Allen Steele made his first sale to Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine in 1988, soon following it up with a long string of other sales to Asimov’s, as well as to markets such as Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Age. In 1990, he published his critically acclaimed first novel, Orbital Decay, which subsequently won the Locus Poll Award for Best First Novel of the year. His other books include the novels Clarke County, Space, Lunar Descent, Labyrinth of Night, The Weight, The Tranquility Alternative, A King of Infinite Space, Oceanspace, Chronospace, Coyote, Coyote Rising, Spindrift, Galaxy Blues, Coyote Horizon, Coyote Destiny. Hex, V-S Day. His short work has been gathered in Rude Astronauts, Sex and Violence in Zero G, The Last Science Fiction Writer, and Sex and Violence in Zero-G: The Complete “Near Space” Stories: Expanded Edition. His most recent books are the novel Time Loves a Hero and the collection Tales of Time and Space. Coming up is a new novel, Arkwright. He has won three Hugo Awards, in 1996 for his novella “The Death of Captain Future,” in 1998 for his novella “Where Angels Fear to Tread,” and, most recently, in 2011 for his novelette “The Emperor of Mars.” Born in Nashville, Tennessee, he lives in Whately, Massachusetts, with his wife, Linda.
In the story that follows, he wraps up his “Arkwright” sequence of novellas, which started with “The Legion of Tomorrow” and took us through the launch of the first starship in two subsequent stories, “The Prodigal Son” and “The Long Wait.” Here, he takes us ahead for generations to a time when that starship has reached its destination—but things haven’t worked out quite the way the scientists who launched it intended it to.…
I
Sanjay Arkwright’s mother was sent to Purgatory on Monone, the second day of Juli. As dawn broke on Childstown, Aara was escorted from her home by a pair of Guardians, who silently walked two-legged on either side of the heretic as they marched her to the beach. Sanjay and his father Dayall quietly accompanied them; carrying belly packs and walking on all fours, they kept their heads down to avoid meeting the gaze of the townspeople who’d emerged from their cottages and workshops to observe Aara’s passage into exile.
It was a day of shame for her family, and yet Aara maintained an upright stance. Even after a Guardian prodded the back of her neck with his staff, she refused to lower her head or place her fores against the cobblestoned street, but instead strode forward on her hinds, gazing straight ahead in almost haughty dismissal of her neighbors. For this alone, Sanjay was proud of his mother. She would obey the Word of Gal, but not with the humiliation expected of her.
On the beach, a group of Disciples had already gathered to form a prayer circle. They squatted in a semicircle facing the Western Channel, where the sister-suns Aether and Bacchae were beginning to set upon the distant shores of Cape Exile. Illuminated by the bright red orb of Calliope rising to the east, they cupped their fores together beneath their lowered faces, and chanting words passed down to them from their mothers and grandmothers:
“Gal the Creator, Gal the All-Knowing,
“Forgive our sister, who denies your love.
“Gal the Creator, Gal the All-Knowing,
“Guide our sister as you watch from above…”
Their voices fell silent as Aara and her guards approached. If they’d expected Aara to join them, they were disappointed. Aara barely glanced at them as she walked by, and Sanjay had to fight to keep his expression neutral.
Dayall noticed this. “Don’t smile,” he whispered to his son, “and don’t stand. Everyone is watching us.”
Sanjay didn’t reply, but only gave his father a brief nod. He was right. This was a sad moment, and also a dangerous one. Most of those who’d followed them to the waterfront were Galians, and even if some were friends of the family, a few were pious enough to report the slightest impropriety to the Guardians. Any sign of support from Aara’s family, and the deacons could easily extend the same sentence to her husband and son as well. It had been many yarn since the last time an entire family was sent to Purgatory, but it had been done before.
R’beca Circe, the deacon of the Childstown congregation of the Disciples of Gal, stood on all fours beside Aara’s sailboat, accompanied by the deacons from Stone Bluff, Oceanview, and Lighthouse Point who’d travelled across Providence to attend Aara’s trial. The Guardians led Aara to them, then stepped aside, standing erect with their staffs planted in the sand. R’beca rose from her fores to look Aara straight in the eye; the other deacons did the same, and for a long moment everything was still. save for the cool morning breeze which ruffled their ceremonial capes and Aara’s braided red hair, revealed by the lowered hood of the long black robe she’d been given by the Guardians.
Then R’beca spoke.
“On the first day of the Stormyarn,” she recited, “when the Disciples were separated from the Children who stayed behind, Gal told his people, ‘Follow my Word always and obey the lessons of your Teachers, for my way is survival, and those who question it shall not.’ Aara Arkwright, it is the finding of the Deacons of the Disciples of Gal that you have questioned the Word of Gal, and therefore committed the sin of heresy, for which you have refused to repent. How do you plead?”
“I plead nothing.” There was no trace of insolence in Aara’s voice; as always, when she was given a direct question, she delivered a direct answer. “I am neither guilty nor innocent. I saw what I saw … and there is nothing in the Word that says it cannot exist.”
R’beca’s eyes grew sharper. She pointed toward the sky. “Clearly, there is no light there save that of Gal and her suns. Even at night, when Aether and Bacchae rise to cast away the shadows and the stars appear, Gal remains in her place, bright and unmoving. Stars do not suddenly appear and vanish, and none may approach Gal.”
Almost unwillingly, Sanjay found himself following Deacon R’beca’s raised fore with his gaze. As she said, Gal the Creator hovered almost directly overhead, a bright star that never rose or set but remained a fixed point in the sky. It had been this way throughout the one hundred and fifty-two sixyarn of Eosian history, from the moment when Gal had carried the Chosen Children from Erf to the promised land of Eos.
None but fools or heretics ever questioned this. Those who did were purged from Providence, sent alone to the mainland to live out the rest of their days in a place where survival was unlikely.
Yet Aara wouldn’t recant. “I did not lie then, and I’m not lying now. I saw a new star in the sky during my turn on night watch, one that moved in the sky toward Gal.”
“So you question Gal’s dominance? Her status as Creator who cannot be challenged?”
“I question nothing. This was not an act of blasphemy, Deacon … it was an obligation to my duty to report anything unusual.”
Hearing this, the Disciples crouched on the beach wailed in bereavement. As they slapped their fores against their ears, R’beca’s mouth curled in disgust. She’d offered Aara a chance to repent and beg for mercy, only to receive a stubborn reiteration of the same defense she’d given during her trial. Again, Sanjay felt pride surge past his sadness. His mother had never been one to back down, and she wasn’t about to do so now.
Yet her courage wasn’t met with sympathy. As the other three deacons lowered themselves to their hinds and cupped their fores together, R’beca reached beneath her cape and produced the symbol of her office, a large white knife she carried with her at all times. Made of the same material as the large block of Galmatter that, along with the Teacher, resided within the Transformer inside the Shrine, it was one of the few remaining relics from the yarn before the Great Storm, when the Chosen Children had first come to Eos from Erf. R’beca clasped the pale blade in her left fore and, raising it above her, intoned the words everyone expected to hear:
“In the name of Gal, creator of Eos and mother of her children, I send you, Aara Arkwright, into exile. May Gal grant you safe passage to Purgatory, where you shall live the rest of your days.”
Then she brought the knife forward and, with one swift stroke, whisked its blade across the right side of Aara’s face. Sanjay’s mother winced, but she didn’t cry out when the blade cut into her cheek; it would leave a scar that would mark her as an outcast for the rest of her life, making her a pariah to any community on Providence to which she might try to return. She could be put to death if she was ever seen on the island again.
R’beca turned her back to her and, still on her hinds, walked away. “You may say farewell to her now,” she murmured to Dayall and Sanjay as she strode past. “Be quick.”
Sanjay and his father were the only ones to approach his mother. By custom, everyone else who’d witnessed the ceremony stood erect and silently turned their backs to her. Through the crowd, Sanjay caught a glimpse of Kaile Otomo. Her long black hair was down around her face, making it hard to see her expression, yet she briefly caught his eye and gave him the slightest of nods. Then she turned away as well.
Dayall stood erect to pull off his belly pack. It was stuffed with clothes, a couple of firestarters, fishing tackle, and his best knife, all permitted by the Guardians to be given to someone facing banishment. Aara took it from him, then let her husband wipe the blood from her face and take her in his arms. Sanjay couldn’t hear what his father whispered to her, but he saw the tears in her eyes and that was enough. After a few moments, Dayall let her go, and then it was Sanjay’s turn.
“Aara…”
“It’s all right. Everything will be all right.” He wasn’t expecting the wan smile that crossed her face as she accepted the belly pack bulging with food he’d taken from their pantry. She dropped it on the ground next to his father’s. “I’m even more sad about this than you are, because I won’t be around to see you and Kaile become bonded, but…”
“It’s not fair!”
“Hush. Keep your voice down.” She glanced over his shoulder, wary of being overheard by the Disciples or the deacons. “Of course, it’s not fair. I was only doing my duty. But the Guardians have their duties as well, and R’beca—” another smile, this time sardonic “—well, she calls it blasphemy if winter came late. My only sin was not realizing this before I opened my mouth.”
Sanjay started to reply, but then she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. “This is not the end,” she whispered. “We’ll see each other again.”
Sanjay knew this wasn’t true. Once someone was sent to Purgatory, they never returned from the other side of the Western Channel. Yet perhaps his mother wasn’t facing reality, or that she was speaking of the afterlife promised by the deacons, when all who believed in Gal would join once their souls had departed Eos. So he simply nodded and told her that he loved her, and she borrowed his fishbone knife to cut a lock of his red hair to take with her, then a Guardian stepped forward to impatiently tap the sand with his staff.
It was time for her to go.
The catamaran was sound and sturdy, its outrigger hull constructed from cured umbrella palm, its mainsail woven from bambu threads. Sanjay had built the boat with his own fores, with help from his friend Johan Sanyal; they’d done this while Aara was under house arrest, awaiting the arrival of the other deacons and the commencement of the trial whose outcome was all but certain. They’d made the boat quickly but carefully, taking time from the spring fishing season to fashion the small craft for his mother. The master boatbuilder, Codi Royce, hadn’t objected when the two boys didn’t work on the fishing fleet’s boats for several precious days; as Sanjay’s mentor, he knew just how important this was.
Although it wasn’t strictly permitted, no one had objected when Sanjay discretely hid a harpoon beneath the oars. It wasn’t likely that Aara might encounter an ocean monarch while crossing the channel. The leviathans were nocturnal; along with the receding tide, this was a reason why outcasts were sent away at dawn, to give them time to reach Cape Exile before the creatures rose to the surface and started hunting. Nonetheless, it might give her some measure of protection if she encountered one during her journey.
Like all Providence inhabitants, Aara was an expert sailor. Once she’d stowed the packs, she didn’t immediately raise the sail but instead used the oars to push herself away from the beach and out into the Childstown bay. As a small measure of respect for her, none of the fishing boats set out when they were supposed to. On the nearby docks, their crews silently waited as Aara paddled away, allowing her a chance to begin the long, sixty-kilm journey from the island to the mainland.
Aara was a small figure sitting in the catamaran’s stern when she finally lowered the outrigger and raised the mainsail. As it unfurled to catch the morning wind, there was a single, long gong from the watchtower’s bell, the ritual signal that an islander was being sent into exile. As it resounded across the waters, Aara raised a fore in a final wave.
Sanjay and his father waved back, and then they stood together on the shore and quietly waited until her boat couldn’t be seen anymore.
II
In the days that followed, Sanjay did his best to put his mother’s banishment behind him. With less than three weeks—thirteen days—left in summer, there was much that needed to be done before the season changed: fish to be caught, dried, and preserved, seeds planted and spring crops tended, houses and boats repaired. He and his father put away Aara’s belongings—they couldn’t bring themselves to burn her clothes, a customary practice for the families of those sent to Purgatory—and accepted the sympathy of those kind enough to offer it, but it took time for them to get used to a house which now seemed empty; the absence of laughter and the vacant seat at the dinner table haunted them whenever they came home.
