He stumbled out of bed, thumping to the grey floor. He blinked. It was the impact of a shuttle, his shuttle, crashing to the ground — he pushed himself off the brown dirt and leaf litter. Tall trees surrounded him. He looked down, finding himself clad in his old cadet jumper, a scarf tied pretentiously around his neck in the style of the time.
Aaron was gone.
The demons were too.
A voiced called out to him, unseen, “You’ve forgotten us, Galiant.”
He shook his head.
“I am disappointed,” said the man in the forest, his accent thick and heavy — a man who never should have been, not if what the Speakers said was true. “I spared your life. I thought you were different.”
“It was hard.”
“All things are.”
Gal dropped to his knees. His head spun violently, his stomach threatening to vomit. “I never asked for this.”
“No one ever has. No one asks for the hard way, no one asks to do what is truly right. They think they want to, think they are prepared for the work, but no one truly understands what it means until they are faced with their own path.”
Gal sobbed, pounding his hands on the dirt. But it was no longer dirt, it was grey carpet. UEC grey.
Aaron stood in front of him, leaning down.
Gal wrapped his arm around Aaron’s leg. “What’s happening?”
“The sedative they gave you is making it worse.”
A soft hand comforted him. “Shh,” she said.
A bolt of panic shot through him, soothed instantly. “Cordelia, you shouldn’t be here.” But she wasn’t here, he was there, in a grassy green meadow, blue sky overhead.
She smiled serenely at him. “I’m not, dear. But you were so upset. I missed you.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Why would I be mad, dear?”
He blinked in bewilderment. In answer, a spectacled man wearing an antique suit strode into the clearing. “Cornelius?”
The man nodded, acknowledging Gal in his regal way.
“I— I thought you were gone,” stammered Gal.
“Whatever do you mean?” the man said, a man who also could not be. “Stay here with us, it will be safe, you will be comfortable. We can take care of your every need.”
Gal felt his heart soften, the panic melting away. “You’re still alive.”
The two smiled at him in return. “We’re your friends,” said the woman, eyeing him curiously. “It is remarkable, we’ve never known another being before. Come with us, enjoy food, rest yourself.”
And Gal smiled. All around him, a great feast rose up, as if from the earth. Real food, potatoes and maize, field greens and oranges. His mouth watered at the sight. So did his eyes.
He sat himself on the bench that lined one of the long sides. Cordelia sat at one end, Cornelius the other. They laughed and raised glasses high overhead. A strange custom, but Gal followed.
It was silent as Gal gulped down bite after bite, his body crying out in joy at the taste. It was more than perfect. He exchanged a furtive glance with the two others, and they all burst into laughter.
But something else, some dark memory pulled at him. He felt it coming. He blinked, and the warm meadow with its feast was gone. Gal’s chest still rose and fell — it felt good to laugh again after all this time — but his mind came to tell him something was very, very wrong.
He saw the mural first, the story of the Gods painted across the wall. Bloody battle scenes played out in paint, the blood becoming rivers, torrents spreading across the floor.
Demons lay dead in the painting.
He turned.
The fat man, no longer lithe and spry as he was in his youth, made comfortable and large in his station, watched him with beady eyes from behind his desk.
Gal took a deep breath. “I won’t apologize for what I did.”
The First Speaker stared back at him darkly.
“Hap, say something.”
Slowly, he rubbed his hand over his ever expanding belly. “It has never been for you to determine the Path of the Gods, Galiant.”
Gal bit his tongue to keep from screaming out that the folk should have free will, that the Gods would never choose the Path that Hap had sold them.
“You caused significant damage to the Valkas, destroyed her entire weapons bank. What were you thinking?”
“I —.” He couldn’t say it was an accident, couldn’t say he didn’t know what he was doing. A fit of madness — maybe, it was that, wasn’t it? “These planets were perfect. I couldn’t let you destroy them.”
“We’ve been friends for eight years. I’ve always trusted and respected your opinion, but as First Speaker, I have a duty to protect the folk.”
“They were trying to help us!”
“Don’t you see. These people who live on the planets do not believe in the Gods. They are dangerous. Unpredictable.”
Why couldn’t Hap see? He’d not always been like this. Gal raked a hand through his hair. “They’re not dangerous. They didn’t even fight back when we went out there and destroyed one of them.”
“Keep your voice down,” snarled Hap. “What has happened to you, old friend? Perhaps the rigours of Exploration have been too much.”
Gal’s heart sank. He had expected it, expected this would be the end, but some part of him believed, foolishly, that Hap would turn a blind eye, that he could escape his crimes as he had done so many times before.
“I know what you did,” said Hap. “But our official reports say the explosion was the fault of the engineer. A good man will pay for your crimes, but you, my friend, will be spared.”
A slow keening had started in Gal’s ears, a cry of disbelief, of selfish joy, of terror.
“I have arranged a posting with Freight for you, out in the Deep Black where you can’t put yourself in too much trouble. The Gods thank you for your Dedication and Service.”
An unseen weight pushed all the oxygen from Gal’s chest, and he struggled just to stand.
