I chose to give them none at all.
“Vote whenever you wish,” I told Council. “I’ll refuse.”
Chit—
Excuse us. Baby being born—
Interlude
THEY’D DISAGREED BEFORE.
This had been—different. True, some on Council could use a reminder exactly whom they’d been ordering around these past days, but that flex of Power, with its underlying ANGER, had been aimed right at him. For, Morgan thought with disgust, the very same reason.
“I do believe I deserved that.” He ran a rueful hand through his hair. Crossed the line, that’s what he’d done. “What was I thinking?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess, my friend.” Barac grinned. “You’ll be forgiven. Eventually.”
The Human grimaced. Sira’d slammed a wall between them, leaving only the faintest thread of their link. “Or longer.”
“Good thing we’re down here, then.” Where Council had sent them, unanimous in their concern over the First Scout’s report.
Wisely so; anything amiss with their food supply posed an immediate threat. Morgan looked around the utilitarian space, free of the alien—to them all—swirls and patterns of color found in main living areas of the ship. The carts were secured and idle. The floor showed no sign it had been covered in food packets some hours before.
“Morgan.” No smile now. “You’re sure? About—” Barac pointed to his head.
“You’re fine,” he answered, firmly. “As is Ruti. And—” because the First Scout would be among those watching the others, “—Odon, Teris, Kunthea, and Destin. Tle, too.” Ruis having assured him, despite the distress he’d sensed from the Chooser, she’d none of the telltale signs.
“Good to know.” The Clansman shook his head. “But the rest. Ghos? Nik? Hap? Degal—” A twist of his lips. “He doesn’t deserve this either.”
“It’ll help to know their symptoms have a cause.” Even more, to have their Chosen warned and on guard. Morgan rubbed his forehead; Ruis was right, the resources he’d depleted were still too low to tap. “Need a night’s sleep,” he admitted ruefully. Till then, he’d continue scanning those around him, as would Ruis, who would instruct their other Healers how to do the same.
The question of using the Maker had not come up again. And wouldn’t, Morgan resolved, unless from Sira. He owed her that.
“I’d be surprised if any of us sleep tonight.” Barac chuckled at the Human’s startled frown. “New baby, remember?”
“Ah.” There was a happier subject, Morgan thought, and one of recent and deeply personal interest to them both—which in no way took priority over their food supply. “Where did the sound come from?” He swung off his pack, pulling free his scanner.
The Clansman walked to the center of the room, turned around once, then shrugged. “I can’t say for sure. It seemed to come from everywhere at once.”
“And you tasted change.”
“For what it’s worth.” Exasperation. “About this, or Ruti. The business with Council—any of it or something we haven’t seen yet. You?”
Shaking his head, Morgan aimed the scanner at the floor and took slow steps toward the still-open access port, moving the device back and forth. “‘For what it’s worth,’” he echoed.
Barac watched him, then went to the carts, giving one an idle tug. “Any other schemes to take over the ship? I’m on your side, by the way.”
Seen through him, too, had he? Although “take over” required a system able to be controlled, something he’d yet to be convinced existed. No, his mutinous ambitions were much simpler—to discover what he could of where they were going and when they’d arrive, in order to prepare as best they could.
And to be sure Sona had no more surprises in store.
Morgan half smiled. “Nothing I’d discuss over live coms.”
“‘Live—?’” The ship’s listening?
“I assume everything that can be recorded—” he waved the scanner “—is.” Not that he’d located any records storage—any he recognized, Morgan corrected. Sira’d passed along the question, the ship replying it was “unaware.” Just as it hadn’t been aware of the Speaker pendants either, which they had caught transmitting. Implying secrecy—
Or such questions hadn’t been anticipated by the ship’s builders. Least cheerful prospect? Ignorance in its passengers served a purpose.
They’d no proof the experiment was over.
When Barac didn’t respond, Morgan glanced up, grinning at the look on the other’s face. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“I would.” A faint smile in return. “But I’ll add it to the list. Anything else, my friend?”
Morgan hesitated.
The Clansman stopped smiling. “Sorry I asked.”
“Don’t be.” Sira preoccupied. Alone with the only other of her kind he trusted—who trusted him, that rare commodity. He made up his mind. “I’d like to show you something.”
Going to his pack, Morgan reached in, fingers finding the smooth, cool curve of the Hoveny cylinder. He’d brought it from the workshop, hoping for such an opportunity.
Before he could doubt, he pulled it forth.
“So that’s what you’ve been up to.” Barac whistled, then gave a charming shrug. “The Om’ray were curious. What is it?”
“My chance to belong. Maybe.” He met the Clansman’s gaze, braced himself for any reaction, including ridicule. “I’ve been trying to make it work, whatever it is. See if my Power can affect their—your technology.”
Giving him a purpose, a future, on a world that might run on nothing else.
Barac merely nodded. “Any luck?”
“Not yet. I’m only guessing it has a function.” If not, he’d been doing the equivalent of trying to start a fire inside a brick. “Even if it does, it could be broken.” Morgan held out the cylinder. “You can help me find out.”
