The Gate to Futures Past

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Aryl?! She hadn’t come here with me, I realized, feeling bereft. Wherever here was. No, she hadn’t been pulled here by the Founder. “Between,” he’d called it. Feeling clever, I asked, “We’re in the M’hir, aren’t we?”

  Then knew I wasn’t, for as I spoke, the room was consumed by that familiar roiling darkness, and to my horror, I felt myself dissolving—

  <>

  The room. The Founder. As if he were a locate, I concentrated . . .

  . . . and was back. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  The Founder seemed unperturbed. “Those of NothingReal who can touch Between have their names for it. M’hir isn’t one I’ve heard. A gift. Thank you. Now. Will you listen?”

  “Yes.” I took a sip, only to find nothing in my mouth.

  “Pay attention,” he suggested, drinking his with pleasure.

  I stared into the cup. The color was right for sombay. If it were sombay, it would—I could smell that heady aroma. After a cautious sniff, I lifted the cup and sipped again.

  My mouth filled with my favorite morning drink, at the temperature I liked best, with the hint of sweet I’d sneak in as an indulgence. I swallowed eagerly and took another mouthful before the stuff could change.

  The Founder raised his cup, tasted. His eyebrows shot up. “I like this. What do you call it?”

  Dream rules, I told myself. “Sombay.”

  He nodded as though committing the name to memory. “Another gift, for which I thank you.” The cup vanished. “Your time here, like this, is limited, Sira. The Watcher who brought you expends her strength to make it possible. That—” he pointed to my arm, “—will warn us when you must go.”

  I looked down. For some reason, I was wearing my spacer coveralls, their blue faded but at least clean. On my wrist was a band of white light. Small flecks of dark green were floating up to its surface; those that met, merged, dimming the light. “How—?” Didn’t matter. “I’m listening.”

  “It isn’t me you must hear. This will be difficult for you. Those who leave NothingReal and come Between—”

  “Who die,” I interrupted, determined to be clear on that point. As for his calling my reality, “NothingReal?” That name fit here much better, but I’d no inclination to argue.

  “If you wish. Those who die there, arrive here. But you, Sira, are an anomaly. You remain in NothingReal. You visit here. You can pass no farther on your own. I’ve agreed to guide you, on one condition.”

  “That I listen.” I looked him in the eyes. “I promise.”

  All at once, I wasn’t sitting with a cup, but standing with the Founder, his hand in mine.

  And we weren’t in a room.

  But in space.

  Space. I use the word, but this isn’t part of any universe I know, or only now I see it.

  Stars burn and planets spin around them, matter dances and energy swirls, moving the fabric of everything—of AllThereIs—in a song defining existence itself.

  There are singers both infinitesimal and infinite. Themes. I hear some: Love. Imagination. Hope. Remembrance. Laughter. Others are mysterious and fascinate. All are part of the song; all create it. To pay attention to any strand is to add my voice—

  I have none, here.

  I hear my silence spread like grief, silencing others. Protectors notice, slip toward me through the fabric like gathering clouds. They howl instead of sing, howls growing loud and louder till they deafen all else. Howls I’ve heard before, but didn’t hear at all.

  For they aren’t names, but they were.

  And it isn’t rage, but triumph.

  I listen. I listen and I understand at last the dreadful truth and wonderful the Watchers tried to tell us. Tell me.

  Changespice.

  We don’t dissolve in the M’hir. We step Between, guided by the howls of the Watchers, to be welcomed, here.

  For we are the Stolen.

  And this is our home.

  Interlude

  HE TRACKED MUD across the deck and along the corridor. People stepped aside, pressed their backs to the walls. Some covered their eyes, others their mouths, but so long as they got out of his way, Morgan didn’t care.

  Sira’s head rode his shoulder, her hair falling limp over his arm. He could feel her breathing, sense the slow steady beat of her heart. She might have slept in his arms, but he knew better. Her mind was empty.

