Ascending (37 page)

“Do you think they would have told you?”

“I don’t know. But I honestly believe our guesses were right—the Shaddill deliberately dumbed down the Cashlings and the same thing is happening to us. Just look at the High Council of Admirals, for God’s sake; four hundred years ago, none of those corrupt bastards would have been put in charge of
anything
. But we’ve sunk so low, they qualified as the cream of the fleet. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

“Do not whine, Festina. You will find out the truth and make everything better. If you are ever puzzled, ask yourself what I would do in a similar situation.”

“Then I’ll end up punching a lot of people in the nose.”

“If that is what it takes.”

Festina smiled. Leaning quickly toward me, she kissed me on the cheek. The left cheek. The one that was not purple.

She drew back abruptly as if struck by sudden shyness. Turning away from me, she looked through the glass hull at the Cashling vessels congregating around us. “You’ll have to take it slow on your way back to Melaquin. Those small ships can’t go very fast—you might take two weeks to get home.”

“I am in no hurry,” I told her. “During those two weeks, I can entertain everyone by telling my story and propounding my thoughts about the universe. I am a Prophet now, Festina; I have an obligation to share my wisdom.”

She laughed. “If anyone has the kind of wisdom to catch the Cashlings’ attention, you’re the one. Still, you’ve got a big job ahead—trying to undo the Shaddill’s legacy.” Her face grew sober. “You realize the Cashlings are all brain-damaged, right? Whatever the Shaddill did to them, the effects could be irreversible. The Shaddill had more than four thousand years to turn the Cashlings into self-absorbed ninnies…and it might not be something you can fix.”

“If I cannot fix the Cashlings, I can still use them to fix my own people. That is a start.”

I moved forward so I could see a bit more of the stick-ship; it would be traveling with us to Melaquin, bringing its Blood Honey fountain. No one could tell whether the honey would actually succeed in reviving the millions of Tired persons who lay dormant on my home planet—perhaps the honey had only worked on me because the Pollisand gave me special treatments four years ago. However, I had great hopes. I would lead my Cashling disciples down to the surface of Melaquin with bottles full of Blood Honey, and together we would seek out the cities, towns, and villages hidden all over the globe.

A dab of purple on each person’s face might bring my world back to life.

Festina’s thoughts must have turned in the same direction as mine, for when I glanced her way, she was staring at my cheek. “You’re sure Blood Honey
is
a cure?” she asked softly.

“Dr. Havel has examined me. He says my brain is now undertaking a natural process of pruning: divesting itself of childish linkages to make me a full-fledged Adult. I am not so happy at losing what I have always been—I was an excellent person, Festina, even if you thought me juvenile—but the doctor believes this pruning is what I require to overcome mental stagnation. The same process may stir the rest of my people from their stupors.”

“And all you have to do,” Festina murmured, “is blemish your entire species—”

“It is not a blemish,” I interrupted her. “It is a medicinal beauty mark.”

“And you feel all right?” she asked. “You don’t feel…I don’t know. It’s possible the purple guck is bad for you. Slowly possessing your brain or something.”

“My brain is
just fine
,” I told her. “I have not had a single incident of Tiredness since the Pollisand did this to me. In addition, I have become more worldly-wise since my transformation. For example, you will notice I am not making a scene about you leaving me again; I am now such a one as can handle cruel emotional abandonment.”

Festina looked at me with a thoughtful look in her eye. “You’re now such a one as can
joke
about cruel emotional abandonment.” She smiled. “I think, Oar, you’re going to become a very interesting woman.”

I do not know which one of us started the hug; but I wanted it very much and it happened, so that is all that matters. This time I did not feel sheepish and self-conscious about embracing my dearest friend.

Not even a little bit.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this Eos book. As part of our mission to give readers the best science fiction and fantasy being written today, the following pages contain a glimpse into the fascinating worlds of a select group of Eos authors.

Join us as acclaimed editor David G. Hartwell brings you the best fantasy stories of the year and Juliet E. McKenna returns to the fascinating world of the Einarinn and the adventures of the thief Livak. As Dave Duncan sweeps you away to a land of swords, sorcery, intrigue, and the finest swordsmen ever. As Kristine Smith builds a suspenseful story of military secrets, interstellar politics, and alien intrigue, and James Alan Gardner returns to the fascinating world of Melaquin—and the deadly adventures of Explorer Festina Ramos. And as Martha Wells tells an epic story of endings, beginnings, and a malevolent plot to keep the world from being reborn.

Whether you like science fiction or fantasy (or both!), Eos has something for you in Fall 2001.

From Festina Ramos:

I met Oar beside a moonlit lake, just after dusk on the day I had murdered my best friend. She was tall, sad, and impossibly beautiful: like an Art Deco figurine molded from purest crystal.

Yes—she was made of glass. Looking through her, I could see the beach, the moon, the world…focused through a woman-shaped lens.

When I think about her, I can’t help perceiving her glass body as a metaphor. She was, for example, transparent as glass emotionally. When she was angry, she raged; when frightened, she trembled; when lonely, she wept. She was as open as a child…and people who didn’t know her often dismissed her as childish, unintelligent, bratty. Oar was none of those things—she was a fully grown woman with an intelligence high off the scales (she learned fluent English in just a few weeks), and her constant claims of superiority to us “opaque persons” weren’t arrogant but heartbreaking: an attempt to convince herself she had some value in the universe.

Like glass, she was fragile. Not physically, of course: she was damned near unbreakable, and immune to disease, drowning, even starvation (she could photosynthesize energy from the weakest light sources). She was strong too—fast and agile. But mentally, Oar was ready to shatter. Thousands of years ago, her kind was created by unknown aliens in mimicry of
Homo sapiens
…but due to a design flaw (accidental or deliberate), the glass race always suffered mental shutdown by age fifty. First, a tendency to boredom; then, a growing listlessness; finally, a descent into torpor, a sleep that could only be broken by the most extreme measures and then only for a few minutes before senility crept back in.

Oar was on the verge of that abyss. Her whole species was. They didn’t die, they just grew Tired: turning into ageless glass statues, alive but dormant. As Oar approached the age when her brain would betray her, she fought her fate, she denied it, she raged; and in the end, it seemed as if she had found a way out. During a battle to save her world from extinction, she sacrificed herself by plunging from the top of an eighty-story tower, taking with her a madman who planned the destruction of her planet. I wept when I saw her body smashed on the pavement…but I told myself that by choosing death, Oar had avoided a more cruel destiny—the gradual loss of who she was, the dull fade-out to oblivion.

Her glass would have warped with age: the lens going dark, the mirror turning cloudy.

But I was wrong. Oar didn’t die in that fall—she was tougher than I ever imagined. Bulletproof glass. And now that she’s back, pursued by inhuman creatures with secrets to hide, the question is whether she can avoid mental oblivion long enough to save those of us who need her help.

Running from aliens, dodging the gunfire, trying to figure out what the hell’s going on before we all get killed…hey, it’s just like old times.

J
AMES
A
LAN
G
ARDNER
is a 1989 graduate of the Clarion West Science Fiction Writers Workshop, and has had several science fiction stories and novellas appear in publications such as Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Amazing Stories, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He is the author of seven previous novels: Expendable, Commitment Hour, Vigilant, Hunted, Ascending, Trapped, and Radiant. He was the grand prize winner of 1989 Writers of the Future contest, has won the Aurora Award, and has been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He lives in Canada.

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