A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  “But . . . but why?” I ask.

  “That is a question for your mother.”

  “My mother?”

  “Yes. Now”—the spots settle low over her eyes in an even line—“you need to drink.”

  Rasimbukar turns and disappears inside another rhohedron blossom. I almost follow her but decide that if she wanted me to, she would have said so. I stand there alone in the sun. I wonder if Dr. Espada and the finders are looking for me or if they’ve all given up, returned to the compound, and left me to my fate in the jungle the way they did my grandmother years ago.

  Rasimbukar emerges from the red petals again, her skin a mottled pattern of brown and red as the coloring from the rhohedron fades.

  “Does your skin do that with other colors too?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says. “Now drink.”

  She holds a long, thin object above me. It’s red too, with a bright yellow bulb at one end, dangling near my face. A stamen from inside the blossom.

  “Are you ready?” she says.

  “Sure,” I shrug, my eyes half-closed.

  She gently pulls off the yellow bulb of the stamen and liquid immediately flows forth. It pours first onto my face: in my state of exhaustion and dehydration I haven’t quite realized that the plant she’s brought to me is what I’m supposed to be drinking. But when some of it gets onto my lips, soaking pleasantly into the thirsty skin, I open my mouth. The liquid is almost as thin as water but with an underlying vegetable taste, tinged with soil. It’s not pleasant, but I drink it greedily. It’s different from water in more ways than texture: as I drink, it courses through my body. With every swallow, my throat seems to light up. I can almost feel it flowing into my stomach and then finding its way into my bloodstream, filling me with its red energy.

  The stamen is empty and Rasimbukar casts it off into the tall grasses surrounding us.

  “I feel . . .” I can’t finish the sentence. I’m awake now, all my limpness gone. But I don’t have a word for this. My body is aglow with liquid light.

  “You are not thirsty anymore,” Rasimbukar says.

  “No.” But I know wasn’t asking. She brought out a few of the stamens, a small bouquet, and breaks a bulb off another. She drinks it easily in only a few swallows. When she finishes, the spots on her forehead spread into the wide pattern.

  “You are healthy,” she says, turning to toss the second stamen into the grass too. When she turns back to look at me, the wide-set starry eyes find mine and hold them in a strong gaze. “And now you will do something for me.”

  I’m not sure what I can do for her. The jungle of Faloiv—and whatever lies beyond—is her world. What can I do for her here?

  “I can try,” I answer.

  Looking her in the eyes, the tunnel in my mind widens quickly, almost painfully. It makes me catch my breath. For all her gentleness, now I feel her terror and, suddenly, her anger, spiking and red. Then out of the mouth of the tunnel rises a flashing succession of images: the jungle, dark, night, Rasimbukar crouching in the underbrush alone, and a group of humans—Manx’s bright white curls—dragging a prone figure through the trees. Long-limbed. Brown. Spots covering his back, arms, and neck. It’s the spotted man. Disappearing down the red dirt path toward the Mammalian Compound. Rasimbukar’s pain echoes through my body, reverberating in my chest. She says nothing, her bottomless eyes tell me nothing, but I feel it, and fight to break away from the images before I speak.

  “Your father,” I say, knowing. She has told me without words. I can’t quite shake off the secondhand fear—it clings to me like smoke.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “We took him.”

  “Yes. He was abducted at the start of a one-moon journey, a voyage he takes regularly to survey the planet’s ecosystems. When he does not return, my people will begin to look for him. I have told no one what I have seen. Only you.”

  “Me? B-but,” I stammer. “But . . . why?”

  The spots on her forehead cluster tightly together.

  “To prevent war,” she says. Her wooden voice sounds rougher than before, less polished. “The Faloii will go to war with the star people if they discover what I know. If you can return him to me, violence can be avoided.”

  “So you’re protecting us?” I ask slowly.

  “No.” The spots remain where they are, a hard cluster. “I am protecting our planet. A war like this one would do irreconcilable harm to much of the life here. Our planet is small. Intricately connected. Violence has grave consequences for Faloiv.”

