Amid the Crowd of Stars

by Stephen Leigh

  =We have spoken to the ship-syna aboard the airboat,= Kekeki heard the new Keksyn say, her voice growing louder as she approached the Strand herself. =They have acknowledged this one as Keksyn and will respond.=

  The Terran put his weapon to his shoulder even as Saoirse and Ichiko continued to shout at him. Kekeki could sense Saoirse’s panic through the connection of the syna-plotch, and a quiet amusement came to her: the Four-Limb Land Walkers still didn’t understand yet how little Kekeki’s life mattered—perhaps none of them would ever feel the same way. Perhaps even the syna couldn’t change them that much.

  Kekeki stared at the Terran and at the ones coming from the ship. She continued to roar her defiance with the others, all of them knowing it would draw their attention away from Keksyn so he could continue to direct the syna. She felt a shivering along her body as the new Keksyn in the deep water of the inlet began to call to the ship-syna, and, as if in answer, there was a low thrum like nothing Kekeki had ever heard before. The new sound grew louder and louder; the Terran skyship began to shiver in sympathy. The sky-eki in their hard shells still on the ship’s stairs shouted in alarm and began to run down or back into the craft; the Terran with the weapon aimed at Kekeki looked back over his shoulder as a fire brighter than any light Kekeki had ever glimpsed before began to flow from under the wings of the skyship. The entire craft groaned as it lifted up from the sand, tilting at a severe angle toward the water. The stairs of the skyship bent and shrieked; the sky-eki there jumped or fell to the beach. The skyship continued its climb, now almost level with the top of the cliffs of Great Inish and still canted over.

  Then the gushing, roaring fire was suddenly extinguished. The machine fell like a stricken bird, sliding sideways.

  It crashed on its side, one wing crumpling underneath, the other rising tall overhead in an explosion of sea and sand. The skyship was mostly in the water, only the belly of it on the beach. The open hatch was submerged, and waves slapped angrily at the hull.

  There was a strange silence. Kekeki let herself slide down into the water to breathe again before lifting up in time to hear the Terran male shout something to his people who were still standing.

  * * *

  “Take them out!” Luciano bellowed. There were a half dozen soldiers standing on the beach, with more down after having jumped or been thrown from the stricken and fatally damaged transport. They all looked shocked, even through the faceless helmets of their armor. Luciano gestured to them: to Kekeki, to the Inish. “Do it now! Those damn things are dangerous! Take them down!”

  “No!” Ichiko shouted back at him, at the soldiers. “Everyone stop! Listen to me!” She interposed herself between Luciano and Kekeki, staring directly into his face, the squat barrel of the pulse cannon nearly touching her chest. “You came here to bring me back to Odysseus, Luciano. Well, I don’t want to go. I won’t go.”

  She moved her hands deliberately to her waist, watching Luciano’s eyes track the movement. She found the seal of her bio-shield unit. She saw Luciano shake his head, mouthing “No” even as she released the clasps and let the belt slip to the sand at her feet. She kicked it away.

  The world shifted around her. Everything felt and sounded and tasted different and new. She took in a breath.

  A glorious, wonderful breath of Canis Lupus.

  She could smell the sea: brine and salt laced with odors she couldn’t identify at all. Noxious smoke and the tang of oil from the wreckage of the transport wrapped around her. The air was chill, the wind ruffled her hair, and the fine hairs on her arms lifted in sympathy. She could hear the call of sea birds and the lapping of patient waves on the strand and the more energetic crashing of the sea against the rocks of Great Inish. Salty spray caressed her face.

  She nearly laughed.

  “What have you done, Ichiko?” Luciano asked her. The muzzle of his weapon dropped. “Ichiko?”

  “I’ve made my choice,” she told him. “You can’t take me back now. I’m breathing in this world and unless you’re willing to force me into isolation for the rest of my life, I’m not going back to Earth. I’m staying here.”

  “And you’ll die here, in agony like Chava did,” he spat back, his face reddening.

  She smiled at him. “That’s entirely possible. If I do, that’s my choice. Or I might survive, like Saoirse and all of her people. I don’t know which—and at the moment, I don’t care. But there’s been too much death here today, Luciano. Please, let’s not have more.”

