Gods and the Stars

by Steve Statham

  “This is disturbing, brother. Perhaps there’s something on my ship that can help.”

  “Maybe, maybe,” he said, and then grew quiet once more. Apollo imagined him pacing the room. “I’ve drifted so far from our origins that I sometimes wonder if I can ever find my way back. I have conversations with Mik—he commands the Hightower—and it seems as if I no longer truly understand how to communicate with an unmodified human being. We were discussing propulsion systems and I wanted to share a concept that required the realignment of a local magnetic field to convey, and I couldn’t find a way to express it. And then I couldn’t even retain the concept.”

  This was a Maelstrom that Apollo had never before encountered. As both man and god, he had always been arrogant, distant and self-assured. A reflective Maelstrom was as strange as any exotic star Apollo had encountered. “Whatever your scars, my friend, we’ll carry out our duty,” he said, even though his own reassurances sounded feeble in his mind. “I’ll need your help to rebuild The City’s defenses. The Otrid will take no more human lives.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” the disembodied voice said. “But I might not be the only one who needs to re-examine his place in the universe. You may find the flesh-and-blood concerns of our people aren’t as compelling as walking across the surface of a star. You were out ranging on your own for at least as long as I was. Are you prepared to deal with the drudgery of food rationing calculations and reports from minor officials about soybean production? To console your worshippers when they flock to your temple seeking reassurance?”

  Back in his own godship, Apollo squirmed. This meeting was not progressing as he’d anticipated. “I take your point. So let’s keep the conversation at a human level. What’s your assessment of Talia? I’m frankly shocked that Tower would do something so extreme as elevating a pure human and tying her into the godsystems of The City.”

  “She’s capable. Tower chose well, I think,” and then Maelstrom paused before continuing. “She’s certainly bold. Has she told you she’s uncovered all the old bio-enhancements from the archives and started manufacturing them? Distributing them throughout the populace?”

  Apollo hadn’t yet encountered that nugget of information in the blizzard of files Talia had sent him. “I’m not sure I like that. We’ve always kept that biotech suppressed so that we’d preserve a pure version of the human race ”

  “I can’t blame her. She watched two gods die, and a third reduced to a decrepit old ghost in the attic. No other gods responded to her calls for months. She had no other choice but to consider that The City might be the last human population in the universe, and do whatever was necessary to survive.”

  “You approve of this? You, of all of us?”

  By the tone of his answer, Apollo had the impression of Maelstrom shrugging. “Her actions have been rational, her plans logical. She’s building a new fleet based off older designs from Tower’s archives. Talia put Mik in charge of this new navy, and he’s been training crews. She’s outfitted a militia for fighting inside the dome or any place ground troops are needed. And yes, the warriors are enhanced, so there’s no going back.”

  Apollo found his train of thought disrupted by a syncopated stuttering that could only be laughter coming from the disembodied voice of Maelstrom. “You’re slipping, Apollo. I’ve never seen an Aspect with such a frown on its face. Can an Aspect be constipated? Best not to let your worshippers see you with that look on your face.”

  “You joke, but these are weighty matters. We haven’t faced this kind of danger since the first decades of the founding of The City. The gods were created to rule for just this type of situation, and yet you seem eager to pass the responsibility on to regular people with a fraction of our abilities.”

  “That’s a reading of the situation that flatters us,” Maelstrom replied. “I think Talia would have been happy for one of the gods to swoop in and take over after Tower fell, but that didn’t happen. I’m not up to it, and no one else emerged from their vacation homes inside Divine Space. She’s playing the hand she was dealt, and so far doing a decent job of it.”

  “For all your talk about diminished capacity, you don’t sound like a mouse in the walls. True, you sound different from the Maelstrom—and the man—that I knew; he hasn’t laughed that much in a thousand years. But I believe you’re capable of more than you think.”

  More laughter over the comm network. “Humility asserts itself in any number of amusing ways. I can think, and reason, and even remember most of my life. But don’t ask me to shift any magnetic fields or pilot this ship through Divine Space. And I can’t guarantee what kind of individual I’ll be tomorrow.”

  The doors to the room slid open. A servitor bot entered, then came to a rest in front of a control panel.

  “The repairs continue, Apollo, and I have to focus to keep the robots on-task. It’s not easy installing one of those implosion bomb cannons that Tower cooked up during one of his darker moments. We’ll talk more tomorrow,” Maelstrom said.

  Before Apollo withdrew his Aspect, Maelstrom’s voice rumbled to life once more. “I’m glad you’re back, Apollo. Because, believe me, the Otrid will return. And when they do, we’ll have to have a final reckoning. They know where we live, and they aren’t granting us the right to exist. Prepare yourself. Hard times are coming.”

  Chapter 14

  Out in the Open

  Apollo projected his Aspect into the heart of the underground godchamber next to the still form of Talia. A wave of sadness passed through him to see this woman so completely wrapped in the hairlike filaments and thick cables that connected her to the electronic and bio-mechanical infrastructure of The City. She looked pale, and small, and seemed to be straining against the invisible demands placed upon her. Clearly, Tower had not had much time to fine-tune the integration of a pure human and the command systems of The City.

