I followed Morgan between the M’hiray families to the section housing the various Om’ray Clans. They kept themselves apart; I suspected they found us, though kin, at times as alien as Morgan.
His dot of light came to rest on a lump of blankets, a lump shivering as if cold. I hesitated, filled with new dismay; this wasn’t where Ruis had left her patients.
Morgan moved forward, passing me the light as he knelt by the bed. “Easy—”
Blankets flew off. The figure beneath scrambled back, limbs flailing, to crouch against the wall at the head of the bed. Eloe di Serona, once of Tuana Clan. I lowered the beam to avoid the young Om’ray’s face. She lunged forward, snatching the light. Holding it close, she rocked back and forth.
Her arms were striped in deep angry gashes; similar wounds marred the smooth skin of her cheeks and neck. Her hands were stained, nails dark with blood. Shields tight, sick to my stomach, I whispered. “I’ll get a Healer.”
A second incident in mere hours couldn’t be coincidence. What was happening?
“Leave me alone.” The Om’ray bent her head, hair sticking to the blood, and drew the blanket to her chin. The light bleached her skin, emphasized the damage. “Go ’way.”
Instinct kept me from reaching for her mind. I bit back my protest when Morgan laid his open hand on the bed, inviting her to touch his. He knew what he was doing.
Hopefully.
A sullen shrug. “Wouldn’t if I were you. It’s dark. Always dark. That’s what they do. Drag you under. Bury you deep. Till there’s nothing but dark.”
As the Oud had done to Tuana. To the multitude of Om’ray we hadn’t reached in time. The flat calm of her voice chilled me more than any scream.
Morgan didn’t move. “Sira, brighten us a bit, please.”
The control for this bed’s light was behind Eloe. Sona, I sent, minimal light, having learned that lesson. I was answered by a gentle glow where the wall met the bed.
With a relieved shudder, Eloe curled into a ball around the handlight.
I’ll stay with her as long as it takes, my Chosen sent, not hiding his concern. I felt a stir as others, beginning to wake around us, expressed their own.
Morgan’s here, I assured them. With the Talent to heal damaged minds. With the risk inherent in its use.
Not, I’d noticed, that my Human cared about risk when a life hung in the balance.
Heart heavy, I gazed down at the young unChosen. The Clan way, to consider the unChosen, lacking a bond to mother or mate, expendable.
It was no longer mine.
“How can I help?”
My help, it turned out, involved granting Morgan and his patient privacy, easier asked than accomplished in a chamber full of disturbed and worried Clan. More and more sat up in bed, beginning to rise to their feet despite the lack of light.
Sona, I sent.
>What is your wish, Keeper?<
Start the daycycle now. While I didn’t hold my breath, I felt a certain relief when light flooded the Core. I’d feel more when I could be sure the ship’s compliance extended to warming the areas without. And I want to make an announcement.
>At your convenience, Keeper.<
“Good morning,” I said cheerfully, the ship carrying my voice to every corner of the immense room. Adults blinked, startled, but looked to me as I’d hoped, not Morgan. “Sorry to cut the night short, but we need an early start today.”
Dozens spoke at once. “Are we there?” “Have we arrived?” “Is it the Homeworld?” Frustrated, they fell outwardly silent, sendings darting through the M’hir. Is it true? Sira, are we home? Until that space began to roil and I realized my mistake.
I’d distracted them, all right. Swallowing a curse I’d learned from another species, I raised my arms, asking for peace. They subsided, waiting for answers.
So was I. Morgan, the only one of us capable of interpreting a starship’s controls, had yet to find any. A preset course implied a destination, yes, but to what? No guarantee “home” meant the world where we’d evolved. Many starfaring species, Humans among them, had left their birth systems so far behind they couldn’t retrace their steps.
Even if Sona took us to that world, what then? Morgan refused to say too much time might have passed, leaving us with a destination surely changed and possibly gone. Wouldn’t say our belief Cersi had been an experiment, succeeding with the return of the M’hiray, was built from supposition and the slimmest of evidence, that if we were wrong, the Om’ray might have been abandoned or exiled or fled from worse—
Not kindness, that forbearance, to keep us full of hope. Morgan knew what this voyage could become if we had none.
