Spinning Starlight

by R. C. Lewis

  I’m pretty sure no one expected it except maybe Spin-Still. The thought that Yilt might have seen what Tiav and I were up to before visiting the Khua brings a threatening blush, quelled by the resurging ache. Maybe it’s not quelled enough, because Yilt sees something.

  “The Aelo are good people. Your friend especially—his mother has broken new paths for all Aelo and has taught him well. But I’m sure he didn’t expect this, either.”

  Regardless of my conflicted feelings, I can’t give the Haleian much more than a nod, but that’s enough. Crumbling into a tear-soaked mess doesn’t sound good, so I distract myself with the basics. Yilt goes back to scanning news-vid feeds, and I get something to eat—some kind of pastry holding meat and vegetables. Once I’m not starving, I go to another room where I can think. I’ve got to figure out what exactly Spin-Still is so sure I understand.

  That night on the roof, when the Triad told me to stay out of trouble, to let them handle things, I had an idea. The Khua are like strings, one end anchored to the spires, the other—or others—roaming on various planets. The conduits are the same but different.

  The conduits have always been anchored at both ends. They take a lot of energy to maintain but they’re still breaking down. Maybe some of that energy goes into dampening those violent vibrations I saw from the Khua on Sampati. Minali thinks they need a biological catalyst to stabilize the conduits. Why don’t the Khua need a biological catalyst to be stable?

  Because they’re already alive.

  Whether she realizes it or not, Minali’s trying to make the conduits into more than artificial portals. She’s trying to make artificial Khua—artificial life. But it’s not what she’s really doing. It’s not going to work that way. What it’s doing is bringing the faulty non-Khua closer to the real Khua, making contact with them. That’s why I can interact with my brothers inside—at least, I could when I was inside without Tiav’s disk.

  The disk makes it different, controlled, cleaner for the Khua. But the rest of the time, they and the conduits are more intertwined, like the same family of frequencies, overlapping.

  That contact with the conduits isn’t good.

  IT HURTS.

  All the questioning and theorizing in my head definitely felt like my own, but that last bit, that certainty that the conduits are hurting the Khua, that has to come from Spin-Still.

  It’s information, and I have to make Yilt understand. He’s still watching news-vids, but it doesn’t look important—they’re talking about a summer festival in some city or another. I’m familiar enough with the computer interface to pull up the drawing program, but I have to stare at the blank wallscreen for a minute. How can I get the idea of conduits and biological catalysts and a bad interaction across in a picture?

  I can’t, so I shouldn’t try. All I need is one word, more abstract, that’ll tell Yilt enough, and he can pass it along to Quain.

  First a mouse eating food. Then a dashed line to show the mouse’s path as it walks away. Finally the mouse unquestionably dead, and I go back to add a bunch of arrows pointing to the food for emphasis.

  Yilt takes it in, thinks. “Poison?”

  Yes, that’s it, exactly. What Minali’s doing to the conduits is poisoning the Khua.

  “Have you been poisoned?”

  The sudden urgency in Yilt’s voice startles me, and I shake my head quickly so he won’t get ideas about force-feeding me antitoxins. I point to the disk hanging from my neck, then back to the mouse food.

  “The Khua have been poisoned? Did the Khua tell you this?”

  I’d say no, because it came from my own thought process, but Spin-Still confirmed it. It’s the same thing, so I nod.

  As I hoped, Yilt immediately contacts Quain and fills him in. If it’s possible for an Izim helmet to frown, that’s definitely what it’s doing now.

  “If this is true, then we cannot waste time,” Quain says. “We must discuss this in person, but I cannot reach the surface without drawing attention. Yilt, do you have any contacts who could get Liddi into orbit?”

  The Haleian shakes his head, but I’m barely paying attention. Spin-Still can get me there. I’m certain of it. I get Quain’s attention and point to the disk.

  “Has the Khua offered to bring you?”

  If that kind of gut instinct can be called an offer, sure.

  “Very well. Yilt, keep the location secure. Liddi, I look forward to your arrival at the Khua’s convenience. Safe journey.”

  I can’t help remembering what Tiav said about the Izim. How anxious the idea of me going on their ship made him. I get the feeling the journey isn’t what I need to worry about.

  Spin-Still wants to wait until evening, which I don’t bother arguing with. She’s in charge. When she decides it’s time to go, she gives me next to no warning.

  None of my portal experiences compare to this. Like being fired from a slingshot or a cannon, hurtling through the white chaotic nothing-everything. No pain—I’m cocooned by Spin-Still’s energy—but I wouldn’t call it comfortable. At the other end, I’m thrown to the ground, crashing to my hands and knees with a jarring force that echoes along my bones.

  Not ground. Smooth metal, but white. I’m in a hallway made of the stuff, the floor curving perfectly to the walls, then ceiling. So much white could blind me, but fixtures on the walls aim light upward, dim and indirect enough to work. A familiar smell teases my nose, tickling my memory. It smells like the workshop back home, only different. Brighter.

  Homesickness surges through my chest, filling my lungs until I force it away. I don’t have time for this.

