Spinning Starlight (15 page)

When my door opens in the morning, I expect either a keeper or Tiav. I get neither.

I get Shiin.

Looking at her is like seeing all the facets of a jewel simultaneously. A soft maternal expression balances with a firmness, making me certain that Tiav didn’t get away with white lies or
troublemaking as a child. Calm while pressing. Patient with urgency. I can’t wrap my head around how she’s all those things at once, but she is. She stands in front of me with her hands
clasped lightly, like she spends every morning talking to mute girls in detention facilities.

“We have a problem, Liddi,” she says. “You clearly have some kind of curiosity or fascination with the Khua. Understandable enough, given your people’s lack of knowledge,
though I cannot fathom what you hoped to accomplish by anchoring yourself to Ferinne that way. You can’t speak, so you can’t explain it to us, and that’s unacceptable. We will
continue to work with you.”

I look around the cell. The tiny space seems ill-equipped for writing lessons. No computer.

“No, you’re being released, though I hope your night here impressed the gravity of the situation. I convinced the Agnac Hierarchy that you can’t be held accountable for
breaking a law you weren’t aware of. And the law is that only those authorized—only the Aelo with our methods—may interact directly with the Khua. Now you know.”

I guess so, except for the whole
Khua
part. Their word for the portals, I suppose.

Their word. Now that I know what to call them, maybe I can get some answers to avoid recklessness and inform my actions, like Jahmari suggested.

Shiin takes me back to the Nyum, back to the small office upstairs. Tiav isn’t there. I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad, but I sit at the desk and put in my earpiece. The
keypad lights up across the desk surface—the “outer” symbols, the broader menu.

“Where would you like to start today, Liddi?”

She smiles, adding another dimension to my impression of her, and it brings a welcoming air to the room. She’s sticking around, even though she has better things to do than deal with the
foreigner. Maybe no one else is willing to after what I did last night—whatever the big problem with it is. That would explain why Tiav isn’t here.

I touch the command for the computer to start sounding off the symbols, lighting each key as it does. When it reaches the
k
sound, I tap that key and get the submenu. It doesn’t
take long to get to
koo
. Then I repeat the process to get from
a
to
ah
. It’s written, so I tap the command for it to read the word on the external sound system.

“Koo-ah.”

The smile fades, and Shiin sits in the chair opposite me. No smile, but I’m not sure what her expression
is
. Curious. Guarded. Conflicted.

“Yes, of course, we should talk about the Khua. The history between our peoples. We were one people once, long ago, as Tiav’elo may have told you. The Khua were discovered here, and
we spread to other worlds, establishing the Eight Points on the planets most tightly connected. Your people believe the Khua are a natural phenomenon, correct?”

Yes. Certain planets are linked on a level beyond our own dimension, and portals are the energy-chains doing the linking. What else would they be?

“They’re natural, yes. But they’re not ‘ phenomena.’ They’re beings. Alive.”

It’s like she heard about my checked genes and decided I was three levels past stupid. I’ve known the basics of biology since I was four. Rolling my eyes gets the message across
clearly enough. Shiin looks angry as she shakes her head, but not at me.

“Exactly what I expect from the Lost Points. Assumptions about life requiring certain molecules. So many assumptions. So little interest in extraordinary truth, though I can’t say
we’re entirely innocent of that on Ferinne. Before you came here, Liddi, didn’t you assume aliens were only in stories? Now you know there are Crimna, Haleians, Izim, and Agnac, and
those are only the ones we’ve met so far, those who found us due to their own fainter connections to the Khua. If I ask you now, do you believe there are more aliens out there than those
I’ve named?”

I haven’t thought about it before, but it makes sense. As big as the universe is, it’s hard to believe
all
forms of intelligent life have already converged on one planet. I
nod, and my answer lights something in Shiin’s eyes.

“There might be hope for you. But the Lost Points as a whole think they’re the pinnacle of the universe’s achievements, so they never look beyond their own borders. Seeing only
what they want to see.”

I make the computer say
Khua
again.

“We believe the Khua are alive, that they have consciousness and will. Your people believe they are not. We stayed here; they went to the other various Points and left us alone. Then we
met people from other worlds, beginning with the Crimna, and the Agnac soon after. They knew about the Khua and believed as we did, that they are alive. Even more so. The Agnac worship the Khua,
quite literally, and they take exception to the lack of belief in the Lost Points. You had erased us from your culture, relegating us to mythic afterlife, but to ensure it stayed that way, we cut
you off from the Khua. We made sure your people couldn’t reach us, and it worked for centuries…until you arrived.”

So no Sentinel and no Wraith, just sparks of energy to be worshiped. I’m not sure which is worse.

Regardless of this the-Khua-are-alive insanity, the Ferinnes clearly know plenty about the portals. I feel like I do when a difficult concept my brothers try to explain finally starts to make
sense. An excitement that the closed doors in front of me aren’t locked after all. Locked. I can use that to simplify my question for Shiin. It takes the better part of fifteen minutes to
piece it together, even with the shortcut of already having
Khua
written in front of me.

