The Prodigal Sun

by Sean Williams

  She was the first successful outcome of a new procedure, one that could replicate in months what years of training could only hope to achieve. A procedure that was both illegal and immoral—in that it could only succeed when applied to children in their prepubescent years—but one that had the potential to increase her worth by millions after one simple operation.

  All this, and more, she learned from the doctor in the spectacular moment her mind first opened—when, effortlessly, she reached into him with an invisible hand, searching, feeling, sensing, and leaving nothing but a burned-out ruin in her wake.

  She was a reave. And she had been made that way.

  It took time—and practice—to come to terms with this wondrous new ability of hers. And in a way it was perhaps fortunate for her that of every ten subjects she practiced upon, nine of them died. Had the doctor lived, and the process been completely successful, who knew what might have happened to her, to whom she might have been sold?

  Even as her control improved—and she came to realize that the years of training endured by naturally occurring psychics were not necessary so much to develop the power, but to control it when it finally appeared—she understood that they would never use the process again. Not only had much of the theory gone with the doctor, but the risks were too great—the risk of creating a monster, of creating a failure, of being caught. Of creating another her, whom they would have to get rid of somehow, without her realizing it.

  So she escaped. And entered the real world. And came to realize that what she had was even less of a gift than she had thought.

  It wasn’t sight—not sight as she had once known it, but an impression of sight, sight with all the baggage. Someone saw a knife and thought of a lost lover; buildings evoked memories of people long dead, of past events that had no relevance to her, the observer. Sounds were even worse, bringing unwanted impressions of voices, songs, screams, and sighs. Her world was secondhand, passing through the filters of other peoples’ minds and emerging tainted rather than purified. She began to lose her own voice in the relentless ambience of echoes, overwhelmed by a world full of other peoples’ thoughts.

  But she maintained, grew bolder, traveled...

  ...received guidance from a bonded reave on Fal- Soma, many light-years from home...

  ...worked ...

  ...and...

  ...returned with no thoughts left for herself. Not for a long while. All she saw—through her own eyes, her own sense of touch—was the orange-grey shelf of rock before her and the grit of dust on her fingertips.

  Roche. Not Maii, the child sold, the experimental subject, the wanderer—the young Surin woman sitting opposite her, her mind elsewhere, far away and unreadable—whom she had been for an instant. Not Maii, not anymore.

  All Roche felt was herself.

  * * *

  When Emmerik returned, he was pale-faced behind his beard. Cane followed, as soft and as silent as the Mbatan’s shadow, yet full of the same vitality Roche had glimpsed earlier.

  “Did you find them?” asked Veden.

  Emmerik glanced at Cane and did not reply immediately.

  “We found them,” said Emmerik softly.

  “And?” Veden prompted.

  Maii said.

  “We should keep moving,” said the Mbatan, shifting his pack awkwardly, impatiently. “More could be following, and the Cross isn’t far away now.”

  “Good.” Veden was on his feet before Emmerik had finished speaking. “We’ve wasted enough time for one night.”

  In a wordless silence broken only by the crunch of their footfalls, they filed out of the niche and headed up the path.

  8

  Sciacca’s World

  Behzad’s Wall

  ‘954.10.31 EN

  0325

  The wind picked up as they crested the ridge of the mountains and rose above the dense layers of the storm. From the ridge, illuminated by the Soul, a wide plateau stretched below them: a deep bowl ringed by cliffs, perhaps an ancient, collapsed volcanic crater, with a small town in its center, too far away and too low in the dust to be seen clearly. The uppermost levels of two thin towers connected to each other by walkways were the only obvious detail.

  “Houghton’s Cross,” said Emmerik, speaking for the first time in almost an hour.

  “That’s where we’re headed?” Although he hadn’t said so, Roche could tell that the town was dead, and had been for many years.

  “Yes. The others are waiting for us there.”

  “Haid?” The name had been mentioned a couple of times earlier, in a context suggesting leadership or at least some sort of coordinating role. If Roche was ever going to find help getting off the planet, she guessed that he was the person she needed to talk to.

  “Maybe. Depends what’s happening in the port.” The burly Mbatan shifted his pack into a more comfortable position. “We’ll talk when we arrive. Let’s keep moving.”

  They descended along a thin path barely wide enough for one person. An avalanche of dust falling through a dip in the ridge enveloped them, reducing their line of sight to the back of the person in front, but at the same time effectively hiding them from the eyes of anyone in the area. If the air within the crater was as gloomy as it appeared to be, they would be invisible to Enforcers standing on the ridge.

