The Clouded Sky Read online

  Inside the cabin, he turns to the computer terminal and flicks through the interface. “It’s very comprehensive,” he says. “Nearly everyone on Kemya uses it, so they’ll be able to take in the Earth media they find most interesting without a translator constantly going. I don’t know if anyone’s ever gone from English to Kemyate before, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to.”

  He enters one final command, his fingers skimming the air about an inch from the screen. The display shows a smiling androgynous face and the words “Language Learner” with the options to “Start” or “Exit.”

  “That looks simple enough,” I say. I don’t know if I’ll find a language from a whole different planet as easy to pick up as ones from other continents, but if Kemyates can do it, why shouldn’t I? After a thousand of years of refining, they’ve probably developed some pretty advanced learning strategies.

  “I’ll make it an . . . icon, on your primary interface, here,” Win says. He dismisses the program. “If you want, I can put in more shortcuts for you, depending on what you’d like to look at. We can’t get direct feeds from Earth this far out, and Britta and Emmer wouldn’t have risked collecting them while they were staying hidden, but archives from when the ship was last in Kemyate space will be loaded.”

  He brings up a video that looks like the sort of news footage I might have watched on my TV back home. Win offers me a grin, but my gaze sticks on something else. Above the scrolling headlines and the woman talking to the camera, the date is hovering in bold white letters. Day, month, and year.

  A year seventeen past the one I was in yesterday.

  “That’s . . . That’s recent?” I say.

  “From about . . . a month and a half ago, your time,” Win says.

  “So right now, on Earth, it’s a month and a half later than when that was recorded.” I wave at the screen.

  Win glances at it and back at me. “Right.”

  My heart sinks.

  I should have known. I did know. Win told me, days ago, that the present he’d go back to outside the time field was seventeen years ahead of my present. Somehow I just managed not to connect it to me, here, now.

  “Right now, on Earth, seventeen years have gone by since you came to bring me to the ship,” I say slowly. “And I haven’t come back, and no one knows what happened to me.”

  I didn’t think—I didn’t even leave a note for my parents trying to explain. Not that there’s anything I could have said that would have made it okay.

  It was so easy before, hopping around Earth’s past. There and back, like I was never gone. But now I’ve been gone for nearly two decades, just like that.

  “It’s all right, Skylar,” Win says. “I can still bring you back to the moment after we left, as I said I would. Anything that’s happened without you there, it’ll be written over. No one will know the difference.”

  “They know it for now,” I say. “They’ve known it for seventeen years. My parents have had to deal with both of their kids disappearing without a trace.”

  I didn’t even get to tell them what really happened to Noam before I left. I found out about his accidental death at the hands of classmates during my Traveling with Win, but in the end there was no safe way to prevent it and bring him back. I wanted them to at least know he hadn’t left on purpose, run away like we’d assumed. Now they’ve felt that agony all over again.

  And I’ll know that, no matter what gets rewritten.

  “I thought you realized,” Win says.

  “Of course you did.” I rub my face. Would I have turned down his offer if I’d seen the full implications? I’d at least have wanted to think it through more thoroughly. My head jerks up. “What about the Enforcers? Won’t it have created a huge shift that I was there and then wasn’t anymore? If they’ve gone after my family—”

  “Hey,” Win says. “You don’t have to worry about that. Before I came to get you, I called in a fake bomb threat to the airport. That’ll have shifted all sorts of people’s movements. Your vanishing will be lost in the chain. The Enforcers didn’t have any real data on you, not even your name. They won’t have noticed. I promise.”

  I should be grateful he thought of it, but he says it so casually, talking about changing hundreds, thousands, maybe millions, of lives—of adding to the toll his people’s shifts have taken on Earth itself—that my stomach clenches. How much did he alter with that one call?

  “I know how you feel about making shifts,” Win says at my expression. “It’s the only way I could bring you safely. It’s not as if I enjoyed doing it.”

  “But you did it,” I say. “You didn’t even think it was important enough to mention.”

  No matter how much he’s against the scientists who’ve been manipulating my planet, he’s still Kemyate. Grown up in a world where the idea of meddling with billions of lives for your own reassurance is totally okay. As intense as the few days we spent together were . . . they were still only a few days. There are parts of him as alien to me as this ship.

  “Skylar,” he says, “I . . .” He doesn’t seem to know how to finish.

  “I understand,” I say. “You did what you thought you needed to. I’m glad you made sure my leaving didn’t put my family in danger.”

  I just need a little while to accept the fact that even after everything we’ve been through, he could do it that easily, see it as mattering so little.

  “When we’re finished here, it’ll all be over,” he says. “I’ll bring you back, you’ll have those seventeen years you were supposed to, and the generator will be disabled so no future Travelers can change that. There won’t be another shift, ever.”

  “I know,” I say around the lump in my throat. I give him a weak smile that I hope conveys I’m not angry at him. If I’m angry at anyone, it’s myself. “Well, I guess if we’re going to speed that along, we’d both better get to work.”

