Читать книгу The Record She Left Behind - Patrice Sharpe-Sutton - Страница 12

The Zenobians wended among stars to record Milky Way spectra and search for cosmic anomalies.

Zer had burrowed into a comfortable position, knees tucked to chest, to watch streaming particles. When choreographed, the ceaseless flow of light patterns showing on her viewscreen would provide background melody for leaping, plunging thermal colors. A musical bar displayed translated heat-color into soundless notes. Zer wanted to hear the pulsing frequencies. She pat, tap, patted the display as ribbons of blue and purple wavelengths rose and burst and collapsed.

Zer glanced about the workroom. No one stirred in either direction along the hallway curve. Crewmates sat at four paired stations, spaced along the curve in a compass ring. Those Zer could see had their noses raptly pointed at their displays; Vatta was just as engrossed.

Zer drummed the beat of the pulsing line, waiting. Leon had forgotten to invite her to the pilot's room where sound data flowed in. Pilots transposed celestial landscapes into music; he'd promised a chance to watch him choreograph a composition from raw data. She could change dimensions, sneak in. Suffering Leon’s calm, impersonal wrath beat endless hours tracking data far from home in a big tub in alien space where she wasn't even allowed to change dimensions. It was natural to turn invisible; back home everyone did.

Here, they had to practice staying third-dimensional solid so later on Earth they wouldn't shock Earthlings. If they ever got there.

She stretched her legs and got to her feet to go check the seeds. It was hard ignoring their pleas, the tiny prickly sensations in her mind.

Sudden laughter sailed round the hall. Vatta glanced at Zer. “We're swapping travel jokes to pass time. Pool with us.”

Zer was not in the mood for psychic communion. “What's funny?”

“Maiden visits to Earth.”

“Yours wasn't funny.” When humans rushed toward Vatta with flashing cameras, Vatta lost control of her body and turned into a semi-dematerialized halo long enough to play tricks on Earthling minds.

“We’re a threat,” Vatta said, laughing.

“Glad you broke them in. You suggesting we play jokes on them?” Zer asked. Better that than change their habits just so they could spend one month among them.

“It gets easier staying solid, especially in Earth’s gravity.”

“Sure.” Remaining third-di solid was easy until you had to. Now she flipped somersaults to keep from exploding or turning fourth- or fifth-dimensional. She used to go invisible at whim with no concern about appearances. It made for quick travel.

“We're all having difficulty adjusting.” Vatta leaned over, tapped a long, pearly finger on Zer's screen and switched on image choices that activated memories. “Solid body sensations.”

“Distractions.” These preflight simulations were Zer’s least favorite part of warrior training. She’d liked the physical exercise part and spent extra time in third-di form, practicing.

“So you don't go planting trees.” Vatta changed the angle and size of pulsing frequencies. Huge, lifelike forty-foot waves surged straight at Zer.

She ducked as the swell broke, smelled pungent seaweed—recalling its briny burning in her nose got her cells all agitated. The molecular frequency motions or bonds of her body changed. She gripped the chair, wishing she weren’t so volatile. She’d go nova, turn into a light being. She’d lose the way home.

Leon, Zer telepathically shouted, turn on the music.

Finally, a long, reedy note wailed past her round the deck. Vatta swayed with it, crooning. Zer jumped up to dance, but the tantalizing song receded. Drat Leon. Was it another test of her will? He was usually subtle. “Lousy pilot.” While composing, he was supposedly able to mentally stalk the crew, caring for their welfare.

“You wanted to hear a music sample,” Vatta said.

“I could’ve gone nova. He should’ve come.” Leon had the golden eyes; he could’ve calmed her just by looking at her.

“C-ring's out of sync.” Vatta was listening to the thrum coming from the wall behind. “No wonder we're giddy.” Inside the C-ring wall, the pyrid’s midsection, energy twisted round a coil and generated subliminal throbs that promoted pooling or other states.

“Rhythm's off,” Zer said.

“You’ll adjust,” Vatta said.

