Wings of Creation

by Brenda Cooper

  “I love her fury and her independence. Those will keep her safe.”

  He loved more than that. He loved the soft heart it had taken years for me to see. “That’s why I love Alicia.” But Jenna wouldn’t do anything stupid. “I can’t imagine Jenna not being safe. She kept us all safe for years. It’s Alicia I’m worried about.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’ll keep an eye out for her, a little, even from here.”

  He had resources everywhere. But I didn’t have access to his net or resources, and no matter how much I admired and trusted him, I needed to do more than worry. Besides, it was going to be too dark to walk back to the cave soon. “Ready to go find Tsawo?”

  25

  JOSEPH: SHADES OF GRAY

  Early evening blurred the edges of the rocks outside the cave and faded the black of Sasha’s coat into the landscape so her white feet and nose looked like ghost dog parts approaching the cave. Stepping through the barrier between the outside and the inside, the hum of conversation and machinery assaulted us. Any calm I’d gathered outside left quickly.

  Tsawo and Angeline weren’t immediately visible. Kayleen pointed. The two fliers sat on top of a storage building at the far side of the cave, off to the right. I started toward them. Kayleen walked beside me, her steps as determined as mine, and Marcus dragged a bit behind, maybe lost in data. Out here in the main cave that meant Lopali data, soft and seductive and full of lies and half-truths and deep truths.

  We stood at the bottom of the storage building, a nearly two-story box with no windows, and rows of closed doors along the bottom. It was made of the same stuff that lined the cave walls, smooth light gray material that could be molded into almost any shape. From this close, it was easy to tell the building’s roof had actually been set up for fliers with stones and perch-tree branches arranged pleasingly to make a sort of outdoor/indoor sitting room. The two fliers, black Tsawo and white Angeline, held their heads close together, talking. I called up, “Hello!”

  Angeline looked down. “Come on up!”

  We weren’t going up the sheer walls in front of us. Marcus headed around the building. “Here.”

  Steep, shallow steps had been cut into the cave wall, more like a ladder than a staircase. We started up, Sasha struggling behind us. Kayleen, last in line, looked down over her shoulder. “Sasha. Wait. You don’t like fliers anyway.”

  Sasha barked, clinging to the wall, and then gave up and fell the three steps down, landing on her feet and whining softly.

  “You’ll be all right,” I told her.

  At the top of the ladder, Marcus helped me and then Kayleen over to the top of the building. We sat opposite Tsawo and Angeline, climbing up on seats clearly meant for fliers; once again our feet didn’t touch the ground. I sat in the middle, with Marcus on my right. From up here, the cave looked bigger and emptier than it did from below. The walls and turns were all rounds and angles, more like a space ship than a cave. Rock, but carved by people. The roof was still far above us, although our new height revealed a doorway behind us at the level of the top of the building. We hadn’t figured out where people lived yet. Maybe here?

  Now what? Angeline prompted me, her blue eyes bright in her pale face. “What can we help you with?”

  I watched Tsawo’s expression. “Alicia’s gone missing.”

  He winced, but didn’t look surprised. “From where?”

  Kayleen was her usual subtle self. “Near Oshai. We’re not supposed to know where the others are. But Seeyan said she and Bryan tied up a Keeper and got away. We need to find her.”

  Tsawo’s features tightened and Angeline’s eyes widened. “A Keeper!” she exclaimed. “Was the Keeper all right?”

  Marcus’s answer came quickly. “Yes.”

  “Good. They’re valuable to us.” She sounded like she thought of the Keepers as pets. Maybe she did; Seeyan acted like they were a club, but whatever they were in Lopali’s overt social structure, it was less than fliers.

  “Alicia won’t hurt anyone,” Kayleen said. “She’s just wild.”

  Tsawo’s face gave away nothing; smooth and pretty and controlled. “You think I can help?”

  A small uncomfortable silence ensued. I spoke into it. “I thought . . . you’d spent so much time with her. I was hoping she told you something to help us?”

