Spinning Starlight (30 page)

There has to be something we can do. I still don’t know how to undo the conduit interference, what to do about Minali. But Ferinne is the one Point the conduits
aren’t
connected to. Only the Khua are. If the Khua are loosened here, maybe that’ll relieve some of the tension temporarily. And keep eight planets from getting torn apart.

“So the Khua need to be untied from the anchors, at least until I can get things worked out back home.”

Quain stares at me, or at least his helmet stays pointed directly at me, like that’s not unnerving. So is the way he’s been standing perfectly still through this whole conversation.
Not fidgeting, not shifting his weight, nothing.

“The Khua chose to bind themselves to the anchors, to make this the one home they always return to,” he finally says. “But they cannot unbind themselves as freely.”

That’s a lie. I use my un-goopified hand to hold up Tiav’s disk with Spin-Still nice and cozy inside.

“Yes, the sempu disks of the Aelo could be used. However, you have only the one, we do not know how to fabricate them, and I do not think the Aelo will share that information with either
of us.”

Her confidence is nice, but I can’t help wondering if it’s misplaced. The Khua and their anchors are still so new and foreign to me. And Ferinne isn’t as friendly a planet as
it used to be.

“You need to tell the council what’s going on, what we need to do. If they catch me—”

“I am sorry, but I cannot do that.”

“What? Why not?”

“The council is very slow to make decisions, particularly when there is arguing, as there would most certainly be in this case. According to our energy readings, which we can now interpret
better with your information, the Khua do not have that much time. If I speak to the council, it will only warn them of your intentions, making your task that much more difficult.”

Quain is starting to seem severely useless, and a particular word he used sparks my anger.

“My task? You’re not going to help?”

“I will do what I can from here, but I cannot help on the surface, no.”

“Why not?”

“It is difficult enough being in proximity to the Khua you carry. I could not be even this close to one still tied to a planetary core.”

He’s telling a truth that still hides something, and I don’t like it.
“Why? If you want me and Yilt to do this alone against a whole planet, no help from anyone, tell me
why.”

Quain hesitates. His posture slumps and his head dips forward like he’s fallen asleep standing up. I wonder if it’s another alien gesture. Maybe their version of crossing their arms
and looking defiant.

Something rises from the back of his neck, through the suit. Floating. If a Khua is a tiny knot of whirling energy, a star in miniature, this is a single point of light, like a star light-years
away.

This is what Quain really is.

The tools were heavy and unwieldy in Liddi’s little hands, but she didn’t care. She was going to make something like her brothers. Something to make their father
proud. Something better than what the triplets were working on. Liddi was pretty sure they were just rigging ways to destroy each other’s projects. Their mother said being eight years old
made you want to destroy everything because that was the quickest way to see how it worked.

“Marek, Ciro, Emil,” Mr. Jantzen said from behind them, making them jump. “Those signal converters aren’t cheap. Try using them for something a little less
destructive. Liddi, dearest, what’s that you’re working on?”

“I don’t know.”

He came around to her end of the workbench and put a hand on her shoulder. Big and strong. “Sometimes we don’t know what it is until it puts itself together, so keep at it.
You’ll need to set up pathways to and from the power source, though. The energy needs to know where to go.”

“That’s stupid,” Liddi said.

“Why’s that?”

“Because the energy should know what I need it to do and just do it.”

Her father laughed and gave his youngest a squeeze. “If only technology were so cooperative rather than making us fight it every step. We could just ask it to kindly do its job and be
on our way.”

Liddi wasn’t sure why that was so funny, but she liked making him laugh…even if it meant her machine wouldn’t work.

THE SUIT ISN’T A SUIT AT ALL.
It’s a robot controlled by the energy being that’s actually Quain. Between this and the Khua,
everything I thought I knew about defining life is moot. Good thing I don’t have to use my voice, because I don’t think it would work in the face of this revelation.

“Does everyone know you Izim are like this and just forgot to tell me?”

He rejoins with his mechanical body to answer. “The Crimna know. The others do not. We found it easier to interact with species like yours in this form. When we saw how the Agnac elevated
their respect of the Khua to the point of religion, we chose not to discuss our true nature.”

They didn’t want the attention that comes with being worshiped. I can’t argue with that.

“What does this have to do with why you can’t get close to the Khua? Aren’t you the same?”

“We were once, long ago. Our originators were Khua who left the core worlds—what you call the Eight Points—to explore others. While the Khua’s energies bind with the
biological, ours adapted and changed, more in tune with the technological. That is the best I can explain using your words. After these ages, our energies became too different. We cannot
communicate with the Khua, but they came before us. They are ancient and have power we do not, so we honor them.”

