by Clay Gilbert
“We use ships with hyperlight drives to travel, and these new things called Portals. If we couldn’t shorten the traveltime somehow, it’d take whole lifetimes to get from my world out to this part of space, which we call the Edge because it’s pretty far from anything we know or have bothered to chart. I don’t even know how to explain to you how big a distance it is.”
“That is all right,” she said. “I can-imagine it. I imagine many things, when I look up into the lights and darknesses. And what do you do on your world?” she asked him.
“I fly starships like that one,” he said, gesturing toward the still-ruined craft. “Fix them sometimes, too—isn’t that funny.” He chuckled. “Mostly I do what other people tell me.”
“And what do you want to do?” Annah asked. “Clearly, these things are not what you want.” Does everyone on her world have Annah’s gift for cutting to the heart of things? Holder wondered. “I always wanted to be a charter; an explorer. I wanted to catalog every last sector of unmapped or forgotten space.”
“So why did you not?” She asked the question the way she might have asked him why he’d turned left instead of right on the way back from the grocery store.
“Not much demand for that kind of career during wartime. There’s been way too much of that kind of time lately. And you? What do you do, Annah, here in this place?”
“I practice Healings. I learn to sing as best I can. I learn about Shaping. I have teachers among the Old Ones. They teach me, even in their dreams. More than anything else, I want to become a Shaper. It is a path that is lost to my people, and if I can, I would like to help restore it. But I cannot speak of these things to others. Like my-imaginingsthey are thought dangerous, even forbidden.”
“What about a grove of your own? A family, I mean? Bloomlings that come from you?” “Such things do not come to one who is alone, as I am. It is one reason some of the Old Ones think I am a disgrace to my own buds.”
“Is there no one who would make a Grove with you; stir the buds to grow within you?” Holder found that the more time he spent with Annah, the more he began to speak and think as she did.
Annah smiled. “The word you want is ‘homeground.’ A Grove is a large group of people-well, that is one thing it means.” She shook her head, looking embarrassed. “And no, there is not. And even were that not true--I want no part of them. They have lost their sight. They would be a disgrace to any buds they spilled their seed upon. And they will not have mine.”
“Smart girl. Gotta watch out for those ‘seed-youths.’ Especially their seed.”
Annah nodded, and smiled. “I have always thought that to be best.” Annah lifted the last of the sweetglobes they had brought with them to her mouth and bit into it. She made a contented sound, then offered the fruit to Holder, who took a bite himself.
“When I eat these,” she said, “I remember when my Memories had not yet taught me what your kind did to our world; when I could not dream of the horrors one people could inflict on another.”
“You mean you were born before the end of the last war? That would mean you were more than a hundred years old.”
Annah’s eyes became blue saucers. “Oh, no. Some of the Old Ones are that old, but I am not,” she said, laughing.
“I didn’t think so.” Holder said. “What I meant was-you see, all of my people have within us all the memories of our race. They do not come to us at first, or all at once, when they do come. It was only a few cycles ago that I remembered what had happened.”
“ I don’t even know what happened. I know there was a big battle near the end of the war, but I didn’t know where, against whom, or why. Why did they do it?” Looking at her, he couldn’t bring himself to say we.
“They thought they could use our gifts for Shaping thingsspecifically, the way some of us are able to speak to this planet and move with the flows of its life-as a weapon in their war. They did not understand. That is not how Shaping works. And when they gave up trying to understand our ways, they destroyed our world, so it would not be a ‘danger’to them. But it never would have been.”
“It doesn’t look destroyed,” Holder said, thinking of how much different the Earth of today looked, compared with pictures and vidclips of even half a century before.
“My people regrew it,” Annah said, her finger tracing shapes in the soil. “Those who were able to do so sang it back to strength; reminded it of its shape. And our world is whole now, for the most part, but my people have never been the same. You might say that they used the last of the music they knew to give this world back to itself. And now, many of us no longer even remember how to sing, or think we should.”
“But you remember.”
“Yes. And one day, when I can, I will teach others. All those whose Memories will not allow it, and still more.” * * * Kale Goodman couldn’t sleep. Evohe. The lost planet’s name itched in his mind like a half-healed scar. Forget about it, he told himself. It was Homesec business, and he’d always been a company man, above all. But what if the company was wrong? It was a dangerous thought. The company-the government, for god’s sake-wasn’t wrong. They kept this whole place from being as uncivilized and criminal as the outlaw worlds out on the Edge.
But to strafe a whole planet out of existence? A whole race? What justified planetary genocide? There had to be a reason. If there was one thing about the military life that comforted Goodman above all else, it was that the military was never random. If this Evohe had been thought to be dangerous, it must have been. Right? He shut his eyes tight against the crack of doubt in his mind and went back to sleep, fitfully dreaming of fire.
* * *
“Did you sleep well, Holder?” I was still sleeping, he thought, but said nothing, only sitting up in the blankets and rubbing his eyes. Annah was standing beside him, looking a lot more awake than he felt. He didn’t know where she’d slept; could only vaguely recall her leaving the fire and disappearing back into the woods. She handed him one of the sweetglobes she had picked from the woods while waiting for him to awaken. “I want you to see something. I have wanted you to see it for a while, but I think, now, you have healed enough to make the journey-and I think it will even do you good.” “Almost there,” Annah said, bringing Holder out of the reverie he’d fallen into as they travelled.
