The Last Crucible

by J. D. Moyer

  J.D. Moyer

  The Last Crucible

  FLAME TREE PRESS

  London & New York

  *

  For my parents

  Prologue

  Director Balasubramanian sipped his tea while reviewing the reports from the Stanford’s Repopulation Council. The ringstations were repopulating Earth at a rate much faster than anticipated. It had started with the Stanford’s own research station declaring independence. The Liu Hui had responded by building an even larger settlement on the island that had once been Taiwan, and more recently the Alhazen and Hedonark had founded their own towns.

  The Ringstation Coalition was a tenuous alliance. Its members shared a joint Human Rights Charter and Ecological Charter, but there were no provisions for enforcement. If one of the communities started torturing and executing people, or strip mining and clear-cutting, all Bala could do was wag his finger.

  There were existing communities on Earth to consider as well, those that had survived civilization’s fall and the great eruption of Campi Flegrei. Repop, for many years, had observed a strict policy of Non-Interventionism. But that had broken down when a Stanford anthropologist had fallen in love with one of her subjects, and then had a child with him.

  “Director, I’m sorry to bother you.”

  He looked up to see Zinthia, a bright young woman who worked as a liaison between Repop and the Security Council.

  “No bother at all, Zin. How can I help you?”

  “Security wanted you to know that the Michelangelo is approaching. It looks as if they’ll be moving into a geosynchronous orbit within a few days.”

  “Around Earth?” he asked. Zinthia nodded. It was a stupid question, but Bala was dumbfounded. The Michelangelo had resided in the outer solar system for decades, powered by a fusion core. “Have they responded to hails?”

  “Not so far.”

  The Michelangelo had started off as a museum ship, hosting and protecting many of Earth’s great historical artworks. But gradually the Michelangelo had slid into isolationism, cutting off communications with the Stanford and the other ringstations. There were rumors that its inhabitants had gone mad, becoming paranoid and investing their resources into deadly weapons systems.

  “Well, I look forward to welcoming them. Maybe we can be reunited with some of Earth’s long-lost artistic treasures.”

  Zinthia nodded and excused herself, handing him a viewing tablet on her way out. The tablet displayed a visual recording of the Michelangelo, which was now close enough for detailed telescopic observations.

  The habitat ship, a black, rotating cylinder dotted with blue and violet lights, was vast in scale, dwarfing even the Liu Hui. What if the rumors were true, that its inhabitants had gone mad? And why were they returning to Earth orbit?

  Bala tossed the tablet onto his desk, accidentally knocking over his tea. The hot liquid spilled and dripped onto his pant leg, burning painfully.

  PART ONE

  The Maghiarja

  Chapter One

  Sardinia, 2757

  Jana struggled to guide the plow behind Pinna, a hulking red ox. Where the blade cut the earth, it revealed rich, black volcanic soil, but it kept getting caught on rocks. And now Pinna had stopped entirely.

  “What is it?” She patted the huge beast, which she had seen birthed by its mother when she was just a child, and looked to see why it had stopped. A half-buried boulder blocked their progress. She squatted and tried to lift it, but her lanky arms strained uselessly against the big rock. She considered just going around the obstacle, but she knew Papà would be displeased. He wouldn’t scold her – he was a gentle, quiet man by nature – but his own fields were always plowed in perfectly straight lines. Not only that, but he arranged his tools carefully, kept their house neat and tidy, and generally abhorred disorderliness of any kind. Jana didn’t mind a little chaos herself, but if she went around the boulder it would drive Papà crazy, like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

  “Antonio! Cristo! Come help me!”

  The young men were lounging beneath an oak tree, passing a pipe back and forth, most likely gossiping about women. Probably about Filumena in particular, even though Cristo was engaged to Sabina.

  “We’re still eating lunch!” Cristo yelled back. They’d finished lunch – barley bread with olives, cheese, and fresh tomatoes – nearly an hour ago. Jana was already starting to get hungry again.

