Authors: Brenda Cooper
Tsawo led me and Induan and another flier to Bryan’s body, and the four of us carried him. His body swung between us, heavy, not yet stiff with death. I couldn’t look down at what we carried. I was in
the right front, and I just looked ahead at the trees far in front of us, biting my lower lip and carefully tracing the lines the trees made against the sky. But at least
we
carried him. His family. And we’d be here for a while, so he didn’t have to be alone on a strange planet.
Even though we were all strong, Bryan’s body was heavy, and sweat poured down my forehead by the time we put him down.
Tsawo took a seat on a bench, and I slid next to him. Induan took my other side. The rest of the benches and perches filled, first with the fliers, and then with others, including wingless. I had no idea where so many people came from, but they came, some of them winded and breathing hard when they arrived.
Almost no one talked. A slight breeze blew, and birds chattered, and feet moved, and people adjusted how they sat, but there was no loud talk to scrape my raw nerves.
I didn’t know what we waited for. I tried not to look at Bryan’s body. It lay in the middle of us all, just to the side of the center of the lawn. His deadweight seemed to be pulling me down into the ground.
Six Keepers showed up with shovels. Tsawo got up and went to greet them, speaking softly. He must have told them what he wanted, since they set the shovels down and carefully cut a large square out of the grass and pulled it back, rolling the grass and topsoil.
As soon as the ground was exposed, I took one of the tools and started digging myself. Better than just sitting beside my dead. The shovel slid in easily, the soil loose and rich, the scent of it oddly clean. It felt good to strain my back lifting it up from the ground and tossing the dirt onto a pile.
Induan came and took another shovel.
Tsawo came up and put a hand on my back. “You should let the Keepers do that.”
I stuck the shovel back into the ground. “I’m not a flier yet. Let me bury my dead.” I lifted a load of dirt and piled it and went back for more. Again. Again. I didn’t even notice when Tsawo withdrew, although when I looked for him later, he had returned to sitting on a bench, watching.
I remembered how we gathered in the band on Fremont when someone died, and built a platform, and a bonfire, and sent the ashes of our dead out on the winds to fertilize the world. Most of the band
sat up all night at a funeral, laughing and joking with each other. I thought about that while I kept digging the hole.
I remembered Bryan making us run, about Bryan and Liam pulling me out of the wagon I had been locked in and carrying me to town, clutched close to Bryan’s chest. He’d smelled like sawdust from the mill and rain that night.
When I could barely breathe anymore, and sweat stung my eyes, I handed the shovel off to one of the waiting Keepers and stood between Tsawo and Amalo. Three more Keepers showed up with a wooden box, and set Bryan’s body carefully inside it. Luckily, they’d built it too big, almost square, and so he fit inside in spite of the awkward angles of his limbs. His claws were out, and absurdly, I wished they could be retracted.
Two fliers held the lid and watched me.
The moment felt heavy.
I leaned down and kissed his cold forehead, and then stepped aside for Induan. She did the same. I said, “We love you, Brother. Thank you for all you were.”
The crowd still watched me, silent and reverent. They needed more. I raised my voice. “Thank you for helping us help the fliers.”
I glanced at Induan. She shook her head. So she didn’t have any more words, either. I looked closely at her, noticing how still her features were, how hollow her cheeks looked. I leaned over and took her briefly in my arms. The feel of her, solid and yet shaking ever so lightly, made me think I should worry about other people more often.
After I let her go, I gestured for the fliers to put the lid on, and I went to stand by Tsawo. “Why so much ceremony for him?” I mean, it wasn’t like Joseph or Chelo or Kayleen had died.
Amalo answered. “Because he is one of you six, and a hero. We will build a statue to him over the grave, and it will be a solemn place, good for contemplation.”
Bryan would probably prefer to be forgotten, but there was no point in saying that. “Is that why you want me to become a flier? Because I’m a child of Fremont?”
The gray flier looked at the box that held Bryan. “That’s part of it.” He smiled sadly. “Maybe you’ll bring us good luck.”
Fat chance. I hadn’t brought Bryan any.
Other people—fliers and wingless, Keepers and seekers—began to gather, too many for me to count them all. Some carried flowers.
