It hadn’t always been their world. Latecomers here, the Tikitik, arriving in the system just as the Hoveny were stretching their reach well beyond it. They’d been uninterested in contact or sharing technology, intent on treasure of another kind: the Oud. Barely sentient. An impediment to construction, with their tunnels and mounds, and had the Hoveny System not contained three other inhabitable worlds—Hilip, Yont, and ringed Oger—and had the galaxy beyond not been so full of wealth, the Oud world would have been urbanized and its “people” reduced, like other wild things, to a curiosity in a preserve.
Enter the Tikitik. They landed among the Oud and, admiring what they called the species’ rare plasticity, their Makers offered the Oud another future.
Or ruined them, for no living Oud resembled their original kind, but Oud kept no history and Tikitik viewed things—differently. The Oud agreed, giving away their world and themselves. Or were overrun. A moot point. The Hoveny, preoccupied with the myriad worlds and species of its growing Concentrix, cared for neither so long as their home system remained at peace.
After the Fall, when the home system was all that remained, Tikitna and its modified inhabitants were waiting.
Today’s civilization, Lemuel mused glumly, couldn’t run without them. There were Oud on every station and space-capable vessel. Oud living throughout the five worlds and every civilized moon of the System Cooperative. The majority were mindless workers, like the Cleaners, engineered by the Tikitik Makers to fulfill specific tasks. There were Minded Oud, some quite brilliant, but they were rarely involved in the doings of their kin, other than to arrange a sufficiency of raw material for the Tikitiks’ tinkering.
The Tikitik eying Lemuel wasn’t a Maker. It was, as far as ne was concerned, worse, being a Thought Traveler and so officially charged with poking its cilia into the business of others. It gestured languidly with a claw-tipped hand, the jeweled bells depended from its wristlet set tinkling. No doubt its intention; the thing knew ne didn’t care for ostentation. Or bells. “Why is this significant, Director?”
Lemuel tensed. Because signals didn’t come from outside the System. Not anymore. Not since the Fall. The System Cooperative was all there was—
Ne composed nerself. A Thought Traveler qualified to be in the Hub would know, making its feigned ignorance a provocation, either to amuse or incite a reaction. Ne walked over to nes second to gaze calmly over his shoulder at the board. The Hub was more than traffic and information. Nes task, to protect those who shared this sun.
The incoming signal was narrow; credit to nes staff and quality of the Hub’s sensor sweeps that they’d spotted it. Incoming—to where, ne wondered. “Target?” ne murmured.
The tech’s arm lifted, finger pointing to the wall, indicating a pale blue dot near the bottom of the display. “Brightfall.”
“Your place of origin,” the Tikitik commented, having followed ner, and if it meant the Hoveny species or simply nerself, both were correct.
And neither mattered. Brightfall was nothing but empty ruins and dust, inhabited by those who cared for the past, and those stuck in it. “Fine-tune it,” ordered Lemuel.
Another tech stood. “There’s been a response, Director!”
“Isolate and prevent any more. I assume we now have the location.”
“Yes, Director.” Numbers appeared on the screen.
Lemuel raised a brow to summon nes personal aide. “I’m going down. Make the—what are you doing?”
The paired back eyes swiveled into their cones to meet nes stare. The front pair remained riveted on the Cleaner Oud the Tikitik had swept up in both hands. Its little black appendages flailed in midair, but there was no escape as Thought Traveler brought the Oud to its mouth, thick gray mouth cilia patting and probing. Done, it tossed the creature aside. Righting itself, the Oud scurried under the nearest stool.
All eyes fixed on Lemuel. “How disappointing,” the Tikitik declared in its smooth, not-quite-but-so-close to patronizing tone. “You haven’t used the supplements I brought you, Director. Given the high-stress position you hold here, they would be—”
“In my position,” ne interrupted, matching its tone precisely, “I’m prohibited from unsolicited additions to my diet, however much I personally appreciate the gesture.” Lemuel bowed nes head, slightly, then turned back to nes aide. “I want to leave at once.”
