The Gate to Futures Past
Page 30
So they shouldn’t. My hair lifted, and I grinned at my captain. “See you in a bit.”
There’d been a few times in my life when I’d been plopped in a strange aircar and taken someplace. Such things happened when you’d Scats and Recruiters and your own kind after you.
I was pleasantly surprised to find Emelen’s machine had better manners. After floating smoothly out into the sunshine, it sank with a businesslike hum to the field below, no faster than a lift, and came to rest with a polite thump.
A breeze cooled my cheeks, and I was glad of Alisi’s jacket. Around me, plants swayed, their leaftips clattering like teeth; those pressed beneath the aircar perfumed the air with a suggestion of, yes, beer. Beer left on the floor overnight, to be exact. Rather welcoming.
I climbed out, snagging Alisi’s empty satchel on the hand rail, and almost fell on the beer plants.
Miss me already?
I looked up at the transport and waved. Should have left this behind.
Show me, Aryl asked.
Turning slowly, I surveyed my surroundings. I stood in the middle of a slender valley, green from edge to edge. The valley and bordering hills flowed in tandem from side to side, explaining the name “Ribbon Lands.” Presumably there were more valleys like this, beyond those hills. Goesen was in the distance, its buildings stone, with tiled roofs. Trees—or what passed here as trees—showed between. I spotted a homely line of pants blowing in the breeze and smiled to myself.
I could live here, Aryl agreed.
First things first.
From Morgan, Sira, look up.
I raised my eyes, startled to see transports approaching from all sides. “Who’s that?” I shouted.
A voice from the aircar. “The Sect gathers, Sira Di.”
Lemuel wasn’t informed. Ne isn’t happy, chit. Nor is Alisi.
Makes it unanimous. I could see my people lining the windows of our flying machine and sensed their unsettled attention.
At least this time I’d decent clothing. I straightened the jacket with an annoyed tug. Emelen could have provided a table with a nice, small, inoffensive Hoveny device waiting. Something I could activate that would give off a light or signal and be done. But no.
The audience said it all. This was to be a spectacle. Here. In this field.
The transports slowed to hover at a respectful distance. The designs and sizes varied, implying a mix of personal craft and commercial, some large and others less so, in common only that they were jammed with people, at windows or leaning on railings. No Tikitik that I could see, nor Oud, but the latter would be impossible to spot if they were as tiny as Tap Tap.
Who’d put me in this mess. I didn’t plan to forget that.
Hundreds of spectators. Could be thousands. The hum, buzz, and growl of their machines was distracting. No, more than thousands. This was a technological society. Whatever I did, fail or succeed, would be known across this world, and throughout the entire system.
Imagining Thought Traveler as one of my observers, I took a moment to glare up, hair slapping my shoulders.
Don’t let it go to your head, chit. My Chosen, deliberately amused. Fame’s fickle.
Sticking out my tongue seemed the logical response.
To it, then. I slogged my way through rows of beer plants, the soil between them a cloying mud, so I was grateful for Milly’s too-small boots. Not far to the gate.
To the columns, I corrected. The one on the right was my height, the other shorter. The gate they supported yawned open, the end of its worn and crooked panel stuck in mud, the chains and ropes used as crude hinges still in place. The stone had been scraped, not washed, presumably in preparation for this test. There were strands of moss still clinging to the dark, almost black-green surface, a surface I discovered to be covered in thick slime. Lovely. I pulled my fingers away, decided against wiping them on Alisi’s gifts, and shook my hand vigorously in the air instead.
Stalling.
Caution is a virtue, I replied haughtily, feeling Aryl’s assent. Their steadfast presence wrapped me in comfort.
Comfort I needed. I studied the columns. Size, shape, outward appearance: all disturbingly similar to the pillar the ship had called its access interface and had been the Om’ray’s Maker. A device capable of altering minds and signaling through space wasn’t to be taken lightly. No telling what this pair did, if they were a pair at all.
I moved to stand between them, raising my arms slowly. With a preparatory grimace, I pressed my palms to the cold, slick stone and took a steadying breath. Easy to imagine everyone else in the valley doing the same.
Well, I thought, here’s something you can’t all do.
And opened my awareness to the M’hir.
Interlude
FROM HERE, to Morgan, the fields might have been designs on a carpet, the transports paint on a canvas sky, and the distant town blocks discarded by a child. Only Sira had dimension. Only she commanded the eye.
And more. Through their link, he shared the instant she opened to the M’hir.
The next, the barrier she threw up to protect him from it. Morgan’s jaw clenched. He’d known she would. It made it no easier to bear. Reduced to vision, he leaned out, one hand gripping the metal frame.
Emelen Dis moved to stand beside him. “I’m told you are her heart-kin. You must be proud.”
Morgan didn’t take his eyes from Sira. “And you’re wearing armor under your robe. Expecting trouble?”
“None of us knows what to expect,” with candor. “We follow the Blessed Instructions, passed down from the Fall.”
