“What are they?” Zahn said. “They’re like phantoms of light.”
The orbs cast strange lights all around them.
“Do you feel that?” Asha said.
“No. What is it?”
“It’s like a presence. A warmth. I think I’m supposed to try healing your mother again.”
“Then keep going.”
Asha placed both of her hands on Darshana’s heart and pushed once. To her surprise, Darshana coughed, took a deep breath, and for a brief instant, she blinked.
“Did you see that? She blinked!”
“Yes. But that doesn’t mean she’s recovered yet.”
Asha kept working as the floating lights indicated other spots that needed attention. At times, Zahn could have sworn that light itself was coming out of Asha’s fingertips, and they worked like this for over an hour, Darshana occasionally opening her eyes for a few moments only to close them once more. Even after all of the wonders they’d seen, seeing his mother’s dark green eyes again was the best sight he’d seen in years.
Finally, after three hours of intense work and a few short breaks to eat some of the food they’d found earlier, Darshana opened her eyes.
And she kept them open.
At first, Darshana had no idea what had happened. She coughed violently and took a deep breath. Then her eyes locked with Zahn’s.
“What happened to you?” she said slowly.
“It’s me, Mom. I’m here. We saved you. You’re safe now.”
Zahn tried to stay strong and not to cry.
“Where?”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
Darshana’s eyes closed again.
“So tired…”
“Here. Have her drink this. It will accelerate her healing.”
Asha had brought over a small vial that contained a familiar golden liquid.
“Is that amrita? You saved some?”
“I thought it would come in handy, so I didn’t drink it all. Here, Darshana. Drink it slowly.”
Asha pressed the translucent vial to Darshana’s lips, and she sat up a bit and sipped it. When she finished the last drop, Zahn could easily see the difference. Color was returning to her face, and the light behind her eyes was brighter. Darshana closed her eyes and fell asleep once more. But this was a truer sleep, a deeper sleep.
“Thank you so much, Asha,” Zahn whispered. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”
“What are friends for?” Asha smiled.
Patiently, Asha and Zahn waited. While Zahn stayed by her side and used the ship to track her pulse and temperature, Asha went to work on diagnosing the problem with the cloaking cells. As Navika had hypothesized, the pulsar’s radiation had leaked into some of the cells, and Asha set to work on retuning them and resetting the field.
During this time, Zahn hardly left his mother’s side. By the time Asha finished her work on the cloaking field, she noticed that Zahn had fallen asleep beside his mother as she slept on the long bench.
Asha walked over and watched Zahn in his slumber. He moved his head slightly every few seconds, as if he were in the midst of a dream, and mumbled something she didn’t understand. After a few seconds he mumbled again, and Asha walked closer to try and understand what he was saying.
“Oon says, we’re going to make it,” he mumbled.
Asha knelt down and whispered into his ear.
“Yes,” she said. “Oonak has faith in us.”
The thought that Zahn was talking to Oonak in his dream was oddly comforting to Asha, but she frowned at the thought of Zahn waking up and remembering what had happened. She missed Oonak very much, but there was nothing she or anyone else could do about it now.
“But Dad,” Zahn mumbled. “She is still alive.”
Asha wondered where Zahn could be now. His eyes were darting back and forth behind his closed eyelids.
“Why did you let her go?” Zahn whispered. “Didn’t you love her? Didn’t you?”
A wave of sadness swept over Asha. When she thought of Zahn struggling even in his dreams, she felt pity. She wasn’t proud of the feeling, but hearing his dreams had changed her somehow. She felt she now knew Zahn in a way she hadn’t known anyone in a long time.
“Zahn,” Asha whispered into his ear. “You’re dreaming.”
Zahn inhaled slightly but remained asleep.
“But you don’t have to dream about that,” she continued. “You can dream about whatever you want. Dream about seeing her well again.”
Zahn’s breathing slowed.
