“You won’t have sacrifices?” Torque asked, downcast gaze still unwavering.
“I think we’ve all already sacrificed enough,” he said, “don’t you?”
The next day they said goodbye to their dead.
At first, Sabira didn’t understand how Gabriel and Orion considered this a ritual. There were neither drums nor sacrifices, not even blood markings. Maybe the translation of Connish into Khvaziz got twisted around, or maybe there just wasn’t a word in her language to encompass what a funeral actually meant.
They all gathered in what normally served as a secondary hangar. One of the Shishiguchi’s two landers remained planetside on Dlamakuuz, leaving the hangar empty. The forma lining the secondary hangar had been reshaped to resemble wild, fractal growths of vegetation. Much of it resembled the vines and flowers of Glish. Other sections resembled the orchids and fields she had glimpsed in the aggie caverns years ago. But many more of the flora depictions looked completely alien to Sabira. The overall effect vaguely reminded her of half-remembered old hens’ tales of alien worlds where plants and animals roamed feral and unmastered.
Orion, as usual, joined them synced into a lem. The detail of Orion-lem’s appearance was much finer tuned than normally, so that he looked almost flesh and blood and not the flat, blank texture of quickly shaped forma. The inorganic nature of his presence was given away by an ever-shifting web of conkanj glyphs, the written form of Connish, crawling all over him. Gleaming like veins of tiny sapphires, the webs of conkanj drifted across his skin and slipped over to roam across his white cloak.
Gabriel wore a ceremonial uniform of black and dark, muted purple. A thin, black cloth lay in intricate folds across his scalp. His rapidly regrowing hands and their forma prosthetic extensions were covered in simple, pure white gloves.
The free brood were all given new clothes of soft, shapable forma-cloth. Gabriel asked that they adjust their clothes to either black or white for the funeral. They all chose to attend in black, except for Cal and Ed, who adjusted their clothes to white. Ed wore a discreet, transparent respirator over his mandibles. The eeshl rested quietly, curled on his lap.
In the center of the room hovered a rectangular pod and a hologram. Maia’s body rested inside the floating pod, visible through glass-like walls. She was dressed in a gown of deep, vibrant green. Beside her shimmered a holographic composite of Rain. His image floated a meter above the deck, lying with eyes closed and long, thin hands crossed at his chest.
The funeral ceremony proceeded just as Gabriel had described. They gathered in a circle around the two hovering figures. Gabriel stepped forward from the circle to speak first. He thanked everyone for joining him in saying goodbye. He said once they had returned to the Constellation, they would bring Maia’s remains to the Temple on Nu’esef where she would be interred in her order’s catacombs. Since Rain’s body was lost to the destruction of the Zol-Ori, images and memories were all that remained for them to honor.
Sabira couldn’t understand why Gabriel was making them perform this ritual. Why have everyone concentrate on such deep sadness like this? Tears built up, not in her eyes, but deep in her throat. Refused to let them break through and burst, pouring down her cheeks. She was the free brood’s warrior, their protector, she couldn’t let them see her sobbing like a lost little mine rat.
“The first time I met Maia, it was in a vision,” said Gabriel. “It’s almost as odd to say as it was to live through. But it’s true. For years, a mentor of mine had told me about the Eleusis Neos ceremonies at the New Temple on Nu’esef. That if you wanted to truly realize your humanity, one must face whatever the sacrament had to show.
“The Ministry eventually sent me off to Nu’esef at the Embassy there. So as soon as I had the opportunity, I asked permission to join in a ceremony and partake of the sacrament. I could finally prove to myself that I could face whatever the eon had to show me, just as my mentor said.
“And the eon showed me her. It showed me all of you, too, in a way. When I awoke the next morning, I found the courtyard where I had encountered her in vision the night before, and there she was. Expecting me. She had seen me in vision too. I’ll never forget that moment. That’s where our journey started, our mission to find humanity’s lost brothers and sisters. The sacrament had brought us together, somehow. I don’t know how that works. The eon is just as much a mystery to me as any of you. Maia was the Oracle, after all.
