The Silver Ship and the Sea (19 page)

Jenna stood and mumbled, low, as if to herself, “I set this up here in case you needed it. I guess you do.” She reached up to the top shelf and pulled a small silver square from the back.

She kept the square in her hands, held close, as if it were an eggshell. It was about twice the size of a data button, still small enough for Jenna to conceal by closing her fist. “This is a sacred trust. I’ve only found two more that work on Fremont. Artistos’s leaders will recognize this if they see it, and take it from you.” She fixed her eyes on me. “Do you understand?”

I nodded.

She was not done. “You cannot use this near any of the self-styled original humans. Not even Tom and Paloma.” She glanced at Alicia. “Not your friends, not any of them. Not in town. Only away.” Then she seemed to come to an answer. “I will take it back from you before you return to Artistos. That is best. But you can conceal it around Tom and Paloma, and I do not know when you will have such freedom again.”

So she understood the gist of the discussions going on back in Fremont. Perhaps that was what drove her to finally reveal so much to us openly.

Jenna handed the square to me. It was surprisingly light, and decorated like the data buttons with smooth symbols I didn’t recognize.

Jenna placed her palm over the top of the box in my hand, twisted, and it opened. She dropped a data button into it and closed the lid. A rectangle of light blossomed a meter from me.

I frowned. “It’s a data projector. We have those in Artistos.”

“You do not have any like these. The ones the crippled humans use in Fremont do not read our data.”

Of course.

Jenna watched me closely, then said, “Be careful about assuming you understand our technology because you understand what Artistos has. Some of it is very different.”

Jenna showed us how to start and stop the stream of data and pictures, using specific pressure points. When I turned on the projector, images of spaceships like
New Making,
and bigger than
New Making,
moved across the face of a planet. “Where is that?” I asked.

“That’s Silver’s Home. We came from there.”

My eyes were glued to the pictures. The planet had much more land than Fremont. Large seas, or maybe large lakes, dotted it. Both poles were almost all ice, and a wide river, almost a sea, fractured the two continents directly centered in the moving picture. Jenna was the only person on Fremont born somewhere else. I had never thought of it before. “Were you born there?”

She reached over and stopped the playback. “There’s no time for much more talk today.” She glanced at Joseph. “The headband transmits all of the data on a button, or even multiple buttons, directly into you. You will be able to cross-reference and search and use this up to the limit of your capabilities. It is the same tool you use for the Fremont data nets, but on our frequency. By definition, none of Artistos’s people have any ability to use data thread, and I doubt they even know what they are. As far as I know, you can keep it, wear it. It can be a gift from me. Tom and Paloma, at least, will accept that.”

Joseph fingered the headband, then took it off. “I…can’t wear it now. It’s too confusing. I’ll work with it.”

Jenna smiled at him. “Your ability to work the nets should re
turn as you learn to use that. In fact, it may grow stronger, as if you are exercising muscles you’ve seldom used.” She reached her hand down to help Joseph stand, and looked directly at him, her single eye boring into his rapt, focused gaze. “Fear will stop you. The knowledge you stand to gain, or for that matter, the help you can give Artistos, is something to value, to learn from.”

He nodded, silent for a moment. “But…but how do I stop the fear?”

“Trust yourself. Trust who you will become.”

His gaze slid uncertainly away from hers, and he mumbled, “I’ll try.”

“Don’t try,” she said. “Simply do it. Use Chelo to help you…she makes you stronger.”

Alicia moved the light stick toward the short hallway, and we stepped out into the larger cave, blinking at the light.

Jenna glanced at the box in my hand. “That can only play a single thread at a time; it is not even as powerful as Joseph is now. It will make some information accessible to you directly, but in a very linear fashion. It was designed for young children. You should have had it when you were six or seven. If it falls into the wrong hands, that same data—much of which has been concealed from the people here—will be available to them. They will never be able to use Joseph’s data thread, they are not made for it. It is conceivable they could figure out the button box.”

I swallowed. “I will protect it.”

“Only you. Do not leave it, ever. Even with your brethren.”

Alicia crossed her arms over her chest. “So I can’t use it alone? Chelo has to be with me?”

“Yes. Chelo is the keeper.”

I was briefly taken aback by the charge, and felt the responsibility she laid on me like a geas. Was it because we were the same, had the same genemods? Or because I was the oldest? This wouldn’t help my relationship with Alicia. I looked Jenna in the eye. “All right. Tell me when you want it back.”

