TORQUE AND RAIN came to Ed’s room later that morning. Rain said breakfast was ready in the common room, but Torque also brought a plate for Cal so he could stay if he wanted.
Sabira patted Ed’s foot on the way out. She wanted to say a prayer for his recovery, but what right did she have to pray, now that she had turned from Divine Will?
While they ate in the common room, Sabira’s gaze kept being drawn to the wide vista beyond the windows. “There are more smoke columns this morning,” she said, “and the older pyres are still going.”
“Too many are dying too fast,” said Coraz.
“Last night, before the ceremony, I listened for the dusk song. But there wasn’t . . .” Sabira paused, composed herself. “It was quiet.”
Sabira remembered running across the backs of granks, playing games and nearly getting her ass trampled for it. Those same granks would have been dropped into hive cities all over the planet, rupture fields disintegrating everything in their path, gills leaving a fog of bioweapons in their wakes. Long after the granks were finally killed or withdrawn back to the pyramid, their toll was still being counted, piled into the streets and burned. And to her, they were a game, a tactic for notoriety. She had thought her penance for foolishness with the granks was the nine eyes on her back. Now she knew the true punishment was witnessing the aftermath.
“One more day everyone. We have a lot to do before leaving Dlamakuuz tomorrow,” said Maia as they finished their breakfasts of porridge and fruits. “But first, we held ritual for you five last night. Does anyone want to share their experiences with the eon?”
“I do,” said Rain. He sat near the window, silhouetted by the morning light. “I think that since for Sabira it was the night of touching the ancestors, for me, there must have been some kind of influence. I found it very much like my second night.”
As Rain spoke, Cal came in and joined them. He sat on a divan near Sabira.
“The way I died in the vision was different than any previous experiences,” continued Rain. “This time I was eaten alive by a giant reptile. I swear, its breath, I can still smell it. The reptile ate me whole. In the dark, there in its belly, I saw my two brood. I hadn’t seen them in, well, since we chose our shafts. Both of them chose the pits. Neither made it. My brood-brother died in his first pit, my brood-sister in her second. So long ago. So many years.
“When I saw them, there in the dark of the lizard’s belly, they told me I’d be with them soon. Isn’t that odd? After all this time. All those years, so many lives I’ve seen, and it was them. I think they meant I’m going to die,” he said. “Soon. Much sooner, I think, than I would prefer.”
Maia let the silence sit with the group for a moment before replying. “Thank you for sharing, Rain. I am always impressed by your bravery. Listen to what your heart tells you about your visions, but—and this is important for all to understand—when you drink the eon, though you may encounter the dead, being deceased does not make them right. Or truthful.”
“I know,” he said. “I remember. When I listen to my heart, my brood didn’t lie to me. Or maybe it’s the plague out there. So much death. It’s so . . .” He lowered his face into his palms. “I truly look forward to leaving for Constellation tomorrow. The other side of the galaxy has to be better than this.”
“Me, too, Rain,” said Dawn, sitting next to Coraz. “I wish we could do like Sabira said and leave right away. I understand why we can’t, but I wish we could. I want these babies to be born free and have names. Tomorrow can’t be here soon enough.”
“Life in the Constellation won’t always be easy,” said Gabriel. “We’re comprised of many different planets, each with a wide variety of cultures. Every single one of them might be pretty shocking at first. And you should understand, we are not taking you off to paradise. The Constellation is our home, and we love it, but it’s far from perfect. But you’re all survivors. I believe you’ll adjust in time. And all of you, all of your children will be born free.”
“Does anyone else want to share their vision from last night?” asked Maia.
Sabira felt Cal’s elbow pressing into her ribs. She pushed it away.
“Sabira, would you like to share?” asked Maia.
“Me?” said Sabira. “I can share, I guess. In both nights I saw this world. We were on the surface, like here. No wait, I started underground but came up to the surface. There were other humans. They had darker skin and lots of hair like you. And there were so many plants and animals everywhere, as far as I could see. The sky, I’d never seen anything like it. The sky here is purple. Back on Nahgohn-Za, it’s dark red, like old blood. But this world had a blue sky. Last night I saw it again, but it was all different. The plants were gone. Instead, metal and glass were everywhere, tall as the clouds. Fire fell out of the sky. After that, I guess it’s just more like impressions. Fear. Confinement. And then . . . then the red skies.
“I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean. If it even means anything. It seemed so real, but now, it feels slippery. Hard to hold on to. I don’t know. It sounds so silly.”
“Not silly at all, Sabira,” said Maia. “You should heed your intuition. She has much to tell you if you listen. But I want to talk more about the world with the blue sky. You saw this world twice in your visions?”
“Three times. I had the vision of coming out of the cave on both nights. Last night I also saw the metal towers and the fire falling from the blue sky.”
Sabira felt a shift rustle its way through the room. Everyone seemed to be a little less comfortable, adjusted their posture or crossed the other leg. “What?” she asked. “What did I say?”
