Reading the Wind (Silver Ship)

by Brenda Cooper

  The fork was closer to the cave than the berry patch, and Sasha and Paloma had a head start. But we had three hebras, Stripes, Night, and Thunder, saddled before the two women raced up to us, winded. Paloma closed Kayleen in her arms and they held each other for a precious moment. Paloma pulled away. “I’m going,” she said, turning to call Sand, her own hebra.

  Kayleen nodded. “Sasha?” she asked.

  Sasha held out the belt she had made for me. I’d left it, not wanting it to tangle in the thick berry vines. I took it from her, leaning down to hold her. “Thank you.” It felt good to tie the belt on, as if I was tying Sasha’s support on. “Sasha—you should stay. The belt will give me your prayers.”

  Her dark brown eyes were rimmed red with tears and fierce with determination. “I’m going.”

  I sighed. “Can you come as our scout? Come with us down the Old Road and go back as soon as we know what we see? That way we’ll have a backup for our one earset.”

  Sasha lifted the dark hair hanging over her ear, exposing the nub and tail of an earset. “I have one, too. Hunter told me to go.”

  “Okay. Saddle up.” I wanted her to stay safe, and I had no idea what we were running toward. “Sasha—has anyone heard from Kili yet?”

  She shook her head. “That’s why I have the earset. They’ll tell me as soon as she gets back.”

  I hated every moment it took for us to get ready.

  Liam did a quick round, checking girths and tack. He boosted Paloma up on Sand, and the rest of us pulled up on our own knotted mounting ropes and settled in the high-backed saddles. Stripes stamped her feet under me, clearly catching my black mood.

  Liam, mounted, surveyed us all, his gaze alert, his jaw tight and angry. He gave the signal to go, and signaled the hebras to race.

  We took the treacherous Old Road too fast. Steady, strong Stripes set the lead pace. Liam and Thunder brought up the rear. Trees kept us from seeing what lay below and silenced our earsets.

  At the bottom of the steep trail, where it first opened out onto the beginning of the plains, I stopped, letting the others catch up, craning my neck and standing in my stirrups to see. The grass was high this late in the year, the stalks stiff and dry, almost ready to burn. The path in front of us had barely been used this summer, and grass grew close to the edges, and even—in spots—scraggled across the slender ribbon of hard-packed dirt. A light wind blew the grass in waves, as if a golden ocean lay between us and the spaceport.

  The spaceport!

  I settled into my saddle and clucked Stripes into a run, racing for the first spot I could get a good view. There! A silver ship. My throat closed in panic and hope. It wasn’t New Making, but its slender, graceful shape was more like the New Making than the Dawnforce.

  Joseph! It had to be Joseph. I turned in my saddle and yelled at Kayleen. Only she could tell for sure at this distance. “Kayleen!” Her head whipped up, and she stopped as she, too, spotted the starship. “Kayleen,” I pleaded. “Is that Joseph?”

  She closed her eyes, swaying in her saddle. Paloma came up by her, holding her daughter’s hand, her graying hair flapping gently across her face in the wind.

  Kayleen opened her eyes. A smile spread across her face. “Yes! Yes!” and then we were all racing each other, Stripes and Thunder and Night in the lead; Liam, Kayleen, and I next to each other. Paloma and Sasha thudded along behind us.

  I struggled to breathe past my pounding heart. So much. The babies. My brother.

  My brother.

  51

  MY SISTER, MY BROTHER

  We had not been fast enough. But we were here.

  Standing on Fremont’s soil felt strange after so long, both perfectly familiar and as if I saw it for the first time. The Grass Plains waved forever around the ship, nearly as high as my head, reminding me how small a single human being is. Paw-cats would not care that I knew how to fly star ships and Read the Wind.

  I had asked to step out by myself first. Alicia had glared at me, and said, “I don’t like Fremont anyway.” I had kissed her fiercely, then traded my flying clothes for simple pants and short sleeves, something that could be taken for belonging on Fremont.

  Now, finally, I stood in the heat of the sun I was born under.

  There was, of course, no sign of Chelo. How could there be? Even if she lived, she wouldn’t be waiting around for me to land. More than five years had passed since we’d left.

