Authors: Kevin J. Anderson
The engineers were talking at the end of the new shaft, where warm, moist air smelled of rock dust and mud. In the bright light of the blazers, 84
Nur’of stood before a broad wall diagram that showed a sketch of extensive new tunnels beneath Maratha Prime.
The lead engineer looked up to see him approaching. “It is the human rememberer! You will have to tell your people this story of what we unexpectedly found. One of our boreholes broke into this odd honeycomb of preexisting tunnels. No one knew they were here.”
Nur’of had widely spaced eyes and an enlarged head, though to a lesser degree than the heads of purebred scientist kithmen. A cross between scientist and technician kiths, an Ildiran engineer was especially adept at doing rapid calculations in his head and could retain enormous amounts of practical data, such as alloy components, melting temperatures, and stress tolerances.
Anton indicated the crude wall map. “Where did all these tunnels come from?”
“Not important. These shafts will take us directly to the thermal rivers.
We can make use of that!” The engineer scrutinized the diagram again.
“Now we can extend transfer conduits through these existing tunnels into the boiling aquifers. Maratha Prime will have all the power and heat we could possibly want.”
Anton clapped the engineer on the shoulder. A few weeks ago, he’d had to explain the meaning of a pat on the back. “I know you’ve been working hard at this, and you’ve dreamed it for a long time.”
During Maratha’s day season, the engineers maintained solar collectors, storing accumulated power in enormous banks outside the domed city. But during the half year of darkness, the skeleton crew had to ration energy consumption until the next dawn.
While most engineer kithmen were content just to maintain systems in perfect working order, Nur’of preferred a challenge. Since Maratha’s crust retained heat long after the night fell, he had conceived a system that would pipe hot water from deep aquifers, through turbines, using thermal plumes to generate energy. Nur’of had been eager to put his plans to the test, but he had never expected to uncover this warren of already dug underground passages.
Fascinated, Anton peered into the new channels. “Why don’t we go explore?” He grabbed a portable blazer, then noticed the engineer’s immediate reluctance to venture into the dark. “Aren’t you curious to know who dug them?”
“Only to the extent that it relates to my project.” Nur’of pressed his lips together. “But yes . . . it would be good to verify firsthand the functionality of my new designs for thermal-power transport.”
Together, the two set off into the tunnel. Anton moved his light from side to side, up to the ceiling, driving back the shadows. “How long has Maratha Prime been here? When did Ildirans first build the city?”
“Nearly two centuries ago. We were not aware of any previous planetary inhabitants, but we have been too busy to delve into Maratha’s mysteries.”
The tunnels had obviously been drilled long before the Ildiran occupation. Who could possibly have made them? The ancient Klikiss race, perhaps? Besides the Ildirans, what other choice was there?
Anton shone his blazer into another passage, but the darkness swallowed up the light. “It’s a rat’s nest in here. I wonder where all these side passages go.”
“What is a rat?” Nur’of said, then suddenly smiled. “Oh yes, you told us about the plague-carrying Earth rodents in your Pied Piper story.”
The steam grew thicker as they trudged ahead, steeply downhill. Soon they heard the thunderous roar of an underground river where hot water surged through a channel beneath Maratha’s crust.
“Excellent. We can install our turbines and generators immediately. No additional excavation will be required.”
As the two men returned to the well-lit passages where diggers prepared the shafts for installing conduits and piping networks, Anton kept looking at the shafts branching in all directions with a puzzled expression.
“You know, we could make daily expeditions into these tunnels and find out where they all go.”
“Not necessary,” Nur’of said. “This shaft already takes us to the thermal river. That is all we need.”
“But what if the other tunnels go someplace better?” His parents would never have turned their backs on such a glaring mystery without investigating it fully.
Nur’of looked at him. “This one is adequate.”
“So you say.” Anton knew the other skeleton-crew members would make similar excuses, probably even Vao’sh. They simply had no curiosity about things that didn’t fall within their fields of expertise.
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Though Ildirans might look like humans, their behavior often reminded Anton that they were definitely an alien species. He couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t want to explore the mysterious passages and unravel the enigma of who or what had built them.