Tell them the ship’s asked for maintenance, chit. With familiar wry humor.
I latched on the idea as if drowning. “Maintenance,” I blurted. “Don’t forget, nine—ten days ago, this ship was Sona’s Cloisters.” There’d been one, housing Adepts and sheltering survivors through changes in their neighbors, per Om’ray Clan. We didn’t know if any others had lifted from the planet. If they had, only the Vyna’s would have had life inside.
The Om’ray didn’t care for the reminder; the M’hiray exchanged glum looks.
>I do not require maintenance, Keeper.<
I need to keep them busy, I replied, perhaps a little too honestly.
>Understood, Keeper.<
I had an instant to appreciate how unlikely that was before the lights pulsed an alarming orange and something below went BANGBANGBANG! The vibration reverberated through the floor.
Those Clan who hadn’t looked frightened before, looked terrified now.
Oh, dear.
Luck, or the Makers responsible for the ship and its programming, was on our side, something I doubted I’d dare count on again, though it was hard not to grin as Holl di Licor made her report. The Healer and scientist, having guessed the likeliest source of Sona’s alarming “bang,” had ’ported there herself to confirm it.
For someone who’d been a M’hir Denouncer, she’d come a long way in a very short time.
“A glitch in the storage system,” Holl announced. “There are food packets strewn everywhere. Nothing appeared damaged,” as alarm spread through the room. That Sona had preserved food suited to all of us, most of which Morgan safely could eat, too, had been the best news of all. To lose it? I shuddered inwardly. “We’ll need to deal with the mess,” she continued with reassuring confidence. “Move the packets to the galley for storage.”
Lucky, Morgan concurred. I chose to ignore the hint of incredulity.
Faced with a clearly defined problem, my people wasted no time. In moments, they’d dressed and organized themselves into working groups, the first ’porting away with Holl to assess the task ahead, those charged with obtaining breakfast going out the door.
Those left tried not to stare at Morgan and Eloe, or look where Nyso and Luek still lay as though dead, their imposed sleep unaffected by the ruckus of moments ago.
Will there be more? Aryl, asking the hard question.
I don’t know. The Clan I could see appeared the same as they had yesterday. If anything, they looked better: those who’d starved gaining flesh from a now-ample diet, our wounded able to stand and walk. Most showed reminders of their hurts, if only fading bruises. Our Healers couldn’t regenerate limbs or prevent scars, but thanks to them—and Morgan’s med-kit—we hadn’t lost any to their injuries.
What was I missing?
Eloe had seemed fine yesterday, cheerful and busily occupied with Merr di Ulse, an Om’ray weaver, and others; the youngster had skill with needle and thread and Merr’s group sought to salvage what clothing had come on board. The Om’ray regarded every scrap of value; M’hiray were happy to relinquish theirs, much of it in rags or ill-suited to daily wear, in favor of the ship’s coveralls.
It wasn’t as if most Om’ray hadn’t adopted the new
clothes as well, favoring grays and browns over more vivid choices, but in common with Morgan, they retained some small item of their own, be it vest, jacket, or a white gauze hood around their necks. In comparison, the M’hiray looked like shoppers on Plexis, bedecked in blues, reds, and swirls of yellow.
A dozen other Om’ray followed Destin’s example and kept their former garb, complete with the knives of the canopy. Barac, only to me, expressed the opinion they couldn’t fathom there was vacuum outside; as he kept his force blade on or near his person at all times, he was hardly one to talk.
The truth was, I knew Barac worried what might be inside the ship, well aware we couldn’t open all of Sona’s doors or scan deeper levels. He wasn’t alone.
To assuage such fears, I’d asked Morgan if he thought there could be something dangerous on the ship, something in hiding. What he’d said—
Aryl had followed the thought. I remember, too. He said, “It won’t be hiding.”
