The Silver Ship and the Sea (20 page)

“I was in the last fight. So were Steven and Therese, and almost everyone else. Nava ran messages back and forth between the fighters and Artistos. Paloma worked in our field hospital. The fight was…terrible.” He closed his eyes briefly and Paloma took his hand, squeezing it, and then releasing it again before he continued. “There’s no value to you in the details. We thought we had killed all of them when Geordie spotted Jenna and a man and a child running away from us up a draw. We hardly had any weapons left—just homemade rocket launchers and some stunners we’d modified to carry enough punch to kill. The child was too young to run; Jenna held it to her breast. We could see the child, but we’d been fired on by the
altered
for years, lost our own children, our parents, our brothers and sisters. We burned with anger. In retrospect, that’s no excuse for firing on an enemy who was running away.” He swallowed, and cleared his throat. “For firing at a child.”

Tom ran his hands over the light stubble of gray beard sprouting from his chin and stood and stretched. He walked to the door and opened it, looking out at the hebras, letting the cool scents of evening and damp grass and running water compete with the spicy stew.

I glanced around. Kayleen’s dark eyes watered and she looked up in a corner, away from all of us, her skin a pale white. Joseph fidgeted, rearranging his weight, apparently unable to be still. Tears streamed silently down Alicia’s face.

We waited for Tom to start again, watching as he carefully levered himself back down next to Paloma. “Geordie sent a rocket after the three of them. The rocket launchers made noise when they were fired, and so the man with Jenna had time to turn and fire on Geordie. They were like that—so fast they could react as if they knew our intent before we did. Maybe he heard Geordie take aim. I don’t know.” Tom paused and licked his lips. “Geordie’s aim was
good. The rocket exploded square in the middle of the little group. The rockets were full of shrapnel, of hard metal that burst in a wide pattern with every explosion. So anything near the explosion should have died.

“I ran up the hill to Geordie, only to find he had been shot through the head. He died as I was carrying him back down the hill. I didn’t stop to check on the group up there. If I had, I would have found Jenna alive, and I would have killed her then.” He reached for Paloma’s water glass and took a sip, licking his lips. I thought perhaps he was done, but he went on. “I thought about that a lot over the years. How it might have been kinder to her to have killed her.”

The subtext was the same, whether it came from Tom or Nava.
If we’d just killed everyone, killed Jenna, killed you kids, then life would be easy.

Perhaps Joseph heard the same unspoken words. His hands were clenched so tightly in his lap the knuckles whitened, but his voice came out even and reasonable. “But if you had killed her, Jenna wouldn’t protect Artistos like she does.”

Tom frowned. “Things are never as simple as they seem.”

Paloma picked the story up. “I climbed that hill with a clean-up detail two days later. Hunter had us searching the whole area, bringing all the
altered
weapons and bodies and artifacts and food…everything…down to a big pile to be burned. So three or four of us went up the hill to find anything left after Geordie’s rocket. We found pieces of the child and of the man, and a hand that must have been Jenna’s. Two of us followed a bloody trail for an hour before we lost it. After we reported what we’d found, Hunter himself tried. He, too, lost Jenna’s trail. And then Hunter was pulled back to town, into the debate about you six.” She raised her eyes and gazed at us contemplatively.

Tom broke the quiet moment, his voice soft. “In the last fight we killed so many of them, so ruthlessly. We had to. But we hated ourselves for it.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “Chelo? How did you feel when you killed the djuri?”

I hesitated. “In the end, after it was too late, I didn’t want to kill it anymore.”

Tom nodded and waited a moment before saying, “I think you lived only because we were so tired of killing by then.”

I swallowed, and took Kayleen’s hand. She scooted a little closer to me.

Paloma whispered, watching Kayleen closely. “I’m glad that we didn’t…that you’re here.”

“Me, too,” I said.

Paloma held up a hand, clearly asking for silence. “We were all so busy recovering and rebuilding that we didn’t make it back to Jenna’s cold trail. The ship was gone, our enemies gone with it.

“We had, at most, one damaged enemy left. At first, Hunter was convinced Jenna lived, and posted special watches. After a month passed with no sign of her, we assumed she had died after all.