“What data have you given us?” Alicia asked.

Jenna stood and started for the door of the alcove. “Children’s
data, on the first button I gave Joseph. History and culture on another. I know a few are training programs for the colonists. Navigation and maintenance and health and how to land on a planet and live there. That’s all I could find. Consider it the education you were denied. Now, we should go.”

Alicia narrowed her eyes. “Why go back?” She looked from me to Joseph. “You two can hunt. I’m sure I can, too. We have data now, we can learn.” Her gaze slid to Jenna’s. “Why can’t we live with you, free?”

Jenna threw back her head and laughed, and didn’t answer Alicia except to cock her eyebrow at me.

There were many reasons not to live alone. The most important ones were all people. “Kayleen. Bryan is back in Artistos. Liam is with Akashi. I couldn’t abandon them.”

“Well, me, then.” She sounded wistful. “I could live free. I don’t want to go back. I don’t even know where I’m staying, who I’m staying with.” Her gaze was still on Jenna, her eyes full of longing. “Please? Can I live with you?”

Jenna met Alicia’s eyes, offering a hard look in exchange for Alicia’s longing. “There is little freedom in my life, Alicia.” She gazed out of the cave, seeming to see something different than the brush and trees and rocks that were actually there. “I am trying to gain more freedom than you can imagine. Perhaps I will be able to share it.” She shook herself, as if leaving some painful memory behind. “In the meantime, you all have at least some measure of safety down there.” She gestured toward Artistos. “In my life, there are many dawns I am surprised to see at all. It is no life for you.”

Alicia frowned. “But my life is no good, either. They laugh at me, they hate me. They locked me up.”

I stepped close to Alicia, putting one hand on her shoulder. “It will be better for you now. I promise.” I had no idea how I would keep the promise, but I meant it.

She looked away, her eyes full of tears. I didn’t know her well enough to tell if they were tears of anger or tears of sadness. I let her turn away to stand at the edge of the cave, her shoulders heaving.

Jenna remained silent while Alicia gathered herself. Joseph
stepped near Alicia, as if offering himself, but she didn’t turn or acknowledge him. Then Jenna handed me the flashlight, which was still on, even though sun touched us here in the cave’s mouth. The flashlight was surprisingly light, like the box I had in my pocket, like holding a twig. “Turn it off,” she said.

It worked almost exactly like the box. A palm touch, a twist. “Jenna? Would this work for…for someone who isn’t
altered
?”

“Yes. It works on sunshine. You must always stow it where it can feed on the sun’s power.” She set it on a little shelf near the cave mouth. “Now, watch me again.”

She did the jump and twist and pulled herself up, then dropped again from the cave roof, standing ready to help us. As she showed Joseph, I took a last long look around the cave. I wanted to stay longer, to learn more. Fantastic stories we could tell about being stuck outside all night played through my head. But there was Paloma, injured. And Kayleen and Tom. And the hebras. “Stripes? Will we find the hebras on the way back?”

Jenna glanced over her shoulder. “What do you think?”

“Yes.”

She made us twist out of the cave twice each, being sure we knew how to do it. By the time we stood on the roof-rock, ready to start back, the sun was three-quarters of the way gone.

Shortly after we crested the rim, Jenna veered off, down a different path than the gravel wash we had taken up the crater face. We followed after her, running easily downslope on a clear trail that switchbacked neatly downward, one small slope after another. This would have been much easier to go up than the boulder wash. If not as fast. Trees and underbrush clung precariously to the steep sides of the crater. I smelled redberry bushes and the meadow and the fire from the cabin.

I smelled the hebras just before Jenna turned down a faint twist of path that veered from the main one. Telltale cloven hoofprints showed in the muddy path. She motioned for us to stop, and then ducked into the trees. She emerged with all three beasts. Stripes came up to me and butted my chest with her head, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief and happiness. I scratched Stripes under the
chin, laughing and giggling and calling her a silly beast for running away.

She made soft contented noises in her throat, apparently just as happy to see me.

“I missed you,” I crooned into her ears.

Jenna watched me with a wry smile. “You know,” she said, “hebras are good, smart animals, but there are places you could design exactly what you wanted for a pet, have it grown just for you. Even have it bonded to you.”

I simply hugged Stripes closer.

