Reading the Wind (Silver Ship)

by Brenda Cooper

  Alicia would love it. In my imagination, her eyes lit and her fingers reached out to caress the small, light-green leaves. Then they touched me.

  “Well, you had it for a moment.” Marcus’s voice came from just above me. I blinked, shuttering away my connection to the data. I hadn’t heard him open the kitchen door. He bounced on his feet, all coiled energy. Perhaps he felt as cooped up as I did. “Maybe, if you’re really good today, I’ll give you a pot with two plants tomorrow morning,” he teased.

  I smiled up at him. “I was thinking something bigger, like a bird.”

  “You’d be so overwhelmed it would peck your eyes out.” His eyes glittered with good humor.

  “Try me,” I suggested.

  “Not yet. Even Wind Readers sometimes find visual acuity handy.”

  I sighed, handed him the pot, and stood up. “Well, then, let’s go while I can still see.”

  He set the pot on an ornate black-iron workbench by the garden. I followed him along the stone path skirting the outside of the house to the skimmer pad, a narrow, flat surface of smoothed stone grown in place using the same kind of technology that hummed in my veins. Too small to see, but big enough to change the world.

  As we climbed into the skimmer, he looked over at me. “Stay shielded until I tell you not to.”

  I frowned. I wanted to try roaming free in the vast nets here, to see if I could do it yet. “What are you worried about?”

  “Rumors of you got out. Most people are ignoring them, but not everybody.” The skimmer’s engines began to hum their waking song.

  “Rumors?”

  The skimmer rose, smoothly. He grinned, a fairly evil, silly grin. “All about the otherworldly boy who flew a starship. This place is sometimes given to gossip. At least the Wind Reader’s web is.”

  “Well, I did fly a starship!”

  “You did.” Marcus smiled. “But somehow you’ve become bigger than life. The flight has become harder, the New Making crippled, and depending on which version you hear, the Port Authority either has you hidden away, or you escaped from them and went into hiding. The Authority, of course, is completely silent on the subject. Which feeds the gossipers.”

  “So what about the Port Authority? You said they followed me. But we haven’t seen them.”

  “I’m pretty sure they know you’re with me. They’ll find you when they’re ready to. The trick will be getting you ready for them.”

  “Are they the government?” I asked.

  He pursed his lips. “Part of it. There’s some power in the lawkeepers here—Port Authority and Planetary Police. But they have to follow rules, and that can keep you free. There’s more dangerous power in whatever affinity groups are ascendant at any one time.”

  I sat silent, uneasy. On Fremont, of course, everyone knew everyone. The six of us altered stuck out from the crowd like paw-cats in a herd of djuri. But why the hell wasn’t I invisible here?

  This was the first time I’d been aloft here since the day I landed the New Making. A fence surrounded Marcus’s compound on three sides, and the bright blue-green of the calm sea made the fourth border. Two maroon kayaks rested by the shore. The kitchen garden, itself fenced, small beside the large square of the main house roof and the round cones where turrets rose on two sides. Large lawns and artful trees, the neat squares of the big warehouse full of equipment we worked out in, the two garden sheds, and last, the guest house. The house stood roughly in the middle, with no roads or paths in or out, just a spot to land the skimmer.

  After a lazy turn, we headed away from the water.

  I dragged my attention from the view, which hadn’t erased the queasy feeling in my stomach. So people here were talking about me. I frowned. “Artistos’s gossips made up stuff about us all the time. But why so many rumors on a planet full of free data?” There were interfaces everywhere. Not just objects like Jenna’s necklace, but in clothes, in skimmers, in chronos. Marcus had shown me how to use some of them, even though they were flat and slow compared to the song of data in my blood.

  Marcus grimaced. “Current information about you is not exactly accessible. The absence of information on a planet full of data calls attention all by itself.”

  “Point,” I said, chewing on my lower lip.

  After a few moments, a cluster of tall buildings became visible in the distance.

