Sing Down the Stars

By Nerine Dorman

In a future society where various alien races mix with humans, twelve-year-old Nuri performs crimes for Vadith until the day she is called away from her home in the slums by an irresistible song only she can hear. Nuri ends up in a secret training facility with the cream of Terra’s youth, who are all competing for the ultimate prize . . . This magnificent Sci-Fi story masterfully creates a whole futuristic universe while maintaining focus on Nuri’s rich inner world. An Oliver Twist-style plot in a Star Wars setting with all the thrill (but not the violence) of The Hunger Games, it is beautifully rendered: the writing is sophisticated and engaging, the exotic cast of characters are a delight, and the plot works perfectly, balancing wild imagination with relatable, age-appropriate themes (like bullying by the “mean girls”). In the facility, the adult characters guide and care for the young people with remarkable kindness, and there is a kind of karmic retribution for the mean kids, which is very reassuring to young teen readers. Beyond the reaches of the facility, life is more combative, but, refreshingly, there is no gratuitous violence. The story also illustrates and explores what it means to live in a “racially” integrated society – although Terra appears to be classist, certainly in the facility we see different species interacting with respect, awareness of and appreciation of each other’s differences in a way that is quite inspiring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Oct 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9780624087496

Nerine Dorman

Nerine Dorman is an editor and author from Cape Town. She has been involved in the media industry for more than a decade, with a background in magazine and newspaper publishing, commercial fiction, independent filmmaking, print production management and advertising. She is also a founding member and co-ordinator for the Adamastor Writers’ Guild.

Book preview

snake

1

You have ten minutes; fifteen minutes tops.

Trembling, G’ren’s tentacled limb spread across the white paint. His skin had become so dark he was nearly invisible in the gloom but for the red input port at his temple that was flashing in time with the connection in the wall.

Nuri swallowed back her fear. What her partner was doing couldn’t be easy, and she didn’t envy the J’veth drone this evening. Despite this being their fifth job as a pair, she was still a bundle of nerves.

Got it, she whispered, scanning the garden below.

Her pack-mate would keep the property’s AI busy with whatever programme he was inputting, but it was up to Nuri to watch for any patrolling bots or bio-sentries.

All was peaceful, with only the quiet hiss of sprinklers deep in the tangle of vegetation.

What a huge garden.

This Fadhil Tien guy was loaded if he could afford all this real estate so close to the Calan City urban zones. Those were real plants and trees, not clever synth-copies. The air smelt green with life. Ancestors, this was far enough from the city centre and all its lights and billboards that Nuri could even see faint stars through the haze. Tiny pinpricks, to be fair, and the vaguest suggestion of the galaxy’s arm, but real stars – not just a projection in a public area.

Focus, Nuri, she murmured to herself as she dropped from the roof onto the bone-white faux-marble tiles of the floor below. This was the top terrace of the residence, and thanks to G’ren all the cameras would be looping. The security bot was on the other side of the structure two floors down, and only due back up here in fifteen minutes.

Large blackened-glass walls reflected her shape as she crept along. According to the plans, this was the master bedroom. Fadhil would only return from his function at approximately 1am, and there were no other bio-life forms inside the property. Any staff had gone home hours ago. Around the corner she sneaked, to the sliding door.

C’mon, G’ren, she mouthed.

On cue, the door sighed open on its tracks, just wide enough for her to slip in before it hissed shut behind her.

She was in a lounge area, decked out in warm creams and featuring enormous rectangular couches. The plush carpeting beneath the soles of her grip-boots was a thick, shaggy pile like the pelt of the snow-wylde she’d seen in the botanical gardens. Even better, it muffled her steps beautifully.

She breathed deeply. The warm air smelt sweet and clean, like vanilla.

What must it be like to live here?

A screen took up an entire wall. This Fadhil guy could lie here and watch through this window into other worlds. Nuri couldn’t help but feel a stab of envy. The current image was of a ringed gas giant with many moons – most certainly not anywhere within Nuri’s native Aread system. Cerulean and violet clouds swirled on its surface, but that wasn’t what caught her attention.

A star-jumper hove into view from the right-hand side of the screen. Although Nuri had seen footage of the giant sentients many times, she’d never seen one seemingly so close and on such a crisp screen.

