A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  “Samirah?” my father calls softly. “Are you sick? Are you all right?”

  “Stay here,” my mother whispers. “Go back to your room only when it’s quiet. We’ll talk soon.”

  She moves swiftly to the study door and out into the hall. She leaves the door open. I sit in the dark like a statue.

  “I’m fine, Octavius,” she says, yawning. “Just wanted to jot down a thought I had about Igua 27 before I forgot. I’m coming back to bed.”

  He murmurs something. A moment later the soft sliding of their door, closing them back into their bedroom. Only then do I exhale.

  I don’t know how long I sit there, folded up in the shadow of my mother’s desk. I hold the slate in my hands like a statue, unable to look away from the strange shapes in the center of my mother’s brain, my brain. The feeling of the tunnel having been opened persists like an echo, but there is no stirring, no buzzing. The tunnel remains closed.

  When I leave, I place the slate carelessly on her desk. Nothing to hide from her now.

  CHAPTER 21

  Yaya stands near the entrance to the Zoo, alone. Rondo, Alma, and I had been whispering about the events in my mother’s study last night—Alma convinced that my father and mother are on opposing sides of a rising battle—but at the sight of Yaya, we all fall silent as if on cue. Grief encircles her like a planet’s rings.

  “Hi, Yaya,” I say as we approach. She looks up, her face expressionless, eyes swollen.

  “Hey, guys.”

  “Are you . . . are you doing okay?”

  She shrugs, not looking at me.

  “I’m . . . fine. I will be fine.” She swallows. “I’m . . .”

  “Did you . . . did you see . . . ?”

  “Jaquot?” she says, and winces, as if just saying his name causes her pain. “No, not exactly. I saw him run away from the group, before any of us were even up in the tree. I think he was looking for another one to climb. But he ran right into the part of the jungle the dirixi came out of a minute later, so I guess that’s when . . . when it happened.”

  “It’s so sad,” I say. I don’t know what other words to offer.

  “Yes,” she says. “We thought it got both of you. I hope we don’t ever have to go back out there again.”

  Jaquot’s absence makes us stiff. Our group stands quietly until my father appears in the door of the Zoo, beckoning us inside.

  “Welcome back to work,” he says. “I know you’ve all had a shock. But I expect you to give your duties the time and attention they require now that you’re back in the labs.”

  None of us reply. We follow him down the long pale hall. I look side to side at the empty exam rooms. Rasimbukar’s father could be in any one of them. I could be passing him as we speak.

  “What are we working on today, Dr. English?” Yaya says. She’s back to leading the group.

  “Today you will be observing a procedure,” he says. At the end of the hallway he turns left, leading us down the next corridor with its endless empty rooms on either side. The idea of observing piques my interest, of course: this is what I’ve always wanted, to gain insight into how we can make Faloiv a place for our future. But then I realize the procedure will probably involve a live specimen, and my stomach lurches. I know what the buzzing in my head is now, but I still have little understanding of how to control it. Like Rasimbukar, my mother had seemed able to shut the tunnel by her own volition, but I can’t imagine how to begin shutting out the communication I can now expect to receive from all Faloivan life-forms.

  My father leads us to a door with a sign that reads Observation Prep 4. I look around for Observation Prep 1 through 3, but I don’t see them. The mazelike quality of the labs is frustrating. He opens the door and holds it for us, nodding for us to go in.

  “You know the prep instructions. Dr. Depp will be in for you soon.”

  He steps back into the hall and closes the door, leaving us alone. Our surroundings are similar to the scrub room we prepped in before our visit to the containment room last week: washbasins and hanging white coats. Rondo pulls on a lab coat and reaches for a headwrap hanging from a hook. There are different colors and the one he grabs first is purple.

  “Here,” he says, handing it to me, letting his fingers brush mine. Then he lowers his voice, his next words just for me. “You look pretty in purple.”

  I smile but look away and busy my hands, wrapping up my braids in the purple cloth. How is it possible that with everything that’s going on I still have space in my brain to think about that night outside my ’wam with him? I try to put it out of my head and focus on tying my wrap. Maybe when all this is over I can think about Rondo.

