The Ghost Sister

by Liz Williams

  When Shu had seen the aircar descending out of the clouds, she had almost cried with relief. She had stumbled over to Bel, as much to comfort the girl as herself, but Bel had said only, “I'm glad you're all right,” and turned on her heel to climb back into the aircar. She did not sound glad, Shu thought, and perhaps that wasn't surprising. The nano-cleaners had been at work to remove all traces of Dia's death from the interior of the aircar, but there was still a presence that no technology could eradicate, a sadness. Bel's coldness had been hurtful at the time, but now Shu felt simply numb. She knew she should try to talk to Bel about the generator, and contact the ship, but she was too exhausted to think coherently.

  Bel had told her that they might be having problems back at the camp. The delazheni themselves seemed to be winding down, as though affected by the growing cold. Shu wondered dimly whether it wasn't some exposure to the world itself that was causing this, some infringement upon their biomechanisms. She couldn't get the feeling out of her mind that it was somehow curiously appropriate. The delazheni were part of Irie St Syre, and they'd left that far behind. Sylvian had apparently been complaining of a number of ailments—rheumatism, conjunctivitis, asthma. It seemed to Shu that they were simply the grit in the oyster of the world, no wonder they were all getting sick. Maybe they'd produce a pearl, she thought wryly. She was already half dreaming when the aircar spun down to land just beyond the camp, and she could seek the unlikely comfort of a cold fold-out bed.

  She woke to find that it was already late into the morning. She lay blinking up at the ceiling, wondering for a bewildered moment where she was, and where Eleres might have got to. Then she realized that she was back at the mission camp, and it was Sylvian who was sitting on the edge of the bed with a cup of hot tea. Sylvian too seemed older.

  “Bel told me what happened,” Shu said, sitting up in bed and weakly sipping the tea.

  Sylvian sighed. “I think she blames herself.”

  “Of course she does,” Shu said. “It's Eve all over again,isn't it? Another person she's failed to save. Or thinks she has.”

  “Do you mean Dia? Or Mevennen?”

  “Both.”

  “Maybe you're right,” Sylvian said. “But I'm worried about her. She's not even the same girl who came to Monde D'Isle. There's a lot of bitterness and resentment that she had a chance to shake off. Instead, it just seems to have grown.” She glanced uneasily at Shu. “We got your message. About your theory of what the generator does.”

  “I think it does much more than we thought,” Shu said. Sylvian did not look convinced. She felt as though she were wading through treacle, putting forth arguments that no one wanted to hear. “I told you. I think it has something to do with the Mondhaith's ability to dowse.”

  “That would make sense,” Sylvian said, slowly. “Like the Hon'an people on Narrandera—the water-seekers. There's nothing supernatural about them; they're just unusually sensitive individuals who have a particular set of receptors in their brains. You can give people dowsing abilities if you actually operate on them, but less radically, it's also possible to change their neurology via biomorphic technology. Rather than genetically manipulating the population into a closer connection with their environment—whatever that means—maybe Elshonu chose to, well, reeducate them via a biomorphic field. Dowsing used to be seen as a kind of psychic phenomenon, but that's just an early superstition. The ability's caused by a particular neurological configuration.”

  “If Elshonu mapped certain behavioral parameters into the generator,” Shu said, “based on the behavioral patterns of other mammals of this world, then he could change the way in which the colonists behaved, too. That's how biomorphic technology works according to you; it sets up a field, and emits generalized algorithmic instructions into that field. I think the energy lines that these people seem to believe lie beneath the land really exist. I think they're the channels along which the field is directed, and I also think that they connect up with the forcefields around the forts. But they don't all do the same thing at the same time, because the algorithms interact with the context. To use the ship's example, you don't get every bird doing the same thing at once—it depends on the situation in which the bird finds itself. If there's danger, to themselves or someone close to them, then the Mondhaith enter the pack state— the bloodmind. That isn't necessarily always violent, but it can turn a person to murder if there's a threat or if the circumstances are right. It's a biological problem, Sylvian, not a moral one. The masques are basically mating periods: within a particular radius, the women's breeding cycles match one another and they become fertile together—though they retain human patterns of nonreproductive sexuality, too. A lot of these people's behavior mirrors that of certain mammals back home, and here too it seems.”

