Wings of Creation

by Brenda Cooper

  Induan had an impish look on her face. She walked toward the forest, and as soon as she’d gone even a few feet I could tell the trees were farther away than they had looked. I had been good with scale and distance at home, but here everything seemed a bit off.

  Induan raised her arms above her head.

  The trees began to rise. Or some of the great bunches of leaves rose from the branches. They spread out in the air, becoming wings, spiraling up with powerful slow beats, like the great blaze fliers from home. As they rose one by one, all of the leaves became fliers. Behind them, a circle of empty perches gave lie to the idea that we were surrounded by forest. As they came closer, I could see that they were much larger than the birds at home, and at least as graceful. Light poured onto them and illuminated bright colors and flashing sparkles as the evening sun caught their wings. Greens and golds, whites, even a pale lavender. Two had wings so black they’d have become lost in a night sky.

  And then they were above us, at least twenty of them, silent and so very beautiful.

  I had never seen such grace.

  Human bodies hung suspended between the great wings, each one thin and long. They wore tight-fitting clothes that left their legs and arms free. Their shoulders seemed to be two sets: forward shoulders that hunched more than ours and that attached to long arms, and a second set of shoulders, or perhaps a very different back, mounded up behind their slender necks and attached to the great wings. Wide torsos tapered to slim waists and hips, and long slender legs. Everything about the shape of their bodies looked designed to hold their wings. Some wore colored shoes to match the tight-fitting clothes, and a few had tied strings with beads or shells or bits of metal on them to the toes, so they glittered behind and below them.

  They kept some distance, so it was impossible to see their facial expressions or what their wings were made of.

  Invisible, Alicia clutched my arm so tight her nails dug furrows in the soft skin of my inner arm. I pulled away. She flickered into herself, openmouthed and staring. Transfixed. Paloma had gathered Caro into her arms, and they pointed up together. Liam and Jherrel stood hand in hand, openmouthed.

  Induan dropped her arms and came and stood by Alicia.

  The others walked quickly down the ramp, Marcus in the lead, Kayleen beside him. Then Ming, Tiala, and Jenna. I didn’t see Joseph, Bryan, or Dianne. Everyone else was soon at our side. Marcus’s eyes narrowed in worry. He watched the fliers carefully, his gaze flicking from one to the other, bouncing on his toes. It felt like I was standing beside a paw-cat, the feline strength of the man again clear and dangerous.

  As if Marcus’s arrival triggered a change, a flier with silver, white, and gold wings spiraled down closer to the ground. The others flew up and hung off a little ways, beating their wings slowly, almost hovering.

  As the single flier neared us, tiny round breasts gave her gender away. This close, her wings more closely resembled bird’s wings than I had thought, complete with bones in the front and feathers hanging from them. Amid the feathers, various decorations streamed in the wind. Beads and metal glinted in the flier’s hair, which was a mass of braids held back from her face by a strip of black leather that contrasted with her golden hair.

  The flier threw back her head and gave a great hard beat with her wings, sending warm air in a strong puff that momentarily lifted the loose edges of my hair. She landed with a hop, and her wings tilted a bit forward, her shoulders slumping to take the weight of them in this new position. She moved toward us, nearly as awkward on the ground as she had been graceful in the air. The other fliers stayed in the same slightly stilted formation.

  “Hello Matriana,” Marcus said, leaning in and giving her a gentle hug, as careful of her wings as if they were glass instead of feathers.

  Matriana wore a long thin sheath strapped to one side. She had a water flask and a few other items I couldn’t identify strapped to the other. I hadn’t noticed them as she flew, so perhaps they had been situated on her back then. She reached into the long sheath and withdrew a shimmering silver feather with a gold tip. It matched her wings.

  She handed the feather to Marcus, who took it gingerly by the quill, raised it to his forehead, and only then slid it into a similar sheath belted to his leg. It seemed to be made to hold the feather. Clearly, he had been expecting the gift, for he simply said, “Thank you.”

  She looked around, as if checking on each of us. Her eyes lingered longest on Liam, comparing his features to the children’s. Her gaze flicked back to Marcus. “Where is this strong Joseph?”

