Star's End Read online

  No, Esme told herself. Don’t start worrying until we have definitive proof.

  Will activated his lightbox, a curtain of light coming up between him and the three new recruits.

  “Have you had any unusual dreams in the last week?” he asked, lifting his gaze toward them.

  The recruits shifted in their seats, glanced at each other—they never expected this question, which was why Will and Esme had decided it was best to always lead with it. Just in case it was one of the R-Troops who was helping the Radiance.

  “No, sir,” the first one said, and the others agreed.

  “Do you remember any of your dreams from this time period? Can you describe them to me?”

  Another uncomfortable pause. Esme leaned back in her seat, trying to make herself as nonintrusive as possible. She needed to be there to hear the answers; it was her decision, ultimately, if further action needed to be taken. She might consult with Will, because he understood better than she did. But everything came to her in the end.

  Two of the recruits shook their heads, but a third said, “I always remember my dreams, sir. I dream in tandem with the rest of our unit. Recycling the day’s events, that’s what they tell me dreams are.”

  “That’s exactly what dreams are.” Will smiled, gentle and fatherly. “And yes, you’re all dreaming in tandem with your unit, even if you don’t remember. Tell me”—he thumbed his lightscreen—“Private Woods-33, do you recall any dreams that featured any of the following?”

  He coughed, cleared his throat. Private Woods-33 blinked expectantly.

  “An unfamiliar language?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Images of black feathers or scales?”

  “No.”

  “Inhuman creatures?”

  Private Woods-33 frowned. “You mean animals, sir? I think I dreamt of a cat one night, since there are cats all over—”

  Will waved his hand dismissively. “Not a cat, no. By inhuman I meant”—here he glanced at Esme, and she nodded once, giving permission—“alien.”

  Private Woods-33 went very still. One of the other recruits turned pale and ashy. “A breach,” he muttered. “This is about a breach.”

  “We’re here to determine that,” said Esme. Her voice seemed to startle him, and he jumped, glanced over at her suspiciously. “But so far, that doesn’t appear to be the case.”

  “I agree,” Will said. “Have any of you experienced daytime hallucinations?”

  They all shook their heads no, much more fervently now. They understood the ramifications of what the questioning was about.

  “Have you noticed any strange behavior among your unit?”

  Here, though, was a hesitation. The R-Troops were designed to be loyal, both to each other and to the Coromina Group. Sometimes, these loyalties conflicted.

  Esme leaned forward and folded her hands on the table. “If a soldier has been acting strangely,” she said, “he will be treated with dignity and respect. A breach is not the fault of a soldier. It’s the fault of the Radiance.” Unless the soldier was helping the Radiance, of course, a possibility Esme dreaded dealing with a second time. But she didn’t say this to the new recruits. “They’re locked away in their dimension, and you are the most vulnerable point of entry.” She smiled, having worked with new recruits long enough to know when it was necessary for her to become motherly, the way Will became fatherly. “Your greatest strength—your connection with each other—that’s how the Radiance will find their way in. If we can stop it before it gets too far, it works out much better for everyone.” She paused, and then said, with a dry tongue, “Radiance included.”

  This soothed them, the way it always did. She settled back in her chair. “That’s good to know,” said Private Woods-33, “but I haven’t noticed anything strange. Truly.”

  “Me, neither,” said one of the others, and the third nodded in agreement.

  “No strange thoughts?” Will asked. “No whispers in an unfamiliar language?”

  No, nothing.

  Perhaps Dr. Goetze had overreacted after all. The R-Troops were safe, and the Radiance were still tucked away in the strange, poisonous dimension where they’d been contained thirteen years ago. The year of the attack at Star’s End.

  The year Isabel went away. Then Adrienne, a year later, disappearing when she went off to college. And then finally Daphne, a few months after that. All three of Esme’s sisters scattering across the system, vanishing the way the Radiance had. Fading into an alternate reality.

  “Thank you for your time,” Esme said. “The Coromina Group appreciates your cooperation. If you ever noticed any of things Will mentioned, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Dr. Goetze can give you my information.” She smiled, one dazzling corporate smile, and the recruits returned it, nervously.

  Will did his part, thanking them, shaking their hands as if they were war-brothers. Then Esme and Will filed out into the hallway. The lab assistant waited for them, wide-eyed.

  “Everything appears fine,” Esme said. “But keep an eye on the unit. Watch for sleeping troubles especially.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The assistant scurried into the meeting room to deal with the recruits, and Will and Esme showed themselves out, back into the thick heat of the forest.

  “I told you, we’re worrying about nothing,” Will said.

  “Well, I still have to investigate Catequil, so we’ll see. Do you want to share a car back to the office?” Esme looked over at him. “I hope you’re right, though.” She thought about her lunch with Miguel. Your father’s dying. Maybe this was her father’s doing. What had happened with the Radiance had been his biggest fuck-up, even if he’d managed to turn it around in the end, with the cover-up, the containment, the R-Troops. She wouldn’t put it past him to try a do-over. One more fight before his body gave out.