After the hole had been dug, checked, widened, and then pronounced done, the box was lowered into the ground and the Keepers efficiently covered it with dirt, and then with the grass square, which they unrolled very precisely. When they finished, it was hard to tell where we’d dug.
One by one, people who carried flowers set them on the grass above Bryan, until the air was sickly sweet with the scents of them.
A strange, eerie chant started up, and fliers from the back began to rise up into the air, and then more, and then more. Amalo and Tsawo and Marti rose up last, forming the center of a circle of wheeling fliers, all chanting. There were no words, just sounds. More complex than the
uu
chant at morning ceremony, more melodic.
It might have been the saddest thing I ever heard.
Even with all the fliers in the air, a crowd of wingless still surrounded me. Someone put an arm around me lightly, and I looked over to find the blue-eyed interface merchant, Amile, swaying beside me in time to the chant of the fliers.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he replied.
“I know.”
He turned to face me. “Let me know when you need more help.”
He hadn’t said
if
. Wow. “I will.”
And then he was gone. I looked for him later, but he had disappeared into the crowd.
Tsawo landed and came up to me. “I have to leave. I’ll see you in a few days. Stay safe.”
I nodded, pleased he’d thought to tell me that much, and curious about where he was going. I glanced up in the sky. Amalo was clearly my primary host, and his wings still spread over Bryan’s resting place.
Induan and I found each other near the end, after the fliers had started landing, one by one, or had taken off back toward Oshai or Charmed or SoBright. “So why did you stay? I had time to think about it, and clearly you stayed on purpose. Why stay here with me, and not go with the others?”
I swear I saw real caring flash across her eyes, something genuine and unfettered. She grinned, impish like the Induan I met on Silver’s Home years ago. “There’re going to be a lot of people telling their stories. Somebody needs to tell yours.”
A
s Marcus, Kayleen, Sasha, and I sat in the command room of the cargo transport
Water Girl
, I realized I’d been on so many space ships I could no longer count them on one hand. We’d reached orbit, one of tens of cargo ships circling Lopali, heading for space stations that also circled, or simply waited. From time to time, small silver ships streaked across one or another of the four screens surrounding us. Flier space skimmers.
The two beautiful ships from Charmed had gone up shortly after us, piloted by Keepers, manned by Keepers and fliers. They’d disgorged the fine, small ships that flew a protective net around us. Not only was I grateful for their presence, but they were so fast, so agile, that I wanted to try one.
“Is that fliers or Keepers in the little ships?” Kayleen asked.
Marcus grinned. “Probably both.” He stopped for a moment, clearly listening to someone besides us. Marcus was working on finding another ship to transfer us to, and I’d become used to ignoring his side conversations.
He signaled for our attention. “She’s coming. Paula is on the way up.”
“How long?” I asked. I wasn’t ready. It was all too fresh: leaving Alicia, losing Bryan. Leaving Lopali.
“An hour or two.”
“Okay. I’m going to take a walk.”
He looked closely at me. “Are you okay?”
I didn’t know. But I didn’t want to tell him that; he needed me to be strong. “I just want to walk around.”
I apparently failed at brushing aside his worry. He frowned at me. “Can I come find you after I find us another ship?”
“Sure.” I left as quickly as I could, leaving Kayleen with him. Unlike a space-going ship, the
Water Girl
didn’t have much human- or flier-friendly space. She did have corridors long enough for a good pacing walk back and forth. So that’s what I did. For a while I just listened to my steps echo in the empty space.
Worry kept me pacing, shivering in spite of the sweat on my forehead. From time to time I passed people, but I generally said nothing, and after one look at my face, they said the same thing. Sasha remained as quiet as I was, padding behind me, clearly aware of my mood.
I’d given up on finding Alicia or Induan aboard, and Bryan’s loss had made a hole in my chest as well. The only unexpected brightness was Sasha appearing at the last moment. At least I hadn’t lost her, too.
At one end of the corridor, there was a small video porthole meant to mimic a real window. Lopali floated right in the middle of it. It might have been an artist’s rendering of a world, all the colors perfect even from here, land and water tamed and harmonious. Circles of land floating on a circle of water. A sweet poison of a planet.
