Forgotten Suns

by Judith Tarr

  Nobody else said anything, either. They were all either recovering from jump, getting ready to land, or not able to speak PanTerran.

  Aisha took a deep breath. “Ra-Harakhte greets MEP 1403. We’re bringing the ship all the way down with a load of cargo.”

  She tried to deepen her voice and sound more like a grown woman, but Vikram’s ears were much too sharp for that. “Aisha? Aisha Nasir Kanakarides? Is that you?”

  “And Aunt Khalida,” Aisha said. “Captain Nasir, I mean. Will you let us come down?”

  “What in the name of all that’s unholy are you doing—” Vikram broke off as if he’d remembered his Spaceforce training. When he spoke again, he clipped out the words in proper professional style. “Stand by for landing coordinates.”

  ~~~

  They came down on the plain outside the ruined city, where tourist ships usually went, and the ground had been leveled to hold them. Ship was much bigger than any ship or shuttle that had landed there yet, but there was room for it, just.

  It could dive through the heart of a star. This planet’s atmosphere and gravity were nothing to it, as long as it had the sun to fuel it. It was happy enough to let the planet hold it up.

  Aisha had been going to put on the good clothes Alexandra had bought for her in Kom Ombo, the pretty blue dress and the headscarf with the gold sequins, but at the last minute she decided to go with her plain ordinary digging clothes. Rama had the same idea, but Aunt Khalida had gone the other way, with an embroidered coat she’d found on the rogue moon, and the rest of the outfit to match. The boots had copper heels.

  She looked like one of them, with her narrow brown face and her wide dark eyes, except for her clipped hair. She was making a statement with that, probably. Aunt Khalida always had to dare people to argue with her.

  Aisha’s hands were cold and her mouth was dry. One way and another she found herself in the lead while they waited for the hatch to open in the shuttle bay, that being the only part of Ship that could hold all eight hundred of them at once.

  She was alone in front of them all, with no time or room to escape. Dr. Ma stood close behind, and Kirkov. Everybody else hung back, even Elti. Especially Aunt Khalida and Rama.

  Aisha felt like a scout probe. If she blew up, the rest would know not to go out there.

  She was not going to blow up. Everybody had come to meet them: the whole expedition, running to the landing field on foot or in rovers the way they always did on the rare occasion when a ship came by this part of the universe. That would be the new interns, most of the usual staff, and Vikram and Shenliu. And Jamal and Mother and Pater.

  Maybe she would blow up after all. She reminded herself to breathe.

  Sunlight flooded through the opening hatch. A cold wind blew in, bringing smells of earth and grass and melting snow. It was early spring here, which meant that time had passed a bit faster than it had on the other side.

  That was better than what Aisha had secretly been dreading, which was that their handful of tendays on the moon had added up to centuries here. They were more or less in sync after all.

  Aisha stepped forward. She wasn’t noticing anything now but the people outside.

  Not just the expedition. Most of Blackroot tribe was there, and a scattering of people from other tribes. They stood back the way the people on the ship stood behind Aisha. Waiting. Taking it all in.

  Winter-dry grass crackled under Aisha’s feet. She drank a deep gulp of the clean cold air. She wanted to run toward Mother and Pater and even Jamal, but there was something she had to do and say first.

  She turned back to face the people in the ship. In Old Language she said, “From light into dark you went, and from dark into light you return. Be welcome, people of the lost world. Be welcome, and be home.”

  She hadn’t bobbled it too badly. Rama could have sung it, but he was being obstinately silent.

  She turned again and faced the daylight. This time there was movement behind her: people walking slowly out of the ship and into their ancestors’ world.

  ~~~

  Aisha thought about hiding until it all blew over, but Nevermore’s part of it would take years, and her part would not end in this life.

  She faced the inquisition that night. It was late and everyone was ready to fall over, but Pater had a thing about sitting down for a meal no matter what the distractions. If no one but the family managed it, that was enough to satisfy him.

