Wings of Creation

by Brenda Cooper

  The night was warm, but the idea of so many people hunting me gave me goose bumps that were half fear and half excitement. “Who do you trust?” I asked her.

  “I think I trust us. Marcus and Jenna and us. Maybe not even Dianne and Ming.”

  “Me, too. Except Marcus. I don’t know if I trust him. He’s part of all this craziness about telling stories on us, making Chelo and Joseph bigger and brighter than they are.”

  She was quiet for a moment. The lights below us grew stronger, the shadows blending onto the darkness of the ground, the sky still streaked with color even though the last radiant edge of the sun had gone below the horizon even from up here on our hill.

  Induan must have stood up, because her voice came from above me. “The stories are a strategy. Life on Silver’s Home is so busy it’s hard to catch attention. So Marcus uses stories. They’re remembered. For example, he’s used stories to make people aware of the fliers. There were already stories about their beauty, and the pain they have, but all the stories the fliers tell say that’s okay—that the pain is needed for the beauty. But that’s not true. So Marcus spread stories about how it didn’t have to be that way. I think that’s how the fliers decided they might be free.”

  “But you didn’t know Marcus before we left for Fremont.” I knew that—I was the one who’d asked Induan to go, and I’d picked my mod to match hers on purpose.

  “I knew of him. Everyone knows of him. Just like they all know about Joseph and Chelo now.”

  “Why us?”

  “Because people are more interested in stories about someplace and someone different. I couldn’t be the subject of these stories. Joseph has Marcus’s strength or more, and so he can be a hero, too. See, if Marcus wasn’t one of the best Wind Readers ever, it wouldn’t matter what he thinks. But that alone makes him powerful, and rich, and scary, all at once. Only people see him as a good guy, as a hero.”

  I stretched, watching fliers spiral out of the sky and into the fair, thinking we needed to get back down there. Soon. “Is Marcus a hero?”

  “As close as it gets. He’s trying to change things that matter. The problems in the Five Worlds are bigger than any of us. Sometimes people who think they’re doing good are really doing harm. Either the war will kill us, or greed and stupidity will do it. Marcus used stories to make himself a legend before he did it to you all. He lived up to it. He was a hero when I was a little girl.”

  A long time ago. Induan was older than Paloma, even though she looked younger than me. “How was he a hero?”

  “He changed the mod for swimming so it doesn’t kill so many people, he made the Port Authority apologize for burning up a ship out of fear, he helped make us accept people like Dianne from Islas.” Her voice sounded nearly reverent, and I recalled that tone from when I’d first asked her to join us. The recollection made me frown slightly as she continued. “There’s more—he’s been a maker and a rebel and a fighter. He used stories to get greedy people unelected and he challenged an appointment to the Five Worlds Court that would have been bad. When he taught at the university, fewer of the Wind Readers went crazy.”

  There was clearly more. I interrupted her. “All right, I get it. Marcus is a good guy. He acts like a hero.” Kind of like Mohami the perfect.

  “So far, you have, too. Joseph saved Chelo, and maybe he’ll save the fliers.”

  I hadn’t been a hero yet, except me and Induan saving the babies. That was in some of the stories, and nicely expanded on, too. But of course, Marcus had had a lot more years to be a hero in. And Joseph saw him as a father, or maybe more. What was more than a father? “I hope he doesn’t die trying, and that Kayleen doesn’t go stark-raving mad.”

  She’d moved around; her voice now on my other side. Spooky. “Maybe Marcus will find a way to get through this war so we come out a better people on the other side. That’s what he wants. And humans all need heroes and stories. You’re just it, right now. And Marcus.”

  “Just us?”

  “Well, since the Port Authority and the Wingmakers are stupid enough to feed the stories, yeah. At least you still have steady attention. We’re competing against stories about families being torn apart and brave young fighters and newly made tech. All wars breed stories. It’s our job to make sure your story doesn’t get lost in the noise.”

  Our job? “How close are you working with Dianne and them on this?”

  “I’m helping. It’s a strength of mine.”

