by Wen Spencer
"Even in real family, cousins can marry cousins," Ethan said.
Paige glared at him to shut him up.
"I know what you did with Jack," Ethan continued.
"And you killed him," Paige growled.
"Jack killed himself," Ethan said.
"I'm going to hit you if you don't shut up," Paige growled.
"We need to find the item that the angels . . ." Ethan started.
"They're not angels!" Paige cried. "They're disembodied nefrims, Ethan. That's all seraphim are! Out in norm space, they're laying waste to the human race. We have no reason to help them."
"Listen to me, please," Ethan said. "Please Paige. Just listen."
"I have listened," Paige said. "And you've not said anything that changed my mind."
"I always suspected that they weren't angels," Ethan admitted. "Really. But that doesn't mean that helping them isn't the will of God."
She hit him then, harder than she intended. She felt his nose break under her fist and blood instantly scented the air. He staggered back and dropped to his knees. "God damn you, Ethan!" She controlled the temptation to kick him for making her lose her temper. For making her hurting someone in her own family—even if it was just Ethan. "Don't grasp at straws to justify your own stupidity."
"Just look at what's been going on!" Ethan cried, ignoring the blood streaming from his nose. "Look at this world! Do you think its just some happy mistake that it's perfect for humans. Do you think its good luck that the human ships all land close enough together that we can help each other? Do you think its just chance that made just Blues that can pull languages out of our butts so humans can talk to their neighbors? For once, just look at the universe and all its parts and see the ordering of events, through out history, has been to the benefit of mankind."
Paige's hand jerked back in a fist before she could catch herself. "I . . .am . . .not . . .in . . .the mood for . . .theology . . .at the moment."
"Everything has been lined up for us to rescue whatever is on Loki," Ethan whispered. "From your engine problems, to you contacting the Svoboda, to you coming here—where the kites are—when Volkov learned where the artifact was . . . God has his finger on us. Look inside. Use the gift he's given you and see the truth. Please, Paige. Just—just think for one minute."
She didn't want to. If he was right, then Jake and the others of the Lilianna were meant to die in order to bring Turk and Mikhail to the Sargasso. It wasn't the kind and just God that she wanted to believe in. Unbidden, though, her mind was tumbling the events around in the white space, finding the links that chained them together. Turk surviving his fall. The civ fishing him out of the water before he drowned and then leaving him alive. The Rosetta drifting into the civ rafe's path . . .
"God damn you," she whispered.
Ethan read her face and smiled, knowing he won. So she kicked him.
* * *
When Paige and Ethan were talking about kites, Turk assumed that they were talking about some kind of ultra-light airplane. It turned out that kites were massive insect-like creatures. They had two sets of transparent wings, visible only due to black veining. They had a long elongated body, segmented so it could move nearly like a snake while still rigid. They perched with a sense of lightness that belied their huge bodies. Their six legs seemed like thin stilts from the distance, but closer up they were like massive chitinous poles. The legs were joined close to the union of the head to the thorax, with one pair fastened directly to what would be a neck on humans. Their heads were bulbous with huge compound eyes. They were brilliant various hues on their backs, but their bellies seemed to be all a uniform dark. At a distance, they seemed sleek, but close up they were pricked with short stiff hairs.
"You've got to be kidding." Turk growled as he followed the Baileys. "You can talk to these?"
"Oh, they're not intelligent," Paige said.
"Husssh, there me duckie, they be plenty smart!" cried a young man ducking out from under one of the massive insects. His Standard was so thick that Turk wasn't sure he understood the man. "Off be ya, no gawking. Less . . ." he ran his eyes down over Paige. "You be a Blue under a red light?"
"Hush yourself," Paige answered with the same thick Standard. "I be gander to this here goose, and he's a right green one."
The man looked at Turk. "Pft, he be a big yun. Straight out of the jar, be he? I bet a pretty penny, though, I can take em."
"Yer ma teach you manners?" Paige asked. "Or business saavy? We're offering cold hard ones for wee bit of work."
