Valence (Confluence Book 4)

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  “Adapted.” Murrrsi reached for Jane’s arm. “Now, three bones. Legs and arms are fine. Then digestive tract last.”

  Three more sharp pinches, then Murrrsi held the device in Jane’s mouth for about twenty seconds. Jane didn’t feel anything from that one. That was it.

  Murrrsi raised the device and spoke. “Jane Augusta Holloway, sampling complete.” The device whirred as an external casing emerged from internal compartments, encapsulating it. She set it down on the platform. “Now it can’t be tampered with.”

  Brai informed her that Ron and Ajaya had landed in a shuttle bay and were making their way to the medical section. Jane said, “The rest of my people are on their way. Two more.”

  Murrrsi got out three more devices. Alan submitted but indulged in a lot of eye rolling and sighing. When Ron and Ajaya arrived, they were already aware of what was needed because they’d been observing the proceedings through the anipraxic link, and it was over quickly.

  Murrrsi stepped back into her armored suit. “I’ll return to my shuttle briefly to get the processing of these samples started in the portable lab there. The results will be uploaded to the science teams automatically. Then I’ll return to continue to scan for nanites. And I’d like to see that device you mentioned, Alan Bergen.”

  26

  October 6, 2020

  Three years after Jane Holloway’s Global Announcement

  ZARA SLAPPED OFF HER ALARM, groaning aloud, like she did every morning. A 5:00 a.m. wake-up call was not normal or easy for a sixteen-year-old, but nothing was normal or easy in her life anymore.

  The US congress had given funding to NASA for a pilot program for kids aged eleven to fifteen. That eventually evolved into a full-blown program involving NASA facilities, national labs, all branches of the military, science-oriented universities nationwide, and even some private contractors in the aerospace field. The positions for “children demonstrating acumen in Mensententia as well as excelling in STEM subjects” were described as internships, mentoring opportunities, and even apprenticeships in some cases.

  They officially called it the MSTEM Scholars Program, and the students were commonly referred to as MSTEMs, M Scholars, or just Ms. But no matter what people called it, it changed everything. The United States wasn’t the first to create such curricula officially or unofficially, and by 2020, every industrialized nation had similar measures in place.

  The government had been forced to do some backpedaling. They had admitted to some things. They still kept a great deal obfuscated, but in Zara’s mind it was a step in the right direction.

  Zara was growing up as an MSTEM Scholar. She went to work with her father at 7:00 a.m. Once there, she attended a class employing accelerated teaching principles with lectures on advanced math and science on a rotating schedule that also featured Mensententia, linguistics, and examples from the download, many of which she’d originally helped decipher. After their classwork was complete, the students went to work for the rest of the day, collaborating with various teams on the download.

  Zara fumbled around for her robe and headed into the bathroom. After relieving herself, she stood in front of the mirror, blinking against the light, to determine the state her hair was in, in order to decide if it needed to be wetted down, or conditioned, or if a quick application of a light product would be enough to whip the recalcitrant, springy curls into a semblance of shape. She started feeling and scrunching her hair before she even looked up.

  Wild color assaulted her eyeballs. Purple. Her hair was shockingly brilliant purple.

  She was instantly awake. “What…?” she shrieked, before remembering that her parents might still be sleeping.

  She turned her head one way and then another, parting her hair randomly to look at it more carefully. The color went all the way down to the scalp. “Oh, no. Oh, no. What? How?” she whispered frantically.

  Her hair was not only purple. It was sparkly. It shimmered, actually. It looked like nothing she’d ever seen on a human head before.

  Who could have done this? Her parents certainly wouldn’t do such a thing to her while she slept. She dived into the shower and leaned forward with her hair under the stream. Nothing happened. Colorless water went down the drain. She put a handful of shampoo into her hair, expecting the shampoo’s suds to turn purple in her hands. They didn’t. She shampooed three times and nothing changed. She stretched a strand out toward her face so she could see it. Even wet, it was still obviously bright purple.

  She leaned her head against the cold tile. She could go to extremes to try to get the color out, which could do a lot of damage to her fragile natural hair. She could try bleaching or dyeing over it, but she didn’t know anything about that stuff. Something could go horribly wrong. She’d seen girls with chemical damage on their natural hair. It looked much worse than this purple. It was just too risky.

  The other option was to just accept it.

  It seemed as though someone had played a prank on her. If so, maybe it wasn’t malicious. She breathed shakily, trying to stem the tide of emotion and be rational. It certainly wasn’t ugly. It wasn’t something that created shame, necessarily. It was just a surprise.

  One of the other students in her program must have done it, possibly with some technology they’d pulled from the database. They were always playing harmless practical jokes on each other, usually creative and humorous ones—never anything mean. The instructors carefully fostered a mildly competitive but overall cooperative team environment, and the kids generally played along with very little friction.

  She’d been bullied before. That had made her feel worthless. This was different, wasn’t it?

  This was the first time she’d been a target of her M peers’ jokes. Was this a rite of passage? Or some other initiation ritual?

  If that was the case, she was being included.

  She felt her lips curl up a little bit.