  I squinted at them. “That’s smaller than the city by the spaceport.”

  “Yes. We’re on Foral, a big island just north of Li. I like Foral because people here pretty much leave each other alone. Besides, there’s more room for gardens.”

  I looked down. No roads cut up the green expanses below me, although houses dotted the low hills. Yet it wasn’t wild. Humans clearly controlled all the space. This was so different than Fremont, where we struggled to tame one scrap of land for a single city. “Where are we going?”

  “To the university.”

  A school. Everything here outstripped and outdid everything on Fremont. How would a school here be like learning in a Guild Hall? I watched for the open land to give way to city. “How fast will this go?” I asked.

  He answered with a burst of speed. Our shadow fled across the ground. The skimmer stayed remarkably stable, and Marcus sat back, touching nothing.

  Below us, roads appeared. Ground vehicles hummed between buildings that were not houses like Marcus’s, but seemed likely to hold many families like our four-houses, only maybe these were twenty-houses or thirty-houses. The skimmer slowed. The city gleamed in front of us, at least fifty tall buildings, most slender, all different. If the buildings below me were thirty-houses, then before me were hundred-houses and more, webbed together with walkways and floating gardens. Skimmers flitted between buildings, and people filled the walkways and lawns in seemingly random patterns. The predominant color was green, all shades of green, punctuated by purple flowers and yellow trees and tan buildings and blue lakes. I didn’t need to open myself to the city’s data to feel overwhelmed.

  We circled over a huge iron-red and deep green complex of buildings, nearly the tallest in the city. Round orbs of buildings, tall spires of buildings, blocky buildings with no windows. We angled down toward a landing strip already cluttered with skimmers, most small.

  “Why here?”

  In a dry voice, he said, “This is Foral University. They train Wind Readers. Your clumsiness will be lost in a sea of students who often lose touch with reality. People call them wind-burned.”

  “Great.” I made an extremely unhappy face. “I get to hang out with a bunch of people who are likely to turn crazy any moment.”

  “Easy boy.” Marcus landed us nicely between two smaller skimmers. “I used to teach here.”

  “Can I fly the skimmer back?” I asked.

  The bubble opened, flooding the cabin with the scent of freshly mown grass. He opened the door, hopping out. “Only if you’re very, very good.” He put a hand up in warning. “Stay shielded.”

  “Right, right. I know.” I followed him across the grounds toward a big, windowless building. “What are we going to do here?”

  “We?” he shot back over his shoulder. “We’re not going to do anything. But you are going to hang out in an isolation room and try very, very hard to follow its instructions.”

  “An isolation room?”

  He stopped at a door and waited, apparently having a conversation with someone I couldn’t see or hear. The door opened, and we went in.

  I gaped at the walls, floor, and ceiling of the long corridor, which flashed nanopaint pictures of wildly different scenes I had no reference for. Underwater shots of a domed city lit from within so it glowed yellow-gold against dark water, a desolate rocky landscape, winged people flying an intricate dance in the air inside a different kind of dome. He waved a hand at the walls. “The five worlds. We used to train people from all of them here.”

  “Used to?” I asked.

  “Now it’s just Silver’s Home and Lopali. Sometimes a few from Joy Heaven.
” His voice had a hint of sadness in it. Before I had time to ask more, he opened a door, and I followed him into a small dark room, my eyes adjusting from the brightness of the corridor and its alluring pictures. I blinked, trying to see what was in the room.

  Nothing. Really, really nothing.

  Black walls, black floor, black ceiling, and a rectangle of light from the open door.

  Marcus sat on the floor, and gestured for me to sit near him. He sat in the dark, the sharp angled light from the door cutting across one foot, so that for a moment it looked like a lone foot, bereft of its owner. While I couldn’t see his face, his voice now sounded serious. “You’ve pretty much learned in a few weeks everything they spend five years teaching young Wind Readers. Except, of course, you don’t have the cultural context. You didn’t grow up here. We’ll work on that over the next two weeks.”

