by Stacey Berg
Lia opened her eyes.
Echo jerked awake with a gasp. A steady, rhythmic sound echoed in her ears, a mechanical sob. She smelled singed hair. For a few minutes she lay there, limp, then dragged her eyes open. A pale oval hovered over her.
“Lia,” she croaked.
But it was not. Nyree looked down at her. Then she disappeared. Echo tried to turn her head to follow, could not move. Paralyzed, she thought. The fall. The medical priest appeared in the narrow cone of her vision. He did something with his hands, and the sobbing sound stopped, and with it, her breath. She felt a pressure in her chest, her throat, and then the tube was out. She still couldn’t breathe. She waited for the flurry of motion, the sharp pain as the priest cut out her ovaries, but nothing happened. They do not want any more of me, she thought, and laughed, and then she was coughing, breath starting again, and for a few minutes she could only lie there, her breath settling into a pattern, the life returning to her body like power lighting a circuit.
And then she remembered. “Lia,” she gasped, and rose, or tried to, but something caught her arm. A tube, the dark blood flowing, connecting her to a machine, and the machine wired to the wall. She felt the faint pressure beating in her vein. The Saint’s heart, beating with hers. Lia’s.
Always.
“You don’t need that anymore,” the medical priest said, disconnecting the tube. Her bandaged palm covered the spot, feeling for the pulse. Bandages wrapped her body, too, but she could move, and she sat up, bringing Nyree back into her line of sight. And past Nyree, the other bed, with the body lying still upon it, and blood on the sheet at the chest, and lower down. Death had transformed the smile into a rictus. Echo’s breath choked in her throat again. Gem, dead. In service to the Saint. To Lia. I will remember.
Echo reached over with a pained effort to clasp the cold hand. After a little while she wiped her eyes. The young hunter’s were still open, sightless; vision blurring again, Echo drew them closed.
“I want to see the Saint.”
She couldn’t walk by herself; Nyree assisted, a hand holding Echo’s arm across her shoulders and an arm wrapped around her waist. It was slow going, up the stairs and across the yard. The wind had died down. Nuns and juveniles and priests were at work sweeping away debris. Echo did not have to look up to know the mast atop the spire still turned.
There was debris in the sanctuary too, and wooden planks nailed up to patch the hole the aircar had made. Some of the panels were dark, eyes with the life gone out of them; but Dalto’s board glowed, the pattern playing steadily across it. She paused, leaning hard on Nyree, to take it in. She didn’t have to ask. Dalto said, “You entered the link. All the way. Saints.” His voice shook, but not with fear. “Your mind—you should have burned to cinders. The Saint . . . preserved you somehow.” His trembling finger traced a pattern. “Whatever you did . . . it saved her too. The power is under control.” He adjusted a dial with a little grimace that turned into a pained smile. “Not ours, I think. And the patterns—they’ve changed, but they are steady. More than steady. Whole. But you know that, don’t you.”
She didn’t say anything, only stood for a moment watching the boards flicker and flash in time to her own thoughts, before finally limping the rest of the way to the altar. The Patri already sat there, fingers laced together in his lap as he contemplated the Saint, face rapt. Nyree eased her down and stepped away.
The empty circlet lay on the couch. The metal was singed, blackened. It didn’t matter; she didn’t need to enter the link that way again. She didn’t need to enter it at all. The pattern was burned into her brain, her heart.
Lia. Her body braced instinctively for the screaming of alarms, but that time was past.
Echo.
After that they had no need for words.
A few days later the Preservers left. Somehow all of them had survived except Taavi. They were taking one of the hunters’ last aircars; Echo had expected Nyree to object, but she had merely stripped the craft of everything of tactical value beyond the flight controls and demonstrated the operations. “I am glad to see them go,” was all she said.
Echo, still heavily bandaged, stood by the hatch. “The beacon will guide you the shortest way home,” she told Stigir. Even as she spoke, she saw it, not with her eyes but the Saint’s, in the pattern she shared with Lia. She grasped the ladder, momentarily dizzy. A warm merriment spread through her, as gentle as a touch on her cheek. You’ll become accustomed to it soon.
Lia, she said, for joy that she could.
Echo.
Time meant nothing inside the link. When she finally narrowed her focus again to the man before her, he seemed unaware of any gap in her attention. “The team will decide whether to open the Vault,” Stigir said. “But I would wait another four hundred years before I drew one seed from it. This is not what we have preserved that treasure for. The world is not ready to be reborn.” The ladder rattled beneath his boots.
Khyn would not meet her eyes. Echo said anyway, “You have succeeded in your mission. The priests have given you everything that might help with the children, whether or not you use the stored seed.” No one had argued with that either, when Echo had ordered it.
“It’s my fault that Taavi is dead. That you killed her.”
Echo knew that Khyn would be seeing that face in her dreams for a long time to come. It was a burden they shared. “She served as best she knew how. It is up to us to give her sacrifice meaning.”
The hatch swung closed on the Preservers.
