Across a Star-Swept Sea

Twenty-five

IT WAS LATE IN the evening and the female captain and her Reduced friend were nowhere to be found on Scintillans. Their glider was still waiting on the lawn, but it didn’t keep Elliot North from pacing and wringing her hands. Justen watched her concern grow, unsure of what he could do to help the stranger relax. He had a variety of antianxiety prickers in his supply bag, but from what he understood of the aristo visitor’s personality, such a move would be tantamount to assault in her eyes. And then he’d have Captain Wentforth to deal with.

And Justen wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Elliot’s growing discomfort. Captain Wentforth’s expression swelled from worry to anger as he watched his girlfriend. At last, he strode over to Persis and demanded answers. “We were promised that if we did what you said, we’d be safe here. Where are my friends?”

Persis’s eyes were as round and innocent as an accomplished courtier like herself could manage as she answered. “Sincerely, Captain Wentforth, I don’t know. The last anyone saw them they were headed down to the sea to swim in our heated star cove—”

“So what?” Elliot broke in, her voice shuddering over the words. “Are you saying they were just swept out to sea?”

“Not from the cove,” Justen jumped to Persis’s defense. “It’s completely protected from undertows. No currents at all. Maybe someone from the fishing village offered to give them a tour. I know there’s a path cut into the rock that goes to the village—” He looked to Persis for assistance.

She closed her eyes. A moment later, several flutternotes erupted from her palm and zipped off to points unknown. Both Kai and Elliot stepped back.

“I’m sorry—did those scare you?” Persis asked.

“I will never get used to them,” Elliot said. She looked a bit green around the gills.

“You’re not alone,” Justen said. “They’ve been around for years and they still make me sick.”

“Oh, Justen!” cried Persis. “You’re such a luddite.”

Both visitors stiffened at her words. Persis cast Justen a confused glance.

“It’s their word for ‘aristos,’ remember?” Justen said.

“Right. Droll name.” She batted her eyelashes and Justen nearly groaned. “At any rate, I’ve just messaged Isla, as well as Andrine and Tero down in the village, to tell them that your friends have vanished. I’m sure we’ll get word of their whereabouts soon. And don’t concern yourself for another moment about that cove. Nothing could be safer in the world. I myself have been swimming there since I could barely walk.”

Justen doubted this made Kai or Elliot feel any more comfortable.

When another hour passed with no reply from Persis’s contacts, Elliot went from concerned to frantic. “I’m the one who took her with us, Kai. I’m the one who put her in this danger. She would have been safe back home on the North Estate with Dee. She would have—” She broke off.

“She’s with Andromeda, Elliot. Nothing’s going to happen to her—Andromeda will make sure of it.”

Persis jumped into action, immediately offering to go down to the star cove and search herself, though Justen was sure the visitors found the idea as comical as he did. Persis Blake wasn’t suited to the job of retrieving missing people.

Perhaps they should call the Wild Poppy.

Kai insisted he be allowed to take his glider and go as well. “It’s fully charged since it’s been sitting out all day. I can fly all night if necessary.” He turned to Elliot and took her hands in his. “We’ll find them. Trust Andromeda to take care of herself and Ro. You know how much experience she has.”

Elliot gave a barely audible humph. “But what if they’re separated? This place . . . the way they look at Ro here—”

“We stare at her,” Persis said, “because we’re not used to her. The same way you stare at our palmports.” She paused, as if suddenly realizing it did little good to compare a human being to her flashy piece of technology. “You know what I mean. She’s unusual here. You all are. But how many ways can I promise you we mean you no harm?”

Elliot turned to her, still holding tight to Kai’s hands. “What are your promises good for if my friend has disappeared?” She looked back at Kai. “I’ll take the other glider.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think I like the idea of you flying at night. It’s different with Andromeda and me. And all these cliffs? You don’t have enough experience . . .”

“Experience?” Elliot laughed. “I’ve been flying your gliders since you first knew how to make them, Malakai Wentforth.” Her voice was haughty, but the expression on her face was wry, and Kai was grinning at the way she pronounced his name. “Besides, everything you design looks like our old tractor, remember? I’ll figure it out.”

