFFILIATIONS.

  Member of the Four Sisters Freedom from Corpocracy Group, 3921 to 3928.

  Wife of Tarczan diplomat; dual citizenship.

  Allegiances to anti-corpocracy groups on the Tarcza planet Zatan.

  Esme read all of this with a curious detachment. She had not realized how deep her sister’s radicalism had gone. She’d never been particularly political herself, but she’d always held to the notion that corpocracy was the best way of running a planetary system. After all, a corporation is better equipped to support its citizen-employees. A corporation is always looking to please their customers. And a citizen, as Mr. Garcia had told her over and over, is a customer born into your trust.

  A link floated into view. WATCHLISTS. Heaviness settled in Esme’s stomach. She tapped the link and the lists blossomed out, over ten of them: POTENTIAL TERRORIST THREATS. POTENTIAL CORPORATE RIVALS. KNOWN ANTI-CORPORATE SYMPATHIZERS.

  With a start, Esme realized that she still thought of Adrienne as a teenager eager to work her first internship at the Coromina Group, a teenager who dressed up for dinner and always knew the right things to say, who studied her lightbox lessons while her sisters were swimming at the beach. But that teenager didn’t exist anymore, and Adrienne had rejected the life that raised her.

  Esme cleared the files away and deactivated the lightbox. So, Adrienne had gone from a model intern to a radical after it happened. Their father’s sins were enough to poison Adrienne against her own family.

  The car arrived at the enclave. Esme climbed out, in such a daze that she forgot to thank the driver, and stumbled up to the front door. The house wasn’t hers, and it didn’t feel like hers, either. Living there reminded her of those first few weeks after she moved into the penthouse. It wasn’t Star’s End, and it wasn’t right.

  She set her lightbox on the dining room table and activated it. Brought up the files again. They scattered across the room. She switched off the overhead lights so she could see better. This time, she touched OCCUPATION.

  A new file system materialized into place. Everything was arranged by dates. Esme skipped over the files from Adrienne’s time at college and touched the one labeled 2927 TO PRESENT. An image of a world appeared. Not a full one, not a corporate one—an asteroid, from the looks of it. Small. A private world.

  Halcyon, said the the subtitle. Designed by Adrienne Lanka in 2930 for Tarcza Preeminence Alexis Zurita. Considered an anti-corpocracy haven; see Political Affiliations.

  Adrienne had become a world designer.

  All the considerations about Adrienne’s politics flew out of Esme’s head. She tapped the image of Halcyon and it grew larger, enveloping the text until the planet was all that remained, spinning above the car seats. The planet was shrouded in pale, silvery mist, although bits of green sneaked through. Esme tapped the planet. It stopped spinning. There didn’t seem to be a way to look at the surface, and Esme realized how disappointed that made her. This was her sister’s biggest accomplishment: not the protests, not rebelling against corpocracy. This lovely designer world.

  Here was a reminder of the Adrienne Esme had known all those years ago.

  Esme scanned over the rest of the file. Adrienne was employed by the Sweeting firm, a privately owned Tarcza company. She’d worked on several other projects over the years, but Halcyon was the only one where she was head designer, and the only one of any interest to the Coromina Group. Esme slid the files aside and asked her lightbox to run a search for Adrienne Lanka, rather than Adrienne Coromina, on Connectivity, to see if there was any private information among the Four Sisters. It was a long shot, but she was curious.

  “It’ll help convince her,” Esme muttered to herself, but she knew that wasn’t it, that wasn’t it at all. She just wanted to see her sister’s work. But she couldn’t find anything.

  Esme drew up the Family system. Immediately, all the floating files collapsed into a point in the corner, and a message flashed over the table, filling the entire car with red light:

  WARNING: PHILIP COROMINA’S DAUGHTER. ESTRANGED. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. DO NOT KILL.

  Esme stared at the warning. Its light burned into her skin.

  DO NOT KILL.

  DO NOT KILL.

  DO NOT KILL.

  “Acknowledged,” Esme said. Her voice cracked, but the message vanished anyway, leaving a darkness in its wake. Esme felt hollow.

  The files resumed their previous positions. Esme tapped on the file concerned with Faust Lanka, Adrienne’s husband. A holo appeared: Ambassador Lanka, his lower half hidden by a podium.

  “The Tarcza system is working as closely as we can with the Coromina Group,” he was saying in his tinny hologram’s voice. “These new revelations concerning genetic experimentation are troubling, but I urge the people of Tarcza to resist passing judgment until all facts have been gath—”

  Esme paused the holo. Lanka’s mouth froze into an ahh expression, like he was silently screaming. Genetic experimentation. Adrienne must have told him what their father had done. Why else would this video be included in her file? But Esme didn’t want to watch it, not right now.

  She read up on Lanka’s history. He had attended Cusson (a quick search on Connectivity told her it was the best university in the Tarcza system) and became a diplomat not shortly after, first to Barazani Incorporated and then to the Coromina Group. He did not have a business background, but the file was unclear as to what background he did have. Which meant the Coromina Group didn’t know. No matter. It wasn’t anything that would be useful. She didn’t need information on Lanka; she needed information on Adrienne.

  On her sister.

  There were so many gaps of information in an official Coromina Group file. Esme could learn where her sister worked and who had she married, but that wasn’t enough to fill thirteen years. She didn’t know how Adrienne and Faust met; she didn’t know who made the first move or which one proposed. She didn’t even know if it was a marriage of convenience or of love. And Adrienne’s job, designing planets—why did she choose that? Did she like it? Was she trying in some way to best their father, to create worlds completely unlike the worlds of the Four Sisters?

  Question after question after question, as all the pieces of Esme’s sister swirled around her.

  • • •

  Esme sat down at a table set up next to a vast, shimmering lake. Mina Weston, Amana’s Head of Weaponry, was alre
ady there, her expression cool. “Welcome to the Cafe du Lac,” she said. “I was surprised to hear you’d never eaten here.”

  “No.” Esme sank down in the chair. The wind blowing off the lake had an icy edge to it, and she shivered, not bothering to take off her coat. Mina had, of course—she must be used to the chill, having not lived her whole life in the tropics. Esme had no doubt that she chosen this restaurant, with its lakeside table, specifically for this purpose. “I haven’t spent much time on Amana at all.”

  “Pity.” Mina activated the menu, holographic images of the restaurant’s dishes spiraling around the table in a slow, lazy arc. “We should start with drinks. Their cocktails are the best in the system.”

  “Serena isn’t here yet.” Esme glanced at the path she had walked on to get there. The table was isolated, and no doubt protected with invisible security shields to ensure their conversation stayed private. Despite being in the center of one of the largest cities in the Four Sisters, Esme felt as if she were in the middle of nowhere, as if she and Mina were the only people in the universe.

  “Serena Cowrie is always late,” Mina said, still flicking through the holo menu. “It’s so typical of those immersion people. Here, let’s have the rosemary infusion. It’s to die for.” She tapped the holo three times and the menu vanished. Then she leaned back in her chair and studied Esme. Esme didn’t blink.

  “So, I read the message about your—decision,” Mina finally said. “That was a bold move, to put it lightly. When do you plan on making the official announcement? To the citizen-employees?”

  Esme gave a thin smile. “That’s what I wanted to talk with you about. And I’m afraid some of them have probably already heard about it.”

  “Just rumors.” Mina tossed one hand dismissively. “But vicious ones, I’ve heard. They’re afraid they’ll be rendered obsolete. That there will be no place for them in the company.” She paused, letting her words sink in, as if she didn’t think Esme had ever considered that possibility. “I know I’ll be safe; I’m highly ranked enough. But the people in my factory—”