Mistworld

by Nina M. Osier

  “We know the gens have revolted, if that's what you mean. Is that what happened aboard Benedon's big ships?” Good. The person doing the talking for Narsai right now had some brains. And the guts to use them, which was even better.

  “Yes. They're gone now. All of them. I'm not sure Benedon blew them up, but that's what I think took place. And we're back here because this is the nearest world where we've got a chance of surviving. Whoever you are, Ms. Narsai Control, we're not your enemies anymore. And I'm willing to prove it. Would you like your master power relay turned back on?"

  * * * *

  Aurelia Paré put all the persuasiveness of which she was capable into her voice. After all her years of diplomatic service, she felt sure it would be enough to turn even this situation around. She said to the chalk-faced young girl who had just struggled free from a young man's charred body, “Councilor Romanova. Madeleine. How long do you think Narsai can manage without power?"

  “Oh, wonderful. So now that bullying us can't work any longer, the damn Commies are going to try blackmail!” Instead of young Maddy's voice, a masculine one filled the ballroom. Ivan Romanov, who if Paré remembered correctly had the incongruous nickname of “Johnnie,” came through the door behind the overturned table and fallen podium. Behind him walked his wife, who had the same surname in its feminine form; and behind her were their daughter and their son-in-law. Tena Romanova, and Kyle Kourdakov.

  Ivan took one look at his dead grandson, and then looked again at Paré. His face stilled, and lost color; but he gave no other sign that he'd understood the sight for what it was. Lorena, his wife, drew Maddy into her arms. While Farren's parents, naturally enough, went down on their knees beside his remains.

  How had this quartet managed to get loose? Not that it mattered now, but Paré wondered just the same. She stood with her arms pinned, with a blaster that had recently belonged to one of her own Marines at the base of her skull, and she repeated her question with a different salutation. “Mr. Romanov. How long can your planet manage without its supply of solar power? I've had the master relay shut down temporarily, by a Marine Corps launch that's standing by to return and either turn that relay back on—or destroy it. Which is it going to be?"

  Surely her life was worth that much. As she watched Ivan Romanov's eyes, those of his wife as Lorena held the young Councilor Madeleine close, and those of Maddy herself, Aurelia Paré realized that her life was about the only thing she could now hope to salvage from this mess. That Narsai, as a Commonwealth possession and involuntary supplier of agricultural goods, was gone already.

  * * * *

  Don't turn that relay back on!

  Lucien Douglas “heard” the frantic command, and looked around his bridge because for a moment he thought he'd perceived it as sound. Then he shook his head, realizing with annoyance that he'd been the unwilling recipient of Morthan telepathy. From on Narsai's surface, presumably? Since he certainly didn't have a Morthan medic on board now, nor did any of the other ships traveling under his command.

  Don't, the inner voice repeated, at once more calmly and with added emphasis. She's had it tampered with, not just shut down. If you send a remote order as you were about to, Narsai's going to need a whole set of new relays. You won't turn the master one back on. You'll destroy the entire power transmission system, instead.

  “Where the hell are you?” He asked the question out loud, without thinking, and got odd looks from his senior bridge crew as a result. So he added tersely, “Morthan talking to me. From gods know where."

  They screwed up their faces in disgust, but they understood him. They'd all trained and won their commissions long enough ago so that they'd been cared for by Morthans, and knew how the mindfucking species operated.

  On board a Mistworld ship that's just now entering this star system. Take a look at your scanners, and you'll see us. I'm getting what I just told you from the Marine technician who rigged the booby trap, at Ambassador Paré's order. Go ahead and do what you were planning, if you want to be responsible for putting a whole planet into darkness for however long it takes us to go for help. If we can find help, in the form of new collectors and relays powerful enough to serve a whole planet, at all right now. With the Commonwealth broken apart into separate worlds, and not a chance in hell that it'll be reuniting. Not until enough time's gone by so that any new union its planets form, will be just that—new. Not anywhere near soon enough to do anything to help you, or to help Narsai, if you wreck its power grid now. Because if you blow out the master relay, you'll be sending a killer surge through everything to which it's connected. On the ground, and in space, too.

