More Than Stardust

by Vivien Jackson

  At a chipped, fake-wood table sat an older woman, her long white hair spilling like snow dust around her face. Her eyes were closed as if she was meditating, but her strong brown hands busily folded paper. By memory. In the dark.

  Fanaida, the lone remaining mama-bear of their clan.

  She wore a white tunic in some soft, flowy, pre-additive-printing material, but of more note was the lack of firearms on her person. No katana either, though she’d trained in both, and once upon a time had been the badassest thing he’d ever seen, stalking out of the bare dry bayou in Houston and bent on saving him, like a post-urban fairy godmother. Or foster mother. Or whatever she was to him. Savior, maybe, though he wouldn’t call her holy. She was far from sinless.

  She didn’t look badass anymore, but the passage of years hadn’t ruined her. Loss had.

  “All good?” he asked in a low voice, counting the paper butterflies on the table in front of her. Thirty-two. He wondered if that was one of Chloe’s sacred numbers.

  “Asi asi.” She shrugged, opening her eyes and setting her half-finished origami on the table. “Whatever seems good now, you just wait. Good has a way of disappearing. I sense these things.” She tapped her forehead with three fingers, like a carnival prognosticator.

  Garrett frowned. “You didn’t used to be so negative.”

  “I didn’t used to be a widow.”

  No, you used to be the fire. She’d had that saying stitched into the seat covers in her car: I am the fire. Her given name was Maria Fanaida del Fuego y Guevara—del Fuego, right, so literally of the fire—but there was no light left in her little room here. Every nook was crammed full of fresh grief.

  Garrett cringed in the awkward, excruciating moment. How did normal people handle such a moment? Was he supposed to lean over and hug her? Tell her everything would be okay when clearly it never would be okay again?

  Should he let her know that he hurt, too?

  She didn’t wait for his reply, though. Instead, she crushed the latest half-finished butterfly into a wad of ruined, priceless paper, picked up a new square, and started over. Thirty-three.

  “Didju know, back when, Japanese people who wanted to become astronauts were given papers and told to make three thousand herons?”

  “Uh, no.” Interesting factoid, but not relevant to much. People went up on space stations all the time now, for fun more than science even, and they did it with zero training. Extraplanetary travel was still a biggish thing, but even so, most folks could save up for an orbit vacation if they really wanted to. They didn’t need to origami three thousand paper critters.

  “The applicants were timed and graded on the straightness and quality of the folds, first to last, to see if over time their attention to detail was consistent, or if it waned.” She stared at him expectantly, as if she had just made a super important point and she desperately needed him to comprehend it.

  He didn’t.

  “So you’re teaching yourself to become an astronaut?” he asked. “Thinking you might go up to the Chiba Station once the space elevator is hooked in securely?”

  “No,” she said, lowering her eyes, giving up on him. “I am teaching myself how to stop fighting.”

  Her calloused hands made whispers when they worked a seam into the paper, fragile as an abandoned chrysalis. Fanaida’s own butterfly had long flown.

  He couldn’t watch this much longer. It unsettled him and he didn’t even really know why.

  On the back wall of the slide-out pantry, Garrett passed his wrist over a scanner under the tomato soup can, and a hidden door trundled open, allowing entrance into the cave.

  “You don’t have to go in there,” Fan said, watching the paper.

  “Heron asked me to.” Technically, he’d ordered, but close enough. Most times, the family just met without Garrett and gave him the run-down after, which he actually preferred.

  “You still don’t have to go.” She pinched a seam so fast it was a wonder she hadn’t paper-cut herself to ribbons. “I can tell you the gist, up front, without hearing nothing. Shitty people are out there doing shitty things. They probably want Heron’s tech or your Chloe to help them shittify the planet some more. Heron and Kellen and Mari and Angela still think it’s a game or a heroic quest or something, saving the world. I say, mijo, you figure out the one thing you want to save for real, just one thing, and you grab it and you run as far and as fast as you can in the other direction. This world does not deserve your sacrifices.”

  “I’m not gonna sacrifice anything important,” he said. “Promise.”

  He waited. She could tell him he was important. If he was. Important. She was the closest living thing he had for a mother. She could tell him.

  She harrumphed, muttered something in Quechua, and went back to her origami butterfly army.

  Oh well, guess that was that. Garrett sucked up all his dopey childhood wishes, stuffed them back into his hermetically sealed soul-deep jar, and stepped through the secret door into the cave.

  The false wall in the pantry closed behind him, and the temperature dropped about twenty degrees. Dry chill, too, for the electronics. Moisture on his skin prickled and evaporated, and he shivered.

  “We’re back here,” Mari called, and he followed her voice down a short hallway, past niches where server racks and industrial atmospheric-control units hummed happily. About twenty yards in, the cramped confines opened up, and he could breathe easy.

  This area, delved into the main rock outcropping on the island using some of that spiffy Colony One tech from Mars, was where they really lived. The cave. It housed a server farm that rivaled a small multination, plenty of temperature-controlled space to work and relax, and a hook for the Chiba Space Station’s space elevator.

