He clutched it to himself, looking at me strangely. He clearly didn’t quite get my change of perspective. Neither did Alicia. Their solemn confused faces only made me laugh harder. Artistos had flashlights. They turned on differently. They weren’t as bright. But they were small enough to fit in pockets or slip on belts. Perhaps we were not so high-and-mighty-different as I’d wanted to believe, not in some ways.
Jenna watched me, her eye flashing approval of my laughter. She did not laugh herself, though.
As my giggles died down I reached for the flashlight, wanting to try it myself, see if this was yet another thing only Joseph could do.
Joseph shook his head and kept it. I might have argued, but the cave was far more interesting than the flashlight.
Joseph shone the light in the doorway, and then followed the bright circle inside, turning to light our steps as well. A short hallway, maybe three meters long. The light played across smooth walls, all clearly tool-cut. The hallway widened into a square chamber. The flashlight’s beam bobbed around the room. Rows of stone shelves lined one wall. The other three walls were flat and featureless. Joseph flicked the light back at the shelves, running it slowly along each shelf. The light stopped and hovered, illuminating five data buttons in a pile on the bottom shelf. The symbols on the surface of each button looked different. Next to them stretched a leather strap, nearly a meter long. Colorful threads wove a diamond pattern into the leather.
There was nothing else of interest in the room. Clearly, Jenna had set us up to find only these things. I watched her. She watched Joseph closely, almost hungrily, like a new mother watching a baby take its first steps.
Joseph’s hand was immediately drawn to the strap. He picked it up, holding it. “Reading threads.”
Jenna smiled, a bright twisted smile of approval. “Good.”
He ran his hands along the length of the leather. It wasn’t new, but it was still supple. “But how do I use it?”
“Tie it…tie it around your head.”
He handed the light to Alicia and complied. The ends of the straps hung down, light against his dark hair, falling nearly to his shoulders.
Alicia watched the whole process closely, leaning in, careful how she handled the light. She reached a slender white hand to touch the headband. “How does it work?”
“The threads woven into the leather read wireless data from the buttons, and connecting with his temples and scalp, they build a direct bridge to Joseph’s circulatory system, and to the nanocytes in his blood. His body was enhanced, using genetics, to accept the nanocytes as part of him.”
“Nanocytes?”
“Tiny machines. Even if you spill his blood and look at it with a common microscope, you will not see them. But they will allow Joseph to read and relate to many threads of data at once. More than he has ever managed. But first, he’ll need to learn how.”
“So Kayleen has the same things in her blood, only fewer of them?” I asked.
Jenna shrugged. “She probably has as many. But she seems less naturally attuned to them. Back home, we could fix that with a single session. Here, she will have to learn herself. You might try working with Kayleen the same way you work with Joseph and see if it helps.”
“But I don’t have these nanocytes? And Alicia doesn’t have them?”
“Neither do I,” Jenna replied. She turned her attention back to Joseph. “You can actually wear that anywhere—but on your head it will look like a decoration, and draw less comment. If you choose, you may wear it somewhere else, like under clothing. It must touch skin.” She reached over and adjusted the position of the band on his head, so slightly I couldn’t tell the difference. Perhaps she just wanted to touch it. “Our wind readers sewed the threads into clothing. Pants legs, shirtsleeves, helmets, even socks.”
I glanced at the workmanship. Jenna hadn’t made it, not with one hand. “Where did this come from?”
Jenna looked at Joseph rather than me. “It was your father’s. David Lee’s.”
I had remembered the David, but not the Lee. I repeated it in my head. David Lee. David Lee.
Joseph closed his eyes and put his fingertips on the band. We had nothing of theirs. I had regretted that a thousand times, wished for even a small memento. Jenna’s words had clearly affected Joseph as deeply as they had me; I thought for a moment he would cry. But instead, he straightened and gazed evenly at Jenna. “How do I make it work?”
