Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) (25 page)

The laugh jolted me, and the threads began to fall away. This time, I held the first half, refocusing. However the room worked, it helped me keep the information accessible, so it filled me. I felt huge—as big as the spaces I now held data for.

My being had grown.

I breathed out and let it all fall gently away, separating myself carefully from the data. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, testing. This time I’d dropped the data on purpose, and I still felt big with potential. I reached for my toes, stretching.

The room’s voice spoke again. “Are you finished?” it asked.

It was too dark to see my chrono. “How long have I been here?”

“Forty minutes. Twenty remain.”

“I will keep going.”

“Then begin again.”

I stretched out spread-eagled against the soft floor in the dark room. Nothing happened. Just me, my breath, my heart beating. The warm deadness of the room.

Then, “Take this thread.”

When I closed my eyes, I saw a silver thread rather than the gold one. The first concept was Silver’s Home itself. Curious, I opened. This
time, multiple linkages surrounded the first point. Creation. Genetics. Economy. I picked my way through slowly, cautiously. This construct didn’t require I keep every bit of data in a row—I could follow linkages, back up and follow new ones. I only understood some, but the information flowed whether I grasped its meaning or not.

The data didn’t relate to anything as concrete as temperature or a university building, although a sense of location existed. I followed that, seeing the whole planet the way I had seen it from space. More threads spiraled from the node representing Silver’s Home, waiting for me to pick them up. I experimented. Could I reach the next node on the silver line before I sampled all of these?

It was one of the five worlds, the Islas Autocracy. Curious, I began to examine the threads attached to that node. Planned community. Perfection. History. A breeding program.

The door opened, light falling on my body, jerking me out of the data and up into a sitting position. Light made war on my eyes, and I scooted back into darkness. My hand shook.

The figure silhouetted in the light from the door wasn’t Marcus, but someone blockier and shorter.

I drew in a sharp breath and shielded, hiding myself, making sure no data came in or out of my internal spaces. I tipped my wrist into the light, looking at my chrono. It hadn’t been quite an hour yet.

“Who are you?” the haloed figure asked as full light snapped on in the room, exposing me completely. His voice seemed overloud. An artifact of the silence of the isolation room? The man wore a uniform, the right chest emblazoned with an insignia that I’d learned from the threads meant he worked for the university.

At least he wasn’t from the Port Authority.

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.”

A
s 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.