  She pulled the shower curtain back and looked at her wet head in the mirror. Truth be told, it was pretty. She might even have chosen to do something like it, if she lived a more normal life. If she’d been a normal teenager.

  She globbed on a handful of deep conditioner, carefully combed it through with her fingers, and soaped up the rest of her body.

  You know what? She was going to own it.

  She smirked. And she was going to find out who did it and reciprocate with something equally clever and shocking. She’d have to start weighing her options. Take her time. Come up with something creative and just as mysterious.

  When she went down to breakfast, her dad looked up at her. His eyes widened. He coughed and spluttered. A little coffee may have shot out his nose.

  “You okay, Dad?”

  He turned and grabbed the DVR remote. “You might want to see this, Grimace.”

  He pressed a button and the news began to rewind. She saw a blur of purple—the same shade she’d just tried to wash out of her hair. He pressed Play and the news anchor spoke:

  “In Australia today the Mensententia Students woke up with a surprise on their heads. Their hair had turned bright purple overnight.” They played footage of a multitude of students talking about their hair. Some of them seemed irritated, others indifferent, but quite a few were amused or cheerful. The theme was that none of them knew how it happened. “Similar reports of the phenomenon have come in from other countries across the globe, including Russia, Germany, and Egypt, only involving teenagers in Mensententia programs.”

  Her dad looked back at her.

  “Huh.” It was all she could think of to say. This was bigger than she’d thought.

  “You didn’t know this was going to happen?” he asked.

  “No. I just spent twenty minutes trying to wash it out.”

  “Someone is making a statement,” he said and poured himself another cup of coffee.

  Her brows drew together. “What kind of statement?”

  Her dad blew on his coffee and looked at her skeptically, like she should know the answe
r. “Unity.”

  27

  ALAN WASN’T sure where Jane was, but he had a hunch. The meeting was going to start in half an hour, so she’d probably been walking the corridors of the ship for a while and ended up at that one window bubble that she seemed to like.

  He could have asked the squid where she was, and sometimes that was useful if he was in a hurry, but it took a lot of the fun out of it.

  She was there, curled up in the curve of the bubble and looking out at the stars. He almost hated to interrupt. The whirring and quiet clunk of his cybernetic leg alerted her to his presence long before he got close. She looked up at him and smiled, but it was a sad impersonation of her truest, most joyful smile. She was anxious about what the Teracian Assembly was going to say. Various government agencies had been communicating exclusively with Murrrsi for weeks while she scanned both ships. Today they were going to find out what the USR had decided to do about them.

  He leaned into the opposite curve of the bubble and looked out. He could see the ass end of Murrrsi’s shuttle docked a few decks away and lots and lots of stars. Back on Earth, stars seemed like things that were sort of sprinkled sparsely through the galaxy. Here, they were packed so densely that the idea of constellations seemed silly. They seemed brighter too. It was a change that was hard to get used to. He could see why she was drawn here so often.

  “What do you see when you look out there?” he asked softly, not wanting to spoil her moment.

  She glanced at him and ducked her head sheepishly. “I look at our sun.”

  “At Sol? Really? You know which one it is?” He moved to her side of the bubble, leaned down until his head was level with hers, and tried to look in the same direction.

  “Brai showed me.” She raised a finger and pointed at a region of space.

  He squinted, but it was just a clump of stars. He couldn’t see how she could pick any single one out. He shrugged. If he wanted to know which one it was, he could ask the squid. Maybe he would sometime. He was warming to the Squidster lately.

  “I’m worried about Earth. I hope we’re making the right choices. I so desperately want to protect our home.” Her eyes looked watery.

  “I know.” He couldn’t give her platitudes. She’d either go down in history as a villain or a savior. Or maybe there wouldn’t be any more history at all. Regardless, she was doing her best, as corny as that sounded. They all were.

  He’d done all he could to help their cause by giving the Teracians the blueprints for his device that could detect the difference between good and bad nanites, as well as his version of a search-and-destroy nanite that would seek out any plague nanites and obliterate them. He’d gotten the idea from Brai and improved upon the design that Brai had used to try to protect him and Jane during their early days on the ship.

  Both crews had been helpful and cooperative. There was nothing more they could possibly do.

  She sniffed and stood. He grabbed her hand and squeezed hard. Unexpectedly she wrapped her arms around him and held on like he was a life raft. When she let go there was a wet spot on his shirt. He ignored that as they silently walked to the bridge.

  By the time they got there, she had her captain face on. She was all business.

  The crews of both ships were present. Everyone spoke in hushed tones and milled around like it was a funeral.

  Murrrsi sat at a console, looking just as nervous as everyone else. She said she’d given positive recommendations but had no control over the outcome. Of course, this affected her future as well. No one here was immune to the decision this unknown governmental body was about to deliver.

  Finally the screen came to life. Ten wildly different-looking individuals stood around a circular table, murmuring to each other. The view was from above. They seemed to realize that they were being broadcast, and one of them tapped a screen imbedded in the table. The camera’s viewpoint shifted to focus on that person.