Barac took it, his nose wrinkled in distaste. “It’s old. What do you want me to do?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Helpful.” But the Clansman was doing something. Morgan could feel his concentration, if not what he did.
The cylinder went from dull white to pale blue—
—dropping from Barac’s hand to bounce on the floor, dull white again.
“What happened?”
The Clansman made a face. “It talked.” He stooped and picked it up between two fingers, gingerly offering it to Morgan. “Gibberish.” Something flickered across his face. “No. Numbers.”
Finally. Doing his best to stay calm, the Human took the cylinder back. He’d hunted for records; had he had one all along? Although numbers could mean a scanner readout. “How did you activate it?”
“I’m not sure. To fuel the ship—” with disgust, “—each of us reached into the M’hir while touching one of those hall panels. I tried with this, but nothing happened. So I—” Barac’s cheeks turned an interesting color.
“Yes?”
“I was thinking I didn’t want to fail. Ruti—she came on our link and—” His eyes widened. “Morgan, she sent me encouragement. The feeling. That’s when the numbers started.”
“Let me try.” The Human lifted the cylinder, watching it, then reached for Sira. Any sign of the baby?
A not-unexpected: Don’t distract me. With a blast of ice.
The cylinder turned vivid purple. Morgan poured everything he had into his inner sense. Concentrated.
“Hear anything?”
The pound of his heart. Barac’s breathing and his. “No.”
He refused to admit disappointment. Useful, learning the device—for now he knew it was a device, without question—responded to what passed unsaid between Chosen. Both Ruti and Sira were stronger than their partners. Relevant or not, another bit of data. The numbers could be a measurement of that strength,
or potential along the link.
As easily, a coded message unlocked only when in the hands of a Chosen.
“Interesting.” Morgan concluded, turning the again-white cylinder over in his hands.
“Only to you. If you’re done, put it away.” Barac gave an exaggerated shudder. “Taking what’s inside us—using it to power machines? It’s unnatural.”
The Human froze, caught by an incongruity. Barac was right. It was—and yet the ability to do just that had been bred into the nature of the Clan.
At great effort. With unimaginable sacrifice. They’d assumed it was to recover what the Hoveny had somehow lost from themselves.
What if they were wrong?
“I know that look.” The First Scout narrowed his eyes. “You’ve thought of something. I’m not going to like it, am I.”
“What we know of the Hoveny Concentrix comes from structures and artifacts locked in stone before there was a Trade Pact, but the creation of the M’hiray is almost contemporary.”
“Your point?”
“What took them so long?”
Barac blinked. “An interstellar civilization collapsed.”
“Without sign of destruction,” Morgan countered. “It’s as if the Hoveny abandoned their technology—beyond our understanding even now—and walked away, leaving the rest of the Concentrix to fend for themselves. The rest did. Most species kept the capacity for sublight travel; members of the First were back trading between systems well before Humans arrived in their space. Yet knowledge surrounding the Hoveny themselves disappeared with them. Deliberately or as a consequence?”
Morgan kept from pacing with an effort, ideas tumbling faster than he would sort them. “Now we know they didn’t die off. Instead, the Hoveny hid themselves so well other spacefaring species had no idea they still existed or where. And a thousand years later, a new generation sent ships like this to Cersi—and who knows where else—in what I assure you was a very costly attempt to wake technology ancient even to them. Why?”
“They could have tried before or since,” argued Barac, “and succeeded. Nothing says we continue to matter,” with abrupt bitterness.
Except to themselves, but the Clansman wasn’t wrong. Still . . .
“A worry on my list.” A keen look. “What’s on yours?”
“A delay of a thousand years, Barac. Think about it.” The Human pressed his palms together, blowing through his fingers as if to warm them. “What if it was long enough for the Hoveny themselves to forget why they turned off the lights and ran?”
Barac made as if to speak, stopped, then gave a short laugh. “You almost had me, Morgan,” he said fondly. “The past is dead and gone. Whatever happened to the Hoveny is a mystery I don’t need solved; we aren’t them and weren’t part of it. The future’s what counts. Starting with making sure we have one.” A nod at the access port.
“Fair enough.” Speculation wasn’t supper. Chuckling himself, the Human leaned into the opening, more than ready to get back to work. “Pass me my light, please. Outside left pocket.” Barac put it in his outstretched hand and Morgan squirmed inside, bracing himself with an elbow and hip against the far wall.
“Must you do that?”
“We’re here. May as well be thorough.”
His voice echoed; hard surfaces. Good thing the headache was fading. His light danced along shiny metal racks, teethlike rows of them extending as far as the little beam reached. Empty.
Might be normal.
Might not. Until now the wide portal had opened on full racks, ready to be unloaded; he hadn’t been able to crawl in like this to do a proper inspection. Morgan twisted to send light down, finding only space below. Rails along the walls implied the racks, once emptied, would move down, perhaps to cycle back around to be refilled.
“Seen enough?”
About to climb out, Morgan grunted something noncommittal, his attention caught. There. A spot on the wall with a different texture. “Now, what are you?” he murmured.
“Ready to leave.”
