Spinning Starlight (7 page)

I tap the icon for Yes and stare at the otherwise blank screen.

“Very well. One new message has just come in that doesn’t fit the ‘ usual.’ Would you like to hear that one?”

Yes again. Why not?

“Liddi, it’s Garrin. I’m not buying Blake’s story about you taking some ‘ quiet time.’ Something’s wrong. Holding back the truth about your
brothers’ disappearance is the wrong move—we need all the eyes possible looking for them. Get back to me. I can help.”

A nice sentiment, but I can’t record a message back to him, and I can’t get into the city to see him without Minali knowing it. I can’t just sit and do nothing either, though,
so I don’t. Unfortunately, doing anything using just the iconographic interface takes
forever
. All the computer networks have been voice-activated for ages now, with the touchscreens
mostly for quick jumping between subroutines. Good thing Dom is such a smart system. He makes up a few new icons and tells me what they mean, hoping to help me get where I’m going. When
that’s too much, I draw pictures for him to decipher, and he uses the in-house cams to watch my gestures.

“Your refusal to speak does make things inefficient,” he says after the fourth wrong try in a row. “And my flexibility regarding icons is limited. But I suspect the information
you seek isn’t relevant to the databases I have access to.”

Relevant databases. There’s something Marek told me. Something he joked about.
“Those archivists on Tarix are so afraid of losing everything obscure, they don’t realize
they lost their minds centuries ago.”

Archivists and historians and philosophers. “Useless thinkers,” Minali called them. Useless to her, maybe. But they have the collected history and knowledge of the Seven Points,
including everything ever dreamed up by the technologists on Sampati. If someone ever knew more about the portals and we forgot, the information would still be there somewhere. Maybe I could find
the connection my gut tells me I’m missing between the old portals and the way the conduits work. And even if the people on Tarix don’t have my brothers’ monitoring codes, they
might have details on the implants themselves. That would be a starting point.

If I can figure out a way to communicate and access their systems…but maybe they’ll have something for that, too.

Even then, what makes me think I can figure it out? Checked genes, the only non-smart Jantzen in history. A waste of all the energy put into building me up. Hopeless and pointless…

I shake off the creeping doubts. It doesn’t matter. Trying is what matters, because my brothers have always expected my best effort. It’s
all
they’ve ever asked of me.
Besides, if my parents set control of the company to pass to Tarix if something happened to me, they must have trusted some people there. If I can find those people, if I can make them understand,
I’ll get the help I need.

But there’s no way I can go to a conduit terminal and ask them to send me to Tarix. Even if I could talk, Minali will have all the terminals monitored by more attendants than usual.

If you found a portal high, if you found a portal low…

So I guess I’ll have to find one.

I pull up the blank screen to draw on and sketch out the icon of the Seven Points. Seven interlocking circles in a partial ring, lines joining their centers, with a web in the middle and flames
through the gap at the top.

“The Seven Points,” Dom says.

I nod and lock the drawing, then point to the web in the middle.

“The hyperdimensional conduits interconnecting the worlds of the Seven Points, used for near-instantaneous travel between—”

I shake my head. After a moment of thought, I delete pieces of the lines forming the web and lower their contrast, making them faded and broken.

It takes Dom a full five seconds to make a guess. “The ancient portals originally serving the purpose now fulfilled by the conduits.” When I nod, he continues. “Would you like
the complete compilation of data or a summary?”

Two fingers up—our signal for the second option.

He talks, and I listen.

The summary isn’t good enough, so I have Dom dig into the full compilation. That takes time, especially since I can’t do much to help him filter it down to what I
need. The records are sketchy and vague, and most of the best information comes from my family. Pieces creep together, so slowly, and I’m not sure whether it’s the lack of material or
my checked brain that’s at fault.

Dom interrupts himself on our second day of digging. “Liddi, there’s a news-vid you may want to see.”

I nod. The break couldn’t hurt. I just hope it’s not about the laserball tournament standings.

A picture flashes onto the wallscreen. Police outside a residential building in the city.

“This is the home of Garrin Walker, who was formerly the assistant of Nevi Jantzen and has worked for Jantzen’s sons in an advisory capacity in recent years. Police found
Walker’s body inside a few hours ago, an apparent suicide.”

My stomach clenches and the tightness in my throat triples. I hit the No icon, which Dom correctly interprets, stopping the vid. But it means more than that to me.

No.

Impossible.

Garrin can’t be dead.

The man who let me build block-towers by his desk, who helped my father every day, who got me away from the vid-cams and the mob when I ran to the city…he can’t be gone, too. My hand
shakes over the touchscreen but the icons have blurred. I can’t see. I can’t breathe. He sent me a message yesterday, wanting to help.

No one offers help one day and commits suicide the next, do they?

Not someone who suspects Minali is up to something and still has a voice. She hasn’t killed my brothers yet, but if she’s killed Garrin just for nosing in, getting in her way…She
says she can’t afford to kill
me
, but she can do worse. Saving the conduits is important, but she’s obsessed. And I know from a lifetime in vids that obsessed people are the
scariest kind.

Walker-Man.
I remember. I didn’t call Garrin that just because of his last name. It was because of something he often said to my father that made little-kid me think he was really
interested in walking.

“Always take the next step before anyone catches the one before.”

I get it now. I can’t waste more time looking for information that probably doesn’t exist. I have to make the next move before Minali realizes the path I’m on. The bits I have
will have to be enough to get me to Tarix. I’ll figure out the rest as I go. Hopefully.

