Forgotten Suns (11 page)

His voice was bleak but his face was calm. “All this is your
fault?” she asked him.

“Do you know,” he said, and that seemed to bemuse him, “I
don’t think it was. No one was abandoning the world on my account.”

“What did you do?”

“Too much, and not enough. Your king who wept because he had
no more worlds to conquer? For me, it was rage.”

Psychically powered rage. Magic, they probably called it. “They
couldn’t neuter you. They wouldn’t kill you. So they shut you off.”

“I think you would say they reset my programming.”

Khalida bit down on laughter. There was nothing humorous
about it, but thinking of what she was doing here, and what she was talking to,
and how preposterous it was—what other reaction could she have? “I gather you’re
not mad any more.”

“Oh,” he said, “I am as thoroughly devoid of sanity as I
ever was. But angry? No. That faded away in the long dream.”

“So you know what happened. Where they all went.”

“No,” he said.

Khalida blinked. “But you said—”

“Whatever happened, it happened long after I paid for my
sins.”

“You can read the writing,” she said. “There must be
something there.”

“Not here,” he said. “Not in your archive, either.”

“So what is this?” She swept her hand around the room with
its treasury of alien words. “What does it say?”

“It’s a king list,” he said. “A chronicle. It stops before
the end.”

“Just stops.”

“History generally does, on the day you write it.”

“How far does it go?”

“A thousand years, more or less.”

“Then it stops.”

“Then it was written. And someone carved a statue.”

“A portrait.”

He stood in front of it. His head tilted as he studied it. “You
think it’s a clue.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Maybe they blamed me after all.”

“Or else they expected you to come out of stasis, look for
answers, and end up here. It’s the only statue left intact on this planet.”

“And it leads me straight to myself.”

“I agree,” said Khalida, “a map would have made more sense.
I don’t suppose you’ve found one anywhere around here?”

“Nothing but lists of kings and priests, and chronicles of
reigns.”

“Well,” she said, “now we know you can read all this, you
can teach the rest of us. We can help you look.”

His face shut down. “There is no
we
.”

“Why? We’re all commoners, so we’re not good enough for you?”

“You are all archaeologists.”

Khalida’s fit of temper evaporated. She was not an
archaeologist. Her mind had a different slant.

She had had questions. This, however improbable, was an
answer.

That was not what an archaeologist would see. Rashid and the
rest had been praying for a stone, a dictionary, a translator, something,
anything to open this world to them. That would allow them to continue their
work in a universe of fading funding and bureaucratic idiocy.

A living relic, a being who had lived in that world, spoken
some of its languages, read the writing that recorded them, known its history
and culture not just as an observer but as a participant, was their fondest and
most impossible dream. They would want to wring every scrap of knowledge out of
him, and study him down to the subatomic particles that he was made of.

Right up until the moment when Centrum came to take him.

A discovery of this magnitude would never be allowed to
remain in the hands of an already struggling expedition. Once United Planets
discovered his particular talents, that would be the end of any hope of freedom
that he might have had. They would never let him go.

“You see,” he said.

“Yes.”

He did not plead with her. He left her to think about what
she should do, and whether, when she had discovered what that was, she could
bring herself to do it.

It was amazing what people saw and didn’t see. The ancient
statue and Vikram’s assistant didn’t connect in their minds at all.

Rama kept his head down and his mouth shut, which didn’t hurt.
As far as anyone took the trouble to notice, he was just the Dreamtimer who
lived in the stable and looked after the animals.

Aisha had the hardest time keeping quiet. This was the treasure
she’d been looking for, and she couldn’t talk about it to anyone without
causing all kinds of complications. Even Jamal would want more explanations
than Aisha could come up with.

What could she say? That she’d blown open some kind of
stasis chamber and let out Nevermore’s version of Alexander the Great? She
wouldn’t believe it, either, if she hadn’t been in the middle of it.

It didn’t matter, anyway. Mother and Pater had the statue.
That was all they needed to keep the expedition going.

