The Harvest (21 page)

19 - REMY

Spring 92,
Sector Annum
106, 5h02

Gregorian Calendar:
June 19

It is almost first light when the door opens and Chan-Yu steps inside. Miah is upstairs with Moriana, Eli is passed out on the couch, and Soren, Osprey, Vale, and I have been dozing on and off, but right now we are bleary-eyed but awake. We welcome Chan-Yu like a long-lost friend, a prodigal son, or a savior. That's what we hope he'll be. The always cool, always collected Chan-Yu will surely know what we should do next. He'll help us interrogate Moriana—who was none too happy and not a bit cooperative when she finally woke up—and, working with the Director, Rhinehouse, and the rest of the leadership team he'll figure out what we can do to counter Corine's plan. And he'll know exactly what Meera meant by
follow the acorns to the tree
. None of us would ever admit it, but I know that's what we've all been thinking. That Chan-Yu will help us solve everything.

And then reality hits.

The first words out of his mouth are not answers to our questions, but questions he hopes we can answer for him.

First: “Any word on Kofir?” Then: “Are you certain Meera didn't have another message? Did you see any other trinket or marker on her?”

Kofir
? At first I don't even remember General Bunqu's given name, but Vale ushers Chan-Yu into the house and says, “Nothing on the general. All we've been able to find is that he was arrested the morning Meera died. Demeter's blind to anything going on in Assembly Hall and OAC headquarters, and I'm sure Aulion's taking no chances on a possible escape.”

“No doubt. But high-value prisoners have escaped before.” Chan-Yu nods ever so slightly to Soren and me and turns back to Vale.

“Yes,” Vale agrees. “But that was when the prisoners had friends inside willing to risk everything to save them.”

“Who says Kofir doesn't have the same?” Chan-Yu says this in such a calm manner that I almost miss the importance, and his deadly seriousness.

“You have people on the inside?” Eli sits up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

“What of Meera?” Chan-Yu asks, ignoring Eli's question. “There must have been more to the message. Something you saw, but perhaps didn't realize was important. Something small. It could have been anything.”

Vale shakes his head. “I'm sorry. The only thing I can think of is that the v-scroll was in her mouth. But otherwise, there was nothing.”

The grief is fleeting, but for a moment it reshapes his features. If I didn't know him, if I weren't comfortable with him now, I might not have recognized it for what it is. Then he's back to himself. “I must wash the road from my clothes. I have traveled far in a short time. Soon we will talk. I will tell you what I know and what I think I know, and, together, we will solve this riddle.”

And that's it for pleasantries. I lead him upstairs to a room at the opposite end of the hall. Heading back downstairs, my fingers trail along the wall and I think about my grandfather and all the people he entertained over the years. He'd designed this old house specifically so it could serve as a meeting place. With five bedrooms plus his own master suite, it was large enough to accommodate many guests for long stays. He would tell stories about how he'd hosted the brightest minds from within the Sector and welcomed travelers from without, wanderers who came from as far away as the oil swamps to the south and the hulking fire-bombed ruins of old Chicago. People who told of the rocky deserts of the Texas Federation and of civilizations built on top of mountains so tall their peaks hide in the clouds.

I pour myself a cup of rich black tea—Osprey found a ten-pound stash of something she calls
ooh-long
in an vacuum-sealed container yesterday—and relax into the couch in between Eli and Vale, who are both soundly asleep once again. Eli is snoring loudly, and Vale's head is jerking up every fifteen seconds as he nods off with his chin on his chest. I put a pillow behind his head and settle in against his side, stretching my legs out across Eli's semi-prone form. I sip my tea, wondering where in the world these leaves came from, and what stranger brought them to my grandfather so many years ago.

I jerk awake when I hear voices. The cup of tea is cold against my chest and a plush blanket has replaced Vale's shoulder as my pillow. I rub my eyes and wipe the drool from my chin, looking up to see Vale and Chan-Yu talking heatedly over the long table in the kitchen.

“No,” Chan-Yu is saying, “it had to be these. There's nothing else that makes sense.”

“But where do they lead? How do you follow it? There's no signal on the astrolabe that leads anywhere. There's no path we can follow.”

“There's a piece missing,” Chan-Yu says patiently, staring at something on the table. I add another splash to my cold tea to bring it up to lukewarm, and sit down across from him, next to Vale. The object of Chan-Yu's attention turns out to be a mess of various metal chains, black necklace clasps, and braided hemp fibers, each attached to a gold acorn similar to the one Vale has worn around his neck for the last six months. Some of the acorns are short and fat, others long and thin. Some of them are worn, the gold filigree rubbed off into a dim copper tone. Some are as brilliant and polished as I imagine they were the day they were made. I do a quick count—there are eleven in total.

“Where did you find all these?” I ask, staring at the pendants in awe.

“Many places,” Chan-Yu responds, as cryptically as ever. “Many people.”

“‘Follow the acorns to the tree,'” I say, repeating Meera's last words to us. “Where do they lead? And how are we supposed to ‘follow' them?”

“That's what we're trying to figure out,” Vale says, his head propped against his curled fist. He looks exhausted, but there's a relentlessness in his eyes that tells me he won't be getting sleep anytime soon.

Chan-Yu glances at me briefly before he starts thumbing through the gold pendants in front of him, lost in thought. Finally, he breaks the silence. “As you know, I gave Vale my pendant when I left the Sector with you and Soren last winter. I had no way to contact the Wayfarers still operating in the Wilds. When Osprey communicated Meera's last words to me, I sought out Chariya, the oldest living Wayfarer. You met her at the Outsiders' gathering, but she rarely stays in one place. With her astrolabe, we were able to locate all the pendants. I brought eleven of them here.” He looks at Vale. “With yours and Meera's, that makes thirteen.” He nods to Vale who slips the two pendants he's been wearing from around his neck and adds them to the pile. “As far as we know there were only thirteen astrolabes and thirteen pendants ever made. After I left Okaria, Meera was the only one in the capital with a pendant.”