I hated it for what it took from me.
Sasha whined, warning me Marcus had begun pacing us. He came up alongside, his expression impossible to read, but his steps smoother and less angry than mine. We walked a full circle, almost a half an hour, before he said anything. “They’re waiting.”
“Yes.”
“Are you ready?”
“No.”
We walked another full circle. I let the ship come into me. Its heartbeat was steady, steadier by far than anything biological. Steadier than the planet below me. “Why did they attack us?” I asked Marcus.
“Because we might succeed, and their lives will change.”
Something the man beside me had fought for. “Did you know so many of them were so scared?”
“No.”
We walked again. I could feel the time passing. It passed in the ship’s instruments and in the blood coursing through my body and with each step I took. It passed through me, and through me, and finally I was empty enough of the anger and pain to say, “I’m ready.”
“Good, because she’s here.” Even though there was enough gravity to walk, he used the wall-pulls to hurry himself along the corridors, and I slowly caught his energy and started to hurry.
Might as well do the real work, and finally know one way or the other if we’d succeeded, if we would stop the war.
Marcus took me to a room in the middle forward part of the ship. Entertainment screens lined the walls, and the floor was half couches and chairs, everything arranged artfully for conversation and games, and well-used for the same. Red chairs with the ends of the arms worn to the underlying silver of their bones. Couches with indents from spacers sitting in them for long hours and grease spots on the floor from spills. Even the ceiling was dented and scratched in a few places. Tickets from restaurants and bars on various space stations and from the spaceports of Lopali had been stuck to the wall willy-nilly. Clearly the crew’s off-hours lounge.
In one corner, Kayleen, Chance, and Paula waited for me on a tattered brown sofa with no back.
The real test. Would we be able to make the change Bryan had died for in a real girl?
Kayleen stood and came over to me, taking my hand in hers. Her blue eyes looked deep and a little shell-shocked, and I leaned down and whispered, “Are you okay?”
“Are you?” she countered. The same question Marcus had asked.
“Yeah.” I glanced at Paula, who sat quietly beside Chance, her face as pale as Kayleen’s. I knew what my pacing walk had let me do. “I had to forgive the fliers before I could do this. They were just scared. They didn’t mean to fight us, and they didn’t mean to kill Bryan.”
Marcus watched us. The whole room watched us, listening to the exchange. “And do you?” asked Paula, her voice soft. “Do you really forgive us?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed, and looked at Kayleen. “I had to forgive Alicia, too.” I hadn’t expected those words. “She was never as much one
of us as the rest of us. Never even as much as Bryan.” Surely everyone heard the sadness in my voice, but I couldn’t hide it. I felt sad when I thought of Alicia. “She never even wanted to be one of us as much. She just . . . wanted to be loved. That’s all she ever wanted. And her freedom. But she went back for Chelo, and she stuck with me. She loved us back.”
“I know,” Kayleen said.
“Maybe she’ll be happy here.”
Kayleen smiled softly. “Maybe.”
“We all need forgiveness.” I was done talking about it. I looked at Paula. “Are you ready?”
She looked more scared than ready, but she said, “Yes,” in a clear, steady voice. She had been born and trained for this.
So had I.
I took a few breaths, remembering how my attitude mattered, centering myself, preparing to let go. “I’m ready.”
Chance smiled encouragingly. “The sim is beautiful. You’re ready.”
I glanced at Paula. Her eyes were closed and she sat so still it took me a moment to verify that she breathed. “The woman is even more beautiful. We’re ready.”
Kayleen squeezed my hand.
Marcus led us, starting with a tour of the ship’s data.
You need to know what might surprise you.
He meant how the ship might warn us if something like Star Mercenaries got too close. But I didn’t think they would. Not now. We had time, we were fine. I could sense the bated breath of Lopali waiting to see what we made up here.
We checked the Paula sim again. It had lived and lived and lived. Its babies had had babies. In some ways, everything the real Paula needed existed there already, waiting for Chance to pluck directions from it. But still, we needed to touch the biology, the breath, the real heartbeat with all its uncertainties and fears. That was the proof, and it would save years and years of slower work.