Echo climbed with difficulty up to the tower room. Exey wasn’t there, but she smelled fresh ferm, and scraps of print were scattered everywhere. She studied one of the drawings, baffled at first, then recognized the pattern: vanes, and a power drop tied in, and a huge screw. The Ward’s new mill. No doubt Exey was boasting at this very moment about his unmatched design. North, chastened for now, would be complaining soon about being left behind. The fabricator had busy days ahead.
So do we.
Echo smiled. She let the print flutter to the floor and stepped to the window. The city spread before her, her vision and Lia’s overlaid in one intricate pattern. It was a market day, and cityens surged towards the square. She could make out hunters scattered here and there among them, ever watchful. Her eyes closed for a moment. Gem’s absence made a hollow place that was always going to hurt.
When she looked up again it was to see the spire, flashing bright as the panels turned in the sun. She opened her arms wide to match Lia’s embrace. Even from here the connection surged between them. It was the Saint’s city, and hers, and together they would preserve it. Stigir had been wrong.
The world was already reborn.
Acknowledgments
It continues to take a bigger village than I can thank properly here, so I’ll just single out a few people: My parents. My brother and sister, who didn’t specify a dedication this time and therefore are stuck with “thanks for going fishing with me even when you didn’t feel fishy.” My agent, Mary C. Moore, who keeps such a good eye out for me. Kelley Eskridge, who told me I could do better and gave me the tools to do it with. Chloe Moffett, Jessie Edwards, Emily Homonoff, and Angela Craft at Harper Voyager Impulse, for the great teamwork. Nicola Griffith, for her support. And most of all my wife, Mary, for saying “Yes, dear” at all the best possible times.
An Excerpt from Dissension
If you liked REGENERATION
make sure to read the first Echo Hunter 367 novel
DISSENSION
By Stacey Berg
Available now wherever ebooks are sold.
Chapter 1
The girl Hunter murdered in the desert was only thirteen.
Hunter eased the aircar closer to the cliff’s edge, hovering just above the bleached white stone stained bloody by the setting sol. Emptiness spread in every direction, silent and watchful. Hunter felt it pressing down as she studied the cautious tracks she had followed for the last few miles. The girl had tried to obscure
them, as she had been taught, but Hunter knew the desert far too well to be deceived. The tracks ended in a patch of scuffed sand. A broken thornbush trailed over the edge where a desperate hand had ripped through it in a last failed grab at salvation. It was obvious now what had happened.
She settled the aircar in the dry creek bed a hundred feet below. Already the cliff cast a long shadow across the canyon. The day’s heat still radiated from the stone, but Hunter could feel the chill in the breeze probing for gaps in her clothing, a mild warning of the harsh night to come. She had to hurry; the scavengers would gather quickly once true night fell. Even she did not want to be caught in the open then.
Her boots squeaked a little in the fine layer of dust, though she could have moved silently had it mattered. Glancing up to the torn spot at the edge of the cliff, she estimated the fall line and began to search the bottom in a systematic grid. It was only a few minutes before she spotted the still form crumpled facedown among the rocks.
The ground warmed her as she knelt. She could see why the girl hadn’t called out for help: her shoulders rose and fell with desperate effort, no breath to spare. Hunter rolled her gently on her back.
The girl’s eyes were open, pupils dilated wide with shock. Her chalk-white face was bathed in sweat despite the chill. Even so, when the girl spoke, her voice, weak as it was, came out calm, controlled. “You came for me. I knew you would.”
“We don’t waste anyone.”
The eyes, dark as Hunter’s own, closed briefly, dragged open again with an enormous effort. “The others?”
“Everyone else returned as scheduled.” Eight out of nine, a good outcome for this exercise. Ten sols alone in the desert culled the weak quickly, but none of the rest had called for rescue, and the girl had not had time. The 378s were a strong batch; there had only been fourteen to begin with, thirteen annuals ago. When Hunter had been this age only eight were left. The priests always made more, but it was never quite the same as your own batch.
“That’s good,” the girl whispered breathlessly. Her eyes wandered up the cliff.
“Tell me how it happened,” Hunter said, though she already knew. It didn’t matter; there was still a little time, and the girl deserved a chance to make her report.
“I was following some canids.” She had to stop and gather air. “I thought they’d lead me to water.”
“That was a reasonable plan.”
“It almost worked. I smelled the spring, but I let myself get too close to the edge, even though you taught us that the rocks there often crumble.” Hunter had never taught this batch. The girl’s mind was wandering, or maybe it was only the failing light. Snatching what breath she could, the girl continued, “I was so thirsty, and I thought . . . And then I fell. I broke my leg,” she added, glancing at the pink and white splinters thrusting out of the torn flesh. Her eyes came back to Hunter’s. “It doesn’t hurt. I don’t feel anything.”
“I know.” Hunter edged around a little. “Here, let me help you sit up.” The girl was a boneless weight against her, arms dangling, a handful of sand trickling between limp fingers as Hunter knelt behind her, holding her close. “It’s all right, Ela. You did well.” The lie wouldn’t hurt anything now.
The girl’s head lolled back against Hunter’s shoulder, eyes searching her face as if trying to focus across a great distance. Her whisper was barely audible. “Which one are you?”
“Echo.”
“Number five, like me.”
