The Silver Ship and the Sea (2 page)

I gathered Joseph to me, holding him, rocking him, tears streaming down my face. Why wasn’t he talking to Therese and Steven? To Gi Lin? To me? “Joseph, can you hear them? Are they okay?”

He’d lost control. Joseph never lost control monitoring. But if he felt them all die? What if they died? Fear touched my voice as I called, “Joseph?”

He hung slack in my arms, as if he were someplace far away, as if he were crushed by the rock fall that devastated our team. A scream filled me, wanting to burst out my throat, and I kept it in, fighting it, fighting for control. Joseph needed me.

Nava’s voice behind me, demanding answers I didn’t have. “What happened to them? What does he see?”

I held Joseph close to me, not looking at her. “He doesn’t see anything,” I snapped. Couldn’t she see his pain? We needed to be in the open, away from the shattered window, the damaged guild hall, away from Nava’s bad grace. I tugged on Joseph. “Wake up, wake up. Now. Come on.” He didn’t respond. His eyes stayed closed and narrow. His skin felt cool, as if he himself were not there in my arms at all.

Tom came up behind me, gently moving me aside, separating me from my brother. He knelt by Joseph, who must have sensed my absence; he struggled and kicked, lashing out wildly. Tom pinned Joseph’s legs, picked him up, and started toward the door. He looked over his shoulder and caught my eyes. “Follow me.” He spoke into his earset, his voice high and worried, “Report out. Anyone. Anyone.”

I followed Tom out and across to the park, thinking of Joseph. Only of Joseph. I couldn’t think of Therese or Steven or Gi Lin yet, of the silence that answered Tom’s repeated pleas. I focused on Joseph, limp in Tom’s arms, his eyes closed, his face over Tom’s shoulder completely white.

Soft grass tickled my ankles. Tom settled Joseph so his head rested in my lap. I stroked his shoulder, the side of his face, trying to pull him back from wherever he had gone.

The sounds of the colony accounting for itself flowed around us. Nava, taking charge, using the deep sonorous gather-tones of the central bell, pulling the townspeople to meet at the amphitheater behind me. Children crying. People calling for their loved ones. Dogs barking.

The guild halls and houses ringing the park nearly all showed damage, but they all stood. Water from a broken underground pipe gushed up through the tight-packed stones on the street between me and the school.

Kayleen and Bryan found us, Bryan’s eyebrows drawn together in worry. Fear brightened Kayleen’s blue eyes. Like Joseph, Kayleen could tap data streams, although two or three at a time, not the unlimited number that Joseph seemed able to juggle. “He’s in shock.” She reached a hand out and touched his cheek, her dark hair falling over her face. “How connected was he? What’s the last thing he said?”

I told them the story. Bryan sat across from Joseph, watching his face. Kayleen sat next to me, chewing on her lip, uncharacteristically quiet. She was at least as disturbed as me. It bothered me that she had no answers, no suggestions.

Townspeople poured around us, streaming to the roll call bell, discussing damage in loud, worried tones. Hilario’s handsome dark face was covered in blood, his arms and hands bathed in it, as if something had opened a fountain of blood in his skull. Gianna limped. One group carried a prone form on a stretcher toward the hospital.

It all felt unreal. We were used to death and danger on Fremont, but by ones and twos, nothing so widespread.

The bell called for us, too. Bryan picked Joseph up, carrying him like a baby, and Kayleen and I followed, holding hands. We settled at the top of the amphitheater, Joseph lying on the grass, his head pillowed on my thigh. Bryan sat on my other side, sometimes taking my hand. Our feet dangled over the edge of the wall. Above us, a large twintree leaned over the amphitheater. It was usually full of kids scampering up and down its broad branches, picking fruit and scaring their parents into high-pitched calls for care, but today only two small boys seemed brave enough to climb it.

We looked down into a ring of granite steps falling gently downslope to a stage. Built in the first hundred years, when the colonists were more hopeful, the open amphitheater could hold two thousand easily; fewer than eleven hundred lived in Artistos today. Empty seats surrounded any gathering held there.

There was no gathering today, rather a stream reporting in and being sent back out in small knots to check streets, record damage, find wounded, do all of the hundreds of things that needed to be done. Nava and the other three Town Council members assigned work and recorded information. Tom ran errands for them. Hope surged in me as the boundary bell rang until I recognized the exit tone: riders being sent to check on the expedition.

Paloma took Kayleen to check on the hebras and goats, but Bryan stayed with us, silent and protective. So he was beside me when Nava charged up the aisle toward us, standing over us like some red-haired warrior, her hands dirty, her shoulder-length hair hanging in damp red strings around her face, her green eyes boring into mine. “Has he said anything else? Does he know if any of them are alive?”