You’re off tune, Leon said, telepathically.

Fine. I’ll take a walk, Zer thought back at him. And maybe she’d plant a few seed.

That’s a dangerous thought cloud forming in your mind.

You don’t have to monitor me that closely, Leon. If you are, why haven’t you helped?

Busy. Leon conveyed an image of a broken song-keying slate, its cord disconnected from the music duct that transferred heat-color sound vibrations into the pilot’s hub. Take care you don’t get overstimulated. Leon laughed softly in Zer's mind.

She couldn’t help smiling. One night back home, before he’d become so responsible, he’d followed her wandering moodily among ships in port and crawled after her into a ship’s quiet music tube. Basking in the cave-dark tubes usually soothed her.

He chased her through the winding passage until they rolled around laughing and merging, fifth-di style. They performed the petal dance for the first and only time. They weren't blood-related, but even if they were, it wouldn't have mattered, not when it came to the petal dance. Bodies sang their truth, however temporary, and theirs had spoken.

Is that an invitation? Zer asked.

Warning.

Don’t stalk me, she said.

Temptation is brewing in your head, Leon said, still mind reading. It’s subliminal now—

Cram your subliminals, Zer thought back, realizing what he meant. You talked me into this trip. And not you, nobody, said anything about temptation. Did you stage this mysterious thrum? If this is one of your weird tests, let’s see where it takes me. She’d received large amounts of wrong stimulation since leaving Zenobia. It was the offbeat thrum that provoked urges to plant Exotica seed.

Working south quad didn’t help. She and Vatta, biologists with different expertise, worked facing space with their backs to the hall. Across the corridor, doors opened into a biolab and small plant-breeding drawers whose possibilities tugged at Zer.

Prickly sensations assaulted her again, stronger. Zer hurried down the hall. Leon had caused her to want to plant Exotica trees.

Taboo where we’re going, Leon telepathed. You’ll be fighting it all the way to Earth. I trust it’s not necessary to mentally stalk you the entire journey.

Zer ignored him. He could’ve made her leave the seed or dump them in space. Was she so unfit for Earth that he had to keep thinking up tests for her to pass? Why insist she come?

The urge to plant prodded Zer again, but now she wasn’t sure if the desire came from the seed or Leon. Those bags of seed could drive her mad. Obsessed at the time she’d brought them aboard, she’d easily rationalized tripling her gift-giving allotment. That same odd prickling, which she’d thought came from within, tugged at her from the biolab.

Don’t, Leon warned.

Zer walked as fast as she could past doors that led into the biolab, library, and restoration chamber and hurried into the engineering lab. Looking at blueprints engaged her love of building.

She was viewing festival structure blueprints when the co-pilot announced a message from back home to stop sending stellar data and commence phase two of mission.

Zer slowly slipped the blueprints back in the drawer. They’d reach Earth and meet aliens sooner. Why elders aborted phase one so soon hardly mattered. They were ultrasensitive, perceiving futures no one else saw for generations, seeing omens in raw data and their by-products.

Zer hurried to her seat. The star map between her and Vatta's consoles refocused on a region of the Milky Way where Sirius, a guide star in Earth sectors, lit up. The co-pilot synchronized with the mothership's prime navigator. Uranus soon appeared, surrounded by flashing lights signaling a storm. The blue go light glowed on the map when all pyrids’ frequencies aligned with Sirius’ coordinates.

Zer felt a pressure on her head, during transport to Sirius' neighborhood. Pilots reset coordinates, the ship hopped to Uranus, and dropped into orbit.

Blue-green clouds back-lit by violent lightning bathed the planet. Ship sensors recorded ultraviolet heat-sound while voyagers watched, enthralled, orbiting with the strangely tilted planet. It had a reputation for inspiring unusual ideas.

Its beauty captivated and flooded Zer with an expansiveness that broke through whatever had blocked pooling; she dipped her mind in and shared jokes with the crew, diving into the rapids and bubbles of group thoughts and sensations. She escaped her tree urges and visions.

