We flew about ten times the height of a man over the ground, which was plenty high enough. I didn’t have a fear of falling, but exhaustion could make me land. I tried to watch, and feel, the ground. Out here, far outside the concentric circles of SoBright, a long thin path meandered below us. It was hard-packed and free of vegetation, and lined with round rocks. Every so often, sets of benches sat off to the side, sometimes full of either people or fliers or, rarely, both. Geometrically shaped fields stepped away from the path on the right, and the left was the sort of meadow/forest/meadow configuration that made one of the outer rings of SoBright a carpet of green punctuated with darker and lighter greens and, from time to time, a spray of color. My aching arms, and now back, kept fighting for my attention. The real fliers were way above us, untroubled by the idea they might fall down.
We passed over two Keeper’s houses, and then a great sprawling house with an open roof, maybe three times the size of the huge guest house we were in. For the first time ever, I got to land in the wild instead of on the big, fat targets at Fliers’ Field. I landed too fast and needed to run, and then almost fell. I really did need to figure out what I was doing wrong: Kayleen and Marcus were barely winded and Chelo had a thin sheen of sweat across her upper lip and her brow. Chance might as well have been out for a stroll around the block. I dripped sweat and had trouble standing up.
We hung our wings up in a neatly painted wooden storage building with orange and blue walls, and yellow flowers blooming in ordered rows outside. The windowsills were deep gold.
Chance led us toward the main house. A wingless Keeper greeted him by name as we crossed a lawn. Inside, we walked purposefully through a spacious, airy home until we ended up deep inside the structure. The large rectangular room Chance led us to had clearly been designed from the beginning to act as a laboratory. The tones in the room were blues and silvers. It had almost no scent; just the underlying smell of being clean. One wall was refrigeration and heating units, beakers, jars of spices and other substances, and tattered and yellowed pieces of paper tacked to the wall. Benches and tables at various heights littered the main floor between perches placed so that if they were occupied, the flier would see whatever was being done on the table.
I leaned over to Marcus and whispered, “Is this associated with the university?”
“No. It’s privately funded.” The look on his face suggested that that was all I would learn, and I wondered if he had funded it. His resources seemed infinite and mysterious, and he hated questions about them.
Three women watched the relative chaos of our entry: a human, a flier, and a tall girl who was probably a failed flier. The human was a woman Chance’s age, and he went to her as soon as he entered the room. Chance’s usually serious face softened, and he turned with pride. “This is Mari, my wife.”
Mari smiled broadly at me. “You must be Joseph. Welcome.” She turned to Marcus. “Thanks so much for bringing them.”
“I hope it helps.” Marcus gave her a brief embrace.
Awkwardly, I added, “Me, too.”
We introduced our group, and then Mari turned to the other pair, who stood quite close together. She gestured to the flier. “This is Angeline.” Her bright white hair had been streaked with a blue so pale it nearly faded to white. Her wings matched her hair, the white a shimmery, shell-like shade. Angeline’s wide-set blue eyes looked sad, an unusual emotion to see displayed so prominently on a flier’s face. Mari pointed to the taller, younger girl. “And this is her daughter, Paula.”
Paula’s body was lithe as a typical flier’s, with obvious wing stubs like Seeyan’s. She had Angeline’s wide eyes and high cheekbones.
“A genetic daughter?” Marcus asked.
Mari might have been Sasha with a bone. “Yes. Our first success.”
A strange wistfulness flickered across Angeline’s sad face.
I remembered the stories of how flier children were carried by normal women, and asked Mari, “You bore her?”
“I did,” Mari said. “But she is Angeline’s natural daughter.”
“And her father is?” I asked.
“That’s the best part,” Mari said. “Her father is also a flier. He is not here.”
They didn’t offer the name. I filed the question away for later.
Chance looked proud. “She’s got flier genetics. They breed true. What you don’t see, of course, is the work of the nanotechnology to build and structure her wings. We didn’t even try that part. We didn’t want to risk her life. But she’s prepped for it—if we had put her through it, the process would have been less painful, and less likely to be lethal, than the one in use now. She lives here, with us, so we can keep studying her, and Angeline comes as often as she can.”
