Forgotten Suns (55 page)

He pushed.

The beast swallowed the gate. The gate swallowed the beast.

Rama flung the fire of himself at the gate. But Umizad was
there first.

He blazed up like a dying star. Stars fed him; galaxies gave
him their strength.

The gate collapsed on itself. Ship rode the shockwave
outward, helpless as a twig in a flood.

Rama clawed his way up out of his cradle, scraping the last
of his psi. He turned Ship, somehow. Aimed it. Dropped, unconscious, dead—Aisha
couldn’t tell. She couldn’t move. She could barely think.

She was a pair of eyes and a shred of consciousness. All she
knew was that the gate was gone. The beast was gone. The universe—she didn’t
know. She might never know.

Umizad was dead. Aisha and Rama almost were. The others,
down on the moon—she couldn’t tell. She couldn’t reach that far.

She woke with the great-grandmother of a headache and the
feeling that her skin was blistering off her bones. When she could make her
eyes work, she couldn’t see any sign of burns, but every part of her hurt.

She was breathing air, which meant Ship was alive. She crawled
out of her cradle past the cold still shape of Umizad. The captain’s cradle was
empty. Rama was gone. Was—

Stupid. He hadn’t flamed into nothingness like his
descendant. He was lying beyond the cradle, sprawled on his back, covered in
grey ash.

Those had been his clothes. He still had his antique
gold—and raw, blistered skin under it.

Aisha dropped down beside him. She was suddenly, ferociously
angry. He was not dead. There was no way he could be dead.

She shook him so hard his head rocked on his neck. “Wake up.
Wake up, damn you.”

He didn’t move or breathe. She hauled back to deliver a
full-bore face-slap.

His hand snapped up and caught her wrist.

His eyes were open. There were galaxies in them. Swirls of
suns.

He blinked. The suns sank back into the depths.

Aisha wrenched free. “You couldn’t even die like a decent
person.”

“Who ever said I was decent?”

That was Rama. Awake, aware, and as sane as he ever was. He
sat up, and reeled.

Aisha caught him. For an instant she was someone else, and
he was Rama. Always.

Then she was Aisha again, and memory faded. So did anger.
Suddenly she was impossibly tired, and terribly calm.

“We won,” she said, “I think. I have no idea where we are.
Or even if we’re in the same universe we started in.”

“We are,” he said. “That thing isn’t.”

“Is it dead?”

“It can’t die. It won’t come back, either. It’s learned its
lesson.”

“You hope.” Aisha pushed herself to her feet. “We need to
eat. So does Ship. Then find our way back.”

If there was anywhere to go back to. But she didn’t say
that.

Aisha wasn’t going to think about what would happen to the two
of them in this universe without a human world or human people. With ship’s
stores that were finite. And—

~~~

Rama retreated to his quarters to wash off the ash and put
on new clothes. Aisha stayed on the bridge next to Umizad’s body.

It was empty, a shriveled husk, like a leaf in a winter
wood. She made herself remember what he used to be before she knew him in this
life: not the master mage or the gifted student but the boy in the barnyard,
just discovering that he had magic. That was his deepest self, his true self.

“Ship,” she said, not even stopping to think whether it
would listen, let alone do what she asked. “Make a cradle for him, please. Keep
him whole and safe, until we can bring him home.”

Ship didn’t answer, but the cradle he was in grew and
blossomed like a flower, rising on a stem as thick as Aisha’s whole body, till
it stopped level with her eyes. Then it grew shimmering petals, pale blue and
palest green and the faintest tinge of red-gold. They folded over what was left
of Umizad, and went still.

Aisha found her voice, eventually. “Thank you, Ship. Thank
you.”

~~~

The bridge was full of Umizad’s memory. Aisha couldn’t
stay there, not without losing what control she had left and crying herself
dry.

She retreated to the crew’s galley. She hadn’t thought she
was hungry, but once she was off the bridge, she realized she was starving.

She rooted in cupboards and bins and coolers, and threw
together what she found, more or less at random, the way she used to do with
Jamal when it was their turn to cook.

