It wasn’t Tiala.
“Jenna?”
She nodded, and a broad smile lit her perfect features, a smile full of more joy than I had ever seen on her face. I knelt down in front of her, meeting her eyes. Two eyes. Two perfect steel-gray eyes. One of my hands went to her smooth cheek of its own accord. The skin was soft, like a child’s.
So much damage, undone so quickly.
Her eyes were still her own—haunted and sure of herself. It amazed me I had mistaken her for her sister at all. I leaned forward and folded her in my arms, something I had never done before. Surprisingly she let me, relaxing into my embrace for just a moment before reasserting her usual distance and pushing me gently away.
I sat back on my heels and stared at her. “I—I—Wow. You look great! How did you do that?”
She shook her head. “I got good prices, particularly for the animals and plants from Fremont.” She smiled and stood, pulling me to my feet with her new arm, which had the same soft-skin glow as her new face. “I had to. No one is ill or maimed here. I would stick out worse than a flyer in a walking city.” She gave a funny smile. “Oddly, it helped a bit to look broken. I think people bid higher just to see the damaged woman in person.” A trace of bitterness flashed momentarily in her eyes, and maybe even loss. She tossed her head and turned to face me, as if still a little unsure of what I thought. “But if I had stayed that way, I would have been noticed everywhere I went.”
She seemed almost apologetic, even though the new Jenna was young and beautiful. No one should have to apologize for being whole. “I understand,” I said softly. “It must feel much better.”
Her face grew serious. “It wasn’t anywhere near enough credit to buy the ship back, anyway.”
I touched her new cheek again. “This was more important than the ship.” Not than getting Chelo; nothing mattered more than that. But surely Jenna had chosen right.
She stretched her arm out. “It’s still a little stiff, and partly mechanical. That was the faster route, and I had other things to do. That’s why I asked Marcus to bring you. Your father is coming—he is flying into Li Spaceport tomorrow.”
My father.
I swallowed hard. “He’s coming to see me?” I asked. “What about my mother?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about Marissa, Joseph. And your father doesn’t know you’re here, yet. I need to see him, and that is all he knows right now.” A brief troubled look passed across her eyes. Just as I was about to ask what worried her, she looked over at Marcus, who stood beside me, watching me closely. Jenna said, “I want to take Joseph to meet David.”
To meet my father. My dreams—flying the ship, finding my parents—my dreams were coming true. I looked at Marcus. Would he let me go?
Marcus returned my gaze. “What do you want?” he asked mildly.
“I need to see my father.” I waited, watching him watch me. “But I want to study with you more, too. Can I come back?”
Marcus nodded slowly at me, a small grin edging his generous mouth. “Perhaps we can work something out.” His eyes seemed to bore through to my very soul. “You still have much to learn. But since I’ve just been seen with you it might be good for me to be seen without you for a little while.”
Alicia stepped up close to me, clutching my hand tightly. He glanced at her, then winked at me before turning his attention to Jenna. He narrowed his eyes. “You’ve heard the rumors about him?”
“Some,” Jenna said. “But they seem to be dying away.”
Marcus gave a wry smile. “We were just spotted at Foral University.”
She frowned at that.
Alicia spoke up. “What does that mean?”
Marcus closed his eyes for a second, surely testing the data nets. I ached to do the same. But I held my shields up, watching him. After a few moments, he opened his eyes. “There’s only a low buzz, and some are debunking the story line. I think it’s safe enough, although I don’t want him easily visible. I’ll go make some cover for you all—I can add to the confusion by being seen elsewhere, without him, and by posting a few of my own incredulous queries.”
“You’re leaving now?” A sharp sense of loss shot through me. He must have heard the pain in my voice, seen it in my eyes. His own voice softened, and a small, slightly sad smile touched his face. “Perhaps I’ll see you sooner than you think. But for now, Jenna can keep you as safe as I can. Stay in touch through her—you must remain shielded.”
“But what if we need to know something? Or reach you?” I asked.