"You ask me ma 'erself." The young man motioned toward an older woman in a bright blue shirt.
Paige headed toward "Ma" with the kite driver.
Turk was going to follow, but realized that Ethan was studying him intently. "What?"
"Do you have a last name, Turk?" Ethan asked.
"No." Turk wasn't sure what to make of this man. He looked much like a slightly older version of Orin with the Bailey blonde hair and blue eyes. If he'd raised one hand to Paige, Turk would have punched him regardless of Ethan being her brother or not. But Ethan hadn't hit her back even though she'd bloodied his nose. Turk respected the man of that much. Of course, Paige wouldn't have been in danger if the idiot had just gone to Ya-ya after Fenrir's accident.
"I see." Ethan said. "Does Volkov owns you?"
"No," Turk said.
"Are you going to stay and marry my sister," Ethan said. "Or you going to leave with him?"
"You will be if you marry Paige." Hillary gave him another grin and sang, "Oni-chan."
He'd thought Hillary had been naïve. He realized now that everyone in Paige's family expected him to marry her. They saw no reason why he wouldn't. Which meant Paige probably saw no reason either. She would marry him if he asked.
All he had to do was ask.
Paige came trotting back. "It's all arranged. They'll take us. Have to go now, though, to have the most time on Loki."
* * *
Because of the long distance from Mary's Landing to Loki, the drivers had limited their kites to a small payload. Thus she, Turk, and Ethan were on different kites. They roared over the water, far up enough that nothing in the water would be tempted to take a bite out of them. Loki grew from a black speck in the distance to a massive rock crowned with jungle.
Unlike other vimanas that Paige had seen, Loki was a misshapen thing. Once you considered the possibility, it was easy to see that Fenrir's Rock had once been part of Loki. Was it chance or knowledge that named the vimana after Fenrir's mythological father? Paige decided it only needed witnesses to the event for the places be linked. She never heard of it in Georgetown, but the kite people had arrived much earlier.
"How much do you know about Loki?" Paige had to shout over the roar of the wing and the deep droning hum that came from the kite's wings.
"We've ne'r been up to Loki for a looksee." X shouted back. "Fenrir's Rock is the only thing he passes by. Neigh on the edge of human waters. We nay want to come down in minotaur waters, if you follow me."
"Have you heard of any stories about Fenrir's Rock breaking off of Loki?"
"Aye, I have. Me gram saw it. A great monster of a ship came streaking in. Bam, she hits Loki and sends the bloody thing spinning, dropping all sorts of rock and dirt and such down into the water below. She came apart and spit pieces of 'erself for miles."
"When was this?"
"Hmmm, well, before you Georgies showed up, but not by long. Gram saw yuns come down too and she marked that as the two big sightings when she was a child."
The Georgetown was one of the first ships United Colony ships lost to the Sargasso. And the U.C. formed when the nefrims utterly destroyed New Haven Colony in a surprise attack. Until that battle, nefrim were unknown. The nefrim ship that hit Loki could have been part of that very first attack.
Or was it the trigger?
No one ever knew why the nefrims came from out of nowhere and started to attack the human race. Could the attack have been retaliation for
something the nefrims only thought that humans did? Was the war over this ship?
It seemed unreason except for one thing. The seraphim—the bodavista of the nefrim race—were focused on this one ship to the exclusion of all others.
They had gotten close enough to Loki that its steep black rocky sides blotted everything but the blue water straight below them. They climbed slowly, the tree crown coming into view. When they finally crested over the edge, the green canopy unrolled for miles in three directions.
Paige gasped at the thick jungle. There was no sign of the alien spaceship. There was no way they could search nearly so much land before the kites would leave.
"Wheresabout you want us to set down?" X asked.
Paige let the question drop the whole way into the white zone and roll about. "Well, I think the ship probably impacted where it's notched." Paige pointed toward the ridge that was at several miles inland. "If anything sheered off and stayed up here, it's probably near there."
