Reading the Wind (Silver Ship)

by Brenda Cooper

  Liam had laid out clothes for me. I pulled them on and walked back, slowly, wishing this stasis, this moment of not-war, could continue forever. But as I got back to the fire, all three of them—Liam and Kayleen and Windy—waited for me in a semicircle, firelight playing across their faces. I stood on the other side of the fire from them, thinking of Sasha driving my wagon and Paloma worrying about Kayleen and Akashi lecturing about living easily with the fearsome predators on Jini.

  I said, “I’m going back there tomorrow. I’m going to make them love the people in Artistos the way that I do.”

  31

  HOLDING GROUND

  Kayleen rose and crossed to me, the firelight bright on her bare arms and feet, touching the ends of her dark hair. She folded me in her arms. “You can’t make them like the people on Fremont, Chelo. These people have no hearts. They came here to kill.”

  I stiffened in her arms. “I have to try.” I looked over at Liam, staring up at the dark sky. I spoke loudly, making sure he heard me. “If I run away from peace, if I don’t try, I will never, never be able to live with myself.”

  Liam turned toward me, his face shadowed. The firelight made a halo over his head. “It’s my parents at risk, and Kayleen’s.”

  He didn’t need to remind me Therese and Steven were dead. Besides, I cared for them all—Paloma, Akashi, Mayah, Gianna, Sasha, Sky …and he knew that. He damn well knew that. “It’s not that simple.” My words were sharp. “This whole thing is so stupid I can’t believe it. Why would anybody fly between planets to kill people they don’t know? There’s got to be more to it.”

  Kayleen brushed the hair out of my eyes. I jerked away, wanting answers more than comfort.

  Liam snapped, “You should hear Kayleen out. She’s learned a lot about them.”

  I circled the fire, agitated. We were all upset, and falling apart was no way to stop a war. I sat down on one of the benches, looking up at Kayleen. “Tell me.”

  She sat down next to me, crossing her feet near the fire. Her far hand twisted through her hair, and she drummed the fingers of her near hand on the bench. She flicked her gaze between me and Liam. Her eyes looked saner than when we’d found her in the cave, but nearly as bad as they’d seemed when we first got here. Reading the Wind cost her. And this had cost her far more than soaking up Artistes’s data. Because of what she found? Because of the stranger’s web itself? I put a hand out near her drumming fingers, waiting for them to stop, then covered her hand with mine. “Go on, tell me what you saw.”

  She cleared her throat. “The Islas Autocracy is another planet, like Silver’s Home or Fremont. Or Deerfly. They’re genetically changed there like us, and they trade information with Silver’s Home. They might even trade people, too, sometimes—but I couldn’t tell for sure.” She stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth, as if it might help her decide what to say next. “It’s a big place, and everything—everything—there is planned. Babies. Families. Buildings. Even trees and streams. They design it all.” She paused, rubbing her hands together in front of the fire. “Islas is drenched in data, but it’s not all free like ours. Everyone obeys. Not like at home, where they mostly obey, but sometimes they only pretend to, and really, everyone breaks some rules. At least the little ones.” She grinned at me. “Except maybe you.”

  I laughed a little at that, and Liam looked over at us, but said nothing.

  Kayleen got intense again. “On Islas, they believe in discipline. Doing what they’re told, all for the greater good of their society. They believe they’re right about everything.”

  Liam threw another log onto the fire, sending sparks up into the night like stars. Kayleen tilted her head to watch them, then looked back at me. “You know how, early on, we figured out that on Silver’s Home, they sell their ability to change things and people? Well, these people call themselves Star Mercenaries, and they sell the ability to kill people. To fight wars.

  “I don’t mean everybody on Islas. But it’s the Star Mercenaries that landed here. This isn’t our own people come back.” She pulled her feet a little away from the fire. “Islas looks down on Silver’s Home, thinks they’re soft and undisciplined. These people are doing a job.” She spat her next words out. “They refer to Artistos as a target, not a town.”

