A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  “It’s not the time for that kind of talk,” she says. “They wouldn’t understand how she . . .”

  The rest of her sentence is lost as my ears pick up a sound from the front of the ’wam: the sigh of our front door opening. My father is home. Lungs fluttering, I scramble away from my mother’s study and into the bathroom, turning on the water in the slim bathing cell. I don’t step in the water yet: I wait, my hands shaking, still half-dressed, until I hear my father make his way down the hall and into my parents’ room.

  I finish shedding the skinsuit, unfastening my chest wrap, and finally step into the cell, careful to keep my mouth closed. I rinse my body off thoroughly, letting the water run over my scalp and through my braids. I don’t have time to wash them tonight. I must finish quickly: it takes a lot of energy from our surplus to bathe, and I don’t need another grievance to add to the list my father already has. I step out, drying myself with the largest size cloth from the wall holes and wrapping myself in it.

  When I slide the door open, I poke my head out into the hall. There’s a light in my mother’s study and a light in my parents’ room. Separate again, I think. I pause in the hallway one more time, and I can hear each of their voices murmuring: two rooms, two conversations. I enter my own room, where I unsheathe from the wrap like a hatching insect. I take the little bottle of jocada oil from my desk and sit on the edge of the bed to oil my scalp. Usually the feeling of the warm oil and the pads of my fingertips relaxes me, but the events of the day churn through my head in an endless parade of shadows. When I lie down, restless, it’s as if the philax is lying beside me, his fear shortening my every breath.

  I don’t remember falling asleep, but my room is bathed in midnight when the sound of my parents’ bedroom door wakes me. My father’s long stride moves almost soundlessly down the hall, toward the front of the ’wam. A heartbeat later, the whisper of the front door gliding open and then shut.

  Back to the Zoo, I think, but I rise and go to my small window, sliding the shade aside. It feels strange watching him like this, but in a way it’s comforting: to see him and love him without the burn of his eyes staring back. I follow the shadow of him as he moves down the path, but instead of toward the labs, he veers deeper into the commune. Odd. I lean sideways in the narrow window to keep watching.

  He stops at the base of the tower that rises against the moonlight like a fang. Something curls in my heart: a sinking feeling, like watching a bird about to be crushed in the talons of a predator. But there is no shadow other than my father’s; he places his hand against the slick trunk of the tower and leans heavily forward, as if it’s the only thing in the world keeping him up. I watch until the clouds shift over the moon and the commune is lost in black.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Worm pulls through the Paw’s gates a little after dawn, its geothermal energy panel gleaming blue. I’d been all but sleepwalking until Rondo emerged, but at the sight of him sleep is a memory. We stand apart, surrounded by the other Paw students, everyone yawning except Rondo. Something about him wires me, but the sluggishness brought on by sleeping poorly empties my brain of interesting things to say. The kids sit and eat slices of hava that their parents have prepared for them, and I wish I had some too, to have something to do with my hands. When the Worm comes to a stop outside the main dome and the driver signals us to climb on, Rondo herds the kids aboard as if he’s been living in the Paw all his life.

  When I get on the Worm, he’s in my seat. And although he can’t possibly have known this, when I stand next to him in the aisle and stare, he gives me a quiet smile.

  “I figured you’d sit up front,” he says. He’s already moved over to make room for me. In my seat. “First off the Worm, so first into the Greenhouse.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say, sitting down.

  The ride to the Greenhouse isn’t long: the building is situated behind the Paw, on another small rise in the land. The Greenhouse is actually in the center of the main research compounds, the others spread around it like a honeycomb. Except the Council’s building, where all the meetings about the happenings in N’Terra are held. It’s the newest of the domes, and I haven’t laid eyes on it, as neither of my parents have offered to take me when they go. Apparently it sits just beyond the arrangement of the compounds, like a satellite observing our little solar system.

  Rondo is so close his arm brushes mine when he breathes deeply. He inhales and I turn to catch whatever it is he’s about to say to me when I realize his words are directed at the driver.