  Tonight it was just what Aisha wanted. She cooked, which was as much hiding from everyone as she meant to do. When the parents and Jamal came in, sparking with all they’d heard and seen and had to look forward to, she had the lamps lit in the family dining room and the food on the table.

  Her heart beat so hard she could barely hear herself think. Her hands were shaky and cold. She’d gnawed through half a loaf of new-baked bread to try to calm herself down, and now her stomach felt bloated and sore.

  They all stopped just inside the room. Nobody looked at anybody else, but they sat down in their usual places and started passing bowls and platters.

  She’d made too much. Mostly it was nerves, and some was habit. She was used to cooking for a mob.

  She couldn’t eat. Watching them fix eyes on plates and shovel in bread and pilaf made her want to climb up in the rafters and scream.

  She slammed her hands down on the table. Everything jumped, even Pater. “That’s it. That’s enough. Just sentence me to house arrest for the rest of my natural life and get it over with.”

  Jamal went back to shoveling in vegetables, but his eyes were on her for a change. They were angry. “Next time you plot to save the world, don’t ditch me. I could have helped.”

  Aisha flinched. She’d had that coming. It didn’t stop her from shooting back, “You could have died. I made sure you were safe. Even if the expedition got kicked off Nevermore, you’d still be alive.”

  “But you wouldn’t!”

  They glared at each other, breathing hard. Jamal’s eyes spilled over with tears.

  Aisha refused to cry. “I didn’t die. Here I am. Right here. I did what I went to do. I helped solve the mystery. Now the expedition can’t be shut down. The mages won’t let it. They need us to help them find their way in this new universe. No one else can do it as well as we can. And they know it.”

  “Until U.P. shows up with a fleet of destroyers,” Jamal said.

  “That’s enough, I think,” Mother said. Her tone was terrifyingly mild. “Aisha, you did an amazing thing and I’m proud of you for that, but I am your mother, and there are certain standards I’m expected to meet. You’ll be receiving your worldsweb implant as soon as it’s practicable to get one shipped here. That will make you much easier to track. In the meantime, you’re confined to the boundaries of this city. You may, with my express permission, visit Blackroot village. That’s as far as you’re traveling, except for such time as the—mages—” She had a hard time saying it; most of the adults did. She shook her head and tried again. “If the mages need your services, they will have them. And that will be all, unless and until you prove you can be trusted.”

  That was much better than Aisha had been expecting. She couldn’t let anybody see how relieved she was, but she managed to say, “Thank you, Mother. I won’t disappoint you.”

  “I would hope not,” Mother said.

  Aisha could feel what Mother was feeling: a complicated mix of love, grief, anger, and pride. Her own feelings weren’t too different, except that there was less anger.

  All this time, Pater hadn’t said a word. He was usually the one who started shouting first. Aisha raised her eyes and made herself look into his face.

  He always scowled. He used to do it, Mother had told her once, because he was so young to be the head of a major expedition, and he had to do whatever he could to back people down. Now he really was older and eminent and had such authoritative eyebrows, he couldn’t help himself.

  He had been so scared. She didn’t mean to see and feel that, but there i
t was. Every morning he’d prayed that she would come home alive. At first he’d wanted her mind and body whole, too. Then he would just settle for having her back.

  She launched herself over the table—she flew; and she couldn’t help that, either. His arms opened to catch her.

  She clung to him and wailed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

  He held her close and let her howl herself out. That took a while. It had been building up since before she left.

  Now she was back and she had saved the world, or enough to keep the expedition on it for another season or two at least. That was a good thing, but she’d hurt people in doing it. She’d hurt Pater. He’d never forgive her, ever.

  That came out in her wail. Pater answered it in his soft rumble of a voice, in Arabic that had been first language she ever heard. “God always forgives. Should I refuse to follow his example?”

  She pushed back till his grip loosened, so she could see his face. There were tears on it.