  “He is on the ship. I will be glad to introduce you.”

  She narrowed her eyes and glanced at the Harbinger, as if counting the painful steps between here and there. I had the sense she was used to giving orders, and held back, wanting something. When she nodded her head, the gesture implied quiet power, like Hunter wielded on Fremont. “I will meet Joseph and the rest of your group in town this evening. We will offer a feast.”

  “Our quarters?” Marcus asked.

  “The gold guest house has been unlocked for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  And with that she turned, crouched low, and with a single powerful wingbeat, she launched herself into the air. As soon as she joined the other fliers, they turned and flew together in a formation that reminded me of wild birds flocking across the Grass Plains.

  Although my feet didn’t want to dance anymore, my shoulders itched to understand the weight and heft of wings.

  6

  JOSEPH: SETTLING

  I watched on a viewscreen as the fliers rose up in a burst of power and color and left our party standing on the ground, staring up at them. The angle of the cameras made them seem small and insignificant against the vastness of the remade moon. I couldn’t see well enough to make out their expressions, but Chelo bounced Caro on her hips, and Kayleen and Paloma had their heads bent near each other in conversation. Ming walked beside Marcus, looking up, though the fliers were almost invisible now.

  It was tough to make out much of Lopali from the spaceport. We were surrounded by cargo ships here, but Dianne had already mentioned that other spaceports catered more to human passengers. Beyond the sterile garden of ships, the careful shapes of fields cut up the land, and beyond that, trees, and here and there the sparkling blue of streams. The largest road headed east, which must be toward the city.

  Dianne and Bryan sat on either side of me. Dianne stared at the screen as if she daren’t miss any nuance, and Bryan sat as still, except that he flicked his nails in and out almost absentmindedly. I watched them, not wanting him to slice my flesh by accident. A strategist, a strongman, and a maker. Marcus hadn’t said it, but surely if he trusted the fliers completely, he wouldn’t have left us three behind.

  As soon as they returned, Marcus drew us all together into a meeting. We were passengers rather than pilots on the Harbinger, so there were no gleaming meeting rooms full of viewscreen walls available to us. The Harbinger was sparse and utilitarian, but it did have a single big oval room designed for gaming and working out, and we gathered in the mismatched and comfortable chairs there, surrounded by video screens and weights and machines. The edges of the room hosted an indoor running track and, on the walls, a pull-gym for low-gravity workouts.

  We settled, the children sticking close to Chelo and Paloma, Liam sitting beside Kayleen, an arm across her shoulder, whispering in her ear. At my side, Alicia kicked her feet and twisted her hands in her lap.

  Marcus sat on a black bench, his legs splayed out on either side of it. “We’ve about a half hour before we need to leave. Questions?”

  “What was the feather about?” Chelo asked.

  “Flier’s feathers can be very valuable. We could buy passage home for all of us on a comfortable ship with the one Matriana gave me, because it’s a pinion feather—one of the long ones at the end of the wings. Those molt once every few years at most. They’ve got a reputation for bringing luck.”

  Paloma looked int
rigued. “Do they?”

  I thought Marcus was going to burst out laughing, but he just said, “It’s not been proven. The longest flier feathers are a valuable trade good everywhere, including Islas.”

  He hadn’t said no about the luck. Interesting.

  Alicia started pacing the edges of the group, holding her arms in, watching Marcus primarily, but also everyone else who knew about Lopali: Jenna and Tiala, Ming and Dianne.

  Ming lifted a beautiful, shapely arm and waited for Marcus to nod before asking, “What did she want us to have luck in?”

  He smiled. “Give a prize to the dancer. She wants us to help her people have babies.”

  I knew what he meant, but Chelo looked puzzled. “What?”

  Marcus answered her. “We know how to make fliers . . . the Wingmakers from Silver’s Home designed them for Lopali. Years ago. A subset of the Wingmakers, the Moon Men, made Lopali. Fliers can only have babies when the Wingmakers make them. Every year a ship comes with babies, only it’s never as many as are wanted. It’s not even close.”

