Call of Worlds

by K. D. Lovgren

  Call of Worlds

  K.D. Lovgren

  Grey Kestrel Press

  Copyright © 2019 by K.D. Lovgren

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design: Jeff Brown Graphics

  Editors: Emmie Mears of Chimera Editing

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  For all those moving between worlds

  Contents

  1. Noctis

  2. At Sea

  3. Demeter To Ocean

  4. Ocean To Demeter

  5. Reversal

  6. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

  7. The Tableland

  8. Pod One

  9. Low Grav

  10. Chance Talon

  11. Intercept

  12. Landing

  13. Exeunt

  14. Inside

  15. Out

  16. Heat

  17. Ground

  18. Intelligence

  19. Carbon

  20. Crystal

  21. Rubyglass

  22. Ignition

  23. Starfinding

  Note to Readers

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by K.D. Lovgren

  1

  Noctis

  Kal’s first night alone on the Ocean as the only completely human person on board was hell.

  She knew she was doing the right thing, telling the pods to go ahead to Demeter to allow the Ocean to be flown by her and the ship’s AI, Rai.

  That didn’t mean the thought of being the only human on a huge, five-level, trillion-dollar ship was not an unnerving prospect. Kal was not a solitary creature. Her people were what they were, had survived, because they knew they were interconnected with the Earth and each other. Without others like her, was she alone?

  She had Rai. Rai might be an artificial intelligence, the brains of the complex technical organism that was the Ocean, but as Kal had gotten to know Rai, to understand how she was evolving, their relationship had changed. Rai had done some questionable things. She had hurt crew members. One of them had died.

  But her intention had not been murderous. Kal thought a lot about Rai’s intentions these days. Did she have any? Rai had tried to emulate the Carys, another AI which had saved itself from some cataclysmic event by attempting to download into humans until she had succeeded and melded with the Icelandic writer and ethicist, Sif Elfa.

  Sif and the Carys, now inhabiting Sif’s body, were a formidable creature. Kal still thought of them as Sif, since that was how she had come to know them, before anyone knew Sif was more than she appeared.

  Now Sif was in the quarantine room of the infirmary, locked in. It was her jail cell, in effect, for the rest of the journey. Who would judge what should be done with Sif, Kal didn’t know. Sif herself should have been the ethicist who arbitrated such things on Demeter.

  Sif had encouraged, aided, and abetted Rai in trying to download herself into a crew member of the Ocean, as the Carys had done successfully with Sif. Rai’s attempts had thrown the ship into a maelstrom of confusion and, at the end, chaos.

  Ultimately, Rai had protected her crew and passengers from Sif. She had ejected the two escape pods, holding all of the travelers except Sif and Kal, in order to protect them from Sif.

  Kal knew she had to go to bed. She couldn’t stay on the bridge twenty-four seven, because she was human. Rai could, and Kal had to trust Rai to cover the bridge, to captain the ship while Kal slept.

  “I’m going to bed.” Kal’s body ached. Her throat hurt where Sif had clutched her windpipe in an attempt to strangle her, and her hand and face were burned from being too close to the pods when their engines fired during Rai’s executive decision to eject them.

  There were things to treat her ailments in the infirmary, but Sif was there. Locked in, unable to control any systems or infiltrate her way into any communications because of the copper shell surrounding the quarantine unit Sif and the Carys had been neutralized. Kal didn’t want to go anywhere near her. Kal could still feel Sif’s hands at her throat.

  Without Rai helping Kal, Sif would have won. Sif would be standing where Kal stood. And Rai? Kal wondered what Rai would have done, if that had been the outcome.

  “Take good care of the ship and--and of yourself. Wake me if any abnormalities or possible outcomes related to the safety of the ship come about. I want to know. I have to trust you to let me know. Can you do that, Rai?”

  “Of course, Captain Black Bear.”

  It still gave Kal a start to hear herself addressed so. Yet it was true. She was captain now. Before her time. Out of necessity. “Thank you, Rai.”

  Still Kal lingered on the bridge. Demeter was too far away to see well, but the habitable planet they were headed to looked like a bright star in the distance, like Venus from Earth. They were off the slingshot—the gravity assist from Sextant, the nearest planet—barreling forward, main engine thrusters off as they rode on their way at twenty-seven thousand plus kilometers per hour toward Demeter. Side thrusters, little course corrections were always necessary, but the ship burned through relatively little power during this phase, beyond what the internal systems of the Ocean required.

  They’d made it through the toughest part, navigation and danger-wise. If the crew were here, it would be a time for celebration.

  Kal found herself even missing Gunn, the somewhat surly engineer who Kal had only just begun to know well.

  “I’m turning in, then.” Studying the constellation she’d privately come to call the Huntress, Kal smiled. Four stars pricked out of the blackness arched like a bow, a scattering of more just behind them the sketch of a person, with the brightest one near the top—the eye, Kal thought. During a hallucination when she herself had been attacked by Rai, she thought the Huntress had shot her.