  She pulled her hand from mine and went back to drumming, leaning forward, staring into the fire. “They left probes—satellites, like ours, only littler—up in the sky on their way in, and they’re reading Artistos’s data as we speak. Half of Islandia is already included in their webs—and the webs are strong. Stronger than ours. They report more kinds of data, and they don’t seem to have any—”she closed her eyes, searching for the right word—“fragility.”

  She shivered. “People like that wouldn’t come all the way here with a contract to kill and then just go away.” She looked at me. “So you see, it won’t help to talk to them.”

  I could tell she believed it. But I couldn’t. We couldn’t wait for them to attack us or Artistos, but we couldn’t attack them until we tried to stop them. Or we knew we couldn’t.

  Windy rested her head briefly on Kayleen’s shoulder, then withdrew a step, watching us.

  Liam knelt on the ground near me, speaking softly, intently, one hand on my knee. “Everyone we love here is in danger. We have to warn them. We have to go back, soon.” He glanced at Kayleen. “But first, I want to hurt them.” He tugged at his braid, thinking aloud, his beloved, familiar face become a stranger’s. “We have weapons. Crazy-balls and those long sticks and that disruptor you wanted to try on the big demons.”

  Kayleen added, “I can kill their nets. Once. I don’t know for how long.”

  The last time I’d tried to talk us out of a fight, Alicia had intervened, threatened the whole Town Council in the amphitheater with a crazy-ball, made it impossible to find peace without threat. But Liam had been on the side of peace that time. I reached for words to sway him, speaking softly to keep his defenses down. “Akashi would not start with a fight. He would start with words.”

  He turned away from me, his shoulders rigid. “What would you have me do? Just stand by until these people kill you? Until they kill my family? Apparently just for being here?”

  Kayleen said, “I think they want to kill them because they aren’t altered.”

  A short, hard laugh escaped him. “Funny—we’ve always been threatened because we’re altered. Now, they’re in trouble for not being altered.”

  How could he be so dense? “That’s just two sides of the same stupid argument.” I frowned at his stiff back, struggling to understand. None of this made sense—fighting had never made sense to me. “Is that really it? Or is it because our parents want the planet? The land? Isn’t that what they came for?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  I turned back to Kayleen. “Kayleen? What do you think?”

  She laughed, edgy and bitter, then threw her head back, brushing her hair from her forehead. The fingers of her near hand returned to drumming on the bench. “They came because they were hired to. They didn’t set up all that data to learn about Islandia. They’re watching Artistos, and they have a warning grid up in case any other ships or skimmers land here.”

  Great. Were they expecting more people? More ships? I stared at the fire, my face warm, my back chilling as the night cooled. A fit mirror for my feelings, hot and cold, angry and confused, mad and resigned. “Who hired them?” The only people I knew with an interest in Fremont were from Silver’s Home. “Our parents?” No, that wasn’t quite right. They were probably dead. “Our parent’s people, anyway?”

  Kayleen shook her head. “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “What about our babies? Don’t we owe them a chance at peace? We can’t run away from these people; they’d find us.”

  “Chelo?” Liam asked from across the fire, his voice breaking. “Chelo? What do you want me to do?”

  Pain danced in his eyes, in the tight set of his features, and I knew we
mirrored each other, both in pain, if for different reasons. “We said we’d decide everything together. Remember? What do you want?” I turned to Kayleen. “And you?”

  Liam turned back toward us. “You’re right about Akashi. He wouldn’t start with a fight. But he’d have a fist prepared. He’d be ready for a fight in case they started it, and he’d be ready to strike if he thought he had to. That’s the way he’s always approached dangerous situations.”

  I threw a stick on the fire, watching the heat rise like my own fears. “Liam? What do you want to do?”

  “I want to know if we can figure out how to hurt them, and I want to be ready to.” He looked directly into my eyes. “I don’t want to hurt them, but we have to. We have to make sure they can’t hurt Mom and Dad.” His next words came out slowly, as if they had to be dragged from him. “And I guess…I guess we can go back and talk to them first. It’s just—you were there. How can you think it will help? We don’t understand these people at all, and Kayleen’s right—they’re much more powerful than we are.”

