Cry Pilot

by Joel Dane

• • •

  That night I dream I’m a cry pilot again.

  Sailors shove me toward a CAV with a thousand swaying ribbons that take the shape of my sayti’s face. She speaks in a mechanical voice. Her words are familiar and I can’t tell if I’m remembering them or if the familiarity is just part of the dream.

  Sayti tells me that CAVs crave drivers. “Pilots. Partners. To pair with their operators, to bond with them. We’re too loud for CAVs. Too complex. Like pouring a tsunami into a drinking glass. Just look at you, Maseo, growing up so fast, a hundred stories high; the reason is love, the reason is always love.”

  The dream changes and I’m a day-owl flapping through a monsoon. I’m a pair of gloves tumbling from a two-hundred-story Freehold balcony. I’m a weightless seedling floating in the Dag Bravska habitation.

  CHAPTER 40

  I’m in the pool the next morning when a new icon flashes onto my lens. My skin tingles with fear and eagerness: a deployment order!

  Except it’s not. My lens says:

  Kaytu, Maseo

  SAVED MESSAGES 6

  Whoa. Messages aren’t allowed in basic, for fear of breaking immersion. They’re not allowed at Ayko either, but I’m seeing them anyway. And they’re not even current; they represent months of backlog.

  I swim another length, savoring the moment. Look at me: Maseo Kaytu, with six messages on his personal lens. I’m such a badass that I actually feel a little weepy.

  The most recent message is from “ENSIGN ANALYST SARAV RANA.”

  I blink at the name for a second because I realize it’s Rana. She sent me a message yesterday. The other five messages came earlier. One is from Ionesca and four are official channel chum, welcoming me to my message system.

  I flick to Rana’s message, but the system won’t permit access. I flick to Io’s. No luck there, either. Apparently I can’t actually read any of the messages. Still, knowing they’re waiting gives me a shot of pleasure, and my laughter sends bubbles floating to the surface of the pool.

  I finish my laps and head across the base for classes in field repair and drone interface. I enjoy both of them, despite feeling the occasional judder of anxiety. This interlude is educational and comfortable, but the lampreys are still out there.

  It’s still our job to stop them, and Command still isn’t telling us anything useful. They can’t be as ignorant as they’re pretending.

  Apparently I’m not the only one thinking this way; that evening, Ting lenses me to come to her room. I frown to myself. We’ve barely spoken since Los Anod, and I’m not sure I want to start again.

  The truth is, I like her. She makes me laugh, and the world needs more of her kind of sweetness. I even admire her in a twisted way. Still, she’s a danger to everyone around her. A technopath is a weapon. Ting isn’t just a harmless, quirky chatterbox. She’s a quirky chatterbox with the capacity to destroy an entire enclave.

  Still, it’s hard to see her as a weapon of mass destruction when she opens her door. She’s naked except for a few swirling straps that adhere to her meager curves. I see Ting in the showers every day, yet somehow the straps change everything.

  “It’s called an ivy suit,” she tells me.

  “It’s, uh, nice.”

  “I guess because it’s all clingy and viney. Shakrabarti says it’s the next big thing. I mean, except it’s kind of little.” She twines herself around me. “We never talk anymore.”

  “Um,” I say, putting a hand on her slender hip.

  She wrinkles her nose and jabs me unsexily in the ribs. Oh. This isn’t about fun, she wants something else. She pulls me into her room and shoots me a look that’s as sharp as her ferret face.

  “We need to talk,” she says.

  I want to walk away from her, but I can’t. I just can’t. Sure, she could reach into my skull and melt my lens, but Cali could snap my neck while I’m sleeping. Pico could shoot me in the back. So what? We’re all weapons. We’re all people, too.

  So I say, “Or we could try kissing.”

  She giggles in relief and nods to a couple of visors on her desk. “I secured those and, um, the squad’s meeting in MYRAGE.”

  “Right now?”

  She nods. “I dug up a few things.”

  “Ah,” I say, and put on the visor.

  She wears the other one, even though she doesn’t need to.

