by J. N. Chaney
“He does have a certain appeal to him, I must admit,” Tanner said, then he glanced at Thorn. “But you obviously disagree.”
“I’m not saying he’s not a blast of good humor. No, he definitely is,” Thorn said. “I respectfully ask you to be alert. That’s all.”
“Stealing your limelight, maybe?” Osborne muttered.
Thorn fired a glance at the Tac O. “If you’d like to lay dead on a morgue table after fighting with magic, be my guest. I’d love the help.”
“Enough,” Tanner snapped. “Might I remind you that you are standing in your Captain’s briefing room, with your Captain present. Now, with that in mind, gentlemen, please proceed. I’d like to see where this goes.”
Thorn looked at Osborne, who looked back. Neither said anything.
“Excellent choice,” Tanner said. “Now, if you two want to go and work out this dick-waving contest during a sparring match in the gym, fine. Until then, keep them firmly in your trousers. Do we have an understanding?”
Thorn and Osborne both nodded. “Aye, sir.”
“Now that that’s been firmly and irrevocably settled, we have a ship to get back underway, folks. To your duties. And Thorn? Don’t take my silence for acceptance of Bertilak at face value. I’m a born cynic as well, but I hide it under my excessive charms.”
“Aye, sir,” Thorn said, stifling a laugh.
“Carry on, then.” Tanner turned away in dismissal, leaving Thorn with his suspicions.
10
Morgan was bored.
Drifting on gentle currents beneath the icy mantle enclosing Tāmtu had been fun. Living underwater—even breathing the stuff—and otherwise poking around the sprawling submarine towns and cities had also been fun. The endless expanse of sea-bottom was a playground to rival anything on Nebo, but that sensation was long gone.
The novelty of it all had worn off. The Nyctus of Tāmtu were her friends, all of them recognizing her and greeting her warmly. But Morgan was starting to find answering them back just as warmly was getting tiresome. She didn’t want to annoy her new friends, but they all had things they had to do, places to go, other Nyctus to meet. This bustle of complicated activity was what kept the towns and cities running, kept the Radiance that illuminated the abyss lit, and kept the Nyctus civilization on Tāmtu generally working. She understood that.
But it was boring.
She tried to spend more time with the younger Nyctus, but it wasn’t the same. Morgan knew enough about how people worked that she understood that children turned into grown-ups. But she also knew that children were just like grown-ups, only smaller. It was different with the Nyctus, though. Their babies started out like fat, pinkish worms, which then changed into spindly things with little tentacles. With no legs, and no obvious way to communicate or do anything at all but swim around randomly, little Nyctus were worse than boring. Only when they reached what the Nyctus called second birth did they become recognizable as actual Nyctus. As soon as they did, they basically turned instantly into grown-ups and graduated back to those boring—sure, important, but still boring—grown-up things.
So she could try to amuse herself among pinkish slugs, or apparently mindless larvae, or among the grown-up Nyctus who had so many other things to do—
“I can tell that you’re troubled, child,” the elder shaman said.
Morgan turned from the glowing city sprawled a thousand meters below her feet and looked at the shaman with a frown.
“I’m bored.”
“What would you like to do?”
“I don’t know.” Morgan bit her lip, thinking about it. “Are there other places?” she finally asked.
“There are—many other places.” A tentacle lifted and pointed in a random direction. “Over there is another place. And there’s another place right beyond it. And—”
Morgan couldn’t help giggling. “Yeah, I know that. I mean, are there other places like—” She paused, struggling to express herself. The elder shaman just waited.
“Like this,” she finally exclaimed, sweeping her hands all around. “Like, up there, out there, above the ice and the sky!”
“You mean, are there other planets.”
“Er—planets?”
“Worlds like this one, but far away, orbiting other stars.”
Morgan pondered that. It made sense. Nebo had been another planet. But it also wasn’t quite what she meant, either. Her limitations as a child left her seeking words outside her experiences.
“Are there places like that,” she ventured, “where more Nyctus live?”
“Ah, I understand. Yes, there are. There are many other worlds where the Nyctus live.”
“Can we go there?”
“It isn’t that easy, child. You would need a ship to travel to them.”
“I made a ship once.”
“Yes, you did. That was how you got here.”
“I could do that again.”
The elder shaman flickered with quick, bioluminescent pulses, a sure sign of alarm.
“We have discussed this, child. It’s very dangerous, for many reasons. You must stay here, where you’re safe. That is why you came to us, after all. To be safe.”
Morgan deflated. “I know. I’m just—”
“Bored. Yes.”
She nodded.
The elder shaman stared for a moment, then reached out a tentacle.
“I have an idea. Come with me, child. There’s something I want to show you.”
Morgan gasped at the wonder of it all.
“It’s beautiful,” she muttered, then she turned to the elder shaman with a frown. “What is it?”
“It’s a map.”
Morgan kicked her feet in a way that had become second nature to her, swimming around the sprawling display of colorful lights, all dots and lines and swirls.
“What’s a . . . a map?” she called back.