Chelo had indignantly relayed how Seeyan’s prospective family had abandoned her when she failed, and so I wasn’t surprised to hear her speak to Angeline. “Good for you.”
Angeline smiled back. “Thank you. It’s nothing to what you’ve sacrificed.”
Chelo took a step back, looking confused. Because she had become an icon of the worlds, or because Angeline seemed to think it was sacrifice to stay in touch with her wingless child? Maybe both.
Introductions completed, an awkward silence filled the room. I glanced at Marcus. “What’s next?”
“We go to work. Paula is the only fully flier-born child who’s an adult. She has the genetics, and we’ve given her the kind of nanotech you have—tools of blood and bone that you can read.”
I swallowed and glanced at Paula, who looked amazingly calm. I wouldn’t want to be studied by strangers. “You don’t mind?” I asked her.
She took my hand and Marcus’s. “I’ve been told it won’t hurt.” She paused. “I want to help my people. I want to . . . to have a baby that can fly some day.”
Okay. Wow. “How old are you?”
She laughed. “I’m twenty. Our program started twenty-five years ago.” I glanced at Marcus, intending to ask him later if he’d been involved that long. Paula continued. “We thought we’d have to wait longer, but when Marcus told us about you, he said you might help us solve the problem sooner.”
Cool. More pressure. And from a really pretty girl, at that. I smiled and said, “I’ll do my best.” I mean, what else could I say?
“Let’s start,” Marcus said, saving me from any more awkward conversation.
Chelo and Marcus must have conspired. Across the room, I saw a couch almost like the one I’d used back on Fremont. My long-dead stepfather had designed it for me when I was still a boy. An oval, with stiff sides and a soft middle that gave with my weight. It felt perfect to curl up in, halfway, the way a baby would curl inside its mother. I climbed in and out a few times, experimenting. Before I climbed in to start working, I took Chelo’s face in my hand, and leaned down. “Thank you, little sister.”
She grinned and slapped my shoulder.
Marcus laughed. “We’ll call it the Joseph Chair.”
In front of the Joseph Chair, Paula lay on her belly, her hair falling around a little handheld reader like a curtain. I’d have done the same if four strangers were going to stare at me—occupied myself. She focused so well she was almost completely still, and I hoped she knew she didn’t have to be.
Marcus sat next to the chair. Chelo and Kayleen sat behind him, Chelo watching me grin as I curled into the Joseph Chair and let out a long sigh. It was one of those moments when it really seemed like there couldn’t be a better sister, and maybe I really could do anything.
I smiled at Paula even though she didn’t seem to be watching, and when she gave a tiny smile in return I felt better.
“Let’s go,” Marcus whispered softly.
I felt awkward, swimming through the data of a real live person who I didn’t know like I knew Marcus or Kayleen. Marcus guided us through seeing the differences between normal human and flier biology. Chelo took notes, a familiar comfort to me, forcing Kayleen or me to actually articulate what we saw into clear enough sen
tences for Chelo to write them down. So much focus drained me, and when we stopped, Kayleen had bitten a bruise onto her lower lip.
Chance, Mari, and Angeline rejoined us as we prepared to leave the big building to don our wings. “How did it go?” Chance asked.
Paula smiled at him. “Boring.”
“That’s good,” he said. “You wouldn’t want them to be impatient.”
Angeline folded Paula in her long, thin arms. “Thank you, sweetie.”
“You’re welcome.”
As if that short exchange satisfied her, Angeline stepped a few meters away and threw herself upward; a pale white flower against a pale blue sky. She moved very, very fast. Paula’s face seemed set tight against sadness, hard. “When will you see her again?” Chelo asked.
Paula stared at the point in the sky where Angeline had been. “Maybe next time I see you.”
“Can we come early next time?” Kayleen asked. “I’d like to get to know you as a person, too.”
Paula said, “I’d like that.”
Marcus smiled, and spoke softly but firmly. “It’ll be dark, soon. We don’t want to spend the night here.”