  Win wavers on his feet. “You’re okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  I will be. When the time field generator has exploded into a million pieces. And the sooner we can come back and do that, the sooner I can end the pain I’ve unwittingly caused.

  3.

  Pavel turns up a couple hours later with his perpetual frown and a device like a pane of glass the size of a tablet computer.

  “I believe the most direct translation would be a ‘vision well,’ ” he says, his hesitant English carrying a slight Australian accent. “You will talk it through . . . Ah, you’re familiar with the idea of police sketch artists?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “The process, for what Thlo wants, will be similar. The ‘well’ is loaded with a few videos of Jeanant for reference, and places from around Earth.” His shoulders hunch as he leans next to me, sliding his fingers over the glossy surface. It wakes up, a myriad of tiny squares of motion growing and shrinking in reaction to his touch. “You tell it what you saw, and it will try to create the scene. You check what it’s made, and say any changes needed, until it’s as close to your memory as you can do.”

  My gaze skims the spread of images. “This is something people on Kemya do a lot?”

  “In a case where there is no real recording of events, it’s very helpful,” Pavel says, and I wonder if he’s used it in the information gathering Win mentioned. Maybe that’s why Thlo asked him to demonstrate. “But it’s mainly used for creating . . . prototypes, construction planning.” He pauses. “I look forward to seeing Jeanant again, if only this way.”

  When I glance up at him, his watery gray eyes dart away from mine. Seventeen years, I think. Pavel doesn’t look like he could be out of his thirties. “How long did you work with him, before he left?” I ask.

  “Almost two years,” he says. “Long enough to know he cared more about improving Kemya than any council member.”

  Then he leaves me to it.

  I take some time testing the vision well, examining the images in greater detail by hovering my finger over them. There’s
one I’ve seen before: the recording of a speech Jeanant gave that Win showed me when he was first explaining their mission.

  When I press on the square, it falls away into the screen. The recording starts to play, as if the thin slab in my hands has transformed into a portal, with a sense of depth and mass no flat image should be able to provide. As if a real miniature Jeanant is standing in a real room between my hands.

  As he moves and speaks, the power of his presence washes over me, like it did every time I met him. The determination in his posture. The confidence in his voice.

  “If we have the courage to take that chance, to question those who would keep us locked in the same old patterns, we can become something so incredible that we’ll set all our lives on a completely different course—one we can be proud of.”

  His words ring through me as the screen darkens. Ring alongside an ache that’s spreading through my chest. I don’t know if I can give Pavel and the rest of them more of that Jeanant. The Jeanant I met was running on empty, dragged down by fatigue and uncertainty after days of racing to stay one step ahead of the Enforcers.

  But I told Thlo I’d try. So I clear my throat and tell the well to make a new file. It offers me a blank screen. I begin to re-create the first place I saw Jeanant: a small gallery room in the Louvre, in the Paris of 1830.

  It’s a slow procedure. I talk the well through the colors of the walls, the images in the paintings there, the size of the space, the height of the ceiling. Strain my recollections until the room I’ve created feels as right as I can make it. Then I insert Jeanant. “Standing a little more to the left. Turned ten degrees to the right. Back to the left five degrees.” On and on: the way he angled his head, the expression on his face, the tenor of his voice. He morphs before my eyes like a puppet whose strings I’m pulling. When a grumbling in my stomach tells me it’s time to grab a meal, I’m glad to take a break.

  The process gets harder the further I go. The caves in Vietnam, where he wasn’t totally sure I was real. The Ohio forest where he refused to accept my help. I work at it for an hour or two at a time across the next few days, setting aside the well in between and letting myself recuperate before going on.

  I fill the rest of the time as productively as I can. Lingering in the halls, remembering Isis’s comment about distracting people from their tasks, makes me edgy, so mostly I stay in my cabin, which is becoming familiar if not entirely comfortable. I’ve acclimatized to the thereness of the ship, but every now and then, especially if I’m tired, it gives me a momentary shudder. Keeping myself busy helps with that too.

  I work my vocal chords around the alternately slurred and staccato syllables of the Kemyate tongue in front of the computer terminal. As I adjust to its gesture-based interface, I sift through all the information I can find about Kemya itself. The diagrams of the station show a huge saucer encased in a diamond-shaped framework: a design tweaked after a couple of earlier iterations. The original station, if I understand correctly, was an orbiting city for Kemyates who worked in space, which has been rebuilt and updated over the millennia since unexpectedly becoming home to the entire surviving population.

  Reading between the lines, it’s obvious the enclosed space comes with other restrictions. Most apartments can only be assigned to pairs or groups, which must mean people can’t move out of their parents’ homes until they have a committed roommate. Apparently everyone’s implanted with tech that prevents them from having kids until they “register,” and couples may apply for no more than two.

  The councils I’ve heard the rebels mention come up regularly. There appear to be “divisions” focused on different areas of life, and each has a council of leaders who get invoked whenever a decision is made in their respective area. There’s also a singular “the Council” that is referenced here and there, but I can’t quite figure out the significance.