The communal sharing helped crews maintain common focus when flying missions.

It was also in this region, while pooling, that ancient elders had learned to discharge excess emotional energy from their bodies in the form of pictures. They'd named it exo-painting. Electrical images formed in their minds, leaked through their skin, and displayed visibly in the space around them. Back home they'd taught everyone. The art became as natural as breathing.

Too natural, Zer thought. Newer crew members, like her, often got lost in personal visions, exo-painted or not, and forgot missions. So she forgave Leon for his insensitive, inexplicable teaching methods; he was stuck with monitoring crew attitudes. Zer sighed. She never understood his lessons until after some rotten experience he'd dreamed up just for her.

The second day of the storm Leon called her to the pilot’s room, but not to watch choreography, she realized, when he looked at her, his eyes veiled by the retractable membrane.

“Prepare for a session on adaptability,” he said, curtly. He touched a panel, and the room flooded with raw, percussive, primal sounds. She felt naked and vulnerable.

Violent noises tore at the room, Zer's bodysuit, her body. Shrieks clawed at her senses. The chaotic noise confused her. She panicked and grabbed at the first thought: mimic a tree. She stood and rooted in place with her feet planted solidly as if she’d sent roots down into the floor to hold her steady against panic: She felt shredded. She’d go nova. Tears welled in her eyes, but she stood her ground, calling on trees. Tree thoughts possessed her, shimmied sap-like up her legs, the deep pulse calming. She laughed joyously. Rhythms shifted around her.

Up through her feet, up her legs, she felt the ship’s steady thrum, more leverage against the ripping shrieks that swept through her. Letting go, she slipped into a timeless river and heard energy sounding from beyond the ship. Energy slurred and shifted again. Space opened to her, welcomed her into a passionate Uranian storm.

Abruptly, the tearing ultraviolence slowed, the lull resembling the dreamy process of exo-painting that started as streams of purple ions swirling in the head. Quiet, frothy fizzes and pings lapped at her mind. Clarity settled over her. Zer calmly sat before a recording slate, and her hands moved of their own will.

Her fingers transferred the key-coded frequency readings that blasted, moaned, or soughed through the music tube. Heat-beat tones swept into the hub at a frenzied pace. No time to think. Light flashed on the frequency-analyzer keyboard, demanding response. With her senses effortlessly swimming in that timeless river, Zer translated whatever feelings the ongoing sounds evoked.

When the starship veered toward Miranda, a Uranian moon, Zer was the mountains, the plains, cracks in the icy surface, fathoms-deep canyons. She was the flit of young terraces and the aged, broken surfaces. A bolt of lightning cracked: her vast body quivered with the seeding.

Spent, Zer leaned back, her fingers sliding from the keys. She felt shaken of energy yet more rooted in her body. Her skin felt thicker, her thoughts tougher and fascinated by the sensual focus required of a choreographer. Leon’s harsh preparation was worth it—for some unknown.

“Tree thoughts got you through.” His neutral tone indicated the idea didn’t bother him much. Smiling, he turned off the sound and moved toward her. The membrane hiding the shining light of his eyes rolled back. Burning golden eyes swept the length of her.

“Dance with me.” His arms reached for her and embraced her. They were wind and crackling light infused with the energy of stars, skimming the floor. When he let her go, Zer landed in reality with a thud, the magic gone. How did he do that?

He played their work, one section at a time, watching her. “What do you hear?”

Zer noticed nothing until he played their recordings at the same time. No significant difference sounded in what each transcribed from the celestial musicscape. They’d responded in the same, sensual way.

“All three hundred pilots produced a similar composition. We heard and shared a universal sound. Thank the trees for not flying apart.”

They prepared me for something, she thought, waiting for more.

“Records will be superimposed and adjusted for minor differences,” he said.

“That’s it?”

“We’re free to compose personal responses. You can do so in the work hall, if you prefer?” His gaze lingered.

“You know I’d rather stay.” Besides, she wanted to observe Leon’s skill at rendering a weathering landscape into symphonies. Like all purebloods, he was a maestro.

