by Jim Grimsley
“We’ll be living here, Nerva. There’ll be time for that sort of travel later. Right now we want to get to the farm, don’t we? So this is a good way to do that. I’m for it. How about you, Keely?”
Sleepy, the boy yawned and nodded. “I’m tired. My legs feel heavy. I want to ride in the flitter.”
The woman named Kitra waited beside the putter with her jaw clenched. Dekkar sat in the driver’s compartment and everyone else found seats in the passenger booth at the back. During the ride through the city, Figg looked about for signs of whatever trouble might be about to surface; the place looked unfamiliar to him, much larger than it had been a century ago when he last visited, during the first boom of out-migration from Senal. The original Feidreh had been engulfed by new construction, including some of the enclave-style architecture common to corporate mega-complexes in Béyoton, but also including friendlier, more open styles of developments and buildings. The city had a different feeling from anything on Senal, which had dug its cities deep and raised them high to accommodate the billions of Hormling who nested there. Here one had no sense of a latticework of people stretching deep into the bowels of the earth. The sky was clear, there were green spaces open to real, direct sunlight, and one could see plazas and open markets where crowds of native Aramenians congregated to do their business face to face. The day had a calm, placid feeling that belied the urgency with which he was traveling.
The putter, under Kitra’s aggressive handling, made good progress and soon ramped into a flitter field on a bluff overlooking the ocean in a clean, bright part of town that looked like a tech complex or some kind of campus for a large business firm.
As they were transferring themselves and their luggage into the flitter, a long, low siren began to moan.
“What’s that?” Nerva asked.
“It’s a big horn,” said Keely, looking up at the sky.
Nerva ignored him and looked at Figg, who gestured toward the interior of the flitter, and she hurried into it as the hatches swung upward, hanging over the sides of the machine like stubby wings.
“Get in,” Kitra said, “that’s an air raid warning system.”
“A what?” Figg asked.
“An attack. There’s about to be an attack.”
“Good heavens,” Nerva said, sliding into the flitter.
Figg took his seat. Dekkar was still standing outside the flitter, looking at the sky. Kitra hit the button for the passenger door; it started to swing closed and Dekkar jumped into the seat. “Sorry,” he said. “There’s an odd smell in the air, some kind of flower I’ve never smelled before.”
Kitra was powering up the flitter; she sealed the cabins as if the machine were flying at a very high altitude.
“What’s going on?” Figg asked.
“The independence movement is declaring war,” Kitra said. “I used to be in it; I got word yesterday to get out of the capital as fast as I could.”
“War?” Nerva asked.
“Like on the vid,” Keely explained, “when people fight.”
“They’ve declared war on the Hormling?” Figg asked; the news, if it was true, was astounding.
“Yes. And on the Mage. And on the Prin. And on the whole trade system.”
“Are they out of their minds?” Figg asked.
“Oh, no,” Kitra said grimly, raising the flitter off the pad. “You have no idea how serious they are.”
“But the Prin—”
“The rebels have allies,” Kitra said, “strong ones. The Prin are about to find out just how strong.”
“But nobody’s beaten the Prin in more than three hundred years,” Nerva said.
“There’s a first time for everything. I can’t answer any more questions right now; use your links if you like. I have to get us out of here.”
3.
The Hormling link to the data mass on both sides of the Anilyn Gate could be maintained in something very close to real time for all the billions of people who lived on both worlds. A very palpable and superlatively complex netting of connections bound the populaces of Senal and Aramen, information flowing constantly from Grand Wheel, the entire data mass maintained by Hanson and his cohorts, available to any and all. Figg’s link was internal, with some additional hardware stored in Penelope.
One moment the data mass felt proper and right, the link up and running, Figg’s neat beads of newsbursts queued for his attention, his orderly head-space making short work of each, and then suddenly there was a feeling of convulsion and the link slowed to a crawl.
1 Reports of an air battle over the northern stretches of ocean, conflicting locations, satellite feeds erratic; there was a delay as Figg realized each of the newsbursts; the prereading service was undergoing a bit of a lag, maybe in response to traffic. Air defense systems had begun going off all across the southern continent, Jharvan. A major electronic pulse explosion over the port city of Chesna dumped ten million people off the network at once; not a jolt big enough to feel in the Surround, but enough to register.
2 A collision in orbit between a small naval squadron decelerating into a low orbit as part of the military alert and a line of passenger shuttles queued to pass through the gate. Thousands of casualties. The reports so fresh that most of them lacked verbs, static pictures of the beginnings of chaos.
3 Appeals from the civilian government in Feidreh-Avatrayn for all citizens to remain calm and await further information. An attack was apparently under way by a northern expeditionary force launched by independence advocates on Ajhevan.
4 Shocked reaction erupted from Senal as the first images broke into the Surround. Citizens of Béyoton were stunned, so many links active in real time that systems were in danger of overload; people were advised to take breaks from the Surround, especially individuals with permanent indwelling links, some of which might under certain circumstances overheat.