“Then Jenna will have to help you, or you will have to use some other form of interface.”
Jenna glanced from me to Marcus. “Can he read the data structures here?”
Marcus nodded. “He also knows how to shield. See that he does it—he needs to stay as invisible as possible.”
“Then he’ll be all right in public?” she probed.
“Yes. He’ll be fine. I think. But feed him and get him to sleep. I wore him out today.”
She laughed. “I’ll bet you’ve been wearing him out every day.”
Marcus continued. “You were right to let me take him. I don’t know of anyone else who could train him—he really is strong.” He glanced at me. “And naïve as hell. But he kinda grows on you. So take care of him.”
I grimaced, resisting a childish urge to stick my tongue out at him.
Jenna glanced over at me, an appraising look in her eyes. “I will.” She turned her gaze to Marcus. “Thank you. You’ve been paid. I want to know more about what he has done, and learned, but I can keep him safe for a day.”
Marcus leaned in and kissed her. She accepted it, naturally, already seeming to be a different person than the wild woman of Fremont. Marcus looked down at her, his eyes soft. “He’s truly remarkable. And not yet trained. I want him back—but in the meantime, show him what you can of the world here. We’ve been hiding out at one of my houses. Tell me where to meet you.”
“Outside of Li, there is a garden. The memory garden. That’s where David will come. Meet us there tomorrow around noon?”
He looked at me. “I’ll come if I can. Good luck with your father.”
“Thank you.” I meant for all of what he’d taught me as well as for his good wishes. The way he smiled down at me, I felt sure he understood the whole message.
With that, he turned and left, parting the leaves nearly silently, the sound of his footsteps cut off as he left the cone of silence inside the tree.
22
THE MEMORY GARDEN
Jenna’s hand shaking my shoulder woke me the next morning. A ray of sunshine fell through the open window, highlighting her unbelievably perfect features. As she bustled about the tiny kitchen making col that smelled like redberries but tasted sweeter, she seemed like someone I hardly knew: beautiful, poised, and smooth. However, the look in both of her eyes remained as wild and cautious as the look in one eye had been, as if the old Jenna inhabited a cave inside the new one.
Jenna flew us all to the memory garden in a skimmer I’d never seen before, a simple silver machine with room for six. “I don’t know how long before he shows up,” she said. “There are sights worth seeing here—we’ll walk.” She looked at me. “Stay shielded.”
“I know,” I mumbled, tired of constant warnings.
Bryan looked as complete and fresh as Jenna, his limp entirely gone. He walked beside Jenna, chatting with her. They led us along a simple path lined with tall spiky plants covered in purple, pink, and yellow flowers. I pointed the flowers out to Alicia, who walked next to me. “The blooms in Marcus’s garden are even more perfect.”
She leaned down and smelled a bright yellow blossom the size of her hand, sniffing deeply. “These are better than anything on Fremont.”
“But even these aren’t as pretty as wild spike-bells.”
“Right,” she shot back. “And I bet these won’t make you sick if you eat their leaves, either.” Still looking at the yellow flowers, she s
aid, “I don’t ever want to leave here.”
Bryan must have heard her, because he looked back over his shoulder and said, “We have to go get Chelo and the others.”
“I still don’t want to go back,” Alicia said.
“I’ll be happier when we’re all together,” I said. I belonged here. I had a role to play, a destiny that could never be fulfilled someplace as backward and untrusting as Fremont. I just knew it.
I kept looking around for my father, even though I knew Jenna would hear from him before we saw him. Would I recognize him? What would he think of me? Did he ever think of me at all?
Jenna stopped in front of a tall statue of a woman with wings. “Lesson time. This is a tribute to Kuli Nam, who made the first viable flyers. Creating flyers boosted our reputation as the best human genetic engineers in the five worlds.”
