by Isaac Petrov
As she pauses to take air, Edda gasps and Aline falters. She must hastily hold herself to the adorned table, before meeting Edda’s wide-eyed gaze.
“REJOICE, LUNTEREN! IN TWO WEEKS’ TIME, THE DAWN OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY WILL BE BROADCAST TO EVERY SOUL IN GERMANIA FROM LUNTEREN! THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT—EVER!—IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COLONY.”
Another pause. Edda takes Aline’s hand into her own. Their wide-eyed gazes meet with the explosive force of realization. It happened! It really happened! Ximena feels the exhilaration like it were her own. Even her heart pumps faster. The joy—the implications—are so overwhelming…
“I WILL BE HEADING AN EMERGENCY COMMITTEE TO BEGIN URGENT PREPARATIONS. IN THE MEANTIME, I ASK ALL OF YOU TO EMBRACE THIS ONE-IN-A-THOUSAND-YEARS HONOR WITH GRATITUDE FOR GOAH’S BLESSINGS. LUNTEREN, WE ARE THE STEWARDS OF GOAH THIS YEAR. MORE THAN THAT, WE ARE AWS AGENTS ON EARTH THIS CENTURY! I ASK YOU TO DO WHATEVER IT TAKES SO THAT GERMANIA NEVER FORGETS OUR NAME. NOT IN A HUNDRED YEARS. FOR LUNTEREN! QUAESTOR MATHUS OUT.”
Edda and Aline, wide-eyed, begin to speak at the same time into each other’s faces, but their voices are drowned by a tide of chaotic shouting and cheering along the street. Some nearby tables kick up their music, and the passersby jump to the bass blasts, hands in the air, in celebration.
The scene closes in on Aline as she embraces Edda fiercely. Both are now laughing wildly.
“It was you!” Aline shouts, locking her friend in a bear hug. “Goah has Mercy, it was you!”
“It was, yeah?” Edda laughs louder, so overjoyed her thoughts melt in disarray, unable to speak—just laugh, hug, and feel. Ximena’s eyes mist over.
“Oh!” Aline releases Edda in shock from the sudden impact of her bottom being smacked.
A teenage boy—tall and muscular, with white-tanned skin, dark blond hair, and blue eyes—is standing right behind her. “Aws Blessings to you, Woman Speese,” he says with a wide smile. “And to you, Redeemed van Dolah. Happy Pontifex’s day!”
Aline laughs and hugs him. “Aws Blessings, my Man Ledebour!”
“Blessings, Piet,” Edda says, laughing. “What are you doing to my friend? When you’re around, she turns into this melted, horny shadow of herself.”
“What can I say? The irresistible attraction of fishermen. No, please—no fish-smell jokes.”
“I like fish!” Aline says, kissing him and biting his lower lip.
The greeting goes on for a while until Pieter finally escapes Aline’s embrace, both laughing.
“Some news, huh?” Pieter says. “Lunteren picked for the New Year’s Festival. Those aliens ain’t fooling around!”
He knows! Ximena thinks with surprise, but then she realizes that Edda is not surprised at all. Then she remembers. During the First Contact section, as she was psych-linked to Gotthard, she saw this boy talking with Edda and Aline in the distance. He was there too.
“Did you sleep with her?” Pieter asks Edda.
“What?” Edda stops smiling.
“That aws Head woman—Consul Levinsohn. Did you….?” Pieter makes an obscene gesture with his hands.
“Piet!” Aline slaps his broad shoulder.
“What!” He frowns in mocking complaint. “Edda was obviously very convincing! Perhaps more than that alien, what’s her name again?”
“Rew,” Edda says. “And let’s just say I did what I had to do.”
“That’s all? No details?”
“Piet!” Aline slaps anew.
“Okay, okay,” he chuckles. “Sorry, Edda. Didn’t mean to… But say, why did you, er…” he wets his lips, “… insist on bringing the Festival right here to Lunteren?”
Edda shrugs. “Was more of an impulse.” She meets his curious gaze. “It sure as Dem opens possibilities, yeah?”
“Like what?”
“Don’t know.” She shrugs again. “But our colony will have the complete undivided attention of the entire country for a few minutes.”
“Uh huh.” Pieter turns his face to Aline, and back to Edda. “So… say, are you mensas going to, er, learn that stuff the aliens are promising?”
