Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) (17 page)

Maybe like Jenna would look if she were whole.

To a one, they looked like Town Council in a formal meeting. Severe, watching us closely, particularly focusing on Jenna. The shortest female, a blonde, brought a hand to her mouth, pity flashing in her eyes. I disliked her instantly; Jenna didn’t need her pity, or anyone else’s.

As we neared them, the tallest one, a red-haired man with white streaks running through his hair near each temple, put up a hand to signal us to stop. “Jenna King?” he questioned, his voice unsure.

I’d never thought of Jenna with two names. She laughed, an undercurrent of nerves in her voice. “Yes. Returned from the planet Fremont with three members of our group left stranded.” She gestured at Bryan and Alicia. “Bryan Armstrong and Alicia Gupta.”

After a moment of silence, she gestured at me. “And Pilot Joseph Lee.” I nodded as she said my name, following her lead and keeping my face neutral.

He looked me up and down, as if stripping my captain’s coat from my body. His icy gaze made me want to squirm away, but I planted my feet and met his eyes until he broke contact and nodded at us. “Lukas Poul, Port Authority.” He inclined his head. “It appears Fremont did not treat you well, Jenna.” There was a slight emphasis on her name, and I wished I could see her face. “There is much the Port Authority wishes to talk to you about.”

Jenna’s voice was cool and controlled. “It’s good to be home. We will be happy to follow you.” She looked at me and fingered the necklace. The ramp behind us rose. She shifted her gaze to Lukas. “We will, of course, allow the Authority to board after our cargo manifests have been reviewed, and I have been able to explain what we carry.” She gestured at Bryan’s cast. “There are other priorities. We need to get Bryan medical care soon.”

Lukas glared at her. He didn’t introduce the other three, but said, “Follow me.” As he turned and we started after him, they followed us in a loose semicircle. Lukas Poul walked fast. I struggled to keep up, not wanting to find out what our three herders might do if I lagged.

It was hard not to stop and gawk at the gleaming ships we passed.

Lukas led us and our herders to a tall building near the center of the spaceport. We followed him into an elevator which went up to the fifty-sixth floor. He didn’t seem to give the elevator any specific commands, but it obeyed his will. But then, Jenna hadn’t done anything obvious to close the ship’s door, either.

Lukas led us from the elevator to a large room with views of the bright ships and flower-lined paths spread below, so high we looked down on the smaller ships, including
New Making
. I squinted until I found it, standing still and silent and closed just like she had been on Fremont. People moved about below, so tiny they might have been children’s toys.

The room’s layout echoed
New Making
’s Command Room, with walls for vid and for writing on, and a large silvery table. Except this room would barely fit inside the ship. Lukas stood at the head of the shiny table and gestured for us all to sit. He sat after we did, and the other man remained standing by the door. The dark-haired woman stood behind Lukas, hands clasped behind her back, pretending not to watch us. The blonde leaned casually against a wall, making no pretense.

Jenna sat at Lukas’s right hand, and I sat next to her. Alicia and Bryan sat opposite us, far away across the big table.

Jenna kept her eye on Lukas, so I did the same. He watched us both, his bright blue eyes neutral. His red hair looked even more striking in the artificial lighting, a flame where it touched the white shoulders of his shirt. His features were set neatly in the angular lines of his face, his skin perfect, his fingernails neatly trimmed. He appeared used to control. In contrast, Jenna’s bright outfit, which had appeared so full of authority and power on the ship, now looked too soft and highlighted her ravaged face. But her eye looked like it did when she hunted.

Did Lukas even see her cool assessment of him?

He broke the tense silence. “Jenna. If you would like to talk alone, there is a private room next door.”

She leaned forward. “Anything the Authority has to say to me can be heard by any members of my affinity group.”

Impatience sharpened the lines of his face, as it had when she closed the ship’s door behind us. But he plowed on. Perhaps with no
choice? What power did Jenna have? “How did you come into possession of the
New Making
?” he asked.

Jenna answered him calmly. “
New Making
is the property of the Family of Exploration; I am a senior board member. Our other ship, the
Journey
, should have returned already.”

