Skye Object 3270a

by Linda Nagata

  Devi stirred. “What … did you want of Tannasen? If you don’t mind my asking … ?”

  Skye wrinkled her nose. Devi was an ado. At most he was only a few years older than her, yet he spoke like the formal old man she had expected to find. “I wanted to ask him how small objects are found. Can a telescope like this—”

  “Oh no. It’d be hard even for the big orbital scopes to see a piece of the swan burster after all these years. The fragments don’t reflect light.” He leaned over the telescope, gazing along its line. “Look at the construction zoo again before it sets. All those objects are gleaming bright because they’re lit up by Kheth. The city is in the planet’s shadow, so it’s night for us. But the construction zoo’s orbit is so high it’s still in the light. Everything that reflects that light is highly visible. The only object that doesn’t reflect light is the lifeboat that was picked up several years ago. If you watch the construction zoo long enough, you can sometimes see one of the lights dim, or even go out. That happens when the lifeboat drifts across your line of sight, blocking the view of the brighter object, eclipsing it. If that didn’t happen from time to time, it would be impossible to tell the lifeboat was there … at least with a scope like this.”

  “That’s right,” Skye whispered. “Lifeboats don’t reflect light.” Of course they could not be seen with a telescope. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

  “Are you all right?” Devi asked.

  She shook her head, glad that it was dark. “Were you … going to say more about the lifeboat?”

  “Oh. Right. Well, lifeboats were made to be hard to see. They were for escape, after all.”

  Sooth.

  The great ship must have been under attack. Lifeboats were filled and launched, in the hope that a few might escape the guns of the Chenzeme ship.

  Or so she imagined. She had no memory of those days. If she thought hard on it, she could remember the feel of her mother’s hands, or the sound of her father’s voice, but she could not remember an attack, she could not remember being put aboard the lifeboat, and she could not remember saying goodbye.

  “How did Tannasen find the swan burster fragments?” she asked. “If they could not be seen?”

  “He used radar. He built a small dish antenna, and launched it into the swan burster’s orbit. The antenna sends out pulses of radio waves. Then it listens, to see if any echoes come back. If there’s an echo, then there must be an object out there, reflecting the radio waves. One pass won’t yield much information, but the antenna can sweep the area over and over again, until a detailed image is assembled. It’s kind of like waving a flashlight in a dark room.”

  Skye imagined probing beams of radio waves searching the dust and pebbles of the nebula, feeling for the presence of a lifeboat. It could work. “How can I get permission to use radar?”

  Devi laughed. “Study astronomy for a century or two, I guess. There’s a huge waiting list for all the equipment … Why do you ask? The fragments from the swan burster have all been tagged. What else is there to find?”

  Skye felt a sudden heat in her cheeks. “Maybe nothing, but … there might be other lifeboats, like the one I came in.”

  “You … ?” Devi’s voice skidded to a high note. “Then you’re …”

  “Skye Object 3270a. Yes.”

  “I … thought your name was Zia.”

  “Zia’s my friend. She was supposed to come with me tonight. She couldn’t make it, and … I’m the one who really wants to know anyway.”

  He was silent for several seconds. Then, “Let’s go somewhere else, okay? And we can talk.”

  Chapter 5

  They walked around to the dark glass doors of the apartment. “Just a minute,” Devi said.

  He touched the door handle and the apartment’s interior flooded with light. Through the glass panes Skye saw an exquisitely decorated living room, with red and gold carpets and black furnishings. Then her gaze shifted. For the first time, Devi was in the light. He was wearing gray slacks, with a black sweater and boots. His hair was bi-colored: an even mix of dark brown and red strands, tied in a loose ponytail behind his neck. He had given in to the ado boy fad for beards: there was a small triangle of dense, rusty-red fuzz on his chin. Heavy brown eyebrows sheltered almond-shaped eyes. The irises were green, flecked with gold. He smiled at Skye. “I’ll be right back.” Then he stepped inside.