“Do people ever fly at night?” Kayleen asked. “I only see fliers up when it’s light, and even you,” she nodded to Chance, “always leave early. What happens if you fly at night? Is it hard to see? Do you carry lights?”
He laughed at her stream-of-consciousness questions. “Night is when we make the world rain. Sometimes you see a night flier inside of a town, more in a busy, bright place like Oshai than someplace sleepy like SoBright.”
I didn’t want to put my wings back on. I stretched my arms up, wincing at the sharp pain that shot down my arms from stiff shoulders. All the way down the path to the outbuilding, I rotated my shoulders, trying to loosen them up.
Before we put our wings on, Kayleen reached into a pouch at her waist. She gave me an evil grin. “Turn around and take off your shirt.”
I complied, expecting to feel her hands on my stiff muscles. I’d never had a massage from Kayleen before. It felt like a guilty pleasure, especially if I imagined Alicia flying up on the scene. I did feel Kayleen’s fingers, but even before she touched me with it, I recognized the smell of the thick silky substance that coated her fingers. “Paloma’s salve!”
“Did she figure out how to make it here?” Chelo asked.
From behind me, Kayleen said, “I brought this from home. I just . . . I thought there might be a moment when we’d need it.”
The salve warmed on my back, masking pain. “Thank you,” I said. “My shoulders thank you, my back thanks you, my neck thanks you.”
“And you might make it home now,” she said.
“There is that.”
We did make it home just as dusk began to dull the edges of our long shadows. By the time we put away our gear, we had to navigate home in almost true-dark.
Bright light poured out the windows and a silhouetted figure moved back and forth in front of the kitchen window talking with her hands—either Jenna or Tiala. We tumbled inside to catch Tiala in mid-sentence. “—we have a day at most.”
Jenna looked to us. “We have to leave. At least, leave SoBright. The Integrator’s Dream landed today.”
“Here?” Marcus asked, crossing quickly to Jenna’s side.
“No. Across Lopali. Near dusk. In Watersdeep.”
Watersdeep was small, the size of SoBright. Just big enough for its own spaceport. It lay almost as far away from SoBright as you could get and still be on the same continent. The fastest civilian transport other than spaceflight was human-powered flight. So Jenna and Marcus looked more worried than they should. “Do we know there are bounty hunters on her?” I asked.
Jenna nodded. “Matriana has staff who can access anything. They had two men aboard. We could beat two. But we intercepted messages to five others. Two of them were in Oshai.”
Oh.
Marcus put a hand on Jenna’s shoulder. “Is everyone here?”
She nodded. “Family meeting?”
Marcus and Jenna explained three choices to us. Give up and leave, go somewhere else. Basically, the “get on a ship and run” choice. The second choice was to keep going, just do what we were doing, only do it from hiding, here. The third was do both—get in a ship, take some fliers with us, and go do the work somewhere else. Like, inside a flyspace dome or a flier ship.
This wasn’t too tough a decision. When Marcus asked for our thoughts, Chelo sounded exactly like herself. “I don’t want to get on a ship. So that leaves one option. Besides, we promised we’d help.” It was the same stance she’d taken at home, and I really couldn’t imagine her doing anything else. The fliers had almost become like the people of Fremont—in need of protection. It seemed to be built into her.
Kayleen simply said, “We should stay.” She was getting better at holding her tongue in tough situations.
Liam argued both sides, kind of acting them out for our benefit, looking for all the world like his father, Akashi, leader of the West Band of scientists on Fremont. His little flock of four had become a band to him. He ultimately came down on the side of staying, but keeping options open and a clear escape path.
Bryan wanted to hunt down our pursuers. Marcus’s eyes lit up at the idea, but I knew he’d never risk me or Chelo or Jenna that way. Although one glance at Jenna suggested that she liked Bryan’s idea just fine. Ming, beside Bryan as always, might have even been the one who suggested it to him.
Alicia spoke as clearly as Kayleen had. “I don’t want to run.”
