Wings of Creation

by Brenda Cooper

  “Know what?”

  A female answered. “If the Maker can make us better.”

  I perked up my ears and kept my head down. The first flier defended us. “Joseph Lee and his sister already saved one world.”

  The woman’s voice was more scornful this time. “Does that mean he can save this one?”

  “Nothing can save us.”

  And then they were gone. Bryan had heard them, too. He gave me a sardonic smile, and stood up. We cleared our table and left, subdued.

  Outside, we stopped to look up and down the wide street. Bushes, flowers, and an occasional small stand of perch-trees lined the road. He put an arm across my shoulder. “Joseph will figure it out.”

  “What happens if he doesn’t?”

  A rustle of wings above our heads drew my attention. The palest lavender wings went by, dotted with great blue circles: the blond female flier we’d seen at the ceremony the day we got here, the only one there who seemed unhappy and almost mean. I whispered in Bryan’s ear, “Do you recognize her?”

  “Yes.”

  I hadn’t been able to catch the expression on her face, or even to tell for sure that she had noticed us.

  I looked over my shoulder once on the way back. She was there. She must have thought her wings blended into the sky more than they did. Or she didn’t care. I took a few extra steps to catch up to Bryan. “Don’t look now, but blue wings is following us.”

  “I’m not surprised. I saw her before.”

  “At the feast the first night? She was the only one who looked angry.”

  “No. I saw her after, once when I was out running with Ming.”

  “So she’s following us.”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  I didn’t like it one little bit. Why follow us?

  16

  JOSEPH: THE MEN ON THE SHIP

  On the evening of our tenth day on Lopali, we were all in one place. Even Alicia was home, although she sat across the room from me. She appeared completely lost in a conversation with Chelo, Induan, and Kayleen about Caro’s new skills. Liam had brought us each back colorful shirts meant for the tourists. I wore the one he’d brought me, a bright blue like my captain’s coat from New Making, with black edging and buttons. He wore a paler blue tunic decorated with moons and stars. He’d chosen fire red with suns for Chelo, and a pale green tunic with images of feathers laid across it in a multitude of colors for Kayleen. Alicia’s shirt was gold on gold, and glittered as light from the windows struck it when she moved. Induan, now a rare sight since she’d been conscripted by Dianne for household planning and security, wore a shirt much like Alicia’s, except that it was white on white, washing her pale features even paler, as if a ghost woman sat in the room with us. The four of them looked like a blooming garden.

  I wanted to go run my fingers through Alicia’s dark hair and feel her slender shoulders under my hands so badly it hurt. Apparently now that she was leaving and arriving home at about the same time as everyone else, the idea that Tsawo could be trouble seemed to have gotten lost. I felt it; the distance between us at night was the longest half a meter I’d ever felt. I’d apologized twice even though I didn’t know what I was apologizing for, but she’d only softened far enough to be polite. I had asked Marcus about Tsawo a few times, but he clearly took it as jealousy.

  Sometimes Alicia even slept with her mod on, so unless she was moving, all I could see of her was a shape in the covers, as if my girlfriend had become a wraith.

  Jenna cleared her throat, pulling my attention away from Alicia. She stood at the top of the stairs looking down at us. I hadn’t seen that feral look on her face since she’d stopped being hunted, after we left Fremont the first time. Even her body stance was more the old Jenna, the paw-cat hunter and killer of ten-foot-long yellow snakes.

  Marcus came down the steps behind Jenna, one hand on her shoulder, protective. They’d been in their room for an hour or so and, where in that hour she’d become the warrior, he’d become sad. They watched while we slowly stopped, until all of us—even the kids—looked up at the two of them.

  Marcus spoke first, his face statue-still and his eyes angry. “Islas has declared war on Silver’s Home, and both fleets are heading toward each other.” Why such a production? We’d expected that. He continued, “The Port Authority has upped the fee they’ll pay for anyone who finds Chelo, Joseph, Jenna, or me. We have to be even more watchful, and may have to move into hiding soon.”