  She shivered in the heat.

  • • •

  That night, Esme dreamt of the garden at Star’s End. Rows of pineapples and acacia trees and a maze built of genetically engineered plumeria plants. The grass wet and soft beneath her bare feet.

  Isabel, whispering into her ear: Ms. Coromina. Ms. Coromina.

  “Ms. Coromina, you have a visitor.”

  Esme’s eyes flew open. For one delirious moment, she thought she was in her childhood bedroom. But then the familiar walls of her apartment swam into view, stark and empty, and the voice of the apartment’s AI system grounded her in the present.

  “Ms. Coromina, you have a visitor.”

  “I heard you the first time.” Esme pushed herself up and tossed her blankets aside. “Who is it?”

  “Your father.”

  Esme’s chest constricted. All the bleariness of sleep blinked away. “Are you sure?” She slid off the bed. “What time is it? Why is he here so late?”

  “It’s nearly midnight. I told him you were asleep, but he insisted I wake you.”

  This sounded like her father. It was a relief, really, to know that even dying couldn’t change him completely. Esme ran her fingers through her hair, blinked the sleep out of her eyes. “Send him up, but put him in the parlor while I get ready.”

  “Very good, Ms. Coromina.”

  The apartment fell silent. Esme went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Her hair was mussed from sleep, and she brushed it out and pulled it into a knot at the back of her neck. Then she changed out of her sleeping clothes, pulling on an old Coromina Group uniform shirt, a pair of loose pants.

  When she walked into the parlor, her father was waiting.

  “Did I wake you?” he asked.

  “You know you did.” Esme perched on the edge of a chair, keeping her posture straight. They regarded each other in the silent emptiness of her apartment.

  “Miguel wasn’t supposed to tell you,” her father said, after a time.

  “Yeah, you mentioned that.”

  He sighed. “This is a complicated matter, Esme.”

  “It’s really not,” Esme said. “But I
guess I shouldn’t have expected better from you.”

  He didn’t react. She hadn’t expected him to.

  “There are some things life prepares you for,” he said. “And some things it doesn’t. This is one of the latter.”

  Esme looked away, at the light painting hanging above the unused fireplace. An ugly thing, streaks of blue on a gray background. An old boyfriend had bought it for her. It was supposed to show the tumult of psychic connection. She got rid of the boyfriend but never bothered with the painting.

  “I wanted to tell you myself,” her father said.

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  He stared at her, face blank. “I was waiting for the right time. When you weren’t investigating Dr. Goetze’s concerns. I told Miguel because, I don’t know, I needed to tell someone. Some secrets are too . . .” His voice trailed away.

  Esme didn’t move. This was the closest to vulnerable she’d ever seen her father, and for a moment he was no longer Philip Coromina, prospector and visionary and billionaire, but a man who was dying.

  “I need you to do something for me,” he said, and the moment was lost. “Since you know anyway.”

  Esme glared at him. “You’re not going to apologize.”

  “I only apologize to clients,” he said, “and I never mean it.”

  Esme sighed. Of course.

  “How much did Miguel tell you?” he asked.

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  Her father shook his head. She choked back her surprise. Odd, that he didn’t go intel-gathering before he showed up at her apartment.

  “I wanted to hear it from you. Wanted to—to talk to you.”

  Esme gave him her iciest businesswoman glare, trying to mask the treacherous warmth that flared when he said he wanted to talk to her.

  “How much did he tell you?”

  She didn’t want to answer. She wanted to answer. Nothing was ever cut and dried when it came to her father.

  “Only that you’ve been diagnosed with galazamia.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “That you got the test results back three days ago. That he didn’t know how much time you had left.”

  “Yes,” her father said. “I kept that information to myself.”

  Esme had never seen her father visibly unsettled. She had never seen him undone.

  A coldness spread through her veins.

  “How long?” she said.

  Her father gave a brief, short laugh.

  “How long?”

  “Not much. Six months. A year at most.”

  “Six months!” Esme sprang to her feet, panic forcing her into movement. “Six fucking months! Most people with galazamia live six years from the time they’re diagnosed, and you—”

  “Most people are diagnosed early,” her father said softly. “Then they take the medications and they undergo the treatments and they drag it out as long as they want.”

  “How could you—lord, Dad, how could you miss the symptoms? The coughing up blood and the dizziness and the—everyone fucking knows that, Dad! Everyone.”

  “I’m nearly three hundred years old, Esme. I thought it was just my time.”

  “Bullshit,” said Esme. Her father had always seen dying as a form of giving up. Lots of people took youth treatments if they could afford them, but most didn’t do it for three centuries. He had. He was that self-involved. That controlling. Three hundred years old so he didn’t have to give up leadership of his company.

  Her father watched her, taking in the situation, weighing the pros and cons like it was a business meeting. She stared right back. She’d been through this before.

  “You always did know me the best,” he said with a smile.

  “Why the hell did you ignore the symptoms?”