Jenna looked away. “I cannot use one. This is the most sophisticated remote communication we had here, the closest thing to being truly net connected, as if we were in civilized space. Whatever physical technique allows you to read the Fremont data nets, you will want to do something similar to read the buttons. David was the best of us, and he once described it for me as ‘slipping sideways to the data wind.’ Perhaps that will help you.”
Joseph blinked. “I…I don’t feel anything.”
Jenna picked up a data button and handed it to him. As his hand closed around it, his eyes widened. Fear flicked across them.
“Relax,” Jenna said.
I stepped to his side. “Here, sit with me.”
He and I curled on the hard stone floor, Joseph’s head against my shoulder, my arm flung over his chest. His heart beat fast against my palm.
He was silent a long time. When he spoke, his voice was full of wonder. “How do I show the others what I see?”
Jenna frowned and cocked her head. “Do you understand any of it?”
He shook his head. “It’s a jumble of images. I can see those. Some of them. Things I’ve never seen before. And words I can’t understand. But maybe if I can show it to Chelo and Alicia and Kayleen, they can help me figure it out.”
“There are tools for that. But they are not so…easy to conceal.” Jenna pursed her lips, as if trying to make a decision.
“Are they here?” Alicia asked. “Can we see? What’s on the data buttons, anyway?”
Jenna stood and mumbled, low, as if to herself, “I set this up here in case you needed it. I guess you do.” She reached up to the top shelf and pulled a small silver square from the back.
She kept the square in her hands, held close, as if it were an eggshell. It was about twice the size of a data button, still small enough for Jenna to conceal by closing her fist. “This is a sacred trust. I’ve only found two more that work on Fremont. Artistos’s leaders will recognize this if they see it, and take it from you.” She fixed her eyes on me. “Do you understand?”
I nodded.
She was not done. “You cannot use this near any of the self-styled original humans. Not even Tom and Paloma.” She glanced at Alicia. “Not your friends, not any of them. Not in town. Only away.” Then she seemed to come to an answer. “I will take it back from you before you return to Artistos. That is best. But you can conceal it around Tom and Paloma, and I do not know when you will have such freedom again.”
So she understood the gist of the discussions going on back in Fremont. Perhaps that was what drove her to finally reveal so much to us openly.
Jenna handed the square to me. It was surprisingly light, and decorated like the data buttons with smooth symbols I didn’t recognize.
Jenna placed her palm over the top of the box in my hand, twisted, and it opened. She dropped a data button into it and closed the lid. A rectangle of light blossomed a meter from me.
I frowned. “It’s a data projector. We have those in Artistos.”
“You do not have any like these. The ones the crippled humans use in Fremont do not read our data.”
Of course.
Jenna watched me closely, then said, “Be careful about assuming you understand our technology because you understand what Artistos has. Some of it is very different.”
Jenna showed us how to start and stop the stream of data and pictures, using specific pressure points. When I turned on the projector, images of spaceships like New Making, and bigger than New Making, moved across the face of a planet. “Where is that?” I asked
.
“That’s Silver’s Home. We came from there.”
My eyes were glued to the pictures. The planet had much more land than Fremont. Large seas, or maybe large lakes, dotted it. Both poles were almost all ice, and a wide river, almost a sea, fractured the two continents directly centered in the moving picture. Jenna was the only person on Fremont born somewhere else. I had never thought of it before. “Were you born there?”
She reached over and stopped the playback. “There’s no time for much more talk today.” She glanced at Joseph. “The headband transmits all of the data on a button, or even multiple buttons, directly into you. You will be able to cross-reference and search and use this up to the limit of your capabilities. It is the same tool you use for the Fremont data nets, but on our frequency. By definition, none of Artistos’s people have any ability to use data thread, and I doubt they even know what they are. As far as I know, you can keep it, wear it. It can be a gift from me. Tom and Paloma, at least, will accept that.”
Joseph fingered the headband, then took it off. “I…can’t wear it now. It’s too confusing. I’ll work with it.”
