by JD Moyer
She had once respected this man, hung on his every word. Now she didn’t care what he thought. They lived in different worlds, quite literally. She was on the ground, he was in synchronous orbit high above. He lived in an ultralight torus, constructed of carbonlattice beams and metal foam, insulated with aerogels, protected from high-velocity space debris by a two-meter layer of flexible nickel microlattice, protected from cosmic and solar radiation by ionized plasma held in place by magnetic fields. She lived in the forest, protected by the sky and the trees, and by a handsome archer and a burly blacksmith (though, in some ways, maybe she was protecting them).
The third, fourth, and fifth messages were short, audio-only imperatives, demanding that she check in immediately. Was she all right? What had happened? He could provide support and guidance, if she would only respond. Please respond. He tried to conceal his rage at her impertinence, her outright disobedience. I am not angry, he wanted her to hear in his tone, I want to help you, to guide you. What he really wanted, Car-En knew, was to manipulate her, to control her like a puppet.
In the sixth message, a full feed, Adrian looked somber and tired. “Car-En,” he began. His serious tone, so self-important and grave, made her want to giggle. “It has been thirty-one hours since I last heard from you. Despite the fact that you have withheld all sensory feeds from me, from this department, for some time, the telemetry from your kit indicates that not only are you alive and well, but that you are on the move, heading west, away from Happdal. I can only imagine what flight of fancy has gotten into you.
“To get your attention, I have deactivated your drones. Since you refuse to share your feeds with me and with this department, I can only assume you are using the technology available to you for your own personal gain, or to deviate significantly from the clearly stated and previously agreed-upon goals of this research mission. You may not be aware that I possess the security clearance to do this, to deactivate your resources remotely.
“I acknowledge and regret that being stripped of your drones may pose a minor security risk, but at this point I am desperate to hear from you. What is going on in your mind? Car-En Ganzorig, please talk to me. I am your ally, not your enemy. There are those who disapprove of this research – indeed, of all the ongoing field research. But I am a staunch supporter of your project, of you personally. I am not only your advisor, but also your friend. Honestly, I’m worried about you – worried that you’ve suffered some kind of psychological break. There is also the possibility that you’ve been kidnapped and are being held against your will, but this seems unlikely – what could prevent you from sending me a silent message? I can only conclude that you are willfully disengaging from me and from the department. That worries me. That’s why I have taken the – admittedly drastic – action of deactivating your drones. I hope it gets your attention. Please contact me immediately. All we need is an honest discussion. All will be forgiven. Don’t make things worse than they already are. If I don’t hear from you…well, I suppose I’ll have to take a step that I really do not want to take.”
With that, he signed off. There were no more messages.
Fucking bastard.
A minor security risk? She could have had her head bashed in by a tree trunk. She could have been cooked and eaten by a bloodthirsty mutant. She needed those drones. They were not an optional part of her gear.
Adrian was showing his true colors. She had always known and accepted that he was arrogant. Arrogance often came with brilliance (as did forcefulness, and being opinionated). Those traits had been part of what had attracted her to the man, not just as an advisor but as a role model. To be so confident and authoritative, she had imagined that those traits might slowly rub off on her, and that she would gain respect as well as seniority within the department. One day Adrian would gracefully step aside. Car-En would be offered a leadership role, Research Director or even Department Head. Her fieldwork on Earth would command admiration bordering on worship. Students would long to hear her stories. The time she was attacked by giants.
That was all gone now. She didn’t believe Adrian would forgive her. He had no idea what was going on. And why should she tell him? He didn’t care about these people as human beings. His only love was for data, and theories, and his own career. Adrian was borderline sociopathic. Maybe that’s what it took to rise within an academic department.
She sighed and tried to relax. She knew better than to waste too much time and energy thinking about Adrian. She had made her own choices; she would live with them.
Sleep did not come. Trond’s large body exuded warmth, but also noxious smells: burned skin, rancid fat, pungent body odor. He snored loudly. In addition, she was feeling claustrophobic in her bioskin. It wasn’t the first time she had experienced the sensation, but the knowledge that Adrian was actively tracking her location enhanced her desire to be rid of the thing.
She couldn’t do that, could she? Get rid of the bioskin? Not only did it keep her warm, dry, and relatively clean (absorbing and recycling moisture, gently exfoliating her skin and converting the dead cells into energy), but the embedded kit was her communications center (not only with the Stanford, but with her own gear and diagnostic tools, even with her pharma implant when necessary). Her m’eye merely provided the interface; the kit contained the tech and did most of the actual work. But it was also the kit giving up her location and vital signs to Adrian.
Life without the bioskin. Adrian wouldn’t be able to track her. And she wouldn’t even know if he was trying to pester her. And she could get truly clean. Months ago, she had removed the skin and gone swimming in the river near Happdal. The ice-cold water had electrified her body. She’d emerged from the river feeling completely clean and fresh. But she hadn’t done it since; being naked had made her feel too vulnerable (not because of modesty; not wearing the bioskin left her technologically bare, disconnected and helpless). Since then, had self-care routine has consisted of biodegradable sanitary wipes (her supply was running low) and the bioskin’s built-in hygienic functionality. Fortunately menstruation wasn’t an issue; she had used her implant to suppress her period since the age of fifteen.
