Blackout

by Edward W. Robertson

  As people cleared the debris from the market's street and tore down the inn's fire-damaged roof, Raina oversaw the construction of simple lookouts above the market, as well as on the highest hills above the main roads entering the city on the north and west. The sentries there would watch over travelers and be alert for raids—but they would watch the skies as well. On the second day of work, Raina came back from one of the new lookouts to find that the blankets and stalls of the market had returned.

  With the market reopened, and watched over by her warriors, the issue turned to housing. It was true that many houses had survived the Dovon assaults, but these had been built for the wants of a different time. Many weren't right to catch the cooling breezes from the sea. Some were too large for any but the biggest of families. And all were built on lots too small for the farms, gardens, and pastures of their owners.

  Beyond this, even old houses that were otherwise usable needed improvements to suit the new age: catchment systems for water, basements to store food, simple irrigation for crops.

  In the first days of work, they tore down far more than they put up, collecting boards, bricks, and stone, the air alive with the crack and squeak of crowbars, the heavy thud of sledgehammers, the rattle of horse-drawn carts full of lumber. Next came the sound of building: the two-part rasp of saws, the sharp crack of carpentry hammers.

  While most of the warriors set down their rifles and picked up hammers, Lowell and Bryson stayed vigilant, drafting up three battle plans. The first would surely come to pass: the precautionary re-evacuation of San Pedro before the return of the Dovon.

  For the second and third plans, Raina hoped with all her heart they would be a waste of time: a long-term evacuation plan, and the strategy they would use to resist a new Dovon war.

  For once, though, Raina was more focused on growth than on chopping down. The houses that came of their efforts were deeply simple—a bedroom or two, a hearth or wood stove for cooking, a common room, a shack out back, a basement that could double as an emergency shelter. There was no denying the crudeness of the structures. They might fall down before the children born in them had grown to adulthood.

  Even so, Raina was proud. And she knew that, as they learned to build for themselves, they would soon erect houses that would play host to generation after generation.

  Georgia had been right: the rebuilding was hard work. Incredibly so. The effort and the passing of days made it easy to forget that the Dovon were still out there, gliding from one country to the next, building their numbers, inevitably to return to Los Angeles—whether in peace, or in war. They had said they would return in 27 days. Raina kept track of each one on a yellowing calendar.

  On the twentieth day, a rider arrived from Better San Diego. This was not unusual: while Raina was instructing her relocated citizens to stay put for a little while longer, the two kingdoms exchanged news every few days. This time, however, the rider bore more than letters. She had a traveler as well: Raina's adoptive mother.

  Her mom came to her on the site of the latest house, where six lots had been cleared of rubble and combined into one parcel in preparation for a new home. Raina recognized her mother's tight-shouldered posture at once. Raina excused herself and hurried to the sidewalk to meet her.

  The woman had a small, straight nose, fair skin, and pale lips that almost weren't there. Combined with the look most commonly on her face—that of someone who expected to be struck on a whim—it could make her appear excruciatingly delicate. Raina knew she hadn't always looked this way. That had arrived with Karslaw. The killing of her husband, Raina's adoptive father. And the removal of her mother to Catalina.

  Even so, there were times when her mother's brittleness ashamed Raina. She worried that others might not know she was adopted and of different stock. At other times, her mother's fragility made her angry. Since the plague, everyone had suffered and lost and been hurt to the core of their being. Those who were wise used that loss to harden themselves and grow stronger, like steel pounded of impurities in a forge.

  Why, then, did her mother insist on treating them as injuries? Growing more and more crippled with each one she endured?

  "Raina," the woman said, smiling with her bloodless lips.

  Raina hugged her, smelling horse-scent. She stepped back. "What are you doing here?"

  "I came to see you." She grinned. "That's my reason as a mother. But I also want to be here when the aliens leave."

  "I don't think that's a good idea."

  "You don't think I should witness the most important event in human history?"