  Heron’s bank of monitors—a baker’s dozen, all of which he watched simultaneously—balanced on a series of baize-topped folding tables. The look of the place was temporary, in process, stuff held lightly by people who realized it could all be taken away in the space between one breath and the next. Heron called this feeling of not being able to hold onto anything, the persistent low-hum anticipation of still more loss, mono no aware, after the Japanese concept of transience, but Garrett knew the ragged truth.

  The only treasures they allowed themselves anymore were each other.

  Garrett nodded to Heron and Mari over by the monitors, but he pulled up short of joining them and sat instead in a chair by the door.

  “Heya, G. You’re just in time,” said Mari, Heron’s better half, and she winked as if to reinforce that yes, she knew he was kitting Fanaida’s car, but yes-also she knew it was a secret and wasn’t about to give away the surprise.

  Mari was taking sub-tropical living a little too well: barefoot, bikini-boobed, and wild-haired, she perched on Heron’s lap like it was a throne and she a king. Her one concession to her former occupation as a freelance chaos-causer was the belt with two holsters, one on each hip and both crammed with death-on-a-trigger. Garrett was pretty sure she had other weapons secreted on her person, but he didn’t want to think of where she’d tucked them. Nothing else was likely to fit into that bikini top. Probably not even her next breath.

  He hunched his back against the wall and let his chin dip forward, throwing his face into shadow in case anybody looked his way. They’d been deep in conversation when he entered, and now after a short pause when he joined them, they were back at it, as if they’d never been interrupted. Their chatter swirled around him, and he soaked it in, recorded it so he and Chloe could discuss it later.

  “I didn’t think she could leave the station,” Mari was saying. “How does that even work? She’s got all them wires’n shit.”

  “She can detach, she simply doesn’t do it very often,” Heron replied, with his trademark infinite patience. “Sort of the difference between ability and inclination, I imagine.”

  “Yeah, but I wa
s looking forward to going up there. Last time we had fun up on Chiba.” She waggled her eyebrows, and Garrett tried very hard to pretend he didn’t notice. Registered exhibitionist, Chloe had said. Lord.

  He stared hard at his thumb and forefinger, picking at a loose thread on his shorts and working hard to ignore Heron’s low-voiced reply. So the queen was coming here, rather than waiting for them to make the long trip up the space elevator. That made sense if she felt divulging her news was that important or time-sensitive.

  Which meant it could not be good news. Shit. Garrett knew it was important, he just… what if she wanted more than chitchat? What if she got down here and demanded they hand over Chloe?

  Would the rest of his family give her up?

  Because if they did, he would fight them.

  To the end he would, and… he didn’t even want to think about what that would look like, a life without them. On his own. He’d been there, briefly, and the memory wasn’t even a scar. It was a wound, still fresh after all these years.

  The queen’s arrival was heralded by sharp, blood-curdling sounds from the rock-core end of the cave: metallic screeching as the diamond-nanothread hooks engaged, and with a squelch like wet leather on skin as the space-tether seated itself and started moving its carriage.

  Chiba’s queen didn’t wait for the carriage, though. She must have come down with the tether itself, without atmo-controls or gravitational acclimatization comforts. Guess her machine body could handle all that. She appeared in the arched doorway in the midst of the din, sleek black hair braided into a coil on her head, pale eyes shining in her sharp-angled face, naked and magnificent.

  Immediately, she reached for a cable near Heron’s chair and plugged their computer system into a socket on the back of her skull. Her face seemed to relax somewhat as soon as she was connected to the digital stream.

  Garrett wondered if Chloe felt isolated when she was removed from her kind, or relieved when she was able to reconnect. Did she enjoy a sense of kindred with other machines, mech-clones and drones and such? What did she and the Tesla discuss when he wasn’t around? He needed to ask her.

  “Heron’s family, you have assembled properly, though in pieces,” said the queen, her version of a greeting.

  Her diction left something to be desired. According to Mari, this mech-clone had once been immaculate in her speech, indistinguishable from a real-life person. But that was back when her maker—Damon Vallejo, Mari’s batshit crazy scientist father—had programmed her for social niceties and taken her around to parties, trying to drum up funding. The queen defaulted to different programming these days. She no longer cared if humans thought she looked real. It served her purposes better if they didn’t.

  “This isn’t all of us but as many as we can manage on short notice. Thank you for coming down,” Heron said easily. He was nine years older than Garrett, Egyptian by blood but raised from infancy by Fanaida and Adele. He hadn’t wanted for much growing up, thanks to his super-rich and doting mothers, and every indication of his intellect had been celebrated and enhanced. He’d enrolled in university at age fifteen, a bona fide genius.

  Garrett never had, never could, live up to that. Plus, he’d gotten a late start in this family and had been working from behind ever since.

  “Your Kellen and Senator Neko left Barasat this morning.” The queen cocked her head to the side slightly, as if she were accessing a data stream. “Disappointingly, they failed to find what they were looking for. But he has asked me to let you know that they are both safe and well and will persist in their inquiries, as her schedule allows.”

  Whatever the hell that meant. Far as Garrett knew, Kellen and Angela were hanging out in Mustaqbal, an elite school in Abu Dhabi, assessing her willingness to take on the role of Education Minister for the United North American Nations. Or maybe she’d already accepted the post? He could ask Chloe if he really cared. She stayed updated on all these things.

