Worlds Away (14 page)

21

Kulsat
Ship :

Centauri
System :

The water was
freezing, and the shock of it caused her to gasp. She swallowed a mouthful of
the salty liquid and tried to choke it back up.

Panic set in as she realized she was going to drown. In
desperation, she tried to quantize herself, but she hadn’t charged herself
nearly enough to make the transformation. If she didn’t do something, she was
going to die.

Three Crescents, whether he’d been pulled in by the current
or had come closer of his own volition, was almost on top of her. He pointed his
energy at her, but he seemed to be hesitating before finishing her off. Perhaps
he was curious to see an air-breather drown. Whatever the reasons for his
delaying the death blow, his proximity had the effect of pumping more radiation
into Justine.

It still wasn’t enough to let her convert her entire self to
protons, but maybe, if she concentrated, she could convert a portion of
herself. Knowing she had only seconds before she would pass out from oxygen
deprivation, she tried to focus on her hand, wrapped around the sphere
containing Kinemet.

All she needed—she hoped—was a single proton to penetrate
the outer shell of the container. The quantum drives they had developed at NASA
had used hundreds of thousands of free protons to initiate the reaction in
charged Kinemet. She had no idea what to expect, if her experiment worked.

A ripple went through Three Crescents’ tentacles. He must
have seen her clutching the sphere of Kinemet, Justine guessed. Bringing the
energy rod up, he fired.

Without consciously thinking about it, Justine willed her
hand to convert from the physical to the photonic state. In a microsecond, the
change occurred, and her hand passed through the sphere and to the grain of
Kinemet within.

Whatever the container was made of dampened the Kinemetic
radiation, but wasn’t resistant to Justine’s photons.

The boost of radiation was enough for her to quantize
herself a split-second before the beam of energy would have sliced through her
body, and before the water in her lungs would have drowned her.

In the quantized state, she could no longer effectively hold
the container, and the sphere fell to the floor of the lab.

Justine instinctively stretched out her essence, one point
reaching for the pebble of Kinemet, the other point extending toward Three
Crescents. The moment she felt her photonic self come into contact with the
Kinemetic atom, she willed a single proton to hit that atom with as much force
as she could generate.

A wave of energy coursed through her, coming up from that
one point and traveling out of the other point, which had reached Three
Crescents.

As the Kulsat had done to her when she was on the
Ultio,
Justine converted Three Crescents into particles of light. She hoped, because he’d
been quantized by her, rather than having done it himself, he would not be
aware while he was in that condition, as Justine had not been conscious when
they’d done it to her.

She waited for a few moments, carefully watching the
collection of photons—Three Crescents—to see if the Kulsat would once again
flee. The quantized essence continued to float where it was, and Justine’s
theory was confirmed. The science leader was neutralized.

Though she could manipulate electricity in her quantized
state, she had no ability to move solid objects. She couldn’t convert back to
her human self, or she would drown, and she wasn’t about to leave the Kinemet
where it was. It was precious.

She had an idea.

Pushing her
sight
out, she saw that the non-Risen
Kulsat were all aboard the shuttle, and it had already launched. They were
several hundred meters away from the Kulsat mining ship. Changing direction,
Justine searched the Kulsat ship. Her exploration confirmed that Long Fingers
was the only other Risen on board. He was on the bridge, all eight tentacles
working at a rapid pace on a bank of computer consoles.

Justine felt a gravitational shift as the Kulsat ship slowed
and banked, obviously coming around to pursue the shuttle. Deep down, she knew
Long Fingers would destroy the other aliens.

Extending herself back to the Kinemet on the floor, Justine
attempted to quantize the Kulsat ship.

She didn’t have nearly enough power. The attempt was like
trying to open a magnetically sealed door by ramming it with her body. The ship
remained unaffected, and Justine nearly knocked herself unconscious with the
effort. If she lost awareness, she would be at Long Finger’s mercy.

The Kulsat ship had completed its turn, and it rumbles as
the engines went into overdrive. Whatever distance the shuttle had managed to
gain would soon be cut short.

There had to be another way to distract Long Fingers.

She formed a plan, but before she tried it, she reached out
to the Kinemet and absorbed all of its radiation as quickly as she could,
becoming fully charged in a matter of seconds.