  “Except yours?” he answered, his face twisted in a scowl. “Was this what you were intending all along? That’s what your AMI told me. You should have come to me if that’s what you were thinking, Ichiko.”

  “What would you have done if I had?”

  “I’d’ve stopped you.”

  She reached out as if to touch his face but paused when her fingers were still inches away as Saoirse called to her.

  “Ichiko! Kekeki says she needs to see yeh!”

  * * *

  Luciano wanted to go with her. “You take care of your people,” she told him, looking at the soldiers around him: those still standing stunned and uncertain, those who were bleeding and injured, and the hopefully few dead—though she had no idea how those in the crashed transport might have fared. “They need their commander to take charge here. So do the Inish, to make sure this doesn’t escalate any more than it already has.”

  He nodded grudgingly. “You be careful around that . . . that thing,” he said. Ichiko didn’t answer him. She followed Saoirse, who was still unsteadily clutching at Banríon Iona’s arm, toward where Kekeki rested at the rocks at the edge of the inlet to the quay. “Rí Angus?” Ichiko asked the Banríon. “Is he . . . ?”

  “Dead,” she answered shortly, with a glare back toward the wreckage of the transport and Luciano. “I’ve sent Liam up to the village to fetch Seann James and carts to carry the other injured Inish back up to the village. The dead can stay where they are for now.” The Banríon spat on the sand. “If I knew it was going to end this way, I’d have told yeh never to come out to the archipelago and I’d have kept Saoirse from ever talking to yeh.”

  “I’m sorry, Banríon. I truly am. This is nothing I ever wanted.”

  Iona sniffed at that. “Yer being sorry changes nothing at all,” she answered.

  “Mam!” Saoirse interjected. “This isn’t Ichiko’s fault. If anything, it’s mine. I brought her here.”

  They were approaching Kekeki, who lifted herself high out of the water again, her colorful flanks rippling. Ichiko could smell the arracht as well, an odor that reminded Ichiko of the smells when her mother brought mizudako, madako, or hihirodako octupi from the fishing market to their house in Japan to prepare for dinner. The arracht’s beak below the helmet of its carapace opened, giving birth to the clicks and whistles Ichiko remembered from her first meeting with the creature. Both Saoirse and Iona lifted their heads as if listening to words Ichiko couldn’t understand.

  “We know,” Saoirse said. “Yeh warned us this could happen. But Ichiko’s here, as yeh asked.”

  There were more sounds from Kekeki; Saoirse nodded, then gestured to Ichiko. “She wants yeh to come closer.”

  Ichiko moved to the rocks along the edge of the inlet, with Kekeki’s bulk rising above her. She could hear the grumbling inside the arracht’s body and see the blood-colored finger-length cilia wriggling in the furrows of the gill strips. Kekeki lifted her left forearm; without warning, the arracht wrapped the tentacles there around Ichiko’s body. Ichiko stiffened, giving a cry of alarm though the tentacles felt strangely warm and her body tingled with the touch—not painfully, but with a depth that seemed to flow all the way through her. Kekeki’s beak opened and the tentacles slipped away from Ichiko. A strange burning sensation coursed through Ichiko’s body; her vision blurred, and the muscles of her legs failed her. She collapsed in a heap near Kekeki as the arracht bega
n talking again, but this time the clicks and whistles translated in her head into words that sounded oddly like those of her disconnected AMI: her mother’s voice. “We see that you’ve finally abandoned your shell. That was wise of you. You can’t be part of this world while simultaneously keeping it apart.”

  “What . . . ?” Ichiko began, but her mouth seemed dry and uncooperative. She swallowed hard. She felt Saoirse crouching beside her. “What did you just do to me?”

  “We’ve given you the gift of the syna: the plotch, as we gave it to those of the Inish who wished to know us and talk to us.”

  “Yer like us now,” Ichiko heard Saoirse say. “Like me. Look at yer arms; yeh’ll see the plotch marks. They’re on yer face, too.”

