by Ann Aguirre
“That is part of an alarm clock.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed out loud, a burst of shock that turned into genuine amusement. “I’m sorry? An alarm clock?” Nadim, I realized, wasn’t laughing. At all. I didn’t get any sense of amusement from him, and his silence was telling. “Okay, apparently I’m wrong, it isn’t funny. Explain?”
“I shouldn’t,” he said. “I could get in trouble.”
“With who, exactly?” Because everything I’d ever seen about the Leviathan, on all the holo documentaries and in the orientation classes, had classed them as loners . . . born in space, separated almost immediately from their parents to travel the universe and grow as sentient beings on their own. They learned by doing and listening. They weren’t social, exactly, and I didn’t think they had a reporting structure—at least, none that anyone had ever talked about. But he’d referred to an elder. Maybe that was who he was worried about.
Nadim didn’t shed any light on it. Instead, he brought up a vid that shimmered in the air a meter in front of me.
I didn’t recognize the face of the young woman. She spoke in what sounded like Russian, but in the next second, it switched to English. Nadim automatically translating it, maybe.
The woman—the Honor—looked sick and scared half to death. “I don’t know what happened,” she said, and glanced over her shoulder. What was in view appeared to be the data console room, though there was something wrong with the color of Nadim’s wall-skin; it seemed purplish, bruised, wrong. I thought the picture was out of focus. Then I realized what I was seeing was smoke, or at least some kind of visible fog obscuring it. The Honor tried to wave it away, coughed, and then bent off to the side to spit out a thin trail of blood. “We should have followed the course that was recommended, but he said the alternate route was fine when we proposed it. Now we can’t wake him up, we can’t—”
“Another one’s coming!” someone shouted, this time in Mandarin, offscreen. I recognized two words of it from chatter in the Zone, and the translation provided the grammar. The Russian girl looked down at the data console and frantically tried to do something. It must not have worked, because she let out a helpless cry. A blur, a shudder, and she fell away.
Then the wall behind her shattered open, a sucking, gaping hole into space, and the smoke that had been hanging in the air vented out in a thick, twisting rope that snaked out and left nothing behind.
The air, I thought, and gripped the edges of the workbench tight enough I felt a sting. The air just got sucked out. And though I hadn’t seen her disappear, she must have been pulled out with it. There was no movement, no sound. The hole slowly closed up. It took long, silent minutes.
The vid stopped. I felt hollow and sick.
Nadim finally said, “I fell asleep.”
I spun around and faced the wall, as if he was standing there. As if he wasn’t all around me. “What happened?”
“We were in the black,” he said. “The black between stars. Off the course we should have followed, but I thought—I thought that the alternate route would be more interesting. I was very young, and it was too far between stars. I . . . I could not ration my energy so far. I fell asleep.”
Trying to understand, I asked, “What’s so bad about sleeping?”
“For you, it’s a quiet period, but for us, it can be more. Deeper.”
“Like hibernation?’
He considered the word before answering, “Like that, yes. That was the first time I fell into a very deep, unplanned sleep; it is a failing that is rare among my kind. I never realized it could be dangerous until then. But my Honors didn’t know how to wake me, and . . . several meteorites pierced my skin. By the time I’d healed and woken, it was—it was too late. The system that provided them with air had been damaged and took too long to heal.”
“When . . . when was this?”
“My third voyage,” he said quietly. “I am very careful now to stay to the approved routes, where I know I will receive enough light. On the Tour, I don’t stray too far into the black. But I am graduating soon, so I have asked for this device. You must complete it. Before I take the Journey, it will be installed, and when I fall asleep, it will shock me awake. An alarm, to protect my Honors.”
A wave of grief swelled, crashing down, closing on me from all sides—Nadim’s guilt. It was easier to sense his emotions when I touched him, but this was powerful enough that even without contact, it felt like being coated in ashes, in a thick, choking pall of utter sadness. This story hadn’t been circulated by the media; that was damn sure. The Honors program must have compensated the families for the loss and quietly swept the tragedy under the rug. Way before my time.
“I was so young,” he said. “And I will never let it happen again. That’s why this is important, Zara. That’s why you must do the work. Please.”
I could hardly breathe under that crushing burden. Nadim’s guilt hadn’t faded, though this must have happened decades ago.
I put a hand against the wall. Not a conscious decision. Comfort. One wasn’t enough. I put both hands there, leaning toward him. His emotions came through even more clearly, and it was everything I could do not to weep for him. “It wasn’t your fault. Everybody sleeps. Even Leviathan, right?”
“I should only go into a dark sleep when it is safe to do so. It was my responsibility. I can’t fail again,” he said.
I didn’t even know why I did it. Maybe just because I needed to. But I bent forward and rested my cheek against the wall. I felt a pulse of something like surprise, then relief, then a rush of something very complicated bolt through me and through him too.
The choking grief slowly eased away, replaced by something like . . . wonder.
“It’s . . . less. You made it less.”
I didn’t ask if he meant the grief or the guilt, mostly because I was basking in the unique pleasure of making things better with just a touch. With just caring. For a few seconds, we floated together, just streaming that inexplicable connection. Quietly I pushed off, out of—what was that? An embrace?—and picked up my H2.