"Righty then, that's there is where we'll set ya down."
* * *
Turk gazed at the edge of the vimana after they'd all dismounted. The rim was a good fifty meters away, but somehow it seemed unnervingly close. Strange how on the kite he had no trouble with the height, but standing on the vimana, knowing how far it was down because he'd fallen that distance before, he was having weird jolts of fear. Not a feeling he liked. He was tempted to walk to the edge and look down, but there really wasn't time to deal with personal demons.
"How long are they staying?" Turk asked Paige quietly. "They're not going to strand us up here, are they?"
Paige shrugged and turned to call to the drivers. "Will you stay as we have a look see?"
"If you make it quick. We're going to see if the lakes here have any nymphs. We've never farmed up here before."
"So . . .. Five hours? Ten?"
"Ten will us wiggle room. Not much more than that."
"Righty then. Meet you here in ten."
"They looking for . . .what?" Turk had tried to follow the conversation and failed.
"Dragonfly nymphs," Paige explained. "The adults lay eggs in the fresh water of the vimana lakes. The eggs hatch into larvae that live in the water for several years until they mature."
"Larvae?" Turk glanced at the multi-legged, winged insects. "Like worms? Living in the water?" When she nodded, he shook his head. "This place is so weird."
She winced slightly and looked away. "We have a little while, but they can't stay long, or we'll be out of human waters."
"How did you plan to find this?" Turk asked Ethan.
"I didn't expect a jungle up here," Ethan admitted.
Paige gave her brother a look that could kill. "It's been, what, fifty, seventy, a hundred years?"
"At the start of the nefrim war," Ethan said. "That's how I found it; I looked for crashes in minotaur waters in the right time frame."
"And you didn't expect a jungle?" Paige mocked him.
"I got the impression that Loki was stripped to bare rock," Ethan said. "So no, I didn't."
"Do you know at least how big the device is?" Turk asked.
This time Ethan managed to look somewhat contrite. "No, I don't."
Turk sighed. "I'll see if the scanners can pick up something, but they have a limited range, and this place is huge."
The Baileys started in opposite directions. Turk wasn't sure if it was some unspoken agreement between the siblings or if Paige was simply heading away from her brother rather than given into the urge to kill him. And Ethan being clever, giving her room to calm down. Knowing how the Blues seem to be able to speak without talking, probably both.
Turk followed Paige.
"We'd probably should split up," she said. "Cover more ground."
"There's something I want to ask you."
"Okay." She kept on walking.
He trailed after her. "I'm sorry I was so stupid in Ya-ya, and on Hoto's boat."
"I don't remember you doing anything stupid with the minotaurs."
"Not with them, with you. I let every woman I've known get in the way of seeing just you. It wasn't until the people at Mary's Landing took you away that I realized how much I love you. That I would kill anyone or anything that got in my way of getting you back."
She laughed. "That's very sweet in a scary way."
He caught her hand and turned her to face him. He opened his mouth and his heart leapt up his throat and for a moment he couldn't form the words. "Will . . .will you marry me?"
Emotions flashed over her face and then she looked away, blinking rapidly. "You don't have to marry me just because I've gotten pregnant."
He had hoped for 'yes' but braced himself for a no. This seemed like it was simultaneously both and yet neither; it left him utterly confused. "What does you being pregnant have to do with it?"
She studied him, frowning slightly, as if she was trying to see through him. "It's usually what men think they have to do when their 'woman' gets pregnant."
"Why?"
She tilted her head slightly, frowning harder. "Your father, the Tsar, he's not married is he?"
Correction, he had been slightly confused, now he was utterly confused. "No, he's not. I don't know if he's ever found a woman that he trusted with his heart. Even the women that seek out Mikhail just want power."
Her face softened, and she put a hand up to his check. "Oh, Turk, I love you." And she leaned up to kissed him. He wasn't sure if that was yes or no, but he held her close and kissed her. It felt like he had everything good and wonderful concentrated down into a warm human form, and he didn't want to let her go.
