A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  “Do you see . . . ?” Alma says breathlessly, somewhere close behind me but far, far away.

  Jain finally releases the animal’s jaws, and the vasana attempts to close her mouth, prevented from doing so fully because of the enormous new fangs. I gape through the glass at the scene before me. The vasana is an herbivore, but terrifying fangs resembling that of the dirixi now sprout from her mouth. I reach out to the vasana, but her terror makes her difficult to look at inside the tunnel.

  “Vasana 11’s teeth have responded positively to the influence of synthetic genes,” Dr. Albatur says. “Now initiating sonic communication to the new brain tissue.”

  A hum enters the observation deck through the small speaker by the window. I’ve never heard the sound before, but I know immediately that it can mean nothing good. The vasana’s muscles twitch as if a current is passing through her body: she begins to swing her long neck from left to right. Faintly, through the speaker, I can hear her snorting and snuffing. The buzzing in my mind quiets, almost to a whisper. Are you there? I try to ask, but the shape of the question stays stubbornly in my mind, where it lies flat. Her presence is receding from the tunnel, shrinking.

  “Vasana 11 is displaying effects but not a positive sequence. Thirty seconds into sonic communication and no visible sequence.”

  I don’t know what he means by sequence. Every word out of his mouth is like a weapon, aimed at the defenseless vasana with the intent to kill. I grope for the buzzing in my mind, but it quiets, smolders, the vasana becoming more and more agitated. Then her head snaps up from where it had been drooping and she fixes her eyes on Jain.

  The tunnel in my mind roars open, so abruptly and so wide that I stagger backward away from the window. Alma gives a small scream of surprise and Rondo is by my side, grasping my arm.

  “Octavia! Are you all right?”

  But above his voice, above everything, I feel the vasana’s rage. It’s not normal, this anger: it feels false. It’s red and vibrating, and in the waves of feeling that pulse through the tunnel into my head, I can feel the vasana somewhere underneath all the rage, drowning in it. It’s as if a giant needle filled with magma has been thrust through the animal’s flesh and injected into her blood. A foreign substance not her own, but strong enough to take over.

  “No,” I gasp, and in my mind I reach out for the vasana, try to fasten myself around her and pull her up for air. But she strains against the bonds that hold her to the table, eyes flaming, snarling with the huge, perilous fangs that protrude from her mouth. She growls unnaturally, scrabbling at the platform to get at Dr. Jain and Dr. Albatur. The two whitecoats look on, expressionless. My shock and horror is nowhere on their faces: this is what they expected to happen. What they wanted to happen.

  “We have to get her out of here,” Alma says, and she and Rondo grasp my arms, towing me toward the door. I fight them, struggling to keep my eyes on the vasana.

  “No,” I scream, scrambling to get back to the window. “She needs me, she needs me!”

  “Do you see what I see, doctor?” Dr. Jain says, his haughty whitecoat voice like an injection of ice into my spine.

  I’m losing the vasana in the tunnel; she’s slipping under the red mist of rage. Her gentle spirit is being smothered, from flame to coal, extinguished by whatever false interference the whitecoats have put inside her. Rondo and Alma drag me away, the door whispering open before us. The last thing I hear before we’re closed out of the observation room is Dr. Albatur’s voice, calm and smug through the intercom.

  “Vasana 11 has successfully completed sequence. Will begin alteration of Vasana 12 directly.”

  CHAPTER 22

  In the bright hallway outside the observation room, I crumple to the floor. The hidden door to the empty room slides shut, blending back into the smooth blankness of the white wall. The vibrations of the vasana’s strange, unnatural rage still quiver through the tunnel.

  “Octavia,” Alma says. She crouches down in front of me and grabs my face in both her hands, forcing me to look at her. “You have to get it together. We can’t get caught here!”

  I stare into her round brown eyes, their thick black eyelashes. I focus on those eyelashes. Their blackness is comforting in this terribly bright hallway. I finally find a hold on the slippery arm in my head and wrench some central muscle, the vasana’s pain and anger slowly dimming. I breathe in short gasps. The tunnel spirals shut, the red clouds disappearing inside it and my lungs expanding to take in more air.