  Pinkish, amorphously shaped, and covered with independently moving villi the size of Alan’s smallest finger, this person was accompanied by a machine that wafted a fog over their body. “This Decatribunal was formed from the greater Teracian Assembly of the United Sentient Races to decide the fate of the two sectilian vessels that wish to enter Teracian space, their inhabitants, and the intern in training for the position of transportation access officer, Murrrsi.”

  The broadcast returned to the high center viewpoint. Another delegate tapped their screen and the camera instantly moved in on them. This person looked almost human except for being white—not white like most humans thought of the classification, but chalk white. Even their hair. This startling lack of pigment—or was it actually an abundance of white pigment?—was accentuated by a shapeless black garment that hid the person’s form so that Alan couldn’t determine gender. The voice sounded feminine and breathy, though, and their eyes were a pale, ethereal gray. “We have studied all of the testing results as well as the ship scans in great detail. As you know, three independent labs were employed to analyze your genetic results, which were of utmost importance to determine before moving forward. Their conclusions were unanimous. Our deliberations were less so, but we have reached a verdict that is a fair compromise.”

  The camera changed instantly to reveal a third delegate removing their hand from their screen. If you could call that a hand. The delegate resembled a very large black walking stick—an insect. They had a bit of an obnoxiously regal air. “Regarding the matter of Jane Augusta Holloway and the three other individuals claiming to be terran: we conclude that Terra is indeed your planet of origin. Your DNA incontrovertibly matches the terran DNA sequences left behind by the Cunabula. Your citizenship will reflect this status. Terra is a non-USR world, but a world that is of vital interest to the USR. For us, this concludes an arduous search by many scholars over centuries and centuries. It is a long-awaited, momentous day worthy of celebration. We urge you to send an emissary to petition the USR in an official capacity to further our mutual interests. We have much to learn from each other.”

  Damn. It was all actually true? All that crap Brai had been spouting about the human race being selectively bred to be more aggressive, to rescue the pansy-asses of the galaxy? He’d pretty much expected that to be debunked here and now. Alan looked around the room and the rest of the Providence crew seemed equally stunned. No one said anything, though.

  And they were back to the high central camera. It stayed that way for a while. The delegates seemed to be murmuring to each other again. He couldn’t quite make out what any of them were saying. He wondered if Jane was faring any better and glanced at her. Her expression was set in a neutral arrangement, but her eyes avidly roamed over the screen as though willing them to continue.

  A brawny person with a horn crowning a long snout took the focus next. A horn? Really? Seriously, nothing else would ever surprise him after this. “Now, on to the matter of quarantine. A verdict has been reached. Exposure to the sectilian nanite infection is a serious matter. The billions of citizens who lost their lives to this plague will not be forgotten. Protocols were put in place decades ago to protect the populations of USR worlds and must be followed. The Teracian Assembly of the United Sentient Races cannot make an exception, regardless of a petitioner’s planetary origin. The transportation access officer in training did commendable work scanning these sectilian ships and found no evidence of remaining plague nanites, and that is well and good. However, the Speroancora and the Oblignatus have harbored the plague in the past and must abide by the quarantine rules. Two standard years before landfall. That is our pronouncement.”

  “Shit,” Alan said. If they were still under quarantine, they couldn’t communicate with anyone. The whole purpose of coming here was to warn the galaxy about Kai’Memna and the Swarm—not to mention to drum up support for Earth.

  Jane turned away from the screen. Ron was rolling his shoulders like he was ready for a fight. Ajaya bowed her head. Tinor stared around with big eyes. Everyone else was just looking to Jan
e.

  Alan glanced at the screen and saw that all but one of the ten delegates was leaving the circular table. That delegate reached out a hand to trigger the camera to refocus. It was clear almost immediately that the communication went both ways. The person on the screen could see them too. They probably all had, but they were such bullshitters that they pretended not to while they made their pronouncements.

  This delegate reminded Alan of reconstructed images of human ancestors. Pale, tawny hair fanned out around a face with a slightly protruding jaw, a heavy brow ridge, and soft brown, closely spaced eyes. “I am Yliriu of Sebapen. I have been chosen to be your liaison on Terac. We understand this is not the outcome you’d hoped for. Know that this decision was not reached easily.”

  Jane turned suddenly and asked, “Is there an appeals process we can begin?”

  Yliriu looked sympathetic. “The Decatribunal’s findings are final and binding.”

  Fuck.

  Jane looked away.

  Two standard years. Two years. It would be less than two years on Earth’s time scale because a USR standard year was based on a planet that orbited closer to its sun. He did the math in his head. That was 1.78 years. Plenty long enough. How could he stand to live on this ship for almost two years with nothing actually going on? He was going to go nuts.

  The delegate spoke again. “I have a few more things to tell you, and then you may ask any questions you might have.”

  Everyone turned at least some attention back to the screen.

  “Murrrsi may decide to live out the quarantine period aboard her assigned shuttle or aboard either the Speroancora or the Oblignatus at her discretion. She will receive a commendation for this service, ongoing remuneration at full TAO pay, and a TAO position will be waiting for her at the end of this term.”