  The floor vibrates underneath me, accompanying the clank of metal-on-metal. I get to my feet and turn around. Quain approaches. At least, I think it’s Quain. If all the Izim have identical suits, I have no idea how I’d tell them apart. He stops a few feet away. No handshakes for greeting the Izim, I guess.

  “Welcome, Liddi. Please follow me.”

  As we walk down the corridor, it occurs to me that I could hand over Spin-Still so she and Quain could figure it all out directly. That’d be easier.

  NO IT WOULDN’T. SPIN-STILL CAN’T COMMUNICATE WITH THE IZIM THE WAY SHE DOES WITH ME.

  Great. These two can’t talk to each other, and I can’t talk at all. This should be fun.

  The room Quain takes me to is more white on white—white walls, white chairs, white table. The instruments built into the table and walls break up the monotony, at least, not that I can understand anything on the screens. Lots of flashing lights and diagrams. Ferinne symbols and totally different symbols.

  I sit in a chair I assume is meant for someone like me—like on Ferinne, others are clearly designed for different alien species. Quain doesn’t sit. He walks around the perimeter of the room, looking over the different displays. Some change while he’s looking. Enough to convince me it’s not a coincidence of timing, but he never touches any controls. Never gives any voice commands.

  Like maybe he controls it with his mind.

  That’s serious technology. Tiav said they were advanced. He even seemed a little afraid of them.

  Maybe coming here was a bad idea.

  IF IT TURNS BAD, SPIN-STILL WILL TAKE ME BACK.

  But how do I know Spin-Still is on my side?

  BECAUSE THE LIVES OF HER KIND ARE AT RISK, AND I’M THE ONE SHE BELIEVES WILL FIND THE WAY TO FIX IT.

  I rub my temples, pushing back a burgeoning headache. The only way to communicate with Spin-Still is to wonder things to myself, and then my own gut tells me the answer. It’s confusing, and I don’t really like it.

  “Is something wrong?” Quain asks. “Are you unwell?”

  I shake my head. What’s wrong is nothing Jahmari could treat, much less Quain.

  “You told Yilt that the Khua are somehow being poisoned. I need to know more about this. As you cannot speak and do not have skill with the Ferinne writing system, I prepared one of our old ways.”

  A panel on the table in front of me slides ov
er, revealing a hidden compartment underneath. A hidden compartment full of pearly white goo.

  “Before we learned each other’s languages, we used this to communicate. Your neurolinguistic signals are sensed and transmitted by the gel, then interpreted by the computer. It took some time for the computer to learn initially, but now that the full language is programmed in, the process is nearly instantaneous.”

  If he thinks I’m going to smear this stuff on my head, then I think I’m leaving right now.

  “If you place your hand in the gel, we can begin.”

  A hand sounds more reasonable, but I’m not ready to dive in. If this thing is going to read my brain waves, it could spill everything. Most of “everything” would make things easier, but I don’t have any reason to trust Quain with the entire contents of my brain. I fold my arms and look up at him, waiting for more information and bracing myself in case he decides to force my hand, literally.

  My suspicion must read clearly enough. “It will only detect focused linguistic thoughts. Ferinnes have described it as the words you hear in your head, heard by all.”

  I’m not ready just yet. I pretend to put my hand in, then jerk it out quickly, keeping my eyes as questioning as possible.

  “The moment you remove your hand, the process will cease,” Quain says. “You may do so at any time.”

  That’ll have to do. I submerge my hand—the goo is cold and slimy and really gross—and think the focused kind of thought that doesn’t work at all on Spin-Still.

  “I get to ask questions, too.”

  So easy. So perfectly what I was thinking. It could actually be me speaking, except that the computer’s voice veers more male. I think of all the time and effort to piece together broken sentences, how hard Tiav worked to understand me, and I want to scream or cry. Maybe both at the same time. All we needed was something the Izim had all along—something they call old, yet all the Jantzens together couldn’t have invented it.

  “Certainly,” Quain says. “But first, could you please explain the ‘poisoning’ you mentioned?”

  I’m very careful. I keep my brothers out of it. Just describe how technology being developed by my people involves energies similar enough to interfere with the Khua and different enough to be damaging to them.

  “Could you not explain this to your people, have them deactivate this technology?”

  “I didn’t know when I was there, and now…there are complications.”

  There’s that hiss coming from his suit again. “The Khua must be preserved and protected. Does the one you carry tell you anything more?”

  I don’t know, I guess she’s told me a lot of things, but what does she want me to share with him?

  ONE THING.

  “She’s worried about the anchors. That both people and Khua will get hurt because of them.”

  “How would this happen?”

  It took until I heard the computer say my words to understand. Anchors mean the crystal spires. Just like I saw in my mind, held in place here, but free to move around in the other worlds.

  Minali is tying the Khua to the conduits—intentionally or not—and every conduit is locked in place by seven terminals, one on each Point. The Khua are only meant to have one anchor point, but the connection to the conduits is restraining them. Like my brothers temporarily restrained one so I could use it. If the Khua are locked down, the vortex I saw on Sampati could happen on both ends—all the ends. Or even worse.