  He tried to recall what it was like to be so small and frail. His own physical body was quite robust despite its many years, but then, a large portion of his godship was dedicated to the maintenance that kept him alive. Talia did not have such benefits. Rather than a miracle of life extension, The City’s systems were more of a drain on her life-force.

  It was one more thing that brought home the desperation of humanity’s situation.

  She turned her head slightly and aimed a weak smile at him. “I assume you had a happy reunion with Maelstrom?”

  “He’s changed quite a bit. He’s not the god I’ve known in the past. But he’s lucid, rational, and offered some good advice.”

  “Did he recommend you switch me off and plug in some other person?”

  Apollo laughed. “Of course not. He actually thinks highly of you. So,” he said, with a new determination to lift her mood, “Where should we begin?”

  “We need to get around the communications blackout,” Talia said. “There used to be constant connection between The City and the AI ships and even the other gods. There was a special class of acolyte that attended the monitoring center. During the attack, that whole center went dead and I haven’t been able to get it functioning again. I send out messages, but get no replies.”

  “That’s as designed. If Grey Wolf or Apex detected a disruption in the system that carried any sort of alien fingerprint, they would have severed all connections and waited for new links that we pre-arranged among ourselves long ago. Anything coming through the old channels would have been ignored. The assumption would be that any communications following an alien incursion would be corrupted. Eventually we gods would send probes of some sort to investigate, but they would be well hidden. There might be one in the system already. I’m surprised none of the other gods have reached out.”

  She watched him in a way that told him she was gathering up her nerve. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. “Why didn’t you respond?”

  Apollo allowed his Aspect to display the sigh that passed through his corporeal body. He’d been expecting the question. “I was dere
lict in my duties. I was so caught up in my exploration of a distant star that I let myself get careless. For a millennium, no problem has arisen at The City that Tower couldn’t handle. I made the mistake of assuming that would go on forever.”

  He tried to read her expression, but her partial encasement made that difficult. Was it disappointment in her eyes, or simply acceptance of hard truths?

  “But I am here now, and you will never stand alone again,” he said. “And I agree with your assessment, reestablishing communication with the other gods should be our priority. How’d you like to visit Grey Wolf?”

  “Me? Why would I be the one to approach her? I've studied her enough to know how wary she is. She doesn't know anything about me.”

  Apollo hoped his discomfort didn’t show on the body language of his Aspect. ”It would be best if someone else approached her first.”

  “Maelstrom, then?”

  “She’ll reject Maelstrom in his current form. She’ll view him as some sort of deception, an alien imposter.”

  “Then we have a problem. I’m not a god, Apollo. I don’t have a godship to sustain me. I can’t disconnect myself from The City to go wandering on a voyage to another part of the galaxy. My physical form is just this shrunken body in front of you and it takes everything I’ve got just to keep The City running. Why can’t you go to her? I think I deserve the whole story."

  She was right, he knew. And a flicker of shame rushed through him. “There are…hard feelings between us.”

  "A feud between the gods?"

  "Nothing so dramatic. But she is slow to forget slights, and once she has made up her mind about something, she rarely changes her opinion. And she made up her mind about me long ago.

  "When the selection of the seven to be elevated was being debated, many of my supporters did not back her. The found her inflexible. And many of her supporters didn’t think highly of me. They believed me a dilettante and an exhibitionist. She shared that opinion."

  "And she’s still holding that grudge after a thousand years?"

  "I can't really say for sure. It has been centuries since we spoke.”

  “We no longer have time to indulge in old feuds,” Talia said, with new strength in her voice. “You need to reconcile with her. We need to build up our defenses if we hope to turn back the Otrid again.”

  In his godship, Apollo scowled, although he didn’t let his Aspect display his frustration. He redirected his focus on Talia, shutting himself from his other diversions. He was finding it difficult to interact with the very people he had sworn to protect. He ached to once more immerse himself inside the beautiful symphony he’d created, to tread the living fire on the surfaces of stars. But those luxuries would have to wait. With effort, he shoved aside such distracting thoughts.

  Serves me right for being gone so long.

  “Yes. You’re correct,” he said. “We need to regroup and stay united. I’ll deal with Grey Wolf.”

  “That leaves us with Apex. You’re the only one who knows where he is, and the location of the new world. Maelstrom burned it from his mind, along with the secrets of Divine Space. Tower left me no clue. If Apex truly has a new world in the making, getting reconnected with him is our top priority.”

  “Agreed. I’m transferring the location to you now. We need to redistribute the knowledge base.”

  Her expression revealed she wasn’t expecting such quick agreement, and Apollo was reminded once more of the different mental speeds at which gods and humans operated. Unconsciously, he’d slipped into the communications rhythms he used when conversing with other gods. In the last fraction of a second he’d already considered her proposal from a hundred different angles.

  He watched the joy and wonder reflected in her eyes when the information packet opened and the secrets of Apex’s world spilled forth.

  “Oh. Oh my. It really is true then?”

