Third Don: Ardulum, #3

by J. S. Fields

  The battle is well over. You and Atalant were enough. You were what everyone needed.

  Emn puzzled over those words. No imagery accompanied them, nor did Salice offer any clarification. Are we going back to Neek? she asked finally. I need to rest and eat.

  Perhaps soon. A Neek physician is en route. Perhaps not the best, but you require medical attention. Salice sent an image of Emn: she lay in Atalant’s arms, too pale, her skin and clothes stained a deep maroon. Her markings were still there, but blurry where once they had been crisp and sharp. Used, it seemed, or stretched and depleted like a battery. Emn shivered and pressed closer to Atalant.

  Salice receded from Emn’s mind, and the conversation seeped back in, becoming distinct.

  “—tomorrow. I don’t have time to discuss this right now. If you’re willing to repair the Lucidity, you can fly it down in a few days once things have settled. We’ll go back in Miketh’s ship. One of the Heaven Guard pilots brought it up.”

  There was a rustling sound, followed by someone clearing their throat. Emn opened her eyes. “We will speak then in a few days, Eld Atalant. Captain Yorden. Salice. I have asked the others of the Markin Council to join me here in Neek’s orbit. When Emn is ready, we will hold court, per our agreement. Though, I…” Markin Pihn’s voice grew heavy. “With this recent display, I think we should consider testing. This goes beyond anything Cell-Tal wanted to accomplish.”

  Yorden pointed a finger at Pihn. “Fuck Cell-Tal. You’ll keep your word.”

  Pihn let his head fall forward. Emn saw the thick purple rise in his neck and the way his hands balled to fists. “We will, Captain Kuebrich. You have my word.”

  There was a metallic clang, and Emn saw a biometal bed frame with a thick cushion being placed on the floor. It was Risalian, so the frame was shaped like a tight crescent, but when Atalant placed her inside, the fabrics inside enveloped her body and padded her well enough that the curved angle of her spine wasn’t troublesome.

  “Rest,” Atalant whispered, her words soft and soothing. “We can talk when you’re well.”

  “I’m going to be fine, Atalant,” Emn returned, but the lines on Atalant’s forehead told Emn how much she believed her words. To be fair, she wasn’t sure she believed them herself, but she didn’t want to see Atalant worried, not after all they’d just been through.

  “The Guard are recovering your spores now, Representative Hepatica. Some have been caught in the gravity of other celestial bodies, but with your help, we hope to recover some seventy-five percent.” Yorden’s voice caught Atalant’s attention, and she stood up to rejoin the conversation. Emn mentally grumbled as Atalant moved away.

  “When they’re done sifting through space, they’ll bring the spores here,” Yorden continued. “We can put them in the Lucidity after it’s fixed, and then you’ll have to tell us how to, uh, get you all back together, Representative Hepatica.”

  “Do you require any…food?” Pihn asked as a thin cord of hyphae snaked from Atalant’s pocket. “I’m not sure we have anything that would be compatible with your biology.”

  Emn lifted her head from the thick pillow and scowled. Risalians were uniformly idiotic, it seemed. She tried to look at Pihn, but was blocked by the curve of the bed frame. “You have a number of ships left with hemicellulose weave, Markin,” Emn said. “Do I have to do everything for you?”

  Pihn walked around the bed to face Emn and nodded at her with pursed lips. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Emn. My apologies. We will take care of it. And we will take care of you, in as much as we can. The Neek healer has just arrived in our lower docking bay and is on zir way here. I have—” Xe hesitated. “The Neek healer isn’t as familiar with your physiology as we are. I have a member of the Cell-Tal board here who…who helped map out your genome. If you consent—”

  “No!” Emn’s voice squeaked as she yelled. Despite the fatigue and the dizziness, she flipped her legs over the side of the bed before Atalant was again at her side, trying to coax her back down.

  Emn, I’m here, and Yorden too, and if the Neek healer can’t figure out how to stop the bleeding—

  “No!” Emn yelled again. That her Talent markings were frayed, she didn’t care. That she was still bleeding from some unknown location, that it apparently required something beyond a simple tourniquet, she didn’t care. She would rather bleed out before a Cell-Tal engineer came anywhere near her. She’d shoot hir with a gun if she had to. Yorden could talk all he wanted about treaties and reparations and amends. Of course Pihn was calm around her now. She was nonfunctional, but Emn would use the last of her strength to strangle any Cell-Tal engineer that came anywhere near her.

