Mori made her way up the rocky trail, following the narrow steps chipped into the stone two thousand years earlier by the first Sojourners. She hadn’t been born out here in the wilderness but in a city, like most Thiopans. Mannowai City was the capital of the Endrayan Realm, not as grand as Bareesh but quite comfortable and modern, and the center of the renaissance of Sojourner teachings led by her father. Mori had vague recollections of having visited this ancestral land as a toddler, on a pilgrimage with her father and others, but she couldn’t be certain if her memories were of the trip itself or of hearing others tell about it in the years since.
It wasn’t until a couple of years after her father’s death that the core of the Sojourners, numbering three or four hundred, had left the cities and towns of the western Endrayan—which were within easy striking distance of government police forays from the adjacent Bareeshan Realm—and returned to the holy place from whence Sojourner beliefs had originally sprung.
So Mori had essentially grown up here. She’d forgotten most of her childhood knowledge about navigating city streets and had acquired the skills needed to survive in the unforgiving Sa’drit Void. It seemed now as if she’d always known how to find food and water, how to conserve what little could be found, how to coexist with the Mother World and her Hidden Hand, never forgetting the fundamental principle of the Sojourners’ belief: that the land did not belong to the people—the people belonged to the land.
Conditions here were not as primitive now as they had been in the old times. The new Sojourners had modern weapons, tools, and techniques to help them. Evain, and later Lessandra and the other leaders of the group, understood the practical need to utilize every advantage they could in their war with the government.
Mori hurried along the path that wound around the rim of Sanctuary Canyon. Here, forces she could barely fathom had wielded the very powers of creation to sculpt a landscape she would always regard as miraculous. The canyon itself was a broad chasm, a semicircle of layered rock that widened as it rose. But it did not open to the sky, for at the widest point, the canyon blended into thousand-foot-high walls that leaned in as if frozen in precarious midcollapse. In the bowl of the central hollow, the furies of wind and water, fire and ice, had cut through giant blocks of sandstone, reshaping them into fragile arches. On one side, floodwaters had crafted a gallery of swirling chambers and tunnels that overlapped with astonishing complexity.
But most miraculous of all was the cradle of everything the Sojourners had been and might become—the Stone City. All those primal forces had carved a long, low diagonal cleft in the belly of Mount Abrai. There, perched in this niche above Sanctuary Canyon, Mori’s ancestors had built their most sacred place. At this time of day, the rays of the setting sun streamed over the cliffs that guarded the front of the wide gorge, splashing the facades of the Stone City with golden light. The buildings were as old as the Sojourners, constructed of meticulously honed sandstone bricks. They ranged in size from hovels to a four-level structure with arched ramparts.
Mori found Lessandra hunched over the furrows of her garden in a pool of afternoon sunlight. Although the Stone City was in shadow most of the day, hardy species of plant life needing minimal light managed to sprout, including vines bearing the sweet blue silberry. But this year’s vines were shriveled and barren. A hint of a breeze riffled Lessandra’s white hair as she pressed seeds into the ground and patted handfuls of gritty soil over them.
“Nothing grew this year, Lessandra,” Mori said. “The underground springs have dried up. What’s the point of planting more seeds?”
Lessandra picked up her walking stick, dug it into the ground, and used it to stand up. Her right leg was missing below the knee, the hem of her legging pinned up to cover the stump. She propped the stick’s padded knob under her arm. She wasn’t young, and she looked older. One lashless eyelid drooped, and a fine network of creases incised her leathery skin. She fixed Mori with a one-eyed gaze. “Because it’s our way. It’s a renewal of hope that our Mother will forgive us for what’s been done to her land. She’ll see we’re trying to make it better. And she’ll send us the water we need. Sacrifice and resurrection. Why are you questioning the Testament?”
Mori replied with a sullen shrug. “It just seems so useless.”
The old woman rested her weight on the crutch. “You know better than that,” she scolded.
