A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  “Stars,” Manx says, looking over each of her shoulders. “Start tracking now.”

  One of the other finders immediately opens her pack and yanks out her slate.

  “Tracking what?” Jaquot says.

  “Hurry, hurry,” the wounded finder says. He’s sitting up now, and I think he’s looking at the wound, but instead his eyes are scanning the jungle around us.

  “What is it? Is it poisonous?” I say.

  “Yes, a morgantan bite contains venom. But it’s not the poison we have to worry about,” Manx says quickly, her hand emerging from her pack with a tube of solution, fitting it to a syringe, and injecting it into the finder’s leg. The swelling lessens almost immediately but the blood continues to flow freely. “It’s the smell of the blood. Stars. Damn, damn, damn.”

  “Anything on the sensors?” Dr. Espada snaps, turning to the young finder who holds a slate close to her face, her eyes searching. Her face goes ashen and she turns her eyes up to Dr. Espada.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “God,” Dr. Espada says. “One whiffed us. We need to move. Now.”

  Manx has just finished tying a tight knot of fabric around the injured finder’s bite, hoisting him up from the ground. He stands on the leg easily, but his face is still twisted. I thought it was pain I was seeing, but now I realize that it’s terror.

  Alma is clinging to my arm—I’m not even sure she’s aware she’s doing it. Her eyes go back and forth between Dr. Espada and Manx.

  “What’s happening?” she says. “Tell us something.”

  “We are in serious danger,” Dr. Espada says. He’s already moved off the path to the base of an ogwe tree. He’s looking up, peering into the branches. “This will do,” he calls to Manx. He drops his pack and digs inside it, withdrawing what looks like a big reel with a hook on its side. He tugs on the hook and a length of cord appears, thick and black and somewhat shiny. He pulls again; more cord. When he has a few lengths, he swings the hook around his head and then releases it, launching it up into the branches. It catches somewhere up above and he gives it a tug. All his teacherly gentleness has fallen away.

  Manx is already up in the tree before I fully realize that we all need to be in the tree.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Alma barks at a finder who has gripped her by the shoulders and is hustling her toward the tree Dr. Espada has chosen. Rondo comes toward me, reaching for my wrist but is intercepted by another finder, who drags him toward the tree.

  “Climb,” the finder says. “Quickly.”

  Alma climbs, poorly, with Rondo following close behind. At one point her shoe slips on the rope and kicks him squarely in the face; he winces and keeps climbing. Yaya is hopping around at the base of the tree, waiting for them to reach the top. And then I hear it.

  A sound that shakes the trees even from what must be a mile away: a roar so deep and mighty that I feel it in the soles of my feet. It’s harsh, almost a scream. Above, rustling in the trees as unseen animals clamber to the safety of higher branches.

  “Oh, stars,” I hear Dr. Espada gasp. “It’s the dirixi.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Yaya cries as a finder shoves her toward the rope. “Can’t we . . . can’t we use an oxynet? Incapacitate it?”

  “No oxynet that big,” Manx yells from the tree. “Get up here!”

  Dr. Espada scrambles for another pack, emptying it in search of a second rope. He finds nothing and turns to close the gap between us with one stride. He snatches my arms, his hands rushing up to find my face, which he holds tightly. He looks in my eyes and the buzzing that has been simmering pleasantly in the back of my mind spikes. “We’re going to have to run,” he says.

  Reality is shooting from my brain through my body in bursts of rising adrenaline. A dirixi. My eyes dart around over Dr. Espada’s shoulders, scanning the jungle frantically for the enormous reptile. My mind needlessly draws up all the lessons from the Greenhouse, recapping the features of dirixi that make them so dangerous: incredible sense of smell, drawn to blood; teeth the length of my forearm, saw-edged to tear the flesh of thick-hided animals like maigno . . .

  “Octavia,” Dr. Espada barks, shaking me. “Look at me! We have to run!”