Life wanted to go on in its normal way. The schoolbot was
back up and running, and Pater had upped the difficulty level. There were
horses to ride; Rama was still training antelope in the increasingly cooler
mornings.

She went down once to look at the statue. It was a beautiful
thing, and whoever made it had caught the expression perfectly. The ancient
king had been proud and happy and full of himself, and absolutely sure that he
was meant to rule the world. She could see people bowing in front of him and
being glad to do it.

The Rama she knew was all damped down. The old king was
still in there; she could feel it, and sometimes he showed flashes of it: when
he rode a horse or an antelope, or when he had an audience he wanted to play
to. But the long stasis and whatever had happened right before it had broken
him inside. It was taking him a while to heal.

She tried to help. Most of that involved grooming antelope
and learning how to saddle and bridle the stallion properly, and cleaning
stalls and paddocks and feeding horses and patching them up when they got hurt,
and when there was no one around, showing him how to navigate the computer
system.

He didn’t have any implants or uplinks. He didn’t need them.
He could go right in and do what he wanted.

“It’s easier than reading minds,” he said. “It’s simpler.
Trails are easier to follow.”

“This is just the house computer,” Aisha warned. “The
worldsweb is ’way bigger and ’way more complicated.”

“Can you show me how to get to it?”

“I don’t have that implant yet,” she said. “I’m supposed to
get it after my birthday. If I don’t—if Psycorps doesn’t—”

She couldn’t get any further than that, and he didn’t ask
her to. He pulled up the expedition archive instead, and got her to teach him
how to run search strings through the database. New scans came in every day
now: they were recording the inscriptions under the temple.

He wasn’t interested in those. He could go down and read
them for himself. He wanted the older ones, and the scans from other sites.
Anything with words on it that they had in the database, he wanted to see.

He was looking at other things, too, mostly from Jamal’s
files that Aisha wasn’t supposed to know about. Star maps. Ship’s schematics.
He ran through Jamal’s collection of space-pirate stories in two days, swallowing
them in one huge, mind-boggling gulp.

That might not have been a good idea, but by the time Aisha
realized he was doing it, it was too late. Then he went off and had Vikram
teach him to drive a rover, and repair one, too.

He had a plan. Aisha was fairly sure she knew what it was.
She knew what she would do if she were Rama.

She couldn’t do anything about it, even if she’d had any
idea how to begin. She had to get through her birthday, and the thing that was
coming with it.

Maybe Psycorps would lose the record that said she existed.
Maybe everybody else would forget she was turning thirteen Earthyears in six
days, then three, and then it was tomorrow. They were all caught up in the new
find. Aisha barely pinged their radar.

That night Pater cooked dinner, and he had all her
favorites: tagine made with woolbeast meat, which was better than Earth lamb,
and a huge platter of roasted vegetables from Mother’s garden, and most special
of all, a pie made with real apples from Earth, and real cinnamon. He had that
particular look when he brought it out, half mischievous, half excited.

She had to be thrilled with it all, and eat a big piece of
pie. Everybody was there on the roof on maybe the last really warm evening of
the season; the stars were out, and people sang, and some of the interns had
got up a band that wasn’t bad at all.

It was one of the best night-before-birthday dinners she
could remember. She wished she could have enjoyed it, and not been all knotted
up thinking of what was supposed to happen tomorrow.

The transport was on its way. It would hit orbit around
midnight. In the morning the shuttle would come down.

Mother went with Aisha when it was time for bed, and tucked
her in. It hurt to take the kiss and the hug the way she used to when she was
little, and not be able to tell Mother all the things that were spinning around
in her head.

“It’s going to be all right,” Mother said. “Just relax and
let it happen. It will be over in no time, and then you’ll never have to worry
about it again.”

“I hope so,” Aisha said.

Mother smoothed Aisha’s hair back from her forehead and
smiled. If her smile was a little shaky, Aisha couldn’t blame her. “Go to
sleep,” she said. “Don’t worry about school tomorrow. I’ll come get you when it’s
time to get ready.”