“We spotted someone coming.”
“Who?”
“Couldn’t tell. Too far away. Looked like two alive, one dead.”
“Don’t know who.” Lessandra sighed. “Well, we’ll know soon enough. Spread the word—tell everyone to gather here once the travelers are inside the canyon. I’ll do the service then. I’ll be inside meanwhile.” She muttered an invocation over the newly planted seeds, then hobbled to the open door of the two-story building adjacent to her garden.
The two surviving fighters rode their ealixes through the pass below the lookout point atop the broken back of the Abraian range. They followed the meandering arroyo that led into Sanctuary Canyon, but that was as far as the beasts could go. Surefooted as they were in open terrain, they were simply too bulky to clamber up steep slopes, so they were turned loose by their riders to join the small herd of perhaps two dozen animals grazing on the brambles and prickle brush that grew along a desiccated stream bed. The tired trickle of water springing from a subterranean source was just enough to keep the ealixes alive.
Using a rough-weave blanket from the dead man’s pack, the riders fashioned a sling in which to carry the corpse up the switchback trail snaking to the top of the canyon bowl. By the time they reached the encampment, all three hundred residents were gathered in the natural amphitheater behind Lessandra’s abode. Gouged out of the stone by prehistoric water flows, the theater had been enhanced by Sojourner masons, long since dead, who had cut curved benches into the mountainside. Mori and Glin waited near Lessandra as the pair of riders gently laid their burden on the ground, then pushed back their own hoods. It was Mori’s first chance to see who had lived and who had died. The dead man was Bradsil. There was a scorched spot on his chest where he’d been shot, and his face was puffed and caked with blood. He had been beaten before they executed him.
Mori was sorry that Bradsil had been killed, especially since he and his wife were expecting a baby. But she hadn’t known him well. And she was relieved to see that her father’s friend Durren had come back in one piece. Durren had been one of Mori’s surrogate parents, probably her favorite. She greeted him with a hug, then looked up into his weathered face, with the long scar down his left cheek. She had always been curious about how he got it, but she was afraid to ask. His whiskers sagged, matching the weariness in his heavy-lidded eyes.
The other survivor was a fighter not much older than Mori, and his eyes still displayed fire through the veil of his fatigue. “They murdered him,” the younger man said fiercely.
Lessandra limped forward. There was no sound at all from the rest of the gathering. “Did you find him, Mikken?”
The young fighter cradled his rifle like a beloved child and nodded. “They murdered Bradsil and then threw his body where they knew we’d find him.”
Glin stepped forward. “How many more, Lessandra?”
“As many as it takes,” said Lessandra with a flinty glare.
“As many as it takes to satisfy your hunger for vengeance against Ruer Stross? That’s not enough of a reason anymore.”
“Who chose you to decide where the Hidden Hand points us?”
“No one—yet. But many of us question whether you can see where it points anymore.”
A reed-thin man with a gray beard came up alongside Glin. “We proved we’re willing to fight,” he said, “and our raids have gotten more daring. They know nothing is safe from us. It’s time to see if we’ve scared them into talking peace on our terms.”
“Jaminaw,” Lessandra said disdainfully, “you’re a fool. Durren, did you accomplish your mission?”
; He nodded. “The bomb went off as planned. Someone from the starship was there when it did, according to our agents inside.”
“How much damage did it cause?”
“Enough.”
Lessandra turned back to her critics. “Then Bradsil didn’t die for nothing. They accomplished what they set out to do.”
“But what will that accomplish?” Glin demanded.
Lessandra dismissed the retort with an imperious wave of her free hand. “This isn’t the time or place for an argument. We have a service to perform.” She limped over to face the others. “In time of death and sorrow, it is our custom, as it has been since the old times, to tell of the garden. Our Mother World created a garden, and she herself was the garden, one and the same. She allowed us to live there, and she allowed those early people to flourish. But soon the people forgot their Mother’s words and ways, and they turned to new ways, bad ways. The Mother World had no choice but to punish the people, and she sent them from the garden. We Sojourners know that only when all our people live by the Mother’s word again will we be allowed to return to the garden where life first bloomed. When that happens, it will bloom again, and we shall be home, living in peace and plenty for all time.”