The thing cruised slowly, a leviathan of the stars. This one’s head boasted a lance that stretched nearly half again its length, like the swordfish at the aquarium, except that its eyes were blacker than black – even viewed on the screen, they absorbed every trace of light. Silent and mesmerising, its fins spread wide, the being moved until it vanished on the left of the screen, trailing faint coruscations of green light in its wake.

Nuri’s heart twisted. What must it be like to travel between stars at the speed of thought?

How’re you doing? G’ren’s voice buzzed in her comm unit.

Nuri jerked, mentally cursing herself for getting distracted.

I’m in the … lounge? She kept her voice low.

Shake your twigs. This AI doesn’t have the dumbs, and I’m not sure how long I can keep it distracted with buffer attacks.

Nuri moved along. According to the plans, the doorway to her left opened into a library. An actual, ancestors-blessed library.

The room didn’t disappoint either, and it was difficult for her not to pause to take it in, despite the crawly fear that she was wasting time. It was like the Mir’Abelan Museum, but on a much smaller scale. Not just books, but artefacts too. Little statues on plinths. Masks. Pictures. So many pictures. The tall, dark-skinned human with the shaved head who featured prominently must be Fadhil. He had a serious-eyed girl with him in many of the images, her skin tone slightly lighter than his – he must be her father. The same tilt to the eyebrows …

Here they were on a boat. Blue sky, azure water. There, riding astride a strange beast with grey fur. The little girl’s eyes were wide, and her laugh was captured in that instant. The screens in their heavy wooden frames cycled through more visuals – sometimes a gold-skinned woman with a heart-shaped face was with them. She wasn’t any kind of human Nuri had seen before. The little girl must be their daughter, her facial features somewhere between the mother and the father, and her dark-brown hair hanging in tight curls on her shoulders. Sometimes she wore a bright bandana. Other times, elaborate braids.

Nuri swallowed back a feeling that hadn’t surfaced in a long, long time – envy.

This girl in the pictures, always laughing, with both parents. She looked about Nuri’s age. Twelve, maybe thirteen.

Nuri. G’Ren sounded tense.

On it. Nuri hurried to the desk. This evening wasn’t going exactly according to plan.

Fadhil’s workspace featured a massive desk carved from what must once have been an entire tree trunk. The wood was stained dark, and the surface gleamed slick beneath the dim spotlights.

The safe was, as she’d been briefed, hidden in a side panel – the door snicked open when she depressed a knot in the wood in the top right-hand corner. It wasn’t the largest safe she’d ever broken into, but the items of interest were small. And rare.

Thank you, G’Ren, for your hacking smarts.

Five velvet-covered boxes with rounded lids. Plush blue velvet she ached to stroke and hold up against her skin. Nuri checked the contents, ignoring the fire opal and the two uncut rubies the size of qalu eggs, until she opened the case that contained the dragon pin.

It was a priceless treasure from before the days of human space travel, her boss Vadith had said. The silver pin had been shaped to look like a creature from the old Terran myths, a dragon with a wedge-shaped head, and a sinuous body curling around the pin. It had garnets for eyes, and they glinted back at her.

"Nuri!" G’Ren’s voice cracked.

Nuri started and shoved the pin deep into her jacket pocket. Then she padded back out the way she’d come. Running was bad. Running meant she might not see danger because she was busy making too much noise herself.

Her pulse was racing, though, and all the small hairs on her nape and her arms prickled. Danger. The interior of the house felt different. Alert. Awake.

Stars above, the door!

Nuri leapt forward and dragged at the sliding door. Already the mechanism was resisting her, and it took all her strength to shove it open enough to slip through. As soon as she did, brilliant spotlights snapped on all around, accompanied by the screech of sirens.

For a moment she stood like a stuck roach, blinded and deafened.

Don’t panic. Think.

Above, to her right, G’Ren barely made a sound as he used a railing as leverage to swing down and across so that he landed on the terrace below.

Nuri followed, beginning that dance between gravity and inertia.

C’mon, you love it, don’t you, her inner voice teased. The thrill of the chase.

Her entire existence narrowed towards the lightning-fast calculations she needed to make. A handhold there, landing the right toe just there with enough twist to roll forward and distribute the force of the impact – within three leaps she’d hit the paved walkway that meandered into the garden.

Behind her, the skitter of metallic claws on stone meant they had a runner bot, most likely designed to resemble a dog, complete with fangs. As if in answer to her suspicion, a terrible, blood-curdling howling started up, in counterpoint to the siren.