“Maia played many different roles to many different people. To me, she was my true friend. She was also a scholar, a scientist, and a musician. But ultimately she chose the path of the shaman. She was never troubled by the paradox of herself. In fact, it inspired her. Maia was driven by paradox, by mystery. It gave her purpose. But all great mysteries have their dangers. She knew—we both knew—we would face death in our quest to find the first diaspora.
“Then, beyond all possibility, our visions came true. Orion discovered the way through the Old Portal, the Shattered Gates, and we found you, all of you, on the far side of the galaxy. And just like the eon warned us, faced our deaths we did. And Maia was so unbelievably brave. Until the very end.
“I don’t know why her and not me. Maia never tolerated dwelling on what-is-not and what-could-have-been. She would say, ‘Reality is hard enough to deal with, why waste yourself on made-up bullshit?’ So, to honor Maia, I won’t lose myself in questions like ‘Why not me?’ Instead, I will choose now to face reality for what it is, as it presents itself to us.
“The reality is this: We live on, we fight on, together. I’m honored to stand beside you. I will do all I can to stand as your protector and your friend. This I swear, in honor of her memory.”
Gabriel took a step backward to rejoin the circle. After a moment or two of heavy silence, Zonte took a step forward.
“If it’s alright, I’d like to say something about Rain,” Zonte said. Gabriel nodded his approval.
“It’s weird, isn’t it, to be looking at our dead? Not only to be encouraged to talk about them, but to have names for them. For them to have identities. It’s just so weird. But it feels right, too, don’t you think? It’s right for us to have these things, even when we’re dead. Dancer’s tits, this feels terrible, saying goodbye to Rain and Maia when we’ve only just become a brood. But it’s a blessing, also, to be able to say their names and tell their stories after they’ve gone. Maia and Gabriel and Orion gave us that blessing. And for that, Maia and Rain paid with their lives.
“Every time I think about it, I just want to scream and cry and scream some more. I’m so mad they were taken from us. Rain, he—I know for fact, he told me this before back in the Embassy—he was so grateful to be freed from the Unity. He said he’d rather die now, that very moment, as a free human than to live as a slave again. He was the oldest of us. He had lived to be older than most nameless ever get to, and I just wish he had gotten more time to be Rain. He was like a—there’s not really a word for it—like a brood-father, I guess you could say, to all of us.
“Goodbye, Rain. We were blessed with freedom. We were blessed with names. But we weren’t blessed with time. Thank you. I’ll miss you terribly. Goodbye.”
One by one, they stepped forward from the circle to share a memory and say thank you and goodbye to their dead friends. While they shared their stories and farewells through wet eyes and trembling lips, Sabira’s jaw clenched, her throat squeezed tight. She remembered how she knelt, half naked before her entire task, as Warseer Vohg burned the nine eyes into her back. She didn’t cry then. If she could manage such a blinding pain, then she could restrain this crushing sadness. But the wet sound of Dawn’s sobbing threatened Sabira’s composure more than a warseer’s prod ever could.
Eventually, Sabira realized most of the eyes around the circle had turned toward her. Even Edlashuul’s sense tendrils bent her way. She took a step forward, and suddenly every word she had ever known was lost, thrown down a dark shaft.
“I’m not sure what to
say. In my crew we had a caller. When something needed to be said to the crew, whether it was orders or prayers or the drum, he would be the one. If he were alive, he might know what to say right now, if he were here instead of me.
“I knew Maia and Rain much shorter than any of you. But in that time, they were kind to me. They helped me in ways I didn’t know I needed. I’ll be grateful for that as long as I live.
“In the Servants, we said a prayer for the dead and then we got back to our duties. We said, ‘Should you find yourself before the Shattered Gates of Heaven, may the Gods find you worthy of eternal service.’ We thought we knew the Gods and what their Will for us was. We thought we knew what waited on the other side of dying.
“Maia changed all that. Or, she helped me to change that for myself. I don’t know if the Gods and Heaven are waiting, or there’s nothing, or something else entirely beyond what we can understand. It’s all a mystery, now. Everything I thought I knew has been replaced by questions and doubt. And that’s so scary, but it’s beautiful too. Maia gave me that. I hope you both find peace in your mysteries, Maia. I’ll try and find peace in mine.
