A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  “Octavia,” my mother says, touching my shoulder gently.

  “I know,” I say, even if I don’t really. I go to the washbasin by Yaya and use the two different solutions to cleanse my skin up to the elbow. I dry my hands and take one of the white coats from the hook, sliding it on over my skinsuit.

  “Good,” my mother says, nodding at us. “I’m pleased to see everyone was prepared with the protocol for scrubbing in. These animals aren’t accustomed to our germs and, though they’ve gradually built a tolerance for them, we don’t want to make it more difficult for their immune systems. You may notice that your hands feel a little strange when you rub them together.”

  We all rub our hands together on cue. My skin feels bizarrely smooth, and somehow more sensitive. Waxy.

  “The second solution you washed with has left a bacteria-resistant film over your skin, to prevent any oils or microbes from affecting the environment in the containment room. It will last for two hours and then be absorbed safely by your skin. Does everyone understand?”

  We all nod.

  “Good. In we go.”

  She turns her back on us and slides her palm across the pad outside the door. It opens with a sigh and we follow her through. I’m the last one to enter and the door closes swiftly behind me.

  The heat hits me immediately—no cooling system in this room. The heat of Faloiv is in full effect, real sunlight streaming down through the transparent ceiling. The sun and the heat surround me and I breathe in deeply, feeling my lungs expand with the thick, damp air. But I’m the only one paying attention to the air. My peers are all ahead of me, looking around in wonder, their low exclamations punctuating the stillness in the room. I look too, and I see the animals.

  CHAPTER 14

  The first thing I notice is how beautiful they are. Colors and patterns that defy the digital depictions we’ve been raised on in the Greenhouse. There’s the tufali—more than one actually—and their pastel blue coats, the silver undercoat. Their tusks are iridescent, pearly. There’s the gwabi, with its glistening coat of sable, the creamy markings that cover its body irregular but uniform across all three specimens. The hortov—deeply, richly green; a foliage dweller, the scattering of shimmering dots across its belly adapted to look like moisture hanging from branches. But I only glance at each of them quickly, where they all lie still in their white-clay cages, to see that they all actually exist as real creatures outside of the classroom projections. The room that contains them is long, several times as big as the sorting room or even the Greenhouse, their clay enclosures varying in size.

  The second thing I notice is the noise. I keep my eyes on the ground, feeling suddenly guilty that these beautiful creatures are caged because of us, calling to get out. The din grows and grows: a buzzing of raucous sound, patterns of noise overlapping, interrupting, blending. It doesn’t sound like any particular animal’s call: it all flows together, almost like words. I can’t isolate any single noise. My mother leads us down the middle of the room, and I almost put my hands over my ears to blunt the clamor when I notice the third thing: my father.

  He’s talking to another whitecoat, comparing the screens of their slates. They don’t appear to be raising their voices above the noise and I wonder how they can hear each other. I don’t look back at the animals, as much as I want to. Instead, I focus on my father. When he sees me, I want him to see my calm, my restraint. Scientist demeanor, I think. I’ve taken the oath and I’m here, unmoved.

  He finally turns to look at our group, acknowledging my mother first. His face is the way it always looks: smooth, placid. There must be a sleep ward somewhere in the labs. He hasn’t been sleeping at home, but he looks rested.

  “Good morning,” he says. “I’m glad to see you all here. If you’re in this room, you have taken the oath and entered the scientific community. This is the containment room. These specimens are animals that have yet to undergo any research or experimentation. We keep them in a separate holding area from those already involved in a project in order to prevent them from influencing one another.”

  “Do you mean infecting each other?” Yaya asks. “The experiments are contagious?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” my father says. “We have not been working with illnesses. I mean influence. Thanks to Dr. English”—he nods at my mother—“we now know that animals on Faloiv are able to communicate in ways we don’t fully understand, and eventually we realized that communication was affecting the outcomes of experiments, so we’ve learned to separate them.”

  “So . . . they were talking to each other about the experiments?” Alma says.

