A Conspiracy of Stars

  DEDICATION

  For Omaun, who makes Earth worth it.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Olivia A. Cole

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  My father and I live under different suns. In reality, it is the same: red and hungry, an intense crimson eye that sends the sweat fleeing from my skin. It’s as beautiful as it is harsh, but my father sees none of the beauty. The past has dulled his wonder, and so the light of this planet shines differently on each of us. For me, it is part of home. For him, it is a beacon over a prison. Like others in N’Terra, he had his heart set on another sun. This one is a poor replacement.

  “Slow down, Octavia,” he says.

  I tighten my hands, made thick with the white driving gloves I wear, on the steering column. My father has been allowing me to pilot the chariot since my birthday but still insists I drive too fast. I decelerate, only slightly—I love the feeling of the wind, tinged with the scent of the jungle, whipping across my face. This is one of the few times I feel relaxed.

  My father says nothing else, so I squint at the intense green of the wilderness that blurs more slowly past us now, allowing the colors to blend. A smallish smudge of brown catches my eye—I’ve seen that mottled texture somewhere before in one of my research projects.

  “Kunike,” I say out loud without really meaning to. Usually I would keep my observations to myself when driving with my father, but kunike are difficult to spot—I’ve never seen a live one—and I’m surprised to have happened across them. There are two: small and standing impossibly still at our approach. Their fur has blended into the grasses that surround them.

  My father nods, unsmiling.

  “Stop,” he says.

  I bring the chariot to a gentle halt, tamping down the eagerness that swells in me like helium. My father lifts one hand from where it rests on the front bar and presses the signal key by the steering column. A short, sharp sound barks from our vehicle, and the two kunike become fully visible immediately. Their fur turns vividly red, and now I can see them clearly: small and fuzzy with large wide ears like sails. One rears up on its back legs, baring its surprisingly impressive fangs.

  Years ago, my father would have prompted me for knowledge: “Purpose? Adaptational trajectory?” That was when I was still a kid, allowed out of the compound and into the open air of Faloiv for the first time. By now he doesn’t need to ask: he signaled the kunike merely as a demonstration—a hint of his rare generosity when it comes to his only child. But I find myself answering in my head anyway: The sentry kunike turn red to signal the rest of the pack. In the event of an attack, they would stop and fight while the others got away. The red coloring doubles as a diversion for the predator. Before, when my father and I would actually talk, he might have told me that the kunike turn a different color if what’s approaching can be considered prey. This alternate color would signal the hidden pack to attack rather than flee. But these conversations are long past. At sixteen, I’m expected to know these things already, and I do.

  I’ve guided the chariot into motion again—the kunike fading back into camouflage behind us—and the wind picks up dust from the road, swirling it around us in rust-colored clouds. Our goggles protect our eyes, but he motions for me to fasten my face guard. Ahead, what looks like a scarlet bird hovers in the air, scanning the ground for food. I recognize it as a carnivore from its claws. But before I can even identify it, another creature—larger, a winged blue reptile—zooms in from out of nowhere and buries its talons in the red bird’s body. Both plummet to the ground, struggling.

  “I’ll say one thing for this miserable planet,” my father says. I can barely hear him over the wind: I’m driving too fast again, but he hasn’t yet noticed. “It has an interesting predator-prey hierarchy. Carnivores preying only on other carnivores? Fascinating.”

  I say nothing. When it comes to my father’s feelings about Faloiv, I tend to keep my opinions to myself. He hasn’t always hated it here, but many things have been different since my grandmother died five years ago, lost in the jungle on a scavenging trip. Perhaps the knowledge that this planet can swallow us up so easily had stirred some feelings of desperation. Faloiv has been his home for over forty years, after his birth planet became hostile to human life, and I doubt he remembers much of life before Faloiv. But home isn’t just memory, I’ve decided: it’s knowledge, knowing where you belong and where you fit. My grandmother’s loss ignited something restless in him, something angry and afraid. Faloiv is different for me. Greencoats—green, the color of a young branch, the sign of our inexperience but also of our commitment to growth—were born here. This is home.

  “Sir,” I venture. “Will we see Dr. Adibuah today?”

  “Yes,” my father answers, keeping his eyes trained on the dust path ahead.

  “Does Dr. Adibuah ever come to the Paw to collaborate on your projects?” I ask, refusing to let his monosyllabicity irk me. “Or do you just come here because you’re on the Council?”

  “I’ve told you not to refer to the Mammalian Compound as the Paw, Octavia. It’s adolescent and unspecific.”

  Behind my goggles I roll my eyes. The greencoats have our own set of expressions: we call the Avian Compound the Beak, and the Amphibian Compound—where my best friend Alma lives—the Newt. Not exactly clever, but it is efficient—even if it is unspecific and adolescent. And we’re supposed to be clever, we students of N’Terra, children of whitecoats. It is our skills that will determine our survival. The founders of N’Terra had not meant for us to stay forever: Faloiv was the only habitable world their scouts had time to chart before evacuating the Origin Planet, and a meteor to the Vagantur’s hull during descent damaged the ship’s power cell irreparably. What had originally been envisioned as a brief stop on the hunt for a more survival-friendly sphere had become the final destination of the Vagantur. The original Council tried for twenty years to fix the ship before they gave up. Now here we are.