“As do I,” Thought Traveler Tikitik’s head thrust forward. “Unless you don’t appreciate my accompanying you, Director. Personally.”
Being a nuisance was its right. Lemuel Dis allowed nerself a tight little smile. “Suit yourself.”
Maybe the thing could be useful—if not, ne would have it shipped home.
Controlling information was the first and foremost goal. They’d approached swiftly, landing on the emergency platform even as nes staff shut down all access, in or out, including theoretically private feeds. Enough? Lemuel Dis doubted it. A bonded mind’s haisin was the unknown and there were those heart-kin able to transcend distance. The only reliable measure of that mental connection was to bring in an Oud-Key and have it sniff, or whatever it did.
Ouds able to think for themselves refused work on airless moons, including this one, Brightfall’s industrialized Raynthe. As for reliable? Ne’d be further ahead to toss purple wirill stems in the air like the choosing rhyme chanted by planet-born younglings. What would dismay ner staff most, ne thought with amusement: having the SysComPrime bring foreign plant material onstation, or that ne, so many cycles their elder, remembered the rhyme?
You left your world, ne could have told them. It never left you.
“How much longer will this take?” Sorina Din’s only concession to being summoned below the surface had been to toss back the hood of her vacsuit and remove her gloves. She eyed the Tikitik, then ignored it. “I’ve crews in locked accesses, Director, and materials I need stuck in orbit. My schedule’s behind arns already. Can’t you just destroy the artifact?”
Lemuel gazed at Sorina Din until the other closed her thin lips, conceding authority. If up to ner, the engineer would have been locked in with her crews. By her designation, “din,” the present Head of Reclamation topped nes list of those liable to spread rumors, sharing haisin with at least three heart-kin, not uncommon in someone who managed others and had no secrets.
Some days it felt nes head was stuffed with them. While neuters bonded to heart-kin, too—be they lovers, confidants or both—Lemuel had no regrets; choosing the “dis” of a life-long solitary mind protected the Cooperative: five worlds, twenty—soon to be twenty-one—settled moons, and the great stations orbiting each.
“You’ll be notified when I’m done,” Lemuel said, signaling. Techs festooned with gear and goggles hadn’t been all ne’d brought to the moon.
The seniormost of nes security left nes post, coming to the engineer’s elbow. “This way, honored official.”
Sorina had no choice but to incline her head and leave without argument, though she shot the Tikitik a disturbed look when it barked its laugh. Most Hoveny wouldn’t encounter an active Thought Traveler in their lifetime.
Lucky them.
“It’s no artifact,” Lemuel murmured, walking around what had been an inert pillar of ancient dark green metal, aware the Tikitik paced behind. “Not anymore.” The object was disconcertingly familiar. Ne’d spent nes youth on a farm in the Ribbon Lands. Dig an um anywhere, and you’d find the same; farmers plowed around them, or used them for gate posts. The pillars were among the more useful of the empire’s remains.
Familiar, yet nothing so ordinary. This pillar had been found, as had this curve-walled complex, beneath Raynthe’s surface. Luck or fate. The moon was slated for a life-sustaining atmosphere and all the fittings to please Oud and Tikitik alike before they began establishing a working biosphere. Surveyors readying a crater for its new life as a lake had discovered this centuries-abandoned install
ation; more accurately, they’d rediscovered it, for the site proved to be listed in documents produced by a mid-rank historian.
Lemuel had been briefed on the flight here. Brought in to inspect the site, Koleor Su had claimed the entire complex to be a control facility, over three hundred cycles old, built in secret by a rebellious planetary government.
Over the generations, there’d been several so inclined. Brightfall remained the thorn in more reasonable hides. Sentimentality, to allow it to be resettled, but it had been before nes time.
The pristine condition of the find, itself rare, meant postponing demolition until the complex could be thoroughly studied, the start of Sorina Din’s scheduling woes.
