A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  “Hurry,” she says, disappearing through the doorway.

  When we open his door, Dr. Espada is sitting at his desk, his slate shining up on a face lined deeply with concentration. A three-dimensional image of a maigno hangs suspended in the air in front of his desk, displayed there by his projector. He looks over in surprise at the sound of the door folding open, the surprise turning into a smile at the sight of us.

  “The English women,” he says, standing slowly. He greets my mother with a kiss on each cheek.

  “Bad news, Tomás,” my mother says, keeping her voice low. She motions for me to slide the door shut, then ushers Dr. Espada over to the windows, the thick green glass lending an emerald tint to both their faces. I close the door and hurry over to them.

  “It’s just what you were afraid of,” she’s saying when I join them. “Albatur has already begun weaponization.”

  “What?” Dr. Espada says. “How can he? The Council!”

  “The Council said no before he was elected,” my mother says. “Now that he’s the Head, he’s slowly turned more and more of them. Those spineless fools. But it’s true. Octavia saw it with her own eyes. Afua, tell him what you’ve seen.”

  I tell Dr. Espada about the secret lab, about Albatur, the vasana and its terror, the horrifying teeth growing from its mouth on Albatur’s command.

  “Stars,” Dr. Espada says, removing his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  “What did you say he called the specimen?” my mother says, looking at me.

  “Eleven,” I say. “Vasana 11.”

  “Eleven!” Dr. Espada says. “So many . . .”

  “There’s going to be a war, isn’t there?” I say. “This is what Rasimbukar meant by us breaking the rules.”

  “Rasimbukar? Where did you hear that name?” my mother whispers.

  “I met her in the jungle,” I say. They both stare at me, their lips pressed tightly together. There are so many secrets: I forget who knows what. “She . . . she told me . . .”

  “She told you what?” my mother demands.

  “She told me she needed my help getting her father out.”

  “Has she told the rest of the Faloii that we have him?”

  “Wait, what?” Now it’s my turn to eye her. “You know her? And, wait, you knew that we have her father?”

  I take a step away from her.

  “Yes, of course,” my mother says. “Not that I was supposed to know. I figured that out on my own. Now, has Rasimbukar told the rest of the Faloii that we have her father?”

  “No,” I say uncertainly. “They don’t know that he’s missing—he’s not expected back from his journey yet. But they’re going to find out when he doesn’t come back. Or when Rasimbukar decides she’s sick of waiting for me.”

  “I should have known she’d be out in the jungle that day,” Dr. Espada says. “When I sent Octavia to the rhohedron field, I should’ve gone with her to explain to Rasimbukar.”

  “When you sent me?” I interrupt.

  He puts his spectacles back on and looks at me with his usual expression of patience. “You didn’t see the rhohedron field in your head?” he says. “You didn’t suddenly know where you needed to run?”

  I pause, remembering. The fear had been so intense, so hectic, that everything now seems blurry. I recall Dr. Espada shouting at me to run . . . and then the image of the enormous red flowers floating before my eyes.

  Suddenly my brain is buzzing: something is hailing me from the tunnel. I slowly muscle the tunnel open, cautious about what I might find.

  It’s Dr. Espada. I gasp, feeling him there, his gentle spirit and his probing mind, nudging me with his consciousness. He’s passing me an image, blurry around the edges: an echo. It’s us, him and me, in his classroom, the day he’d assigned the internships. I hear his voice—Listen—and I understand.

  “You too,” I say, withdrawing from the tunnel, letting it close slowly.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Who else?”

  “Just the three of us. And your grandmother. She was the first.”

  “We don’t have time to tell you everything right now,” my mother says, and holds up a hand before I can argue. “I understand your anger. But there’s too much that needs telling. I’ll say this: trust Rasimbukar, and trust us. The Faloii gave us a gift to protect life on Faloiv—ours and theirs. There are those of us in the compound—N’Terrans—who are making decisions against the wishes of the Council that put us all in jeopardy. We cannot let that happen, or all is lost.”

  “But why is this happening?” I stammer. “Why did we take Rasimbukar’s father to begin with?”

  “It’s complicated,” my mother says. She shoots a look at Dr. Espada.

