A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  “Yeah, a little bit.” I force a laugh. I dropped the piece of zunile when she grabbed me and I peek at the floor to see if I can find it. When I look back up, my plate is in my mother’s hand. Walking toward the biotubes to dispose of the remains of my meal, she says over her shoulder, “Come with me, interns. It’s time to get you back to the sorting room. From what I’ve been told, you have quite a bit left to do.”

  After we drop our platters off at the biotubes, my mother turns to the group to make sure we’re all accounted for. I study her face, looking for traces of our argument yesterday. Her eyes wander to the back of the Atrium, where they fall on the platform that the bone-faced Dr. Albatur sits at. Dr. Albatur watches my mother too, his insect jaw set into a square, his eyes shining like two beetles. They keep eye contact for only a moment before he ducks his head and continues speaking to the other councilmembers. If they’re Council, why isn’t my mother sitting there with them?

  My mother turns away and leads us back out into the white hall. Her face betrays nothing, but I can sense her unrest as if it’s a scent seeping from her pores. She actually seems relieved by the distraction of my fellow interns, who pepper her with questions. Despite her reputation for brilliance, she also has a reputation for kindness: the stiffness that the presence of my father tends to induce is washed away and everyone relaxes under her smile. Yaya tails my mother closely, interrogating her with as much delight as Yaya’s studious mask allows for.

  “Dr. English, how did it feel when you first discovered that animals across different genuses and species could communicate telepathically?”

  My mother chuckles, a sound I know well and have inherited. Her laugh used to fill our ’wam, and the knowledge of its absence turns those memories into ghosts, floating hollow around me. I miss those days, when I felt like I actually knew her. Both of them. It stings even more when I realize that the answer she’s giving Yaya is a story I’ve never even heard.

  “It was incredible,” my mother says. “At first I wasn’t entirely willing to believe what I had discovered. But all the tests were conclusive, and after two or three days of checking everything twice and thrice, I allowed myself to feel excited.”

  “That’s amazing,” Yaya says, and my mother grants her a smile that brightens the whole hallway. I didn’t inherit that. Or maybe I did, but I don’t think I smile enough anymore to really know. Rondo falls back to walk alongside me.

  “Returning to your precious eggs,” he says. I wonder if he means to make his voice low and soft like that, or if it’s just how it comes out. The texture of his words almost makes me forget about my sadness—I can’t believe talking to him used to make me nervous.

  “I don’t know about precious,” I say. “So. You knew that two hundred of the original N’Terrans were scientists. More hacking, I assume?”

  “How else?” He shrugs. Protocol is so important in N’Terra and Rondo just . . . doesn’t give a damn.

  “Always hacking. I thought you were into music.” I bump him with my shoulder.

  “I can’t be interested in more than one thing?”

  “Well, N’Terra hasn’t outlawed that.”

  He bumps me back.

  “Yet,” he counters. “To be honest, the only reason I started messing around with computers was because the whitecoats are so secretive about everything. I would love to just focus on music but . . .”

  “But, again, we have no musical compound,” I tease.

  “I’d make one,” he says. “But it’s like no one on the Council cares about anything except expanding N’Terra.”

  “So you started hacking to . . . what? Make a point?”

  He laughs lightly.

  “Not necessarily. Just boredom, I guess. They won’t let me study what I want, so I study them instead.”

  “Watching the watchers,” I say with mock solemnity. “Very deep.”

  “I don’t think I’m the only one who does it though,” he says, his smile fading. “When I was doing some looking around last night, I saw someone else in the files too.”

  I steal a glance ahead at my mother to make sure she’s not listening—she’s fully engaged in conversation with Yaya and Alma. Jaquot has fallen some distance behind us, alone, but he’s in his own world, chewing a piece of fruit he’d brought out of the Atrium. Also against protocol, I would imagine, but that’s Jaquot for you.

  “Who was it in the files?”

  “Don’t know. Their access point was encrypted.”