Sometimes I wasn’t sure what questions would bother him. “Is it some kind of genetic condition? I mean, with all your advances—”
“Yes, it is linked to a mutation. Because of it, when I am awake, I am much better at channeling energy in a crisis than most of my kind. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. You probably don’t know why Beatriz is good at math and you prefer more practical concepts.”
He had a point. “Well, she’s studied more, and I do have a knack with gadgets.”
“Among my kind, having this . . . mutation can be seen as something that could disqualify me from taking the Journey. But if I make this modification, it should convince the Elder that I can manage my condition appropriately.” Nadim paused, like maybe this was a gray area.
“I’ve got it.” The way I read it, this sleep issue was along the lines of a disability. So this was an accommodation, not a fix.
“I need this to keep you safe,” he said. “Will you do as I ask now?”
“Depends.”
“Zara!”
“Is there an off switch?”
He sighed. “Yes, because all Leviathan must enter the dark sleep at least a few times in their life. The device is built with a code that will allow it to be disabled under certain conditions of safety. It must only be used when I am bathed in starlight, and there are no other risk factors. I will place this code in the records. Is that acceptable?”
“Then absolutely.”
It was grueling work, requiring both technical comprehension and physical dexterity, but I was in my wheelhouse. I blazed through the assembly, and I found a few things to add on as I went, including a second, hidden off switch—a mechanical one. I didn’t always trust beamed code. If Nadim needed to enter that deeper sleep state, and the damn shock collar wouldn’t let him, then there needed to be a backup.
But I didn’t tell him, because I knew he’d object to me modding the design. I skipped lunc
h and kept working, flying through progress steps, all the way to the testing phase.
I left the diagnostics running and went to dinner, feeling sweaty, exhausted, and exhilarated all at once. I’d finished two days ahead of schedule.
Take that, bottom of the class.
After dinner, since I was done with my to-do list, I sat down in front of the data console and absently said, “Hey, Nadim? Are you tied in to this device?”
“Of course,” he said. “I provide it with power.”
“Yeah, I mean . . . can you read the data on it?”
“I can, but I don’t normally. It is for your use, organized in human structures.”
“Okay. Mind if I poke around a little in past records?”
“I don’t mind. The recordings are there to help you. There is nothing in there forbidden to you.”
Digging around in the data proved to be fun. I was no Conde, but I’d rehabbed enough times to understand how to find the stuff people buried in their data sets. Which was how I unearthed the coded personal journal of one Marko Dunajski. Recording our thoughts was encouraged “for posterity” but not mandatory, which was good, because I was pretty sure I didn’t want to have my thoughts out there for anyone to see.
I figured Marko’s entry would be gold from the beginning, because he looked grumpy. “I’m going to record, please ignore me,” he said, which I thought was a strange way to start, until I heard Nadim’s voice on the recording say, “Of course, Marko.” Marko chugged more coffee and set the cup aside. Rubbed his face like he might scrape his features off.
“I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought.” His tone surprised me. When he had me on the recruitment trail, he’d seemed so confident that I figured these would play like propaganda films. Instead I had Marko, uncut and unkempt. “Okay, let me start again. When I was chosen as an Honor, it was the happiest day of my life. I thought I was prepared. Before getting on the shuttle, I read all the previous Honor biographies and interviews with people who were alone on space stations, and I watched vids about the first settlers on Mars. I understood that we’re partners with our Leviathan in training during the Tour. But once the fanfare and celebration stops, it’s . . . a sobering responsibility. How does it make sense that somebody like me has been sent on a mission like this? I’m not a scientist. I am a musician.”
Somebody like me. The words caught my attention and tugged because I’d been wondering the same thing.
“What we’ve seen out here, it’s marvelous. Unbelievable. So many civilizations that no longer exist, because they’ve destroyed themselves. Nadim doesn’t say it, but I think the reason they show these places to us is to explain why they take such an interest in humans. We’re here now. We exist. And we were going to destroy ourselves when they first met us and end up another cautionary tale on the Tour. I suspect the Leviathan couldn’t stand to see it happen again. He says that the two who made contact were on their own, responding because they couldn’t ignore the cries of the wounded in the dark. That has a certain . . . beauty.” Marko’s voice changed. Grew darker and rougher. “And I’m sure Nadim believes the story. But I’m not sure I do any longer. There are things that don’t make sense out here. Things he avoids talking about, or can’t tell us. There are mysteries in the dark too.”
So, like me, Marko wasn’t all sunshine and flowers. He had an edge I’d never suspected. Good. It made me like him better. And his words put me more on my guard too. Mysteries in the dark.
“Still, for all that . . . This is going to sound stupid, but I’m just talking to myself, aren’t I? There are people who study the stars their whole lives and never get to soar among them. I can’t help feeling that I didn’t deserve this chance, but I intend to make the most of this experience. I’m going to learn everything I can and make my family proud. And maybe . . . maybe I will go on the Journey, if the Leviathan give me a chance. Solve the real mysteries. Finally explain once and for all what the Leviathan want from us . . . or want us to learn from them.”