  Still, somehow, I’d expected her here.

  I walked around slowly, alert for anything unusual, connected to the cameras in the ship. I saw the tall grass in front of me, and I saw myself see the tall grass in front of me.

  The spaceport had been attacked. The hangar and the colony’s two shuttles lay shattered, the pieces jumbled together, a twisted wreck.

  We’d flown in over the sea at dawn, with no good view of Artistos. What had happened to it?

  The cliffs looked normal, except that from here I could see the silver tip of what must be the Dawnforce parked by the hebra barns.

  Why were they still here? Surely they had seen us land, but they had sent no message. No welcome party, friendly or not, trailed down the cliff path. We were vulnerable here on the Grass Plains, but I had needed a good place to land Creator, and the pads here were the only place I knew.

  My shields were up tight, a habit developed on Silver’s Home. I sat, cross-legged, feeling the hard solidity of the planet beneath me. I drew in a deep breath, smelling the plains: wheat-grass, green-striped grass, sugar-wheat, plains spikes, dust, and animal scat. Glorious scents. I breathed them out, dropping my shields, opening.

  A strange data field blanketed Artistos. Its meanings licked at my nerves, not quite clear, like some of the people I’d met on Pilo Island with thick accents. Autocracy data. I’d studied it enough to know that I could learn it. I didn’t test deeper—no need to alert the data owners to my strengths. I did check its reach—the data seemed to have no end in any direction. It even flowed out across the water.

  So strong!

  Had the Islans covered the whole planet, like Silver’s Home?

  Underneath the new, strong webs, I detected the Artistos webs, faint and ragged. They’d been changed so they no longer homed to Artistos.

  A smile ripped from me. Kayleen, at least, lived.

  I surged down our webs, repairing them as I went, unable to resist adding things I’d learned. Kayleen would know I was here.

  She did. A taste of her swarmed up the nets.

  Close.

  Where? I forced the spatial data free of the web, and stood, looking. The grass went on forever, summer-brown, waving. I closed my eyes, searching through Creator’s cameras.

  There! Near the base of the Old Road, hebra heads bounced above the tall grass. I crouched, bringing myself as fully into my physical being as possible, then took off. My senses remembered the boy who’d hunted, gloriously alive, sure-footed and watchful, sorting for paw-cat or demon dog sign in the dust of Fremont that rose from beneath my pounding feet. No fresh scents alarmed me.

  As I neared them, I stood, not wanting to spook the hebras, waving my hands.

  “Joseph!” Chelo yelled, followed by Kayleen, the two of them whooping. A smile tore through my body, a lightness, as if I could rise above the grass and fly.

  She lived!

  We were in time.

  Kayleen, Chelo, and Liam rode three abreast, closing in on me. They whooped again, and I frowned. Desperation edged their voices, something raw.

  They were thinner, cheekbones showing. Chelo had always kept her hair shoulder-length, but now it hung as long as Kayleen’s, in a sloppy ponytail that spilled over her right breast. She dismounted quickly, dropping her reins, clearly trusting her beast.

  I caught one close glimpse as she raced to me. Her eyes were red and blotchy as if she’d been crying, her cheeks hollow and thin. Two fresh cuts showed on her right cheek. She flung herself into my arms as if the whole world had collapsed on her, and only I could save he
r.

  I held her.

  No matter what had happened in my sister’s world, she was here, and I was here, and we held each other as if it had been a hundred years instead of five. She sobbed into my chest and I stroked her hair, breathed her sweat in, patted her back, closed her in my arms.

  My big sister crying in my arms.

  She had never done that before.

  Chelo let go of me with one arm, opening it out, and Liam fit himself into our embrace, his eyes warm but full of some darkness that didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. Then Kayleen clutched me, wrapping her physical self and her data self about me all together.

  None of us said anything for a very long time, not even Kayleen and I in the quiet of the data world. Words might break the perfect spell. The miracle of all four of us being together felt fragile. Dreamlike.

  “Where are the others?” Chelo asked. “Alicia and Bryan?”

