Forgotten Suns (49 page)

All they could do was keep on toward the moon, settle into
orbit around it, and ready the shuttle for descent. There were no spacecraft in
orbit with them, no stations, nothing but the emptiness of an uncharted system.

~~~

Rama piloted them all down in the shuttle—even Dr. Ma.
Khalida or Kirkov could have done it, but one look at his face and they both
found cradles in back of the pilot’s station.

Aisha ended up in the cradle beside him, because no one else
would go there. She wasn’t altogether comfortable about it, either, but she’d
never been afraid of him.

He went completely still as the shuttle descended. His face
in profile looked as if it was carved in obsidian, all sharp planes and fierce
angles.

She’d thought he might put on whatever a king wore in his
world, to show himself to the descendants of the people he’d ruled, but he’d
gone the other way. He was in the first clothes he’d found on Nevermore, the
faded red shirt and the hand-me-down Spaceforce trousers and the well-worn
riding boots. And gold, plenty of it: ring and bracelets, torque and earrings.

It said what it needed to say. What his people would think,
Aisha couldn’t know.

She’d dressed for practicality herself, in her digging
clothes. No weapon. If they needed any, they had Rama, whose whole self was a
weapon.

When they touched atmosphere, Aisha caught her breath. It
felt like fire running across her skin.

At the same time her hands were cold. She kept reminding
herself to breathe.

“Steady.”

She almost thought she’d imagined it, but Rama’s eye was on
her, with the hint of a smile.

He was as scared as she was. Being Rama, he built walls
around it and locked the gates against anyone who tried to get in.

Behind Aisha, Dr. Ma was talking to Kirkov, softly. “This is
a universe being born. All those clusters of galaxies and infant stars—we’re at
the beginning. It’s possible we’ve traveled in time as well as in—and
beyond—space.”

“That’s not possible, is it?” Kirkov said, but not as if he
was really arguing.

“Theoretically it may be,” she said. “If every universe is
different, however subtly, why not one at the beginning of its cycle?”

“But time travel—”

“What would you call the space—place—continuum—that exists
between universes? Does spacetime follow the same rules there? Might time be as
simple to traverse as space? Could we—”

“You’re giddy,” Kirkov said.

“I am never giddy.” Her voice was pure frost. “This is
scientific euphoria. I need the worldsweb, with all its data and its
computational powers, but I think—I hypothesize—I theorize—”

“You know we’re not likely ever to get back there,” Kirkov
said. “All you have is the ship’s web and what’s inside your own head.”

“I’ll make do,” she said.

Aisha had to admire her. She was not easy to like, but she
had passion. As for what Kirkov had said…

Aisha refused to believe it. They would get back. Somehow.
They’d find a way. After they finished whatever they’d been called to do on
this lost moon of Nevermore.

When the shuttle touched atmosphere, what felt to Khalida like
a tractor beam locked on. No voice came on the conn; no planetary security
system issued a challenge. They were simply and effectively trapped and held.

Rama tried an evasive maneuver or two, met an invisible
wall. He shrugged and folded his hands and let be.

Once when Khalida was visiting Nevermore, before Araceli
broke her inside, the expedition had been invaded by one of the giant plains
cats, a young one looking for its own territory. It had badly injured one of
the interns and killed a mare and her foal.

Marina and Vikram had got the rest together to build a trap
and half lure, half herd the cat into it, with a young antelope for bait and
all the available transports to make sure it went where it was supposed to.
Then once it was trapped, they had flown it, in the cage, to a far and
unclaimed corner of the plains.

This felt like that. Bait for the predator; a route
constructed to bring him to it.

They flew over the widest of the moon’s several continents,
a rolling expanse of brown and green, mountain and plain, that reminded Khalida
