Authors: Kevin J. Anderson
“I wish I knew what you are,” Celli said aloud.
The round knots that were its eyes moved. She could tell the thing was looking at her, though its detailed facial features were still covered with an outer woody shell. The irises of the eyes had a whorled pattern like the rings of a tree.
All her life, Celli had heard green priests describe how the worldforest could see all of Theroc through a billion invisible eyes in its leaves. But this was different, an aspect intentionally grown and shaped to evoke human features and expressions. And it looked oddly familiar to her. . . .
One afternoon, as Celli stood in the cool shadows, smelling the rich soil and the moist underbrush, she heard a loud crack. She rushed over to the man-shaped stump. There was a louder pop, and then a long snapping sound, as if bark was splitting. The outer covering had broken like an eggshell beginning to hatch.
She took two steps away, then curiosity forced her closer again.
The gold-scaled bark peeled apart to expose fresh pale wood beneath
it. It was smooth and golden-grained . . . like skin. The large knotted branches began to stir and finally broke free, extending from the central torso-trunk like the arms of a newly awakened man stretching. From its curled, tucked-under position, the rounded lump of wood now lifted up and turned its face toward her, its features still covered with thick patches of bark.
The wooden arms reached up; at the ends, a set of thin branches rem-iniscent of fingers splayed outward, flexing. As the living carving touched its face, the ends of the twigs broke off like old scabs, leaving only perfect fingers.
Speechless, Celli watched as the wooden hands fumblingly peeled away the remaining bark to expose a smooth brow, then a nose and an entire face. She recognized the features.
“Beneto?” Her voice was the barest whisper. It looked exactly like her brother who had died when the hydrogues destroyed the worldtree grove on Corvus Landing.
The legs of the tree figure divided into two narrow trunks in the ground. The wooden Beneto strained, trying to lift the legs, and finally they broke free, disconnecting from the roots. The manlike sculpture took a single plodding step forward and stood, separate from the tree.
“Beneto . . . are you in there?” Celli said, her eyes sparkling, but she was afraid to come closer. She had heard old stories about human simu-lacra made out of clay. What was the word? A golem! The worldforest had shaped and grown some sort of golem that looked exactly like her lost green priest brother.
The wooden figure took another tottering step forward, and stopped, bathed in a shaft of sunlight that shone through the interlocked branches overhead.
Celli hurried forward, forgetting her caution. She used her hands to brush away the flaking bark that still clung to the wooden man’s chest like an old skin from a larva that had not completed its first molting. When she at last stared at the polished wood grain of the artificial man, she saw that the facial shape was indeed identical to Beneto’s, though his body was smooth and streamlined, asexual and without blemishes.
“Oh, Beneto! Can you speak? Talk to me!”
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The tree golem swiveled its head and looked at her with wood-grain eyes. It seemed to be struggling.
“Don’t you remember me? I’m Celli, your little sister.”
Finally, the lips cracked open, as if the worldforest had just finished forming the Beneto golem’s mouth. Inside, a perfect set of wood-chip teeth showed themselves as his hard lips formed a smile. It coughed, expanded its chest, then inhaled to fill the lunglike hollow spaces in its body core. A whistling sound came out, then a harsher noise. Finally, the sounds became words.
“Celli . . . of course.”
His speech had the familiar timbre of her brother’s voice, but it also had a hollow, echoing quality that reminded her of the woodwind flutes her grandparents made for small children.
“Celli. I remembered you every day . . . as I grew. I watched each time you came to visit.”
“Is that . . . really you, Beneto? Or does it just look like you? All the green priests said that you died when the hydrogues attacked. Everyone on Corvus Landing was wiped out.”
The wooden man looked at her, and his expression became troubled.
“The worldforest fashioned me. At the moment of my death, I was connected to the trees. I poured my every thought, my every memory, through telink into the worldforest. It was as if I stored my . . . soul there within the great mind of the trees. And now the forest has brought me back. I am a living synthesis, halfway between tree and man. I am . . . needed for the war.”