  A streak of purple shot out from under a table, hitting Devi in the back of the knee. He stumbled. Skye heard him shout. Then the streak slowed down, resolving into a purple and gold dokey that leaped to Devi’s outstretched hand. He turned around to Skye and held his hand out for her to see. The little six-limbed creature clambered and swayed as it pulled itself upright. Devi shrugged helplessly. “Do you mind?”

  Skye laughed. “Not at all. What’s its name?”

  “Jem. He’s from the second batch of dokeys ever made. I’ve had him since … since I was thirteen.” Jem had climbed up around Devi’s shoulders. The dokey started patting his long, straight hair, pinching together the red strands.

  Dokeys had been created only three years ago. Skye put the facts together. “So you’re sixteen?” she said as he returned to the balcony.

  “Yes. Major domo? Call the elevator.”

  “Yes master Devi. The elevator will arrive in twenty two seconds.”

  “Did you really build that telescope yourself?” Skye asked.

  He shrugged, while she reached up to scratch Jem behind his purple ear. “I mined the design from the library. I refined it some, and put the components together. Is that building it?”

  “Good enough for me. All my projects have been virtual.”

  The elevator door opened, spilling more light onto the wide balcony. A woman started to step off the elevator, but she hesitated, staring at Skye in surprise. She had creamy skin and red hair in complicated braids that lay flat against her head. She was slender, and at least three inches shorter than Skye. Her eyes looked like Devi’s, green flecked with gold … and very pretty when she finally remembered to smile. “Divine, I didn’t know you’d invited a friend,” she said, stepping out of the elevator at last.

  “We were just going out, mother.”

  Divine? Skye turned to stare at Devi. Beneath his golden skin his cheeks had flushed a rosy hue.

  “Mother, this is Skye—”

  “Yes,” Devi’s mother said. “I recognize her.”

  Skye frowned, resenting the way real people could link to the city library and withdraw any information they might need at a moment’s notice. They could do this because every real person had an atrium—an artificial organ that grew in tendrils throughout their brains. Atriums were biomechanical tissue, capable of receiving and sending subtle radio communications—and of translating those communications into words or pictures or smell or even a sense of touch. When Devi’s mother had looked at Skye, she had probably captured Skye’s image, sent it to the city library with a request for identification, and received an answer, all in less than a second and in perfect silence.

  Ados were not permitted to have atriums, and so they had to rely on fallible memories. It was a rule Skye resented, but she could not hold it against Devi’s mother, not in the face of her warm smile.

  “Hello, Skye. I’m Siva Hand.” She extended her hand and Skye shook it. “Say hello to Yulyssa for me, will you? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

  “I will, ma’am.”

  Next Siva turned to Devi. “Divine, you won’t be out too late?”

  “No mother.”

  “You need to practice the sitar.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I’m glad to see you going out with your friends. Well … goodnight.”

  The elevator car had waited for them. Skye hurried aboard, turning in time to see Siva Hand at the apartment door, gazing wistfully at Devi as he followed Skye onto the elevator.

  The doors started to close. Ord slipped in just before they sealed. Jem hissed, and Devi took a startl
ed step back. “What’s that?”

  Skye held out her hand so the little robot could climb aboard. “My dokey, I guess. Its name is Ord.”

  The elevator began its descent, dropping at stomach jolting speed, like a jump off the column except the sensation lasted only a second.

  An awkward silence came over them. Might as well talk about it, Skye thought. Get it over with. So, staring straight ahead and stifling a giggle, she said, “Divine?”

  Devi groaned. “Don’t ask.”

  Skye wasn’t good at following instructions. “Divine Hand?”

  “Cute, isn’t it?”

  Shut up, she told herself. Shut up. It’s not your business. But she really was bad at following instructions. “You’re sixteen, Devi. You could change it.”

  “You don’t know my mother.”

  “Oh.” Siva had seemed very nice. “She must think a lot of you.”

  “You don’t know the half. So who’s this Yulyssa my mother mentioned?”

  “Oh, you must know her. Yulyssa DeSearange? The mediot? She does the news almost every day. I live with her.”

  “Oh right. She’s a founder too.”

