The Silver Ship and the Sea

by Brenda Cooper

  He winked at me. He jumped down from Sugar Wheat and handed his reins to Paloma.

  Paloma reached her free hand out to take Legs’s reins from Joseph as well. “How about Alicia and Kayleen care for these two and saddle the rest? Joseph and Chelo can take down the perimeter, and you, Tom, can skin this beast. I’ll skin the jumping prickles.”

  “Joseph should help prepare his own kills.”

  Paloma frowned, her tone serious. “Hmmmmm. Next time. For now, I’d like to talk to you.”

  Did she want to talk about Joseph’s hunting? But she had known; she hadn’t seemed surprised this morning. So maybe she wanted to talk about how Joseph hunted? I bit my lip. Surely Paloma and Tom weren’t testing us? Paloma knew how fast and strong we were, even if Tom was still learning.

  Joseph and I started at the closest edge to the cabin and began pulling down the little perimeter data nodes one by one, flipping tiny switches to turn them off and stowing them in a blanket for safekeeping. As we reached the back of the cabin, out of sight of everyone else, I heard a low hiss. I jumped, glancing after the sound.

  Jenna stood casually against a near-elm trunk, a slow approving smile on her ravaged face. Dressed in well-worn leather pants, a leather vest over a brown hemp shirt, and low boots, she blended with the background. I was sure my eyes had passed over her at least once before she made a noise. She looked wild, feral, part of the forest.

  Joseph regarded her quietly, as if trying to reconcile seeing her here with his expectations. “What do you want?” he asked.

  For answer, she threw Joseph a thin pipe as long as his arm. It gleamed in the sunshine, turning lazily over and over, crossing the distance between them. Joseph caught it easily, and held it lightly, turning it one way and then the next. It glowed like the skin of New Making.

  We manufactured nothing like it in our shops. I glanced from the pipe to Jenna and she tossed a second item, much smaller, to me. My hand came out naturally and plucked a small smooth object from the air. It only filled half my palm, and felt light, like a flower or a seed. It looked like the same material as the pipe. Was New Making so light? The smooth flattened sphere bore a single marking: a set of three interlocking diamonds, etched or inlaid so the black diamonds were smooth to the touch, seamless between silver and black. “These are ours,” Jenna said.

  I looked over at her. “Ours?”

  “You are outside Artistos now. If you look closely, look in places only you can go, you will find traces of us. You have not forgotten who you are.”

  Joseph and I glanced at each other, and I saw my own wonderment and confusion reflected in his eyes. “What are they?” I asked.

  She squatted, balancing easily with her back against the tree trunk. “The pipe is from a wrecked vehicle. Just a spare part. It has no value, except to show you that you have not seen everything in Artistos. The data button holds information. You need reading thread to access it.”

  I closed my fist around the button. “Do you have any? What does it look like?”

  Her face was serious, her single eye burning with energy. “Joseph can find you some. If he listens. Keep it. You may share it with our people, but not with Tom or Paloma. Or anyone else from Artistos.”

  “Why?”

  Jenna’s one eye twinkled and her mouth pulled into a slightly twisted smile. “They have more in Artistos. But they have never shared them with you. Ask yourself why.”

  I nodded. Jenna thrilled me, excited me, puzzled me, scared me, but I was tired of knowing nothing. “You, too, are withholding information. Tell us more about this thread.”

  She looked startled, just for a moment, and a small smile touched her mouth. She leaned in toward me. “I am giving you information as fast as you can use it. Find some reading thread, find out more about us, and earn the next piece of information.” She held her hand out for the pipe.

  Joseph returned it to her, giving it a wistful glance, and I wished for time to touch it myself, to see if it felt like New Making’s skin. But Jenna’s hand closed on the pipe. She smiled at Joseph and said, “Good hunting today. But break the djuri’s neck faster; it did not have to feel pain.”

  So she had watched him hunt. I wished I had seen it.