  She paused, and gulped her tea to soothe her parched throat, trying not to think about Morrac, that day of the masque. “You see, Sylvian? You see how important this is? I think we were right. The generator's the 'magic book'that Mevennen was talking about.The 'book'that helped people to live in harmony with their environment. It doesn't just produce the violence and the territorial instincts, but so much more. The ability to dowse, to sense metals. These people are completely in tune with their world, much more than we are. Elshonu's Dreamtime. It looks as though he achieved it, after all.”

  “Yes,” Sylvian replied, after a moment. “It looks as though he did. But at what price? We don't kill each other for no reason, do we?”

  “You're a biologist,” Shu said, her heart sinking. “Surely you could see how much such abilities would mean to a people who live in a world as harsh as this one? And how much it might mean if those abilities were ripped away?”

  “I may be a biologist,” Sylvian said evenly, “but I'm a Gaian first of all, and everything I've seen has shown me that our way is right, and Elshonu's was wrong. There's Re-Forming equipment somewhere, down in the ruins of Outreven. Bel's hoping it could still be activated. We could still set this world back on track. Shu, if what governs these people is nothing more than a field, it can be reversed. Mevennen stepped into the field, and it—instructed her. It must have altered her neural receptors—knit those connections together again. It changed her brain-wave patterns— reeducated her into becoming whatever Elshonu Shikiriye turned the rest of her people into. We know that Elshonu didn't want to use ReForming technology to set the processes in place that would change the environment itself—instead, he wanted to change the colonists so that they fitted into that environment somehow. He tried to manipulate them genetically and failed. So he tried another way— using biomorphic technology, and the consequences for these people have been disastrous. And that's why we have to make sure the generator's deactivated.”

  Shu stared at her. “Sylvian, it doesn't work that way. That's appallingly crude—you can't just switch off one machine and switch on another one and expect everything to sort itself out. You do realize that, don't you? There are thousands of people who'd be affected, in who knows what kind of way.”

  “I came to tell you something,” Sylvian said, as though she hadn't heard, and Shu wondered whether Bel was the only one whom circumstances had been pushing over the edge. “Bel's going back into Outreven. To see if she can find Mevennen. She wants us to come with her. In a little while, the generator will be down and perhaps that will bring Mevennen back to normal.”

  “All right,” Shu said, thinking quickly. If she could contact the ship, somehow abort the instructions it had been given, or get to the generator itself before it shut off…

  She struggled out of bed. Sylvian went back outside, pre-sumably in search of Bel, and Shu hastened across the bio-tent to the console. But when she tried to punch in the coordinates of the ship, she found that she was locked out of the system. This was no side effect of alien technology; this was deliberate. The passwords had been changed, the DNA relay would not respond to her palmprint. To Shu, this meant that Bel did not trust her. Hurriedly, Shu pulled on her clothes and hastened outs
ide to where the aircar was waiting. Her only chance now lay in Outreven itself.

  “Mevennen?” Shu called hopefully, two hours later. No one answered. Accompanied by a strained and watchful Bel, she was standing on the rickety tower on the cliff overlooking Outreven. Footprints disturbed the dust that covered the lower deck and their surface was ridged, as though their maker had worn boots. The only entrance to the uppermost deck was the hatch at the top of the stairs, and there was no way that Shu was going to go up through the hatch headfirst. She had seen one of the children earlier, skulking at the end of one of the blind alleyways that led from the main passage of Outreven.

  “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?” Shu asked unhappily, and not for the first time.

  “No, I haven't. I told you,” Bel said, and then was silent. Shu looked around her. Bel had thought that it might be easier to see from up here; Shu was doubtful. They had no way of knowing how far Outreven extended underground, and her own feeling was that Mevennen had gone deeper rather than come out into the light. But then there were the footprints.