But abandoning the bioskin wasn’t realistic. She would probably die without it. She wouldn’t be able to navigate, or contact the Stanford, or find her way back to the mule station. She put the thought out of her mind.
She scooched away from Trond and snuggled up next to her pack. Time to fall asleep, even if by brute force. She instructed her implant to release a moderate dose of soporific into her bloodstream. Her mind immediately began to drift. Forget about Adrian. Forget about everything.
A vivid image appeared in her mind’s eye: the giantess extracting the spear from her dead child’s throat, dark blood gushing from its mouth. Her eyes snapped open. Despite the soporific, her heart was racing.
She stood. Esper was sitting two meters away, cross-legged, watching the campfire. As she approached him, he stood up to meet her. He started to speak but she silenced him with a finger to his lips.
“Hold me,” she said.
He wrapped his lean, powerful arms around her, pulling her close. She inhaled his scent, musky and intoxicating. He held her for a long time without pulling away. Finally he loosened his embrace and stepped back, still lightly holding her arms. For a moment she lost herself in his eyes, pale blue irises surrounded by dark rings. “Lífs,” he said. Alive. She understood the word even before she heard the translation in her implant; she was starting to pick up the dialect. He kissed her, first on the forehead, then gently on the lips when she raised her face. She parted her lips and tentatively touched his tongue with her own. He responded in kind; at least in terms of kissing their cultures were similar. He cupped her neck and kissed her more forcefully. As they kissed, her fatigue melted away, along with her fears, her worries about Adrian and her career, her concern for Esper’s village. None of it was important. There was just Esper, his long, lean body and
his kind, hypnotic eyes. An electric ripple rose from the base of her spine up to her neck, spreading to her arms and fingers, her tongue, the surface of her skin.
“Wait,” she said. She found the small zipper on the left side of her neck and unzipped the bioskin down to her waist. She hesitated for a second, then took it all the way off. She stood completely naked before him, the bioskin tossed to the ground in a rumpled pile.
His brow furrowed. “You need to eat more.” But he was already taking off his own clothes.
Chapter Fifteen
Henning led Katja to a small hut, not much more than a shed. The oaken door was weathered and unpainted. “The library entrance,” he said, opening the door and inviting her in.
Inside were a few rickety bookshelves, home to fewer than a dozen leather-bound books. A sun-bleached rocking chair sat near the hut’s single window.
Katja frowned. “Even Esper has more books than this. He has recovered at least twenty from the Builder ruins.”
“This is nothing,” said Henning. “Journals for each of us, though not all of us write in them. Here – this one must be yours.” He picked up a slender volume and handed it to her. “If you fill it, another one will appear.”
There were letters on the spine; she recognized K. She handed it back to Henning, not bothering to open it. “Esper tried to teach me to read, but I had no patience for it.”
Henning nodded. “Stian would be pleased to teach you. Any of us would be willing – take your pick. There is plenty of time to learn. Believe me, reading will help keep you sane. And beyond that…it will change you.”
“I do not want to change,” she said. “I want to go home.”
Henning returned the journal to the shelf and knelt on the floor. “Maybe you’ll find a way.” He grabbed the nearest edge of a throw rug and carefully rolled it up, revealing a trapdoor. “I don’t know why the entrance to the library is hidden,” he said. “I suppose Raekae gives the old hosts the choice to reveal it to the new host, or not. But Franz showed Stian right away, and they both showed me within days of arriving.”
“And by ‘arriving,’ you mean that your mind came here, while your body remained in the real world?” She did not believe any of it, but she wanted to make sure she understood what Henning and the others believed. That knowledge might prove useful when negotiating with Raekae.
“Yes, exactly.”
“And what happened to Stian’s body then, when your body became host?” she asked.
“I suppose it rotted away. The same way my own body is dead and decaying, now that you are the host. I have little memory of the exchange – bits come back in flashes. But Raekae explained it all. Ask him yourself.” Henning lifted the trapdoor, revealing a narrow stone staircase. “Would you like to go first?”
With one hand on the pommel of her dirk, she started down the stairs, heading toward a warm, steady yellow light below. There was no railing, just stone walls on either side. “Be careful,” said Henning. Why, she wondered? If she fell and injured herself, she would heal within a day.
The stairs turned left and the passage widened. Reaching the bottom, Katja looked up and gasped. Before her was a vast room, thrice the size of the Happdal longhouse and five times as tall. Each wall was lined with rows of ornate wooden shelves (at least two dozen from floor to ceiling), and each shelf was packed with books – more than Katja had imagined existed in all the world. There were ladders to reach the higher shelves, and a narrow balcony providing access to the uppermost third. The soft light came from a vast arrangement of hanging crystals, immense glass flowers dripping from the high ceiling.
“The library,” said Henning. He pointed to the left side of the room. “History, over there. Some of the books are ancient, handwritten on vellum, centuries old. But most are from the end of the Builder Age. From our own time there are hardly any books at all, perhaps half a dozen.” She noticed a quaver in his voice.
