Wings of Creation

by Brenda Cooper

  Marcus took us to a well-lit room with bright overhanging lights and chairs on each side of a soft bed. I lay Kayleen on the blue coverlet, which would match her bright eyes if she opened them. When she opened them. I picked up her hand to lay it over the coverlet, her fingers limp and almost cold. Marcus brought me a lightweight tan blanket from a closet and helped me tuck it around her. Worry lines surrounded his eyes. His every movement seemed so controlled he must have been seething.

  We’d spent an hour or more trying to revive her in the room, retracing paths of data, holding her, talking to her. Nothing had changed her condition at all. Here, she simply had more room and looked more comfortable in the bed but, in a way, sicker. I sat beside her and ran my fingers across her fragile face. “Stay with her,” Marcus said. “I have to go find Stark. I’ll also look for other things to try. She may just—wake up.”

  He didn’t sound hopeful.

  “We can’t leave with her like this, can we? She’s lost in the data here. If we take her away from her self, the part of her that’s lost, then how can she ever return? Should we even have moved her away from your shielded network?”

  He put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently. “I’m sorry Joseph.” His voice had none of its usual confidence or humor. “It was a hard thing we three did. It may have had a cost.”

  I needed to hear it. “Meaning?”

  “She may never find her way back. She was never as strong as you.”

  “Then I’ll find her.”

  “You’ve already tried. We both tried. It’s not safe here—you’ll be like a candle in the Lopali data.”

  I’d be a fire. I was going to try again. What more could go wrong, anyway? After all, people seemed to know where we were. Mercenaries were coming. Half our group had been captured. I wasn’t going to be too afraid to save Kayleen. But I needed to start. Maybe for her, maybe for me, but I needed Marcus gone in the worst way. I nodded at him, hoping he’d interpret that as acquiescence. “Good luck.”

  He stood up and left, his shoulders slumped. A long time ago, he’d had a reputation for keeping his students from being wind-burned. He should have been looking out for her more. I should have, too. In our abandon and joy, in our power, we might have killed her. If so, this was the second time I’d killed in power.

  It couldn’t be. Not Kayleen.

  As soon as he left, Sasha came over and licked my hand, clearly responding to my sad determination. I patted her head and then kissed her wet, cold nose. “Go on, girl, go lie down.”

  She went to the corner and curled up in it, nose on paws, giving a soft doggie sigh that suggested discontent. I curled up next to Kayleen, under the blanket, close enough for her to feel my body heat. Best to start with the physical and go back into the data if that didn’t succeed. Kayleen and I were one family. I held her hand in mine, and with my free hand, I stroked her face. I whispered her name, talked to her. “Kayleen. Our best flier. Remember being in the air on the way here, doing loops and laughing, watching me struggle on below you. Remember your little girl, who needs you and me to keep her safe. Caro needs her mom. Chelo will need you, too. She is so serious, she needs your silly questions and she needs to be needed, the way you need her. Come back to us. You are part of Liam’s band. Who will he lead if you don’t come back? Paloma loves you, came all the way here and left her home to keep being your mom.” Who else? “Bryan loves watching you climb, you and your big feet. Jenna will have lost a daughter—you know we’re like her family, too. She saved us on Fremont, more than we ever knew. Over and over. I learned some of that when we flew all the way home from Fremont the first time, when she was still one-eyed Jenna.” I paused. I was rambling. Like Kayleen rambled. “I love you. Come back for me.”

  There was no change.

  I repeated it all, twice over, using different words but saying the same thing—we loved her and we needed her and she needed us. She couldn’t die, couldn’t stay lost.

  If she heard it, she showed no physical signs at all.

  The opposite.

  Her fingers grew colder, even the ones I cupped in my own hand. They should have warmed to my touch. Her breathing stayed even but slowed. It felt like I cuddled close around a ghost, as if all that made Kayleen herself had fled.

  I kissed Kayleen’s cheek, another chaste kiss, and then I closed my eyes and matched my breathing to her thin, slow breaths. A hard choice, my body didn’t want to slow that much, but I craved resonance with her.