“Yes, well, and you have to go,” Jenna said.

“How did you keep them safe?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I can only teach you so much in one day.” She held my eyes for a moment. “Take care. Take care of the button box. Don’t get caught.”

I nodded, my nose still buried in Stripes’s shoulder. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

But she was already gone. As before, I couldn’t see her footprints.

By the time we found an old stump to use for a mounting block, the light had shaded to the soft gold that heralded dusk. The pack hebras refused to be ridden, standing stock still and ignoring all forms of encouragement either Alicia or Joseph could think of to offer. Stripes let me ride her bareback, although she swiveled her head around and looked at me balefully, as if telling me off for forgetting to drag tack up here. She took over the lead in Sugar Wheat’s absence, herding the other two. I pretty much hung on and let her trot up and down our tiny line. Between bouncing on Stripes’s backbone and running our conversations with Jenna over and over in my head, I felt dazed and bruised by the time we reached the edge of the meadow. There were so many questions I hadn’t had time to ask. About our parents. About us.

Tom waited for us by the new, closer high-line. The hebras called greetings as soon as they were in sight of each other, dancing and perking their ears forward. A sigh of relief escaped as I finally slid from Stripes’s back to stand on wobbly legs next to Tom. He looked around, as if expecting Jenna.

I answered his unspoken question. “She’s gone again. But we wouldn’t have found the hebras without her.”

“Where were they?” Tom asked.

I waved toward the wall of forest marching toward the crater rim. “Up there. It took a while.”

Tom and I helped Joseph and Alicia tie up the pack animals, and
then we all dragged into the cabin to find Kayleen standing over a stew pot that smelled of djuri and pol-roots and herbs. Sweat beaded her forehead as she lifted a spoon for a taste, smiling at us. My stomach rolled with hunger. We’d run after Jenna, scrambled up the wash, been in and out of the cave, and herded the hebras home with nothing more than water and pongaberries since breakfast.

Kayleen spooned up bowls of her stew, a proud grin on her face. “I made it all myself. It kept me from wishing I was with you.”

“Mmmmm.” I took a steaming bowl from her hands and set it on the floor in front of me. “I wish you
had
been there. We’re exhausted.”

“You look like it. Your hands are all scratched up.”

Alicia grimaced tiredly. “We had to scramble up a lot of rocks and gravel.”

I shot her a warning glance. We didn’t want to give away the location of the cave. Her eyes flicked away from mine, but her grimace told me she understood. “They were hiding in a bunch of trees halfway to the rim,” she added. “It took a long time to find them.”

Tom frowned, looking confused. “Everything is so muddy it should have been easy to track them.”

I choked down my bite of the spicy stew, swallowing a pol-root almost whole. “Hard to see where they’d gone through the grassy parts and the water.” The little lies adding up made me squirm. “Anyway, we caught them.”

Paloma nestled in a pile of saddlebags and blankets, her foot up on a full pack stuffed soft with dirty clothes. I turned to her, asking, “How’s the ankle? And Sugar Wheat?”

Paloma shook her head slowly. “We’ll both be okay with a little rest. But nothing got done. We didn’t work on the net nodes at all today.” She yawned. “I think we were all too tired. So we’ll do that tomorrow. I don’t know how you three had the energy to keep going all day. Maybe if both me and the silly beast out there rest, we can keep going in a day or two. But we probably shouldn’t ride Sugar Wheat for a few days.” She set down her own empty bowl.
“How was being with Jenna all day? I’ve never seen her as friendly as she was this morning.”

Unanswered questions aside, I was still reeling from how much information Jenna
had
shared with us. “You know, she’s always quiet. But she’s a good tracker.”

Joseph must have decided to follow Jenna’s advice to hide the headband in the open. He pulled it out of his pocket. “She gave me this. To hold my hair out of my eyes when I hunt. Isn’t it neat?”

Tom handed his bowl to Kayleen and turned to look at both of us, his face stern. “I want you two to promise not to hunt without permission. It’s dangerous.”

Joseph and I glanced at each other, and he gave a tiny nod. Accepting that as acquiescence, I said, “Sure, we’ll ask first. I’m sorry.” I shrugged, trying to make it look unimportant, remembering the fear in Tom’s eyes after we killed the two djuri. “I just wanted to try it. I didn’t really like it
that
much.” It was only partly a lie. I didn’t like the killing part, but the chasing had been wonderful.

