The Silver Ship and the Sea (14 page)

Liam watched her carefully, a small frown marring his features. “Most people don’t hate us, Alicia. Paloma and Akashi, for example, are pleased we can do the things we do. And I’m glad you are away from the Easters.” He glanced at me. “It was more than Akashi hoped for as well.” His eyes flicked to Joseph. “However, it
is
clearly a test. I wish I
could
go with you.”

We sat quietly. I watched Liam, trying to remember every nuance: his long hands resting carefully in his lap, the bronze of his skin as the sun shone down on it, the way the light illuminated some strands in his dark blond hair so they looked almost white, the ridges and valleys of his biceps and shoulders. I didn’t want him to go.

Tom and Paloma walked back to us. We ate apples and drank water, mostly quiet. Stripes came over and sniffed the apples. She raised her lip, exposing her teeth. I laughed. “No. Apples are
not
good for you. Earth food gives hebras bellyaches.” She gave me a baleful glare before turning back to the grass at her feet.

I pointed to a thin dark slash on a rock near us. “What made that?”

Liam looked at me curiously. “Us. That’s from an
altered’
s weapon. You’ll see many signs of the war out here.”

I realized I
had
seen slashes like that in the rock on the trip up. I just hadn’t recognized them. Nothing I knew of could do that to rock.

Joseph walked over to the rock and ran his fingers across the smooth spot. “It feels melted.”

“It is melted,” Alicia said.

Liam nodded. “You’ll see a lot of those where there were major battles. Look carefully around the lake.”

I didn’t want to piece the war together; I wanted it to go away. Fat chance. We were born in the middle of it, and had never been free of it.

The roamers’ wagons began to struggle up the long path below us, and we watched them, waiting. I was in no hurry for them to reach us, for us to separate into our own small group. The West wagons, and the roamers’ knowledge, seemed like friendship and support. I glanced at Alicia. Surely she knew much of the country we would travel.

Liam stood behind me for a moment, curling his arms around me, hands resting on my stomach. My head just fit below his shoulder. Even two years ago I had been the tallest, but Liam and Bryan had both grown past me the last year. Liam leaned down and whispered, “Good luck,” and kissed my cheek softly. His lips felt like hot feathers, nearly burning my skin. My voice choked up, and came out halting as I said, “You, too. Take care this winter.”

He hugged Kayleen as well, kissing her on top of the head. She wound her arms around him so he had to step back and pull them away gently, laughing. He turned to Alicia, who kept a little distance from him, but held out her hand. He took it and smiled at her. “Good luck to you, too. Good journey.”

She smiled softly. “Thank Akashi for me.”

“I will.” He turned to Joseph. “Have fun. Take care of these three troublemakers.”

Joseph only nodded, as if he still couldn’t quite talk after the trip up the High Road.

Tom and Paloma had already mounted, and the rest of us followed suit. Liam began to ride back down to his band. He turned around at the last minute, just before rounding the first switch-back, and smiled broadly and waved once at us.

We waved back and followed Paloma down the smallest of the three paths, toward Little Lace Lake. Tom took the rear.

We rode for nearly a half hour, occasionally pushing through undergrowth attempting to take back the path. A stream gurgled nearby, sometimes visible. We crossed it twice, the hebras’ hooves splashing on the damp rocks, kicking cool water up onto my feet. The narrow path forced us single file. I watched Stripes’s ears and how carefully she carried her head, looking around on all sides, sniffing the air. It reminded me that paw-cats and demon dogs and wild orries and yellow-snakes lived in the forest here.

We crested the rounded hump of a steep hill, and Tom called to us to all stop. The lake below us was a great circle of deep blue, lighter around the edges, surrounded by multiple shades of green. Thick forest met the bank on both sides below us. On the opposite bank, folded low hills rose to the crater’s edge, dotted with small stands of trees. The sun hung directly overhead, so no shadows fell on the lake. The water looked smooth and cool and inviting. “All of this is a meteor crater.”

I swallowed, trying to imagine something so large. The lake would take days to ride around; the rock that made it must have been as big as a mountain.

“What would happen if something that big hit us now?” Kayleen asked.

“We would all die,” Paloma said.

“We’re in a meteor shower now,” Kayleen said, her eyes wide.