  Kayleen added words I’d only been thinking. “Or maybe you told her something about Lopali that she wanted to go find. Alicia’s curious.”

  Marcus remained quiet and watchful, his energy partly gone again as he double-dipped between the physical and the world of data. Hopefully he was looking for Alicia and Jenna his own way.

  Angeline and Tsawo shared a glance. The dark flier looked back at me and took a deep breath. His words sounded soft, like a stream of peace, but were actually hard. “Alicia is willful. She has no calm, no access at all to her inner core. I tried to teach her to fly, and she couldn’t get close enough to her own fears to even see them, much less overcome them.” He paused, the look on his face almost exactly the one I’d seen on Alicia’s face when I asked her about Tsawo. He seemed to be proud of her and mad at her all at once, about like me. He drew in a slow breath and calm touched his muscles one by one, until his face was again serene. “She’s probably gone to find some poor soul from the warring worlds that will help her try to kill herself by attempting to change into a flier.”

  His words had gotten Kayleen all worked up. “Alicia’s better than you’re giving her credit for. She’s undoubtedly trying to help us. She wouldn’t just run away and she wouldn’t tie someone up on a whim. She’s smart. She’d know we might get in trouble, so it must have been worth the risk! She must know something we don’t.”

  That might not be hard.

  Angeline spoke up. “Lopali is a patient place.” She looked at me, and then at Marcus and Kayleen. “You three have shown patience, and I’m grateful for the work you’re doing. There are more forces at play than you realize. A saying we have for visitors is, ‘Patience skins your soul.’ ”

  Kayleen’s soul hadn’t been skinned yet. She just plowed ahead, pleading with the fliers. “She’s got this invisibility mod. We’re not going to be able to find her by looking for her. Don’t you have any ideas about where she is?”

  Tsawo shook his head. “Our eyes aren’t any better than yours at seeing the invisible.”

  Kayleen blinked up at him, looking disappointed. “What about the other women who were with us? Have you seen them or heard anything about them? My mom’s with them.”

  He leaned back away from her, looking slightly assaulted. Maybe he wasn’t a guy who understood women’s feelings. Maybe fliers didn’t know what a mother meant to someone. I glanced at Angeline, who probably should know, but her face was as serene as Tsawo’s. But then, she hadn’t birthed, or really raised Paula. Mari had. I tried a different tack. “Chelo said that you’re protectors. What does that mean?”

  His feathers rustled softly against the stones he sat on. “It means we’re protecting Lopali against the war.” His gaze stayed steady on me, unblinking, and I refused to look away. Finally, he looked at Marcus. “I know your goal. You want to drag us into war, but we want peace.”

  Again, Kayleen said the first thing that popped into her head. “Chelo doesn’t like war, either.”

  “I admire that,” Angeline said. “I hate the idea of Tsawo dying in some strange place, or anyone else.”

  I glanced at Tsawo. “You can fly a space ship?” It would give us something in common.

  His laughter sounded bitter. “Not me. Fliers are seldom Wind Readers like you; we don’t command most of our own ships. We learn as children that ships are cages.”

  Marcus spoke up. “So then why is Angeline worried about you going to war?”

  “Because if there is a war, I will go.” He glanced at the other flier. “Angeline, too. But I far prefer flying here to flying through space.”

  And I preferred flying ships to flying myself any day.

  Angel
ine interrupted. “But what about you two? Do you want to stop this war?”

  Marcus answered her. “We need you. With Lopali at our side, Islas will back away.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Tsawo said. Marcus’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t reply.

  Kayleen answered him. “I hate fighting.”

  He looked at me.

  I wanted to fly the ships I’d seen in the war room. More than that, I expected to; they called to me. But the end of the only real battle I’d been in made me want to puke for months. So that’s what I talked about. “I killed some people in the battle on Fremont. I hated it. Especially afterward.” When their screams stayed in my head for months and when they came back to haunt me, like they had when we were working on Angeline’s daughter’s simulation. Now, because I had made the mistake of thinking about them. My ghosts.

