A Conspiracy of Stars

“Science requires reserve. Calm. Control.”

Reserve? It’s my passion that makes science so appealing to me. Doesn’t that count for something? And what about Jaquot—always bragging and telling jokes? I can’t remember anyone lecturing him about reserve.

“Do you believe that you exhibited calm and restraint at the Avian Compound today?”

I start to tell him it wasn’t my fault, but he cuts me off again.

“We study life-forms, Octavia,” he says sharply. “Your first time seeing a specimen up close, and you behave this way. How do you expect to be a whitecoat when you get emotional at the mere sight of an animal being tranquilized?”

“Emotional,” I repeat.

“Fainting at the sight of a tranquilization is hardly the behavior of a logical human being. A scientist.” He’s raised his voice: it rings out loud over the thrumming of the chariot.

“I’m not emotional!” I say, even louder. He’s not hearing me. “I felt . . . I felt . . .”

I want to say afraid, but that’s not right. He doesn’t understand what the fear felt like, shoving its way in and occupying my body. “I felt—something!”

“It’s not about what you feel!” my father shouts. “It’s about what you know!”

I have nothing to say. He’s not listening anyway. The Paw appears up ahead, but jumping off the chariot and walking into the jungle currently seems more appealing. I set my jaw and stare blankly as the guards—more buzzguns—stand aside to let us enter the compound.

“Control is how we will survive,” he says more quietly but still with noticeable sharpness. “Entire cities have fallen because they weren’t free to command their circumstances. N’Terra will not lose control. And neither will you.”

The chariot comes to a stop between two others just like it, and I don’t wait for my father to switch off the power cell before I leap off the standing platform and walk quickly away toward the main dome of the Paw. He calls me but I continue on, my steps long and hard. Right now the sound of my own name sounds too much like his, and I don’t want it to belong to me.

The air of the Paw flows over me and fills me with a sense of comfort that I welcome. I jog through the sparse jungle of the main dome for a minute or two. I want to get farther away from the entrance before I rest, so that my father doesn’t immediately spot me when he comes in. When I’ve trotted a sufficient distance, I stop and lean against an ogwe, breathing deeply. I smell the smell that Jaquot says doesn’t exist: the multilayered scent seems to curl into my nostrils. My mind feels clearer now, the noise that invaded it earlier fading into silence. Don’t be emotional, I think, and even though the thought makes me as annoyed at myself as I am at my father, I tell myself that maybe he was right.

I hear voices and peep my head around the trunk of the ogwe to look back the way I came. My father with—of course—another whitecoat, the two of them following the other path at the fork, the one that leads to the labs. Typical, I think bitterly, he’s going to the Zoo on his rest day, even when we’ve been at the Beak for hours. He disappears down the path, his back tall and straight, his right hand gesturing to emphasize some point he’s making to the whitecoat, who’s nodding vigorously. “Yes, Dr. English,” he’s probably saying. “You’re right, Dr. English. You’re so brilliant, Dr. English!” I roll my eyes.

When my father and the whitecoat are out of sight, I carry on down to the communal dome. The doors open on their own for me when I approach.

With the main dome constructed on a small hill, the attached commune is built into the shallow valley alongside it. Above is the characteristic arching roof, transparent to let the sky in, but I’m more focused on the commune below. Things change so quickly lately, and every time I come home I pause to make sure everything is as I left it. Last week I returned from the Greenhouse to find that the curving stream that divides the dome had two additional bridges constructed across it. From here I can see the stumps of the three young trees used to build them. My father says the trees were dying.

Today a team of engineers is painting the roofs of several wigwams. Our homes are low and smooth, built with the white clay abundant around N’Terra, and with the light coming through the dome roof, they light up and shine like white stones in water. The paint the engineers are adding must serve some kind of purpose, I think, watching them work: insect repellent, perhaps—we need that. Surely it can’t be for the aesthetic alone—they’ve chosen red—as there are ordinarily so many colors in the commune already: swatches of fabric dyed with plants grown around N’Terra, draped on the sides of ’wams and hanging from poles driven into the ground. But there are fewer flags and streamers than usual. A new decree by the Council perhaps, I think, like the one that had authorized the construction of the tower.

The tower has grown since I left the dome this morning, planted there in the exact center of the compound, a spiny-looking gray tree of a structure that the Council had ordered construction of eight weeks ago. The shadow of it falls across the commune like a thorn. After so many years standing in this same spot on the hill, I find the protrusion of the tower is strange. Instead I choose to focus on my ’wam: even from here I can see the yellow cloth that hangs on our door. It was brought here all the way from a place called Englewood, where my grandmother was born. I wonder if I—if we—will ever stop missing her. As I descend the curving steps down into the commune, I brush my fingers along the flowers that grow on either side, tiny petals that curl closed at night, bright yellow in the morning and deep blue by dusk. As always, they lean away from my fingers. I smile, sympathetic. That’s how I feel right now too.

At the bottom of the stairs, it’s as if some blanket of silence has been pulled back, and I’m grateful for the chaos of children laughing and running. Far across the commune the first beats of a drum rhythm come to life, people relaxing after spending their day at various kinds of work. I frown, thinking of when my father used to play. It’s been a long time.

I’m so focused on the sound of the drum, I run straight into someone on the path.

“Stars!” I curse, stumbling. The sudden jolt of my body reignites some of the ache from my sprain, and I grab my neck with both hands as if to clamp down on the pain before it spreads.

“Sorry,” says a low voice.

I know this voice but am surprised to find it here—it belongs to Rondo, who, until now, I’ve only ever seen in the Greenhouse, and who I know to live in the Beak.

“What are you doing here?” I blurt, and I realize too late that I’ve snapped at him, still irritated from hurting my neck.

“I live here.” He adjusts the burden under his arm, a medium-size black case.

“Since when?”

“This morning. My parents transferred their study.”

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