  “Yes,” my father says without a smile.

  Alma’s eyebrows knit together for an instant. Her face eventually relaxes, but a small furrow remains between her eyes. She has more questions, but my father—as usual—isn’t receptive. And my mother, I realize suddenly, is gone.

  “Any other questions?” He stares at me even though he’s addressing the group.

  I give a small shrug, trying to ignore my growing headache. “When do we start?” I say.

  He smirks. I can’t tell if it means he’s pleased or displeased.

  “Not today,” he says, and he enjoys the look of disappointment that appears on Alma’s, Jaquot’s, and Yaya’s faces. Rondo, I know, is indifferent. So am I, or at least my face is. Although the noise of this room is making me consider a career in shopkeeping in the relative quiet of the commune or the archives like Aiyana.

  “You are off sorting duty,” my father continues, “but you won’t begin observing lab work until next week. First you must spend some time in collection.”

  “Collection?” Yaya says, raising one eyebrow. I, too, imagine something distasteful: cleaning droppings from the animals’ cages or collecting urine for analysis. I brace myself for my father’s answer. But it’s Rondo’s voice I hear.

  “Specimen collection,” he says. “With the finders. We’re going into the jungle?”

  My father opens his mouth to reply, but a door at the far end of the containment room slams open and a whitecoat bursts through it.

  “Dr. English!” he cries. “We need you with Tufali 8 immediately!”

  “What’s happened?” my father says, taking a step toward the whitecoat, hesitant to leave us.

  “The specimen was sedated and Dr. Sligo attempted to run a test. The specimen woke up and it’s out of control. We’re having . . . difficulty containing it.”

  From the look on the whitecoat’s face, it sounds like more than “difficulty.” He looks almost on the verge of tears. I wonder if my father will call him emotional.

  “Wait here,” my father says to us. They disappear through the door.

  No one says anything for a moment. We all stare at one another. Alma looks embarrassed as she opens her mouth to speak. “Should we . . . ?”

  “Yes,” Yaya says without waiting for her to finish, and they take off running across the containment room for the door at the end. Their feet echo slightly, even with the noise of the animals. Jaquot is on their tails. Rondo stands to my left looking slightly crestfallen.

  “Well, I guess we go too,” he says.

  “Yep.”

  We run after them, and I find myself running faster than I need to, eager to escape the crushing din of this room. They’re afraid, the animals. I can tell. The feeling isn’t strong, but it’s real. Their fear is all around me; I can almost smell it, thick and pungent.

  Outside, Alma and the others are already creeping down the hall by the time Rondo and I come out.

  “I can hear them from all the way out here,” I say softly. “I don’t know how the whitecoats concentrate with all that noise.”

  Rondo looks at me strangely. Ahead, Alma is creeping up to a research room that appears to be open.

  “You can hear who?” Rondo asks.

  “The animals.”

  He looks confused.

  “But . . .”

  “Octavia!” Alma hisses.
<
br />   We trot down the hallway, trying to be silent. It seems dimmer here than in the entrance hall, but I can’t tell if it actually is or if the dimness is just a result of my headache. The pain throbs like a siren, but I focus on Alma, Yaya, and Jaquot, who are peeking in at the edges of the doorway. The whitecoat who came to fetch my father is standing squarely in the entrance, his back to us. I move to Alma’s right to peer into the research room.

  There’s blood everywhere, coating the floor behind an exam platform in a thick puddle. Behind the platform is another whitecoat, her coat stained deeply red all along one side. She breathes shallowly, motionless, staring at my father, who dominates the center of the room, a tranq gun held in both hands, aimed at the woman in the bloody coat. At first I don’t understand: why is he aiming a gun at her? But then I look again.

  A tusk protrudes from the front of the woman’s thigh, a coat of blood tinting its bluish point with red. The tufali is behind the whitecoat, unmoving as if frozen. Its tusks are easily a foot long, the one that has impaled the whitecoat’s thigh the longest.