Paloma smiled. “This was the size of a small moon. Nothing Gianna has tracked in this shower is as big as the stone that made this lake. But some may be big enough to worry about; Gianna is watching closely.”

We wound down, still single file. Near the lake, the trail forked. Paloma stopped, looked both ways, then shrugged. “We need to go all the way around anyway.” She turned her hebra right, and after no more than twenty minutes, we rounded a corner and saw a rusty metal data spike, a tall pole with a small rounded data pod strapped to the top with rope. Nearby, a cabin occupied the center
of a clearing. A metal corral sat beside it, and behind, a wide stream flowed slightly downhill toward the lake.

Paloma eyed the rough-hewn cabin. It looked smaller than any house in Artistos, but big enough for more than one room. “I was here once, a long time ago.” She seemed to be lost momentarily, in memories, and for the first time I wondered what she had done in the war. “It will be tight, but we’ll all fit, and it will be easier than camping out tonight. At least there’s running water.” I looked down, and barely made out a pipe sticking up by the corral and another heading into the cabin. “This is one of the locations marked for us to fix—L4S.” She glanced at Tom. He nodded at her, his face tight and drawn, and I suspected he, too, had memories of this place. Paloma dismounted and led her hebra toward the corral.

Tom and Alicia scanned the cabin for spiders and biting black-bugs, Joseph and Kayleen took care of the hebras and tack, and I helped Paloma set up the perimeter bells—a series of tiny wireless pods programmed to detect intrusion, identify the intruders, and make sounds like its much bigger cousin that surrounded Artistos. We set the perimeter at the edge of the forest, claiming the entire clearing, including part of the inbound trail and the data spike, as ours. We tested the invisible fencing by walking through it, hearing the chime of exit and entrance bells. The perimeter made us safer, although nothing guaranteed safety on Fremont. We found the others gathered in the clearing on some stumps and cut-up logs set outside the cabin for seats.

Tom squinted at a small square data monitor in his hands. I couldn’t see it from where I sat, but knew it would have a readout of the data pod diagnostics, if the pod was healthy enough to broadcast. I arrived in time to catch the end of a question he was asking Kayleen. “…feel anything from the pod?”

Kayleen closed her eyes and went still, and after a moment she said, “Yes, it’s—”

“Don’t tell me. Yet.” Tom cut her off. “Joseph? What about you?”

Joseph looked around, as if hunting for somewhere to escape to. His feet tapped the ground, his hands twisted in his lap. He
wouldn’t be able to connect to anything while he fidgeted so much. Finally, he slowed and stopped and closed his eyes. His hands were still, but clenched so tight the muscles in his forearms stood out. He shook his head.

No one spoke. I silently urged him to say something, to engage.

Tom’s voice was gentle. “Humor me. Talk to me. Tell me what process you go through to connect.”

Joseph opened his eyes. “I’m sorry. I can’t feel anything.”

“What would you have felt, before?”

Joseph was quiet so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. “It…it used to almost always be there. The whole web, something I felt, like heat or rain. Background noise. And to go deeper, I would stop and focus only on the data. It’s like picking up threads, one by one, until you have all you can hold. And as I picked up threads, the rest of the world disappeared, bit by bit, until it seemed like I wasn’t in my body anymore.”

Paloma glanced at me, a thoughtful look on her face. “And Chelo helped you? Is that why she sat beside you all the time, so you felt safe enough to let the rest of the world go?”

Joseph’s hands twisted and twined again, sharp fast little movements. “Only…only when I went really deep. Following one thread didn’t mean losing the world, or two threads, or three. But to handle as much as possible, to fade out completely, it mattered if Chelo was there.”

Tom nodded. “Okay. But for one thread, that was easy? Not so threatening?”

Joseph nodded, looking miserable.

Paloma asked Kayleen, “Okay, so how many threads do you feel here?”

Kayleen closed her eyes, bending her head down so her hair obscured her face. “Just now, only one. But that was all I was looking for. The diagnostic thread. If there’s a bunch of stuff—say weather data and intrusion detection and seismographic data, that comes out like separate threads.” She closed her eyes and went still for a moment, checking back into the data networks. “I don’t feel anything else working here.” She glanced at Joseph. “Even if I did, I
can’t…weave…calibrate…more than one to—sometimes—three data flows at a time. Joseph can do dozens.”