If nothing else, it would make a wonderful story.
255MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA’H
Hearing that the Hyrillka Designate had awakened, Jora’h wanted to leap from the chrysalis chair and rush down to the infirmary level, but such a brash action would cause as much of a stir as Rusa’h’s awakening.
Prime Designate Thor’h looked like an overjoyed child. He grabbed the medical kithman’s arm, intending to be the first to see his uncle, but Jora’h raised his hand. “We are all going, Thor’h. I want to see Rusa’h as much as you do.”
Pery’h appeared more relieved than happy at the news. The Designate-in-waiting had felt uncertain about taking over his role, though Jora’h had been convinced that his quiet and intelligent son would be up to the task.
Attenders came swarming in. They jabbered and scurried, retracting the anchor legs of the voluminous chair, adding blankets and colorful wraps, tucking in the Mage-Imperator as if they were packaging a fragile antique for a long journey, instead of just moving him to another room in the Palace itself.
They finally lifted the chrysalis chair and carried it like a palanquin through the wide doors of the contemplation chamber. The procession moved along the dazzling halls, down winding ramps. Startled by the Mage-Imperator’s presence, pilgrims stood staring, unable to believe their good fortune at catching a glimpse of their revered leader.
Prime Designate Thor’h pranced ahead, his eyes as wide and bright as M A G E - I M P E R A T O R J O R A ’ H
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if he had taken another massive dose of shiing. This time, though, his frenetic behavior had nothing to do with any drug other than genuine excitement.
When they reached the infirmary chamber, the doors were flung open and the guards made their way through the crowd of doctors that had arrived ahead of the Mage-Imperator. Rusa’h’s emergence from the sub-thism sleep had taken them all by surprise.
As his chrysalis chair was carried into the infirmary room, Jora’h reached out with thism, following the myriad silvery lines of soul-threads from the Lightsource. But though the Hyrillka Designate was awake, Jora’h could not sense him. It was as if his brother was invisible to the all-encompassing web of thism. Only another part of the deepening mystery . . . but the joy of having Rusa’h awake again was paramount.
Dazed, the Hyrillka Designate sat up in his bed, glancing around.
When Jora’h looked at his hedonistic brother, he saw a stranger’s face.
Rusa’h was gaunt and pale, his formerly soft features now lean, wasted away after months of catatonia. He had been full of laughter, surrounded by pleasure mates, entirely pampered, and he had always kept a smile on his plump face and a twinkle in his eyes. Now, though, the man looked disturbed and troubled.
Thor’h ran to Rusa’h’s side and embraced him, not even pretending to follow protocol or dignity. “Uncle!” Thor’h’s close-cropped hair was bristly, but his uncle’s hair remained long and full, since he had been unconscious during the death of the former Mage-Imperator, when all Ildiran males had shorn their heads.
“Thor’h . . . ?” the Hyrillka Designate said, trying to reassemble his memories. “Yes, Thor’h. Have the hydrogues gone?”
“Yes, Uncle. The hydrogues did terrible damage, but they left Hyrillka.
I helped the people to recover and rebuild. When you get home, you will be glad to see all I have accomplished.”
Pery’h stood beside the Prime Designate and lowered his head formally. “And I am to be your new Designate-in-waiting, Uncle. I am greatly relieved that you can now act as my guide during the transition years. We feared you might never wake.”
Rusa’h finally seemed to piece together the implications of his brother Jora’h sitting in the chrysalis chair, where he expected to see old Cyroc’h.
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He asked no questions, said nothing at all for a long moment, then seemed entirely uninterested in the new situation.
The attenders brought Jora’h’s chair next to the Designate’s bed, where he could reach out his hand. “We are glad to have you back among the living, Rusa’h. The Empire needs you.”
Rusa’h grasped his hand with surprising, almost defiant, firmness.
“Yes . . . back among the living.” He heaved a long, low sigh. “I have returned from the realm of pure light. I was on a higher plane, surrounded by the Lightsource, engulfed in its holy illumination.” He closed his eyes, then opened them again as if he couldn’t believe where he found himself.
