Reading the Wind (Silver Ship)

by Brenda Cooper

  I wiped it up, refocusing, then looked at Marcus. “Some people were fair to us, some our friends, but we scared most of them. Some people hated us because of the war—because of family members they’d lost. But it wasn’t our fault. We were just babies then.”

  Anger flashed in his eyes. He masked it, his cool stare returning. At least he cared. He took a deep breath. “Tell me more about the colony.”

  “It’s small, a few thousand people. There’s only one city, Artistos. Most people live there. There are two roamer bands—scientists, really—that come and go. They’re each over a hundred strong. One had Alicia and hated her, and one had Liam and loved him.”

  Marcus drew me out with questions, asking about the bands and how people lived day to day, little things like where we got our water from (the river) and what we built houses out of (wood and metal) and about what we wore (woven hemp, djuri and goat hide, goat’s wool).

  “Where was Jenna?” he asked.

  “People tried to kill her for years, but they weren’t strong enough or fast enough, even a lot of them together. She lived outside town, and she finally made a truce by killing the paw-cats and demon dogs and yellow snakes that got inside the boundaries. She dumped their bodies in the park. She was too strong and too smart for them to kill, and she taught people to need her.” I remembered how she’d looked the few times she came into town, her hair a long uneven braid from having to catch it back with one hand, clad in paw-cat hide, wild and damaged and free. “All that with one arm and one eye missing. When I was very little—around seven or eight—I wanted to live by her side in the wild more than I wanted anything except to fly the ship.”

  He raised an eyebrow at that and almost laughed, pleasure touching his eyes. “So, Jenna learned to be innovative. That might be good for her—she used to stick to rules and tradition as if her life depended on it.”

  “She’s not like that, now. People have to watch out for her.”

  Marcus just laughed. “Why do you think Jenna stayed around town?”

  “To help us. She taught us a lot, mostly by making us learn things. She saved a skimmer and a bunch of other technology, and eventually she gave me one of my father’s old headbands full of data threads and enough clues to figure out how to use it. She saved up a bunch of—our—technology.”

  He pursed his lips, and turned his questions back to more general ones about Fremont and Artistos. After an hour or so, he suggested a short break and we cleaned up from breakfast. He led me to a bench in the garden.

  A palm-sized butterfly with a rainbow pattern on its wings flitted over and landed on my arm. Marcus glanced at it. “That’s one of my first creations that bred true—I call them light link butterflies. I was about your age when I designed those.” The butterfly took off, hovering for a moment in the air. Together, we watched it fly to a bush twice my height and disappear into bright blue and green flowers. Marcus turned back to me.

  He settled himself comfortably, one long leg crossed over the other. “Now, tell me about your relationship with data. How did you first learn you could feel it differently than other people?”

  Chelo had told me the story so many times I had no idea if I remembered the actual events or her side of them. “I was young, maybe five, and Chelo seven. We were in Commons Park, in the middle of town, playing catch. I remember knowing something was wrong, feeling off balance and suddenly scared. And then I knew what it was—and I said the word. ‘Demons.’ Chelo knew I was scared—she can always tell what I feel—and she knelt down next to me, and then the bells pealed for demon dog entry and people ran by us to find the pack and get it out of town.”

  “What do you do to access data on purpose?”

  “At first, I had to go almost into a trance. Chelo helped me by being near. She isn’t a Wind Reader herself, but she took care of me.” I closed my eyes, breathing in the smell of foreign dirt and different plants, momentarily homesick.

  “Chelo is a full sister? Where is she now?”

  I nodded. “She’s back on Fremont.” Years distant. If I left now, it would take three years to get back.

  “It was easier for you with her nearby?”

  I rose to stretch, turning away from him, not wanting Marcus to see how lost I felt without her.

  Apparently he didn’t need to see. His voice, which had been all business, softened. “You must miss her. Sometimes family is designed to support each other, and that must have been how your parents designed you and Chelo.”

  Jenna had told us a little back at Fremont’s spaceport, and told me more on the ship. “We were designed to be a team. Liam and Chelo to lead and support, both capable of either, me and Kayleen as Wind Readers, Bryan to be physically strong and thoughtful, and Alicia to keep us on our toes, to take risks. There were more, but they died in the war.” I remembered a story Paloma and Tom told us once, in the tent. “One of them died in Jenna’s arms when she got blown up. I only know about the others because Jenna told us.” I sat back down next to him. “I do miss Chelo. I want to go back for her.” I shifted, looking at him. “Jenna could help some, but she never fit as well as Chelo. But I don’t really need either of them to access data anymore—just for other things. The data threads that Jenna gave me made me stronger. When I wore the headband, I could do things when I was awake that I couldn’t even do from a trance before that—I could feel the whole network—everything.” I had felt so powerful then. Lord of a tiny trickle of data, compared to the relentless flow here. “After a while, I didn’t even need the physical data threads anymore.”

  He blinked at me, looking surprised, but didn’t say anything.

  “I could manipulate their nets, turn them on and off, hear almost everything they said. And they couldn’t sense me doing it, couldn’t prove it was me.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Is that why you had to leave?” he asked.