  “Why can’t the fliers have, or at least make, their own children?” Paloma asked.

  Marcus stood up and walked around as he answered her. “They’re sterile, so they can’t have children. The processes that make them are owned, and secret. The fliers have beauty, and power, and by now a history. Lopali is almost five hundred standard years old—that’s almost as old as the civilization on Islas, and older than Joy Heaven or Paradise. The fliers have been living here for almost four hundred years. The Moon Men are long gone now. Those that could, turned into fliers or died trying. That’s what they hired the Wingmakers for—they were something else then, too, and took the name after they failed here.”

  “After they failed?” Alicia asked. “It looks like they succeeded to me.”

  Marcus stopped in front of her. “If they’d succeeded, the fliers would be able to have babies, and humans everywhere could fly if they wanted to.”

  “Wow,” she said. “That would be great.”

  “But they failed, and yet they became rich because they failed. Generations ago, they gave up even trying to succeed anymore. They charge the fliers a lot to give them children, which are really just new, young, fliers. There is no real genetic link to the parents.” Marcus’s tone was tinged with scorn. Once, I had stood by Jenna when she lectured Alicia and Bryan and me about how unfair the fliers had it.

  The look on Paloma’s face said she might get sick, and Chelo looked green. Alicia was curious; Bryan showed no emotion at all, which meant he was still thinking about it, and given the situation, probably seething inside. Whoever designed us made us so injustice drove us nuts.

  As Marcus told the tale, I watched Chelo’s face. When he said, “Over half of flier children die before they reach puberty,” her mouth thinned into a small line, and she narrowed her eyes and then raised her hand. He waved her hand down. “Some live, and stay in town. You’ll see them.” He grimaced. “It is unfair. But fliers are prized for their beauty and grace, and Lopali is a spiritual haven. People come here to meditate, to fly, and to learn to balance joy and sorrow like the fliers. For that, a high price has been accepted. Death of the fliers’ children, and early death as well—the oldest fliers are only a few hundred years old.” He sounded proud. “Finally, the fliers want to change their situation, stop being at everyone else’s mercy.”

  I suspected he had something to do with their new attitude.

  “They can’t keep killing children!” Chelo hugged the two children overtightly to her chest.

  “Shhhh . . . I agree with you. That’s why we’re here. They want Joseph to help them create their own children.”

  Huh?

  “It will be a test for Joseph.” He caught my eye and grinned at me, then added, “I’ll help.”

  “You’d better.” What did I know about creating fliers? The last day Marcus had talked about my ability to create the way he could, he was teasing me about almost killing simple plants.

  Alicia stopped pacing and stood near me again, facing Marcus. “Why Joseph? Why not you? He has no experience in genetics.”

  Actually, I had a little.

  “It’s got to be hard!” she said.

  Marcus laughed. “I just told you I’d help. There are two reasons. Joseph is stronger than me, and he can hold more data than I can. And you’re right, this will be . . . a challenge. Kayleen will also help. So will the fliers’ own geneticists here.”

  Alicia looked even less happy.

  Jenna’s voice sounded biting. “Silver’s Home likes their power over Lopali.”

  “You mean the Wingmakers,” Tiala clarified.

  “It is the same thing,” Dianne broke in, uncharacteristically animated. “The Wingmakers have too much power and are allied with those who make ships and gain from war. Which is why Lopali stays neutral. They won’t side with Silver’s Home while they’re enslaved by your people. We’ve agreed to set them free.”

  “Not my people,” Tiala retorted, giving Dianne a sharp look.

  Liam frowned. “What’s to keep them from going to Islas if we free them?”

  Dianne said, “Fliers hate control. Islas is the essence of control, and the fliers shouldn’t join them. But you’re right. No outcome is certain. Maybe they’ll stay neutral.”

  “I wouldn’t blame them,” Alicia asserted.

  “Is that bad?” Chelo asked.

  “We need their fleet,” Marcus said, resuming his pacing. “Islas is more war-ready than Silver’s Home, and Lopali has agile ships.”

