For Darkness Shows the Stars Read Free Page A

care for the Reduced and their offspring. They’d tend the land, obey the protocols, and keep humanity alive.
    Then came the CORs.
    Some reckoned there were four generations of them now, though others claimed only two. There were more every year, though, as if the human spirit itself had risen from the ashes of the Reduction. CORs—or Posts, as now almost everyone but holdouts like Elliot’s father had taken to calling them—came from Reduced ancestry, but they were born and developed completely normally. Posts were as intelligent and capable as any Luddite. They’d been rare in the time of Elliot’s grandfather, but now people said one in twenty babies born to a Reduced was a Post, and a Post parent never produced a Reduced child.
    Posts quite naturally stepped into positions of power on the Luddite estates. By the time Elliot was born, it was a given that the Luddite farms, instead of being overseen by the actual Luddites as they had been for generations, would instead be manned by a staff of Post foremen, mechanics, chefs, and tailors. The Luddites themselves presided over all in a life of relative leisure.
    When Elliot was younger, she’d asked her tutor why, if the CORs were as capable as the Luddites, did they still have the legal status of the Reduced? The conversation hadn’t gone well. No one could deny the existence of the CORs, but it was still taboo to deviate from the Luddite way. No one had even studied the origin of the Posts, nor tested their genetics. It was not for Luddites to question the will of God or the nature of man. Such thoughts had led to the Reduction, and by their piety alone had Elliot’s people been saved.
    What, Elliot wondered, would her teacher think of her Luddite piety now? She knew her wheat was a sin, but what choice did she have? The North estate could not go hungry.
    These flowers, though—they were something else. There was no reconciling it. She knew what everyone else would see. A creation of frivolous beauty, made by a Reduced who’d aped Elliot’s crimes. It was insupportable. Unforgivable.
    It was also pure Ro. She loved pretty things, which was why she grew flowers, and she loved Elliot, which was why she tried to do everything just like her. And she was Reduced, which meant she bore the punishment for the hubris of her ancestors. Ancestors who had held themselves higher than God, and had been brought lower than man.
    If Elliot wasn’t careful, Ro would suffer punishment for a sin of Elliot’s making, too.
    Ro began to shuffle the pots, burying the hybrid blossoms among the others. “Shh,” she said. “Shhh, shhh.” But she couldn’t be trusted to keep the secret. Not like Dee or any of the other Posts.
    Elliot plucked a single bloom and rubbed the petals between her fingers. They were so small and perfect, so alive and vibrant. How could such a thing, such a tiny, beautiful thing, be a sin against God? Surely a sinful flower would wither and die, but look how these prospered under the care of the most humble of creatures. Whatever else this meant, the existence of these flowers, on this day, told Elliot one thing: Let her father trample what wheat he may—Elliot would not give up.
    ON SUMMER AFTERNOONS, BARON North and Tatiana made a big show of descending into the star-cavern sanctuary for Luddite services. Their piety waned in the winter months, however, when the ancient refuge was less a cool retreat from the sun and more the frigid, punishing darkness that their ancestors had endured only because the wars had driven them underground.
    Elliot didn’t begrudge them their activities, though. She used the time to have uninterrupted access to her father’s study, so she could deal with his correspondence. Once, the job had been her mother’s, and so by rights it should now be Tatiana’s, but Elliot’s sister showed the same interest and head for numbers as their father—which was to say, very little at all. Left to them, the desk would collapse beneath