The Assassins of Altis

by Jack Campbell

  “Not as dangerous as it is to me and my Mage. We got it in Marandur. It’s from the vaults of the old Mechanics Guild Headquarters in that city.” It hadn’t come directly to her from those vaults, but the statement was still true.

  She could see the people before her wavering. Mari held up the text. “This is only one of what we have. If you truly value knowledge, perhaps you would like to see the texts. All of them.”

  “What…what is you want?” Coleen asked.

  “We are here seeking records of the past,” Mari said. “Records which might tell us how our world came to be as it is. I need to know this.”

  The woman rallied. “We cannot help you.”

  Alain spoke to her for the first time. “You choose not to help us.”

  “I’m offering a trade,” Mari said. “You answer my questions, and I let you look at the texts that are in our packs.”

  “Can you tell us about Marandur?” a man asked. “What it is like right now?”

  Coleen turned to glare at the man as Mari answered. “Yes. And about the masters and students still occupying the university there.”

  “They still survive?” a woman cried. “Coleen, please, this is priceless.”

  “We have our mission,” the leader said, but her resolve was clearly wavering. “What do you seek in our records?”

  Mari met her eyes. “I need to know why the world is the way it is, why the Great Guilds control its fate. I need to know if there is a good reason for that, if the world’s subjugation to the Great Guilds was in the name of some higher purpose or in response to some awful events. And I need to know anything about other ways that the world could be, ways that give more freedom than anyone has now.”

  “Why do you need to know this?”

  Mari took a deep breath and then spoke steadily even though the words felt as if someone else were saying them. “Because I am the daughter of Jules, and our world will soon face a great crisis that will destroy everything. I can stop that, if I can unite Mechanics, Mages, and the common folk to overthrow the Great Guilds and bring freedom to this world.”

  Another of the robed men spoke. “It is her, and the Mage. The ones we were told of.”

  Coleen gazed at Mari. “Do you have any idea of the cost if we reveal ourselves to you, and if that information becomes known to the Great Guilds?”

  “I swear to reveal nothing of this place, not unless you give me permission.”

  Her eyes went to Alain. “But what of the Mage? What oath can he give?”

  Alain inclined his head toward the woman. “I vow also to say nothing.”

  “The word of a Mage means nothing.”

  Mari felt anger that she couldn’t quite suppress. “That may be true of most Mages, but it is not true of my Mage. He is a man of honor.” She held up her left hand so the promise ring shone in the sun. “He is also my husband, and I will not have his word questioned.” She could see the eyes of the entire group focusing on her hand in disbelief, then shifting to see the identical ring on Alain’s.

  The woman leader stared at Alain. “Why did you marry this Mechanic?”

  “Because I love her,” Alain answered.

  “But the wisdom of Mages says that all people are shadows, and no feelings must bind you to others.”

  “Lady Mari has shown me a new wisdom, one stronger than that which the elders of the Mage Guild teach. That is why we walk together, and why I have resolved with her to do the right thing.”

  Mari spoke into the silence which followed Alain’s declaration. “We wish you no harm. Please. We need to know that what we are doing is the right thing.”

  The woman shook her head, looking down at the path. “We hold knowledge, Lady Mechanic, but the answers you seek may be beyond the wisdom of any man or woman. We can provide facts, but right and wrong are judgments, and only you can decide them.”

  “Then give me the facts to make such a decision wisely! That’s why I came here, to have the data I need to make an informed decision!”

  The woman turned to look at her fellows, and one by one they nodded back at her. She faced Mari and Alain again. “We cannot deny your request, for knowledge must have a purpose, and for too long our only purpose has been to protect it, not to assist in the use of it as our calling demands. I am Coleen, head librarian of the librarians of the tower. If you will come with us, we will try to answer your questions, and in exchange you must grant us access to the materials you carry. The knowledge in them will be a great gift to us and to the people of this world.”

  Mari nodded, smiling. “It’s a deal.”

  #

  Coleen led the way to the tower, the rest of the librarians following behind Mari and Alain. People they passed stopped to look at the procession in amazement, but either Coleen or one of the other librarians always assured them that all was well. Mari endured the slow walk, wanting to run to the tower, but Alain’s hand in hers helped hold her back.

  When they reached the tower, Mari paused to run her fingers across its surface. Up close, the material was just as smooth as from a distance, but also very hard and apparently unmarked by time. “What is this? Mari asked.

  “We don’t know,” one of the male librarians admitted. They had all dropped their hoods and seemed just as eager to talk now as they had formerly been reticent. “It was something our ancestors could make, a material which could be poured like water, yet would hold a shape and then harden into something stronger and more enduring than stone.”

  “Our ancestors.” Mari glanced at Alain. “Did they come from the stars?”

  “Yes. Very few people are still aware of that.”

  Mari felt her breath stop for a moment. “Our ancestors really did come from the stars?”

  “Don’t the Mechanics still boast of their lineage from the stars?”

  “Yes, but most of them don’t believe it anymore. It’s true?”

