Perdita

PROLOGUE

The years since humanity abandoned Mother are lost in the black of space. We know only that our ancestors left her, the world we evolved on, to settle a planet they engineered and gave the name of Daughter. Now, you may ask why I’m beginning a history of jae technology with such an ancient story. I’m doing so because the origins of jae and the origins of humanity are one and the same. Long before a technology exists, it exists in the mind of a dreamer. Healing existed before vaccines and killing before there were guns. No technology is anything but what the actions of its makers make it.

Thousands of years ago, the depletion and pollution of Daughter triggered a collapse in its biosphere. Our ancestors fled into space. Over the millennia, they made new homes and new discoveries. They discovered that by translating particles into another dimension, a spaceship could travel between any two real-space points almost instantaneously. This technology, called jae, might have made our age-old superlight travel by rippling obsolete, but only one empire ever implemented it. That empire is as dead as Daughter.

The History of Tachyon-Quark Technology,

Commonly Called Jae by Sylan del-Disal West-

of-Now, Division of Physics at Melnar and

Nevan West-of-Now, Division of History at

Melnar

2028 After the End

PART ONE

THE KIRI SHIP

CHAPTER 1

Everything about her husband aggravated Sylan these days.

All Nevan had done was fall into the copilot’s seat and ask, Where’s the planet? and it made her want to slap him.

It’s supposed to be there. She pointed to a blank grid square on the readout. At 45 million kilometers.

Did you double-check the coordinates? he asked.

No—would you believe it? That never crossed my mind.

He rubbed his beard.

The coordinates check, she said, but, then, since the War’s End there’s been no record of Berdida. So our coordinates are two thousand years old. Who knows if they’re accurate?

Nevan nodded.

Sylan’s hair was in her way: a red haze over the console. She twisted it into a knot behind her head, but it immediately slipped free. Her mother’s message had told them to meet her on Berdida. But in the three months since, she hadn’t answered any of their comms. Even for Sylan’s eccentric mother, that meant something was wrong. She was stranded or dead. The planet itself wasn’t there.

It would be awfully silly if we were dealing with a scanner malfunction., said Nevan.

Sylan’s look was acid. Do you think I haven’t scoured this ship’s systems?

I’d expected you did, said Nevan. I’m just running down the possibilities. He took her hand. So let’s assume it’s the right place. What’s your theory?

The planet could have been destroyed, assuming an agency to remove the debris.

Destroyed without anyone registering the explosion? And how? Who?

I’m just running down the possibilities. Sylan disentangled her hand.

Right. But if it were destroyed, then your mother would have tol—

Yes. Assuming the coordinates are correct, the only other explanation I can think of is that it’s shielded.

I like that one, said Nevan. It would mean she got through and is waiting for us.

She still would have sent a message to prepare us for the shielding.

But if communications are shielded—

She’d have gone back into orbit to send it.

Nevan shrugged. And this is all guessing. But if Berdida does have information about the War’s End, well, that would make it important enough to shield.

To protect. At the cost of killing my mother?

≈•≈

Nevan was a nervous space traveler and well aware that his wife found it irritating. But after three months in a cramped ship, with his mother-in-law lost and the destination itself missing, panic became hard to resist. Especially so for a Kiri: Kiris didn’t belong in space. Leddies like Sylan thought of spaceflights as a morning’s outing. Short flights, anyway, where nothing went wrong.

There has to be a logical explanation.

Nevan reviewed the vid Sylan’s mother had sent three months ago. She’d been excavating on Toldurn. There, in the ruins, she’d discovered something—she would not say what—that had pointed her to Berdida. Berdida, she was sure, would unravel that riddle of the millennia, the fate of the Sama Empire.

Sylan and Nevan specialized in the War years, she in its technology, he in its history.

"Bring your Jae History," Sylan’s mother had told them.

For twenty years, the Jae History had been the cornerstone of their studies. It was common knowledge that the Samas’ use of jae in space travel had resulted in the Quark-Shift Plague that claimed billions of lives during the Kiri–Sama War. That was easy to explain: jae shifted particles into another dimension, but partial shifting resulted in unstable particles that tore apart molecular bonds, causing massive cellular damage. It was inevitable, therefore, that the first reaction after the War’s End had been to blame jae. Yet post-War quark-shift contamination, far from having skyrocketed, was lower than the War-era baseline. No one had ever explained why.

Nevan massaged his brow, wanting nothing but a breeze from the meadows of his home on Onáda.

I tell you, he said, I need to make planet-fall.

Sylan said, There it is.

It hovered in space like a tarnished coin, as if its sun hardly found it worth the effort to light.

So it is shielded, said Nevan. Conventional shielding obscured an object from a distance but could not conceal it completely close up.

The scanner flashed the planet’s position now, spilling out contradictory gravitational and electromagnetic analyses. Soon the moons came into view, two gray spots, circling a larger gray smudge.

The moons have shields, too, said Sylan, or booster stations to channel the planetary shield.

Behind them, a curtain swished, and feet padded over the mossy floor. Jasen rested a hand on the back of Nevan’s seat. He’s getting so tall, Nevan thought as his son towered behind him. Why did we bring our children here? Why not leave them home safe?