  "We're still not sure they're going to leave," Raina said. "It's too dangerous."

  "Too dangerous."

  "They might be intending to betray us. I won't even let most of my warriors be here for it."

  The delicateness dissolved from her mother's face, replaced by wryness. "When your father and I found you, you were so wild. When he tried to get you out from under that dock, you bit him. Do you remember?"

  She could still remember the taste of his blood. "I remember."

  "There were times it didn't feel safe to be around you. Even when you were tied down, we'd lock our bedroom door at night. When we tried to talk to you, to show you it was all right, we were afraid you'd bite us again. Or…hurt us."

  "You were both so good to me. I'm sorry for any trouble I caused you."

  "You shouldn't be. You were exactly what the new world made of you. And we're lucky it did. Without you, none of us would be here. That's why, when you say it's dangerous here, it makes me want to laugh. Wherever you are—that's the safest place in the world."

  * * *

  Sebastian watched from the bridge as the city unrolled beneath them. Even after so long on this world, and having seen so many of its cities, it looked as alien as those who inhabited it. So dry. Like an empty shell.

  And yet also so hostile. The buildings' brutally sharp corners. The roads that divided all into squares within squares. The skin of humans was so soft, their bodies full of curves and roundness, and yet they lived in dead wood cut to perfect angles and planted in fields of stone no plants could crack. Not even earth-born stone, but false stone ground from the bones of born stone, the better to be poured to fit the squares-within-squares.

  He had lived among and traveled with humans for six years—their years; he had lived here so long he'd stopped thinking in Dovon time, much as he no longer thought of himself by his Dovon name—and studied them for years before that. And he still could not understand why they wished to trap themselves in such hard, ugly homes.

  And yet this mystery was of a piece with his fascination with them.

  The sun set behind the ship, dyeing the buildings orange and pink. In this, that which was ugly became beautiful. The whaleship halted above the familiar bay. Sebastian felt the pulse of its engines relax. He did as well.

  Down in the heart of the Innermost, Commander Toru said something to his officers, turned, and walked up the layers to where Sebastian waited. Sebastian saluted with a crossing of tentacles.

  "There is no need for that," Toru gestured. "You are now of this ship, but I don't command you."

  "But I do respect you," Sebastian said. "And so I will salute as those who must respect you also salute."

  "Should I accuse you of flattery?"

  "Accuse me of being stricken witless by finally finding a leader who shows honor."

  "And is perhaps witless himself." Toru looked at him with a wry expression. "Is it to be as safe as you think it is safe?"

  "You shouldn't fear them," Sebastian answered. "This war was never their war. They welcome peace like a friend they never thought they'd see again."

  The commander stilled, growing somber. "What are they like?"

  Sebastian gestured searchingly. "They are…difficult."

  "I have learned this much."

  Sebastian clicked his claws lightly. "It is hard to say as to what they are. I have only seen them in response to what we Farschoolers
have done. It is right to greet great injustice with equally great anger. And yet they are capable of honor, too. And also of charity and hope."

  "You sound like a fan."

  "I suppose that is what I am. I am not deceived. They are also low and mean and cunning. But I respect them in this as well."

  "Because this is the Way."

  "Because," Sebastian agreed, "this is also the Way."

  Toru chittered his claws. "See if your humans are ready. We land soon."

  Sebastian bobbed his tentacles and climbed to the uppermost terrace of the bridge, where Ness and Sprite waited, gazing out at the darkening city.

  "The time grows near," he signed to Ness. "Are you still willing?"

  "Willing like crazy," Ness gestured back. As usual, his signs were without subtlety, making his words disjointed and sometimes awkward. "Let's accomplish this thing."

  Sebastian nodded in the way of humans. "And what does Sprite say?"

  The muscles of Ness' mouth and chest jerked and signaled in the way of laughter. "Trust me with no proof, he says there's food there and that he loves food. So let's go get loads of that food."