  “Of course it’s true. Obviously, my information is a bit out of date, but that’s the world Apex has been building. It’s no doubt much further along than what you’re seeing there. In fact, I’d estimate that it’s nearly ready.”

  She was silent as she devoured the data he’d sent.

  “A whole world, just for us…It’s beautiful. Why hasn’t he called for us? Or even let us know that it’s real? I served in the temples most of my life, and I watched a steady erosion of faith that the new world even existed. People talked about it in the same way they debated the existence of an afterlife. If we could show this in Apex’s temple…” Her voice trailed off, and even after all his years away from regular people, Apollo could discern the hope in her voice.

  “After the failure at New Sydney, Apex can be forgiven for applying a little extra caution. It would be far worse to build up and then dash everyone’s hopes if the ecosystem he’d built proved unstable.”

  She shook her head, as if rousing herself from a trance. “The stakes are now much higher than dashed hopes,” she said. “How do we convince him to open this world for settlement?”

  “Apex is level-headed. He’ll listen to one of you. Have anyone in mind?”

  After a moment’s thought, she nodded. “I think we should send Mik, our fleet admiral. He’s the one Tower sent to retrieve Maelstrom when the attack came. Mik’s the only living human to have navigated Divine Space and returned, and the only one who can really operate the Hightower.”

  “Admiral, is it?

  She smiled, yet in a sad way, and Apollo could read the affection she had for the man. “Mik is a Fixer at heart, happiest with a tool belt around his waist and a problem to solve. He found things in the UnderWorks that even Tower missed. But he’s also the man Tower hand-selected to operate his most advanced ship, so I named Mik commander of our fleet. We’re all having to take on new roles, as you can see,” she said, motioning faintly to her own body.

  “You should know that this world is a great distance away,” Apollo said. “Apex worked with the Benefactors to map every known sighting of the Otrid, creating a rough territorial map, and then went looking in the opposite direction. The planet he chose is in another arm of the galaxy, and it’s well concealed from the Otrid vantage point.”

  “Then he could be gone for a long time?”

  “Divine Space, as you call it, doesn’t necessarily work like that. Time to destination doesn’t have a direct correlation to distance. What matters is what path you take once inside. The danger is, if he navigates poorly, it would be easy to get lost.”

  “But you can help him, right?”

  “Of course. But lately I’ve been having to remind myself that things I perceive as being easy—done without a thought—can be much more difficult for pure humans. I’ll reveal the path to him, but it’ll be up to him to stay on it.”

  She was quiet a moment as she digested the information. Apollo saw that despite the enhancements Tower had given her, she still carried on a conversation using normal human speech rhythms. “Apollo, what is the nature of Divine Space?”

  He took a full second to analyze all the possible outcomes from revealing such a secret to Talia. It seemed a luxurious amount of time to spend, but she’d never notice. “I suppose we should redistribute the knowledge base on this issue as well, but you must compartmentalize it,” he said. “If things go badly, the Otrid must never know. You must have a method to burn it from your memory. Can you do that?”

  She answered with a hard determination reflected in her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Are you familiar with the cosmological features known as the Great Attractor and the Dipole Repeller?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t had time for data dives of that nature. Give me a second.”

  Apollo watched as she closed her eyes and accessed The City’s memory cores.

  “The Great Attractor is a force operating on a cosmic scale that is dragging along entire clusters of galaxies. The Dipole Repeller is in an empty part of space that acts as a similar force pushing from behind,” she said.

  “Exactly. S
o imagine the kind of forces that are capable of moving entire walls of galaxies from one end of the universe to the other. What if you could tap into those forces? From a distance, the Great Attractor and Repeller appear to be simply exhibiting gravitational influence. But gravity doesn’t explain everything that’s going on. There are other fundamental forces involved. The Beh’neefazor discovered how to tap into and control the dark flow that drives everything and ride along, so to speak. Once you’ve tapped into those strands, you’ve stepped outside the normal fabric of space-time. A godship—or something like the Hightower—can harness the power in such a way to bend it to the ship’s command, compressing distances.

  “In theory, we could use these strands to travel to another galaxy. That’s probably where the Beh’neefazor went. But that kind of exploration is for another epoch in human history.”

  Talia’s eyes reflected surprise. “Paths, you said earlier. Mik described his first journey in Divine Space as feeling like he was tunneling through the roots of infinite trees. Yet he could still track the pursuit of Otrid ships. How is that possible if he’d taken the Hightower outside of space-time?”

  “The Otrid jump through space using gates built of exotic matter to open wormholes. That kind of blunt-force engineering is visible across the spectrum. Not a very elegant solution,” Apollo said, and let his disdain show on his face.

  “Regardless, the Otrid gates allow them to travel faster than light. But the distances they can travel in one jump are short, and it takes enormous energy to open and maintain a gate. The infrastructure required is considerable. From your reports about the attack, Tower must have destroyed the gate leading to this system. That’s likely why the Otrid haven’t returned yet. So introduce me to this Fixer admiral of yours, Talia. We’re in a race, and it’s time for us to all move as one to win it.”

  Chapter 15

  A Lord Rises