  “No.” My cheeks grew hot again. “Well, maybe partly. But mostly we left because Alicia picked a fight with Town Council, and Jenna wanted to come home. But I wanted to go, too. I wanted to fly the ship. It had been sitting there all that time. And when Jenna told me I could fly it, I knew I had to.”

  He laughed. “It’s probably in your blood. And I mean more than just the nanocytes. What did flying the ship feel like?”

  I blushed. “It’s even better than sex.”

  He threw his head back and laughed even harder. “Did you ever tell your girlfriend that?”

  “Of course not!”

  He was still laughing, not at me, but kindly. It felt like laughing with a friend, like something man to man passing between us. The warmth stayed in his voice as he asked, “So, now I know it felt like the best thing ever, but what was it like to fly? What did the data feel like?”

  I sat back down next to him. “It wasn’t as easy as the nets on Fremont. I had to stay close to trance on the ship, because there was so much more there—more data than in all of Artistos. The coat helped.”

  He nodded. “You’re lucky that nothing unexpected happened when you landed. That’s why I waited until you came down in one piece.”

  I bristled a little at that. “I wasn’t fully stretched. I could have done more.”

  “Pride,” he said dryly, “might be your best friend or your worst enemy. You can’t handle our nets yet.”

  That stopped me. I couldn’t bear the nets here. Yet. But I’d do something to be proud of here; I just knew it. All I said was, “I know. Your nets feel different.”

  “They aren’t. Not much.” He leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “I know where to start now. The difference you feel is the size of the conversation. On Fremont, you had a single interconnected network—maybe a few if you count the satellite data, etc. But a handful, at most. The ship is a single network. A big one, and you did well. But here …” he waved his hand around in the air, taking in the garden and the house and maybe the whole planet “… here there are a million conversations all running at once. Even though a single blade of grass d
oesn’t send out data about itself, every single blade of grass has data collected about it.”

  I looked around, counting up the blades of grass in my head. Millions.

  He continued. “Data threads weave into many webs, some open to everybody, some secured.” He stood, too, and spread his arms wide. “The big webs include a finance web—the credit balances of everyone and every affinity group and every government here. An affinity web that tracks affiliations. A law web. Webs for each art form. A geo web that describes the places here in detail. Constructs really, so that people can understand related data through a single interface. Everywhere, local webs interact with bigger webs.”

  He fell silent for a moment, and I tried to remember what I’d felt when I stepped off the ship, and then again when I tested his skimmer. It fit—a million million bits of data and even more connections between them. “How does anyone keep track of it all? How do you keep track?”

  “No one can, or needs to. The trick is getting at what you want. You have to understand the linkages. For example, this garden has its own web that connects to the house web that connects to a web over the whole property that connects to the city, then the continent, then the planet, then to our space web. The geo web connects to other webs—for example, to the law web. If the rules are different for Li Spaceport than they are in the flyspace, the geo web can tell you that.”

  I blinked at him, trying to understand so much complexity. A sudden thought crossed my mind. “Is everything here tamed?”

  He laughed. “We have no wandering predators here. Like your—what did you call them? Demon dogs and paw-cats. But we have predators. Perhaps you would consider them tame, compared to wild Fremont. Here, there are designed predators, big game that suicidal idiots hunt over on Water Lily continent.” He snorted. “Some people die that way every year.” He fell silent for a moment, then said, “But we have people that are predators, too.”

  “I’ve met people who are predators.”

  “It sounds like you have also met governments that are predators. Some of ours are the same. But it would be risky to think you understand the dangers here for a very long time.”

  He’d said people might be looking for me. “Am I safe here?”

  He turned, a feral grin touching his face and satisfaction shining from his green eyes. “Not only are we standing inside a secure web, broadcasting only what we want, but some people here consider me a predator.”

  I recoiled a bit; it was easy to forget there must be more to Marcus than the teasing teacher.

  But there was more to me, too. I had hunted, brought down fast nearly man-sized djuri with my bare hands. “Are you a predator?” I asked.

  His eyes widened, and he looked like he was about to choke on his tongue. He took a deep breath, either trying to stop some outraged comment or trying not to laugh. After he calmed down, his voice grew serious. “Yes, but only to people who want too much power. See, Joseph, I believe in the balance and beauty of creation more than the beauty of power alone. I believe that people need to be able to choose what mods they want, to design themselves.” His green eyes almost glowed with energy, and he fixed them directly on me, demanding my attention. “There is a lot of beauty here.” He swept his arm in a wide arc, taking in the entire garden. “But we force some things on people before they’re born, things they can’t change. Like wings, or extra arms. We play god too hard, and too fast, and we may design our own doom if we aren’t careful. Other societies on other planets have done that, and we seem to have forgotten the lessons they left for us. There are powerful groups here willing to sacrifice long term good for immediate gain—some for power, some for attention, some for reasons I don’t understand.”

  It sounded complex. On Fremont, they forced things to be the same, and hated us for being different. Here, they made people different on purpose. Either way, it was about control. I shivered, even though the temperature was perfect.

