Spinning Starlight

by R. C. Lewis

  Then a new dance started. Just a man and woman dancing with a younger boy.

  Parents and their son, she thought.

  And the music was sad. So were their movements, their dancing. Aching and yearning.

  They lost him. Or he lost them.

  Like we lost Mom and Dad.

  Tears fell, and Liddi was glad vid-cams weren’t allowed in the performance hall. As the audience applauded, Durant put an arm around his baby sister and whispered in her ear.

  “That’s the point of art, Liddi. It reminds us that thinking is well and good, but feeling is what makes us alive.”

  DURING THE DRIVE TO EDGEWICK, I get the jittery feeling of luck running out. The first conduit was easy. No one was there working on it, the voiceprint recording got us in perfectly, and the redesigned sempu fit into the modulating unit just as Fabin promised. It took us five minutes at most.

  The next two weren’t quite as simple. A few JTI techs were at each, falling all over themselves when they saw me. Tiav filled his role perfectly with things like “Miss Jantzen is here to check the unit’s configuration” and “Please don’t disturb Miss Jantzen while she’s working.” The techs were scarcely more than entry-level employees and didn’t have any expectation that I would speak directly to them, so they didn’t comment on my silence. They didn’t even dare question Tiav’s out-of-place accent.

  It makes me a little sad.

  Regardless, three conduits are set, five remain. Vid-cams have caught sight of us, so far just media-grubs marveling over the Jantzen girl finally showing up and getting some work done. We’re doing well, but I don’t like this feeling.

  “Liddi,” Dom says over my com-tablet, “you have a new message in your queue from Minali Blake. Would you like to hear it?”

  I guess I’d better, so I tap the icon for Yes.

  “I don’t know where you’ve been or what you think you’re doing,” says Minali’s disembodied voice. “But stop it. Your checked genes may not be able to grasp it, but this is what will save the Seven Points. It has to be done, and don’t forget that implant. That news-vid was almost clever, but I know the implant’s still active.”

  The message ends, and I rub the bridge of my nose. She didn’t say anything I didn’t already know, but the reminder isn’t helping.

  “What did she mean, ‘checked genes’?” Tiav asks.

  Dom handles the answer. “Parents have the option of holding certain genes in check during the early stages of prenatal development. Mostly it’s used by particularly vain individuals who want to ensure their offspring’s ears don’t grow disproportionately.”

  “So what did your parents hold in check?”

  I tap a finger to my forehead, and Tiav’s eyebrows go up.

  “Your mind? That’s ridiculous.”

  Sweet of him, but he doesn’t know the full Jantzen history I’ve failed to live up to. When he sees my doubt, he presses his claim.

  “First of all, why would parents do that to their child? Second, you’re brilliant. All those gadgets you made on Ferinne when nothing here works the same way? How would someone with ‘checked’ intelligence pick those things up so quickly?”

  I don’t know. Somehow the technology on Ferinne made sense in a way nothing on Sampati ever did. It’s not the same.

  “Dom, do you have access to Liddi’s medical records, her genetic code? And her parents’?”

  “I do.”

  “Could you tell if they’d done anything to modify her genes?”

  “I could. And they did.”

  I’m stopped from giving Tiav an I-told-you-so look by a sucking emptiness exploding inside me with the confirmation that my parents really did that to me. Despite the evidence of my whole life, part of me wanted a different answer.

  Only Dom’s not done yet.

  “However, it had nothing to do with limiting her intelligence. Rather, it was a minor modification to intuition and flexibility, enhancing them slightly.”

  I’m so stupid, I didn’t even think to ask. Of course, getting the information out of Dom on my own, without my voice, would’ve been impossible.

  Tiav takes my hand, squeezes it tight. “That woman lied to you, Liddi. Or maybe she wants to think it’s true. I don’t know why you believed her.”

  Because it made sense. I’m the failure of the Jantzen family. I pull up my news-vid queue and find the packet I’ve played dozens of times—my brothers at the Tech Reveal, everyone wondering when I’m finally going to show up, and I never have.