“No one saw her until the following winter, which was particularly cold. She haunted the edges of town. She had somehow managed to slip inside the boundaries. People chased her. Some to kill her, some to catch her. She was elusive, amazingly fast, and she did no harm. Some people spoke of missing ears of corn, or once a small goat, but no one could produce real evidence. There must have been many opportunities for her to kill us, but she didn’t take any of them. After a while, she started killing predators and bringing them to town under the cover of darkness, so we’d find dead paw-cats or full clutches of demon dogs.”

“I remember,” I said carefully, “I remember how people used to chase her.”

Paloma shifted again, her eyes still pained. “I’m sure she must be lonely. I imagine she very much liked spending the day with you today.”

I nodded.

Paloma’s voice held a note of longing as she said, “I would like to know if she ever tells you any interesting stories.”

I pushed myself up. “She doesn’t seem used to talking.”

“No,” Paloma said, “I imagine not.”

Joseph stared at his hands, at the leather band in them. “Do you know if our parents left with
Journey
or if they died here?”

Paloma shook her head. “We don’t know who they were.”

I expected that answer; Therese and Steven had answered the same way.

We were all unusually quiet preparing for bed. Tom looked over at us. “You three look tired. I’ll take the first watch over the hebras tonight. Kayleen can keep me company. We’ll wake up Joseph and Chelo later on.”

Joseph answered, his voice heavy with exhaustion. “Okay. Tom—let
me
work on the nodes tomorrow? I think I can do it now.”

Tom nodded, smiled at Joseph, and he and Kayleen slipped quietly through the door.

I crawled into my bedroll, grateful to be both still and horizontal, to have avoided first watch. My body relaxed long before my mind. Had Jenna chosen to live to protect us? What did she want from us and for us? Now that we were nearly grown, what could we offer her back?

Always, I thought of helping the colony in terms of keeping ourselves safe, avoiding their prejudices, becoming useful in exchange for being allowed to live with a semblance of freedom. Sometimes in terms of sheer survival. Neither seemed like enough tonight. Safety was not a worthy goal all by itself and survival was simply instinct. We had no dreams, no direction.

Jenna was right; we needed to know what we wanted.

Where was Jenna anyway? Was she staying in the cave tonight, or perched nearby, watching the cabin, watching us?

It seemed like I had only truly slept for moments when Kayleen shook my shoulder and whispered, “Wake up. Your watch.”

“Hmmmm…did anything happen?”

“Yeah. We got cold. Take blankets.”

She was right. The chill air outside smelled like decaying fall leaves, like the night after a storm when all the water has not yet sunk into the ground or risen to the air. We settled on some wide low stones with a good view of the high-line and the cabin. At first, I sat sleepily next to my brother, welcoming the cold against my cheeks, watching Wishstone, Faith, Hope, and Summer hang above us. Four-moon nights were said to encourage contemplation,
a fit to my mood. The hebras dozed standing, heads down, clearly too uneasy to lie down as they sometimes did back home. Night birds called calmly back and forth to each other. I imagined any of them might be Jenna, patiently watching, blending in.

Joseph broke the silence first. “Come closer, Chelo. It’s too risky to use the projector here, so close, but I want to try the headband. I can tell you what I see.”

I scooted over next to him, so we shared a single blanket between us and the wet grass, and I draped the blanket Kayleen had urged me to bring so it covered both of our shoulders. “Do you have one of the buttons with you?” I whispered.

He nodded. “But first, I’m going to fix the node. The one on the ridge. I’ve heard the whole local net all day, and I can feel its imbalance inside me. It’s driving me nuts.” He held my hand, leaning into me, his head against my shoulder. I slipped my arm across his back. It had been one of his favorite positions to rest in when he was ten.

“Go on, little brother, read the wind.”

He nodded, mumbling, “Blood, bone, and brain.” I watched his eyes drift closed and then returned to scanning the sounds and shadows of the clearing and nearby forest, making sure we were safe. Joseph became steadily limper in my arms, heavier. His eyes fluttered and he thrashed softly, restless. It took longer than usual, even longer than the easy past, before he said, “Okay, Chelo, I have it. Node 89A sees two other nodes here, 90A and 91B, both up near the top. It should be able to talk to 102A across the lake. 89A is healthy enough. It’s reaching the far side, but all it gets is static. I can’t quite—twist it—no. We’ll need to replace the far side.”