By the time Rama came out of his room, dressed in his
gi
, she’d eaten about as much as she
could stand. He sat down across the table from her and ate everything that she
hadn’t devoured.

He didn’t complain about her more creative combinations.
Just raised his eyebrows and kept on going.

It was the kind of food she’d made on Nevermore, the kind
she hadn’t eaten in ages. At least since Araceli. She’d been missing the food
of her own people, and the people, too.

She wanted to go home.

~~~

Ship fed for a whole shipday. Aisha slept through much of
it. So, as far as she knew, did Rama. There wasn’t anything else they could do.
Until Ship was fueled, nothing much more than life support would work.

When Aisha was awake, she went into ship’s web in search of
Aunt Khalida’s navigation protocols. The web was in a knot, with some systems
down and others corrupted, but she managed to sort it out bit by bit.

Finally she found the files she wanted. Getting them to open
was another adventure. Rama helped with that, emerging from his quarters after
she’d started to think he’d collapsed the way he had after he first rescued
Ship.

He’d done that alone. For this he’d had all that was left of
his people. Whether there still were any, neither of them knew.

He had closed in on himself again. “We should be
celebrating,” Aisha said. “The eater is gone.”

“Not till we know the price,” Rama said, even while he
sorted out a string of navigation files and got one of the star maps to stop
turning itself inside out.

Aisha leaped on it. “There! That’s the orientation we came
in at.”

She triangulated maps and observations. That gave them a
course to set.

Ship couldn’t jump yet, but it could make fair enough speed
swimming through this part of space, which was rich with stellar gases. They
had time to rest and get their own strength back.

Two shipdays. Three. Four. Aisha had the web running the way
it should, and she had repaired some of the damaged systems. Ship was healing
the wounds in its hull, though sometimes, when it itched or the healing tissues
stretched, everything inside went strange: the smell of the air, the quality of
the light.

She’d thought Rama was finding things of his own to do, till
it dawned on her that she hadn’t seen him since the second shipday. She tracked
him down to his quarters, in the kind of panic that left her barely able to see
where she was going.

He wasn’t lying dead in his bed or hanging from a
nonexistent rafter. He sat with his feet tucked up, back straight, hands on knees.

Aisha sagged against the door. His eyes were open, wide and
blank. Still, he was breathing. When she stepped into his line of sight, he
blinked.

“I can’t find them,” he said.

She knew who he meant. “Because they’re too far?”

“No.”

“Then why—”

“I think I burned myself out.”

He was perfectly calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that meant
he was screaming underneath.

Aisha shook her head firmly. “That’s not true. You went
right into ship’s web, didn’t to use an interface. Your psi is still there.”

“Barely. I can’t see past the hull at all, except through
the screens. I can’t find anything out there. I can’t see, or feel, or hear—”

She’d never heard him talk like this. He was shaking:
holding on by a thread.

“It will come back,” she said, though she didn’t know if
that was true. “You drained the cup, that’s all. It will fill up. A day or two
in the sun, a few days’ rest…”

“This is worse. This is scraped down to the bare bone. What
if it never comes back?”

“I don’t believe that,” Aisha said. “I refuse to believe it.
And even if it’s true, does it matter? You’re alive. You have Ship. We’ll find
your people.”

“If they live. If they haven’t all—if I didn’t—”

“Stop.” Aisha caught hold of his hand. It was the one that
held the sun. She turned it palm up.

The sun was still there. Dim, clouded, the swirls of plasma
sluggish and slow. But it wasn’t gone.

“Look,” she said. “Can you feel it? Is it burning?”

“It always burns.”

“The rest will come back.” She folded the fingers over it
and held it in both of her hands. He didn’t pull away, which surprised her. “Ship
will help. So will I. And the mages when we find them. Between all of us and
the sun, you’ll get yourself back.”

“Is that my self? Is that all I am? That burning thing?”

She would never say so, but he was acting like Jamal.
Complete with whiny fit. Which was disconcerting, because she wanted to laugh, and
that would not be a good thing at all.

“What did you used to be?” she asked him. “When you were
only you?”

“I was—” He claimed his hand back finally, but used it to
catch one of hers and pull her closer. He peered into her face. “I was never
only
anything.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

She’d gone too far. His breath hissed between his teeth.

She pushed just a little bit further. “Maybe it’s time you
learned to be a person like anyone else. Nobody out there wants or needs a
king.”

He could kill her. He was close enough and strong enough. He
could snap her neck before she had a chance to move.

She held herself still. Trusting him. Daring him to get over
himself.

He rocked back on his heels. She watched rage chase
tiredness past the first unwilling flicker of laughter across his face. “Damn
you,” he said, but mildly.

“Come out and eat,” she said. “Ship says we’re almost where
we want to go.”

“Ship says?” His brow quirked upward. “It talks to you now?”

“It always did.”

“I don’t think I’m surprised.”

“But you are jealous.” She danced back out of reach. “It’s
your turn to cook. Better make something fast. I’m hungry.”

He lunged after her. She darted ahead of him. He might catch
her, and she might get a bruise or two, but it would be worth it. She’d kicked
him out of his pity party. With luck he wouldn’t fall back into it before they
came to the rogue moon.

They circled around from the sun side of the barren
planet, into a night that was both emptier and fuller than it had been before.
The eater’s prison was gone. The blackness of space was already filling with
dust and gases and bits of stars streaming into the void.

Sparks of light glimmered from the moon, tracing the shapes
of cities and the lines of rivers. Someone was alive down there.

Aisha couldn’t hear anyone thinking. Ship walled her off
from anything that might have come in from outside.

Maybe she was burned out, too. It didn’t matter as much to
her as it did to Rama. She’d be better off without it, if she ever made it
home. If she didn’t, not much of anything would matter.