With the layout of the ship clear in her mind, Justine raced
toward the engine room, which housed both the Kulsat’s quantum drive and their
normal space engines. She didn’t know what kind of propulsion the Kulsat used,
but she did know they would use some form of electric power to run the
computers. Risen or Kinemats—whatever they were called—could manipulate
electrical current. She would shred every conduit and computer in that room.

When she got to the engine room, she headed for the normal
space engine first. It was unlike any other engine she’d seen before, but she
detected trace elements of plasma. She guessed their engine used a form of ion
propulsion, similar to what was equipped on the majority of ships in Sol
System.

Justine had to stop the Kulsat ship from accelerating.
Reaching out with her senses, she traced the various conductors and capacitors,
and forced as much electrical current through them as she could.

Many of the systems were waterproofed, but as the first
circuits overloaded and blew, the explosions ruptured the firewalls, and salty
water poured into the computer banks. The few brief sparks were extinguished
quickly, but the water itself did more damage than Justine. The entire array of
computers beside the normal space engine fizzled and died.

The plasma engine cooled, and then ceased to function.

Next up was the quantum drive. Justine intended to cripple
the Kulsat ship.

Before she could turn her attention to the computers on the
other side of the room, the quantum drive turned on. Long Fingers must have
realized his ship was being sabotaged. If the ship were quantized, it would
effectively stop any further destruction. Long Fingers could travel at light
speed to the beacon, and simply return to his home system. Once there, he could
marshal the military, warn them of the threat humanity posed, and return in
force.

Also, Justine had no idea what would happen to her if she were
on a ship that quantized while she was already in the quantized state. Would
she be trapped on the ship? Would she retain her consciousness? She didn’t want
to find out.

By force of will, she pushed her essence through the water
environment toward the quantum engine control computers. Before she got there,
however, she ran into something. That fact alone shocked her. She was made of
photonic particles; what substance out there was dense enough to stop her?

She realized there was some kind of damping shield around
the quantum engines. Perhaps, she speculated, it was there to contain or focus
the quantization procedure. The scientists back at Quantum Resources and NASA
would kill to study the Kulsat technology. Whatever the reason for the damping
field, it prevented her from sabotaging the engines. She could sense they would
fire in a matter of seconds.

Directing her energy toward the hull of the ship, she
streaked to it, through it, and out into space mere moments before the Kulsat
vessel quantized. It raced away at the speed of light.

With her
sight,
she tracked it for the two seconds it
took to reach the star beacon, over six-hundred-thousand kilometers away. One
instant, the ship existed, and the next, it disappeared from the Centauri
System.

∞

Using her ability to visualize the space around her, Justine
scanned for the Kulsat shuttle, and soon spied it flying toward a large
asteroid in the distance. The shuttle had traveled over a hundred kilometers
away in the few minutes since it had left the Kulsat ship. Justine propelled
herself toward the small vessel. With her
sight,
she saw that she was
closing the gap, though slowly. Although she was made of photonic particles,
she did not seem to have the ability to push her essence even a fraction of the
speed of light—obviously, another reason for a quantum engine.

Even though she’d been fully irradiated, Justine knew from
the experimentation on the Lucis Observatory that she would not be able to
maintain her quantized form for more than a few hours without additional
exposure to Kinemet. The shuttle, however, carried enough of the metal to fuel
her for the rest of her life. With it, she would be able to scan the entire
sector of the Centauri System in search of Alex and the others. She just needed
to reach the shuttle before her radiation levels dropped to the point where she
turned corporeal again.

A nagging thought crept up from the back of her mind as she
raced forward. When she’d been on Venus, she’d been able to sense Alex on
Canada Station Three, even though his essence had been very faint to her. Now,
she did not sense him at all. Although the Kulsat ship had traveled quite a
distance away from the space port, it wasn’t even a fraction of the distance
from Venus to Canada Station Three. Three Crescents had given her no indication
that they had killed her friends, and the science leader had said that if she weren’t
going to cooperate, they would gather the others for questioning.

It made no sense to her, unless something had happened in
the last few hours.

After what seemed like an eternity, Justine halved the
distance between her and the Kulsat shuttle. She estimated she would reach it
before it arrived at the asteroid.

Her
sight
still extended, she sensed the star beacon
pulse. A moment later, a ship appeared in the Centauri System. Had the Kulsat returned
already?

Justine knew they would be able to sense her, and would head
straight toward her. Even if she changed her course, they would eventually find
their wayward shuttle and recover the cargo. She also knew there was a good chance
they would kill all the Kulsat on board.

