Reading the Wind (Silver Ship)

by Brenda Cooper

  His eyes were a startling blue, unnatural, and he looked like he expected to be obeyed.

  I scrambled to my feet, stepping back, staying a good meter away from him. “Who are you?” I countered.

  “I’m in charge of our training program here.”

  A student should know him. The first question out of my mouth had given away that I didn’t belong. Sweat broke out on my palms. What to do? Marcus wasn’t here. The man’s wrong-blue eyes made me feel like a trapped bug. He looked young, but that meant nothing here.

  His gaze demanded a response. I could open, and call Marcus, but that would leave room for this man to penetrate my shields. Surely he was a Wind Reader.

  What would Marcus do? I smiled as nicely as I could, and extended a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  He looked startled for just a second, then his wide lips thinned into a flat line. “Are you Joseph Lee?”

  Uh oh. Marcus had said people were looking for me. I felt a query, a knock against my shielding. Hurrying to shore up my internal defenses, I asked, “What do you care?” I winced. My words sounded childlike.

  Footsteps pounded down the corridor. Marcus. I knew for sure before I saw him; his energy and gait and the feel of his presence had become that familiar to me.

  Marcus slowed as he neared the man. “Charles Milan.” Disdain laced Marcus’ voice.

  The blue-eyed man narrowed his eyes, but kept them on me. “Well, I’m not surprised to find you associated with … with … with whoever this is.”

  Marcus was visible outside the door now, close to Charles. Marcus looked down at him, his voice controlled and edged with anger. “And what did he do?”

  Good question. I thought I had done rather well.

  Charles swallowed, finally looking at Marcus instead of me. He blustered nervously, his voice higher now. “The student monitor AI notified me fifteen minutes after he started his session. This is that Joseph boy—the one they say is so strong. It has to be. He surpassed anything we’ve ever seen on level one. That’s what set the AI’s alarms off—he’s way out of norm.” Charles sounded excited as well as affronted, and proud, either of himself or me. I couldn’t quite tell. I watched him curiously as he continued. “So I gave him the final, the masters final, and he started right in on it—at a rate you never managed!”

  A bemused smile crossed Marcus’s face. “So you just ran down here to confront him … for what? Being capable?”

  Charles bounced on his feet as if excited. “So it is him. Serge said you might have him.”

  Marcus gestured for me to come near him.

  Charles stood in the door, blocking my way, looking me up and down. Marcus put a hand on Charles’s shoulder, pulling him gently back out of my way. He didn’t let go of Charles until I was safely past.

  I turned to look at the man. The sharp glow in his eyes had died back, lost intensity.

  Marcus said, “Look, Charles, there’s nothing for you here. The boy is doing fine.”

  “But … but … think of what good he could do for the school.” He was nearly pleading. “Think of what we could do for him. We have all the tools—”

  “No thanks, Charles,” Marcus interrupted. “Besides, he’s already passed your final, from what you say.” He put a hand on my shoulder, speaking to me. “Let’s go.”

  Charles frowned. “You’re making a mistake. Enroll him here, and no one can take him.” He hesitated, then blurted out, “Please.”

  Marcus looked down at me, raising one eyebrow, his eye twinkling. “Want to stay here?”

  Actually, I would have loved to stay in the room longer. But one look at Charles screamed the reasons not to. I felt braver now, with Marcus next to me, and a little cocky. “Gee, Marcus, that was fun, but if that’s the final exam, maybe not.” I glanced back at Charles, who stood, eyes wide, face growing red. “But perhaps we can visit, sometime.”

  Marcus winked at me and we turned and walked slowly and deliberately back down the bright colorful corridor. This time I recognized the Islas Autocracy pictures: ordered perfection as stunning as Silver’s Home, but without the chaos and with about half as many colors. The sky was a different blue, deeper even than Fremont’s sky.

  We walked to the skimmer. As we climbed in, I said, “So I suppose I don’t get to fly it, do I?”

  He didn’t laugh, and I’d expected him to. Instead, he seemed lost in thought. The bubble had closed over us, but we weren’t moving yet. He shook his head. “No, Joseph. You beat my expectations.” He frowned. “Stomach okay?”

