The Silver Ship and the Sea

by Brenda Cooper

  She stopped. “I shouldn’t have expected you to understand all that. An affinity group is a set of beings that chooses similar lifestyles and shares an economic future—that owns the same things. Like the original humans that started Artistos. It is like…like an extended family, only more diverse. An affinity group will stand up for its members when no one else will.”

  “So me and Joseph and Kayleen and Liam and Bryan and Alicia are an affinity group?”

  She paused. “You are part of ours.” After a few moments, she said, “You could make a separate group.” She waved her hand up at the sky, “Out there. If you had any resources. But you don’t, not yet.”

  I changed the subject a little. “But now you want to go home. Silver’s Home?”

  We had arrived at the keeper’s cabin, and I rummaged through my pack for my coat, shrugging it on quickly. We went back outside and continued walking.

  I had just about decided she wasn’t going to answer me when she stopped near the edge of the concrete pad, folding down cross-legged twenty meters from the New Making, close enough that it loomed above us. The ground around the pad the ship rested on had burned black, but New Making’s outer skin showed no scars from the fire, no sign it had been affected in any way. “We came from Silver’s Home, and the others most likely returned there.”

  My heart leaped into my throat. “Were my parents there? Did they get away?”

  She shook her head, and I swallowed, unbidden tears stinging my eyes. My breath caught, hard, sobs struggling to break free of my throat.

  Her one eye never left me. The scars across her face shifted. Softened? “I said that wrong,” she said, “I’m sorry. The bodies were all burned. They buried the ashes. I was…incapacitated for a long time, after. Surely they all thought me dead with everyone else. So I don’t know who escaped. Enough to fly away, and at least one pilot. Your father was a pilot.”

  The tears that had come to my eyes fell anyway, even with this uncertain news. It was nearly as bad—maybe it was worse—than knowing them dead. I knew Chiaro was dead. I still missed her, in a small place inside. Therese and Steven were dead; I helped burn their bodies and scatter their ashes. I knew there was no hope of seeing any of them again. Not knowing, still, about my first parents was harder. “How many other pilots were there?” I asked.

  “There were three left last time I counted. Joseph was born to be a pilot.”

  Joseph was born to be a pilot. I stuttered her words back at her. “Jo…Joseph—was born to be a pilot?”

  “Joseph can fly the New Making.”

  I blinked, stunned. Joseph? Fly the New Making? “Now?” I asked.

  She nodded. “He’ll need to learn, and we have to check the ship’s systems out. It will take a day or two.”

  A day or two.

  While I struggled to keep peace here, Jenna had worked to get us all away safely. I could see the pattern, the way she and I had been working together, loosely bound more by her goals than mine. Jenna could help us figure out where to go. There was something more than family out there for us, maybe. If they survived. I hated the war all over again, and loved Jenna all over again, even though some inner part of me screamed caution.

  “Is Joseph the only one that can fly the ship?” I asked.

  Jenna nodded.

  “Not Kayleen?”

  “Kayleen might learn, in time. Not nearly so quickly as Joseph.”

  I shook my head in frustration. “If Joseph was born to be a pilot, what was I born for?”

  She smiled. “You were born to help me—a politician, a strategist, and Kayleen to work the data nets. Bryan to be a fighter, a strong man. Liam, like you, to lead. Alicia to experiment. And others to be other things…but they are all dead.”

  The child that was killed, that Jenna held when the rocket tore her arm away. I’d forgotten about it in the rush of skimmers and fires and tactics and needing to negotiate some kind of peace. “Jenna? I heard that the day of the last fight you had a child with you. It was one of us, wasn’t it? What was that child born to be?”

  Jenna’s words came out packed with longing, but sharp and short, so that her very voice carried pain and loss such I had never heard in a single human voice except, perhaps, in the wailing of funeral rites, the songs around the pyres. “She was…she had…she was going to be our geneticist, our surgeon. All but one were killed. She…could have helped us all. Helped you. You see…it takes maintenance to keep us alive for hundreds of years. Care. Care I can’t give you.”