  Coleen gave Mari a wry smile. “If you truly wish to know how our world came to be as it is, that is where you’ll have to start, with the ship that came from another star.”

  The ground floor of the tower was a vast room, with stairs leading upward and down. The interior was illuminated by some kind of electrical lighting, though Mari noted that a lot of the lights had failed. “Where’s your power generator?” she asked.

  A librarian waved around to encompass the tower. “The tower itself turns the sun’s rays into power for us to use. But the amount of power has been slowly dwindling for generations for reasons we do not understand, and when lights now go out, we have no more replacements for them.”

  Coleen headed for one of the stairways down, leading Mari and Alain down three flights to what must be a level well beneath the surface. “It is very safe here,” she said. “The safest storage space in all of Dematr. Not just because it’s deeply buried in living rock, but because this part of the planet is very geologically stable. It is where we keep Original Equipment.” From the way she pronounced the words, it was easy for Mari to hear the capital letters in them.

  Coleen paused at the door at the bottom of the stairs, manipulating a lock and then standing aside as she opened the door to allow Mari and Alain to enter.

  Lights came on as Mari walked into the room, apparently triggered automatically. She came to a halt, staring around at an assemblage of equipment which surpassed anything she had ever imagined. Mari knew her mouth had fallen open as she gazed at the smooth panels, at the devices whose functions she could only guess at. As Mari slowly turned to take in everything, she felt moisture running down her cheeks, and reached up to wipe away tears of joy and wonder. “Stars above. So many things in the banned texts are right here, truly existing. Oh, this is awesome.” Her voice cracked and Mari had to close her eyes, more tears spilling out as she cried at the marvel of these devices which actually did exist, which were real and here in front of her. Things that the Mechanics Guild had kept from her world.

  “Mari?” Alain’s voice was concerned as his hand touched her
gently.

  “Oh, Alain.” Mari shook her head, opening her eyes and turning around and around to look at everything over and over again. “This is so beyond belief. This is what the Mechanics Guild took from us. Am I right?” she asked Coleen, who had entered behind them and now watched Mari with shared joy.

  “Yes,” the librarian said. “All of these things came from the great ship, which means all of them came from a world warmed by another star. They were all built an unimaginable distance away, many, many years ago. We have had to keep them hidden to protect them from your Guild.”

  “Not my Guild,” Mari denied violently. “I am a Mechanic, but that is not my Guild any longer. I could never belong to any organization that forced the suppression of such wonders.”

  Coleen had walked over to one wall, where a large diagram hung, the image on it faded but still legible. “This was the ship.”

  Mari came close, staring at the drawing. “What’s the scale?”

  “Here,” the librarian said, indicating a marker in one corner of the diagram. “Our ancestors used something called a metr. A metr was about half a lance in length.”

  Checking that against the diagram, Mari felt her jaw drop again. “It was huge.”

  “It had to be. The voyage took hundreds of years.” Coleen indicated a map on the wall next to the diagram of the ship. Even under its protective covering, the map had browned with age.

  Mari and Alain studied the map, seeing huge continents of unfamiliar shape. “What does this show?” Alain asked.

  “The home of our ancestors,” Coleen said, her voice now worshipful. “The place from which the great ship came. Another world. Urth is its name.”

  Mari traced the outlines of the continents with her fingertip, carefully not touching even the covering of the map. “Urth. How far away is it?”

  “We do not know anymore,” another librarian answered. “We know only that the distance is so great that light itself takes many years for the journey.” Her voice saddened. “One of the stars we see in the sky is the sun which warms Urth, but we no longer know which star that is.”

  Coleen, plainly enjoying sharing this information, pointed to one part of the ship. “This was where the crew lived and worked. Because the trip was so long, the original crew aged and died along the way, and their children continued in their stead, and so on until this world was reached.”

  Mari ran her finger under one large word, the text odd but readable. “Demeter. The name of our world. Just like on the texts. That’s how it was originally spelled and pronounced?”

  “Yes. It was also the name of the ship.” The librarian indicated another portion of the diagram. “And this area was where the passengers were, along with all of the animals, fish, plants and other creatures the ship brought.”

  “There couldn’t have been very many passengers,” Mari said. “That area is a lot smaller than the crew area.”

  “There were thousands of passengers.” Coleen’s face lit with awe as she spoke. “Our ancestors knew how to take newly created children from the bodies of their mothers, then freeze them so that they would exist unchanging for many years, until thawed and allowed to grow into babies.”

  Mari stared at the other woman, shocked. “They took children newly created from the mothers?” Mari became aware that her hands had dropped down of their own accord, covering her own lower abdomen protectively. Alain had noticed her gesture as well and seemed unusually startled by it. But why should he be? Perhaps because he was a man he couldn’t grasp why that would appall a woman. “That’s horrible.”

  Coleen shook her head, speaking gently. “No. It harmed neither mother nor child, and every mother and father who gave their unborn children to this purpose did so by choice, so that their children could live here someday.” She gestured to the equipment around them. “The ship also carried devices which could serve as mothers to bring the children to term.”