Gabriel spoke first. “Sabira, I know you’ve realized there’s been quite a lot we’ve held back, details we’ve not told you, about who we are and where we come from. I can only dream of how confusing this must all be for you. We also did this with the others before you and for good reasons. Your people have been utterly isolated for over nineteen centuries. It would be cruel to not give you time to understand who we are. Who you are.”
An expanding light spread across one of the walls, formatted into a man-shaped silhouette on the surface. The silhouette congealed into finer detail so that a three-dimensional person appeared within the wall’s two-dimensional surface. Orion’s face stared back at them, his wild, spiky hair slowly transitioning through electric hues of blue and green. “What’s crunchy?”
“Sabira saw a world with blue skies when she touched the ancestors last night,” said Maia. “Both nights.”
“Good,” he answered. “I wanted to be here for this.”
“Be here for what?” asked Sabira.
“Girl,” said Coraz, reaching out to take her hand. “Just listen now. Hear what they have to say, then you make up your mind later.”
“I just want to know what everyone is talking about,” she said. “Cal said there was a story . . .”
“I know, girl.” Ahn squeezed her hand. “But you just listen for now.”
“Sabira, you and the others have told me about your homeworlds, your life, your stories,” said Maia. “I am sorry that I have told you little of my home, Tierra. I was born there, obviously. Spent my youth there and all the years I studied in universities. This was before I drank eon and chose to become an Oracle. In many ways, it is much like Dlamakuuz. A little more gravity. And we do not have purple skies. We have blue.
“You may have noticed that in some ways I am different from Gabriel and Orion, though you have not met Orion in person yet, but I am not talking about skin color or hair. I mean the augments, like in Gabriel’s eyes and hands. And how they are able to learn your language faster than me. Though I think I am getting better every day.”
“What do you have in your hands? Is that how you sliced that gun yesterday?” Sabira asked.
Gabriel smiled, the silver and gold in his eyes dazzled as he spoke. “You saw that, did you? Yes, Sabira, my implants severed his weapon in two.” He held up his right hand. A golden-tinged energy field glowed around the blade of his hand, shaped like a long, pointed wedge, extending half a meter from base to apex. “It’s a concentrated molecular dispersion field. When the field contacts matter, it negates their molecular bonds. I believe the Theocracy has a similar technology?”
“We called them rupture fields. But the field generators were too big to ever be implanted in human arms. It takes the biomech of three grank horns to make the rupture field,” she said.
“Gabriel and Orion are what we call second diaspora,” said Maia. “Their ancestors were originally from Tierra as well. But they left more than a thousand years ago to colonize many of the planets that now make up the Constellation. Their ancestors incorporated very small machines, as small as blood cells, in their bodies to help them survive the journey and the many different kinds of worlds they would find out in the galaxy.”
“Those little machines, we call them n-tech,” said Gabriel. “They were passed down from mother to child ever since those early days. They help us in many ways and have become just as much a part of us as our cells. And they allow for the integration of various augmentations into our bodies.”
The wall next to Orion transformed, its surface showing a floor-to-ceiling video illustrating Gabriel’s words. Images of crimson blood zoomed in closer and closer until the fluid became a series of round cells flowing past. Swimming along the churning mass of blood cells, little machines darted in and across and between. These swarmed throughout the body, knitting broken bones and torn flesh. A quick succession of images followed, small objects implanted into bodies, interacting with the n-tech and merging into one.
Next, the wall showed a diagram of a pregnant hen, belly round and heavy. But this hen had coppery skin like Maia and long, reddish-brown hair on her head. The diagram displayed her womb. Strangely, there was only one child inside. The n-tech flowed from mother to child.
Maia continued. “My ancestors, however, did not migrate out into the new colonies but remained on Tierra. Like most Tierrans, there is no n-tech in my body. Though over the centuries, different gene modifications were introduced: resistance to disease, slower aging, increased memory and faster learning, and for some much more radical changes as well. But there is no computerization to me.
“Since I had left the Solar system long after the hard work of colonization, n-tech is not needed for me to survive. Those of us who journey out from the Solar system now are referred to as the third diaspora.”
The wall continued to illustrate Maia’s story. Sabira saw a planet, blue and green and brown, marbled with streaks of white, above it a single pale and pock-marked moon. Then images of massive above-ground cities, thousand of towers piercing the clouds. The cities swarmed with those strange kinds of humans like the founders, with so much hair in so many colors on their heads and bodies, short and tall, muscular and thin and fat, and skin from dark as space to almost as pale as hers. But none looked like khvazol, no stark alabaster flesh, no nearly colorless eyes. A few did have smooth scalps, but with no ownership or bloodline glyphs.
“You mentioned second and third but haven’t said anything about the first diaspora. What about them?” asked Sabira. Her breakfast felt uneasy in her stomach.