  Joseph smiled back, and something, some look, perhaps an energy built on the shared experience of being hunters, passed between them. “I will.” He held his hand out for the data button, and I passed it to him reluctantly. As his fist closed across it, he started, his eyes widening. “I am the reader,” he said, suddenly, opening his fist again and then sitting, closing his eyes, as if trying to fall into his inner silence and access whatever tales the button had to tell.

  So we were right about Jenna’s earlier reference to a key.

  Joseph stirred, opening his eyes again, looking quizzically at Jenna.

  “Not yet,” Jenna said. “You don’t have the strength or the facility.” She laughed. “Nor the machinery. You need a tool to help you.”

  He pursed his lips, then looked away from us, staring at a set of twintrees twining above the near-elm. He swallowed. “Kayleen?” he asked. “Can Kayleen do this? Am I the only one?”

  Jenna nodded. “Kayleen may never have the strength. Your parents built you and one more for this task.”

  “One more?” I asked.

  Jenna spoke slowly, sadly. “One more who is dead now. Dead and gone twelve years. You were not the only children. Just the only ones left alive, left here. You six and I are all of us still here.” She straightened, fixing both me and Joseph with her one eye. A feat. “I must go. Remember not to show that to your guardians.”

  She faded into the forest as if she had never been there.

  Tools and keys. But to what end? What did she want?

  Joseph pocketed the button, and even though I wanted to ask for it back, I kept my silence. We finished the perimeter and returned to find everyone ready to depart. As we rode away, I looked back, hoping for a glimpse of Jenna.

  Our path looped near the lake, and I managed to pull Stripes up next to Joseph in one wide patch that bordered a rocky beach. I leaned in toward him. “What did you feel when you first held the button?”

  He glanced ahead, checking that Paloma, who had the front, and Tom, who had the rear, were out of earshot. Alicia and Kayleen struggled between us and Tom, managing one pack hebra each, clearly too occupied to overhear us. “I felt a hum deep inside—like this thing, rather than the data nets we manage, was what I was born to hear. I don’t know how to explain it better. I can’t read it like I can the nets, but even now I can feel it in my pocket, as if it is alive.”

  “Does it feel good?”

  He licked his lips. “It scares me. Even more than the data nets. But not in the same way. On the nets, I’m afraid of going back to the day Steven and Therese died, or of something else happening. Of knowing things I can’t control. This is different. Like it’s teasing me.” He brushed a biting-fly from Legs’s neck. “I’m certain that if I learn how to read it, something will change in me. Something big.”

  At least his words showed some clarity about why he could no longer fix simple nodes. “Well, it sounds like Jenna thinks that won’t happen right away. Do you want me to hold it?”

  “Not yet.”

  After a three-hour ride, we found the next data stake in a clearing that ran downslope to the stony lake bank, the shallows full of grass and weeds that smelled like rotting vegetation and mud. The sun’s evening rays slanted through the trees above us in golden beams. There was no convenient cabin or corral, so Tom and Paloma went off together to put up the perimeter alarms in a big half circle arching from lake bank to lake bank, leaving the four of us to water and hobble the hebras and pitch the tents.

  We stripped the tack from the animals, clipped on lead lines, and walked them, two for each of us, toward a small clear stream that ran along the far edge of the clearing. Along the way, we passed a jumble of rocks scarred with long black melted lines. Who had sheltered behind the rocks, hunc
hed low while someone else shot at them with a weapon that melted rock? Probably people from Artistos. Weapons that strong surely belonged to the altered. To us.

  Did Jenna have any? I shivered, uncomfortable and suddenly cold.

  We reached the stream and six thirsty hebras plunged their noses into the water as one, the outer two waiting, watching.

  Joseph glanced at me, patting his pocket with one hand. I cleared my throat to get attention, waiting until Alicia’s and Kayleen’s eyes were on me. “Jenna came to see us while we were taking down the perimeter this afternoon.”

  Alicia’s eyes sparkled with excitement and she said, “Really? Here? What did she want?”

  Joseph pulled the data button from his pocket, taking one of the two leads Kayleen held from her hand, and dropping the flattened silvery button in her hand. Kayleen immediately closed her fist around it and said, “Oh.” Her eyes widened almost like Joseph’s had. So she could sense whatever he felt.

