A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  Adombukar. Isn’t that a bad idea?

  The Faloii have no predators but the dirixi. And everyone here—he glances at the animals that have awakened—has an agreement.

  What . . . what about us? I say.

  He looks at me and then at Alma and says out loud, “They will not harm you.”

  There’s a metallic clatter and I spin around to look toward the doors, expecting to see the guards already bursting through. They’re not, but it’s obvious they’re working on the scanner.

  “Oh no,” Alma moans, and then jumps involuntarily as a tufali comes to nudge her leg, inhaling her scent. I recognize the tufali: she’s the same one who put one of her tusks through a whitecoat’s thigh.

  “The guards are going to go crazy when they see all the specimens out of their cages,” I say.

  “I have an idea,” Alma says suddenly, grabbing my arm again. She rushes from my side across the containment room to where Adombukar is still opening cages. She pulls out the pavi extract again; using it, she begins opening cages too. “Come on! Use the wand. We need to hurry.”

  I rush to join her, dodging freed animals left and right. We’re at the cage of a rahilla; with the bars gone, I merely reach in and wake it with the wand. Then the next cage, and the next. Between us and Adombukar, we open every cage in the containment room, then stand at the far end of the room and look at everything we’ve done. Piles of white-clay dust have been spread across the floor by various paws and hooves, and the owners of those paws and hooves roam freely. I watch in awe as a gwabi and an igua—natural enemies—stand near each other, completely ignoring the other’s presence. They know there are bigger things at work here, I realize.

  “So what’s your plan?” I say, turning to Alma. I hear the metallic clattering every minute or so: either the guards are breaking down the door or they had to bring Dr. Older from the Beak to reprogram the scanner. That could be why they took so long.

  “Uh, well, not much of a plan. But maybe we, uh . . . wait for the door to open and then, you know, rush them.”

  “Rush them?”

  “They won’t be expecting it, right? They’re expecting us to keep running, and they probably think Adombukar’s still really weak. There’s no way they could know that the kawa was in the gwabi’s mouth, or they wouldn’t have been looking for it in the commune. They won’t be expecting all three of us to be mobile. We can rush them and maybe grab their guns.” She sees the shocked expression on my face and waves her hands. “No, no, we won’t use the guns! Just so they can’t use them. Then we make a break for it.”

  I look at Adombukar, who has been listening impassively. His large starry eyes seem to glow. He says nothing, shows me nothing in the tunnel. It’s the only plan we’ve got. Ahead, the metallic clatter gets louder, the sounds closer together.

  “Adombukar, can you . . . tell the animals our plan? I can show them, kind of, but you’re much better.”

  “They know what to do,” he says.

  I can only nod.

  We stand in the scrub room, Alma in the doorway that connects it to the containment room so it stays open. Here, the sounds of someone working on the door are easier to hear. I’m fairly sure they brought Dr. Older: the sounds I hear aren’t brute smashes but mechanical noises that mean they’re fixing the scanner. I look behind me at the far end of the containment room and suddenly realize there are probably guards outside that door as well: waiting. I turn back to the door ahead. They’re in for a surprise. My muscles are taut, alert. When that door opens, we’ll make our move. In my head, the tunnel is wide and bright, buzzing pleasantly with the energy of all the conscious creatures around me. We’re all focused on one thing.

  The door opens, and twenty guards crowd around the doorway, black mesh masks obscuring their faces. They never knew what hit them.

  CHAPTER 29

  Pandemonium.

  I’m closest to the door and think I’ll be the first one through, but the gwabi who had the kawa in her belly leaps over my head, landing with her full weight on the first two guards. Two igua, eager to escape the containment room, bull past me to my left, heads lowered and tusks aimed. Blood splashes. I look away. My heart feels as if it’s inside every warm body around me, pulsing a hundred times too hard. Adombukar stands over the body of a guard. I can’t tell if he’s dead. I don’t know what Adombukar did to him until I see him do it again. He dodges a blast from a buzzgun, grabs the owner of the gun with both of his strong paw-hands, then puts a gentle finger to the guard’s forehead. And just like that, the guard is out.

