Free Wings of Creation by Brenda Cooper Page B

and slipped in. We waited for two normal-looking women, and a tall slender man who looked like he should have wings, to leave before we turned our mods on. I liked switching on in bathrooms; the nano had to think about how to reflect the wall behind us into the mirrors. It took enough time that for the space of a breath or two I looked infinite.
    Outside, we climbed invisibly, and cautiously, down the hill. Induan led me through groups of fliers and around flower beds, both of us careful how we set our feet. I didn’t want to get caught. The fliers might feel spied on, and Marcus would be mad for sure.
    As full dark fell, globe-shaped lights brightened. In a few cases, groups of fliers sat on rock formations, some filled with crystalline structures like the geodes we used to bring back to trade with the townies on Fremont, except twenty or thirty times as big. Some crystals were artificially lit from within, as if fires burned inside the faceted stones.
    A few fliers wore swirls of tiny ribbons braided in their hair or woven into necklaces, lit at the ends so the fliers who wore them glowed. I didn’t dare talk since we didn’t know how good the flier’s hearing might be. Instead, it seemed like we glided silently through a fairyland of wonders, Induan and I holding hands so we didn’t lose each other.
    Farther away from the central hill, there were fewer and fewer wingless. The few we did see all moved with purpose, bringing plates and bowls of seeds and breads and grapes to knots of fliers lost in conversation.
    Induan pulled me to a low mound of rounded rocks. “Watch the regular humans,” she whispered into my ear. “Tell me what you see. Quietly.”
    Twice in the ship, we’d been caught talking while invisible. I leaned my head into hers. We could talk quieter if we touched skulls. “That one’s tall, like he was meant to be a flier but no one put wingson him. The woman over there must be an original human. She’s no bigger than me.”
    “What are they doing?”
    “Well . . . they’re waiting on the fliers.” I’d noticed that already. “They don’t look unhappy. I mean, look, they’re all smiling. I’d wait on the fliers to be near them.”
    “You’re addled. Do you think the fliers are better than you?”
    She wanted me to say no, but I couldn’t get the word out. “Maybe.”
    Her hair tickled my cheek as she shook her head. When she’d stilled again, she said, “The Wingmakers designed them to make you feel inferior. They’re taller and prettier and they can do something all humans want to do; fly by themselves. They also made them martyrs, and slaves. Since they can’t have their own babies, the guild controls both an income flow and their culture. The Wingmakers created a being no one would ever kill, so they could watch it grow. They even made Lopali first, designing it for the fliers while the fliers were cartoons on a drawing board.”
    She almost sounded like she admired that, and yet disapproved. But then, it was probably a good strategy, and Induan liked a good chess move. “Isn’t that what they want Joseph and Marcus to change?” I asked.
    “If no one kills them first. If they can do it. Marcus is good, and so’s your boyfriend, but the fliers guild isn’t exactly bad.”
    I hadn’t thought of Joseph maybe getting killed for this. Induan tugged on my hand, the angle telling me she’d stood. She started us walking toward a small crowd of fliers. Always the strategist, she’d said something shocking, and now she was making sure I couldn’t respond right away.
    She led me around the crowd, and stopped with us standing between a flower bed and a rock, which probably meant no one would step into us by accident. I didn’t say anything, just stopped and listened.
    A few of the fliers’ voices were raised. We weren’t terribly close, but I caught a few words here and there. I heard Joseph’s name. Every once in a while, whole sentences would emerge clearly from the