Authors: Brenda Cooper
I shook my head. “I hope forever. There was a time I wished they weren’t together, but not anymore.”
“Why not? She’s a distraction for him. There’s not just six of us for you to save now, sweetheart. There’s millions, and maybe we’d be all right if she faded into them. She might be happier.”
I hoped she meant millions of people like us, and not millions for me to save. I put a finger over her lips. “We six. We have to stay together.”
She stared up at the ceiling. “I know you think that.”
I sighed. “Besides, if he loses her, it will break his heart.”
“I know.”
“We’ll figure it out. We’re family.”
As if to prove my point, Caro leapt up on top of us, giggling wildly. “I didn’t even hear you,” I teased her, although I had.
“Get up!” Her hair had grown into long dark curls as wild as Kayleen’s and her eyes had settled into Kayleen’s blue. Her long toes dug into my side. “Famished.”
I grinned at her. “It’s not always a good thing for kids to learn more words.”
“Yes it is,” Caro stated.
A
s I predicted, Paloma and Seeyan immediately took to each other. Paloma took a deep breath the moment she walked inside the door, her eyes sweeping across the tied bunches of drying pastel-colored herbs. Seeyan had a full head of height on Paloma, and she frowned down at Paloma’s gray hair, reaching a hand out to touch it curiously, and then running fingers across the spiderweb of wrinkles at the edges of Paloma’s eyes. “Why do they let you get old?”
Paloma smiled gently. “Where we came from,” she made a gesture that included me and her, “people die of old age. At home, they don’t like the ways you stay young.” She shrugged. “I’m old. Almost everyone on almost every ship has offered me some way to fix it, but it’s just me and I don’t see any reason to fix it yet. Maybe I will when my bones start to hurt.”
Seeyan still looked confused. “You’re lucky it’s your choice, although I don’t understand it.”
It was Paloma’s turn to look confused. Nevertheless, exactly as I’d expected, she pointed to the herbs hanging from the ceiling above the sink. “Can you tell me about those?”
Seeyan started a detailed description, and they became immediately lost in conversation. I took Jherrel and Caro, walking away from the town. I didn’t want the kids trampling Seeyan’s carefully kept places, but I needed to find them someplace to run. Marcus warned us to run and lift weights daily so we didn’t become soft in the slight gravity. Luckily the kids were enamored of being able to jump so high and happy to go outside.
Following Seeyan’s direction, we found a path directly behind Seeyan’s house. A small forest gave way to grassy ground, which in turn led to a large perch-tree fence and, eventually, to croplands. The fields were well-tended, but naggingly wrong. The warm soft winds and steady sunshine had convinced my body it was late spring or early summer. Even though most of the food here didn’t match what we grew on Fremont, I had been close enough to farming in my childhood chores to notice these fields randomly changing from newly planted to just harvested. No seasons?
The ring of perch-trees that surrounded the spaceport sprouted beyond the fields like a fence.
“See ships?” Jherrel asked.
I eyed the distance. Just what I’d wanted. “It will be a long walk.”
He nodded, with all the seriousness a three-year-old can muster. “Okay.”
His barely older sister observed, “We can’t walk across the crops.”
“There’s a road.” He pointed and, sure enough, there was at least a visible space between rows of crops. “We can run.”
“If you get tired, I’m not carrying you.”
“We won’t get tired,” they said in unison. And they wouldn’t, unless they wanted attention. Our genetics had bred true physically. They ran fast and climbed well—Jherrel the faster runner, and Caro, with outsize feet like Kayleen’s, the better climber.
I followed them, the pace easy for me even though their little cheeks reddened. Halfway across I called a halt for breath. I pretended to pant as hard as they did. “Sure you want to go all the way?”
“Follow the fliers,” Jherrel said, pointing up.
“I like the purple one,” Caro proclaimed. “And the yellow one.”
Sure enough, a set of seven fliers flew straight and fast overhead, directly toward the spaceport. I squinted, pretty sure that one was the blonde with the pale purple wings who had been so happy to get away on the feast day.
“Race you!” Jherrel called my attention back closer to the ground.
I let him beat me to the perch-trees by two strides, and Caro caught up with us before we’d got our breath back. “Let’s look together,” I suggested.