  From below, they could see that the deck took up the whole of the upper story of the tower. Cautiously, Shu reached the top rung. Gripping the sides of the narrow banister, she hauled herself up, crunching her knees against her chest and hanging suspended beneath the hatch. The daily workouts that Dia had insisted that everyone participate in appeared to have paid off, Shu conceded reluctantly, and so had that long mountain hike, but her joints still burned with a touch of arthritis. Ancient complaints, conjured back by an ancient world …

  She tried not to think of long-lost Irie St Syre, and her comfortable, warm study, now far in the past. Tensing up, Shu scrambled through the hatch, hoping desperately that the floor wouldn't give way. She rolled sideways, coming up on the firm floor around the sides of the deck. And with an icy bolt of shock, she found herself face to face with Mevennen.

  The woman's eyes were wide, her features distorted. Saliva trickled from one side of her mouth. She showed sharp teeth and snarled, reminding Shu of a Nipponese No mask. Evidently, the generator's closure had not yet taken full effect.

  “Mevennen?” Shu said, softly soothing. Her heart hammered in her chest. She called down, “Bel Zhur? She's here. Stay there and keep quiet.” To the other she said, “Mevennen? It's all right. Nothing's going to happen.” She kept talking, murmuring quiet endearments beneath her breath as though she were coaxing a frightened animal. That analogy seemed apt; there was no awareness behind the woman's eyes. Shu inched forward, murmuring. Mevennen hissed through her teeth and lashed out at her, tearing through the sleeve of her jacket. Hastily, Shu jerked back, thoughts of Morrac spinning through her mind.

  “All right, calm down, nothing's going to happen, everything's all right,” Shu muttered. Fleetingly, she wondered whether she was speaking to reassure Mevennen or herself. She edged around the platform to where Mevennen was now crouching. There, at what she thought was a safe distance, she stopped and held out her hand. Mevennen looked at it with the kind of bored disdain that a cat might exhibit, presented with a supposedly alluring toy. Ignoring the cramped discomfort in her calves, Shu sat back on her heels and waited. Mevennen was staring at her, warily suspicious.

  “Everything's all right,” Shu said. “You're fine, everything's all right.” The stun gun lay across her knees, but with her arthritic joints Shu doubted that she'd be quick enough to use it. She thought: The hunts and masques don't last forever, and if the generator's off… She'll snap out of it at some point. I hope.

  It occurred to her then that perhaps she had been wrong all along, that maybe the generator had nothing to do with the bloodmind. The thought snapped at her and she had to stifle a sudden, hysterical laugh. So she kept murmuring soothingly, and eventually the tension seemed to ebb a little from Mevennen's shoulders.

  Mevennen turned her head, to gaze out across the ruins of Outreven. Shu followed her gaze, falling silent, and soon lost track of the time. It seemed as though they were sitting in some perpetual present, with the half-light changing the mountain wall to a soft mauve, and the stars at the horizon's edge almost too faint to be seen. Slowly, Shu sank into a distant awareness of her own, letting her racing thoughts pass by, stilling her mind to quietness, and as she did this, so Mevennen seemed to grow calm. Shu began to breathe, counting as she did so: ten counts in and ten counts out. And gradually Mevennen began to breathe with her, her breast rising and falling with the same rhythm. At last Shu turned to look at her, and the light was back behind Mevennen's eyes.

  “Mevennen?” Shu said.

  And the woman whispered uncertainly, “I'm here. Shu?” Panic crossed her face; she caught her lip between her teeth so hard that it bled. “The world's gone. I can't feel it any more. I'm landblind.”

  “Let's go down, shall we?” Shu said, trying to hide her dismay. The moment in which she turned her back on Mevennen to go down through the hatch was an unpleasant one, and she felt the skin tense between her shoulder blades, but nothing struck. She found Bel on the platform below.The girl stared in horror as Mevennen followed her down. Whatever change the Mondhaith woman had undergone was still plain in her face.

