Darkness Between the Stars Read online

  As soon as I thought it, I heard Dad’s footsteps booming on the floorboards outside my door. His back had long since healed, and he was as loud as ever.

  I stood up.

  I looked at the ceiling.

  I swallowed my life’s biggest breath.

  “Joff, you can come out now,” he said through the door.

  And so I did.

  The walk down the hall felt like it took several minutes. I glanced through an open door into Aly’s empty room, and even though she hadn’t visited in two months, I swore I could hear her laughing with her friends on a sprite. The other doors were closed: the bathroom, Mom and Dad’s room, and the sunroom, all shut behind dark wooden planks.

  I worried I’d never open those doors again.

  Dad had his arm around my shoulders, but I barely felt it. I saw the kitchen awash in sunlight at the hall’s end, and I heard the floorboards creaking beneath our feet, but I couldn’t really feel anything.

  No one had told me what to expect.

  But I knew what was happening.

  Dad pulled out a chair at the dinner table. Everyone looked at me as though they expected me to be nervous, but I wasn’t. I plunked down, put my palms face down on the old wooden tabletop, and looked everyone in the eyes.

  Dad sat to my right. The sunlight from the window shined on his face. He was trying to be stoic, but I saw through it. He was miserable.

  Mom stood at the sink. She rubbed her palms as if they were sore, but I knew it was her nerves. I’d seen her do it a thousand times before.

  As for the two men in black suits, they were already sitting at the table. The one across from me was tall and stern. He’d taken off his hat, and the sunlight glinted on his shiny, bald head.

  The man to my left looked younger and less grim. I figured he was the one who’d do most of the talking. He wore the same black polymer suit as the bald man, but his face was kinder.

  Easier to sell something when you’re nice about it, I remembered something Dad had said a long time ago.

  “You’re here to take me away,” I blurted just as the younger man opened his mouth.

  “Joff, we—” Dad tried.

  “No, it’s ok.” I cut him off. “I’ve been waiting. Ever since they came a few years ago, I knew.”

  The two men looked at each other. I could tell I’d surprised the younger one. Unimpressed, the bald one folded his hands and sat up even straighter.

  “Joff Armstrong, fourteen years of age, farmer. Your talents are needed by the government.”

  Talents? I wondered. I could tell he didn’t like me. It was fine. I didn’t like him either, though I wasn’t sure why.

  “Well…I guess I could fix your tractors. If you have any.” I dared to joke.

  “Joff—” Mom wasn’t smiling.

  “I’m kidding.” I looked at the bald man. “What do you need me for? I know I’m ok at math and building things, but it’s like you said. I’m just a farmer.”

  “We need you for many things.”

  “Like?”

  “Before we get to that, you’ll need schooling, and lots of it,” he said with a grimace. “Unless of course you’ve already learned everything.”

  “No. I don’t know everything. I mean, I thought you’d be nicer. And I was wrong about that.”

  “Is he always this way?” The bald man glanced at Dad. “Is he always…sarcastic?”

  “No,” said Dad.

  “Never.” Mom looked worried.

  “Joff, enough.” Dad rubbed my shoulder. “We know you’re afraid. You don’t have to cover it up by being funny.”

  He was right. I was trying to be funny. But I wasn’t afraid.

  I was mad.

  “How long has it been?” I asked everyone in the room.

  “How long what?” said the bald man.

  “How long has everyone known about me? About what I’m supposed to do to help you? About where you’re going to take me?”

  “You told him—” The bald man looked at Dad.

  “Nothing,” said Dad.

  “They didn’t tell me anything,” I interrupted. “That’s what I’m saying. All these years I’ve known something was up, but not really what. I mean, everyone else goes to school – why not me? Every other house is filled with sprites and work-bots, but not ours. I’m only fourteen, but I’m not stupid. I know we’re not like other families.”

  Everyone retreated into silence, even the bald, scary guy.

  They had expected to surprise me.

  What happens now?

  The younger man tugged at his suit’s collar and cleared his throat. Looking at him bundled in black polymers, I wondered why. His suit was intimidating, but stifling. I hoped I’d never have to wear one.

  Trying to scare us? I guessed.

  Or maybe they just haven’t left their houses in Donva in forever.

  And then it occurred to me. They hadn’t come from Donva. Their way of talking wasn’t familiar. They’d come from much farther away.

  “Joff,” the younger man began, “there’s no easy way to say this. We’d have preferred your mom and dad tell you these things, but it didn’t work out that way. We’re here a year earlier than we expected. There’s just no time for niceness.”

  A year earlier?

  “We’re sorry, Joff,” Dad touched my arm again.

  Mom tried not to weep.

  “We have to take you today,” the young man continued. “We’re going to leave in an hour. You won’t need to bring much. Just a bag. Everything else you need, we have.”

  “In one hour?” My eyes were glazed.

  “We wanted to give you more time. We’re sorry. We hoped your family would get to tell you next winter, and that we wouldn’t be back until late next spring. But things have changed.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “We’ll explain on the way.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To Donva. Then onward.”

  “Onward?” I made a face. “But first to Donva? I want my mom and dad to drive me.”