  “No! Take it away!” Ichiko cried out, her voice sounding harsh and frightened as her gaze moved frantically from Saoirse to the Banríon to Kekeki. She tried to lift herself up and failed. “I never asked for this.”

  “You wanted to know more about us and understand how this world works,” Kekeki responded. “That’s what you said you wanted, and you can’t do that without the plotch helping you. And it will help you; you’re unlikely to suffer the fate of your friend because the syna will give you some protection from the diseases of this world.”

  “I don’t care. I never asked for this.”

  Kekeki grumbled without words. Her eyestalks remained fixed on Ichiko as Kekeki sank low enough in the water for her gills to be submerged before rising once again. “Then we apologize for our choice, but it can’t be taken away. Once given, the syna will always stay with you. You’re now part of the Jishtal, the web of species, though every species that is aware of it has its own term. The Inish call it simply the Others.”

  Ichiko remembered Saoirse using the term. “I didn’t realize . . .”

  “We can teach you to listen to the Others, though for a species like yours, it can be confusing and painful to hear all the voices at once. Saoirse has already told you that, though we’ll show you also if you wish. For now, though, we have a message for you to send to your captain. The syna were able to enter the biological components of your ship’s intelligence—what you term ‘wetware’—and have slowly become part of those components, as they have become a part of you now. That’s why we were able to disconnect you from your AMI and how we nearly crashed your flitter when you first came here.” Kekeki’s tentacles gestured toward the wrecked transport in the water, smoke still billowing from the holes in its hull. “It’s why your skyship now lies destroyed.”

  “The captain won’t believe you.”

  “Then tell her to ask the ship itself—ask the collective intelligence you call AMI. It will verify what we’re telling you now. Those of the Jishtal aren’t capable of lying to others if asked directly.”

  “How am I supposed to believe you? That this isn’t just some kind of trick?” Ichiko shook her head as the full import of what Kekeki was struck her . . . If true, then Odysseus itself could not return to Earth; it was as much a danger as any infected human—and likely more so. “Kekeki, is it possible to remove these syna from the ship, from AMI?”

  “Yes.” If it were possible for an arracht to sound sad, then Kekeki managed it. Ichiko didn’t know whether or not that was an emotion the arracht were capable of feeling, or if Kekeki could sense that it was what Ichiko wished to believe. “But it isn’t something your people will like,” Kekeki continued. “Here. Let the syna tell you . . .”

  A pathway opened in Ichiko’s mind. She saw the syna like a spray of violet-and-emerald motes, she heard the whispers of their mass voices, and they showed her what would have to happen: without regret, without fear.

  Without any emotion at all.

  “Oh,” Ichiko breathed when they had finished.

  She wished she knew how Captain Keshmiri would react.

  Dance Upon The Mountains Like A Flame

  NEARLY EVERYONE FROM Clan Mullin and Clan Craig was out, clustered near the bell tower on An Cró Mór and looking up into a relatively clear sky. The last reverberations of Low Third had ended a few breaths ago. Saoirse was standing at Ichiko’s right side, close enough that Ichiko could feel the heat of her body. To Ichiko’s left was Nagasi Tinubu, the only one of Odysseus’ crew who’d chosen to go to the archipelago.

  The rest of the Terrans, Ichiko knew, were at First Base and the new village that was growing around it—already four members of the Odysseus crew had succumbed to Lupusian diseases, and another dozen were hospitalized in First Base’s clinic but recovering. The remainder were undoubtedly also watching the sky from there.

  “It’s hard to process what we’re about to see,” Nagasi said to Ichiko. He shrugged with arms wide, his dark arms liberally covered with lighter patches of plotch—Kekeki had done to him what she’d done to Ichiko. “I never thought it would come to this.”

  “It isn’t what any of us wanted, my friend,” she answered. “I’m still not certain it’s the right choice, but it’s too late now.”

  In Ichiko’s head, she could hear the whispering of the ship-syna. =Soon . . . soon . . . We can feel it beginning.= Looking down to the sea, she could see the carapaced heads of the arracht lifting above the whitecaps near the Sleeping Wolf. If she listened carefully, their voices were there as well—a massed chorus speaking as one.