His fingers flew across the keys; his eyes were shining.

Zer lost herself in his music and rose to dance the liquid tempo. She swayed in one spot when he got stuck and played the same bars repeatedly. Hands and hips gesturing, she suggested variations, and he translated her movements into duets and light-hearted riffs.

“Greater than parts,” Leon said, smiling, “relatively rare.”

“You knew something like this—”

“Guessed.” Leon, eyes beckoning, began circling her with the slow opening steps and words of the petal dance. “Heart of my heart.”

“Heart of my heart,” she responded, gliding just out of reach. He sang to her, and the low timbre shivered her spine, her very bones trilling a subatomic symphony. Slowly, she moved closer till their skin barely touched, their bodies singing to each other. Her heart and womb opened, petal like, feeling the way as she and Leon began changing dimensions together. They danced as spirits of the fifth or seventh dimension, without separation, without the nameless sea of molecular matter between them. They found timelessness, together. She felt grown up.

The planetary storm raged another day. The co-pilot informed them they were headed for Jupiter, set the coordinates, took their records, and left them alone.

The starship orbited the yellowish gas giant whirling within its rings. Zer edged her keying slate closer to Leon, breathing down his neck and swaying while primordial energy within Jupiter’s body and cyclonic wind were erupting from one spot. Leon swept Zer around the room. She could have stayed forever.

At times she wished they were more than caring friends but glad they were close enough to explore another sort of love that was intimate yet not.

She huddled among pillows when the ship entered the asteroid belt where it dodged or blasted flying rocks. A huge wall screen displayed the explosions, but Zer was hearing the volcano that had wiped out her birth home and many groves. Leon had saved her.

Except, she wouldn’t have been alive to rescue if Exotica hadn’t protected her. They’d died saving her. Zer was tending them in the breeding grove when the fires came. While trees on far ridges combusted into fireballs, her trees herded her to the dock where Leon found her. And made her leave the trees behind.

He picked her up kicking and pushed her into an aircraft. As they lifted, she saw embers catch in the leafy crowns of Exotica and burst into orange torches. Her last sight of home.

Leon took her to his mother in Zenobia who brought her home to her mind and emotions. Zer adopted Zenobian ways. She never cried till that day Leon presented her with a dozen Exotica saplings. She learned everything she could about their biology and language, for she honored them.

Every chance, she’d gathered with other Lilio survivors. They loved and understood the trees as she did, making music and dancing while the trees shook their crowns in rhythmic snaps like ancient Egyptians playing castanets. Zer hoped Earthlings would appreciate the adventure and humor that Exotica brought to their lives.

Leon, much as he loved her, couldn’t fully understand her grief. Yet he’d brought her saplings, and the renewed symbiosis with Exotica restored her sense of wonder. They healed her, pulling the deepest sorrows from her mind.

She’d dedicated her life’s purpose to Exotica. Now Exotica would divide her loyalty.

Leon turned from the control panel, gazing at her. The membrane dropped over his eyes.

When the starship snagged an eighty-kilometer-wide asteroid, Zer left him to mine iridium for the elders’ musical instruments. A previous crew had tunneled into the megarock beneath the parked starship. With about sixty others, Zer scouted for the brittle sound-signature of iridium metal, sweeping the area with a spec-meter. The cavern magnified every sizzle, moan, whistle, and click of radiation. The constant whip-cracks made it difficult to distinguish iridium snaps or to think.

Zer and three others turned down a quieter side tunnel, their ion gun beams set for the desired atomic composition, and found several rich surface deposits. Once used to the asteroid’s rolling motion and lower gravity, they float-hovered along using their magnetic hand scrapers.

Zer raked small, loose metal chunks into small pouches attached to her spacesuit; she was glad to work with simple, solid matter and enjoy guiltless thoughts about Exotica. She would return the seed to Zenobia, if Earthlings proved unreceptive. “I vow,” she whispered.

The echoing “vow” started her companions and her singing. She didn’t notice when the others quit until Brea interrupted her.