Celli threw her arms around him, feeling the solidity of wood, but also the warmth and glow of living human flesh. “Whatever you are, I’m glad you’re here. It’s better than having no brother at all. Do you . . . do you know that Reynald was also killed?”
“The worldforest cannot forget a moment of the attack on Theroc,” the Beneto golem said. “We felt every single death, whether of tree or of man or woman. Even those who weren’t green priests . . . still, we saw them, we witnessed their pain, mourned them. We remember.”
Celli took his wooden hand and pulled him to the edge of the thicket.
“I have to show you to our parents. Sarein has come back too, from Earth.
Everyone will be so glad to see you.”
Beneto grew steadier on his feet as he took one step after another. Now the fallen branches in the collapsed barricade sprang out of their way, as if the wooden golem himself exerted a kind of force to clear a path. Celli bounded ahead, skipping and excited, urging him to hurry.
When they finally emerged from the dense thicket into the open clearings of the worldforest, Beneto came to a halt as if his feet had taken root again. He swayed in place, drinking in the details of the devastation with eyes that were close to human. The wood-grain whorls of his irises shifted as his facsimile pupils widened, even though as part of the worldforest he intimately knew exactly what had happened. His expression sagged into a deep sadness. “I have returned not a moment too soon.”
Celli stopped beside him and held his hand. He flexed his wooden fingers, as if trying to feel her touch, and she tugged on his wooden arm again to urge him along. “Come on, Beneto. We have to tell everybody. It’s about time the Therons had some good news.”
“Yes,” Beneto said, lifting his foot to take another step, as if he had forgotten how to walk on human legs. “I have much information to share.
Even the green priests have not learned everything from the forest.”
Celli looked questioningly at her brother’s wooden but familiar face.
Beneto seemed to be marshaling his thoughts, gathering his echoes of memory. Proud and strong beside him, Celli led her brother toward the settled areas, where the toppled trees had been dragged away and the ground cleared by the Roamer helpers.
As the two of them approached the fungus-reef city, the trees seemed to whisper an announcement of their arrival. Green priests looked up from their labors. Their emerald skin was covered with ash, their expressions weary, their eyes reddened by tears and dust. But they could feel a thrumming through the worldforest mind, and when they saw the golem of Beneto, they stared.
Mother Alexa and Father Idriss climbed down from the fungus reef.
When they saw Beneto and recognized the features carved and grown into the smooth, polished wood of his face, their thrilled and happy expressions looked awkward on their faces, as if they had forgotten how to feel joy.
Celli bounded forward. “Look what I found! See what the worldforest has created.”
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Idriss reached the ground first, then turned to help his wife, though he couldn’t tear his gaze from the strange visitor as the Therons parted to allow them a clear passage. “My daughter? What is this? It looks like . . .”
Idriss couldn’t seem to say the name.
“Yes,” the golem said. “I am Beneto . . . in part.”
Their parents had never pretended to understand the mysteries of the universe. Alexa and Idriss accepted his return with a sense of wonder and without an avalanche of questions.
The Theron people came forward cautiously. They had no fear of the facsimile of Beneto, despite his unnatural appearance. Celli beamed, and all the others fell into a hush as he lifted his head and began to speak. “I am . . . a gift from the worldforest. Call me a messenger if you like.”
“Well, I would rather call you my son Beneto,” said Idriss. Alexa touched his arm to keep him quiet while the wooden man talked.
“I am that, and more,” he said. “I have come here to help.” Beneto turned slowly to look at all the amazed people. The restless worldforest stilled itself so that everyone could hear his voice, loud and strong.
“This is the beginning of a new phase in our war against the ancient enemy, the hydrogues.”
The Ildiran species is polymorphic. Different kiths have attributes and abilities that place them into appropriate castes on the Ildiran landscape and also on other planets within the Ildiran Empire. Thinkers love being thinkers; workers love being workers.