  “Here. In the ship. Come and tell us what happened.”

  She nodded, but turned toward two other people who rode up on blowing hebras, keeping back a bit, watching curiously. Only when they, too, dismounted, did I lift my head long enough for a good look. An old woman and a young woman. A slight limp gave the older one away.

  Paloma!

  But she looked twenty years older, not five. Her face was browned and weathered, her eyes cracked with deep lines, her hair more gray than blond. I stepped free of the others and held her. She was so tiny! She pushed me far enough away to look me over, and I did a little half-bow. “It’s nice to see you, Mother-of-my-heart.” She had, almost, been a mother to me during the time Chelo and I lived with Nava.

  Paloma grinned, pleasure lifting a few years of age from her frame. “It’s good to see you.” She turned to the young woman with her, a slender, wide-eyed girl of maybe seventeen with a striking white streak in her hair. “This is Sasha.” She nodded at the girl, who stood as if rooted in place, looking from me to Creator and back again. “And Sasha,” Paloma continued, “this is Chelo’s brother, Joseph.”

  I reached my hand out to her.

  A mad cacophony of screeching data assaulted me, driving me to my knees. Kayleen’s eyes rolled up in her head and she let out a piercing scream, falling to the ground beside me.

  I threw up my own shielding, silencing the awful whine in my head. Then I grabbed Kayleen, pulling her close, struggling to connect with her so I could, maybe, include her—the way Marcus had included me in the park the day I met my dad.

  Kayleen screamed and threw her head back.

  I curled a hand around the back of her neck and refocused. My shields were generally passive, a shutting down more than weaving a wall, but Marcus had started drilling me in his way.

  But this was data I didn’t know. It bucked and fought me, leaking in the sides of my concentration, an onslaught of interior sound more than information. As soon as I held a bit of it at bay, another torrent started in.

  I dropped back to my familiar, passive shielding and silence fell inside me.

  I wasn’t strong enough. I could protect myself, but I couldn’t protect us both.

  Kayleen thrashed in my arms and let out a high keening wail.

  Creator. Getting into Creator would help. It could be a shield, itself.

  I bent down to pick Kayleen up. Liam knelt at my side, reaching for her right arm.

  “Let me.” I looked up. Bryan. He leaned down and plucked Kayleen from the ground, her arms still twisting in pain and shock.

  “Creator,” I shouted at him. “Take her in.”

  He jogged toward the ship, steady and even and strong. I turned to the others, still breathing hard, my shields clamping out all of the available data nets. “Chelo, Liam, go!”

  They bolted, following Bryan.

  We had room for them, if they wanted to go. If we left. Dianne had agreed with my father with no hesitation. Jenna had surprised me by backing them both, suggesting we get away as fast as we could. She’d shivered, and asked me, “Do you want to die on Fremont after all?”

  I bit my lip. I didn’t want to leave. Chelo wouldn’t. But what if staying started a war? Who could we save? Paloma? Akashi would never leave.

  Paloma and Sasha stood looking at me, waiting for something. “Do you want to leave?” I asked them.

  Paloma glanced at Bryan, carrying Kayleen through the doorway of the ship. Her brows were drawn tight together in worry. “Will she be all right?” she asked.

  I nodded. They’d entered Creator. “She might be okay already.”

  Paloma still held her own hebra’s reins. She reached for Liam’s mount’s trailing rein, handing it to Sasha. “The babies,” she said. “We have to get the babies.” She picked up Kayleen’s mount’s rein, and Stripes’s. I remembered some of the beasts’ names. If only there were time to mount one and race down to the sea!

  “Get the babies,” Paloma said. “We’ll report back. Chelo has an earset. She can talk to us.”

  Babies? The hebras? Or human babies? And whose? Report back to who? “Do you want to leave?” I asked her again.

  She frowned, staring at Creator, and then looking at Sasha and Sand. “Not now. You can’t either. We’ll wait.”

  I stood looking at her, confused.

  “Go,” she said. “Follow your sister.”

  Clearly I would learn as much from Chelo as I would from Paloma.

  Something important was going on, something dark. It shone in all of their eyes. A fear. I went.