5 This next was not words but an image: a tree root twisting through a cadaver in a busy street, the root like something serpentine, flexing its strength, driving through the body and into the side of a building. An image so vivid it held Figg’s attention for longer than necessary. What had been a large, empty retail space lay in ruins and the tree rose out of it, growing as if by will. The image came from a neighborhood in Feidreh where the tree appeared this morning as a seedling and had now rooted through twelve levels of putter parking under a downtown church, which it had also infiltrated. Was this part of the attack?
6 Failure in communications systems were reported throughout Jharvan, some caused by a fungus that ate electronics and their attendant organics. Rumors circulated of reports of a similar fungus infestation in military installations and equipment. Loss of some technological function even in the capital; loss of some communications satellites in orbit as well, though there were no reports as to the cause.
7 A long narrative ensued: a journalist was steering her construct via remote control in a borrowed flitter headed south; she flew low over the ocean tailing a spectacular shower of dogfights high in the air; high resolution cameras caught needle fighters, racers, missiles arcing, drones plummeting into the ocean. Close-ups of the aircraft from Ajhevan matched military profiles from the data mass, all identifiable except for a few pale, almost transparent darts and a number of what looked like flocks of dark birds that cut through aircraft as if they were made of pure carbon, flying blades. So many images were gathered by the remote-construct that the Surround was continuing to digest them long after the journalist’s proxy was destroyed by one of the invading aircraft firing a regular air-to-air missile. What we’re seeing is astonishing, said the voice of the journalist, our camgatherer recorded images of nearly three thousand aircraft, the whole force available to Drakkar Air Station plus a much larger enemy force flown to the coast by the rebels of Ajhevan. This is unheard-of audacity to challenge the Mage in her own backyard. The governor is anticipating a response from the Fukate Choir of Ten Thousand. Everyone is reminded that not a single military encounter with the Pr
in has ended in anything less than complete victory since the earliest days of the Conquest. This desperate quest for freedom on the part of the rebels in the north is doomed from the start. Perhaps it has been long enough since the last challenge to the power of the Mage that it is necessary for her once again to demonstrate the overwhelming power of the Prin chant. But the Hormling air force appears to be having difficulties in these early stages.
8 Troops coming ashore at the port of Chesna, flitters wheeling and landing in well-formed ranks; discharging squads of rebels in brown uniforms, rising and wheeling northward again, efficient and quick. An army was coming ashore uncontested, landing in our city of Chesna apparently uncontested. The city was experiencing widespread power outages and real disruption due to heavy electronic pulse bombardment. Local choirs of the Prin had been ineffective.
9 A young girl lay near the entrance to a building, gray fungus covering her like fur; eyes open, staring upward, she was breathing shallow breaths. Chaos in the background, what looked to be explosions. The image switched to another body, a large man, clothes bulging oddly, the same fur of fungus over his face and hands. Downtown Feidreh, still peaceful until a few moments ago, had suffered an explosion at a local restaurant, and workers arrived to this scene, a kitchen fire raging out of control and a room full of corpses covered with some kind of plant growth. Some appeared to have died of contact with a virulent fungus, others of allergic reactions leading to cardiac arrest.
10 Reports of trees growing faster than they should, growing back even when ripped up or poisoned, discarded portions taking root in nearly any locale, some of them out of hand by the time they were discovered; a tree growing through the abandoned Cathedral of Mur Under Heaven roof. Victims poured into local hospitals complaining of contact with new varieties of flowers that had been reported across Jharvan; some of the patients presented in acute respiratory distress.
11 From Grand Wheel emerged further reports of mishaps aboard naval vessels attempting to position themselves from space to provide cover for the Jharvan government. The Fukate Ten Thousand were assembling in the Prin College in Citadel. Unconfirmed reports continued to appear of near-human construct troops from Ajhevan landing at various points along the coast, their approach apparently undetected.
12 Unofficial word had been received by the governor from leaders of various northern independence movements that this would be the day celebrated by their children as the beginning of freedom.
13 Difficulties in satellite communication were reported on both sides of the Anilyn Gate.
This was followed by a shuddering, a pulse in the link that manifested in Figg’s head-space as a dead silence, a complete disconnect from all those voices of the network, the Surround, the link that had been part of him for nearly three centuries.
A great feeling of surprise came over him, an emptiness except for the voice of Hanson, which survived the convulsion of the link; and then new voices, echoes, resounded in his head.
He was the only one in the car on-link; Keely was too young and the rest were preoccupied with the flight. He looked up at the sky. Some of his alarm must have shown in his expression.
Dekkar looked at him.
“The gate,” he said.
Kitra turned her head. “What?” She was looking at one of her instruments. “The link’s down. The link to the car.”
“It’ll come back up in a minute,” Figg said.
“How do you know?”
“I was on-link when something happened. The whole Surround went dead. Then it came back up.”
“What did you mean about the gate?” Dekkar asked, but he was pale and drawn, as if he already knew.
“That’s why the link went down. The gate’s closed.”
“What?” Kitra asked.
“The Anilyn Gate. It’s closed. Someone closed it.”
She blinked, as stunned as he.
“Rebels?” Figg asked.
“Hardly,” Kitra said. “No one even knows how it operates, how would anyone sabotage it?”
