by Essa Hansen
Her blue-moon gaze flicked between the crew members, then back to him. “You are unable to procreate through biological means. It is a common result of selective breeding and mosaicism, which your genetic makeup suggests.”
Selective … Caiden crushed his sleeves in his fists. Bovine breeding was the responsibility of those with husbandry determination— Caiden knew enough from questioning his mother— but no parental units on his planet made children. Four-year-olds graduating from the Stricture were assigned a unit based on their aptitudes.
He was a sterile hybrid, not born to a family or a tribe but created to be a slave, a cog in the Casthen’s vast machine. The overseers’ voices at Appraisal had been blunt: As a mechanic determination, it will become your job to maintain this world.
Caiden’s only purpose had been to unwittingly perpetuate injustice.
“Name,” Sina urged.
“I’m …” Caiden is dead, weak. Couldn’t save anyone he loved. “Winn.”
She input more data into the display and showed him for confirmation. “Passager, tell me where your ship is docked and we will gather its specifics for the—”
“No scan,” Laythan cut in. “A name is fine for registration now. Give it a name, Winn.”
Only one name sprung to mind, inexplicably, the same syllables stacking together every time he thought of the ship, a name like the shape of her but in language: “Azura.”
“Good. You are registered as a free passager, under the aegis of the Cartographers. You may provide more details at your leisure.”
Caiden nodded, gaze stuck on the blank white counter, as he wished some new feeling would emerge. He was still nothing, from nowhere, and was one passager among millions.
En came up beside him, her blue curls tumbling over the counter. “Brave thing. We’ll help you get on your feet. The Azura needs repairs and we need to buy a new ship for ourselves— might as well take yours to get to Emporia, where we can achieve both. Laythan can’t argue against keeping you for at least that long.”
Laythan grunted and stepped up to the counter. “What’s the report from passagers returning from the previously restricted universe, CWN82?”
Sina’s face sobered. Speckles bubbled at the edges of her cheeks. “That information is still being—”
“Please?” En leaned in, stretching on tiptoes. “I’ll bet my heart that the gloss operation is driven by Dynast buyers. The Cartographers are letting passagers rough up CWN82 now to shake the blame loose, aren’t they? What about the Casthen armada that flew in during the gloss raid?”
Sina sighed. “The Casthen’s Prime, Çydanza, claims her ships stumbled on the planet at the same time as the passagers.”
Çydanza. “She’s lying,” Caiden blurted. “They were there getting their gloss back, right? They started all this!”
The Cartographer cocked her head. “Where did you come from, Passager?”
Caiden gripped the counter’s edge and unleashed the truth like a gale: “I’m from a planet in CWN82. The Casthen enslaved my people then dumped us as food for the nophek.”
As brave as the admission felt, the reality of it all summed up sent a sour shock through his body.
Sina blinked her luminous eyes, and the spots on her cheeks slimmed to discerning pearly wrinkles.
Caiden wrestled with everything he’d learned. If the Dynast and Cartographers were rivals, and the Casthen slavers had been cultivating gloss for the Dynast, then the Cartographers should want to expose the Casthen as much as he did.
“You buy knowledge, right? I know everything. I saw them. I-is … is—” The rage sat brittle and dry in his throat, threatening to crack him again.
En patted his back, and he wasn’t sure if he felt comforted or humiliated. Maybe both at once. In a tightly measured voice, En said, “Memories of Casthen involvement would incriminate Çydanza and her Casthen, and get every passager up in arms attacking their infrastructure, investigating every operation, station, and planet the Casthen have from here to Unity. Perhaps even exposing their Dynast buyers.”
A slow green flush of recognition dawned across Sina’s shoulders, while a dead pause followed from everyone else.
Panca shot to her feet off the bench. “Don’t let him do it.” Her aspirated voice was filed raw. Her white-ringed eyes flicked between Laythan and En.
Do what? Chills wormed down Caiden’s spine.
Laythan said, “It’s up to him.”
“What’s up to me?” Caiden asked, but was ignored. “Panca?”