  Joseph watched her closely. “What do you feel?”

  She closed her eyes. “Like I’ve felt this before.” She looked at me. “Chelo—you’re the oldest. Do you remember seeing these?”

  I tried to recall the neatly stacked and ordered items in our parents’ tent, but what I saw was just Chiaro’s round face and almond eyes, her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, perpetual worry pulling the corners of her eyes and mouth downward. I shook my head, scanning my memories again. “They had a lot of things, and I do remember silver things, which must have been made of this stuff. But I don’t remember anything like this.”

  Alicia plucked the button from Kayleen’s hand. “It’s…light. But it doesn’t make me feel strange.”

  I took it from her, glad to hold it in my hand again. It lay in my palm, light and bright and silent. “That’s all right, Alicia. I don’t feel anything either. It must be related to Joseph and Kayleen being able to ‘read the wind’—that’s a term Paloma taught me about their skill.”

  Alicia gave me a quick hard look. “Paloma knows about our alterations? What we can do?”

  Kayleen pursed her lips. “Of course she does. She tries to study them. She stands up for us.”

  Alicia’s brows furrowed. “Are you sure?”

  Kayleen watched Alicia warily. “She’s my mom.”

  “Paloma’s okay,” I echoed. “I think she wishes she could run as fast as we can.” I handed the button back to Joseph and watched Stripes raise her head, water dripping from her beard. “She’s tried to study us, to study alterations. But she says she hasn’t learned much. She told me the original humans didn’t bring any real information in their databases, just some side references.”

  “What do we do with that thing?” Kayleen asked. “Did Jenna tell you what it’s for?”

  “Just that it’s called a data button. And that she doesn’t want us to talk to Paloma or Tom about it. She said Joseph needed to learn more about the data nets before he can use it, and that he needs to find something.”

  Joseph put the button back in his pocket. “She told us to look for hidden places where the altered lived and fought.”

  “And died,” Alicia muttered under her breath.

  “But I want to show it to Paloma,” Kayleen said.

  I shook my head. “Jenna is everywhere. Apparently she watched the hunt today, too. She would know. Then she might not give us anything else.” It was getting cooler and darker. I pulled on Stripes’s lead line. “We’d better get the tents set up.”

  There was no more time for talk that night. Paloma and Tom returned as we finished pitching the three tents; the biggest for Kayleen and Paloma, smaller tents for Tom and Joseph, and for Alicia and me. Kayleen and Paloma made a stew of dried corn and the jumping prickles, and Tom and Joseph roasted djuri steaks. Before I climbed into the tent, full and sleepy, I noticed two more meteors burning across the sky. It was a rare moonless hour, and the flashes of light shone like tiny suns as they burned up above us.

  Surely Gianna was cataloguing them back home. I bit back a brief wave of loneliness.

  The hebras whickered softly and low wind waves gurgled through the plants and washed rocks softly against each other on the beach below us. As I drifted off to sleep, my last waking thought was to wonder if our parents had ever slept here, listening to the same water, watching the same moons.

  Either set.

  Perhaps our parents had fought each other on this very same beach.

  12

  My Own Killing

  The next morning I crawled out of an empty tent to a surly sky and the smell of impending rain. Alicia sat on a blanket next to Joseph, combing her hair. I sat beside them. I wished them good morning, then glanced at Joseph a second time. Dark circles spread under his eyes and his hair stuck up in the back, as if he’d slept badly. He held the data button in his hand, shivering slightly in the morning air. I frowned at him. “Are you okay? Did you sleep out here?”

  “No.” He blinked as the gray dawn slowly grew lighter, tossing the data button from hand to hand. “I’m not sure I slept at all.”

  Why hadn’t Tom come to get him, made him get some sleep? “You were out here alone all night?”

  “Yes.” He looked out over the lake, avoiding my eyes. “I decided to stay up until I could fix the node.”

  “Did you?”

  A short, ironic laugh escaped his lips. “I’m still awake, right? I can hear it, though. Whenever I want. I listened to the diagnostics all night. I can hear the node Kayleen fixed yesterday. Even now. And a third one, farther away.” He pointed past us, in the direction we would go in when we left. “But I can’t change anything in them. I don’t understand why.”