almost painfully of Nevermore. She looked down on a tracery of rivers and a
deep green of forest, and in among them, the regular shapes of roofs and walls,
streets and plazas.

Roads connected the towns and cities. The shuttle flew too
high for its passengers to see people moving there, but flocks of winged things
passed below. Khalida’s mind was almost antic enough to wonder if any of those
was large enough to carry a human rider.

She would have thought the shuttle would be drawn toward one
of the larger cities, but whatever was in control piloted them toward a complex
structure perched on the sides and summit of a mountain above the blue bowl of
a lake. The walled interior of the mountaintop looked like a park: an intricate
pattern of stone and greenery bounded on the farthest edge by a waterfall that
plunged half a hundred meters into the lake below.

Khalida knew that fall. There was no sign, visual or
otherwise, of the guide who had brought them from one universe to another.

The shuttle came down on the long field beside the upper
reach of the fall. People waited there: a dozen standing together.

If Rashid could see…

Only one of them was like the tribes who still remained on
Nevermore: smaller than the rest, all ivory and gold, with a smooth oval face
and wide golden eyes. Three towered over them all, dark and eagle-faced like
Rama but as tall as the woman in her dream. The rest were short or tall, brown
or bronze.

None was their guide. These were strangers, standing very
still, with expressions ranging from somber to grim.

They were afraid. Not of the shuttle; that barely troubled
them at all. Of the man who walked out of it, with the rest trailing behind.

He was amused, with a distinct, dark edge.

He halted between the shuttle and the welcoming party,
giving them time to get the measure of him. Khalida doubted that any of them
could see him clearly through the lens of legend and dire history.

After what felt like a long while, the man in the middle
spoke. He was tall though not nearly as tall as the dark ones, with red-bronze
skin and narrow dark eyes and proud and somber features, crowned with striking,
shoulder-long, fire-red hair. But for that last, he could have been a man of
Earth.

“Kalendros,” he said.

That was Old Language, or close enough. A title. Not quite
King.
Majesty,
maybe. With a faint but unmistakable suggestion of
Tyrant
. Or
Royal Monster.

“I see my reputation precedes me,” Rama said. He sounded
light, easy. “What do you have for me, then? A war to fight? A dragon to slay?”

“We thought you’d bring an army,” one of the tall ones said.
He was young, Khalida thought, and less afraid than the others—maybe because he
was still young enough not to know better.

“I did,” Rama answered him, flicking a hand toward the
others behind him. “There’s much more to them than meets the eye.”

Khalida realized that she had stiffened and come to
attention. She fixed the young giant with a hard, cold stare, as if he had been
a particularly callow recruit.

He had the grace to blink and look away. One of the others,
square and sturdy and remarkably like a woman Khalida knew from Old Tibet,
stepped forward and met Rama eye to eye. She was slightly taller.

They were all psi masters. Khalida could feel the force of
it under her skin. That one, the woman who had the least fear of Rama, was the
strongest.

She might even be stronger than Rama. Khalida lacked the
knowledge to be sure.

“So,” the woman said. “The Sun’s son found his way to the
other side of the sky. You’re saner than I expected.”

“And shorter?”

Her lips twitched. “That part of the story came near enough
to the truth.”

“It’s a dragon, then, isn’t it? Not a war. You seem
remarkably peaceful here.”

“We work at it,” she said. “Come. Majesty. If it pleases
you.”

She might be mocking him with the title and the courtesy.
She might not. Rama took it calmly either way. “I’m no king in this world. They
call me Rama in this age. And you?”

“Elti,” she said.

He bowed slightly. “Elti,” he repeated.

“Come,” Elti said.