I’d taken it as a joke, to reassure me. Hearing it again, I felt chilled to the bone. A Chosen pair who’d lost touch with reality, now an unChosen no longer in her right mind. What had my Human seen that I hadn’t?
He’d have warned me about a threat or if he’d tasted change coming, that warning having saved us both times without count.
Something more nebulous, though. A suspicion without facts. Oh, that I was quite sure Morgan would keep to himself until he’d proof.
He knows something, I replied at last, looking at my Chosen.
Nothing in his expression suggested it was anything good.
Interlude
BAD ENOUGH the ship only took orders from someone qualified to pop in a course disk and cycle air locks, Morgan thought grimly. While he loved and respected Sira with all his being, that wasn’t the point. The wrong command could kill them.
Sira knew it, too. She’d promised not to give another operational command without consulting him first. She’d—
Gotten away with it again. The result appeared harmless, and it was keeping most of the Clan busy elsewhere.
Those still here gave him space, but he didn’t need to lower his shields to feel the Clan’s attention. Gazes slid his way. Mouths were downturned and shoulders hunched, ever so slightly. Worry and dread. A species able to share emotion and thoughts appeared uniformly terrible at concealing them.
Sira had picked up that Human skill. She’d taken charge, erect and graceful, her lovely face serene. For a wonder her hair held to the ruse, its usually opinionated red-gold a calm waterfall down her back, its ends moving no more than living hair should.
There was nothing serene to his inner sense of her. The Clan, reliant on their minds and will, had a horror of either failing. The connection between their minds, as the Human understood it, meant such illness could spread, one to the next. Sira was right to worry.
Just wrong about why.
An ache started in his hip, the one that had taken the brunt of an aircar mishap years ago, and his sore ribs protested in harmony, but Morgan didn’t move. He hadn’t since putting his hand on the bed. The distraught young Om’ray needed quiet and consistency. Time. To relax, if she could. He’d wait as long as it took.
As he’d waited for this: the moment the frenzy of survival reverted to the ordinary routines of life, a life different from any they’d known, and minds subjected to fear and overwhelming loss—
—broke.
This illness didn’t need to spread. To some extent, everyone on this ship already suffered, whether they showed it overtly or not. He’d been through his own version of their hell, after the war on Karolus. Only the understanding of a friend had kept him from self-destruction; even then, he’d needed time and lots of it.
Time they didn’t have, not with close to two hundred potential Eloes onboard ready to explode, not with their destination minutes—or possibly years—away.
Oh, and didn’t that uncertainty add a knife twist to what seethed inside the Clan?
Lips moved. Shaped words without sound. “Go ’way.”
Morgan couldn’t obey; she’d only harm herself further. He had to act, but how?
Memory was pliable. He could remove the worst of hers.
No. Memories were all they had.
Dull the worst, make them bearable. That he could try to do, but it was the more delicate work. In the contrary way of things involving the M’hir and the Clan, delicacy required significantly more Power.
Sira’s was his for the asking—and even when he didn’t. There was something adorable about her belief he hadn’t noticed her little gifts. Each flood of strength she sent surged through him like a stim, and it was just as well he’d had other reasons for gasping.
Morgan frowned. Whether they’d admit it or not, the Clan came close to worshipping Sira these days, especially the younger ones. Maybe it was his Human thinking, but he’d prefer to salvage this unChosen’s pride. Ruis di Nemat? Was needed where she was.
Let alone the folly of risking both Healers-of-minds at once.
Morgan made up his mind. Barac.
The M’hiray First Scout excused himself from a discussion and walked over. His eyes, dark and expressive, filled with pity as he took in Eloe’s woeful state, then fixed on Morgan. What can I do?
I’ll need to borrow strength to help her. Not yours, before the other could offer. It should be someone she knows. I’m strange enough.
A fleeting smile acknowledged the truth of that. Barac and his brother Kurr had been among the few Clan to work freely near Humans. Eloe lost her family when Tuana was buried, but Ruti will know if she has heart-kin here.