  “Come on!” Alma screams. There’s a hole in the wall; the world is filled with noise. Not just in my head but all around me: the sounds of animal rage and human terror. Even the kunike, small as they are, do what they must to make way: two of them attack a guard’s ankles. He shoots one of them with a buzzgun and my whole body lurches.

  “No,” I moan, my limbs going weak. I can sense the kunike’s death filling my mind, his energy leaked away into nothing.

  Then I feel Adombukar, his presence pushing images through the tunnel and into my head: the kunike’s light returning to Faloiv, his energy filtering through the ground and into the trees.

  Is that true? I say.

  Yes. Death has a place on every planet. But the violence must stop.

  “We have to go!” I scream. I find that I am able to speak while also sending the animals an image of what we need to do. The long hallway leading to the main dome: we need to make it there.

  Alma leads the way, the animals streaming after us like a river of bodies. The gwabi stays close to me, a comforting light coming from her. She means to watch over me.

  More guards. The gwabi leaps on them. Her curved fangs gnash into the flesh of someone’s throat, a bright arc of blood. I think of what Rasimbukar has said about war having grave consequences for Faloiv. Has the war already begun? We make it to the hallway, Adombukar catching a lone guard in his hands, shaking the gun from her grip, and then putting her gently to sleep. He lays her on the floor, then looks at me for direction.

  “Down here!” I shout, motioning with my arm. We’re in the long corridor that will take us to the main dome. We could make it. We’re almost out. I sprint down the hall, the gwabi’s breath loud and hot beside me.

  One moment the hallway ahead is empty, and the next moment two struggling bodies tumble out from an open door—one of the deceptively empty exam rooms. One wears white, the other is a guard in gray; between them, the glint of a buzzgun’s metal, which the two fight for. The guard throws the person in white against the wall.

  “Alma, that’s Rondo!”

  I put on an extra burst of speed to reach them as Rondo throws himself at the guard again. The gray-suited man uses the buzzgun as a club and the dull sound of it striking Rondo’s face jerks through my body. He staggers, then cocks back his arm and delivers a punch that sends the guard spinning. Adombukar overtakes me, reaches the guard as he’s beginning to rise; and with one touch of Adombukar’s finger, the man is sinking back to the ground, unconscious.

  “What are you doing in here?” I cry, reaching Rondo and holding him by the arms. His lip is split, a trickle of red trailing down his chin.

  He points over my shoulder, swiping at his blood with the back of his hand.

  “Your mom!” He pants. “I found your mom.”

  I whirl. The window shows the room to be empty, but through the open door I see one end of an exam platform. Someone is stretched out on its surface, but all I can see are the shoes.

  I shove past Adombukar, leaping over and around the animals that mill in the hallway. I shoulder past the door and enter the room to find my mother strapped to a tall platform, the arm of her skinsuit red with blood. Her eyes are closed. I rush to her side, too alarmed to cry.

  “Mom!” I grab her, shaking her. “Mom!”

  She doesn’t move, her body deeply asleep with tranquilizer. I fumble for the blue wand as Alma appears beside me, tearing at the straps hold
ing my mother to the platform. I reach out for my mother in my mind. I’m coming, I tell her, and her energy flares in response. I yank the wand out of my skinsuit and immediately press it to her neck, the tip glowing blue.

  Her eyes flutter open, taking in the room in a series of blinks before they settle on my face.

  “Afua,” she says, a slow smile spreading across her face. “You found me. I’ve been calling.”

  I tug her into a sitting position, Alma unfastening the last of the straps around her feet.

  “Where is Dr. Espada?” I cry.

  She bites her lip, holding her injured arm.

  “Octavia . . . he’s gone, baby,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “He’s gone.”

  Her words sink in to me too slowly. Gone? Dead? I just saw him. How could he be dead when I just saw him?

  My mother pulls herself to the edge of the platform and then jerks in surprise. Adombukar fills the doorway with his body, and around him crowd the animals we freed from the containment room, all looking in on her with various shapes and colors of eyes. She can’t hear them, but they’re all buzzing about her, sensing that she is like me, if in a slightly different way.

