by Sara Creasy
”
“Nice speech.” He was making her head hurt again, and she rubbed at the sharp pain in her skull. Still, she had to struggle to keep the curiosity from her voice. “So you steal BRAT seeds and trade them to the Fringe worlds, right? You need a cypherteck to hack them, calibrate them to new environments.”
“That’s right. But we have a cheaper and more efficient method than replacing all those failing seeds. We dig out seeds from recently seeded worlds—the biocyph needs to be in the embryonic stage to be pliable. Then we reprogram the biocyph to create what we call keystone seeds. Only works ten percent of the time, but with your help our success rate will soar.”
Edie ignored the sweet-talk. “Are you talking about some sort of override?”
“Yes. It counteracts the inbuilt failure mechanism of BRATs. We program a keystone for our customer’s specific ecosystem—just one per planet. It transmits the override to all the other BRATs on the planet, making a renewal key unnecessary.”
“That’s…impossible.” Even as she said the words, her mind was figuring out how it might be done. “The override wouldn’t hold for long before the existing biocyph on the planet rejected it.”
“It’s not a perfect solution, by any means. The keystones do fail after a couple of years, but still it costs the colonies a fraction of what the Crib charges. Their resources are freed up to pay for more important things, like infrastructure and med-teck.”
“It’s irresponsible. You can’t throw biocyph around like that. The Crib has to control it—it’s dangerous.”
“I never said otherwise. But do they have to charge so much for it? Must populations be forced into serfdom, generation after generation, to pay the ransom to keep their worlds alive?”
“I think you’re exaggerating.” Her protest sounded lame. What would she know? The decades-long Reach Conflicts had fizzled out four years ago, but everyone knew the Crib still censored information flowing in and out of the Central zone for “security” reasons.
Of course, the Crib must already know about these keystones. If CCU wasn’t getting its payments, and yet those worlds weren’t falling apart, it would investigate. But the Outward Reach treaties protected the independence of the colonies. There was nothing the Crib could do if people on the Fringe found a way to misuse their BRATs. These rovers, on the other hand—their actions were outrageously illegal. Haller and his crew would end up lifers on a serf labor gang if they were ever caught.
Edie’s rebuttal hung in the air as Haller tapped a finger against his chin, contemplating her. “Your world was almost destroyed, your ancient race of people decimated over the last few decades by the new wave of colonists on Talas.”
She bit her lip at the mention of her people, but kept silent. She had never thought of them that way.
“Your people are hanging on by a thread. Have some compassion for the Fringers, Edie. Millions have already died or been dispossessed after they failed to pay up and their worlds were left to rot. And now Project Ardra will expand the Crib’s territory at an ever-increasing rate as it terraforms and mines advanced worlds that were previously off limits. You have to admit, helping the Fringers become truly independent is more palatable than feeding the Crib’s endless greed.”
Edie frowned. “You can’t blame the Crib. Humans have always taken the worlds they want, and always will. Sometimes I think the eco-rads have a point.”
Zeke spoke up, his voice low but scathing. “Rads killed your trainer, isn’t that right? Don’t go defending them.”
If Haller had chided her like that, she’d have bitten back. But she could only stare at Zeke and feel her face warming with shame. She lowered her gaze quickly and then glared at Haller, hating herself for being tempted. Not because she cared about the Fringers—Haller was no doubt misrepresenting their plight—but because stealing BRATs was an appealing way to thumb her nose at the Crib. Her status as an abductee would protect her if they got caught.
“Why not hire a cypherteck from the Fringe? I heard there are illegal training programs out there. And Crib Central is swarming with legal cyphertecks, ripe for kidnapping.”
Haller seemed very pleased with the question. “Do you know what CCU’s overall success rate is for seeding planets?”
“Those figures aren’t released to the public.”
“But you’re not the public. You know the figures.”
“Well, they’re not great.”
“One in five is a success. Eighty percent of terraforming missions fail, often within a few months of dropping the BRATs, and usually due to cypherteck error.”
“It’s not an exact science.”
He waved that aside. “And what’s your success rate, Edie?”
“I don’t have any successes yet. It takes years to assess whether—”
“Eighteen missions, eighteen new worlds molded by your hands, your mind, over the last seven years. And not one has failed. Two of them have already been announced publicly as colony worlds, with recruitment calls going out for settlement within the next five years. The others are well on the way to success. You’re the best there is.”
There had been nineteen missions. Nineteen. And yes, she was good at what she did. She also recognized clumsy attempts at flattery when she heard them.
“Forgive my cynicism, but I don’t believe you’re doing this purely out of compassion.”
“It’s a business operation, of course. And we don’t expect you to work for free.”