  “Better?” Alma asks, her eyebrows crunched down in the middle. I nod slowly. My mind quiets, and the only buzzing I hear is the vague hum from the lights above.

  “What did we just see?” Rondo says.

  “I don’t know,” Alma says, reaching her hands down to help me rise. “But we can’t talk about it here. We need to get back to our observation room now.”

  “She’s right,” I say, scrambling up with Alma’s help. “We need to go.”

  We hustle back down the direction we came. My mind prickles as we continue past stretches of blank white walls, but I grit my teeth and concentrate on keeping the tunnel shut. I need to learn how to control this better: I can’t risk having it open whenever there’s something on my radar. I wish I could talk to Rasimbukar; and at the thought of her, I’m stabbed with anxiety. What if she’s already here? Locked up like her father probably is? Being experimented on? Seeing what we saw, feeling what I felt . . . no wonder Rasimbukar thinks her people could start a war. Members of the Council, the lawmakers of N’Terra. If the Faloii knew what we were doing . . .

  “It’s this room on the left,” Alma says. “Be smooth. Maybe no one noticed we left.”

  Slipping inside, I expect to see two dozen pairs of eyes turning to stare at us, my father’s among them. But all we see are the backs of whitecoats, right where we left them, peering into the procedure room where Dr. Depp has moved on to a young igua, which stands cowering on the table, Dr. Depp rubbing an ultrasound against its belly to view its digestive tract. I wonder if these animals will eventually be subject to painful experiments too.

  I exhale softly, grateful that no one seems to notice we were gone. They’re all rapt, watching the procedure and taking notes on their slates.

  “Where have you three been?”

  I jump at the voice so close to my ear. It’s Yaya, standing even farther to the rear than we are. I hadn’t noticed her leaning against the wall.

  “What is wrong with you?” I demand, hissing. “Stars, you scared me. Why are you hiding at the back?”

  She shrugs, her eyes wandering to the procedure.

  “I came back here to ask you guys what you thought of the igua and then I realized you weren’t here. Where were you?”

  “Dr. English stopped by,” Alma says quickly. I’m impressed with the smoothness of the lie. “She was just asking some preliminary questions about the procedure.”

  “Oh.” Yaya looks disappointed. “She could have asked me. I hope you didn’t make us look bad.”

  She offers a close-lipped smile to show she’s kidding, but I know she’s not.

  “You didn’t miss much,” she says, turning back to the procedure room. “Besides it’s kind of sad.”

  “Sad?” I say. I wouldn’t expect her to attach any emotions to the work in the Zoo.

  “Yes. They’re all so scared.”

  “How can you tell?” I ask.

  She gives me a look like maybe it’s me who needs to be on an exam table.

  “Look at him,” she says, turning her eyes to the igua. The igua baby crouches as low as its splayed legs will allow, his body shaking. “He looks miserable.”

  “Yeah.” I will the twisting tunnel to stay shut.

  “I suppose it’s just what we have to do,” Yaya says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How else are we supposed to learn?” she says. “We’re not hurting it, even if it is scared.”

  I don’t reply. If she could sense the igua’s fear, I
think she’d feel different, and after seeing what I saw of the vasana, everything seems like a horrifying precursor to a looming atrocity.

  “You okay?” Rondo whispers.

  “I still feel dizzy,” I say.

  “The vasana . . . this really is worse than we thought,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “If the Faloii found out . . .”

  “I know.”

  The whitecoats are all standing up, their murmurs turning into ordinary voices. I crane my neck to see the procedure room and find it empty. The procedure is finished, the baby igua carted away, hopefully back to its mother.