  “Nice morning, isn’t it?” he says.

  “I fail to see what’s so nice about it,” Draco replies. I should have warned Rondo not to talk to him—Draco is always irritable. He’s an old man: too old, some have said, to be driving the Worm. But trying to get the steering column out of his hands would be tempting fate.

  “Well, you have us, don’t you?” I’m surprised to hear the humor in Rondo’s voice. Only a few words exchanged with Draco and already he seems to have pinpointed what makes the old man tick. Or what ticks him off, to be more specific.

  Draco makes a growling sound as the Worm turns a corner. Somewhat roughly, I think, as if Draco imagined trying to send Rondo off the side. I swallow a laugh.

  “You?” Draco says when he’s done growling. “The only thing my morning wouldn’t be complete without is this drive. You don’t even enter the equation, young man.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Rondo says, straight-faced. “I think you might be lonely if you drove without us. Otherwise what would be the point?”

  “The point,” Draco scoffs. I can’t see his face, only his hands on the steering column: wizened and deeply tanned. “The drive itself is the point. When I was a young man on a planet you know nothing about, I’d drive for miles on my own. Miles!”

  “Going where?”

  “Nowhere! Can’t do that here.” His hands tighten on the steering column, some of the color fading from them as he squeezes hard. “Can’t waste the energy. Besides, our hosts wouldn’t have that, would they?”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t be dense, young man. The Faloii.”

  Draco pronounces it differently than what I’ve learned is correct—he condenses its three syllables into two, as if the third isn’t worth enunciating. Rondo catches my eye, raises his eyebrow. I keep staring—something about Rondo’s eyes don’t let you go. Held captive by his irises, I only hear the tail end of Draco’s gripes.

  “Dr. Albatur will change that though,” the old man complains. “People can’t live as tenants forever. Faloiv is ours now too. They’d do well to get used to that.”

  At the mention of Dr. Albatur’s name, I finally turn my eyes away from Rondo.

  “What does Dr. Albatur plan to do?” I ask.

  “Take back control,” Draco grates. “You kids are too young to know: you don’t understand anything but your sad, small world. But at one point, we made the rules. We wanted to build? We built. We wanted to drive?” He slaps one palm against the steering column. “We drove!”

  I have more questions, but the Worm jerks to a stop—not as gently as it usually does. Draco turns to Rondo and me with a sour expression.

  “Off.”

  We get off.

  Our Worm is gone in a heartbeat—Draco enjoying his drive—but the Worms from the other compounds are pulling up now; I put the old man out of my head, squinting in the sun for the vessel from the Newt. Alma will be on it and I have things to tell her. Looking for her, I see Jaquot step off the Worm from the Beak and we briefly make eye contact. I look around for Alma, but as usual she sees me first.

  “Octavia,” she calls, with a gesture of her hand to come meet her. Alma doesn’t say much without a hand gesture accompanying it.

  She steps off the Worm from the Newt, her hair an enormous cloud around her head. It’s different almost every day: some days she braids it to her scalp like me, some days she gathers it into six or more puffs. Today nothing restrains it—an explosion of
soft brown.

  “Look at you,” I say, greeting her with a shoulder bump.

  She smiles her wide smile.

  “My hair is getting so long. My mother says her grandparents called this an Afro.”

  “That’s correct,” says a voice I know to be Dr. Espada’s. Our teacher stands in the doorway of the Greenhouse, his arms folded and his smile broad. “One of the most regal hairstyles in the galaxy. The captain of the Vagantur wore one. Captain Williams.”

  Dr. Espada doesn’t wear a white coat like the other scientists: he says it gets in his way when he’s teaching. Which is true. He gesticulates a lot, like Alma. She would make a great teacher as it is, so her gestures put her ahead of the curve.

  “Oh?” says Alma, patting her hair gently. “I like the sound of that.”

  Dr. Espada gestures for us to come into the Greenhouse, where the younger kids are already trailing off to, led by Dr. Yang, who taught us when we were younger. Dr. Espada will be my last teacher—after him, the Zoo.

