Star's End

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  “Luck,” whispered Isabel carefully.

  “It means something good will happen to you before the dry season starts,” Adrienne said.

  Daphne scowled, although her scowl disappeared as she began eating the rice pudding. Isabel dropped the coin on her napkin and stirred her own pudding around. I remembered the first time I’d found a rice coin—I’d been around her age, six or seven. Rena told me the same thing about keeping the coin in my jewelry box.

  The rest of us finished our desserts, but I noticed that Isabel hardly touched hers. She only swirled it around and around, smiling to herself.

  • • •

  My shuttle touched down on Starspray City’s landing pad, out in the churning black ocean. Even though I knew it made me look like an idiot, I peered out the window to catch my first glimpse of the city. I’d been to Catequil before, of course, but only to a handful of the civilian cities, and I’d never come this far south.

  Everything about Starspray City looked haunted. The buildings rose up in a series of twisting metal tubes, and amber lights shimmered through the white fog lifting off the ocean.

  “Ms. Coromina?” The attendant smiled down at me. “We’re ready to disembark.”

  “Yes, I’m ready.” I jerked my gaze away from the window, slightly flustered that she’d caught me gawking like a tourist, and fumbled for my bag. I was the only person on the plane save for the pilot, who I never saw, and the two attendants. I’d assumed that Ms. DeCrie would book one of the Coromina shuttles for me. And maybe she had. But when I received the confirmation for my flight to Catequil, my lightbox chimed ten minutes later. It was Dad, telling me that I should take his plane and also that he was uploading a file to my personal directory that I’d be able to open once I was in Starspray City. The file would give me instructions before fizzling away on my lightbox’s hard drive.

  “I need you to check up on some things for me,” he said. “Clearance Level Sixty-Four.”

  Then he vanished from my screen.

  The attendant waited for me as I gathered my bags and wrapped my hair in a scarf. The wind whipped off the ocean, throwing stinging dots of saltwater across my face. The Winds of Catequil—that had been the name of a drama I used to watch. The first I time I visited there, I saw the name wasn’t just poetry.

  The walkway took us to a covered ferry that sat bobbing in the sea. I left the attendant standing on the walkway, her uncovered hair flying up around her face like a lion’s mane, and took a seat in the ferry’s inner room. The room was empty, and almost as soon as I sat down, the ferry pulled away from the walkway. I pulled out my lightbox and tried to open Dad’s file. A message box materialized instead:

  Sorry, Esme, not in Starspray City yet.

  I scowled and shoved the lightbox back in my bag. This was supposed to be a routine visit, the sort of thing any new manager in Genetics would have done. But already Dad was turning it into something else. Something I didn’t even have clearance for.

  Starspray City loomed ahead, the lights and pipelines looking like a star map. No trees, no landscaping. Just rocky soil and the twist of metal buildings. Ten minutes later, we arrived.

  A young man waited for me on the dock, standing beside the windbreak with a portable holoprojector at his feet, beaming up my name in my big, glinting letters.

  “Ms. Coromina!” he said when I walked up to him. “So wonderful to meet you in person.”

  I recognized him, then, by the gush in his voice, as Ms. DeCrie’s administrative assistant.

  “Cameron,” I said. “Yes, it’s nice to meet you as well.”

  “Are you ready to tour the facilities?” He bent down to switch off the holoprojector. My name evaporated. “I know Ms. DeCrie has everything set up.”

  I nodded. The wind blowing off the ocean was cold and damp and seemed to cut straight to my bones, slicing through my clothes and my skin and my musculature. It howled through the buildings like the voices of the dead.

  “It’ll be nice to be inside,” I said.

  Cameron laughed. “You get used to it.” He led me down the docks to a covered electric cart that ran on tracks into the tangle of buildings. The wind buffeted us as we rode along, but Cameron didn’t seem concerned, and he just kept chatting about the Alvatech account and how pleased I’d be with the products. I looked past him as he talked, out the window, to the gleam of buildings zipping by, and wondered about the file on my lightbox.