She caved, her shoulders tense. “Laythan … side effects’re unique to each brain. And he’s a child. I was … It’s not a decision he can make. The cost …” Her hoarse voice thinned and strained. Laythan drifted one step toward her, the very vision of a concerned but ill-equipped father.
Taitn straightened, just understanding. “You mean—”
“Don’t talk like I’m not here!” Caiden said, and matched Laythan’s intense gaze. “What do you all mean?”
The captain said, “You’re the only survivor who’s witnessed everything. There’s a procedure, an uncommon one—”
“Laythan!” Panca shouted.
He raised his hand. “A tool that stimulates emotional memory. It monitors your— well, it lets us see and record your memories as they play out in your brain.”
“It’s not a nice tool,” Panca hissed. “Trauma’s not meant to repeat. It’ll send you back there.”
Back to the beasts. Leta whimpering his name. The heat of the monsters’ breath and the stench of their blood-dripping manes. The crunching, tearing. His mother’s clawing hands shoving him to safety with her final strength. And the last glimpse of his father’s face. Eyes bloodshot. Mouth wide. Run.
Caiden’s vision throbbed, pressure building. He crossed his arms and squeezed. I ran like a coward. I survived and now I have to pay that back. One good thing, one purpose.
Panca drifted over, took Caiden’s upper arm, and forced him to sit next to her on a bench by the wall. Her velvety face hardened in an earnest expression. The luminosity of the white room seemed to pool in the jewel-like core in her forehead, setting it aglow. Her eyes were bright rings in black pools, a gaze that peeled back the layers of him.
“You’re a small, wronged part of something large and twisted.” Her airy voice pillowed around the edges of his misery. “Fear, resentment, hatred— those’re your enemy. Not an organization. Untangle your feelings before you turn those feelings on others.”
Taitn padded over and sat on the other side of him. He placed a gentle hand on the nape of Caiden’s neck, over the slave brand. “Think about this. Don’t rush all your decisions.”
The velvet fog cleared to sharp edges. “If I don’t do something, no one else will.”
A jagged memory.
They hit me, Leta had told him once, where the bruises don’t show, so no one sees. People don’t do anything if they don’t know.
Caiden met Panca’s gaze.
Her face scrunched around sad eyes. “Be sure you’re ready.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Caiden inhaled, chest expanding. His trauma was all he had left, and it was worth something. “I want everyone to know.”
CHAPTER 11
MEMORY JOG
We must contract payment first, for memory jog,” Sina said as she curved around the Cartographers’ counter.
“What sort of payment?” Caiden asked.
“Firsthand proof of the Casthen’s guilt is worth a great deal. But you lack so much, most of what Cartographers could offer will have no immediate value to you.” Purple spots clouded her nose as she hesitated. “Your ship won’t help you if you cannot pilot it or navigate, and are too young for combat. You know nothing about stellar drives, machine spirits, neural interfaces, or xenobiology, and your body has not developed to survive in a fraction of worlds passagers frequent.”
Caiden shrank as Sina pounded in his worthlessness.
She concluded, “For someone so young,
we could offer acceleration.”
Taitn inhaled sharply, then opened his mouth to speak, but En laid a hand on his tense shoulder. Taitn flinched violently, throwing her off. She said, “Let him hear it first.”
Caiden raised an eyebrow.
Taitn exhaled the words. “Instantaneous accelerated aging takes years off your life span.”
En tsked and added, “But spends those years growing your body, conditioning your mind with knowledge and skills that would’ve taken many more years to cultivate. Extremely expensive and rare.”
“I would be older?” A delicate awe bubbled up.
Sina nodded. “We have the proper facilities in Emporia, in Unity. I can offer six years of accelerated age in exchange for the recorded jog of your memories.”
“Six …” Caiden tried to imagine a twenty-year-old self. “I’ll grow height and muscle?”
“The body is weakened initially,” Taitn said, “stretched to a future state.”
En sniped in, “But you can choose abilities and knowledge. It would be a chance to make up for being isolated so long, learning so little.”