Jherrel took off, running toward the one opening in the thick line of perch-trees that we could see from here. I grabbed Caro up and took off, racing after him. With Caro’s weight in my arms it was tough to catch up. Even with short legs he was a good sprinter, and had time to catch his breath. So we ended up getting to the opening all together. It turned out to be a wide road meant to carry cargo between the spaceport and SoBright. We stopped just at the line of perch-trees, both breathing hard this time, just as a warning bell went up and a stern voice demanded, “Clear the area.”
Fliers rose from whatever they were doing and fluttered into the air, and I finally understood the perch-trees’ purpose here. It was far enough away that the fliers who worked the spaceport—or others, like Matriana when we came in—could safely watch ships arrive and depart. So we had come at a perfect time. Jherrel would like this: he loved ships as much as his uncle Joseph.
After forty or so fliers found perches all the way around the spaceport, the bells rang again. Two more fliers popped out from behind a ship and headed for the trees. A safety bell? A last-minute notice?
After the two fliers landed gracefully, I glanced back at the spaceport. Was something coming down or going up? There was no movement, and I couldn’t see anything in the sky. In front of us, the flat, hard surface looked like a game board of dark- and light-colored squares, and every few squares, a ship rested. “How many ships do you count?” I asked the children.
Caro was fastest. “Eleven.”
“Is one going to go up or come down?”
She grinned. “Go up.” She pointed to one close to us. “That one. The fat one.
The Ind . . . tegreetor’s Dream
.”
“Integrator’s Dream?”
She nodded, smiling.
There were no engines or lights on it, and it didn’t look any different than the other ships. How did she know its name? I couldn’t see it from here. Only one ship here looked like
New Making
or
Creator
, sleek and fast and meant for interplanetary travel. Everything else, including the one Caro pointed to, was squatter and fatter, designed to go between here and the space stations that blinked overhead at night like slowly shooting stars.
“Where is it going?” Jherrel asked.
Caro answered him. “Up. It’s empty except for two people. It’s going up to the space station to get some men.”
What? I remembered Joseph sitting in the park on Fremont, telling me the demon dogs were coming, when he couldn’t possibly see them. I knelt down beside her, and brushed unruly curls from her forehead. “What else do you know?”
“About what? That ship’s the only one that’s talking. And the man that told all the fliers to get up.” She looked over at me. “Cover your ears, Mommy Chelo.”
I did, pantomiming Jherrel to do the same.
He slammed his fists hard against his ears, his face screwed up in concentration. Even so, his eyes stayed on the ships.
Nothing happened.
Just as I was beginning to wonder if Caro was right after all, the ship she’d pointed to gave a great low rumble, and rose into the sky, starting out ponderously slow, almost hovering, and then picking up speed and flashing away from us.
If I’d had more than tea, I’d have thrown it up. Caro was a Wind Reader. Powerful. Capable. In significant danger of going stark-raving mad in her teenage years, and never free of the possibility. Like Kayleen and Joseph. She’d be able to talk to others like her in the quiet of a world of data, and maybe she could fly starships. I could only hope she was steady, like Joseph, and not plagued by her skills like Kayleen. “Jherrel?”
“What?”
“Did you know which ship was going to take off?”
“No.”
Good. I didn’t really want him to be as different from me as Joseph and Kayleen sometimes felt—as I saw them feel. Kayleen, at least, was likely to be killed or driven crazy one day. I was often afraid for her. I clutched Caro in close to me, murmuring, “Good job, honey. We’ll tell Dad and Mommy Kayleen when we get home, okay?”
“Tell them what?”
“That you heard the ship talk.”
She pondered the idea. “Okay.”
I turned to Jherrel. “Was it fun to watch?”
He nodded. “Yes. Can we go again soon? I miss the ships. I want to learn to fly.”
Which he might not get to do, if he wasn’t a Wind Reader. “Don’t you like this better?”
“The sky is too big.”
I cringed. “You’ll get used to it. Ready to run back to Grandma Paloma?”
He shook his head. “My legs are tired now.”
“You promised I wouldn’t have to carry you.”
“You carried Caro.”
He was too smart for his own good, and he’d gotten heavy, too.
P
aloma and I returned with the kids by late afternoon. Paloma stopped from time to time, snipping flowers and herbs, telling us the names. By the time we got home, she’d filled two bags Seeyan had given her and carried an extra clipping in each hand. “Maybe I can talk Seeyan into introductions to the other Keepers. I want to interview them, and see how all of this is used. Seeyan said some were designed for beauty and healing powers.”