“Who wrote them – the books from our age?” she asked. Esper could read, and scratch out characters with a stick of charcoal, but she could not imagine how someone could create an entire book, not without Builder magic.
“There are people beyond the Five Valleys. Raekae is not the only one of his kind. There are other immortals, in other lands. Somehow, they share knowledge. Raekae told me that other people on Earth – Earth is the planet on which we live – that others have learned things, or relearned them, beyond what we can do in Happdal. But in other areas we – you and I and Stian, the people of the Five Valleys who came from the Northlands – are the ones with the secret knowledge. Metalworking and smithing. And cheese-making.”
“They are not your people anymore,” said Katja. “You are of this place now.”
Henning’s face fell. She felt a hint of remorse but pushed the feeling aside. Even if he was her distant kin, she owed him nothing. And she was still angry; he had cut her. She glanced at her palm. No mark or scar, and no pain when she clenched her hand into a fist. But she still did not trust him.
“To the right, philosophy, and logic, and mathematics, and physics. Over there, biology and chemistry. In the next room” – he pointed to polished wooden double doors carved with elaborate designs – “fiction, which means stories. Novels and plays, epic tales of all kinds.”
The words meant nothing to her, but Henning’s tone was breezy and cheerful. If her words had injured him, he was trying to hide it.
“Where is Raekae?” she asked.
He looked at her with a strange, wild expression.
“This way,” he said, leading her toward the double doors. She followed. For a moment, she was mesmerized by his dark blond hair, which hung loosely, reaching halfway down his back. She felt a strange and inappropriate impulse to braid it. She missed Happdal. She missed braiding Kristin’s and Karina’s long hair. Hinrik’s surviving daughters often spent time at their house, helping Elke cook and then staying for dinner. Katja had no sisters of her own and loved both orphans as if they were kin.
The ‘fiction’ room was filled with tall shelves, arranged in long, maze-like columns. They took a turn, and another, and soon Katja could no longer see any walls – only books. How large was this room? Which way was north? She had no idea. She would not be able to find her way back without Henning’s help. Finally, a book-lined passage came to an end. Henning led them through a plain door into a narrow hallway. The floor was covered with some kind of coarse brown fur, spongy beneath Katja’s boots. They passed by several closed doors on either side.
“What is behind these doors?” she asked.
“Collections,” said Henning. His eyes were wide, his skin pale.
“Are you unwell?”
“You do not feel it, do you? It’s too soon for you. I remember, at first, I was the same way. It is good you are exploring this place now.”
Katja opened the nearest door and peered inside. The well-lit room was lined with shelves; each shelf was packed with rows of ceramic cats, in all shapes, sizes, and styles. “Strange,” said Katja.
“There are at least two dozen rooms like this. Not only cats. Machines, as well, and all varieties of musical instruments.”
Katja closed the door and motioned for Henning to continue. Soon she heard the faint sound of music, a single player executing a complicated tune with many notes, on an instrument she did not recognize. “What is that?” she asked. Henning did not answer, but pointed ahead.
They entered a room, not so large as the library, that seemed designed for comfort. There were many ornate chairs in various styles, and a table laden with food and drink: a cheese plate, bowls of fruit, jugs of wine and water. The wooden floor was polished to a high sheen. In the center of the room a middle-aged man was seated at a large black musical instrument, his fingers moving quickly over white-and-black slats.
“That is Raekae’s father,” said Henning. “Mostly, he just plays the piano. You
can speak with him if you like, but his head is empty.” The musician briefly looked up, flashing a smile.
Katja drew her dirk and approached the old man. He ignored her, oblivious to the threat of naked steel. “How old are you?” she asked.
The man stopped playing and looked at her inquisitively, glancing at the knife. “You should be careful with that.” His voice was oddly accented but kindly in tone. “Carry it with the point down. That way, if you fall, you won’t stab yourself.” He wore a black jacket over a white shirt, both garments made of smooth cloth and stitched with precision. Who had made his clothes?
“Answer my question!” she barked, slashing the knife toward his face. The motion caught his eye, but he seemed immune to fear.
“Take care,” said Henning. “Raekae loves the old man dearly.”
“What did you ask, darling? I’ve forgotten your question.”
“How old are you?” Katja repeated.
“Fifty-two,” he answered, and resumed his playing. The music changed, becoming more melancholy.
She turned to Henning. “Is Raekae a young man?” she asked. Henning was looking over his shoulder, and took a moment to notice her question.
“No. Age is relative here. Remember, I am your great-grandfather.” Henning’s voice trembled. He was trying to control himself, but his pallor and sheen betrayed him.
She sheathed her dirk angrily. “Take me to Raekae.”
He shook his head.
She touched the pommel of her dirk. “Take me, or I gut the old man, and tell Raekae you did it!”
“It would not work. He would just replay the scene.”
Katja stared him down until he blinked. “Fine.” He sniffed the air. “This way,” he said, heading toward a hallway on the left side of the room. Katja followed. The melancholy music receded behind them.