  “Run? Run where?” I stutter. Yaya is barely halfway up the rope and I don’t see Jaquot or the other two finders anywhere. But looking at Dr. Espada, my mind fills with the image of great red flowers, a whole meadow of them. I don’t know how this image got there: I’ve never seen it before in person. But I know the flowers: they’re the same deep red as our skinsuits. Rhohedron. Even as a daydream, I can smell the sweet scent of their nectar, emanating from the blossoms in waves like a magnetic field.

  “Go!” Dr. Espada shouts in my face, and we take off running in opposite directions. The jungle blurs around me. Somewhere behind me, from the branches of the tree, Rondo calls my name. His yell is broken in half by a hand clamped over his mouth, silencing him, protecting the group.

  I run. The giant leaves and tree trunks speed past me, as if I’m standing still and it’s the jungle that’s running. In my head, the meadow of rhohedron floats in front of me like a specter. I can still smell them, their scent beckoning to me as I hurtle through the crowded underbrush. I hear the sound of branches breaking behind me, and, far off, Dr. Espada’s voice calling and calling. His words are drowned out by another screeching roar. I glance over my shoulder: I can’t see the dirixi, but I know it must be nearly on my heels. Its intensity invades my consciousness, like deep space creeping in through a starship’s cracked hull. I run too near a tree and my canteen strikes it, spinning off into the lush foliage. I run faster, following the phantom smell of rhohedron toward a place ahead where the light seems to change to a thinner, paler green.

  I burst out of the tree line, at first thinking I must have circled far back to the red dirt road. But the red that springs up before me isn’t the road: it’s rhohedron, an entire field of it, some of the blossoms as large as my entire ’wam. I gape for only a moment at the stalks towering above, but the sounds in the jungle behind me spur me onward. I leap headlong into tall grass, ducking and dodging through the enormous low-hanging flowers and frantically looking for a stalk I might be able to scale.

  Climbing isn’t an option without the kind of gear that Dr. Espada had in his pack. I wasn’t even issued a pack. I rack my brains for anything I might have learned in class that can help me in this moment, but instinct is all I have, and instinct says hide.

  I dive into a cluster of the red rhohedron and burrow far into them until I find myself within the petals of one of the huge hanging blossoms, my back against the thick trunk of the parent plant. I pull my knees to my chest, squeezing my eyes shut tight and pulling my lips in, trying to breathe softly. I realize that my head is buzzing: I can almost smell my own blood, the way the dirixi must smell it. I can feel its hunger, a roiling, savage sensation like lava coursing through my veins.

  And then I think of rhohedron. I allow the image of the field to fill my mind; imagine that when I breathe in and out that I am inhaling and exhaling the scent of the huge red flowers. It calms me and I feel light, as if my body is made of plant fibers and the wind is blowing against me gently. Somewhere outside myself I hear the heavy, shambling steps, the dirixi snuffling at the rhohedron; can see the shadow of its hulking, scaled body through the delicate petals of the blossoms. But I am a flower, a poisonous flower.

  A wave of hot breath passes through the rhohedron, blasting against the side of my body with enough force to make me wobble. The stench is like nothing I’ve ever smelled, a foul mixture of rotting food and something burning. I hold my breath. My mind floods with red. I tell myself the only thing that exists is the wind against my petals.

  I don’t know how much time has passed. Gradually I feel like a person again and slowly become aware of my fingers and toes, my back, stiff and sore against the trunk of the rhohedron. My lips are dry. Slowly I open my eyes, letting the shadows swimming in front of me slow
ly take the shape of the things they are. Flower petals. Stones. Stems. And a person, standing above me and looking down curiously. A person who I think is a person like any other, until I see the pattern of spots covering their skin.

  CHAPTER 18

  I’m too tired to be afraid. My body’s senses are dull, as if the heat has enveloped me and overheated my brain. I look up at the person staring down at me, squinting against the sunlight slicing in between petals of the rhohedron. With the light behind them, it makes it difficult to see their face. I want to stand but I can’t seem to find the energy. My head buzzes ceaselessly but not sharply the way it had in the containment room. It has returned to a purr almost below my consciousness.