  “What’s on the agenda, Doc?” says Alma, the first through the door after him. I follow before the other greencoats start to push in for good places.

  “Always so eager.” Dr. Espada laughs. “Take your seats, tortoises. We have lots of new material to cover.”

  “What are tortoises?” Alma says quickly.

  “Ahh. A reptile from the Origin Planet. Very slow.”

  “I see.” Alma’s round face is serious, her eyes squinted. I shake my head at her, laughing. The rest of us roll our eyes when Dr. Espada and the other whitecoats use words that have no place on Faloiv, but Alma mentally records each one, as if they might be worth something later.

  Alma and I take our seats down front, closest to the transparent display board where most of Dr. Espada’s presentation will appear. Rondo chooses a seat behind me, and my entire body stiffens. He never sits here—always in the back with Jaquot and other Beak dwellers. Jaquot even shoots his friend a quizzical look, glancing undecidedly toward the back row, before sitting down next to him. I try to act like I don’t notice, straightening my back.

  “What’d you do on your rest day?” Alma asks me, settling in and powering on her slate. “I sent you a message but you didn’t write back.”

  I swallow. I don’t want to talk about what happened in the Beak here in class. Too many opportunities to be overheard—specifically by Rondo.

  “All right, let’s get started,” Dr. Espada begins, and I can’t help but feel relieved that we’re interrupted. A gentle hum rumbles through the walls as Dr. Espada powers on the three-dimensional projector, the sound of energy being drawn from the Greenhouse’s solar store. He’s just raising his hands to start gesticulating, when his eyes flick to the doorway, away, and then back again in a double take.

  “Oh,” he says, and his hands drop.

  The heads of my classmates turn as if attached to a single curious neck. It’s rare that class is disrupted: I can recall only one other time, when the Slither was flooding, that we were excused early. But the person in the doorway doesn’t look urgent as if an emergency has brought her. She glides into the classroom.

  “Council,” Alma murmurs in my ear, just as I glimpse the gold Council pin on the breast of the woman’s lab coat—a delicate likeness of the Vagantur surrounded by five circles representing the compounds.

  “May I come in?” the woman says, though she’s already in. Her voice is unexpected for someone so broad, its tenor reedy and thin like a blade of grass.

  “I . . . of course,” Dr. Espada says.

  “Dr. Albatur has sent me to make an announcement,” she says, turning to us. I note the frown that flickers across Dr. Espada’s mouth.

  “He couldn’t have come himself?” Alma whispers. “Everybody knows he doesn’t actually do any of his own research.”

  I conceal my smile. I’ve heard my mother say the same thing—that it was his long rambling speeches that got him elected, not his work.

  “An announcement? Has something happened?” Dr. Espada says.

  “You could say that.” The councilwoman shoots him a flash of teeth. Her smile remains focused on him a beat longer than is called for, and I’m not surprised when he doesn’t smile back. Her expression is like the painted clay decoy animals used in some field experiments. False. Hollow.

  “There has been an exciting breakthrough in N’Terra,” the woman says. She spreads the fingers on each hand wide like two fans. “Tomás, could you please bring up a photo of a myn?”

  “Certainly.”

  A moment later, we all gaze up at the image of a fish presented before us, slightly blurry: it’s light gray in color with a long wispy dorsal fin, eyes an opaque orange in sharp contrast to the dull color of its body.

  “And now an oscree, please,” the councilwoman says. She still hasn’t told us her name.

  Alongside the fish appears an image of the common oscree, its delicate wings folded along the length of its body.

  “Two different animals,” the councilwoman says. “Two different species. And yet today we have discovered that they have more in common than we could have ever predicted.”

  She pauses. I dart my eyes at Dr. Espada and find that his face has lost its frown. Instead, every wrinkle seems to have been laid smooth. It’s like looking at a mask.

  “Would anyone like to hazard a guess?” the councilwoman goes on. She lets her eyes drift across the room, and as they wander through my row, I swear they pause on my face for just an instant too long. I wonder, my breath becoming shallow, if Dr. Albatur had told her about me, if I’m already getting a reputation in the Zoo.