  “Everything's all right,” Shu said, and was appalled to hear her voice wavering. “Let's go, Bel.”

  But Bel Zhur had to help her down to the bottom of the tower, and as they made their unsteady way across the caldera to the aircar, Shu realized with a sudden cold shock that Outreven was indeed different. The humming had stopped.

  8. Eleres

  In the morning, I woke early to a pearly gray light filtering through the window: the winter sun reflected from the snow. Ithyris was gone. I dressed, putting my coat on for the room was cold, and went downstairs. People came in and out, and greeted me. Someone gave me breakfast. I meandered about, went outside to look at the weather: a clear morning with frost sparkling across the flags but surprisingly no more snow. The roofs were covered, however, and occasionally a load detached itself and slid in an eerie rush to the ground. Along the stable roof sat a row of birds, fluffed up against the cold and whispering, more arctic migrants. Their ruffled feathers were the color of earth: a rich, dark brown.

  Under the stable roof, someone was working an anvil, sending showers of sparks to fall across the frosty ground. The hammer tapped methodically, making the flinty sound that is called the “voice of eresthahan.” I did not recognize the woman who stood above it, but she seemed to know me for she smiled as she plunged the hot metal into a pail. Steam rose up, and there was an astringent odor of burning.

  Ithyris was in the storerooms, going over sacks of grain. She would do this, obsessively, every day throughout the winter until the time when she slept. She ran Sephara, as Luta ran Aidi Mordha, and Eluide is a kinder country than Munith.

  “You'll be all right, this year?” I asked her.

  “Until the time when we're not,” she replied grimly. “I think we will be, though—as far as the sleep, anyway, and after that we can hunt. We worked hard this summer, up on the high fields. Sephara's so isolated. It's down to us if we live or die.” She sighed and straightened up, then she stiffened. Her face twisted. She said in a frightened whisper, “Eleres?”

  My skin prickled with static. There was the sudden taste of metal in my mouth, and a blinding pain at the back of my eyes. The light that streamed in through the open doorway was suddenly black as night. It was as though the world had been turned upside down. Someone cried out. The ground was rough and cold beneath my hands and knees. At last, through the pain, I realized that I could see again. And I knew that the world had changed. All at once, over the course of a lightning moment, the color and the life had drained out of it and it seemed as lacking in dimension as a picture.

  As if in a nightmare, I reached out with my usual senses, seeking the presence of the world around me, but those senses were gone as if they had never been. The storeroom was full of ghosts, staring wide-eyed and aghast at one another, and I was one of them.
It was as though I'd been suddenly struck blind, and then the little part of my mind that hadn't retreated into shock realized why; that was exactly what had happened. I was landblind, just like my sister Mevennen. Ithyris was ashen faced, and leaning against the wall for support.

  “Eleres?” she whispered again, and even my name sounded strange. Numbly, I sat down on a block of stone. I heard Ithyris say, in utter grief, “It's gone. The world's gone.”

  I had always wondered what it would be like to be dead, and now I knew. “What happened?” I whispered.

  Ithyris's eyes were wide and frightened in the dim light. She glanced wonderingly down at her hands and answered, “I don't know.”

  I don't remember much about those next hours.We made our way back into the house, though it was hard to walk even that short distance. My balance was wrecked. As we stepped through the door, it started to snow again. But when I stumbled to the window and gazed out, the landscape beyond was nothing more than a moving image—like shadow puppets on the firelit wall. There was no longer any connection between myself and the world. Nor could I sense the presence of anyone else. I could see and hear them, but something vital was lacking.

  Toward dusk, Ithyris rose from her huddled position by the fire and said unsteadily, “Whatever curse has befallen us, someone's still got to feed the mur and the birds. I'm going out.”

  “I'll come with you,” I said, anxious for something to do and telling myself that it might not be so bad once I got outside, perhaps it would wear off… But it was exactly the same as before. Our feet rang hollowly on the frozen ground. Numbly, Ithyris and I threw grain to the birds. Ithyris turned to reach for another handful, and I heard her gasp.