Star's End

  “What if I’m terrible at it?” I said.

  “You aren’t terrible at anything,” Dad said. “You’re too scared to fail.”

  I looked away at that, over to the cluster of leather chairs, imported from out of system and deliriously expensive for it. I’d never seen someone sit in any of them.

  Too scared to fail. He was right about that, too.

  “Are you going to make any more feeble protestations?” Dad asked. “Because I have a meeting with the laboratory director in ten minutes, and I’d really like to get some prep work done.”

  “This is a mistake,” I told him.

  “You don’t have the whole picture,” he said. “This is the only decision I could’ve made. Now get out.”

  That conversation had happened a week and a half ago. Now I was sitting in my new office on the twenty-seventh floor, syrupy office light pouring around me. I’d toyed briefly, in that week and a half, with putting in the worst performance of my short career, with taking six-hour lunches and missing meetings and simply not caring. But Dad was right. I was too scared to fail.

  But I’d had a revelation while I was out on one of my last field visits as PM Assistant Director. I was in a little town on Catequil, one of those windswept places where the people always looked blown back and battered. I’d sat in the city offices and listened to grievances, my lightbox recording the voices of the townspeople as they pleaded with me to help repair the town windfarm. And I said the thing I always said in those situations, except I said it wrong—“I’ll try my best.” Not We’ll try our best, royal we, company we, like I’d been trained.

  “I’ll try my best,” I said, looking down at the farm couple, two old men with faded clothes and dust in their hair. The sentence echoed around inside my head. What could I do in Planet Maintenance? Nothing, not without the say of the company. But in Genetics, I’d have real power. I’d work my way up the clearance level. I could order repairs to a wind village on Catequil without asking permission.

  After that, I didn’t complain about the transfer. All I needed to do was bide my time. As Dad worked on whatever subterfuge he was playing at with his ridiculously named Project X, I would gain control of the company in tiny increments, and I could go back to helping the people of the Coromina I system the way I wanted.

  It was a game. And I knew how to play, so I did.

  • • •

  My first day in Genetics proceeded as I expected. The sales team started trickling in around eight o’clock and let out little startled cries when they saw the lights were all turned on. Most of them stopped by my office to introduce themselves. The man I’d replaced, Mr. Muraski, had been transferred to a higher position in Terraforming. He was an ambitious type and grateful that I’d replaced him, since it gave him a link, however tenuous, to Dad. He called a couple of times during the day, asking if I needed any help. I didn’t.

  I read through the project lists and checked up with the sales team on the day’s progress. I recorded messages of greeting for each of the five militaries we currently had contracts with; one of them was Andromeda Corps. My mother was still stationed with them, last I’d heard, and as I stood in the bright white light of the holorecorder, I wondered, like I was a little girl again, if she’d see my message. But of course she wouldn’t. It was encrypted for the Andromeda Corps general and no one else. She might have seen the message I sent her directly, telling her about my promotion. I didn’t know. I hadn’t received a response yet.

  I took lunch with Joan and Allison, a couple of friends from PM, picking at my shrimp salad as they talked about a new initiative to build roads over on the Tiess Atoll, halfway across the world. When I got back to my office, I sat at my desk for a few moments, staring out the little square window that looked over the jogging trail below. It was still raining. It would keep raining for the next six months.

  I sighed, wondering how long it’d take me to get to the clearance level necessary to do the work I wanted.

  After meeting with the sales team that afternoon, I sat down at my computer and started contacting the laboratories the company ran offworld. As with the generals, I wanted to introduce myself and check up on the state of the projects, but since Quilla and Catequil were both in-system, I didn’t have to resort to a holo recording.

  We had five labs total across the two moons, and I dialed up the smallest first. A wiry little man answered, although he wasn’t looking at the screen, but off to the side, distracted.

  “Mr. Targowski?”

  He turned to me. “You said my name right.”

  “I make sure to look those things up.”

