The Gate to Futures Past (34 page)

I
WAS—

In the empty corridor of the Hoveny transport, open doors on both sides, and for an instant believed I was done with strangeness and AllThereIs. Back in what I'd thought the real universe but was NothingReal.

Making it the Hoveny's reality, not mine. Not to keep.

Until I tried to take a step. My feet, in their too-tight boots, were embedded in the spongy flooring. It didn't hurt.

It was inconvenient. How was I to reach my people if I couldn't go to them?

“Call them to you, Sira.”

I swiveled my head. Beside me stood a Clanswoman, her age worn as lightly as gauze. White hair cloaked her shoulders, moving to a breeze I couldn't feel, and her lean body was clothed in a simple blue dress, belted at the waist. A longknife and hook hung from that belt and her feet, in sandals laced up her bare calves, floated above the deck.

I'd have known her strong lovely face anywhere. “Great-grandmother. What are you doing here?”

Aryl didn't smile. “I'm here for the same reason you are. To restore the Stolen to their rightful place. To bring our people home.”

Making us the ghosts now, I supposed. For some reason, that didn't bother me as much as it should. I suspected I was in denial or shock, but that wasn't what mattered. “Do you know how? I didn't,” I chose to complain, “get instructions.”

“Call their names.” A new voice.

Yet one I'd heard, once before. Enris. He came up beside Aryl, his arm going around her waist, hers around his. A lock of willful hair slipped around his neck, and he growled happily in his throat, bending to give her an enthused kiss.

Chosen did that. They were Joined, again. I didn't need to reach to feel their link, it glowed in their faces, and I would have been thrilled for them both—but for one very personal problem. “Are you dead, then?”

They separated, smiling into each other's eyes, before turning to me. “We've waited this long without hope,” Aryl said gently. “We can wait a little longer, having it. I promise I'll stay with you, Sira, and be born, if that's what you ask of me.”

She made no promise to stay after that, nor would I have expected her to—everything, I thought with a pang, was turned around. Here was danger and imprisonment. There? Freedom. Family. Be born to NothingReal?

I'd never ask it of her.

“We will guide them, Sira,” Enris told me, his voice deep in my bones. “It's time to come home. Call them.”

I couldn't smile.

Not because there wasn't joy; the universe—both of them—rang with it. Not because this wasn't right; it was. By going home, to AllThereIs, the Clan would save so much more than themselves, sealing a wound that should never have existed, wiping away generations of grief.

What was the loss of one against all that—

I spoke the first name, feeling it leave me like the start of a melody.

“Tle di Parth.”

—everything.

They answered. One at a time, Chosen as pairs, the Clan appeared in the corridor, walking toward me. They'd been housed across three decks, but bodies weren't what came. These were their true selves, freed of flesh. To each, I offered the palm of my right hand, which wasn't flesh either, but how was I to know the rules of this?

Through each fleeting touch, I sent my
certainty.
This, I told each, was the end of our flight from death. Here would be the beginning of life.

Then I showed them the way.

Some smiled and laughed, seeing me there, and didn't wait, disappearing as though my presence granted them permission to follow their own unheard voices. I supposed it did. I'd asked so much of them, until now, to stay for me. It was time they did what was right for them.

And go.

The M'hiray scientists came together, gesturing respect to Aryl, their faces shining. Andi laughed and pulled her parents to hurry, dashing from them to run into Aryl's arms, then mine. “We'll see you soon,” she whispered, with a child's innocent joy.

I'd no doubt of that.

Ruis took my hand without smiling, sending
strength
. She knew.

Others were afraid. Distrustful. Suspicious. Most still came to me, slowly. I shared with them what I'd experienced in AllThereIs, what we were, what they would be again. Most of all, I let them listen, for the song had come with me.

And the Watchers. I felt them hovering, protective and intense. Enris was one. I recognized others. The Stolen, reborn, choosing to be guides to those they'd loved. All along, they'd brought home those who'd dissolved in the M'hir.

We'd been wrong to fear them.