Save them from zealots. “So nothing may happen,” he started to say, then stared.
For something was.
Blue light, like that dripped from the pod shards, flickered along the columns. More blue limned Sira’s body and glowed along her outstretched arms. Morgan watched, mouth going dry, as her glorious hair rose in a cloud, red-gold edged in blue.
Then, the world screamed.
Chapter 28
BLUE LIGHT TRACED LINES. Glowing dots chased one another. The familiar signs of a Hoveny machine waking up seemed—premature. All I’d done so far was be aware of the M’hir.
Oh, well. Using Sona’s technique, I grabbed with what weren’t hands and pulled some of the darkness closer.
Blue appeared on my arms. That was new.
My hair crackled with energy. The locks I could see had a blue glow to them. Also new.
Enough to pass this test?
I doubted it. I grabbed again. Pulled more, and harder.
And more than the M’hir came.
<
<< Sira, dear. You don’t belong there. Come home.>> Gods, that was—that was Enora.
<
Mother? More and more voices. Some soft and familiar. Some loud and strange. I reeled, buffeted from within, staying up only because I couldn’t free my hands from the pillars.
On some level, I heard Aryl weep, call out names I didn’t know: Seru!Bern!Worin!
I had to stop them, stop all of this!
I grabbed more and more darkness, poured it out like madness and grief.
The world screamed in answer.
Interlude
WHAT HAD BEEN rock was hard no longer.
What had been buried, rose to take breath.
Gleaming blue.
What had waited did so no longer.
What had slept beneath a crater pushed through, cracking seals and spilling atmosphere.
Gleaming blue.
While in AllThereIs, Watchers shrieked in despair and fought to hold in their universe with hands that shredded and burned—
Only one dared plunge Between.
Chapter 29
I WAS—
&nbs
p; Where I couldn’t be.
Not the most useful thought, since I was. But—how? I ran my hands along the stone rail, looked out over mountains I knew, and had no idea what I was doing home.
This wasn’t home.
Well, then.
As if I’d ’ported with no effort at all, I was elsewhere. I walked along the corridor of the Silver Fox, drawn by the aroma of fresh sombay to the galley.
Where I couldn’t be.
I stood still. The corridor, perversely, didn’t. I found myself going through the galley door—and there wasn’t a galley, there wasn’t a Fox, this was a trick—
STOP THIS.
Darkness surrounded me. I’d thought I’d seen all the moods of the M’hir. This—this was like nothing I’d experienced before.
Because this wasn’t the M’hir. This was—absence. Of anything.
Making a point, was it? Whatever it was. I had to believe there was an “it.” Something to talk to—something to—what could I say?
“Hello?”
After a lifetime . . . or was it a heartbeat?
Light.
Light that coalesced into a figure, moving toward me without walking, or drawing me forward. It was annoyingly difficult to tell which.
Suddenly, the figure was close enough to touch—not that I’d a body at the moment. I’d checked that.
I was.
I just wasn’t, at the same time.
Promising, to be bodiless. Either that or terrifying.
Promising it was, I told myself firmly. I’d wandered in a dream-state before now. Hadn’t been quite like this, but—
<
Hollow, that voice. Or was it rich and full?
Death and ashes. Or was it vibrant? Alive?
Confusing, everything not being one or the other, but I wasn’t about to be chastised by a luminous non-thing in my own dream. “I am paying attention. Where am I?”
<
Unhelpful. “Where’s that?”
<
Another tack, then. “Who are you?” Polite that was, not to ask “what.”
The face appeared. Grew solid. A Clanswoman, Chosen by the net around her black hair, with wide gray eyes and—
Aryl gasped inside me. Mother!
The strong brow furrowed in lifelike puzzlement, a neat trick. There was nothing like life in that face.
Say rather, that memory of a face.
<>
“I’m not going—” But I was somewhere else already, wasn’t I? “I’ll listen.” If anything here could make sense, I was willing.
The details of the face shifted, became that of someone else. A stranger. Elderly, with a high forehead and hooked nose. <
Arms that weren’t flesh grabbed me.
And pulled!
Interlude
THE HOVENY were frozen: in shock, or horror, didn’t matter. There was no time to try and get sense from any of them, let alone demand they land the transport or take him down in anything smaller. Morgan tore through the hangar, searching for rope or cable, his mind already sending an urgent summons. Barac!
Faced with what Sira had just done? He’d take the bet a Clan popping from thin air wouldn’t be noticed. Not that he cared.
He had to get down there—
Barac appeared, stepping forward without hesitation to put a hand on Morgan’s arm. No need to tell him where to go . . .
. . . Morgan sank to his knees in what had been a field, grateful it was no farther—the softened land could have sucked them both down. He squinted to see, coughing with Barac as dust filled their lungs. Heavy stuff, settling quickly.
Sira knelt between the pillars, her hands at her sides. Her hair hung straight and her eyes were shut and she was smothered in colorless dust.