“He seems to be in shock,” I said, as evenly as I could.

“Well, your job, both of you, is to fix him. We need him back on the data nets.”

The ground chose that instant to shiver and jerk again, enough to jolt more tiles from the guild hall roofs onto the ground, to cause a child to scream. “I have to go,” she said. “Get him working.” Nava jogged away from us.

Bryan whispered under his breath, “He’s not a machine,” and
I heard the anger in him. Bryan’s strong, polite outer nature shielded him against rude treatment from his adoptive family, who never forgot his
altered
strength or forgave his extraordinary patience and intelligence. Patience, however, is not forgiveness. It is merely patience. Bryan’s anger burned deep. Now, it lit his blue eyes, tightened the line of his jaw, and flushed his skin. He pushed his brown hair from his face with one large hand and stared out across town, his gaze apparently fixed on the horizon. Bryan was always sweet and patient with us, but like the big sheepdog that helped Stile with the hebras, I knew he could be dangerous to anyone who threatened me or Kayleen or Joseph.

For now, Nava and I both wanted Joseph to heal. We just had different reasons.

Bryan got up, smiled softly at us, and walked down the hill. He came back a few moments later, carrying a blanket, a canteen, and a hunk of bread. He covered Joseph carefully with the blanket and handed me the water and half the bread. My shocked body welcomed the water, but I simply held the bread in my lap, unable to take a bite. I stroked Joseph’s head.

Dusk had driven the twintree shadows nearly the length of the park when the boundary bell rang again: entrance. I looked up, my heart leaping with hope and confounded by dread all at once. Bryan must have seen my feelings in my eyes, because he said, “Go, I’ll watch Joseph.” I kissed them both on the forehead, and ran down the street toward the river. They’d be coming in from the north. I could intercept them at Little Lace Park. If there were any dead, the searchers would have to pass through the park to take the bodies to the other side of the river for preparation. I’d pass anyone bringing the living to the hospital. I ran all out, blood pumping through my limbs, my fingers, my toes, my heart driven to find out, now. I passed four groups of people before I ran up on Paloma, her blond hair flying. She turned toward me, her blue eyes startled, and put a hand out, yelling, “Chelo!”

It took great effort to slow my steps, to bridle the energy that burned in me and obey her, to go no faster than her pace, draw no more attention. But I did it.

Kayleen and Tom and about ten other people had beaten us to converge on the riders in the park. The long graceful necks of two hebras poked above the human heads, nearly silhouettes in the evening light. Tom struggled with a bundle strapped to the back of the nearest hebra. I ran up to him. Tom narrowed his eyes and looked as if he were going to send me away, but Paloma and Kayleen stood beside me. He sighed, and swallowed, and continued with his work. It seemed to take forever.

The burdened hebra turned its bearded head, watching Tom carefully, its wide-set dark eyes curious. Cold settled inside my stomach. The body lowered and the shroud opened to reveal Gi Lin, one side of his face flattened, the other perfect. Kayleen and Paloma and I nearly crushed each other’s hands from sorrow and disbelief.

The other hebra was similarly burdened. Just as Tom loosened the ropes, a hand flopped out. Steven’s hand. His left little finger was missing, an accident from the last days of the war. It is one thing to be certain of something, and another to have knowledge of it driven into you with the harsh stake of reality. I landed on my knees on the stony grass of the park, and Kayleen and Paloma knelt on each side of me. Someone keened. When I found my breath again, I pushed myself back to standing. Behind me, Paloma asked, “Any word of the others?”

Ken, one of the men who’d gone to retrieve the bodies, answered her. His words were choppy, uneven, as if he still had trouble admitting their truth. “Rocks fell almost all the way across the road. Hard to pass at all, but if someone was on the upward side, they could get to us. We saw a dead hebra off the cliff, but there are rocks there, too, rocks crossed the road.” He swallowed. “We did see Therese’s body, but there’s a rock too big to move covering most of her. We’ll have to go back later.”

I stumbled into Paloma’s arms as the second expected blow became real.

Tom came up, putting his arm over my shoulder. “Go on, Chelo, take care of Joseph. You can’t stay in the park all night. Your house came up safe in the survey. Go there. We’ll check on you tomorrow.”
He glanced at Paloma and Kayleen, his eyes demanding rather than asking. “Can you take her back? Settle her and Joseph in? Then meet me at the amphitheater—I’ll be there in an hour.”