“Hmm? Oh, okay.” He smiled at her, and squeezed her hand. He’d apparently been holding it for some time, but he couldn’t remember taking it in the first place. It didn’t matter, though; it felt right, just like everything else did at that moment. If Holder had had any doubts that his wounds were healing, the several miles that he and Annah had walked would have convinced him otherwise.
He hadn’t been thinking about it, though; he’d been too busy taking in the diversity of the landscape around him. As he’d guessed when he’d first awakened from the crash, the planet’s surface seemed largely covered with thick expanses of woods and jungle terrain, much like the continent of Africa back on Earth. But like that continent, there were open places, too, here and there, short stretches of grassland. Now and again, Holder caught glimpses of creatures whose strange but oddly familiar shapes he could almost distinguish before they were lost again in motion and distance.
“So there is other life here, besides your kind?” he asked Annah. “Some,” she said. “When our world was restored, those who did it were more concerned with providing the essentials of life for our people. Some of the-details-were left out. But it seems our world has memories, as we do, and slowly, it is filling in the spaces. It is, as you would say, ‘a work in progress.’”
Holder smiled. She clearly comprehended his language well enough to make herself understood. Hell, she’d learned it in a couple of nights just from some edudiscs. From time to time, he noticed, she used phrases or metaphors with special emphasis, as if she were giving him a gift of words. He was beginning to see this giving as an essential part of who she was. Perhaps it had been that way for her people, too, before his people had destroyed their worl
d. God, is everything the same, everywhere?
“Can nothing change,Annah?” She turned her blue eyes to him, and her face was full of tenderness. “Not quickly, for the ancient trees, or for the great stones. But the streams and rivers know that there is a current to all things, and the smallest blade of grass knows this.”
She brought her lips close to his ear and whispered, a sound that made him shiver: “Everything changes. Now! Come see!”
“Here it is,” Annah said, after a last expanse of flat, forested land had sloped upward into a stretch of steep, forested land that had seemed to go on until Holder thought he might finally run out of breath. Somehow, though, he hadn’t. And now, he’d see what she had brought him to see. And, having thought about it most of the way, he was curious.
At the top of the hill, far enough from the edge that it would have been invisible from the ground, stood a circular garden of rocks, green grass, and bright flowers. In the center of the garden stood a table of stone, looking to Holder like an altar of some kind.
“This place is beautiful,” Holder said. “I tried to make it so,” Annah said, turning her eyes from him and glancing toward the ground. “I had only the Memories to go by. There are no places like this anymore.” “Well, I don’t know what one is supposed to look like, butI’d say you did a good job.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
“What is that?” he asked, gesturing toward the table. “It is a-”she sang a long, high trill of notes like birdsong. “There is no easy translation in your speech. Call it a ‘heart-place’.”
“That sounds perfect,” Holder said. “What does it do? Is it where you worship your god? Or gods,” he added, remembering that things were often different depending on where, or who, you were.
“Gods?” asked Annah. “I do not understand.”
“Hmm. Ahh-the ones who you say made your world, your people.” “ Oh. The First Ones. We do not worship them, if that word means what I think it does. We talk to them. We work with them. We listen to them. And we love them.” She lowered her eyes again, and frowned. “Or we did.”
“Is that something else that got forgotten?” Annah nodded. “It was already happening before your people came here,” she said, seeing the troubled look in his eyes. Some of my people even said what happened to our world was the First Ones’ punishment for turning away from them. Some of them still say it,” she added, shaking her head. “They know nothing.”
Holder reached out, intending to stroke her hair to comfort her, but stopped, his fingers tingling at the sensation of the strange field of heat-energy her body gave off, and at fear of seeming too forward.
“It is all right,” she said. “We are not strangers anymore, Holder. You have been here on my world for more than what you call a month, and during the part of that time when you still slept from the crash, I touched you many times-to bathe you; to dress your wounds, to heal you in the manner of my people, and, more than once, to comfort you when you seemed to be having bad dreams. You are not unwelcome, to me.”
Holder reached out his hand; ran his fingers through her fire-gold curls, and down her back. She sighed, and shifted her body toward his slightly. “Thank you,” she said. “It is very difficult sometimes, being alone. I suppose I am not truly alone, but there has been no one who really understands me, or is not frightened by the way I think.” She looked at him. “It hurts me so much sometimes, Holder, the way they are.”
“It’s the same way where I’m from, Annah. Someone always thinks they know the best way, the right way-and it’s always their way. Hey, does anyone know about this place?”
“No,” she said, in a concerned voice. “I do not think the others would come here. The Old Ones certainly would not. They never leave the Grove.”
“As far as you know.” “Yes,” Annah said, looking troubled. “Truthfully, they likely would not have to leave the Grove to make their displeasure known.”