  The cart rattled to a stop. Cameron hopped out and opened the door for me and I exited, turning my face against the wind. We stood in front of a tall, glittering building wrapped in pipes, like a tree covered in parasitic vines. White steam poured out of a smokestack. The air smelled unnaturally sweet, like rotting mangos.

  “Here we are,” Cameron said. “The main lab. Ms. DeCrie’s waiting inside.”

  He led me up the steps, and I was aware of the building towering above me, this oppressive steely height, another sign of Dad’s power, and his power over me.

  Cameron scanned his eyes at the identification lock and we went in. The front door opened into a cavernous lobby with clean white walls and tile floors and a few tasteful chairs tucked away in the corner. I heard Ms. DeCrie before I saw her, the click click click of her shoes against the tile. She strode across the lobby, one hand raised in greeting. No one else was there. Not even a receptionist. They didn’t need one, not when they had an identification lock.

  “Ms. Coromina,” Ms. DeCrie said. We shook.

  “You can call me Esme,” I said automatically.

  She grinned with delight. “And I’m Flor. I’ve never been fond of that old Earth formality; don’t you agree?”

  I nodded. Flor gestured with one hand at the echoing lobby. “You’re standing in Catequil’s pride and joy. This was one of the first buildings established once the planet was terraformed.”

  “Interesting,” I said, although I’d already known. The history of the Coromina I system, and all of the Coromina Group’s involvement with it, had been the focus of my tutoring as a child. My entire future was built from the past.

  Flor walked toward the elevators at the end other end of the lobby. “I’m sure Cameron told you, but we’ll be looking at the Alvatech project today. Given some of the tensions the company’s been having with OCI, Mr. Coromina asked me personally to look into developing soldiers that might serve us if we ever came to blows.” She winked like she was talking about some ballgame, but I felt a tightness in my chest. I didn’t want the Coromina Group to go to war with OCI. The Coromina Group going to war meant all of the Coromina I system could serve as collateral. Sure, we hired out soldiers these days, but battles didn’t always stay in space.

  I stepped onto the elevator with Flor—Cameron had vanished out of the building—and the doors whisked shut. Flor scanned her eyes, then stepped back and gestured for me to do the same. It was the first time I’d been anywhere remotely high-level, and there was a brief flutter of anxiety that the scan wouldn’t take, that my promotion had all been some prank on Dad’s part.

  But the lock beeped in satisfaction and the elevator shot upward.

  “The products are still in the development stage,” Flor said. “Vat level. But they’re the current standard design—increased strength, stronger bones, less need for sleep—”

  “The Kalevala models.” I watched the numbers on the elevator blink higher and higher.

  “Yes! Of course, you would know. I’m just used to giving the pitch to the generals.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was familiar with the Kalevala models not because I’d read up on them in my transfer (although I had) but because the soldiers currently stationed at Star’s End were all Kalevala. Dad had switched over to a group of entirely engineered soldiers a few years before, for reasons he hadn’t bothered to divulge to me. And on my own, I hadn’t been able to learn anything but their model name.

  The elevator stopped. We stepped out into a narrow, brightly lit foyer. “This way,” Flor said, and led
me to the right, through a corridor lined with windowless doors, the locks at their sides all blinking red—activated. The floor was silent save for the hum of a generator in the background.

  Flor stopped at a door like all the others. Scanned her eyes. I did the same.

  The door snapped open. Inside the room was a gurgling like a river. Flor held the door for me and I went in. I took a deep breath to steady myself.

  The room was lined with vats filled with human beings.

  The door clicked shut and the lock reactivated. Flor stood at my side.

  “We keep all the Kalevala models in this room,” she said. “These guys are in the later stages, just about to be extracted.” She smiled at me. “Go on, have a look around. The farther back you go, the younger the products become. Let me know if you have any questions.”

  My ears buzzed. I thought about my trip to the bioengineering lab when I was a little girl. It had looked like this, only smaller, scaled down. A child-sized version. That visit had been a taste of my future. Now I was at the banquet.