  For a moment my brain can only process the color of the blood—bright and wild like the philax’s feathers that day in the Beak. My legs tremble, but my muscles are confused about what direction they want to go—part of me wants to run forward to help, and the rest of me wants to flee the scene before me. Rondo’s hand shoots out to steady me, but his fingers are shaking so much he almost misses. We stare at the animal, only its tusk and feet visible.

  She, I think, not it. The blood doesn’t affect me now: I’m distracted by a smell. And I gradually realize it’s the same tufali I saw that day in the hall with my mother. I don’t know how I know: something about her scent—the same unique combination of odors. I wonder if she recognizes me too.

  “Be careful, Dr. English,” the whitecoat in the doorway murmurs. With his back to us, all I can see of him is his neck, shining with sweat.

  My father takes a tiny step to his left. He’s looking for an angle to shoot the tranq gun, but the tufali has positioned herself directly behind the whitecoat, as if to use the woman as a shield. The woman’s leg looks bad, blood seeping from the wound like lava from a volcano, even with the tusk somewhat plugging it. Every time my father moves, looking for a shot, the tufali has to move too. The shuffling, I’m sure, causes the woman excruciating pain.

  The words come to my mind without bidding. I don’t know why they’re there, but here they are, floating from the silent oath to the front of my mind. I don’t say them out loud, but hold them in front of me like an object.

  Do no harm.

  Things happen very quickly.

  The tufali rips her tusk out of the whitecoat’s leg in one smooth motion, and the woman cries out as she tumbles to the floor. With her out of the way, we in the doorway have a clear view of the tufali’s face: her long, wide head, her flaring snout, the orderly rows of tusks, one of the front spines shining with human blood. But it’s her eyes that I see above all: gleaming black, impossibly deep, drilling into my core.

  Look away.

  I hear the command, not in actual words but in some mental impression of them. I feel it, and I obey, whipping my head away and back, squeezing my eyes shut and turning back into the hall. Behind me goes the zip-zip of the tranq gun releasing two darts, the dull thuds of them finding the tufali’s body. She doesn’t make a sound, but I hear something anyway: a rippling cry tearing through my brain. I am dizzy. I will not pass out, I will not pass out, I command. I will not. I open my eyes, willing myself to remain upright. I focus on the shining floor. More blood, spots of it bright and red at my feet. At first I don’t understand. Had it leaked into the hall from the room? I look around, perplexed. It’s not until Rondo is in front of me, his face serious and almost sad, extending the corner of his white coat to my face, that I realize the blood is coming from my nose.

  CHAPTER 15

  We make it back to the containment room before my father, the five of us scurrying back down the hall, me holding Rondo’s coat to my face. Once inside, the buzz that’s been simmering in my brain heightens again. With my father out of the room, I don’t feel the need to hide how much it bothers me. I put my hands over my ears, the blood from my nose already mostly dried, trying to drown out the racket. It doesn’t help.

  “Octavia, what happened to your face?” Jaquot says. The others hadn’t noticed the blood until we returned to the containment room, and now they crowd around me, concerned.

  “I don’t know,” I say. I can still see the tufali’s eyes, like spots in my mind after staring at the sun. The sense of something nameless and whispering remains. There aren’t words for these things, and I’m helpless as my friends stare at me, waiting for answers. If only it weren’t so loud in this room! The dozens of caged animals surround and squeeze in on me: it’s almost as if their fear has a distinct language.

  “I just wish they’d be quiet,” I say, swinging my head to look at the cages. “I don’t know how you guys can stand it!”

  I finally glare at the animals, the first long look since we were brought into the containment room. I’m suddenly angry at them, for their fear, their clamoring. But my anger fades almost as soon as it rises. I see their faces: another tufali, a cage of three kunike, several marov, a long striped animal I can’t identify, its ears huge and pointy. They’re beautiful, but they’re also asleep—all of them.

  “They’re . . . they’re . . .”

  “Tranquilized,” Alma says. “Your mom said they keep them asleep in the containment to keep them from being too agitated.”