“Why thirteen and who made them?”

“We don't know why thirteen and we don't know who made them.” He shakes his head and looks at me with a wry smile. “There are things I know and things I think I know.”

I glare at him. Chan-Yu loves to speak in riddles. I tend to wish he would get to the point.

I pick up one of the pendants, one with an elegant black silk necklace attached, and hold it in my palm. “It's heavy for something so small.”

“The gold is merely decorative,” Chan-Yu says. “Inside is a dense combination of biofibers and nanocircuitry containing a technology that no Outsider has been able to replicate.”

“What about someone in the Sector?” Vale asks.

“I do not believe that anyone in the Sector has knowledge of this kind of technology.”

“What kind of technology?” His voice is laced with impatience.

“I do not know.”

“What
do
you know, then?” Vale asks, now fully frustrated. Chan-Yu doesn't so much as raise an eyebrow.

“I know this: about a hundred years ago, a group of people gathered together and started calling themselves Outsiders. In the wake of the Religious Wars that decimated the world, there were many who were afraid of any form of authority, which they believed would naturally descend into corruption and authoritarianism. There was a word for this type of thought.”

“Anarchy,” Vale prompts.

“Yes,” Chan-Yu says, nodding. “As the new world was growing, recovering, this school of thought became more prevalent. At first it was born out of fear. Fear of governance, of corruption, of a code of laws that could be used in favor of the powerful and to oppress the less powerful. But as the Outsiders grew, it became a movement of trust. In order to reject laws and government, you must trust those around you even if there are no formal laws and even if they will not be punished for harming you.

“The movement grew, and they traveled in loose bands relying on technology they could scavenge from the Old World, technology that would have minimal impact on the environment within which they were trying to survive. After about forty or fifty years, the group grew to include almost two thousand members. It was about this time that the pendants and astrolabes first surfaced. Or at least that's when our stories first mention them.”

Chan-Yu pauses to take a sip from his canteen. A quick glance at Vale reveals that he is as enraptured as I am.

“Legend has it that there are thirteen of each because the inventor was a bit of a joker. A man—or woman, we don't know—who loved numbers and what they signified. Instead of creating twelve of each to match the zodiac, the legend goes, he made thirteen because there are actually more than twelve months. If you employ a lunar-solar calendar, there are 12.41 lunations each solar year. Thirteen is also the first prime number that is an emirp as well.”

The last word sounds a bit like a bird chirping. “What's an emirp?” I ask. “It sounds like half a word.”

“A prime that, when reversed, is a different prime. And,” Vale sits up straight, “there are thirteen Archimedean solids; thirteen is a centered square number, a happy number, and one of only three known Wilson primes.”

Chan-Yu doesn't say anything for a moment, and there's a silence while I think back to the last math class I enjoyed. It was called
The Art of Mathematics
, which might have been why I enjoyed it. My professor, a wiry woman with paint perpetually in her hair, instructed us on the artistic interpretations of Euclidian geometry, the golden ratio, the mathematical implications of perspective, and sacred geometry.

“Isn't thirteen also a Fibonacci number?” I ask, adding up the numbers in my head.

“Yes,” Vale says, looking at me proudly. “One, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen.”

“But why does any of this matter?” I am suddenly as impatient as Vale was a few moments ago.
What does this have to do with anything?

Chan-Yu shrugs.

“Maybe it doesn't. There are things I know and things I think I know. In this case, I believe that the creator of these acorns made thirteen because it is a unique number, and a bit of a non-conformist one at that. How many rooms does this house have?”

His question takes me by surprise. I think over the floorplan.

“Five bedrooms and one master bedroom. Three bathrooms. The kitchen. Living room. Basement. And if you count the root cellar,” I pause, “thirteen.”

“What are you saying?” Vale asks, his eyes narrowed, deadly focused on Chan-Yu, who, for his part, leans back in his chair with his arms crossed, contemplative.

“Do you think the acorns lead here?” I demand, leaning forward.

“Your grandfather encoded the most important discovery of his life in the shape of a flower that conforms to the Fibonacci sequence,” Chan-Yu says. “How old is this house, Remy?”

My mind is spinning.

“I don't know,” I respond. “Sixty, seventy years …”

“When I was a child, my elders spoke of a safe place, a place travelers could always stop for a rest, a place where there would be a welcome fire and good conversation.” Chan-Yu sounds almost excited. This is the most I've ever heard him talk before. “They called it the ‘waystation.' When this house was built, it was in the Wilds. Sector territory expanded to encompass it, but—”

“Are you saying my grandfather invented the pendants and astrolabes?”

“There are things I know—”

“I know!” I shout, then lower my voice again. “There are things you know and things you think you know. But why
here
? Why do you think it was my grandfather, of all people?”

“I stayed here once,” Chan-Yu's voice softens. “I was on my way back into the Sector after visiting Soo-Sun in the Wilds. It was just a few weeks after your sister died, Remy,” he says, looking at me hard, as though the secret to the mystery might be inside me, and it's all I can do to hold his gaze. “Your grandfather was already dead, and it had been months since any of his family were here. But Meera guided me here, gave me a safe place to sleep, and stayed up with me for many hours that night.”

“How did Meera know about this place?” Vale asks, as riveted as I am.