Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) (27 page)

I kept looking around for my father, even though I knew Jenna would hear from him before we saw him. Would I recognize him? What would he think of me? Did he ever think of me at all?

Jenna stopped in front of a tall statue of a woman with wings. “Lesson time. This is a tribute to Kuli Nam, who made the first viable flyers. Creating flyers boosted our reputation as the best human genetic engineers in the five worlds.”

I remembered Marcus’s admonition about the wrongness of creating flyers. Yet the metal woman in front of us shone with mystery and magic. She stood at least ten meters tall, with long sweeping silvery wings that reached down to her calves. Her wide shoulders tapered to narrow hips and long slender legs. She seemed poised to run and jump into flight, one metal foot flat on the ground, one heel raised. Her carefully sculpted facial expression almost cried out “expectant joy,” and looking at her, the impending feeling of something magical seeped into me.

“Tell me about Lopali,” I asked. It was one of the five worlds, but I had been interrupted before I learned about it in the isolation room.

Jenna spoke briskly, without looking away from the statue. “Lopali has the smallest population of the five worlds. It’s essentially a terraformed moon, built as a place for humans to fly. The designers pictured assisted flight, but Kuli Nam saw the opportunity and produced true human flyers. They cannot breed true, and Lopali does not have the right to the designs nor sophisticated enough facilities to make them, so we produce new flyers for them, many from Lopali genetic seed stock.”

“So they can’t have children of their own?” I asked.

Jenna shook her head. “The flight genetics don’t breed true. They
can’t—there are a series of one-time sculpting nano runs that build the shoulders and shrink the other bones.”

Bryan’s brow furrowed. “So you make all the people for Lopali on Silver’s Home?”

Jenna laughed. “No. There are humans that breed true there. They fly with aids. We provide around ten percent of the population. Our flyers have great standing on Lopali, so we make their most powerful citizens.”

“I don’t suppose that has anything to do with the war Marcus mentioned?” Bryan asked.

Jenna hesitated. “Well, maybe. But that’s a different discussion. Lopali is on our side, so far. Islas is the problem.”

I had learned a little about Islas in the university threads. “Islas is a very controlled society.”

Jenna nodded. “So Marcus taught you some things. What else do you know?”

“I know Marcus is worried about them. I guess they don’t like how people live here.”

“They believe the only way to keep humanity from destroying itself is to control it closely.”

“Don’t the people hate that?” Alicia asked, her gaze still on the statue.

Jenna said, “No. I don’t think they do. Some. The ones who do usually go to the other four worlds, about half to us. Islas lets them. It means they don’t have to deal with as many problem elements in their society, and it lets them keep spies here.”

“Don’t we stop them?” Bryan asked.

Jenna shook her head. “All of the five worlds, including Islas, have an agreement allowing emigration. Besides, we don’t have much of a police force. The Port Authority is the strongest, since the laws governing import and export are universal. And to protect us. The rules governing behavior on-planet vary by affinity group, or by town, and both police their own. Current rules, and consequences, are always in the nets.”

Alicia walked around the statue, looking at it from all angles. “Tell me more about flyers.”

“Lopali’s ecosystem is the only one of the five worlds that isn’t easily
reproducible here. Flyers here congregate in controlled microclimates which closely mimic Lopali—like the domes we passed the first day on Li. There are only four on Silver’s Home. Lopali has a much denser atmosphere, and less gravity.”

“And that’s why people can fly there?” Alicia asked.

“That, and pretty severe changes in bone structure. Flyers are weak, here. We tried to make humans that can fly in our atmosphere. The cost to the body was too dear. It still gets tried—over and over—but nothing produced is actually human.” She looked up at the statue again, her eyes slightly narrowed as she squinted into the bright sunshine. “But when I was little, I often wished I’d been born a flyer.”

“So they’re born that way?” Alicia asked. “Someone decides for you before you’re born?”

Jenna nodded. “The mod is too extreme for most adult bodies to handle. It gets done, but it drives half the people who try it crazy, and plain kills others.”

There were a lot of ways to become crazy here.