Caiden scratched the smooth bench with a fingernail as he imagined all the holes in him filled instantly, reversing what the Casthen slavers had made him. They had called him perfect, once, and branded him with belonging and value. Six years of acceleration was his chance to become everything those lies had promised. The memory jog would expose their brutality, and the acceleration could make him strong enough to hunt the slavers himself— starting with their leader, Çydanza— and not rely solely on his memories galvanizing others.
Taitn cleared his throat. “Memory jog first.” His eyes crinkled, summoning the same brave smile that Caiden had used when telling Leta everything would be all right. “Who or what you want to become afterward can wait until you’ve put your past behind you.”
“Passager Winn,” Sina called. “If the payment is sufficient and you are ready, please have your medic inspect you. Cartographers will not be held responsible for calculable side effects of memory jog or your physical and psychological stability during procedures.”
Caiden looked to Ksiñe, sitting on a farther bench. Dark, ragged bands swathed his upper face.
“Most xenids experience no repercussion to memory jog,” Ksiñe said, shrugging. He pinned Caiden with a feral gaze as he rose from the bench and spread his gloved fingers, holding tensile bands of dimpled air between them. Caiden flinched back as Ksiñe began an unceremonious and handsy inspection, running the dimpled matrix across Caiden’s body. His soft Andalvian skin and features were at odds with his stiff posture. His whipkin pet scurried up and down him, stretching to sniff Caiden.
Satisfied, Ksiñe pulled away and said, “He is enough cur, will be fine.”
“Cur?” Caiden twitched as Ksiñe stalked away.
“This way, Passager.” Sina led Caiden through the Cartographers’ zone to a small room buried among a warren of halls and pods.
The space was empty white, housing a chamber in the middle, one and a half meters square. The walls and ceiling of both the chamber and surrounding room were translucent glass so thick it became opaque pearl. Bubbles dotted the inside walls like watching eyes.
“Full-access biodata chamber,” Sina explained. “It has many functions. Please, undress.”
Caiden peeled off his slave clothes to his undergarments, shrank in embarrassment, and stood patiently while Sina stuck tiny cubes to his body. The objects flattened, spidery and milky under his skin. The backs were sheeny nodes the size of small rivets.
“Stand in the middle. Close your eyes, think about home and what happened. When you are ready.”
“I’m ready.” Saying it aloud made it feel more true. This was something only he could do: travel back into misery and lies, to make them real to others.
Caiden stepped onto the frigid, copper-colored gills of the chamber’s floor. The entryway closed behind him in a series of square folding rods, completely seamless when sealed.
A silent pressure filled Caiden’s head. His feet rose off the ground until he floated in place, and the air filled, like heat waves, buzzy against his skin.
The lights cut out. Caiden closed his eyes and focused.
Home. It’s not home anymore. He pictured the false gray sky. The aerators spewing smoke lies and blotting out what must have been a view of sun and stars. He thought of his home unit, his simple bed pad and red coverlet, the steel kitchen, the bath after a day of work, the tools in the shop lined up on rotary cylinders. His parents, whose care hadn’t been a lie even if everything else about his origin and upbringing was. He heard their laughter. He imagined the buildings and pasture blocks and roads arranged like parts of a machine. The air hot and muggy, the grass swaying green, and the gentle rips and grunts of grazing bovines reached his ears.
Beneath the oak tree, he and Leta lay down to gaze up at the sky.
She asked, Where’s the wind come from?
He replied, It just makes a big circuit.
So it’s the same wind every time?
Probably filtered, yeah.
Does the wind get tired, always being the same?
He didn’t have an answer.
Leta said, Maybe there’s a wind that doesn’t touch the same spot over again. A wind that just keeps going.
The livestock died, and it wasn’t a quick extinction. Pustules and abscesses developed on their lumbering bodies, sapping their strength until they dropped dead, infecting others.
Carcasses flattened the grass. Caiden jerked and covered his nose, still aware that his actual body floated in the biodata chamber. When he tried to open his eyes— they already were. His memories were all around him, inescapable. A nightmare from which he couldn’t wake.
The sky parted like jaws. An orange throat. The black tongue of the transport box descended, surrounded by searing light. Shadow and fear blackened the crowd.