  Pater, crying. She gaped at him, all the drama shocked out of her.

  He actually smiled. It was like sun breaking out after one of the ferocious storms that tore across the plains. “We’re good, then?” he said.

  She swallowed. Her throat ached too much for speech. She nodded.

  “Good,” Pater said, and now he looked and sounded like himself again. “Good. Now get to bed. Morning comes early, and you have work to do.”

  69

  When the rest of the universe caught up with the Ra-Harakhte’s whereabouts, a whole chorus of hammers would fall. But the beginning brought so much archaeological and anthropological euphoria that Khalida could glide along all but unnoticed.

  The mages put up a tent city beside the river and moved all their baggage into it, along with their stores. They would not ask anyone to help or feed them, but the tribes came on their own, bringing whatever they could spare after the winter.

  It was a gift, and the mages accepted it. It helped them find their feet in this new-old world, and proved that they were welcome.

  When they planted the first of the year’s crops, the tribes worked beside them. The land was hard to farm, the sod was so thick and the grassroots so densely knotted, but the mages had ways to take care of that. No shyness about it, either, and no reason to think they needed any.

  They were an ongoing revelation for the expedition. Rashid looked absolutely furious, which was his way of expressing joy incomparable. He closed down excavations and concentrated on the living artifacts instead, setting his teams to helping the arrivals as they could, and recording every action and word.

  “Your brother has the scholar’s passion,” Daiyan said in the evening a tenday after the arrival. There had been no formal banquet yet, and no rituals of welcome beyond what little had marked the arrival, but mages and expedition had begun to cross-fertilize.

  On this first nearly warm night of spring, Daiyan and a handful of her fellow mages had come to dinner in the compound. Khalida had invited Daiyan; the others had followed, somewhat to Khalida’s dismay.

  That was short-lived. What intentions she had had for the ritual of meeting the family were better served by this more casual gathering. It was hardly the first time any of the mages had been inside the compound, but it was the first meal they had eaten there.

  It was warm enough with heaters for everyone to eat on the roof. For once there was no storm within sight or sense; the stars were out, and the moon was nearly full.

  Rashid was deep in conversation with Elti and a pair of twin mages who happened to be Daiyan’s cousins: identically tall, identically dark, and very differently minded when it came to the finer points of the sacred language. Rashid already had his own views, now he had access to the texts and the history behind them, and he was in no way shy about expressing them.

  “Are you laughing at him?” Khalida asked.

  “No,” Daiyan answered. “We admire passion. As you should know.”

  She made no physical move, but Khalida felt the warmth of her down deep. It was a promise, for later.

  For now there were worlds meeting, and a world changing. Even the precogs could not predict where it would go.

  Aisha’s voice rose above the babble of conversation. She was talking to Shenliu and her mother and a cluster of interns. “I’ve started a dictionary and a grammar of the common language, which is based on a combination of languages starting with Old Language. Now I’ve got back to a system set up for something besides the hard sciences, I’ll be able to get somewhere with it.”

  “Oh, come now,” Kirkov said from farther down the table. “You were doing perfectly well with ship’s web before you patched it all into the system here.”

  “Patches and kludges,” she said. “Though it was useful for translating science into psi and back again.”

  “You really did that?” one of the interns asked. “Put the two together?”

  “That’s how we found our way back. Psi alone couldn’t do it, and science didn’t know where to start.”

  Someone slid onto the bench beside Khalida. She glanced at him and started.

  Rama had been as close to invisible as it was possible for him to be. He had been avoiding gatherings and keeping his head down in the fields or among the tents. Khalida doubted that Rashid even knew he was there, though she suspected Marina did. To everyone else he was simply one more alien among the hundreds. Most assumed that if the pirate who had hijacked the Ra-Harakhte was on the planet at all, he was safely and discreetly confined to the ship.

  His presence here tonight reminded her poignantly of dinners on the roof before they went on the long hunt. She felt profoundly different now.