Kiths occasionally interbreed, sometimes out of love and attraction, other times as a conscious effort to enhance certain attributes (i.e., swimmers, scalies, fighters). In their culture, mongrels are rare but not completely uncommon. It often turns out that the best singers and poets and artists are half-breeds, thus implying a genetic strength that the purebred castes do not have.
Each kith ends its name with a particular phonetic sound, and crossbreeds combine the sounds:
’h
rulers/nobles
’n
soldiers, warriors, guards
’nh
military leaders/generals
’k
workers
’v
bureaucrats
’t
singers
’l
lens kithmen
’f
scientists
’o
technicians
’of
engineers
’a
teachers
’th
artists
’sh
rememberers
’x
miners
Despite their kith variations, though, the Ildirans are a very homogeneous society, all under their Mage-Imperator.
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T H E H A L F - B R E E D C H I L D R E N O F N I R A K H A L I
Osira’h
, female, father: Jora’h
Rod’h
, male, father: Udru’h
Gale’nh
, male, father: Adar Kori’nh
Tamo’l
, female, father: lens kithman
Muree’n
, female, father: guard kithman 453
A N O T E O N I L D I R A N u N I T S O F TI M E
Since Ildirans evolved on a planet of constant sunlight, naturally their race does not measure time in segregated units we know as the “day,” “week”
(the length of a phase of the Moon), and “month” (based on the lunar cycle). However, the Empire uses time units of generally similar lengths.
For the convenience of the reader, rather than inundating the text with numerous alien-sounding words, I have used the rough equivalent in Trade Standard. Bear in mind that when an Ildiran speaks of a “day,” he means the generally accepted length of a waking-sleeping cycle, and not specifically twenty-four hours.
455
adar
—highest military rank in Ildiran Solar Navy.
Aguerra, Raymond
—streetwise young man from Earth, former identity of King Peter.
Alexa, Mother
—ruler of Theroc, wife of Father Idriss.
Aladdia
—transportal technician on Rheindic Co.
Andez, Shelia
—EDF soldier, held captive by Roamers at Osquivel shipyards.
Aquarius—wental-distribution ship flown by Nikko Chan Tylar.
Arcas
—green priest, part of Colicos team on Rheindic Co, murdered by Klikiss robots.
Archfather
—symbolic head of Unison religion on Earth.
attenders
—diminutive personal assistants to the Mage-Imperator.
Avi’h
—Maratha Designate, youngest son of Mage-Imperator Cyroc’h.
BeBob
—Rlinda Kett’s pet name for Branson Roberts.
bekh!—Ildiran curse, “damn!”
Beneto
—green priest, second son of Father Idriss and Mother Alexa, killed by hydrogues on Corvus Landing.
Bhali’v
—bureaucrat kithman, assistant to Maratha Designate Avi’h.
Big Goose
—derogatory Roamer term for Terran Hanseatic League.
blazer
—Ildiran illumination source.
Blind Faith—Branson Roberts’s ship.
Blue Sky Mine
—skymine facility at Golgen, operated by Ross Tamblyn, destroyed by hydrogues.
Boone’s Crossing
—Hansa colony world, known for its black pine forests, now devastated by hydrogues.
Brindle, Robb
—young EDF recruit, comrade of Tasia Tamblyn, vanished after attempting to contact hydrogues on Osquivel.
Bron’n
—bodyguard of Mage-Imperator Cyroc’h, committed suicide after his leader poisoned himself.
Burton—One of the eleven generation ships from Earth, fourth to depart.
Lost en route, captured by Ildirans for Dobro breeding experiments.
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458
Caillié—One of the eleven generation ships from Earth, fifth to depart and first to be encountered by the Ildirans. Colonists from the Caillié were taken to settle Theroc.
Cain, Eldred
—deputy and heir apparent of Basil Wenceslas, pale-skinned and hairless, an art collector.
Cannons of Darkness
—geysers on Maratha, active during the cooling-off weeks of the long twilight.
carbon slammer
—new-design EDF weapon, effective at breaking carbon-carbon bonds.
cargo escort
—Roamer vessel used to deliver ekti shipments from skymines.