Heart-kin being those closer than blood, as Barac di Bowart had become, to him as well as Sira. Morgan moved his free hand in the gesture of gratitude, hoping Eloe would see he wasn’t totally alien. Make it quick.
Grim-looking Clan surrounded the bed. The Chosen pair, faces lined with grief, were what remained of Tuana’s Council: Nockal and Kunthea di Mendolar. Both were Adepts, learned and powerful; Nockal nodded a greeting to Morgan, her stump of an arm tucked into a pocket. With them came two slight unChosen, a male and female, alike enough to be sibs. They gripped Ruti di Bowart’s hands, or she held theirs. Likely both. Before Sona had lifted from Cersi, Barac’s Chosen had taken the young of Om’ray and M’hiray into her care and woe betide any who might harm them.
Being pregnant with new life herself.
Sira might seem absent. She wasn’t. Morgan felt her presence tight along their link. Give the word and I’ll ’port the lot to the farthest part of the ship.
She could. Where a similar group of Humans would object strenuously to being forcibly removed, the Om’ray would not. Sira’s right to lead was based on her greater Power and unquestioned.
No need to exert it. The familiar faces had brought up Eloe’s head, started a flow of unheeded tears. All to the good. I’ll let you know, Witchling.
“Who’s done this?” Ruti bristled. “Who’s harmed this child?”
“Are you blind?” Nockal kept her voice low. “She’s done it to herself.”
Ruti, shorter by a head and a quarter the age, didn’t back down. “Who made her? Can you tell, Morgan?” Her look at him was pleading. “Who it was?”
Behind her, Barac gave an oddly Human shrug. Morgan understood. Before they’d fled to Cersi, Ruti’s mind had been taken over by the will of another’s. She feared her attacker or an ally might have come with them, to bide his or her time before acting again. She could be right.
Just not now. “Eloe hasn’t been influenced, Ruti,” Morgan assured her. He looked at the sibs. “Which of you is Eloe’s heart-kin?” The male unChosen swallowed and went pale. Ah.
“Both of us, Hom Morgan,” the female asserted. “Well, we are,” at something her brother must have sent. Rude that was, a private sending in front of other Clan; dangerous, in front of those mo
re Powerful.
Brave, that above all.
“Let me introduce Dama and Tal di Lorimar.” Kunthea reached over and rubbed Tal’s head, the younger male blushing. “They’re a set, these three. Always have been.”
Eloe’s eyelids flickered.
She gave a tiny nod.
Now, Morgan judged. He rose, gesturing to the bed. “Sit with Eloe, please.”
Tugging their hands, gently, from Ruti’s grasp, Dama and Tal took their places, careful to stay clear of Eloe. Even heart-kin had that instinct.
“I need the rest of you to leave.”
A flash of dark eyes. Is that a good idea?
If it worked, yes. The Human wasn’t about to open a discussion. “Please.”
Ruti took her Chosen’s arm. “If anyone can help her,” she said firmly, “it’s Morgan.” With that, she led Barac and the other Chosen aside.
Leaving him with what were children.
The Human went to his knees, offered his open hands, and waited.
Dama touched two fingers to his right palm. Not to be outdone, Tal did the same to his left. If those fingers trembled, it merely spoke to their courage. He’d been right to ask for them.
As for risking them? If he was right, Morgan thought grimly, these two might need his help as much as Eloe. No time like the present.
He lowered his shields, inviting them in on their terms, not his. Their exploration was tentative at first, then grew bold. A little too bold, finding a moment of heat between Chosen.
Far enough, the Human sent, adding amusement.
Two pairs of eyes widened. You sound normal. A protest.
Of course he does, Tal! The sister gestured apology with her free hand. Excuse my brother, Chosen of Sira. Take what you need from us. The pair took firm hold of Morgan’s hands, dropping their own shields with shattering trust.
He stayed clear of their thoughts. All he need draw upon was their Power, bonded to their love of Eloe, heart-kin to both.
If only it had been that simple.
The Gate to Futures Past Page 5