  MYRAGE blurs into place around me. Before my gaze flicks to the menu, Ting sweeps me along a labyrinth of virtual paths, too fast for me to track. After a blurred journey through strange architectures, we stop in a room that looks like our training barracks.

  A moment later, most of the squad shimmers into existence around us.

  “M’bari and I have been poking around, scrutinizing the situation.” Ting brightens. “Oh! Oh! Scrutinize is like inscrutable! I mean, the scrut is the same in both—”

  “We all know that Ayko is designated a quarantine base,” M’bari interrupts.

  “I don’t.” Cali scratches her bald head. “The lampreys are catching?”

  “This isn’t physical quarantine,” M’bari tells her. “They quarantine information, too.”

  “That’s why we can’t contact anyone back home,” Ridehorse says. “We were supposed to have access after basic.”

  “No surprise there,” Jag says.

  “The corporations are doing an amazing job keeping lampreys quiet,” Ting says. “I mean, MYRAGE is designed so no single channel gets too dominant, but still. There should be chatter.”

  “There’s none?” Basdaq asks.

  “Only the teensiest,” she says. “Like urban legends and stuff.”

  “They’re trying to prevent a panic,” Voorhivey says. “While they develop a response.”

  “That’s our working theory,” M’bari says.

  Ting nods. “Yeah, except not a theory that is working necessarily, not that kind of working. It’s a theory that we’re working on is all, a provisional theory or a—”

  “We get it,” I say.

  “Oh! Right.” She flushes. “So they’re keeping things quiet, but I found a couple things.”

  “Like what?” Pico asks.

  “Experimental L-tech gear,” Ting says, and shapes form in the air behind her.

  Combat rifles with modified cans, rampart guns with nonrampart cartridges, drone-packs with mutated drakonflies, and shoulder mounted anti-armor missiles with green-glowing warheads.

  “Untried prototypes,” she continues. “Well, they tried some of them.”

  “In Los Anod,” Ridehorse grumbles.

  “Yeah, and they worked okay, except for, you know . . .”

  “The mass casualties,” Jag says.

  “They need better samples to develop better weapons.” Ting scrubs her amber hair. “To pinpoint what lampreys are. To know what they’re evolved from, where they came from.”

  “To find their weaknesses,” M’bari says.

  “See, lampreys are structurally anomalous, if that means what I think. And molecularly, too. They’re totally alien—”

  “Told you!” Cali says.

  “Not that kind of alien! Not alien alien, just strange alien. And that’s the first step. Analyzing a sample of lamprey.”

  “Like that pink goo?” Voorhivey asks.

  “Nah, the goo is worthless. Those slime trails are inert.” Ting pauses. “How come the opposite of inert isn’t ert?” She sees our faces and hurries on. “So the first step is analyzing a non-inert sample.”

  “That’s the second step,” M’bari tells her.

  “Oh! Right. First they need to get one. Which means they need to, um, control the encounter? Choose the battlefield? What’s that called?”

  “We need to control where we fight the lampreys,” Basdaq says, “instead of just chasing after them.”

 
; “But what’s that called?” Ting says.

  “Defining the battlespace.”

  Pico rolls his muscular shoulders. “We need Rana.”

  “Fuck you,” Cali snarls. “Don’t drag Rana into our shit.”

  “She’s in the Flenser fleet anyway,” Ting says. “A frillion miles away.”

  “She’s already in space?” Cali says, her voice a low rumble.

  Ting nods. “She’s probably interplanetary by now.”

  “Fuck me, that’s hot,” Cali breathes. “I’m gonna need a few minutes alone.”

  “Can we get to the point?” M’bari asks.

  “Oh!” Ting blurts. “Sorry! This is the other thing I found.”

  A glowing yellowbeige squid appears in the air behind her, slowly rotating to display cut-out sections and schematics.

  Jagzenka frowns. “Is that a weapon?”

  “Looks like M’bari’s ass-tat,” Cali says.

  “It’s bait,” Ting says. “Like lures for lampreys. To attract them, like I said. To choose the battlespace.”

  “So we can dig in ahead of time,” Shakrabarti says, a predatory glint in his beautiful eyes. “And carve slices off these things.”