  “What?” I growl, and when neither of them answers, I repeat it a little louder. “What?”

  My mother looks at me frankly. “Your father is playing a dangerous game with Dr. Albatur. Albatur wants to leave Faloiv and he has convinced your father to help him.”

  Surely I’ve misheard her—the stupidity of it seems impossible to believe. Leave Faloiv?

  “To go where?” I say. “Why?”

  “Many reasons,” Dr. Espada sighs. “They believe that the past is more valuable than what the future holds. Re-creating it is easier than imagining something new.”

  “Now that you’ve met Dr. Albatur, you can see why he would desire something else,” my mother says. “His body cannot tolerate Faloiv. Tomás and I believe that he has preyed upon your father’s desires to draw him into a plan. A plan that violates our agreement with the Faloii.”

  “I did hear them talking about a project together,” I say.

  She nods solemnly. “Your father wants to change the terms of N’Terra’s existence on this planet. He wants N’Terrans to be in control, free to expand and alter Faloiv as we see fit. He wants the ability to power the Vagantur, to leave and come back at will. None of which is possible without an energy source that is precious to the Faloii. . . .”

  “What energy source?” I say. I’ve never read about an energy source: only that when trying to repair the Vagantur, a power cell had always eluded N’Terra.

  “We have to get Adombukar out of the labs,” my mother says. “That’s step one. Any attempts we make at peace will be futile if we still have one of the Faloii held prisoner. We must free him and expose Dr. Albatur—then hope the Council listens. If it turns out he’s gotten to the other councilmembers before we do . . . we might be on our own.”

  “We might be, Samirah,” Dr. Espada interjects, tugging on the short hairs of his beard. “They’re serving zunile in the Atrium. The Council never voted on that, so that tells me Albatur is reaching as far as his powers as Head will allow.”

  My mother makes a sound of annoyance and squeezes her bottom lip.

  “Albatur,” she says with disgust.

  “Why did you let this happen?” I demand. “You didn’t know about Vasana 11, but you did know about the zunile and you just let it happen! People are eating that . . . that stuff! My friends are eating it! Oh, stars, if they knew.”

  My mother grabs one of my shoulders and jars me into silence. “This is complicated, Afua!” she snaps. “We can’t trust everyone on the Council! They don’t know about the gift we’ve been given, that we can communicate with the Faloii the way the Faloii communicate with each other. We mean to do good, but there are those in N’Terra who would see this as an act of treachery. A reversal of the Council’s goals for the settlement.”

  “But why? You’re trying to keep the peace!”

  “Fear makes people stupid,” Dr. Espada says. “It makes them violent.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  My mother and Dr. Espada exchange looks again and I grope in my mind for the tunnel to see if they’re thinking anything I can pick up on. But my mind is silent.

  “That’s complicated too,” Dr. Espada says. “Sometimes keeping the peace isn’t peaceful. Right now, based on . . . past
events, it’s possible that the Council could view citizens of N’Terra who sympathize with the Faloii as traitors. Violence could ensue, and we can’t allow that to happen.”

  “Past events? What past—”

  “What matters right now is getting Adombukar out of the labs, and you’re the one who needs to do it, Afua,” she says.

  “Why,” I say, not even as a question. I have too many questions and I’m tired of asking them and not getting answers.

  “Because you have a gift,” she says.

  “So do you,” I counter.

  “You’re a little different.”

  “How?”

  “Later,” Dr. Espada says. “Right now we need a plan.”

  “No,” I insist, raising my voice. “I need to know. Tell me what you’re talking about. How am I . . . how is my brain different?”

  My mother starts to speak, but Dr. Espada steps forward, his hands raised to placate me.

  “We’ll show you,” he says, gesturing toward the door. “Will that satisfy you?”

  I follow them back down the hall and out the Greenhouse doors that I know so well. Somewhere behind me I can hear the children in Dr. Yang’s classroom singing a song that helps them memorize the scientific method. I remember myself as a child, sitting cross-legged on the worn woven rug alongside Alma, my mouth open wide, chanting, “First you make an observation of the planet around, take notes to record all the things that you found.” I step out into the sun and breathe a sigh of relief under its heat.