With renewed determination, Justine pushed the limits of her
powers. Though she had no idea what she was going to do when she got there, she
knew she had to get to the shuttle before the Kulsat ship did.

The newly arrived ship quantized, and the streak of light crossed
the distance between the beacon and her in a blink.

It rematerialized a few hundred meters away from her. Unlike
the Kulsat ship, whose shape resembled a gigantic narwhal, this ship had the
contours of an enormous bird. The hull, also made of Kinemet, swirled with reds
and golds.
Was this a Kulsat warship?
Justine wondered.

The ship seemed to sense the shuttle beyond them, and
changed course, powering toward the helpless vessel. Even going as fast as she
could, Justine knew she would never reach the shuttle in time. In a desperate
gamble, Justine put herself on an intercept course with the new ship. She would
do the same to it as she had to the first Kulsat ship; with the last bits of
her Kinemetic power, she would tear it apart from within.

When her essence raced through the hull, and into the belly
of the ship, she felt a momentary disorientation. It took her a moment to
realize she wasn’t floating in water. The inside of the new ship was filled
with air. Instead of the dull gray sheen of metal that covered the walls and
floors of the mining ship, the inner surfaces of this ship were painted in a
mosaic of bright patterns.

This isn’t a Kulsat ship,
she realized.

Detecting two Kinemetic presences on board, Justine flew in
their direction instead of trying to find the engine room.

At the bridge, she froze in momentary shock when she saw two
tall, bird-like bipeds sitting at the controls. In front of them was an
electronic display showing the Kulsat shuttle. Though Justine could not
understand any of the words on the readout, she was very familiar with what a
targeting system looked like.

The new aliens were preparing to blast the shuttle, along
with Red Spot and all the other Kulsat passengers, out of space.

22

Sierra
de las Minas :

Guatemala
:

Long Count: 10.0.0.0.0 :

For the next
two days, I
treated the burns and did as much as I could to help the survivors recover from
the tragedy.

My mother and some of the other women had set blankets
around the outside of her house to serve as beds. While they all had burned
skin, soon they began to complain of upset stomachs. Some became so weak, they
could not even lift themselves up off the blankets. Some soiled themselves
where they lay.

Those who were still able helped to bury those who had died,
while I tended the sick as best I could.

The three elders were dead, leaving me the only remaining
adult male; and I was still not completely healed from my broken ribs.

When one of the women from a nearby farm came to the village,
I bade her travel to Copán and ask them to send help. By the time she gathered
supplies for the journey there, she’d fallen ill and didn’t have the strength
to pick up her pack, let alone hike the distance.

Of the fifty-two women and children in our community,
seventeen had been in the village itself when the star grain exploded. Four
women and one child had been killed in the blast, and two children and an older
woman had died from their burns the first night. By all accounts, there should
have only been nine wounded left for me to tend, but as I surveyed my patients,
I counted fifteen women and four children who needed my aid. Some of the women
who had been on their farms were showing the same symptoms.

My mother became ill as well, and had fallen into
unconsciousness a number of times.

She died that night, along with the rest of the women and
children who had been in the village during the blast.

By morning, every surviving member of our community made
their way to me, begging me to help them.

I had no idea how to do that. I had only read a few of Balam’s
healing scrolls, and those had only told me how to heal physical wounds.
Nothing I had read had given me the knowledge to treat inner sickness.

Ysalane, who lived on the farm farthest from the village,
was one of the few women left who could still walk around on their own. When she’d
come to us with her two younger brothers yesterday, she had not shown any signs
that she was burned, but by mid-morning, blisters were appearing on her arms
and legs, and both of her brothers had started vomiting.

By that afternoon, she became too weak to stand.

I was completely overwhelmed by the death and pain
surrounding me. There was nothing I could do to save them, and I couldn’t stand
listening to the dozens of pleading voices begging me to ease their suffering.

I ran into the woods east of our village, trying to escape
the desperation I felt. When I reached the stream where we got our water, I
fell to my knees along the bank and looked at my rippling reflection.

For the first time since I was a child, tears rolled down my
cheeks.

Why had I not been affected by the illness and burns? Did it
have something to do with Ekahua sharing his gift with me? Had that, somehow,
made me immune to the effects of the star grain?