  By the time Dr. Depp comes—a whitecoat I’ve never seen before—we’re all prepped and ready for whatever happens next. Dr. Depp doesn’t greet us. He just sticks his head in the door.

  “Ready? Good. We’re on a schedule.”

  We follow him down the hall, deeper into the labs. He’s not unfriendly, but he’s brusque in a way that reminds me of my father. Once through a thumb-locked door, he leads us to the end of a short hallway, where another door whispers open.

  “In here,” he says. “This is the observation deck, from which you’ll be able to watch. I’ll be going down into the procedure room. There is an intercom that will allow you and the other observers to hear me. I’ll be available afterward if you need clarification on any of the procedures you witness.”

  He doesn’t wait for us to reply, disappearing through another door, and we file into the observation area alone.

  Inside, the room is nearly full of whitecoats, all crowded in before they have to go to procedures of their own, eager now to watch and take notes. I don’t recognize any of them, and they don’t look up from their murmured conversations as we shuffle into their midst. It’s dimmer here than in the hallway, the front of the deck brighter with light shining through a glass wall. The procedure room on the other side is almost empty, resembling the illusion rooms that line the hallways outside, and I’m not entirely sure that this isn’t an illusion too until a door in the room slides open, admitting Dr. Depp and another whitecoat, his assistant, a youngish man. Two other whitecoats enter behind them, bearing a medium-size cage.

  The two whitecoats place the cage on the raised center platform, where one of them dons heavy white gloves and opens its door. Reaching in, he draws out the still, prone body of a kunike. It’s very small—not yet an adult but already with the characteristic large ears. The animal appears to be sedated, the ears not standing erect but flopped loosely down from its delicate head.

  “Aww . . . ,” Yaya says in a hushed tone. I almost smile, to hear this kind of reaction from her of all people. It is cute, even if it does have razor-sharp teeth hiding in that small, fuzzy mouth.

  The whitecoats place the kunike on the platform, securing it with thin white straps. They’re not gentle and I frown at their careless handling of the small body.

  Alma glances at me, catching my eye. She lowers her chin slightly, her eyebrows raised in a wordless question. I shake my head. No, I don’t hear anything. Only a steady, buzzing lull. Maybe it’s because the animal is sedated, or maybe the glass is effective at separating my mind from the kunike’s.

  Dr. Depp has already begun talking, describing every move that he and his assistant, Dr. Wong, make. It occurs to me that they’re recording the session for future analysis, three-dimensional data that will go onto one of the innumerable slides my mother is always studying. Dr. Depp approaches the platform, grasping a long thin instrument like a wand. He brings it into contact with the kunike’s small neck, and I watch as the tip of the instrument glows a pale blue.

  The kunike stirs. My consciousness prickling, I feel it waking up before its body even begins to move. The tunnel in my brain widens slightly, noticing it. The kunike is afraid. His fear is mild compared to the tufali’s terror, which had caused her to gore the female whitecoat, but it’s also because he’s groggy. Alma’s eyes are on me aga
in, as if I too am a specimen she’s monitoring. This time I nod.

  Dr. Depp begins the procedure, followed by the rustle of whitecoats taking notes.

  “We are now removing a small sample of Kunike 13’s fur. Based on the modifications we have made to its nutrition—introducing plants not normally found in its diet in the wild—we will see if its camouflage abilities have been affected by the change.”

  A lump of sadness hardens in my core. This sounds like something my grandmother would have studied: the effects of an animal’s food on its biology. Somehow, though, I don’t think she would have approved of this method of observation.

  Dr. Depp is snipping a small chunk of the trembling kunike’s fur from around his shoulders. I can almost hear the sound of the tiny scissors slicing in my ear. The kunike doesn’t understand that only his fur is being taken: he thinks his life could end at any moment and his fur shifts to the bright red color it takes on when alarmed. I hold my breath. I wish I could soothe the kunike, and I even try sending something through the tunnel the way Rasimbukar—and my mother, I think—had. But I can’t. It feels like trying to flex a phantom limb, attempting to curl fingers I can’t even see or feel.

  Dr. Depp painstakingly places the fur sample between two transparent films and passes them to his assistant, who binds them and moves to the other side of the procedure room. There’s a projector set up that I hadn’t noticed before, connected to a microscope.