“I wasn’t sure before, Zahn, but now I can feel it. With the help of the amrita and the phantoms of light, your mother will recover. I can feel it. Dream of her now. Dream of your home. Dream of walking with her along the silvery sands just like you told me about. Can you see it?”
Zahn mumbled something, but she couldn’t understand it. She performed a blessing on both of them that the Amithyans had taught her and sat down beside him as she waited patiently for one of them to awaken.
Then, Darshana did something remarkable: she sat up.
CHAPTER 31
THE DISEASE & THE CURE
Zahn woke up right before it happened. He was sitting on the floor admiring the stars, when she abruptly sat up. Holding the blanket to cover herself, she looked around the cabin. At first, he thought he might be imagining it, until she spoke.
“Where am I?” she said. Her voice was soft and weak.
Zahn sat up and gently took his mother’s hand.
“You’re on a ship. You’re safe. How do you feel?”
Darshana closed her eyes for a moment and took another deep breath. “I’m cold. Zahn, what happened to you?”
“What do you mean, Mom? I’m fine.” Zahn turned to Asha. “Do you have any extra clothes my mom could borrow?”
“Of course.” Asha dug through one of the compartments under the seat.
“What happened to you Zahn? You’re so big. I was asleep. There was no time… no sense of time…”
“I know, Mom. You’ve been gone for a while, but everything’s okay now. Asha is getting you something to wear.”
“Who are you?” Darshana said weakly as Asha helped her put on an Aaravan robe.
“This is Asha,” Zahn said. “She helped us. She’s a friend.”
“A friend. That’s good.” Darshana smiled slightly and closed her eyes once more.
Zahn wondered how much blood she might have lost that day before they arrived. The image of the Hataazan and the bloody tube flashed back into his mind, but he pushed it aside.
“I dreamt of you and your father. I dreamt for so long that I began to think that the dreams might be real,” she said. “How did you find me?”
“Well, it’s a long story, but the council helped, and—”
The jagrul, which was eating some seeds near one of the rear corners of the cabin, suddenly whistled toward Zahn.
“—the jagrul helped a lot, too. But, we never could have found you if you hadn’t given me this.”
Zahn took the lens out of his pocket and showed it to her.
Darshana smiled. “My old lens. Remember when I gave that to you? We were at the observatory. We were talking about what it means to see.”
“Yes, I remember! I remember everything. I just can’t believe I’m finally sitting here with you… Mom, everyone thought you were dead. You’ve been gone for so long, but because of this lens, and a lot of help, I was able to find you.”
“Lens,” Darshana repeated. Her voice was stronger now.
“Yep.” Zahn smiled.
“Zahn, that’s why they took me. The lens.”
“This lens? I don’t understand.”
“No, not that lens…” Darshana’s eyes widened. “Zahn! We did it. We invented a device that could see the gravitational connections between worlds, between anything. No longer did we have to wait and observe their motion to calculate it. We could finally see the spacetime curvature itself. We
called it the Gravity Lens.”
“That’s astounding. But I work at the Ashraya Observatory, and I’ve never heard of that. Was it an observatory project?”
“You work there now?”
“Yes. I’m an observer.”
“I’m so proud of you, Zahn. Do you enjoy it there?—No. Must focus. The lens. I was the lead scientist on a small team. It was extremely secret. Zahn, that’s why I was taken. Because of the horror that I saw through the lens.”
Zahn and Asha were spellbound.
“What did you see?”
“I surveyed all of the planets in our solar system to test it, and I found something that was simply impossible. Zahn, do you remember Rodhas? Do you recall it ever showing any traces of life or possessing any unusual qualities?”
“Well, I was never assigned to survey that planet, but no. I’ve never read any reports that suggest life. Besides, Rodhas is the farthest planet from our star. It’s freezing.”
“Yet when you look at it through the Gravity Lens, it violates everything we know about astrophysics. Zahn, it’s hollow inside.”
“What?”