She’s watching the house—I’m sure of it. From the media-casts, I know people are getting more and more desperate to catch a glimpse of me. Dom knows better than to mention
interview requests and event invitations at this point, but I’m sure they’re clogging up my message queue. The new security measures are holding, but if any media-grubs break through,
it’ll be reason enough for Minali to bring me back into the city. Especially if Garrin’s concern already has her worried about people going public or trying to help me, she’ll
want to keep a closer watch.

Can’t have that—I need the woods. Fabin’s research said portals were more prevalent in natural areas, and when all I have to go on is “look really hard,” I need the
best odds I can get.

Evening walks have been part of the routine since I was silenced. Even before that, it was common enough. Cams still don’t work on the grounds—I checked—so if Minali is
watching, it’s with satellite imaging, and that doesn’t provide much detail.

If she’s watching, she won’t notice I’m carrying a small pack with some clothes, food and water, and a com-tablet.

When I walk out the back door, the fragrance of the night phlox is almost too much, reminding me of the night of the attack. My first instinct is to hold my breath, but instead I inhale deeply,
letting other memories flood and flow. Playing tag or stickball, Vic lifting me so I could climb trees whose lowest limbs were still too high, Durant nagging him about using two hands, making
doubly sure I wouldn’t fall.

I’ll get them out. I will. Somehow.

Luna Major is already well above the horizon, so visibility isn’t an issue. My only plan is to wander until I find a portal. It’s not much of a plan, especially given the vastness of
the property, but it’s the best I’ve got.

Just as I’m wondering whether I should try up- or downriver, movement flashes in the corner of my eye. My first instinct is to duck and hide, but then I see what it was.

Fabin.

Every night I’ve walked the grounds, hoping to see one of them. Now, the night I need them most, here he is! Still faint and ghostly, but I don’t just see him. I hear him.

“Liddi, come on! This way.”

His voice is strange, weak and muffled like there’s a wall between us. But it’s my brother’s voice, and I’ve never heard anything so beautiful. I run toward him. He runs
as well, making me follow.

He’s in such a hurry. A pulse of panic surges through me, alongside my adrenaline. I missed a piece. There can’t be vid-cams on the grounds, but there could be people. More
mercenaries. More guns.

I run faster.

We head upriver to the old footbridge, but I lose Fabin in a tangle of trees on the other side. The panic hasn’t left me, but before I can pick a random direction to keep running, I spot
Ciro ahead, beckoning to me.

Two of my brothers in short order. It can’t be a coincidence. They know something. I don’t know how, but they know.

This is going to work.

I follow Ciro, and he leads me along an unfamiliar path for several minutes before I lose him. The pattern continues as each of my brothers finds me and leads me in turn.

Durant is the last, but when I lose him, I don’t have to wonder where to go. A light filters through the trees ahead that definitely doesn’t come from either of the moons. It
crackles, like light making sound. I come to the edge of a large meadow—larger than any clearing I’ve found in the woods—and see the source.

It’s an enormous knot of white-blue energy hovering in the middle of the meadow, twisting and snapping at itself. But it’s more than that. As I walk closer, I feel it. Not like the
hair-raising tingle of an electric field. I felt that plenty of times in the workshop as my brothers fiddled with electricity. This is so much more, so much “other.” It’s like
walking on a laser beam, like if this massive spark weren’t twisted so tight, holding itself together, it’d tear the entire world apart. More than the world. Tear space and time and
thought and everything until there was nothing left whole.

My cells writhe in its presence.

I don’t understand how there haven’t been reports of anybody seeing one more recently, or why the old reports were so sketchy and vague. There’s nothing vague about something
this terrifying. Every detail sears itself in my memory, whispering promises to haunt my nightmares forever.

The very real possibility of turning around and walking home presents itself. The part of me that doesn’t want to stand here looking at this vortex of destruction, contemplating stepping
into
it willingly, seriously considers that possibility. It’s not like it’s going to take long for Minali to notice I left. It might take some time to figure out I went to
Tarix, but there are only so many Points, and they know my face on all of them. So not
that
long. More than likely, not long enough for me to accomplish anything useful. I could go home
and forget it. Play along.

Pretend I didn’t even hear about Garrin’s death.

No, I can’t.

Every one of my brothers’ innovations started out as a long shot they took a chance on, then worked at until they succeeded. It’s my turn to take a chance. But at the same time, the
portal evokes a bone-deep desire to run.

I drag my eyes away from the snapping, convulsing energy and see something else. My brothers are here. All of them, spaced along the edge of the clearing. I wish they’d come closer so I
could hear their faint voices, so they could tell me what to do. But they don’t. If they won’t come to me, I’ll go to them.

One step toward Emil stops that idea. Even from a distance, I see how they all tense. Shake their heads. Then I notice something else. They’re not just standing on the perimeter;
they’re moving along it. Not by walking. More like gliding, adding to the ghostlike effect of their appearance.

I turn back to the portal. Beneath the complex lashes of energy, the whole thing revolves slowly, in time with my brothers. They’re bound to it, under its control.

Or they’re controlling it, holding it in place long enough for me to use it. If that’s even possible. But something about the idea feels right.

If that’s what they’re doing, it can’t be easy. It could be why only one at a time could guide me, and only for a little while, until he had to get back to wrangling his
“corner” of the vortex. And even all eight can’t do it forever.

I tighten the straps of my pack, fix my thoughts on Tarix, and run right at the whirling mass of energy.

The reports said travel by portal was uncomfortable.

The reports lied.