Lessandra scanned the faces of the people sitting on the stone benches, then cleared her throat. When she continued, her tone was strident. “The government of this world violates everything we believe in. They are raping our Mother World. As long as they do so, we can never compromise.” She raised her hand and traced a circle in the air, then continued in a singsong: “Lord of life, Lord of death, two halves of the same. You are the master of all. You permit our sojourn in your garden-womb. Unless there is death, there cannot be life. Grant us peaceful renewal. Harvest our souls.”
She bowed her head for a few moments of quiet, then looked up and waved to a pregnant woman seated in the second row of benches. “Kuri, come here.”
Bradsil’s widow, Mori thought, and watched as Kuri approached Lessandra. For the first time she realized Kuri couldn’t be more than a year or two older than she was, and she wondered if she could be as stoic if her husband was killed.
“We confirm the circle of life,” Kuri whispered, her eyes dry and unseeing, as she repeated Lessandra’s gesture. “The circle and the cycle are all in life and time. There is no beginning and no ending, just the circle.”
Lessandra patted Kuri’s bulging abdomen. “You and your child are symbols of the circle, as are we all. Within that circle, we all share your loss.”
Kuri nodded numbly, then turned back the way she had come.
At a signal from Lessandra, two burly young men picked up the blanket-wrapped body of Bradsil. “Take our brother and commit him to the Cave of Remembrance,” she intoned.
Mori glanced at Glin and sensed her barely suppressed anger. When Kuri and the bearers were out of earshot, Glin exploded.
“That cave is overflowing with your dead bodies, Lessandra! When will you come to your senses and stop this bloodshed?”
“When they give us back our world,” the other woman replied.
Mori couldn’t listen any longer.
Bad enough that there was bloodshed between the Sojourners and Stross, but for the Sojourners to fight among themselves . . .
She ran until she reached the ledge. From there she watched the ealix herd grazing calmly down in the crook of the canyon. She started when she felt a strong hand enclose her shoulder, but relaxed when she realized it was Durren. “What’s wrong?”
She shrugged, blinking back tears. “I guess I’m just confused.”
“About what?”
“Whom to believe, what to believe . . .”
“You believe what your father taught.”
“I’m not sure I even remember what my father taught. I certainly don’t remember my father.” She took a composing breath. “He taught me to think. You taught me to act—to ride and shoot, to survive out there.” She nodded toward the dusk-shrouded desert. “It’s easier to believe in actions. Especially when everybody’s thoughts collide.”
Durren smiled down at her. “To tell you the truth, I always had a hard time understanding everything what your father said myself.”
She gave him a quizzical stare. “You did? But you were almost like brothers.”
“Even brothers don’t always understand each other. To Evain, everything was so complicated.”
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. He was a good man. He believed in the right things, and he put his life on the line for them.”
“Would I have loved him if I’d known him?”
Durren nodded. “I’m sure of it.”
They were quiet for a few moments, watching the tranquil ealixes down below. “Durren, did you—”
He winced briefly. “Oh, Mori, don’t ask me that.”
“I have to,” she said, her expression hardening. “Did you find out anything about my father?”
“Little one, that’s not why we went to Bareesh.”
“But you know what that escaped prisoner said when we saw him at Crossroads. He swore he talked to Evain in the prison hospital less than a year ago.”
“I know what he said.”
“And you said you’d see what you could find out—”
Durren’s temper flared. “We were on a mission. We lost a good fighter. We’re lucky the two of us got away alive. Mori, we can’t drop everything to find out about rumors—”
She cut him off. “Do you really think he’s dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think there’s any chance at all he might not be?”