  He watched me closely. “Sometimes I do things to disturb the status quo.” He paused, apparently realizing how intense he sounded. He shook himself, as if shaking off strong feelings. His voice lost some of its fire, turning into a calmer lecturer’s voice. “The most fun people to shake up are the government—they can do the most ill, or the most good. They need people to keep them on their toes.”

  I remembered how I met him. “But sometimes you work for the government.”

  “There are some things only I can do. And some of those things, I don’t mind doing.”

  “So tell me again why you are training me.”

  “You should not have been able to do what you did—learn to read the wind on your own, fly a ship. Not and stayed sane. But you did. That implies much balance inside of you. You intrigue me.” And then, laughing. “Besides, I’m getting paid.”

  “I haven’t forgotten this is a job for you,” I blurted out. Silence fell between us, and I thought about the other things he’d said. “I’m off balance,” I said, more softly. “I can’t even open to the data here—it almost kills me.”

  He put his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “If you work hard, I’ll teach you the beauty of creation.”

  “I want to learn.”

  He dropped his arms. “Sit down.” After I sat on the cool stone bench, he said, “Lean back, close your eyes, and feel the garden.”

  I took a deep breath and opened. Data poured in, temperature, air mix, pressure, bits from every plant. In no more than two breaths it was too much. My stomach roiled while pain slammed into my forehead. I opened my eyes, searching for Marcus.

  He seemed to be trying not to laugh. “Listen more carefully next time. I did not suggest you ride the garden’s data, but that you feel the garden itself. Close your eyes again.”

  “But if this is a single system, why can’t I handle it?” I protested.

  “Who said this is a single system? There are webs here for plants, for animals, and traces of the geo web and affiliation web. My security web, letting some things in and keeping others out. And more. Linkages between them all. Now, close your eyes.”

  I wanted to ask more questions, but his commanding tone of voice didn’t encourage questioning. I closed my eyes.

  “Good. Now, feel the temperature. Tell me about it.”

  “Warm, not too hot.”

  “Is there a wind?”

  “No.”

  “Smell the grass.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you smell just the grass?”

  “No.”

  “Try.”

  And so we worked.

  He pushed me to separate and then synthesize my senses, focusing down on one thing, one thing, one thing, then another. It felt like work for a schoolchild.

  We drank water, but didn’t eat.

  I grew incredibly sick of isolating one sense at a time, one individual thread within one sense at a time. My stomach and head hurt, but there was no way I’d admit it to Marcus.

  He pushed me until the mid-afternoon sun turned the light a deeper gold. Finally, he said, “Stop.”

  My stomach cried out for food, but I didn’t want to look weak and ask. “Did I do well?”

  “What do you think?”

  I had only used my simple senses for information. “How will this help?”

  He cocked his head and gave me a half-smile. “Sit back down and try again to read the garden’s data.”

  I did. Again, data poured in, filling me, jolting my body. At once I was overfull and light as air. The two feelings together seemed twisted, as if my body was falling, even though the stone bench was hard and cool under my back.

  “Focus on the temperature.”

  Threads of data pulsed around me and through me. They bunched, separated, knotted, and stretched. Paying attention to one thread at a time felt easier now, and one by one, they became knowable. Some clearly originated nearby; queries produced the history of plants or the composition of dirt. Unchanging threads were from temperature sensors or other mechanic
al devices. Data about butterflies and birds swarmed chaotically against data about and from trees, and everything linked to information about place. I sampled, fighting a sense of falling, of losing myself. The temperature thread had to be from nearby, had to be steady. I focused on steady straight threads, checking one by one. Location. Air pressure. Humidity. Finally, I could whisper, “Twenty-three degrees.”

  “How many square meters of land are inside the garden fence?”

  I dove back down, querying. Pain lanced through my stomach, and the data threads seemed to bunch and knot more than they had the first time. Surely that wasn’t the data itself, but me. I forced three deep breaths, and on the last one I came fully into physical presence, coughing and spluttering.

  Marcus looked like he was hiding a laugh again. “Did you progress?”

  “Sure, now I can go catatonic and get sick as a dog just to find out what my skin will pretty much tell me.”

  He threw back his head and laughed loudly. “Exactly. Good thing. A sense of humor.”

  Alicia always teased me for being too damned serious. I watched him as he reached into his pocket and tossed me a handkerchief. “Wipe your face. We’ll break for lunch and then work on something physical.”

  I groaned, thinking of Jenna’s endless physical sessions on the ship. She’d taught me and Chelo and Kayleen this way—making us work for knowledge. Maybe it was a habit on Silver’s Home.

  But food? If it tasted like breakfast had, it would be worth all the work. I grinned, wiped my face, and followed Marcus into the house.

  I sat at the table while he bustled about the kitchen. After a few minutes he looked over at me. “You could help.”

  Of course I could. Chagrined, I got up and stood near him. He handed me a knife and some tomatoes. “Cut these up into small cubes.” As soon as I’d started in on them, I drew up my courage. This morning he’d told me not to ask questions, but surely now I could? “Tell me about my father.”