  After Tiav watches it all, he’s silent for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is low. “Liddi, how old were you when your parents died?”

  I hold up six fingers.

  “And you inherit the company, not your older brothers. Everyone on seven planets knows that, right?”

  Knows it and won’t let me forget it.

  “Don’t you think that kind of pressure would make anyone lock up? Most Aelo take up their full duties by the time they’re twelve. Instead, I almost quit the whole thing because I was sure I’d never be as good as my mother. Maybe your brilliance showed through on Ferinne because no one had those expectations, there was no pressure. Maybe you just need to relax and let yourself be brilliant in your own way, which might be a little different from your brothers’.”

  I like his maybes better than mine. But I’m not sure it’s true, not when I’ve always struggled, always lagged behind.

  Not always.

  A memory flashes: the workshop, Dad and the boys so young. A sparkling contraption full of light hovers in the air. Something I made. It looks a little like a Khua.

  Pretty spark.

  How in the Wraith’s name did I do that?

  Spin-Still tells me something I don’t remember. I saw a Khua when I was a toddler. I escaped into the yard at night and chased the pretty spark. Fabin found me with the Khua hovering near my face like a curious firefly. He never told anyone.

  Did the Khua pass something on to me, so all my ideas are theirs?

  No, that Khua was just intrigued by a child who wasn’t afraid. That’s all. Tiav’s right—I’ve been letting the pressure get in the way, because I’m the one who chooses.

  I choose to prove Minali wrong.

  Liddi Jantzen broke two nails today…climbing a disposal chute.

  I’m too anxious for a laugh to tempt me. My hands and feet are barely keeping me wedged in the chute as it is. We still have at least ten feet to go, inch by inch. A slight slope keeps it shy of vertical, but close enough.

  All necessary because I was right that the ease of the first three conduits couldn’t last. Minali’s stationed police officers at some of the conduits, including this one.

  No problem. Dom got us the building schematics and we found a back door—or rather, I disconnected the recycler at the end of the chute and we climbed in. Not the most elegant solution, but the best I could come up with.

  “This would be a really bad time for another tremor, wouldn’t it?” Tiav whispers from below me.

  I miss my hand placement and slip a few inches before catching myself, wishing endlessly for the tethers and harnesses we used during the Daglin. I do not want to think about tremors right now, as often as they’re happening.

  “Sorry!”

  Once I’m sure I won’t slip, I resume climbing, and Tiav follows. The small panel at the top is meant to open easily enough from the outside, whenever a lab tech has material to dispose of. It’s unlikely anyone ever considered opening it from inside the chute, but that’s what I need to do.

  I reorient my body to wedge myself with just one hand and both feet, and claw at the panel with my free hand. If I can just get under the edge and apply a little upward force, the assistive motor should kick in.

  There goes another nail, but the panel’s open. A little more maneuvering, and I tumble out onto the lab floor. Before I can get back to help Tiav, he’s made his own way through. My arms and legs are screaming from the exertion, so I try to shake t
hem out.

  “And now back down again, right?” Tiav says.

  True enough, though it makes me want to groan. The conduit’s on the first floor, while this lab is on the third. With the police standing guard at the building entrance, there was just no other way in.

  Getting around inside the building isn’t too bad, though. Out of the lab, down an emergency stairwell, and onto the first floor. No police stationed inside. The voiceprint recording gets us into the conduit facility, and I get right to work.

  It’s simple enough. The conduit terminal consists of a raised target area for travelers to stand on with some emitters and receivers embedded in the ceiling, and a console next to it for the operator. I just have to remove a coverplate under the console to get at the modulating unit. Old components out, sempu in, another conduit tuned to a Khua frequency.

  Just as I get the cover back in place, the floor bucks beneath me, smacking my head into the console.

  My vision swims. The room swims. I’m not under the console anymore, but I can’t get my bearings.

  “Liddi!”