  I released myself into the data, starting by picking it up thread by thread, feed by feed. Unshielded, the fliers and Keeper’s raw data still threatened to carry me off in bells and calm. To resist, I kept Kayleen’s face in my memory, and the feel of her energy signature. Everyone felt like themselves in data; since the first time I met Kayleen here, deep in the Fremont data, I’d been able to find her, in all of the sources and flavors of data we’d shared at home and on the ships between here and there.

  But now I couldn’t feel her.

  Maybe I needed to find sim-Paula, except she grew inside Marcus’s shielding. She would be hidden. So deeper, wider. Maybe I needed to hold the Lopali data and let it make and be space for me the way I’d held so much data inside of Marcus’s shield.

  Marcus would warn me away from that. His voice was an echo in my head, something that might as well be real, edged with caution.

  Kayleen’s sweet energy was stronger.

  I opened more, and more.

  And more.

  I held all of the myriad data coming in and out of the cave. I held the data from the vineyard; planting times and wines and varieties, sales figures. I held the data from the weather control systems, cruder than ours on Silver’s Home, but they could be; Lopali had been made for control. The mandala of peaceful data about the rivers and streams and wild things that Kayleen had found. The transportation grid. The fair in Oshai. The Keepers, all connected one to another to keep the planet.

  I tried to stay careful, to sift the world of data in a way that set off no alarms.

  I tasted a few other people I didn’t know as I went. I’d known there were other Wind Readers here, but it was not like Silver’s Home and built by us, not changed by the minute by varying classes of Wind Readers from student to master. Except for me and Marcus and Kayleen and Caro, there were probably no more than twenty or thirty who lived here. More at the spaceports, of course. A few hundred on the whole planet.

  And then, I felt a Wind Reader I recognized. Slow. Thrashing. It felt like Kayleen but not; too different to be her. Since she was strong and wild and unshielded and lost, it took time for me to be sure.

  Caro.

  Looking for her mom.

  You don’t come near someone in data the way you do it physically, it’s a sharing of the signature ways we process and think, and a recognition of the thoughts we have. Only Kayleen thinks in the randomly bubbly way she does. Marcus was always sure of himself. And Caro had a baby stubbornness she was showing right now, bulling her way through information by accepting and rejecting stream after stream of data. She didn’t have the capacity or the control to do much more, but seeing her strength I wished harder than ever I’d had time to spend with her.

  I felt immensely proud of her.

  Perhaps, if I couldn’t find Kayleen, her daughter could.

  I inched near Caro, going slow until I felt her recognize me.

  She wanted reassurance. I did my best, but the only real comfort either of us needed required finding Kayleen. It took a while to settle Caro, to find a rhythm we could use together. She was still so unformed I had to fold her in myself, guide her, but hold her loose enough that she was following her own senses in the data. Concepts and questions she had no words for came and went through her mind, unformed but amazing. Either she was a special child, or all children were more special than I had ever known.

  My niece was a marvelous little person.

  How had she gotten here?

  It didn’t matter. The search—our
search now—mattered. My physical link to Kayleen’s body, our matched breath, told me how thin and insubstantial she had become. We were running out of time.

  What if we stopped moving and tried to bring Kayleen to us?

  Caro. Think about your mommy.

  Okay.

  Feel her. Talk to her in the data.

  How?

  Like you’re talking to me. Send her your love.

  I am.

  There was nothing coming back. I couldn’t tell Caro to try harder—she was trying as hard as she could. If we lost her mom, I couldn’t let it be her fault. I joined her in calling, doing the triple duty of watching over Caro, calling for Kayleen, and looking for anything new in the data that said we had been discovered. It felt more like we were an ember in the data than that we were fire, but even an ember warmed. And Caro had none of the shielding I did, none of mine and Marcus’s and Kayleen’s skill at looking like the data we were in, appearing to be a part of it instead of something foreign.

  Her call for Kayleen echoed through the Lopali nets. A plaintive sweet voice that saddened and called to action at once. It couldn’t be going unnoticed.