  I try to understand. I can feel my brain blundering through what she’s saying. It’s as if my thoughts lack thumbs, handling a puzzle clumsily and without context. War. Violence has grave consequences. The idea sends a quake through my bones. I don’t know why N’Terra—my father—has taken Rasimbukar’s father prisoner, but surely it’s an act of war. If the consequences are grave for the Faloii, who are indigenous to this planet, then what would they be for us? There’s no power cell for the Vagantur to flee with. End of the line for what Rasimbukar calls the star people. The galaxy we wandered through to come here is closed.

  “So if I can return your father to you without your people finding out, then it will be okay? The Faloii won’t . . . kill us?”

  “Your people have broken agreements in the past,” she says. “The Faloii have been angry for some time. There are amends that need to be made. But we can keep the bridge from being broken if you return my father to me and if the star people break no other understandings.”

  From the back of my mind comes the word “control.” I think of my father, of Dr. Albatur; how, under his leadership, N’Terra has swirled with the grumblings of bitter whitecoats. What have we done?

  Rasimbukar looks up at the sun. It’s beginning to sink, bathing the tops of the trees in deep golden light. The spots on her face spread a little but don’t stray far from the center of her forehead.

  “I must return you to your people,” she says. Her voice sounds sad, though I’m not sure if what sounds sad to me actually translates as sadness for her. I try to look into the tunnel, but it’s closed tightly, as if she knew I’d be looking and shut herself off. “My people will soon begin to search the jungle for my father, and it is only a matter of time until they arrive at your compounds with questions. If your people lie, the Faloii will know.”

  “But how will I find him? How will I get him out? How will I find you?”

  She’s reaching out for me, one long brown finger extending toward my face, her eyes wide and dark and staring.

  “You will find a way,” she says. “He will need the kawa, so you must help him get it. When you are ready to enter the jungle, I will know.”

  And then her finger meets my forehead. There’s an instant of stars. In the moment before the world goes dark, I think of my grandmother once more. I can almost see her stepping out into the trees, as strange and vast as the stars themselves. In a jolt, I imagine what she must have felt: her spreading wonder as the core of this new planet rose up to greet her, a precious center where all things meet. Then a sweet, warm black filled with the smell of ogwe trees surrounds me, carrying me up into their branches.

  CHAPTER 19

  In the dream, the stars conspire. They mutter in silver tongues, their language a pattern of chains that snare everyone in N’Terra with metal coils. Some of them sound like my father. Some of them are voices slithering from behind glass, heavy with secrets. One of them sounds like my mother for a moment, whispering my name. In the haze, I feel her running a finger up and down my jawbone.

  “Octavia. Afua,” she says. Her voice is warm, her face in shadows. “You can come back now. Come back.”

  I open my eyes. It’s not a dream. The shadow that is my mother blots out some of the soft light from above, but I still blink several times as I move into full wakefulness. I’m in my parents’ bed. My mother’s finger pauses in its path down my jaw.

  “There you are,” she whispers.

 
; I open my mouth to speak, to tell her all the things I’ve learned and ask her all the questions I need answers to. My head buzzes, my fingertips tingling: it’s almost like heat, the skin along my palms burning faintly. I struggle to lift my hands to look at them, but they feel too heavy. I flex my abdominal muscles to sit up, but my mother rests a gentle hand on my chest.

  “No, no,” she says. “Rest. You don’t have anywhere to be. Your hands are okay. You have your father’s hands now.”

  “My father’s hands,” I repeat sleepily. Am I dreaming this? My fingers continue to tingle.

  “Yes,” she says, giving my arm a squeeze. “They’ll get you where you need to go.”

  I can’t make sense of what she’s saying.

  “Alma . . . Rondo,” I whisper. “Dr. Espada.”

  “Alma and Rondo are fine. So is Dr. Espada.”

  “Yaya? Jaquot?”

  “Yaya is fine. Rest,” she says, and I do. Exhaustion swallows me whole and I drift down its throat into sleep.