  Tiav’s voice sounds far away as the shaking continues. My arm stings, and I don’t know why until my eyes focus a bit. It’s bleeding. I cut it on a jagged crack that formed in the floor. That fact quickly moves down the priority list.

  Another crack is in the ceiling. A larger crack going right to the conduit terminal.

  Three of the embedded emitters have been knocked loose.

  A chasm opens up to swallow my heart, to suck the air from my lungs.

  The tremor trails off, and I push myself to my feet. Try to. I’m too dizzy and my balance skews. My knees don’t hit the floor like I expect, though. Something’s holding me up. Hands on my waist. Tiav’s saying something, but I’m not listening. I’m moving my feet forward toward a maintenance locker, dragging him with me.

  “Hold still and let me stop this bleeding!”

  No, that can wait. I wrestle out of his grip, still scarcely able to breathe. The conduit assembly only uses full power when someone’s actively traveling, but it’s always running, always maintaining the conduit’s connection to the network. If the quake damaged it too much, I don’t know what it might do to people trapped inside.

  It might hurt them. It might do worse.

  This one is Emil’s conduit.

  Tiav doesn’t understand, not until I start pulling tools out of the locker, thrust my com-tablet into his hands, and point emphatically between it and the damaged emitters. Then he stops arguing about the cut on my arm.

  “Dom, I think Liddi needs you to tell her how to repair some damage here at the conduit terminal.”

  It takes some back-and-forth between them before Dom has a lock on the situation and locates repair procedures. Moments later, I’m sitting on Tiav’s shoulders—not great for my recovering equilibrium—so I can reach the ceiling and follow Dom’s instructions.

  My hands are sure and steady because they have to be. Any harm to Emil might be temporary, might just be while the few emitters are offline. There’s no time for mistakes.

  One emitter repaired. Then two, a little trickier. Finally, three is secure, its indicator lights glowing again. Back on the ground, Dom coaches us through a diagnostic to ensure the conduit is fully online. Green, green…

  “Worst one yet, I—hey, what are you—Miss Jantzen!”

  The disjointed declarations come from the doorway. I whip around, certain I’ll face a dark green police uniform, but I don’t. Just a pair of women wearing the coveralls of JTI techs.

  “The officer didn’t mention you were here,” one of them says.

  “He said he just came on shift, though, didn’t he?” her partner adds.

  I busy myself gathering up the tools I used, keeping my injured arm out of view, while Tiav jumps in to answer.

  “Just trying out a possible fix for these conduit problems. That tremor slowed us down a little. You’ll want to seal these cracks. We should be going, shouldn’t we, Miss Jantzen?”

  After glancing at the diagnostic display to verify the last icon turned green, I nod and leave the room with Tiav. Back to the stairwell, back to the lab, back to the disposal chute.

  Sliding down is a lot faster than climbing up was.

  We’re in the hovercar and on our way with no sign of the police out front being aware of us. The technicians will probably mention my presence when they leave, but I can’t worry about that.

  I’m too busy shaking.

  It’s nothing to do with Tiav finally tending to my arm, nothing to do with the bump on my head that makes me wince when he runs his fingers through my hair. When he wraps his arms around me, the shaking only gets worse.

  “I’m sure your brothers are fine.”

  The warmth of his whisper on my cheek tempts me with its reassurance. But we both know he isn’t really sure. We know we can’t spare the time to summon a Khua and check. We know we have to finish the job, and only then will I see if Emil’s all right.

  Tiav’s words aren’t meant as truth, though. They’re meant as hope. I snake my arms around his neck and hold him back even tighter.

  Hope is better than nothing. I’ll take it.

  The seventh conduit still has no police presence and no workers, proving Minali hasn’t figured out exactly what we’re doing, which conduits we’re visiting. Almost all of my brothers were captured while investigating on other Points. Tiav and I traced out the Sampati ends of those conduits through the planetary rerouter, so our targets would look random to Minali if she hasn’t done the same backtracing. Which it seems she hasn’t, at least not yet.

