by Erica Rue
If they found the fabricator, they would be able to manufacture new parts, which would ease some of the tensions with the Aratians. Brian thought the fabricator was a ridiculous myth. There were still some alive who had seen firsthand as the Farmer returned with supplies, supposedly from the fabricator, but no one had seen the device in person. Even his father believed there was a scientific explanation for what it could do. The Farmer hadn’t told anyone where it was or how to get there. People swore they saw him heading south, but others claimed north, or east to the mountains, to the point where no one actually knew the truth anymore.
Dione wasn’t from the southern island, but she still might have some insights into the fabricator. At least she could explain it to him. She was good at explaining things. Last night, when she had told him the truth about Kepos, it was like she could anticipate what he wanted to ask. Like something he had always wondered about. The fixed star in the sky was apparently a space station in a fixed orbit. She hinted at a much larger world. No, larger universe. There were still so many questions to ask, but Brian was afraid to know the answers.
Dione would not be happy to know Victoria’s plans for the Flyers. It might even stop her from helping them. She didn’t understand what life was like here. She didn’t understand hunger or watching your loved ones die. She needed to understand.
On the other hand, Brian didn’t like Victoria’s plan either. She would start an all-out war between the two settlements, and a lot of people would die. If he could find the fabricator, there might be a way to resolve this peacefully. They would be able to replace the broken parts in Aratian machines in return for food shipments. If the fabricator was real, he could bring the embargo to an end, and prevent a war.
33. DIONE
The more Dione thought about her conversation with Victoria, the less confident she was in her decision to start the Flyers. Victoria was planning something, and it wasn’t good. The man next to Dione was looking at her with curiosity, and she was on her last tiny bite of food. Pretty soon, they were going to start talking to her, or worse, asking questions. Would it be rude to pull out the journal and start reading? She had already read through it once, but if it saved her from questions about the southern island, or better yet, showed her how to unlock the Flyers, it might be worth it to be rude.
Brian returned just in time.
“Come on, I want to show you around,” he said. He grabbed a slice of bread, then led her outside. It was early, but everyone outdoors was working. Some were repairing houses, others digging trenches. A few, she noticed, carried guns and bows and headed toward the main gate.
“Brian, I’m not sure how I feel about this deal. What is Victoria going to do with the Flyers?”
“Does it matter? You need a Flyer. This is the only way.” He avoided both her question and eye contact. Victoria must have said something that got to him.
She put her foot down. “It does matter.”
“Then you’re prepared to let your friend die? For what?” Brian snapped at her.
Dione flinched away from him. She knew it was wrong. She knew she would be handing a powerful weapon over to one side of a conflict. They were on the verge of war. She hadn’t really understood that until now. What right did she have to tip the balance of power toward one side? All actions had consequences.
“If I do help start the Flyers, what would happen to them? You think Victoria’s going to just let you take one? Because I’ve known her for about five minutes and I can tell you what she’s going to do. She’s going to bypass any Aratian defenses there are and attack. Tell me, Brian, are all of the Aratians guilty? Can you risk innocents, like Evy?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. You want to talk about innocents? Here, come with me.”
He stormed off down a side street that crawled in between two buildings made of a mixture of natural wood and brick, plus pre-fab material that had come from a colonizer ship. They were poised at the end of a row of buildings, all nearly identical except for the designs painted on their doors. Each building looked large enough to house multiple families, like miniature apartment buildings. Dione walked quickly to keep up.
“See that house?” he asked, pointing to one with a tree painted in brown on the door. “They lost a daughter. Killed while trying to steal some food from Aratian fields.”
He was walking slowly down the street now. He pointed to another house. “He lost his son, and then his wife killed herself.”
Further down the row, he stopped in front of a house with deer painted on the front. “She lost her baby last week. Malnutrition.” He turned to Dione. “You don’t need to remind me about innocent people dying. So if you’re still asking if I’m willing to risk a few Aratians, the answer is yes. Because no one has to die. They have more than enough food, and they won’t trade it with us because their Artifacts keep breaking. They think it’s our fault, but we just don’t have the spare parts. The Aratians we smuggle out increase tensions, too, but we’re not going to leave them there. And their Regnator is so stubborn that he won’t even talk to Victoria about a treaty. She wasn’t always like this, Dione. The last year has been hard. It’s changed her.”
Dione didn’t know what to say. What hardship had she endured until recently? She had been too little when her mother died to really miss her. Her father had given her everything she needed. Her uncle had loved her. Professor Oberon had believed in her. She had never wanted for food or water or shelter or safety. She had to stop pretending that she was uninvolved in this conflict. Whether she meant to or not, she had joined with a Ficaran and offered him and his people help. It was too late to turn back. She wasn’t sure if she actually trusted Brian or if she just wanted him to be worthy of her trust, but he was the only one on her side right now. If she wanted to survive, if she wanted to save Bel, she couldn’t afford to screw that up.
“I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to understand what it’s been like for you here.” Brian said nothing. He didn’t understand her perspective either. A question popped into Dione’s head.