  “Hello,” I say. What else can be said?

  The person doesn’t respond. They shift their weight from one bare leg to another; a massive brown leg as spotted as the arms and neck. The person is more difficult to see now than a moment ago. Is it the light in my eyes? I blink and refocus, but I can’t make out the legs anymore, the arms.

  I realize slowly that it’s not a trick of the light. The person’s skin has changed from the smooth brown that made them so visible a moment before to a vibrant red. In my dazed state I think that perhaps they somehow slipped on a skinsuit like mine between the slow blinks of my eyes. But it can’t be. In places on the red skin I can still make out the spots, also red but a slightly different shade. My head continues to buzz.

  “Your skin changed,” I say.

  The person’s teeth are a flash of brilliant white, and then the face with the teeth comes closer, the red body kneeling down to look at me. The person is tall: I still have to tilt my head far back to see them. But this close I can make out their features. Broad face. Unusually large eyes, wide set. No nose to speak of, just a slightly raised area at the center of the face. No ears that I can see. But the face is not unfamiliar. Cheekbones, lips, defined eye sockets.

  “You’re Faloii,” I say, not surprised, really, but at this point in my state of mind I’m only capable of making observations. Another observation floats to the surface of my mind, its origins unclear: the Faloii person is female.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Do you understand me?” I ask slowly, not for her benefit but for my own. My tongue feels thick and sluggish.

  “Yes implies this, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  We study each other. Her lips are parted a little, showing just a glimpse of her teeth. A moment later she stands again.

  “Come.”

  She pushes through the heavy red petals of the rhohedron and disappears out into the sun. I swallow, gather my strength, and drag myself up from the ground. My legs tingle uncomfortably. I wiggle my toes inside my shoes where they’re asleep, take a deep breath, and follow the Faloii woman out through the petals.

  She’s already almost brown again when I join her. She stands in the sweltering sun, the vibrant red disappearing from her skin like ink sinking out of sight into deep water. I stare at her. I can’t help it. From her massive legs to her large feet that resemble paws, to her long muscular arms with hands also like paws, she is like no person I’ve ever seen. She wears what looks like a head wrap, also brown, that hangs down over the back of her head, covering the nape of her long, sloping neck. I feel tiny next to her: my head barely reaches her chest. She’s studying me too. She doesn’t have eyebrows like mine; rather, a pattern of darker brown, almost black, spots spread up her throat to her face, arranging around her eyes like dotted fingerprints. They fan out onto her forehead as well; and, staring at them, I realize they’re moving. At first I think it’s my eyes—that I stood up too quickly, came into the sunlight too fast. But no: the spots around her eyes and on her forehead shift as she inspects me. They form a pattern that gives her face an expression of curiosity, arching slightly, one side of the pattern peaked above the other.

  “What’s your name?” I ask. My head buzzes—with questions or exhaustion, I can’t tell.

  The spots shift again, spreading a little way apart, fanning out into a pleasant pattern.

  “This is a question you can answer for yourself,” she says in her smooth voice. Hearing it, I have an impression of wood: polished wood, deeply brown and shining. That’s what her voice evokes. But I don’t understand what she means. We’ve never met before. How can I answer for myself when I don’t know her? I open my mouth to ask, but she interrupts.

  “Listen,” she says in the smooth, wooden voice.

  Something in my mind shifts as she says the word. I almost start to speak again, but the something is tugging at me in my head, an unseen hand pulling gently at an inner ear. Inside, my mind’s eye looks toward the pulling sensation, and it’s as if a tunnel opens slowly before me, widening, allowing a hazy light to seep through. And there it is: a word. A word I’ve never known or heard or shaped in my mouth, but I find myself speaking it slowly, lilting at the end to form a question.

  “Rasimbukar?”

  “Yes,” she says, showing her teeth again, the spots on her forehead fanning out, wide like a bird’s wings. “Good.”