  “We have a hover—”

  “If you want me to go, you’ll let them take me,” I said firmer than before.

  They knew I meant it.

  * * *

  I wished the black-suit men had come at night.

  I wished they’d given me a full day’s warning, or at least a few hours.

  As I walked up to our car, I felt selfish. I wasn’t broken-hearted about leaving my house. I couldn’t muster any tears. Instead, my mind was on my skypad, and how I’ll never again use it again to count the stars. I wanted to ask it once more, just to confirm what I’d always believed. I almost begged Dad to fetch it from the barn. But when he hugged me and when Mom walked up behind us with puffy red eyes, I didn’t have the heart.

  As it turned out, Dad couldn’t come with us. He had work to do that couldn’t wait.

  “Joff,” my father said as he squared my shoulders in his big, strong hands, “I didn’t expect it to be like this.”

  “It’s ok,” I said. I’d been angry in the kitchen, but the feeling had passed.

  Dad shook his head. “No, it’s not ok. You’re our son. You trusted us. And we didn’t tell you everything. And now…now everything’s changing and we don’t even have time to tell you why. It’s our fault, Joff. We failed you.”

  “You didn’t fail me.” I shook my head. “You made me ready. I’m not afraid.”

  “You don’t have questions?”

  “Of course I do. The black suits said they’d answer everything. So it’s ok.”

  “I don’t mean about where they’re taking you.” Dad shook his head. “I mean about why we kept things secret. About Aly, the skypad, and the way things have been these last several years.”

  I tried to smile. I was sad, but not in a way I understood. It occurred to me that I’d never really been sad before. Not even when Aly had left. I didn’t know what to do with the feeling.

  “I used to think
I was adopted.” I closed my eyes. “I figured…why else would you and Mom not tell me so many things? I thought you loved Aly more because she got to live a normal life, and I didn’t. I was mad for a while, but then not so much.”

  “Adopted?” He hugged me again. “Never, Joff. You’re ours. Always have been.”

  “I know.” I smiled for real. “I had the skypad do a DNA profile.”

  He looked surprised for a second, and then let out a laugh. “I might’ve known. Joff, my scientist. More like your mom and sister than me.”

  Aly? A scientist? I almost blurted.

  No. Be nice.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, son.”

  “Is this it? I mean…really it?”

  “You mean will you get to see us after today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

  “So it’s serious.” I looked at the men in their black suits, at the black hovercar humming beside our old world vehicle. “All this…it was planned.”

  “Yes. Planned. Pretty much from the beginning,” he admitted.

  From the beginning.

  I knew it.

  I hugged him. It was the first time I remembered initiating a hug with him. I did it because I had to. With the way Mom was crying, the way Aly had left, and the looks in the black-suit men’s eyes, I wondered if I’d ever see my family again. Showing affection was the right thing to do.

  “I love you, Dad,” I managed.

  “Love you, too, Joff. They say we’ll be able to talk to you. Which means…I guess we’ll talk soon.”

  “Even if you have to use a sprite?” I grinned.

  “Yep. Even if.”

  I walked around the car and slid into the passenger’s seat beside Mom. The top was down, and the sunlight pouring onto the old, dry leather seats. I remembered how Aly had told me I’d never sit there, how we’d run out of gas long before I was old enough.

  I thought about it, and then I missed her.

  Mom turned the key, and the engine rumbled to life. She guided us onto the dirt path leading to the road toward Donva, and for my sake she did it slowly. The dust swirled behind us, but through it I saw my father. I didn’t take my eyes off him until we rounded the bend leading up out of the valley, and even then I imagined him, standing in a sea of golden wheat, leaning on his shovel, watching us vanish.

  For once in my life, I was glad the drive to Donva wasn’t short. Even with the black suits’ hovercar buzzing beside us, Mom and I were able to talk. It felt almost normal, almost like it’d been when I was a little boy sitting in the backseat and arguing with my sister.

  “I put something in your bag,” Mom told me. She was wearing her big, wide-brimmed hat and round sunglasses. I was grateful because I couldn’t see her sadness.

  “The skypad?” I was hopeful.

  “No, no.” She smiled. “Alpo.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  She shrugged. “I know. But I thought you should have him. If it’s too silly for you to have a teddy bear, just pretend he’s me. His eyes are my eyes. I’ll always be looking out for you.”

  “Ok, Mom. I’ll pretend.”

  We drove and we talked. It was the same as all the talks we’d had during breakfast for the last fourteen years. Of all the things I knew I’d miss, sitting at the table with Mom and a pile of hot griddlecakes was destined to be the hardest to do without.

  We talked about Aly.

  About Dad.

  About simple things, like the windows in the kitchen, and how the sunlight looked during different seasons.

  We might’ve talked forever, but halfway to Donva the wind tore across the fields and took Mom’s hat. I told her to stop, but she accelerated instead.

  “If we go back, I won’t want to drive to Donva,” she explained with a smile. “I’d turn around and take you home. The black suits wouldn’t like it.”

  Black suits, I thought.

  She calls them the same name I do.