Now? I feared what else would be watching. How long would the Great Ones wait? Did time flow in AllThereIs as it did Between as it did—wherever here was? Or did they count the new arrivals as they budded like fruit—

Pointless. I'd a chance to do for Brightfall's innocents what the Founder hadn't. Save them.

I'd take it. The Clan must leave.

And did. Going as they'd come, one at a time, Chosen in pairs. However long each lingered Between, in memory of this life, they'd find their way back to AllThereIs, there to sing with those they'd thought lost and with all those they'd forgotten, who never had.

Until eight remained, and me. I didn't need to
reach
to know why. Fear held Degal and Signy here. Ambition, Teris and so Vael. Duty bound Destin, which was no surprise; Elnu, though injured and in pain, wouldn't go without her.

“Nor I, without Barac,” Ruti said firmly. She'd come to the corridor, standing aside to watch the children go.

Barac. He refused to hear, or couldn't. My heart ached for him.

You've done all you can from here, Great-granddaughter. It's time.

I was—

Where I should be, was my first thought, in Morgan's arms. Filthy, was my second, as hair shivered itself clean, creating a ridiculous cloud of—

“Sira!” Morgan grabbed me, was shaking me, or he was shaking. Whichever way it was, he was upset, I could feel it along our link.

It's all right,
I sent back, with
love
and
reassurance.

Knowing it wasn't.

T
AKE THE SHIP . . . take the ship . . . every step Barac took down the corridor beat to Morgan's order; every panting breath filled him with glorious fury. They'd no revenge on the Assemblers. No justice from the Blues and Grays and all who'd betrayed the Clan—

At last, he could make things right again. His fingers twitched. Recover their weapons, that first and quickly. Might not even need to take over Hoveny minds—but he'd do it and gladly.

The first room he'd passed was empty. Why was the next? And the next? There should be Clan here. Barac broke into a run, looking from side to side. Glimpses of the giant Hoveny structure flashed at him through windows to his right; the hill and sky beyond full of other craft to his left. Neither mattered. Where was everyone?

Where are you?

No one answered.

He reached the end of the corridor and 'ported to the level below, to the room where he'd sat with Ruti before Morgan's summons.

She looked up with her wonderful smile, her dark eyes bright, hair like a cloud, and for a heartbeat, he believed the nightmare
over. “Barac! I'm so glad you've come. I promised to wait but can't you
hear
? Sira's called your name. It's time to go.”

Sira—among the dead? A ghost?

Barac spun on his heel and ran blindly. “Take the ship,” he panted. “Take the ship.” Solve everything. Put them in control—at last—

More empty rooms, half shadowed by the past, half threatened by the present. Gear abandoned. Foolish blankets. Useless clothes. His breathing became gasps, became ragged sobs.

Barac, my Chosen. Beloved. Come back. Everything's possible. Please stop and come back. Listen!

He tried to block her voice, push aside the waves of
love
and
longing
she sent him. He'd orders.

“Take the ship.”

His lips pulled back from his teeth.

If he had to do it alone, he would.

I
OPENED my left hand, unsurprised I'd clenched it, even less surprised to find the palm held a coin of brown dust unlike that coating most of me and my Chosen. I tipped my hand slightly, watching how it slipped along, staying together.

I concentrated, returning the speck to the M'hir, close as I dared to where it had been flower petals and memory, and looked at my Human.

Who was having some difficulty hiding his glee.

“You told my cousin to ‘take the ship.'” Considering what I'd been through and learned, I shouldn't have been taken aback, but was. Maybe it was perspective. “I thought we were working with the Hoveny. What did I miss?”

Lifting an arm behind his head, Morgan rapped his knuckles on the window. “This, for starters.”

Hands on his shoulders, I pulled myself up to see outside. “Oh, dear.”

“There's another on the moon.”

I eased down again. I'd been inside such a building. The Founder's memory of it, at least, though it had felt real enough at the time.

The Founder. The Great Ones. The wonderful—and
terrible—things I'd heard flooded through me with a vengeance, and it was all I could do to breathe.