Jenna smiled at him. “Your ability to work the nets should return as you learn to use that. In fact, it may grow stronger, as if you are exercising muscles you’ve seldom used.” She reached her hand down to help Joseph stand, and looked directly at him, her single eye boring into his rapt, focused gaze. “Fear will stop you. The knowledge you stand to gain, or for that matter, the help you can give Artistos, is something to value, to learn from.”
He nodded, silent for a moment. “But…but how do I stop the fear?”
“Trust yourself. Trust who you will become.”
His gaze slid uncertainly away from hers, and he mumbled, “I’ll try.”
“Don’t try,” she said. “Simply do it. Use Chelo to help you…she makes you stronger.”
Alicia moved the light stick toward the short hallway, and we stepped out into the larger cave, blinking at the light.
Jenna glanced at the box in my hand. “That can only play a single thread at a time; it is not even as powerful as Joseph is now. It will make some information accessible to you directly, but in a very linear fashion. It was designed for young children. You should have had it when you were six or seven. If it falls into the wrong hands, that same data—much of which has been concealed from the people here—will be available to them. They will never be able to use Joseph’s data thread, they are not made for it. It is conceivable they could figure out the button box.”
I swallowed. “I will protect it.”
“Only you. Do not leave it, ever. Even with your brethren.”
Alicia crossed her arms over her chest. “So I can’t use it alone? Chelo has to be with me?”
“Yes. Chelo is the keeper.”
I was briefly taken aback by the charge, and felt the responsibility she laid on me like a geas. Was it because we were the same, had the same genemods? Or because I was the oldest? This wouldn’t help my relationship with Alicia. I looked Jenna in the eye. “All right. Tell me when you want it back.”
“What data have you given us?” Alicia asked.
Jenna stood and started for the door of the alcove. “Children’s data, on the first button I gave Joseph. History and culture on another. I know a few are training programs for the colonists. Navigation and maintenance and health and how to land on a planet and live there. That’s all I could find. Consider it the education you were denied. Now, we should go.”
Alicia narrowed her eyes. “Why go back?” She looked from me to Joseph. “You two can hunt. I’m sure I can, too. We have data now, we can learn.” Her gaze slid to Jenna’s. “Why can’t we live with you, free?”
Jenna threw back her head and laughed, and didn’t answer Alicia except to cock her eyebrow at me.
There were many reasons not to live alone. The most important ones were all people. “Kayleen. Bryan is back in Artistos. Liam is with Akashi. I couldn’t abandon them.”
“Well, me, then.” She sounded wistful. “I could live free. I don’t want to go back. I don’t even know where I’m staying, who I’m staying with.” Her gaze was still on Jenna, her eyes full of longing. “Please? Can I live with you?”
Jenna met Alicia’s eyes, offering a hard look in exchange for Alicia’s longing. “There is little freedom in my life, Alicia.” She gazed out of the cave, seeming to see something different than the brush and trees and rocks that were actually there. “I am trying to gain more freedom than you can imagine. Perhaps I will be able to share it.” She shook herself, as if leaving some painful memory behind. “In the meantime, you all have at least some measure of safety down there.” She gestured toward Artistos. “In my life, there are many dawns I am surprised to see at all. It is no life for you.”
Alicia frowned. “But my life is no good, either. They laugh at me, they hate me. They locked me up.”
I stepped close to Alicia, putting one hand on her shoulder. “It will be better for you now. I promise.” I had no idea how I would keep the promise, but I meant it.
She looked away, her eyes full of tears. I didn’t know her well enough to tell if they were tears of anger or tears of sadness. I let her turn away to stand at the edge of the cave, her shoulders heaving.
Jenna remained silent while Alicia gathered herself. Joseph stepped near Alicia, as if offering himself, but she didn’t turn or acknowledge him. Then Jenna handed me the flashlight, which was still on, even though sun touched us here in the cave’s mouth. The flashlight was surprisingly light, like the box I had in my pocket, like holding a twig. “Turn it off,” she said.