  “Assistant Dr. Wong is placing Kunike 13’s fur sample under the microscope for examination.”

  The microscopic view of the kunike’s fur is projected on the wall and I hear the uniform sound of the observing group’s motion as we all lean to see the image. The whitecoats in the room with us murmur to one another: there must be something worth seeing.

  “Kunike 13’s fur sample displays minor but noticeable change after six weeks of dietary adjustment,” Dr. Depp says. “This suggests that the highly advanced sets of camouflage that kunike are able to employ as their chief defense mechanism can be expanded based on the foods they consume.”

  Then I hear something else. At first I think it’s the kunike, his fear growing larger the longer he is held captive on the platform, but it’s bigger than that. The feeling pulses through the tunnel and fills my head with cavernous humming. I can’t tell where it’s coming from. The hall? Another procedure room? Just how far does the tunnel travel? Is the noise—this cacophony of brain activity—coming from the containment room nearby? I try to control my breathing: there are too many whitecoats in the room and I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Alma, of course, notices.

  “What’s up?” she whispers.

  In the procedure room, Dr. Wong is holding the kunike’s head still while Dr. Depp swabs inside the large floppy ear. The kunike’s heartbeat spikes in my mind, but the other thing—the humming—is larger, louder, more intense.

  “I hear something else,” I whisper. “I think it’s nearby. I can’t tell what . . .”

  “Focus,” Alma says. “Calm down and focus.”

  I breathe deeply through my nose, trying to widen the tunnel enough to let more through. Forcing my mind to open is like attempting to grip vapor. It twists around, following its own pattern. But I close my eyes and find myself asking it to open. Let me see, I think, but not in words. The shape of words.

  At that, the tunnel opens, and the larger fear thrusts itself into my head like a fist. My breath catches. Rondo and Alma are both looking at me now, each of them glancing up at the whitecoats ahead of us to ensure that no one has noticed. Inside me, the fear is a clash of orange and yellow, and I find myself sliding along the wall to the door, which whispers open to admit me into the hallway. Rondo and Alma are on my heels, slipping through before the door has a chance to hum shut again.

  “What is it?” Alma asks. “You hear something?”

  “It’s a vasana,” I say, closing my eyes around the buzzing.

  “What’s that?” Rondo says. He stands very close, both of them do, bodies rigid as if to catch me if I fall.

  “Herbivore,” Alma says, reciting her brain’s contents as if from a slate. “Large, a little bigger than a tufali. Pale green coat that’s short and shiny. Long muzzle. Slopey ears.”

  “It’s nearby,” I say, opening my eyes. The feeling is like a trail laid out through empty space, glowing ahead of me. “Something is wrong.”

  “It’s all wrong,” Rondo says.

  “It’s worse,” I say, looking around for I don’t know what. “Something horrible.”

  It’s a female. I can feel her now. Her mind is as open as mine, searching. She feels me, reaches out with the shapes of her fear. No words, just horror. She doesn’t know who or what I am, but she reaches.

  I race down the hall, trying to pick up on the traces of the vasana’s plea. She’s everywhere at once: I can’t make my mind focus on finding her. I shut my eyes tightly and allow her to come galloping in. I see her as she imagines herself: her long sloping neck, her gentle ears, her round eyes. Sadness rises like a blue serpent, encircling me. She thinks she’s dying.

  “They’re going to kill her,” I gasp, and I follow her. It’s as if she’s leaping in front of me as I run through the white warren of the labs, streaming past doors and the false empty windows of the rooms. Behind me Rondo and Alma hiss my name, trying to run lightly.

  “We are way out of bounds, O,” Alma whispers urgently. “If someone sees us . . .”

  I ignore her. I’m close. I don’t understand how this works: I can’t see her, the way I’ve seen the philax and the tufali in their moments of fear. Yet this feeling is more intense than anything I’ve felt so far. But I can’t find the source: wandering through the long white halls is fruitless. We turn another blank corner and I glance from side to side. No doors, no windows, just signs in thick black print that read Restricted Access. A hallway of nothing: smooth white walls without a crack.