  The vats bubbled and hissed, as if the people inside were sighing. The room smelled like chemicals, strong enough to burn at the inside of my nostrils. I forced myself to walk over to the closest vat. It was a woman, almost fully grown, like Flor had said. She floated in the clear preservation fluid like a mermaid, bobbing slightly, her eyes closed. A few inches of dark hair drifted around her head. I touched the info pad at the base of the vat and her vitals and designations popped up in glowing blue holoprojection. NO. 39083-F. EST. EXTRACTION: 39-8-2813. Heart rate, blood pressure, respirations: all beeped steadily on.

  I touched the pad again and the information disappeared. This was the Alvatech order; she might face my mother in battle someday. The thought made my stomach twist around.

  “She’s close,” I said, because I had to say something. “To extraction, I mean.”

  “Yes.” Flor nodded. “If you wanted to stay a week or two longer, you might be able to watch. Not that there’s anything to see. We pull them out of the vats and let them wake up in one of the suites on the seventy-third floor.”

  “Are they ever confused?” I moved away from the woman, down the aisle of floating future soldiers.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When they wake up.” I stopped in front of another vat, this one containing a person not as developed as the woman. The designation information noted that he was a male, but I couldn’t tell from looking at him—the body was smooth and featureless, not yet fully formed. It wasn’t a child’s body, more like a doll that hadn’t been painted on. “How confused are they, about who they are, where they are—I was never clear on that.” I looked at Flor, mostly so I wouldn’t have to look at the soldier.

  “Oh!” She laughed. “Oh, yes, I know what you mean.” We moved away from the vat and continued to walk down the aisle. “No, they aren’t confused. We program all that information at the genetic level. It’s a neat trick, and it’s pretty much common practice now. Not just with the Coromina Group.”

  “So, they know everything?” I wondered what that was like, waking up as an adult, your childhood a dream from before you were born.

  “Not everything everything. Not how to brush their teeth and dress themselves and that sort of thing. But they’re all so easily adaptable, and they learn extremely quickly. Takes about a week or so to teach a new extraction how to function in the world. But they do wake up knowing speech—Coromina Standard, of course; we don’t get that fancy—as well as who and what they are, and what they’ll be expected to do.” She shrugged. “It’s been this way for decades. Back when bioengineering was the new thing, they’d have some problems—”

  “Yes, I know.” My voice was sharper than I expected, cutting her off. The Coromina Group had been the major pioneer of this sort of technology, solely because Dad had been looking to profit off the Triad Sector Wars. Terraforming was not a high-enough earner. But the early soldiers had been unpredictable. They didn’t follow orders; they questioned authority. Technological advances solved the problem, although we’d only ever touched on them in tutoring.

  We arrived at the far end of the room. The vats were smaller, the air warmer.

  “The babies,” Flor said brightly.

  They didn’t look babies—more like baby-sized adults, only even more smoothed over and featureless. They didn’t have eyes, and their mouths and noses were tiny slits in their smooth oval faces. I drew up the designation on one, and the sex hadn’t even been marked yet.

  “We’re doing some of the more fiddly engineering work with them right now,” Flor said. “Appearance, mostly. Personality, too—we like to mix up the personalities a bit, within the range, so that woman-born soldiers will be more comfortable interacting with them.”

  I nodded, staring at the tiny blank slate of a human floating before me. I remembered seeing the twins and Isabel when they were born and not knowing what to make of them. But I knew what to make of this. Everyone did. Its fate had been decided before it ever existed.

  At least Adrienne and Daphne and Isabel had had a choice. They could take their lives where they wanted.

  Or maybe they couldn’t. I hadn’t been grown in a vat, but in half an hour, I’d be running some secret errand for my father because he told me to and I didn’t say no. I couldn’t say no.

  I did not want my sisters to have that future.