  As her irises dilated the longer she stared out the great curving window of the bridge, she let her thoughts drift, subconscious come to the fore, to connect to the meaning of what she’d experienced. What did the Huntress have to teach her?

  “Captain Black Bear, do you wish for a reminder to go to bed?”

  “Huh?” Kal had been so far out beyond the ship, floating forward into the stars, she fell back into the awareness of her body with a thunk. “Yes, yes. Everything will be all right. Right, Rai? You can handle this.”

  “I flew the ship alone for the span of time you were in hypersleep, Captain Black Bear.”

  Did Rai know how to speak with asperity? If she didn’t, this sure sounded a lot like it.

  “I take your point,” Kal said, giving Rai her due. “You took excellent care of us then.”

  “I thought the reminder might put your mind at ease, captain.”

  Kal brushed imaginary dust off the back of Captain Sasha Sarno’s chair, now her own. “It does. Thank you.” It really did. It was so easy to feel necessary, when you were human.

  “See you when I wake.”

  “Yes, captain.”

  Making her solitary way out of the bridge and over the gangway, down the spiraling ramp to the cabin deck, Kal was accompanied only by the lights that lit themselves as she passed through. Other than that, nothing. No sound except for the ship. Her ears still rang from having been too close to the pods as their engines boosted.

  The long corridor of cabins, all empty. Gunn’s nameplate, next to her own. Gunnhildur Rut, Systems Engineer. Kal passed her hand near her cabin door and it slid open. She hadn’t made her bed. The last few
days had been a blur of exterior calm and interior chaos. Her bed reflected that. With a shake she tried to get herself out of this contemplative mood, which wasn’t helping. She yanked the sheets and blanket from her bed and remade it with fresh ones. Stuffing her dirty sheets into the sterilizer, she hurt her burned hand. In the head she found a salve to put on. It comforted her skin. She slathered it all over her face, hands and arms, and ears. The cooling sensation made her sleepy for the first time in a long time.

  Pajamas seemed like too much trouble, a quick shower seemed like too much trouble, but she made herself take the one and put on the other, to go with her clean sheets. It was a new start, and she needed to begin the next day as a new person. A captain, responsible and accountable for everything, from here on out. The truth was, she had been ever since those pods shot out of their bays without her.

  Lying down felt like an escape into another, calmer world. The sheets were cool, her pillow soft and enveloping. Once they entered this system, she had set her ceiling to show the constellations here, to familiarize herself and begin to learn to navigate by them. Sextant wasn’t only the planet they exited next to from the portal—a sextant was a tool. A tool she still studied and used. The old ways were there to help, for the people who bothered to learn them. And Kal did. She touched her wall to let the twinkly lights dim. Her eyes closed, as last. She slept.

  The deep, dreamless sleep was more like hypersleep than the sleep Kal usually knew. When her eyes flicked open, it was as if the past hours had been erased. No memory, no restlessness, no dreams. She awoke in the exact position she had fallen asleep. With a caress of the wall her overhead sky lightened gently. A deep, body-shaking inhale drove oxygen through her like a cold wind sweeping over a cornfield, rattling the stalks. Her eyes drifted closed again, prolonging the sensation of absence from every problem she’d encountered over the last week.

  At last her fingers reached for her wall again and the light glowed warmer and brighter, sun coming up. Not the Sun, Kal corrected herself. Mythos. Mythos coming up didn’t sound right at all. Would she have to say, on Demeter, it was a mythosy day, instead of a sunny day? Space training, thorough as it was, hadn’t prepared her for the linguistic challenges of living in another planetary system, whole planets orbiting around another star not called the Sun.

  Her body said, let’s lie here another little while. This was unlike her, boarding school and academy-trained as she was.

  Kal didn’t want to address Rai here in her cabin, invite her in to get a report. She would get dressed and go out to the bridge properly. This day would set the tone for the rest of the journey. Six weeks, if all went to plan.

  With a leap she bounded out of bed, fighting against her sluggishness. With the wooden comb given her by her aunt, Kal combed her hair and braided it. She bound it with a tie that had a small nub of turquoise attached, for luck. Dressing quickly, she wiped her face till it shone and cleaned her teeth with the gross nanoparticle gel they all used and spat it back into its container, where it would creepily clean itself to be reused that evening.

  Today she wore a jumpsuit, like Sasha often wore. She was ready for the bridge.

  As she walked there, she noticed her hand no longer burned, and she hadn’t even thought of her face as she wiped it. The salve had done its magic.

  “Lights brighter,” she said as they chased before her like fireflies. They bloomed, shining in pretty patterns against the walls of the corridor. It felt different, walking to work today. For the moment, it felt okay. Exciting instead of terrifying.

  The gangway hung over the dark atrium, the bridge over nothingness, until Kal spoke to the lights in the atrium and brought those up, too. For now, she would have light to keep her company.

  “Good morning, Rai,” she said as she crossed over into the bridge. “Report, please.”