It worked almost exactly like the box. A palm touch, a twist. “Jenna? Would this work for…for someone who isn’t altered?”
“Yes. It works on sunshine. You must always stow it where it can feed on the sun’s power.” She set it on a little shelf near the cave mouth. “Now, watch me again.”
She did the jump and twist and pulled herself up, then dropped again from the cave roof, standing ready to help us. As she showed Joseph, I took a last long look around the cave. I wanted to stay longer, to learn more. Fantastic stories we could tell about being stuck outside all night played through my head. But there was Paloma, injured. And Kayleen and Tom. And the hebras. “Stripes? Will we find the hebras on the way back?”
Jenna glanced over her shoulder. “What do you think?”
“Yes.”
She made us twist out of the cave twice each, being sure we knew how to do it. By the time we stood on the roof-rock, ready to start back, the sun was three-quarters of the way gone.
Shortly after we crested the rim, Jenna veered off, down a different path than the gravel wash we had taken up the crater face. We followed after her, running easily downslope on a clear trail that switchbacked neatly downward, one small slope after another. This would have been much easier to go up than the boulder wash. If not as fast. Trees and underbrush clung precariously to the steep sides of the crater. I smelled redberry bushes and the meadow and the fire from the cabin.
I smelled the hebras just before Jenna turned down a faint twist of path that veered from the main one. Telltale cloven hoofprints showed in the muddy path. She motioned for us to stop, and then ducked into the trees. She emerged with all three beasts. Stripes came up to me and butted my chest with her head, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief and happiness. I scratched Stripes under the chin, laughing and giggling and calling her a silly beast for running away.
She made soft contented noises in her throat, apparently just as happy to see me.
“I missed you,” I crooned into her ears.
Jenna watched me with a wry smile. “You know,” she said, “hebras are good, smart animals, but there are places you could design exactly what you wanted for a pet, have it grown just for you. Even have it bonded to you.”
I simply hugged Stripes closer.
“Yes, well, and you have to go,” Jenna said.
“How did you keep th
em safe?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I can only teach you so much in one day.” She held my eyes for a moment. “Take care. Take care of the button box. Don’t get caught.”
I nodded, my nose still buried in Stripes’s shoulder. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
But she was already gone. As before, I couldn’t see her footprints.
15
War Stories and Success
By the time we found an old stump to use for a mounting block, the light had shaded to the soft gold that heralded dusk. The pack hebras refused to be ridden, standing stock still and ignoring all forms of encouragement either Alicia or Joseph could think of to offer. Stripes let me ride her bareback, although she swiveled her head around and looked at me balefully, as if telling me off for forgetting to drag tack up here. She took over the lead in Sugar Wheat’s absence, herding the other two. I pretty much hung on and let her trot up and down our tiny line. Between bouncing on Stripes’s backbone and running our conversations with Jenna over and over in my head, I felt dazed and bruised by the time we reached the edge of the meadow. There were so many questions I hadn’t had time to ask. About our parents. About us.
Tom waited for us by the new, closer high-line. The hebras called greetings as soon as they were in sight of each other, dancing and perking their ears forward. A sigh of relief escaped as I finally slid from Stripes’s back to stand on wobbly legs next to Tom. He looked around, as if expecting Jenna.
I answered his unspoken question. “She’s gone again. But we wouldn’t have found the hebras without her.”
“Where were they?” Tom asked.
I waved toward the wall of forest marching toward the crater rim. “Up there. It took a while.”
Tom and I helped Joseph and Alicia tie up the pack animals, and then we all dragged into the cabin to find Kayleen standing over a stew pot that smelled of djuri and pol-roots and herbs. Sweat beaded her forehead as she lifted a spoon for a taste, smiling at us. My stomach rolled with hunger. We’d run after Jenna, scrambled up the wash, been in and out of the cave, and herded the hebras home with nothing more than water and pongaberries since breakfast.
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