  I grinned at him, nerves still on edge from the encounter. “Not at first. Eventually. Am I ever glad you showed up. But it was wonderful! I learned so much. Is there anyplace else like that?”

  He just looked at me, and then shook his head, slowly. “I think we’ll lay low for a bit.”

  21

  ON PILO ISLAND WITH MARCUS

  As we flew away from the university, Marcus gazed straight ahead and chewed lightly on his lower lip. Bright sun shone through the smoky bubble of the skimmer’s shield, highlighting the reddish streaks in his brown hair. He hadn’t said anything about the encounter with Charles, which had, ultimately, almost been funny. Finally, I cleared my throat. “Did you meet your friend?”

  He nodded. “Julianne. She studies Wind Readers—she’s sort of a psychologist. She helps students get through training successfully.” He glanced over at me. “I talked to her about you. I trust her implicitly—she and I worry about the same things. We both want the creative power here to be spent for good.”

  “So what did she say about me?”

  “She has a theory.” He was silent for a moment as the skimmer banked out over fields, already far away from the city. “I told her a little bit about Fremont. She suspects you’re so strong because of constant and immediate stress—from the people and environment. Little things like losing your parents and hunting paw-cats and being persecuted just for being different.”

  “But Silver’s Home doesn’t seem much safer,” I said.

  He laughed. “No, I suppose not. But the dangers here are different. Wind Reader students are more worried about a job, or a goal of their affinity group. Our stresses are about long-term goals and relationships.” He looked over at me, as if making sure I understood. “Students that are part of tight affinity groups do better here than free agents. Julianne suggested that both the immediate stress you had and your support structure mattered. Jenna seems to have helped you, but it doesn’t sound like you saw much of her. Maybe your sister?”

  I frowned, remembering how we all stuck together, and met in semi-secret to be ourselves—to run at our speed together, to climb, to practice. Chelo mattered, but so did Alicia and Bryan and Liam and Kayleen. “Maybe I had to stay sane to keep Chelo and the others safe. We all had to use our skills to protect each other.”

  He turned the skimmer again, taking us out over crystal-blue water touched by tiny whitecaps. “I wish Chelo was here,” he mused. “It would be interesting to see how you two work together.”

  “I’m going back for her. As soon as I can.”

  “I would like to see this Fremont of yours, and meet your sister.”

  I wanted nothing better. Not to stay, but I missed Chelo so much it made me ache to talk about her. I turned away from him to hide the tears stinging my eyes, and looked back down at the water. “Where are we going?”

  “Pilo Island. It’s a busy place, good to get lost in. We need to get lost. You’ve just picked up extra buzz.”

  “Buzz?” He’d used the term before, but now it was being applied to me.

  “Attention. You haven’t exactly got planetary buzz—Charles is a Wind Reader geek and it’s not surprising he’s interested, but you do have enough buzz that we might be better off if we head elsewhere for a bit.”

  “Where’s Pilo Island?”

  “About three hours’ flight. South, near Jo.”

  Jo was another big continent like Li, closer to the equator.

>   He smiled. “It may be a bit overwhelming. Don’t gawk. Now, why don’t you rest a moment while I seed the nets with some misdirection? It’s probably all over the university by now that you were there, and we may have some followers we don’t want.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember everything I’d seen in the isolation room. In my memories, the room’s voice became Alicia’s and the beauty of the data structures mirrored the complexity of her hair, tangled from sleep, the smoothness of her skin, the brightness of her eyes. She would have loved it.

  I dozed and woke, dozed and woke. Every time I woke, we were still flying over water. We passed a few skimmers flying beneath us, and once Marcus pointed out a group of large sea creatures below us which he called “shilo serpents.” Long rounded bodies with thin necks and oblong heads leaped and gamboled in the light whitecaps, apparently playing. He flew low over them, and I counted nearly twenty. The longest were twice the length of the skimmer. Marcus said, “They can be ridden—with the right gear—if they’re raised around humans.” I didn’t see anyone riding them, but they were fast and I wanted to try it.