  “Machines?” Mari demanded. “Machines in which babies grew until they were birthed?” She had worked around machines most of her life, she loved machines in many ways, and yet the idea felt incredibly repulsive.

  “Machines of a sort,” the librarian agreed. “It was necessary. Upon arrival here the devices brought to birth a first generation of passengers, and when those were old enough to care for babies another generation, and so on until every passenger had been born. Since then,” she added with a slight smile, “every birth has been in ways more familiar to us.”

  “The animals, too?” Alain asked. “This is how the first animals came here?”

  Mari thought Alain was still rattled, but then she was used to spotting subtle signs of how he felt.

  “Yes, the animals as well,” Coleen replied, then turned a serious look on Mari. “And this is how the Mechanics Guild came to be and to control so much, and why so little of our history is truly known. When the great ship reached our world, most of the crew felt that they and their ancestors had done the work to reach here and deserved to be rewarded far more than the passengers. So they decided to violate the orders that had been given long ago on Urth. These crew members allowed only a small portion of the science and technology they had brought here to be made known to the passengers as they grew. The crew members also never told the passengers where we had all come from. Those who chose to create the Mechanics Guild claimed to be the only humans who could build and repair mechanical devices. The passengers knew only what they were told and were too busy laboring to build the first cities and scatter life through this world to dream of the truth.”

  Mari felt a sense of anger as well of relief. “Then the Mechanics Guild was always about power and wealth. It never had any higher purpose, never had any other justification.”

  “And what of the Mage Guild?” Alain asked. “Did the Mages on the great ship make an agreement with the Mechanics Guild in those days?”

  Another librarian answered. “We have no records we can read and no memory passed down to us of any Mages being on the great ship,” he said. “The first mention of Mages comes more than a generation after the ship arrived here.”

  “None of the ship’s records we have been able to read speak of Mages as real beings,” Coleen added. “We found only children’s stories and fantasies and other fictions which feature humans able to do supernatural things.”

  Mari stared at Alain. “Mages didn’t come on the ship along with everyone else?” She felt a sudden, awful, sinking sensation, wondering if she and Alain could ever have children.

  But the librarian who had spoken before was shaking his head. “All people here came from the ship. There was no one on this world before its arrival. Something happened after people came here, or perhaps on the voyage itself. There are words which may hold the answers, though we no longer understand enough about them. Mutation. Genetic drift. Something called genetic engineering, which was able to change the very nature of a person’s body, may have been involved. We don’t know. All we do know is that a generation after the arrival of people here there began to be reports of people who had magelike powers, weak at first but growing in strength and variety. More and more of these Mages appeared, and eventually they were strong enough to form their Guild.”

  “And,” Mari added, feeling some relief to know Alain was as human as she, “strong enough to be able to survive the attempts of the Mechanics Guild to destroy what it couldn’t understand. But Mages are…like us? I mean, in all of the important ways?”

  A woman librarian frowned slightly at Mari’s question. Then her expression cleared as understanding came and she looked at Alain. “As far as we know, yes. You should not need to worry on that account.”

  “Thank you.”

  Alain was looking concerned again, but that was easy to appreciate given the topic. “From where did the librarians come?” he asked.

  “Not all members of the crew agreed with the decision of the majority,” Coleen explained. “Some of the crew were what were called…”

  Another libr
arian spoke up. “Data Storage and Media Retrieval Technicians.”

  “Yes. It meant librarian, in part, and so our ancestors reverted to the simpler and more complete name.” Coleen gestured around to include the entire tower. “The plan for settling this world included the construction of this tower in a safe place, as a refuge in the event of disaster and a secure location to keep records and equipment of value. When those who established the Mechanics Guild made their decisions, the ancestors of we librarians were forced to agree to their terms. In order to prevent the Mechanics Guild from destroying these records and devices, our ancestors agreed to remain silent about them. In exchange, the Guild knew all of this remained available to them if it was ever needed.”

  The librarian sighed, she and the others looking guilty. “It was a bargain with demons, but necessary. The alternative would have been the loss forever of everything here and all we knew. For century after century the librarians have remained hidden here, protecting the past but unable to share it, hoping for the day when the Mechanics Guild would fall and we could once again give our knowledge to the world.”

  Mari grasped Coleen’s arm. “I can’t fault your ancestors or you for that decision. I know just how ruthless the leaders of the Mechanics Guild can be.” She took a step toward one case, gazing at some of the small devices within it. “I saw something like these in the Mechanics Guild Headquarters. A very old far-talker that looked like this.” She bent to read the labels. “Rah-dee-oh. What does that mean?”

  “It was what our ancestors called far-talkers.”

  “Why? What does it mean?”

  The librarian looked embarrassed. “We don’t know. Much of this equipment no longer works. Other devices still work, but we no longer know how to operate them safely.” Coleen gestured toward another small device. “This is a mass data storage reader. According to our information, it can hold thousands of books within it and display all of the knowledge, but how it did this we cannot remember.”

  Mari stared at the racks near the device, which were filled with what looked like coins. “That’s not money?”