  The last one’s going to be impossible for Minali not to pick up on, though, because it’s not a public conduit terminal at all. It’s at JTI headquarters. Anton had the bad luck to get caught in a conduit that traces back to one of the labs. We saved it for last, knowing it’s where we’re most likely to get caught.

  An assistant spots us in the lobby and flags me down. “Miss Jantzen! I didn’t realize you’d be coming in today. Has there been any progress on the conduit outage? Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “Miss Jantzen is very busy, but I think we can manage,” Tiav says. The woman is persistent, but another word or two succeeds in brushing her off as we get into an elevator.

  “Which floor?” Tiav asks.

  I hold up nine fingers and bounce anxiously on my toes. Minali will have been alerted as soon as I entered the building. We’ll have to move quickly.

  The voiceprint on my com-tablet gets us through two sets of doors. A Banak police officer waits inside. Even though I told myself to expect it, I’m startled and freeze.

  Tiav doesn’t. Two punches, a knee to the groin, and a blow to the back of the head add up to an unconscious police officer who didn’t even have a chance to pull his gun. The man had focused on me and didn’t expect Tiav’s reaction any more than I did.

  “Spending half my life fighting Kal has its advantages,” Tiav says, answering the question in my eyes. “Just don’t tell my mother I did that.”

  Right, behavior not befitting an Aelo, I’m sure.

  He drags the officer to a storage locker while I work on the doors. We don’t have any time to spare, but if I can slow Minali down, I might buy enough. I enter the first level of locks easily enough, using the standard icons and my voiceprint. Then I have Dom enter some code we came up with on the drive here.

  It won’t last forever, but it’ll have to do.

  This part of the dance I can do in my sleep by now. Open up a panel, slide out two components, slip the sempu in, and tap the icon to reconfigure.

  We’re done, and they’re going to find us any second.

  “Okay, Liddi, time to finish this,” Tiav says, closing the access panel. He steps toward me but stumbles as the floor shifts beneath us. “Sparks, not now!”

  He’s right—not a great time for another tremor, though at least it waited until my head was clear of the console. It’s not a bad one, bu
t I’m pretty sure we’re about to make it worse.

  “We have to hurry. Tell Spin-Still to call the others.”

  She’s already glowing so bright, I’m afraid the heat might burn me. They’re on their way.

  They’re here.

  Ten Khua burst into life in the middle of the room. Not like on Ferinne, so calm and controlled. They writhe with the pollution of the conduits’ energy, sparking and twisting, dancing around each other as they instinctively try to escape something tied to their very foundation.

  It’s gotten bad. But they’re strong, holding themselves together and staying in this room despite the nearness of a conduit—the source of their pain. One for each of my brothers, to pair with his conduit. One for Tiav and one for me, to complete the chain and pull them out.

  Hopefully.

  “Unidentified energy signatures in Conduit Lab, Level Nine.”

  Leave it to the computer to state the obvious. If Minali had any doubts about where we are, she doesn’t now. All I can do is hope my locks will hold as Tiav and I get to work. We take the remaining sempu disks from our pockets, one to bring each Khua to the same “frequency” we’ve tuned the conduits to, and set them on the floor in a circle. Or as close as we can get to a circle while the room’s shaking. Spin-Still burns even hotter, warning the others not to join with the disks until we’re ready.

  We’re as ready as we’ll get once we stand back from the circle. I take Spin-Still off my neck so I can hold her in my hand. The heat is just about as much as I can take.

  The other Khua fly to their sempu like drops of water joining together, and the room explodes. Not literally, but the blast of light and color sends Tiav and me both back a step. The shaking stops, but I’m not sure whether it’s because the tremor’s done or the force of the Khua overpowers it.

  Just like on Ferinne, each Khua forms a length of energetic fabric centered on its sempu. Only now, with no spires to confine them, the fabric extends to the edges of the room, floor and ceiling. And with ten of them, they intersect each other, forming seams of searing-white energy. But not all at the same point, and that’s what we need. One intersection, all together.