“It’s a picture,” the elder shaman replied. “Of places. It shows us where those places are, and in what direction, and how far away they are from other places.” Ripples began to shudder rhythmically along the shaman’s body, driving it toward, and then into, the vast map.
Morgan looked around her. The map filled an enormous, domed chamber that was attached to another series of domed chambers. All together it was called The Conclave—which meant nothing to Morgan, aside from it being the place the grown-up Nyctus went to do whatever grown-up Nyctus do. The Conclave had something to do with running the city, or maybe all of Tāmtu. She wasn’t really sure which and didn’t really much care, either.
This map, though—this was something special.
It filled the enormous dome, probably a hundred times bigger than Morgan. Maybe a thousand, or a million. It was enormous, in any case. It would take Morgan at least a whole minute, and maybe longer, to swim from one side of it to the other.
That made her curious, so she did just that—started swimming. With decisive, strong kicks, she pulled herself into motion, hands fluttering to steer as she moved forward.
Bright points of light drifted past her. There were words beside them, some different for each of the little lights, some the same for all of them. For instance, one of those same words for each was Population, with a number beside it, but it was a different number for each one. Glowing lines connected many of them, but not all. And there were other, less well-defined things. Misty wisps and fuzzy glowing splotches were also labeled with words she didn’t recognize.
She found her attention drawn to one of those diffuse spots of light, pulsing brighter than the others. For Morgan, different was good.
The shock of pain from Daddy trying to pull her apart made her jerk back, made Mister Starman flare as bright as the sun. She snatched desperately at that pain, using its energy to scoop up endless handfuls of dust and gas and anything else she could reach to fling at Daddy as hard as she could. Another titanic blast, the biggest and brightest yet, crashed through reality, flinging away stars and planets and glowing gases like spark
s from a campfire.
“Child?”
Morgan jumped and looked around. She’d been staring at that one glowing smudge of light. The words beside it said Anomaly 87409-AAB, Aberrant Stellar Nebula, first observed . . . and then it gave a date and a time. There were other numbers, too.
“Child?” the elder shaman said again. “Is something wrong?”
Morgan tilted her head, still staring at Anomaly 87409-AAB, then pulled her gaze away and turned to the shaman. “Nope. I just—” She looked around, taking in the map that now sprawled all around her. “It’s so pretty!”
“It is. However, this is what I wanted to show you,” the shaman said, drifting a few meters back, then reaching out a tentacle and touching one of the points of light. It immediately flashed, and another picture appeared, a smooth, white sphere, covered with a fine network of dark cracks. The word beside it was Tāmtu. Many more words and numbers popped into existence all around it.
“This is where we are. This is Tāmtu,” the elder shaman said, then he gestured at the picture of the cracked sphere. “This is what our planet looks like, if you were to go into space and see it from far away.”
Morgan nodded. “I sorta remember. When I was coming here, I sorta remember seeing that.”
The shaman gestured with another tentacle, then touched another point of light. The picture of Tāmtu, and all of the words and numbers around it vanished, then a new picture and new words and numbers appeared around the second point the shaman had touched. The word beside this one was Pelagus.
“And this is a different world from Tāmtu. If you wanted to travel there, this map would show you what direction you had to go, and how far away it is.”
Morgan giggled. “That’s dumb. It’s, like, as far away as my toes are from my nose.”
Amusement flickered along the elder shaman’s body. “Like I said, this is only a picture. Pelagus is actually very, very far away from Tāmtu. If you shone a beam of light from one to the other, that light would take over five whole years to make the trip.”
Morgan stared. She knew that light traveled very fast, so if it took it five whole years, then it must be hundreds of kilometers away.
Another thought cut off her amazement. She stared at the picture, at a sphere. This one was blue and brown and covered with swirls of white cloud.
“Do other Nyctus live there?”
“They do. There are many large cities, just as there are here.”
“But there’s no ice.”
“Not all planets are covered with ice like Tāmtu is,” the shaman said. “On this one, the air is much warmer, so most of the heat comes from the planet’s star.”
“You mean the sun?”
The elder shaman flickered softly with indulgent patience. “Yes, the sun. Most of the heat on Pelagus comes from the sun. Here, on Tāmtu, it mostly comes from inside the planet, through the vents.”
Morgan stared at Pelagus. “I wouldn’t like that. I wouldn’t like not having ice over me.” She reached back for Tāmtu and touched it, making the picture and numbers and such for Pelagus to go away, and Tāmtu’s to reappear. “I’m way happier here.”
“I’m glad, child.”
Morgan was happy, she realized.
But also bored.
“Do you talk to the others?”
“The others?”
Morgan swept her arm around. “The other planets. The other Nyctus. Do you talk to them?”
A strange shiver shook the shaman, as though he was angry? Upset? Afraid? Morgan wasn’t sure, but before she could ask, the shaman replied.
“Not since you arrived here, child, no.”
“Oh. So what about the ships? The ones that keep showing up in the sky, above the ice?”
“The ships?”
“Yeah.” She pointed up. “Up there. Ships come, sometimes. I make them go away.”
“Go away how?”
