Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) (36 page)

L
iam looked worried. “Travel safely.”

I nodded. It had been my suggestion to go alone, to buy Kayleen and Liam time to put things in place. I clutched him tightly to me. “I will. Somehow.”

“Remember, Chelo, that if we attack them we aren’t starting something new. We’re in the middle of something our parents started.”

“I know.” It had started before I was born, shaped and molded my life, sundered my family not once but twice. And here was a third sundering if I didn’t choose right. Or maybe no matter how I chose.

I pushed away from Liam and turned to Kayleen. “Keep our baby safe.”

She nodded, apparently at a loss for words.

We had spent much of the night planning an attack. Kayleen spread out her weapons, our weapons, and we talked about how to place crazy-balls and how to use disruptors.

In the end, we decided to start with Fremont itself.

I left a little early, giving myself time to think, taking the journey slowly.

When I stood looking up at the Dawnforce, I nearly turned back. I was an ant, the Dawnforce a mountain. It bulked across the plains, its presence bigger than just the ship. It spilled big skimmers and structures around it. What Kayleen had told us made the camp feel malevolent.

Two buildings had sprung up overnight, smooth shells complete with windows and doors. The Islans had not cut trees to make these things, and the buildings were too big to have been carried whole
inside the ship. I knew it was technology, but it might as well have been magic.

And then, for a moment, I stood gaping. The Burning Void sat behind one of the buildings. I stiffened. Why? Was it a trap for us? A favor? Or did they think they owned it for freeing it?

I kept my distance, not sure I wanted them to know I’d seen it.

I wasn’t going into the Dawnforce this time, not without being forced to. I stood outside the door and waited, positive they would show up.

Sure enough, in a few moments Ghita, the two strongs, and the captain came out of the ship. “Chelo!” Captain Groll called out cheerfully. “How are you? Where is Liam?”

“He didn’t feel well this morning.” Let them chew on that, in case they had put something in our food. “We didn’t want to disappoint you, so I came alone.” Kayleen had suggested they wouldn’t notice the stupidity of walking about by oneself on Fremont. She seemed to be right, because they didn’t react or remark on it. I tried to sound as friendly as I could. “Are you ready for a brief tour?”

Ghita gestured at one of the three sleek skimmers sitting near the
Dawnforce
. “We can fly.”

That wasn’t in our plan. “A walking tour will teach you a lot more. Remember how we pointed out plants on the way back? There are things you see on foot that you can’t see from the air.”

The captain and her second looked perplexed for a moment, then the red-haired captain said, “I’ll call Moran and his team.” She touched a spot on the neckline of her tunic and spoke into the air, too softly for me to make out the words. I couldn’t help but appreciate her beauty, the thin steel of her form, the way she moved, lithe and graceful. Her movements, even her walk, were compact and perfect, wasting no energy but somehow full of it. Her eyes caught mine, as if she knew I had been watching her. “Very well. We will walk a ways, but only an hour’s distance or so. Then perhaps you will visit with us for a while before you return?”

An hour would be enough. Inwardly, I sighed in relief. Outwardly, I smiled at her. “That sounds fine. Would you like to see the waterfalls?”
Would you like to go see the place the demon dogs live?
The dogs didn’t scare me as much as these people.

In a few moments, four more people showed up, three men and a
woman. They looked normal, or as normal as the captain and Ghita. Uniformed, neat, healthy, young. But they were altered, like us. Visual cues would not tell me age. I smiled at them, getting their names one by one. The men were Moran, Pul, and Zede; the woman, Kuipul. They were all cool and polite, masked like Ghita with no real emotion showing, even in their eyes. After the introductions, Ghita waved a hand at the mountains. “Let’s go.”

I started up-valley, leading eight dangerous strangers up a path I’d never been along myself. Surely with this big a crowd, we would scare off single predators, especially during the afternoon. So I pretended not to worry much about the land or the animals, to make it a casual walk, to project a feeling of calm relaxation. It hadn’t rained for days, so the ground was hard-packed and unlikely to show the demon dogs’ tracks. Or ours. A soft wind blew across grasses beside the path, cooling me. Insects chirped. Twice, we surprised swarms of flying grass beetles, hundreds of green-backed creatures as long as my little finger and twice as wide, flying up and away from us in frantic leaps, pushed along by the breeze and tiny flashing yellow wings.