  As high-profile as we’d already become? Chelo looked at Caro and Sherrel with worry and clutched Liam’s hand. It wasn’t fair she couldn’t have a quiet home and raise her kids, that no place in the world had ever been safe for her.

  Marcus clapped his hands before the room could erupt in conversation. “We’re going to redouble our efforts to fly well—in case we need the skill. Not only will that help us blend in, but it will help us escape if we need to.”

  Jenna nodded and spoke very quietly. “The battle is a distant threat; it will be many months before the fleets get close enough to each other to fight. Consider it background news.”

  Now she had my attention.

  “When Caro told Chelo the ship she saw taking off was going to get some men, Dianne and I decided to verify that as a way to check how accurate Caro is.” She paused for a second to let that sink in, and I felt a touch of pride, just like I had when Chelo first told me about Caro. I wanted to spend more time with her. When, I didn’t know, but when I was a kid, I had been so lost. . . .

  Jenna continued, her voice low, which only served to emphasize her words. “The two men it went to get are from Silver’s Home. We don’t know for sure, but it’s a strong possibility they’re bounty hunters.”

  And the prices on our heads had just gone up. Although Jenna hadn’t said, they must have come in on an interstellar starship and been dropped off at one of the orbiting stations. “When will they come back?”

  Marcus’s face was deadpan. “Well, if we’d asked the three-year-old that question, we might know.” Then, he broke into a grin. “Otherwise, well, there’s no recorded flight plan back. We’ll watch for it. But the fact that we’re watching may alert these people to come down on a different ship. We should assume they know the tricks we know.”

  Chelo’s stricken face made me mad.

  Marcus continued. “That’s all for tonight. Tomorrow morning, we’ll head for Fliers’ Field as a group.”

  The room erupted in too many conversations to keep track of, so I took Sasha out, figuring she might like some peace and quiet.

  After a while Marcus came out and stood with me, throwing sticks for Sasha, letting the moment just be. Then he put a hand on my shoulder. “Training.”

  Kayleen and Marcus and I spent the next two hours curled into three of the comfy chairs in the tiny sitting room in Marcus and Jenna’s quarters. We had been practicing reading each other or, to put it into Marcus’s words, learning the human genome. But tonight, we didn’t sit and read each other’s nanomed data streams. Instead, we drilled into the Lopali data fields and learned key phrases to more easily find the common nets: finances and goods and services exchanges and, to some extent, the data that cared for the world. Lopali was much simpler than Silver’s Home since there were no microclimates and no guilds of Makers changing things regularly. Lopali, instead, changed slowly and gracefully.

  Between worlds, on beaten-up cargo ships, there had been sensual data flows meant to comfort lonely spacers which were easier to break free of than the measured, beautiful song of Lopali. Marcus kept exhorting, “Look for patterns. Break through the low-level patterns and search for higher ones.”

  Kayleen saw it first. Marcus sent us out for a long swim across the surface of the data. “Don’t look at any details.” Usually we were trying to isolate threads. “Let yourselves relax and just sense what’s out there for you. Sip as deeply as you can.”

  That meant fading far enough down into the data that the air on our skin or the fact that we had fi
ngers and toes and bellies, that we even breathed, all if it became nothing. We let our bodies go to the autonomic processes and nearly became the flows of data that moved through us.

  “Soft focus,” Marcus urged, in with us, the three of our virtual selves staying still as data danced through us. “Like a dream,” he said.

  I tried to balance on that place between focus and not-focus, to keep my thoughts from wandering to Alicia or Tsawo, but often when I jerked back I’d pick up details I didn’t want. Crop yields. Temperature. Tourist and seeker schedules. Other times I just kind of melted into the seductive rhythm of the flows, listening to the music.

  Kayleen gasped and pulled up. It’s tough to explain how it feels to be deep in data, but I noticed her disappearance as a hole beside me, a cooling wind made of the absence of her energy. I surfaced, too, Marcus ahead of us both, already alert.

  Kayleen’s eyes were smiling as hard as her face and lips. “Did you see it? The mandala?”

  I shook my head.

  “The whole thing,” she said. “Every city, every road and street between them, every garden and house. The whole thing is designed to resonate.”

  “Huh?”