Quick as that, it was decided, and Elliot, Kai, and Persis all left Justen alone. Not one of them offered to take him along for the ride, or suggested a place he might look for the visitors himself. And since Torin and Heloise had used the arrival of the visitors as an excuse to go on a private retreat to their north shore cottage, Justen found himself, again, alone in the house. Most of the servants had already gone home for the evening.

Since he still hadn’t received any response from Noemi about the new location of the refugees, he couldn’t go to them. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t help. He still had his grandmother’s research. Maybe, when cross-referenced with the recent tests he’d done, he could glean some new information. If only Noemi would write him back. He was sure she must be busy, but he needed to help his countrymen and undo some of the damage he’d caused.

Then again, she might let him come back to work and he’d just make a bigger mess of things than he had last time. The pinks had been just such an accident, and seeing Kai and his rudimentary gengineering today reminded him of how much trouble humanity could get into while trying to help, let alone trying to harm. Even the great Persistence Helo had created DAR alongside the cure, and Justen bore no pretensions he was smarter than she.

He’d read Persistence’s diaries a hundred times, and he couldn’t find her mistake any more than she could. She’d followed every trail that might hold a hint of a solution, from genetic flaws that might have worked themselves into the cure to ways to stop the deterioration before it had started. Indeed, it had been one of Persistence Helo’s hypotheses that had led him to create the Reduction drug.

Or whatever it really should be called, as Justen now knew what real Reduction looked like. That girl, Tomorrow—or Ro as her friend Elliot called her—embodied the past of most of the population of Earth. He’d never seen it in person before. But, of course, his grandmother had. She’d been surrounded by Reduced people. And yet, none of the research or history he’d studied could teach Justen what being Reduced really meant. Only Ro had had the power to show him.

In his grandmother’s diaries, there had been points where she’d written, late in life, about her attempts to trace the genetic ancestry of those regs who seemed most affected by DAR. Since the side effect was still relatively new by the time of her death, she hadn’t had a large enough sample size to test her hypothesis, but she had postulated that there was a genetic basis to natural regularity and that those whose family lines had achieved it by the time of the cure—even if individuals hadn’t themselves—were less likely to develop DAR.

Justen, coming into the research a few generations later, was able to follow family backgrounds further and determine not only that his grandmother was correct but also how much more likely a reg was to develop DAR if, at the time of the cure, his or her ancestors had no siblings or cousins who were natural regs.

But if DAR susceptibility had some basis in the genetic predisposition of its victims toward naturally remaining Reduced, what would it mean for someone like Tomorrow? Someone his age, who was probably three or four or more generations younger than any Reduced that New Pacifica had ever seen?

Wasn’t it far more likely that this Reduced girl had siblings or cousins who were natural regs than it had been at the time of the cure? Regularity grew, generation by generation. Even at the beginning of Persistence Helo’s research, she’d mapped out a timeline, based on population and reproduction patterns, for a natural end of the Reduction. She just hadn’t wanted to wait that long. But here was Tomorrow, much farther down the line. What possibilities lay in her genetic code? What would happen if Persistence Helo were doing the same research now, using Tomorrow as a model of a Reduced of her generation? Might Ro’s descendants be immune to DAR completely?

And if so, might Justen be able to figure out how, and apply it to his own people?

As always, time blurred into a series of brain models, numbers, notes, and chemical equations. For a while, everything else was forgotten. He didn’t even hear the voices on the lanai outside the sitting room where he was working. And he certainly didn’t see when a figure entered the room at his back.

“It’s nice to see you working so hard. I was afraid when you’d come to Albion you’d given up the use of your brain entirely.”

The sound of Vania’s voice snapped him out of his focus. He looked up to see her standing right behind him, her long hair drawn back in a dark tail over her shoulder, her black military jacket and trousers looking out of place against the Blakes’ bright furnishings.

“What are you doing here, Vania? I thought we’d said all we needed to last time.”

“If we hadn’t, your striking me from the Scintillans approved guest list certainly got the message across.”

“All evidence to the contrary.” He tapped his fingers against the oblets to hide the displays. How long had she been standing there? How much had she seen? “As you’re here.”

“Yes, but not as your guest.” She nodded to the terrace. “I made some new friends this afternoon. Nice people, if a bit . . . strange.”