“What are you offering?” She had no idea how much she was worth. She’d never been a commodity on the open market before.
“Twenty thousand for your first run and another twenty in bonuses, depending on how the mission shapes up.”
Edie couldn’t help herself—her eyes popped wide. Haller and Zeke exchanged a look.
“How many missions?” she asked.
“As many as we can manage over the next few months.”
“Until my implant runs dry?”
Haller tsked but didn’t address that concern. “Here’s how it works. Our client sets up the runs, finds us the customers at the other end. There’s even a little downtime to spend your earnings. ’Course, we may have to monitor your downtime—wouldn’t want you skipping out on us early. But I think you’ll come to see things our way. I think you’ll want to stick around.” His equanimity and confidence were irritating, as though he was certain of her eventual capitulation.
“What happens if I refuse?”
“That would be a pity,” Haller said, still affable. “I don’t want an uncooperative teck aboard, one with wires in her fingertips and wet-teck in her head so she can talk to any teckware just by touching it. Makes the crew nervous. This is a big dock—I’m sure we can find a rover ship that’s not so fussy. We’ll get a good price for you.”
Edie clenched her fist, feeling the wires crackle under her skin. The offhand manner of his threat was infuriating, but that didn’t change the fact that his proposal was more appealing than anything the Crib had to offer. And it was more creds for one mission than she’d see in a year with CCU. Assuming she could trust anything he said.
“We’re doing you a favor, Edie, and you know it. The Crib trained you for eight years and you owe them twice that in service—eleven years to go, and no way out. You were a kid when they signed you up. Doesn’t sound like a fair deal to me.”
It was better than the camps. Better than spending another day with her people.
“So, what do you say? Are you with us, or shall I start looking for another crew that might be interested in you?
Of course, I can’t promise they’ll be as concerned as I am about your medical requirements.”
With her life on the table, it wasn’t as if she had a choice. Her only decision was whether to go willingly, how far to play along. A likely outcome, after all, was that the Crib would track these rovers down and take her back. Perhaps she could at least bargain with Haller for the one thing she really wanted that the Crib had alway
s refused to give her.
“I want my Crib records.” She pointed at his palmet. “All of them. Everything you have.”
That took him by surprise, and Edie was perversely satisfied that something could disturb his smug demeanor.
“You can have them. But not until we board the Hoi and get under way.”
That would have to do.
Edie drew an unsteady breath and glanced at Zeke. That one she felt safer with, if only because she identified with the no-nonsense approach of a fellow teck.
“Given my options, I guess I’m in.”
Haller’s eyebrow twitched. Perhaps, after all, he hadn’t thought it would be that easy.
“By the way,” he said, standing up to leave, “what’s with that pretty little thing at your throat? The medic tells me it’s organic, but the DNA doesn’t match up with anything on record.”
Edie touched the smooth warmth of the beetle shell. “What about it? You want one?”
He must have taken her sarcasm as some kind of breakthrough in their relationship, because he grinned. “Latest fashion on Talas, huh?”
Zeke chuckled.
She cut off further conversation by turning back to the window, looking past the girders to the polygon patterns of space beyond. And the stars, those blazing pinpoints crowding the view—she’d visited a handful in her years on the seeding team and she’d left her mark on their planets, but it had all been dictated by the Crib. Here was her chance for a new start.
The possibilities were out there.
CHAPTER 3
She can make the lights sing.
In waves of silver and crimson she spins them in the night air and they sing their pure, clear drops of music. Carving ever-decreasing spirals, trailing fire, and then bursting outward again in an explosion of color and sound, raining down like glowing embers.
Her audience gasps, awestruck. She shuts out their voices and concentrates on the lights. They leap over each other, chanting arpeggios as they gambol in a wide circle, racing and turning. They jump out of line, three by three, pulsing with simple chords and then falling back to resonate with the dance of melodies. And then she makes them fade away, their song becoming a hum, a whisper, until they vanish into the night with the faint curlicue of a sigh.
The camp guards whoop and cheer and applaud the performance, and it isn’t the effusive artificial praise one gives a child. It’s real. She unhooks the sensor from behind her ear and hands it back to Ursov, along with the small flat holoviz projector. He grins and pats her on the head.
They’re inside the double-ribbed perimeter fence, near the hog pens where the talphi that nest in the feed troughs are settling down for the night, chattering among themselves. Gossiping women, Ursov calls them. She doesn’t know what gossiping women sound like. The women in the camp gather in groups to weave or carve or cook, their hands flying in stilted conversation, often one-handed while the other hand attends to their work. But it’s almost entirely silent conversation.
