The Silver Ship and the Sea

by Brenda Cooper

  While I was rummaging through my pack, I noticed my paper and pens. I hadn’t had time for them, but maybe Paloma would like to use them—she often drew plants and flowers and herbs she found. I handed them to her, stopping only long enough to acknowledge her startled smile.

  Jenna stood in the doorway, frowning, as we gathered our final goods, said our good-byes. At last, we stood by her in the doorway, ready. She frowned down at us, then reached for our bags. She stripped out everything but the water and the earsets, leaving a small pile of goat jerky, apples, and even a shirt by the door. I looked at Joseph and giggled nervously. “I guess we travel light.”

  Jenna glared at me, and saying nothing more, she went out the door and took off, loping quickly across the meadow. We tumbled outside, finding our feet, running bunched together, trailing far behind her. We never set off the exit bells. Did the storm or the plunging animals destroy them, or did Jenna just know how to magically avoid our nets?

  By the time we reached the end of the meadow she had become invisible again. We stopped and stood in a knot, staring at each other, blowing, our breath coming in gasps. Alicia caught her breath first, and called out, “Jenna?”

  There was no answer.

  Alicia’s cheeks were red from exertion, and she flexed her fingers and danced a little, ready to keep moving. I suspected this was just the beginning of a long day, and laughed. “We’ll have to find her. She doesn’t teach with words, not often.”

  Alicia blinked, absorbing the information. Then she adjusted. “So what do we look for? Tracks?” She gazed at the muddy ground. “Should be easy enough, here.”

  Our tracks showed clearly in the mud. I was sure this was where Jenna had left the meadow. I’d marked it by the redberry bushes that stuck out farther into the meadow here than anywhere else nearby. But Jenna’s tracks were invisible, as if she ran on air.

  I leaned down to look at the grass, trying to spot broken stems.

  Joseph said, “You won’t see anything. Think your way through this. I saw her leave through here. And you agree, right? That’s why you stopped?”

  I nodded.

  “So, we’re tracking hebras. Looking for signs of them. So she wants to find high ground. She’d go up.” He pointed to a gravelly wash with a thin stream through it. “That goes up, and it’s easier than pushing through underbrush. There’s no regular trail here.”

  We followed him up. Around the first bend, Jenna sat idly on a rock, a patient look on her face. She smiled. “Good. That did not take too long. But don’t bother looking for the hebras.”

  Were they dead? Or had they run home? I pictured Nava’s face if three riderless hebras showed up in Artistos. “Why not?”

  “Because there is something else I need to show you.”

  I didn’t need her to add that this was a unique opportunity. We were away from all the adults in Artistos, on our own. Outside the data nets. I remembered Jinks, though. “Can we try and find Stripes, too?”

  “Later.” She turned and bounded easily up the damp streambed, her steps sure and silent. We followed, almost as sure but not nearly as silent. She lost us again quickly, but we kept going. She wouldn’t let us stray far. Whatever she wanted us to see was important to her. I thought of Joseph’s words yesterday, and turned to him. “Do you feel…what you felt yesterday? From the data button?”

  He nodded. “Stronger.”

  Perhaps she wasn’t making us find the thread ourselves. After last night, maybe she thought we’d never make it.

  I shook my head to clear it, trying to focus on the wild rush up the hill the way I had focused on the djuri. Right hand reaching for a jagged gray rock, pulling up, left foot swinging wide to find purchase on a little dark shelf of volcanic rock, slipping, grabbing, finding a big flat stable rock, squatting and jumping, almost sliding off the next target, my hand splashing in cool shallow water, birds twittering overhead, the scent of wild mountain-fern…How did Jenna make it up here so fast with one arm?

  By the time we found her again my palms were raw, I’d bumped one knee, and the long muscles in my thighs quivered.

  She laughed at us as we clawed our way up a short sharp cliff to her. Our perch was near the top of the crater rim. We could see all the way across Little Lace Lake and farther, past the mountains on the other side. Alicia pointed out the rising dark clouds that marked the volcano, Rage, on the far southern tip of the continent, belching steam and fire.