  It wasn’t enough answer for him. “This war. What do you think of this one?”

  I didn’t know. I shook my head, feeling stupid. Chelo had a stance; if it was war, it was wrong. Marcus’s every breath went into stopping this war, but he would fight it if he had to. Alicia would like it. Bryan, too. But what about me? People were fighting about the freedom to do what Marcus was teaching me to do. The same stuff that Islas hated enough to go to war to stop. I took Kayleen’s hand. “We’ll do what’s right.”

  Angeline’s gaze was softer than Tsawo’s. “Do you know what that is?”

  “Helping you is right,” I said. “Whatever happens with the war, I want to help you. You shouldn’t be owned.”

  She nodded. “We agree.” She paused, and her voice softened. “At least you’re willing to tell us what you don’t know.”

  Tsawo slid down from his perch and stretched his wings. “I can’t help you easily. But if I see Alicia, or I hear about her, I’ll let you know.”

  Angeline smiled wistfully. “Good luck.” She, too, spread her wings.

  “Wait,” I said, but not before they fell off the edge of the building. A wing beat or two later they rose again, flying out the cave mouth, side by side, and so fine-looking I lost my breath for a moment.

  “What are they to each other?” Kayleen asked Marcus.

  “Brother and sister.”

  “Really?” I’d thought they might be lovers. “Genetically?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Matriana and Daniel raised them both.” We were still sitting on the slightly-too-tall-for-normal-humans perches, and he started to slide off. “I want to check on the simulation.”

  “I saw you in the nets. Did you find Alicia? Or the others?”

  Disappointment crossed his face. “No. But I’ll keep looking.” He narrowed his eyes at us. “Don’t you look. You’re not subtle enough here, not yet. You leave trails everywhere you go.”

  I hated that he was probably right.

  He started toward the ladder in the wall.

  “Wait,” I said. “I need to know something.”

  “What?”

  “What are we doing? Sometimes I can’t keep all this straight. You’re a creator. You want to make things like fliers, and like your kitchen garden back home.”

  He nodded.

  “That’s what Silver’s Home is fighting for, right?”

  “Except they want to own the fliers. That’s wrong. What we did to the fliers enslaved them.”

  Kayleen jumped down and started pacing. “Wait—the fliers . . .”

  “Just a minute,” Marcus said. “Go on Joseph.”

  I think he knew my question but wanted me to ask it. “And Islas wants to slow Silver’s Home down, too?”

  “Yes. But they want—different curbs. They want to control creation themselves. Centrally. That’s not right, either. You and I wouldn’t be able to choose, nor would any being that had been made.”

  Kayleen stopped and frowned at him. “But what you want sounds closer to what Islas wants than to what Silver’s Home wants.”

  “No. Not really. Islas sees us as too strong, too dangerous to their own laws. They say we’re eroding the careful way they’ve built their society. But it’s our very freedom that attracts change. Some of their own people, like Dianne, come over as spies or diplomats, or both, and they leave and come here.”

  Kayleen cocked her head. “Was Dianne a spy or a diplomat?”

  “Wait.” I didn’t want to let the focus drift. Marcus was still next to me on the perch, both of us above Kayleen. He looked out over the cave, as if he didn’t want to meet my gaze. “Look at me,” I asked him.

  He did, his green-gold eyes bright in the artificial light.

  “I know you want to stop the war. If Silver’s Home wins, they’ll have too much freedom. And if they lose, they won’t have enough. That’s what you’re telling me, right?”

  He nodded.

  “And if the war doesn’t happen, then what? What do you want instead?”

  “What I’ve wanted all along. I want every being that gets made, and can think, to have their own rights to evolve, like we can. Rights for every kind of smart being. And more. If they can’t make up their minds, like my light-link butterflies—who are about as bright as dust motes, if prettier—to have a right to live. Anything that’s stable and can reproduce.”