Justen craned his neck. Andromeda and Tomorrow were on the lanai, looking disheveled and confused. Justen understood the feeling. All this time everyone had been worried about the two missing visitors, they’d been off with Vania? What was his old friend up to?

“Where is everyone?” Andromeda called in to him.

“They’re out looking for you. They even took the gliders.”

“What?” Andromeda exclaimed angrily. “Malakai let Elliot use my glider?” She took off, Ro hot on her heels. Justen sighed, crossed to the nearest wallport, and sent out a barrage of messages to Persis, Isla, and Tero that the missing visitors were home. With any luck, Persis would find a way to flag down the other two.

He turned back to find Vania sneaking a peek at one of the oblets.

“Get away from that.”

With a flourish of her hand, she made the files spin above the oblet’s base. The smile on her face was keen and cunning. “What secrets you’ve been keeping, Justen! People from elsewhere. Natural Reduced. Flying machines . . .” She passed her fingers through the oblet’s display. “Anything else I should know?”

He pushed past her and shut the machine’s display down again. “I don’t think you should know as much as you already do.”

“So arrogant. I suppose you think like an aristo, now that you’re such good friends with them. You think you and your pretty, stupid aristo and your pretty, stupid princess all deserve knowledge about the world that no one else is allowed to have. Is that why these visitors are being hidden away up here? Do you honestly believe that’s why they came to New Pacifica in the first place? To be imprisoned in your girlfriend’s gilded cage?”

Justen grimaced. He didn’t need Vania putting a voice to all the thoughts in his head. “It’s a temporary situation.” He’d never once made the argument that Isla’s actions were faultless. But temporary discretion was not the same as imprisonment. She’d requested that the visitors wait, which they were happy to do for a day or two, until their friends arrived on their ship. And they were free to go—as Andromeda had just proved.

Vania was still talking. “Captain Andromeda Phoenix—next to her most fascinating name—has the most remarkable impression of our homeland, Justen. She’s been told it’s a vile place, full of danger and destruction. Wherever would she have gotten that idea?”

Justen shrugged in response. “Honestly, Vania, I don’t have much to do with what the visitors are and are not told. I’m merely a guest here, like them.”

“They’re not like you, Justen. Not like anyone in all New Pacifica, and you know it. That one with the orange hair is Reduced. Really Reduced.”

Her eyes practically glowed with promise. How much had she seen of his notes? Justen watched Vania the way one might a snake. She hadn’t come here to chat this time. Vania was smart and ambitious, and because she’d once been like a sister to him, he knew she classified people into one of two camps: friend and foe.

Justen was pretty sure he’d slipped into the latter category at their last meeting.

“Well, you didn’t come here looking for them, Vania, so what did you come for?”

“I came to enlist your help.”

“In what?”

“Tracking down the Wild Poppy.”

A sharp, staccato burst of laughter escaped his lips. Again with this? “What in the world would I know about the Wild Poppy?” He didn’t even know where the spy hid the refugees. Not anymore.

“I’m not sure yet. That’s why I’m here. After all, the Wild Poppy is undoubtedly an aristo, and you seem to be thriving among that community. Here you are, in the very heart of elite life in Albion, doing favors for the princess, going to parties with her— What exactly is your girlfriend’s official position again, Justen? The royal stylist?”

“If you like,” he replied. Hadn’t he once thought the same of Persis? Now, of course, his opinion of her was—well, he wasn’t exactly sure. Persis was confusing. She was silly, and then she made the most sense of anyone he knew. She was sexy, but she wasn’t anything like the type of girl he could feel something for. She was shallow, but she was also one of the most thoughtful, kindhearted, and generous people he’d ever met.

“And now”—Vania gestured to the work littering the desk—“it seems you’re back to your favorite topic of research. Only this time, you’re doing it for the Albians.”

“I’ve always been doing it for the Albians and Galateans both. Just like my grandmother.”

“Hmm.” Vania shrugged, then moved away from the table. “And yet here you do it in your girlfriend’s living room, whereas back home Papa gave you an entire lab and a staff of your own.”

“That lab came with trappings I found . . . a bit constricting.”

Her gaze dropped from his face to his feet and back up, studying one of the new outfits Persis had picked for him. “Actually, I find your new trappings much more constricting. But no matter how much you wish to talk about fashion, Justen, I have more important things in mind.”