  And then, after a long drive up through the fields, we came to Donva. Its dark spires reached into the gathering clouds, and its little white dwellings huddled together in the shadows. Donva didn’t have any walls or guard shacks, so we drove right in on an empty street. The sky was an ocean of greys and deep, dark blues, and the people hurried inside to get out of the incoming rain.

  For a few breaths, it felt like we were the only ones in the city.

  When we stopped on a corner and the black suits’ hovercar drifted to a halt in front of us. I saw the look in the bald man’s eyes, and I knew what it meant.

  This is as far as Mom goes.

  She reached into the backseat, lifted my beaten-up brown satchel, and set it in my lap. It didn’t weigh much; the only things inside were two changes of clothes, a few candies in a metal tin, my mostly-full notebook, and one-armed Alpo.

  Mom gripped the steering wheel with two hands. Her hair was a riot in the stormy wind. Her sunglasses couldn’t hide her tears any longer.

  “Everything Dad said is true,” she told me.

  “I know.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to go this way.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you angry with us?”

  “No.”

  “Nervous?”

  “A little.”

  She lifted her sunglasses. I saw her eyes, dark as if with storm clouds, and I knew I’d never be upset with her for keeping secrets.

  I just had one question:

  “Did they make you do this? Or did you agree to let me go?”

  She looked to the sky. The once sunny morning had turned almost black. The rains were coming. The shields on the black suits’ hovercar would keep the water off, but Mom would almost certainly get drenched on her way home.

  “We weren’t going to have children,” she said.

  It stung a little. “Why not?” I asked.

  “They needed you.”

  “What about Aly?”

  “They needed her, too.”

  “Why Aly?”

  “They’ll explain everything. Just be patient with them. They’re not bad people. They’re just desperate.”

  The black suits exited their hovercar. Thunder pealed as they walked up to my door. I could see little raindrops beading on their shoulders and rolling off the cold, black polymer.

  “It’s time,” the younger man said.

  “Hurry. We hate getting wet,” added the bald one.

  I opened the door and got out of Mom’s car. When I looked at her again, she’d put her sunglasses back on. She didn’t need them with the sun having vanished. She didn’t want me to see her cry.

  “Goodbye, Mom.” I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  She mouthed the words, ‘I love you.’

  And drove into the rain.

  Callista

  On the far side of the world, on the rim of a dark mountain, in a fortress carved into the stone, I sat in a room with sterile lights and waited for someone to tell me what was happening to my life.

  The longer I sat at the massive chrome table, gazing out a bank of windows onto the vast woodland beneath the fortress, the lower I sank in my chair. I was tired, gravely so. If not for pride, I’d have rested my head on the table and slept many hours away.

  I blamed driving in a hovercar for several hours.

  Followed by sitting in a jet as it streaked across an ocean.

  Followed by a long wait in a strange tower without food or water.

  And then another hovercar ride into a remote valley.

  The black suits had promised to tell me everything on the way, but they hadn’t. From the moment I’d stepped into their hovercar, they kept their sprites turned on and me tuned out. Their tiny floating sprites had stayed on nearly the entire trip, streaming data into their brains while they ignored most of my questions. At first I’d been angry, but the more I watched them, the longer I eavesdropped into their conversations, the more I realized s
omething:

  They didn’t know much.

  So when a tall, dark-skinned man walked alone into the fortress room, I figured my ignorance was about to end.

  “Joff Armstrong?” He sat across from me, asking my name as if he didn’t already know it.

  Drowsy, I sat up. “Yes. That’s me.”

  “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” He looked me up and down.

  “Yes. I mean, has it? A long time what?”

  He leaned forward and planted his elbows on the shiny chrome table. He wore the same black polymer suit as the others, but he wore it better. He reminded me of my father in a way, being both stern and kind at the same time. Looking at him, I bet myself the bald man was envious of him.

  “I’m Doctor Abid.” He stretched his open hand out toward me, and I shook it. “You can call me Abid. Or just Doctor. Either is fine with me. The last time I saw you, Joff, you were two weeks old and on your way home after a stay at the hospital. We kept you there longer than usual, you see. We had to make sure you were absolutely the healthiest baby possible.”

  “Why?” was the only question I could think of.

  “Well that’s the thing.” Abid leaned back in his chair. His hands were the same dark color as his face. I’d never seen anyone like him. “You’re one of many hundreds chosen for something special. Knowing your upbringing, and especially knowing your mother, I’m sure you figured out something was up long before now.”

  “You knew my mom?”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “Ava Armstrong, brightest of the bright. She and I worked for years together on many different orbital stations. We went to school together, and we stayed in touch even after she met your father. Your mom is one hell of a scientist, young man. Many of the things you’ll see in the next few months, she had a hand in creating.”

  I made a face. “Wait…I don’t understand. If she’s this great scientist, why’s she living on a farm in the middle of nowhere?”

  Abid smiled again. “Because we asked her to.”

  “Why?”

  “So she could raise you and your sister.”

  “Oh,” I said, though I still didn’t understand.

  Abid folded his hands beneath his chin. His golden eyes darkened, and he took a deep breath before speaking again.