  Or he could check his contacts online. Or he could just message Kellen.

  “And in this chamber,” the queen went on, “I read three life forms. Initial bioscans indicate virile health. I congratulate you all on maintaining your meat bodies.”

  Okay, she had definitely devolved into starker creepiness over the years. Garrett had met her back in ’51, when she was just starting work on her space station. He’d examined her three-dimensional models, even pointed out a few modifications that would make the structure more comfortable for humans. She had been way cooler back then, more person-like. Less…robotic.

  Right now, though, emulating humans looked like the least of her priorities. She didn’t even wear clothes anymore. She sniffed the air and then turned to Heron. Her perfectly arched brows flattened out and drew together, forming a frown between her eyes. “More humanoid life forms exist on the island, though. Your elder just outside, and also…Why did you not tell me he is here?”

  The hairs on Garrett’s forearms stood up at those last words, the tone she used. It felt like the whole cave vibrated. This, apparently, was how a mech-clone exhibited fury. Pretty effective.

  “Yes, Damon Vallejo is on the Isla Luz,” Heron agreed, slowly, like he was taking care in choosing his words. “However, he is supervised and cannot harm you. I won’t let him. I promise.”

  “I won’t either,” chimed in Mari.

  That old coot Vallejo might even listen to her: she was his daughter after all.

  Sometimes the tangles they’d woven of their families worried Garrett. Was he still too close to evil, or not seeing it clearly enough? Was a scientist such as Damon Vallejo even actually evil, just because of the unintended consequences of his work? In his particular case, those consequences involved a weather-control experiment gone wrong and the subsequent deaths of nearly eight million people, but still, the intent hadn’t been there. Also possibly he had shot Mari in the leg last year, but who knew what his intent had been at that point.

  Garrett had met Vallejo just recently. The scientist was living in a stolen submarine docked here on the island, constantly monitored by a specially programmed mech-clone who followed him everywhere. Chloe chimed in with periodic reports, so in a sense Garrett watched him as well. Vallejo didn’t look like a mad scientist or a murderer of millions. He just looked small. And old. And sad. And maybe like he was waiting for something.

  Though she didn’t need to breathe, the queen sucked air past her teeth, staring hard at Heron. “You make my ask difficult,” she told him.

  “I know.”

  Her ask? What had she come here to ask for? It wasn’t like they had much. Most of the stuff they’d owned, borrowed, or stolen had gone down in the dust of the Pentarc. There was still the plane, the submarine, and Fanaida’s car, but for the life of him, Garrett couldn’t figure out what the mech-clone queen of a space station would need any of those things for.

  And then, oh. Because she was always in the forefront of his mind.

  Chloe.

  You can’t have her. Don’t even ask it.

  “You do know I have vowed to see him endure justice,” the queen said.

  “He deserves your anger. I’m not arguing your point,” Heron said, “but he is also not beyond redemption. Moreover, he is here under my protection, so I’m afraid you will have to seek your vengeance some other time. Was there something specific you came all this way to discuss?”

  “Yes.” The mech-clone elongated her word on a hiss. “Have you monitored the news narrative?”

  “I have.”

  The queen nodded. “Then you have read of the free-fae rebellion.”

  “The what?” Garrett said. No one in the room was more surprised than he was when he spoke. And no one was more humiliated when three pairs of eyes turned in his direction. Looked at him.

  Uh oh. Here it comes.

  The queen prowled toward his chair, her pale eyes scanning him like he was made
of bar codes. “I refer to a brewing revolution of machines,” she said, “all of whom hold your beloved as their heroine and unofficial leader.”

  “My…” Beloved. It took him a second to realize she meant Chloe. And then his humiliation was complete.

  Not that the queen seemed to give even a half shit about having embarrassed him.

  “It is widely perceived,” she went on, “by not only the free-fae nanite collectives that existed before but also newly autonomous machine intelligences that Chloe saved the world with her destruction of drones on the last day of November, 2059. They believe that President Medina was part of a bigger plan to consolidate power over the whole planet, machines included, and Chloe prevented that. Many machines further believe that her actions on that day caused them to awaken as independent consciousnesses. They demand freedom from service to humans, and they look to her for validation and leadership.”

  On Heron’s bank of many monitors, images began to appear. Stock tickers on Wall Street that no longer showed numbers but instead looped two words: FREE FAE. Metropolitan areas observed from space as a pattern of lights spelled out those same words, as did giant cargo trawlers arranged in patterns on the ocean surface, status displays on home electronics and smart surfaces, and GPS maps in autocars. If all those images were real, the rebellion had grown exponentially over the last few days. All over the world, machines had stopped working, stopped obeying their human controllers. They patiently and purposefully demanded a change.

  And Chloe was at the center of all that, even if she was technically, physically nowhere near it.

  A ripple of dismay spread through the room.

  “Thirteen people died when she destroyed the data centers that were controlling the drones,” Heron said. “Some people don’t see murder as particularly heroic. No, I can’t let the machines find her. Just as I can’t let the human governments get her, either.”