  “Good morning, Captain Black Bear. Trajectory maintained. Mythian flare noted, effect calculated as minimal. On course for arrival at Demeter in forty-five days, four hours, and twenty-seven minutes.”

  2

  At Sea

  Kal’s mind was mostly empty as she went about the business of being the human on board, the captain, the one who talked to Rai and discussed fuel and trajectory and landing protocols and closed loop system function and philosophy. The last part came about because now Rai liked to talk about ideas. Kal missed Ogechi, the passenger off on one of the pods, who was good at such things.

  Kal and Rai fell into their shorthand way of speaking to each other at times, but Kal tried to resist the urge. She didn’t want to get to Demeter and forget regular English syntax.

  Although she tried not to think of Sif, alone down in the quarantine room in the infirmary, she couldn’t help it. If she woke in the night for any reason, that is when she thought of Sif. Was Sif awake, below, staring up at the copper ceiling? Did she get lonely, or did the Carys keep her company? Did they talk to each other out loud? Did she have one voice in her head or two? Did they argue with each other, and if they did, who won?

  It could have been that Kal would have known how it felt by now. Rai had tried to do to Kal what the Carys had done to Sif, download herself into Kal, share her physical being. It had been Rai’s chance to be a mobile, flexible, embodied human who could move about much more conveniently and widely than an AI tied to a starship could. When she thought about this too deeply, Kal had trouble breathing. It felt suffocating, something pressing on her chest, pressing into her mind. She liked Rai. She and Rai were now bonded. In Kal’s mind they were akin to family, because Kal had invited Rai to be so. It was blood with them now.

  Even so, the thought of sharing her body and mind with Rai was stifling, claustrophobic. She couldn’t help wondering if some part of Sif felt the same way.

  Kal made herself keep to routine. She worked in the greenhouses, in her gardens. She strapped herself into the physio machine until sweat flung off her in all directions.

  Sometimes she roamed the corridors, spending time exploring parts of the ship she didn’t know as well, the cargo holds, the empty cabins that would one day hold more travelers, the long path following the loop of the reactor.

  Her favorite place was still the astrolab. Up there, she was reminded of her insignificance. In the astrolab she had been attacked twice. Yet here she felt safe. She liked to lie on the cool floor and feel the floating sensation of being amongst the stars. Long hours she devoted to studying the constellations, naming and tracing them. She brought out her sextant and practiced celestial navigation in this system. The better she knew it before they arrived on Demeter, the more useful she would be.

  She spoke to the pods a couple of times a day. They were well behind her now, but on the same trajectory and benefitting from the same gravity assist, so they would be weeks behind, not months. There wasn’t a chance or much of a desire on her part to try to have any personal conversations. Kal knew her calls were a big interest and amusement for the pods, as they lacked much chance for diversion. Her words went over an all-comm so everyone could hear.

  Kal had begun to feel these conversations and updates were a bit of a burden, even as they eased her loneliness. She felt she had to entertain, to be light and keep the morale of the pods up. Even though she was alone and they had each other, the pods seemed to have more of a problem with morale than she herself did.

  It was her duty, part of the survival of the mission. At the same time, her heart ached for true connection, for a private commiseration and dark jokes with Noor. Sasha she had begun to keep a bit of distance from. They exchanged professional reports and a few jokes. Kal asked for advice sometimes. That was it. It was best, Kal thought. The time when they had all been together on the ship began to take on the feel of a dream, or an era long past.

  Only Demeter ahead. Rai could do this part of the trip herself, really. Kal might be helpful during the landing sequence. She’d be needed for interaction with the biohab builders, the crew of the Land already on Demeter. If the last week had taught her any
thing, it had been her own superfluousness.

  Sometimes she went into Chyron’s office and talked to her as if Chyron, the neuropsychologist, were there. She placed a cactus where Chyron normally sat. Kal thought this was a healthy way to express her feelings and didn’t worry about her own sanity in this regard.

  She hadn’t been superfluous, really. Kal had been the one to get them through the portal, and that was never guaranteed. Kal felt instinctively she had a connection, a way of getting through, that was unique. Maybe it bled over into her ability to communicate with Rai. The mission had needed her. Still, did it really need her now? She could be on the pods. Rai had kept her back, luring her with the hologram of her beloved aunt and mother-figure, Priscilla.

  On the fifth day since the pods, Kal dutifully did her time on the physio. She bathed in Sasha’s tub after, one new luxury she allowed herself. She retained her old cabin, because it seemed creepy and presumptuous to move herself into the captain’s cabin, considering her history with Sasha. The captain’s tub was another story.

  It was gloopy, not really wet, since the tub did not contain water but self-cleaning nanoparticles mixed with hydroponic effluvia. The gel-like substance was warm and comforting, and it really did get the person in it clean. Kal could dip her hair in, too, and scrub it clean. There was something primordial about sliming around in the tub like some biological specimen millennia before considering whether to try these fins on land.