“And now I have come back to a place of so many shadows . . . so many.”
He lay back in his infirmary bed, as if incredibly weary. “But I no longer need to fear the shadows, or the darkness.”
Rusa’h appeared marvelously recovered . . . yet it now disturbed Jora’h greatly that he could not sense his brother in the network of thism. It was as if Rusa’h had been erased, or disconnected. “We must let the Hyrillka Designate rest. We should not trouble him now. He has returned to us, and this is a great day.”
“I’ll stay with him,” Thor’h said. The Prime Designate’s tone carried no request for permission.
“And I too should be here.” Pery’h simply offered a logical conclusion.
Before Thor’h could complain about his younger brother’s intrusion, the Mage-Imperator said, “Yes, it would be best if both of you remained here to help your uncle grow stronger.” He signaled for the attenders to carry his chrysalis chair again. “We will talk further, Rusa’h, when you feel stronger.”
265JESS TAMBLYN
Now that Jess knew he could escape, the isolated water planet no longer seemed like a hopeless trap. All of his intrinsic powers and the reborn wentals would do him no good unless he could bring the water entities back to the Roamers . . . and Cesca.
He stood on his reef day after day, watching as the framework of his amazing vessel took shape in the water before him. The wentals carried his thoughts, helped guide aquatic creatures—from plankton and brine shrimp to lumbering leviathans—that became a nearly infinite workforce.
As the white surf foamed against the rocks, Jess sensed and directed the furious activity taking place in the deep ocean, even in the segregated tide pools. Microcellular animals and tiny coral creatures cemented millions of grains of sand in place, one at a time, to form a skeleton like an organic armillary sphere. Shellfish and slithering invertebrates secreted resins and pearly films that coated the rough bones of the ship’s skeleton, strengthening it with an enamel harder than human teeth, then plating on pure metals stolen from the seawater itself.
Arched ribs rose up out of the water, curving inward like fingers grasping an immense ball, the plaything of a giant child. Coral continued to build, crisscrossing the main supports. Growing out of the shallows, the incomplete ship looked like the fossil of an extinct dragon, its bones picked clean and half-submerged in the reef water. Jess watched it take shape and fill in, becoming more marvelous day after day. With his naked body flooded by wental energy, the possibilities seemed endless.
Roamers were experts at cobbling together functional vessels out of scrap components, their ships never pretty but always reliable. He’d seen a hodgepodge of designs that fit no standard catalogue, but this unique vessel—constructed by a limitless army of ocean creatures and guided by a water-based entity that had never taken human form—looked stranger than anything Jess had ever seen.
The plated coral bones formed curves and loops like the partial rings of latitude and longitude on an ancient globe. Incomprehensible engines 90
were incorporated into the framework, operating on powers that even Jess did not understand.
Because of the raw life energy he drew from the alien ocean itself, time passed with a different sense for Jess. He could stand still as the tides cycled, bringing more creatures, more workers, more materials, and watch the ship grow before his eyes.
Finally, at high tide under two diamond moons in the unnamed world’s sky, the rigid outline of the spherical cage was complete.
From the deepest water came an enormous tentacled creature that emitted low thrums in a language more ancient than human civilization. It raised itself into the open air, letting water stream off its algae-covered hide.
The monster’s tentacled embrace seemed to wield a muscular power sufficient to crack a hydrogue warglobe. With one enormous milky eye, the leviathan looked at Jess and then the motionless wental starship.
The creature lifted three tentacles as thick as tree trunks and seized the armillary-sphere framework. Jess watched anxiously, concerned that its brute force might damage the carefully constructed vessel. But the wentals guided it. With a strange delicacy, the beast carried the reinforced framework from where it had taken shape on the reef shelf into deeper water—where it sank.
Jess stared at the empty, rippling water. “Now what?”
Now your transportation bubble is complete.
Since his body was filled with the force of the wentals, Jess could breathe water . . . in fact, he didn’t need to breathe at all, yet another sign that he was more than human. Ripples of liquid electricity flowed like phosphorescent plankton just beneath his skin, like static sparks ready to jump to anything he touched.