  Emn. Atalant pushed past the anger in Emn’s mind. Sweetheart, just try to lie still. You need a healer, but I promise I’ll keep you safe.

  They’re Risalians, Emn spat back.

  And I’m an eld, Atalant countered as she lowered Emn back into the bed. I’ll melt them if they try anything, okay? I’ll have some andal strangle them or impale them or whatever you want. Just, please, get some rest.

  The pleading in Atalant’s voice pulled at Emn’s heart. She wanted to wrap herself in the protection she offered, wanted to relax back into strong arms. She let her head rest on Atalant’s shoulder and felt Atalant’s lips press against her forehead.

  Thank you. Once we get back to Neek—

  Their connection thinned, and then Atalant’s mind slammed into Emn’s. Four billion other voices followed, pounding into her skull. Andal—trillions upon trillions of trees—screamed in unison. Emn screamed, too, at the fullness in her head and the steel grip Atalant now had on Emn’s arms. She could only see white. She could only hear trees and voices…Ardulan voices, flare voices, as they ricocheted through Atalant’s head and into her own.

  Atalant! Emn yelled over the din. What is happening?

  Emn heard a string of curses, in Common and Neek, before her vision cleared and a solitary image filled her mind. An image of a small planet, covered in greens, with a blue comet-like tail streaking behind it.

  Ardulum. No one said it, but the name filled Emn’s thoughts nonetheless. Ardulum.

  Ardulum had returned to Neek.

  Chapter 25: N’lln, Neek

  Dear Sister,

  I understand this letter will confuse you. I never had a chance to tell you. Couldn’t tell you. But now you’ve come back to us in gold robes. An eld.

  I used to have dreams, as a child. I dreamt of an old gatoi with feet of roots and hair of branches. A mouthpiece to the living andal. Zie spoke of Eld and subspecies and of you. Zie said you had to leave Neek, because our people are young and bound tightly to custom, and that an eld must be worldly. I was instructed to discover your primary Talent and nurture it, to find the one thing that you excelled at beyond all other Neek. And then, when you were skilled enough, I was to push you off-planet, for it takes a great catalyst for a subspecies to flare into an eld, and you would not find that catalyst on Neek.

  Now here you are, returned to us from exile as a ruler of our gods. Will you forgive me, for setting this chain of events in motion? For pushing you away from your family so that you could return and liberate us all? I loved you as my sister, but I need you, now, as my Eld.

  —Message written on a biofilm given to Eld Atalant by Son of the Tertiary Forest Preserve, N’lln, January 27th, 2061 CE

  JANUARY 27TH, 2061 CE

  “We didn’t agree to this!” Atalant yelled at the screen. A bewildered Ekimet stared back at her, while on the other half of the screen, Arik looked sheepish. Behind Arik was a row of dazed flares, and behind them, a crowd of Ardulans stood in stunned silence.

  Behind Atalant, uncomfortable Risalians shuffled noisily to the steady beep of the diagnostic tool the Neek healer was using on Emn. The sounds pushed Atalant further into her rage. She was so close to pulling this whole religious bullshit off without a hitch. Why now? What would possess that damn planet to come now, once all the fighting was over and no one was in
any danger anymore?

  Arik rubbed at his forehead. His fingernails were encrusted with the red dirt of the Eiean moon, and his tunic was sweat stained. “I didn’t do it alone. One eld can’t move Ardulum, former flare or not. I landed back on Ardulum after some planting and the planet asked me. Asked all the remaining flares, too. Every Ardulan on-planet heard the request. We couldn’t say no, especially—” His voice lowered. “—especially when you think about what this will mean for the flares, and for their reintegration.”

  Atalant kicked at the console in front of her. She could feel what it meant as the waves of awe and praise from the Ardulan population rolled over her. Andal damn her telepathy!

  “Fuck!”

  A Risalian in gray cleared hir throat and was hushed immediately by Markin Pihn. A mild mental rebuke came from Emn, clouded by whatever drugs the healer was administering.