  It wasn’t Lost, not if he could walk and breathe and be so afraid every muscle threatened to spasm. Taking a trip without me, chit?

  Barac stepped around him, leading the way into the first of the bare cabins assigned to the Clan. Whomever may have been there vanished before the Human stepped through the door.

  Morgan sat on the bench, still holding his Chosen, and looked up at the Clansman. “They did this.” His voice was a stranger’s, so he put his cheek against Sira’s dust-caked hair and closed his eyes.

  Take the ship.

  He eased Sira to the bench—to be sure he was free to move, should the need arise—but held her tight. The trouble with the Clan was their tendency to vanish.

  He expected the Hoveny to notice that very soon.

  “Hom Morgan?”

  All that showed in the doorway was an eye peering through a mess of golden hair and a smidge of round cheek. “Hello, Andi,” he said gently.

  The rest of the child appeared, a hand and arm still outside as if she held on to the wall. “I stayed to check on the baby.” The little Birth Watcher leaned in. She frowned in disapproval. “Sira’s all dirty.”

  “Come in.” He hadn’t heard from Aryl. Hadn’t thought of her, was the guilty truth. He reached quickly, finding a daunting void.

  Andi entered the room, her palm trailing with a squeak around the doorframe. Instead of walking straight to Sira, she continued around the room, fingers on the wall.

  As though it was important to hold on. Her face was pale and unhappy, her clothes disheveled. Morgan focused on her. “What’s wrong?”

  “The dead aren’t being nice anymore.” Matter-of-fact. “I don’t hear them as much if I touch something.” A pause. “Can’t be a person. If I touch a person, they get louder, and they’re too loud already.” She bent to bring her hand to the edge of the bench and continued to approach.

  “What do the dead say?” A question he’d never imagined asking, not seriously, but after watching buildings push through the ground?

  “‘We’re bleeding! We’re bleeding!’” She grimaced. “They aren’t, you know. I can see them and they’re in their boxes and fine. They’re just being mean. They don’t like what Sira did.”

  Shields tight, Morgan controlled his features to hide dismay and kept his voice calm. “Could the dead hurt Sira?”

  Andi gave him a too-wise look. “Why do you think she’s sleeping so much?” She moved her free hand over Sira’s abdomen, eyes partly closed in concentration.

  Uttering a cry, she scrambled away, both hands outstretched. “Go away. I won’t come by myself. Stop shouting at me!”

  “Andi, what—”

  He was talking to air.

  Chapter 31

  HOME. Great flocks whirled through space like rivers of sparkling gems. One streamed close, then split around me, and I floated amid reflections of interest/curiosity/amusement. Not birds, though they flew.

  Singers.

  Who were—what we were, I judged, weeping jewels of joy. Or should be. Would be, again. The distinction seemed pointless here.

  <>

  I moved, or AllThereIs shifted; regardless, I found myself elsewhere.

  Vines of darkness formed around me, cloaking and calm. Fruit clung to them, or so my overloaded mind insisted, being globes of star-flecked black, varied in size. Vessels, I thought, or like enough. Not here, like me. Belonging, as I didn’t yet, for these—sang.r />
  <>

  Andi’s “boxes.”

  Curious, I spotted one swelling and wished myself nearer, to see for myself, to know what to expect.

  Contrarily, I moved, or AllThereIs shifted, and I was elsewhere.

  Darker here. The vines were thick and writhing. They clung to what I was, stifling, pushing me. I fell against fruit that hung loose and shriveled, and heard no song at all.

  They had to be empty. If there was mercy, they were empty.

  I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t—<>

  The universe shrank to a dot and a breath and I found myself back in a room. Or, rather, standing on a balcony. It wasn’t mine but the Founder’s, sliding like a drawer from the smooth curve of a windowed wall to overhang a vague-ish garden without plants, merely a blur of riotous color with a floral scent.

  Perhaps, I thought desperately, he hadn’t paid attention to it.

  There was a railing and I clung to it, grateful to have hands again. “What did I see? What are we?” I turned my head to stare at him. “What are you?”