“You can take us to Barac,” he continued, getting to his feet. “Don't worry. They've seen us 'port.”

As if that was even remotely a concern. I sat, looking up at my Chosen, memorizing his face. I knew it, beard or no. Knew the shape of him. The taste. The warmth and real and—

Morgan sank to his knees in front of me. “What's this?” He searched my face, brushed hair from my cheeks, hair that turned and curled and held his wrist.

I'd fallen into the blue of his eyes so many times before—had never thought there'd be a last. You didn't, that was all. Self-protection, that blindness, because looking into them now, I couldn't imagine taking that step—not for the Hoveny, not for anything.

Tell me.

If I did, I'd never smile again.

B
AD? The Oud-Key had a gift for understatement. Lemuel went to what passed for a bridge on the clunky transport, taking reports from ner second as they walked, gleaning more through the feed in her other ear. Fear and outrage. Excitement and curiosity. They'd spiral into hysteria, either way, disrupting travel, communications, commerce. Ne sighed to nerself. Not a situation to leave to underlings. In no sense.

Ne'd a functioning pre-Fall structure. Two, if the one on Raynthe was airtight. Possession didn't equate to ownership, by System law. It did equate to responsibility. Ne'd been here and involved.

Making it nes mess to sort.

Susibou Di acknowledged nes arrival with a curt, “Director,” keeping her eyes on the console of the sophisticated detector they'd brought from the station. “Issued your warn-off to the civilians. They haven't budged. Permission to ram them.”

Susibou joked when others wouldn't dare; Lemuel wasn't sure the tech was joking this time. “Not yet. There'll be government officials on some of them—who knows who else. Any news from Raynthe?”

“The advance team's taken a flyover. They don't expect survivors.”

Whatever Sira had started seemed to have stopped with her—disappearance. This could be the last of it.

Or the start. Lemuel preferred pessimism as a working platform. “Where are we on this—vanishing?”

Susibou swung her head around to glower, hair beads tinkling on her shoulders. “It's not my equipment.”

“I didn't say it was. Did you record it?”

Another tech interrupted. “Director, Morgan's back on board, with Sira. They—” he swallowed and went on calmly. “They appeared in the passenger section with the one called Barac.”

A cloaking device, with some form of personal flightgear? There'd be time for answers once the situation was contained. “Send—”

“I believe we can help.”

“Excuse me, Director. They say it's urgent they see you,” her second explained. Five figures stood in the door to the bridge, surrounded by staff.

Lemuel recognized three, dismissing the rest as unimportant: Degal Di, with an unknown female, presumably his heart-kin; Teris Di, with an unknown male, presumably hers. The pair claimed to represent the rest. Completing the group, Destin Di, who belonged in the cargo hold with her wounded heart-kin. A simple guard, weaponless, but nes own protection stiffened, alert to potential threat.

The only threat from these three was distraction while ne dealt with crisis. “Take them back to their quarters and keep them—”

Degal disappeared.

Then reappeared by one of the techs, who let out a shriek.

He held out his hands placatingly. “A harmless demonstration, Director, of our value. Sira isn't the only one with something to offer.”

“We're all Founders,” Teris stated. “We can do what she did.”

These people smiled freely; Lemuel put one on nes face. “Come in. Tell me more.”

“Director.” Susibou had been crouched over her console. She turned, her face stricken. “They're gone.”

“If you mean the rest of the Clan, the fools listened to her,” Teris sneered. “We don't need them.”

“That's not what I mean.”

The Great Ones slowed. Stopped.

Then
REACHED
!

Watchers tumbled. What lived was shunted aside, the dance abandoned, the song distorted as the fabric of space itself folded and stretched.

Like arms, what
reached
. Like gaping mouths. Holes they might have been, or hands. Whatever they were, they coursed along the channels of what bled AllThereIs to consume what they found.

Withdrawing, they sealed the wounds behind them, tossing into the
seething dark
what didn't belong.

But they didn't move.

So nothing did.

Waiting.