  “Which means what exactly? They were purposefully covering their tracks?”

  “Yep.”

  “And do you encrypt your access point?”

  He twists his mouth to the side and gives me a sidelong glance, a nonverbal obviously.

  “Good,” I say. “If you got caught, they’d probably kick you out of the Zoo for a decade—you’d be on sanitation duty until your hair was gray.”

  “And?” he fires back. “Like I said, I don’t even want to be in here.”

  “If they let you play the izinusa on sanitation duty, I’ll come listen on my breaks.”

  He pauses and gives me a long look, his lips twitching in a smile before he goes on.

  “Why are we talking about me? We should be talking about you. Wandering out into the main dome at night spying on whitecoats? Pretty sure they’d kick you out for that too, and I doubt you’d be as cool about it.”

  I almost expect the hypothetical idea of being barred from the labs to affect me on a gut level, prepare my stomach for the flood of theoretical panic. But it doesn’t come. Instead I feel something almost like . . . relief? Like sand washing away to expose something shining and hidden under its drifts.

  “We didn’t get caught, did we?”

  “No,” he says, returning the smile. It’s a small brief offering of teeth, but it feels like a gift. “Not yet anyway.”

  My mother, Alma, and Yaya have reached the doorway of the sorting room and turn to wait for us to catch up. Alma raises her eyebrow at me in a teasing way, but I dodge making eye contact with her, afraid of what my face might betray.

  “This is where I leave you,” my mother says, and the door opens to admit us. “Three more hours and you’ll be free, if you have the rest of the eggs sorted by then.”

  Jaquot groans, making Yaya laugh—she’s in love with him, I decide: only love makes people laugh at stupid things like this—and our group files through the doorway. I’m about to go back in too, my mind still on Rondo’s smile and wondering if maybe I’m stupidly in love as well, when my mother reaches out and touches my arm lightly.

  “Octavia, a moment, please.”

  She says it in her scientist voice: One moment please, colleague. But scientist voice or not, I still hear mother voice in its undertones. All the warm feelings that had fluttered about when walking with Rondo crumble back down into the shadows of my stomach.

  “How’s it going?” she says, this time in her mother voice. But now it’s the scientist voice I hear in the undertones, the roles swapped but never really independent of the other. I wonder if it’s because she’s in the Zoo and the whitecoat voice is hard to shake in work territory, or if it’s because I’m both daughter and project.

  “Fine,” I say. “It’s a good group.”

  “Are they enjoying the experience?” she says.

  “I think so. How long do you think our work will be limited to the sorting room?”

  “Do you not like working with the eggs?”

  “No, I do. I was just curious.” The thought of the violet egg and the tingling it had left on my skin emerges out of the shadows of my brain, but I push it away hurriedly, as if she might see it.

  “How do they make you feel?”

  My gut ties itself into an elaborate knot. Is there surveillance equipment in the sorting room? Has she been watching me, observing my reactions to the specimens?

  “Um . . . how do eggs make me feel?”

  She nods, as if this is the most natural question in the w
orld.

  “Um . . . fine, I guess? Calm?”

  She looks pleased, her mouth widening into the smile I know well.

  “Which ones make you feel calm?”

  There is definitely a trap somewhere in the short distance between us.

  “You mean, which exact eggs? Uh, I don’t know. I hadn’t really been paying attention.” I pause, contemplating what she’s actually asking, striving to see the parameters of the experiment she might have laid out around me. “Do different eggs have different effects on humans or something?”

  She gives me a look I can’t quite decipher. She practically glows with excitement, but I can almost see her holding something back.

  “Different eggs have different . . . purposes. Not all eggs produce young, you know.”

  “In that case, is it really an egg, then? What does it do if it doesn’t hatch?”

  She studies me, saying nothing, and my head starts to buzz. I hate these bright white lights. My headache is back.

  “Later,” she says finally, the smile wavering. I suddenly have the impression that she’s wearing a mask, a second face that she dons specifically for the white hallways of the Zoo. It plants a shudder in my spine. “Soon we’ll talk all about it. Soon.”