  Marcus looked pleased with her.

  She brushed the hair out of her face, twisting it. “You’ve studied religions, right?”

  Marcus had made me. I nodded.

  Kayleen and Paloma had explored faiths for weeks on one of the ships, driving us crazy with their enthusiasm at dinner every night. Kayleen had that same look on her face right now. “Well, it’s like the Golden Numbers laid out on the beating heart of the cosmos into a mandala or a sand painting—into a sacred organization. It’s designed to keep people calm. This data design is part of why Lopali has the reputation it has: for luck and for spirit.”

  “You saw that quickly,” Marcus said. “I’m proud of you.”

  “But you knew it was there?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Some of our work may disrupt that harmony.” He hesitated, then grinned. “Politely, of course.”

  Kayleen stiffened. “No. It’s so pretty! I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “There is nothing else like it.” Marcus stood up and swallowed. “It’s effective. Haven’t you all felt it since we got here?”

  “Not really.” I mean, Alicia and I weren’t exactly overrun with harmony.

  As if he knew what I meant, Marcus said, “But you’re not fighting, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Or loving?”

  Who was he to point that out? Still, no wonder Lopali was neutral—it was pretty hard to imagine getting all riled up about anything here. “Marcus?” I asked. “Did the people of Lopali design the data flows this way, or did their creators? Who made the religion?”

  “Why don’t you research that and let me know the answer?”

  “Now?” Kayleen asked. “I’m exhausted, and when I’m tired I can’t stay free of this place. It gets in me and keeps me, and I think it’s changing me.”

  Marcus smiled at her, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Yes, now. You must learn to ride this data. Otherwise, you’ll be tired and chased and in danger some day, and you’ll sit down to rest, and you’ll sleep in it and dream of enlightenment while your enemies catch you.”

  “Remember all the ways the mercenaries killed on Fremont.” I took her hand and whispered, “I’ll help you.”

  She smiled, grateful, but Marcus interrupted. “She has to be strong enough on her own. Go on. Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll be in Fliers’ Field at dawn tomorrow.”

  I leaned down and gave Kayleen a kiss on the top of her head, and she took my hand for a long moment. My palm felt her warmth all the way downstairs.

  Alicia was already in bed, her hair tumbled beautifully over her face and one hand covering her eyes. I reached over and touched her hair, and whispered, “Good night.” She didn’t respond at all, even though I sensed she was awake.

  I was often stupid enough to push her. “I missed you today. Sleep well.”

  “You could choose to spend time with me instead of her.”

  “Marcus was training us.”

  “I’ll never be a Wind Reader.” Bitterness edged her words.

  “So? I don’t care.” I reached a hand for her, tentatively, afraid she might bite it.

  “It would be like asking a flier to love someone with no wings.” Her hand was still over her face, but I saw a tear catch on the tip of her little finger and fall to the bedclothes. Funny, how a Wind Reader and a starship captain can find a tear so frightening. I should have grabbed her and held her, and never let her go. I wanted to, but instead I just whispered, “Good night,” and “I love you,” and hoped she heard me. I pulled the covers up over my head and tried to sleep.

  The next morning, Marcus and Jenna woke us all early, feeding us col and making snacks and water for our day at Fliers’ Field. The hill where the fliers’ feast welcomed us is the center of the wheel of SoBright, surrounded by the park where we’d had the feast. Then, in concentric circles, there’s the city with homes for fliers and humans, a row of forest where the Keepers also live, and then cropland. If you put them on a compass, the guest houses would be north; the university south, by the road out to Oshai; the spaceport to the west; and Fliers’ Field is in the east. A beaten path flowed almost directly from the guest houses to Fliers’ Field.

  Dew slicked the short grass, and the first flights out of SoBright were just spiraling up above the city as we arrived. Since Marcus no longer made us shield, each flier who rose into the sky changed and adjusted my sense of the day’s data, reinforcing the idea of the living mandala of Lopali’s data. Now that Kayleen had pointed it out, the subtle shifts that matched the fliers’ routines to the layers of data designed for meditation were clearer to me, and it was easier to avoid traps for my consciousness.