Hap stood from his chair. “If you’ll excuse me, I must convene with the Five. There are some very tricky matters to attend to.”
Gal watched him go, helpless. He would be spared, but so far from the Central Planets it would be as if he had ceased to exist. Except he would still exist, he would still be there to serve the Gods, because Hap was right and his name was known. People knew him: Galiant Idim, devoted friend of Hap Lansford, surveyor for the Gods.
Demons poured from the mural and swam in the blood that covered the floor. Hap walked through them as if they weren’t there, kicking and pushing them out of his way. When he reached the far door, his pants and shoes were magnificently crisp, unsullied by the blood of millions.
The mounted heads of animals long since extinct stared back at Gal from the opposite side of the room. Hap hadn’t hunted these animals, but his ancestors did, and so they were his prize too, displayed in all their glory.
Gal took a step closer, examining one and reading the brass name tag below: ‘Beagle, Canis familiaris’. It was a strange feeling, touching something that was once so alive but now so still and hard, as though it had never been anything more or less than a bit of rock covered in moss, delicately sculpted.
‘familiaris’ — familiar.
Gal looked down the line. A beast with massive sticks shooting out from its head: ‘Reindeer, Rangifer tarandus’. A shaggy creature with sharp teeth as big as a grown man’s fingers: ‘Grizzly Bear, Ursus horribilis’. An entire creature mounted sideways like an upturned smile, its body sleek and muscular with only tiny veils in place of arms and legs: “Perch, Perca fluviatilis”.
Once all these animals were known to people, familiar, but now they were nothing more than decaying statues.
More creatures, more demons.
This was what the man in the forest had feared, all those years ago when Gal’s shuttle crashed there and he discovered a secret more important than any other.
And there, in the middl
e of the row, standing in his hallucination as though it had been there all along, was a human head, its face permanently twisted into a scream. Man, Homo sapiens.
Gal stumbled backward.
The human race was dying, going extinct the same as everything else.
Years of expedition and terra-forming had failed to yield a suitable planet to replace their Earth. Indaer — Etar was good, but the atmosphere was thin and the gravity too heavy.
Hap was wrong.
Gal ran out the door, climbing the circular steps to the Dome, the secretary chasing after him. But she stopped at the foot of the stair — it was forbidden for a mere human to enter the chamber, lest the Gods smite them down. Gal pressed on, Gods be damned, this was the human race.
His head breached the Dome, the perfectly round permaglass sphere that looked over every inch of the capital city and directly to the heavens, to the domain of the Gods, above.
The Speakers fell silent and stared at him. They stood there, their mouths hanging open: Faith, Knowledge, Prudence, Fortitude and Strength, all staring at this captain who dared to enter their Chamber. Arthur Herrington, Speaker of Knowledge, dropped his data pad on the floor.
Hap lurched forwards, and Gal braced. “Galiant, what are you doing? Get out of here now.” Hap glanced up to the sky and kissed his five fingers.
“No,” Gal heard himself shout. “I have to talk to you about the planets. It’s too important.”
The Speakers glanced nervously at each other, surprise and fear laced into their features.
Prudence spoke, nervous, “You should not be in here, it will upset the Gods.”
Hap snarled, “We have already made our decision.”
“You haven’t seen. The planets — planet,” he corrected himself, “is beautiful. Lush, green, There’s fresh water and good soil, crops ready to be harvested. Everything we could ever want.”
Knowledge held up his hands, asking him too quiet. “There are too many variables.”
“Too much possible danger — what good is fulfilling our needs in the short term, without care for the consequences,” said Prudence.
“We need somewhere to go. Humanity is dying!” Gal cried.
“We have several colonies — many you helped set up yourself, Captain Idim. Humanity will thrive once again,” said Knowledge.
“We aren’t surviving out here. Earth was our home.”
“We have been through a difficult time, and difficult times are ahead,” answered Fortitude, “but the Path will lead us to salvation.”
“What if this is the Path? What if the planets were sent to us for our salvation?”
Hap braced, setting his shoulders. “The Gods do not speak to you, Galiant. We are the Voice of the Gods. And these planets are obstacles on the Path.”
Gal gasped.
A hand rested on his shoulder, and behind him stood Aaron. “Gal, what are you doing?” he whispered.
But Gal was caught in the deep undertow of the memory-hallucination. “You destroyed Cornelius. All he ever wanted was to know us, to help us.”
“The planet was against the Will of the Gods. It never should have been.”
“Maybe we just have to have Faith.”
Hap rose to his full height, his expression menacing, body towering — for a minute, Gal almost believed that there was truly a god inside him. “The Path of the Gods is never to be taken lightly, Galiant.”
Suddenly, the Five stood around him, heads basked in the light of the dome, refracting around them like halos. “We know what you have done. Your life has been spared as your disappearance would cause too many questions, but should you ever show your face on the Central Planets again, we can destroy everyone you have ever cared about.”
Gal fell back, Aaron pulling him down so they landed in a mess of flailing limbs and grey carpet. Gal scrambled to get to his feet, but Aaron stopped him.
“You don’t understand,” shrieked Gal. “They’ll destroy them.”