  When I wake again, Alma is in the chair in the corner with her slate in her lap, studying. Her hair is loose from braids or head wrap, free in a fluffy Afro. Watching her, my chest swells with gratitude that she’s okay, whole, alive. I can still see her scrambling to climb the tree with Manx and the others, and all the fear and chaos from that moment rises in me again. A tear escapes from my eye and travels the short distance down my cheek to the pillow. I sniff.

  Alma looks up and throws her slate on the floor in her haste to reach the bed.

  “Octavia,” she says. “Rondo, she’s awake!”

  I hear quick steps, then the hurried sliding open of the bedroom door. In a moment both Alma and Rondo hover above me. Rondo’s eyes are red. He reaches for my hand and holds it. At the feeling of his fingers, my chest swells again.

  “Hi,” I say. My throat feels scratchy.

  “Are you thirsty?” Alma says. “You’ve been getting fluids intravenously, but your mom said that if you woke up today you’d probably want actual water.”

  “If I woke up today?”

  “They figured it would be today or tomorrow. Your vitals have been getting closer to normal.”

  “How long have I been sleeping?”

  “Three days.”

  “Yes, I’m thirsty,” I croak, squeezing my eyes shut.

  Rondo releases my hand. When I open my eyes again, he’s there holding a small bowl. He brings it to my mouth and tilts it against my lips. I drink a few sips, feel the cool liquid trickle down my throat. It tastes how I know water tastes, but I can’t help but compare it to the rhohedron nectar. Plain water is pale in comparison. I sigh and look up, and see the bottom of Alma’s sleeping platform.

  “Was I in my parents’ room before?”

  “Yes, but they moved you in here with me yesterday,” Alma says. “Said you’d get better quicker if you slept in the same room with someone.”

  “I guess they don’t realize that you snore.” I smile, feeling a little stronger.

  They both smile back: small, strained smiles. My arm aches: I don’t need to look at the needle to know where the intravenous line enters my body. Three days. It feels like it’s been years. But I can still feel the footprints in my mind where Rasimbukar had been, can still feel the stretchy sensation of the tunnel opening and closing in my head.

  “Are you in pain?” Alma asks.

  “I don’t think so,” I say. Do I tell them? Do I know how? “I feel weird. Are you guys okay?”

  Rondo shrugs, as is his custom. His gaze doesn’t seem to want to leave my face until this moment.

  “Yes,” he says. “I was just . . . we were just worried about you. We didn’t know where you went when Dr. Espada came back to the tree without you.” He shakes his head.

  “We wanted to stay and help,” Alma says. “But Manx made Dr. Espada and the finder who was bitten take us back while they looked for you and Jaquot.”

  “Jaquot?” I say. “Where was Jaquot?”

  Alma’s eyes fill with tears as if I had slapped her. I turn to Rondo and he rubs his temples.

  “What happened to Jaquot?” My voice gets shrill, high. “He’s dead isn’t he? Jaquot is dead.”

  Neither of them can look at me. It seems a long time until Alma says, “Yes.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to choke down the nausea that’s rising in my throat. Jaquot. Dead. The cocky boy from the Beak, whose eyes I thought were pretty when we were children. The boy who squeezed my arm the first time we saw the philax. Alma and I used to call him a moron and I wonder if she remembers. We thought he was a moron and now he’s dead. I think of Yaya, her secret smiles at Jaquot—the only person I saw make her laugh. I open my eyes to find my vision blurred with tears.

  “The dirixi?” I say, trying to keep my voice from breaking.

  “Yes,” Rondo says, his mouth twitching as if to say more, but closing again before any other words escape.

  “What? What is it?” I don’t want anyone to be gentle with me right now. I’m already lying here with a needle in my arm, the lights turned low as if I’m on my deathbed. I don’t want to be coddled. I want to know everything.

  “We . . . we won’t be able to cremate him. All Manx and her crew found was a piece of his skinsuit. And . . . and blood. They found his blood.”

  “Because the dirixi doesn’t chew; it swallows,” I say. It feels sickeningly comforting, reciting Greenhouse research as if I’m talking about a case study. Not a person. Not a guy who I’d studied next to, laughed with, rolled my eyes at. I remember his last words to me in the jungle and my chest nearly seizes.