  Care she couldn’t give herself. I let silence fall again after that. I had no answer for the pain I heard in her, which seemed as deep as Little Lace Lake. I had lost the heart to ask if the child was hers. I didn’t want to know. Silence itself became oppressive, the echo of Jenna’s tone filling the emptiness between us.

  I headed for more comfortable territory. “You asked us to keep the projector and the headband secret. It can’t matter anymore. We should tell Tom and Paloma how we’re learning, and Liam. They know you had that skimmer somewhere.”

  She nodded. “You’re right. But not yet where the cave is.”

  We sat. I breathed in the silence, the nearly still spaceport, the lack of action, the choices that hung in front of me, so heavy as to be nearly visible. The cool breeze blowing in from the sea carried salt as much as smoke, and stars glittered above us. I thought about what Jenna had said, about the things we were born to be, and whether or not we could be them. Joseph had been miserable and unhappy when he tried to be a pipe fitter, and excited since Jenna showed him the cave, and gave him the headband. Since he started learning to be what he was born for.

  Could I choose not to be a leader? We had skills designed for a colony of altered, but useful here, now, as well. Were all of our choices foreordained?

  A meteor streaked near the horizon, a red flare disappearing over the tops of the mountains that rose a distance behind the New Making. A small thing. A reminder of my conversation with Gianna.

  I had never been alone with Jenna for so long. There were so many questions, but it seemed like such an odd time to ask them. Like they should wait for…some change to happen. To be past this crisis. Surely we would have time for long talks in the ship (in the ship!). But that was soft thinking, and I needed to make sure we could get away, make sure that whatever happened was right for us. All I knew of this affinity group was Jenna, and it was up to me to save us six. Not her. I had to remember that. It would be so easy to forget, to let someone else decide for us. “What is back on Silver’s Home? What will happen to us if we go there?”

  She cocked her head and shifted her gaze from the ship to me. “It depends on who made it back. If our people made it back and did well, then maybe they are still there and maybe we have some resources.” She shrugged. “My sister stayed. I’d like to know if she lives. If our people are coming back here.” She looked away again, watching the silent silver ship. “They might be on their way here now. It takes six to ten years for a round trip. We could pass each other in the space between places.”

  Somehow I had never thought of Jenna with family. Jenna was always crazy and alone and distant, and now she sat here next to me, close actually, and she had spoken of a girl who might have been her child and of a sister far away.

  I remembered trying to touch Nava, how I hadn’t touched her, how when I’d tried she’d pulled away.

  Jenna’s palm rested on the concrete, holding some of her weight. Close enough to touch. “Did I tell you I climbed a pongaberry tree?” I touched her hand with mine, briefly, my hand withdrawing of its own accord, and I forced it back and over her palm, laid it down on top of her rough hand even though I had to stretch and reach to do so.

  “That’s good,” she said, and shifted her weight, turning her hand under mine to grasp it with her strong fingers. Her palm felt warm and dry. “You need to learn your capabilities.”

  We sat that way for three or four minutes. I wished I knew what was in her head, her heart. Her finge
rs clutching mine did not tell me.

  Then her hand withdrew quickly and she pushed herself up. “I—need to check on the others.” And she was gone, a silhouette in the dark, running so lightly back toward the hangar that I couldn’t hear her footsteps.

  I stared at the New Making. Joseph was made to fly that ship. My father flew that ship. Soon, I might finally be inside her, see inside her.

  If only Bryan were here.

  What if I left, and my parents still lived, and came here looking for me? If we all left, would Artistos get along, or did they really need our skills, and would they ever let us use them? Was there any life available here for Joseph? And if I didn’t let Joseph, and thus Jenna, go, was I dooming her to die, broken and maybe soon, when she could be healed? What would life be like without Paloma and Gianna, or even Tom? Leaving was simple, and yet it wasn’t.

  The night was half gone, and I needed to be ready for the coming…confrontation. I walked back, following Jenna’s footsteps, slowly, alone under the stars. I passed the keeper’s cabin and the hangar, and went to Joseph.