  “You know.” He swept a hand downward at himself. “This is but memory—my memory—from NothingReal. I left it behind, but for now it’s convenient, with you still as you are.”

  “As I am . . . ?”

  He looked more impatient than kind. “You know,” he repeated. “Others from AllThereIs can leave it safely. But if we venture Between? If we come too close to NothingReal?” He pointed at my abdomen. “We can be taken.”

  I pressed my hands over the life within me. Taken into a Hoveny unborn, he meant. Our wombs were partly in the M’hir; our bonds to our children went through that other space, so very close to AllThereIs. “What happens then?”

  “We exist in bodies that aren’t ours, until we die and shed them. From being caught to being freed, we live as those around us and know nothing more.”

  As he’d been, I realized. “And when you died?”

  “The body dies,” he said gently. “The Stolen return Between, bringing with them what was, in NothingReal. You saw what happens next.”

  The fruit. Andi’s boxes. Inside one was Enris, in the home he’d wanted with Aryl. In another, my father, in his workshop. Each and every one clinging to a memory—existing there—before letting go to become who they really were.

  Or, I thought suddenly, thinking of those shriveled globes, never letting go at all. “My life—our lives. Are they so terrible?”

  “No,” with a sad smile. “But Stolen were rare, once. Each brought ideas—gifts of new experience—and some viewed it as an adventure, eluding the Watchers to try and be caught. Then, suddenly, there were strangers able to move within the boundary of Between. Close and irresistible. The Watchers did their best to keep us safe, but more were Stolen than ever.”

  The M’hiray. “The Hoveny and Tikitik bred the Clan,” I said grimly. “You saw us ’port.”

  “The greater the Power, the harder to resist. Do you understand now, what you are?”

  I put my hands beside his. Held on to what he remembered as solid. I’d the Clan view of this body as a husk, my mind what was real—but those, I discovered now, were words and empty. “Stolen.” It could be worse, I thought. I’d die one day, but “not exactly.” To become, again, part of AllThereIs, to sing its song with all those I’d loved—

  Save one.

  The one I loved most.

  Jason and I were in the prime of life, for our kinds. We could share full rich lives till the end, or die at any moment, those lives being what they were. Together. That was the comfort of being Chosen.

  To continue, alone? I felt sick.

  “Sira, listen. You aren’t here for this. You must save the innocent.” The Founder stared out, seeing what only he could see. “While Stolen, I believed I’d a rare gift, one I was proud to use to help my people and share across the known universe. But in releasing that energy source, I opened the first breach.”

  Of course. The vibrant energy of the null-grid had nothing to do with the M’hir’s—Between’s—seething dark. “The null-grid draws from AllThereIs, doesn’t it?” I felt a twinge, thinking of the song. The life there.

  “Yes.” Heavily. “Watchers threw themselves into the wound—the first one—all of them—to slow the bleeding. Others tried to flee, but what touches AllThereIs touches all and all began to fade. Because of me. Because I’d given the untold billions of NothingReal the means to drain and steal—I couldn’t imagine the consequence.” He faded, too; I could see the railing through him, the building.

  “What consequence?”

  “The Great Ones defended themselves.”

  I heard words. What I felt—was indescribable. I knew them, now. In AllThereIs, they’d appeared as stars and planets, galaxies of them, their grand, complex dance creating so much more: a home for life. My kind. Others.

  AllThereIs. The Great Ones listened to its communal song. Were part of it. Of me. Immutable, permanent.

  They were part of that other, oddly distant universe, too, for I’d met Great Ones before and hadn’t known it. White, the world of the Rugherans. Drapskii, latest home of those dear little balls of trouble.

  “What did they do?” I whispered.

  Faint—far away. “You came to listen. Will you?”

  About to protest I was listening, intently—moreover, listening to what I’d prefer not to, most of it frankly terrifying—I realized the sky was now the dull russet of sunset. We weren’t on a balcony over forgotten flowers, but riding up the side of the Drapsk stadium in a bowlcar full of fragrant petals.