  Outside the Beak, I pull up to a woman standing by the white, smooth-walled wigwam that serves as a gatehouse. I’m surprised by the buzzgun she carries—more and more guards have them these days, and it’s jarring to see it slung so casually over her shoulder. The woman had been smiling before we pulled up, but when she sees my father alongside me, she tucks the smile away. He has that effect on people.

  “Names?” she says. She has a thin, almost-transparent slate in her hands. It’s a formality: she knows who we are. My father is a member of the Council—the twelve-person congress that makes decisions about N’Terra. My mother is on the Council as well, which makes for some interesting debates when we eat our evening meal. Or at least it used to, before my grandmother’s absence filled all our mouths with an ash of silence too thick to talk around.

 
I lean back as my father stretches across the steering column.

  “Dr. English, Octavius. Mammalian Compound. Daughter: English, Octavia.”

  “Dr. English,” she says after a moment, nodding in confirmation.

  The guard passes the slate to my father, who applies his thumb to the screen, then passes it to me to do the same. I take the slate, center my thumb in the red square beside a picture of my face and profile, and the slate’s screen goes blank. I pass it back to her.

  The solid white gates ahead of us slide apart and the woman with the buzzgun nods us through. Under my hand, the chariot whispers forward toward a cluster of other vehicles, where a small group of whitecoats stands conversing. One of them wears a strange article of clothing that I’ve never seen: a red cloak with a tall collar that extends well above his head, which then curves forward and outward like the palm of a hand. It covers his face in shade: I can’t make out his features until I’ve parked alongside another chariot and the red-cloaked man moves toward us.

  “English,” the man says, raising a hand gloved in the same red, scaled material as his cloak.

  “Dr. Albatur,” my father says, nodding. He’s removed his traveling gloves and his hands look comfortingly human in comparison to the other man’s red fingers. “A pleasure to see you.”

  So this is Dr. Albatur. I’ve heard his name a lot in the last year—he’s the recently elected Council Head of N’Terra. Somehow I’d pictured him differently. Younger. Stronger.

  “Looking forward to hearing your proposals,” Dr. Albatur says. My parents have debated Albatur’s policies many a time at evening meal, but they’ve never mentioned his garb. I study it, trying to guess its purpose. He seems to see me for the first time and forces what could be interpreted as a smile onto his narrow mouth. “Ah, your daughter.”

  “Hello, sir,” I say, nodding respectfully, but my eyes still wander to his covering.

  “I see you’re curious about my hood,” he says. His tone is unpleasant to my ears, the sound of someone drawing a line and daring you to cross it.

  “Yes, sir,” I say without hesitating.

  He squints at me.

  “So. Ask.”

  I consider his expression, wondering if he means it. I almost look at my father for confirmation, but the idea of needing permission to ask a simple question irks me.

  “What animal did we learn this technology from?” I finally say.

  Dr. Albatur smirks.

  “So very N’Terra of you, Miss English,” he says. “To assume everything we know is from this hot little globe. No, what I wear isn’t an innovation of Faloiv. This technology is of the Origin Planet: the material is from the hull of the Vagantur.”

  My forehead wrinkles involuntarily.

  “I wasn’t aware we dismantled the ship for personal items,” I say.

  Dr. Albatur’s expression clouds and he fixes me with a sharp look.

  “The Vagantur has not been dismantled,” he says quickly. “Nor will it ever be. And this is not merely a personal item. My skin and the sun of Faloiv are . . . incompatible, you see. This material acts as an effective barrier in order to keep me alive. A scrap of the hull that was damaged in the landing was salvaged when my condition became apparent.”

  “Oh. But why will the Vagantur never be dismantled?” I go on. “Faloiv is our home. We’re not going anywhere.”

  Dr. Albatur’s eyelids seem to thicken and droop: suddenly they too seem to be wearing a hood like the one over his head. He stares at me hard, the corner of his mouth twitching ever so slightly.

  And then he turns his eyes to my father, transferring his gaze without moving his face. He addresses him now as if I’d never said a word.

  “Dr. English,” he says. “How goes the progress on our other project?”

  I look at my father to hear his response and note a change in his eyes. Normally round and wide like mine, they’ve narrowed slightly.

  “It continues. We are still attempting to locate a specimen,” my father says. “I will alert you the moment we find one.”

  “Good,” says Dr. Albatur, nodding from deep inside the hood. “Good.”

  He turns abruptly, the bulky redness of him moving away from us and toward the doorway to the Beak, which guards with buzzguns are now opening—Albatur’s posture suggests that he’s bending slightly, bowing his head away from the sun. The whitecoats that accompany him scurry at his heels, staying close. I expect my father to follow him directly, but instead he’s rubbing the material of his gloves between two fingers, staring after Albatur with an expression of preoccupation.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have asked,” I say when Albatur is out of earshot. “It just seems strange that he was so adamant about not dismantling the Vagantur. It just sits over there in the jungle, growing moss.”