“Sure,” Edda says. “All the way! I can use those persuasion,” she wiggles her fingers, “powers of theirs to convince my dad to stop his Joyousday.”
A slight frown crosses Aline’s forehead. “Aren’t you afraid of what they will ask us to do in return?”
“Why? I bet they know what they’re doing, sister. They’ve helped us since, what did they say, like ten thousand years ago?”
Pieter nods. “We scratch their backs, they scratch ours. Fair and square. I for one want to stop all those Siever factories for good! You with me, love?”
“Uh, sure,” Aline says, and smiles, thoughtfully. “We could even try to end the coal trade in the Hanseatic Imperium.”
“Now you’re talking!” Pieter says, eyes beaming. “And why just in our Imperium, huh? We could clean all aws Imperia from filth, can’t we? Where’s the limit?” He takes an orange-colored fluffy cookie from the table and gnaws on it. “Wow! This is good!” He chews slowly, and gapes at Aline. “You did this?”
She playfully slaps his shoulder again. “So hard to believe? Gastronomy runs as deep in the Speese family as engineering. Unfortunately, it brings less karma.”
“Oh, fuck!” Pieter says, his eyes squinting at something behind Aline. She turns to see a male teenager of their age approaching with a smug smile. Light brown skin, short black hair—and attractive. Ximena recognizes Gotthard instantly. He is dressed in a fine orange tunic, same as the darker-skinned toddler sitting on his shoulders looking around at the colorful festivities with large eyes.
“Aws Blessings to you,” he says.
“Aws Blessings,” Edda and Aline reply at the same time. Pieter remains silent.
“Impressive achievement yesterday, Edda. I wasn’t sure that dream was, well, just a dream. But now…”
“Not too bad, huh?” Edda says with a wink.
Gotthard turns his attention to Pieter and gives him a long, studious glance. “I was surprised to see you and your brother there too. I wonder what the marais saw in you?”
Pieter shrugs. “Ask them.”
“And what are you doing here? This is a specialist district.” He walks closer to Pieter. “Shouldn’t you be catching some fish or whatever you smelly rat boys in the fishing district do?” He has taken a napkin out and waves it mockingly over his nose.
“I go where I goahdamn want,” Pieter says.
“I don’t know what you see in this rat boy, Aline,” Gotthard says as he hands her a folded piece of paper. “A woman with your talents should have standards.”
Aline unfolds the paper and nods absentmindedly as she gives it a superficial glance.
“What’s that?” Pieter asks, trying to peek.
“Nothing,” she mutters, folding the paper and sliding it in her pocket. “Professional secrecy.”
“You working with this… elitist worm?”
Gotthard walks past Pieter like he doesn’t exist—no, like he doesn’t matter—and leans to inspect the small shrine set up next to the table. The shrine, on top of a piece of tree trunk, is made of freshly cut lush-green branches, decorated with shiny balls of different colors. The open front reveals the inside: an orange cloth, possibly silk, with a pile of metallic flat pieces.
“Not much karma left,” Gotthard says. “I hope the Quaestor is more generous this year with the engineer families—we scientists have doubled. I can put in a good word, if you like.” He turns his side-smile to Pieter. “You and your rat brother better catch many, many fish this year, Ledeboer, because aws Head never has much karma left for rat families.”
Pieter, face flushed, walks his massive body right in front of Gotthard, their faces mere inches from each other. Pieter, a head taller, stares with bloodshot eyes down into Gotthard’s amused gaze.
“Goah, the smell!” Gotthard covers his nose with the napkin. “Makes me almost hungry.” The to
ddler sitting on Gotthard’s shoulders reaches out to Pieter’s blond hairs, grabbing them with a giggle.
“Ouch!” Pieter takes a step back, safe from the infant’s curious hands.
“Leave that, Gerrit!” Gotthard says, raising his right hand to caress the toddler. “You just had your bath.” He points at the large speakers, loud disco music merging into the street celebrations. “Goah’s Mercy, Speese. Stop that noise or change the tape.” He shakes his head theatrically. “What’s that, the Bee Gees?” He chuckles. “The 1970s were a lost decade.”
“But that’s when we were exploring the moon,” Aline says in a musical, ironic tone. “You like space, don’t you, Gotthard?”
He side-smiles back at her, but says nothing.
“Very true!” Edda says. “What was that story in the summer about? Oh, yes! One of the old space colonies, apparently still has people living on it, yeah?”