Tom’s gaze stayed on us. “I want a promise that you won’t hunt, or do anything else…anything else I wouldn’t like…without asking first.”

A vision of the inside of the cave filled my head. “I’ll try. But it’s dangerous out here, and sometimes we’ll have to act.” There, that would leave a little room for freedom.

Tom nodded. His voice sounded stiff as he said, “Thank you.” He turned to Joseph. “You, too. I want your promise as well. I am responsible for you both.”

Joseph mumbled assent, his focus on the leather strap he ran gently, almost reverently, through his hands.

Paloma and Kayleen both reached out for it at the same time. Joseph set it in Paloma’s hands. “Look at the embroidery. There’s silver and copper threads in there, so it looks different any way you turn it, and it shines in the sun.” Joseph’s face was a study in innocent enthusiasm.

Paloma, too, ran the leather strap through her fingers, almost an echo of Joseph’s actions, her face noncommittal. She passed it to Tom, who sat between her and the woodstove. He held the reader
up to the firelight. The flickering light danced on his face, and caught the metallic threads woven into the leather. He looked at it for a long time, fingering it.

Joseph watched him carefully, a guarded look on his face.

Tom kept the headband, looking at Joseph, appearing unsure what to say next. “You may not be able to keep it. Hunter is leery of any
altered
artifacts, and he is still responsible for security. He made us scrub the whole area around Artistos clean, and there’s still a standing order to bring back anything we find and give it to him.”

My hands balled into fists all on their own, and I took a deep breath, commanding them to release. Joseph needed the headband. It was the only thing we had of our parents’. I could not imagine handing it meekly to Hunter.

Joseph apparently agreed. His mouth was a tight hard line and his eyes bored into Tom’s, pressuring him.

Tom gazed back, evenly, fingering the reader.

They stared at each other that way so long I thought no one would give, would look away. After the tenth breath I counted, neither had changed position. I silently willed Joseph to relax, to give Tom an opening to relent. Joseph didn’t relax; Tom turned his eyes away. He looked down at the headband and shrugged. “I suppose a piece of decorated leather can’t be too harmful. You can keep it for now, but you must show it to Hunter when you get back.” He handed the reader back to Joseph, who passed it to Kayleen. “Did Jenna give anybody else anything?”

I resisted an urge to feel for the box in my pocket. Alicia and I shook our heads, each of us paying close attention to our food.

Paloma spoke up from her corner. “I remember when we were all scared of her. Some people still are, but I’d like the opportunity to visit with her more, learn more about her and her people. We are, I hope, ready to all live together rather than fight.” She fixed us momentarily with her bright green eyes, as if to make sure we caught her message. A caution to us. “If you see her again, will you tell her I’d love to talk with her someday?”

I wondered how much Kayleen told Paloma about our periodic short meetings with Jenna.

Alicia asked, “Do you know how she lost her arm?”

Paloma and Tom glanced at each other. Paloma smiled softly at Tom. “No reason not to tell war stories. They’re growing up.”

Tom looked uncomfortably at the scuffed wood floor of the cabin. I felt him caught between Paloma and Nava, between someone who trusted us and someone who didn’t, between a woman he liked and a woman he loved.

He would have to make up his own mind, but I spoke into his silence. “Nava told me some of her war stories the night before we left.”

Joseph narrowed his eyes at me. I hadn’t told Joseph Nava’s story. I’d planned to, but it had seemed too personal, and I wasn’t through digesting the implications. Besides, he’d had his own worries. I added, “I’d like to hear your stories, hear anything you know about Jenna.”

Tom looked up at me, then at Paloma. “Well, I’m already in for it when Nava figures out these two can hunt, and I started it.” Tom’s gaze slid to Joseph. “I just…didn’t expect…I thought you would flush djuri and I’d shoot them.”

He cracked his knuckles and drank from his glass of water. “I’ll tell her after Joseph finishes figuring things out, goes back to his work on the nets. Then I can tie his new self-confidence to the hunting.”

“But you will tell her?” Paloma asked.

“I never lie to Nava. How can she lead if we hide things from her?”

So we weren’t the only ones keeping small secrets. Tom wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t telling either. Yet. It was hard to picture Nava or Wei-Wei or even Hunter being thrilled that we could bring down food with our bare hands. I bet we’d have to hunt in secret like we had to run in secret. They hated displays of our skills, even though Jenna’s skills helped keep them safe. Because Jenna’s skills helped keep them safe?