I was so consumed by my own misery, I did not immediately
notice that the sky was growing brighter. When I finally looked up, my breath
caught in my chest, and I rose to my feet.

It was another sky boat.

Unlike Ekahua’s vessel, which had streaked across the sky
and crashed into the mountain range, this one was coming to land on the ground
near our village in a very slow and controlled manner. It was large, and
resembled a massive phoenix. The hull of the ship looked to be made of the same
kind of material as Ekahua’s.

My first thought was to run for the ship, and call whoever
was in there to come out and help save the women and children of our village.
Then I remembered Ekahua’s warning, that others might come looking for him. I
didn’t know why he didn’t want to be found, but by the way he’d said it, I
assumed their intentions might not have been pure.

Were these Ekahua’s enemies, then? Or his rivals?

I stopped myself from rushing forward, and hid behind a tree
until I could figure out what these newcomers wanted from us.

The ship landed on eight long, thick legs. Some of the women
in the village were shouting in alarm, but none of them was strong enough to
get up and flee. I felt guilty for not running to their rescue, but I knew I
had no power to defend my villagers against the newcomers.

A rectangular opening in the side of the ship appeared, and
a platform slid out from inside the vessel. Two impossibly tall people stepped onto
it.

I could not believe what I was seeing. They had arms and
legs just like any other person, but they wore costumes unlike anything I had
seen. Their outfits were made of a shiny material, almost like polished stone,
and covered every part of their bodies except their heads. Instead of hair,
they had what looked like a headdress of white and yellow feathers. The lower parts
of their faces were drawn forward, ending in small mouths and chins. Like
Ekahua, they had no ears that I could see.

From where I was, I couldn’t make out the words they spoke, but
it sounded like the chirping and squawking of a bird.

They carried something in their hands, but it did not look
like a weapon to me—it was shaped more like a small box. They pointed it around
the village, and there were portions of the box that seemed to light up. It
reminded me of the picture boxes in Ekahua’s sky boat. The creatures made more
chirping sounds, this time quite excited.

My heart skipped a beat as the platform lowered to the
ground, and the sky travelers stepped off. Some of the women yelled curses at them;
others cried out in fear. They were too weak to get up and fight the invaders.

I felt terrible for not doing anything, but though I was not
as weak as the others were, I knew I was powerless to stop the sky travelers.

When they approached Ysalane, however, I stood from my
hiding place and had every intention of charging them. I had no idea what I
could do to stop them, but I had to do something. When I saw that they were not
trying to grab her, I stopped, and moved back behind the tree once again.

They spoke to Ysalane, and though their words came out in
chirps and squawks, a moment later, a secondary voice spoke in our language.

“I am a Sentinel of the Collection; I am a protector,” the
sky traveler said to Ysalane. “You have been touched by star fire. If you come
with us into the sky, we will complete the change in you and your people. Your
lives will continue. If you remain here, this world will consume you and you
will die.”

“You can save us?” she asked, looking at her brother, who was
lying on the ground beside her, curled into a ball. “You can save him?”

“Yes, but you will never be able to return here.”

Ysalane looked at some of the others, who nodded to her. She
said, “We will go with you. Just save my brother.”

The leader motioned to the other sky traveler, and they
assisted all the villagers off the ground and to the platform. In groups of
four, they lifted the women and children up and into their sky ship.

Once all the survivors of the blast were inside, the leader
approached one of the dead women—I couldn’t see whom. He swept the box over her
body. He made a squawking sound, and then gestured to the other. They picked up
the woman’s body and carried her back to the platform. The sky travelers
repeated the process for all the dead.

When all the villagers, both living and dead, were in their
ship, the leader took something out of one of the pouches on his costume. It
looked like a large ball, similar in size to the ones used at the ball court in
Copán. This one, however, was not made of rubber. The surface of the ball was
similar to the stone block from Ekahua’s sky boat.

The sky traveler stepped over to the blackened crater where
the common fire pit once stood, and placed the ball in the center. He returned
to his ship, and went inside.

Stepping on the platform, which lifted him up and into the
ship, the sky traveler made a gesture with the box in his hand moments before
the rectangular opening in his ship closed.

The ball on the ground began to glow and vibrate.

When I realized what the ball was for, I knew I had to flee.

The sky ship rumbled and lifted off the ground.

I turned away from the village and, trying to ignore the
pain in my chest, ran as hard as I could.