“Oh, yes, I remember the story,” Pieter says. “The meteor colony!”
“Asteroid colony, hick,” Gotthard replies, smile frozen in place, a spark in his eyes. “And there was nothing apparent about it,” he says, turning to Edda. “There really is a lost colony. Still alive. I heard the radio traffic myself.”
Aline laughs. “There were warnings about the end of the world, right?” She points at Gotthard. “What was it all about? The end of the world is nigh, over,” she mocks, enjoying herself. “A meteor will destroy Earth in a hundred years, over and out.”
Aline and Pieter laugh wholeheartedly, while Gotthard stares at them, keeping the smile on his lips, but not in his eyes.
“How did all that end?” Aline asks between laughs.
“They also sent a picture,” Gotthard says, his voice barely audible over the loud music. “My contribution was the software that rendered the image.” He looks at Edda, his eyes dark and sad. “The faces—they were old—Old. One glance, and aws Head declared them demon-ridden and banned all further communication.” His gaze is lost somewhere behind Edda. “Heresies… they called it, the ignorant zealots. And then, they covered it up, like it never happened. I couldn’t believe it! They just…” He waves a hand, and sighs, “No, there’s no surviving colonies in the solar system, they said. All colonies were abandoned to their fate during the collapses and starved out centuries ago, they said. All lies. Dangerous, dangerous lies, that damn us to extinction.”
“Lies, huh?” Pieter points a finger at the toddler. “You better get your shit together, mensa, for your son’s sake.”
“Okay, enough everybody!” says Edda with a loud clap. “Pieter, stop being such an asshole. And you,” she turns to Gotthard, “take your snob ass somewhere else, yeah?” She steps forward and caresses the toddler tenderly, who giggles in return. “What a poor example for Gerrit.”
Gotthard smiles to her and mocks a bow. “As you wish, dowry sister,” he says, and walks away.
“Wow!” says Aline. “You play that idiot like a guitar. How can you have such an influence on him?”
“I know how,” Pieter says sourly, still glaring at Gotthard’s back. “By walking over to aws Womb and giving away an ovum to the Kraker family.”
“Piet!” Aline turns and gives him a scandalized look.
Edda laughs and shrugs. “I think you’re right, Piet. Gotthard may not respect many things—but family, that he does.”
“Goah’s Mercy, Edda,” Pieter says, voice drenched in disgust, “what a catch. You’re always talking about how we must be oh so alert, how those rastocrate families have our sacred rights in their sights, and just want to oppress us and all that shit. And then you fucking bind to one of them!”
“You mean aristocratic, Piet,” Edda says, an incipient frown of anger on her brow. “And it was my dad who arranged the dowry bond.”
“How unfortunate for you. Well, at least you get to enjoy the karma.”
The scene vanishes and the spring sun and blue skies return to the amphitheater. Ximena and many of her fellow students stretch their dream limbs as they refocus their attention on the stage below.
“Sorry, people,” Professor Miyagi says, “the dreamsenso section finishes here. I was thinking about prolonging it with Edda’s spectacular slap across Pieter Ledeboer’s face, but it was getting way too long already.”
Chuckles, polite laughs and whines of disappointment fill the open-air auditorium.
Miyagi takes a few steps, hands on his back, as if reflecting. “You know what comes to my mind when I witness the events leading to the Century Festival?” He pauses and looks gravely up to the students’ expectant faces. “That they had some dubious taste in music.”
All students burst out laughing.
“No, seriously, people,” he says as the laughs die away, “when I watch this scene, I always wonder about Gotthard. You have seen the little asshole. He lives a life of privilege—the Kraker are a prestigious scientist family. And yet, the poor bastard seems to be the only one who knows that the Babi asteroid is coming, and has the education to understand what that ultimately means.” He shakes his head. “The world lives in innocent denial, and science has been silenced by dogma. Ignorance—not truth—is guiding humanity in the age of Goah. Ignorance, fanaticism. And lies. Not the most reliable guides, I would say.”