  Alicia handed him her comb. “Maybe you’re trying too hard.”

  “Maybe.” He swiped the comb through his hair perfunctorily and handed it back. He grunted. “Look, I’m going to take a walk.” He stood shakily.

  He looked like he might fall back down. At least he was trying to fix the nodes, but staying up all night surely wasn’t the best way to go about it. “Maybe you should go get some sleep.”

  He shook his head. “I think I’ll do something useful. I’m going to water the hebras.”

  Alicia’s mouth drew down tightly, and she scrambled up next to him, putting a hand on his forearm. “Let me help you.”

  He shook her arm away. “I’d rather be alone.”

  Alicia blinked, surprised, her eyes flashing pain but her face suddenly impassive, as if a mask had covered her delicate features.

  I took Alicia’s hand and, together, we watched him pocket the data button and walk away. She squeezed my hand in return. “He can’t water eight hebras.”

  “I know. But let him try. He gets downright moody lately, and it’s best to leave him alone when he’s like this. He’s safe enough; we can see him.”

  Joseph led Legs out behind him, the hebra nipping playfully at his shoulder and Joseph brushing him away. I figured Legs would eventually win, and Joseph would have to smile. The other hebras looked at us as if to say, “Me, too,” but I managed to ignore them for the moment by turning my attention back to Alicia.

  She jerked the comb through her hair; I heard strands ripping. Her usual expressions were reappearing slowly, anger and loss and excitement becoming visible together, fading up through the mask. Subsuming herself must be how she survived the East Band. And I’d never known; perhaps I’d simply read the mask and not the girl all along? I kept my voice gentle, hoping to coax the true Alicia to the surface. “Are you always up so early?”

  She let go of the hank of hair in her left hand and stood, pacing slowly around me. Trust and fear rippled across her eyes and her delicate fingers clenched, and relaxed, and clenched again. “I haven’t been able to sleep more than a few hours a night since Varay died. And last night, I dreamed we left here, took the New Making, but I’d left something behind and had to come back. Only I could never tell what I left behind.” She stopped and looked out over the water. A single raindrop fell
on her forearm, glistening. She ignored it. “I didn’t want to come back. I can’t imagine what I would miss here.”

  I pointed at the lake. Its surface glowed dark under the clouds, ruffled by a cool wind. It was just possible to make out the crater rim on the far side, mountains rising up beyond it, the far ones improbably touched with sunshine. “Fremont is beautiful. Being alive, being here.” I touched her arm. “We have each other.”

  “And people who think we want to kill them.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be such lousy company. I just…I don’t fit in. I don’t even fit in with you three. You and Joseph are so close you hardly have to talk, and Kayleen talks whole paragraphs to you and barely says a word at a time to me.”

  A flush of embarrassment heated my face. “Alicia, you belong with us. You’ll see.” Rain started falling in big fat drops. The hebras whickered. “We always looked you up. Every time the band came.”

  She cupped her hands, catching raindrops, watching them splash off her palm. “I used to dream I could stay behind with you and Joseph and Bryan, that I could live in a house instead of a wagon and wake up in the same place every day.”

  The hebras bugled at us. We relented, each taking two beasts to the water, staying ten meters upstream from Joseph, ignoring him like he was ignoring us.

  As we got back, fat slow raindrops gave way to a sharp stinging downpour. Joseph remained by the stream with Legs. Paloma helped us put the animals away while Tom and Kayleen prepared hot tea, and cooked up a scramble of the leftover meat from Joseph’s hunt and the rest of our fresh supplies from Artistos. By the time breakfast was served in Kayleen and Paloma’s big tent, Alicia’s long hair stuck to her back in thick wet ropes, and we were both soaked through and shivering. Joseph came in, clutching a dry shirt that he changed into before eating silently. He fell asleep along the south wall of the tent.

  “Can we go back to the cabin?” Kayleen asked from her spot near Joseph’s feet. “I’m cold.”