Security no doubt hoped she’d curl into a little ball, paralysed by fright.

The muscles on her right back calf tingled with a remembered bite.

Not today.

Nuri grabbed the low-lying limbs of a spreading tree and skittered up to run tree to tree. Like one of those long-tailed skarris she’d seen in a nature documentary, which moved so fast they could run along branches that were in actuality too weak to bear their full weight.

The wall wasn’t far now.

Her night vision kicked in, and though the garden was dark, she could see well enough as long as she avoided looking directly into any of the torchlight eyes that flashed below.

Metal claws scratched on paving. Her pursuers were much closer than she’d estimated.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

Her foot slipped and she made the leap a bit sooner than she wanted to, with a little less momentum to carry her over the gap. Nuri’s fingers grazed the branch, but she fell and only just managed to grasp another limb before she crashed into the trunk of a tree. The muscles in her left arm screamed in protest as her full weight came down on it, and her new handhold dipped alarmingly. No time to do anything but gasp at the shock. Below her came a high-pitched whine as an electronic sentry powered up a stunner.

Balls! Nuri bit the word out and swung, desperately propelling herself a few metres as the stunner exploded into the branch a mere whisper after she’d let go. Her lungs and side cramped, but she powered on.

Arms straining, she dragged herself onto a lateral branch that created a narrow causeway to the next tree, and dashed along, keeping her attention on the point in the wall where she knew the pod was waiting. Air singed her lungs with every breath.

A bot crashed through the vegetation to her left, keeping pace, but there was no time to worry about that now. Only idiots got distracted from their objective. There were no obstacles ahead of her, and the only potential setbacks were parallel or behind her.

Focus.

A foothold, that branch. Lift. Jump. Pull up. Use that vertical surface to change direction.

Nuri cleared the gap between the last tree and the wall, and for a few heart-stopping seconds she flew, the wind slapping her burning skin as she pushed out into the nothingness. Then: bunch and leap, into the waiting pod.

The hatch whispered closed. She barely had a moment before arms had pulled her aside and another body slammed into hers, the familiar mushroomy smell of J’Veth, as they rocketed along the wall.

The force of their acceleration flattened Nuri and G’Ren into the back of the pod, a tangle of limbs half crushed against one of the crates.

Hold on, you lot! yelled Shiv, their pilot.

Nuri braced her legs against the back seat. One of G’Ren’s arms was pressed over her chest, and his bulk cushioned her on her left. His slit pupils were so wide they almost filled out the orange of his eyes.

The pod tilted sharply to the right and dipped, then righted itself.

Wooo! yelled Shiv. The boosters are working.

We know, groused G’Ren. "And if Nuri hadn’t dragged her feet, we’d not have to use the damned boosters. What were you doing in there?"

The pod tilted again, doing barrel rolls around a series of tight bends, and all Nuri could do was shut her eyes and pray they wouldn’t make a sickening impact with a wall or another craft.

I got the pin, Nuri said once they’d evened out.

For all that hassle, I should damn well hope so. G’Ren twisted into an upright position. His skin was an inky blotch against the dark interior.

Shiv’s overly large eyes gleamed in her bulbous silver-grey face as she peered at Nuri. Can we see it?

Let’s just get back to the Den, right? Nuri gritted her teeth.

The pod lurched sharply again.

Preferably in one piece.

snake

2

The Den was on the outskirts of the Western Calan City barrens, near the fens, which meant that the air was always full of biting insects. The barrens was a no-man’s land, where old wrecks and rubble created a haven for those who weren’t Citizens. Every year as Calan City grew, it pushed its barrens just that little bit further, a spreading canker that blighted the remaining wild lands. Yet to Nuri, this wasteland was home.

She knew every little side street and alley between the stilt-legged shacks, and could run them blindfolded if need be. Stars above, she could run all the roofs too. The Den itself had been built from old trams – three, in fact – that leant drunkenly against each other to form an enormous tripod. It nestled between Mama Ria’s Tea Room (constructed out of old shipping containers and trimmed with the outer shell of a Heran ore freighter) and a Khu-Khut hive (four weird, mud-daubed cones nearly as tall as the Den, embedded with bits of broken glass).

Shiv slipped their pod into the Den’s entrance without even a whisper of a bump, and they all clambered out, grumbling and grumping. Nuri stretched, feeling all the kinks of the run.

G’Ren bumped past her, hard enough to make her stagger.