  “Or we can dig in ahead of time,” Ridehorse grumbles. “And get slices carved off us.”

  Ting wrinkles her pointy nose. “The research units developed this bait to, um . . .”

  “To what?” Shakrabarti asks.

  “I can’t think of another word for bait,” Ting explains. “They developed bait to bait them.”

  “That’s the news,” M’bari tells us. “Lamprey bait. They’re sending us fishing.”

  Cali grunts. “About time.”

  “With the same L-tech that blew up Los Anod?” Jag asks.

  Ting highlights one of the modified weapons. “These are new cans. I don’t understand how they work. Through osmosis, I guess, attacking the lamprey’s membranes.”

  “Brane cans,” Cali says.

  “Cali’s finally using her brain,” Pico says.

  “Not that kind of brain,” Ting tells him, giggling. “The membrane kind of brane, and the system just flagged us for meeting inside an unofficial privacy shield, so I’ll drop this link and also I’m not allowed—”

  MYRAGE vanishes and I’m back in Ting’s room, disoriented and blinking as I remove my visor.

  “—to kiss you,” she finishes.

  “What? The system is flagging us?” I shake my head. “You’re not allowed to kiss me?”

  “Rana asked me not to.”

  I want to ask her about the bait and the brane cans. Instead, I gape at her. Rana told Ting not to kiss me?

  “Except she didn’t say kiss,” Ting says. “And she didn’t ask.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She rubs the nape of her neck. “And she, uh, she wants to talk to you.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “I asked.”

  “When? What? You contacted her through quarantine?”

  “Yeah, is that okay? It’ll take a while to put a secure link together, though. Flenser tech is tricky. And also, Mase? Um, I meant to tell you . . .”

  I’m afraid she’s going to thank me for the stem. We’ve never said a word about that, and I don’t want to start now. “What?”

  “We’re officially graduating Anvil tomorrow,” she says.

  “Why bother? Why now?”

  “So we’re not trainees when they send us against lampreys, I guess.” She quirks a smile. “We’re really soldiers now.”

  “It’s been a long road.”

  “Yeah. And I guess . . .” Ting wrinkles her pointy nose. “I guess this is just the beginning.”

  CHAPTER 41

  After the corporations glassed Sweetwater and evacuated Vila Vela, they provided resettlement services. Non-aligned families got new homes and new lives in new enclaves. Resistance fighters got blinders and vocational placement services.

  Most orphans were adopted into affinity families, kinship faiths, and foster moshavim. Low-resource families and troubled kids ended up in refugee camps, staffed by caring professionals in vibrant Freeholds.

  Except when you’re a troubled kid, caring and vibrant sound like challenges. The staff did their best, but we did our worst—and we had more scope.

  I lived in a twenty-seventh-floor refugee camp in the Coastal Vegas Freehold. My world suddenly overflowed with sinewy music and atrium theatrics, responsive art, and a thousand new scents. The beds were soft and the meals nutritious. The MYRAGE classes encouraged us to follow our passion while gently guiding us to master the basics.

  I hated the staff, I hated the music. I hated the comfort and the peace and the kindness. I wasn’t the only one. The older kids had already formed sugarbee gangs that spread like moistmold through the camp, and they didn’t take kindly to new kids who refused to join.

  A month after I landed, I met Ionesca, a gawky girl from an enviro cult, with mottled skin and scarred hands. She was a little younger than me, a little shorter, and almost never spoke.

  “You see her?” another fugee boy asked me. “Her cult scavved the Goo Growth. They fujjing discomposed.”

  I looked at the girl. “They scavenged in the terrafixing?”

  “You tip the Goo Growth, newboy?”

  “They lived in the—the Goo Growth?”

  “Yah,” the boy said. “She’s the solovisor.”

  “The sole survivor?”

  He mocked my accent and I didn’t see the girl again until the sugarbees cornered us outside the baths. We ended up back to back. Me and this strange, otherworldly girl roped with the muscle of a short, hard life. Nobody survived the New Growth, not for long. I wanted to ask if her people really lived there; I wanted to ask what she’d seen.

  Instead, the sugarbees told us that we belonged to them now: fresh meat, new pledges.