  He looked the same, even to the slightly ragged clothes and the air of not quite being in the world. But he too had changed. The shock of waking had eased. He had made his peace with this universe, if not yet with himself.

  She passed him what was left of the platter of roast not-quite-lamb, and Daiyan handed him a cup filled with vineberry juice. It could, if one tilted one’s perception just so, almost seem to resemble wine.

  “Not too appallingly bad,” he said of that. He said it in PanTerran, which Daiyan was undertaking to learn.

  Vikram passed by on his way to the sweets table. His stride checked; he stopped. “So,” he said. “I did see you working in the farthest field the other day.”

  Rama smiled up at him. “Good evening, Vikram.”

  “Good evening to you, too,” Vikram said. “I can’t say I’m sorry to see you survived. Though I should be. You’re wanted in all the hundred human and affiliated systems, did you know that?”

  “I did,” Rama answered. “Will you be arresting me?”

  “Not tonight.” Vikram sketched a salute and went back to his quest for Marina’s baklava.

  ~~~

  Khalida left Daiyan asleep in her bed and wandered down to the kitchen for coffee. On impulse she took the long way back, up along the wall that overlooked the stable.

  The sun was barely up. She shivered in her light robe. There was a bite of frost in the air, though it promised warmth again later.

  She saw Rama in the riding arena below, riding leisurely figures on the antelope stallion.

  “He’s been here every morning,” Marina said behind Khalida. Khalida jumped, then forced herself to relax as Marina came up beside her. “It’s as if he never went away.”

  Khalida wrapped her hands around her mug for warmth, and took a long sip of blissful bitterness. “Does Rashid know?”

  “Not that he’ll admit to.”

  “Probably wise of him,” Khalida said. “Otherwise he’ll have to confront the issue of harboring a fugitive.”

  “Technically,” Marina said, “he’s not. As long as the fugitive is on a restricted world, and as long as he can prove that he’s a native, he’s not subject to U.P. law.”

  “You think that will stop the bastards who are after him?”

  “Once they know he’s shown up with almost a thousand o
f his own species and laid claim to the planet the bastards have been trying to sink their claws into since they first realized it existed? Not for a nanosecond.”

  “My money’s on the thousand,” Khalida said.

  “So they really are psi masters,” said Marina.

  “Oh yes. Every last one. Even the children.”

  “Even the one in your bed?”

  “Especially the one in my bed,” Khalida said through the hot and sudden flush.

  Marina was kind enough not to remark on it. “She looks interesting,” she said. “I’ll look forward to knowing her better.”

  “She said the same of you,” said Khalida.

  Marina laughed. “Why don’t we start with breakfast, then. I’ll get it going. Go down and tell his majesty that he’s to join us. If, of course, it pleases his royal self.”

  “He’s not a king any more,” Khalida said.

  Marina’s smile expressed her opinion of that, before she retreated to the warmth of the house.

  ~~~

  Rama had no objection to accepting Marina’s invitation. Khalida lent him a hand with the antelope’s saddle and watched while he cooled the animal out and curried the sweat from his coat. It was peaceful work in the rising morning, while the interns assigned to the stables stumbled yawning in to clean stalls and discover that Rama had already fed the horses.

  When Rama was done and the stallion returned to his harem, Khalida blocked his path to the house. “So,” she said. “You’ll be staying here. What happens when the Corps comes hunting?”

  “I’ll be gone,” he said, “with a nice ripe trail for them to follow.”

  Khalida’s brows went up. “You’ll be gone? Where?”

  “Wherever my fancy takes me.”

  That was the old antic temper. He moved to step past her. She moved with him. “They’ll capture you the minute you clear this planet’s atmosphere.”

  “Not if I’m on board the Ra-Harakhte under the flag of Beijing Nine. I’ve contracted with the good doctor to retrieve the rest of her people from their various sanctuaries, then to assist them in continuing their research wherever and however we may judge best.”