  “Wait here, Pinna.” She patted the ox again and jogged over to where Cristo and Antonio were lounging. Searching the ground, she found what she was looking for: a sturdy oak branch. Cristo flinched when she picked it up.

  “Come help me move this rock, if you think you’re strong enough.”

  She dug away at the loose earth beneath the boulder and drove the branch in as far underneath as she could. Using the branch for leverage, she was able to budge the rock, just barely.

  “Here, let me try,” Cristo said, handing his corkwood pipe to Antonio. As she’d predicted, posing the task as a test of strength had snapped the boys out of their slothful stupor. Cristo grabbed the oak branch and heaved, grunting loudly. The boulder moved a few centimeters.

  “That’s not going to work,” Antonio observed.

  Cristo heaved and grunted again, with similar results. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “We could harness the ox to the rock. Pinna is strong enough to drag it.”

  Jana frowned. “That was my first thought, but we’d have to go back to town for rope. And tying the plow to the boulder might be difficult.”

  Antonio nodded. He was more reasonable and thoughtful than Cristo. “What do you think, Jana? Any ideas?”

  “Just leave it there and go around it,” Cristo said.

  “My father wouldn’t like that.”

  “Well, then have him come move it.” Cristo didn’t like Papà, but Cristo’s father and her own father had been friends since childhood. Cristo was obligated to help when asked.

  “We could ask Sperancia to move it,” Antonio suggested.

  Jana hated to ask Sperancia to do manual labor; the old woman had enough on her plate with doctoring and teaching. But it would probably be the fastest way to move the boulder.

  “You can ask her,” said Cristo. “I’m scared of her.” There was no shame in being afraid of the village maghiarja, as she was sometimes called. A word from the old language: a sorceress. It wasn’t that Sperancia would curse you or give you the evil eye, but it was easy to feel judged when she looked at you. She was old – at least a century and maybe two – and had strict notions of how people should behave. Those she disapproved of heard about it at length. And one didn’t interrupt Sperancia or treat her with anything other than the utmost respect. Not only because of her venerable age, but because she was strong enough to kill a pig with a single punch to its forehead. Or to move a heavy boulder with her bare hands.

  “I suppose I can go to town and get some rope,” Jana said. “Will one of you unharness Pinna and lead him to the shade?”

  Jana tried to stay in the shade herself on the path back to town, walking on the edge of the packed earth road. Evergreen and cork oak forests covered most of the island of Sardinia, or at least the parts Jana had seen, with the exception of the coastal areas where some gardeners grew artichokes. Sperancia said she could remember a time when the forests hadn’t been so thick and oppressive, a time when people had cut down so many trees that the sea had eroded the soil and made the land barren. The volcanic eruptions on the mainland had fixed that problem, depositing huge amounts of mineral-rich ash all around the Mediterranean. Unfortunately those same eruptions had killed nearly everyon
e in Europe, but winds had sheltered the people on the western coast of Sardinia. Those survivors were Jana’s ancestors.

  The island had gotten bigger over the centuries, not just from the ash fall, but because the oceans had receded. Sperancia said that the water had been sucked up and away into the ice fields, far to the north and south, great expanses of glaciers that flattened forests and the remains of once-great cities, pulverizing metal and stone alike. It was hard for Jana to imagine such things; she’d only seen ice in thin, clear crusts over still water on the coldest winter mornings. But Sperancia insisted on the existence of entire mountains made of ice, kilometers high.

  Jana wasn’t exactly clear on how Sperancia could know or remember all this. If Sperancia was as old as she claimed, she’d been born in the 2600s, or the mid-2500s at the earliest. If Jana remembered her history correctly, the Campi Flegrei cauldron had erupted in 2387. Sperancia claimed that she talked to her ancestors directly, that they lived inside of her somehow. Did she mean that literally, or did the old sorceress just have a colorful way of describing her internal dialogues? Jana sometimes imagined conversations with Nonna Ànghela, her father’s mother, who had died a few years ago, the day after Jana’s eighteenth birthday. But Nonna Ànghela didn’t live inside of Jana, not really. She was dead and buried in the cemetery.