  On Fremont, everything was a check and balance for everything else. Herds of grazers fed paw-cats and demon dogs. “But someone still has to make decisions. Who is that?”

  “A group of us.”

  “You?”

  “And you.”

  Me? Make rules? Be like the Town Council at home? I wasn’t old enough. I searched his face to see if he really meant it. He was the closest thing to a real father I’d ever had. Steven had raised me well on Fremont, even though he’d adopted me and Chelo as spoils of war. But he’d died, and the man who took his place, Tom, was married to a woman who hated me. I’d finally found my physical father, only to find he had broken his moral compass when he’d abandoned us. He’d tried to kill a whole planet full of people in vengeance.

  Marcus was better than any of them. He was passionate and smart and had taught me things I’d used, over and over.

  But that didn’t mean I was ready to trust him to run the world.

  Or me either.

  His one little comment had almost paralyzed me. When I didn’t answer, he continued. “We have allies. Independent, unaffiliated. Almost an affinity group of people without economic ties to each other. They all want a world created and managed, but not by any central source. Not by just me or just you or just Silver’s Home or just Islas. By a set of guidelines that say all self-aware beings need to own their own future. Machines and things can be made and sold, except true AI’s. But not biology.”

  Kayleen came and stood between us, bidding for attention. I slid my arm around her waist. “So how does stopping the war make that happen?” she asked. “I don’t get it. If Silver’s Home wins, they’ll keep doing what they’re doing, right? And If Islas wins, they’ll make you stop, or they’ll kill you. Maybe you’re better off letting Silver’s Home win and going from there.”

  He looked down at her, his features softening. He liked her. More than he liked Alicia. “If we have to go to war, we want Silver’s Home to win. But I want peace instead.”

  “And the fliers help how?” she asked.

  “We use them to make Islas bargain.”

  I saw a problem with that. “But if you can win, why would Silver’s Home bargain?”

  He looked away. “There’s a lot of us working on that.”

  “How many?”

  Now he shook his head again. “I can’t tell you. Not yet. There’s a bounty on your head, and I can’t risk a lifetime of work.” He did look genuinely miserable.

  “But what if something happens to you?” Kayleen asked.

  “Then Dianne or Jenna will take care of you.”

  “Or Ming?” Kayleen pushed. “Should we trust Ming, too?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t answer your questions. I’m sorry. You have to trus
t me.”

  “I just want to understand,” she said. “Who’s right? I don’t get it.”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t an easy fight. There’s right and wrong on both sides. That’s the real world. Children think wars are fought over right and wrong, and that the word truth has a capital T and can always be seen. But the real world doesn’t have absolute truths, and so you have to think.”

  She started to open her mouth again and I pulled her closer. “I trust him.” Even if he did want to take over Silver’s Home.

  Marcus asked, “Are you ready to go check on our work?”

  I glanced behind us, curious. “Where does that door go?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Can we look?” Kayleen asked.

  I shook my head at her. “Sasha’s waiting down below.”

  Sure enough, she sat at the bottom of the steps, looking up and wagging her tail as soon as we started down. If only I had the patience of dogs. I wanted to find Alicia, not head back to secure rooms and play with genetics. And find Paloma for Kayleen, who must be worried sick, and Jenna for Marcus. We should be finding our family instead of trying to save the world.

  Maybe I didn’t have the same drives Marcus did.

  I wanted to stop and check on the war room, but Marcus passed it by quickly and led us into the small room beyond. It took an extra few minutes to wipe the dregs of the conversation with Tsawo and Angeline from my head and get down into the simulation.

  Like before, Marcus built walls of safety around us. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  There was nothing there. Marcus’s disappointment touched all three of us. “What happened?” I asked, still deep, the question as much a feeling as words.

  “She died.”

  Kayleen gripped my hand. Silence, and then he said, “Get ready. We’re going to watch her die, and see how to start again.”

  Great. Just what I wanted. “Do sims die often?” I asked.