“I have a brood-sister I left behind on Nahgohn-Za. She was nameless, a hen. She had already birthed her first brood when I finished my discipline and shipped out. By now she must have had a second brood already. I’ll never see her again. I’ll never meet all those little mine rats running around her. But I have new sisters now. Brothers too. All of you are my brood now. And if you’ll have me, I’d be honored to stand beside Gabriel as our brood’s protector. I think that’s what Maia and Rain would have wanted. It’s what I want, too.”
After the funeral, they feasted in the ship’s dining hall. They ate from the stores of sweet fruits and nuts from Dlamakuuz. The kitchen’s semblers fabricated an unending array of dishes atom by atom. Some of the dishes were familiar recreations, the protein pastes and fiber breads she was accustomed to from the Labyrinth. Others were exotic in every way possible, full of strange textures, tastes, and smells. Sabira sampled a little of everything but came back most often to the comforting blandness of the more familiar dishes.
Gabriel pulled a crate out of the back corner of the kitchen’s storage locker. Inside were a half-dozen fragile-looking glass bottles tightly encased in packaging foam. He pulled one out with more than a little flourish and proudly presented the bottle to the group. Sabira thought it looked like it was full of old, dark blood.
Gabriel said, “I brought these with me from home. I’ve been saving them for the right occasion. This, my friends, is wine. It’s from the West Valley region of Babylonia, where I grew up. Known as some of the best wine in all the Constellation. Ironic, since half my homeworld thinks the vineyards should be burned to the ground, but that’s Babylonia for you. Come come, get fresh glasses. This is for everyone. Oh wait, sorry, not you, Dawn. Well, I’m sure a little sip won’t hurt. But just a sip.”
He took a strange little device out of the crate and used it to open the wine bottle with a satisfying pop. The bottle was quickly emptied out as glasses of deep red liquid were passed around.
“In the ancient days, wine too was considered a sacrament,” he said. “But nothing like the eon, so don’t be nervous. Now, don’t get me wrong though, it’ll still knock you on your ass if you drink too much too fast, but a few bottles of wine among friends is all fine and good.”
The first sip made Sabira’s mouth pucker and throat tingle in a way she didn’t really like. By the time she finished off half the glass, however, the taste had grown more and more agreeable. The wine intoxicated like diggers beer. The harsh edges of her perceptions softened, and a deep, warm release of tension exuded from her belly and flowed into her limbs.
By the time Gabriel was well into pouring the third bottle, the conversations around the dining hall had grown steadily louder and sloppier. With arms wrapped over shoulders, they shared more stories of Rain and Maia, and shared personal stories too. They shared more laughter than tears, but tears there were still.
When the wine made her dizzy, Sabira knew she’d had enough, and she drifted farther back from the center of the gathering. She’d spent the last few days with the world throbbing and spinning around her head and had no desire to resume the sensation. The urge to slip away and curl up alone in her cabin grew undeniable.
Orion was telling a story from his youth involving too much wine, a pretty girl, and some unfortunate bodily noises the wine had apparently instigated. Taking advantage of the ensuing, drunken laughter, Sabira stepped out of the dining hall and headed down the corridor to her cabin.
She slumped against the cabin port, trying to remember the proper gesture needed to get the door to slide open. Instead, a hand softly touched her back, and a whispered voice asked her to wait. She turned to find Playa smiling back, Zonte just behind her.
“I’m sorry, I hope we didn’t startle you,” said Playa. “We saw you sneak out.”
“I wasn’t sneaking,” Sabira said.
“We know,” answered Playa. “It’s just that, well, we saw you leaving, not sneaking, and we thought that . . .”
“We thought that we haven’t had a chance yet to thank you properly,” said Zonte.
“We wanted to thank you for all you’ve done for us,” continued Playa, lightly caressing Sabira’s arm in a way that sent soft tingles up her spine and down her front.
Zonte mirrored the caress on her right arm. “You can come with us if you like. Orion gave us a cabin on the deck below, away from everyone else.”