  “Where does this go?” Alma whispers. “I don’t even see any doors. What is this?”

  “There has to be something,” Rondo says. “It’s like the illusion windows of the exam rooms O told us about. Hidden.”

  My brain pulses, the vasana’s heart beating so fast that it’s like a drumbeat of lightning in my head. I stretch out my hand to feel the smooth white wall, trail my fingertips across it. I walk very slowly, the vasana’s fear reeling me in close. My fingertips tingle on the faultless white wall. And then I hear, “Enter, Dr. English.”

  I jump back in shock, jerking my tingling fingers away from the wall. Its blank whiteness has illuminated: not all of it, just a faintly blue square. In the middle of the blue square is a digital image of my father.

  The white wall moves. Not a door like any I’ve seen in the compound, but a door nonetheless. It slides open to reveal a room, dimmer than the stark hallway and entirely empty.

  “Octavia,” Alma whispers. She and Rondo stand back away from the door as if it’s a trap, their eyes wide. Rondo’s neck is craned to peer into the doorway without actually going in.

  “It thinks I’m my father,” I say, looking at my hand. The door stands open in front of me, and the vasana’s mind leaps from the emptiness. I step into the room, ignoring Alma’s urgent whispers behind me.

  It’s an observation room, like the one we were in moments ago. Only here there are no whitecoats watching: there aren’t even any benches to accommodate observers. The room is empty, the light illuminating the floor cast from the large observation window at the front of the room. I take three paces forward and then freeze. There she is: the vasana.

  Two whitecoats have her on a slightly raised platform. She’s bound securely in a standing position, her eyes glassy from the remaining tranquilizer in her blood. And above her, white coat pristine and glaring, is Dr. Albatur.

  “Him,” I whisper.

  “Dr. Albatur attending Vasana 11,” he says, his voice loud and clear. “Today we will be viewing the implications of the previous session’s experimental addi
tions. In the last session, we implemented the synthetic genes, along with some alterations to the brain. The alterations, we hope, will—on command—override the specimen’s first nature and revert to the programmed behavior. Dr. Jain?”

  Dr. Jain, his assistant, steps forward quickly, pulling on thick padded gloves. I approach the glass, wondering if it’s two-way, if Dr. Albatur will look up and see me, stop whatever he’s doing that has the vasana so terrified, and curse at me. She feels me—she can’t move her head, but inside she’s looking right at me. I can’t tell her anything. It’s like being without a tongue.

  With the thick gloves padding his hands, Jain reaches for the vasana’s face. The animal doesn’t resist, merely folds her ears backward in a submissive way as Jain grasps her muzzle and opens her mouth.

  “Dr. Jain is opening Vasana 11’s mouth to examine the animal’s standard dental bite,” Dr. Albatur says.

  The vasana’s teeth are white and somewhat small, the four canines at the front of its mouth—top and bottom—a little longer than the others and leading to flat molars in the back. Jain holds the animal’s mouth open and looks to Dr. Albatur. I feel as if I’m floating outside my body: I’ve spent my entire life hoping to get into the Zoo and observe procedures with the animals of Faloiv. But the coldness of the whitecoats freezes my blood. It’s not just the vasana’s fear: it’s the way the whitecoats treat her as if she isn’t alive at all, as if she’s just one more piece of equipment.

  “Initiating synthetic genetic command with Vasana 11,” Dr. Albatur says, and takes a device from the workstation by the door. The device is like a slate but not as wide, its design thicker and more rudimentary, with actual knobs and buttons. As he manipulates the controls, a light begins to flash on the device. In my head, the vasana’s heart begins to pound. She knows what’s next, even if I don’t. My heart pounds too. I put my hands on the glass, desperate to help. But I can’t.

  The vasana trembles on the table. She picks up each of her hooves one at a time, over and over, as if standing on hot coals. Then I look at her mouth, which Jain still holds pried open. The teeth—the regular, even, white teeth—are growing. They’re enlarging and elongating, the canines becoming dramatically long, sharpening, narrowing; extending beyond her mouth and hanging over her lips. I know those teeth, but they don’t belong in a vasana’s jaws. They’re the fangs of a dirixi.