  Founders were the original citizens of the city, who had emigrated to Silk 272 years ago. They had arrived to find the city strewn with the bones of the people who had built it, all of them dead of a mysterious plague spawned in Deception Well. Only in the last twenty years had city authority begun to understand the plague. Before then, no one had been allowed down to the planet for fear of contracting the disease. Now anyone could visit, though only on closely supervised tours. There were two small settlements on the coast where a group of scientists and engineers lived full-time, but only a few elite explorers were allowed to mount expeditions into new territory.

  The elevator reached the bottom floor and opened. “I’m fourteen now,” Skye said as they walked through the lobby. “But I’m not ready to live in Ado Town. I like living with Yulyssa. I had other guardians, but I never got along with them … I guess I was a little angry then. Yulyssa is different. She’s one of the oldest people in the city, you know … old enough to let me be myself.”

  Devi looked uncomfortable. “I wish I could say the same about my mother.”

  The lobby doors opened and they stepped outside onto a path that glowed with a soft white light. Devi paused to scan the sky. Skye followed his gaze. Only a few stars could be seen through the milky glow of the nebula. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “We could get something to eat.”

  “Oh. I guess so. I mean, sure. Where—?”

  “Message, Skye,” Ord interrupted. It rode on her shoulder, so its silky voice spoke directly in her ear. “A message from Zia.”

  Devi’s dokey glared at Ord, growling at the robot’s artificial voice.

  Skye too felt annoyed at the interruption, but at the same time she also felt strangely relieved. “So play it.”

  “Hey ado,” Ord said, precisely imitating Zia’s voice. “So I guess you went to see M. Hand after all. Meet me at the Subtle Virus when you get free, okay? I want to know what M. Hand said, helpful or not. And don’t get moody on me if the news was bad. If you don’t show up, I’m going to sneak into Yulyssa’s apartment and lock a gutter doggie in your breather.”

  “Wow,” Skye said. “Glad that wasn’t personal or anything.” Then she laughed at the embarrassed look on Devi’s face. “Is the Subtle Virus okay with you?”

  Zia ambushed them at an intersection near the restaurant. She slid out of a side street just after they had passed. Then she tapped Skye on the shoulder, making her jump. “Hey. It’s just me.”

  “And that’s the problem.”

  Zia grinned. Then her gaze shifted expectantly to Devi. “Hi.”

  “Hello.” Devi’s brown cheeks grew a little flushed.

  Skye felt suddenly angry. She didn’t want to introduce them … but that would look pretty stupid, wouldn’t it? So what if Zia was a flirt. It didn’t mean anything.

  “Zia, this is Devi Hand.”

  Her eyes got wide. For a few seconds she looked frightened, as if she were imagining him as a real person. Then her grin slowly slid back into place. “You’re not real.”

  “Sorry.”

  Zia laughed. “Well I’m not.”

  A commotion erupted in the street below. Skye turned to look, happy for any distraction.

  From where they stood, the street curved down and to the right, diving into a cluster of two story buildings with restaurants on balconies that overlooked the street. Ados ducked and darted aside, some of them laughing, others shouting threats and obscenities. “What is it?” Zia asked. But Skye could see no reason for the furor. Not at first.

  Then a black spot no more than a couple of centimeters long shot across the luminous white street, moving almost faster than her eye could track. A moment later she heard the harsh buzz of tiny mechanical wings furiously drumming the air. “It’s a camera bee.”

  “Sooth,” Zia said.

  Devi added, “It looks like it’s gone crazy.”

  The bee darted back and forth above the glowing street, diving recklessly into groups of ados, slipping past their swatting hands, doubling back to buzz their noses, sending some of the more timid youths screaming for cover. Camera bees were handled by remote operators … so who was handling this one?

  “Look out!” Devi yelped, as the bee darted in their direction, bearing down on them with buzzing wings. Zia shrieked and dove aside, while Devi ducked, a split second before the bee blazed past him, almost grazing his ear.

  Jem rose to the defense. Balancing on Devi’s shoulder, the dokey stood on its hind legs and growled at the bee, as if challenging it to come back.

  It did.