  “Listen,” Dr. Espada says.

  It’s almost easy now. I flex the invisible muscle in my mind, the unseen fist uncurling and letting the tunnel spiral open. The light comes in, my mind wide and bright. I hear little things: oscree feeding on the ground, wary of the nearby kunike. I feel the kunike, their hungry vigilance. I think of the kunike in the lab on Dr. Depp’s exam table: the creature’s paralyzing fear. There is fear here as well, the ever-present fear for survival, but it’s natural, rhythmic—not the pounding terror and ruin in the labs.

  What do you hear? Dr. Espada says.

  At first I think he said it out loud, but then I realize that the shape of the words has come through the tunnel. I find him in my mind, along with my mother—their quivering concern for me, their impatience for me to see what they’re showing me about myself.

  “The same thing you hear,” I say out loud, annoyed by their impatience. “Oscree. Kunike.”

  Not quite.

  I notice it, then. The shape of Dr. Espada and my mother in my mind: it’s missing something. Between me and the kunike and the oscree, linking each of us, is a wavering path of . . . something. Not light, not sound. But a . . . string: a feeling like a string, drawing each of us together in a web. I feel the string between me and my mother, between me and Dr. Espada, but they’re connected to nothing else. They float somewhere separate from the animals: untethered, unconnected.

  You can’t hear the animals, I say to them, floating the words through the tunnel.

  No.

  “Now call to them,” Dr. Espada says. “Call to the oscree.”

  I’m not sure what he means. Call to them? The oscree don’t speak my language, and I certainly don’t speak theirs.

  My mother must feel my confusion because she says, Show them your heart, the feeling behind her words as gentle as her voice when she speaks out loud.

  In my mind, I reach out to the oscree on the ground. They are six feet away, pecking at the red dust for insects, cocking their tiny blue heads toward the hidden kunike every now and then. The string between us quivers, as if I strummed it with my finger. Their consciousness prickles and leans in my direction, listening. They’ve noticed me all along: I’d shown up on their mental radar when I first opened the tunnel. But now they pay attention. I don’t know what to tell them, what to show them, so I just think soft yellow shapes, images that, in my heart, feel safe and gentle. I close my eyes, focusing on sending the peaceful greeting down the line toward the small flock of fluttering minds.

  Octavia, I hear my mother say.

  I open my eyes and find the oscree in the dust at my feet. If I were only looking with my eyes, I would think they were ignoring me. They hop about, picking at things my eyes can’t see, ruffling their feathers. But in my mind, they’re looking at me. There are no words, only their fragile trust. We are here, they seem to say. Now what do you want?

  One lands on my shoe, unafraid. I almost laugh out loud, in awe. They are so beautiful up close, free from cages and fear. They respond to my amusement: they return the yellow feelings of warmth down the tunnel, which my mind absorbs gratefully, like a stomach digesting nutrients. It feels the way the rhohedron nectar had felt as my body absorbed it in the jungle.

  “There’s more, baby,” my mother says, reaching out to touch my cheek, her smile small. “More than you know yet. So much more.”

  At the sound of her voice, the oscree take flight and flap off into a nearby ogwe. They apologize as they go, tiny shapes of green coming through the tunnel whose meaning I understand perfectly, even if they lack a common language.

  I allow the tunnel to close, and a moment later I’m faced with only my mother and Dr. Espada in the flesh.

  “If you can’t hear the animals,” I say, “what can you hear?”

  “Just each other,” Dr. Espada says. “And the Faloii. The Faloii, of course, can hear us, each other, the animals, everything.”

  “Now take off your shoes,” Dr. Espada says.

  “What?” I don’t move. The idea of taking off my shoes outside makes me nervous. I’m rarely without my shoes even in the compounds: Who knows what could be in the grass out here? I think of the morgantan and its nasty bite on the finder’s leg in the jungle, the bleeding that had drawn the dirixi out of the trees.

  Dr. Espada starts to repeat himself, but a noise draws my attention away. At first I think it’s the wind, whipping up the dust and moving it toward us in red billows. But the whining isn’t the wind: it’s three chariots, speeding down the path toward the Greenhouse. One of them is a longer chariot, the Worm that used to carry me to school in the morning. I cover my nose and mouth to protect my lungs from the sweeping dirt, squinting my eyes to keep out the grit.