“Do you think all lives have equal value?”
He looked at her, puzzled. “No, of course not.” He paused. “Do you?”
“It’s what my uncle taught me. That every life was valuable. I don’t think my father agreed, but he never said anything.”
“How can you possibly think that all lives are equal? It makes absolutely no sense. Should an old man, incapable of defending the settlement, receive food and medical treatment when our supplies are scarce? Every life may be valuable, but certainly not equal.”
“What if you didn’t have to ration supplies? What if everyone could access what they needed? Would all lives be equal then?”
Brian stared at her a moment, thinking. “I can’t even imagine a world like that. If that’s what life is like where you’re from…” He sounded bitter. “What about murderers? What about people so stone-hearted that they can’t even be called human?”
A pang of guilt wrenched her stomach. Or brutal aliens who send their children to murder other children? Can you disregard those lives? Dione didn’t have the moral high ground, even though she knew that she made the right choice when she killed that Ven.
“I guess you’re right. We all do what we have to in order to survive.” Dione said the words, but she didn’t feel them. Not yet. She had lived so far thinking she was a good person, but apparently, she had just never been challenged.
His shoulders relaxed and his frown receded. “Come on. I want to show you something else.”
He led her up one of the wooden scout towers that lined the stone rampart. They were new. They looked out of place, made out of newer materials.
The two looked out over the plain surrounding the settlement. The Ficarans were easy targets. Dione wondered what kept the Aratians at bay.
“All of this used to be farmland. We were able to irrigate it with water from the river that runs along the ridge there. We knew we had to find a new source of ma
terials for Artifacts, because demand was growing and the supply was dwindling. The Temple here has equipment that can refine ore mined from the ground, so we headed up into that mountain to the mine that the Architect had told us about. But we got greedy. It poisoned the water, which poisoned our crops, which poisoned us.”
“It sounds like your people have had terrible luck.”
“You can help change that. Victoria talks about making attacks, but really she just wants to feed her people. Deep down, she knows that intimidation, using the Flyers as leverage, will be enough to get bigger food shipments. Their embargo is practically a siege. We can only hunt and gather so much, but we’re having to go deeper and deeper to find game, and you saw firsthand how dangerous the deep woods are. I don’t think the Aratians will fight back.”
“How do you keep them from attacking now?”
“We have most of the Artifact weapons. That pistol I took was probably worth a fortune among the Aratians, and here they’re not for sale. They are stockpiled and issued only to guards on duty.”
They headed back down the wall, and Brian led her to a shady area to rest. They had barely sat down when a beautiful young woman about Brian’s age came striding over.
“Brian, when did you get back?” Her pale blue eyes stood out in contrast to her dark wavy hair. Beautiful didn’t cut it. This girl was stunning.
“Melanie!” he said, jumping up and giving her a big hug. “Dione, this is Melanie, my best friend. Melanie, this is Dione.”
Dione regained her confidence at his fast use of the term ‘best friend.’
“Hi, Dione, nice to meet you,” Melanie said.
“You, too.”
Melanie turned back to Brian and raised an eyebrow. “So you finally ran out of hearts to break in our own settlement, and now you’re smuggling in Aratian lovers.” To Dione she said, “Has he tried to seduce you yet?”
Dione felt her cheeks grow hot as she remembered last night’s kiss. Well, she had already figured out that Brian was a flirt. That would explain his interest in her last night. She did have a pulse, after all.
“Cut it out, Melanie,” he said. He was smiling, but Dione thought she saw a hint of embarrassment there. “She’s not Aratian. She was in the Flyer. You saw it fall, right?”
Melanie’s expression changed from playful to interested in an instant. “Then where are you from? Where’d you get the Flyer?”
Dione turned to Brian. This was his friend, his settlement, his lead.
“You can trust her. Tell her the truth.”
Dione told her about everything. Melanie’s jaw dropped when she got to the part about the space station.
“That’s not all. Now that Dione’s here, Victoria wants her to start all the Flyers.”
“As leverage?” Melanie said. “But Victoria is way too angry to just threaten the Aratians to get more food. She’ll—”
“Start an all-out war, I know,” Brian said, “and we can’t risk it, not if those Venatorians could be on their way.”
“So what’s your plan?” Melanie asked. Brian smiled. He looked so relaxed, talking with her. A moment of silence fell over the trio.
Dione wanted to help them. She could give them the Flyers, but would that really help? That would just start a war. “Is this really the best way to solve the problem?” she asked Brian.
He frowned. The question seemed to catch him off-guard. “I don’t want war, but we’re suffering. We’re dying. We don’t have any leverage when it comes to trade. We don’t have any more supplies or parts that the Aratians need, and we have nothing they want, except for the guns. And Victoria will use those before she trades them away,” he said. “Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“There are rumors of a machine that creates things. A fabricator. Apparently the Farmer would periodically take a Flyer and come back with fresh supplies.”
Dione lit up. “Of course. Every colonizer would have been equipped with a fabricator.”