He tried to think of something else, to rewind to gentle grass and gray sky, and Leta’s voice, but the scene wouldn’t stop. One memory ricocheted to the next. The overseers emerged in their armor, their scratched blue faces and muffled, amplified voices. Caiden scrunched in the darkness of the transport, jabbed by elbows and knees, whipped by screams. He hugged his sibling while his mother whispered maniacally, “Soon, soon, soon …” Soon the rumbling would stop, the swelter would cool, and sweet air would waft away the feces and fear. They’d be greeted with a new world of vibrant green and a pure vapor sky.
Leta’s pleading eyes looked up at him, clinging to the heroic promise that he’d come back for her. “Stay here, really quiet. It’ll be calmer here.”
Caiden stumbled onto sand. His heart pounded faster than the rhythm of the stampede. Madness propelled them, and terror stopped them short as the nophek beasts tore limb from body.
He spasmed, images jerking past, surrounding him: screaming faces, shredded bodies, red sand. Time rushed by in every direction as he ran. Vertigo tipped the landscape and he was lying on his side, squeezed beneath the overhang, staring at dripping jaws. Pungent metallic blood stung his head and seeped into his skin, never to be removed.
The rest came in a rush. Plodding across dunes. The ship, a pillar of safety. A battle in the sky. The overseers coming.
The lights in the chamber ceiling flashed on, and Caiden’s vision burned white. He fell to the copper floor and stumbled to keep upright, hands slapping a wall, stomach threatening to heave. Sina clutched Caiden’s arms and helped him up as the walls spun, all looking alike and everything too bright. Too white and pure and there should be blood everywhere.
“Sit.” She lowered him onto a white bench.
Covered in sweat, Caiden leaned back and shut his eyes. His shivers and heartbeat raced out of sync, and he sat breathless, throttled, wrung out.
“Take your time.” Sina pressed a cloth into his limp hands.
He squeezed it. Soft.
“Your crew is waiting for you when you are ready. It will take the Car
tographers a short time to parse your recording into coherent playback, then broadcast in our districts for passagers to discuss.”
Her footsteps drifted away.
The staccato clink of the folding outer door poked Caiden’s ears. He opened his eyes and wrung the towel in his hands. The fuzzy yet slick greenish fabric left his skin energized where he slid it over his forearm, the sweat wicking away until his skin looked smooth and matte as it had after the scour. Cool. Astringent. Mint crushed in the fields. He grappled for that memory but it seemed squeezed from him, far off.
When the room stopped whirling, Caiden wobbled to his feet. New clothes were stacked beside him, softer and thicker than his old ones, without the rips and scorches from his old life. The dark trousers and long-sleeved shirt were loose when he pulled them on but shrank close to his body as he stretched.
Memories and slave clothes, shed like old skin.
The door opened for him, and En stood outside: light-gray eyes and smile the same, but black-skinned and long hair high in a tie. He held the morphcoat, which had changed to tiny scales, and whisked it around Caiden’s shoulders. “I shooed Taitn away, he was a ball of anxiety. Not what anyone needs. You hold up?”
Caiden nodded but wasn’t sure. His body tingled, dead-weight heavy, and something splintered at En’s care, as if the reality of what he’d gone through was more apparent once recognized from the outside.
“Let’s get food.”
“Starving,” Caiden croaked.
Narrow hallways returned them to a large common area in the Cartographers’ zone. Circular counters formed islands among the crowd. Spherical maps of light hovered over these and morphed at the touch of well-dressed Cartographer attendants. Recognizing no languages, Caiden absorbed a wash of weird sounds across frequencies. All the people and creatures— what En had called xenids— moved stiffly around one another, navigating invisible borders, the way the bovines had moved around herders, reacting to every motion with a shift of their own. Eyes flicking, heads swiveling. The tension must have been because of the gloss from the raid: some people had it, everyone wanted it.
A backlit bar stretched against one wall, staffed by one of the muscular xenids called a chketin. Dim lighting hid most of their two-meter-tall, purple-gray body, their neck tapering up to a thick, round head. Muscular bundles defined all of the chketin’s form, punctuated by crisp gold eyes and slit pupils that flicked toward Caiden instantly.