  The whitecoats file out, leaving the four of us alone—four: I can feel that we’re all suddenly aware of Jaquot’s absence again, a hole in our team. We try to fill the void with chatter. Yaya and Alma talk about Yaya’s host family, whether she’ll be going back to her home compound any time soon. I focus on not shrinking to the floor until Dr. Depp rejoins us, his skin a bit glossy from the decontamination regime.

  “Thoughts?” he says to us, taking out his slate and studying something on its screen. He doesn’t care about our answers; he’s already on to the next procedure in his mind.

  “Very interesting,” Yaya says.

  Dr. Depp doesn’t respond, just frowns at his screen, his forehead lined with concentration. I swallow the first small ripples of panic, wondering if somehow he’s receiving word that we left the observation room during the procedure.

  “Good,” he says finally, looking up and nodding once before turning back for the door. “I was skeptical about allowing greencoats internships, but I believe the Council was right about the value. If whitecoats are truly invested in this work, they’ll be less likely to leave. Now, I’m going to hand you off to Dr. Wong. He’ll get you back to the prep room so you can get a head start on your assignment.”

  “Sorry, leave?” Alma says in her note-taking voice, as if she just wants clarification. But I know her too well and I can hear the edge in her tone like a scalpel.

  We’re already following him out into the hall and he’s barely acknowledging us, staring at his tablet instead.

  “Yes,” he says, still distracted by whatever is on his screen. Then he looks up and squints. “What? Oh, Dr. Wong, lovely. You’ll take it from here?”

  Dr. Wong has appeared from the procedure room with a smile, nodding at Dr. Depp, who doesn’t even wait to hear Dr. Wong’s reply. He’s walking down the hallway, off to his next procedure. Rondo stares after him as if he has a mind to follow, but instead turns on Dr. Wong.

  “Dr. Depp was just telling us about why they decided to allow interns,” he says matter-of-factly.

  “Why?” Dr. Wong says, a little surprised but not unfriendly. “Well, I’m not positive. But I can see a few reasons for allowing younger scientists into the labs.”

  He begins to move down the corridor, motioning for us to follow.

  “Greencoats inducted into the labs for internships will get to spend significantly more time learning the fundamentals and getting acquainted with the methodology, for one,” he says. “By the time you’re old enough to be assigned a specialty, you will have lab experience on which to base it. Dr. Albatur is ambitious: he has lofty goals for N’Terra and believes that if we want to achieve them, we need to pursue them aggressively. I think the Council hopes that by training greencoats into our processes sooner, you will be better, more committed whitecoats in the long run.”

  “If we don’t start a war first . . . ,” Alma mutters.

  Dr. Wong doesn’t hear her. “I wouldn’t question it, if I were you. If I could go back and enter the labs at sixteen, I certainly would!”

  Rondo turns to look over his shoulder at me and squints. These aren’t the answers we were looking for. But we all heard Dr. Depp.

  My head still throbs and I focus my energy inward. I ignore the white lights and the hard floor under my feet and turn my attention to the core of my brain. I don’t know why I want to reach it: the pain from the vasana is still fresh, the echo of it still floating within me. But I want to know if she’s alive.

  Now that I know where the tunnel lives and how to summon it, it’s easier to find. I pinpoint it nestled in my consciousness and nudge it, willing it to open. At first, nothing. My mind is tired. My headache intensifies as I focus on it. But then I feel the prickling, the stirring spiral of the tunnel yawning open. My brain suddenly feels wide and bright.

  And then the buzzing. We pass one of the empty windows and even though my eyes tell me nothing is there, I feel a presence. A feeling like sorrow comes crawling out of the tunnel, a damp helplessness. An igua, I think. It’s the mother of the baby igua Dr. Depp just examined: her worry pulses into my brain. The baby has not yet been returned.

  We pass door after door; and in passing each one I sense the fear, loneliness, and anger pulsating out from the animals trapped inside. I feel them all, and even smell them: the things that come through the tunnel are various. Some impressions, some sensory details. The familiar scent of the tufali, the sharp smell of an animal I don’t recognize but whose biology I can now hear and feel like a shell I’ve handled while blindfolded. By the time we near the end of the hallway, tears form in the corners of my eyes.