  "This is about more than love of food. It's about speaking last words to those who deserve them."

  "Entirely. But trust me again, Sprite will be too busy chewing to listen."

  Sebastian glanced at Sprite, who was ignoring them, as he had learned to do when they spoke in the language of two. "Have you spoken to him? Does he not wish to come with us as well?"

  Ness tipped his head to the side. "He's tempted madly, but he chooses to stay. I believe he wants to make reproductive copies of himself. Minimal chance of that up in this place."

  Sebastian considered attempting to explain that the Splice could make this possible, but he suspected that the Splice was not applicable to human feelings. So bound up in pairing off. He knew enough about Dovon history to know they had once felt so as well, but that had not been true in so long that he understood the human impulse no more than he understood the krra's impulse to chase its own tail.

  After another discussion with his officers, Toru returned to the top levels of the bridge. Six of the Vigil, including Kkad, moved to flank him. Sebastian gestured to Ness and Sprite. The ten of them exited the bridge and followed the flow of the tunnels to the elevator and then to the docking bay. The commander's shuttle awaited, a beetling vessel of great grace and comfort. The human Carrie was there, as was her pair-bond Walt.

  Seeing him, Sebastian felt amusement. Already the Dovon told stories of him. They made him to be a beast, a terror, a primal force called forth from Earth to strike down the Farschool for their treacherous departure from the Way. Sebastian expected their stories would only grow as the years went on. He looked forward to hearing them.

  The humans spoke to each other happily. The Vigil ushered them into the ship. They seated themselves and adjusted their straps. The shuttle doors closed them in.

  "Hold no worries," Sebastian told Ness. "Toru means all that he has said."

  "I got no worries for him," Ness signed back. "It's the humans down there I worry about."

  The shuttle lifted gently, floating from the mouth of the hangar. Below them, the sun set on what was left of the city. Knowing the trip would be over too soon, Sebastian spent every second absorbing the sight of the mountains ringing the city that sat on the great round bay.

  They touched down on a straight road not far from the beach. The Vigil wished to go ahead and ensure that all was well, but Toru waved them off and stalked toward the sea.

  A hundred humans waited on the sand. They carried their guns, but these were held on their shoulders or in the carriers on their hips. Toru stopped, regarding the humans, then bowed low. A few of them nodded their heads. Toru continued to the darkening waves foaming up the sand. He kneeled and let a wave wash over his tentacle. He lifted his limb above his head, letting drops of water fall upon his brow.

  "What's he doing?" Ness signed.

  "The act of remembering where we came from," Sebastian said. "A rite of humility. Some day, we will all be returned to the sea to feed those we once shared it with." He went still for a moment, watching. "That he does so here, on your Earth, is to say that it could also have been these seas we came from."

  Each wave was unique, but also part of the pattern of the tide that fed each piece of the world in turn. It was gorgeous beyond words. He wondered what the waves sounded like, but he suspected that he knew. After the breaking of the first ship, he and his gutbrothers had fled in the submarine, coming ashore hundreds of miles north. There, despite their horror of what had happened, they stood in the waves and cried in wonder.

  As bitter as a slug, Ggad had explained that it was the world's own fault it had been invaded. That it was so intoxicatingly beautiful that the Farschool had been made drunk on the idea of what they could make of it. And yet even then, Sebastian had known the truth. It wasn't Earth's fault. It was their own. They could have lived on a world such as this one—the Dovon homeworld—yet they had struck out in search of another.

  And once they had found it, after generations had been born and died knowing nothing but the ship, they were so greedy for a land to call their own that they invented a reason why they had to take it from those who were already there.

  Toru turned from the waves and toward the humans. He signed to Sebastian, "Do they permit me to speak?"

  Sebastian passed this to Ness, who spoke to a young woman with black hair and brown skin and eyes like two fires behind the pane of a window.

  "He's welcome," Ness gestured. "They listen."