  The damn mindfucker had to be lying. Of course. Yet Douglas let his gaze drift to one of the orbiting habitats, and he allowed himself to wonder how many Humans lived on board it. All of whom would die, if the fragile shell that protected them from the absolute cold of space—and that provided them with clean, oxygen-rich air to breathe, plus everything else their bodies required—lost not just its ongoing energy source (for which backup systems were substituting right now), but its very ability to accept and use solar-generated “juice."

  “Lieutenant Commander Douglas, this is Councilor Madeleine Romanova.” A youthful voice, feminine but extraordinarily low-pitched for its gender, came not from within his mind but from his command console's commlink. “It's over down here. We've captured the Terran Embassy, and the Ambassador's in our custody. We need power back on, now ... no! Wait a minute!"

  The girl sounded physically pained. And a girl she was, if Douglas remembered local newscasts from his far too long stay here before the mutiny. Youngest child of the Matushka, former Fleet Admiral Catherine Romanova. Pushed into the spotlight by genealogical and political considerations that the Star Service officer didn't profess to understand—but she did have the authority she claimed to possess. He felt sure of that.

  He waited, and after a “minute” that lasted halfway to forever he heard a sigh. “Let the Mistworld ship take care of turning things back on, when they get here,” the young councilor said, letting him know beyond doubt that she, too, had somehow been able to hear the Morthan (or some similar being?) on board the alien vessel now making its way into Narsai's star system. “Let them board you, Commander. I'm sure you'll understand why I can't ask Narsai Control to let you land the way you are now. Er, fully armed, and all."

  * * * *

  “Damn!” Aurelia Paré made sure she uttered the curse within pickup distance of the open commlink. She was being marched past Maddy Romanova now, no doubt to take the place of the hostages she'd had her own people holding an incredibly brief time ago. She could only hope that her last remaining ally was monitoring every transmission coming out of the Terran Embassy, as ordered.

  They unimaginatively took her into the place from which they, several surviving members of the thrice-damned Narsai Militia, had released the four adult Romanovs. The small meeting room, like the rest of the Embassy, still had its lights and comm system and other necessities functioning thanks to reserve power. Its viewscreen was on, and of course that screen showed what was happening in space right now. Specifically, the alien vessel—the ship from Mistworld—approaching the thirteen small survivors of the once-vast Benedon battle group. No one else was paying attention, right now, to the master power relay. But it was on screen nevertheless, at the periphery of the display—with something heading toward it. Something that Paré knew to be a Marine Corps launch, a spaceship not much larger than a decent-sized lifeboat.

  They'd have to get in close, to do what she'd ordered them to do. They might or might not be able to get away safely afterward. But afterward it wouldn't matter, because their job would be done.

  Take it out. Take it out forever. Leave them in the dark, where they belong. Paré concentrated as if she had the mental powers of a Morthan, and banished all thoughts (however tender and regretful) of her far-off children and grandchildren. She wouldn't see them again now, anyway; so what difference could mooning over
them make? She could at least go out doing her duty, as she always had. A senior official of the Terran Diplomatic Service couldn't ask for a more appropriate and useful end than that.

  “What's that? What's it doing?” Romanov, the aging farmer, came into the room behind her. He looked past her shoulder, realized where Paré had her own eyes fixed on the viewscreen, and saw what she saw.

  Only to him it was cause for panic, not satisfaction. He bellowed at the young captain of the pitiful craft that was the biggest one in orbit right now, “Douglas! Take care of that boat, before it gets a chance to grab onto the master relay! For gods’ sake, hurry!"

  He wasn't fast enough. Just before the Narsatian rebel who still held a blaster to Aurelia Paré's head fired, and vaporized her brain (not to mention the bone and flesh encasing it), the Ambassador's gratified eyes saw a beam of pure energy strike out from the launch and engulf the master power relay.

  The last thing she witnessed, before death took her, was her final order being carried out.