~~~

Rama insisted he could pilot the shuttle. Since Aisha had
never done it, there wasn’t much choice.

He seemed to have calmed down. His eyes were clear and his
hands steady on the controls. The course he laid in took them back the way they
came, to the field outside the mages’ city.

They touched down just before sunrise. The field was empty
and damp with rain that had fallen in the night. The air smelled rich and
green.

Aisha still couldn’t hear anything outside her own head. It
was a muffled feeling, like walking around with her ears blocked. What it must
be like for Rama, she could hardly imagine.

As they came closer to the city, Aisha started to smell
baking bread. At first she was sure she’d imagined it. But it grew stronger.
Then she heard someone singing, painfully and blessedly off key.

Rama heard it, too. He lurched forward, then stopped cold.

Aisha didn’t want to leave him, as badly as she needed to
see for herself that people were still alive. At least Shendi was, making the
day’s bread, which meant there must be people to sell it to.

“Rama,” she said.

He wasn’t listening. “I can smell them,” he said. “Hear
them. Feel them, like sun on my skin. But I can’t—”

“You can feel them? It’s coming back, then.”

He tossed his head the way his people did, not quite a
headshake. “It’s not the same.”

“It will be.” She thought about pulling him forward, but the
tightness in his shoulders warned her not to touch him.

Someone came toward them down the road, a shadow against the
rising sun. Aisha recognized the height and the way it moved, like a big cat.

Her name burst out of Aisha. “Daiyan! Where is my aunt?”

Daiyan didn’t break into a run, but she could walk very fast
with those long legs. “Umizad?”

“You first,” Aisha said.

Daiyan dipped her head: half bow, half concession. “We had
casualties. Most survived.”

“We had one,” Aisha said, and watched Daiyan’s face
stiffen—as if she hadn’t known it the moment she saw Aisha and Rama alone on
the road. “He’s on the ship. We’ll bring him down now we know there’s something
to bring him to.” She advanced a step. Her voice lowered, almost a growl. “Where
is my aunt?”

“Alive,” Daiyan said. Aisha sagged, but didn’t quite fall. “She’s
still recovering.”

“So are we,” Aisha said, once she had her legs back under
her. “Are we welcome here?”

“Here and in every city and town and village in our world,”
Daiyan said, bowing and spreading her hands in a gesture that took in Aisha and
Rama together. “We didn’t feel you coming, or we would have given you a proper
welcome.”