Joseph frowned. Sweat beaded his forehead even though a light breeze blew from the lake toward us.

Tom sighed. “Okay. We don’t have to do all the work this minute. Chelo, can you stay here while the others go round up some firewood and explore a little?”

“Sure,” I said.

Tom looked at Alicia. “Alicia—you’re a roamer. Can you lead these three safely? Stay together?”

Alicia’s mouth made a surprised little “o.” I would have bet a good meal no one had ever asked her to be in charge of anything before. “Just for firewood?” she asked. “Just for a little while?”

“Just for firewood,” Tom repeated, smiling at her. “Just for a little while.”

Paloma glanced at Alicia. “Do you want me to go?”

Alicia shook her head solemnly. “I can do it. We’ll be back soon.”

“Be careful,” Tom said. “A half an hour at most. Use the earset if you need us.”

Alicia put a hand up to her ear, cupping the tiny wireless communications device. They were rare artifacts from
Traveler
that Artistos could not yet manufacture replacements for. She smiled and turned, and the others followed her.

Paloma and I sat quietly and watched their backs as they retreated across the clearing, Alicia in the lead, trailed by Kayleen and Joseph. The bell announced their leaving in three short chirps. After they had passed from our sight, Tom turned to me. “Chelo, do you know how it works?”

“I can’t do it. Whatever the genemod is for reading data flows, I don’t have it.”

Paloma quietly said, “I’ve watched Kayleen for a long time, trying to figure it out. She calls it ‘Blood, bone, and brain,’ chants those words when she goes into reading data. She says that’s how she feels it; it starts like a heartbeat and then she feels it deeply, everywhere in her body, and only then can she read it and understand it. But
I think it’s really in her nervous system.” She sighed. “I did as much research as I could. The Deerfly databases refer to the skill—they call it ‘reading the wind.’ But they just say it’s a common genemod. Not how it’s done, or if it breeds true. I suspect you have to be born with it. I don’t think it’s a skill you can graft later, like you can change skin color or strength anytime you’re willing to accept a mod. But that’s about all I know.” She pursed her lips. “Our ancestors limited us severely when they chose not to include the science around genemods in our databases. I suppose they didn’t want us to be tempted.”

I looked at Paloma curiously. Was it a temptation? Did she want to be like us?

Tom stood and paced a bit, and looked in the direction the others had gone. “We know Joseph’s fear is stopping him. I don’t know how to change that for him, and we have some complex work to do, later on. Kayleen could do this one, but I want Joseph to do it.” He paused. “I want to start small with him. This node is still sending good diagnostics; it simply isn’t hooking into the others. There’s another one nearby that is in the same shape; the monitor picked it up. We can probably get this one back into the main net now, since they replaced the ones lost in the rock fall.” He sat down next to Paloma. “I want Joseph to have as few distractions as possible, for me and Chelo to be the only ones with him, and to see what he can do. As soon as he gets back. Before he has time to brood more about failing just now.” He looked from me to Paloma. “What do you think?”

Paloma nodded.

“Maybe it would be easier for him if it was just me,” I offered.

“No. Remember, we’re in the wild.”

He was right. I glanced at the stunner on his belt. “Okay.” I wanted another answer. “Tom? What happens if Joseph can’t do this?”

“Then we’ll try again.”

“I mean all trip, ever.”

“I don’t know. The whole colony loses a measure of safety, and you lose a lever for acceptance.” He hesitated and swallowed.
“None of us wants to need you, particularly Nava and people like Wei-Wei and Ruth that can’t forget the war, but it would be foolishness not to use skills that help us survive here.”

What he didn’t say, but I knew, was that the trip would affect our rights.

So we set it up. Alicia and Kayleen and Joseph returned with an armload of firewood each, and Paloma took Kayleen and Alicia back out to collect herbs and fruit and dig for the long thin roots of licorice-vine, carrying her stunner.

Joseph and I walked close to the edge of the perimeter. We examined the tiny pod on top of the data spike; it looked physically whole. Even though the earthquake had undoubtedly flung the top around, perhaps jerking the data pod into its current silence, the pole had remained firmly lodged in the ground.

As we started back, Joseph walked slowly, looking down. “I shouldn’t have let Nava manipulate me so easily. I don’t think I can do even this. My body has forgotten the data.”