Oi! What was that about? she called after him.

The J’Veth drone flipped a rude sign over his shoulder and stomped up the stairs to the common area, leaving her alone with Shiv.

Shiv’s third eyelid slipped slowly over her large black eyes, her tiny mouth pursed in annoyance. What bug crawled up his cloaca?

Nuri shrugged. I think he’s peeved because I took too long.

You tipped off security, Shiv said. That’s not cool. I struggled to shake them.

I know. Sorry about that. Nuri huffed out a sigh and stretched, then she patted her pocket. The pin was still there.

I hope whatever it is, is worth it, said Shiv. Can I see?

Um, I’d best go up to see the boss-thing, Nuri replied.

Spoil sport, Shiv murmured, busying herself with linking up the pod to its power source.

Nuri hurried up the stairs, unaccountably nervous. G’Ren was most likely already telling Vadith everything Nuri had done wrong.

Nothing I can do about that now.

This time of the morning the common room was near deserted, the hammocks dangling from the interior scaffolding empty. Most of the pack were out running, and the few who were in huddled on couches plugged into their VR sets or playing games of Tisk. The little ceramic discs clattered like bones on table tops.

Vadith’s quarters were on the mezzanine section right at the top, and Nuri clambered up the ladder in double time. As expected, G’Ren was squawking, and her name cropped up twice before she stepped onto her boss’s level.

Vadith was large for a Heran, which meant he was two heads shorter than Nuri. She liked the fact that she now looked down on him, but that didn’t stop him from reminding her where her place was – at the bottom of the pecking order in his pack.

His grey skin made him all but blend in with the hide-covered daybed upon which he reclined, blinking at her with his large, liquid-black eyes while he sucked on a gizza pipe. Beneath the dim strip lights, his complexion looked pasty even for a Heran, his short, skeletal limbs at odds with his pot belly and oversized oval head. G’Ren sat on stool to Vadith’s right, his skin gone peach-coloured in places, which suggested he was well pleased with himself. All six of his facial tentacles quivered in poorly suppressed mirth.

Nuri sighed, trying to keep her shoulders straight.

I’ve got it, boss. She reached in her pocket, overcome by a sudden reluctance to surrender the trinket.

Vadith put down the pipe’s mouthpiece, puffed out a plume of smoke and clapped his hands. Well, bring it. Don’t be tardy.

She strode forward and withdrew the pin. Vadith snatched it from her hand before she had a chance to examine it.

Yes, yes! This is exactly it, he crowed, stroking the little dragon with long, grey fingers.

If I may ask, Nuri started, out of all the items there, why this one? There were rubies –

I can get rubies at the market, he snapped. This – he held up the item to the light fittings – is irreplaceable. An ancient human tribe called the Celts made this. It’s the real deal. Vadith smugly pinned the item to his jacket. And this is where it will stay. His tiny mouth squinched up with pleasure.

Realisation hit Nuri. "You made me and G’Ren risk our necks for a trifle?"

Vadith straightened, his left hand protecting the dragon pin. There is more to this game than merely profit, child.

That was top-class security you had us breach, Nuri continued. We almost got caught.

"I told you we didn’t have much time, G’Ren broke in. And you had to waste it."

Nuri fixed him with a glare. Not now.

This, Nuri, was a straight in-and-out job, and you had to gawp like a glimmer bug at a light fitting, Vadith chastised. Most unprofessional. You could’ve gotten caught, and then what?

"But we didn’t," Nuri said, hot shame burning her face.

Not this time. Vadith cleared his throat. You’ll be on bathroom duty for two weeks. Perhaps scrubbing the drainage outlets will give you time to reflect on the importance of teamwork.

Nuri swallowed back her indignation. The last time she’d given Vadith lip, he’d extended her bathroom duty to an entire month. It had taken a week to get the grime out from beneath her fingernails afterwards.

Vadith’s puckered little mouth stretched into what he might consider a smile, but what she thought looked more like the back end of a fen-flit’s larva. Do we have an understanding?

Nuri focused on the scuffed toes of her grip-boots. Yes, sir.

Good. Dismissed. Vadith sniffed. Now, G’Ren, I am well pleased …

Nuri didn’t stay to hear more.

Bathroom duty for two weeks – that was a special brand of awfulness. The others would make sure to dirty things up even more. They were like that. Nuri’s chest felt tight, and she scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her wrist. It wouldn’t do any good to cry coming down the stairs. No sign of weakness among the pack, the unspoken rule.