He sounded confident. Himself. As if the headband erased his fear.

“Now…linking backward, into Kayleen’s work. Easy slide, follow…follow…data returning to Artistos: seismic, weather, temperature…” His voice trailed to nothing. His skin warmed slightly beneath my fingertips. The reddish moon, Summer, slid behind the crater rim, near the cave. I imagined it filling the cave with soft light, landing on Jenna’s face, softening her rough features,
turning Jenna in her sleep to the beautiful woman that first came here.

Joseph drifted, his eyes fluttering, his lips moving, but silent, as if he had no need to tell me exactly what he did, where he went. He felt far away and I curled myself closer around him, tucking the blanket in, watching carefully.

A small shower of meteors spun through the sky, brilliant points of fire and light. The hebras shifted and stamped their feet. Joseph stayed a quiet heavy lump in my arms for so long I lost the feeling in my legs. I shifted a little to become more comfortable and hummed quietly to keep myself awake, wishing I’d brought the flute out here.

Joseph’s far arm rose, stretching, and my hand slid down to his waist. He pushed himself up partway, and I shifted again, finding a comfortable spot. He tilted his head toward me. “It worked.” His dark eyes were bright and happy, as if the data of Fremont fed him. He whispered, “I want to go back to Artistos and sit in the middle of the web and see what I can do.”

“We have work to do out here first.”

He grinned, eyes alight as if a secret wanted to burst from them. “Only a little. Two nodes on the far side need physical replacement, and one is missing entirely. I know where they all are. Everything else is done.”

I blinked at him. “The whole lake ring? Just like that?” Jenna had said the data threads would help him, but she hadn’t seemed to expect this much this soon. But then, she was like me. Deaf to whatever data flowed here. She might be guessing what to do for Joseph.

He sat the rest of the way up, still grinning. “There’s more. I can sense the cave, and nodes way up by the Fish Mountains. From here. It’s as if I can feel everything on this part of the web, all the way back to Artistos. I can feel it now, while I’m talking to you. I can hold the threads.” His words tumbled out one on the other, loud in the quiet night.

I put a hand over his mouth, shushing him gently. “Tom will be able to tell this is fixed as soon as he turns on his data reader. Artistos will see the new data. Do we want that?”

“Isn’t that what we came here for?”

“But so fast? I want time for you to learn to use the headband, for the rest of us to try the projector, maybe time to spend with Jenna.” I looked out over the clearing, watching the moonlight touch the grass tips and the streams. “I’m not ready to go back yet.”

His eyes looked dreamy even in the wan moonlight, as if he were half in conversation with me while the rest of him rode the winds of data. His energy felt light and confident. “I…no, it’s okay. They can know these are fixed. We still have the physical work to do. That will take a few days. Then I want to go find Liam.”

“Is that in Tom’s plans? I thought we were just going to fix the lake nodes and maybe a few more.”

“We’ll make up a reason.” He stood, bouncing up and down on his feet, holding a hand out to me. He radiated confidence, and more. The boy from before the earthquake was back, clothed in an extra coat of success. I took his hand, letting him pull me up, his ebullient energy infecting me even through the soft haze of my exhaustion.

“So, this is really easier now than before?”

“It’s like jumping in the sea for the first time, when all you’ve ever known are streams.”

I followed him to the hebra string, where he woke Legs from a drowsy sleep with a gentle slap on his neck. Legs snorted and turned a scathing look on Joseph, and I thought if the hebra could speak he would say,
Why are you waking me, why now? Go to sleep, silly human. It’s just past the middle of the night.

Joseph laughed and patted Legs, stroking his neck and the long nearly healed scar on his haunch. Legs whickered contentedly.

“Is it because of the headband? Is that why you can see our data, the Artistos data, so clearly again?”

He slipped it off and handed it to me. It felt warm from his head, and the fine metal strands woven through the pattern were smooth and slick. I tied it around my own head. Wearing something my father had worn seemed to weave a connection to him through the years, a physical link I could no longer remember directly.