  Ugh. “Well, if I’m going to give you any heroic stories to tell, we’d better go find Bryan. I told him I’d meet him in an hour; I’ve got to go.”

  “He’s being looked after. Seeyan asked me to keep you safe for a few hours.”

  I hadn’t left Bryan alone just to spend the night sitting on top of a hill. “What about Juss? Seeyan asked me to find Juss, only I never did.”

  “He’s one of the people looking for Bryan. To take care of him.”

  If he’d been looking very hard, surely he could have found us. “How do you know that?”

  “Seeyan told me.”

  Seeyan wasn’t on our list of who we trusted. “What about Amile? I told him I’d find him, only he wasn’t there.” I stood up, pacing the top of the hill. It had grown completely dark now, so dark we’d have to be careful getting back to the fair. “I want to find him.”

  “How do you know he wasn’t going to kidnap you?”

  “He saved us from the other guy.”

  “Why?” she asked. “The reward for Joseph and Chelo is pretty big. What if he was trying to be your friend so you’d lead him to them?”

  He’d said he wanted away from here. I believed him. Besides, I had a good feeling about him. I knew things, I really did. Just no one believed me much. Joseph, sometimes. “I don’t know, I just trust him.”

  “It’s risky.”

  So? “Well, when they made me a risk-taker, they must have built in some way to tell which risks are safer than others.”

  “My brain is wired to be a strategist, but I still had to learn the difference between a good strategy and a bad strategy.”

  I made sure I was a few feet in front of her, partly down the hill. Just in case I needed to get away. “I can’t sit here anymore. I’m going to find Bryan, or Amile, or Juss, or someone. Are you coming?”

  “Be patient. We need a plan. You need to think bigger than yourself.”

  “I am. I’m thinking about how to save my friends.” I started down the hill. She’d be able to tell from my voice. “Coming?”

  “I promised Seeyan I’d get you out of danger.”

  “You kept your promise. I bet I’ve been out of danger twenty whole minutes.”

  “Alicia. You’re acting like a child. Let us help you. Seeyan went to talk to Joseph—she’ll be along soon.”

  My heart hoped. “Is she bringing him?” She’d come closer to me. I stepped a few feet away, still unsure of her.

  “I don’t know,” she said from too near. She was keeping up. I looked down. Maybe she could see my footsteps even in the dark.

  I didn’t care about her. I needed Joseph. I needed us. “I’m going. I can’t stand still. I’m not made that way. But I’ll be stronger with you. A strategist and a risk-taker belong together.”

  She grabbed my arm, bringing me close. “Promise not to talk unless I do? Promise to be still and quiet?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “I’ll do the best I can. And that’s going to have to be good enough.” I’d learned long ago never to make an absolute promise. It bound you, and I hated to be tied up in promises. I’d been tied up that way almost all my life, all the time in Ruth’s band.

  She must have heard that I meant it. “I’m coming.”

  I wondered what I should make her promise, but I couldn’t think of anything. She was still holding my arm. I took her hand off, and held it, so we could travel together, and started down the dark hill toward the lights of the festival.
r />   30

  JOSEPH: LETTING GO

  The small room beside the room of war felt colder than it had been, or we were all sleepier. Kayleen was on her back, in the middle between us, closer to me than Marcus. Even in the half-light, I could see the mess of her dark hair, now so tangled it might be hopeless.

  “We have to keep going,” Marcus said, his voice dragging tired but determined. “The sooner we finish our work, the sooner no one will want you.”

  People had been chasing me ever since I got to Silver’s Home. “Do you really believe that? That there will ever be a day when no one wants to find me for the wrong reason?”

  “All right. The sooner we can be free to find the others.”

  “That’s better. Did people chase you your whole life?”

  He shifted position, pushing up on his elbow so he looked down on us. “Most of it. That’s the price of ability.”

  “So why wasn’t I born more of an idiot?”

  Kayleen stirred. “Would you really give up your skills?”

  “No.” Although I’d take some of yours away if it made your life easier. Except I couldn’t say that. One look at Marcus reminded me of his impatience. “Are we ready?”