  “They could have killed us today, and they didn’t.”

  “And they might kill you tomorrow. Who’s to say they’ll let us go again?” he said. “We’re damned lucky they let us go at all.”

  Kayleen turned to me. “I don’t like it. But you know, we’re probably going to die anyway. No matter what we choose.” A tear ran down her cheek, sparkling gold in the firelight.

  I held her hand to stop it from drumming, watching her face. Kayleen never sounded like this. Even though we’d been there and she hadn’t, she knew more about the strangers than we did. Being in someone’s data was surely more intimate than being in an awkward meeting.

  Kayleen wiped the tear from her cheek with a quick jerky motion and reached a hand up for Windy’s nose. “If it matters that much to you to talk to them, go ahead. I know how stubborn you can be, Chelo. And I love you for it. But don’t trust them. Don’t you trust them.” She looked intent, her eyes drilling into mine, half her face lit by dancing flames. “Go ahead and try to convince them to love Artistos, but if that doesn’t work, we’ll have a backup plan.”

  Neither of them sounded like they expected me to succeed. Maybe I didn’t expect to, either. But I had to try. I nodded, suddenly sympathizing with Hunter when he’d led the war against us. Against our parents. “All right. What do we have in our fist?”

  32

  THE CHOICE

  Liam looked worried. “Travel safely.”

  I nodded. It had been my suggestion to go alone, to buy Kayleen and Liam time to put things in place. I clutched him tightly to me. “I will. Somehow.”

  “Remember, Chelo, that if we attack them we aren’t starting something new. We’re in the middle of something our parents started.”

  “I know.” It had started before I was born, shaped and molded my life, sundered my family not once but twice. And here was a third sundering if I didn’t choose right. Or maybe no matter how I chose.

  I pushed away from Liam and turned to Kayleen. “Keep our baby safe.”

  She nodded, apparently at a loss for words.

  We had spent much of the night planning an attack. Kayleen spread out her weapons, our weapons, and we talked about how to place crazy-balls and how to use disruptors.

  In the end, we decided to start with Fremont itself.

  I left a little early, giving myself time to think, taking the journey slowly.

  When I stood looking up at the Dawnforce, I nearly turned back. I was an ant, the Dawnforce a mountain. It bulked across the plains, its presence bigger than just the ship. It spilled big skimmers and structures around it. What Kayleen had told us made the camp feel malevolent.

  Two buildings had sprung up overnight, smooth shells complete with windows and doors. The Islans had not cut trees to make these things, and the buildings were too big to have been carried whole inside the ship. I knew it was technology, but it might as well have been magic.

  And then, for a moment, I stood gaping. The Burning Void sat behind one of the buildings. I stiffened. Why? Was it a trap for us? A favor? Or did they think they owned it for freeing it?

  I kept my distance, not sure I wanted them to know I’d seen it.

  I wasn’t going into the Dawnforce this time, not without being forced to. I stood outside the door and waited, positive they would show up.

  Sure enough, in a few moments Ghita, the two strongs, and the captain came out of the ship. “Chelo!” Captain Groll called out cheerfully. “How are you? Where is Liam?”

  “He didn’t feel well this morning.” Let them chew on that, in case they had put something in our food. “We didn’t want to disappoint you, so I came alone.” Kayleen had suggested they wouldn’t notice the stupidity of walking about by oneself on Fremont. She seemed to be right, because they didn’t react or remark on it. I tried to sound as friendly as I could. “Are you ready for a brief tour?”

  Ghita gestured at one of the three sleek skimmers sitting near the Dawnforce. “We can fly.”

  That wasn’t in our plan. “A walking tour will teach you a lot more. Remember how we pointed out plants on the way back? There are things you see on foot that you can’t see from the air.”