He took a deep breath before answering. “A chance.”
“That’s all I wanted to know.” She smiled. “I’ll see you later, Durren.”
“Durren.” Lessandra beckoned him over to where she was talking with Glin and Jaminaw. “This is our time; I’m sure of it. It’s in the Testaments, just as Evain preached before they caught him. This starship that has arrived—it’s the Hidden Hand working for us.”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Durren, do you think we can kidnap the captain of the Enterprise?”
Glin’s eyes opened wide. “Have you lost your mind?”
“No,” said Lessandra, “I’m using my mind, which is something you should try doing more often. Durren, what about it?”
He thought a moment. “Our agents say the captain stays on his ship. It was his executive officer, a man named Riker, who beamed down with some Federation representative.”
“Good enough. This executive officer, Riker, will do as a hostage.”
Glin’s disbelief grew. “And what if this captain—what’s his name?”
“Picard,” said Durren.
“What if this Captain Picard won’t bargain with us?”
Lessandra’s face remained impassive. “Then Executive Officer Riker may very well become a casualty of war.”
Chapter Seven
WESLEY CRUSHER sat cross-legged on his bed. “I do miss you, Mom, but it’s not as bad as I thought.”
Beverly Crusher, on Wesley’s cabin viewer, feigned deep distress. “Words to warm a mother’s heart.”
“You know what I mean,” Wes laughed. “I hardly have time to think about it.”
“Are you eating?”
Wes rolled his eyes at the indignity of this maternal interrogation. “Of course. How’s your job going?”
“Well, I’ve discovered that being chief of Starfleet Medicine has its good points and its bad points. Too much administration, not enough medicine.”
Wesley glanced at the time on his computer screen. “Mom, I have to go.”
“Bridge duty?”
“No, I have to give a report to Captain Picard.”
Beverly’s eyebrows arched beneath her red hair. “I’m impressed.”
“No big deal.” Wesley shrugged. “It was just a little research project Data gave me.”
�
��Has he learned to tell a joke yet?”
“Not exactly,” Wesley said. “But he keeps trying. Maybe by the next time we see you . . .”
“Oh, Wes,” she sighed, “I wish that could be soon, but I just don’t know when I’m going to be able to escape this bureaucratic black hole.”
“I understand, Mom. Well, I better get going.”
“Bye, honey. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Mom. Bye.”
Dr. Crusher’s wistful smile faded from the viewer, and Wes felt a little blue, the way he always did after they’d spoken by comm channel. These were the moments when he felt most alone. But he’d stayed with the ship by choice, and now he had work to do.
He slid off the bed, straightened his uniform, and headed for the bridge.
Captain Picard peered across his ready-room desk. “I gave this assignment to you, Mr. Data.”
“And I gave it to Ensign Crusher, sir. I felt it would be useful for him to gain experience doing research not directly related to his special skills in engineering and propulsion science.”
Seated on the corner of Picard’s desk, Riker nodded his approval. “A reasonable reassignment, Data. Very well, Mr. Crusher. Report on the Sojourners.”
Wesley swallowed, wishing his mouth didn’t taste like he’d taken a swig of composite-repair glue. He stood so stiffly he could barely breathe. “Yes, sir.”
“At ease, Ensign,” Riker said. “My granddad used to tell me, ‘Look ’em in the eye and tell ’em what you know.’ ”
“Yes, sir.” Wesley loosened up as he went along. “There wasn’t that much information in the Federation files, so I did a little searching. The Sojourners were originally a small religious group that began in the Endrayan Realm—that’s the province next to the one where the government is now—about two thousand years ago. They believed in coexisting with nature. I guess you could say that belief was the basis for their whole religion. The realm where they lived wasn’t very fertile, but it was possible to farm there with the help of irrigation. And there were lots of mineral and ore deposits, so mining also got started there.”
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