I set my already empty bowl in front of me and scooted back against the wall. Kayleen moved a little closer to me, to a better spot to watch Paloma. Alicia and Joseph already sat close together,
not touching. Still, even from a meter away, I felt a new closeness between them.

Paloma cleared her throat and her face went momentarily slack, as if she were sneaking into the past. “I first saw Jenna just after the
altered
landed. I don’t remember being afraid then. I remember being curious. We were only a few years older than you. Me and Tom and Nava and Karin and Pam and…” Her voice trailed off, and she swallowed hard. “It doesn’t matter. Most of them died. Hunter and his wife, Sarah, ran the colony then. But none of us had any power yet. So we watched, fascinated, as the delegation from the ship walked past us, heading to meet with Hunter and Sarah and Wei-Wei and the guild leaders. We didn’t have a culture guild yet. That was created after the war by a group of older people, too old to fight, who made group dinners and kept Commons and River Walk Parks clean…and later, it became the natural home for the wounded.” She shook her head, as if to clear it of memories. “I’m sorry, I’m digressing.

“Jenna was with the first delegation. They
all
towered over us, at least a head taller, some more. Like you, now. Otherwise, none of them looked very different from us. Healthy, almost glowing with health and strength. Perhaps they chose the least
altered
in appearance to keep from frightening us. Jenna had short hair then, and of course she wasn’t hurt yet. She walked with more grace than I had ever seen in anyone, as if she glided. I thought her beautiful and exotic. She took notes about Artistos, and I saw her deep in conversation with Sarah sometimes, and even laughing.” Paloma stopped for a moment, the faraway look relaxing her face.

Joseph shifted position nervously, his eyes fixed on Paloma.

I tried to picture Jenna laughing. Jenna beautiful. Jenna whole. She had smiled more than usual yesterday. No matter how hard I tried, the only Jenna I could see gazed at me from one eye.

Paloma continued. “But Jenna’s laughter died away. As we and the
altered
grew more wary of each other, her face became more like stone. She always seemed to notice everything. She began to seem more haughty than beautiful to me, like an ice-woman sent to watch us. But even though I overheard arguments between the
altered
and our own leaders, I don’t recall hearing her voice in the fights. Those of us who still lived with our parents weren’t allowed to attend any meetings with them, so we got information secondhand, or from listening outside of locked doors.” A little ghostly smile flew across her face and disappeared. “Therese and Steven were older than us, and sometimes included. They told us the
altered
leaders treated Jenna as important, that they asked her advice on some things, and brought her to almost every meeting.”

Paloma shifted, moving her leg a little. Tom handed her a cup of water. She sipped some and set the cup near her hand.

“And then the war started. The
altered
camped outside of Artistos, in the field past the hebra barns where we grow hemp now. Some of our young men and theirs clashed. People died, and the
altered
who weren’t still with their ships on the Grass Plains moved up the High Road and settled around here, near the lakes. We found three camps after the war, and burned them. Hunter made us burn them.” She looked down at her hands, which twisted in her lap. “I’m wandering again. It is so easy to get lost in those years.” She fell silent, chewing on her lip. Heart pain hovered in her eyes and settled into the tiny lines on her face.

“How did she lose her arm?” Alicia prompted. “And her eye?”

Tom looked at Paloma and nodded. “I was there.” He picked up the thread of the story. “It was near the last fight. I hadn’t seen Jenna fighting, not directly. Some
altered
who came here had only subtle changes, like you. The fighters were the strangest of the
altered
. They had physical advantages over us. More legs or arms or reflexes or…one had four eyes, two in the back of her head. God, there were a lot of them, and they killed us so easily.” He opened the door on the woodstove and piled in two more small logs. “But there were more of us, and so in the last fight, we knew we would either win or die. But you know the basics of that fight?”

Everyone in Artistos knew the stories and songs. Desperate, the original humans had committed all of their resources to a single fight at a newly discovered camp. Half the remaining
altered
were there, either counting on secrecy or needing to meet for some
other reason. We never knew why the opportunity existed. But Hunter exploited it. For the first time, they died and we didn’t. Or vice versa. It made my head hurt to belong to both sides. I responded to Tom. “Yes, we know the story.”