By the time I reached the closest farm, a blast of light,
many times brighter than the one that had ripped through our village before, covered
our entire village.

I turned my head before it blinded me, and dove inside the
house on the farm just as an ocean of heat, more intense than I could ever have
imagined, washed over me. It burned the very air around me, and I could not breathe.

Certain that I would die, I prayed to the gods. Perhaps they
heard me. Just when I thought I could hold my breath no longer, the heat and
light faded, and air filled my lungs when I opened my mouth and inhaled.

When I felt strong enough to rise, I made my way back to the
village, but it was no longer there. No buildings, no common area, no trees,
and no grass; there was nothing but a huge circle of bare earth. It was as if a
thousand farmers had come and tilled the soil.

For a very long time, I could only stand there and wonder at
what had happened. I knew everything that had occurred over the past week was
greater than anything written in any of the story stones at Copán.

The affairs of the gods were beyond me, and though I had
been thrown into the center of these events, I could not divine their purpose.

I don’t know how long it was before I returned to the
farmhouse, but the sun had begun its slow descent from the sky, and the moon
had come out from hiding.

Sleep was not something that I thought about, but exhaustion
got the better of me, and by the time I woke up, it was morning again. It had
been five days since the men of the village had gone to war.

I searched through the house for some basic supplies—a pack,
some tools, a knife, and food—and then I set out on the trail for Quiriguá.

∞

By the time I arrived near the area where the Ch’orti’ army
was encamped, I’d had plenty of time to think about what had happened.
Unfortunately, I was just as confused as I had ever been.

The sky travelers had said they would heal the women and
children of the village, but the same time, they would never be able to return.
Did that make them good or evil? Were they taking them away to become slaves?
There was no way I could know.

Ekahua had asked me to burn his body, rather than bury it. I
didn’t know if he didn’t have the desire to journey through the Underworld and
be reborn in Heaven. In my mind, I had not felt any remorse that I had left him
buried in the cave, and not burned his body as he’d requested. Now, however, I
was having doubts.

He’d told me that other sky tribes would arrive and look for
him, and I could not let his body be found by them. Without knowing the
birdlike sky travelers’ intentions, I had to believe that Ekahua had been right
all along. After all, he’d given me a gift that had protected me from the star
fire.

Instead of continuing on to the warrior camp, I went wide
around them, being as stealthy as I could. I decided to find the cave where I
had left Ekahua, and burn his body as he’d instructed me to do.

It was several hours before I reached the mountain, and I
realized that my chest no longer hurt. My ribs had healed, and my breathing was
once again strong and sure.

With a little searching, I finally found the cliff where the
crevice was, but to my dismay, the entire area was covered in rocks, boulders,
and gravel. The earthquake must have caused the cliff wall to crumble.

Even with a team of twenty men, it would take a hundred days
to dig through to the cave, and there was every chance the cave itself had
collapsed in on itself. For a single man, it could take years.

The cave-in had hidden Ekahua’s body from the bird-like sky
travelers. They would never find him. After all, who would think this enormous
pile of rubble was a grave for a sky traveler?

I had one duty left: to find my father and the other Ch’orti’
warriors and tell them what had become of our village. It was a task I did not
want to undertake, and I sat down among the ruins of the cliff and thought long
and hard about how I was going to tell them their wives and children were either
dead, or taken by invaders from the sky tribes.

They would never understand about the star fire, or about
sky ships. The elders of my village, and the King of Copán, believed Ekahua was
a god, no matter what I’d said. If I told my people exactly what had happened,
they would doubt my words. I had to tell them the story in a way they would
understand.

A thought came to me, then. The Song of the Stars. The words
Ekahua had used for the song were gibberish to me, and he’d said the words didn’t
matter—it was the melody that was important for our descendants.

I would use the Song of the Stars, replace Ekahua’s words
with my own, and tell the story of our downfall. I had to make certain the
story was powerful. I might have been protected from the star fire at the
village, but I knew I would pass on to the Underworld one day. Combining the
story of my village with the song was the best way to ensure that both would
survive me.

Over the next few hours, I created the story, and composed
the words to match the melody of the Song of the Stars.

The bird-like sky traveler who had spoken to Yslance was
Kinich Ahua, the firebird god and messenger of Hanab Ku, creator of the People.
The other sky traveler was Kukulcan, the feathered serpent.