  “Who are you?” He squinted at the bottom of the screen, where the identification information would be displayed. “Oh, you’re from headquarters. Genetics? What happened to George Muraski?”

  “He was transferred.”

  Mr. Targowski sat unmoving for a moment, then nodded and said, “Ah! I remember now. He told me a few weeks ago. Are you his replacement?”

  I nodded. “My name is Esme Coromina. I just wanted to introduce myself.”

  Mr. Targowski’s brow furrowed. Everyone in the company reacted to my name in some way or another—their eyes narrowed, they recoiled from me as if I were poison, they broke into big, disingenuous smiles. It was a reflex. None of them could help it.

  “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Coromina.”

  I smiled. “Please, call me Esme. And it’s a pleasure to meet you as well.”

  It seemed to put him at ease, the reassurance-through-civility that I wasn’t my father.

  “I don’t have any major questions at the moment, but I did want to check up on production status. Nothing formal, just what you know off the top of your head.”

  Mr. Targowski grinned. “We’ve been meeting quotas left and right the last few months. You came onboard at a good time. Mostly we’ve been filling orders for Zimconia—they’ve got a list of requests they like, night vision and that sort of thing.”

  “Their deployment is out in the Zimmer system, isn’t it?” I paused, rifling through my memorized corporate history. “They started out as a subsidiary of Zimmer Corp’s military branch, right?”

  “I believe so, yes. Now they’re going rogue. I don’t keep up with it myself. Just produce the damn things.”

  I smiled politely.

  Mr. Targowski used that as an excuse to launch into a detailed description of Zimconia’s most recent order: a squadron of pilots whose genetic code could interface directly with the military-grade shuttles the Coromina Group had put out a few years before. I knew from all my tutoring sessions that the shuttles had been designed with that specific purpose in mind—any weapons or aircraft we produced could be used only with a Coromina soldier.

  I eventually cut Mr. Targowski off, claiming I had a meeting. From there, I called the second-smallest lab and had an identical conversation. Same with the next two. The largest lab was different, though—it inhabited an entire landmass on Ekkeko, called Starspray City, and it really was a city unto itself, with housing and schools and most everything that a typical midsized Coromina city had. It was the first lab the company had built, back when Dad had the idea for the soldiers, after the Coromina Group made its first trillion off the Triad Sector Wars.

  An administrative assistant answered my call, rather than the head researcher herself. The assistant had a snappish countenance that smoothed out when he heard my name.

  “Ms. Coromina,” he gushed. “So glad to meet you. Ms. DeCrie will be with in just a moment.”

  The screen flashed to the hold screen. I sat back in my chair and waited. Speaking with the other labs had made me realize how little I knew about what Genetics did. I’d gone over it in my tutoring sessions—I’d gone over everything the company managed—but I’d always been interested in Terraforming and Planet Maintenance, never weapons production. I was going to have to study up on it in my own time, if this plan of mine was to work.

  As I sat there waiting, t
he Coromina Group logo spinning in endless circles, I thought of the first engineered soldier I’d ever seen, that marine who came to the estate before the flu epidemic. Private Snow. It always left me unsettled that he’d been born in a laboratory. It struck me as unfair to him, to deny him a mother and a father and a real life.

  Of course, I didn’t really have any of those things myself.

  The holding screen faded away and Ms. DeCrie shimmered into view. “Ms. Coromina, such a pleasure to meet you. When I heard you were taking over the department, I have to admit, I was pleased to hear it wasn’t another old man.” She laughed. She looked young—maybe a few years older than me—but her skin had that telltale glossiness. Rejuvenation treatments. Hardly anyone in the upper echelons of the company appeared older than thirty, and so age was meaningless unless someone lived for centuries, like Dad. It was different in the village. The young and the old had different places in the world. But not here. We let the company rank us, One through Ninety-Nine. “I was hoping you’d come visit Starspray City if you have the chance. I think it’s important to keep in contact with headquarters, and I’d love for you to see the facilities.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” I said, and smiled even though I didn’t mean it. Going to visit the largest lab was exactly the sort of thing I should be doing now that I was in charge of the department. It showed an interest in my work, the way showing up early did. But showing up early was easy.

