A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  “I don’t care what they are,” Alma says, running her hands gently over the surface of a round orange specimen. “I just want to stare at them.”

  Almost as if we agreed to do so, we all allow ourselves to admire the contents of the room for a few minutes.

  “Nobody younger than twenty-one has ever been this close to this stuff before,” Jaquot says. At first I think he’s as filled with wonder as I am, but then he adds with a laugh: “I hope I don’t break one! They’ll kick us out.”

  The idea of him breaking one of these eggs makes me want to break one of his bones.

  “It makes sense that this is where they would start us,” Yaya says, studying the screen of her slate on which she’s pulled up the classification matrices. “There are so many subtle variations between types of eggs. If we can tell these apart, we can tell animals apart easily.”

  Once we’ve gotten over our awe we get to work, picking up on those subtle differences as we sort. There are differences in color but also in shapes and textures. Reptilian eggs are mostly oblong, and mammalian eggs tend to be rounder, little hints we use to make identifying them a bit easier. We find large empty bins at the back of the room and use them to sort the eggs by class, the bins filling as time ticks by. I pause as I pick up a globular violet egg with a texture like tiny pebbles.

  I stroke its surface and it leaves my skin feeling tingly. Rubbing my fingers together, I feel the sensation traveling up my arm. Alarmed, I put the egg back in the bin it came from, as quickly as I can without dropping it. I glance up, my eyes searching the room for Rondo, but he’s absorbed in trying to identify a smooth blue egg, lost in his slate’s matrices. I open my mouth to call him only to close it again, knowing that if I attract his attention I’ll attract everyone else’s too. I can’t touch my arm through my skinsuit, but I continue rubbing my fingers together, trying not to be too frantic as the tingling dulls into something difficult to describe—as if under my clothing, my arm is transforming into air.

  “Are you stuck on one?” Alma says. She hasn’t spoken directly to me since we arrived in the Zoo, and I can tell from her tone she’s trying to break the thin layer of ice that’s crept up between us.

  I look away from my tingling hands and up into her eyes. It’s as if the brown of her irises drives the sensation out of my mind, because my skin abruptly feels like skin again, the vibrating residue on my hands gone. I feel nothing, and when Alma comes over, scooping up the violet egg I’d just put down, I can only stare wordlessly as she places it in the mammalian bin. She doesn’t rub her fingers, she doesn’t pause or look troubled.

  “The egg . . . ,” I start, but Yaya turns her eyes on us, listening, and I realize, with a shade of nausea, that whatever I just felt might be the reason my mother sought to keep me out of the Zoo: some hidden weakness that I’m barely concealing. One word from Yaya might get me booted. “Yeah, I was stuck. But I’ve got it now. Thanks.”

  “Are there any animals that don’t lay eggs?” Jaquot says, and I’m grateful that his interruption draws Yaya’s attention. “We could build a whole new compound with these damn things.”

  “I think it’s fascinating,” Alma says. “I do wonder how long we’ve been in here though.” She stands by the reptilian bin with one knee bent, her hip pushed out. Her hair, braided today like mine, is covered by the gauzy headwrap the procedure file ordered us to wear. We all wear them, but she’s tied hers with a high knot to give it a decorative flair.

  “Three hours,” says Rondo.

  “I wonder if we get food,” says Yaya, stifling a yawn.

  As if on cue, the doors at the front of the room slide open. I expect to see my father, but it’s another whitecoat. I’ve seen him before in the commune, always looking busy and rushed. He’s no different now and doesn’t even greet us.

  “How many garifula eggs have you sorted so far?” he says.

  My brain scrambles to find an answer. I haven’t been looking at the totals, just entering numbers for each egg I sort. I’ve been busy admiring the specimens, letting my mind wander. I open my mouth to provide some reason why we don’t have that information, but Yaya answers instead.

  “One hundred and twelve,” she says without hesitation.

  “Good,” the whitecoat says, already melting back out into the corridor. “Come with me. It’s your allotted time to eat. I’ll be taking you to the Atrium.”