Sanjay didn’t feel very much like attending the Juli service at the Shrine, but Dayall insisted; if he didn’t make an appearance, the more inquisitive Disciples might wonder whether Aara’s son shared her blasphemous beliefs. Dayall was an observant Galian if not a particularly devout one, and the last thing they wanted to do was draw the attention of the Guardians. So Frione morning they joined the Disciples in the dome-roofed temple in the middle of town. Once they’d bowed in homage to the scared genesis plant that grew beside the Shrine, they went in to sit together on floor mats in the back of the room, doing their best to ignore the curious glances of those around them. Yet as R’beca stood before the altar, where the box-like frame of the Transformer stood with its inert block of Galmatter in the center, and droned on about how the souls of the Chosen Children were gathered by Gal from the vile netherworld of Erf and carried “twenty-two lights and a half through the darkness” to Eos, Sanjay found himself studying the Teacher resting within his crèche behind the altar.
Even as a child, Sanjay had often wondered why the Teacher didn’t resemble the Children or their descendents. Taller than an adult islander, his legs had knees that were curiously forward-jointed and hinds lacking the thin membranes that ran between the toes. His arms, folded across his chest, were shorter, while the fingers of his fores were long and didn’t have webbing. His neck was short as well, supporting a hairless head whose face was curiously featureless: eyes perpetually open and staring, a lipless mouth, a straight nose that lacked nostrils. And although the Teacher wore an ornate, brocaded robe dyed purple with roseberry, every youngster who’d ever sneaked up to the crèche after services to peek beneath the hem knew that the Teacher lacked genitalia; there was only a smooth place between his legs.
These discrepancies were explained by the Word: the Teacher had been fashioned by Gal to resemble the demons who ruled Erf, and the Creator had made him this way to remind the Children of the place from which they’d come. This was why the Teacher was made of Galmatter instead of flesh and blood. According to history everyone diligently learned and recited in school, the Teacher and the Disciples had fled the mainland for Providence just before the Great Storm, leaving behind the unfaithful who’d ignored Gal’s warning that their land would soon be consumed by wind and water.
The Teacher no longer moved or spoke, nor had he ever done so in recent memory. Yet his body didn’t decay, so he was preserved in the Shrine; along with the Transformer and the Galmatter block, they were holy relics, reminders of the Stormyarn. In her sermons, R’beca often prophesized the coming of the day when the Teacher would awaken and bring forth new revelations of the Word of Gal, but Sanjay secretly doubted this would ever occur. If it did, he hoped to be there when it happened; he’d like to see how someone could walk on all fours with limbs and extremities as misshapen as these.
Kaile kept a discrete distance from Sanjay after Aara left. He missed her, but understood why; her parents, Aiko and Jak, were strict Disciples who’d become reluctant to have their daughter associating with a heretic’s son. And while she wasn’t as rigid in her beliefs as her parents, nonetheless Kaile was a Galian who did her best to adhere to the Word. So he saw her only on occasion, sometimes in town but more often in the morning on the waterfront. While Sanjay was a boatbuilder—indeed, his family name, which his father had taken after he bonded with his mother, was an old Inglis word for those who built water craft—Kaile was a diver, trained from childhood to descend deep beneath the channel to harvest scavengers from the sea floor. When they spotted each other during those days, they’d exchange a brief smile and a wave, a sign that she still cared for him and would return once her parents let her.
Dayall, on the other hand, retreated into himself. As Juli lapsed into Aug and then Sept, Sanjay watched as his father became increasingly morose. He seldom spoke to anyone, let alone his son, instead adopting a dull daily pattern of getting up, having breakfast, opening his woodworking shop and puttering around in it all day until it was time to close up and go home, where he’d eat and then go to bed. Although he was still bonded to Aara, it was understood that this no longer mattered; other women could come to him as prospective suitors, and he could bond with them and take their name if he so desired. But Dayall was approaching middle age, and it was unlikely any woman in Childstown would want to take as her mate someone who’d once had a heretic as a wife. So Sanjay could only watch as his father came to terms with his loss; he was helpless to do anything about it.
More than once, Sanjay found himself cursing his mother for not having the foresight to keep what she’d seen during night watch to herself. He began to suspect that her eyes may have been playing tricks on her. It wasn’t uncommon to see streaks of light in the night. Old Inglis teachings, passed down through generations, called them meteorites, small rocks which occasionally fell from the sky. Perhaps Aara had seen something like that and had mistaken it for a moving star. She’d sworn otherwise when she’d been called before the Council of Deacons, though, and Aara was an intelligent woman who wasn’t likely to mistake a meteorite for anything else. Nonetheless, Sanjay wondered whether, just this once, his mother may have been a fool … or even the heretic the deacons had proclaimed her to be.
When Monthree came around in Sept, the last week of summer, it was his turn again to take the night watch. Garth Coyne, Sanjay’s uncle and the mayor of Childstown, dropped by the boat shop that afternoon to let him know that he could skip his turn if he wished. Garth would assign someone else instead, and Sanjay could wait three weeks to take the Monthree watch in Dec.
Garth meant well, of course. Part of the purpose of the night watch was to look out for anyone who might try to cross the channel from Cape Exile, whether it be a sinner attempting to abduct an islander for their own vile purposes—which was the Disciples’ explanation for the occasional disappearance of someone from a village—or an exile attempting to return. Garth was the mayor, but he was also Dayall’s brother, so he was more sympathetic than most, and also aware of the bitter irony of having Sanjay stand watch to prevent his own mother from coming home. Yet Sanjay turned him down. He didn’t want anyone to think that he was reluctant to assume the task that led to Aara’s downfall.
That night, he stood in the wooden watchtower, anxiously watching the sky in hopes that he’d spot the same mysterious star Aara had seen. Yet thick clouds had moved in shortly after Calliope went down, so all he could see was the diffuse glow that its distant companions, Aether and Bacchae, made through the overcast. Even Gal was nowhere to be seen. The only light he saw was the luminescent glow of nightjewels floating on the bay. Sanjay ended his turn in the tower with nothing more interesting to report than an ocean monarch breaching the surface a short distance out beyond the reefs; with summer coming to a close and the waters becoming colder, the predators were more often to be seen off the Providence shores.
He’d become accustomed to the fact that he’d never see his mother again when Kaile came to him on Thursthree morning. He was sitting beside a fishing canoe, patching a tear in its mainsail, when she walked across the beach on all four and stopped beside him.
“Lo, Sanjay,” she said. “How are you?”
Sanjay looked up at her, surprised by the casualness of her greeting. She hadn’t spoken to him all season. Many of his friends had distanced themselves from him, but he’d missed her more than anyone else. Summer was a time for laying down with one’s lover, and his bed had been cold and lonely without her. Sanjay had lately begun to wonder if he’d lost her for good, so her abrupt return caught him unprepared.
“Good, thanks. Just working on this boat.” He tried to pretend that her appearance meant little to him, but his fores slipped as he attempted to slide a threaded fishbone needle through the sail patch. He nicked his right forefinger instead.
“Oh … watch yourself!” Kaile exclaimed as he hissed in pain. “Here … let me.”
Before Sanjay could object, she bent closer, took his fore in her own, and gently slipped his finger into her mouth. Her lips formed a sly smile around his finger, and her eyes gleamed mischievously as her tongue, warm and moist, played with his fingertip. Sanjay felt himself becoming aroused. He shifted his hinds nervously, hoping she wouldn’t notice, but if she did, she gave no sign.
“There,” she said, withdrawing his finger from her mouth. “All better?” He nodded and she smiled. “So … I was just wondering if you’d like to go diving with me today?”
“Diving?” He’d done it before, but he wasn’t trained the way she was. “Why?”
“Just because.” A slight shrug. “We haven’t seen much of each other lately, and I thought … well, it might be a way of getting back together again.” Another smile. “Besides, my crew is running a little behind, and we could use a little extra help.”
Sanjay looked across the keel of the upended canoe. Codi was squatting nearby, working with Johan to finish a new boat. He didn’t have to ask whether they’d overheard the conversation; Codi and Johan traded an amused look, and then his mentor nodded. “Sure, go ahead. We can take care of things today.”
Sanjay hesitated, but only for a moment. “Of course. I’d love to.” Leaving the patch unfinished, he removed his tool kit from his vest and gave it to Johan for safekeeping. “After you,” he said, and she smiled again and turned away, leading him on all fours down the beach toward the nearby docks.
He was just beginning to admire the way Kaile’s body moved beneath the diaphanous shawl she wore over her halter and thong when she paused to let him catch up. At first he thought she was merely expressing fondness when she raised herself erect on her hinds and slid her fore through the crook of his elbow, but when he stood up so she could pull him closer as if to give him a kiss, she murmured something only he could hear.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she whispered.
“What about?” Sanjay glanced around to see if anyone else was nearby. They weren’t alone; others were walking past. The waterfront was busy as it always was this hour of the morning.
“Not here,” she said softly. “Wait until we’re out on the water, where no one can hear us.” She paused, then added even more quietly, “It’s about what Aara saw … I’ve seen it, too.”
III
The fishing fleet bobbed on the warm blue waters of the bay, six canoes with sails furled and anchors lowered. This late in the season, it was necessary for them to venture further away from shore in order for the divers to catch anything of significance; it would take the nine weeks of autumn, winter, spring for the breadfish and scavengers born the previous yar to grow large enough to be caught. So the boats had to spread out in order for their crews to bring home a decent catch; this made for conditions suitable for a conversation that wouldn’t be easily overheard.
Nevertheless, Sanjay had a hard time containing himself from asking Kaile what she meant. Two others were on her boat: Sayra Bailee, a young girl who’d become a diver only three yarn ago, and Ramos Circe, the boat captain. Neither Sanjay or Kaile were very much concerned about Sayra—she wasn’t terribly bright and tended to keep to herself anyway—but Ramos was another matter entirely. He was the Guardian appointed to the fleet to observe the fishermen and help them maintain spiritual purity while they worked, and the fact that he was also Beacon R’beca’s son only made him more dangerous. They would have to be careful of him.
So he and Kaile had made small talk with Sayra as they paddled out into the bay, saying nothing that really mattered while ignoring Ramos. They were about a half-kilm from the reefs which separated the outer reaches of the bay from the Western Channel when Ramos called for them to take down the sails and drop anchor. By then their craft was a hundred rods from the next nearest boat, all the better for the privacy they sought.
Sanjay watched as Kaile stood erect, dropped her shawl and, as an afterthought, discarded her halter as well. She wore nothing now except her thong, which covered very little of herself. He’d never forgotten how beautiful she was; with the bright red sun on her light brown skin, she was as radiant as Gal herself. Taking off his vest and kilt, he was glad that he’d decided to wear a thong himself that day; otherwise his reaction would have been obvious to all. Sayra also chose to dive almost entirely nude, but at sixteen sixyarn, she hadn’t yet blossomed into the full-breasted womanhood Kaile had achieved at twenty-two.
In keeping with his position as a Guardian, Ramos pretended not to notice either of the women. He waited while everyone buckled on diving belts and attached knife sheaths and woven collection bags. “All right, over you go,” he said once they were ready. “Good hunting. May Gal keep you safe.”
“Thank you.” Raising her fores level with her shoulders, Kaile dove headfirst into the water, disappearing with barely a splash. Sayra followed her a moment later, leaping from the other side of the canoe. Sanjay took a few more breaths to fill his lungs, then he joined them, although not nearly as gracefully.
The instant he was submerged, he instinctively squinted, forcing shut the watertight nictitating membranes of his eyes that Gal in her wisdom had provided her children. At the same time, the fingers of his fores and the toes of his hinds spread apart, opening the webs between his digits which allowed his people to be fast and effortless swimmers. Although he wasn’t the practiced diver Kaile and Sayra were, nonetheless he could stay underwater for three or four mins at a time, allowing him to descend the twenty rods it took to reach the bottom. Although the sunlight faded, he could still see Kaile clearly, swimming toward the seafern jungle that lay across the bay floor.
It was here that they searched for scavengers, the spidery crustaceans which prowled among the ferns, feeding on the remains of nightjewels, breadfish, and other pelagic species who’d died and drifted to the bottom of the sea. Because they tended to blend into their environment, catching them was easier than finding them. Kaile was much better at this than he was; she’d collected two while he was still searching for one, and shook her head when he picked up a half-grown crustacean and showed it to her: too small, let it go.