  Behind the smile mask I detect concern, hidden in places only I would notice: the subtle droop of her lower lip on the left side; the creases at the outer corners of her eyes, slight wrinkles that are deeper than I remember. I have decided to ask her if she’s okay, when a door just down the white hall slides open and we both turn our heads to look. Two whitecoats appear, guiding a massive rolling cart out into the wide corridor. At first I think it’s a bin like the ones we’ve been filling with eggs all morning, but then they turn the corner of the doorway and I instead see that it’s a cage. Inside crouches a very large, sleek-furred animal, blue-gray in color, ears like large round leaves, snout snubbed and short, multiple tusks sprouting from either side. My headache throbs but doesn’t dampen my excitement.

  “A tufali,” I say. I’ve only ever seen it displayed on a screen as a three-dimensional projection, and now here it is, vividly alive. I’m surprised to find that I can smell it, its musk wafting down the hall toward me like an invisible, sentient cloud. I’m taking a step toward it to get a better look when my mother’s fingernails bury themselves in my arm and I’m hauled around to face her.

  “Stars, Mom—” I snap, surprised, swiveling my head back around to look after the tufali, but the cart is disappearing down the hall. She takes my chin in her hand and roughly directs my face to look at her.

  “What the—” I gasp.

  “Male or female?” she asks, her voice urgent, as if she’s asking me the password to a computer that might explode at any moment.

  “W-what?”

  “The tufali that you just saw. Was it male or female?”

  “I don’t—”

  Her eyes drill into mine, deeply brown and shining with a look I don’t recognize. “Think, Octavia.”

  After a long pause, the pressure of her fingers on my chin making my jaw ache, I grind my answer out.

  “Female.”

  She lets go of my face, her eyebrows raised slightly with what looks like grim satisfaction. She was leaning in toward me and now withdraws, hesitantly as if she might grab me again.

  “How did you know?” she asks.

  I’m not sure how to answer. It hadn’t felt like a guess. But I’d glimpsed the tufali for no more than a half second before my mother pulled my gaze away. I’m angry at the thought: the first animal specimen I’ve seen all day—something I’d never see milling around the side of the road or grazing beyond the compound gates—and she keeps me from looking. What is her problem?

  “I should get back in,” I say, moving toward the door to the sorting room. All my sadness about our fight has disappeared, replaced with anger. “They won’t appreciate having to do my work for too long.”

  She nods. She seems unsettled and glances over her shoulder, back down at the Atrium as if to see if anyone is watching us.

  “Go,” she says. “I’ll see you at home.”

  “Yeah maybe,” I say, the sarcasm leaking into my voice like a toxin.

  Inside the sorting room, Alma and the others are all talking but stop when I walk in. I look around, waiting, but no one says anything.

  “What?” I say.

  “We were just talking about your mother,” Yaya says.

  “What about her?”

  “She’s brilliant,” Yaya says, as if that should have been obvious. “My mother studies neonatology. Which is interesting, fine. But to study mammalian neurology—the brains of the biggest animal class on Faloiv . . . well, it’s just awesome.”

  “Was she helping you cheat?” Jaquot asks. His grin would ordinarily rub me the wrong way, but I can tell he’s just trying to show how much he admires my mother. At one point it would have been flattering; now I just feel queasy. “Giving you some tips?”

  “No,” I say. It’s true, but I can see the disappointment on their faces: they were hoping for a peek behind the curtain, some privileged piece of information that will make knowing me worthwhile. “I did see a tufali though.”

  Their expressions brighten, even Rondo’s. Yaya’s mouth falls open.

  “You did?”

  “Just now?”

  They all say variations of this, various expressions of excitement.

  “Yeah. A female.”

  “How do you know? The males and females look identical. Their sex only becomes apparent when they mate.” Yaya says this like she’s answering a question on an exam and I can’t help but laugh. We’re greencoats. The nearest mention of animals and we go into Greenhouse mode, like a knee’s reflex bursting out under the tap of a mallet.