  “Yes, sir,” she says, and it seems she has now established herself as the leader of our little class. I make a mental note to find a way to distinguish myself later.

  We troop out into the hallway where the whitecoat had gone. I don’t see him anywhere. We stand there, alone, and it feels cold compared to the sorting room: the eggs seemed to lend a warmth to the air. Despite the chill, the hallways beckon to me. I’m considering taking a few steps back down the impossibly long entrance corridor, just to peek into some of the previously empty research rooms, when the squat whitecoat reappears. He tells us to follow him, Yaya leading the way under the glaring artificial lights. Out here, away from the warmth of the eggs, I realize how sluggish I am. My energy feels as if it has leaked out of my veins and pooled invisibly on the stark white floor. Alma falls back from the group and walks beside me.

  “It feels so weird,” she says in a soft voice. We must speak quietly if we don’t want our words to bounce off the walls.

  “What?”

  “No windows. I’m used to seeing the sky.”

  I look up, expecting to find the transparent ceiling of all the domes in our compounds, including the Greenhouse. But my eyes meet only glaring white lights.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “I hadn’t even noticed until now. Maybe that’s why I feel so tired.”

  A cluster of whitecoats makes its way toward us, and we stand to the side to give them room as they pass us in the hall. Two women and one man, all with serious looks on their faces, murmur softly to one another. I catch a thread of their conversation as they hurry by.

  “They should just build it anyway,” the man says. “Damn the landing agreement.”

  “Truly,” his colleague says. “Those people are a threat to our safety.”

  “If you can even call them that,” the second woman whispers. “Dr. Albatur’s right—we need a barrier.”

  “Did you hear that?” I whisper to Alma.

  “Hmm?”

  “Ah . . . nothing.”

  I dart my eyes around, looking for Rondo, but he’s several paces ahead. The white-clad trio disappears down the hallway. I can only assume they were talking about the Faloii. A barrier? Rondo sees me lagging and drops back to join us.

  “I’ve never even seen some of these people before,” he says as another group of whitecoats passes.

  “The woman with the freckles used to live in the Newt,” says Alma.

  “It’s easy to forget how many of us there are,” I say. “With everybody in different compounds. There’s gotta be hundreds of us.”

  “There were already five hundred people on the Vagantur when it landed,” Rondo says. “Over two hundred of them were scientists. And that was over forty years ago.”

  The whitecoat is leading us to doors at the end of the corridor. As we approach them, the doors open and two whitecoats enter the hallway. With them comes a scent from what I realize must be the Atrium, its doors still wide open. Inside there are groups of whitecoats sitting and talking at various long platforms. The light is softer, and I know even before walking through the entry that the space ahead has a transparent domed ceiling: the light we see is the sun. I feel like one of the myn that’s been flopping on a bank, gasping for air, finally tossed back into the compound’s stream.

  “What’s that smell?” Alma asks.

  I ignore her, taking in our surroundings. It’s a dome much smaller than our commune, and smaller than the main dome too. Thirty or so whitecoats sit and stand at various platforms, some at ground level with us and some above on a small hilltop, into which stairs have been dug. Ogwe trees
dot the land, most of them average in size, aside from a large one growing near the center, around which a cluster of platforms have been molded from Faloiv’s abundant white clay and in front of which a short string of whitecoats has formed a line. The scientist who escorted us from the egg-sorting room gestures toward the central ogwe.

  “You can get your food there. Take your time eating. Someone will come get you when it’s time to return to your duties.”

  He removes himself without another word, marching back the way we came. Jaquot is already making a beeline for the central ogwe, leading the way with long urgent paces. I remember now that I’d skipped first meal and my stomach clenches in a gurgling fist.

  “Whatever that is, it smells amazing,” says Yaya.

