Reading the Wind (Silver Ship)

by Brenda Cooper

  I nestled the data button in my captain’s coat pocket next to the headband, took my mother’s hairbrush, and closed the cubbies. I gave a silent call to Leo, and it clambered up to me, settling on four arms, leaving the other two in front of it. I patted it for being obedient, as if it would notice, and told it, “Good night.” These words, like the others, reverberated in the emptiness. I curled up and fell deeply asleep on my parents’ bed.

  When I woke, I took Leo, ate, and went to the ship’s nose. I’d only been here once, with Jenna, in freefall. It felt entirely different from anything on Fremont and it took a good head for math to move with economy.

  Even here, New Making’s skin was windowless and smooth. I could call up data via Starteller, but there was no projection wall so any video was inside my head, fighting my normal vision, making me feel off balance. I anchored myself by hooking my feet in some of the webbing festooning the walls, and took the data button back out. It helped to feel its shiny silvered surface hard as a pebble in my palm, to caress it with one finger of my other hand. Some level of physicality helped me stay grounded, present in both the webs of data and in my body. I no longer had Chelo by my side to be my link to the physical.

  I followed different threads, ignoring the pictures for now. Stored data about the ship. Links to financial records. Probably useful, but I had no context to understand any of it.

  Then, finally, something truly personal. I found my father’s journal.

  They realized the planet was inhabited a few days before they landed. He described how they’d spotted Traveler, the colonists’ stranded ship, in silent orbit around Fremont. And then, on landing day:

  Disaster. Jenna led an expedition to meet them, and she says they have a claim from long before ours. It is valid in their minds. They remain simple and weak, calling themselves original humans, attempting to preserve primal human genetics. Or at least, what is left of them. Jenna told Marissa they hate us being here.

  I pictured them landing, Jenna still whole. She might have been pretty, and perhaps stood taller, before her arm was ripped from her socket and one eye torn from her face in the last battle of the war. She might have laughed often.

  I read forward. He didn’t keep detailed notes for the next few weeks, just short entries about when visits happened. Apparently he and Mom stayed on the ship at first. Then the lack of progress frustrated him, as did the leader’s choice to humor the illegal settlers, to try and convince them with words. I slid hastily forward, looking for the entries nearer the war, looking for information about us.

  In one entry, he proclaimed:

  This is our home, our dream. We sacrificed for it, and we earned it. They have no right, except that they exist. We cannot kill them simply for existing, but they must honor our right to be here. Marissa is beside herself—one of their leaders, Hunter, said we could stay as long as we give up genemods. As if we could give up being ourselves. If we’re ever going to send enough goods back to settle our claim, we need to start now. We have fifteen years to get one ship home, and we are wasting the first of them talking to slow humans unwilling to reach their own potential.

  That was close to the last entry. Ship’s records suggested he and Mom left the New Making shortly after that. Apparently, he didn’t take the journal with him. Three weeks later, the war started. I knew they had come back, but clearly he had not chosen to add to his journal on their return trips. There was not even an entry for Chelo’s birth, or mine.

  But he had given me a clue, and an odd hope. If it took the Journey as long as it took her sister-ship, the New Making, to go home, then the Journey may not have left in defeat. She may have left to secure our claim.

  I unhooked from the netting, and let myself float free, connecting more fully to the New Making’s data trove. It felt as if I myself flew between the stars, ship and self indistinguishable one from the other.

  Starteller informed me Jenna’s waking sequence had begun. There was no way to hide from her that I had been awake, so I didn’t bother. I toyed with meeting her in her waking room.

  Jenna was a fighter, a predator with quick reflexes. Surprising her didn’t seem like a good idea. So I took the path of least resistance and left her a note that I waited for her in the Command Room. I set out a glass of water for her, sat in one of the side chairs, and watched a picture of Silver’s Home on the wall screen.