Lukas nodded. “
Journey
no longer belongs to the Family of Exploration.” He swallowed, hesitating for a fraction of a second. “And neither does
New Making
.”

Alicia gasped, but Jenna held up her hand, her voice a notch lower than it had been. “Why?”

As he leaned toward Jenna, the woman behind him stepped closer to his back. His voice sounded full in the big room. “Your group chose to forfeit her for debts incurred.”

Jenna spoke quickly. “I need verification.”

A stream of data floated in front of us all, numbers and words I couldn’t read. I didn’t dare reach for it; I didn’t want to pass out on the table. Jenna stared at the glowing figures for a long time, finally nodding. “Not forfeit; but held as collateral. Very well. We claim her contents, a combination of goods we brought with us to Fremont and did not use and scientific data from the planet.”

I bit the inside of my mouth to keep myself from speaking. We
needed
the ship to get back to Fremont and get Chelo and Kayleen and Liam.
New Making
was my ship. I’d flown her here. If I hadn’t been able to do that, she wouldn’t belong to anybody; she’d be sitting silent and lonely on the Grass Plains of Fremont.

Lukas looked sour. His jaw moved: a conversation with someone else not nearby. So he wasn’t a Wind Reader. After he finished, he cleared his throat and stood, some of the formality falling from him, but his voice, if anything, colder as he said, “I have been a lousy host. Would you like something to drink?”

Jenna glanced at us, then sat back in her chair. “We are already troubling you too much. Bryan needs care. I have been away from home a long time, and would like to see my family. I will return soon to begin unloading the ship.”

Lukas smiled, a fake smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “I will trade you the ship and its contents for the right to bond your pilot to us for five years.”

I stiffened, my hands turning to fists. Alicia shot out of her chair, leaning over the table toward Jenna. “No!”

Jenna’s gaze flicked to Alicia just long enough to gesture at her to sit down, then returned to Lukas. “The contents are not yours to trade.” Her voice stayed even, almost imperious.

“You will consider my offer?”

All thoughts of being tired fled. I was not trade goods! I forced a deep belly breath, made my hands relax the fists his words had encouraged. Wiggled my fingers. Jenna wouldn’t trade me. Not for anything. She hadn’t protected us on Fremont to lose us now.

Jenna shook her head. “I need to discuss this with the Family of Exploration. Surely you cannot expect me to make such a decision now?”

Lukas inclined his head slightly.

Jenna nodded back. “I’ll return as soon as I have enough information. I expect it will not be more than a few days.”

Bless her. But she hadn’t exactly told him no. I did my best to glare at him; she’d given me no commands not to glare, just not to speak. Besides, she was looking at him and she couldn’t see my expression. Alicia looked like she was about to explode in nervous giggles and even Bryan raised an eyebrow at me.

Lukas noticed. He laughed, his laughter puncturing my anger. “Jenna, your pilot has much to learn about our world.”

She cast a disapproving look at me. “I intend to teach him.” She stood. “And now, we should go.”

Lukas nodded coldly. “Ming will lead you out.”

I stood, keeping my gaze straight in front of me, as cool as possible. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades and ran slowly down my back.

Ming, the dark-haired herder, turned and led us out. She didn’t speak until we were outside of the building. Then she spoke to me, her voice quiet and a touch amazed. “Pilot Joseph, you are lucky he is allowing you to leave. Thank Marcus.”

Why would she say such a thing? What influence did the mysterious Marcus have on these people? Was she implying Marcus was on our side, or even that she was? I nodded at her. “I’ll thank him if I ever see him.”

A silver skimmer waited near the edge of the spaceport, sleeker
than the
Burning Void
, almost as long, but lower to the ground. “I called you some transport,” Ming said, smiling sweetly and unconvincingly “I added the bill to the total debt of your group.” She glanced at Jenna. “Let me show you how to fly it.”

Jenna nodded, silent, listening as Ming explained the skimmer’s interfaces. Unlike the one I’d flown at home, it had hand controls and a clear display that showed the long flat stretch of hard surface in front of it. Ming glanced at Jenna’s missing arm, pursing her lips. “Can you fly it?”

Jenna snorted. “Of course.”