His lungs were beginning to hurt by then, so he followed her back up to the boat and watched as she tossed her bag over the side and took another one from Ramos. The scavengers died when exposed to the air, of course, but it didn’t render the tender flesh beneath their carapaces inedible. Kaile and Sanjay took a min or two to replenish their lungs, then they went down again. They ignored the fat breadfish which occasionally swam past, leaving them for the long-line anglers in other boats, and stayed clear of the reefs, which tended to be patrolled by seaknives who’d attack any humans who dared enter their domain.
Over the next couple of hours, they made seven descents, stopping for a few minutes after every second or third dive to float on their backs and rest a little. Sanjay noticed that, while Sayra stayed fairly close to the boat, Kaile was gradually leading him further away. Apparently Ramos expected her to do this, because he didn’t seem to mind that they’d have to swim quite a few rods to reach the boat again. By late morning he’d decided to take a little nap, lying back against the stern with an arm across his eyes.
On their last dive, Ramos caught a full-grown scavenger, but when he held it up for Kaile to see, she surprised him by shaking her head. Instead, she pointed to the surface. Looking up, he saw that the keel of the boat was nowhere to be seen. Understanding what she meant, he dropped the scavenger, then rose with her to the top.
Once they were, she paddled over to him and, to his delighted surprise, draped her fores across his shoulders and pulled him close. “Kiss me,” she whispered, and he was only too happy to oblige. “Good,” she said once they’d parted. “Now hold me close while we talk. This way, everyone will think we’re just making love and leave us alone.”
By then, he’d almost forgotten the reason why she’d asked him to go diving with him. “Can’t we do both?” he asked, playfully stroking her breasts.
“Maybe later.” A wry smile that quickly vanished as she pushed his fores away. “For now, just listen. I was standing watch last night…”
In furtive tones quietly spoken while she allowed him to caress her, Kaile told Sanjay about her turn in the watchtower the night before. The night was clear, without the clouds which had ruined his own attempt to observe the sky, but she hadn’t been making any particular effort to see anything unusual. All the same, it was in the darkest hour of the night, when the sisters were setting to the east and before Calliope had risen to the west, her eye was drawn to a peculiar movement in the zenith.
“A small star, quickly moving from east to west.” As she said this, Kaile glanced up at the sky. “It went straight toward Gal, quickly at first, and then…”
She hesitated, looking down at Sanjay again. “Then what?” he asked.
“It slowed down and … Sanjay, it merged with Gal.” Her mouth trembled as she said this, her eyes wide. “It was if the two became one. For just a few secs they became brighter, then Gal went back to normal.”
Losing interest in her body, he let his fores fall to his sides, moving back and forth to keep himself afloat. “How could…?”
“That’s not all. I kept watching, and it was almost first light when something else happened. The little star parted from Gal again and went back in the direction it had come, but this time, instead of vanishing beyond the horizon, it started going faster and getting brighter, until it formed a tail. I heard thunder, like a storm was coming in, but there were no clouds. Then…”
Again, Kaile looked away, but this time not at the sky, but to the west. “It came down over there,” she said softly, and when Sanjay followed her gaze, he saw that she was staring at the distant grey line that marked the shores of Cape Exile.
“Purgatory?” He could scarcely believe her. “Are you sure?”
Kaile glared at him. “Of course I’m sure!” she snapped, her voice rising a little as she swam back from him. “I’m telling you, I saw what I…!”
She stopped herself. Like Sanjay, she remembered that this was exactly what Aara had said when she’d defended herself before the deacons. And Sanjay had spent enough time in the tower himself to know that the view of Cape Exile from up there was excellent. Save for the high cliffs of Stone Bluff to the north and the summits of Mt. Lookout and Mt. Roundtop in the island’s forest interior, there was no higher vantage point on Providence. Indeed, it was whispered among islanders that, from these places on clear nights, one could see faint, glimmering lights on the mainland, a sign that at least some of those who’d been banished there still lived, struggling to survive in the terrible place from which Gal had rescued her most devout followers.
“I believe you,” he said quietly, and paddled closer to her again. “It sounds like you saw the same thing my mother did. Something like it, at least.”
“No. That was more than what Aara saw.” Glancing past him, she returned her fores to his shoulders once more. “Kiss me,” she whispered. “Ramos is watching.”
Again, their mouths came together. This time, though, Sanjay took little pleasure from it. He was thinking about something else. “Have you told anyone?” he said softly, his face against her wet hair.
“No.” She sighed, and despite the warmth of the water, Sanjay felt her tremble. “After what happened to Aara, how could I?”
“No, of course not.” As obedient to Gal as Kaile was, it would have been mad to repeat Aara’s mistake. Deacon R’beca wouldn’t have given any more credence to a second act of blasphemy than she had the first. He found himself wondering whether anyone else who’d recently stood watch might have seen the same thing Kaile did, but had likewise remained silent about it, for fear of following Aara Arkwright into exile. But if there had been any similar sightings, they would never know, unless …
“There’s only one way we’ll ever know,” he said quietly, thinking aloud.
Kaile looked him straight in the eye. “How?” Then she realized what he meant, and her mouth fell open. “No … no, you can’t be serious.”
She was right. Even as the notion entered his mind, Sanjay thrust it away. None but those whom the deacons cast out of Providence ever made the dangerous crossing of the Western Channel. In fact, no one was allowed to leave the island except fishermen and those who used sailboats to travel from one coastal village to another. All that was known of the rest of Eos came from ancient maps belonging to the First Children that had been handed down through the generations. They depicted great continents separated from one another by vast seas, with Providence the largest island of a small equatorial archipelago just off the coast of the landform known as Terra Minor. Gal had forbidden any exploration of these distant lands, though, so her children knew almost next to nothing about the rest of the world. Even the maps were closely held by the Council of Deacons, rarely seen by anyone else.
“No, you’re right.” He shook his head. “We can’t do that. We’d…”
A shrill whistle from their boat, then Ramos’s voice came to them from across the water. “All right, you two … enough of that! Back to work!”
Then Sayra called to them as well. “Yes, enough!” she yelled, childishly scolding them. “Save it for your bed, Sanjay, if she’ll let you take her to it!”
Kaile forced a smile and raised a fore, but Sanjay wasn’t about to let her go quite yet. “It’s not a bad suggestion,” he said. “I’ve missed you very much. Will you…?”
She laughed, this time with genuine amusement, and pushed herself away from him. “Help me gather a few more scavengers,” she said, “and I’ll think about it.”
Then she upended herself and, with a kick of her hinds, disappeared beneath the surface. But not before Sanjay caught the coy wink of an eye that told him that she’d already made up her mind.
IV
Kaile kept her side of the bargain. When Calliope was going down and the boats returned to shore, she came home with Sanjay.
Dayall was already there, working on dinner. He was surprised when Kaile walked in with his son, and it was the first time in weeks that Sanjay saw him smile. As if nothing had ever changed, he put another plate on the table, then pulled some more mockapples and vine melons from the pantry and put them out along with a jug of wine. Sanjay had brought home a scavenger he’d caught, and it wasn’t long before it was steamed, shelled, and on the table. They talked about his diving trip while they ate, and for once Dayall’s part of the conversation wasn’t limited to monosyllables. For just a little while, it was as if everything had gone back to the way it had been before Aara left.
Once the meal was over and the kitchen was cleaned up, Dayall murmured something about how he thought it might be nice to spend the night at Garth’s house. Sanjay politely objected, but he knew why his father was going over to his uncle’s place. Dayall gathered a bedroll and took another jug from the wine cabinet, and was gone before Kaile could thank him for dinner.
Sanjay lit a fire and took the small wooden box of dreamer’s weed down from the mantle. Kaile blew out the candles and they shared a pipe by firelight, saying little as they gazed into the flames and let the pipe smoke soften their senses. The night was cool, so he closed the window shutters. The fire warmed them, and it wasn’t long before their fores wandered to each other’s bodies. Soon they were curled up together upon the rug, rediscovering the pleasures they’d been denied all summer.
Kaile considered going home, but decided that the hour was late enough already that any excuses she might make for her absence would be transparent. Besides, it was time for her parents to learn that she wasn’t going to leave Sanjay no matter what they thought of his family. Sanjay couldn’t have agreed more. As the fire began to gutter out, he led her through the darkened house to his bedroom. They made love again before exhaustion caught up with them and, wrapped within warm blankets, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Sanjay had no idea what hour it was when he felt a fore upon his shoulder and heard a voice quietly say his name. Slow to emerge from the depths of sleep, his first thought was that Kaile trying to rouse him for another round of lovemaking, but then the voice repeated itself and he realized that it wasn’t her who was speaking to him. Kaile was still asleep beside him, while the person trying to wake him up was crouched next to his bed. He opened his eyes and turned his head, and in the wan amber light of the sisters seeping in through a crack between the closed shutters of his bedroom window, he saw Aara.
He jerked upright in bed, not quite believing what he was seeing. Before he could say anything, though, his mother lay a fore across his mouth. “Shhh … be quiet!” she hissed, barely more than a whisper. “Don’t wake your father.”
“Sanjay?” Kaile twisted beside him, still more asleep than awake. “Sanjay, what’s going on?”
Aara’s eyes widened, her mouth falling open in dismay. “Is that Kaile?” she asked softly, as if it would be anyone else. Still stunned by his mother’s presence, he gave a dumb nod and she sighed. “Oh, no … I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Aara?” Kaile woke up as suddenly as Sanjay had, and was just as astonished. “Aara, what are you…?”
“Hush.” Aara lifted a finger to her mouth. “Keep your voice down. I don’t want Dayall to know I’m here.”
Kaile went silent, but Sanjay could feel her trembling beside him. “He’s not here,” he whispered. “He’s spending the night at Garth’s house.”
Aara let out her breath in relief. “Good … that’s good. Wait a sec.”
She moved away from the bed, and a moment later there came the tiny sparks and soft sounds of firestarter flints being scratched together. The fish-oil lamp on his clothes chest flickered to life, and now they could see her clearly. Aara wore the same black robe she’d been wearing the last time Sanjay had seen her; although its hood was drawn up over her head, he could see the facial scar left by R’beca’s knife, a reminder that she was an exile who could be killed if anyone found her back on Providence.
The thought must have occurred to her as well, because Aara’s expression was wary when she turned to them again. “Kaile,” she said quietly, “I can trust you, can’t I? You’re not going to run straight to the Guardians, are you?” She looked straight at the girl, meeting her gaze with suspicious eyes.
Kaile hesitated just long enough for Sanjay to realize that she was wrestling with her conscience. “No … no, I won’t,” she said at last, much to his relief. “I’m not Aiko or Jak. I didn’t want you to be banished. But Aara, why…?”
“I can’t tell you that. Not now, anyway. No time.” A nod toward the closed window. “It’ll be morning soon, and we must be gone by then.” A pause. “Sanjay, I mean … Kaile, you’re staying here, and I’m going to have to ask your word not to tell anyone that I was here or where…”
She stopped herself, but not before Sanjay knew what she meant to say next. “You want me to go with you?” he asked, and she nodded. “To Purgatory?” Again, a solemn nod. He felt a cold sensation in the pit of his stomach. “Why?”
Before Aara could respond, Kaile spoke up again. “I saw a light in the sky last night while I was on watch. Just like the one you saw, but instead it merged with Gal before it came down on Cape Exile. That has to do with this, doesn’t it?”
A grim smile. “Yes it does.” The smile disappeared and Aara was thoughtful for a moment. “How many people know you spent the night here?”
“My parents. Dayall.” Kaile lay a fore on Sanjay’s shoulder. “Just about everyone who saw us leave the beach together after we went diving yesterday.”
Aara sighed again, this time shaking her head. “So the Guardians will question you when he goes missing. I don’t want you to have to face them or R’beca on my account. I can’t make you come with us, but…”
“No. I want to come.”