“Right, the Wild Poppy.” Justen sighed and waved his hand. “Well, off you go.”

She chuckled, but there was no amusement in it. “No, off you go. I am going to find the Poppy this time, and you’re going to help me.”

“I beg your pardon? We already went over this. I absolutely will not.”

Vania was silent for a moment. “You haven’t even asked after your sister, Justen. Don’t you care to know how she’s doing, all alone, in Galatea? Don’t you wonder how knowledge of your treason is affecting her?”

Justen’s blood chilled again, but he did his best not to let it show. “I think of my sister every day. I miss her tremendously.” And he didn’t think she’d received a single message he’d sent her since coming to Albion. His fears for her were starting to come to pass. At first he’d thought she was still angry from their argument, but now he feared worse, especially since Vania’s last visit. After all, why would they let him contact Remy if they thought he’d betrayed the revolution? He needed Remy here.

“In fact, I’d appreciate it if you could give her a message for me.”

“I think that will be difficult,” Vania said, her expression utterly guileless, “unless of course you help me. After all, it’s so hard to communicate anything to the Reduced—”

Justen didn’t know how he did it, but it was as if he could move as fast as those visiting captains, for suddenly he was right on top of Vania, her narrow shoulders in his grip. “What have you done to Remy?” he shouted.

“Nothing.” Her voice shook as she freed herself from his grasp. “But, Justen, you know that treason is a clear cause for arrest—not just of the traitor but of his entire family as well.”

“You wouldn’t—you couldn’t do anything to Remy. She’s living in your house.” And yet wasn’t that exactly what he’d been afraid of all along? He’d just never thought Vania—Vania of all people—could betray him. Betray them both. They’d grown up together; they’d loved each other as brother and sister—or so he’d always thought. Was this what the revolution had done to her?

Vania’s eyes narrowed. “Are you accusing my father of favoritism? That would make him no better than the queen he had a role in deposing.”

“Remy has done nothing. To ensure her safety, I’ve been keeping my feelings about the revolution private. Don’t you think, if I’d wanted to, I could have argued long and loud against everything going on down there?”

She snorted. “You want me to admire how ineffectual your treason has been?”

“Vania, you love Remy. You can’t let anything happen to her.”

“That’s precisely what I’m saying to you.”

Justen ran his hands through his hair, paced away a few steps, then turned. “You won’t do anything,” he insisted, trying to convince himself. “You’d be foolish to. If word got out—Remy’s a Helo. The people of Galatea wouldn’t stand for it.” To say nothing of the people of Albion. If Isla needed an excuse to invade, Remy Helo might be it.

“I hope you’re right. But if you aren’t, I doubt the Wild Poppy will find it so easy to break into Halahou prison again.”

The Poppy had broken into the prison? The man was more adept even than Justen had thought. “Vania. Listen to yourself. Listen to what you’re saying. You’re coming to me and actually threatening to imprison Remy? Torture Remy? Reduce . . . Remy?”

There was the faintest flicker in Vania’s eyes, but a second later it vanished, replaced by a serene expression. “It’s not going to come to that. You’re going to help me find the Poppy, Justen.”

Justen shook his head in disbelief. Vania was perfectly calm, but it was the assuredness of a zealot. Justen remembered when things had seemed that simple to him. The revolution was a moral good, no matter its price. And then, even when he’d first come to Albion, he’d not given much thought to anything beyond putting up with Persis and the princess in order to get his research off the ground. But now he’d seen a natural Reduced, now he’d talked to the Galatean victims, now nothing was as it seemed. He looked at Vania. At his friend Vania; at his ally Vania; at his foster sister, Vania, and he didn’t even recognize her.

“I won’t.”

She stiffened and her expression turned stern. “Then I guess you’re the one who will be Reducing Remy.” She started to move away, and Justen tried to grab her.

“Stop! No, you can’t.”

But Justen, who spent his days in a lab and his nights with his nose buried in books, was no match for a top member of the Galatean military. Quick as anything, she swept his legs out from underneath him. He landed hard on his spine, the back of his head thunking against the inlaid stone floors. For a moment his vision blurred, and when it cleared, Vania was standing near the door.

“Though I suppose,” she said, her tone thoughtful, “if you think about it, it was you all along.”