  “Yes,” Rondo says. I wonder if his eyes are red from crying or sleeplessness. Both, I imagine. I wonder if he thought I was dead too. I wonder why I’m not dead. How had I known to find the rhohedron field, the sweet-scented flowers that had protected me but not Jaquot? The tunnel in my head . . . I try to open it now, but it stays stubbornly closed. I find myself drawing up the smell of ogwe trees, their scent of fiber and sap crosshatched in a complicated but soothing aroma.

  “Do you guys know what ogwe trees smell like?” I blurt out, sitting up as much as my strength will allow.

  “Ogwe trees?” Rondo asks. “No. The compound’s filled with them and I’ve never smelled anything.”

  “They don’t have a smell,” Alma agrees.

  I remember Jaquot saying the same thing and bite my lip to keep from crying.

  “But they do.” I sigh, closing my eyes and falling back onto my bed. “They do.”

  “Octavia.” Alma says my name like she’s talking to a child. “What happened out there? Where did you go?”

  “I ran from the dirixi,” I say, keeping my eyes closed. “I got lost. Just like my grandmother. Maybe the same dirixi that killed her killed Jaquot.”

  “Don’t do that, O,” Alma says. “There’s no point. It’s illogical and it doesn’t help anything.”

  “Where are my parents?”

  “In the Zoo,” Rondo says. “Going over your charts. Making sure you don’t have any toxins that will make you sick later. Your mom did a procedure on your hands too.”

  “My hands?” So it wasn’t a dream, waking up and feeling them tingling. I look at them now: they look normal and I don’t feel any burning.

  “Yeah, she thinks you might have touched some jival? The poisonous vine thing,” Rondo says.

  “Yes, jival. She said you were fine though,” Alma adds. “Just a quick laser cleansing. She hasn’t been here since she brought you back from the procedure. Neither has your dad.”

  It occurs to me that my parents might be questioning the spotted man, Rasimbukar’s father. If my father kidnapped him—for whatever reason—then he might somehow think the Faloii had kidnapped me for revenge. Who is the villain here? I try to remember the feeling of gentleness that came from Rasimbukar. She seemed to want to avoid violence, not cause it. Violence has grave consequences. . . .

  “I met the spotted man’s daughter,” I say.


  “You what?” Rondo barks. He had been sitting on the desk platform across from the bed, but now he’s on his feet and standing close to me, one hand extended as if he thought to clutch my leg and then changed his mind.

  “Yes.” I tell them everything. “She said to find the kawa when I was ready to come to her,” I finish.

  “The kawa? What is that?” Rondo sounds almost angry.

  “I have no idea. Alma?”

  “I don’t know that word,” she says, sinking onto the chair at my desk. “How strong was her grasp of our language? Maybe she mispronounced something? Water, maybe? Kawa, water.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “She said it really clearly. And her speech was perfect: there’s no way she didn’t know the word water.”

  “How could it be perfect?” Rondo breathes in wonder. “They’ve only interacted with us a handful of times. The only thing Dr. Espada and the other whitecoats say about them is how mysterious they are. How did they learn our language?”

  In spite of everything, I smile. Rondo always said he wasn’t interested in studying animals. He preferred people, he said. I see it now in his fascination with the Faloii.

  “I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “But Rasimbukar barely had an accent. She did have one, but nothing I can compare to anything I’ve heard from any whitecoat.”

  “Amazing.” Rondo sighs. He sits on the desk next to Alma, leans his back against the wall, and breathes deeply. “Wow.”

  “Am I the only one freaking out?” Alma says indignantly, looking from Rondo to me and waving her hands. “Great, Octavia talked to a Faloii woman. Yes, it’s cool. But what are we going to do? She’s talking about a war here, guys! This is critical! You have to talk to your mom, O. Seriously.”

  “And tell her what?” I snap. Almost all the fatigue has faded from my body. “That a Faloii woman told me what happened by showing me pictures in my mind? You think my mother won’t just go straight to the Council, to my father, and tell him everything?”

  They’re both staring at me strangely, Rondo with an expression that is open, bright, as if waiting for more.