  “Atalant,” Emn croaked from her crescent bed, soothing her reproach.

  Atalant tried to pull back her temper, if only to get Emn to stay put. “It’s just—” She turned to Yorden, hoping for some sympathy, and saw only poorly concealed amusement. “Yeah. Laugh. I appreciate what this has done for Ardulum and the flares, but the Neek will never shut up about Ardulum now. Any chance of being with my family is gone.” Atalant tugged at the neckline of her robes. “I am never going to be able to take off these damn golden robes, not even when I’m not wearing them.”

  “You do have a home, you know,” Ekimet offered. Zir tone was meant to be soothing, but it only grated more. “Do we have any idea how it got here?” Ekimet asked Arik. “I mean, the mechanics of it, not the energy it took. Did you actually direct, like in a normal move, or did the planet just use you all like batteries? I already tried to ask Ardulum directly, but it’s not giving me straight answers, per usual.”

  Arik ruffled his short, black hair and shook his head. “The flares and I facilitated the move. I directed, but only for the departure. As to where we were going…I just assumed it was answering Atalant’s or Emn’s call.”

  “Not me,” Emn managed. “At least, I don’t think so, but there was a lot of cellulose flying around, at the end.”

  Atalant turned from the screen to see the Ardulan pushing the healer away and trying to sit up. There was no new blood, which was good, but the stained floor and bed padding was a stark reminder of Emn’s very recent condition. “I’m fine,” Emn said as she again pushed the healer away. “I can take it from here. I just needed a bit to catch my breath.”

  Atalant had serious doubts that Emn was in any state to heal herself, but refrained from suggesting otherwise. “Well, just stay there, Arik. And keep everyone on-planet, except maybe send a healer to look over—” She glanced at Emn, caught the warning look. “To look over Salice. She got pretty banged up during the battle. We’re getting on Miketh’s skiff in a few minutes and are heading to Neek. We have to sort through everything down there first, especially the crowds.” Oh, and what crowds there would be. Atalant could almost picture the waves of fanaticism. “We can figure out planetary mechanics later.”

  “You are correct about the crowds, Eld Atalant.” Ekimet’s face on the screen was replaced by an aerial shot of the landing pad. Two Keft and four Yishin ships were already parked, and their occupants dazedly pushed through the crowd, buffered by the Heaven Guard. The crowd was split between Neek that were trying to touch the other subspecies and those that were on their knees, praying. Nicholas darted around the worshippers, trying to create a path Atalant was inevitably going to be forced to walk down. The midday sunlight shining down on the people was tinted blue, just like in that damn poem from The Book of the Uplifting, because of course it was. Atalant swore at the feed.

  “I muted the audio to save your ears, but the Neek are singing one of the old hymns.” Ekimet panned the screen. The Neek were packed in shoulder to shoulder, with more arriving as they spoke. “I don’t think they’re going to disperse anytime soon, Eld Atalant,” zie added. “They’re demanding you.”

  “I’m not walking through that crowd again,” Atalant muttered. She walked to the bed and knelt, facing Emn, who had mercifully fallen asleep. Before she could speak, Yorden was next to her, his heavy hand on her shoulder.

  “She’s fine, Atalant. I’ll make sure that Ardulan healer has a look at her after Salice. She should have her voice box checked anyway.” He winked. “But you are going down to that crowd, and you are going to walk through them like the damned god you are.”

  Atalant stood and faced her captain. He was thinner than she remembered—and older, like age had finally caught up with him. His graying beard was thicker, eating up his face and neck, but the mirth she’d always appreciated was still there, lurking underneath the layers of hair.

  “What then?” she asked him. “After I toss my people back into dogma, what then? Keep lying for the rest of my life?”

  Yorden laughed and shook his head. Salice came up beside him and, much to Atalant’s surprise, took his hand. There was so much more behind the Ardulan’s eyes than Atalant had seen before, she realized. Something that Yorden had managed to bring forth?

  “Then, you’re going to come back to your family,” Yorden said. He grabbed the fabric of Atalant’s robes between a thumb and forefinger and let the material slide between his fingers. “Whether we’re on the Lucidity, on Ardulum, or even on Neek, it doesn’t matter. We’re still a team.”