  And I was alone. Relieved, I picked up a handful of petals. The band of light on my wrist was three-quarters dark green, flecks floating into place like destiny. That meant . . .

  <>

  Time was running out, if it was time at all. I should be with the Founder. I had to find him. Hear him.

  The balcony reformed. I turned to face him.

  “You asked what the Great Ones did.” Where his eyes had been, stars wheeled through space; as he spoke, I heard their song. “Listen well, Sira. Before sealing the breaches, they entered them. They followed to everything that used what bled from AllThereIs and buried it, leaving a trace of Between to lock them in time as well as place.

  “That would have been enough, but flesh and building are the same to them. The Great Ones followed to every Hoveny, anywhere, who’d touched AllThereIs and wiped them from existence. Those here called desperately to those they’d lost, their Stolen—to me—to summon us home. Only then did the Great Ones stop, satisfied they’d ended the threat.”

  A threat alive again. A threat I’d recreated. I made a wordless sound.

  “The Great Ones will end this one,” as though I’d spoken. “They understand neither mercy nor restraint. We’ve tried calling home the Stolen who listen. Now you—what you’ve done? I’ve been sent to you, because the Watcher said only you can stop this.” The Founder seized my hands, pulled them forward. The band was dark green save for a tiny point of light, like a star. “This isn’t just about us and AllThereIs. Sira, I’ve remembered the Hoveny. The Tikitik and Oud. No more innocents of NothingReal should pay for my mistake—for ours. You can save them. Listen, Sira.”

  And I did, I tried with all my might, but his voice was growing fainter, my arms impossibly long.

  “The Great Ones will only stop when AllThereIs is whole again. Bring the Stolen home, Sira. Bring them all—”

  Interlude

  WHEN THE MAGNIFICENT BUILDING punched through the ground, Emelen Dis had wet himself. There was no shame in a body’s weakness, faced with such a demonstration of the Divine.

  He’d been, however, grateful the armor Oncara imposed on him was absorbent. />
  “The tunnel’s fine,” Alisi Di was reporting to someone behind him. “Milly didn’t notice the tremor, but I’ve ordered an evacuation.”

  “Sira Founder, best is!”

  Ah, the Oud-Key. Hard as it was to take his eyes from what was happening below, Emelen collected himself and turned, giving the expected dip of his head. “I believe the Seesor has her evidence.”

  Alisi gave him a haggard, angry look. “This isn’t evidence, Keeper Emelen, but disaster. There are casualties in Goesen—”

  “More on Raynthe.” Lemuel joined them. “I’ve received a report—” Nes hand gestured disbelief. “Another of these structures erupted through the Twelve installation, taking out the construction crews and their air locks above. No survivors—yet—rescue’s heading there.” Ne gazed at Emelen, face set and grim. “If I find you knew any of this would happen—”

  “I did not. We—speaking for the sect—did not.” The moon? His hands wanted to tremble. “The pillars were believed to—are null-grid conduits. We’d hoped for a display like the one on the access portal. Detectable energy. Something to show—” he faltered.

  “—the world,” Lemuel finished in a dreadful voice. “You’ve managed that. I want the valley cleared of spectators, now. I want the Founder taken into custody and kept as far as possible from any more of these conduits.”

  “She’s gone!” Lemuel had staff keeping watch out the open back of the transport. One turned, a stunned look on her face. “Director. It’s—I don’t know how—Two figures appeared near Sira. One picked her up. They’ve vanished!”

  “People don’t vanish.” Ne looked around. “Where’s Morgan?”

  “I don’t know—he was here, then there—we were watching—See for yourself, Director. They aren’t there now.”

  Emelen followed Lemuel to the opening, hesitated before looking down himself. It was true. The pillars stood, their blue fading, and there were marks in the soft ground. Footprints. Nothing else, as far as the eye could see. He looked at Alisi.