Ignoring the Clansman’s plaintive comment, he put the light between his teeth and stretched, brushing the tips of his fingers over the wall. Hard. Smooth—
The tips sank in.
Quickly, Morgan pulled back his hand. His fingers were coated in a liquid the same color as the wall. “That can’t be good.”
A head appeared. “What’s wrong?” demanded the First Scout.
The next unpleasant surprise. Morgan held up his hand. “I’d say Sona’s about to change something.”
“It can’t,” Barac protested. “We’re here.”
“Let hope it knows that.” Staying where he was, the Human played the light over the wall. More spots with that revealing texture. More and larger, he noticed uneasily, the longer he looked. “Time to go—”
His elbow and hip were suddenly braced against nothing. Morgan contorted as he began to fall, reaching up—
—meeting a firm grip. “Got you!” The Clansman hung by his hips, half-inside the opening.
“Don’t ’port!”
The Human could almost feel Barac’s incredulous stare, but the other didn’t argue, pulling until Morgan could bring his feet against something still-solid and push himself up and out.
As the other steadied him, their feet began to sink. “Can we leave now?” Barac pleaded.
The walls were, Morgan noted, noticeably sagging in—explaining much about the reshaping process. He lunged for his pack and pulled it free of the floor. “Definitely.”
A hand clamped on his shoulder . . .
. . . and what had been food storage, now rapidly becoming something else, disappeared . . .
. . . The Human found himself standing in the deserted hallway outside the galley.
Barac gave him a shove before letting go. “Next time we’re in a dissolving ship, I’m not waiting for your luggage.”
“Agreed.”
They looked at one another, neither moving.
“So that’s it, then,” Barac said at last, very quietly. “We don’t go mad. We starve to death. That’s what I tasted.”
Curious he hadn’t received any such warning. A first. Unless they hadn’t been in real danger, other than being frightened to death. Made sense the ship would have some way to allow for passengers wandering where they shouldn’t—
But why food storage—why now? “Starving’s one possibility,” the Human admitted, thoughts racing.
“What else is there?”
Morgan told him.
Chapter 8
M’HIRAY GAVE BIRTH in the presence of witnesses and their Birth Watcher. The father, if approved by the mother-to-be and her family, could attend if interested.
I tried not to step on toes, or be stepped on, in the very interested crowd surrounding the bed where Gricel di Eathem lay, sweating and smiling. According to the Om’ray, not only must the father and Birth Watcher attend, but every pregnant Clanswoman in range.
Having never planned to be pregnant, I found myself at the bedside with the rest, Ruti to one side and Andi to the other, wondering if anyone else was terrified.
The child and Jacqui di Mendolar, our other Birth Watcher, seemed confident they could share their duty to the unborn and mother. Far be it from me to point out neither had attended a birth before. The Om’ray had lost their Birth Watchers, a wrenching loss among the rest, and gratefully accepted the help offered.
Gricel made a face as another wave of contractions rippled along her abdomen. “Impatient, aren’t you?” She sounded improbably calm. I supposed it helped that this wasn’t her first.
What’s happening? Morgan, no doubt full of curiosity. If there’d been any space at all around the bed, he’d have squeezed right in, scanner in hand.
In my present mood, as well he didn’t try. Don’t distract me, I sent and slammed down
my shields.
Jacqui ran her fingers over bare, distended skin and nodded. “Time to get you on your feet, Gricel.”
Others helped, taking hold of her arms. Once standing, Gricel’s abdomen began to flex in and out, each powerful contraction driving air from her lungs. Andi dove to the floor, her arms full of pillows. As Gricel’s hair lifted like an aura of dazzling red, the birth sac slipped free in a flood of clear liquid.
“Got you!” Andi exclaimed. She stood, juggling the sac to her chest with one of the pillows. Welcome! Welcome!
Those gathered made room as Andi carefully brought the birth sac to its little hammock, strung between two beds. I’d a clearer view than I’d hoped.
The sac was as black as the M’hir, flecked with starlike patches of pale, new-grown skin. Human babies didn’t arrive like this; I’d found a vid on the Fox and watched with a certain skepticism. Clan newborn were locked within an impenetrable case, a case that opened from inside.
The first Choice: be born.
Or not.
If the unborn refused to come out, he or she would die, as would the mother, their bond sending both minds—and, among M’hiray, the father’s—adrift in the M’hir. The Birth Watchers’ role was to communicate with that new, nascent intelligence, to encourage and, most importantly, allay any fears—
Don’t be afraid, Aryl sent gently, sensing mine.
She understood what was to happen, what must happen. Would make the Choice that preserved us both—and Morgan. I had to trust her.
I did. It was just—I may not be right, inside. There, what I hadn’t told her. A toad put me back together.
What’s a toad?
I shared the image of Baltir, the Retian who’d experimented on my flesh. A Human med-tech supervised him—and my Human, a blade at Baltir’s loose-skinned throat—but there are no guarantees he fixed the damage.
You wanted to be sterile, then, Aryl observed with grim accuracy. Now you have me, a gifted Birth Watcher, and Clan Healers with experience. Don’t be afraid, Great-granddaughter. With warmth. Then, Hurry, show me the birth.
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