Across a Star-Swept Sea

by Diana Peterfreund

  The excuse Persis had made at the time was that Isla needed her, that it was her patriotic duty to help her best friend as she recovered after her father’s death and adjusted to life as the unexpected and very young ruler of Albion. The court was beautiful, but if the revolution in the south had proved anything, it was that it could be as deadly as a pod of mini-orcas to a young and inexperienced monarch. Isla needed to make sure there was at least one courtier she could trust completely.

  “But you’ve been doing so well in school,” he’d said back then. “I don’t want you to lose yourself in the kind of idle pursuits that characterize most of the ladies at court.” He’d never been much for Albian courtiers. Back when every young aristo girl in Albion had been throwing themselves at his feet, he’d fallen instead for a reg who could gut a fish as easily as read a sonnet. Together, he and Heloise had made history. Persis had no intention of letting the legacy die with her generation. “Gossip and court intrigue? Darling, you’re the smartest girl on the island, not simply Isla’s spy.”

  If only he knew that Persis’s activities at court were the very smallest part of her spying. However, Persis would take each argument one at a time.

  “Papa, there’s a long tradition of such things. Look at that ancient story, where the student Horatio left school with Prince Hamlet after his father died and Hamlet needed help—”

  “And how did that story turn out again? Maybe you should stay in school.”

  Well, Horatio had survived, even if Prince Hamlet hadn’t. And anyway, Persis wouldn’t be swayed. She had more important things to deal with than school—school where they taught her that the Reduction was over, that war was a thing of the past. School, where they argued these things even as Galateans were being Reduced by the score in a war her government refused to do anything about. She couldn’t sit in a classroom while this was going on. She couldn’t.

  And she wasn’t going to let a little bout of genetemps sickness stop her now, either.

  “I can put a geographical lock on your boat, you know. You won’t be able to sail beyond Remembrance Island without my say-so.”

  “Papa! You wouldn’t!”

  “I would, and what’s more, I’m going to. I’ve never had to restrict you in this way before, Persis. You’ve always been so responsible. But I can’t have you in Galatea. Listen to Justen Helo if you don’t believe me. He has every reason in the world to be happy with the revolution and even he thinks it’s unsafe there right now. If you get on someone’s bad side down there, they won’t care that your mother is a reg. They won’t have any respect for the fact that you’re a close personal friend of the princess. In fact, that might get you into even more trouble.”

  She started to protest but he cut her off.

  “I don’t care what Citizen Aldred’s official policy is. You could get caught up by a mob and no policy in the world will help you. I don’t want you in Galatea. Period.”

  Well, that was a nonstarter. Period. The Wild Poppy would just have to find alternative transport. The spy’s missions had been doubly complicated by the day’s events. Not only would she have to find a place to stow her new Galatean charge, now she’d have to find another way to cross the sea.

  “Persis? Are we clear?”

  She nodded. “Yes, Papa.”

  He smiled. “Good. Now that this is settled, let’s discuss the rules about bringing strange young men into the house while we’re not around. You’re sixteen. I don’t know what kind of nonsense is going on at court, but this is my home.”

  Persis rolled her eyes. “Ask the servants. Justen is a perfect gentleman.”

  Torin relinquished a smile. “I knew he would be. A Helo and all.”

  Her parents were both starstruck, Persis realized with a laugh and a shake of her head. Even if Justen hadn’t been a perfect gentleman, she couldn’t imagine her father getting too enraged. And that was a good thing, since the two of them were about to embark on their little cooked-up romance. Maybe it would serve as a distraction to her parents—the idea that she’d fallen for a Helo.

  They desperately needed a distraction these days.

  As they emerged back on the terrace, Persis was gripped by a moment of fear. They’d left Justen alone with her mother. But as soon as she saw them at the table, she relaxed. Justen was talking animatedly, and Heloise Blake was laughing, a light, musical sound that wasn’t heard often enough around Scintillans these days. For a moment, Persis indulged herself with the vision of what this night might have been had everything been different. Maybe Justen Helo was the one from her fantasies: a young, talented medic she’d met on a trip to Galatea, a place where there wasn’t a war. Maybe she was simply a schoolgirl studying politics, and she and Justen could be real friends. Maybe they were all having a nice family dinner, and her mother was well, and her father was happy, and all was right in New Pacifica.

  Right. And maybe they weren’t the only living land left on Earth. Fantasies were nothing more than that, and she wasted her time imagining otherwise. So instead she pasted her most enchanting smile on her face, poured herself another glass of kiwine, and joined them at the table for another round of being pretty and giggly and useless. Justen kept up his end of the conversation, and both her parents were utterly charmed.

  “I do support gengineering,” Justen said at one point, “but unlike your friend Tero who builds games and pets, I prefer to focus on its more therapeutic aspects—”

  “Yes, but like Tero says, you never know what you might stumble across while working on something else,” Torin pointed out. “Who knows if some breakthrough might be lurking inside the code for some silly palmport app.”

  Justen seemed to be having a hard time swallowing a bit of fish. “True,” he said at last, coughing a bit. “Sometimes our discoveries are fortunate accidents. Or even unfortunate ones.”