There were four seats under a bubble of something clear that looked like glass but felt softer as I touched it. Jenna opened the bubble and climbed into the pilot’s seat, gesturing to me to take the other front seat. Alicia helped Bryan ease into the wide backseat behind me and sat next to him. Ming stood silently, watching, a tiny smile brushing the edges of her lips.

The bubble top closed over us, shutting out the sounds and smells of the spaceport. Jenna followed Ming’s instructions, pushing buttons and pulling a lever. The skimmer jerked twice, getting about two meters away from Ming, then stopping. Jenna cursed and touched her necklace. The skimmer started slowly down the hard path, gathering speed, and then rose smoothly. “Why didn’t the Authority witch tell me I didn’t need the hand controls?” Jenna said to no one in particular.

What did it mean for us that even Jenna was having trouble navigating here?

I
stared through the bubble as we rose above Li Spaceport and turned toward the glittering city. The sun rode lower in the sky, almost directly behind us, its light bouncing from bright smooth surfaces.

Alicia spoke from behind me. “Jenna—why can you fly this? You couldn’t fly the other skimmer at home.”

“Very few of our own data nets ever came up on Fremont—just simple nodes to communicate with the ship from our bases, and a strong local set in the caves. That made us dependent on Wind Readers, but it couldn’t be helped. Here, the ship has a support net. I just give it directions.” She touched her blue necklace. “And we all have plenty of interfaces.” She glanced at me briefly before turning her attention back to the stunning view. “If we’d gotten a really good set of our own nets up, we would have won the war. But the Artistos data net kept our data out of Artistos, for the most part.”

“So what do you need Wind Readers for here?” Bryan asked.

She laughed. “All the hard stuff. We have smart communication and smart nets and smart machines, but we limit the ability of machine intelligence to create.”

I watched the city grow in the window, bright and light and airy. It seemed to me that a machine could do more than I could. “Why?”

“On worlds where machines were encouraged to create, only the machines lived.”

That brought silence to all of us for a few moments. “So how do you stop the machines?” I asked. “Don’t you have AIs here on the planet?”

Jenna didn’t answer at once. “It’s never built into them to create.
Just to obey, and sometimes to be creative about the right answer to a difficult problem. But the machines here have no desire to create art or life.”

Alicia changed the subject. “You won’t trade Joseph will you? What did you think of the Port Authority? How come they were so mean?”

Jenna grunted. “Of course I won’t trade Joseph. The meeting? We don’t seem to be in as much trouble as I expected.”

“Ming suggested Marcus had something to do with it,” I said.

“Maybe.” She glanced over at me. “I’d like to know why.”

So would I.

“Who’s Marcus?” Alicia asked. “Are we going to see him? Why does he want to meet Joseph?”

Jenna didn’t answer. She banked the small skimmer left in a big lazy circle. A river snaked below us, its banks lined with tall buildings and its surface full of movement and color. Artistos had a few small fishing boats, only good when the river ran slow. Below me, boats of every imaginable shape and hue danced on the water like insects. There were so many they should have hit each other, but they didn’t. Jenna finally answered. “Marcus is a lone creator; he belongs to no visible affinity group. Or at least, he didn’t.” She touched the blue necklace, probably giving some silent command. “He was not so powerful when we left.” She shook her head. “I can’t say I know who or what Marcus has become. We should look him up, but not now. We’re meeting my sister.”

Surely with the power I’d sensed on board the
New Making
, he could find us if he wanted to. I shivered. He had been so
strong
.

Jenna pointed at the river. “That’s new. There used to be hundreds of lakes, and now it looks like a river surrounds the whole city.”

“Did they
make
the river?” Bryan asked.

Jenna swept her arm in front of her. “That’s what drives the economy here. Change. Parts of the city change daily in some ways; the cumulative effect is a lot of change.”

Alicia leaned forward, one hand on my shoulder. “Are we taking Bryan to a hospital? How will you find your sister?”

Jenna laughed. “Yes, we’ll get Bryan some better care. All of us. But first, we’ll see Tiala. I know where she lives—she hasn’t moved and I doubt she’s changed much at all. Tiala is—not a risk-taker. She is a researcher
for the University of Creation, and has been since she was twenty.”