  “Are there any people modified to live in the sea?” I asked.

  “There are short-term mods for that, but it turned out that people prefer land, in general. Paradise has a lot more water, and there is a subspecies designed to take advantage of that, but even they can also walk and live on the islands there.”

  “A subspecies?”

  “Sure, even Wind Readers are a subspecies, depending on who you listen to. The lines are blurred, but legally, we are all human.” His voice sounded disapproving.

  “Could I be modified to live in water if I wanted?” I asked, curious.

  “Sure. I did it once when I was young and stupid. It’s a major mod—it hurts.” He sighed, then looked down at his hands. “I love creating. I love our world, and being who I am. But sometimes we go too far.”

  That gave me food for thought as we rose back up away from the shilo serpents and Marcus lapsed back into silence. What was going too far? Hurting others, surely. Creating bad things? All forms of doing harm, whether you meant it or not?

  An island came into view a few moments later. “Is that Pilo Island? It’s too round—it has to be man-made.”

  “The island is a creation of the Landmakers Affinity Group, who retained rights to it and set up the local rules.”

  We began to slow. I looked carefully, awed at the idea that people could make a whole island. “What holds it up?”

  He smiled. “Good question. They have creator’s rights to a nanomaterial that floats. The whole island floats, and there are engines that move it one way or the other, keeping it free from the influence of tide and current.”

  Except for its perfect shape, nothing about the surface of the island screamed made-thing. All of the buildings were similar: big, with rounded edges, many windows, and glittery brightly colored walls. Green, blue, and yellow seemed to be the most common colors. Small forests and green spaces grew from the top of some of the buildings and threaded between them. As we came closer, I noticed skimmers and boats and people walking on the streets.

  We landed on top of a building and parked in a sea of at least thirty other craft of varying sizes, some ten times the size of Marcus’s. As soon as we stopped, he opened the bubble and hopped out, and I joined him on the roof. “Were we followed?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Stay close to me.” He took off at a fast walk, and I followed him across the flat expanse of building-top into an elevator. We emerged on the street level, still inside the building, surrounded by people. Unlike Li, and even the university, the diversity of people here dragged my eyes from one strange feast to another. I spotted tall slender bodies, a woman with extra arms walking with a woman with extremely long, strong legs and no hair at all, a few strongmen like Bryan—only wider and taller. Two women with wings adorned with long glittering ribbons were pretty much avoided. Their gaits were off balance, and their faces showed pain lines around the eyes. I felt slightly sorry for them. They looked as out of place as I had felt on Fremont. Awkward flyers aside, the general mood on Pilo Island was controlled, content chaos. Conversation and laughter filled the air, although periodically people walked by, shrouded in total silence.

  I stayed close to Marcus as we pushed through the crowd and exited a door on the far side of the building. Outside, we threaded through crowded walkways that smelled of human bodies, of flowers, and of the salt air blown in on a stiff breeze.

  Marcus ducked sideways, leaving the street. He led me into a throng of people gathered in small groups on a wide expanse of grass bordered by four buildings, including the big one we’d landed on top of. There must’ve been as many people in this one space as on all of Fremont. Twice as many. More. Heady spices from strange food assaulted my nostrils and a cacophony of conversations wafted around me. We changed direction multiple times, passing through two buildings and a tunnel.

  The island and its strange inhabitants dwarfed me, dwarfed the university, which had seemed big and full just hours ago and now felt like a refuge of peace and stillness. My breath came fast and quick and my hands shook. “Marcus,” I called. “Can I sit down?” Without waiting for an answer I found an empty bench and collapsed, trying to shield my senses from all of it.

  Marcus stood, looking at me, his eyes narrowed in concern.

  I focused on his tall slender form, on the one familiar thing, and the background swam behind him, losing resolution. “I’m dizzy.”

  He sat beside me on the bench. “It’s okay. Rest.”