“It’s real?” Brian said. “I always thought it was a ridiculous story as a kid. How can a machine create something out of nothing?”
“It doesn’t use nothing. It requires raw materials, but it can render almost any design into a 3D facsimile.”
“What?”
“If you tell it what to make in a lot of detail, it uses raw materials to create that object.”
“Then there’s another way,” Melanie said, smiling at Brian.
“What?” Dione said.
“We steal one,” he said, turning to her. “I don’t want war either. When Victoria talked to me this morning, I learned that if she gets the Flyers, she’s going to make a preemptive strike. If we can find the fabricator, we can open up trade again.”
A weight lifted from Dione. This had been her hope all along, but she didn’t dare bring it up after he talked about the Ficarans who had died.
“Melanie, I have a few other things to tell you, and a favor to ask. Come on,” he said. “Dione, I’ll be right back.”
So for the next ten minutes, he had some sort of secret conversation with Melanie. Or he was making out with her. Probably both. The best thing Dione could do for now was to ignore her attraction to Brian, and work on starting the Flyer. She kept looking through the journal, though by this point, she had read the whole thing. It was repetitive and confusing in places. The author started out angry at the Architect, then the entries became incoherent for awhile, jumping from memory to memory. Toward the end, things got clearer again. By that point, the author trusted the Architect, who had clearly given her the key to the Flyers to use at the right moment, but she never explicitly said what the key was. Soon, Brian returned alone.
“Melanie had to get back to work, but she says, well, it’s not in my best interest to repeat it, so I won’t. Have you figured out the key?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. There’s this one passage that I keep coming back to, though she mentions a few times that the journal holds the key,” Dione said. “I’m hoping that once I see the Flyers, something will click. It’s the last entry.”
The Architect, no, she asked me to call her Samantha. She doesn’t like how they call her Architect. She sings me the lullaby every night, even though I won’t remember it later. She tells me it doesn’t matter, because she’s hidden it in the pages for me. I’m supposed to give it to the Aratians when the time is right, after no one believes the Farmer anymore. Jameson. She tells me I should use his name, too. I ask myself how I could love such a monster, and as much as I make excuses, I know why. I’m a monster, too. Why else would I abandon my husband and son?
Really, she expects too much of me. I can’t live with the memories of what I’ve done, but when they start to slip away, how can I go back to being that blind woman? This journal won’t save me. It won’t save us. What do you do when you hate who you are and hate who you’ll become?
“It sounds like the lullaby is the key,” he said.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t say what lullaby it is, or what part of it contains the key.”
Brian didn’t have any ideas, but Dione gave him the book to puzzle over while she thought. The last line. The writing was darker, as if the author had traced back over it again with her pen. What would she do? No, what would the author do? The journal progressed from hatred toward the Architect to self-hatred, and these very last words seemed like just that, final words. Had the author committed suicide? Dione had suspected this before, but she needed to say it out loud.
“I think this journal belonged to the Farmer’s wife. In the earlier entries she makes it sound like the Architect, Samantha, is trying to use her to get to the Farmer, Jameson, and this last entry, well, look at the final line.” She showed Brian the page with the last entry. “Didn’t she commit suicide?”
“She did. Maybe you’re right.” Brian looked up from the journal. “Does it help you unlock the Flyers?”
“Probably not.”
“I’m sure once you’re in the Flyer, you’ll kno
w what to do,” he said, though Dione thought he looked a little nervous.
The key had something to do with the lullaby. Or maybe there was some sort of alphanumeric code hidden at intervals in the pages. Maybe if Dione had spent more time with Lithia playing at detective holos, she would be able to figure it out. When Victoria summoned them, they were out of time and out of ideas.
34. LITHIA
Lithia waited impatiently for Cora to return, just as Zane had instructed. When she entered the prison, she addressed the guard on duty.
“My father requested that I come and show Lithia around. She’s the one in cell four,” Cora said.
“Yes, the only captive right now. Do you have a release from the Regnator?” The guard seemed a little nervous.
“No, but I could go and get one. He’s probably not in his meeting yet, but if he is, I’m sure he won’t mind an interruption from me,” she said.
“No!” the guard protested. “Don’t bother him. Restraints?”
“No, thank you,” she said. “My guard is waiting for us just outside.”
A few minutes later, they left the detention center together.
Lithia spoke first. “Where’s your guard?”
“Not here. I slipped away.”
Lithia was impressed. “Now you know why I’m here. Did Zane tell you about my mission?”
Cora shook her head. “Only that I’m supposed to help you.”
“I need the medicine that treats the demon sickness, the one where your cuts glow green. Do you know where it is?” Lithia couldn’t believe she had actually just called it “demon sickness” with a straight face.
“It’s probably in storage with all the other rare medicines. I can check the catalog once we’re down there. But we need to be fast. My father really is in a meeting, and you need to be gone before he realizes it.”
Lithia was surprised how quickly she had agreed to help them. The Farmer must really carry a lot of weight around here.