  She supposed she would find out the truth soon enough. The Crucible ceremony was in midsummer, only a few months away.

  She arrived home, entering through the side gate into the garden, where she guessed she would find her father, Leandro, tending his tomato vines, greens, potatoes, carrots, and mirto berries. Like most people in town he spent much of his time growing and preparing food. Those who didn’t garden or tend orchards spent their days in fishing boats, hauling in huge amberjacks or giant black grouper that could feed a family for a week. Those who lived upriver in the hills that fed the Temo herded sheep and goats or grew grapes and olives. Plowing fields and planting grain – barley and farro – was a relatively new tradition pioneered by Sperancia, who had gathered wild variants descended from ancient island crops gone to seed. Though the soil was rich, it was difficult to find open fields, and preparing an area for planting meant clearing trees and burning out the stumps. Jana’s father was one of the few willing to put in the work. The rewards – dense bread and rich, nutty grain dishes – were delicious, but Jana wasn’t sure it was all worth it. Her arms were sore from guiding the plow, and the winter barley wouldn’t be ready to harvest for months. Other sources of food produced results more quickly: goats gave milk every day; a fisherman could eat his catch the same day; tomatoes could ripen overnight. But Sperancia was always pushing for new ways of doing things, while at the same time keeping the old ways alive. The old woman seemed to know everything, either from reading ancient books or from the direct experiences of her long life.

  “Papà!” She called for her father several times but no one answered. She checked inside the house to make sure he wasn’t napping, and again in the garden, but he was nowhere to be found. Maybe he’d joined Cristo’s father at the bar for a glass of wine. Though it would be unusual for him to stop working so early in the day.

  She found a length of oak-bark rope in the toolshed, closed the side gate, and started back up the road to the field.

  “Jana Manca – come here!” It was Filumena, beckoning her from down the road.

  Jana’s heart sped up, as it always did when she saw her best friend. She knew she wasn’t unique in that regard. Filumena, with her long, brown hair, olive-gold skin, and strong, supple body, set many hearts aflutter. Not only because of her beauty, but because she was big-hearted and gracious, loving others as much as she was loved. Filumena was kind to children, to grandparents, to nearly everyone.

  “What is it?”

  “Jisepu said he saw something while fishing. He’s telling everyone about it at Micheli’s.”

  “What did he see? A whale? A turtle as big as a house? A kingfish longer than his boat?”

  “No, not another one of his fishing tales. He’s seen visitors. And they want to meet with us.”

  “Visitors from where? From the mainland? I didn’t think anyone lived there.”

  “C’mon! Leave that rope and come with me.”

  “Antonio and Cristo are waiting for me up at the new field.”

  Filumena scowled at hearing Cristo’s name. “Let them wait.”

  Jana hung the loops of rope on a nearby branch and took Filumena’s extended hand. Filumena started to skip, not daintily but taking huge leaps with each step, just as they’d done as children. Jana had to do the same to keep up. For a moment she actually felt good in her own body. What came naturally for Filumena, to feel and act physically comfortable, was a struggle for Jana. She didn’t hate her body – it functioned well enough. But nor did she feel connected to her lanky frame. Nor did she enjoy looking at her pale skin and big nose and wide, awkward mouth in the mirror. Filumena could look at her own reflection, brushing or arranging her hair, and seem satisfied, even absorbed in her own image. But Jana passed mirrors as quickly as possible.

  Minutes later, they’d reached the town square. While most of Bosa was in ruins, surrendered to time, much of the old town was still intact. Stonework from as far back as Roman times, though chipped and cracked and crooked, remained standing. The town masons did as much as they could to preserve and repair the oldest buildings.