  She came in, opening the door with her one arm. Her short hair hung in gray wisps around her ravaged face, highlighting her missing eye and the devastation of folds and wrinkles surrounding it. She had grown even thinner on the ship than when she ran wild on the outskirts of Artistos, hunting and living from the land. As if being someplace with no immediate danger had drained her of vitality. Her one steely-gray eye fixed on me, and I waited to see what she would do.

  Her voice was as cool as her eye. “I presume this is no accident?”

  I shook my head, offering no defense.

  She took the glass of water I’d set out for her and drank it. Her voice was sharp as she asked, “What did you do with the time?”

  Her question and the look in her eyes made me feel as if I’d betrayed her. I swallowed hard and sat up straight. I told her what I had done, trying to make the story sound noble but hiding nothing, including my visit to my parents’ room and what I had read in my father’s journal.

  When I finished, she said, “Yes, they may have made it back in time.” She sighed, and held her silence for a long moment. “But it would have been close.” She waited again, watching me. “I suppose you had to begin to drive your own destiny eventually, and I knew you were curious about your parents.” She stared at me, evenly, so still I felt her anger in her silence. “I don’t expect any further choices that you don’t consult me about.”

  “Why not? I’m an adult now, and I know how to handle the ship.”

  She laughed, her laughter stinging and a little scary. “Flying a simple ship with a preprogrammed course is nothing like maneuvering on a planet full of sophisticated people and complex politics. You must not act on your own when we arrive. The first few days on Silver’s Home may be dangerous.”

  “Why?”

  She turned her back to me and went to the galley and poured herself another glass of water, drinking it quickly and pouring yet another, which she held in her one hand while she looked me up and down as if trying to read my soul. All she said was, “Silver’s Home will appear safer than Fremont. But it is far more dangerous, especially to you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because no one with your strength can afford to be so headstrong.”

  She walked out of the room, as if she couldn’t bear to talk to me right then.

  12

  DECISIONS

  Images of the New Making crashing into the ground raked my nerves.

  The special pillowed chair in the command room held me securely, my head fixed in place by a rigid but padded rest. I stared up at the piteously glowing blue ceiling. Jenna stood behind me, silent and still, her brow furrowed as she looked down at me. The light from the control displays gleamed across the ridges of scar tissue on her face: red, orange, white, and blue; like sunrise over a distant mountain ridge.

  The soft hums, clicks, and beeps of the controls blended into a continuous background noise that by now was familiar, almost soothing. I stroked my captain’s coat, running my fingers along the bumps of the data buttons, the plush, velvety fabric interwoven with tiny, slick data threads. Even though I no longer needed it for daily status checks, I wanted to be sure I had the best possible communications with New Making when I started braking. I took a deep breath of the cool, recirculated air I’d probably breathed a thousand times before, and let it out slowly, willing myself to relax, to open to the data flow. Braking.

  Nothing to it.

  Starteller displayed the maneuver for me, and Jenna had already told me everything she knew. She made it sound easy. But for Jenna, killing paw-cats was easy.

  “Relax, Joseph.�
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  I glanced up and caught her deepening frown. “You’ve worked through the simulation with Starteller,” she said, her voice as stern as her expression. “You have performed equally complex tasks before. If you don’t relax, you won’t be able to maintain optimal contact with New Making.”

  “I’m okay.” She was right. I could do this. I had to control my nerves. Had to prove to her I could do it.

  Had to prove it to myself.

  I took another breath, closed my eyes, and started counting down slowly from ten to one as I let it out. Ten … nine … eight… My heartbeat slowed. The pillows and Jenna and even the coat slowly faded to background… seven … six… Time shifted. The friendly background noises slowed, deepening with my breath… three … two … one.

  Like water through an open flood gate, data from New Making’s main engines poured into me, filling me, seeping into my mind, my blood, my muscles, my bones. My body became larger, heavier; I was the ship, my skin proof against the icy vacuum of the empty space I sped through, a flash of light and heat. I was the engines, thrusting against my own speed; my muscles bunched as I dug in, braced against it to slow my own headlong momentum.

