The rumbling began as they were walking from Josef’s office back to the seniors’ classroom. It felt like an earthquake that had not quite reached them yet. A student who passed them said to a friend, “Looks like somebody jumped the mark.”
Then the claxon sounded, a blast of noise that Sean felt in his bones. If a car was made as big as a city, its horn would have sounded like that. The claxon gave off a long, low blast then went silent, only it now seemed as though the entire world was mimicking the noise with horns of their own. Even the building holding the classroom gave off a booming roar from somewhere overhead. This was the first real evidence they’d had that the building holding the school was actually surrounded by other structures, that they were actually in a city. There were hundreds of horns. Thousands.
Dillon asked a passing student, “What is going on?”
He asked the worst possible guy, a tall Lothian with hair gelled into angry spikes tipped in silver. Matching black pants and vest with silver spikes up the legs and ringing the shoulders. Eye shadow and rings everywhere—evidently skin art was a galactic event. And the attitude to match. He sneered, “Don’t you know anything?”
The girl walking alongside him would have been called Goth back home. She answered, “Apparently not.”
“I know enough to not look like a pair of dorks,” Dillon said to their backs.
A voice behind them said, “Don’t mind them.”
Sean turned and felt the same swooping dive as the previous day. He switched to Serenese and said, “It sounds like a city on the move.”
“It is, in a way.” She turned to Dillon and gave him a solemn look. “Hello, Sean’s brother. I am Elenya.”
“Dillon. Hi.”
“Dillon. It suits you.” She did not actually dismiss him. More like her intent was to focus on Sean. Exclusively. The thought was good for the day’s first shiver. “I was looking for you. Where have you been?”
“With Josef.”
She nodded and held out her hand. “Come.”
“Where are we going?”
“To witness the most beautiful moment of this planet’s year.”
They joined the stream of students passing through a door that before had been permanently locked, up three flights of stairs, and into a room the size of the entire school. One giant high-ceilinged chamber, four hundred feet to a side, filling with more people than Sean had seen before, certainly more than just those attending the school. The space was consumed with excited chatter, a huge sense of electric anticipation.
But the most intense sensation for Sean was the warm hand holding his.
The grinding noise continued to grow until it took hold of the building’s foundation. The rumble grew from all sides. The room was rimmed by tall windows. But all they saw beyond the glass was a featureless greyish-black.
Elenya led them over to a spot where they had the railing to themselves. “Yesterday when we spoke. How did you know I was Serenese?”
“Because you look like Tatyana.”
“Who is that?”
“My Counselor.”
She clearly liked that. “Your counselor.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I positively adore long stories. But not now, yes?”
He didn’t care about the dark wall grinding along outside the window. Or how other people crowded in around them. All his being was focused on the long-fingered hand that held his. “Whatever you say.”
“Are you always this agreeable, Sean?”
He thought about that. “Yes.”
“Good. I am glad.”
Sean decided Elenya was fully aware of how he was staring and welcomed his attention. The woman was so controlled, so precise. Her white-blonde hair cascaded in a single perfect line down her back, across the blue of her uniform, which on her actually looked stylish.
He asked, “How old are you?”
“In what planet’s terms? Here on Lothia I would be almost twenty-one.”
He translated that and realized, “We’re the same age, more or less.”
She turned to him, revealing eyes grey and luminescent. “Pay attention, Sean.”
“I am. Believe me.”
“This is important.” She turned to the window, beyond which the first pale wash of light began to grow. “Here it comes.”
The light grew until Sean could see that the building was rising. The entire building was moving up. Up, up, and now he realized they were emerging through . . .
He spoke the word as a question. “Ice?”
“Every Lothian building has a shield generator in its roof. Shields can be made to create massive amounts of heat. For this very purpose.”
Ice. Blue streaked with white. Ice. Hundreds of feet thick.
Ice.
Then the city emerged into daylight. After all this time, waiting to see another world, Sean filtered the entire amazing scene through the sensation of the hand holding his.
Elenya was saying, “Lothia is far from what I would call a beautiful world. But this first sight every summer makes up for everything one must endure here. Almost.”
“You’ve lived on Lothia?”
“Off and on for much of my life. Until last year, my father was the planetary Ambassador assigned to this world. What do you know of Lothia?”
“Nothing at all.”