“So we don’t have to worry about making too much noise or anyone bothering us,” added Playa.
Sabira the Servant would have been dragging the two pretty pillows halfway to their room by now. She wasn’t sure at all what Sabira the free should be doing. Her instinct was to wrap one in each arm and pull close, kiss them both at the same time, bathe herself in the warm, delicious heat of their bodies. But when she looked at their faces, it was not their inviting lips that drew her gaze but the Pillow glyph tattooed on their cheeks.
“You don’t have to do this,” Sabira said. “You’re not pillows anymore. I’m not a servant. Like I said, I’ll fight for all of you because we’re brood, because we need to help each other if we’re going to survive and be free, not to be rewarded for my service.”
“Of course we don’t have to,” said Zonte,
“We want to,” said Playa. “Not as a reward . . .” She leaned in and, soft as a feather stroke, kissed the corner of Sabira’s lips.
“But out of gratitude,” finished Zonte before leaning in to kiss just below her ear.
Sabira touched her hand to her tunic, feeling the remnants of her left breast through the cloth. “I’ve got scars,” she said.
“Who doesn’t?”
They were right about the cabin, no one bothered them at all and no one seemed to hear. After, as Sabira lay entangled in long, soft legs and strong, comforting arms, the tight knot she’d carried around all day in her throat, swelled, unraveled, and burst. She couldn’t hold back the tears a single breath longer. She cried, deeply but quietly, for a long time.
Playa and Zonte wept as well, which only seemed to bring more tears to her eyes, and they held each other closer. Eventually, the tears stopped, and sleep came over them, but no one let go of the others.
49.
THE SHATTERED GATES of Heaven loomed overhead, a blood-red scar across millions of kilometers of empty, black space. Dlamakuuz and the rest of the Av system receded into the star field below their feet, though still nearer and brighter than any other sun.
Per Sabira's request, Orion had tuned the forma walls of the ship’s commons to display the feed from the Shishiguchi’s sensors. Though similar to the observation deck of the Ihvik-Ri, the flat display and remaining non-forma furniture in the room lessened the immersive experience a bit. Even still, the view was stunning. They were a full shift out from the Gates, but Sabira planned on staying in the commons the w
hole time. Waiting and watching.
The others gathered in the commons with her, laughing at the sparkling beauty of stars wrapped all around. Awestruck at the mythic crimson nebula growing steadily larger above them. Everyone was there except Orion, who said he had some final preparations that required his full attention but would join them soon.
Orion had warned that, as they neared, all field tech needed to be shut down on the ship in order for him to be able to prime and calibrate the Gates. No inertial regulation, no artificial gravity, no warp bubbles, no stealth veils, and no shields. Just the ship’s propulsion constantly accelerating them toward the Gates so that it simulated gravity. Torque had explained to her that where they headed was feeling like up, where they came from was feeling like down. The ship’s continuous acceleration simulated a gravitational pull about two-thirds of Dlamakuuz.
Sabira and Torque sat back to back on the floor of the commons, gazing up at the glowing red expanse of dust and gas. Swirling tones of pink, mauve, and orange grew more and more distinct with their approach. Zonte and Playa held hands while spinning in circles, rapturous smiles on their pretty faces, lit by simulated starlight. Coraz and Derev sat on either side of Dawn on a long couch that molded itself to best support her and her ever-growing belly. Cal and Ed chased the eeshl all around the room, creating the illusion they were young gods leaping across the stars. Gabriel stood in the center, arms crossed, silently watching as they laughed and ran.
It was clear to Sabira that Gabriel remained unconvinced that bringing Edlashuul with them was the right choice.
The day after the funeral ceremony, Gabriel had gathered them all together in the commons and told them they needed to take Ed and the eeshl back to the Vleez.
“The battle for Dlamakuuz and the Av system is over, the Monarchy have won,” he said. “We’ve transmitted Orion’s cure for the Theocrats’ bioweapon to all the Vleez ships and outposts in the system. Thankfully, Edlashuul has fully recovered. And I’m afraid it’s time for you to be back with your own people. Where we’re going, there are no other Vleez, nor any other race of the Monarchy.”
Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven Page 32