What she did need was to go for a run. Maybe as far as the north-western border before Flint’s territory at the ruined warehouses. An hour out, then back again before sunrise. Maybe she’d pick up useful intel or loot along the way. Fortune favoured those who took initiative.

Where you goin’? Shiv called as Nuri leapt up onto the hatchway.

For a run.

Tonight’s close call not enough for you?

Oh, sod off. Nuri pushed herself from the balcony and landed solidly in the alley between the Den and Mama Ria’s.

The ground was slightly squelchy from the previous afternoon’s rains. The ancestors alone knew what else festered in the muck.

If she had more of a spine, she’d stay and deal with the ribbing she’d get from her pack-mates. By the time G’Ren came down from his little chat with the boss, the story of how Nuri had nearly botched the entire mission would be the talk of the Den. Everyone who came in would hear the news second- and third-hand until the story was so blown out of proportion, you’d think Nuri had accidentally on purpose set the entire city on fire.

The snide comments about her muddied ancestry would come into play too.

It didn’t help that Nuri wasn’t quite human. Or any known species for that matter. Which only added to the teasing. Humans didn’t have a fine spray of translucent scales on their upper arms and cheeks. When Nuri was younger, this had looked like glitter, but now that she was nearing adulthood, actual scales were forming. They gleamed like mother-of-pearl in a certain light, and she supposed they could be pretty, if it weren’t for the fact that her skin had no pigment. She was as pale as wax, and her dreadlocked hair was bone-white. It looked as if someone had stripped all the colour out of her with industrial-grade bleach, and she hated it. The fact that her ears were pointed too, and her teeth were a smidgen too sharp, had earned her the nicknames Monster and Fangface.

Everyone in the pack teased everyone all the time, but for some reason the nicknames stung her that little bit more, even though she tried to hide it. What were words, after all?

About the only thing she even liked about herself were her eyes. The irises were dark red, verging on indigo, with little flecks of violet in them, almost like a nebula.

Vadith said she must have a nocturnal species in her DNA, but Nuri didn’t burn in sunlight any worse than the other lighter-skinned species. She just had to wear shades when she was outside during the day because her eyes were unusually sensitive to light, and she knew for a fact she could see as well in the dark as one of the Mahai-kin. So there was that.

Nuri pulled her hood down low and started running. As she approached the dead end, she dragged herself up onto a stack of crates and followed the boundary. Her path along the wall was a mere foot’s width, but that was fine. Up here, on the rooftops, she was the mistress of her surroundings, lifted from the dirt and detritus into a world of buzzing neon and flashing LED screens.

Calan City’s lights became their own constellation, shimmering screens showing windows onto other worlds. Trains snaked along their rails, and every ten or so minutes yet another spacecraft gained clearance from the port to the north. The city never slept – the muted roar of thrusters, the wail of sirens and the ever-present hum of power drives kept up a constant drone. No matter where Nuri went or how high she climbed, there was no silence. No quiet. The air tasted of burnt plastic, dust and despair.

Her goal for the morning, before sunup, was to reach the old relay station. It was right on the edge, before the fens, abandoned because the ground was subsiding and new tech had made the station obsolete – at least until someone found some value in the structure.

None of the barrens-folk would set foot near it. The oldies said the place was cursed, and the kids only came here on dares. The station’s single aerial was listing heavily to the west, and kaza weed had swamped the walls in a green tide. The tiny, trumpet-shaped blooms were still open, releasing their sticky-sweet scent into the muggy air, where fat white moths the size of Nuri’s hands bumped into each other – a strange mingling of ruin and nature.

Anything that might’ve been of value had been stripped away years ago, but Nuri loved exploring the cavernous space where equipment had once been bolted into the floor and walls. In her wildest imaginings she became her own boss and claimed the station. Any runners who joined her pack would become her friends – other youngsters who’d been picked on and made the butt of jokes.

Such dreams were what kept Nuri going.

She came here, too, because she could climb to the top of the aerial, which was the tallest structure outside the city limits. Some nights, she fancied she could see all the way across the fen to the next city over. When it was clear, she might glimpse the shimmer of lights, and she’d wonder if there was another girl or boy sitting on a high place, thinking the exact same thoughts she was. It made her feel less lonely.

Rust flaked