All Aisha could do was nod. Mother kissed her again and went
away. She lay with dinner sitting like a rock in her stomach, and thought about
throwing up.

She’d been practicing the sun-shield that Rama had taught
her. She was getting good at it, she thought, but other things had started
happening, maybe because of it. Those, she wasn’t as sure of.

A few days ago, she’d woken up to find herself floating half
a meter above the bed. It wasn’t a dream. She didn’t crash down when she
realized where she was. She stayed there, drifty and peaceful, until it dawned
on her that this was really impossible. Then the air dropped out from under
her.

It had been wonderful when it happened. Terror came after,
when she remembered the Corps. But there was the sun, wrapped around her, roaring
and flaming. Keeping her safe.

Tonight she opened the door in her mind where the floating
was, and let the bed sink slowly away. She couldn’t sleep like that—if anybody
found her, Psycorps wouldn’t even bother to test her, it would just take her
away—but as long as she was awake, it was hard to resist.

It felt like floating in the ocean. Things like fish swam around
her, a flicker of shadow and gleam: people sleeping or thinking or wandering
through a dream. If she wasn’t careful she could slide right inside them, but Rama’s
sun worked to keep her in as well as Psycorps out.

Thinking about him brought him up beside her. Unlike
everybody else, he knew she was there. Warmth washed over her. If he’d been
there in person, she would have seen him smile.

Then she could sleep. Nothing could touch her. Anything that
tried would have to get past him first.

~~~

The Psycorps agent came in on a Spaceforce shuttle: leaner,
quieter, and much faster than transport and tourist shuttles. It landed on the
plain with not so much as a bump, right in front of Aisha and the parents and
Vikram with the rover.

The agent’s name was Lieutenant Zhao. He was young, pretty,
and shockingly cheerful. He looked nothing like the grim psi master Aisha had
been expecting. He wasn’t wearing black, either. His uniform was dark green,
like conifers, and he even smelled a little like one.

She had slept better than she ever thought she would, thanks
to Rama, but she still felt scratchy and out of sorts. Mother had let her sleep
through morning barn cleaning, then brought her breakfast in bed, and helped
her get dressed and braid her hair.

She had a headscarf over the braids now, like a grownup, and
a new dress in her favorite color, which was the soft deep purple of Nevermore’s
sky after sunset but before the dark had completely come down. Aunt Khalida had
given her thirteen silver bracelets, one for each year of her life. They felt
strange on her thin brown arm, but she liked the way they slid up and down,
chinking softly together when she moved.

Lieutenant Zhao smiled at her and kissed her hand, which
made her blush all over. She
knew
he
was doing it because he was trained to, so if there was anything to find, she’d
be too relaxed and trusting to hide it. But she also knew he meant it. He did
think she was pretty, and he was glad to meet her.

She was so far off balance she almost forgot to hide behind
the sun. She remembered just in time. She even managed to smile, though she
couldn’t look him in the eye.

He was probably used to that. He had three gold buttons on
his collar. Level three—that was high. They only went to five, though there was
a rumor of more that nobody talked about. All the way up to nine.

All the more reason to keep her barrier up. He bowed to the parents.
“Dr. Nasir. Dr. Kanakarides.”

They bowed back, not as low. Pater’s thick black eyebrows
were even closer together than usual. He didn’t like Psycorps. At all. Most
people didn’t. Mother had to smile for both of them and invite Lieutenant Zhao
back to the house—as if he wouldn’t go there anyway, whether she wanted him to
or not.

It was Mother who sat next to Lieutenant Zhao in the rover.
Vikram was up front, driving, and Aisha was in the back, trying not to cling to
Pater. She was determined to keep her chin up and her best face on.

This was going to take forever. There would have to be
greetings and coffee and a tour of the house and the site. It would be hours
before the test could even start.

But when they got to the house, Lieutenant Zhao smiled as
brightly as ever and said, “I know you’re eager to get this over with. Doctors,
is there a room we can use, with full computer access?”