“Are you sure this is a deep good idea?” interjected Derev. “She’s not like the rest of us. She’s a servant, a true believer in a way none of us ever were.”
“Not this again,” complained Zonte.
“She has as much right to hear what Maia has to say as any of us,” said Torque. “Then she can make up her own mind about it. That’s all I have to say about that.”
“Oh godsdammit,” said Sabira. “I know you don’t trust me yet, Derev. Fine. But can we stop this game?”
“Or what? You’ll kill us?” said Derev. “Like the vleez children you massacred?”
“Derev, please. That is enough,” commanded Gabriel, his deep, resonate voice filling the room. “We will no longer have the debate about Sabira’s right to refuge in this Embassy. Nor her right to hear what we have to say. All that we have to say.”
Derev tried to match Gabriel’s gaze. He didn’t last long. He lowered his eyes and remained quiet, hunching his thick shoulders.
“Maia, if you would. Please tell us about the first diaspora,” Gabriel said.
Maia took a deep breath, closed her eyes a moment to recompose herself. “The first diaspora is a harder story to tell. There is much that was lost to history and time. By Constellation Standard Years, the first migration began suddenly, more than nineteen hundred years ago. This is around when the first foundations of n-tech and gene enhancements were laid by our ancestors.”
On the wall, the skies of Tierra again. But long streaks of fire tore through the blue. A shiver tingled up Sabira’s spine.
“Tierra’s first contact with an interstellar civilization came without warning. We called them the Slavers. They were more advanced, but our ancestors still managed to fight. In the end, they had left as fast as they had come. Took over a billion humans with them. Another billion were dead on Tierra, many of our great cities reduced to rubble. During the Slavers’ invasion, our ancestors captured some of their technology and vehicles. That is where our knowledge of faster than light travel and formatted matter first originated.
“The billion human lives taken off to the stars by the Slavers were never seen again. Legends grew and spread. It was not until centuries later that we ever found out what happened to them. Astronomers thought it was the remains of a supernova at first. But once human migration reached the cluster, deep within the nebula they discovered the massive and ancient ruins we now call the Old Portal. The New Temple of Mysteries, Eleusis Neos, was founded on Nu’esef beneath the nebula’s red glow.”
“There are traces on Nu’esef, and other nearby systems, of an ancient civilization,” interjected Gabriel. “Vanished many thousands of years ago. In one of the ruins, scholars were able to make a translation. It said, ‘The Gates of Heaven have become the Gates of Hell. We must shatter them.’”
Maia resumed. “It was theorized that the Slavers took our lost brothers and sisters through the Gates of Hell to a distant part of the galaxy, or perhaps to another galaxy altogether. We calculated the Gates' destruction to coincide with the Slavers’ withdrawal from Tierra. They must have destroyed the portal behind them, so none could follow. Perhaps they feared revenge from the stars would fill their skies in some distant millennia. We had only ideas and theories, though. For hundreds of years, no one ever knew why the Gates were destroyed and what awaited on the far side. That is until we, the three founders, passed through the Gates and discovered the truth.”
“You’re welcome,” said Orion.
“Soon after, we encountered the Monarchy. Through our exchanges with them, we gained some new knowledge of what may have happened to the first diaspora and the Gates.
“This city, Glish, is named for one of their many traditional heroes. Their histories say in ancient times, before what you call the Gates of Heaven were shattered, an invading race emerged from the portal and demanded the Vleez worship them like gods. But the Gates were much older than the invaders. According to the Vleez histories, the Gates were as old as the stars themselves.
“The Vleez tried to resist, but the invaders were far more advanced. Dlamakuuz was conquered. Their hero, Glish, allied himself with a splinter faction of the invasion force. Together they outsmarted the so-called gods and convinced them all to return to their homeworld. The splinter faction gave Glish the ability to destroy the Gates behind them. He launched his attack on the Gates from this very location, so the Vleez founded a city here. There is a statue of him near the river.”
“We were told the Vleez allied themselves with Trickster,” said Playa. “They helped Him shatter the Gates of Heaven.”
“Maybe Trickster represents the splinter faction of the invaders,” offered Zonte.
“Often the same story can be told from many different points of view,” said Gabriel. “And the most dangerous lie comes packaged in a truth that has been twisted around it.”
“From my very first time, the eon has shown me a vision,” said Maia. “If I could find a way through the Shattered Gates, I would uncover the mystery of the lost ones. And that is what happened. From the Monarchy, we discovered that for centuries our lost brothers and sisters had been enslaved, put to toil rebuilding the civilization of the Nahg, a people almost destroyed by the invading gods. They became the Nahgak-Ri, your Divine Masters. We call them the Slavers or Theocrats. They had altered the human body to serve specific functions in their society as well as to survive below ground, living and dying without ever seeing sun or sky. Those people were your ancestors, Sabira. You are a child of the first diaspora from Tierra.
“That is why we are here. That is what the eon has shown us. We have come across the galaxy to find you—all of you—and to take you home.”