  Alicia and Joseph looked as ragged as I felt. Jenna didn’t sport a single scratch.

  She didn’t say a thing, just watched us gulp water. She pointed, and we followed her finger to a tall pongaberry tree.

  But Kayleen wasn’t with us.

  We must have looked confused. Jenna sighed and took off her shirt, handing it to me. I wondered what Joseph thought about her tanned breasts. The one by her missing arm drooped slightly. We didn’t get a long look. She jumped up and ran for the tree, hopping easily from one boulder to another, down to the ground, and making another jump. Her balance was perfect. The muscles in her back stood out, the ones on her right side, the one with the arm, at least twice as thick and ropy as the others. She appeared to have no fat on her long body at all.

  She walked up the pongaberry tree, almost in line with its slender trunk. Her feet seemed to find easy purchase on the rough bark, and her arm shimmied up the tree with easy, if jerky, motion. I held my breath, afraid she’d fall and yet sure she wouldn’t. The first half of the tall tree had no branches, no leaves, and once past that point, Jenna moved even easier, using the thin swirling branches as footholds and a handhold. A fat bunch of berries nestled near the trunk a meter above her head, well over thirty meters above the ground. She stood on two branches on tiptoe, and reached for the stem where the berries attached to a branch, the stem fully as thick as the branch they attached to. She jerked and freed the plump berries. Two purple berries fell down through the leaves and then the open air, into the brush below. Jenna clamped the berry stem between her teeth and descended as easily as she’d climbed up.

  She returned, handing around the berries, and simply said, “It would be good for you to practice your physical strengths.” She only had one scratch. Every time Kayleen harvested pongaberries she looked like the spiky leaves had used her for target practice.

  Alicia glanced at me and grinned. We did practice, but clearly not nearly enough.

  Jenna pulled her shirt back on with no further comment. She must have dressed again for us, for our Artistan upbringing. Certainly, I’d never gone shirtless.

  The berries were sweet and warm from the sun. As I ate my share, energy filled my body. The others looked better as well. The rest helped us as well as the berries; all of us had stopped gasping for air and the red flush had fallen away from Alicia’s and Joseph’s faces.

  The next part of our journey took us along a faint trail over the top of the rim, away from the lake. We stopped briefly at the crest. Blue sea lined the horizon. Far to our right, the edge of the Grass Plains showed yellow-green. Everything else fell away in forested hills, marching north and north and north. The sun was almost directly overhead. Wherever we were going, we wouldn’t have much time there before we had to turn back.

  We wound down a faint path, Jenna periodically pointing out markers: a rare single twintree trunk, a rock shaped like a bird, a deadfall near-elm with three tall live trees growing in it, including a round baby tent tree.

  Jenna stopped on a long, flat rock with a great clear view on nearly all sides. She stood still for a long time, looking outward, apparently lost in thought. She turned back around and swept her gaze over us all, letting it linger for the longest on Alicia. Then she touched my earset. “Call home. Tell them we haven’t found the hebras yet. And don’t say how far we’ve come.”

  I tapped the set to activate it. “Kayleen?”

  Her voice was excited. “Did you find them? Did you keep up with Jenna? Did she tell you anything interesting? Are you on your way back?”
/>   “Not yet.” Then I added inventively, “But we’re following tracks. How’s Paloma?”

  “She still can’t walk. She has a fever, but Tom says it will pass, that it’s just because of the swelling. Paloma had some of her salve in her bag, and Tom rubbed it on her ankle to kill her pain.”

  Silence for a moment. Then Kayleen’s voice again. “Tom says to be sure you get back before dark. Well before dark.”

  “Okay, we’ll try.” I hung up quickly, suddenly guilty.

  Jenna nodded at me and then told Joseph, “Tell me what you feel. Tell me which direction we should go.”

  Joseph sat and closed his eyes. “I…I can feel it. It’s all around, though.”

  “What direction?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t tell.”

  Jenna frowned. “Chelo, sit next to him. Support his back.”