The guards start to disperse. They’ll get into trouble if they’re found shirking their duties or interacting with a Talasi child. Some of them break those rules, like Ursov. She was wary at first. It was hard to shake the fear that the other children instilled in her, those who deigned to communicate with her at all—but she’s always been treated well by the guards. She trusts their kind actions more than she trusts the warnings handed down by the Talasi elders.
Sometimes Ursov shares food. She likes it best when he shares his stories. Now he squats down beside her.
“They’re very impressed with you,” he says.
“Why? It’s so easy to do.” Her hands sign the words as she vocalizes them—a habit she’s not yet broken when speaking aloud.
“It’s not easy, you know. Controlling the lights like that. You’ve got a special talent.”
“Can we play the swan-dive game?” This is another trick from that little flat box, a game for two using the lights to battle for territory.
Ursov laughs. “No. You’re too good for me now. I’ll have to go back to playing it with my son.” She must look crestfallen, because he smiles and holds out the box toward her. When she reaches for it, he draws it back.
“Tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll let you have the holo if you promise to do something for me.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a lady in the city, in Halen Crai. She’s very interested in your special talent. I’ve told her all about how good you are with these games. She wants to meet you. Will you talk to her and show her what you can do?”
She thinks about that. The very mention of the city churns up strange emotions. The people who live there are the ones responsible for killing off the forests and ultimately forcing the Talasi into camps. She’s supposed to fear and hate those people. But the city is also where the camp guards come from, where their families live, where they board ships to the space station and to the mysteries beyond.
She would perhaps be very pleased to meet a lady from Halen Crai who is interested in this silly game of musical lights.
“Okay, if she really wants to meet me.”
“She really wants to meet you.”
“Can I have the box now?”
“One more thing. She’s going to ask you questions. About your life here, how they think there’s something wrong with you because your mother wasn’t Talasi, and how they make you live out here minding the animals, and won’t let you eat with them or play with the other children…”
She shuffles her feet uncomfortably. She doesn’t want to talk about that. It will certainly cause trouble. But Ursov’s voice is very gentle and kind.
“You can tell her everything, Edie. The truth. If you promise to do that, I’ll let you have the holo and you can keep it. Because Ms Natesa is a very important lady, and she’s going to want you to be properly looked after. If you tell her how unhappy you are, she might be able to get you away from here. Let you live in Halen Crai.”
Her eyes pop wide open. “Just because of this game?”
“That’s right. So will you show her what you can do and tell her everything? Do we have a deal?”
She reaches again for the little flat box. They have a deal.
Edie woke with a clearer mind—and a clearer understanding of the deal she’d struck with Haller. The last time she’d made a deal that dramatically changed her life, at least she’d trusted the man on the other end of the handshake. This time she might be in over her head.
But she’d play along with these rovers, at least until Haller handed over her records. Maybe even go on a mission or two, if they lasted that long before the Crib found them. And if they could evade the Crib and she could escape the Hoi, the creds they’d promised her would pay for someone to steal neuroxin for her. With a sufficient supply of the drug, she’d finally be free of Talas, and free of Natesa’s stifling grasp.
The rhythmic low-frequency engine thrum told her she was shipside and they’d left dock. Being shuffled from place to place while unconscious only reinforced the feeling of being viewed as a commodity. An adolescence spent at Crai Institute on Talas meant she was used to that sort of treatment, but she’d never learned to accept it.
The room was small and dark, the bulkhead lined with locker doors, with a washbasin in one corner. The gray and blue décor was as worn as the medfac’s, in contrast to the well-maintained CCU vessels she was accustomed to. A jumble of clean clothes on the end of the bed signified her welcome to the Hoi Polloi.
Checking the lockers, she found more changes of clothes, a personal palmet, and other essentials. Among the clothes that someone had preselected for her was a long-sleeved zip-up navy-blue tee, which she discarded and replaced with a gray one from the locker. This minor act of defiance felt ridiculously good.
She grabbed the clothes and looked for a shower. The only door in the room led to a tiny annex with a console and, curiously, a narrow bunk. She’d never had a roommate before. Opening the main hatch from the ann
ex, she looked up and down a long corridor. No one in sight. She found the shower room directly opposite her quarters and went in. Behind a frosted panel that divided the room in half was a row of showerheads. Edie flung the clothes over the door of a toilet stall and gratefully shed her hospital garments. Hot water and steam lifted the last of the drugged stupor from her mind and muscles.
Done with her shower, she pulled on the tee, dark gray pants, and a paneled sleeveless jacket shaped by vertical spines around the rib cage. Typical space-flight gear for a teck. Back in her spartan quarters was a pair of ankle boots, new and stiff and a size too big. She tossed them across the room in a flash of frustration and doubt. The unknown future felt more like freedom than anything she’d known, but did she have any more control over her life now? She didn’t even have her own boots.