  =We should have all known each other better. Our mistake was holding ourselves apart—from those on the mainland, from the sky-people when they came—but we have learned from it.=

  Ichiko could have answered in her own mind. She didn’t. The arracht believed that they couldn’t directly lie, that such a trait wasn’t possible for a group mind. But she knew the arracht were able to learn from other species and humans could lie. Sometimes too easily. Lying was not a skill she wanted to teach them.

  The way to remove the ship-syna from the ship is to destroy Odysseus. The syna will permit that to happen. That’s what Kekeki had told her. It hadn’t surprised her that Captain Keshmiri, upon realizing that Odysseus itself had been infected, had decided that she would end her own life with the destruction of the ship—that was an old naval tradition, after all, though she’d told everyone on the ship that she was comfortable being the only one to die with the ship; anyone else who wished to could go downworld and take their chances there. Ichiko had been somewhat surprised that a half dozen of the senior officers of Odysseus and a few of the lower ranking crew members had chosen to stay with her, choosing suicide over the uncertain risk of dying due to disease and infection.

  One of those senior officers was Luciano. She’d begged him to change his mind, telling him that Seann James and the other Lupusian healers had potions that would cure or at least minimize the risks of many of the local diseases that had stalked the initial human inhabitants. He’d been adamant in his refusal. She wondered, even now when it was too late, if he might have made a different decision had she told him she’d be with him if he chose to remain on Canis Lupus.

  But she hadn’t because she wasn’t sure that was what she wanted. She hadn’t been willing to give him that lie.

  The com-unit Ichiko had given Saoirse was sitting on a rock at the base of the bell tower. She heard the speaker crackle and the sound of Captain Keshmiri’s voice ringing out over the hilltop. “I’ve just entered the final command for the destruction sequence, which will commence in one minute. All records pertaining to Odysseus’ mission to Canis Lupus have been sent back to Earth along with the crew’s recordings to their families. They should receive our transmission in about 14 years, Earth time. I want everyone listening to know that it was my deep honor and privilege to serve as your captain, and I wish all of you hearing this happiness and long lives in what is your new home. This is Odysseus’ final transmission. Captain Keshmiri out.”

  There was a click and the com-unit went silent. Ichiko looked up, waiting.

  A few breaths later, a shaft of brilliant light pierced
through a break in the clouds. Strong shadows from the new sun played over An Cró Mór before fading rapidly and soundlessly. From the crowd came a collective “Ahh!” of mingled wonder and grief. Then the light was gone entirely, leaving afterimages that slowly changed color in the eyes of the watchers until they, too, faded and vanished.

  There was nothing else to see, though they’d been told to expect meteor showers from ship debris over the next cycle that might be visible to those nearest the edges of the starward habitable zone, where the twilight was darkest—though night never fully came to the habitable zone. The clanfolk began to slowly disperse. Banríon Iona put her hand on Ichiko’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for all you’ve lost,” she said, “but we’ll remember this day forever in tales and songs.”

  Ichiko tried to smile back at her and was only partially successful. “I know I’ll never forget it,” she said. Iona patted her shoulder again and set off down the slope toward the Mullin compound.

  Nagasi remained behind as the Inish started to leave the summit. “It all seems unreal and impossible,” he said. “I wonder if any of us will ever feel normal again?” He didn’t wait for Ichiko’s answer, instead following the others down toward the Mullin clanhouses.

  Finally, it was only Saoirse and Ichiko left at the bell tower. “Would yeh want to stay with me for the rest of the cycle?” Saoirse asked. She reached out with her hand for Ichiko’s, who allowed a brief touch before dropping her hand back to her side. Ichiko shook her head.

  “No.” A single, soft word. Ichiko could see disappointment flood Saoirse’s features. “I’m not saying that means never, Saoirse,” she added, “and my answer has nothing to do with you. It’s just that after today, after what just happened, I need to be alone for a bit to process things. Can you understand that?”

  “Aye, I understand,” she said, and though Ichiko wasn’t certain that was entirely true, she appreciated Saoirse’s attempt. “Yeh know where I’ll be if . . . when yer ready.” Saoirse ventured a quick smile before turning to follow the others.