Alicia’s brows were drawn together, as if the idea of manufactured fliers troubled her as much as me. “I’d like to fly.”

Jenna glanced at her, frowning. “It makes for a very limited life, at least here. And I wouldn’t live on Lopali—it’s a difficult world.” She turned and looked at Alicia. “And you
can fly
. There are wonderful mechanical wings and other solo flying devices. Perhaps I can take you sometime.”

Alicia looked pleased. “I’d like to try it.”

I leaned over near her, and whispered, “Your risk-taker is coming out. Fly in a ‘device,’ but don’t try to become a flier, okay?”

For answer, she stuck her tongue out at me and laughed. “Not today.”

“We have other priorities,” Jenna said, sounding slightly distracted.

We wandered on. Jenna kept us from actually running across anyone, turning us casually before we passed a crowd.

When would my father call? The more time passed, the more my nerves ran with fire and the harder it became to focus on anything, even Alicia.

The park was dedicated to the history of Silver’s Home, or more accurately, to the history of the planet’s creations. Every corner and
path and garden and exhibit held some strange thing. Here and there, sculptures of various sizes hung in trees or dangled from curved metal stakes, designed to capture the wind and sing songs of air and metal. Tiny flying machines smaller than my thumbnail swept silently through, picking up dead leaves and clipping grass, avoiding the paths entirely. I wondered idly if they swarmed the paths at night in order to keep them so neat. They’d have been handy to help keep up Commons Park in Artistos.

We stopped by a set of interlocking ring pools full of colorful fish. Jenna cupped her ear for a second, and then looked over at me. “He’s coming.”

M
y father was coming.

Jenna sat on a bench and gestured for us to take another nearby bench. I sat beside Alicia, where I’d have a good view of anyone coming. Bryan stood behind us, watchful and protective. The pools sang of running water. One of the little wind-sculptures sighed and tinkled in the light breeze that cooled my cheek. I held Alicia’s hand in mine and watched.

A young man walked toward us—too young to be my father—and blond. Except that people didn’t grow old here and everything could be changed. I stood up, hopeful, but the man kept going. A pair of women walked by, holding hands and chattering. He probably hadn’t changed
that
much.

I sat back down, my feet tapping on the hard-packed earth of the path. Alicia leaned in close to me and whispered, “Breathe.”

All right. I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering Marcus’s endless lessons in control.

One breath.

My heart still raced.

Two breaths.

Three breaths.

I looked at the blackness behind my eyes, focused in on the movement of my belly—in and out, in and out.

Four breaths.

Would he like me?

Five.

Alicia’s hand squeezed mine sharply. I opened my eyes. A hundred paces away, my father walked toward us. I shivered, touched at the hope, fear and anticipation licking my spine. He walked like I did, like Chelo, his strides even and smooth, his head up, his eyes on Jenna. His dark hair had been cropped short, and he wore a flight uniform—a blue and gold captain’s coat hanging unbuttoned over pants of the same blue and a simple off-white shirt.

He noticed that I watched him, in the way that all people seem to know when they are under scrutiny, looking at me briefly and narrowing his eyes before turning his gaze back to Jenna. He didn’t appear to recognize me. I stayed glued to the bench, unable to move, unable to say anything, reality-shocked at the moment.

He was close enough now for me to see his eyes, smoky-blue and pleased at the sight of this woman he knew, yet overlaid with puzzlement. “Jenna,” he said, “You look—fantastic.”

He glanced over at the three of us, as if trying to decide if we were safe to talk around, and then his gaze returned to Jenna. His demeanor looked slightly guarded—from us being nearby or from something else?

I remembered Tiala and Jenna racing toward each other, the raw emotion of their meeting. In contrast, Jenna and my father seemed more like two paw-cats happening on the same territory and sizing each other up. My father’s voice sounded slightly deeper than I had heard it on the data button that carried his journal. It still sat in my pocket like a talisman. “How did you get here?” he asked Jenna. “When?”

Jenna smiled. “Just a few months ago.” She looked closely at him, then glanced at me, a warning in her eyes. She looked torn between wanting to take him away and talk to him, and needing to introduce us.