“It’s hollow inside, yet it contains more mass than a gas giant. So I asked myself: how could this occur through natural means?”
“Well, I suppose if two planets formed in the same dust belt… No, that wouldn’t work—”
“It’s not possible, Zahn. I ran every simulation I could think of, and it’s not possible for a planet to naturally form that way. So I had to face the truth. What’s going on inside Rodhas is not a natural phenomenon. And then it got even stranger.”
“What’s stranger than that?” Asha said.
“When I first detected the anomaly, I stayed in the lab all night. I kept the planet under close observation, and during the night I clearly observed that the mass was increasing gradually, hour by hour. It was a slight change, but it was increasing at a predictable rate. I calculated that it would only take about twelve years to reach a mass that would destabilize our entire solar system. And then… well, I can only remember bits and pieces after that—”
Darshana stopped in mid-sentence and studied Zahn’s face.
“But Zahn, you’re all grown up. It must have been years.” The light behind her eyes was brighter now. “How long have I been gone? Zahn, you must tell me. What about Avani? Zahn, is Avani all right?”
“When I left, Avani was fine. But that was… well I traded my photodisc so I don’t know how long ago that was. I’m sure I could ask Navika how long I’ve been gone, but honestly, I don’t care. We still have time to act. I can feel it.”
Zahn glanced back toward the command chair.
“Navika, are you familiar with anything that may be capable of doing what my mother saw through the Gravity Lens?”
There was silence for a moment while Navika considered this.
“According to my Confederation records, there are only two races in the galaxy that are capable of creating such potent gravity anomalies: the Taarakani, who have been missing for aeons, and the Vakragha.”
Zahn thought back to how Oonak had sacrificed himself to allow them to escape with his mother safely. No one had ever done something so selfless for him before.
“In fact,” Navika continued, “what your mother describes sounds remarkably like the legend in which the Sanguine Suns grew wormholes within planets to conceal them. According to the legend, once a wormhole was unleashed from the core of a transformed planet, the rest of the planets in the system were soon swallowed up, carrying them off into Sanguine Space.”
“Wait. Are you saying the Vakragha are growing an artificial wormhole on the edge of the Kuvela system? Near my home?!”
“Indeed,” Navika said. “Your mother’s findings strongly suggest this.”
“The wormholes in the legend are real? Do we have proof?”
“Don’t you remember the stolen Taarakani moon in the nebula?” Asha said. “How do you think it got there?”
Zahn was speechless. The thought of his mother being returned was once an untouchable dream. Now that he had saved her, he felt as if nothing could ever be wrong again, until this. The thought that his entire planet might be on the brink of total disaster froze his thinking for a moment.
“And the wormhole is going to kill everyone on Avani?” Zahn finally said.
“Uncertain,” Navika said. “Before we reached Avani, Oonak and I came upon a group of people who claimed to have escaped from an enslaved world, though our encounter with them was brief. Therefore, it is possible that the planets are swallowed up and the inhabitants are merely enslaved instead of annihilated. Although, that sounds like a fate even worse than death.”
“So if the legend is true, that means Avani could get swallowed up into the Vakragha Dominion like the prison world we just rescued my mother from?”
“The available evidence supports this hypothesis.”
Zahn ran up to the command chair and sat down.
“We have to get back to Avani now. We have to warn them. They may only have days left.”
“Wait!” Asha ran up to him. “What Navika said strongly supports the existence of the Tulari. You’re forgetting the rest of the legend, Zahn. How did the Innocents save themselves?”
Zahn tried hard to think back to when Oonak had first told him the legend, back before they’d even landed on Aarava. But he drew a blank.
“The Innocents found the Tulari, Zahn!” she said. “They found it in a cave deep underground and used it to seal up the wormhole forever. Don’t you see? What’s happening to your world echoes the legend, and the Tulari is the only effective weapon against them.”