  Roche walked grimly onward, the pain somehow keeping her focused on who she was and what she was doing. The straps holding the Box to her back were like whips in slow motion, digging into her bruised and battered shoulders with each step she took. The valise itself had been attached to her for so long that it was starting to feel like an extra limb—and a useless, hindering limb at that, dragging as it did behind her. In a way it seemed more of an inconvenience than her strapped left arm, yet without it she doubted she would ever feel complete again.

  That thought depressed her more than any merely physical pain. That, and the still-ringing echoes of Maii’s life.

  The floor of the crater was relatively flat and composed of a loose, grey dirt. Although the soil here seemed as parched as that of the neighboring foothills, hardy weeds grew from it, clinging to the ground in a desperate embrace against the severe winds. They crossed an unused road at one point, then a wide, flat area that might once have been a landing strip. An abandoned machine—an ore carrier—loomed out of the gloom, rusted and hulking, left to the elements centuries ago and now barely recognizable. Dust had sanded its paint and windshield back to bare metal, which itself was scored and pitted. A ragged hole in one side offered a mute explanation for the neglect, although Roche was unable to tell if the hole had been caused by an internal malfunction or external interference.

  Closer to the town, the crater floor undulated in a series of low dunes, possibly a forestalled attempt at irrigation. Something glinting in the dirt at the bottom of one of the trenches caught Roche’s eye, and she stopped to pick it up.

  It was a silver coin, heavy in her palm, with a bold “U” on one side. She didn’t recognize the denomination.

  said the Box.

 

 

  “Except to deal with outsiders,” she muttered.

 

  Roche glanced at Veden, whose back was receding up the slope of the trench.

 

 

  nce of this coin, here, could be taken as suggestive.>

  Roche dropped the coin into the dirt and hurried to catch up with the others, suspicious yet again of the Eckandi’s motives. If the rebels on Sciacca’s World had no current means of paying Veden for his services, what did he hope to gain from coming here?

  Emmerik glanced back at her as she approached. “Don’t wander,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

  Made curious by the forbidding tone in his voice, Roche obeyed but kept her eyes peeled. Another road crossed their path, and Emmerik turned to follow it. The brown, stony surface was cracked and split in places, and puddles of sand had collected in the cracks, making footing treacherous. The ever-present dust allowed them to see no more than six meters in any direction; even via infrared, the world was dim and featureless. Roche wondered how Emmerik could tell their position relative to the town.

  Then, rising out of the haze, shapes appeared lining the road and spreading off into the distance: a field of posts, perhaps, barely a meter high, or the trunks of long-dead shrubs, stripped of their branches. Roche couldn’t tell exactly what they were, except that there were a lot of them. The wind moaned eerily through them, making the hair on the back of her neck rise.

  She approached the edge of the road to look closer at one of the objects. Through the haze of dirt, she recognized the dull sheen of blackened metal and the sweep of a stock, sight, and barrel. It was a weapon, buried barrel-first in the dirt.

  said Box.

  She crouched down to study it more closely. She hadn’t seen a HFM peace gun outside the Armada Museum, but the distinctive line of the trigger guard, designed for digits larger than her own, confirmed that the Box was right at least about the Caste that had built it. She reached out a hand to touch it.

  “Roche!” Emmerik’s warning snapped at her.

  She glanced guiltily upward. An indistinct figure was moving toward her through the gloom from deeper in the field, a vaguely Human shape wrapped in rags, hissing menacingly. She jerked upright, reaching automatically for her empty holster.

  The figure stopped in its tracks and stared at her. Two more approached out of the dust, and stood on either side of the first. She stared back, mystified, waiting for them to make a move. It was only when Emmerik’s gently restraining hand came down on her shoulder that she realized they would approach no closer while she stayed away from the rifle.

  “Leave them alone,” Emmerik said from behind her. “We have no right to interfere with them, and what belongs to them.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Caretakers.” Emmerik’s hand, now on her good arm, led her away from the edge of the road. “They preserve the killing fields.”

  “The guns?” she said.

  “No,” said Emmerik firmly. “This is neither the time nor the place to discuss what happened here, Roche.”

  Roche opened her mouth to speak, but Emmerik was already moving off down the road, into the dust. She followed slowly after him, her attention caught by the three ghostly figures disappearing once again into the gloom. The movements of one of them disturbed her a little. With each step it took, its garments moved in such a way as to suggest that it had more than one right arm.

  When the three figures completely vanished into the haze, Roche hurried her pace to catch up with Emmerik.

  “How many?” she asked, coming to his side. “The guns, I mean.”

  Emmerik kept his attention on the road ahead. “Not now, I said.”

  “When, then?” she snapped. “I’m sick of not knowing anything.”

  “When we meet the others.”