  The chariots stop just yards away from us, their drivers leaping off the standing platforms and striding toward us and the Greenhouse. Their pace seems urgent and intent.

  But they don’t pass us for the Greenhouse entrance; they stop in front of us and one says, “Dr. Espada, Dr. English, we need you to come with us.”

  “Come with you?” Dr. Espada says. “Has something happened?”

  “Come with us, doctors,” the same driver says, his mouth a rigid line across his chin. I’ve never seen him around the compounds and I don’t like his face. A square jaw with reddish hairs sprouting from it. He seems too young to be speaking with any authority, yet here he is. “You’ll be briefed when you arrive at the Council.”

  “The Council?” my mother says, stepping forward. “I’m on the Council and I haven’t heard anything about this. What’s going on?”

  “You’ll need to come with us, Mrs. English,” the shortest of the three says, and my mother smirks.

  “Mrs. English?” she replies in a voice that very clearly says she doesn’t need to do anything. “You will address me as Dr. English. Now tell me who has asked for Dr. Espada and myself.” She says “asked for” in a peculiar way, as if she knows whoever has sent these three young men in gray uniforms had not been asking.

  The one whose face I don’t like moves his hand. Not any defensive movement or a gesture that says anything specific. But in its tiny motion, up toward his hip before settling again by his side, I become aware of the tranq gun in a holster there on his white belt.

  “Mom . . . ,” I say quietly, sending her a flare in my mind.

  “Come, Tomás,” my mother says, stepping forward, triggering a look of surprise on the first driver’s features. “Someone at the Council want
s to see us, it seems. I can’t imagine what for.” She drawls this last part in a voice slanted with sarcasm, and the driver tightens his jaw.

  Dr. Espada follows my mother over to the Worm, where the third driver steps forward as if to put his hands on them. The square-jawed man waves his hand and the driver steps back again. My mother boards the Worm calmly, expressionless. Dr. Espada climbs on behind her, his face a picture of annoyance. The man with the square jaw turns back to me after watching them take their seats.

  “Miss English, your father has asked me to inform you that he’ll be waiting for you at home when you return to the compound.”

  For a moment I think he’s going to grab me, force me onto the Worm with my mother, and I tense my body in preparation. I’m not sure if I’ll run or if I’ll fight if he touches me. Or maybe neither: maybe I’ll just let him push and shove me over to the long chariot. But he turns his back on me.

  The third driver boards the Worm and powers on its battery. The whine of it fills the air as I stand there in the red dust that has begun to swirl, watching my mother being carted off to the Council under ominous circumstances. My nails dig into my palms, balled in helpless rage. And then I sense the prickling in my mind: my mother is waiting there in the tunnel before it’s even fully open.

  Your empathy is your greatest asset. My mother’s words come through to me as a firm shape like a stone. Ambystoma maculatum.

  I almost yell to her, to ask her to explain, to tell her I don’t understand. But I don’t. The three chariots turn slowly away from the Greenhouse and leave me standing there in their churning dust, reaching out in my mind for my mother. But she’s either too far away or she’s closed herself off. Only when the machine bearing my mother is out of sight do I allow the tunnel to relax.

  As it’s spiraling shut, slowly and resolutely, something causes me to clench the muscle in my mind, gripping it tightly to hold the tunnel open a moment longer. I hear something—not hear, but feel: an abrupt pulse of energy that appears on the horizon of my mind like a sudden burst of starlight. I can’t make out what it is, not quite. I’m starting to develop a sense of near and far in the tunnel: the hazy buzzing of all Faloiv, the constant pleasant thrum of the lives around me; the prickling of someone or something nearby that’s prodding my consciousness; and then this, the hazy illumination of something close enough to register in the tunnel but just far enough to remain obscure. I wonder if this is what carnivores register as for each other, predators hunting predators, and at first it makes me afraid. But the presence is changing, right now: the pulse of it grows in clarity, and a sense of familiarity makes its way into my mind, a shape of smells and feelings and echoes that forms a name.