  "I am Toru, Commander of the Eye That Sees Through the Dark, representative of the Deepfinders, who in turn represent the Dovon."

  Toru waited, allowing time for Sebastian and then Ness to translate. As always when Sebastian spoke in the makeshift speech he and Ness had invented together, Sebastian's first wonder was how—and how well—Ness translated his words into the speech of Ness' people. It was most likely that Sebastian came off just as clunky and foreign as Ness did, although he also suspected that it was much less likely that his words were as horribly informal as Ness'.

  He liked to believe, though, that Ness did as he did, smoothing those clunks and breaks into something elegant.

  Toru continued. "The Dovon have done great harm to you. Harm so great that it makes my hearts ache in shame. This cannot be undone and neither can it be mended. All that can be done is for us to end our foolish, cruel war. To give you peace and to leave you in peace. Forevermore."

  As Ness relayed this, a wave of excitement rippled across the humans. Toru allowed them to digest before going on. "Today, I pledge you this: the Dovon will never harm you again. And that we will make sure that no one else does, either. I have two hopes for you: first, that you flourish, and once more fill your world with your kind. And second, that in the fullness of time, you will join us in the stars, and we can become friends—if you will allow us."

  He bent his legs, bowing once again. As Ness translated, a tear trickled down the human's face. Across from him, the other humans opened their mouths in their show of shock. They turned to each other, embracing and crying, jumping up and down in the sand, a hundred bodies joined in a single triumph.

  A limb uncoiled in Sebastian's gut. The sensation startled him so badly that his tentacles jerked. It wasn't until the feeling began to fade that he understood it wasn't physical, but an emotion. Dread. Dread held for so long and so deeply that he had come to accept it as a part of himself.

  It faded from his body like a fog burned off by the day.

  He gazed on the human faces. He couldn't hear their laughter and their joy, but he could feel it on the air like the warmth of the sun.

  For the first time since seeing Earth through the screens of the now-lost ship, Sebastian felt peace.

  EPILOGUE

  They didn't stay long. Toru held a private conversation with Raina, then summoned the other Dovon to him.

  "Well," Ness
said to Sprite. "Looks like we're on our way."

  Sprite chuckled. "I can't believe you're going with them. I'm so jealous I could explode."

  "You could go, too."

  "Nah. Tempting, but nah. I'd get bored. Anyway, I feel like the next few years are going to be awesome. We get to be cavemen again."

  "Well," Ness said. "It was fun. I'll miss you."

  They hugged. As they drew back, Sebastian walked through the sand to join them. "IT IS TIME THAT WE LEAVE"

  "I know," Ness signed.

  The alien leaned closer, staring into his face. "WHAT IS WRONG"

  Ness shook his head. "Nothing."

  "NOT NOTHING. YOU SHOULD FEEL THE SAME JOY THAT THE OTHERS DO. AND YET YOU LOOK AS IF SOMETHING DIES"

  "Trust me, I'm happy for them. For all of us. It's not that."

  "IS IT TRISTAN"

  Ness sighed. "I just wish things had been different."

  "SHE IS HERE. YOU SHOULD SPEAK TO HER"

  "What's the point? I won't ever see her again."

  "YES NESS AND THAT IS WHY YOU SHOULD SAY GOODBYE"

  "But isn't Toru ready to go?"

  Sebastian gave him a look. "FOR YOU, TORU WOULD WAIT FOR A YEAR"

  The beach was heading into twilight, the people on it shading toward silhouettes, but he spotted her immediately, standing with a cluster of Raina's warriors. She looked just as strong and proud and beautiful as they did. They looked like they belonged to a different species. One way better than whatever had produced Ness.

  "Oh, fuck it," he muttered.

  He stalked across the sand. As he neared, Tristan stepped away from the babbling, laughing warriors.

  "Hey," she said.

  "Hey." He stuck his hands in his pockets. "The ship's leaving in a few hours. I'll be going with it."