  The whitecoats ahead of us in the line pass through with their platters, and I note that the platforms bearing the food are being manned by two youngish men wearing the same headwraps we wear, except theirs are green, matching their leaf-colored skinsuits. The green is nice, and I wonder if the color has a purpose or if it serves only as a demarcation of their duties. It bothers me, for some reason, the idea that wearing green as opposed to white might not have a function other than differentiation. N’Terra has always put those who study in the Zoo on a pedestal—especially since Dr. Albatur was elected—but the scowls on the faces of the men in green makes me wonder if the pedestal is higher than I thought.

  “Do we serve ourselves?” Jaquot asks, and one of the green-suited men nods.

  We take our platters and pile food onto them: hava slices, strips of zarum, the thick red paste of tangy waji. Jaquot makes a big show of loading his platter into a massive mound. In a basin at the end of the platform are some brown chunks I don’t recognize, flecked with black.

  “What’s that?” Yaya asks, pointing.

  “Zunile,” one of the greensuits says. The frown that had been etched on either side of his mouth eases a little when he looks at her, taking in her big brown eyes, the lashes that curl so dramatically they almost touch her eyebrows, her locs that reach her shoulder blades. She notices but just nods.

  The zunile doesn’t look appetizing, but new food is exciting—it takes a long time to vet whether something is safe for N’Terrans to eat. I add a small mound of it to my platter and follow Jaquot, who has made a direct path to an empty platform close to one of the smaller ogwe trees. Our group sits and eats immediately, speaking only after we’ve taken the edge off our hunger. It’s not until after I’ve taken a few bites that I realize Rondo has chosen the space next to me, and even though his leg is five inches from mine, I imagine I can feel the warmth of it. Alma catches me staring at him and bats her eyelashes exaggeratedly, stopping to laugh into her waji only when I mouth I will kill you.

  “This place is brilliant,” Yaya says, looking up and around as she chews.

  “It is,” I agree. I’m watching a row of bright red flowers. Their stamens keep extending, reaching up several feet into the air with movements so fluid they could be underwater, before slithering back down into the conical shape of their petals. “It’s so different from the rest of the Zoo in here.”

  “Seeing the sky helps,” Jaquot says. “And, you know, having good company.” He directs this to Yaya, the rest of us seemingly invisible. I take a bite of food to hide my smile, remembering how in the Greenhouse he always sat in the back row. Now I know why—that’s where Yaya sits.

  “What’s with the face?” Jaquot says, jutting his chin at me with a smile.

  “Good company does help,” I say. Then I turn to Yaya. “Matter of fact, Yaya, Jaquot was just telling me how much better our group is because of you.”

  “What?” Yaya draws her attention back from observing the Atrium, squinting like maybe she missed a punch line. Under the platform, Jaquot’s feet are searching for my shin to kick. I pull my ankles in closer to my seat.

  “A small intern pool could be tricky,” I say, trying to sound casual. “Only five? The wrong fifth could have made us all look like idiots. I mean, we all know Jaquot isn’t the sharpest scalpel in the set, so he was really happy to hear you were placed in the Mammalian Compound.”

  Jaquot glares at me until he sees that Yaya has turned her wide dark eyes on him; then his expression immediately goes smooth as glass.

  “I think he’s plenty sharp,” she says, and then dips her head to her tray of food, like she possesses only a measured volume of flirtation and is rationing the rest. Still, it was enough for Jaquot and he shoots me a grin that tells me I’m absolved. I can’t help it—I grin too.

  “Why did they build the labs like this to begin with?” Alma says. “Why wouldn’t they make everything with a transparent ceiling? It’s so much better in here.”

  “Looks like the whitecoats like it, too,” says Rondo, nodding in the direction of a platform of them, who are laughing. The serious silence that has seemed the norm in the rest of the Zoo is like a broken spell in the Atrium: hushed voices and solemnity are abandoned as whitecoats gather around the surfaces of eating platforms, stuffing food in their mouths and talking.

  “Except them.”

  I almost don’t understand Jaquot, who continues to speak with his mouth full. But he points with his eyes at a group of whitecoats sitting at a secluded platform toward the back of the Atrium. It’s almost as if they have a bubble forming an invisible atmosphere around them, deflecting the relaxed energy of the rest of the dome. Their food sits nearly untouched in front of them, their faces long and grave as they converse.