  Still, I didn’t feel Kayleen anywhere.

  I felt something or someone, weaker than us, originating from Oshai.

  Friend?

  Yes. Someone boosting Caro’s call.

  I accepted it; we needed it. Caro’s data voice reached further without weakening.

  And then two more joined us. More strength. I had not been a fire, but an ember, and Caro the spark. Now we had a fire.

  Marcus must have felt it. He slammed into my data signature, demanding attention. What are you doing?

  Feel it? Feel the help?

  Our enemies will find us.

  They knew we were here anyway. Help us. Help us or leave.

  A brief moment of surprise. For a breath, I thought he was going to shut us down. He withdrew.

  And then Caro was gone ahead, surfing a wave, sending her mother before the rest of us. I dove after her, and the collective of what must be most of the Wind Readers on Lopali pushed us, like a wind.

  Marcus surged back, helping. Security structures turned to air around us, data blending from the war machines of the two fleets and the peace machine of Lopali. He opened a hole in the world for us to go through.

  When Marcus committed, he committed.

  Bless him.

  As we neared Kayleen’s unique data signature, my heart fell. There was no babbling, no movement to find and take or even release bits of data. She hung like still water, wide and diffuse and full of holes where data blew through her.

  I reached toward her, nudging her gently.

  No response.

  I tried harder.

  No response.

  The most wind-burned students on Lopali simply never came back; the universities fed their bodies for a year and a day and then disconnected them, and they died, every one.

  Call her, Caro. Call harder even though she’s here.

  Mommy! Came back to us. A voice as pure as the heart of a young being in need, like a baby’s first cry. Lusty and single-focused. Mommy! Mommy, come to me!

  Nothing.

  Mommy! Her stubborn nature amazed me. I’m not leaving without you! Come back now. If she could have stamped her feet here, she would. I almost laughed, except that it was so bittersweet.

  We’d gone where the others who’d blown us here could be felt, but only barely. Kayleen could be felt, but only barely.

  I joined my voice to Caro’s, chose to follow her lead. Kayleen! Come back now. If you leave your daughter to know she got this close and you wouldn’t come, I will never forgive you!

  Me either, Caro called. I need you. Come back now.

  And she did. At first it was slow, just a coming together of the bits of her that had been recognizable, but scattered.

  Keep coming, I sent. Breathe. Feel your body breathe.

  Oh my God. She wrapped Caro up inside of her. Oh baby. How did you get here? Come back with me now. It’s dangerous way out here!

  Fear made her energy draw into itself. If she became too afraid, we might lose her again. She’s okay. Get yourself back.

  And then Kayleen began to feel the others, still helping. Oh! What happened? Why so many? I was gone; I thought I’d gone forever, floating. You wouldn’t let me float.

  Never. We will protect each other always. I included Caro. All of us.

  Caro echoed me. All of us. Even them.

  Marcus: Hurry. Reach for us.

  We did, going back up the path we’d come down, only faster and surer. The people who helped us knew this data, Lopali’s data. They gathered us in, helping, encouraging.

  I tracked them. Six pilots. A Keeper named Jill who knew Caro—and who had been the first voice. She’d gathered the others. Sweet Jill. Three other Keepers. Someone from Silver’s Home who’d come here as a seeker. An ex-patriot from Islas, like Dianne, named Kyle.

  Caro and Kayleen stayed close, with me herding them both, and still trying to do the double and triple duty of watching. And then they began to separate as they came into more and more contact with their own physical bodies. Kayleen was in the cave in the hill, and Caro in Oshai. Caro couldn’t have much experience finding herself, and we’d gone deep. Jill: watch Caro. Take her. The rest of you, too. Thank you, all of you. Thank you.

  Words and feelings came back.

  I’ve got her.

  You’re welcome.

  Call us again if you need to.

  We’ll listen.

  We’re our own affinity. Everywhere. Always.