  “You keep saying that.” Roche fought to control her anger, but she could still hear the snap in her voice.

  “Not far now,” he said, adjusting his dust-specs. “The town’s just a little further on.”

  * * *

  The field of rifles petered out after a hundred meters. Moments later, a large shape appeared through the dust, glowing with the remnants of the day’s heat: a wall, natural for the first five meters, then artificial above. Exactly how high it rose above the floor of the crater, Roche couldn’t tell, but it showed no sign of ending at the limits of her infrared vision. She supposed that the builders had situated the wall, and the city within, on the central peak of the ancient impact crater to thereby gain the strategic advantage that would give the town. Higher than the crater floor, it was well placed to repel ground attacks—the unbroken expanse of the floor itself gave little cover for an attacking army—and the ring of mountains was far enough away to reduce the accuracy of sniping.

  The road came to a halt at the base of a gentle ramp, which led to a wide pair of sliding doors set into the natural base of the wall. The doors were firmly shut, and looked as though they weighed tons. A sign on the door proclaimed a brief message in letters almost too faint to read, in a script Roche recognized but could not decipher.

  <‘Ul-oemato,’> read the Box.

 

  <‘Founder’s Rock.’>

 

 

 

  The Box paused, as though scanning its extensive memory.

  Roche absorbed this information while Emmerik approached the massive doors.

  chimed the Box.

  Roche nodded.

  Maii’s words intruded, suddenly, upon their silent conversation.

  Roche glanced at the Surin, who had spoken even less than Emmerik since their brief break in the mountains. The girl shivered deep in her survival suit—which had turned a deep, gloomy grey, mirroring both the night and Maii’s mood.

  asked Roche.

  said the reave. Maii read Roche’s confusion and answered the question that had arisen in her thoughts: The explanation ceased the moment Roche’s confusion cleared.

 

  Roche felt a slight chill at the reave’s words. Not sick, but sickened. By something.

  A deep, bone-jarring rumble distracted her. She looked up in time to see the mighty doors slide open a meter, then crash to a halt. Emmerik slid his bulk through the crack and gestured that they should follow. Cane did so first, sniffing at the air before entering the darkness. Veden and Maii went next, leaving Roche alone in the chill night air. If it was a trap, she reasoned, better to face it with the others than alone.

  Darkness overwhelmed her as she slipped through the narrow space—a deep black broken only by the faint heat profiles of those ahead of her. Echoes told her that the passage was slightly wider than the doors, and barely as high. She was reminded of their earlier journey through the tunnel leading from the ravine. This passage seemed more oppressive despite its greater width—perhaps because it was designed to be lit, and was not.

  Several minutes passed before anything changed. Veden grunted with surprise, and Roche tensed. Then she realized that his heat image was rising, as were those of Emmerik, Maii, and Cane. A second later, she too hit the ramp and began to climb. The passage had been designed to accommodate wheeled vehicles, not pedestrians, for the slope was steep and the walls lacked ha
ndholds. She maintained her balance carefully, conscious that if she slipped she might not be able to arrest a slide back to the bottom with only one arm to stop her.

  The ramp leveled out after twenty paces, and reached another set of doors. Emmerik again approached them, and manipulated the controls of what could only be a magnetic lock, although one of ancient design. Roche felt the tingle in her implants as powerful fields shifted to a new configuration and the heavy barrier slid aside.

  They stepped out of the tunnel into a square on the edge of the town.

  The pearly sheen of the Soul, diffused though it was by the dust-laden air, seemed bright in comparison to the interior of the tunnel. Roche glanced behind her, and realized that their journey had taken them only as far as the inner edge of the wall, the base of which must therefore have been nearly thirty meters thick. Its top was studded with ramps and walkways, and sturdier emplacements where weapons might once have peered over the wall at the crater below. Every fixture seemed perfectly designed, intended to last centuries—as it seemed they already had. Roche could only admire the builders of the wall, and the military function it performed so well.

  The square split traffic from the tunnel into five wide roadways that diverged as they led deeper into the town. The buildings were uniformly squat and solid, with rounded corners and domed roofs—an architecture common to Dominion military emplacements. Apart from the efforts of wind and time, not one of the buildings appeared damaged in any way. Every door was open, and the few windows were utterly black. In the absence of wind, the square seemed unnaturally still.

  Raising her eyes from the buildings before her, she saw the two large towers at the heart of the city: the only buildings higher than two stories. From this close—less than two kilometers—they were far more impressive. The shorter stood at least one hundred meters high; its taller twin might have reached one hundred and twenty, although dust hazed its upper limits. They stood roughly ten meters apart with a tracery of scaffolding connecting the two, as though they had been undergoing repair when the town had been abandoned.