Startled, Sanjay stared at her. She met his gaze and gave him a brief nod. Yes, she was aware of what she was getting into. And she was doing it anyway. “Very well,” Aara said as she turned away again. “Get up and get dressed, and be quick about it. I’ve got a boat waiting for us.”
“A boat from Purgatory? Who…?”
“Never mind that now. We’re leaving in two mins.”
Before Sanjay could ask any further questions, his mother left the room. No more lamps were lit, but as he and Kaile climbed out of bed, the soft creak of the pantry door told him that she was gathering food. He wondered why she’d bother to do so, but there was no time to ask.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked Kaile as he dug into his chest to give her a sarong, tunic, and calf boots that would be warmer than the thin shawl she’d worn yesterday. Autumn was only a couple of days away, and they would be travelling far from home. “You know what this means, don’t you?” he added as he put on nearly identical clothes.
Kaile didn’t say anything, but the silent nod she gave him told all that he needed to know. For better or worse, they were about to join his mother in Purgatory.
V
The sisters were beginning to set when the three of them slipped out through the back door. Kaile had mentioned that it was Johan’s turn to stand watch, which Sanjay took as a good sign; he knew that his best friend often stole a few hours of sleep in the tower so that he’d be rested enough to go to work the next day. In any case, though, they avoided the streets as much as they could, and instead quietly made their way on all fours through shadowed alleys between cottages, sheds, and shops until they reached the forest on Childstown’s eastern border. No one spotted them; the town was asleep.
Aara led Sanjay and Kaile to the foot path leading south to Mountain Creek, which flowed through the forest from Mt. Lookout to the northeast. The trail would take them to the coastal estuary where the creek drained into the bay. It was there, Aara told them, the boat which had carried her back across the channel was awaiting her return.
“You came over tonight?” Although they were now out of earshot from the village, Sanjay was careful to keep his voice down. “How were you not spotted?”
The forest they walked through was dark, the black fronds of the umbrella palms and sunshade trees forming a shadowed canopy which blotted out all but thin slivers of sisterlight. All the same, Sanjay could see the soft smile that played across Aara’s face. “The exiles have ways of getting here,” she said. “You’ll see.”
“But the monarchs…”
“That’s … something else entirely.” Her smile disappeared. “Now hush. No more questions.”
Sanjay and Kaile exchanged glances, but obediently fell silent. Sanjay knew better than to argue with his mother. Still, he thought as he shifted the straps of his belly pack, she was being a little too mysterious about all this.
About three kilms from Childstown, they reached the end of the trail. Through the wild roseberry and bambu that grew along the shore, the estuary lay before them, its waters faintly shimmering with the reflections from Aether and Bacchae. From the other side of a genesis plant that rose beside the trail, Sanjay could make out a catamaran resting upon the narrow beach. As they approached the genesis plant, though, he heard a soft voice, male yet unlike any he’d heard before.
“The specimen appears to be fully mature, approximately one-point-eight meters in height, its width … call it a little less than one meter at its base. As with all pseudonative species, its leaves are matte-black in pigmentation, a genetically engineered adaptation to the primary’s lesser magnitude and, in this instance, generation of cyanobacteria and the subsequent production of atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen. Its form clearly indicates its descent from the giant hosta, albeit considerably larger. Altogether, it appears that the alteration of its basic genetic pattern has been remarkably successful, especially considering the…”
“We’re here,” Aara said, raising her voice just a little.
Realizing that he was no longer alone, the person speaking abruptly stopped talking, but not before Sanjay spotted the individual to whom the voice belonged. Taller than any of them—as tall, in fact, as the genesis plant he stood beside—he stood upright on his hinds, his figure cloaked by the hooded cloak which covered him from head to toe. Indeed, as they came closer, Sanjay was surprised to see that, beneath the cowl, he wore a dark veil across the lower part of his face, a mask that completely hid his features.
Yet it was his voice, in the brief moments in which Sanjay heard it, that intrigued him the most. Although he’d been speaking Inglis, many of the words he’d used were unfamiliar; Sanjay had clearly heard what he’d said, but didn’t understand its meaning. And the accent was strange: sharper, with an odd inflection of the syllables.
“Oh, good. You made it back.” The figure stepped away from the genesis plant, and for an instant Sanjay noticed something held in his right fore before it disappeared within the cloak. “No trouble, I hope?”
“None. We got out of there without being spotted. But—” Aara hesitated, then stood erect to indicate Kaile “—I had to bring someone else. This is Kaile, my son’s betrothed. She was with him when I found them. We couldn’t leave her behind.”
A disgruntled sigh from the other side of the veil. “Are you sure? This could complicate things, you know.”
“If she stays, the Guardians will know that she was with Sanjay when he disappeared, because they were seen together all day yesterday and last night. They’ll try to work the truth out of her, and R’beca is very good at that. With any luck, my husband and her family will believe that the two of them simply ran away for awhile, as young people sometimes do.”
Sanjay now understood why Aara had taken food from the pantry. Once he and Kaile were found to be missing, which was inevitable, the most likely explanation would be that they’d taken off into the wilds for a little while, perhaps to a little lean-to shed Sanjay had secretly built in the mountains. Unbonded lovers occasionally did this when they wished to be free of the prying eyes of family and neighbors; it wasn’t a practice condoned by the Disciples, but tolerated nonetheless. If they were fortunate, no one would search for them for a little while, preferring to give them their privacy while they rehearsed their future roles as a bonded couple.
“Very well. If we have no choice.” The figure nodded his hooded head toward the boat. “Teri is waiting for you on the boat. If you’ll give me a second … a sec, I mean … to cut a leaf…”
He stepped back toward the genesis plant. “Stop!” Kaile snapped, raising her fores. “You can’t do that!”
The stranger halted, looked around at her again. “I’m sorry, but what…?”
“It’s forbidden to touch genesis plants.” Kaile was horrified by what she’d seen, but also perplexed. “It’s in the Word … everyone knows that!”
Sanjay was just as confused. One of the most basic tenants of the Word of Gal was that even wild plants such as this must never be harvested. They were the means by which Gal had created Eos, and touching them without the supervision of a deacon during the spring and autumn solstice rituals was considered a sacrilege. Every child was taught this the first time they were taken into the forest for their first lessons in woodlore. How could this person be unaware of this?
“My apologies. I…” The stranger stopped. “Perhaps I should introduce myself. I’m Nathan.”
This was a common enough name among islanders. In Galian lore, it was said to have belonged to the archangel who beseeched Gal to carry the Chosen Children from Erf to the new world. Yet Sanjay noticed that he didn’t mention a family name as well. “Sanjay Arkwright,” he replied, and gave a formal bow, clasping his fores together as he bent forward from his knees.
“I know.” When Nathan returned the bow, it was in a peculiar fashion: stiff-legged and from the waist, fores still hidden by his cloak. “I’ve been wanting to meet you every since your mother told me about you. In fact, you’re the very reason why we’re here.”
“I am?”
“We don’t have time to discuss this,” Aara said. “Calliope will be coming up soon. We need to be away before we can be spotted from town.” She pointed to the nearby boat. “Hurry, please.”
They followed her to the beach, where a man about Aara’s age was already raising the catamaran’s sail. As they walked toward the boat, Sanjay noticed that Nathan remained upright, apparently preferring to walk on his hinds even though the others dropped to all fours. His gait was also slow, as if each step was an effort. Was he crippled? Perhaps, but if so, why risk undertaking a sea journey?
He tried to put all this aside as he helped his mother and Aara stow the belly packs they’d brought with them, then helped the captain push the boat out into the water. He could now see the reason why the boat had been able to travel across the channel without being detected. Its wooden hull, mast, benches, and oars were painted black, and even the sails had been dyed the same way. Against the dark waters of the bay at night, the craft would have been very hard to spot.
He wondered if the inhabitants of Purgatory had ever crossed the channel before, using this very same boat. Perhaps. There were rumors that exiles had sometimes returned to Providence for one nefarious reason or another; every so often, a relative or close friend who’d been left behind had disappeared for no accountable reason. But maybe …
“All right, everyone settled in?” The captain, who’d given his name as Teri Collins, glanced around from his seat at the tiller. Sanjay and Kaile had taken seats amidships, while Aara and Nathan sat in the bow—Nathan awkwardly, hunched slightly forward with his hinds stretched out straight before him, still covered by the long folds of his cloak. “Very well, then,” he said as he used an oar to push away from the shore, “Sanjay, raise sail, please.”
Sanjay turned around to grasp the line dangling from the mast and pulled it down, unfurling the black sail. The tide was beginning to go out and the morning breeze was starting to come in; the sail bellowed outward and the boat quietly slipped away, its outrigger skimming the water surface.
“We need to be silent now,” Aara whispered, bending forward to speak to Sanjay and Kaile. “No talking, no movement, until we’re well past the reefs. Understood?”
Sanjay nodded, as did Kaile. It was still dark and Calliope hadn’t yet risen. If they were lucky, no one in Childstown would see a boat heading out into the bay. Nonetheless, he hoped that Johan was asleep in the tower.
As the boat entered the bay, though, and the town came within sight, no lights appeared within its windows, nor was there the gong of the warning bell. Childstown remained peaceful, unknowing of the intrusion which had happened during the night. Teri must have sailed these waters before, because he accurately steered the boat through the break in the reefs which lay a couple of kilms offshore. The hull sliced through the glowing nightjewels and scattered the curious knifefish who’d ventured close to the boat. High above, Gal observed their passage with an unblinking and omnipresent eye.
Looking up at her, Sanjay hoped that Gal would forgive her children for their transgressions. Providence had become a long, black shape gradually receding behind them, its inland mountain range rising as three low humps. He’d rarely before been this far out on the channel, and only then in the light of day. The sea was a dangerous place to be at night.
He prayed that the monarchs wouldn’t notice them.
His prayers went unanswered.
VI
“Monarch,” Teri said. “Off starboard bow.”
He spoke calmly, yet there was no missing the urgency of his tone. Sanjay turned to look. At first he saw nothing; the sea and the night both were still dark. Then, about three hundred rods from the boat, he caught sight of a dorsal fin, light grey and shaped like the tip of a knife, jutting upward from the dark water. It was running parallel to them, neither approaching nor moving away, as if the massive form to which it belonged was swimming along with the catamaran. Tracking, observing, waiting for the moment to strike.
To the east, the first scarlet haze of dawn had appeared upon the horizon, tinting the curled gauze of the high clouds with shades of orange and red. He’d hoped that, with the passing of night, the danger of being noticed by an ocean monarch would pass as well. But this one hadn’t yet descended to the channel’s lowest depths. It was still prowling the waters midway between Providence and Cape Exile in search of prey.
And now it had found them.
There was a harpoon lying on the deck at his hinds. Sanjay started to reach down to pick it up, but Teri shook his head. “No need,” he said, his fores steady on the tiller. “Just wait.” He glanced at Aara. “Move to the center of the boat, Aara. Everyone, hang on.”
Sanjay stared at him in disbelief. Surely he didn’t think they could possibly outrun a monarch? Many had tried to do this, but they’d only succeeded if they were already far enough away that it couldn’t catch up … and this one was pacing them. Their only hope of survival lay in using a harpoon against it when it attacked.
He began to reach for the harpoon again, but then his mother, who’d walked back from the bow, lay a fore against his wrist. “Just watch,” she said quietly. “The same thing happened to us on the way over.”
“A monarch attacked you last night?” He had trouble believing her. “How did…?”
“Wait and watch.” Aara smiled as she squatted across from him and Kaile, then nodded toward Nathan.
The stranger remained in the bow. Until then, Sanjay hadn’t taken much notice of the long object wrapped in waterproof bambu cloth that lay on the deck before him. Picking it up, Nathan removed the covering, revealing something of the likes Sanjay had never seen: a slender, rod-like thing, broad in the center but tapering to what appeared to be a hollow tube at one end, with a handle fitted with a small ring projecting from its lower side. Its surface gleamed dully in the wan light of the coming dawn, and Sanjay realized to his surprise that it was made entirely of metal: very rare, and almost never found in such a quantity.
“What is that?” Kaile asked.