The blue was gone. From her. From the pillars.
Not from the world.
As they struggled toward her, Morgan couldn’t stop staring at what now filled the valley beyond. A building—a Hoveny Concentrix building—stood touching the sky. Dust flowed down its curved sides like water. More boiled along the base.
The building dwarfed those in the tunnel. Dwarfed any he’d heard had been discovered in the Trade Pact. He’d watched with the rest, appalled as it thrust up through the ground, setting off quakes that stripped tiles from the town and toppled trees.
At rest, the structure was pristine, as though newly built.
Alive. That, too. Blue chased along edges and gleamed from windows. The uppermost openings shone with white light, hinting at inner chambers.
His boot stuck, and Barac helped pull him free. “Sira did that?” The Clansman’s voice shook.
“And more.” The Human had been there as the report came in, the Hoveny relaying it close to hysteria. “There’s another on the moon.”
Barac looked up, as if he could see it. “How?”
“The null-grid must connect them.” He’d ponder the implications of that later. No casualties here, unless some hearts had failed among those watching. The moon—there’d been construction workers, researchers. Didn’t sound good.
Change. The taste of it boiled in his mind. This wasn’t over.
They reached Sira to find the blue wasn’t completely gone. It ran over the soil and caught on bits of dying plant in fits and flashes, impossible not to step on, so Morgan didn’t try.
“Are you sure you should—”
Morgan ignored the rest. He put an arm around Sira’s shoulders, the other behind her knees, and lifted, cradling her against him. Her head lolled back; unconscious, not that he’d needed to confirm it. Their link remained strong, but her mind—was elsewhere. He gazed down helplessly.
“Morgan!” When he looked up, the Clansman gentled his tone. “Jason. Where do you want to go?”
They’d no choice. “Emelen Dis.” Who “hadn’t” known what to expect.
What other lies had he told?
Sira first. “Up there,” the Human said, staring up at the transport. “Where we can care for her.”
Chapter 30
I’D DONNED A SPACESUIT and gone outside the Fox. Where I was now felt similar: weightless, drifting, queasy.
A line, of sorts, kept me in place. Normally, I wouldn’t have thought being tied to a stranger—more accurately, a face and perhaps arms—could be a good thing. Here, where nothing extended in all directions, and none?
Having come far enough <
I’d gained a torso and head, yes. With a neck and eyes, since I could bend the former to use the latter to see the rest. I supposed the head was a guess on my part.
<
<
<
More here, I thought grimly, meant less there—assuming I’d a body left on Brightfall.
Morgan was not—NOT—going to be happy. His first stop: Emelen, getting answers—no, he’d be with me, the part of me still there. Worried.
Then he’d go after Emelen.
Unless I’d failed the test and this was the result. Being stuck here for good.
<
<
His face appeared, hooked nose to mine. <
Not “all there is” but one word: “AllThereIs.” A name? A state of mind? A—before he could say it again, I spoke, or voiced, or whatever this was that sent words flying into nothing. <>
How? To what? Was it literal? I stared over
his nose into his eyes, hunting details. Paying attention.
Lashes, long and dark. Spots on the eyelids. The eyes themselves, dark-pupiled, gray—no, green, a green brightening with notice. Myriad lines—wrinkles. From squinting, not so much age. He wasn’t as old as I’d thought.
I drew back, or he did. Black hair, streaked with white. Bushy eyebrows. The high brow I’d seen before, narrow shoulders I hadn’t. Behind those shoulders—
It was as if Morgan painted a scene while I watched, each stroke multicolored and textured. A wall took shape, then shelves. The shelves filled with containers, grew labels. Beside the shelves, draperies, dark blue, beside them a door, arched at the top.
All at once, I was out of nothing and into a room as real as any I’d ever seen.
Nor was I alone. A Hoveny male, with a now-familiar face, sat at ease in a well-stuffed chair, his legs crossed. He put aside what looked like a clipboard, as if I’d disturbed him in the midst of work.
He gazed around the room, smiling. “Better than I’d expected, Sira. Well done.”
I staggered back, having grown legs and feet, and dropped, more than sat, into a chair like his. “Who are you?”
His smile disappeared. “The first to make a terrible mistake.” He bent his head. “I am the Founder.”
“So you’re one of them.” I was too disappointed to be tactful. “Dead.”
The smile came back. “Not exactly.”
I felt it important to establish some rules. “I know I’m dreaming.”
The Founder finished pouring a dark steamy liquid into two cups and handed me one. “In a sense, so am I.” He took a sip, looking around the room. “I haven’t brought myself here for a very long time.”
I’d never been here, making the concept of dreaming slippery at best. “Why now?”
His eyes rested on me. “A Watcher thought you’d listen. Is that true?”
A Watcher. So I’d finally met one in the—what wasn’t flesh. It—she had named herself Taisal, Aryl’s mother, my great-great-grandmother.