A form of demolition was presently underway, techs with no interest in history going through rooms and corridors, where necessary tearing open walls, while Koleor Su sat fuming on a stool, barefoot and in his nightshift, having been dragged from his bed at Lemuel’s order. Seeing the pillar, he’d exclaimed once, then fallen stubbornly silent.
A “su” had no heart-kin—yet—and so no haisin to breach security. He could wait.
The pillar, now surrounded with recording apparatus, continued to flash a dizzying display as it cycled fruitlessly through what Lemuel’s techs concluded was a preset sequence of reception and transmission. They’d thrown a frequency specific shutdown field over this side of the moon once the location had been verified.
Perhaps in time to keep this quiet. Nes staff were the best.
“Tech,” Thought Traveler dismissed the object. “Old at that.”
“Director.” A tech offered Lemuel a curled sheet that, by rights, should be protected in a case; that it had been spat out by the pillar before the shutdown gave ner a profound sense of dislocation. The present mattered. Planning for the next cycle mattered. Offensive, to have the past assert itself.
There were marks on the sheet, none familiar. Lemuel tossed it at the historian. “Read this.”
The stool toppled with a bang as Koleor scrambled for the sheet. Cradling it, he glared at ner, fury burning red on his cheeks. Like younglings, academics; to be forgiven their lack of social grace. Certain no emotion crossed nes features, Lemuel gestured for him to proceed.
His anger faded as he concentrated, lips moving silently. All at once, Koleor’s hands trembled. “Received or sent?” he demanded, looking up. “Quickly! I must know!”
Nes staff were offended, the Tikitik bored, but the question was, Lemuel deemed, pertinent. “Received.”
The historian let the sheet fall, his face gone sickly pale.
The techs paused to stare; at nes look, they resumed their activities, shoulders hunched. “What did it say?”
“It’s impossible.” He collected himself, lips twisting. “Exactly that. This is some trick to discredit—”
Lemuel Dis swept up the sheet and closed the distance between them, boots clicking on the colored metal floor. “My presence proves it is not.”
He recoiled, dread flooding his appallingly expressive face.
Ne raised the sheet with the marks toward him. “Please.” Quietly. “Tell me what it says.”
Later, Lemuel would remember the moment and wish ne’d listened to Sorina Din, destroyed the pillar and everything here, then run, not walked away.
“Yes, Director.” Koleor locked eyes with ner as if for strength. “‘Confirmation request. Identification: Cersi-So.’”
Lemuel ignored the tech who gasped out loud, busy controlling shock of nes own.
“Let me explain the significance—”
“One of the Twelve,” Thought Traveler broke in. “Is it not, Director?”
“It is.” Children learned the names; the religious prayed with them. Twelve starships had been sent into the Heavens by Brightfall in 1030 AF, their mission to circumvent the System Government by establishing contact outside it. To recreate the Hoveny Concentrix with themselves once more in charge. “The Twelve disappeared without a trace,” Lemuel responded, keeping nes eyes on the historian. “You’re telling me this—” ne crumbled the sheet in a fist, “—is from a ship lost over three hundred cycles ago?”
Koleor pointed to the pillar, still flickering through its display. “That’s telling you.”
“I find your reaction inappropriate.” The Tikitik prowled close, cilia tasting the air near the historian. “I read about your work. You’ve spent your life researching the Cersi Rebellion. Surely this is vindication. Why are you fearful?”
A grimace. “I didn’t expect the past to just—show up. If this is Cersi-So—” The historian swallowed. “Director, how freely may I speak?” He tipped his head at those around them.
Ne didn’t look. If nes personal staff couldn’t be trusted with what he planned to reveal, no one in the System could. As for Thought Traveler?
Oh, there was curiosity aplenty twirling its eyecones now. “Say what you wish,” Lemuel stated, “but do not waste my time.”
“I won’t.” Though his skin remained paler than normal, Koleor steadied. “The Twelve weren’t what we’re taught, nor was their mission. I planned to release my findings—” he waved the rest away impatiently. “Director, those ships couldn’t return, not on their own. They were built around pre-Fall technology and the only way back was to get it working again. Do you understand? Their real mission was to find and restore the null-grid. That’s what Cersi and her followers believed would bring back the Concentrix.”