  Fortunately, Ms. DeCrie had given me the opportunity. And if she was inviting, she’d schedule the flights and accommodations. Sometimes, there’s benefit in waiting.

  “Wonderful!” Ms. DeCrie clapped her hands together. “I’ll have Cameron get in contact with your people about arranging travel. When would you like to come out?”

  “Sometime soon. In the next few days, maybe.” I was falling so easily into this role, although it didn’t feel right, like a dress a size too small. “I’ll be interested in looking at some of your most recent projects. I’ve spoken with the other labs, but I know Starspray City’s been working on the Alvatech contract, and I’m very interested in seeing how that’s progressing.” An easy lie to tell. Which was good, because it was going to be nothing but lies from here on out. They were worth it, though, if it meant making this company what it should always have been from the beginning.

  • • •

  Adrienne asked the cook to prepare a formal multi-course meal that night, to celebrate the first day of my promotion. Twenty-five years old and I still lived at the estate—I’d mentioned to Dad that I might like to have a townhouse in the corporate enclave, but he’d snapped at me and told me it was dangerous. “You’re protected here,” he’d said, gesturing out at the yard. I knew he was talking about the soldiers patrolling the perimeter. The soldiers were new; he swapped them out every year, never explaining why. They were all genetically modified these days.

  I still didn’t know what the soldiers were protecting us from. I’d gone looking when I started at the company, but that information was too highly classified for me to access. All I found were locked files and encrypted holos that, for me, only played static. The security protocols at the enclave were some of the highest in the system, but they didn’t involve constant coverage from a squad of engineered soldiers. Now that I was in Genetics, maybe I could find out more. Maybe.

  The dining room table was too big for just the five of us—me, Adrienne and Daphne, Rena and little Isabel. I always made sure to eat dinner with them if I could. I knew what it was like to grow up with that unused dining room reminding you of the family you wanted.

  We were on the second course now, bowls of watercress soup, a traditional start-of-the-rainy-season dish. I’d never cared for it, but since Adrienne had asked it to be prepared, I ate it out of politeness. She was in her usual spot, sitting with a straight spine, play-acting at being a princess. Daphne didn’t seem too interested—I knew she didn’t like the soup much either. Isabel slurped at hers, still young enough she didn’t realize it was rude.

  “So, how was your first day?” Rena asked.

  Daphne poked her head up. “Did you get to see any of the soldiers being made?” Her eyes gleamed.

  I shook my head. I had already visited the labs by the time I was her age, but Dad didn’t expect them to take over the company someday. He ignored them most of the time. I couldn’t decide if that was better or worse.

  “I will, though,” I told her, stirring my soup around. “I’m going to Catequil later this week. To Starspray City, to visit the lab there.”

  “Starspray City!” Adrienne’s eyes went wide. “That’s where they filmed the last Intensity of Days storyline!”

  Daphne rolled her eyes. Eight years old and Adrienne was already the romantic, lapping up those Amanan dramas as much as she could. Daphne didn’t have time for them. I just smiled at her, though. I remembered that storyline. It had been part of a campaign put out by the Psychology department, to sell the citizen-employees of the Coromina I system on the importance of manufacturing soldiers. I never told Adrienne about that, though. She just loved the romance of it, the ill-fated affair between the scientist and the soldier she helped create.

  “Do you think you’ll see Artus Falk on your trip?” Adrienne asked, her eyes wide. One of her favorite actors from the show. Had he played the soldier? I couldn’t remember.

  “Probably not. I think they’re filming on Amana again.”

  Adrienne sighed dramatically. Daphne made a face at her and I gave her a sharp look, which she ignored. They didn’t really obey me. Rena, she was their surrogate mother. Me, their half-sister, my mother still alive even if I hadn’t seen her in person since I was a baby—that put me in some other, harder-to-define category.