No one answered her. Nathan rose from his bench and, hinds firmly planted against the gentle rocking of the boat, cradled the object in his fores. Turning away from them, he lowered his hood and pulled down his veil. Sanjay couldn’t see his face, though, only the short-cropped red hair on the back of his head.
“Coming at us!” Teri snapped.
Sanjay looked in the direction the captain pointed. The monarch had veered toward the catamaran, its fin creating a frothy furrow through the water. Fifty rods from the boat, the fin abruptly disappeared beneath the surface. Nathan knew that the monarch was diving in preparation for an attack, but even as he grabbed the harpoon and stood erect to do battle, he heard a faint, high-pitched whine from the object Nathan was holding. From the corner of his eye, he saw that the stranger had raised it level with his shoulders and appeared to be peering straight down the length of its tube.
Sanjay barely had time to wonder what Nathan was doing when the monarch breached the surface. A massive wall of flesh, grey on top and white across the bottom, the leviathan shot up from the water only a few rods from the starboard side. Large as the boat itself, its mouth was wide enough to swallow a human whole and lined with rows of serrated teeth. Sanjay caught a glimpse of black eyes, small yet malevolent, and with an angry scream he raised the harpoon in both fores …
It was as if a beam of starlight had erupted from the hollow end of Nathan’s object, a thin white ray which briefly and silently erased the darkness. It lanced straight into the underside of the monarch’s mouth, and for an instant Sanjay saw it reappear within the creature’s jaws. A smell like fish being broiled as the beam burned through the monarch’s head and a loud, agonized groan, then the monarch fell back into the water, making a tremendous splash that threw a wave over the side of the boat.
The monarch was still spasmodically flopping on the surface, its fins and tail thrashing back and forth, when Nathan pointed his weapon—for this was obviously what it was—at it again. Once more, the thin beam cut into the creature’s head, this time between the eyes. The monarch jerked and then became still, a dying mass floating on the water.
“A gift from Gal…” Kaile whispered.
“No.” For the first time since they’d left shore, Nathan spoke. “Not Gal. A plasma beam rifle.”
Sanjay hadn’t the slightest idea what he meant by this, but as Nathan turned to him, he suddenly didn’t care. Nathan’s cloak had fallen open, and now he could see the rest of the stranger’s body: forward-jointed legs and slender hinds, a waist that was a little thicker, a neck not as long as his own. The breeze caught the robe and pulled it back from the stranger’s shoulders, revealing long-fingered fores that lacked webbing between the digits.
But it was his face which startled Sanjay the most. Except for his red beard, the open nostrils of his nose, and eyes which possessed visible pupils, Nathan’s face was nearly the same as that of the Teacher.
Kaile whimpered, clutching Sanjay’s shoulder in fear. Sanjay stared at the apparition before them, not knowing what to say or do. When he glanced at Aara, though, he saw the calm and knowing smile on her face. She’d been aware of this all along.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“You won’t believe this—” Nathan stopped, then corrected himself “—but I hope you eventually will. Sanjay, I’m your cousin.”
VII
Nathan refused to say any more about himself for the rest of the journey across the channel. He spent the remaining hours sitting quietly in the bow, rifle propped up on his forward-jointed knees, an enigmatic smile on his face as he politely listened to the younger man prod him with questions. He finally raised a fore and shook his head.
“Enough,” he said. “You’re just going to have to wait until we reach shore. Once we’re there and we meet up with my friends…”
“There’s more of you?” Sanjay stared at him.
“… then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
“So there’s other Teachers like you.” Kaile was no longer as fearful as she’d been, but she continued to hold tight to Sanjay’s fore.
A dry laugh. “I’m not a Teacher, and neither are they. We’re human, just like you … only a bit different, that’s all.”
“Then why do you look like…?”
“Be patient. All will be explained.” He then turned away and spoke no more. Sanjay looked at his mother, and Aara silently shook her head. She wouldn’t tell them anything either, nor would Teri. They would just have to wait.
Calliope came up a little while later, revealing the mainland before them. By the time the sun was high above the channel, they could clearly make out the black forests that lay beyond the coast, gradually rising to meet the inland mountain range known as the Great Wall. This was the most anyone could see of Cape Exile from Providence, and although it soon stretched across the visible horizon, Sanjay was surprised to see how much the eastern peninsula of Terra Minor resembled Providence. He’d been told since childhood that anyone who dared to approach Purgatory would hear the mournful cries of the banished, but instead the only sound that reached his ears were the screech of seabirds spiraling above the coastal shallows.
And once they were only a couple of kilms away, he saw more than that.
The white sand beach had just become visible when sails came into view, fishing boats plying the offshore waters. The men and women within them raised their fores in greeting as their catamaran sailed past, and Teri did the same in return.
“Wave back,” Aara quietly urged her son. “We’re among friends.”
Sanjay gave her a doubtful look, but did as he was told. He noticed that Nathan made no effort to hide his features or misshapen limbs. His hood remained lowered as he smiled at the fishermen, and although a couple of them stared at him, no one seemed surprised by his appearance, let alone regard him as an emissary of Gal. Indeed, they treated him as if he was what he’d claimed himself to be: just another person, just one who looked a bit different.
There was no settlement visible from the water, yet canoes and sailboats were lined up on the shore, with nearly as many people around them as there would be on the Providence waterfront. A couple of men waded out to meet their boat; they grasped its sides and pulled it the rest of the way onto the beach, and one of them helped Nathan climb out. As before, Sanjay noticed that Nathan walked with a stiff, almost arthritic gait. It occurred to him that the stranger not only wouldn’t walk on all fours, but in fact could not. He always stood on his hinds, and never used his fores for anything except grasping and holding objects. Yet it seemed as if there was a heavy load on his back, for he walked with a perpetual slump, shoulders hunched forward and head slightly bowed.
Aara caught him staring at Nathan, and walked around the beached catamaran to stand beside him. “He was born that way,” she murmured, “but he’s not a freak of nature. It’s not polite to stare.”
“He’s … not from here, is he?” he whispered, and Aara shook her head. “Then where is he from?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Come.”
With Kaile walking behind them, Aara led Sanjay from the beach. There were no structures on the shore, yet a trellis gate at the edge of the tree line marked the opening of a raised boardwalk leading into the woods. Nathan was already ahead of them; he’d just reached the gate when a bearded older man emerged from the boardwalk. He rose up on his hinds to greet Nathan; instead of the customary exchange of bows, they clasped each other’s right fore, a gesture Sanjay had never seen before. Then he turned to Aara, Sanjay, and Kaile.
“Aara … so glad to see that you’ve returned. Any trouble along the way?”
“Not at all.” Apparently Aara didn’t think that a close encounter with a monarch was worth mentioning. They exchanged bows, then she raised a fore to Sanjay and Kaile. “Let me introduce my son, Sanjay, and his betrothed, Kaile Otomo … it was necessary to bring her along, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll trust that it was.” A kindly smile. “No worries. I’m just happy you managed to get away safely.” The older man dropped to all fours to approach Sanjay and Kaile. “Welcome to First Town. I’m Benjam Hallahan, the mayor. Pleased to meet you both.”
“An honor to meet you.” Sanjay rose to offer a formal bow, as did Kaile. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand … where did you say we are?”
“First Town.” Benjam’s smile became an amused grin. “We don’t use the name Purgatory. In fact, it’s what this place was called before the Stormyarn. The Disciples…” He shrugged. “Let’s just say for the moment that most of what you were taught is wrong.”
Hearing this, Sanjay instinctively glanced about to see if anyone was listening. Aara noticed this and laughed. “Don’t worry, there are no Guardians here. No deacons, either. In fact, I don’t think you’ll find any Galians in First Town.”
“We have a shrine,” Benjam added, “but only a few people worship there. Mainly older folks who’ve come here from Providence as exiles and still have trouble accepting the truth.”
“What truth is that?” Kaile asked.
Benjam started to reply, then he paused to gaze over his shoulder at Nathan. The stranger shook his head, and the mayor looked back at her and Sanjay again. “That’s a question with a long and difficult answer,” he said, and his smile faded. “I’m afraid some of us have recently learned a few things we ourselves didn’t know before.” His eyes met Sanjay’s. “One of them involves you, my friend.”
“Me? How am I…?”
“Maybe we should find a place where we can speak a little more privately.” When he spoke, Nathan seemed a bit more weary than he’d been before they’d come ashore. “And more comfortably.”
“Of course. You must be exhausted.” Benjam went down on all fours to lead them toward the boardwalk. “This way, please.”
VIII
First Town was located deep in the forest, on a low plateau that had been cleared of the surrounding trees. When Sanjay reached the stairs leading to it at the end of the boardwalk, he was amazed by what the forest and adjacent marsh concealed from the channel. The settlement was larger than Childstown and, if anything, more prosperous. The houses and workshops were bigger, more solidly constructed; they had glazed windows and quite a few even had second floors, something he’d never seen before. Elevated aqueducts supplied the town with fresh water from mountain springs; he saw waterwheels turning millstones and lathes, and Benjam told him that a buried network of ceramic pipes fed water into individual homes and businesses. It was the last day of summer, but there seemed to be no anxious rush to prepare for the cold weeks ahead. Townspeople were calmly going about their daily affairs, and there seemed to be more shortage of children playing in the schoolyard.
He’d been expecting a crude camp filled with starving peasants mourning their banishment from Providence, not a content village inhabited by happy, well-fed people. There was a Galian shrine, just as Benjam said, but it was small and neglected. The genesis plant which grew beside it appeared to be regularly tended, but it wasn’t cordoned off by a ring of stones. One look at it, and it was clear that the Disciples had little or no authority here.
What was more surprising were a row of pens near the community gardens. Inside them were flocks of what appeared to be large, flightless birds, fat and white, which incessantly clucked and pecked at the soil. Never having seen the like before, Sanjay and Kaile stopped to stare at them, causing the others to come to a halt.
“Chickens,” Benjam said as he walked up behind them. “And those are turkeys.” He pointed to another flock of larger and even fatter birds in another pen. “We raise them for food.”
“Food?” Kaile asked, and Benjam nodded. “Where did you find them? There’s nothing like that on Providence.”
“No, there isn’t. They’re not even indigenous to Eos … they came from Earth.”
“Erf?” Sanjay drew back from the pens.
“No … Earth.” Again, Benjam smiled. “Come. You’ve got a lot to learn.”
Sanjay glanced at Aara. His mother gave him a knowing nod, but said nothing. Yet as they turned to follow Benjam again, Sanjay noticed that, while he and Kaile had been examining the … the chickens and turkeys … Nathan had disappeared. Looking around, he saw the stranger walking away, apparently heading for another part of the village. A few passersby gave him curious glances, but no one seemed to be startled by his appearance. It was obvious that he was known here.
Benjam brought them to a large, slope-sided building near the center of town. Opening its front door, he led them into what appeared to be a meeting hall. With its carefully arranged rows of mats facing a high rear wall whose stained glass windows formed an abstract pattern, it bore superficial resemblance to a shrine, yet there was no alter, no crèche containing a sleeping Teacher, only a low table. The mayor gestured to the front row of mats, and once Sanjay, Kaile, and Aara were seated, he squatted before them in front of the table.
“Nathan will be back soon,” he began, speaking to Sanjay and Kaile, “but before he does, I’ll get started by telling you what Aara learned when she came here. Namely, that much of what you grew up accepting as fact is … well, to put it bluntly … wrong.”
“Heresy.” Folding her hinds beneath her, Kaile crossed her fores and glared at him.
“No. Not heresy … history. History that has been lost to generations of people living on Providence.” Benjam paused. “You grew up in a proper Galian household, didn’t you?” he asked, and Kaile nodded. “You can’t be blamed for believing that anything contrary to the Word of Gal is blasphemous. But you’ll have to believe me when I tell you that the Word is a distorted version of what actually occurred many yarn ago, and that the true events are more complex than anything you’ve been taught.”
Kaile scowled and started to rise from her matt, but Sanjay stopped her with his fore. “Let’s just listen to what he says; we’ve come all this way. Maybe it’ll explain what you and Aara saw.”