  • • •

  Cameron drove me to the hotel on the edge of Starspray City. It was a reinforced brick building situated behind a windblock, and when I stepped out of the electric cart, I could smell the salt of the sea. I thanked him and checked into my room, which was on the top floor of the hotel with a view of the ocean. There wasn’t much to see, just glassy black water and curls of white mist. Still, I left the curtains open.

  I was tired from travel, from seeing those soldiers in their softly bubbling vats, but when I sprawled out on the bed, I pulled out my lightbox anyway. I brought up the file Dad had asked me to open. Tapped on the icon. This time, the lightbox chimed and the file blossomed open into a holo recording, tiny and hazy in the light of the hotel room. It was Dad.

  “Esme,” he said, his voice tinny. “You’ll only get to listen to this message once, so be sure to pay attention. If you take notes, they must be destroyed before you leave Starspray City. Do you understand?”

  A message box popped up on the touchscreen, YES OR NO. I rolled my eyes. Dad must have been watching too many espionage dramas lately.

  I tapped YES.

  “Good. I’m holding you to that. If I ever find out that any part of this exchange was not kept secret, there will be repercussions. Do you understand?”

  Another message box. Another YES OR NO. I considered tapping NO just to see what happened, but I tapped YES.

  “Excellent.” Dad almost smiled. “There is a man working in the records building who has a file for me. The material on it is far too sensitive to transmit over Connectivity, so I’ll need you to go to his office and collect it physically from him. He will complete a retinal scan to confirm your identity. I would suggest doing it sooner rather than later—I’ll feel safer knowing the file is with you.”

  A little warmth of happiness worked through me, even though I knew the trust was just Dad’s nepotism.

  “Do not lose the file! It is imperative that it gets back to me as soon as possible. I suggest keeping it on you at all times. Whatever you do, do not leave it in your hotel room—it’s not secure enough. Do you understand?”

  Another message box. I pressed YES.

  “Good. Your contact’s name is Walter Indisch. As I said earlier, he works in the records building. The hotel concierge will be able to arrange transport for you. Don’t ask Ms. DeCrie’s assistant—the boy couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. Do you understand?”

  Another message box. I sighed, hit YES. “I’ll go right now, Dad,” I said, as if he could hear me.

  “Remember: Walter Indisch, records building. Identify yo
urself and he’ll know what to do from there. This file will corrupt in five seconds.”

  I lay back on the bed and counted to five in my head. When I checked the lightbox again, the holo had frozen into a fan of empty light. I blinked at it, listening to the distant whistle of the wind outside. So, this was why Dad needed me in Genetics. Running files like a character in a story. Like we were just playing some father-daughter immersive, like none of this was real.

  I rolled over onto my back. The ceiling hung low and oppressive. Maybe I wouldn’t get the file after all. Maybe I would just stay in my room, pull down the media screen, watch an old episode of some drama.

  But I knew that wasn’t really an option. Not if I wanted to do my undercover PM work. I needed the high ranking, so I’d do what I could to get it. Then I could start tending to those villages that the company liked to forget about. Make sure they got the money to rebuild roads, to run schools.

  So, I pulled on my coat and walked down to the lobby. The concierge smiled at me like she hadn’t just checked me in five minutes earlier.

  “I need transport to the records building,” I said.

  “Of course.” Her fingers moved through the glow of her lightbox. “It’s ready for you outside.”

  I thanked her and stepped out into the damp, chilly air. The wind howled behind the windbreak. An electric cart waited for me on the rails, empty. When I climbed in, the doors clicked shut and the cart flew away, its path to the records building marked on the map glowing on the screen set into the dash. I watched my progress. I didn’t feel nervous, really. Only annoyed. Put out. Put upon.

  The records building was squat and unassuming and nestled between a pair of high-rises belching steam. I walked through the door and into a fluorescent-lit lobby. No receptionist, no guard. Just another glass screen like the one in the cart. TAP HERE FOR ASSISTANCE glowed in white letters. I tapped.

  A few moments later, a short, round man walked through a swinging dark door. He blinked at me, waiting.

  “Mr. Indisch?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Esme Coromina.”