But she eventually pulled away. "Getting married means we stay together."
"I know."
"Will you be happy here? In my world?" Her gaze demanded that he be honest.
He sighed. "On the boat? Fishing? No. But if that's what I need to suffer to be with you, then . . .I guess I have to suffer."
She cuffed him in the shoulder. "I don't want you suffering. I think we'd start to hate each other if you're suffering."
"I don't want to put you through what I went through. I don't want to be the one that takes it all away from you."
She leaned against him.
"We're supposed to be looking!" Ethan called from the distance. "Not making out!"
"I'm so going to push him off the edge." Paige murmured into Turk's chest.
* * *
So they searched while Paige considered how to answer Turk. He had committed. He would stay if she asked him to. Somehow it felt like a hollow victory. She'd seen how Mikhail leaned on him. Mikhail would be Tsar, but Turk would a true "right hand" to Mikhail's power. It seemed petty to take a man whose dreams spanned a dozen planets and lock him on a boat. Viktor had died from it; he'd become bored to death by the monotony of fishing.
And if she was brutally honest with herself, the Rosetta was not the life she wanted for herself. She'd been much happier living on her own in Ya-ya, working as a translator. Two years ago, she'd abandoned her dreams to save her younger siblings, and there were many times since then she could have cheerfully drowned them all and gone back to Ya-ya.
Even though she didn't completely love the life she now lived, she was comfortable. She couldn't imagine living without the ocean somewhere close by. She couldn't imagine 'space' and 'night' and 'winter' and dozens of other words that were in English that she knew the definitions of but had no context for.
She couldn't imagine. She had no idea. Turk didn't need to imagine. He'd lived in her world. He knew what he was committing to. Which was braver, facing what you knew you hated, or facing the unknown?
Distracted, she slipped and fell. Close up, it was impossible not to notice that the layer of dead foliage was very deep. Possibly several feet deep. The device was probably under all the compost, anywhere along the line of impact that could strength for miles. They were not going to find it, especially in her state of mind.
Come on, you're smarter than this,
think about it.
She sat up, brushed off the black earth, and forced herself to stop worrying about her future with Turk and concentrate on her current problem. A nefrim ship warped into the Sargasso and like the Svoboda, struck an vimana. She knew the point of impact—slightly before Fenrir's Rock because the boulders would have travel in the direction of the Spin as they fell. The force of impact was enough to break off pieces off of Loki. Massive chunks of non-floating rocks fell to create Fenrir's Rock and its smaller neighbors. The ship came down in minotaur waters.
The question was: where is Shabd?
The answer seemed close but elusive; like a minnow darting through her white space. It would help if she had a clue what it was exactly. How large. What shape. What is was beyond 'the music of the world that can only be heard by the inner ears.'
Only be heard . . .
Maybe if she listened.
She let herself drop into a meditative state. Mediating for her had always been like dropping into an ocean of white. She became that place of answers. Ethan might call the voice of god, but there was nothing musical about it to her. She considered why not, and the white replied: because she didn't believe.
She was a devout agnostic. She believed in God, and she embraced every religion of the Sargasso, but truly believed in none. In her mind God was not be imagined, not even by the Hak. Since God could not be imagined, then every religion was a misperception and thus while she accepted that they were shadows of God, she rejected them as visions of God.
What if she was wrong about the basic concept of religion. That the rituals of all religious weren't how God interacted with intelligent beings, but how intelligent beings opened themselves up to God. God was, afterall. He did not change. It was the creatures that changed. From man to man. From man to Hak. By their very small and limited and thus individualistic nature, each personal belief system had to find its path to God.
If she wanted to hear the music, she had to believe it was truly there to be heard.
Part of her worried that she might be deceiving herself. Hearing something not that simply because she wanted to hear it. It was, perhaps, how she saw all the other people who were devout in their own religion. Self-deluded. But if she never allowed herself to believe anything, then there was no way of believing in what was true.