  Dozens were crowded into Micheli’s restaurant-bar, listening to Jisepu’s tale. She saw her father in the front row. He nodded solemnly when she caught his eye, then returned his attention to Jisepu.

  “How did their boat fly?” someone asked. “Did it have wings?”

  “I don’t know,” Jisepu answered, twirling his mustache. “It hovered above the water like a gull catching the wind, but it had no wings.”

  “What language did they speak?”

  “Italian. Only the red-haired woman spoke. Her accent was strange, but I understood her. But she also addressed me in the old language.”

  “In Sardo?” Jana’s father asked.

  “Yes. I recognized a few words.”

  “How could she have learned the old language?” someone asked. “Nobody here is fluent except for Sperancia.” Jana scanned the crowd but didn’t see the old woman.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do they want?”

  “They said they want to meet with us, to talk and share knowledge. They’re coming to the docks tomorrow morning.”

  “Did they have weapons?” her father asked.

  “None that I saw. They seemed friendly.”

  “Maybe too friendly?” asked Iginu, Cristo’s father. He was a good man, kinder than his son, but careful and suspicious.

  “Maybe.”

  “What questions did they ask you?” Filumena asked. It was an insightful question, Jana thought.

  “They didn’t ask me anything!” Jisepu answered, surprised by the realization. “They knew about Bosa, about the docks, that we are many.”

  “They’ve been spying on us!” Iginu shouted, banging on the bar.

  “Calm down.” Sperancia had not shouted, but the room went silent as if she had. People made way for the maghiarja as she approached Jisepu. She was tall for a woman, and stood perfectly straight, her spine unbent by age. Her face was lean and craggy but had few wrinkles. Where her skin was thinnest, around her eyes and temples, a fine latticework of black threads was visible beneath her deep tan.

  “Tell me everything, from the beginning,” she said. Jisepu nodded and complied.

  Jisepu and Zorzi had been out fishing as usual. They’d gotten a late start – Zorzi had been drinking the night before – but had still managed to net a good haul. They were about to head back to shore for lunch when Jisepu had spotted another boat on the horizon. They’d waved, thinking it was Nevio or another fisherman, but the vessel had ap
proached them rapidly, faster than any boat. Zorzi had wanted to flee (at least according to Jisepu – Zorzi was now napping and could not say differently), but Jisepu had readied his oar as a club, ready to bash in the brains of whatever Corsican savage or other pirate dared threaten them.

  But the vessel had slowed as it neared them. It had hovered like a bird over the water, and was made of materials other than wood. Maybe metal, but how could something heavy float like that?

  An older, red-haired woman had hailed them. She’d introduced herself as Ingrid, speaking Italian, and then repeating herself in the old language. She’d introduced her companions: Tem, a strong-looking young man with long, dark hair and light brown skin, and Lydia, a woman about the same age as Ingrid, with pale skin.

  “Did they resemble each other?” Sperancia interrupted to ask. “Were they of the same family, or kin group?”

  Jisepu shook his head definitively. “Not at all. They looked as unlike each other in features as they looked unlike us.”

  “And only the red-haired woman – Ingrid – only she spoke to you?”

  “Yes. Though the others appeared to understand, and they conversed with each other in another language.”

  “Did the other language sound like this?” Sperancia said something in an unfamiliar tongue.

  “Maybe. I couldn’t say for sure. They were speaking quietly to each other.”

  “Go on.”

  Jisepu continued his story, enjoying the attention. The old fisherman was happy to talk forever, but Jana had heard enough. If Jisepu was telling the truth, the visitors would be back the next day. She would be there, at the docks, to speak with them herself.

  Outside on the street, she felt a little better. There had been too many people inside Micheli’s, and too many smells: garlic and wine and mirto, fish and unwashed bodies. To her surprise, Sperancia joined her on the cobblestone street only a few minutes later. “What do you think, Jana?”