They don’t worship the Khua—they honor their ancestors. Different energies, so being near them probably causes interference, especially with the robo-suit. Interference…something
about that tickles my brain, and I stow it away for later. The bottom line is Quain can’t help. Not in person, at least.

“You said you don’t think there’s much time. How long, do you think?”

“I cannot be precise, but in the Ferinnes’ measure, no more than one moon-cycle. And I suspect the conflicting energies will significantly damage the Khua before that, if they have
not already begun to do so.”

I run the numbers quickly, accounting for Ferinne’s and Sampati’s slightly different day lengths. A moon-cycle from now lines up closely with the Tech Reveal. If something bad is
coming before that, Minali may be entering another stage of her process. If the Khua are running out of time, so are my brothers.

Quain can’t help, and just about everyone else is against me, but Spin-Still is right. I’m the one who knows what’s happening. It’s up to me, and a fugitive Haleian and
rogue Khua will have to be enough help to get it done.

My brothers told me to stay out of it, to stay safe and leave it to them. Whatever plan Spin-Still and I can come up with, it’s not likely to be safe at all.

I’ve spent a lot of years doing what my brothers told me. I think now is a good time to stop.

It might also be a good time to get back to Ferinne’s surface. A
really
good time. A time so good, I’m pretty sure it’s Spin-Still’s idea talking to me, and she
doesn’t want to wait for me to say good-bye to Quain.

The metaphorical slingshot pulls back and releases, catapulting me through everything and nothing until I crash-land on the ground.

Ground, not floor. Grass. Stars above me.

Not the safe-house.

Even better, a thin layer of the neurolinguistic goop still covers my hand. All I can do is wipe it off on the grass and hope it isn’t toxic.

“Liddi!”

I sit up to find the source of the voice, because I recognize it. Fabin, standing between me and a Khua-and-anchor combination just a few feet away. Still ghostly and only half-here, but
he’s also exhausted and terrified. It seems ages since I’ve seen any of the boys, and more than ever I wish I could hug him.

“Where were you?” he demands. “Are you all right? We felt it—that you were gone.”

I point straight up. That’s the best I can do to explain I was on an orbiting spaceship, and he can see from looking at me that I’m in one piece.

“Okay, never mind. I don’t know how long I can hold myself here, but I have to tell you, I have to explain. Liddi, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault, all of it.”

The anguish in his voice chills me. I reach for his hands, even though I can barely feel them.

“I didn’t mean to,” he continues. “We were all working on the conduits, and I was studying energy signatures. I thought I saw something, so I kept looking, and it seemed
like there was a gap, something keeping the signature from being complete. The missing piece reminded me of a biological energy signature, but a little more complex. So I mentioned that to Minali.
It was just an observation, I never imagined she’d use people, or any living thing. Not like this. It’s madness. She’s so convinced it’s the solution, locking us in here.
And the portals, the conduits are hurting them, and we’re stuck partly in the conduits, partly in between the two. We thought maybe we could force a bigger separation, keeping them
apart—we’ve tried, but we can’t. We can’t. There’s nothing we can do to stop it.”

Fabin is ranting, something I’ve never seen any of my brothers do. I can’t speak to calm him. I can’t put my arms around him. I look at the Khua hovering between its spires.
Then I look at Spin-Still in the sempu—the crystal disk.

Interference. If the disk can only hold one Khua, I wonder what would happen if I tried to put another in.

No time for research and bench tests. I’m going to have to jump straight to the full-scale experiment.

I hold up one finger to tell Fabin to wait. Then I take Spin-Still from around my neck and loop the cord on my hand several times so the disk rests against my palm. A few steps carry me to the
other Khua, and it’s only on my approach that I realize something’s different.

The Khua’s power, I still feel it, but it’s no longer a sleeping giant waiting to crush me on a whim. It’s a power bound, a being in trouble, crying for help. Like it’s
too large to help itself. With a silent hope that I’m small enough, I raise my hand to the mote of light.

It doesn’t join with the disk and form the energy field like I saw with Tiav, but the two do collide. The impact sends hundreds of tiny needles into my hand—at least, it feels like
it—and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out. I blink through tears and see the Khua pressed against the face of the disk.

Now that I have a physical connection, I need to break it free from the anchors. In theory.

All I can do is follow my instincts, pushing it away from myself. Or I try to. It’s like it weighs twice as much as Yilt. So I bring my other hand behind the first, using both arms to
push.

The needles burrow deeper. Every fraction of an inch takes all the strength I have. Half the exertion is from the effort not to scream. I couldn’t scream if I wanted to. I can’t
breathe.