I remembered Marcus’s admonition about the wrongness of creating flyers. Yet the metal woman in front of us shone with mystery and magic. She stood at least ten meters tall, with long sweeping silvery wings that reached down to her calves. Her wide shoulders tapered to narrow hips and long slender legs. She seemed poised to run and jump into flight, one metal foot flat on the ground, one heel raised. Her carefully sculpted facial expression almost cried out “expectant joy,” and looking at her, the impending feeling of something magical seeped into me.
“Tell me about Lopali,” I asked. It was one of the five worlds, but I had been interrupted before I learned about it in the isolation room.
Jenna spoke briskly, without looking away from the statue. “Lopali has the smallest population of the five worlds. It’s essentially a terraformed moon, built as a place for humans to fly. The designers pictured assisted flight, but Kuli Nam saw the opportunity and produced true human flyers. They cannot breed true, and Lopali does not have the right to the designs nor sophisticated enough facilities to make them, so we produce new flyers for them, many from Lopali genetic seed stock.”
“So they can’t have children of their own?” I asked.
Jenna shook her head. “The flight genetics don’t breed true. They can’t—there are a series of one-time sculpting nano runs that build the shoulders and shrink the other bones.”
Bryan’s brow furrowed. “So you make all the people for Lopali on Silver’s Home?”
Jenna laughed. “No. There are humans that breed true there. They fly with aids. We provide around ten percent of the population. Our flyers have great standing on Lopali, so we make their most powerful citizens.”
“I don’t suppose that has anything to do with the war Marcus mentioned?” Bryan asked.
Jenna hesitated. “Well, maybe. But that’s a different discussion. Lopali is on our side, so far. Islas is the problem.”
I had learned a little about Islas in the university threads. “Islas is a very controlled society.”
Jenna nodded. “So Marcus taught you some things. What else do you know?”
“I know Marcus is worried about them. I guess they don’t like how people live here.”
“They believe the only way to keep humanity from destroying itself is to control it closely.”
“Don’t the people hate that?” Alicia asked, her gaze still on the statue.
Jenna said, “No. I don’t think they do. Some. The ones who do usually go to the other four worlds, about half to us. Islas lets them. It means they don’t have to deal with as many problem elements in their society, and it lets them keep spies here.”
“Don’t we stop them?” Bryan asked.
Jenna shook her head. “All of the five worlds, including Islas, have an agreement allowing emigration. Besides, we don’t have much of a police force. The Port Authority is the strongest, since the laws governing import and export are universal. And to protect us. The rules governing behavior on-planet vary by affinity group, or by town, and both police their own. Current rules, and consequences, are always in the nets.”
Alicia walked around the statue, looking at it from all angles. “Tell me more about flyers.”
“Lopali’s ecosystem is the only one of the five worlds that isn’t easily reproducible here. Flyers here congregate in controlled microclimates which closely mimic Lopali—like the domes we passed the first day on Li. There are only four on Silver’s Home. Lopali has a much denser atmosphere, and less gravity.”
“And that’s why people can fly there?” Alicia asked.
“That, and pretty severe changes in bone structure. Flyers are weak, here. We tried to make humans that can fly in our atmosphere. The cost to the body was too dear. It still gets tried—over and over—but nothing produced is actually human.” She looked up at the statue again, her eyes slightly narrowed as she squinted into the bright sunshine. “But when I was little, I often wished I’d been born a flyer.”
“So they’re born that way?” Alicia asked. “Someone decides for you before you’re born?”
Jenna nodded. “The mod is too extreme for most adult bodies to handle. It gets done, but it drives half the people who try it crazy, and plain kills others.”
There were a lot of ways to become crazy here.
Alicia’s brows were drawn together, as if the idea of manufactured fliers troubled her as much as me. “I’d like to fly.”
Jenna glanced at her, frowning. “It makes for a very limited life, at least here. And I wouldn’t live on Lopali—it’s a difficult world.” She turned and looked at Alicia. “And you can fly. There are wonderful mechanical wings and other solo flying devices. Perhaps I can take you sometime.”
Alicia looked pleased. “I’d like to try it.”