  * * *

  Chapter 24

  Another universe? Another galaxy? A part of their own galaxy, but so far removed from Commonwealth territory that its stars were still unmapped? Catherine Romanova couldn't guess where they'd ended up, she and her husband and her sons. Her foster son, his wife, and her three infant grandchildren. What she did know was that she'd been taken far away, unimaginably so, from her daughter and her other loved ones. Some of whom she didn't have waiting for her anymore, back home on Narsai. If she had understood Maddy's thoughts correctly, that was, during the rushed contact which Mistworld's transition here aborted ... the Matushka slid out of bed, in the small room in the Nah Trang/Fort cottage, and left her mate lying there alone. She wrapped herself in a heavy cloak, pushed her feet into her boots, and went quietly outside.

  The path back to the headland called to her, and the moonlight made walking it as easy at the local equivalent of 3 am. as it might have been at noon. She stopped envying Linc his ability to sleep (which he was doing quite soundly), as she climbed toward the place where they'd been when everything changed. Just a few hours ago—it wasn't the first time in her life, by any means, that she'd had her universe turned inside out around her. But had it ever been done more thoroughly?

  On the headland, a fire leapt and glowed. An open bonfire, in a rocky circle that she'd noticed there on previous visits. Shapes surrounded it. Human, or at least humanoid, forms. Most of them seated, or crouching. A few standing still—and one, pacing back and forth and periodically stopping to gesticulate.

  She reached for Linc again, and found him still deep in slumber. That was a good thing, of course. She ought to be doing the same. But she couldn't, and she missed him as profoundly as she might have missed an amputated limb.

  Should she approach this gathering? She knew, from asking about the bonfire's site at other times, that colonists met on the headland to discuss community problems. At night, because their days (especially when the settlements were new) held no leisure for such meetings. But she doubted that the customary time for them was between midnight and dawn.

  She didn't recognize everyone. Nowhere near. But she did know Ishi Sanibello, Chad Thorne, and Dram Andersen. She did know Nadja Nah Trang, and Astin Fort. It hadn't occurred to her to wonder whether or not her hosts were behind their bedroom's closed door when she left the cottage. She did know.... “Dan! Rachel! Kerle!"

  Calling out to them like that wasn't tactically wise, but until now this hadn't felt like a situation to which caution must be applied. But since she'd already done it, she walked boldly into the firelight and stood there looking from face to face. After a moment she asked, into the silence that fell when the gathering first heard her voice, “What's going on?"

  “Is it your business, outworlder?” Her foster son asked her that, in the voice she knew but with inflections totally unfamiliar. “If we'd wanted you here, we would have invited you."

  “She is here now, though. And there's no sense sending her away, and thinking she'll go without getting an answer to that question she just asked. Because it won't work. And you damned well know it, Dan.” The voice belonged to Ishi Sanibello, but the words were unmistakably Ewan Fralick's to his best friend. “Suppose you tell her. Since you understand it better than I do, being ‘native’ and all."

  Oh, no. For a moment Romanova thought she'd uttered the disbelieving words aloud. She said, before Daniel Archer could get his mouth open again, “I think I've already got the most important part of the picture, Ewan. The Misties need bodies in order to exist here, don't they? It's no longer possible for them to live the way they did before, without corporeal form in the upper atmosphere."

  “That's right, Katy.” Rachel Kane stood up, from behind Dan Archer. “Don't worry. The kids are okay. Cash's watching them, since he's too young for hosting duty."

  “Are all of them doing this willingly, Ewan?” Asking Dan or Rachel, Nadja or Astin or Kerle—or anyone else whose body now held a Mistworlder's consciousness—would be pointless, of course. But Romanova had spent enough hours with her sons in their host-bodies, in enough different situations, so that she felt certain no one was compelling Sanibello to host Ewan. Or Thorne to host Bryce, or Andersen to lend his flesh to Marcus.