The Captain and Ghita flanked me. The others trailed behind, the strongs in the far back, watching all of us. No time like the present. I took a deep breath, wishing for success. “So you want to hear about Artistos? Our home.” There was surely no point in hiding that now. “The people who live there call themselves’ original humans’. They’ve been on Fremont since before we showed up from Silver’s Home. They have schools and music guilds and artists and hunters. They farm and raise animals and study the planet.”

Ghita spoke, her face drawn in a scowl. “Pah. Original humans. No one is completely un-engineered—every human strain has evolved. Evolution is a biological mandate—it’s what we do. Humans cannot succeed by going backward.”

Damned judgmental of her. What the heck was backward, anyway? Her self-righteousness toward the original colonists sounded like the Town Council when they talked about us. Teeth on edge, I clamped down on the words I wanted to say, and kept my voice calm. “They are succeeding. The colony is growing. It’s self-sufficient. It’s what they
want, and they have it. They just don’t like as much technology as you use. They don’t want to be changed.”

“Why?” Captain Groll asked. “Why not use every tool you have? Why not become everything you possibly can? We don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do, either,” I replied. “It is central to who they are, though. Besides, they’re good people.” I glanced over at Ghita, who was watching me instead of her footing, instead of the landscape around her. Why wouldn’t a trained fighter be more aware?

I pulled my focus back to convincing them the people in Artistes deserved life. “There’s Gianna. She’s a scientist—she studies meteors, and warns us about big meteor showers. She cares about everyone, and spends a lot of her spare time with the kids, teaching them as much science as she can. She has a great laugh.” I looked at the two women’s faces for a reaction. The captain looked curious, and Ghita seemed to have not changed at all.

I led them over to some large reddish rocks pockmarked with holes. Soil had blown into some of the holes, and summer grasses rooted, popping up above the rocks like hair. I pointed to the rocks. “One of the volcanoes threw those rocks out in an eruption.”

Captain Groll bent down and looked at the rock, her head cocked a little. “There are no active volcanoes on Islas.”

Kaal, the strong I’d talked to on our way to the ship the day before, stepped closer, either because she was interested or because she was protecting the captain. She picked up a small rock, grunting in surprise at how light it was. She knelt down and picked up a bigger rock, testing its heft. At least she had the good grace to seem interested.

The captain reached a hand out to touch the rock. “It’s rough.”

“If you climb a field of those without protecting your hands, they’ll get bloody.” We were about halfway up the valley. A telltale plume of steam wafted through the low vegetation lining a streambed ahead of us. “Come on, there’s at least one more thing to see before we hit the waterfalls.” If there were waterfalls. We’d avoided this valley because of the dogs.

It was up to me to judge these people, to say if we showed our fist. How was I going to tell? So far, no one seemed much moved by my stories. But I wasn’t telling them well; I had to be so careful not to say
anything they could use against us later. The captain was the only one who appeared engaged at all, and although she at least asked questions, she didn’t have the same light in her eyes that the roamers got when they learned new things.

Politeness didn’t mean her fist was open; I was being polite.

I started toward the steam. “There are volcanoes on Jini, too, but only one active one, Rage. We named the big one here Blaze, but we’ve seen two other eruptions since we got here.” I needed to connect to these people, to touch them. I wasn’t doing it yet. “We have a science guild. They keep track of everything we learn, and pass it on. Paloma, one of the women in town, picks herbs and makes teas and salves—so if you fall down and get hurt she can help you. Her workroom always smells wonderful.”

The captain looked at me curiously. “We were told there was a ship here. The
New Making.
How long ago did it leave?”

I wished she’d asked about Paloma or Gianna or Artistes. New Making had probably reached Silver’s Home about the time Kayleen brought us here. I frowned. “Five years or so.” How much did they know? “The
New Making
went back to Silver’s Home.”

The captain didn’t miss a beat. “Who flew it?”