  Ionesca threw herself at them. She was big, even then, and half-wild. She was tough, too. She knew the treacherous wilderness, she knew the scents and sounds of the terrafixing, but she didn’t know shit about fighting.

  They stomped her.

  I knew fighting and I also knew the odds. There were too many of them. Still, I fought with every scrap of my rage and self-loathing . . . and also got stomped.

  Still, there was nothing in the refugee camp either of us wanted to face alone. From that moment, we stuck together. We lost every fight for months.

  We spent our nights huddling together for comfort, and one morning Ionesca told me her story. Her mothers and father had rejected the enclaves, the tracks and towers, the artificial toxicities that jutted from the terrafixing for human habitation. They joined an e-cult with a simple creed: walk away. Walk away from the cities and lose yourself in the embrace of Edentide.

  “Just stroll into the New Growth and try to live there?” I asked, dumbfounded. “In the wilderness? People can’t survive in the Growth.”

  “Adapt or die,” Ionesca said.

  “That’s a bit harsh.”

  She brushed my black eye with her split lips. “Just like everywhere else. What do you think the terrafixing changes?”

  “Flora, fauna. Microbial shit. Bioregional distinction, the atmospheric mix, even remorts.”

  “You’re one of the things on that list, Mase.”

  “You calling me a microbial shit?”

  Io’s voice was deep, but her laugh was squeaky and warmed my heart. “You’re fauna. I’m fauna. The terrafixing is fixing us, too. Humanity. We’re not the same anymore. We unleashed a treatment on the planet and we’re the ones being cured.”

  “You’re as loco as your parents.”

  She play-shoved me and the light caught the patchwork of color on her skin. “We’re not meant to live like this, separated from nature. We’re
animals locked in a cage we built.”

  “We’re cage-building animals. Anyway, the terrafixing is designed not to affect humans.”

  “It’s designed to adapt. And so are we. Close your eyes.”

  “What? No, I—”

  “Close your eyes, Mase.” She trailed her fingertips from my eyebrows to my cheeks. “Shh. The world is so much bigger than we think.”

  She called the glowing spots behind my eyelids phosphenes, and told me that biophotons shine inside human eyes, like the light from bioluminescent fish. She said that her parents, her people—her cult—coaxed the phosphenes into an icon, a mandala, a fractal pattern of New Growth swirling with fronds and forests, butterfly antennae and tectonic plates.

  “That’s how we remind ourselves that we are Edentide, and it is us.”

  She showed me how to remove my self from myself, to “grow the flow”—as her mothers said—of the terrafixing. To step beyond my fear and rage. No judgment, no fear. To slow my breathing, control my pulse, and draw an ever-shifting, ever-evolving mandala in my mind until I felt no distance between the wind in a forest canopy and the blood in my heart.

  Bullshit, right?

  Still, it worked. My anger cooled, my self-loathing dulled, my heart beat slow and sure. Plus it was cheaper than soft-drugs and more important to Ionesca than food. That meditation was a memorial to Io’s lost family, and a way to claim me as her new one. She needed me to feel what she’d felt, to learn what she’d learned, to flow into the New Growth without leaving a trace.

  She taught me to master the meditation while all I taught her was brutality.

  We spent our days attending classes and exploring the Freehold; we lied and stole and fought like cornered animals. We had nobody else; we fit together like a blade in a scabbard.

  We started winning fights.

  We started attracting pledges.

  I beat three kids halfway to death in a stairwell.

  The sugarbees tried avoiding us, but we gave no quarter. Ionesca was a wild, driven girl and I was her loyal lieutenant. There was no space between us. We twined together like ivy, making each other stronger, fiercer.

  Io’s parents taught her that everything must adapt to the terrafixing, including humans, reevolved along with sandfleas and plantains, and she adapted to her new environment: the Freehold gutter, the rich soil where commerce met criminality. Fertile ground. We seized a hallway from the sugarbee gang, and then we seized the gang itself. Io prowled the atria and the stairwells. I stepped backward, into her shadow, losing myself in her. Maybe I was looking for absolution for my sins; maybe I was just trying to forget them.