“Yes, Ela.” She eased one palm around to cup the back of the girl’s head, the other gently cradling her chin. “Ready?”
The girl’s nod was only the barest motion between her hands. Hunter let her lips rest against the girl’s dusty hair for a short moment. She felt the girl’s mouth move in a smile against her fingers.
Then, with a swift and practiced motion, Hunter snapped her neck.
In a trick of the sunset the spire of the Church glowed, a wire filament burning in a lamp to guide her home. The crossed antennas rose above like a man with arms outstretched to embrace the city. Beneath, the rose window was an eye gazing out at the horizon.
The sky was dark by the time she stood before the massive doors, staring up and up as she always did when she first returned from the desert. The doors faced away from the compound, setting the line between Church and city with an edge not entirely physical; whoever had built them, long before the Fall, had meant the scale to show a greatness far beyond the mere human. Even before the newer defenses had been added, anyone seeking to enter, friend or otherwise, would have to pause here to consider the indifferent power he faced. The great planks were wider than her torso, bolted top and bottom to make the vertical run three times human height, and the worked-metal bindings looked as strong today as the day they were forged. In the center of the doors, just along the seam at chest height, the bindings flattened into a pair of panels. A hand there, and the door knew who sought to enter. Many fates had been decided with a simple touch.
She raised a grimy palm to the panel. Normally there was no wait. Tonight the doors seemed to hesitate, weighing her worth, before the mechanism clicked and they dragged open, permitting her to enter.
Behind its thick walls the cathedral was cool and dim, conditions that changed little day or night. This was the oldest part of the Church, the hewn stone ancient even before the Fall. Stone walls flanked either side of the cathedral for a few hundred paces. Where they left off, the forcewall, invisible but in some ways stronger than the stone, curved to encompass the whole compound. In the other direction, the Saint’s thoughts carried the forcewall in a vast circle separating city from desert, and the canids and other dangers that flourished in the absence of men.
Hunter crossed the nave into the sanctuary. Above her head, the vaulted ceilings arched high, a space calculated to awe the men who used to come here in search of something greater than themselves. Now the echoing silence only mirrored the emptiness of the world. Still, it was a miracle of engineering, this huge enclosure constructed from nothing more than small blocks of stone cemented expertly together. The forebears must have glimpsed long into the future to choose this place as their last refuge against the Fall. It was no allegory, the Patri always said, that the ancient cathedral stood intact so long after the metal and glass of newer buildings had fallen into ruins. The Church simply had the capacity to repair the stone.
The altar rose in the center of the sanctuary, surrounded by the panels and stations the priests tended. Lights played across the screens in patterns unreadable to a hunter, the priests’ fingers tapping responses with swift precision. Upon the altar lay the Saint. A glittering crown of copper connected her to the machines that preserved the remains of the city, maintaining the forcewall that blocked the wilderness out, the generators that gave the cityens a bit of light in the darkness and heat to keep them from freezing to death in the winter, and more important, powered the crypts where the priests did their work to keep the Church itself alive; for only the Church could preserve what was left of the world. That was the central truth of all life in the four hundred annuals since the Fall: without the Saint, the Church would die; without the Church, the city.
Hunter bowed her head. She envied the priests, who could know the Saint’s thoughts, or what passed for thoughts in a mind that was so much greater now than human. The Saint spoke to them through the boards, but no one knew where her awareness began or ended, or if anything about it could be considered awareness, the way men conceived of it.
Once the crown was on, there was no asking.
The Saint had been a girl once, before she ascended to that altar. Hunter hoped for her sake that it was like a deep sleep, undisturbed by any dream.
Hunter had spoken to the girl, before she became the Saint, had received her words and judged her. Wrongly, foolishly. She wished devoutly that she could speak with her now, confess, ask forgiveness. If she listened hard enough she could imagine that she still heard the girl’s voice. But that was all it was
, imagining, the way a mind would always try to fill a void. To know the Saint’s thoughts was not her place, nor any hunter’s. That she even wished it made her unworthy.
Yet she lingered, listening, until she knew for certain she would hear no voice answering her from the silence.
The Patri waited for her at the inner gate, sure enough sign of his concern. He must have been standing there for some time; the motion-activated lights glowed softly where he stood, but the path back to the domiciles was lost in darkness. Another man might have wished for less illumination: Hunter hadn’t had time to go back to the spring before night fell, and a quick roll in the sand had done little to scrub the blood and gore from her clothes. The Patri only nodded as she came down the steps from the mundane inner doors. “You found her in time, I see.”
Hunter nodded, drawing the little vial from her pocket with a sticky hand. “Her ovaries were perfectly intact. I left the rest for the scavengers; there was nothing of value.”
The Patri accepted the bottle without hesitation, secreting it in a fold of his loose-flowing robe. “What delayed you? The aircar landed some while ago.”
Dust clung to a wet stain across the toe of her boot. “I’m sorry, Patri. I came in through the sanctuary.”
She heard the long breath he let out. “Very well. Go bathe. I will have a meal sent to you if you wish.”
Hunter’s stomach twisted. “Not now, thank you, Patri.”
His wise gaze was nearly unbearable. “Rest, then. There will be much to do in the morning.”