  A pause. A hesitation. Then he said, “I thought my youth treatments would counteract the worst of it. So, I set the zamia aside. Powered through.”

  There, that was the answer she expected. He despised weakness. In some ways, it was startling to hear him confess he was sick at all.

  Her father shifted on the couch. He didn’t look sick. Old, yes, the rejuvenation treatments could only do so much at three hundred, but not sick. Not dying.

  “I don’t regret it,” he said. “I only wish I could have done it longer.”

  “What, pretended you didn’t have fucking zamia?”

  “That language, Esme, really isn’t becoming.”

  She glared at him.

  “There’s no point in wallowing in self-pity. No one’s found the cure for death yet.” Her father laughed, hard and bitter. “As you well know.”

  Esme sighed. The Coromina Group’s search for immortality had been the subject of rumors the last few years, mentions of a new high-clearance project popping up on the different news streams. She had spearheaded the project herself, although not for the reasons her father thought. She knew immortality was impossible. But medical advancements—that was something she wanted for the company. Make people better rather than killing them.

  “It’s a shame we weren’t successful,” he said. “You could move out of this penthouse to your own planet system. And I wouldn’t have to die.”

  “You’re not planning to shut the project down, are you?” She hoped not; otherwise she would have to go behind his back to get it up and running again. And that was not something she wanted to deal with, not when she needed to investigate these reports alerting the company to signs of a potential security breach.

  “No, of course not. There just won’t be anything for—for me.” He looked down at his hands, and Esme felt a quiver of pity deep inside her chest. She hated it. She’d seen the damage his secret projects could do. It was fitting that he wouldn’t benefit from this one.

  “So, this is why you show up at my apartment in the middle of the night?” she snapped. “To tell me you failed at living forever?”

  He stared at her, eyes dark and piercing. “I need a favor from you, Esme.”

  “What?” This, she hadn’t expected. “A favor? Right now? I still have one more security breach report to investigate!”

  “Yes.” Her father took a deep breath, his slumped shoulders rising and falling. “The timing is bad, but you found out earlier than I intended.”

  Typical of him. One urgent assignment piled on top of another.

  “I know you learned well from me, Esme. Never do a favor without expecting something in return. But this isn’t business. This is family.”

  Esme looked at him. She was stunned into silence.

  “I have to achieve my immortality the old-fashioned way.” He smiled at her, although it was a cold, empty smile. “With you. And your sisters.”

  Esme didn’t say anything. She’d never thought of children as a continuation of self. She’d never thought of children at all.

  “A year from now, I’ll be gone. And I want to—” He closed his eyes. In the parlor’s thin white light, he was unsettlingly pale, like he’d already become a ghost. “I want to see them again. The others.”

  Silence rushed in. Esme couldn’t move. She thought she might strangle on the shock of his words.

  “All of them?” she said carefully.

  Her father jerked his head up. “Yes.” His voice was like stone. “All of them. Adrienne. Daphne.” A pause. “Isabel.”

  They won’t want to see you, Esme thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. For all her attempts at it, she had never been as skilled at cruelty as her father.

  “I know we parted on bad terms. I’m not an idiot. But it’s been over a decade since I talked to—to any of them.” Vulnerability flashed across his features again. The second time today. Esme found it disturbing. She found it sad. “I can’t go tracking them down myself. I’ve got my affairs to attend to, and they wouldn’t listen to me, anyway.”

  “You think they’ll listen to me?”

  He looked at her. “I don’t know.”

  Esme sighed. It’d been years since she’d spoken to Daphne,
and Daphne was the last sister she’d spoken to—over the holocomm, not even face to face. The connection had been bad, Daphne’s face stretching out as if she were made of liquid. She was living on Catequil at the time, working at one of the cooperative wind farms. Four years ago, maybe. The Light Solstice. It had fallen during summer that year, at least on Ekkeko. Daphne hadn’t said what season it was on Catequil. And what they’d talked about had been even more frivolous than the weather.

  “I thought about hiring someone to track them down,” he went on. “A PI, you know. But since you found out about it anyway, I decided I’d rather keep it in the family.”

  Esme sighed. He kept saying family as if it meant something.

  “You disagree?”

  “I’m not sure how much of a family we are.”

  For a moment, Esme thought she saw her father recoil. But she couldn’t believe that was possible, that those particular words could hurt him that much.

  “Am I to take that as a sign that you’re not interested?”

  Was she? The request was so absurd, after everything that had happened, and all the time that had passed. She wondered what he really wanted from them. There had to be another reason beyond hoping to simply talk to them, to see them again. There always was with her father. “It’s not—I guess I just don’t understand why you want to do this.”

  He looked almost confused and Esme didn’t expand on what she meant, what she really wanted to say—that she understood why someone would want to do this, she just didn’t understand why he would want to do this.

  “They’re my daughters,” he said, his voice quiet. It was the same tone he used whenever he fired someone. “I want to see them again before I die.”

  The parlor was shrinking, drawing in closer and closer, sucking out the air.