The words hit Ximena like a sting. It’s a strange feeling. On one side she intellectually understands what the professor is saying, that aws Head was looking the other way when a world-ending event was literally falling over their heads. They covered it up, they buried it. History repeating itself, just like in the first collapse. Worse. Yes, the professor is telling the truth, she knows, and yet she feels attacked inside—in her identity—by his words. The blue-and-white section of GIA students at the other end of the hemicycle also stirs uncomfortably. This is not history, not by far. They are still living the age of Goah, at least in the Goah’s Imperia of the Americas, as vibrant as it was one hundred years ago. Aws Head is not just a human-made institution. It’s more than that, much more—it’s also divine. They’d never—
“Imagine what he might be feeling.” Miyagi’s words interrupt Ximena’s thoughts. “Loneliness, perhaps? He’s a father, and perhaps he is relieved that his son will live a normal, fulfilled life, and his grandchildren as well, and so on for a few more generations. Does he even care, with the short lifespan of his time, what will happen to his descendants a hundred years in the future? Does he even care,” he lowers his voice, as if thinking aloud, “about us?”
Ten
Worth and Soul
Rew paces forward, or rather floats an inch over the ground towards the forty-eight youngsters.
Ximena feels Edda’s inquisitive eyes scanning the elongated form, and comparing it with the eleven mares standing in a neat row behind her. There are subtle differences. Yes. Some are slightly higher, or thinner. Even length of arms and legs vary from one to the next. The shade of white of their skin also differs subtly. They’re just… animals, Ximena thinks, same as us, with individual traits and variations, the result of evolutionary pressure in a resource-scant ecology.
“I do welcome you back to the staging permascape,” Rew says, and waves an arm across the infinite flatness of dark stone and black skies. “It is only us here—our conscious minds—then at this point only we do matter, what we marai say to you, and what you ultimately decide to do with our words.”
Rew turns her head to the side, and three mares walk forward to stand next to her. There are subtle differences among the three, as there are among the rest, but they move as one in precise synchronization—same gait, same speed, same balancing of the arms as they slide, same stance as they stop.
“Do meet Overseer Yog,” Rew says, bowing lightly to the three mares. “She shall clarify your choices.”
“Sense and bind, humans.” The words emanate as a single feminine voice from the three heads. Ximena feels Edda’s wonder as she realizes how alien the aliens really are. “All of you are here to serve us.”
Not the sexiest of
speech beginnings, Ximena thinks. Edda and the others seem to agree, their faces expressing a degree of unease.
“You shall be granted abilities that no other humans possess.” That’s better. “You shall exert power over other humans, and so do our bidding.” Ouch. “It is imperative that only humans of worth are provided access to this knowledge. Walker Rew,” the three heads turn lightly left, where Rew remains fully still, “suggests that all of you are of worth. I shall judge that. I shall assess each of you at every step to determine if you are worthy of carrying the power of a Walker of the Mind.”
A Walker of the Mind. Edda’s excitement flows through Ximena like a hurricane through a ravine.
“Worthy are those with the will to exert power,” Yog continues. “I shall assess who is worthy among you, humans. Walker Rew and her Deviss Walkers,” her bodies turn briefly to glance at the eight mares standing behind, “shall instruct you in the three steps of the Path of Light.”
The Path of Light. Ximena feels Edda’s anticipation with amusement. Everybody in the twenty-sixth century knows, of course, about the Paths. To a great extent, dreamtech defines their age. But for Edda, they are just words—never-heard-before words of hope.
“But a master of the Path of Light,” Yog continues, “is but an apprentice of the Path in the Shadow.”
The Path in the Shadow. Ximena smiles, as she feels Edda’s steel determination, like a drooling lioness. A sudden image of Willem crosses the psych-link in a flash of love and angst, but Edda promptly gathers herself in an impressive show of discipline, and her attention snaps back to the speaking mares.
“The three steps of the Path in the Shadow are the true source of power over others. That is your objective, humans: to tread the Path in the Shadow. Your objective, and ours. Without treading the Shadow, you are worthless to us—and to yourselves. Only a Walker in the Shadow—a true Walker of the Mind—can traverse the Second Wake, intrude into the minds of others, and hope to mold them to their will. It is my duty to ensure that only the worthy tread the Paths.” Her heads turn left, as if talking to Rew directly. “It is a sensitive and dangerous discipline, that which Walker Rew plans to instruct you in. Thus, it is also my duty to limit the access to the powers of the Mind Walker to a minimum of subjects.” She turns her heads to the forty-eight gripped youngsters. “Only the two most worthy humans shall be granted access to the Path in the Shadow. Only two of you shall become Walkers of the Mind.”