We walked back, clutching each other’s hands, stumbling through nearly complete darkness. Only one weak moon, Plowman, added to the starlight. The town’s evening lights hadn’t come on. We stumbled through the dark to find Joseph and Bryan where I had left them. Bryan carried Joseph, and the five of us shuffled carefully home, crunching shards of glass and ceramic roof tile under our feet.

Kayleen and Paloma helped me tuck Joseph in. Bryan made me a cup of mint and redberry tea. After they left, I tried to drink the tea, but it tasted bitter. I wandered about, restless, picking up cups and pictures that had fallen, sweeping the shards of a broken potted plant into the trash.

Steven and Therese should walk in any minute. I knew better, yet I looked up for them over and over.

I pulled my bedding into Joseph’s room and lay down on the floor. False crickets chirped outside the window and the occasional call of a night bird sounded from up above the house in the beginning of the Lower Lace Forest.

The night passed slowly. What if Joseph didn’t get better? What would happen to us now? Who would take us in?

Light falling in the window woke me. I blinked. Where was Therese? She usually woke us up. I remembered, and wanted to fall back asleep until Therese woke me. But she wouldn’t, ever again. My back was stiff from sleeping huddled on the hard floor of Joseph’s room and he lay, hurt, above me. Joseph stirred, as if waking in sync with me. “Are you awake?” I whispered.

“Yes.”

I sat up and gazed at him. He was on his back, looking up at the ceiling, his face white. “How do you feel?”

Joseph’s eyes met mine, but looked right through me. It made me shiver. “Like fire burned me inside out,” he murmured, his voice cracking. “I heard them, their voices, their cries. Steven calling out for Therese, Mary yelling for Jonas, but of course, he wasn’t with them. I was afraid with them, as if the rocks were falling on
me.
I heard their pain, heard them wink away, one by one. Therese was one of the first, and I heard Steven yell for her, then I heard him scream.” He looked up at the ceiling. “I couldn’t help them.” Tears glistened in the corners of his eyes. “I…I felt it here, felt the quake rock my body, but I’d already felt it up the hill and they were dying, so my attention stuck there, with them.”

His voice was shaky, and I wanted to hold him, but I didn’t want anything physical to break his thoughts. His pain was too deep for me to touch away. When he fell silent a moment, I whispered, “Do you remember sitting in the park?”

“I sensed you all, you and Kayleen and Bryan, and Tom once. Bryan stayed with us.” Finally, he looked at me. “Is everyone else okay?”

Okay? Of course not. But I nodded and fetched him a glass of water. His lips looked dry and chapped and his eyes were the wrong shade of black, like thunderclouds about to pour rain and fire. I watched him take a long, slow drink. Only when he handed me back the empty glass did I say, “No one died here. Denise broke her wrist and Hilario’s face got banged up by a falling roof tile. Gianna hurt her ankle. I heard the hospital was full, but they released most people. We were lucky.”

“Were we?”

A knock at the door saved me from answering. I dragged myself from Joseph’s side. Something as normal as answering the door seemed impossible, like walking through waves. As I pushed the door open, the widening crack spilled light and birdsong into the short hallway. The happy normal sounds scraped at my confused grief; I wanted the world to be silent and respectful.

Bryan stood just outside, his bulk filling much of the doorway. He folded me into his arms. He whispered into my hair. “I’m so sorry. I would have come sooner, but I couldn’t.” I didn’t answer, just stood in his arms, drawing strength from his bulk, his steadiness. After a minute, he asked, “How’s Joseph?”

“He’s awake. Come in.” I stepped back and Bryan passed me, heading for Joseph’s room. The empty place he left in the doorway filled with Kayleen, damp from a shower, but not fresh; her eyes drooped and she moved slowly. “Sorry I just couldn’t come earlier. Nava made me and Mom run tests on the data nets until after midnight.” She pulled out a kitchen chair, sat down with a thump, and started combing her hair with her fingers, watching me. “You don’t look like you slept. You look exhausted. Just a minute, I’ll find us some breakfast. How’s Joseph?”

Seeing her lifted my spirits a tiny bit. “He’s…he’s hurting.”

Kayleen headed for Joseph’s room, still trying to untangle her hair. I followed her, so the four of us crowded into the small square room. There was only one chair, which Bryan filled, so
Kayleen sat on my rumpled bedding and I perched on the narrow bed by Joseph, who had turned back to the wall.

Bryan’s voice was low and even. “…need to talk. I know you don’t want to, I know it’s not a good time yet, but Kayleen and I are worried. We need to come up with a plan for you two.”