Maybe it wasn’t meant for me at all, but that message arrowed straight into my heart. Make my family proud, he’d said, and I realized that I desperately wanted that. My family and I, we were like passengers on trains heading in the same direction but on parallel tracks. I loved my mother and Kiz. Maybe we’d never be like a regular family, but if I could make them proud of me, of something I accomplished—that would be . . . good.
But I also had to take Marko’s doubts seriously. I’d come on board thinking about Valenzuela and his incoherent warning; Nadim had soothed that jitter out of me, but this made me think, again, about what we weren’t being told. What mysteries the Leviathan kept.
“The thing is,” Marko continued, “I’m not sure I’ll be chosen. Nadim seems to need more interaction than he gets from me. Certainly he’s not getting it from Chao-Xing. It helps when I play for him. The Leviathan are musical from their core; I think that’s one thing that fascinates them about us, our ability to summon up our own songs, even though we aren’t born from the same culture. Even though we can’t hear what they do. I like Nadim, but I feel we’re not . . . not a good fit. He has just one more try at finding someone who fits with him before he goes out into the black. I hope—I hope someone next year works. If they don’t, he’ll either be matched for a long time with someone who isn’t on his frequency, or he’ll be alone out there. I don’t like to imagine that.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what Marko was talking about, but it was sad to consider Nadim setting off on the Journey unhappy. He had a real yearning to bond with people, or at least, that was what I sensed in him. He was lonely. More lonely than anybody I’d ever met.
It occurred to me that this was pretty rude, listening to Marko talk about Nadim and his shortcomings when Nadim was bound to have heard all of it. Marko, after all, had made a point of asking Nadim not to listen when he was recording. Leaning back in my chair, I said, “Um, Nadim?”
No answer. I had an awful thought that he was so bothered by Marko’s observations that he didn’t want to talk to me at all . . . but then I reached out and touched the wall and tried again. “Nadim?”
“I’m here,” he said.
“Were you listening?”
“No,” he said. “It was a private record. I don’t listen to those. It isn’t polite.” There was a certain precision to his response that made me smile.
“Let me guess. Somebody yelled at you before for spying on them.”
“I’ve had dozens of Honors aboard. Most of them have yelled at me when they became frustrated or felt they had no privacy. I don’t take that personally, most of the time.”
Most of the time. That got me curious, made me want to ask.
I didn’t.
From a transcript of a research interview between Dr. Elacio Camacho and Leviathan Moira, conducted aboard the Leviathan, 2112
CAMACHO: May I play you a sample of how we interpret the sounds that stars make, Moira?
MOIRA: I would like that.
CAMACHO plays a recording.
MOIRA: That is a very limited interpretation, Dr. Camacho. It is only sound. There is no life in it.
CAMACHO: It’s only a digital interpolation based on the shifts of light frequencies. We find it useful for various calculations.
MOIRA: It makes the stars sound very stupid.
CAMACHO: [pause] Are . . . you saying that the stars are intelligent?
MOIRA: Creatures of your planet sing. I sing. The stars sing. Who am I to believe they are not singing on purpose?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Breaking the Peace
THE SILENCE THAT followed as I hovered near the data console might have been awkward. I supposed that our connection let him sense my lingering curiosity. “Did you . . . want something else?” Nadim asked me. “There are more recordings. I could leave you to play them in private.”
“No, I’m done.” I yawned. “Maybe I should just go to bed.”
“If you prefer. Or you could proceed
to the media room. Beatriz is singing.”
“She’s what?”
“Singing. She is quite accomplished, though I believe she underestimates her talent.”
“Did she say it’s okay to listen?”
Instead of answering, Nadim lit up a pulse on the corridor wall for me to follow.
Halfway there, I heard her, a quiet voice, then louder, stronger. I didn’t know the song. I didn’t go into the media room, but I peeked in and saw Bea standing on the stage, her eyes shut, her face lit with transcendent joy as she sang and sang, the notes soaring with pure and perfect beauty.
It was like the starlight. Like the dizzying black beauty of space. It was free and fierce and full of longing. It was so far beyond me I felt lifted on it, taken out of myself.
Nadim said, in a whisper meant just for me, “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. Other Honors played music or sang, but she . . . she’s different.” There was awe in his voice. Awe all around me, like a cool, shifting fog.
Beatriz sang a long time before she paused. Since this wasn’t a concert, I got up and headed over to her. Following my impulses had gotten me into more trouble than I could list, but I hugged her anyway—the kind of hug you give when somebody surprises you with a gift so special you never even knew you wanted it until you opened it.
She let out a little squeak, and then she squeezed me back. “My vó would be pleased with me. For bringing her music to the stars.”
“Your vó?”
“My grandma. She was an opera singer at the Teatro Real,” Beatriz said. “Very famous, in her day. She sang to me all the time, and I studied music as well—but I was always afraid of being onstage. So I’ve always sung just for her. And for me.”
“Nadim should broadcast you. The whole universe should hear that gorgeous voice.”
She gave me a smile so radiant that I understood at once how different she must be back home in Rio. “I don’t know about that, but thank you. The acoustics in here are so perfect, I might not sound so wonderful somewhere else—”