  “Mum, I'm not sure about that myself. As far as I know they are, but it's been a rough night for a lot of people on this planet.” Ewan looked at her with what experience told her was absolute frankness. “There aren't that many more adult colonists than there are true Mistworlders, plus adopted ones like me. So it's hard for me to say for sure that every pairing's as voluntary as mine with Ishi, especially since none of the hosts realized what had happened to them for awhile. Not until the Misties they were carrying recovered enough to wake up! But we're helping each other, all of us, to get a handle on it now. That's what this gathering's all about."

  “There's a similar meeting going on at every community on Mistworld,” Nadja Nah Trang said, as she stepped away from the others and joined Ewan (who had been striding up and down when Katy approached, obviously addressing the group). “We're trying to remember, Matushka. Who we were before we came to Mistworld. In the first place—long ago."

  “Because that's how you can explain what's happening to you now?” Romanova felt a powerful wave of psychic pain from the other woman, despite Nah Trang's outward calm. Confusion, terror of the unknown, anguish at being trapped within a fleshy and vulnerable envelope, weariness and hunger on that container's part ... for the life of her she couldn't tell where one being's distress stopped and the other's began. She only knew that neither the Human called Nadja, nor the immortal (until now!) creature co-occupying the administrator's body, was happy right now. Or expecting to become so any time soon.

  “We hope we can. Yes. And we also hope that you'll go back to the cottage, and let us continue with our task. Because there's nothing you can do to help us with it, and talking with you like this is taking up valuable time."

  The blunt words made Katy blush. For the first time in many years, she felt the way she had when she went into Johnnie's arms as an affianced bride of thirteen. As she had when, at seventeen, she secretly reported to Narsai's Terran Embassy for her Star Service Academy entrance interview. As she'd felt time after time during her plebe year's succession of embarrassing as well as challenging moments, and later during her maiden assignments at each new level of professional responsibility.

  “I see,” she said, with as much dignity as she could muster. “I'm sorry for intruding, then. But before I go, I've got one question that I really do need answered. Why wasn't I, well, taken as a host? Or my husband, either?"

  The headland went silent, except for the bonfire's crackles and hisses and the slight ocean breeze that rustled clothing and grass. Finally, Nadja Nah Trang replied. “Because neither of you belongs to Mistworld, Matushka. If you could find a way to return to your own home, you'd take it this very minute. Isn't that the truth?"

  “It is.” Romanova looked
at each of the faces dear to her in this assembly. She found none that belonged to a person who called some other world “home,” or at least not with the intense longing that she still felt toward Narsai; and for Linc to choose a life here without her was, of course, beyond imagining.

  “We may need your help later, Mum.” Bryce spoke up, gently, in Chad Thorne's tenor voice. “But right now we need for you to let us be. All right?"

  “Of course.” She didn't feel embarrassed now. Just sad, and—well—left out, too.

  * * * *

  Should she crawl back into bed with Linc, in a cottage left empty except for the pair of them? No matter how wide awake she felt, and despite the racing of her thoughts? Not that she'd ever been very good at sleeping on nights like this one, when moonlight poured down and made the landscape bright as day. Whether the planet had one moon like Mistworld or a dozen like Farthinghome made no difference.

  Katy. I've been waiting for you to get back.

  He was still asleep. She knew that, from touching his mind with hers. Yet he reached for her now, in what had to be a dream—and she responded, because she couldn't help it. She walked through the cottage's entrance, across its silent common room, and into the bedroom. She took off her coat and boots, and slipped under the covers with her body spooned against her husband's back. He lay on his side, breathing in the deep, even rhythm of contented unconsciousness; and the last thing she knew about her physical body was that she was starting to do the same.

  Ah. Minds neither those of children, nor clouded by being “two in one body"! Whoever this was, whatever this was, it spoke with deep relief. But you don't belong here, either of you. Strange. What are you?

  I'm Katy. I'm Human.

  I'm Linc. I'm part Human, and part Morthan. What are you?

  A pretty typical, almost prosaic, first contact conversation so far. Until the other being's next “words,” that was: I suppose you should call me the Warden. Since that's the term your minds have stored, to associate with an entity that has the task of punishing malefactors.