  Dr. Wong leads us into the prep room to change out of our lab coats. I keep my head down as we file into the small room.

  “A scientist will be in for you in a little while,” he says. “I don’t know if you’ll be viewing any other procedures today. They’ll probably just let you work on your assignments.”

  He smiles and then he’s gone, the door sliding shut behind him. Yaya rounds on the three of us, squinting at me where I slump on a stool. I don’t have the energy to conceal my exhaustion.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” she demands.

  I take a long time deciding whether to answer.

  “Well?” she says, sniffling against her will. “Is it something about Jaquot? Everything is strange. They couldn’t find his body. Did the Faloii take him? Maybe they set the dirixi on us. Maybe the whitecoats just don’t want to scare us . . . maybe that’s why people are leaving the labs, like Dr. Depp said.”

  “He didn’t say leaving the labs,” Alma corrects. “He said leaving. We don’t know what he was referring to.”

  “What else would he mean?”

  “N’Terra,” Rondo says. He’s not even addressing her, or any of us. He’s thinking, gazing at the door but not really seeing it. His fingers tap out their silent melody, and I wish more than anything that my head was full of his music and not the buzzing.

  “No one would leave N’Terra when the Faloii are out there killing people,” Yaya says, and I wonder where the rational girl from the Greenhouse went. Is this what fear does to people? “The Faloii probably threatened us and people are afraid to work in the labs. Afraid of all their absurd rules.”

  I sit up a little straighter on the stool.

  “Why would that be your theory?” I demand.

  “You know why!” she snaps. “We don’t know anything about them. I know what my grandmother told me, and Magellan said—”

  “Who in the stars is Magellan?”

  “Magellan. The finder who was bitten that day in the jungle. Weren’t you paying attention? He said the Faloii won’t let us expand N’Terra. And they won’t let us study them to see how they survive here so easily.”

  “Why should they let us study them?” I say loudly, standing. “This is their planet. They don’t owe us anything. And they damn sure don’t owe us running experiments on them.”

  Rondo and Alma stand uncertainly between us, Alma’s hands half-raised as if to tell us to keep our voices down, but not wanting to say it.

  “Magellan said they still act like they’re the only ones that live on this planet. They won’t even let us explore their part of Faloiv—”

  “Why should they?” I snap again. “You’re stupid enough to give that argument weight?”

  “D
on’t call me stupid,” Yaya says, taking a half step toward me. The shine of tears in her eyes is gone: she’s fully angry now and it shows. But I’m angry too. Is this how humans got ourselves into this mess? By believing that we have as much right to this planet as the Faloii? Do we think we own the galaxy? I’m surprised they haven’t already thrown us back out into the stars.

  “Guys,” Alma says, keeping her voice low. “We can talk about this later. This really isn’t the place.”

  Yaya and I glare at each other, and I find myself wishing for the prickle in my brain. What could I hear in Yaya’s mind that she’s not saying out loud? Maybe I would understand her better.

  “To answer your original question,” I say, hearing the nastiness in my tone but unwilling to remove it, “I don’t know anything about Jaquot that you don’t know. But I will tell you this: if you’re as smart as you think you are, it’s not the Faloii you should be worried about.”

  The whisper of the door opening turns our attention to the front of the room, where my father is stepping in through the doorway with his eyes on his slate.

  “What’s this?” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Still in white coats? You must have enjoyed the procedure.”

  “It was brilliant,” Alma says quickly. She moves almost imperceptibly to stand between me and my father. Maybe she thinks there’s still some trace of emotion left on my face. “But I do have a question about the procedure with Kunike 13,” she continues. “What purpose does the data serve for human use? Altering the specimen’s diet means that if it ate foods not usually in its nutritional regimen, it could eventually change its fur pattern to camouflage itself with the flora it consumes, correct? But what’s the implication for humans?”

  She already knows the answer, I’m sure. She’s buying me time to calm down.