“Hey mate, an asteroid split and calved. We’re leaving. Say your good-byes.”

“You were spying?”

Brea was settled against a ledge. He laughed. “You're touchy for a Zenobian.” His grey-flecked green eyes bored into hers, hunting.

She shivered. Though Zer didn’t know him well, she avoided Brea. He rarely agreed with anyone, baited people, and always wanted to gamble. Not unusual for someone from Homa, a continent of merchants, spacefarers, and gamblers. But Brea’s every glance seemed a dare. She felt like prey. She busied herself, disconnecting two full pouches of ore from her suit.

“What’re you going to do with that loot?” Brea eyed the pouches.

Zer had enough ore for a couple of chimes and half a dozen of the popular glass balls that were vitrified or studded with iridium.

“I can show you how to make glass balls and lollipop radiation sucks,” he said.

“Are you always vulgar?” Zer asked.

“Can’t take a joke? Come on.” He took the pouches and started for the ship.

When they reached the work hall, he headed for the door leading to the middle of the pyrid.

“Where are you going?” Zer asked.

“You’re Leon’s apprentice, aren’t you?”

“No,” Zer said, mystified. She’d never asked or wanted to train as any kind of leader.

Brea ignored her, depositing the pouches at the pilot's door, and left.

Zer hadn’t seen Leon all day and felt the distance when he greeted her.

“Please, stay. We have things to discuss.” He said nothing more, but puckered his thin lips between thumb and forefinger. He never discussed matters aloud yet liked company when making up his mind. After the ship rose, he sat at the controls, his back to her.

Zer nested among pillows and enjoyed, briefly, the larger view of space from the hub. The starship plunged after an asteroid calf, changing the calf’s rocky trajectory before it crashed into Mars.

“People’s thoughts solidify on Mars,” Leon said, without turning.

“Meaning what?”

But he didn’t speak again until after they landed on the planet, far from recently abandoned Earthers’ projects. By then, hundreds of Zenobians in pilgrimage-blue bodysuits dotted the landscape like a field of flowers. They stood on an old recessed landing site gouged from a crater. Leon tossed Zer one of the tough-fabric pilgrimage suits with its hooded mask. She pulled it on and clamped gravity weights on the footers.

When they crossed the old site, Zer experienced a peculiar sensation. Her tentative resolve about establishing Exotica on Earth grew firmer with each step. Leon was telling her of the ancient city buried leagues below Mar's surface. He cringed but not from the frigid wind. Around them blew bio-ancestral memories that evoked a sense of isolation.

Through clouded eye-shields, Zer peered at the Martian surroundings, the cold, dry club-shaped rocks and rust-orange desert dust. Dust had smothered older lava and poured over ancient shores, where the dead bloom of an earlier Zenobian civilization had lost to time. Zer shuddered and determined to grow at least one Exotica, a living tree, on Earth.

“I like the gravity,” she said, lightly. The atmospheric pressure approximated Zenobia’s.

“Yes, pleasant, more like Earth's than other planets in this solar system. The only resemblance.” He was baiting her. Would he never let up?

He didn’t want her believing Earthlings could get used to sentient trees gliding across the land. But Exotica refreshed people’s spirits. It was this desiccated planet that depleted people’s spirits, the disquieting, somber beauty of Mar's passage through time. Being here strengthened her conviction and need to help preserve Earth. This planet conferred a mantle of responsibility; she would plant Exotica on Earth. She had to. The premonition made her shiver. Why did Mars cause such a reaction in relation to Earth? Because a civilization died here?

From the ship, Zer had seen Mar’s eroded mountains and dunes and basins cratered by asteroids. She couldn’t imagine living in the shadows of giant boulders tumbling past or crashing, the constant battle, the wind that lifted rocks and slammed them against the ground. Maybe the legend of Zenobia was backward: Forebears first crossed the galactic breach heading toward Andromeda, away from the Milky Way.

“They had only a colony here,” Leon said, following her thoughts.