  “The Khua have to move, right? It’s like breathing for them. If they’re held in place everywhere, not just on Ferinne, what would happen?”

  Another hiss. That’s definitely his not-happy sound. I don’t need more answer than that. The vibrations would turn destructive.

  There has to be something we can do. I still don’t know how to undo the conduit interference, what to do about Minali. But Ferinne is the one Point the conduits aren’t connected to. Only the Khua are. If the Khua are loosened here, maybe that’ll relieve some of the tension temporarily. And keep eight planets from getting torn apart.

  “So the Khua need to be untied from the anchors, at least until I can get things worked out back home.”

  Quain stares at me, or at least his helmet stays pointed directly at me, like that’s not unnerving. So is the way he’s been standing perfectly still through this whole conversation. Not fidgeting, not shifting his weight, nothing.

  “The Khua chose to bind themselves to the anchors, to make this the one home they always return to,” he finally says. “But they cannot unbind themselves as freely.”

  That’s a lie. I use my un-goopified hand to hold up Tiav’s disk with Spin-Still nice and cozy inside.

  “Yes, the sempu disks of the Aelo could be used. However, you have only the one, we do not know how to fabricate them, and I do not think the Aelo will share that information with either of us.”

  SPIN-STILL THINKS I CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO. IF SHE GETS ME TO AN ANCHOR, WE CAN SOLVE IT TOGETHER.

  Her confidence is nice, but I can’t help wondering if it’s misplaced. The Khua and their anchors are still so new and foreign to me. And Ferinne isn’t as friendly a planet as it used to be.

  “You need to tell the council what’s going on, what we need to do. If they catch me—”

  “I am sorry, but I cannot do that.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “The council is very slow to make decisions, particularly when there is arguing, as there would most certainly be in this case. According to our energy readings, which we can now interpret better with your information, the Khua do not have that much time. If I speak to the council, it will only warn them of your intentions, making your task that much more difficult.”

  Quain is starting to seem severely useless, and a particular word he used sparks my anger.

  “My task? You’re not going to help?”

  “I will do what I can from here, but I cannot help on the surface, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “It is difficult enough being in proximity to the Khua you carry. I could not be even this close to one still tied to a planetary core.”

  He’s telling a truth that still hides something, and I don’t like it. “Why? If you want me and Yilt to do this alone against a whole planet, no help from anyone, tell me why.”

  Quain hesitates. His posture slumps and his head dips forward like he’s fallen asleep standing up. I wonder if it’s another alien gesture. Maybe their version of crossing their arms and looking defiant.

  Something rises from the back of his neck, through the suit. Floating. If a Khua is a tiny knot of whirling energy, a star in miniature, this is a single point of light, like a star light-years away.

  This is what Quain really is.

  The tools were heavy and unwieldy in Liddi’s little hands, but she didn’t care. She was going to make something like her brothers. Something to make their father proud. Something better than what the triplets were working on. Liddi was pretty sure they were just rigging ways to destroy each other’s projects. Their mother said being eight years old made you want to destroy everything because that was the quickest way to see how it worked.

  “Marek, Ciro, Emil,” Mr. Jantzen said from behind them, making them jump. “Those signal converters aren’t cheap. Try using them for something a little less destructive. Liddi, dearest, what’s that you’re working on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He came around to her end of the workbench and put a hand on her shoulder. Big and strong. “Sometimes we don’t know what it is until it puts itself together, so keep at it. You’ll need to set up pathways to and from the power source, though. The energy needs to know where to go.”

  “That’s stupid,” Liddi said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because the energy should know what I need it to do and just do it.”

  Her father laughed and gave his youngest a squeeze. “If only technology were so cooperative rather than making us fight it every step. We could just
ask it to kindly do its job and be on our way.”

  Liddi wasn’t sure why that was so funny, but she liked making him laugh…even if it meant her machine wouldn’t work.

  THE SUIT ISN’T A SUIT AT ALL. It’s a robot controlled by the energy being that’s actually Quain. Between this and the Khua, everything I thought I knew about defining life is moot. Good thing I don’t have to use my voice, because I don’t think it would work in the face of this revelation.

  “Does everyone know you Izim are like this and just forgot to tell me?”

  He rejoins with his mechanical body to answer. “The Crimna know. The others do not. We found it easier to interact with species like yours in this form. When we saw how the Agnac elevated their respect of the Khua to the point of religion, we chose not to discuss our true nature.”

  They didn’t want the attention that comes with being worshiped. I can’t argue with that.

  “What does this have to do with why you can’t get close to the Khua? Aren’t you the same?”

  “We were once, long ago. Our originators were Khua who left the core worlds—what you call the Eight Points—to explore others. While the Khua’s energies bind with the biological, ours adapted and changed, more in tune with the technological. That is the best I can explain using your words. After these ages, our energies became too different. We cannot communicate with the Khua, but they came before us. They are ancient and have power we do not, so we honor them.”

  They don’t worship the Khua—they honor their ancestors. Different energies, so being near them probably causes interference, especially with the robo-suit. Interference…something about that tickles my brain, and I stow it away for later. The bottom line is Quain can’t help. Not in person, at least.