I leaned over near her, and whispered, “Your risk-taker is coming out. Fly in a ‘device,’ but don’t try to become a flier, okay?”
For answer, she stuck her tongue out at me and laughed. “Not today.”
“We have other priorities,” Jenna said, sounding slightly distracted.
We wandered on. Jenna kept us from actually running across anyone, turning us casually before we passed a crowd.
When would my father call? The more time passed, the more my nerves ran with fire and the harder it became to focus on anything, even Alicia.
The park was dedicated to the history of Silver’s Home, or more accurately, to the history of the planet’s creations. Every corner and path and garden and exhibit held some strange thing. Here and there, sculptures of various sizes hung in trees or dangled from curved metal stakes, designed to capture the wind and sing songs of air and metal. Tiny flying machines smaller than my thumbnail swept silently through, picking up dead leaves and clipping grass, avoiding the paths entirely. I wondered idly if they swarmed the paths at night in order to keep them so neat. They’d have been handy to help keep up Commons Park in Artistos.
We stopped by a set of interlocking ring pools full of colorful fish. Jenna cupped her ear for a second, and then looked over at me. “He’s coming.”
23
JOSEPH’S FATHER
My father was coming.
Jenna sat on a bench and gestured for us to take another nearby bench. I sat beside Alicia, where I’d have a good view of anyone coming. Bryan stood behind us, watchful and protective. The pools sang of running water. One of the little wind-sculptures sighed and tinkled in the light breeze that cooled my cheek. I held Alicia’s hand in mine and watched.
A young man walked toward us—too young to be my father—and blond. Except that people didn’t grow old here and everything could be changed. I stood up, hopeful, but the man kept going. A pair of women walked by, holding hands and chattering. He probably hadn’t changed that much.
I sat back down, my feet tapping on the hard-packed earth of the path. Alicia leaned in close to me and whispered, “Breathe.”
All right. I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering Marcus’s endless lessons in control.
One breath.
My heart still raced.
Two breaths.
Three breaths.
I looked at the blacknes
s behind my eyes, focused in on the movement of my belly—in and out, in and out.
Four breaths.
Would he like me?
Five.
Alicia’s hand squeezed mine sharply. I opened my eyes. A hundred paces away, my father walked toward us. I shivered, touched at the hope, fear and anticipation licking my spine. He walked like I did, like Chelo, his strides even and smooth, his head up, his eyes on Jenna. His dark hair had been cropped short, and he wore a flight uniform—a blue and gold captain’s coat hanging unbuttoned over pants of the same blue and a simple off-white shirt.
He noticed that I watched him, in the way that all people seem to know when they are under scrutiny, looking at me briefly and narrowing his eyes before turning his gaze back to Jenna. He didn’t appear to recognize me. I stayed glued to the bench, unable to move, unable to say anything, reality-shocked at the moment.
He was close enough now for me to see his eyes, smoky-blue and pleased at the sight of this woman he knew, yet overlaid with puzzlement. “Jenna,” he said, “You look—fantastic.”
He glanced over at the three of us, as if trying to decide if we were safe to talk around, and then his gaze returned to Jenna. His demeanor looked slightly guarded—from us being nearby or from something else?
I remembered Tiala and Jenna racing toward each other, the raw emotion of their meeting. In contrast, Jenna and my father seemed more like two paw-cats happening on the same territory and sizing each other up. My father’s voice sounded slightly deeper than I had heard it on the data button that carried his journal. It still sat in my pocket like a talisman. “How did you get here?” he asked Jenna. “When?”
Jenna smiled. “Just a few months ago.” She looked closely at him, then glanced at me, a warning in her eyes. She looked torn between wanting to take him away and talk to him, and needing to introduce us.
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, my eyes glued on my father, taking in the details of how his hair was cut just above his ears, how he stood with both feet together, a little stiff, how the captain’s coat fit him perfectly, instead of hanging slightly off-shoulder like it did on me.
Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) Page 21