  The staff swept in and cleared our bowls away, then brought in plates of lemon-butter trout. I know Adrienne was enjoying the formality of the dinner more than the rest of us.

  When Isabel saw the trout, she threw her fork on the table and pouted.

  “What’s the matter, dear?” Rena asked mildly.

  Isabel didn’t answer. I took a bite of fish—flaky and almost sweet. Isabel’s pout turned into a scowl.

  “What did we talk about?” Rena said.

  Isabel paused for a moment before letting loose a long stream of babbling, hissing syllables. It startled me; I knew about this made-up language of theirs but had never heard it myself. It didn’t sound like noises a human being could make.

  Adrienne answered Isabel in the same language. Her eyes were narrowed in annoyance. Daphne watched them both, her head cocked to the side, listening. I felt a stirring of pain in the part of me that was still a lonely little girl—Why didn’t they teach it to me, too?

  Rena set down her fork, crossed her arms over her chest, and turned a steely gaze to Isabel. The babble fell away and she gazed back up at Rena, her dark eyes wide.

  “What,” Rena said, “did we talk about?”

  Isabel looked down at her plate. “Only speak Corominan at the dinner table.”

  “Very good. Now will you share what you were saying to Adrienne to the rest of us?”

  Isabel hesitated. Then she said, “I don’t eat fish anymore.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “I dunno; I just don’t like it.”

  Rena frowned. “Well, fish is what we were served, and so fish is what we’ll eat.”

  Isabel sighed. “I knew you were going to say that,” she muttered. Then she picked up her fork and shredded her trout into pieces without eating any. Rena didn’t push the matter.

  I’d first heard about the language from Grace, the girl who brought me breakfast in the mornings. She had chattered about it when it first started up, how all three of them had just suddenly started talking nonsense to each other, but nonsense that they apparently understood. No one could figure out where they picked it up. I told her one of them must have made it up, but she just shrugged and said, “You think they made up an entire language?”

 
I didn’t think it mattered so much. They were better adjusted than I had been at that age—we were all motherless and growing up at Star’s End, but at least they had each other. I liked to watch them from my window when I was working. They’d drag their kid-sized table and chairs out into the garden to have tea parties. Sometimes, they disappeared into the plumeria maze, three by three, their arms all linked. They were kids. They had some whole world created out there in the garden, and no adult was ever going to see it. Not even me, as much I wished I could.

  The staff cleared the fish away. Brought in dessert. It was another rainy-season dish, little bowls of sweet rice pudding with a square of dark bitter chocolate tucked away at the bottom. I was touched that Adrienne had thought to ask for it. One bowl would always have a coin instead of chocolate, and whoever had the coin was supposed to have good luck during the following rainy season—well, good crops, specifically, but we weren’t rice farmers.

  “Do you know which one has the coin?” Daphne asked Evonne, the server.

  “I most certainly do not. Where would be the fun in that?” She set a bowl down in front of each of us and stepped back against the wall, gazing beatifically down at the kids.

  “Don’t eat yet!” Adrienne cried as Daphne picked up her spoon. “We have to dip in at the same time so we don’t ruin the surprise.”

  Daphne groaned.

  “Everyone’s served,” Rena said. “You can eat now.”

  And even though I was an adult and in charge of Genetics at the Coromina Group, I still shivered a little with excitement when I dipped my spoon all the way to the bottom of my bowl. When I pulled it out, melted chocolate swirled together with my pudding. No good luck for me this year.

  Daphne and Adrienne both sighed with frustration, but Isabel held her spoon over her bowl, a flash of gold glinting in the chandelier light.

  “I found the coin.” She squinted down at the spoon. “Do I eat it?”

  “No!” Rena laughed. “Here, set it on your napkin. I’ll wipe it off for you. You can keep it in your jewelry box for luck.”