  He and Alicia curled like one being under the same blanket. In sleep, the lines of pain and anger that often creased Alicia’s forehead and lined her mouth had gone, and she looked…vulnerable. Joseph looked like a boy who wanted to be a starship captain, not a young man who might become one soon. Surely the right answers were here, surely home was here. Surely we could wait before making these decisions.

  I knelt beside them, hearing Gianna’s exhortation in my head. Maybe I could wake just Joseph. I reached out and shook his shoulder gently. He curled his arm tighter, pulling Alicia closer against him, grunting. I tried again. He opened one eye. “Mmmmmm…”

  “Wake up,” I whispered. “I need you.”

  He moved Alicia’s arm from his waist and pushed himself up, shivering as the cold air hit him. I stood and started walking toward the unruly pile of goods by the hangar, gesturing for him to follow me.

  He crawled completely free of Alicia, turned and covered her, and padded silently after me. He took a blanket from my outstretched hand and wrapped himself in it, then stood leaning against the hangar wall. “I…I’m sorry I couldn’t stay awake. What happened? Did you hear anything about Bryan?”

  “I’m meeting Nava tomorrow morning.” I glanced at my chrono. “Or more accurately, in about eight hours. If she calls to confirm. But she will. She’s keeping Bryan hostage in Artistos. She didn’t give me much detail about how he is, but I think they beat him up pretty bad. Garmin’s friends.”

  His jaw tightened and he stood straighter. “We’re in trouble.”

  “And you need to be careful not to scare them; not to do anything else to show off. I’m pretty sure they…some of them…would welcome any excuse to be rid of us. Maybe even if they had to kill us. Not everyone. I talked to Gianna, and that’s why I woke you up.”

  “How is Gianna? Is she mad at me? What did she say?”

  “She’s nervous about meteors. She wants your read on the data nets, something about cross-correlating multiple data points. You better talk to her to get the details.”

  “So Nava maybe wants to kill us and Gianna maybe wants us to save them all?” Joseph raised an eyebrow and shook his head. “I think that’s a clear sign it’s time to go. Jenna wants me to help her check out the New Making.” He looked toward the ship, as if hungry to be back inside it.

  I had known that was what he wanted, but only now could I really feel the sharp knife of his desire to leave. “Joseph.” I used my best big-sister voice. “I know. We may have to use the ship. I don’t know what to do about that. But don’t forget Bryan, and that Kayleen and Akashi and Liam may not want to go. Don’t forget the good Therese and Steven did for us.

  “Please look into the meteors, and get back to Gianna. I know you can figure out how to message her.”

  His gaze was still pinned to the New Making. I wondered if he was even then reading data. Finally he said, “Well, I don’t exactly want a meteor to fall on the New Making. But I’m not very good with space-based data streams. Gianna only let me use them once before.” He paused, stilled completely, and then his face brightened. “I’m pretty sure I can get to them.”

  Jenna materialized, as if out of thin air, next to him. Damn. How did she move so quietly?

  She cleared her throat. “I think I can help. Come, Joseph, let’s open New Making. There’s better access to data there.”

  He smiled at her, his face lighting up. He turned toward me. “Coming, Chelo?”

  My body suddenly felt cold inside. “I’ll be there soon. I need to find Paloma and Liam and Akashi and tell them about the headband and the data reader and the cave.”

  “I’ve told them,” Jenna said. “All of that is small compared to the New Making. Let’s go.”

  “Someone has to stay on watch.” Why didn’t I want to go? The coming meeting was important; getting ready. I missed Bryan. The hebras needed water. I didn’t want to do this thing I had wanted all my life. And then I caught Joseph looking at me from the corner of his eye, as if I had perhaps gone a bit insane, and I suddenly knew why I detested the ship in that moment. The New Making had already stolen Joseph. I could see it in his face, his eyes, in the set of his body. Nothing tied him here, not even me. If I wanted to be with my little brother, to watch over him, I needed to go with him. I hugged him, holding him tight, not caring that Jenna was there to watch. He smelled like the skimmer and smoke and hebra.

  “All right. Maybe Akashi and Paloma can hold watch. I still have the earset; they can reach us if they need anything.”