  “My mother told me,” I lie.

  They ask more questions about the tufali as we get back to sorting eggs. Most of them I can’t answer because my viewing of the creature was so brief. I can still smell its musk, but I don’t mention that: the scent isn’t quite a real scent, hanging in my nose. It’s more like a memory, an impression of the smell. I try to distract myself with the eggs but am hesitant to touch them, and when I look around for the violet egg from earlier, I don’t see it anywhere.

  “How are you supposed to tell the marov egg apart from the roigo egg?” Jaquot stands near me studying his chart. “They look exactly the same.”

  They don’t look the same at all, not to me, but I don’t say this out loud. I cautiously pick up a pale blue globe, waiting for the tingle in my fingertips, but nothing happens.

  “The marov egg has a noticeable texture,” Yaya says. “It also has a faint yellow ring at one end.”

  “Oh, I was just joking,” Jaquot says. He wasn’t. Now he’s pointing at another specimen. “They’re actually really easy to tell apart, but what about this one? This isn’t even in the chart.”

  He keeps breaking my concentration. I finally turn to look at the egg he’s referring to if it means he’ll shut up.

  “I’m sure it is. Let me see.”

  Jaquot reaches for the pinkish egg he’s indicating and goes to pick it up, but then he yelps.

  “What?” I demand. “What happened?”

  “It’s hot!” he says, tucking his slate under his arm and cradling his hand. “White hot.”

  Yaya tentatively touches the egg in question with her fingertip. She snatches her hand back.

  “It is,” she says, as if even she is shocked that he’s right.

  Without thinking, I reach for the egg, ignoring Jaquot’s words of caution. Its shell feels solid and warm in my palm, but not hot. It’s smooth, comforting. A sensation thrums in my fingers as it did in my encounter with the violet egg, but it’s different somehow. Not tingly this time—instead, a feeling of moisture. I rub my fingers together but they’re dry.

  “It’s not hot to you?” Yaya says, disbelief tinting her words.

  “It’s not in the identification chart,” Jaquot
says again, frowning.

  “Yeah, it’s definitely hot.” I turn away in case the lie doesn’t look convincing on my face. I ignore Rondo’s pointed gaze and move toward the bins. “I’ll just put it in an empty bin by itself. The whitecoats will know what to do with it.”

  We’re silent for a while, the mountain of eggs getting smaller and smaller as we sort them into bins. My mind goes again to the spotted man, and then to my mother’s words in the hallway. The heat of the two eggs can’t be coincidence—do they have a different purpose than hatching offspring? But why doesn’t the heat bother me? I find myself yet again wishing that my grandmother were still alive. I was eleven when she disappeared, but it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve begun to wish I’d asked her more questions.

  Alma comes to my side, where I’m collecting three or four roigo eggs.

  “Why don’t you tell me anything anymore?” Alma says softly.

  There are so many things to hide, I’m not sure which one she might be alluding to, and it’s as if the herd of secrets inside me scatters at the glow of her searchlight, shadowy legs running for cover.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “You acted like you’d never had zunile before, or even heard of it.”

  “I—what?”

  “Zunile,” she says impatiently. “At second meal today none of us had ever seen zunile before and you acted like you hadn’t either.”

  She’s talking about food. I’d almost laugh if I weren’t so confused.

  “Maybe your parents told you not to tell anyone since it’s new. They were probably still researching it or whatever,” she says, not looking at me. “But you could have told me. Stars, O, you always used to tell me stuff.”

  “I’m confused,” I admit.

  “While you were walking with Rondo, your mom told me you’re allergic to it,” she whispers sharply. “How would she know you’re allergic if you’ve never eaten it before?”

  “She said that?” Why would my mother lie?

  “Yes. She made me and Yaya promise to never let you eat it since she won’t always be around. Why did you try eating it today if you’re allergic? You know reactions to new food can be dangerous.”