  I obeyed. Joseph leaned into me, smelling of sweat and mountain-fern and pongaberries. I braced one hand on the warm solid rock under me and put the other on Joseph’s shoulder. He sat still for a long moment, the space of ten heartbeats, and then he opened his eyes, a surprised look on his face. “Down,” he said. “Under me.”

  Jenna nodded approvingly and walked to the end of the long warm stone, turned, and hanging from her one arm, dropped from view. I crawled to the end of the rock and looked down. Jenna stood on another flat rock below her, a rock so flat it looked metal. I frowned and looked at the rock we sat on. It was rough, natural. But the one below was not. Joseph and Alicia both bent over next to me. Alicia made a soft amazed sound, and twisted around, dropping easily to stand next to Jenna. Whatever she saw there, her eyes grew wide and her mouth dropped open.

  Joseph and I scrambled after them.

  14

  The Cave

  We dropped from the rough exposed rock to land, bent-kneed and noisy, on the smooth surface beside Jenna and Alicia. We straightened to look into the dark mouth of a cave at least as big as the science guild hall. The floor was cut flat, the walls a mix of smooth surfaces and natural rock. The ceiling was smooth as the floor, and dry. Doors faded in the darkness, set into the smooth walls. At least two wide corridors branched away. The air smelled clear, vaguely dusty, but not damp or chemical or mossy like the caves I’d been in before. This smelled…controlled.

  Jenna turned and pointed outward. Trees and jumbled rocks would hide this opening from even direct sunshine within an hour or two. Thirty meters downslope, it would be nearly invisible. Jenna’s voice was firm and careful as she swept her hand in front of her, encompassing the land on all sides of the entrance. “Even if you can find this place from out there, do not come in this way. Only use the way I showed you.” She pointed up to the rock we’d dropped from. I looked up. How do we get out, then? It was too far to jump.

  “Climb.” She showed us clever footholds in the rock near the edge of the cave mouth. She demonstrated. It required one awkward jump and much strength; Jenna’s arm quivered at how she had to torque to hold her weight nearly upside down at one point. She landed back beside us and said, “See? Normal humans cannot do that.”

  No, it would take our strength. Kayleen’s nearly prehensile feet would come in handy. It could be done with a backpack, but not with very much weight. But two people could haul stuff out; one on top, where we jumped from, and one below. And of course, Tom or anyone could get in and out with rope.

  “Why not come from the other way?” Joseph looked dubious about the exit technique Jenna had just shown us. “It looks easier.”

  Jenna spoke matter-of-factly. “You would die. There are traps.”

  I drew in a sharp breath. The trees and rocks outside looked completely natural, safe. Thick redberry bushes and tall thorn sage bunched together, blocking easy access. Behind them, near-elm. No tent trees. Perhaps they’d been cleared? Tent trees were great to hide in, and with the cave here, they could hide enemies. “What kind of traps? Where are they?”

  This time she looked at me. “You can earn that knowledge. Just don’t come up from there, don’t betray my trust bringing you here.”

  So she trusted us enough to show us this place, but not enough to share all of its secrets.

  Joseph squinted into the cleared sunny area between us and the brush, probably also scanning for the elusive traps. “Jenna, why did you tell us to look for the cave if it’s booby-trapped?”

  “I turned the systems off after we talked. Then I changed my mind.”

  “Did something happen?” Alicia asked. “Or is it because we weren’t finding it on our own?”

  Jenna frowned, as if Alicia’s questions interrupted her train of thought. “Circumstances gave me this unexpected chance.” She shrugged, but excitement flashed from her one eye. “I do not have time to wait forever for you to learn all you need to know, or for Joseph to fix the data nets.” Then she smiled. “Besides, you were busy absorbing other lessons.”

  So she had seen our hunt. She gazed far out into the distance, apparently lost in thought. A trick of light highlighted spiderwebs of weathered wrinkles around her one good eye and the corners of her mouth. The place where her other eye had been was a sunken scar, red and angry around the edges. Her gray hair hung in a long twist down her back, the ends uneven and straggly. She lived a harder life than the rest of us, and after Nava’s story, I was curious about Jenna’s as well. What pain drove her?