  “Okay.” My voice sounded big in the darkness.

  “Teachers use these rooms to help students jump to the next level. If the students succeed, they get to go on with their training. Otherwise, they go out into the world and make do with what they have, which is still quite a lot. I want to see how you do.” He shifted, and his foot disappeared outside of the line of light. “Here, the intel webs expect behavior out of the norm, and you won’t be noticed unless someone is looking awfully hard. Besides, these rooms are tightly shielded on purpose. It’s the safest place I could think of to get an independent test of your skills.”

  “Safe?”

  “You have enough power for people to want to use you. We already know the Port Authority finds you interesting. Commercial affinity groups might want you to help them make new products or entertainments. You’re untutored still, and vulnerable. People who need more power to push through their own agendas could find someone as naïve and biddable as you are a tempting target.”

  “Naïve and biddable?” I used my most unhappy voice, trying to cover dismay with humor.

  “Sure. You’d be just as excited about the new things you’re learning if the Port Authority was teaching you, or someone designing flyers or flyspaces, or doing genetic engineering for one of the other planets. It will take time for you to develop a sense of the morality of creation. Like I said, you will eventually have to choose a side in the coming war. You’re too powerful not to.”

  I swallowed, dissatisfied with his answer but allowing that it had a kernel of truth. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Do what the room says, and learn, but don’t push the boundaries too far. That’s all. Don’t show off. I suspect you can’t yet tell friend from foe.”

  Still stung at the idea of being naïve, I asked, “And which are you?”

  His answer was quick, his jaw briefly tightening with anger. “Don’t joke here. This is serious.” He regained his control, calming. “I’m slipping an old friend some credit to cover this time.”

  I shut up. Marcus remained a puzzle to me. I liked him. He made me work, and the work made me happy. As far as friend or foe, well, I would bet on friend, but he clearly had plans for me that I didn’t understand. Yet.

  Marcus stood up, tall in the small, black room. “I’m going to close the door—the room won’t work with more than one person in it. Besides, I need to go see someone. I’ll monitor you from her office. I’ll be back for you in an hour. Don’t leave. The room will give you verbal instructions.”

  I nodded, uneasy.

  He stepped out of the room, closed the door, and the rectangle of light disappeared completely, plunging the room into darkness more complete than I had ever experienced. My senses seemed cut off—I felt the floor where I touched it, but my eyes might as well have been closed, and the only scent was my own familiar odor. I scratched at the floor in order to have sound, then stopped, realizing how silly it was. What was I supposed to do? Did I have to start something?

  A voice spoke into the darkness, feminine, vaguely electronic, a little bit seductive. “Lie back, close your eyes, and listen inside yourself.” The voice reminded me of Alicia.

  The room had given a generic instruction, probably keyed to anyone who used it. I complied.

  A single light burst inside me. A stream of yellow-gold data. The voice asked, “Do you see the data thread?”

  “Yes.”

  “Focus on it. See where it takes you.” No further instructions. The room remained silent.

  It was easier here than in Marcus’s garden. No other data competed for attention, nor any physical sensations except the ones inside my own body, which I had long ago learned to ignore.

  Throughout the thread, I read simple concepts that I now knew enough to relate to individual webs. I accessed them one by one. A new thread burst into visibility with each concept, each thread linked to the main one. The first concept was physical space. A map spread out—one I felt as much as I saw, a thick layer of information covering the outline of the university. The data sharpened only where my attention focused, in the room, in the building, in the university. The thread only went to the boundaries of the school. Nothing living, nothing inside the space—just the space itself. I dropped that thread and reached for the next one.

  I couldn’t access it.

  I pulled the sense of physical space back into my consciousness, and the next concept, temperature, became accessible. It lay on top of the spaces, showing me warmth and cold. So it was a test? I experimented. If I dropped any thread, I lost the others. I kept picking up data. My own body temperature. The speed of my heartbeat. The heat of another student in a nearby room. Ten other people in the building. A room at the far end where a meeting was being held. The identities of the people in the meeting—meaningless to me, but names I held in my head.