  Kayleen rubbed her hands over her face. “Can’t we sleep first? And shower? Wouldn’t we have a better chance if we’d had enough sleep?”

  “No.” Marcus shifted in his portion of the paired black chairs the three of us shared uncomfortably. We’d had one, and then a few hours ago, we’d dragged a second one in—all that would fit. Surely this was meant to be a closet and not a shielded data room. The extra chair kept me and Kayleen off the floor, but left Marcus less comfortable, too. My hip ground into a bit of the support for the chair, and I couldn’t find an easy way to shift that wasn’t disrespectful of Kayleen. I missed Alicia’s body tucked into mine, close, the way I’d be with Kayleen if we had a few inches less space. I missed Chelo, and Kayleen must miss her, too. And her babies. I took every chance I had to make Kayleen comfortable, but in this strange place I had to be careful lest we both fall into an unreal world we’d regret.

  That didn’t make it easy. We could both use comfort.

  Our third try for a successful sim had just started deteriorating, but we’d pulled up just the same. Why watch it die?

  Marcus had fallen silent, but then he said, “Sleep won’t help. In fact, not having sleep might be better. There’s art in creating.” Even though it was Kayleen’s question he was answering, he looked at me. “It’s all our knowledge of biology and machine nano and biomachines and art. You’ve got to have all that. And the ability to dive deep in data streams while you work. I do, and you’ve learned, you’ve been learning every day. Between us, we know more than enough to do this. But if data was all it took, a computer as dumb as a ship’s AI could do this—put it all together into a simulation and run scenarios until something happens.”

  “Good idea,” Kayleen murmured. “Then we could sleep.” She shifted a little, giving me enough room to slide my hip off the hard lump it had been hugging.

  I sent her a grateful thought, more a feeling, and she returned warmth.

  Marcus sounded far away, as if he were in a conversation with someone else. “It doesn’t work. If it did work, we’d have machine-made organics everywhere. We have machine-designed machines, machine-monitored climates, little machines to weed and clean and organize our world, machine sensors everywhere.”

  He’d talked about this before, lifetimes ago, during my first few weeks on Silver’s Home. “But machines can’t make life,” I finished for him, remembering.

  He smiled. “Life speaks to life. And it’s not your head that does it, not the part of you that’s done all the studying. You need that part, too, but Making—Making is more, and less, than that. It’s something that comes through you but is more than you. That’s where you and I need to get to.” He touched Kayleen’s shoulder gently. “And you, too, if you can.”

  She gave him a faint smile, but I could see the whites around her eyes, and I was sure that if I held her hand, it would be trembling. Maybe mine would, too. I knew what he wanted. And the last time I’d done it, the last time I’d let myself go and become all the world that I could sense, I’d used the power to kill. “I’ll do my best.”

  He whispered, “That’ll do.”

  And so we went down again. This time, more than exhaustion licked at me. Memory. A memory I couldn’t see without fear. It had been . . . so beautiful . . . to be so far outside myself. The strongest moment ever, a moment when my soul was the soul of the world and the soul of Fremont, and it felt like the entire universe was in me. The nano in my blood and the blood in my heart and the data in all of it had resonated as one note, one beat, then another, synchronous, a dance so deep and full it showed the way everyone linked, enemy and friend, predator and prey, sun and moons, machine and man.

  I hadn’t gotten close to that moment ever again.

  I couldn’t even remember how I’d done it. Why. It had come up on me unawares, and had made all the difference in our last battle. I’d had to find that place to win, even though I hadn’t been looking for it. Chelo had been next to me, always my strongest help. And the others had been in danger. I’d had more net—Fremont’s own, a net I’d built myself, and the Islan net put up by the Star Mercenaries. Different. But not so different as this one.

  The day I threw the ship into the sea had started as a tiny tunnel on the net, as sensor data flowing innocuously into a starship. Only all the data in our world had been added, bit by bit, letting me expand into forever.