“Who? Destroy what?” said Aaron.
“They don’t see.”
“See what?”
“They just destroy — Augments, Indaer, Cornelius — anything that’s different, anything that threatens the Gods. They’ll destroy me.” Gal looked up at Aaron, into his eager, dead, very much alive face.
Aaron rocked back on his heels, afraid. “Cornelius is already gone, Gal. Years ago”
“No.” He shook his head. “It’s happening over and over. It will happen always.”
TEN
KIERAN SOLDERED TWO WIRES TOGETHER, stifling a yawn.
He blinked. Blinked again.
The connections were crossed — he was holding the wrong wires.
Another blink.
What was he building?
He stepped back, looking up and down the open storage locker. He recognized the device — a signal capture machine, a computer to process the ghosts and fragments of signals sent from too far away that were too eroded to be meaningful without the machine. What he didn’t recognize was how he had come to build it.
If there was anything not to build, it was this. A machine not even considered as an idea in this epoch. A machine designed specifically on the Observer ship to collect the transmissions of centuries.
He pressed his lips together. Hoepe’s words echoed through his mind, taunting him: tired engineers making tired mistakes. He doubted he meant this kind of mistake. He scrubbed his hand over his face. The last thing he remembered was waiting for Sarrin to wake up, and then crawling exhausted onto the bed — he didn’t remember lying down or falling asleep.
This machine had something to do with Sarrin.
She wanted to join him on the Observer ship. A guilty warmth started in his gut and spread out to his fingers and toes. Maybe she could. He would show her all his secret hiding places on the ship — the tight spaces behind the engines, and the weightless corridors where the grav-plating didn’t quite reach to the outer hull.
Would Sarrin like music? The Speakers had a Musician Laureate, but it paled compared to the rock and roll they played over the ships speakers. She would probably like it, maybe it would help her relax.
He grinned to himself.
Not only had he found some of the lost Augments, but he was going to bring one back with him. They were always encouraged to bring people back if they found anyone suitable. The Observer ship was massive, but it had been flying for generations. Any new blood would be welcomed.
So why the machine? He looked up at down at its long, cylindrical form and glowing blue power light.
She had been missing from his quarters when he stumbled out of the bed — gone without explanation, although he knew the things that plagued her mind. Dread tapped at his chest. If she came home with him, it would be forever. It would mean leaving her brother behind.
But the signal capture device could easily pick up transmissions from the warship to Etar, even if it was three-days FTL jumping away. That’s how it was designed. If Halud was still alive, they would find him. And Halud could come to the Observer ship too.
The thought sat strange with him. Full siblings were non-existent on the Observer ship. It narrowed the genetic pool too much. But Halud, like Sarrin, wouldn’t be safe anywhere either. He was an Augment, he had defied the Speakers. He would have to leave with them, and the Observers would just have to live with it.
The geneticist would have his work cut out for him, was all.
The geneticist. He frowned.
Kieran had a sister and a brother, but they were half-siblings — his sister and he shared a mother, his brother had the same father. And all the children were raised collectively. He knew his sister’s other sister, and his brother’s sister, and all their siblings. No doubt they were probably all related somewhere in the family tree, but it was too complicated to try to figure out in his head.
The geneticists had long algorithms to trace the genealogy. When he returned, they would determine the best match — they would use his genetics to co
ntribute to a child, and a second one — every person two children. And he would help raise them with everyone else on the ship, the same as he’d done with the younger kids before he left.
But his part was easy — a lab sample. They would expect the same from her, only the children lived with their mothers, were borne by their mothers — and she had new genetics, they might want more offspring. The thought of Sarrin ever in a hospital again, undergoing another procedure, another scar — he clutched the locker door.
The machine stared out at him, its soft blue light pulsing gently. He should rip it out, pretend it never existed. But he couldn’t. They needed to find Halud. And then… and then what?
What would happen after that was too much to think about. She had asked to come, he wanted her to come. But bringing her to the Observer ship might be the most selfish thing he had ever considered. His chest sagged, the weight of his body suddenly crushing.
He glanced over his shoulder — the storage area was hidden from the rest of the engineering bay, but not separate. He could hear the dings and clangs and the muffled talk of the Augments working on the other side of the wall, but it was the middle of the night-cycle and the bay wasn’t full. No footsteps came towards him.
He would finish it. Quickly. Lock it in the locker and let it run.
His fingers found the multi-dose injector in his pocket, dialling it for a double and pressed the cold stims into his neck.
* * *
“He said, ‘they made you’. They made us what?” Hoepe rubbed his temples, slouching into the stiff, grey plastic chair in the canteen.
Across from him, Leove sat next to Isuma. She picked idly at the now-cool ration container in front of her, casting curious glances at Hoepe. Leove shifted, his arm coming off the backrest of Isuma’s chair and into his own lap as he grunted and tried to fit himself into the too-small seat. “I’ve not seen such advanced withdrawal before. You were right to sedate the captain.”
“But what did he mean?” Hoepe poked at his own cold ration dish — something with protein noodles and a sauce that looked like purulent discharge.
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