  It zipped to a stop, flipped over and darted toward them again—only this time it was aimed at Skye.

  She glared at it, silently swearing that she would not be made the butt of any dumb ado joke. No one was going to laugh at her for jumping out of the way.

  As the camera bee bore down on her, Skye stood her ground.

  Zia was picking herself up from the luminous street. “Oh no,” she muttered. “You’re not playing chicken?”

  Ord was getting nervous too. “Bad thing, Skye,” it murmured. “Leave. Leave now. Please Skye?”

  She didn’t answer. Ord stopped talking too. It crouched on her shoulder, perfectly still as the bee zoomed down on them. Then, a moment before it should have hit her or darted aside, Ord’s tentacle shot into its path … and the bee disappeared, the buzz of its wings instantly silenced.

  Skye flinched. Had Ord whacked it out of the air? She looked down, expecting to see it skittering across the ground, but there was no sign of it. “Where … ?”

  Ord unrolled its tentacle, and the thumb-sized bee tumbled to the illuminated street, its wings motionless, and probably broken.

  Jem leaped off Devi’s shoulder to sniff and growl at the little machine. Nudging the dokey aside, Devi leaned down to pick up the camera bee. He held it up to his eye. “If we get the ID number, we can find out who it belongs to.”

  Watching him, Skye had a sudden urge to laugh. “It would be pretty funny if the camera was still on.”

  Devi’s eyebrows rose. “Say hi,” he suggested, shoving it in her face. She shrieked and slapped his hand away …

  … just as a deep voice boomed up the street. “Hey Skye!”

  Her eyes widened. She whirled around, telling herself it was not him. It couldn’t be. Not Buyu. She’d already had the misfortune of running into him once today. She couldn’t have crossed paths with him again. Not twice in one day.

  But a single glance down the street was enough to assure her that this was indeed the worst of days, for there was Buyu, forcing his ungraceful way through the crowd, receiving many hearty pats on the back—along with a few dirty looks—as he passed. “Skye!” he called again. “Sorry about the camera bee. I was doing some stunts with it, but it got out of control.”

  “Buyu,” Zia sniffed.
“So it was him.”

  Ord saw him coming too, and hissed. Skye had never seen the little robot flee anything before, but it picked that moment to slip off her shoulder.

  Apparently, Jem had been waiting for just such an opportunity. As soon as Ord touched the ground, the purple and gold dokey launched itself at the robot.

  “Look out!” Skye yelled, as the dokey landed on Ord’s head.

  Jem’s fox-like muzzle darted down, biting a chunk of tissue from the base of one of Ord’s tentacles. Zia yelped. Devi roared, “Jem! Stop it. Stop it!”

  The startled dokey sprang to the right. Ord saw its chance, and streaked to the left, but as soon as the golden robot moved, the dokey darted after it. Skye yelled and dove for Jem, trying to grab him, but the dokey was too low to the ground, or she was too tall. All she got was a pinch of the loose skin and silky fur behind his neck before Jem slid free.

  Skye stumbled after him, off-balance and almost falling down, suddenly aware of Buyu only a step away. She watched him reach down to snatch Ord up with hands as fast as anything she had ever seen.

  Then, triumphantly holding the little robot in two hands, far above the reach of the frustrated dokey, Buyu whirled around—

  —and Skye crashed into his upraised elbow.

  A hot, black explosion of pain clouded her awareness. The next thing she knew, she was sitting on the gleaming street, leaning forward with her hand pressed against her nose while blood dripped out between her fingers. Apparently Ord had once again escaped Buyu, because the little robot was on the ground beside her, one tentacle patting her cheek, the other tapping at the drops of blood glowing a bright ruby red against the light of the street. “Poor Skye. So sad. Nasty, nasty accident. It will fix, Skye.”

  Then suddenly everybody was all over her with the poor-Skye routine. Zia crouched beside her. “Poor Skye. You never were too graceful. Let’s get a look at that nose …”

  “You okay?” Devi muttered. He scowled at the bright blood droplets in the street, as if he’d never seen blood before. Or maybe he just hadn’t seen that much blood before.