  She licked her lips. “There is much in this cave which it would be best if no one sees.”

  So show us, I urged her silently. But she remained in the cave’s mouth, still looking out. Alicia asked, “Are there other places we shouldn’t go? Other traps?”

  She turned to face us. “Not nearby.”

  I fidgeted, wanting to be inside the cave, to see what was so carefully hidden. “Can we come back here?”

  She grinned at me. “Answer that yourself.”

  I pursed my lips, thinking, then grinned back. “Sure. You wouldn’t have been so careful to show us how to get in and out if it we couldn’t come back.”

  Her smile faded. “Best if I am with you. There is much in here you would not understand, and some you could do harm with.” She licked her lips. “Harm to yourselves or others.” Her eyes flicked toward the sun, already past midday. “Today, you will only see a very little bit of the parts of your heritage that are here.”

  “Is this where you got the pipe and the data button?”

  “I’ve gathered nearly everything of ours, and put it in here. There is another, smaller cache that Akashi knows about. But even Akashi has not seen this.” Jenna turned around and walked into the cave, the three of us following like baby chicks, until we were surrounded by stone and weak light.

  The cave felt full of new knowledge, knowledge of ourselves. Our parents. Surely they, or at least the altered, had lived here, based from here, fought from here. I wished Bryan and Liam could see this. Kayleen. I wished we were all together.

  Jenna prompted, “Okay, Joseph, now where?”

  He blinked and scanned the cave. At least three tunnels led in different directions. Small alcoves hid in shadows. “I don’t know.”

  Jenna sighed exaggeratedly. “What did you just learn?”

  I stepped over to him, folding him in my arms. He leaned into me, smelling of sweat and pongaberries, letting me take his weight. His eyes closed. I braced myself to balance him. He was so heavy my leg shook and I wished we’d thought to sit down, like on the rock above the cave.

  It seemed like a long time before he straightened and walked toward a wide shadowed doorway in the left back corner. The rest of us followed.

  Alicia whispered to me, “What do you do to help him?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve always helped him.”

  “Could I help him?”

  Jenna answered, “Not as much as Chelo. She and he are one blood; brother and sister. Even though Chelo is deaf to the nets, her physical closeness soothes Joseph. It has to do with Chelo’s own genemods.”

 
My breath caught in my throat. “And what are they? What am I?”

  Would she avoid the question, change the topic like she did with me so often? But she licked her lips and answered, “A caretaker, a planner. An influencer. That is your special gift.”

  “Will I be as strong as you?”

  “If you develop your body. But it’s more important to develop your instincts. Separate your goals from the goals others have given you. Almost anything you want, you will be able to make happen. By suggesting, by making choices about how and when to offer what information, and to whom. Joseph can thread data, but you can thread life, thread politics. But you must learn who you are first, decide what you want. Because, you see, you will often get what you want.” It was a very long speech for her, and after that she fell silent.

  Joseph had stopped by the doorway, listening. “I always do better when Chelo is around.”

  Alicia looked long-faced. “Does that mean I can’t help him the same way?”

  “You, Alicia, are a risk-taker. Perhaps there will be a time when that is exactly what he needs most.” Jenna turned to Joseph. “Here, you’ll need light.” She handed him a shiny silver canister, wide as my wrist, half as long as my forearm. I had not seen her carrying it, or seen her pick it up.

  Joseph turned the cylinder over and over in his hands.

  Jenna laughed. “Figure it out.”

  Joseph ran his fingers along the smooth surface. It reminded me of both the skin and the mystery of the New Making. He drew his brows together and twisted his mouth up. He carefully placed both palms, one on either side, flat against the lower portion of the cylinder. Light bloomed from the top, startling Joseph so much he nearly dropped the cylinder.

  “How did you know to try that?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “It felt…warmer there. But I don’t know if that was physical, or something else. This new—energy field—feels different from the Artistos data.”

  And suddenly I started giggling, picturing us so serious, so intent, so…like children with new toys. “It’s…it’s just a flashlight…a flashlight.”