  “At least two of them are on the Council,” Rondo says. He doesn’t look at them, instead directing his gaze upward as if studying the branches of the central ogwe. Rondo has a way of seeing everything at once, missing nothing. I start to ask him how he knows they’re on the Council when even I have never been to their dome, but I realize I already know. Hacking, I think. Of course. The identity of councilmembers isn’t exactly a secret, but the fact that Rondo knows them by sight tells me he’s been doing more snooping than he’s admitted.

  I observe the councilmembers more closely: two women and two men, their gold Council pins glinting from their lapels, and one person whose face I can’t see until someone leans forward to whisper across the table, revealing him. His face stands out like a bone protruding from soil: pale and unpleasant looking, with sharp edges to his cheekbones that remind me of an insect’s mandibles. He’s leaned forward in his chair, speaking with squinted eyes to the rest of the table.

  “That’s Dr. Albatur,” I say. “The pale one. The Council Head.”

  “That’s him? We saw him in the Beak that day,” Jaquot says. I hear the hitch in his voice as he realizes what he’s broached. He pilots right around it, and I cast him a look of gratitude. “That day you and your dad came to visit.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Alma says.

  “Oh . . . well, it was no big deal,” I say. I pretend to focus on scooping waji onto bread and tell them about my encounter with Albatur outside the Beak that day with my father, the strange red hood he has to wear. I leave out everything else.

  “He seems to be okay indoors,” Alma says, eyeing him. “Did he happen to say what his condition is called? I wonder if it’s only direct sunlight that’s a problem for his skin.”

  “Could be there’s something protective in the dome’s roof,” Yaya says, pointing upward. “To block the rays and keep him safe while he’s inside.”

  “What a wretched life,” Jaquot says. “To be stuck on a planet that your body hates.”

  I think back to the day I met Dr. Albatur, his disdain for Faloiv. It’s more than his body that hates our planet, I think. He hates it too, no matter what the shopkeeper thinks.

  “What did Draco say on the Worm that day?” I muse. But Rondo only shrugs, not yet following my train of thought. “Didn’t he say Dr. Albatur plans to change things?”

  I almost mention that it had something to do with the Faloii, but I close my lips around this part of the thought. I want to think ab
out it a little longer myself.

  “I guarantee he has whitecoats working on projects that can help cure him,” Alma says. “There has to be an organism here that we can learn something from for that. I wonder if it’s genetic? I’d hate to live on this planet if I were him.”

  “I’d hate to be sitting at that table. They all look miserable,” Jaquot says, and Yaya laughs. They share a small smile. Yaya has always made herself a secret, but I’ve been hanging out with Jaquot at the Greenhouse since I was six—it still baffles me that I missed this crush of his. A key part of what we do in N’Terra is observation, but somehow I missed this. What else have I overlooked?

  “They need to eat instead of just sitting there—that would cheer them up.” Alma interrupts my thoughts, turning her gaze from the whitecoats to me. “Are you going to try the zunile, O?”

  The brown chunks are the only thing that remain untouched on my plate. They’re the source of the tantalizing smell hanging in the room.

  “I mean . . .” I raise my eyebrow at the small pile. “Do I want to?”

  “It’s actually pretty good,” Jaquot says. He puts a piece in his mouth, the massive quantities of food he heaped almost entirely consumed. “Really chewy—I can’t compare it to anything. It must be a new plant the finders discovered on one of their trips. Don’t be a coward, O. You’re supposed to be our future nutritionist.”

  “Okay, okay, fine.” I pick up one of the brown chunks between thumb and forefinger and eye it. It looks fibrous and squishy. The odor is interesting. I open my mouth and bring my hand up to drop the zunile in, when another hand appears in front of me and fastens its iron grip around my wrist.

  CHAPTER 10

  I stare blankly at the hand for a half second, but by the time I realize it’s my mother’s, she’s already released her grip.

  “Hello, everyone,” she says, smiling. “Did I scare you, Octavia? I tried to sneak up on you.”