“Asha, that’s great. I’m glad it might turn out to exist, but how could we even hope to find it? It has been over twelve years since my mother discovered the anomaly. We are out of time!”
A look of dread crossed Darshana’s face.
“It exists,” Asha said. “Trust me. My father has gathered too much information from too many sources for it to be a fabrication. It exists, and it can bend space around it unlike anything you could ever imagine.”
“Over twelve years. Over twelve years…”
“Mom, don’t worry. Just let me figure this out.”
“Zahn, the anomaly could be on the brink of destroying everything we know.”
“Mom, please be quiet for a just a second. I need some silence to think about this. Asha is technically an extraterrestrial, as was the owner of this ship. Ask her about living on a moon base. Ask her anything. Just please give me a few minutes to think. We can solve this.”
A silence fell upon the cabin, and Zahn listened to the quiet hum of the ship and contemplated the situation. Darshana looked over to Asha, seemingly studying her.
“You’re not from Avani?” Darshana said.
“Ah, no. I thought you knew.”
“I assumed from the tone of your skin that you might be from one of the southern continents, but now… Do you mind if I ask about where you live?”
“It’s just a small outpost that services travelling starships. My father and I repair them and sell supplies, primarily.”
“Extraordinary.”
Zahn stood up.
“Okay, it’s settled,” he said. “We’re heading back to Avani, finding this Gravity Lens device, and using it to find the Tulari. After all, if the legend is true, the Tulari is our only hope of saving Avani, anyway.”
“Whoa, Zahn! One step at a time here,” Asha said. “There’s no guarantee that the Gravity Lens will help us find it. After all, my father has been searching for the Tulari for most of his life. Do you honestly think—”
“Do you have a better idea, Asha? First Oonak was attacked in orbit above Avani by a ship that seemed even more advanced than Navika, and now this. Asha, the Vakragha are practically at my planet’s doorstep, and every passing minute is a minute that they’re closer to consuming my planet whole, and who knows how many others.”
“All I was going to say was,
we should go find my father.”
Slowly, Darshana turned around and looked at them. Her gaze was strangely calming.
“Zahn, from what I’m hearing, I don’t think we need the Gravity Lens at all. If what Asha says is true about the Tulari bending space, then it has a unique energetic fingerprint.”
“Of course.” Asha brightened. “If the Tulari can erase artificial wormholes, then it must have a truly incredible gravity signature. It probably leaves trace radiation, as well.”
“But Asha,” Zahn said, “the galaxy is huge. There’s no way we can scan billions of stars to find it. We need information, some clue that will point us in the right direction.”
For a moment, his gaze drifted over to the countless number of stars around them.
“You know, you two make a good team.” Darshana smiled.
“Only part of a team…” Zahn looked down to the partially transparent floor.
Asha walked over to him and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Zahn. We’ll see Oonak again. I can feel it.”
Zahn tried to imagine what Oonak would do in this situation, but his mind went blank. As Asha walked back down to where Darshana was and gave her some water, Zahn was surprised to hear Navika chime in on the situation.
“Sadness in a captain affects the entire crew. Is there anything I can do to help?” Navika said.
“Nothing. Unless you can bring Oonak back or simulate a model of the entire galaxy…”
Then, Zahn’s eyes flashed with excitement.
“Wait a second. Navika, based on everything we know about the Tulari, can you create a working model of such an object? And if so, could you extrapolate possible gravitational profiles based on that model, and then scan for any matches?”
“Yes, but extrapolation will limit my accuracy.”
“It’s our best shot. Do it.”
As Navika worked, Zahn looked out onto the stars ahead, and then over to his mother. She was resting again, and Asha was sitting beside her.
Once again, Navika’s crisp voice filled the cabin.
“I’ve constructed as accurate of a model as possible based on all of the available data. But I’m sorry to report that nothing within range or in memory matches that gravitational profile. I’d recommend executing a search pattern, instead.”
Epic of Aravinda 1: The Truth Beyond the Sky Page 22