Holder thought of some of the war stories he had heardexaggerated or not-about that last battle. “Probably not.” Annah brightened. “But they would have to find out, first.” “What’s the big deal, anyway?” he asked. “Why would they care?”
“A-a heart-place-” she stumbled over the word that flowed so easily when she sang it-”it is not meant for just anyone. It is only meant for Shapers. No one else is supposed to make one, or touch one. I want to be a Shaper, and I am learning, but I am not one yet. And you-”
“I get the idea.” “It is like this,” Annah whispered, reaching out and touching the stone of the table, which, Holder could see now, was charred and rough and blackened. It looks likelike—
“It is called heart-stone. It is the only thing the center of a heart-place is ever made from. It is stone from the sky-but more. It’s a piece of the old world, before it was remade.”
“Annah, they’d probably kill me for touching this. And do god-knows-what to you for bringing me here. I won’t let that happen.”
“I can hide this place. I do know a little of Shaping, and I can weave a gate that only you and I can pass through, because we will be the only ones who know it is here. First Ones, Holder-I never meant to endanger you. I was going to show you what is done here. And I was going to sing for you. I did not think. I should never have brought you herebut I care for you. I do not understand my own feelings, and perhaps I am foolish to admit them, but they are there.”
She started to turn away from him, and Holder stopped her. “Hey,” he said softly. “Hey. It’s all right. I don’t think you’re foolish. I-I care for you, too. I can’t pretend I don’t. You know, you haven’t hurt anything.”
Annah stepped toward the stone table; paused for a moment. “I will do this as best I can,” she said.
“Just forget I’m here.” “I do not want to forget,” Annah said. She took a deep breath; turned away from Holder, toward the heart-stone. She could feel him watching her, but instead of making her feel awkward or afraid, she felt a deep calm settle over her. She turned back toward him. “Now, I will sing for you.”
The sound was soft at first, its pitch a rich soprano, a tone that for some reason reminded Holder of a steadily-running stream. As Annah sang, Holder watched the air around them begin to shimmer and ripple, as if the melody itself were re-ordering atoms and molecules. And perhaps it was, he thought.
The sound of the song rose, its pitch brightened, and Holder heard something new in it: this was Annah, herself: her essence-the force of her own will, her own desire to be more than a root or stem, more than seed or bud. She stood apart, he knew-he sensed she always had-but she belonged, too. Holder wondered if he had ever truly belonged to any place, or anyone, and tears came to his eyes as he listened.
“Holder, are you all right?”
He had lost track of both time and place as Annah sang. Looking up now, he could see a wall of shimmering silver circling the place where they stood. “Oh. Yes, I’m fine.”
“Did I upset you?”
“What? Oh, no. Sometimes, music gets to me like that. Hasn’t happened in a long time. You sing beautifully.” “Thank you. I did what had to be done,” she said, brushing past the compliment. She was still not sure how to see him, this Holder. Everything in her Memories marked him as an enemy, but that was not what Spirit said to her. Must I not do what Spirit compels? “The gate will hold,” she said. “And now we should go. But there is a tradition. This is a place of truth, and to enter it is free. But to leave, one must speak one true thing; leave a small part of oneself behind. This is mine,” Annah said. “Before you came, I was completely alone, even amongst those of my Grove. I still feel they do not know me; they do not care for the ways and gifts we have lost. The truth I offer is that despite this, for the first time, now, I am beginning to feel I am no longer alone.”
Holder walked toward the table and stood beside Annah. “Honestly, when I landed here, I didn’t expect to live. This place is the middle of nowhere for my people. As far as I know, it isn’t even on the charts. I was
banged up pretty bad. If you hadn’t found me; hadn’t taken care of me, I probably would have died. Back on my world, people don’t really do that sort of thing for people they don’t know, anymore, not unless they can make some credits doing it. I haven’t trusted anyone in a long time-not since my wife left, I guess. But the truth I offer is that for the first time in a long time, I think I’ve found someone I can trust.” Annah nodded. “We should leave this place now, Holder. It is not likely that we were seen, or followed, but it is not impossible, either.”
In a place deep in the brackened and vine-grown wood, Jonan peered with dark eyes into deeper darkness, and beheld the sight of one of his own kind, and one of his race’s most traitorous enemies—the enemy of his own seed. Wayward seed-maiden, what are you doing with him?
He had always admired this one. They had been bloomlings together; had sat in the grove and heard the dreaming wisdom of the Old Ones together. They had been friends; he had been proud of her skills in singing, and he remembered she had praised his abilities with Vision. Abilities which have grown, dear one.
He had thought it was important, with fewer of their race living now than once had been, and with so few new ones being bloomed and born, that they think of sustaining their race. “I care for you,” he had told her one night, in the shadows of the Elder Grove, where the Old Ones slept. It was, he thought, a place fit for saying important things.
“You have great gifts,” Jonan said, “and, partnered with mine, they could bring great honor to our grove. We could bring great honor to our grove.”
He had not understood the look she gave him. It was a look neither of hatred nor of disdain; neither of joy, nor desire. She looked sad, he thought—and that was something he did not expect.