I blinked, startled. That was my job. I hadn’t been doing it. I didn’t want to do it, not yet. I put a hand on Joseph’s shoulder. “He’s right. We need to plan.” There would be too much to do to let anyone grieve long. Nava wasn’t one to wait on emotions, and certainly not on ours. The town couldn’t wait. A fresh wave of loss washed through me. Therese and Steven. “We’ll probably all be called to work today.”

Joseph groaned and whispered, “I can’t.”

“We’ll be okay.” I rubbed his shoulders lightly. “We’ll manage. They need us, and I’m sure we can do something easy.”

Joseph burrowed into the pillow. “How come you’re always so positive?” he mumbled.

Bryan twisted his hands in his lap. “She’s made that way. Now, come get some breakfast. You need to eat.”

Joseph pulled the covers tighter. “I’m not hungry.”

“Do I have to carry you?” Bryan asked. He glanced at Kayleen and me. “You two, go on. Get something easy for him to eat. We’ll be in.”

I smiled at Bryan. “Thanks for being here.”

Kayleen found four small red apples in a basket on the counter. I dug goat milk out of the refrigerator and a few thick slices of bread, which we’d have to eat dry since the butter container had fallen from the counter in the quake and lay in greasy shards under the corner of the cabinets. We finished just as Bryan and Joseph came down the hallway and settled into chairs. Joseph’s hands shook in his lap and he didn’t reach for any of the food. I understood, but took a slice of apple, hoping to coax him into eating.

Kayleen drummed her fingers on the table. “So, Bryan told you we’ve been talking. You’re almost an adult, Chelo. You will be in a year. Surely you can make a case for living by yourselves now. It
would solve the problem of where you’re going to go. There are plenty of empty houses.”

We’d daydreamed about the four of us living together when we grew up. Why not now? Who’d want us, anyway? I could be completely responsible for Joseph, protect him. A small sliver of hope rose inside me.

Kayleen continued, her words rushing out like cool spring wind. “And maybe we can live there, too. I
know
Paloma would let me, at least sometimes. We could practice together without having to go outside. Joseph and I could explore the data fields more, maybe I could learn to handle more than two data streams.” She leaned forward, her blue eyes bright with her idea. “We could have our long talks and not worry about being interrupted. Bryan’s family can’t stand him. I bet they’d let him go.”

Bryan looked less willing to believe in good fortune. “Will Town Council let us?”

“Not if Nava is in charge.” I mused out loud, my head clicking through possibilities slowly. “She’d never allow it. She likes us where she can watch us. They let us be friends, but remember, they split four of us across three guilds on purpose, and gave two to the roamers, to keep us separate.” But what would the colony really do about leadership? Grief kept my head from forming questions as easily as usual.

Bryan added, “Nava runs the logistics guild. Exactly the skills we’ll need to rebuild the town.”

Kayleen held a slice of apple near Joseph’s hand. “I know you don’t want to eat. But you need to. Please?”

Joseph ignored her, as if he
couldn’t
respond. I watched with growing alarm. He was never rude, never silent, never all the things he was that moment.

After a moment, Kayleen set the apple down and asked him, “Hey, what do you think about us living together?”

His voice shook. “I’m not going.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Back into the data streams. I can’t go there.”

I bit back an immediate reply. He had to. He’d discovered his tal
ent when he was six. I could still see it clearly—it was the first moment it really sank in that we were more powerful, in some ways, than even the adults around us.

I was watching him in the playground at the park. His attention drifted, so he didn’t notice the ball as I threw it to him. Then he stiffened and his eyes widened so he looked puzzled and excited and scared all at once. He said, “Something’s trying to come in.”

“What?” I asked him.

“Demons.” His eyes rolled in his head and he sat down, going completely still, frightening me. It was as if he’d died right there, gone so far away that I might as well not have been there. A full minute later the boundary bell rang the high sharp tones for animal intrusion. It was a pack of demon dogs; fast four-legged animals with sharp teeth. Gi Lin and Steven scared the pack off, but from that day forward, Joseph’s primary play was listening to the vast wireless networks that surrounded us. I was deaf to them, but Kayleen quickly learned to join him in data-play.

How to deal with Joseph’s fear? He fought commands; I’d circle back to his data connection later. “What about living together?”

“Who has to approve it?” Bryan asked me.

“Probably Nava. I suppose we could petition Town Council. Their attention won’t be available to us until the mess is cleaned up. I’ll watch for a good opening.”

Kayleen waved the apple in front of Joseph again, and he grunted and pushed himself to standing. His knees buckled and he crumpled, limp, his arms splayed across the floor, his cheek turned to one side. He moaned softly.