And when it was my turn, Paula’s patient, steady gaze seemed to burn into me. “We keep helping.”
Marcus looked around at us all, took a long slow sip of tea. He gave us a warm smile that suggested he was proud of us. In leader-like fashion, he spoke a single word. “Pack.”
As I stuffed the last of my clothes into a duffel, I said, “I won’t mind leaving this room.” It was the only place Alicia and I had ever stayed together without making love.
Alicia’s voice sounded small. “I liked watching the fliers from here.”
I came up to her and placed an arm over her shoulder as casually as I could. She neither flinched nor moved toward me. “There will be fliers wherever we go,” I whispered. “I suspect we won’t be far, anyway.”
“Oshai, I think.”
So she knew our escape plans. “Is it pretty?” She’d been, once, but I hadn’t had time for a field trip.
She chewed at her lip, contemplating, and then smiled. “I’ve never seen a place so busy and so pretty all at once. There’s art everywhere. There’re people from all over, too. Even Islas and Paradise.”
Of course there would be. I hadn’t thought about that. “Won’t you . . . miss your lessons?”
I watched the pale white curve of her cheek as she looked out the window, toward Fliers’ Field. Her lower lip began to tremble. Instinctively, I pulled her close, and she let me do it.
The silence between us felt softer than it had for a long time. Just our breath and the scent of Lopali on her skin: flowers and herbs and tea.
“You smell like Fremont,” she said.
“Paloma’s salve. My arms were so tired from flying I needed some to help me get home.”
She turned into me, so my arm slid around her back, and her breasts brushed against my chest. I ran my fingers through her hair as she stood there, trembling like a spring leaf in a soft breeze. Her voice was nearly muffled by my aching shoulder. “I never thought I’d like the smell of Fremont again.”
“Even though I don’t expect I’ll go back, I still miss it sometimes. It was easier there.”
She looked up at me, the corners of her eyes damp and her chin still quivering a bit. “I thought . . . I thought I could . . . could fly here.”
“Shhhh . . . you can.”
“Like you. Slow. I want to really fly.”
“You will. I’m sure you will. We all will.” I had no idea if it was true or not, but it matt
ered to her. “In the meantime, fly with me and then you won’t be the slowest.”
That made her laugh, and she pulled away and started setting our fully packed duffels on the floor beside the bed. They would be carried—wherever we were going—by someone who wasn’t flying. Beside them, we each had small belts with necessities in them. After she set everything down she looked at me and winked. “One more night here, and then we’re into the unknown again.”
In her comfort zone. The unknown. But I would go with her to the end of forever.
She reached up and took my face between her hands and delivered a grand, long kiss that traveled as heat down my spine.
Perhaps I needed to make sure there was always some uncertainty in our lives.
18
CHELO: THE KEEPERS OF THE GARDENS
SoBright, and the guest house, had begun to feel like a home, and I’d started routines for Jherrel and Caro. I hated packing. But not as much as I hated the idea of being separated from the kids. They must have sensed my mood since they picked up whatever I asked without complaint. Caro stopped with one of the wooden space ships Joseph had carved her held over her head, heading for the galaxy of the ceiling, and asked, “Mommy Chelo, why do we have to go with Daddy?”
I plucked the toy out of her hand and gathered her and Jherrel to me. “You aren’t old enough to fly yet.”
“I am, too!” Jherrel proclaimed. “I flew in the starships.”
They had played in zero gravity a few times. Flying. “That was a place where you didn’t weigh anything. Here, there aren’t any wings just your size, and you’re too big to be carried. Besides, your daddy would miss you.”
Caro put her hands on her hips and with the complete seriousness only a three-year-old can muster, said, “Mommy, we should stay together. It’s your job to watch us, too.”
“I know.” I struggled not to show them my angry guilt. My face and story were so well known that Jenna and Marcus had decided I should travel with Joseph. Kayleen, too, since she’d become such good help for him. I gave Caro and Jherrel each a special, deep hug and sang a summer song from home to give rhythm to our work. They picked up speed and sang along. It helped me a little bit, too.
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