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“Lissa, Lin told me about your parents.”
Elissa didn’t say anything. If she said anything, she was scared she’d start to cry.
Cadan put his arm around her. He was warm, and his jacket smelled of coffee, and the bark of the tree they were leaning against, and him. “You know,” he said conversationally, “I don’t much like your mother.”
Elissa gave a splutter of laughter that was almost a sob. “Oh, what she
said
about Lin. And that
SFI employees
are the innocent victims! After what she
knows
was happening.”
Cadan’s arm tightened around her.
Elissa gave another almost-sob. “I want to just say screw it, forget about it all. I
had
to leave. It’s not my fault. But my dad, knowing what they did to him . . . And Bruce, losing his career . . . And I can’t
do
anything, I can’t help. And—oh God, did you see the news this evening?”
“I did.” His voice was grim.
As the IPL military police had clamped down, as the fear of food shortages rose, as different political factions formed, the first terrorist act had taken place.
A bomb. A real with Carlie and Marissa”, cbomb, small and primitive, nothing like the sophisticated nonlethal devices the ecoterrorists had been using for years. Twenty people had been killed immediately, with more fatally injured. The newscasters had been repeating the figures during every update, on every channel.
Sekoia was falling into chaos.
“I didn’t think I cared,” Elissa said. “I thought as long as I could get Lin to safety, nothing else mattered. But seeing what’s happening, seeing our planet—our safe,
civilized
planet—going insane . . .”
“It’s your world,” said Cadan. “Of course you care.”
She took a long breath, determined not to be a brat. “I know it’s worse for you. At least my family’s being relocated.”
“Yes.”
Something in his voice caught at her. “Cadan? What is it?”
“I . . . nothing, really. I haven’t heard anything since I spoke to them yesterday. But with what’s happening . . . I’m afraid of reprisals. Against them—against anyone associated with SFI.” His breath ruffled her hair. “Like you, if I could do anything . . . But even if there were any public flights to or from Sekoia, even if they hadn’t shut down transport, even if I could get there, what would I do that’d be any use?”
Elissa spoke quietly, not looking at him. “If you could go, though . . .”
“Yeah. I would.” He hesitated. “God knows I don’t want to leave you, but knowing my family’s stuck there . . .”
“No, I know. I . . .” She was edging closer to the elephant in the room, the thing they both knew they weren’t talking about. She didn’t want to—if you couldn’t do anything about it, wasn’t it better to go on pretending it wasn’t there? But somehow, with every sentence, she got closer and closer to the time when there’d be nothing left for her to do but point it out.
“I’d go with you,” she said in a rush.
His arm stiffened where it touched her. “You’ve thought about it?”
“I
keep
thinking about it. My compensation money—I could refuel the
Phoenix
. Even with the hyperdrive not working, it’d get us back to Sekoia eventually. Airspace isn’t closed off yet. We could get your family out at least. I mean, the
Phoenix
is still technically yours, right—you’re still the captain?”
“Technically, yes. SFI isn’t in any state to try reclaiming it, and IPL’s not going to stop me from taking a ship that doesn’t even belong to them. Lissa, I didn’t realize you’d
thought about it that much.” But his voice didn’t lift in relief. He knew as well as she did why it might have been better not to talk about this at all.
She looked up at him, aware that her helplessness showed in her expression. “If it were just me.”
But it’s not just me. It’s Lin. I can’t leave Lin. And I can never even suggest the possibility of going back to Sekoia, not to her, not ever
. It felt like a activated. Security breached at Section spacert betrayal to say it out loud, but in Cadan’s eyes she read understanding. As she would never ask it of Lin, he would never ask it of her.
But as she lay, sleepless, later that night, the thought—unwanted, unasked for—returned. It wasn’t just about rescuing Cadan’s family. Once again she saw the pale, shocked faces of all those Spares, coming out of imprisonment into a world they didn’t understand. Lin had said the telepathic link between one twin and another usually died out when they were still young. Would it have survived for any of them, or would they be totally adrift, without the anchor, the safety net that Elissa knew she’d been to Lin? Would the Spares ever adjust to the outside world? And if they didn’t, would they be as dangerous as Lin had been—still could be? Lin’s wasn’t the only brain that had the power to fuel a hyperdrive—it couldn’t be just Lin who had some kind of electrokinesis.
Elissa thumped over in bed, tugging the covers with her. She and Lin, linked, could move a spaceship. Without hurting themselves, without putting themselves in danger. If the links between other Spares and their twins hadn’t died out completely, could the pairs be as powerful as she and Lin?
Sekoia needs its spaceflight industry. It needs hyperdrives. But the only way it can power them
—
Oh God, though. It’s not okay to even think it, after what’s been done to them
.
She flumped back onto her other side.
She and Lin, going back, voluntarily, to show how Sekoia’s spaceflight industry could be restored, to let other Spares see that their power could be used without pain or danger, that might be the one thing that could rebuild a shattered society. She and Lin might be able to turn the tide of anger and desperation, stem the inexorable march of events dragging Sekoia down into the poverty from which it had so recently struggled free.