  Marcus smelled familiar and comfortable. I closed my eyes, letting the sounds wash over me and through me. I began to treat it like data, isolating conversations. It helped. After a few moments, I tried opening my eyes again, and this time the colors and movement of the crowd stayed crisp and clear.

  “Better?” Marcus asked. When I nodded slowly, he asked, “What is it? Are you just tired?”

  I shook my head. “I think it’s just—there are so many new things here. Maybe the isolation room took more out of me than I thought.” Watching my back and worrying didn’t help much either. How was I to tell who might be an enemy in the sea of strangeness here?

  He pursed his lips. “Maybe it’s from shielding so hard. Try to relax into it; let it be your normal state so that data stays outside of you.”

  I took three deep breaths, trying to follow his advice. But if I relaxed too far, I felt data creep in, and knew I’d go out to meet it. It was too natural now, maybe had always been too natural. I swallowed, maintaining my shield with force. “I’m ready to go,” I said, trying to sound strong.

  We made it three-quarters of the way across the busy lawn when I noticed Marcus heading for a large tree with thin green and gold leaves that cascaded almost to the grass. Its shape reminded me of the tent trees back home even though the leaves and slender branches of this tree created a more delicate boundary. It shimmered. As we came near enough to hear the leaves rustling gently against each other, a hand appeared amidst the leaves, parting them, and Alicia darted out, clutching me tightly. “Joseph. It’s really you. You’re here,” she whispered, “so good.”

  My heart raced. She looked wonderful, felt wonderful. “We’re here.” I clasped my arms around her, holding her tight. I couldn’t believe Marcus hadn’t told me we were meeting them. I buried my face in her hair. “Are you all right?”

  She pushed me back and lifted her face up. Her skin glowed with health and her violet eyes danced. “I’m better than I’ve ever been. I love it here. I don’t ever want to go back, or go anyplace else.” She stood and threw her arm out in an expansive gesture. “Isn’t this beautiful? There’s so much here.”

  I stared at her, entranced. Enchanted.

  A necklace of tiny green and gray beads lay neatly against her neck. She brought one hand up, stroking the necklace the way she had stroked my face a hundred times. Excitement and pleasure seemed to roll from her like waves. “I can read
data. And no one cares if I have access, no one keeps me down here, Joseph. I can be myself.” She lifted her hand from the beads and took mine in it, her slender fingers holding tight.

  Envy flashed through me for a second. I couldn’t even let my shields down. But seeing Alicia swamped all other emotion.

  She stopped and squinted at me. “How have you been? We’ve heard rumors about you, and I studied up on Marcus. The Port Authority and the rest of the government seems scared of him even though they hire him. He’s popular, kind of in an underground way—he has low steady buzz. Jenna called him a ‘balancing power,’ whatever that means. He really is the strongest Wind Reader here.”

  I laughed, and Marcus came up beside me. “I might not be anymore.” He smiled at me. “Now go on, see the others.”

  Of course the others were there. I squeezed Alicia’s hand. She turned and I followed her. As we slid in between the leaves, all noise from outside cut away as if a sheet of glass separated us from the crowd. The tree smelled of clean dirt and leaves, with a slight sweetness under it all. “The silence feels good,” I whispered, drinking in the details of her face.

  Alicia grinned. “Isn’t this cool? It’s a meet-me tree. You have to pay to use them, but they can make you feel like you’re alone even here.”

  “Does it block out data, too?” I asked.

  She grinned, touching her necklace. “If you ask it to.”

  I looked around. Bryan sat next to Tiala, smiling expectantly. He, too, looked perfect, with glowing skin and no sign of his injuries. He gave a small wave and stayed seated. Waiting for something?

  I looked around for Jenna and for Tiala’s bird. The upside-down bell of the tree was big, but not big enough to hide anyone. “Where’s Jenna?”

  Tiala waved at me, lifting a hand and returning it to her lap, twisting her hands together. A slightly exaggerated gesture. She gazed at me steadily, her expression as expectant as Bryan’s.

  I looked, and looked again. Her perfect face showed no scars, but her dark hair was no longer caught back in a long braid. It hung, like Jenna’s, just above the shoulders.