  “Adombukar,” she says, and then looks at me. “You found the kawa I left for you.”

  My mind is still processing the fact that Dr. Espada is dead. It takes me a moment to hear what she says.

  “You . . . ?”

  She pulls herself off the platform, standing beside it and swaying just a little.

  “Yes. I had to. I put it inside the gwabi while she was sleeping, I hope she doesn’t mind.”

  The gwabi is nearby and blinks. I wonder if she understood.

  “I knew your father would put things together,” my mother continues. “He and I . . . we’re at odds.”

  “Dad sent the Council for you . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “Octavia,” Alma warns. She’s standing by the door now.

  “We have to go, Mom,” I plead.

  I grasp her hand and pull her toward the door, and she follows. Outside in the hallway again, I notice that the alarm has stopped blaring.

  “We have to move,” Rondo calls. He’s dragged the unconscious guard to the side of the hallway so he won’t be trampled by animals.

  “Yes,” Adombukar says, and moves quickly down the hall after Rondo. I run after them, my mother in tow. The gwabi is at my side again, and together we dash in the direction of the doorway.

  Something is happening in my mind: a flash of energy, a rippling in my consciousness that is as intense as it is abrupt. Adombukar feels it too: he pricks his mind toward it in the tunnel, curious. Another flare. And then another. As the intensity grows, I know something isn’t right. The stirring in my mind is like the tumble of dead leaves. Ahead, Adombukar slowly comes to a stop midstride. My mind has filled with this new, wrong something. Adombukar turns to gaze down the hallway, and I look too.

  At first, I think they’re vasana that we left behind in the containment room, just now catching up. They mill about at the end of the hall, a herd of them. I don’t recall seeing them in the cages—perhaps Adombukar had set them free? But I feel his confusion, a gray cloud of worry entering the tunnel, cautioning me, cautioning us all. The vasana move toward us slowly, their steps long and graceful, but their path puzzled and aimless.

  “Should we wait for them?” my mother says, not understanding why we’ve stopped, Alma beside her.

  “Something’s wrong,” I say. I grope for the vasana in the tunnel, looking for a connection. I sense their vague presence, a dim consciousness floating in the dark. But there’s no chain connecting us, no glowing string. They feel stripped, hollow.

  “Oh no,” I whisper.

  “What is this?” Adombukar says, softly at first. Then he’s bellowing, “What is this!”

  “We didn’t know,” I start to say, but with the realization starting to spread in my mind, I know we don’t have time. “Adombukar, we have to go. Now.”

  He stands like a tree in the hallway. Like a ripple, the animals around me begin to notice that something about the herd of vasana is off. They think that the animals down the hall are sick, and some of them shuffle uncomfortably, moving toward the door where Rondo stands waiting.

  “What have you done?” Adombukar turns on me and my mother, his anger and pain surging through the tunnel like a whirlwind.

  I run, dragging my mother and Alma. I can’t close the tunnel—I don’t have enough focus to do it, and there’s no time.

  Adombukar, I call for him. Please come. Your daughter needs you.

  And then there’s a scream. Not a human scream, but an animal sound that tears through the air like lightning, electrifying the hairs on the back of my neck.

  The herd of vasana, all twelve of them, are halfway down the hallway, their bodies trembling and writhing, stamping their feet. Even from this distance I make out the whites of their eyeballs, wide and exposed as they roll in their sockets. Their mouths are open, the screams rising from their elegant necks like a dirge. And beyond them, at the end of the hallway, stands Dr. Albatur, leaning against the wall for support. He has something in his hand, something black. It’s too far to see properly, but I don’t need to see it well to know that it’s the control device.

  “They will bring me your bones, Faloii!” he bellows, his voice echoing down the hallway.