  The room didn’t care what order I picked up threads in. It didn’t let me ask general questions, but I watched for anything that might lead to my father, to Alicia, or to Fremont.

  Nothing.

  I spiraled out, picking up threads one by one. The construct began to tangle, the threads of information joining and losing distinction. Whatever ran the room required me to keep the data straight and free, keep the threads separated, yet read them all.

  Easier to know than to do.

  Sweat dripped from my forehead as I reached for more. I fought the distraction, focusing on how the data and I were connected. Like flying the ship—a physical, visceral need being satisfied.

  I found the two buildings next to us. The parked skimmers.

  My stomach knotted, hard. I stopped, breathing into the pain, barely keeping all of the threads I had. I reached for another one and they all fell away.

  I was smaller, empty, bereft.

  I blinked into the darkness. My breath sounded loud in the tiny room, a rasping. I heard my heart beat. I closed my eyes again, reached for the gold thread, and started over.

  I kept going until my body was light and full of twice as many threads. My stomach only seemed empty and twisty, not actually ill. I could sense most of the area around this building and the few next to it—plants and people and movement. Remembering Marcus’s first conversation with me in the garden, I zoomed in on a blade of grass, holding all of the available information about it. Five centimeters tall, nano-clipped this morning, healthy. I zoomed back out, taking in the whole university.

  I heard myself laugh in joy.

  The laugh jolted me, and the threads began to fall away. This time, I held the first half, refocusing. However the room worked, it helped me keep the information accessible, so it filled me. I felt huge—as big as the spaces I now held data for.

  My being had grown.

  I breathed out and let it all fall gently away, separating myself carefully from the data. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, testing. This time I’d dropped the data on purpose, and I still felt big with potential. I reached for my toes, stretching.

  The room’s voice spoke again. “Are you finished?” it asked.

  It was too dark to see my chrono. “How long have I been here?”

  “Forty minute
s. Twenty remain.”

  “I will keep going.”

  “Then begin again.”

  I stretched out spread-eagled against the soft floor in the dark room. Nothing happened. Just me, my breath, my heart beating. The warm deadness of the room.

  Then, “Take this thread.”

  When I closed my eyes, I saw a silver thread rather than the gold one. The first concept was Silver’s Home itself. Curious, I opened. This time, multiple linkages surrounded the first point. Creation. Genetics. Economy. I picked my way through slowly, cautiously. This construct didn’t require I keep every bit of data in a row—I could follow linkages, back up and follow new ones. I only understood some, but the information flowed whether I grasped its meaning or not.

  The data didn’t relate to anything as concrete as temperature or a university building, although a sense of location existed. I followed that, seeing the whole planet the way I had seen it from space. More threads spiraled from the node representing Silver’s Home, waiting for me to pick them up. I experimented. Could I reach the next node on the silver line before I sampled all of these?

  It was one of the five worlds, the Islas Autocracy. Curious, I began to examine the threads attached to that node. Planned community. Perfection. History. A breeding program.

  The door opened, light falling on my body, jerking me out of the data and up into a sitting position. Light made war on my eyes, and I scooted back into darkness. My hand shook.

  The figure silhouetted in the light from the door wasn’t Marcus, but someone blockier and shorter.

  I drew in a sharp breath and shielded, hiding myself, making sure no data came in or out of my internal spaces. I tipped my wrist into the light, looking at my chrono. It hadn’t been quite an hour yet.

  “Who are you?” the haloed figure asked as full light snapped on in the room, exposing me completely. His voice seemed overloud. An artifact of the silence of the isolation room? The man wore a uniform, the right chest emblazoned with an insignia that I’d learned from the threads meant he worked for the university.

  At least he wasn’t from the Port Authority.