I felt as weak as Joseph, scared for him all over again, like in the park.

Bryan scooped him off the floor, and carried him back to bed. I followed, my breath catching in my throat. Joseph looked small and vulnerable in Bryan’s arms. Had something serious broken in him? How would we know?

Kayleen brought the apples and a glass of water and set them on Joseph’s bedside table. As Bryan covered him with a blanket, Joseph looked gratefully at him. Yesterday morning, or any other
morning, Joseph would have turned beet-red at being carried.

Bryan smiled down at him. “Go on, little brother, sleep. We’ll try to decide what to do.”

Joseph nodded and rolled on his side, looking away from us at the blank wall beside his bed.

The three of us headed back to our interrupted breakfast. “Why can’t he stand?” Bryan asked the question before I got it out of my mouth.

Kayleen finished her milk and set the glass down. “Sometimes, when I try to handle too much data, it exhausts me, like it wears out my nervous system. Joseph was seriously immersed, right? Then jerked out? It might take a day or two before his body does what he wants it to.”

Another knock on the door.

I went to answer it, followed by Kayleen and Bryan.

Nava stood there. Her hair was wet from a shower and she wore clean coveralls and a light shirt. Dark circles spread under her eyes. “Good,” she said, “you’re all here.” She paused, then drew herself up. “I know you’re hurting, but so are we all. We lost two greenhouses, one storeroom is missing its roof, and only half the houses we’ve checked so far are safe to live in.” Nava stopped and looked at us, as if gauging our reactions. “Gianna thinks there’s a storm coming. I’m going to need you all this morning. I’ll need everyone.” She looked down, her fists balled by her side.

A deep need to be moving, doing, seemed to shoot out from Nava, as if she were a comet about to explode against some solid object. I wanted her to leave. She was looking at me. “I know you feel bad, we all do. We just”—she shrugged—“there’s no time.”

“Of course,” I said. “The three of us will come and help. But Joseph’s asleep; he’s exhausted, he can hardly walk. He needs to rest.”

Nava frowned, as if she wanted to contradict me, but nodded. “Should I send over a doctor?”

Joseph would hate that. “I think he just needs rest. Please, I want to work nearby, where I can check on him.”

“I’ll do what I can.” She glanced at Kayleen. “That means we’ll
need you to work with Paloma. Be at the amphitheater in twenty minutes. All three of you.”

“All right,” Kayleen piped up from behind me. “We’ll be there.”

Nava turned quickly on her heel, heading for the neighbors’ house.

“She is
not
happy about Joseph being out of the nets,” Kayleen said, shaking her head.

Bryan grunted. “She could have at least asked how you were before telling you what to do.”

We finished breakfast. None of it had any flavor.

The gather-bell rang. I checked on Joseph while the other two picked up the kitchen. He breathed softly and evenly, clearly asleep, although soft little whimpering sounds rose from deep in his throat. I kissed his smooth cheek and straightened the blankets around him.

We held hands as we walked over to the park. The air felt heavy and damp, pregnant with electricity and rain. Only the early crops had been harvested; the third hay cutting, the squash, and the second crop of beans were still in the fields. Some of what we’d already harvested had probably been damaged, and rain might damage more. We never got our disasters in ones. Always twos or threes or fours.

The crowd gathering at the amphitheater talked quietly, looking somber. Family groups walked together, parents holding children’s hands. I often helped at the elementary school, and some of the children waved at us, but most adults ignored us. We sat near the top, like yesterday, Bryan and Kayleen on either side of me.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Startled, I looked up into Jenna’s single steel-gray eye. Her mangled face was weathered, her skin dark from living outside. Her breath smelled like twintree fruit. She said, “Take care of your little brother. His pain is huge.” She didn’t wait for a reply but let go of my shoulder, backing up, sitting by herself in a shadowed corner. She never came into town, never responded to the gather-bell. I hoped she would be all right in the crowd.

“What’s she doing here?” Kayleen whispered.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. How does she know about Joseph?”

Jenna lived outside of town but inside the boundaries. People chased her when I was a little girl, as if she were some kind of animal, trying to kill her. She outfoxed them; she killed a few paw-cats and caught two of the long yellow snakes, which she brought, one by one as she made her kills, into the middle of the park and left for people to find. We modeled our own acceptance on hers. Being useful.

Jenna was the only adult example we had of what we might become, even if she was broken and barely tolerated and hard to talk to. Jenna was wary of everyone, even us. Still, we’d puzzled out some of our abilities by watching her. She had Bryan’s strength, although she was tall and wiry, less boxy, and she ran like Kayleen, fast and agile.