“Just go away. I don’t like them. The Nyctus on them are mad. They’re not friendly like you here on Tāmtu. I don’t like that, so I make them go away.”
Morgan thought about that. The ships had started coming not long after she arrived. First small ones, then bigger ones. One really big one and three smaller ones had eventually shown up. Morgan had made them go away, too, and there’d been no more ships since.
Another shiver ran through the elder shaman. At the same time, quick flashes of angry crimson shot along the length of its body. But that soft turquoise glow of the Radiance immediately replaced them, and the shaman relaxed again.
“If more ships come, child, please tell me before you make them go away.”
“Why?”
“Because they may want to talk to us.”
“But they’re mad. They’re not my friends, like you.”
“It’s because we’re your friends that we care about you, child. But we also—”
He shuddered again.
“—we also do not wish to harm our own people.”
Morgan sighed. “Okay, fine. But if they’re mad, they can’t come under the ice. I won’t let them.”
“Very well.”
Morgan swam off, amusing herself by touching points of light, flashing up pictures of planets, some entirely water, some a mix of water and land. There was another covered with ice, and still another that seemed to be entirely shrouded in some sort of thick mist. It held her interest for a while, but eventually she got bored again.
Her attention drifted back to Anomaly 87409-AAB. She floated over to it—
Another titanic blast, the biggest and brightest yet, crashed through reality, flinging away stars and planets and glowing gases like sparks from a fire. A flame of creation. Or pure violence, made from will.
Why had Daddy done that? Why had he tried to change her, to make her into something she wasn’t?
She wanted to know. She needed to know that she could trust him before she ever talked to him again. That’s why she had done what she had, why she’d—
She stopped, staring at Anomaly 87409-AAB but without really seeing it. She had an idea.
Morgan reached down inside herself and tugged at the glittering power she found there. She scooped imaginary handfuls of it up, then looked around and threw the energy, glittering and granular, all around her. Motes of potential raced outward, stopping when each one touched one of the little lights marking the Nyctus planets. From there, they all shot upward together, like a shower of sparks from an ancient forge, but much, much more powerful. They swept through the ice, into the sky, into space beyond, and scattered as if powered by a will that was wild and free.
Now she had to concentrate a little harder. It would be easier with Mister Starman helping her, but she didn’t like him anymore. Frowning, she pushed the motes on and on, letting herself experience each one separately, but also all of them together. They flashed through space as quick as thought, each one finally reaching the same planet it had touched on the map. As each mote arrived, Morgan had a momentary vision of that place. Images and impressions thundered into her mind. She had to work hard to keep it all sorted out, and she eventually lost track. They all smeared together into a blur of nonsense, visions of one place superimposed on or mixed with others. Finally, with a growl of frustration, she gave up and just let the motes flicker and die.
It left her with a headache and a thin curl of blood wafting from one nostril. It also left her with nothing but a confusing swirl, like someone had thrown a whole bunch of still images into the air. She’d tried to look at each, and remember where and what it was, before they all hit the ground. But now it was a jumbled mess.
She sniffed, pulling water through her nose. She briefly tasted the blood, harsh and metallic, but she ignored it and focused on the one thing she really did want to know.
And there it was. Out of all the Nyctus, on all of the planets shown on the map, only the Nyctus of Tāmtu were her friends. Only they were the soft, blue-green of the Radiance. All of the other Nyctus—every single one of them, everywhere�
�were flaring orange-red. They were mad, all of them. They weren’t her friends at all.
Morgan turned in place, slowly taking in the map spread around her. The elder shaman said something, but she was too busy looking at where all the angry Nyctus were.
She wondered if she could change them. She wondered if she could make all of them nice, like the Radiance.
She wondered if she could make all of the Nyctus her friends. Whether they wanted to be her friends or not.
11
But they’re mad. They’re not my friends, like you—
Thorn flung his eyes open and sat up.
“Lights.”
He looked around as the lights came on.
Sweaty sheets, his rack on the Hecate—
He swung his feet to the floor. “I am so tired of waking up like this,” he said to his shirt, which was currently draped over the back of the chair attached to his miniature desk.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Please restate your question or order.”
Thorn scowled at the voice. For reasons that he still didn’t understand, when compared to Trixie, the Hecate’s AI was like a data pad compared to a supercomputer. He’d heard it had something to do with security but couldn’t imagine what.
“Just forget it,” he said, then he glanced at the time and groaned.
“There’s zero-dark-thirty,” he muttered, “and then there’s a time to be awake that truly sucks.” He glanced up. “Don’t you agree?”
“The answer to that question is purely subjective,” the AI said, its voice clipped and efficient.
Thorn smiled a humorless smile. “Machines are so dumb.”
The AI didn’t respond.
Thorn sank back and sprawled across his rack, his head and shoulders against the bulkhead, his legs and feet dangling off the side. This time, the dream had been even more vivid, more real. Usually they were half-glimpsed impressions of his daughter, Morgan being somewhere—although he wasn’t sure where, beyond it being only dimly lit by bluish light. This time, though, he had a firmer notion of her being somewhere specific. It was somewhere underwater, and there were—