  “Like with the genetic experiment that caused the Reduction in the first place, all those centuries ago.” Heloise shook her head sadly.

  Persis’s father quickly moved to change the subject. “Tero is such a promising young man. He and Persis have been trying to one-up each other since they were children, you know.”

  Justen’s brow furrowed.

  “In collecting admirers, I’m far ahead,” Persis said quickly, batting her eyelashes. “Tero is quite handsome with those broad shoulders of his. Like some sort of ancient warrior. But he does chatter on about the dullest subjects imaginable. All this nonsense about chemical reactions and DNA. It’s deadly boring.”

  Her parents looked scandalized, and Persis wanted to dive under the table when she imagined what they must be thinking of her. As dessert was served and kiwine flowed, she found it more and more difficult to restrain herself to flaky responses and interjections. Usually, dinners at Scintillans were one place where she could still be herself, still talk about politics and history and, yes, even gengineering like the girl who’d once beaten Tero and Isla and everyone else for top marks in school. But now, even that was taken from her. She ducked the odd looks she was getting from her father. Hopefully, he’d write her behavior off as trying to steer the conversation into a light, casual zone that would make it easy on her mother. But she could hardly bear the confused glances her mother sent in her direction. After all, how many more dinners would they have together? Could she really afford to waste any remaining masked as an empty-headed socialite?

  After dinner ended, Justen said, “Which way is my room? I’m all turned around right now.”

  “I’ll show him,” said Persis and led him down the corridor toward the guest suites. But as soon as they rounded the corner, Justen put a hand on her arm. Persis stopped short.

  “Your mother,” he said abruptly, his face impassive and somber. “How long has it been going on? Six months? More?”

  “What are you talking about?” Persis asked, though dread trickled through her veins at his words.

  “Persis, just stop. She’s managing the symptoms well, but it’s only going to go do
wnhill from here.”

  “Honestly, Citizen, I haven’t the foggiest—”

  He hissed in frustration. “You might be able to hide it from your other silly aristo friends, but I’m a medic. I know DAR when I see it.”

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  Nine

  NO ONE HAD EVER said it out loud to Persis before. Not her father, or her mother, or the family medic who shook her head and frowned during her weekly visits to Scintillans. The word was verboten. Talk of Darkening was banished from the grounds. Never mind that she saw it echoed in the eyes of each servant on the estate. Never mind that she dreaded every time she visited the court that today would be the day the whispers began. That today would be the day the story escaped and became fodder for the gossips. The day it became spoken. The day it became real.

  Did you hear about Lady Heloise Blake? Darkened. Guess that what comes of Lord Blake marrying a reg. Can you imagine? All that beauty, all that cleverness, drained away like water down a hole. I wonder if their daughter’s got it, too?

  For hundreds of years, the survivors of the wars that had cracked open the Earth and destroyed every place and person except those on New Pacifica had lived as two populations: aristo and Reduced. The few natural regs born were viewed as aberrations. Then the Helo Cure came along, promising that every child born would be normal. The cure was adopted by both nations, and the Reduction ended in a single generation. But as with the Reduction itself, the side effects were discovered too late. Dementia of Acquired Regularity was the dark underbelly of the cure, the shadow that lay over the salvation of the human race.

  It was inescapable. Gengineers could make fantastic beasts and nanotechnologists could customize every material under the stars, but no one could solve this puzzle. Just like Reduction, Darkening defied science; and again, there were those who wondered if the victims deserved their fate—if they should have been content to remain Reduced.

  Without the Helo Cure, Heloise Blake would never have grown into the brilliant, perceptive woman she once was, would never have met Torin, would never have had Persis or lived so many happy years in Scintillans. Some days, when Persis was gripped by the terror of what was to come, she remembered something her mother had said to her long ago. Something she hadn’t understood at the time.

  “Better a short life lived well.”

  At first, you might dismiss the symptoms as mere forgetfulness, a slightly spaced-out look in the eyes. But that was just the first few months. Full-blown senility followed, along with loss of muscle control, as more and more areas of the brain were compromised. The year after that came loss of speech, loss of sight, loss of hearing. Most victims wound up motionless vegetables, trapped in a prison of their minds and bodies for the final months before their brains broke down completely and they passed away at last.

  The Darkened were usually sent away to sanitariums—that is, if they didn’t take their own lives first. They’d escaped Reduction—the worst fate in the world was to be dragged back into its depths before they died.

  Which was why the word was forbidden in Scintillans. Her mother was … sick. That was all. It wasn’t Darkening. It couldn’t be. As Heloise’s parents had both died young in an accident, there was no proof that either of them had it. No proof that this was, indeed, what ailed Lady Blake.

  And since it wasn’t Darkening, there was no reason for Persis to get tested. No reason at all for her to learn whether or not she’d lose her mind and die in less than twenty-five years. No reason at all to think about what might lie in her future every single time she looked deep into a Reduced prisoner’s eyes and wondered what, if anything, they retained of their former selves while trapped in their mindless hell.

  “Persis?” Justen passed a hand before her eyes. His voice was filled with a concern Persis resented at that moment. “You do know, right?”