Kaile hestitated, then reluctantly sat down again. Benjam let out his breath, then patiently went on. “First … to begin, Erf is not what you’ve been led to believe it is, a netherworld filled with damned souls. It’s called Earth, and it’s a planet much like Eos, only about one-third smaller. It revolves around a single star called Sol which is much larger and brighter than Calliope … it’s white, not red, and Earth is much further away from it than Eos is from Calliope.”
“Did Gal create sisters for it as well?” Sanjay asked.
Benjam shook his head. “No, there’s only that one sun … and Gal didn’t create either Calliope or Sol, or even Earth or Eos for that matter. They existed long, long before Gal … because Gal itself isn’t a deity, but rather a vessel created by humans. Our own ancestors, in fact.”
Kaile hissed between her teeth. “Blasphemy!”
“Listen to him.” Aara glared at her. “He’s telling the truth. Go on, Benjam.”
“Gal is a vessel … what people like Nathan call a starship.” Benjam continued. “About 440 sixyarn ago … or years, the way his people reckon time … our ancestors built a ship called Galactique for the purpose of carrying the seed of men and women to this world, which they knew was capable of sustaining life.”
“Why?” Unlike Kaile, Sanjay wasn’t upset, but intrigued, by what he was hearing.
“The reasons are complicated.” Benjam frowned and shook his head. “I’m not sure I completely understand them myself. Nathan and his companions have told us that Galactique was built because the people of that time believed that life on Earth was in peril of being destroyed, and they wanted to assure the survival of the human race.” A crooked smile. “It’s still there, but it isn’t a terrible place filled with tortured souls. The Chosen Children, as we call them, were simply the seed of those who’d spent years building the ship. In fact, they resembled Nathan himself … those we call the Children were altered before birth so that they could live comfortably on Eos, which Galactique had changed to make suitable for human life.”
“Then Gal … I mean, Galactique—” Sanjay stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables “—is our creator.”
“Just as the Word says,” Kaile quietly added.
“Galactique created our people, yes, and also the world as we know it … but it is not a deity. Those of us here in First Town and the other mainland settlements … yes, there are other villages like this one, although not as large … knew this even before Nathan and his companions arrived a few weeks ago. People here have long been aware of the fact that we’re descended from the human seed … the sperm and eggs, as they call it … transported from Earth aboard Galactique, and that Eos itself was a much different place before Galactique transformed it over the course of nearly 300 sixyarn into the world we know now.”
Benjam pointed beyond the open door of the meeting hall. “Those birds you saw, the chickens and turkeys … they were brought here, too, in just the same way. In fact, everything else on Eos … the forests, the insects, the fruit we eat, the fish in our seas … is descended from material carried from Earth by Galactique, then altered to make them suitable for life here.”
“Nathan calls this ‘genetic engineering’,” Aara said, slowly reciting words she herself had apparently learned only recently. “It’s really very complicated. I’m not certain I understand it myself.”
“It all was done aboard Galactique during the time it circled Eos.” Benjam nodded in agreement. “Nathan and his people have told us that, during this same time … hundreds of yarn, longer than our own history … Galactique also deposited across Eos dozens of tiny craft called ‘biopods’, which in turn contained the genesis plants. Eos was a much different place back … its atmosphere was thin and unbreathable, and the only life here was insignificant … lichen and such. The genesis plants were scattered all over Eos, and as they took root and grew to maturity, they absorbed the atmosphere which was already here and replaced it with the air we breathe while also making it thick enough to retain the warmth of Calliope and her sisters. Once that was accomplished, the plants distributed the seeds of all the other plants we know, none of which existed on Eos before Galactique came. Other biopods followed them, bringing down the infant forms of fish, birds, insects, and animals which had been gestated aboard the ship. Once they were here…”
“Then came you,” Nathan said.
He’d entered the room unnoticed, and he wasn’t alone. Looking around, Sanjay saw that he was accompanied by a man and a woman, both walking upright on forward-jointed legs and curiously small feet. This time, though, instead of the hooded cloak that had concealed his form on Providence, Nathan wore a strange outfit over his clothes, a jointed framework of pipes and molded plates made of some metallic material that softly whirred and clicked with every move he made. The other two wore similar outfits.
Nathan noticed that Sanjay was staring at him. “It’s called an exoskeleton,” he said as he walked over to where he and the others were seated. “The surface gravity on Eos … the force that causes you to stay on the ground … is half-again higher than it is on Earth. Without these to help us stand and move about, we’d get tired very quickly. Our hearts would have to work harder as well, and before long it would be very unhealthy for us to live here. The exoskeletons compensate for this.”
Sanjay stood erect to tentatively lay a fore on the exoskeleton’s chest plate. It was hard and cool, reminding him somewhat of a scavenger’s carapace. “Why weren’t you wearing this on Providence?”
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t float. If I’d fallen out of the boat, it would have dragged me to the bottom. Leaving it behind was the wisest thing to do.” A wry smile. “Fortunately, I’m in pretty good shape. I could handle the stress for a little while.” Nathan turned to the two who’d walked in with him. “Let me introduce my companions. This is Marilyn Sanyal, and he’s Russell Coyne. Like myself, they’re related to people you may already know…”
“I have a friend named Johan Sanyal. And my father’s family name is Coyne.”
“Is it really?” Russell appeared to be Sanjay’s age, differences notwithstanding. He grinned as he extended an oddly-shaped fore, then apparently thought better of it and bowed instead. “I believe that makes us relatives.”
Sanjay didn’t return the bow. Instead, he looked at Nathan. “You said on the boat that you and I are cousins. Are you also…?”
“Even more so than Russell, yes. My last name is Arkwright … Nathan Arkwright II.” He raised a fore before Sanjay could ask another question. “There’s a lot of complicated family history involved here, but you should know that we both bear the last name of the person who was responsible for Galactique in the first place, and I was given his first name as well.” He touched his hair, then pointed to Sanjay’s. “Same hair color, in fact … it’s hereditary.”
“So you’re telling us that Sanjay comes from the seed of someone on Erf who was brought here by Gal…” Kaile began.
“No.” Nathan turned to her. “Not the way you’re saying it, at least. As Benjam just told you, Erf is a world called Earth, and Gal is a starship called Galactique that’s still in orbit above Eos. Over time, their names were shortened, just as their true nature had been forgotten.”
“Otherwise, you’ve got it right.” Marilyn appeared to be a little older than her, although not quite as old as Aara. Of the three, she alone had skin the same dark shade as the native inhabitants; the others were nearly as pale as the Teacher. “What’s your family name, if I may ask?”
Kaile hesitated. “Otomo.”
Marilyn pulled a small flat object from a pocket from the clothes she wore beneath the exoskeleton. Holding the object in her left fore, she tapped her finger a few times against it, then studied it for a moment. “There was a Katsumi Otomo among those who built Galactique,” she said. “A propulsion engineer … never mind what that means. She was your ancestor … one of them, at least.”
“Everyone you know, everyone on this world, is descended from at least two of the two hundred men and women who contributed reproductive material to Galactique’s gene pool,” Russell said. “First, the ship distributed genesis plants across the planet, which in turn introduced cyanobacteria into the atmosphere to reduce the carbon dioxide content, raise the oxygen-nitrogen ratio, and thereby make Eos human-habitable through ecopoiesis…”
“Russ … don’t get technical,” Nathan said quietly. “They’re not ready for that yet.” Russell nodded, albeit reluctantly, and Nathan went on. “The point is, although we don’t look alike, we’re humans just as you are. Galactique altered the embryonic forms of your immediate ancestors so that they could survive this planet’s higher gravity while also making them amphibious…”
“And you’re telling me not to get technical,” Russell said, raising an eyebrow.
“So the word is correct,” Kaile said. “Even if what you say is true, it still means that Gal is our creator.”
Nathan shared an uncertain glance with Russell and Marilyn. “Well … yes, I suppose you could say that, but not in the sense you mean.”
“But she’s in our sky every day and every night, watching every move we make.” Kaile remained adamant. “She’s been there for as long as our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers…”
“A matriarchal mythology as well as a society,” Marilyn said softly. “Interesting.”
Nathan ignored her. “Once humans were brought down here, Galactique moved into a geosynchronous orbit—” he caught himself “—a place in the sky which is always above the same place on the ground, where it was supposed to function as a … um, a source of information for the original colony. That’s why you can see it all the time. It rotates at the same angular velocity as Eos itself, so it’s always directly above you.”
Russell picked up the thread. “The ship also carried with it two … ah, artificial beings, what we call robots … which were meant to be your instructors. They raised the first children who came here, teaching them how to survive…”
“You mean the Teacher … there were two?” Sanjay said.
“Yes, there were.” Benjam had been quiet for awhile; now he spoke up. “There was one here in First Town like the one in Provincetown, along with another Transformer.” He looked over at Russell. “Which, as you say, manufactured from blocks of the material we call Galmatter the first tools used by our people.”
“Correct.” Russell was obviously relieved that someone here understood what he’d been trying to explain. “The Transformers are what we call three-dimensional laser manufacturers. They took information stored within Galactique’s data library and…” He caught a stern look from Nathan. “Damn … I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
Nathan nodded, then spoke to Sanjay again. “The Teachers, the Transformers, the stuff you call Galmatter … they were all sent down here to help the original colonists … the ones you call the Chosen Children … grow up and survive in their new home. But then, there was an accident…”
“Enough.” Kaile raised her fores in protest. “You tell us these things and ask that we believe them, but you offer no proof.” She cast an angry glare at Nathan. “Perhaps you’ve managed to fill their minds with lies…”
“We’re not lying,” Nathan said, his voice flat and steady.
“… but I refuse to accept what you’re saying on your word alone. Prove it!”
No one said anything for a moment. Then Benjam stood up. “Then I’ll give you proof. Something that’s been here since the beginning of our history, which we’ve long accepted as evidence that life began out there.”
“And you’ll also see what caused that light you saw in the sky,” Nathan added. Marilyn opened her mouth as if to object, but he shook his shook. “No, she needs to see this. It’s the only way.”
“Follow me,” Benjam said, then dropped to all four and began to walk toward the door.
IX
Another path, this was on the far end of town, led uphill into the dense forest at the base of the mountains. As Benjam led the group through the black woodlands, Nathan picked up where he’d left off in the meeting hall.
“First Town was the original colony, and for the first few years … um, sixyarns … it was the only settlement. During this time, the Teachers nurtured the hundred children who’d been gestated and born aboard Galactique … building shelters for them, providing them with food from the mockapples, roseberries, and melon vines that they cultivated, and educating them as they raised them from infancy to childhood. It helped a great deal that Eos has very short seasons. Unlike Earth, your winters last only three weeks, and in the equatorial region is relatively mild…”
“Have you ever seen snow?” Marilyn asked.
Sanjay and Kaile shook their heads. “What’s that?” Sanjay asked.
“It’s … um…”
“Don’t interrupt,” Nathan said to Marilyn. She grinned and became silent, and he went on. “The colony was approaching self-sufficiency when an unforeseen occurrence happened, one that changed everything … your sun, Calliope, underwent a variable phase.”
“Calliope is what’s known as a red dwarf.” As Russell spoke, he turned to walk backward on his curiously shaped hinds. Sanjay was amazed by the improbable and yet so casual movement, but Russell didn’t seem to notice the way he stared at him. “They’re generally smaller and cooler than Earth’s sun, but every now and then … a few thousand years or so … they tend to spontaneously enter phases in which they grow hotter and brighter due to solar prominences…”
“Russell…” Again, Nathan was concerned that Sanjay and Kaile wouldn’t understand him.
“No, don’t stop,” Sanjay said. “I think I understand what you’re saying?”
“You do?” Russell said. Sanjay nodded, and after a moment Kaile reluctantly did as well. “All right then … anyway, when Calliope started to undergo one of these variable phases, Galactique detected the change that was about to occur…”
“Of course she did,” Kaile said. “Gal knows all and sees all.”
Marilyn sighed, shook her head. “Please try to understand … Gal isn’t a deity. It’s a machine.” Seeing the confused expression on the young woman’s face, she tried again. “It’s like a tool, just far more complicated than anything you’ve ever seen. One of the things it can do is think and reason for itself, just as you can.”
“This tool has a mind?” Even Aara was startled by this revelation.