  Arik’s voice cut through. “I’ll keep trying to talk to Ardulum. I’ll be up here, when you need me. And Atalant?” She looked over her shoulder at the screen. “I’m glad everything is all right, or as all right as it could be, all things considered. I’ll start preparing saplings for transport. From the scans of your homeworld, it looks like you need them. With your permission, of course. We’ve got Neek’s original species and variant on file. We won’t plant anything exotic. We could return the forests to their original state, even, if you wanted.”

  Atalant brightened. They had a chance to make things right. To fix the ecological mess Ardulum had imposed on Neek all those hundreds of years ago. “Thank you. A team to help plant them would also be useful. Maybe if Ardulans work alongside Neek, they won’t be quite so mystical.”

  Ekimet laughed. “I don’t think that’s how it works out, Eld Atalant, but we shall see. I’ll meet you at the temple. There’s a ground skiff waiting for you at the landing pad. I’m going to take the Keft and the Yishin to the temple now.”

  The screen went dark. Atalant kissed Emn on the cheek before turning away. With Yorden’s words heavy in her mind, she followed Miketh up the boarding ramp to the skiff and prepared to, once again, return to Neek.

  IT WAS SO much louder than it had been the last time. There were no rope barriers set up now, but the crowd stilled as Atalant stepped onto the planet. A ground skiff was hovering only a few meters away, and through the clear front panel, Atalant could make out Nicholas waving. His light-green flight suit—Heaven Guard standard issue under the robes—had oil marks on it. She loved that he had been up there with them. Not flying, likely, but directing, maybe. Perhaps being someone’s extra pair of eyes. It would have been cramped, with two people in a settee, but the damn kid had done it. He could go home a hero, if he wanted, contract or no. But, he wouldn’t. She knew that. He belonged with them, on the Lucidity.

  Nicholas grinned at her. Atalant couldn’t help but grin back.

  She saw Tabit a few yards away, laughing with another guard. Did she know she had died? Atalant herself had no memories of the experience, but Tabit seemed…happy. Unconcerned that parts of her had been floating in space just a few hours ago. They’d have to talk about it sometime, Atalant supposed. Sometime, but not now.

  She took a step forward. Then, another. There were no longer any sounds. The city’s scrubbers had finally removed most of the smoke, and the sky was streaked only lightly with red. Atalant allowed herself a long look at the planet that “burned” above her, like the old poems described. It was closer than any
of their moons and filled the sky with blue ribbons of some compound Atalant couldn’t recognize. There would be tides and other gravitational issues to deal with almost immediately, but for the moment, Atalant let herself imagine being a Neek hundreds of years ago, seeing Ardulum appear in the evening sky, having no concept of interstellar travel. Of meeting technologically advanced beings, of trying to wrestle with the physics of a traveling planet. Andal help her, she was still trying to wrestle with the physics of that.

  “It’s a beautiful gift you’ve brought.” The voice startled Atalant, and she shivered despite the familiarity. She broke her gaze from Ardulum and turned to her brother, who stood next to her in the oasis amongst the crowd.

  “Eld Ekimet said you went home, after the fires were contained. I’ve been back since, with father and talther. We’ve moved back in. I saw that you went into your room.” His voice faltered, and anger flushed Atalant’s face. “The boxes. The labels. It’s not like that, Eld Atalant. I mean, it was—it is—but, well.” He put a hand into his pocket, pulled out a rolled biofilm, and handed it to her.

  “You found everything except the one thing you needed.” Her brother reached out and tapped her cheek, as he had when they were children. “Do you remember the day the neighbor burned your doll? It was a catalyst of some sort, I think. My dreams started then. Explained in there.”

  Atalant unrolled the film and nodded, not meeting her brother’s eyes. A lot of things had happened on that day—most vividly, her own dreams had begun, which then haunted her for the next decade.

  Her brother shoved his hands in his pockets. “You’re welcome to stay with us, Eld, of course, whenever you’d like. There will always be a room for you there, even if it technically belongs to Exile.” Atalant began to read the text on the film, and her brother took a step back. “I tried my best to follow the message, although I didn’t understand it all. I just hope… I hope my sister has found happiness. I know she can’t ever truly come home again, but I do love her, as do father and talther. We’re proud of her and the path she chose to follow.”