  Chelo still looked puzzled. “Do we have permission from Silver’s Home? To do this?”

  Marcus’s laugh suggested that time would run backward first. “Neither the Planetary Police nor the Port Authority owns the fliers’ genetics. And yes, powerful people want to stop us. That’s where the bounty came from. But we’re doing the right thing.”

  Chelo sighed. “Sometimes that’s all you can do.”

  I noticed he hadn’t named our enemies.

  “Agreed.” Marcus stood, and motioned for Alicia to sit down. She did, as close as she could, leaning back into me, warm but still quivery with excitement.

  Marcus cleared his throat. “We’ll leave for town soon. Take everything you brought with you.” He grinned. “And be sure to have easy access to your best clothes. We’ll be going to a formal event, and while we’ll look shabby beside the fliers, we should look our best.” He clapped his hands and everyone scattered to get their gear.

  Alicia went with me. She and I shared a cabin. We’d both already packed, so I pulled her down next to me on the single bed, breathing in the sweet salty scent of her. She reached a hand up and stroked my face, tracing the outline of my nose and jaw and forehead. “Can you imagine flying?”

  A risk-taker’s heaven—flight on a new planet. “I guess—sure. I’d like to try it. But I already fly ships—so I guess I feel like I know how to fly.”

  “Silly. With wings of your own. Can you imagine being so beautiful?”

  I shook my head. “Maybe with the wings they’ve made for people. But I’ve heard over and over that humans who try to become fliers as adults die. A lot of them, anyway. It changes everything about you.” And suddenly I knew that was really what she meant, that she wanted to sprout wings and be free. A shock of fear for her made my hands shake. “Don’t do it. I couldn’t bear to watch you die.”

  “But imagine me with wings.”

  She was more beautiful than any of the fliers. “You have everything I need.” I touched her face and then her breast and belly. “You’re perfect.”

  She rolled over to face me. “If you can truly help the fliers have children, then you can help me fly.”

  I swallowed. “I can’t even do the first thing. And I won’t risk losing you trying the second.” Maybe no one would help her. I certainly wouldn’t. Could I keep her from trying? Might as well force the wind not to blow. “Promise me you won’t try to make me do this, and you won�
�t try it on your own. Settle for flying with the kind of wings you can take off afterward.”

  She said nothing.

  “I love you. I even love the way you take risks. But this is too big. Promise?”

  She pursed her lips. “I’ll promise until we understand what all the options are. But I won’t promise anything to anyone forever.”

  “Thank you.” I brought her to me and kissed her. Maybe she’d like fake wings well enough. Maybe she’d find something else to want more. Maybe the wind would stop forever.

  At least, when she kissed me back she was greedy for my touch. She might want to fly, but she still wanted me, too. She tasted of chocolate col and ship’s air and salt, and she fit perfectly in my arms.

  I’d seen Chelo’s dance through the viewscreen, and after I walked out from the ship into a sky for the first time in years, I understood it. Lopali smelled of rain and life and death and rebirth. It smelled like the windborn scents of fecund flowers and the sweat of a real climate. Even though it didn’t smell like Fremont, it smelled like home.

  Belongings in hand, we stood at the edge of the road, waiting with a few of the crew from the Harbinger. A big, slow-wheeled vehicle stopped and picked us up, filling to cramped once you counted us and the crew and all the stuff. The cargo carrier was simple; wheels and a flat surface, the whole thing made of shiny ship’s silver, and thus unscratched. Rows of seats looked out in all directions, and a tarp covered them all, shading us from the sun. In the middle, a raised cage held our stuff, the boxes and duffels rattling together and the wheels bumping along. Whatever propelled us was, however, as silent as a starship.

  We drove slowly through a patchwork of fields: grains, vegetables, and some fallow, but all neat and tidy. Every once in a while, another wheeled cargo carrier of some kind passed us, and once we passed a small cart. Occasionally, a group of fliers passed by overhead, paying no attention to the ground. Chelo leaned over near me and said, “That’s why no skimmers. So they don’t hit any fliers.”