“Of a sort, yes.” This time, Russell made a stronger effort to speak in terms the islanders could understand. “Not exactly like your own, but … yes, it can observe, gather facts, and make its own decisions. Galactique also provided the Teachers with information and instructions, just as it provided the Transformers with their own instructions.”
“Unfortunately, it can also make mistakes.” Nathan had become pensive. He walked with his head down, gazing at the ground as he spoke. “When it saw that Calliope was entering a variable phase, it calculated the probable effects upon the planetary climate and realized that severe storms … typhoons, we call them … would occur in this region. The colonists were still quite young, and the settlement had been established in a coastal area which would probably experience high winds, flooding, perhaps even forest fires…”
“The Great Storm,” Sanjay said.
“We know all about that.” A vindicated smile appeared on Kaile’s face. “This was when Gal separated those who believed in her and took them to Providence, leaving behind those who’d sinned.”
“Again, you’re only half-right.” As Nathan said this, Sanjay could tell that he was trying to be patient. “It wasn’t a matter of who’d sinned and who hadn’t. Galactique determined that the odds of survival would be increased if the colony was divided, with half of the children sent elsewhere while the other half remaining here to protect the settlement. So it instructed the Teachers to build boats to take fifty children to the nearby island, whose western coast Galactique calculated would be less vulnerable to storm surges from the east, where they would remain until the variable phase came to an end and the climate restabilized.”
“My ancestors were among the fifty who stayed here.” Benjam walked slowly, turning his head to Kaile and Sanjay. “They were given a Teacher and one of the Transformers, just as your ancestors were, and then they relocated to higher ground away from the beach … the place where First Town stands today.”
“It was supposed to be only temporary,” Marilyn said, “but then…”
“We’re here,” Benjam said.
The path came to an end in a clearing where the slope was level and only chest-high grass and clumps of dreamer’s weed grew. From its center rose a tall object, off-white and partially covered with vines, that Sanjay first took to be a large, tooth-shaped boulder tilted slightly to one side. As they walked a little closer, he saw that it wasn’t a natural object at all. Darkened on the bottom, tapering upward as a conical shape with mysterious markings along its sides, it had a round opening midway up, a rope ladder dangling from it.
Whatever it was, clearly it had been made by human fores.
“This is where it all began.” Benjam stopped and stood erect. “This is the craft in which all our ancestors were brought down to the surface.”
Nathan pointed to dark blue markings along its upper surface, just visible through the clinging vines. “See? G … A … L…” He shrugged. “The rest got rubbed off some way or another.”
“Probably atmospheric friction during entry and landing,” Russell said. “Sun and rain, too. Still, it’s in amazing condition, considering how long it’s been here.”
Walking a little closer, Sanjay rose on his hinds to peer in the direction Nathan was pointing. All he saw was something that looked like a snail, something that looked a little like a harpoon tip, and a right angle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You can’t see that?” Marylyn asked. “How can you not…?” Then she stopped and stared at him. “Oh, my god … you can’t read, can you?”
“No,” Benjam said quietly. “For the islanders, Inglis … what they call English … is entirely a phonetic language, with no written counterpart.” He regarded Sanjay and Kaile with a pitying expression. “The children who were sent to Providence lost their ability to read and write when their Teacher was disabled and they lost communications with Galactique. It’s the main reason why their understanding of history become diluted by myth.”
“Oral history.” Marylyn nodded with sudden understanding. “Unwritten, malleable, and all too easy to be misunderstood. Everything they know, or they think they know, has been…”
“What are you saying?” Sanjay glared at them, annoyed by their condescension but also confused. “Are you trying to tell us that everything the Deacons have told us is … is…?”
“Wrong,” Nathan said, finishing his thought for him. “I’m sorry, but that’s what we’ve been trying to explain.” Stepping past Benjam, he slowly walked through the high grass, approaching the craft as respectfully as if it was a shrine. “You wanted proof,” he said over his shoulder to Kaile. “Well, here it is. Want to come closer and see?”
Kaile hestitated. Then, visibly shaken but nonetheless curious, she followed Nathan and Benjam, walking on her hinds so that she could see the craft more clearly. Sanjay and Aara fell in behind her, with Russell and Marylyn following them. As the group made their way across the clearing, Nathan continued.
“When our ship arrived a few weeks ago … that’s the light your mother saw, Sanjay … one of the first things we did was rendezvous with Galactique and access its memory … talk to it, if you will. We learned a lot of what had happened here over the last hundred and sixty years … sixyarn, I mean … but there were still some mysteries that remained unsolved until we came here and made contact with Benjam and his people.”
“By then, I’d been told the truth as well,” Aara said quietly, looking at Sanjay. “Like everyone who’s been exiled here, the first thing that I learned was how wrong the Disciples are. Our whole history, everything we know…”
Her voice trailed off. Nathan continued to speak. “One of the worst effects … in fact, probably the single worst effect … of Calliope’s variable phase was the enormous electromagnetic surge that occurred during its peak.” He glanced over his shoulder at Sanjay and Kaile. “I know you’re not going to understand this, so I’ll try to make it simple … stars like Calliope emit more than just heat and light. They also cast other forms of radiation that you can’t hear, see, or feel, but which are present anyway. The radiation became so intense that it not only destroyed Galactique’s ability to … um, talk to the Teachers and the Transformers, but also even the islanders’ ability to communicate with those who stayed on the mainland.”
“We didn’t lose our Teacher the way you did,” Benjam explained, “because it took shelter within this craft, which has adequate shielding to resist against this intense radiation. So we still had the means by which to learn the things we needed to know, including our history and origins. But our Transformer was destroyed, as well as the high gain antenna. Those had been built up and couldn’t be deconstructed in time.”
“Almost all electrical technology was lost,’ Russell said. “Except for the emergency radio beacon … that was inside the lander, where it runs off a nuclear power cell. Once we learned its frequency from Galactique, we were able to use it to figure out where this colony was located.”
“That’s the light you saw, Kaile,” Aara said.
She said nothing. By then, the group had reached the landing craft. Over forty rods tall, Sanjay could now see that it was made entirely of metal, its paint chipped and faded with age. The opening midway up its flank was a hatch from which a ladder made of woven vine and bambu had been draped.
“The children who’d been taken to Providence remained there,” Benjam said. “Their Teacher and Transformer ceased to function and they lost contact with those who’d been left behind. By the time the Great Storm finally ended four yarn later, they’d come to believe everyone there was dead. Without a Teacher to lead them, much of their knowledge was lost. They couldn’t even cross the channel without risking being killed by monarchs…”
“What we call great white sharks back on Earth,” Marilyn added. “Like everything else, they’ve been adapted to provide Eos with a diverse ecosystem. Unfortunately, they also became a barrier between the two colonies.”
“So the colony on Providence formed its own culture,” Benjam continued, “without the benefit of written language or history or even science. In time, their children and children’s children came to believe in Gal, but here—” he lay a fore against the lander’s hull “—we didn’t lose those things. Before our own Teacher ceased to function, it taught our grandparents all that we needed to know. By the time they were ready to build boats and try to restore contact with those who lived on island, the Disciples had made anything contrary to the Word of Gal … Galactique’s final instructions to the island colony, passed down by word of mouth over the yarns, all the time being reinterpreted and misunderstood … an act of heresy. Even trying to come over could get us killed. All we could do was stay away and accept those your people banished. Do you see?”
“Yes,” Sanjay said.
“No,” Kaile said. “All I see is something left to us by Gal. It could be anything but what you say it is.”
“Kaile…” Aara shook her head, more disappointed than angry. “Everything they’ve told you is true.”
“If you still don’t believe us, go in and see for yourself.” Benjam tugged at the bottom of the ladder. “Here … climb up and look.”
Sanjay didn’t hesitate. Taking the ladder from him, he grasped the rungs with his fores and carefully began to climb upward. As Nathan took the ladder to follow him, Sanjay paused to look back down. Kaile was still standing on the ground; when she caught his eye, she reluctantly began to scale the ladder herself.
The compartment on the other side of hatch was dark. As Sanjay crawled through the hatch, he found that he could see very little. There was a gridded metal floor beneath his fores and hinds, and some large oval objects clustered along the circular walls, but that was almost all he could make out. Nathan came in behind him, and Sanjay was startled by a beam of light from a small cylinder he’d pulled from his pocket. But this was nothing compared to the shock he felt when the bright circle fell upon an object on the far side of the compartment.
“A Teacher!” Kaile had just entered the craft. She crouched beside the open hatch, staring at what Nathan’s light revealed.
Sanjay felt his heart pound as he stared at the solitary figure seated in a chair in front of what appeared to be some sort of glass-topped desk. Like the Teacher in Childstown, it had a featureless face and oddly formed limbs; this one, though, wore a loose, single-piece outfit that had moldered and rotted over time, exposing the grey and mottled skin beneath. Yet the Teacher’s eyes were as blank as those of his long-lost companion, and it was obvious that it, too, hadn’t moved in many yarn.
“Benjam tells me it managed to survive the solar storm.” Nathan’s voice was quiet, almost reverent as Sanjay crouched beside the Teacher. “It took refuge in here, and that’s how it was able to remain active long after the one you have on the island became inert. Unfortunately, it appears that they couldn’t disassemble the replicator … the Transformer, I mean … or the communications antenna in time to save them, so this was the only place where any electronic equipment…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sanjay continued to peer at the Teacher. He prodded its face with a fingertip, something he’d always wanted to do with the one in Childstown. The Galmatter felt nothing like human flesh, or indeed like anything that had ever lived.
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s going to take a while for you to…” Nathan stopped himself. “Anyway, here’s something else you need to see.” He looked back at Kaile. “Come closer. You ought to see this, too.”
“No. I’m staying where I am.” She wouldn’t budge from the hatch. Sanjay could tell that she was frightened.
“Suit yourself.” Keeping his head down so as not to bang it against the low ceiling, Nathan came further into the compartment. “Look at these, Sanjay,” he said, running the light beam across the ovoid shapes arranged along the walls. “What do you think they look like?”
Sanjay approached the egg-like objects and examined them. Although they were covered with dust, he could see that their top halves were transparent, made of substance that looked like glass but resembled Galmatter. Raising a fore to one of them, he gently wiped away the dust. Nathan brought his light a little closer, and Sanjay saw that within the cell was a tiny bed, its covers long since decayed yet nonetheless molded in such a way that would accommodate an infant.
“They look like cradles,” he murmured.
“Exactly. They’re cradles … meant to carry down from orbit one hundred new-born babies.” Nathan shined the light upward, and Sanjay looked up to see an open hatch in the ceiling. “There are three more decks just like this one above us, and in two of them are more cradles, along with places for all the equipment that was transported here from Earth. But the babies were the most important cargo.”
Returning the light back to the cradle Sanjay had been inspecting, Nathan reached past him to tap a finger against a small panel on its transparent cover. “You can’t read what this says, I know, but it’s a name … ‘Gleason’. That’s the last name of the child who was in this particular egg, and it’s also the last name of the person who donated their reproductive material to Galactique’s gene pool. All of these cradles have names on them, and I bet that if you went through the lander and looked at them, you’d find the last names of everyone you know … except one. And you know who that is?”
“No.”
“Yours.”
Sanjay turned to look at him. “I don’t understand. You said…”
“There’s no cradle here with the name of Arkwright, but that doesn’t mean our common ancestor wasn’t aboard the lander. These names were put on the cradles before Galactique left Earth, and the Arkwright genome … our family, that is … is supposed to represented by the Morressy genome. But there are no cradles here labeled Morressy, which means something else unforeseen happened after Galactique arrived. And that’s why your mother and I came to find you.”
“What was it?”
Nathan didn’t respond at once. “I could tell you, but … maybe you ought to hear this for yourself.” He turned about to look at Kaile. “Do you still not trust me?” he asked, not in an unkindly way but rather with great patience. “Do you still think all this was performed by some all-powerful deity?”
Kaile was quiet. Her gaze travelled around the compartment, taking it all in. Then she said, softly yet with determination, “I believe in Gal.”
“Very well … then let’s go meet Gal.”