She cocked her head and the hair cascaded over one shoulder. “How long have you been a recruit?”
“Forty-five days and counting.”
“And yet you are assigned to the senior class. You and your brother must be seen to have the potential of becoming adepts.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
But whatever she was about to say was cut off by all the Lothians who surrounded them, lifting their hands and chanting in unison. Elenya translated, “They speak a traditional saying from what is now called Old Lothian. ‘Another long night has ended. We enter the dawn light with hope for all the new tomorrows.’”
Other buildings continued to sprout slowly from the ice. A dozen, a hundred, a thousand, a vast city rising into the mist and the light. The sky overhead was partly veiled by clouds colored a surreal mix of lavender and grey. Two suns shone through the covering, but light from both was dim enough for Sean to look directly at them. They were joined by a faint ring of pale pink that shimmered like a sunset rainbow.
A ring. Around two suns.
Dillon spoke in English from his other side. “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”
“That’s for sure.”
Elenya asked, “What did your brother say?”
Sean translated, then explained, “It’s from a story about a girl who is transported to a distant world in a storm.”
“Perhaps the storyteller could transit?”
“Doubtful.”
Dillon leaned far enough over to smirk at their two linked hands. He said in English, “Way to rock and roll, bro.”
“The two of you, pay attention,” Elenya said, punctuating her words by tugging on Sean’s hand.
He huffed a silent laugh. Elenya was already laying claim, at least to the moment. And he was just loving it.
Elenya went on, her words aimed at the glass before her face. “My father studied the planet’s history before taking this assignment. You know of the Serenese Records?”
“A little.”
“There was no mention of Lothia. None. Then the Lothian adept appeared, the first to come from elsewhere, rather than us going first to them.”
“Adept means somebody who can establish new transit points?”
“Correct. Among other abilities.”
“I’m no adept, Elenya.”
She just looked at him. A single glance, one carrying a wealth of the unspoken. Then she turned back to the glass. Sean could feel Dillon close to his other side, wanting to hear. So he pushed down his protests and said, “Tell me what happened.”
“The Lothian adept’s first words were, ‘I bring greetings from the hollow world.’ Lothia held many surprises for the empire of man. Nowhere else have humans been planted underground. But what is more, the Lothians knew of our other worlds.”
“They knew they had been planted?”
“Correct.”
The buildings rose like defiant spears, gleaming symbols of man’s presence. Even here.
Sean said, “But I thought the Serenese Records were the first anybody knew about other worlds.”
“For all worlds except Lothia, that is correct. But Lothia knew it had been created by others. Who had done this planting, they could not say. Only that they were intended to grow to where they could connect with the humans of other realms. They searched for this method for three thousand years. And arrived just eight centuries after the Serenese Records revealed the transit concept to us.”
“Just eight centuries,” Dillon said. “Imagine that.”
As far as Sean could see in every direction stretched nothing but rock and ice. The suns and the cloud veil painted the vista in a thousand hues of rose and white and silver and palest violet, a landscape of mystical wonder. And of death. For nothing grew here. Not now, not ever. This world of rock and ice was consumed by the feel of lifelessness.
Sean asked, almost to himself, “How did the planters ever come up with this place?”
“It is a marvel, is it not? But they came, and in the giant underground caverns that are warmed by this planet’s core, they planted a green realm of animals and plants whose genes come from a dozen worlds. Here too is another wonder. For on no other planet has there been this pollination of beast and plant. Only humans.”
They stood there for over an hour, until most of the others had departed and only the Lothians remained. Sean studied them, wondering what it would be like to live underground for eight months at a stretch.
Dillon said, “We ought to go check in with the professor.”
“Right.” But he was reluctant to let go of Elenya’s hand, and it appeared she felt the same. “Josef wanted to speak with us after we saw this. Thanks for making it so special.”
She rewarded him with another of those rare smiles. “I was the one honored, Sean. Perhaps we can meet later and you will share with me tales from your outpost world?”
“I’d like that. A lot. We call it Earth.”
Dillon warned, “Josef may keep us awhile.”
“Tomorrow then.” Her gaze was locked on his, laser intent. “Will you show your home to me?”
“Is that allowed?”
“If Josef agrees.”
“Maybe you better ask him. We’re already pushing the envelope.”