  “But who—where is all that noise coming from?” I cry, looking back at Alma. Yaya and Jaquot look on with furrowed brows, Yaya’s mouth half open as if to diagnose me.

  “Octavia, I don’t hear anything. What is going on?”

  “How can you—” I start, but at the end of the room the door has slid open and my father has reentered the containment room, conversing with a whitecoat in low tones. Rondo takes this opportunity to reach out his hand and wipe what must have been the last of my blood from my top lip. He takes the corner of his coat and stuffs it into his other pocket, to hide the blood on it. I wonder if my father knows we followed him down the hall.

  My father rejoins us, the whitecoat he was talking with exiting the way he came. My father looks unflustered, giving no indication that he had to tranquilize a tufali after it maimed a woman only three rooms away.

  “Now,” he says, folding his hands in front of him and eyeing us. “Where were we?”

  “Collection,” Rondo says quickly before anyone can say anything else.

  “Of course. Yes, collection, like sorting, is one thing most whitecoats do not do on a regular basis: that is the role of finders. However, every intern who eventually becomes a whitecoat in this compound must experience that part of the research process at least once. Where we find our specimens in the wild is as important as learning about them in captivity. A firsthand experience with this planet—however limited—outside the compound is beneficial as well.”

  “Will we spend an entire week doing collection?” Yaya asks. She looks uncharacteristically uneasy, as do the others. They were eager to get into the labs, I think. Going out into the jungle wasn’t part of that excitement. Besides, they just witnessed a woman get mauled by an animal inside the lab.

  My father smiles, and he looks briefly the way I remember him looking years ago, before my grandmother died. Kind. Those eyes end up on my face rather than Yaya’s.

  “That is unlikely,” he says. “I expect you will only accompany the collection group for one or two days.”

  He’s addressing me with this and I’m not sure why. He looks down at his slate.

  “Now,” he says, extending his hand toward the door we entered through originally with my mother. “I have somewhere to be. I will take you to a research room where I will ask you to complete an assignment about safety and procedure for your collection duty. Each of you must complete this before tomorrow.
”

  “We’re going tomorrow?” Alma says.

  My father chuckles.

  “Yes, but think of it this way: the sooner you complete collection, the sooner you will move on to observation.”

  Alma raises her eyebrow and nods. I can sense her brain cranking, her potential excitement about seeing new specimens weighing against her unease about going out into the jungle.

  Back in the scrub room, Jaquot extends his hand to Rondo.

  “Here, give me your coat,” he says. He takes the lab coat with my blood on it and stows it behind a jumble of others, shooting me a look. “Nobody will think it was one of ours back here.”

  “Thank you,” I say, surprised. “I . . . thanks.”

  “No problem,” he says, grinning his lopsided grin. “They see this and the next thing you know the Zoo is too dangerous for greencoats and we’re out of here. I demand my fair shot at getting mauled by a tufali!”

  The rest of the group laughs, but I can’t bring myself to even smile. Jaquot is a good guy. Obnoxious at times but good. Behind the buzz in my head, I make a note to cut him a break. Our little group might be better with him in it after all.

  My father leads us down the corridor, still deeper into the labs. Out here, the noise in my brain slowly fades away, leaving an ache like an echo in my mind. I barely notice that we’ve reached a research room until a hand on my shoulder stops me and I look up into my father’s eyes.

  “Miss English, if you have a moment,” he says, gesturing with his head. I shrug and follow him, not even bothering to look over my shoulder to see my group’s reaction. My father and I walk two doors down to another door, which he opens with his thumb.

  Inside, the air is cool, cooler even than our ’wam, and the light is dim; the room feels small and close. When we step fully inside, a sensor picks up our presence and the room brightens. My sluggishness fades as I look around with interest.

  We’re in his office. The room has been made smaller with shelves, all of them filled with various objects. Models, charts, statues. My gaze falls on a three-dimensional model of what looks like several overlapping galaxies: orbs of varying colors, some of them glowing.