  Liam pulled me into the strange ship after Kayleen and Bryan. Joseph had turned away from Paloma and Sasha, following us at a dead run. Bryan stepped into an elevator in front of us, and I hesitated a moment, looking back. Whatever had attacked Kayleen had clearly attacked him, too. But he had a way to beat it. Maybe he could teach her. He had always been so much stronger.

  Liam folded me in his arms as I watched Joseph race to catch us.

  Joseph had become a man.

  All of the little boy uncertainty and mischief had dropped away from him. He had built his body so his muscles stood out. My little unassuming brother looked almost like Bryan had looked when he was here. And Bryan—such strength. Where had they been? Who else was here?

  Joseph caught up to us, stopping just long enough to say, “Follow me,” and then he was swarming up a vertical corridor the way we had on the New Making, using the handholds as ladder rungs, nearly bouncing upward. I followed him, struggling to move as fast. Halfway up, my right foot slipped from a rung while the left one hung in mid-step and I fell down, banging my chin. My arms held, and I pulled and scrambled the rest of the way, rushing to the sound of Joseph already at the top, calling my name and reaching a hand down for my hand.

  My fingers brushed his fingertips. Another step, and I had his arm above the wrist. He pulled, I stepped and leapt, standing near him while he reached down to help Liam scramble up the last bit of round vertical wall. Joseph was off again, leaving us to follow. This ship—what had he called it? Creator?—looked newer than New Making, with cleaner lines and splashes of color here and there to offset gleaming silvery surfaces.

  Joseph led us to what must be the command room. Screens showed various pictures of Fremont. One looked out on the Grass Plains, centered on Sasha and Paloma and the hebras, standing quietly, looking up at the ship. The other two showed the ruined hangar, and the cliffs below Artistos. The room was smaller than the New Making’s command room, although it had an adjacent room with a sink and cupboards. A square silver table occupied the center space with four pilot’s chairs around it. I briefly registered people in each, a man and three women, all four with dark hair, and young, but my focus was on Bryan as he laid Kayleen down on the middle of the table.

  Kayleen’s eyes were still rolled up in her head, and she moaned softly. Her limbs remained still. One of the women, a dark-haired beauty, leaned forward and touched Kayleen on the forehead, looking worriedly at Joseph, who stood just in front of me. Her voice was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place i
t. “What happened?”

  “Some kind of data attacks. I shielded—but she doesn’t know how. She should be all right after a bit in here.” He fell silent for a moment, then said, “Yes. It’s not strong in here.”

  I pushed past Joseph, standing between the man and the woman who had asked about Kayleen. “Can someone get me water?” I asked.

  One of the two women went to the sink, handing me a glass of water. I bathed Kayleen’s forehead, speaking softly.

  She’d been through so much today!

  Liam moved to the bottom of the table, removed Kayleen’s worn boots, and rubbed her feet. She thrashed once, and opened her eyes, putting a hand to her forehead. “Where am I?”

  Joseph spoke. “Creator. You’re in the command room of the starship Creator.”

  Liam held out a hand and pulled Kayleen gently to a sitting position right in the middle of the table. She looked up at Bryan, her eyes widening. “Bryan.” She scooted down the table near him.

  He held her, his head on her shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re all right.” He raised his head long enough to look at me, his eyes full of wonder and, maybe, a touch of abandonment.

  I had sent him away from me, all those years ago.

  His voice was soft and controlled as he said, “You’re all okay. We were worried.”

  Worried? Had they known the strangers were here?

  Two women pushed in the door, standing near the edge of the wall, close to me. I gaped, and it was my turn to fold someone in my arms. “Alicia!” She, too, glowed with health like Joseph. What was she doing back here? She’d almost killed us all the day before she left. “I …It’s good to see you.” There was no time to talk to her, not here. Hopefully it was a good sign that she’d come back. Maybe we’d need her courage.

  I looked around the table. They all had light skin. It must be from doing without real sun. The man—short cropped dark hair and sea-mist blue eyes—stared at me as if the very sight of me was a feast, and a tear rolled down one of his cheeks.