“Kon-trole koo-ah lock koo-ah how?”

A smile returns to Shiin’s lips, but it’s a very different one. Small, with hints of mischief, reminding me of both Jahmari’s voice and Tiav’s eyes.

“Oh, you’re not going to like the answer to that, Liddi. Not when you roll your eyes because I say the Khua are alive.”

Okay, maybe the eye-rolling was rude, but I have to go with the most efficient communication I can. I lean forward and raise my eyebrows, urging her to answer anyway.

“How did we lock the Khua?” she says. “We simply asked them not to let you in.”

Facing the conduit terminal was the one thing that could dampen Liddi’s enthusiasm. Visiting one of the other Points, spending time with Luko and Vic, getting away
from the old routine—those things sparked all the excitement a nine-year-old could muster. Traveling by conduit made her a little nervous, though. It didn’t hurt, and all she had to do
was stand on a platform while an attendant entered commands. A brief disconcerting moment of nothing-everything, and she’d be there. Her brothers assured her the mild fear that she’d
disappear from one world and fail to reappear at the other was all in her head, and true enough, every trip by conduit had been smooth and predictable.

It just felt
wrong
, and she couldn’t figure out why.

She set it aside with everything else she didn’t understand.

The trip to Erkir ended up being one of the best Liddi could remember. The twins took her everywhere—flying a glider over the grassland prairies, snow-shoeing in the far south, and
snorkeling in the tropics. A small contingent of vid-cams followed them everywhere, of course, but Liddi was proud of herself. She didn’t give the media-grubs a single negative thing to say.
Not like the previous year’s briefer visit to the beach property on Pramadam.

On the last day, the three of them hiked up to the top of one of Erkir’s mountains. Nothing high enough to need special equipment or training, but still very high for Liddi. Her
brothers offered more than once to carry her piggyback if she needed a rest, but she refused. She didn’t want to let the vid-cams see her give up.

Finally, they reached the top, and Liddi lost what little breath she had left. She could see everything. And
everything
didn’t include a single city.

“Erkir, it’s like…it’s the opposite,” she said.

“The opposite of what?” Luko asked.

“Of Sampati. We have all our cities, and just a few areas like our house or the little in-between places. They have all this space and just small settlements scattered around. I bet
there are more animals on this mountain than people on the whole planet.”

Vic nodded. “That’s true. It fits our needs. Erkir is focused on the ecological sciences, so they need space for the plants and animals to have their habitat. Sampati’s
main industry is technology, so we need the infrastructure to support that.”

Liddi didn’t know what “infrastructure” meant beyond some specific kind of structure, but she was pretty sure she understood. Something else about the situation puzzled
her, though.

“It seems like when people have opposite ideas, they usually fight about it. But we don’t fight with Erkir or Neta or any of the other Points.”

Luko glanced at his brother. “It wasn’t always that way, I’ve heard. People had to learn a big lesson so all the Points could get along.”

“What lesson?”

Vic playfully tugged her ponytail before answering. “That just because something’s right for you doesn’t mean it’ll be right for me.”

WE ASKED THEM TO.
The answer barely registers, it’s so absurd. My mind races with a return of the maybes.

Maybe the Ferinne who figured out how to lock the Khua wanted to keep the method a secret, so he made up a story about “asking.”

Maybe it was so long ago, the real event was lost and morphed into this legend.

Maybe the Ferinnes were afraid the hot-tempered Agnac would go to war if they didn’t go along with the aliens’ worship-the-living-sparks lifestyle.

“I knew you wouldn’t like the answer,” Shiin says. “You don’t believe me.”

No, I don’t, because I’ve been inside, and the inside fits my idea of “chaotic hyperdimensional energy phenomenon” a lot more than “living being that’ll do as
you ask.” There’s no order, no reason, no
anything
there except a highly disturbing passage from one Point to another. Like ancient ocean crossings in a storm…a
reality-bending, sanity-breaking storm. Instead of shaking my head, though, I start digging through the symbols again.

“Truh-bull wye?”

“Why were you in trouble yesterday?” Yes, that. “Tiav’elo tells me he hasn’t had a chance to explain our role as Aelo. We are…liaisons with the Khua, the only
ones permitted to interact with them. It wasn’t always this way. Everyone used to be able to try but found it chaotic, painful, confusing. The most we could accomplish was travel between the
Points. Then the Aelo developed the methods and skills necessary to understand the Khua. Later, when the Agnac came, they revered us for that understanding—they still do—and asked for a
law preventing anyone but the Aelo from entering the Khua. We agreed because even without the law, it was the reality that only the Aelo went in. The law made no difference to us. But to the Agnac,
the presence of one who doesn’t believe or understand defiles the Khua. It’s one of their deepest crimes.”