If we went back, we could get Cadan’s family to safety, and help other Spares recover, and even . . .
“Lissa?” said Lin’s voice in the dark.
Elissa’s heart skipped a guilty beat. “Yes?”
“I don’t want to go to college.”
Irritation jabbed fingernails into Elissa. She had to think about Lin’s education
now
?
“What do you want to do?” she said patiently.
“I want to go back to Sekoia.”
“What?”
Elissa snapped upright in bed and clicked the light on. Across the room Lin blinked at her. “What are you talking about?”
Lin’s chin set in a stubborn look that was becoming familiar. “Cadan will take us if you ask him.”
“Yes, I know he—” Elissa shook her head. “Wait, what are you
talking
about? What do you want to do on Sekoia?”
Lin gave her a sidelong look. “I just . . . I don’t like seeing the news. Your family’s being moved off-planet, and Ivan and Markus don’t have family there, but Cadan and Felicia do. I keep thinking, if it was
you
stuck down there, and I was
here and couldn’t do_ spacert anything . . .” She wriggled to a sitting position, wrapping her arms around herself. “When I got out of the facility, I knew where I was going. I knew I was going to you. Some of those Spares—their link will have died off like it’s supposed to. They#8217;s head c
Her arms tightened around herself, a movement like a shudder. Her eyes were dark, distant. “I don’t like it, that’s all. And I keep thinking, we could help them. The Spares. And their twins. And Cadan’s and Felicia’s families—even if it’s just getting them off the planet. But . . .” She met Elissa’s gaze again. “We’re
millions
of times stronger now, Lissa. It wouldn’t have to stop with just that. If the planet got safer again, no one would have to leave it. If we went back, together, we could . . .” She trailed off, biting her lip, her expression suddenly full of uncertainty.
Elissa looked at her. Into the face so like hers, the face she’d seen bleak with terror, lit with happiness, bone white with the determination that had saved them both.
“If we went back . . . ,” Elissa repeated, and Lin’s eyes lit up as she recognized what Elissa was going to say an instant before she said it. “We could help Cadan’s family, and d save our world.”
Through the viewscreen the stars were a distant mist of lights. Paths and signposts all over the galaxy, pointing the way back across the star system to Sekoia. To the planet Elissa would once have called home.
“Take the speed up a notch,” said Cadan.
Elissa slid her finger over the control panel, watching the line on the display climb, feeling the
Phoenix
respond to her command.
“It
has
to be my turn now,” said Lin, leaning over the railing for the third time.
“Oh, good God,” said Cadan, exasperated. “You learn every damn thing twenty times faster than your sister—can you just give her a bit longer?”
Lin sighed, breathing down Elissa’s neck. “I could be your
copilot
by the time we get there, if you just let me practice some more.”
“That’s assuming I want you as my copilot,” said Cadan crisply. “Right now I’m about ready to drop you off on the nearest deserted moon.”
“Oh, please.” Lin pushed away from the rail and wandered over to get herself a chocograin bar. “I saved your life,
and
paid to refuel your ship. You owe me
forever
.”
Cadan slanted a look at Elissa. “To think I ever thought
you
were a brat.” with Carlie and Marissasu cl b
“Tell me what you think I am now.” A smile pulled at her lips, and Cadan grinned at her.
“Maybe later.” He reset the controls to where they’d been. “Okay, you want to try that sequence again?”
Elissa went through the routine, ticking procedures off in her head. She was probably years away from ever learning to really fly a ship, and she’d never keep up with Lin, but it felt
good to be learning a few of the basics. They were no longer being pursued by SFI, of course, but there were other dangers out here between the planets. If the
Phoenix
the Spares, an
She’d reached saturation point now, though. When Lin next came to lean hopefully over the rail, Elissa got up and let her sister take the controls. She moved to the seat at Cadan’watching him as he explained another complicated maneuver to Lin.
Ivan, Markus, and Felicia had joined them for this return to a planet in chaos. She hadn’t expected them to want to, had thought they’d already risked more than enough for her and Lin. But they had wanted to come—people with whom she would once have had nothing in common, who were fast turning from friends into something like family.
And the
Phoenix
, the ship she’d once seen as nothing but an escape route, a means to an end, was becoming home.
Elissa edged her hand over so it just touched Cadan’s. He didn’t turn from the screen, from the code he was translating for Lin, but his fingers closed around hers, warm and firm.
All her life she’d just wanted to be normal, ordinary. She was a long way from either now.
She’d wanted safety, too, something else she was a long way from. Sekoia was a different place now, a dangerous place. There’d be people there who’d see her, Lin, Cadan, and the crew as the people who’d caused the planet’s disintegration, as bad as terrorists themselves.
But going into danger yourself, of your own will—it was so very much better than having your will taken away, than having other people’s decisions imposed on you. And there
were things more important than a guarantee of safety—or of being normal.
And, anyway
. . . Elissa looked past Cadan to what she could see of Lin, whose eyes were intent on the screen, fingers flickering over the cs other side,