  Mixed in with the drier articles and reports are what must qualify as Kemyate entertainment. Music in electronic tones keyed to certain moods—relaxing, energizing, concentrating. Videos of an antigravity sport where the players shunt a tiny disc between walls speckled with glowing spots of color. Recordings of tech presentations in which beaming scientists announce how this refined console or that improved engine has 5 percent more clarity, or 10 percent increased efficiency. That’s as extreme as their innovations seem to get.

  I guess knowing that the last time someone charged ahead with some bold new technology it destroyed your entire planet puts a damper on the inventive spirit.

  The ship’s network contains a huge database of Earth media too: news feeds like the one Win showed me, satellite recordings, music, and movies. The news feeds are mainly raw footage, but every time I see a date that should be in my future, my throat tightens up. A few times I hover on the verge of searching for my parents’ names, or Angela, or Lisa, and then chicken out. I bring up a couple TV shows that didn’t exist when I was last on Earth, only to discover that everything in the public database includes Kemyate commentary. A blurb at the beginning describing the general absurdities of Earthling behavior that will follow, like unreliable communication methods or the overvaluing of individual needs. Then explanations of cultural details blink across the bottom of the display at intervals: “In this period in the United States of America, homosexual relationships are still considered unusual enough that their existence is seen as humorous. Earthling treatments for cancer continue to be so ineffective that they respond to the diagnosis with fear.” And so on, in a tone condescending enough to raise my hackles.

  After a little of that, when I need something from home, I leave the computer off and listen to the music on my MP3 player—a few songs at a time, preserving the battery.

  Win comes by at most mealtimes, joining me in the cafeteria for variously flavored brownie-like foodstuffs that leave a faint chemical taste in my mouth, but he barely has time to gulp down his food before Mako or Pavel or, once, Thlo walk in with a look that reminds him of whatever job I’m keeping him from. That gets my hackles up too. There’s a hum of activity around the ship, though most of it I only glimpse beyond the doorways, but the senior rebels aren’t giving Win a second to rest. I can’t help suspecting the partly joking comments he’s made are right—that they’re punishing him for the risks he took on Earth. The risks that paid off exactly the way they’d have wanted.

  He looks more harried every time I see him, until one evening he doesn’t come by for dinner at all. Finally I go looking for him. For the first time since I came on board, he’s in his cabin—the last place I check. He opens the door with a smile that doesn’t reach his weary eyes.

  “It’s late, isn’t it?” he says. “I lost track. I was just . . .” He gestures vaguely. I can hear the effort he’s making to sound casual.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  He looks at me—startled, and then with resignation. “It’s nothing. We should go eat. You must be starving. Unless you already—”

  “Win,” I interrupt, “do I need to remind you how much I hate it when I can see you’re not telling me things?”

  He halts, and his mouth twitches with a flicker of a real smile. “No,” he says, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. “It really is nothing. I finished working on some inventory Mako wanted done, so I went ahead with the obvious next step—and when she noticed she . . . what’s the phrase for it? Tore a strip off of me? It turned out I hadn’t even done it wrong, just not exactly the way she preferred.”

  “I have gotten the impression she’s kind of . . . uptight,” I offer.

  “Yes, well, I decided I needed a little time away from all of them.” He grimaces. “I thought it’d be better, after what we managed to do, not worse. I can deal with it. I’m used to them not expecting much from me.”

  “What more do they want?” I say. “You delivered practically the whole weapon to them!”

  “That doesn’t matter much if Thlo also sees it as a reason not to trust me,” he says. “I can’t blame them:
her or Mako, or Pavel. They’ve put so much into this mission. All I can do is keep showing I can handle whatever they throw at me. It’s just hard to pretend I agree they should treat me like an idiot who can’t think for himself.”

  Despite his words, his voice has turned wry. “How much more is there left to do?” I ask as we start toward the cafeteria.

  “Right now the most important jobs are getting everything on the ship to match our cover story.”

  “And once we’re on the station?”

  “As far as I know, we just have to gather the materials we need, Isis will test all the weapon’s systems, and we’ll organize a story to justify another trip out into space,” he says. “It shouldn’t take long. We’re already working on the next steps here, and Thlo’s putting together her plan for after we take the time field down. It’ll be much easier for her to take charge if she can offer a clear course of action while everyone else is confused.”

  “And that course of action will be finding a new planet, right?” I say.

  He brightens. “Exactly. Emmer’s narrowed down the possibilities, and we’re processing the data so Thlo can make a final decision. As soon as the experiments on Earth are shut down, the Council will have to admit that we’ve gathered more than enough information on planet life to be properly prepared, and there’ll be no excuse to delay moving on to a real home.”

  That’s why he’s risked his life for this mission, why he accepts whatever treatment the others offer. His world and his freedom are at stake nearly as much as mine.

  Toward the end of the fourth day of re-creating, I reach Jeanant’s death. The Enforcers on either side of him, blasters aimed. His numb leg sprawled in front of him. The bag with his time cloth out of reach. My voice cracks as I describe how he reached for the closer blaster, how he switched it from the numbing setting to the killing one, just as the Enforcer pulled the trigger. The movements aren’t perfect, but it’s hard getting it down at all.