  “Myn and oscree? How about”—Jaquot draws out the words comically—“they instantaneously die of boredom when they come across each other in the wild?”

  A subdued current of laughter courses through the room, and the councilwoman’s hollow smile widens. Her eyes don’t change. I glance back at Jaquot and find him reclining in his chair, grinning. Ordinarily I would be throwing ocular poison in his direction, but today I send a subtle salute, which he accepts with a kingly nod.

  “I was under the impression that your students were erudite,” the councilwoman says, turning her teeth on Dr. Espada again, whose neutral mask falters. Jaquot’s smile fades. “Apparently not. So I’ll get right to it. In these two unrelated species, we have a confirmed study that proves myn and oscree are able to communicate without any means of physical or aural input.”

  “Excuse me.” Alma beats me in breaking the silence. “What does that mean exactly? Psychically? If they’re communicating without physical or aural signals, then you mean they’re communicating . . . how? Telepathically?”

  “Someone is paying attention after all,” the councilwoman says, beaming, but Alma doesn’t smile. “Yes, that’s what our studies appear to conclude. Preliminary studies began by exploring intraspecies communication and found that mammals may be communicating psychically. Then, thanks to Dr. English’s research, we realized there was more to it.”

  “Dr. English?” Dr. Espada says quickly.

  “That’s correct,” the councilwoman says, and this time her gaze is definitely on me, that empty smile lasering in on me with almost predatory intensity. “Samirah English, that is.”

  The class claps, as we always do when one of our parents is recognized for a breakthrough in N’Terran science, but I barely hear it. I sat in the kitchen with my mother last night, eating and talking, and she didn’t mention this discovery at all—she just disappeared into her study and whispered about pulling me out of the not-yet-announced internships. A movement from Dr. Espada catches my eye—he reaches for his slate at his desk, typing something in a flurry of silent finger taps while the councilwoman resumes her speech.

  “Quiet now,” she says, her hands fanning out again. “There’s one more thing. As you know, under current policy, you won’t be assigned to a specialty of study until you’re eighteen, after you’ve shown some aptitude for a particular branch. And then won’t b
e in the labs until you’re twenty-one, after extensive guided research.”

  Everyone is holding their breath. I feel Rondo’s eyes drilling into the back of my head. Dr. Adibuah’s rumor is already at the front of my mind when the councilwoman continues.

  “As you can imagine, this new discovery is significant and could change the way we gather information about survival on this planet. There will be shifting priorities in N’Terra. So as of next week, students sixteen and older will have the opportunity to take part in an internship in one of our research compounds. We’ll also be introducing children to hands-on procedures at age ten, and shortening their time in the Greenhouse. . . .”

  It’s like being in a bubble at the center of an explosion—around me, scholarly decorum is shattered with the roar of exhilaration, the room dissolving into chatter. The councilwoman has more to say about children getting less formal Greenhouse instruction, but her voice is lost. Alma is standing, gripping my arm and shaking it as Jaquot fake-brags about how he’d already known about internships. Somehow the excitement doesn’t sink into my skin—I’m watching the councilwoman slip out of the room, Dr. Espada’s eyes on her back as if observing a dangerous species in the wild. I don’t hear the notification from my slate over the din of the classroom, but I see it light up and tap the mouth icon that appears. It’s a message from Rondo.

  Interspecies telepathy. So even if I was a bird, I could still tell you you’re pretty, it says.

  I stare at the black text for a moment, allowing the feeling of pleasure to overtake the gloom the councilwoman left behind—even if I’m the only one who feels its shadow. The text is like a wave of sunshine that sweeps down from my head to my chest.

  That’s assuming a bird would even find me attractive, I type back.

  I would say your beauty is pretty much universal.

  I don’t know what to say to this. My fingers tingle as if they have their own message they’d like to send. Alma, sitting again now that Dr. Espada is attempting get the class under control, leans over. I minimize my messages with one swift stroke.