  Real fliers, of course, had no need for Fliers’ Field. It was meant to teach humans. Although Liam had described a large, gardened Fliers’ Field outside of Oshai, this one was fairly small. We had all been here a few times, learning to don and doff wings and getting accustomed to the weight and balance of them.

  This morning, Chance had beaten us here. He walked over and started organizing us into groups. When he came to Alicia, he smiled, and said, “Alicia? You’ve had a few lessons, right?”

  “Yes.” The look on her face was guarded at best.

  “You can teach.” He sent her toward Induan, Ming, and Bryan. “Can you help Ming get fitted? I’ll be along to help you with Bryan in a few minutes.”

  Alicia had kept her back to me all morning, and I expected a visible relaxation when she realized she wouldn’t be working directly with me. Instead, she seemed stiffer.

  A tall chestnut-haired woman walked into view, and Caro and Jherrel ran to her. This must be the mysterious Seeyan of the herbs and meadows. She was quite beautiful, and very poised, almost ethereal. Her height and the shape of her shoulders gave her away as a failed flier, and once, when she turned her back and bent down to pick Caro up, I saw the stumps where her wings had been cut away from her.

  She represented all I wanted to fix here. Before I could talk to her, Marcus called me over to fit my wings. They extended past my arms, so the widespread tips nearly brushed the grass, and connected down my side to just above my knees, so they were more like butterfly wings than bird wings. “These are so long,” Marcus teased, “because you’ve been eating entirely too well.” He grinned. I knew I was thin, but well-muscled. We’d been living in ships at full Earth gravity, and had much more muscle than humans on Lopali, or even from Silver’s Home, which was about ninety percent of full gravity. Marcus had warned us away from treatments to adjust to Lopali gravity, since we might need strength when we left. Flying, he said, would keep us strong. He’d even winked and continued, “Besides, if you’re heavy enough to make it hard, flying will be a great workout.”

  The thought made me glance over toward Bryan, who had been de
signed for strength. He was heavy. Chance and Alicia together were fitting him with a completely different device, one with a motor to help. Every time he flapped his wings there was a bit of an assist, and he could even hold his arms still and move forward, although slowly.

  Marcus tugged on the straps holding the smaller wings, which started partway up my calves and ended in lightweight soft boots that would theoretically allow my feet to help steer. I felt clumsy and awkward. Unlike a starship, this wasn’t data, and being a Wind Reader gave me no advantage.

  We broke up into small groups and fanned across the large field, moving away from the long low building that housed the wings and rest rooms and classrooms. Matriana, recognizable by her bright silver and white-gold wings, flew down and joined the group with Alicia, Induan, Bryan, Chance, and Ming.

  A man with deep violet and silver-barred wings joined Jenna, Tiala, Paloma, and Dianne.

  There hadn’t been so many people at our past lessons, so clearly the news of moving battle fleets had somehow goaded the fliers, too. A black-winged flier circled above us, dipping down.

  Tsawo.

  He dove into a graceful landing near Matriana and Alicia, and I gritted my teeth and nearly overbalanced, so I had to fling my wings backward to keep upright. I swallowed, slightly embarrassed. Marcus leaned down and whispered in my ear. “You cannot choose your teachers.”

  I stared at him. “You knew he was coming? And you didn’t tell me?”

  “You were asleep before I stopped working with Kayleen last night.”

  “You could have told me this morning.”

  “And that would have helped you how?”

  I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to find my balance. A trick Marcus himself had taught me years ago. “Okay. Do you know anything I don’t? Do you have any reason to trust him?”

  “We’ll know more about whether or not to trust him if we can see him.”

  I hated it when Marcus was right. Like almost always. I still couldn’t take my eyes off of Tsawo, so I watched him snap up away from the ground and fly toward us. I braced myself as he landed, expecting a cold shoulder or a mean look or something. But he simply smiled at all of us, me included. I felt wildness in him, and distrust, like Alicia had in her, although in Tsawo it felt like a coiled cat waiting for the right moment to strike; and perhaps, still and always evaluating. Alicia was more like a loner demon dog, circling whatever she wanted until she pounced.