  “Dr. Albatur has many ideas as the Council Head,” my father says, and I’m surprised that he’s not angry with me. “The Vagantur is just part of them.”

  “What else?” I ask. This is one of the longest conversations we’ve had in some time.

  “The Solossius,” he says.

  “The what?”

  He looks at me then, quickly, his eyes refocusing.

  “Dr. Adibuah will be waiting for us.”

  My father has prepared me for what awaited in the main dome of the Beak—an absence of cages, with the herbivorous birds allowed to fly freely in the wide expanse of the dome. I duck immediately upon entering, two flurried pairs of wings darting just above my head in a flash of gold and crimson. From outside, the large dome appears to be solid white, but inside, sunshine pours in through slow-traveling clouds at the highest point of a transparent ceiling. The clouds are both real and not, my father has told me: made of moisture like real clouds but engineered indoors to provide the birds with a lifelike habitat. With the birds all around me, and the clouds above, it’s almost like being outside, beyond the borders of N’Terra.

  Dr. Adibuah is approaching, and my enjoyment of the dome fades momentarily. His usually sunny disposition seems dimmer today, the tension in his jaw turning his face somber.

  “Octavius,” he says. He shakes my father’s hand firmly. “I didn’t know Albatur was coming.”

  I catch a glint of something like regret flit across my father’s face before he buries it again.

  “Apologies. I assumed you knew.”

  “I didn’t.” Dr. Adibuah looks at me, his eyes losing some of their gloom. “And here’s O, on my turf for the first time.”

  I like when people call me O. Sometimes Octavia is unbearably close to Octavius: my father had claimed my name like a scientific discovery, a new species; something he thinks he owns. My mother had at least insisted on me having my own middle name, Afua.

  “Hello, Dr. Adibuah.”

  I follow my father and Dr. Adibuah through the dome, simultaneously admiring the Beak and eavesdropping on their conversation. We pause as a large flightless bird appears at the edge of the path, eyeing us almost irritably, as if commanding us to make way. I’ve seen this species before—the molovu—but only in the floating three-dimensional displays of the Greenhouse, where my peers and I go for our daily classes. The animal is so close now—just out of arm’s reach. My head seems to buzz with the wonder of it. I squint, looking for the tentacle it hides in its orange breast plumage, an opposable, trunk-like limb that it uses to essentially vacuum seeds from the jungle floor. But the bird disappears into the bushes on the other side of the path.

  “Today is the first day that we were able to manipulate the oscree pattern to appear on a skinsuit,” Dr. Adibuah is saying, not bothering to conceal his excitement.

  “Good,” says my father, who never gets excited about anything. My grandmother’s death had stolen the light from his eyes, and she wasn’t even his mother.

  Dr. Adibuah opens his mouth to add something else, but a flash of red through the trees draws his attention and mine. We’re almost through the indoor jungle to the entrance of the Zoo, and Dr. Alba
tur stands ahead with his cluster of whitecoats like a drop of blood seeping through gauze, the red hood still shielding his face from the sun pouring in from above. The gloom returns to Dr. Adibuah’s eyes. He turns to me as if to distract himself from the sight of the Council Head.

  “You’ll be in the Zoo with us one day,” he says.

  I smile at Dr. Adibuah’s teasing use of “Zoo”—whitecoats don’t usually call it that; it’s another greencoat nickname for the laboratories in each compound, and is the place where greencoats such as myself desire to go most—a territory we won’t be allowed to enter until we’re twenty-one. It’s where all the important animal-focused research takes place, and while I’ve heard rumors that Dr. Albatur wants to cut back on zoology for other avenues of research, the Zoo is still the place where my grandmother said we would find the keys to our survival.

  Dr. Albatur is absorbed in conversation with one of the guards, but he turns to eye me, as if I’ll come charging at the doors to the Zoo with a battering ram. Dr. Adibuah must notice my scowl because he pauses to give me one more smile before he and my father join the other whitecoats.

  “One day at a time, O,” he says, and it seems like something he might be saying for his own benefit as well. “I hear they’re considering introducing internships, so you may be in sooner than you think.”

  “Internships? Seriously?”

  “I hope I haven’t given anything away,” Dr. Adibuah says, smiling. “Let’s keep that between us.”

  “Yes, sir,” I say.

  “Octavia, you can occupy yourself while I’m with Dr. Adibuah? You have your research?” my father asks as we near the Zoo’s doors.

  He doesn’t wait for me to say yes, but instead turns to the guard, who stands aside and allows my father and Dr. Adibuah to register their thumbprints on the scanner. The door slides open without a sound. Dr. Albatur doesn’t bother to scan his thumb—he sweeps in through the entrance and everyone else follows.

  When the door closes, I turn back to the main dome of the Beak. As much as I’d like to be in the labs, the fact that I’m unaccompanied for my first visit to this compound means I can actually explore. Everywhere there are whitecoats with slates and recording equipment, standing and observing different birds as they hover and dart and do the things that birds do. Some of the white-coated doctors are even perched in trees, motionless as they watch a bird in a nest or an egg hatching. The animals go about their business. Many of them were born in the compound; they don’t know anything else. Like me.