  The captain and her second looked perplexed for a moment, then the red-haired captain said, “I’ll call Moran and his team.” She touched a spot on the neckline of her tunic and spoke into the air, too softly for me to make out the words. I couldn’t help but appreciate her beauty, the thin steel of her form, the way she moved, lithe and graceful. Her movements, even her walk, were compact and perfect, wasting no energy but somehow full of it. Her eyes caught mine, as if she knew I had been watching her. “Very well. We will walk a ways, but only an hour’s distance or so. Then perhaps you will visit with us for a while before you return?”

  An hour would be enough. Inwardly, I sighed in relief. Outwardly, I smiled at her. “That sounds fine. Would you like to see the waterfalls?” Would you like to go see the place the demon dogs live? The dogs didn’t scare me as much as these people.

  In a few moments, four more people showed up, three men and a woman. They looked normal, or as normal as the captain and Ghita. Uniformed, neat, healthy, young. But they were altered, like us. Visual cues would not tell me age. I smiled at them, getting their names one by one. The men were Moran, Pul, and Zede; the woman, Kuipul. They were all cool and polite, masked like Ghita with no real emotion showing, even in their eyes. After the introductions, Ghita waved a hand at the mountains. “Let’s go.”

  I started up-valley, leading eight dangerous strangers up a path I’d never been along myself. Surely with this big a crowd, we would scare off single predators, especially during the afternoon. So I pretended not to worry much about the land or the animals, to make it a casual walk, to project a feeling of calm relaxation. It hadn’t rained for days, so the ground was hard-packed and unlikely to show the demon dogs’ tracks. Or ours. A soft wind blew across grasses beside the path, cooling me. Insects chirped. Twice, we surprised swarms of flying grass beetles, hundreds of green-backed creatures as long as my little finger and twice as wide, flying up and away from us in frantic leaps, pushed along by the breeze and tiny flashing yellow wings.

  The Captain and Ghita flanked me. The others trailed behind, the strongs in the far back, watching all of us. No time like the present. I took a deep breath, wishing for success. “So you want to hear about Artistos? Our home.” There was surely no point in hiding that now. “The people who live there call themselves’ original humans’. They’ve been on Fremont since before we showed up from Silver’s Home. They have schools and music guilds and artists and hunters. They farm and raise animals and study the planet.”

  Ghita spoke, her face drawn in a scowl. “Pah. Original humans. No one is completely un-engineered—every human strain has evolved. Evolution is a biological mandate—it’s what we do. Humans cannot succeed by going backward.”

  Damned judgmental of her. What the heck was backward, anyw
ay? Her self-righteousness toward the original colonists sounded like the Town Council when they talked about us. Teeth on edge, I clamped down on the words I wanted to say, and kept my voice calm. “They are succeeding. The colony is growing. It’s self-sufficient. It’s what they want, and they have it. They just don’t like as much technology as you use. They don’t want to be changed.”

  “Why?” Captain Groll asked. “Why not use every tool you have? Why not become everything you possibly can? We don’t understand.”

  “I’m not sure I do, either,” I replied. “It is central to who they are, though. Besides, they’re good people.” I glanced over at Ghita, who was watching me instead of her footing, instead of the landscape around her. Why wouldn’t a trained fighter be more aware?

  I pulled my focus back to convincing them the people in Artistes deserved life. “There’s Gianna. She’s a scientist—she studies meteors, and warns us about big meteor showers. She cares about everyone, and spends a lot of her spare time with the kids, teaching them as much science as she can. She has a great laugh.” I looked at the two women’s faces for a reaction. The captain looked curious, and Ghita seemed to have not changed at all.

  I led them over to some large reddish rocks pockmarked with holes. Soil had blown into some of the holes, and summer grasses rooted, popping up above the rocks like hair. I pointed to the rocks. “One of the volcanoes threw those rocks out in an eruption.”

  Captain Groll bent down and looked at the rock, her head cocked a little. “There are no active volcanoes on Islas.”

  Kaal, the strong I’d talked to on our way to the ship the day before, stepped closer, either because she was interested or because she was protecting the captain. She picked up a small rock, grunting in surprise at how light it was. She knelt down and picked up a bigger rock, testing its heft. At least she had the good grace to seem interested.