  I can’t think of what to say next. My body is heavy and tired. Out in the sun, outside the protective camp of the rhohedron’s petals, I’m exposed and I remember, as if from a dream, the monster.

  “The dirixi,” I say.

  “The beast is gone,” Rasimbukar says, the spots on her forehead settling low, closer to her eyes.

  “Dr. Espada. My friends . . .” I take a few steps toward the jungle but pause. I can’t remember where I entered the meadow. The jungle around the field of rhohedron looks uniform in its green intensity, the trees rising on all sides like mountains. I might as well be an insect, separated from the hive and easily squashed. Somewhere in the jungle my friends are hiding in a tree. Or maybe the dirixi had found them. I have no way of knowing, and no idea how to find them. I would consider crying if I weren’t so thirsty: the idea of even a single drop of water leaving my body is enough to make me hold back my tears.

  “Dr. Espada is safe,” Rasimbukar says. Her spots cluster close to the center of her forehead. “I am not sure about the others.”

  “They climbed a tree.”

  “It is likely that they are also safe. Dirixi travel alone. This one followed you here and then continued toward the sun, not back.”

  I stand apart from her, trying to decide how to take these words. She might be lying. I know nothing about her or the Faloii. I take a step backward, ready to run.

  “You do not need to fear me,” Rasimbukar says, the spots still low but spreading into a wider, looser pattern.

  “How can I be sure? How do I know you’re not going to hurt me? Kill me?” My conversation with Yaya in the exam room yesterday vibrates in my mind. Rasimbukar doesn’t seem dangerous but what if . . .

  “You ask more questions that you could find answers to yourself.”

  I stay silent this time. The tunnel in my mind that had opened when I found her name has not closed: I look at it again, find the answers floating there. Not words this time but impressions. Feelings. Her gentleness emanates from the tunnel’s mouth, and I can read its colors and shadows the way I would text. I feel lost, like I’m floating in the vast space of the galaxy.

  “What is happening to me?” I say softly. One tear slips from my eye and I swipe at it hastily before it leads to more.

  “You are listening,” Rasimbukar says. The smooth woodenness of her voice is quieter now, her spots arranged along the outside of her eyes. Their position reminds me of my mother, when she’s giving me “the look.”

  “To what?” I whisper.

  “To Faloiv.”

  I stare at her, trying to learn something else from her wide-set eyes. They’re slanting and dark, and although I can’t distinguish an iris or a pupil, there are layers and shades of black so unfathomable it’s like looking into deep space. She stares back, and I find myself watching the spots on her face as well, waiting for them to move, to tell me anything about
what she might be thinking or feeling. But something else is moving instead, on her head. What I thought was a head wrap is shifting, rising, straightening. I hold my breath. Is this an attack? I know, somehow, that she doesn’t mean me harm, but her strangeness leaves me on guard. Any bit of moisture that remains on my tongue evaporates as the material on her head rises, separates into two, and fans out to either side.

  Ears. What I thought was a head wrap is actually two large, curving ears that until now have lain flat, backward over the crown of her head, hanging down loose like braids from her neck. They are brown like her, but thin and membraneous: the late-day sun shines through them, giving them a glowing quality. She was tall before, but the large ears give her another six inches and a fearsome quality as well.

  “Do you . . . do you hear something?” I ask, trying to be polite. I try not to stare at the ears, but they demand attention.

  The spots on her forehead seem to vibrate, rising and spreading. She shows her teeth.

  “No,” Rasimbukar says. “I am hot, and my bones are harvesting energy.”

  “Your bones,” I say, tilting my head. I can’t make my brain understand what she means. Instead I focus on her ears. “Your ears . . . they keep you cool? Like the maigno?”

  “Yes,” she says. The spots settle into the wide pattern. It’s like a smile, I decide. A gentle smile. “Although their hearing abilities have lessened some through generations. We hear in other ways. The way you are beginning to,” she adds.

  It’s as if there are pieces of a puzzle floating around in my head, just out of my grasp. Some of them have connected to form something I’m starting to see, but I can’t figure out the shape of it.