“Great Irion closed it,” Dekkar said, speaking with quiet assurance.
“How do you know?” Figg asked, watching the persistant hint of trouble in Dekkar’s face; the priest could not quite be rid of it.
“He’s the only one who can,” Dekkar said. He folded his hands, looking out the window. “I suppose we’re on our own then.”
Sisterhood
1.
Kitra had spent the last few days piecing together bits of a puzzle that, while still not fully assembled, pointed to the need to get off the southern continent and head north.
She worked for the Citadel, the Prin College in Avatrayn, as a specialist in matters relating to northern politics. For the first decades of her life she had worked for Aramenian independence, agitating against the rule of the Prin as the foundation of the whole Hormling trade system. Over time she became one of the senior leaders in People for a Free Aramen, one of many colonial independence movements that had sprung up in the cluster colonies. But a decade ago she had turned her back on independence and come to the Prin for help. Following a trip into Greenwood to visit her brother Binam, she had changed her attitude.
Her brother had been sold to the Dirijhi at a young age, a voluntary candidate to become a tree symbiont, a human adapted for life as part of its tree host. Symbionts were the means by which the Hormling had established contact with the sentient trees and the inducement they had used to convince the trees to allow Hormling colonists onto the planet. At the time she had seen the trip only as an opportunity to make contact with the Dirijhi, to convince them to support independence. She had been successful in opening a dialog with the trees, but in the process she had seen the conditions under which the human symbionts lived, as slaves to their hosts more often than as partners. She had dedicated her life to getting her brother out of Greenwood, no small challenge since he could no longer feed except from food prepared for him by his tree; in search of allies, she had turned to the Prin. In the past decade she had made three more trips into Greenwood, though she had not seen her brother again.
A ten-day ago she read an article in the morning news-frame about a curious appearance in Feidreh-Avatrayn of a number of new botanical species, new cultivars, or new variants of older flowering plants. Botanists and biologists attached to one of the universities were attempting to investigate the cause of the sudden emergence of so many new variants at once; this must be sign of some ecological shift of which humans remained unaware.
At the same time, in an Enforcement enclave near the Citadel, some armored vehicles and a couple of military aircraft developed a problem with a kind of fungus that had an appetite for electronics, also digesting most of the organic components of the machinery, including a couple of cloned-consciousness supervisory boxes that had been eaten alive.
The Fukate Choir of the Prin, whose chief cantor, Vekant Anevarin, was one of Kitra’s close contacts in her work, developed a difficulty in managing the weather over Ajhevan; this was a problem that recurred periodically when the weather choir went a bit out of tune. Since the Prin were barred from visiting the north in person, management of weather systems there had always been less than certain. But the combination of these factors made Kitra suspicious, and she said as much to Vekant during a meeting to plan her next foray into Greenwood.
“We’re seeing nothing in the chant.” Vekant had the polished, almost burnished skin of a Hormling, dark eyes, long lashes, his hair a bit fussy and curly; he was stocky and short, not a very fashionable physiognomy, but he was more fastidious in his manner of dress than most of the Prin. He wore all three layers of his ceremonial vestments even at a meeting; his fingers were heavy with rings and his earlobes crusted with piercings. The Mage herself was said to favor simple dress and few adornments. Vekant also wore a light makeup, though it was nevertheless a bit heavier than Kitra’s own.
“This is too much coincidence. Fungus here, these flowers, and now the weather gone weird over Green
wood. I think the rebels and the Dirijhi are nearly ready to launch their attack.”
Vekant contemplated her carefully, perhaps even showily, as if gauging once again how far to take her into his confidence. They were on a roof park in the Citadel near his administrative offices; he had walked her here to make a quiet zone around them both, which he did by some means she could never detect but which gave him a bit of a tic, one eyebrow bobbling up and down a bit periodically. For all his heaviness and weight of bangles, he moved quietly as a cat. She was sure he was only partly paying attention to her; not unusual for one of his kind. The anxiety of being so near a Prin still made her skin prickle at times. “Do the Dirijhi have any sense of how we do our work in the chant?”
“I don’t have much idea myself,” Kitra said.
“We learn languages,” Vekant said. “That’s the primary tool we use to do the work we do. It’s a bit of a simplification, but it’s true. We learn to speak words that cause things to happen.”
“Look, you might as well call it magic, that’s what everybody else does.”
“Great Irion doesn’t like the word anymore; we don’t use it unless we have no choice.”
“You don’t?”
He had a way of speaking that reminded Kitra of vids of frontier schoolmasters, prim and polished and smug. “Great Irion believes we work through some means that is physical and explainable, even though your scientists haven’t made much progress figuring it out.”
“You think the Dirijhi have?”
When he failed to answer for a while, she felt a sinking in her stomach. “You do, don’t you?”
“I suppose that’s what I’m thinking, yes. It’s only coming clear to me as we talk. It’s the weather, you see. We’ve always had difficulty managing air currents, moisture, front movements, all that, for Ajhevan continent.”
“I’ve always heard it was the distance, the fact that none of you can actually go there.”