  I turn to run again just as the fangs emerge from the vasana’s mouths, long shining dagger-like teeth sprouting from their jaws like nightmarish spikes. I shove Adombukar, whose heart I can feel breaking in the tunnel, shout for Alma and my mother. Rondo has disappeared, already out in the dome. In my mind, I scream for the other animals to get away, escape. Some of them run in time. Those who are farther behind I can feel being torn apart, my body on fire with their pain. Adombukar runs beside me, silent. I feel nothing from him.

  A guard strides into the mouth of the door ahead, buzzgun drawn. Its muzzle is aimed squarely at Adombukar’s chest, and there’s nowhere to hide in the corridor, no place to dodge its blast. Inertia hurtles me forward even as my brain tries to urge retreat. I hear the zip of the gun being fired, my eyes squeezing shut involuntarily. The screech that rips from my throat could be from any one of the animals that stampede behind me.

  When I open my eyes, debris is falling from the ceiling, embers and dust from disintegrated clay showering the hallway ahead. I look frantically for Adombukar, expecting to find him lying in a pool of blood beside me, but he’s passed me, crouching by a tangle of two bodies lying there in the doorway.

  “Rondo!”

  The stampede of animals is no longer in the hallway around and behind me but in my chest. A massive egg of panic hatches deep inside, the creature bursting forth sending me sprinting to the Zoo’s entrance, skidding to my knees and almost falling on top of him, pushing Adombukar away.

  “Oh, stars,” I scream. My voice cracks: everything inside me is cracking. “Oh, please, no, please, stars, no.”

  I grip the hand I can reach—his other hand holds the branch he used to strike the guard. Around me, the sound of my mother and Alma screaming my name filters in through what feels like a cloud of noise, the shrieking of the vasana echoing louder and louder.

  “I see,” Adombukar says. He presses his finger against Rondo’s neck, as if checking his pulse, but the flare of green light in the tunnel tells me something else is happening, even if I don’t know what. “Both are alive.”

  “Rondo, Rondo, Rondo,” I repeat, as if saying his name over and over will stir him.

  Another guard approaches, aiming his buzzgun. I throw my hand up at him as if the force of my rage and pain alone will stop him. Above my head is a hot blur of energy as the gwabi hurdles over me and Rondo, leaping upon the guard. She doesn’t have to bite him: all five hundred pounds of her landing on him is like a meteor crushing his body.

  Then pressure on my hand. My head snaps down to look at Rondo, his beautiful fingers squeezing mine ever so so
ftly.

  “Leave,” he groans.

  I have no choice, but I can’t make my hand let go. I need his eyes to open. I can’t move until I’m inside his dark eyes.

  His eyelids flutter. His pupils adjust to the white hallway. He squeezes my hand, his grip weak. “Octavia, go.”

  I don’t recognize the sound that rips from my throat as I force myself to let go. My mother drags me after Adombukar, who makes his way smoothly through the dome like the shadow of a cloud on water. His emotions are so intense it makes it difficult for me to breathe: his rage at the fate of the vasana combined with a breathless exaltation for his freedom. He looks around at the trees and then up at the sky through the transparent roof. It’s night, with only the moon lighting the dome, but his relief at seeing the sky flows like grass blown by wind.

  I can smell my mother’s blood like I can smell the blood of the igua, the kunike, whose bodies I can’t see but I feel lying behind us in the hallway, torn by the vasana. All around me, the ogwe give off their terrifying scent, transformed from a warning to its own silent alarm. It fills the animals’ noses and drives them on, away from this place.

  Alma makes it to the main door of the dome before the rest of us, slamming her palm against the scanner. The square turns red, refusing to let her out.

  “They’ve locked it!” she screams. “Octavia, please do it!”

  My mother releases my hand and I sprint to Alma’s slide, slapping my palm on the scanner. They know I have my father’s hands. They know. They’ve changed the prints. But the scanner turns green, the door slides open, and we stumble out into the hot night air of Faloiv.

  Adombukar holds the door, silently calling for the animals. They streak off headlong toward the main gate. Behind us in the dome are the screams of the twelve vasana as they follow our scent. Whatever’s been done to them has altered their brains in such a way that they can’t speak to us in the tunnel, can’t see us in the way that other creatures of Faloiv can. Worse than death.