Unlike her, Leon never forgot to mind read. But though he often disagreed with people’s thoughts, he remained kindly. Like an elder. She stared at him.

“I’m glad we experienced this place,” he said.

“So am I. I’m slightly more responsible.” Zer smiled and tucked her gloved hand in his.

That evening, Leon changed into a black bodysuit with a long, black cape and danced for her while she lay on ruby and emerald-colored pillows. He slowly raised his arms, the cape forming the flanks of a mountain. Abruptly, he convulsed and howled as if he were an animal, head thrown back, raging and wailing. Zer sat up straight, her body reverberating with this dark intimacy. This was not the man she thought she knew so well. Through his howling, she glimpsed the darker rhythm of Mars, the once molten lava that rushed across the terrain. Tears glimmered on Leon's cheeks, and she saw land exploding, raining sulfur. His ancestry lived in him—as Exotica’s legacy lived in her—but he usually mastered his feelings. His vulnerability made her eyes well with tears.

“Remember,” he said, huskily.

“I will never forget.”

“Thank you for coming on this journey.” He whispered, sliding next to her. Petal by petal, he opened his heart to her and showed her a dark courage, giving her a reservoir to draw from. He was, she later realized, preparing them for the days ahead.

That night, the elders sent the voyagers a message to check matters on Earth, immediately. Leon emotionally pulled away from Zer, yet he held her tightly when she clung to him. She felt the dark rhythm that had shaped Mars take hold and shape something in them, something she didn’t understand.

“You’d better go.”

She left shaken loose from him and her moorings.

Brea stopped her on the work deck. “I know about your trees. I’ll wager you won’t be able to establish them.”

Zer hurried toward her console and Vatta as the starship zipped toward the Van Allen belt near Earth. Before settling in orbit, the core mothership and pyrids separated, a movement that subtly fractured the communal mind; the three hundred pyrids floated alone in orbit in octaves of space, their crews’ distant notes.

In Pyrid Six, a disoriented Zer forgot rules and was about to change dimensions to visit other crews when Leon telepathically called her a clinging symbiot, suggesting she’d jeopardize her trip to Earth. She thudded on a cushion, rematerializing in her personal cubicle, and lay there, fists clenched, while Leon caressed her mind with a brotherly touch, treating her as a child, as if events on Mars had never happened.

Zer stayed aboard but relished the moment another lonely soul mentally reached out till all Zenobians were pooling psyches: One mosaic brain resonated, circling Earth’s magnetic belt. Earth’s deep tone rippled through them.

Pyrids then pulled away and descended one by one, falling into planetary orbit, the crews scattering to Earth’s many biomes. On a world of plural geographies and customs, spacefarers like Zer expected to explore titillating facets of individuality cultures before returning home—preparing for the day they and Milky Wayans would share galaxies and maybe co-evolve.

However, the immediate future changed. From the mothership, stationed beyond the Van Allen belt, Elder Kalila relayed a report on miniscule flickers of activity manifesting a light-century ahead of expectation on the far edge of Earth’s solar system. Pyrid crews considered it the initial stage of an event that would affect no one in their lifetime except ultrasensitive elders. But a second report noted a significant orbital change of planet Mat in the region beyond Pluto: the cue the elders expected.

Zer recalled what followed the reports as a blur of events, revelations, and constant struggles against exo-painting that started after Vatta recited an obscure legend. It was about the origins of mixed bloods and Lilios that occurred after disaster in the Milky Way long ago, around the time a third strain of mixed bloods emerged. The tale touched on the elders' belief that at certain intervals, a voyage to another galaxy sounded the endnote of one era and triggered a new one—along with natural disaster. Thus, before photon and gravity effects reached a planet now deemed ripe for explosions, pyrid crews retreated, orbiting near Earth, to observe and await better conditions.