X
From space, Eos looked like nothing Sanjay had ever imagined. His people knew that they lived on a planet, of course; no one but small children thought the world was flat. But since only the deacons saw the global maps dating back before the Stormyarn—one more aspect of their history lost to Galian superstition—his people’s knowledge of the place where they lived was limited to Providence, the Western Channel, and Cape Exile.
So he was unable to look away from the windows of winged craft which had carried him, Kaile, Nathan and Marilyn into space. On the other side, an immense blue hemisphere stretched as far as the eye could see, its oceans broken by dark-hued landmasses, its mountains and deserts shadowed by gauzy white clouds. The world slowly revolved beneath them, so enormous that he could barely believe that it could even exist.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Marilyn spoke quietly from the right front seat of the spacecraft she and Nathan had led Sanjay and Kaile through the forest to find. It had been left in a meadow about a half-kilm from Galactique’s lander, where the expedition’s contact team had touched down three weeks ago.
“Yes … yes, it is.” Sanjay could barely speak. Fascination had overcome the terror of liftoff, the noise and vibration of the swift ascent, the invisible pressure that had pushed Kaile and him into soft couches barely suitable for their bodies despite the changes Nathan had made to accommodate them (during which Sanjay learned that the visitors had other words for their fores and hinds: hands and feet). The pressure was gone, and now his body felt utterly without weight, as if he was floating on the sea except without having to make any effort to stay buoyant; only the straps kept him in his seat. “Never thought it was … so big.”
“Eos is about 8,500 kilometers in radius and 17,000 kilometers is diameter.” Nathan didn’t look away from the yoke-like control bar in his lap. “Kilometers are what you call kilms. Anyway, it’s about one-third larger than Earth, but just a little more than one-fifth of the distance Earth is from Sol … about .2 AU’s, but you don’t need to worry about that. The important thing is that it’s not rotation-locked, which helped make it habitable.”
Sanjay looked over at Kaile. She’d closed her eyes shut the moment the spacecraft left the ground and kept them closed all the way up, but now she’d opened them again and was staring at Eos with both awe and dread. She clutched the too-short armrests, and when Sanjay reached over to lay a fore across hers, she barely noticed.
“And you say it … it wasn’t always like this?” she asked, her voice barely more a whisper.
“No. Before Galactique arrived and began dropping its biopods, Eos was a hot and largely lifeless world. The oceans were there, but they were almost sterile, and what little life existed on the surface was … well, very small and very primitive. The biopods and genesis plants changed all that, and very quickly, too … just a little less than three centuries.” Again, Nathan glanced over his shoulder. “That’s about 1,800 yarn by your reckoning. A very short time … but then, your seasons are so much shorter, so it just seems long to you.”
“And you say you came here in another craft?” Sanjay asked. “One that’s bigger than this?”
“Oh, yes, much larger.” Marilyn reached forward to press his fingers against a row of buttons between her and Nathan, and a moment later a small glass plate above the buttons lit up to reveal a picture of something that looked like a sphere with a long, ribbed cylinder jutting from one end. “That’s our ship … the Neil DeGrasse Tyson. It’s about six hundred meters long … a meter is about the same length as your rod … and there’s over two hundred people aboard. It took us over sixty-seven years for us to get here…”
“That long?” Sanjay was becoming accustomed to their way of counting the time.
“Yes, but we slept most of the way, so…”
“You slept? How did you…?”
“It’s rather complicated.” Marilyn shook her head. “Anyway, it’s on the other side of the planet, where it can’t be seen from Providence, but that’s what your mother saw … its main engine firing to decelerate.” Again, she let out her breath in frustration as she gave Nathan a helpless look. “I never thought I’d have to explain so much.”
“No one did,” Nathan murmured.
“Where is Gal?” Kaile asked abruptly. “You said we could meet her. So where is she?”
Her expression had tightened, her eyes no longer filled with wonder. She had endured enough already; now she wanted to see what she’d been promised, the face of her Creator. Sanjay was almost embarrassed for her. He’d become convinced that what Nathan and Marilyn had told them was the truth, but she remained stubborn in her beliefs.
“Just ahead.” Marilyn pointed. “There … look.”
Stretching forward as much as he could against the straps, Sanjay peered through the bubble. At first he saw nothing but stars, then something came into view, a small, bright dash of light that twinkled in the sun. It steadily grew larger, gradually gaining shape and form.
“It was much larger when it left Earth,” Nathan said as he guided their craft closer. “It once had a sail larger than Providence, but that was discarded once it reached Eos. The lander we visited was once attached as well. Now there’s only this.”
Hovering before them, slowly tumbling through the night, was a slender, cylindrical object about a hundred rods in length. Sunlight was reflected from its silver hull, and what looked like sticks, dishes, and barrels stuck out here and there. In no way did it look like a deity, though, or in fact like anything except a toy some imaginative child might have cobbled together from discarded household implements.
“This is Gal?” Kaile’s eyes were wide, her voice weak.
“This is what you call Gal.” Marilyn was apologetic. “I’m sorry, Kaile, but … yes, this is all there is.”
Sanjay looked down at Eos again. It took him a few moments to recognize the shapes of the landmasses that lay below, but the finger-shaped peninsula protruding from the northeast corner of an equatorial continent was probably Cape Exile … which meant that the large island just off its coast was Providence. Calliope was beginning to set to the west. Anyone looking straight up from the island would see the very same thing they were.
“He’s telling the truth.” Sanjay’s mouth was dry as he turned to Kaile. “We’re above Childstown.” He pointed through the windows. “This is what we’ve seen whenever we’ve looked at the sky.”
Kaile didn’t speak, but when she peered in the direction he was pointing, her face became ashen. “Now I want you to hear something, Sanjay,” Nathan said as he did something with his controls that caused the yoke to lock in place, then bent forward to push more buttons. “Many, many years ago, while Galactique was on its way here, one of your ancestors on Earth sent a message. Her name was Dhanishta, and her father Matt helped her send this to Galactique. The ship received the message and stored it in memory, and we found it when we arrived. Here’s what Dhani had to say…”
The glass panel lit again, this time to display a child’s face: a little girl, probably no older than seven or eight sixyarn, as dark-skinned as any islander but with a yellow flower in her long black hair. She was sitting upright in a chair, smiling brightly, and as Sanjay watched, she began to speak:
“Hello, Sanjay. My name is Dhanishta Arkwright Skinner, and I’m calling you from Earth.” The image was grainy and occasionally shot through with thin white lines. The girl’s cheerful voice has a blurred tone to it, but nonetheless her words were distinct. “I know you’re still asleep and so it will be many years before you see this, but when Galactique finally gets to Eos, I hope you will.” A slight pause; she looked flustered. “I mean, I hope you’ll see this. Anyway, I wish I was there with you, because I’d love to know what the new world looks like. I hope it’s as nice as Earth and that you’ll have a great time there. Please think of me always, and remember that you have a friend here. Much love, Dhani.”
The girl stopped speaking. She blinked, then looked away. “Is that okay? Did I…?”
Then the glass panel went dark.
Sanjay didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t tell which astonished him more, the fact that he could see and hear a little girl speaking to him from across the worlds and yarn, or what she’d said. When he raised his eyes again, he found both Nathan and Marilyn smiling at him.
“She said her name is Arkwright,” he said.
“That’s correct.” Nathan nodded. “Dhanishta Arkwright Skinner … Arkwright is her middle name. She’s your ancestor. Mine, too.”
“But how did … how did she know I was here?”
“When she was much older,” Marilyn said, “Dhani wrote her memoirs … her life story, She explained that Matt Skinner, her father, had told her that there was a little boy named Sanjay aboard Galactique, and let her send that message to him.”
“But the little boy didn’t really exist,” Nathan continued, “so her father sent another message to Galactique, telling its AI … its machine-mind … to alter its original instructions. As I said, many of the people who helped build Galactique were allowed to contribute eggs and sperm who’d later become the original colonists … the people you’ve called the Chosen Children. One of them was a woman named Kate Morressy, who was Dhanista’s great-grandmother and also the granddaughter of Nathan Arkwright.”
“The person you’re named after.”
“Correct. Well, without telling anyone, Matt instructed the AI rename that particular genome ‘Arkwright’ instead of ‘Morressy’, and that its first offspring was to be a male child named Sanjay.”
“He did this as a gift for his daughter, but never told her about it,” Marilyn said. “In fact, we didn’t know about it either until we reached Galactique and downloaded … I mean, listened to … its AI.”
“My great-great-grandfather’s name was Sanjay Arkwright.” Sanjay could barely speak; his voice came as a dry-throated croak. “He was one of the Chosen Children.”
“That was the little boy Dhani imagined was aboard Galactique,” Marilyn said. “He never heard it, though, so in a way, the message was meant for you.”
Something small and wet touched Sanjay’s face. Reaching up to brush away the moisture, he looked over at Kaile and realized that she was crying. Her tears didn’t roll down her cheeks, though, but instead floated away as tiny, glistening bubbles.
“Do you believe us now?” Marilyn asked, quietly and with great sympathy.
Kaile didn’t say anything. She simply nodded, and continued to weep for the god who’d just died. “Yes … yes, I think we do,” Sanjay said quietly. “So what do we do now?”
Nathan and Marilyn looked at each other. For once, they were the ones who were at a loss for words. “That’s up to you,” Nathan said quietly. “What do you think we should do?”
Sanjay gazed out the window for a little while. “I think I know,” he said at last.
XI
The craft shook violently as its wings bit into the atmosphere, and for several minutes its canopy was enveloped by a reddish-orange corona. Sanjay clenched his teeth and held Kaile’s fore tight within his own; he felt weight returning, and regretted losing the brief euphoria he’d experienced high above Eos. Nathan had warned them that returning to the ground would be like this, but it didn’t make it any less frightening. He just hoped it would be over soon … although he wasn’t looking forward to what was coming next.
The trembling gradually subsided and the corona faded, revealing the darkening blue sky of early evening. Through the canopy windows, the ocean came into view; Aether and Baachae were coming up over the horizon, and Sanjay gazed at them in wonder, understanding now that they weren’t really sisters but instead two dwarf stars just like Calliope, the three of them sharing the same center of gravity.
Indeed, everything familiar seemed new again. Eos, his people, their place in history, even Gal … no, Galactique … itself. What had once been the works of an all-powerful creator, he now understood to be something different, small yet significant aspects of a vast but knowable universe.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Although Nathan didn’t look away from his controls, Sanjay knew that he was speaking to him and Kaile. “You can always change your mind, y’know.”
“I’m not sure we’re doing the right thing.” Marilyn spoke to Nathan, ignoring the passengers seated behind them. “It’s a primitive culture. The shock … maybe we should take this slowly, introduce it over time…”
“No.” Just as Sanjay was feeling weight return to his body, so he also felt the responsibility of telling others what he’d learned. “My father, my friends, even the Disciples … they have to know the truth.” He glanced at Kaile. “Yes?”
She lay back in her seat, gazing through the windows. “Yes,” she said at last, turning her face toward his to give him an uncertain smile. “They won’t like it, but … they deserve to know what everyone in Purgatory already knows.”
Nathan nodded, then looked at Marilyn. “Very well, then,” he said, letting out his breath. “We’re go for touchdown.”
“Make it the beach,” Sanjay said. “Plenty of room there.”
Far below, Providence was coming into view. The last light of day was touching the thin white strip of its coast, and although he still couldn’t make out Childstown, he knew that those who lived there had probably seen the bright star descending from the sky and the bird-like object it had become. The bell in the watchtower was being rung, and townspeople were emerging from their homes and workshops to stare up at the strange thing descending upon them.
He smiled to himself, imaging R’beca’s reaction when she saw the craft alight upon the waterfront and who would emerge from it. Soon, there would be no more heretics. Another thought amused him and he laughed out loud.
Kaile looked at him sharply. “What’s so funny?”
“I’m going to be busy soon,” he replied. “We’re going to need more boats.”
Puzzled, Kaile shook her head. Sanjay didn’t explain what he meant, though, but instead gazed up at the sky. Galactique was there, as it had always been, but he now knew that its long journey had finally come to an end …
And another journey was about to begin.