  The part of me that hummed and sang with the big ship fought hard to stay on course. I locked my shoulders, holding my vast, metal body along my trajectory. I was the ship, turning, and I was the small, surging engines fighting myself.

  This was piloting. Managing the feel and balance, searching for anything going wrong. Like knowing by the feel of the reins when a hebra smells a predator. The fear that overcorrecting will drive you spinning into a trap.

  My human body sweated, water pouring down the sides of my face. I felt Jenna bathing my forehead and chest in cool water.

  Dissonance.

  Dissonance. The ship fighting itself and me the balance, tiny adjustments one way and then the next. Breath and water and Jenna stretching my arms, massaging my shoulders. Dissonance dropping away, gradual silencing of the roaring engines. A long, slow last turn through space.

  Sweat pouring down the sides of my face, sticky and salty. Momentum and math taking over, running the consequences, everything falling together, just right.

  Jenna’s calloused palm on my forehead.

  Turned, back in a good trajectory, the growling main engines themselves fighting our forward momentum like a goat butting us, legs splayed, stubborn. Winning, slowing us. Our trajectory felt fine and fragile; I stayed immersed in the delicate sweetness of balance and direction, checking and adjusting and re-checking.

  “That’s enough, Joseph. We’re stable. Come out of it.”

  Jenna’s words tumbled into my ears, tangling in a jumble of noise before clattering into place and acquiring meaning. Time to let go, to be just Joseph again. The ship receded from my body, my mind. Gleaming blue swam in my vision as I pried my eyelids up.

  Jenna’s face wavered into focus above me. “Four hours is long enough, Joseph. You’ve done it. Now, get some rest.”

  I grunted and sank back, my body an unwelcome place, full of aches and twinges that kept me hovering at the edge of sleep. The clicks and chirps of the computers and readers, Jenna’s muted footfalls, the whoosh of the air circulation—all of it unnaturally loud. I tossed fretfully for a time before finally passing into deep dreams of the ship and the open space we flew through. Starlight kissed my skin, my fingers tingling with the cold.

  Four days passed, then five, then six. Flight had been easy, but now we felt the thrust of slowing. Moving around the ship was harder. It crossed my mind that Jenna knew enough about the ship and however its gravity and cabin were set up to free us from feeling the steady pressure of the engines, now in front of us. I asked, and she looked at me as if I were a puppy or toddler. “It reminds us we’re in the hardest part. Ships rarely come to harm on long steady runs. It’s the stress of slowing and landing that costs lives. You need to feel the ship without insulation.” Her look softened, but only a little. “There is nothing to do unless something fails, but if it does, there will be seconds to react. Maybe.”

  Jenna sent messages saying we were coming home.

  While we waited through the long, slow braking, Jenna forced herself through hours of endless running and weight-work sessions, building her one arm and her long, slender legs. At night, in the half-hour before the ship’s lights dimmed, she sat in our common room and squeezed a metal spring to strengthen her fingers. I got off easier, running an hour or so every day and doing pull-ups in the hard-framed doorways. During free time, always connected to the ship, feeling it as if it were my own subconscious, I wandered the corridors or the remaining threads of the data buttons. I re-read my father’s words, chose alternate formats, listened to the sound of his voice over and over. I searched the button, but my mother apparently never spoke to it directly.

  Restlessness drove me back to Jenna regularly, checking for any word from the planet. None.

  We turned again, easier and slower, on target for the spaceport on Li, the largest of the twelve continents. This time, Jenna shifted and fidgeted at my head. Nerves, or more trust in me? The closer we came to Silver’s Home, the more distracted Jenna seemed. She muttered at the air.

  The turn finished. An hour later, Jenna drove us back to weights and running. Although she didn’t say anything, she often stared forward between sets, toward Silver’s Home, her mouth set in an increasingly tight line. Her speech became shorter and more clipped. She failed to reset a bicep machine correctly and a weight cylinder rolled off and hit the floor with a huge bang.