  Joseph smiled. “Good. I’m going to wake Alicia up. We should all see this together.”

  So all of the altered on Fremont, except Bryan, all of us gathered around the ship that had brought our families here twenty-two years ago. My fear and anger at the ship had melted away, replaced by dread, directed at the future, but not at the simple metal of this ship I had wanted to see inside my whole life. Besides, I had to know if it was safe, if we could use it. If it could carry my brother away from me, or both of us away from everything we’d ever known.

  The cool soft night wind blew my hair against my face. Stars spread above us, and far off, I could hear the low rumble of the sea.

  Jenna stopped outside the ship, turning around, facing us. “A few days before the last battle,” she said, “we had a conversation. Your parents were there—at least Alicia’s father, Kayleen’s mother, and Chelo and Joseph’s mother and father. The rest were already dead.”

  Kayleen drew in a little tight breath next to me and clutched my hand. Liam stepped closer, but hardly reacted otherwise, his focus on the ship.

  Jenna continued, not missing a beat. “We took only the Journey; there weren’t enough of us left to fill even one ship. Leaving New Making behind would both draw us back, and be a story for Fremont’s children. We didn’t know that those would be our children.” She stopped, struggling for words. Her voice lost volume, catching in her throat, and I had to strain to hear her. “So this ship is meant to be your tool as much as mine.”

  I took a step closer to her, and Liam and Kayleen matched me, the three of us staying close, Kayleen still clutching my hand. Liam slipped an arm over my shoulder, and I felt his hip against mine, a return of the closeness I’d felt on the walk to the hangar earlier. Joseph and Alicia, also holding hands, marched past Jenna up to the ship’s sleek gleaming side. They looked small next to it. Alicia held a hand out, stroking the outside metal as if it were a lover. I had only stood this close to it a few times, and never had I felt so…awed. We were about to step inside the New Making.

  Jenna cleared her throat, gathering our attention back to her. “We will go inside, all of us together, but you must stay with me. Do you understand?”

  We all nodded.

  Movement. Just behind Jenna and to the left, a ramp folded down in the same way as the skimmer ramp. Out here, with wind and insects and the sound of our feet shuffling, I could barely h
ear the movement of the door. It appeared to fold out from the ship with magic. “Jenna?” Kayleen asked. “How is it so quiet? How come I didn’t know the door was there?”

  “Materials. Our materials are nearly perfect. Nanotechnology. The ship is nanosteel and carbon and diamond, all of the materials manufactured, and coated with active protectant.”

  “So why doesn’t Artistos use such perfect materials?” I could imagine windows and doors and signs and pots and a million things made of such smooth, clean metal.

  She shook her head. “They probably didn’t have the resources to bring such technology with them.” She turned, gesturing to us to follow, and started walking to the ramp. Her mutter barely reached me. “They may have chosen not to.”

  That sounded right to me. They were such stubborn people, so afraid of change. And it seemed they liked to do everything the hard way…

  And then I was following Jenna up the ramp, and I didn’t care about Artistos or Fremont, or why we had no such metal.

  New Making demanded all of my attention.

  22

  The New Making

  We walked up the ramp toward the New Making. Jenna first, then Joseph and Alicia, and then me in the middle and Kayleen and Liam following. Liam didn’t run up to the New Making the way he’d run up to the skimmer. I looked behind me once. Starlight illuminated beads of sweat on Kayleen’s face, and Liam smiled encouragingly at me, his eyes wide as he looked past me toward the entrance. I followed his gaze.

  The tall, narrow doorway displayed only darkness. Air spilled out, smelling of oil, clean metal, water, and even, faintly, of plants. I had expected stale air or decay; it had been still for twenty years, and closed up, certainly, since the end of the war twelve years ago—since its sister ship, the Journey, fled.

  Jenna touched something inside the opening and light bloomed, illuminating a corridor beyond. The walls glowed a soft blue, the floor a soft silver, and four red lines ran through the round corridor: top, bottom, right, and left. Bumps of various sizes rose from all of the walls except the floor. “What are these?” I asked.