There didn’t seem to be any reason to lie. “My brother.”

For just a second I saw surprise flash through her eyes. “Why didn’t you go, too?”

“I wanted to stay here.”

She stopped then, and after a few steps I stopped, too, looking back to see that the whole line of them had stopped. Everyone did what the captain did. Their obedience made my skin crawl. But then, I had stopped, too. Perversely, I turned around and kept going, scanning the prickly bushes and low trees around us. A hushed conversation went on behind me, and then the captain jogged up to my side, and Ghita caught up a few steps later. “Why live here instead of going home?” Ghita asked.

I smiled. She couldn’t have given me a better lead-in. “These people need us. We’re stronger and faster; we help them. We’ve helped build barns and fix”—better not say the nets; I hid my hesitation with a small stumble—“fences and hunt. There are things only we can do.
There’s a tree with good fruit, but we’re the only people in town who can climb it without ropes.”

Captain Groll pursed her lips, looking at me. “These are not your people—both you and Liam have much more advanced genomes than they can have.” She narrowed her eyes, searching my face. “Sometimes people become attracted to others who capture them and keep them.”

I bristled. “We weren’t captured. We were raised there.” I wasn’t going to tell her any of them ever treated us badly. I turned to look her in the eyes. “The war is over. Like Liam said, it’s history.”

She didn’t blink, or react. Just watched me, her emotions invisible. If she had any. “How many of you are there from Silver’s Home?”

I sighed. “By how many of us, do you mean how many altered?”

“What do you mean when you say altered?” she countered.

“You know. Like us. Genetically engineered.” I wanted to tell her there were more of us, give her pause. But they were already reading Artistos’ data. “Three.”

“Aren’t you lonely?” the captain asked.

I winced at the close cut.

Ghita spoke up. “They let two of you come over here—when there are only three? That does not sound like they need you.”

Lies compounded lies. I hated the web I was building. “We asked to. For …for time alone.” Let them chew on that. I put my hand over my slightly swelling belly, emphasizing my pregnancy.

Captain Groll raised a hand to her mouth and a pleasant laugh escaped through her fingers. Ghita took a second more to understand, then nodded. She didn’t smile. “Whatever. But this is a backward place. You don’t know what you’re missing. The Five Planets are full of wonders, and rich beyond your dreams. No one starves. Everyone has valuable work. Art and beauty surround us since we don’t have to spend all of our time surviving.”

Art and beauty for killing machines. Her tone sounded like Nava lecturing the five-year-olds in the Science Guild hall, confident past reason. I fought becoming one of those five-year-olds. I couldn’t afford weakness. They were dangerous—I could feel it. Casually dangerous.

They probably wouldn’t care if they did kill us.

Really finding out what they wanted seemed impossible now that I was trying to do it. Ghita hadn’t smiled all morning. The captain had some warmth in her voice, but there was no connection except curiosity between us. We weren’t sharing anything real.

Ahead of us, the steam plume twisted into the air, blown long and flat at the top by a warm breeze. Shortly afterward, at least if I was following Liam’s directions properly, the path narrowed and headed toward the dog’s dens. They’d be sleeping at this time of day. But like us, demon dogs posted watches. Kayleen had her fist-sized disruptor, even if she didn’t exactly know how to use it. The one that made the animals on Jini react to sound only they could hear.

I was going to have to signal Kayleen and Liam soon, one way or the other. If I signaled them to show our fist by leading the group much further, then some of the people I led on this walk might die. I’d start a fight. And if I turned around soon, I’d leave the
Dawnforce
free to attack Artistos with all of her strength.

As we neared the steam plume, I struggled to breathe out the fears that curled up my spine. My mouth tasted like ash and sulfur.

A hot spring bubbled and steamed to the right of the path. A wispy evaporation cloud faded to whitish mist just above the surface of the water, obscuring the cooled lava lining the edges of the pool. On the far side, hot water leaked slowly out, tumbling down a crevasse and disappearing underground for a few meters, then popping up and joining a snow-melt stream a few meters from the hot spring. Like a miniature version of the Fire River and the sea, a steady plume of steam issued from the meeting.