  “What could be wrong?” I asked. “Why hasn’t anyone answered us?”

  Jenna didn’t look at me, but bent to pick up the weight. She wore a thin, sleeveless shirt and the muscles in her back stood out like ranges of mountain ridges and valleys. Sweat formed rivers in the valleys. Scars crossed it all: a diagonal web from the twisted shoulder of her missing arm almost to her hip. She didn’t answer.

  “We’ll hear soon,” I said.

  She looked over her shoulder at me as if it wasn’t my place to reassure her, but instead of rebuking me she simply said, “We’d better.”

  An hour later, Starteller dinged. I reached for the data, but the message was scrambled to Jenna. That left me watching in silence from across the room as she sat on a bench and communed with Starteller. Her back was to me, so I couldn’t see her face, but she slumped a bit as she listened. Just as she turned to talk to me, a second ping indicated another response.

  There was nothing to do but watch mutely as she heard the second message and spoke a subliminal response to at least one of them. She would have spoken up if she wanted me to hear her.

  I waited, foot tapping, struggling not to show my impatience.

  When she turned, her eye was so wide and her mouth so tight she might have been slapped. Her voice flat, she said, “The Port Authority is demanding that we dock outside the system, at Koni V station, and turn the ship over to them.”

  I blinked at her. It took a moment to find my voice. “Does that mean we’re in trouble?”

  “It means the Family of Exploration is in trouble.”

  “Isn’t that us?”

  She stepped closer to me and sat down on a bench. Her fingers swept through her hair, a gesture of futility. “Good answer. Yes, that’s us.”

  She’d only told me a little about the Port Authority, but I knew they managed all interstellar travel, most of which was between Silver’s Home and four other planets that were close to it—less than a year’s flight for the furthest away. Which was much closer than Fremont, which was three years away, but with room for faster flight. “Do we have to obey them?”

  “A good answer, and now a good question.” The corner of her mouth quirked up, turning her scars into a fan. “We have much in the hold of value, maybe enough to help the Family. I haven’t answered the Port Authority yet.”

  “So who did you answer?”

  “My sister, Tiala.”

  I had never imagined Jen
na with family. Except us. Was the call good, or not? Her expression remained blank, almost too blank.

  “What did she say?” It would’ve been nice if Jenna offered information without making me dig it out of her.

  “She says there is only money trouble, and that the Port Authority is making too much of the problem.” She paused, her finger rubbing the twisted edge of her mouth. “I trust my sister’s heart. Defying the Port Authority may be a dangerous choice, though, so we will wake up Alicia and Bryan. And then we will decide together.

  “We had better hurry.

  “In the meantime, I will ignore the Port Authority until we are too far along to easily turn for Koni station.” She arched her single eyebrow. “If we get stranded there without resources it could take a year to work our way planetside.”

  It didn’t surprise me that Jenna didn’t accept orders.

  “We should wake both Alicia and Bryan at once to save time,” she said. “You might wait for Bryan in his waking room.”

  “I’d rather wait for Alicia.”

  She laughed, a rare expression from her, but more common on the ship than it had ever been on Fremont. “I know. But she knows me, and he does not.”

  She had a point. Jenna had interacted with Bryan very little on Fremont. During the weeks she showed us the cave and helped me understand how to heal the channels that had burned closed with my adoptive parents’ death screams, he had been Town Council’s captive. One look at his injuries and Jenna had ordered him frozen before we even left Fremont. “All right. How will he feel?”

  “Cold sleep doesn’t heal or harm. He’ll still feel like someone beat him up.”

  “Great.”

  She hesitated, as if reconsidering her decision. Then she said, “After Bryan wakes, take him down to the hospital. I’ll work on him. If he can’t walk, let me know and I’ll come for him. After I chat with Alicia, we’ll meet you at the hospital. And don’t forget Bryan won’t have any context for landing on Silver’s Home.” Her voice took on a note of irony. “At least Alicia stayed awake until after we took off.”