  And then a curtain built between us, Marcus creating more security, urging us into our bodies, where we were going anyway. Sasha’s wet tongue scraped across my cheek and I pulled her down beside me, feeling her warmth and weight. I opened my eyes and looked at Kayleen’s face, just inches from my own. Her breath had returned to normal speed and her eyes fluttered open. They did match the coverlet. “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice thin and reedy.

  I let out a long, slow breath to control my elation, to give Kayleen the calm support she needed. Still, my heart leapt with the joy of her return to us. “Without Caro, I would never have found you.”

  She gave a quick nod. “I’m afraid for her.”

  “We were more afraid for you. I’m sorry. It was my fault.”

  She pushed back the covers and I helped her sit up. She took my face in her two hands. “It’s not your fault. Nothing is your fault. The world made us and it needs us, but you did not make the world.”

  I laughed, gently. “I can tell you were lost in Lopali data.”

  She dropped her hands, taking one of mine in one of hers. “There’s beauty here. It didn’t happen because of the people who created these poor fliers, or because of the world they made, but because the human heart and soul itself is so magnificent. Lopali has become the soul of the Five Worlds, and most of the people on the other worlds don’t even know it.”

  If it was the soul of the Five Worlds, it included kidnapping and coercion. She wasn’t even really babbling. She felt different. When I looked into her eyes, they were calm pools, unrecognizable as belonging to the Kayleen I knew.

  “Do you promise to stay with us?” I asked her. “You won’t go plunging back into the bliss of data for a while?”

  Her smile was beatific. “Yes.”

  As gorgeous as she was in that moment, she was not the Kayleen I knew and loved, at least not exactly. Maybe this state was residue. Please. I wanted my Kayleen.

  Marcus came in the door, moving fast. “We have to go. Every Wind Reader on Lopali knows where you are now. Not all of them are helpful.” He leaned down a bit and looked at Kayleen. “Can you move?”

  “If you’ll take me to Caro.”

  Kayleen, telling Marcus what to do. Even he looked taken aback. “The sooner we leave, the sooner you’ll see her.”

  One of his non-answers. But Kayleen had done the same thing. “Kayleen
—can you travel?” I asked. “Are you strong enough?”

  She smiled and stood up, reaching for the ceiling and then bending down and placing her hands flat on the floor beside her long feet. She stood back up, slowly, and smiled at me. “Let’s go.”

  When she started for the door, she tripped, and I barely caught her before she fell. I slid my arm around her for support and whispered to her. “Are you truly all back?”

  She turned her newly serene eyes on me. “Maybe not. Maybe I’ll never be all the way back.”

  Marcus clapped his hands above her head hard, startling her so she nearly fell again, clutching my waist with both of her arms. The look he gave her was calm, but merciless. “You’d better be fully in the present. The next few days will demand even more than that. They’ll demand twice what you’ve ever given.”

  She blinked up at him, then closed her eyes and shook her head. She pushed away from me and, this time, when she looked back, it was the Kayleen I knew, the more hesitant Kayleen, that gazed at me.

  I wondered which one was stronger.

  I offered my arm. She took it, and we made it to the door, where Stark waited, a worried look on his face. Even though he didn’t say anything, I felt like I was being chastised. Instead of the wings I expected we’d need, he held three packs. I raised an eyebrow at Marcus, who said, “There is another way out.”

  Stark led us through the door into the war room. Marcus stopped a moment, contemplating the wall of fleets. They seemed far removed from us, as if we watched some entertainment video. But Marcus’s eyes narrowed as he watched.

  “What is it?” I asked him.

  “Three ships from Silver’s Home, all representing the Wingmakers, have declared neutrality. They claim we’re trying to drag their property into a war.”

  “So our own side is still fighting us, and we’re still the cause. What’s new about that?”

  Stark rewarded me with a nod of agreement. Kayleen asked, “What about the sim? Is it still alive?”

  Marcus nodded, but then cautioned. “We still don’t know if it’s a good take. We may need to do more.” He hadn’t taken his eyes off the screen. He swallowed, and then turned to Stark. “I’ll let you know where to get us from. Wish us luck.”