“I thought you’d like Seeyan and her herbs.”
“Maybe I can make more of my salves.”
“We’d like that.” At home, Paloma had been the town apothecary.
“I hear there’s great gardens in Oshai. We’ll have to ask Liam about it when he gets back tomorrow.”
Hopefully the guest house would start smelling like Paloma’s old place soon.
I settled the kids down for a nap with Sasha, and then went downstairs and made a cup of col while Paloma made notes about her collection, including detailed drawings. Jenna looked over her shoulder. “I suppose you want me to find a way for you to hang those in the window.”
Paloma nodded placidly.
Jenna sighed. “All right. Let me think.”
I took three long sips of col before I let out my secret. “Caro is a Wind Reader.”
Jenna came over to my side. “How do you know?”
“She spotted which ship was about to leave the spaceport before it started its engines.”
“And there was no other clue?” Jenna asked.
“Not that I saw.” I thought back. “She said it was going up to get some men. I suppose you could check on that.”
Jenna frowned. “Did you see the name of the ship?”
“Caro told me. Something really weird. ‘
The Integrator’s Dream
’?”
“Well that ought to be unique. Dianne and I will look it up.”
“I’m sure she was Reading the Wind,” I said. “I practically raised Joseph.”
“I know,” Jenna said.
“About time she told you,” Paloma said dryly, and picked up a delicate flower, holding it up to the light and turning it slowly, so it shone a translucent bright blue.
J
oseph rolled over, flopping an arm out and pinning me to the bed with it. He mumbled, “The blood vessels in the lungs are twice as effective as ours. Biology is helped with flexible carbon bones in the chest so a flier can . . .” His face turned down, muffling whatever the flier could do.
I needed that biology. A full week of Tsawo’s flying lessons had left my shoulders heavy and thick, and layered tender bruises on my bottom. I’d even barked my shins on a rock trying to land. Flying was beginning to give back some of what it cost me, but there was no freedom in it. Not yet. The middle of my back ached. Joseph’s heavy arm felt stifling across my sore chest, and I lifted it and rolled away. He’d been so busy since we landed I almost never saw him, and half the time, even when we were in the same room, he didn’t notice me. I wanted it to be better between us, but I needed him to tell me he loved me, and instead he spent all of his time with Marcus and Kayleen, and sometimes Chelo. And now that Caro was a Wind Reader, with her, too.
Morning was painting gray into the black sky, and already the earliest fliers were up. It still enthralled me to see them; at dawn they seemed to fly for joy and fun.
Marcus’s voice called up the steps. “Jo-seph. Morning. Jo-seph.”
I turned back to Joseph, watching the shadows on his face. He didn’t stir. His jaw had a strong angle that I loved, and his hair had grown long enough to fall unruly around his ears. He smelled of
dreams and sweat. I inched closer to him, hoping he’d feel me there and move toward me.
He didn’t move at all, except his eyelids fluttering with dreams. A soft grunt escaped his lips.
“Jo-seph.” Marcus had come closer up the stairs. “Jo-seph.”
“Mmmmmphhhh.” Joseph rolled away from me and sat up, rubbing the sticky hair from his forehead. “Coming.”
I lay, listening, as he readied himself; the slide of pants up his naked legs and the even softer fall of a shirt across his shoulders. Water running and the mildly astringent scent of Paloma’s homemade toothpaste.
The door opened and closed behind him. He called a cheery good morning down to Marcus. I wanted to cry and pound the pillows, or maybe scream out angrily. Maybe it would have been better, after all, to go back to Silver’s Home. Of course, he’d been separated from me there, too. Ships and genetics mattered more than me, and worse, he wouldn’t even let me help. Why put a risk-taker near your careful projects?
I waited until he left with Chelo and Kayleen and Marcus, heading back to the university. Downstairs, I found Liam getting the kids ready to go on a butterfly hunt, and Dianne deep in conversation with Tiala and Jenna. As usual, Bryan sat off to the side, watching. I sometimes wondered if he wished he’d chosen invisibility like me and Induan. He’d had the chance, but picked fighting fingernails instead. Just like a guy, pick something that was really only useful as a surprise once. Bryan gestured me to the chair next to him. I poured some col and sat down beside him. “Morning. Where’s Ming?”