Thought Traveler gestured abruptly, bells strident. “Fools and nonsense. That technology failed. It destroyed your Concentrix.”
Technology the Tikitik had rejected, Pre-Fall. Afterward, they’d helped the rest of the System recover from its loss.
If by “helped” you meant traded for permanent and equal say in the new order. Fair enough. Thanks to the Tikitik, the surviving Hoveny hadn’t lost their space capability.
Only their taste for it.
The null-grid, Lemuel thought, mind whirling, was like something out of a dream. Ne signaled and a tech hurried to bring ner a stool. In the brief pause, the historian retrieved his and sat, grim-faced, an improbable prophet in a nightshirt.
The null-grid had created the Concentrix, for that had been the Hoveny’s lavish gift to any who joined: a pure and inexhaustible power source greater than any previously known. No physical fuel. No wires or broadcasts. No waste or stockpiles. The null-grid arrived in the marvelous technology the Hoveny offered, from buildings to machines to the tiniest devices; those who adopted them could be forgiven for believing the Hoveny had ushered in a new golden age, for such it seemed.
Until the Fall: the instant, without warning, the null-grid disconnected and vanished. Communication devices no longer worked, starships plunged from subspace, lost, and this remote system, birthplace of the Hoveny and heart of their empire, was cut off from all else.
At first, they hadn’t understood the scope of the disaster. Civilization continued, technology predating the null-grid brought into play even as questions were asked. The capital world suffered most, having been completely rebuilt as a gleaming showcase for all that was new, all that was promised. The other worlds went from chagrined at being left behind to quietly grateful for their older buildings and tired infrastructure—
To horrified. Nothing remained of the billions who’d lived in the capital. The discovery of handfuls of survivors, clustered in remote regions, was scant comfort.
Still, surely this was temporary. Surely they’d be helped. The priority was to reestablish contact outside the system but before they could reach out, a flood of messages began to pour in.
Messages of anger, fear, and betrayal. The Hoveny had done this—the Hoveny had stolen back their power—the Hoveny had abandoned them.
The null-grid hadn’t failed here, in this system; it had failed everywhere. The empire was gone, and more.
As they listened
, the surviving Hoveny had cowered in silent despair. Where were the multitudes who’d made homes on other worlds?
For none of the voices were theirs.
Cycles passed, decades. The Hoveny no longer heard their name, truth be told, they no longer listened, and hoped to be forgotten. Centuries, and the Hoveny—sensible, ordinary Hoveny—no longer thought about the universe beyond their warm, yellow sun.
Until now, and another message: “Confirmation request. Identification: Cersi-So.”
No wonder her predecessors had set alarms. Lemuel roused. “Our ancestors buried their dead cities. That’s where the past belongs.”
“Yet,” the Tikitik lifted a hand, turned it over with the faintest chime of bells. “Are there not those who remember the name of your world? Might they not be—interested?”
In the deathly silence after the words, the faint chirp of a comm notification made them all start. A tech lifted her head. “Director,” almost a whisper.
“What?” What could possibly matter at this moment, Lemuel thought, when the shape of the universe failed to hold and—
“Your pardon, Lemuel Dis, but Sar-lyn Station reports a ship on approach.”
They hadn’t been in time. Hadn’t stopped whatever “confirmation” Cersi-So had demanded.
What would be next? Thought Traveler was right. Their world had had another name, long ago, before being renamed Brightfall to mark the end.
If the Twelve had found what they’d sought—could it have that name again?
Hoveny Prime.
Chapter 14
IT WAS PASSAGE, in that we rode within the M’hir, and I could feel its darkness seethe at our intrusion.
It was not, for I could feel my pulse hammering and the awkward press of Morgan’s pack—which smelled comfortingly of the Silver Fox and him—
The Gate to Futures Past Page 19