~~~

Yes, this was a cage for a predator. It had the amenities
of a palace, with of course no machines, but a company of mute and efficient
servants. Its walls were made of energy as well as stone—a forcefield maintained
by the powers of the mind. Their hosts—she could not quite bring herself to
call them captors—were taking no chances.

Rama seemed neither wounded or angry at the mistrust of his
own people. He had gone into a kind of trance, light and yet hyperalert, as if
his every move was a form of katas.

The archaeologist in Khalida was enthralled by the palace:
from architecture to furnishings to frescoes and mosaics and works of art on
walls and floors and displayed in niches and courtyards, to whole rooms
constructed like galleries in a museum. That maybe was what it had been before
it became a monster’s prison: a place not meant for living in, though the beds
in the high airy rooms were wonderfully comfortable.

A pair of silent servants led them to one of the galleries,
where a table was spread with the makings of a feast. They set out the plates
and cups and bowls, bowed the guests to seats at the table, and mutely
withdrew.

The food was close enough to the tastes of the tribes on
Nevermore that Khalida could guess at some of what was in it. The room was like
nothing she had seen on that planet. Sculptures lined the frescoed walls. Human
figures of all the kinds and peoples of Nevermore sat and lounged and whirled
and leaped, dancing, feasting, making love: as if in stripping their own world
of any such thing, they had brought it all here.

It was too frenetic for Khalida’s stomach. She ate what she
could of bread and sharp cheese and roasted vegetables and drank a little of
the too-sweet wine, then sat back in the elaborately carved chair while the
others satisfied less finicky appetites.

Rama could be a delicate eater, too: he took most of his
energy from the sun, or from the ship when he was in space. On this night of
the moon’s short day, he ate as if he were fueling for a race. Or, she thought,
a battle.

No one had much to say. Aisha was the most talkative: she
was teaching Kirkov and Dr. Ma bits of Old Language, naming the various items
of furniture and describing the most exuberant of the frescoes, color by color
and figure by figure.

They were being watched. It began as a prickle in Khalida’s
nape and grew to a crawling sensation across her shoulder blades.

Rama ate one last bite and thrust his plate away. Then,
quite calmly, he said, “Come out and face us. We’re not animals in your
menagerie.”

“No?”

Elti emerged from the shadows, with a much taller shadow
behind her.

Khalida’s breath stopped. There was the woman of her dream.
Here in the room, in living presence, she was even taller than Khalida had
expected. As tall as any of the men who had met the shuttle.

She carried that height well, with easy grace. She wore a
long embroidered coat over closely fitted trousers. The coat was open; her
breasts were bare, firm and high though she must be at least as old as Rama
seemed to be. Her hair was straight and shining and braided down her back; she
wore a torque, deceptively plain, made of what must be pure silver.

Khalida had to remember how to breathe, and then to see.
There were others with the two women: a man, walnut-brown, very old and
withered with sparse white hair, and a pair of young persons helping him hobble
into the light and settling him in a cushioned chair.

If the others they had met were psi masters, this was
something more. Khalida could barely describe to herself what it felt like to
be so close to him. Like waiting for a storm to break. Like standing inside the
warp drive of a starship.

Rama sat motionless at the table, relaxed, visibly at ease.
Khalida had always known that he was damped down, suppressed; still in large
part asleep, lost in a long dark dream.

Now he was waking. He might, she thought, be angry.

Or not. She would hardly know. He was no king or kin of
hers.

“No?” The tall woman read Khalida’s thought as easily as if
she had spoken it aloud. “Worldgates opened on your world once. One of his
descendants, it’s said, met a woman there, a queen.”

“Of course a queen,” Khalida said, not meaning to be
cutting, but she could not help herself.

“Why not?” the woman said. “He was a king. Or had been. By
then he’d abdicated. Retired to tend his flocks. Until there was a crisis of
gates, and he was trapped on the far side of one. You have his blood—his genes,
is that your word? Far and far away, but perceptible still.”

Khalida opened her mouth to argue, but memory silenced her.
The results of a test. Contamination, she had thought. Maybe, after all, not.

“So that’s how,” Aisha said farther down the table. “It wasn’t
just Rama making the connection to come here. It was us.”

“Yes,” the woman said.

She was speaking PanTerran. Khalida had been too focused on
her and on what she said to absorb the meaning of that. Now it struck words out
of her. “That
was
you at Starsend.”

“A projection,” she said. “You know firsthand how difficult
physical passage is. Mental, however…”

“Daiyan,” Elti said.

It was interesting to see that proud person reined in by an
evident superior. Commanding officer? Mother abbess?

“You’ll speak again,” the old man said in Old Language. “Later.
Now there must be apologies: to you, majesty, for treating you like a wild
beast, and to you, strangers from far worlds, for our lack of courtesy and
proper welcome.”