Evershore(Skyward #3.1)(8)

Which meant I shouldn’t keep them from it. If she was busy, FM had less time to worry in my general direction. “Yeah, we’re done here,” I said. “How is the platform exploration going?”

“The team is still working on it,” Rig said. They were looking for more platform control rooms like the one on Wandering Leaf. It was similar enough to the platforms on Detritus that it seemed likely we might have some with similar capabilities. More platforms that could hyperjump or fire hyperweapons would be a valuable asset. “There is a lot of junk in the debris belt, and a lot of platforms to search.”

“I understand,” I said. “Let me know if you find anything.”

“Will do,” Rig said as FM pushed her chair away from the table and moved to join him. Rig didn’t report to me officially, but we were all in a holding pattern until Cobb returned, so sharing information only made sense.

“Are you ready to look for signals now?” I asked Alanik.

“Yes,” she said. “But not here. These chairs are too square. It’s distracting.”

I didn’t have a chance to ask what she meant, because Alanik had already stood up from her…square chair and marched out of the conference room.

I scooped up Snuggles and Boomslug and followed Alanik, as she seemed to know where she was going. I hoped I’d be able to help. I had to do something, because if I didn’t, the tragedies we’d suffered would only be the beginning.





Three


Alanik brought me to one of the small meeting rooms. At the head of the square table sat the weirdest chair I had ever seen. It looked as if it was made entirely from tree branches, sanded and polished and warped into twisting shapes that stretched up the back in a spiraling pattern. As I got closer I could see that it was a continuous carving from a single large piece of wood.

“Did you bring that here?” I asked.

“Yes,” Alanik said. “It was Arturo’s suggestion. I was saying that I find your furniture strangely square, and he said that if I was going to spend hours searching for Gran-Gran and Cobb in the negative realm, I might as well bring myself back a comfortable place to sit. It’s my favorite from my own home.”

The seat was polished wood rather than a cushion, and Alanik folded herself onto it with her legs tucked under her.

There was another chair in here—which did look squarish beside hers, but it had cushions covered in a plain brown fabric, and looked much more comfortable to me. I wondered if Arturo had been using it. They seemed to be spending a lot of time together.

I sank into the chair. “I don’t know if I’m going to be any help at this.”

“If you’re willing to try,” Alanik said, “it can’t hurt.”

I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. As I reached out with my cytonic senses, I could feel Alanik on the chair beside me, and Boomslug and Snuggles settling on my lap. I widened my focus and found the other slugs across the platform, and—dimly—the vibrations that indicated there were still more taynix down on the planet that we hadn’t been able to locate.

I should probably be down there looking for them myself, since I could sense them and the ground crews couldn’t. Maybe Cobb would use that as an excuse to send me away for a while once he returned. It would be better than bereavement leave. At least I’d have something to focus on, something to do.

“Okay,” Alanik said. “We’re going to reach away from Detritus. The universe is like a giant map, and we can examine places up close or at a distance. Do you know what I mean?”

“Not really,” I said. “I can focus in on one person’s mind, or sense the cytonic…vibration of a group. But I don’t see locations, only people.”

“People!” Snuggles announced. I thought she liked being included.

“Hmm,” Alanik said. “This is why you have a hard time hyperjumping, probably.”

“I can visualize a physical place in my mind,” I said. “Like I can imagine the trees of ReDawn, because I’ve seen them, and send that picture to Snuggles.”

“Snuggles,” Boomslug said affectionately.

“Forget about the places then,” Alanik said. “I think our experience of them is different. Instead, try reaching for people, but instead of looking for them, listen.”

That sounded just as nonsensical, but at least it didn’t require me to look for things I couldn’t see.

“When you say ‘listen,’ do you mean for things you hear? Or the way Spensa heard the stars, the way I heard the slugs. Like, the vibration of the universe?”

“Neither,” Alanik said. “Like when I speak in your mind. Listen for the voices of others. You can intercept their communications, whether it’s hypercomm or mind-to-mind. It all passes through the negative realm, and if you are passing through it at the same time…”

Okay. That made sense. “Thank you for explaining,” I said. “When Gran-Gran taught me this stuff, she mostly made me knead bread and told me to listen to the stars. It helped, weirdly, but it wasn’t exactly intuitive.”

“That’s not as bad a tactic as you might think,” Alanik said. “My training was similar. I can try to explain things to you, but in the end your intuition is the only way you will learn.”