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, my eyes glued on my father, taking in the details of how his hair was cut just above his ears, how he stood with both feet together, a little stiff, how the captain’s coat fit him perfectly, instead of hanging slightly off-shoulder like it did on me.

Alicia’s hand remained in mine, clutching me tightly. She knew what it meant to me to see him. Bryan knew also. He still stood behind us, one hand on the back of the bench, the other on my shoulder.

My father seemed excited and apprehensive as he gazed at Jenna. “I have good news for you.”

She cocked her head, waiting.

He glanced over at us. “Can we walk?” he asked. “Or are these people with you?”

“They’re from Fremont.”

His eyebrows drew together as he looked at us, the puzzled look spilling from his eyes and filling his whole face and a trace of something unsure flickering in his eyes. For a second, he looked afraid.

Jenna continued. “Remember the children? Three of them came back with me.”

His eyes widened, and he seemed to actually focus on us for the first time. We sat, still as the statues in the park, watching him back. The moment froze, and I heard Jenna say, “Bryan is standing in the back, and that’s Alicia, and next to her is Joseph.”

Her voice saying my name broke my tongue free. “Father.”

For a long moment he looked at me, and I watched the hope in his face turn first to disbelief and then to amazement. “Joseph?” He knelt then, not yet touching me, but something mysterious passed between us in that moment, a spark of deep knowing.

And then I stood and he stood and we embraced, and I felt the arms of my father holding me tightly, his chest heaving, and his cheek against mine. He drew in a deep sobbing breath. “You’re alive. You’re truly alive.” His face was wet, and mine, our tears mingling. The park, the people around us, the very air disappeared for a long moment, and I felt only him, only the joy of being held by my father. He smelled of space ship: clean oils and remanufactured air, the soft captain’s coat. “I thought … I knew … I knew you were dead.”

The birds and the wind-sculpture and the sound of running water returned to my consciousness, and he stepped back, looking at me. “You have your mother’s smile,” he said, his voice choked and small, full of loss.

I knew by the way he said it that she was dead. I swallowed, touched by his feeling, loss and a need to know about her filling me. “What happened to her?”

Pain flashed across his eyes, momentarily destroying the wonder
and joy of a moment before. “She died in the last battle.” He glanced at Jenna. “You couldn’t have known.”

The mother of the tender drawings. But I would not dwell on it yet—not in this moment when my father stood before me in the flesh.

He turned back to me, his voice choked. “I thought you died, too. They killed children. Or at least, our children.” He gazed at some point on the horizon past me, his face rigid. “We were sure they killed you. The last thing we heard before we left was Chiaro telling us you were captured.” Hope filled his eyes. “Chiaro? Is she alive?”

“She died that day. Chelo remembers.”

He turned to look at us, as if counting us again to make sure he hadn’t missed the other three. “Chelo?” he asked, his voice insistent. “Where’s Chelo?”

“She’s still on Fremont,” I said. “She’s doing all right, or she was when I last saw her. She and Kayleen and Liam.”

He closed his eyes and breathed out, slowly, as if absorbing this new information. I expected him to be happy. Instead, it seemed like hearing Chelo lived delivered a physical shock.

But he hadn’t, truly, known we were dead. Had that been easier for him—to be sure even when he couldn’t really know? Did that explain why he never came back for us?

I stepped closer to him, wanting to ease his pain. I didn’t care about the past, not now; I cared about this moment. “Father. It’s okay and Steven who took me and. Did you know Therese and Steven? They took me and Chelo in. They took care of us.”

His eyes widened and he turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me, or Jenna.

When he turned back around, the first thing he said was, “I’m sorry.” His face crumpled in for a moment and he looked away, visibly drawing control back over his features. “I would never have left if I thought there was a chance you were alive.” He squinted at me. “How did you get back?”

“We brought the
New Making
back.” He must know I had his skills. “Dad, I’m a Wind Reader. I flew us back.”

He blinked, then looked at Jenna, as if this was something he couldn’t believe without verification. She nodded and he looked back
at me. “You flew her back by yourself? With no training, no certification?”