***

On Pyrid Six, Zer and her crewmates debated the rule of intergalactic travel: Do not influence the evolution of others. How? When they returned to the mess, the precipitation of cosmic phenomena would make it difficult to honor the rule. The subrule, bend-but-don’t-break the rule, muddled the issue. It was a beloved, ancient axiom handed down by forebears who’d learned to bend reality. And exo-paint; they all could. Exo-pictures started as purplish clouds in the mind, whirling fluorine ions in the brain, that occurred as natural as breathing.

So they indulged, venting feelings or ideas for useful products. Soon, Leon requested they break the habit, announcing it, gutlessly, behind the sound system. But the C-ring thrum was stimulating creativity, making it extra difficult to quit.

Quitting became impossible within hours after a small asteroid exploded in the atmosphere and shattered into dust, turning the sky bright, near Antarctica, CE 2033, Earth time, followed by underwater explosions and shock waves. Multiple events affected magnetic flux on the ocean floor and subtler orgasmic reactions of Earth: tremors after slabs of undersea mounts dove toward the hot iron core of Earth's body and after molten magma shimmied along old seabed trenches. Tons of ice sheet slippage heightened seas. Atmospheric currents dispersed asteroid particles around the globe. Hazy volcanic and other ejecta later hid the sun, chilling the globe.

Helplessly, the crew watched from afar as some Earth people died. But other Earthlings donned bodysuits with built-in nose and mouth filters, and many went underground. Indoors, people tapped blank computer screens as power grids crashed. Underwater explosions set off fault line slippage, earthquakes, and minor reactions at retired nuclear-waste sites. People looted stores for survival gear. Feet ran across rooftop gardens. On a map, a finger traced networks of green belts, trails, and zoos between cities and high-rises. Animals pacing in cages on edges of trails paced faster. Some broke loose. A boy leading a camel vanished in whirling dust. Disoriented geese flew in circles, a cue to retreat from Earth's magnetic field. High wind and fires enveloped regions of the planet.

Zer and her crewmates created a gallery of the images, forging bonds of sorts with Earthlings. Leon didn’t bother to try stopping them. He encouraged the crew to exo-paint. As excess emotion built up in their brains, the swirling purplish ions needed release. The ions, discharging outwardly through the skin, formed pictures unique to each person. The art, ingrained from childhood, enabled them to stabilize their bodies in their high UV home environment and to cope with compassion.

Longtime voyagers had greater detachment and control over their feelings and bodies; Zer had little, especially with no mature, soothing trees aboard. She painted numerous Exotica.

After Leon resumed mindstalking, Zer stemmed the urge to exo-paint or plant seed via frequent visits to the blueprint chamber. There, the crew produced samples of utilitarian objects they’d exo-painted. Co-pilot Raya had helped Zer design a windtop, combined with energy-storing fabric, for generating a little energy in homes. Today, she’d come to see the sample.

No one was around, but on the work table by the fabricator, she found the sample lying on top of a sketch of Exotica transmuting poisons in air and water. She crumpled the sketch and shoved it in the recycler chute.

Days later in the room, Brea ambushed her, emerging from behind the fabricator. “Plant now, they’ll clean the environment sooner. Bet it’ll speed evolution, we’ll go home sooner.”

“If trees restore the planet too fast, Earthlings won’t have to develop new ways to cope. They’ll revert to old habits.” Zer fingers curled into fists as she spouted one of Leon’s stock views. She disagreed. Exotica might enhance personality traits for good or ill, but interaction with them wouldn’t stop Earthlings from evolving. Nor cause symbiosis with the trees any more than Zenobians had; only Lilios, who grew up with trees, fully embraced them.

“Don’t think much of Earthlings?” Brea flashed a daring grin.

“Heard they’re full of fears. Exotica can’t detox that so fast.” But they could, she thought. And make it easier for everyone to evolve.

“I’ll wager—”

“Leave me be.” She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing she sided with him. She didn’t need anyone urging her to plant trees before they landed.

Today, Brea waylaid her in the gallery, following her among exo-pictures.

“You can’t resist a natural urge,” he said. “The thought makes you zing.”

Zer, who’d come to look at pictures to overpower such instincts, stomped off.