Spinning Starlight Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t do something, they
will
collapse and each planet will be left
isolated. As for getting your brothers out…I’m not sure we know enough about how the conduits really work. Designing them in the first place was guesswork with half-understood energies, and
failing conduits aren’t the right ones to study. We’ll keep looking. But we still have you, and it’s more important than ever that you take care of yourself, okay?”
    I nod, because I don’t want to hear any more. Definitely not anything that hints at me being the only Jantzen left. Minali ushers me toward the door, offering to arrange a hovercar home,
but I decline.
    I don’t want to rest. So I wander. There’s been no further sign of the gunmen, making the attackers look more and more like some opportunistic ransom-takers. With the security-cam
keeping an eye on me, freeing my brothers is a much bigger concern.
    Regular vid-cams notice me quickly enough, but I don’t pay any attention to them. My feet carry me in random directions. Away from JTI, away from home, away from the entertainment
district. If it were night, I’d try to see my brothers, hope that they could give me some clue. Knowing exactly how they got trapped would help so much in getting them back. But it sounds
like sunlight is too bright for them to be seen, so that’s not an option, and I keep walking.
    The last Jantzen. The only one left. The one everyone has been counting on.
    The world presses on me, crushing with its weight. Maybe all seven worlds. I find a bench on the side of the road and sit, hoping if things settle, a solution will pop out of the ground like
it’s been waiting for me to notice the obvious. The first ten minutes aren’t promising—nothing obvious yet—and my still silence is so boring that the vid-cams following me
back off and try to find something more interesting in the vicinity.
    I don’t know if it would count as “interesting” to the computer algorithms, but something is happening in a schoolyard across the street. Several little kids are playing with a
skip rope, including the rhyme everyone learns around the time they begin to walk:
    If you found a portal high, if you found a portal low,
    Where in the Eight Points would you go?
    Each child takes a turn calling out one of the Points and jumping as long as they can according to the matching rule. Sampati means jumping with a fast left-left, right-right pattern. Yishu has
to dance and spin. For Pramadam, the twirlers move onto a low wall or curb so the jumper has just a few inches of width to stand on. Erkir jumps gently, Tarix jumps backward while the twirlers move
across the playground, and Neta does the opposite, with the jumper moving forward so the twirlers have to follow. Banak is the favorite for show-offs, with the rope swinging at knee-level off the
ground. Most kids don’t last long on that round.
    The Eighth Point is Ferri—Death. Not a real Point, no planet to match, just the mythical afterlife ruled by the Sentinel and the Wraith. When a kid chooses Ferri, the twirlers have to drop
the rope and everyone runs from them. Anyone who gets caught within a minute is dead and out of the game.
    During the brief time I attended school, we got bored with the game pretty quickly. Not so with this group. Round after round they go, laughing at the silly dance moves of a boy who chooses
Yishu, cheering on a girl who manages to complete fifty Banak-jumps.
    If you found a portal high, if you found a portal low,
    Where in the Eight Points would you go?
    Portals. Not conduits. I remember Fabin telling me something about portals, the natural phenomena the conduits were based on, the original connection between the seven worlds. There’s a
reason the rhyme goes the way it does, about
finding
portals. They had to be found every time you wanted to use one, because they don’t stay in place. Anyone who looked hard enough
seemed to find one, but they’re unreliable, unsafe, and unpleasant,