  “Shh!” She opened the door to Justen’s guest room and yanked him inside. “What part of ‘watch your tone’ makes you think it’s acceptable to start tossing around accusations in my home?”

  “Accusations?” Justen asked, incredulous. “It’s DAR. She didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not her fault.”

  “No,” Persis said without thinking. “It’s Persistence Helo’s.”

  Justen didn’t look away, didn’t flinch as she expected. He met her eyes, his face grave. “Yes, it is. It’s horrible. Persis, I’m so sorry.”

  Now she turned from him, from the pity on his face. They’d hidden it so well for so many months, but it had taken him seconds in her mother’s presence to see the truth. If this was the case, soon they wouldn’t be able to hide from anyone. Heloise Blake, once the darling of the Albian court, would vanish, and in her place would be a story about some reg who thought she was good enough to marry an aristo and infect the family line. Her mother would die in ignominy, the victim of a disease most aristos liked to pretend didn’t exist, because it would never touch them.

  And then what? How could Persis go on, pretending to be the perfect aristo daughter, the perfect heir to her mother’s place in court, once the truth was known? Would she even be able to keep her position? What would Isla think when she knew what kind of secret Persis had been keeping?

  “How long?” he asked again.

  “A year.” What was the point of lying anymore?

  He gave a single nod. “If so, she’s doing well. Her symptoms are exceedingly subtle. I trained in a dementia sanitarium. I know exactly what to look for in patients. I doubt the average person would even notice yet.”

  “That’s indeed a comfort,” she replied drily.

  His mouth quirked up in a rueful little smile.

  “What!” She pounced. “What is so funny about our situation?”

  Justen sobered instantly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. That was incredibly inappropriate of me. It’s just—all the times I’ve counseled families about a loved one with DAR—it’s never been an aristo before. You sound so haughty. ‘Indeed.’”

  “You are not counseling me.” He wanted haughty? She could reduce him to a cinder. How dare he come into her house and use forbidden words and ask forbidden questions and raise forbidden concerns? Helo or no, she wouldn’t allow it.

  “Has anyone been?” he pressed. “Is anyone treating her? What about you, Persis? Have you been tested?”

  To what end? What good could possibly come of knowing she had twenty-five years left to live? That she could risk her life saving Reduced aristos and end up just like one herself? That every day she spent pretending she was stupid was just a prelude to the horrible, true mental incapacity she might, like her mother, be doomed to face? “None of your business.”

  “Actually,” said Justen, straightening, “it is. It is, quite literally, my business. Or rather, my life’s work. That’s what I want to do, Persis. That’s why I became a medic, that’s why I trained in a sanitarium. My grandmother—she did something wonderful, something that saved so many people—but every time someone honors her for it, every time someone honors me, I remember DAR. I think about the people who are dying because of the cure. I want to stop it. Forever.”

  He went to his bedside table and pulled out several oblets. They were old and their surfaces were scratched and dull with age, like scuffed stones. He held them out.

  “These were Persistence Helo’s. They contain all her work. At the end of her life, she devoted every resource she could to trying to find a cure for the curse she’d unwittingly unleashed upon humanity.”

  Persis touched the oblets with a tentative hand. So the old medic Helo had been working on a solution, just as Persis had suspected. Just as she’d hoped. And here it was. In Scintillans! “How did you get these? I thought Persistence Helo left all her research to the Galatean Royal Laboratory.”

  “Which is—thanks to the revolution—under lock and key by Citizen Aldred. He gave me access to
them, back when we were on better terms. I never gave them back.”

  “You stole them?” Persis dragged her gaze up from the precious oblets to Justen’s face, afraid to even contemplate what this might mean. Yesterday, Justen Helo had saved her life. Today, he was promising to save her mother’s.

  “I had to. Unc—Citizen Aldred isn’t interested in DAR. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s even interested in helping the regs in general. Right now, the whole revolution is focused on one thing and one thing only—punishing the aristos.”

  And anyone else who got into Aldred’s way, Persis wanted to point out.

  “I can’t do the work I need to do there. That’s why I’ve come here.”

  “With stolen oblets.”

  “No one will notice they’re gone, trust me,” said Justen. “No one thinks they’re even of use, except me. I’m the only person on the lab staff who even cares about this stuff. And if I could have done the research back home, I would have stayed in Galatea.”

  So he hadn’t told them the entire truth. He wasn’t seeking asylum because of some vague philosophical objections to the shape of the revolution.

  “Galatea,” said Persis, heedless of her tone. This was not the time to play flake. She needed answers from him. All the answers. “Where you told my princess that you no longer believe in what they’re doing? Tell me, Citizen Helo, is it the torture you disagree with, or the fact that they aren’t giving your research sufficient attention?”

  His eyes met hers, keen and so intense that Persis felt the instinct to toss her hair or bat her eyes or do something to deflect the impression she was getting that Justen Helo was seeing her—really seeing her—for the first time.

  And worse, she almost wanted him to.

  But he said nothing for a long moment. “It’s both,” he whispered at last. He tore his eyes away from hers, and faced the bed. His grip on the oblets was so strong his knuckles had gone pale. “It’s all … mixed up together.”