  Marcus, show me. You do it here, you let go. I want to feel how you let go and stay safe. You’ve kept me out of their nets, but give me more. Give me the extra capacity in the war room next door.

  Hesitation. Kayleen answered with feeling, showing me she saw the right of my need. She’d been there. She’d glimpsed where I’d gone, even though she hadn’t followed.

  I still needed to get past the fear, but I’d need power to do it.

  I need more, I repeated. If you don’t want me in the winged net, you have to let me in your other feed. The war feed. There’s capacity there.

  It will be . . . distracting. If you lose control, I may not be able to shield you well enough.

  If you think I’m strong enough to save the fliers, to save the Five Worlds from war, then you have to trust me now.

  Still, there was silence. Did he believe in me as much as he said? He had to. He’d practically created me.

  There hasn’t been enough time. The first sign of the wind that burns is disorientation. Promise me you’ll stop if you no longer know yourself?

  Right. How do you know when you don’t know yourself? The drop from sanity off the wall of the wind into the fires of the burned was sharp and fast. I knew that much.

  Kayleen spoke up. I know what it feels like. I’ll watch for him.

  She had not fallen off. She’d been there, at the edge, tipping toward insanity, and love had brought her back. My sister and Liam. They’d loved her in spite of the bloom of craziness in her, helped her tame it. Bless them.

  I’d be okay.

  If he didn’t make me wait much longer. Waiting for him to decide might burn me all by itself.

  Marcus’s silence seemed to go on forever, and so I picked up data threads one by one, absorbing the state of the sim, preparing. Anything was easier than waiting.

  Maybe that is what we all need. Ready?

  Good! But who would watch out for Kayleen? I’d have to do that, too. Somehow. I reached for her. You ready?

  Yes.

  Okay.

  I braced, but there was no flood, just all of us breathing together far away from my consciousness, but still in tune one with another. The simulation in front of us. The same, but richer, every detail more distinct. Paula, who wanted a baby she could grow wings on. Paula, who was more than us and less than us, a complexity of machine and human, of biology and engineering.

  I followed
Marcus, Kayleen following me, all side by side and linked, together, but led one by the other by the other, there was simply more to accept. Enough, finally. I hadn’t fed on so much data, so rich and sweet, since we left Creator. Paula became huge inside me.

  And then I was inside her.

  We’d been the surgeons, the ones outside wielding the knives of change. Badly. Now we were . . . something else.

  Marcus kept his word, showing me what he felt, what he did. No wonder we’d failed and failed and failed. I had been skimming the surface of her before, and I hadn’t even known it. Maybe he had been this deep in her, and I hadn’t seen it, but now she was open entirely to me. To all of us. I took a deep breath of the data, synchronizing my breath to Paula’s simulated breath, trusting Marcus and Kayleen to follow.

  Kayleen felt strong, if distant. Marcus, strong and supportive, nearby, with me. He and I were outdistancing Kayleen.

  No help for it. I sent to her: Stay as close as you can. Watch me and I’ll watch you.

  Of course.

  Enough dataspace existed for me to use, more than enough. I expanded, breathing in more with every breath, my self-in-data linked to my physical body. With every out-breath, I simply held what I had. The biological rhythm served to ground and contain me, to keep me distinct as myself. If I forgot to notice my breath, I might become lost.

  Unused room for data existed between the parts I needed and the flow of warship statistics and locations and chatter; a buffer. I left it there, remembering Marcus’s warning, appeasing myself by saying I would come back and taste it later. For now, I didn’t have any trouble keeping my focus on breath and heart and bone and blood vessels and ovaries.

  We began to work.

  Kayleen, as always, bolstered and commented and added strength. Yes, she watched me more closely. I watched her back. Maybe staying aware of each other would keep us safe, and grounded.

  Marcus felt more sure, more confident. Perhaps he had needed this, too. We couldn’t be timid or afraid. If we were, it would take months to accomplish this, and we didn’t have months. The safety of our family depended on doing this right and now. Someone had Paloma. Jenna. That thought formed another bridge between this moment and the moment of Fremont. It goaded me.