"Is that it, Mila? Jasen asked Sylan. Though the family usually spoke Nevan’s native Keshnul, the children had always called Sylan mother" in her own language.

Yes, that’s it. Put on your shoes—you too, Nevan. With luck we’ll be landing before the next sleep cycle.

Nevan rose. Quietly, Jas. There’s no need to wake Miri yet.

When they returned, Nevan gave up his seat to his son.

Shielded? Jasen looked at the brightening moons.

That’s right, said Sylan. The shield scatters electromagnetic waves as they leave the outer atmosphere, so we can’t perceive them easily. But as we get closer, the jumbled patterns haven’t had as much time to disburse, so we can see better.

I know what a shield does, said Jasen.

I was talking to your father.

So why is it shielded? Jasen swiveled in his seat to stare at Nevan. His telepathic blocks were partially in place in the normal Kiri way, but Nevan had grown used to the feel of the question: what had happened to his grandmother. Over the months it had become an accusation, as if Nevan and Sylan had failed her.

That’s what we’re going to find out. Nevan sat in one of the backseats.

Near orbit, the gray cast fell away, and white-blue Berdida shone marble bright. Now, it had a living look. The Samas had engineered Berdida to be capable of maintaining a livable, Daughter-type biosphere without human management. A rare and beautiful thing in the Sama Empire.

It’s the right place, said Sylan. Look, you can see the two continents.

Each no more than fifteen hundred kilometers wide, the planet’s only continents lay like two yellow eyes in the ocean’s face, soon to be obscured by falling night.

Sylan said, I can’t read electrical signals through the shielding.

Can you try sending out a general hail? asked Nevan.

I have, said Sylan. No answer yet.

She’s dead, said Jasen.

Sylan’s face was hard. We’ll have to move in closer to get a signal through.

≈•≈

As Jasen watched the planet swell in the viewscreen, his heart began to pound. If his grandmother had died there, or was trapped there, what was to stop them being next?

I still can’t get any clear electrical readings, said Sylan.

As she spoke, the ship lurched, throwing them against their harnesses.

What was that? gasped Jasen.

Sylan, busy at the controls, only shook her head.

Jasen? His little sister’s voice came from behind the sleeping curtain. "Mila? Dad?" In his mind, Jasen could feel her fear shoot up.

It’s all right, Miri, Nevan called. We’ve just hit a little turbulence.

I’m coming— began Miri.

No, sweet, stay in your sleeping harness, called Sylan. Nevan, go sit with her.

Nevan cleared his own harness and started for the curtain as the ship lurched again. He fell against the mossy wall, then continued into the children’s cubicle.

Is it the shield? Jasen held tight to the copilot’s console as the ship began to rattle.

Sylan made an affirmative noise. It’s feeding scrambled signals to the relays between the helm and the engines. I didn’t think it would affect us so far away. She scrunched over in her harness and opened an access port.

What can you do?

Take everything offline but manual control and try to countermand any skewed signals that still get through. She worked at the switches.

Will that work?

It should, but we won’t have full inertial damping, so hold on.

Jasen looked at the viewscreen; they were careening over an expanse of cloud and ocean. He found himself listening for the muffled reassurances his father was giving Miri as Berdida spun toward them. It was like zooming in on a satellite picture, the clouds steadily more like clouds, the water more like water. They were going to crash—and they’d swept right over the continents. There was nothing but water.

"Mila, we’re going to hit the ocean."

Sylan glanced up. The ship pitched, and they rocked into a cloud bank. She swore and turned back to her work.

See if you can get a fix on our position, she told him. I want to know how far we need to go to get back to a continent.

For a moment, Jasen stared. Then the ship dove down sharply, Miri cried out, and the ocean pulled out of the clouds. In a flurry, he ran through the navigation readouts.

I think . . . I think . . . It doesn’t make sense. The computer’s scrambled.

The ship pitched up, though whether that was due to the shielding or his mother, Jasen was not sure. They whisked over the ocean, the rattling subsiding.

Are we out of it? asked Jasen.

We’re under the shield, said Sylan, loud enough for Nevan and Miri to hear. To Jasen, she added, We’ve suffered some damage to our helm controls, though.

You can bring us down, though, can’t you?

I’m your mother, aren’t I?

She steered the ship toward the looming horizon of the eastern continent, out of the sun, into the night. They decelerated rapidly—without inertial damping, it was a thickheaded feeling. Relief surged through Jasen all the same. We’re slowing down. Thank God.

They swooped past the ocean over a flat land. A mountain range reared up; they knocked and jolted as Sylan pulled them over it. In the middle of the mountains was a vast lake, glassy gray. Then, they dropped down once more, and the land skimmed by them faster and faster, though the tugging of Jasen’s harness told him that they were still slowing down.

Trees rushed by in a blurred mass. His mother wasn’t even looking as she fought with the controls.

You’ll overshoot the land, Jasen blurted.

She started and cursed again, gunned the reverse thrusters. The ship rocked back, head over heels. In the night sky, stars whirled past the viewscreen—Miri screamed. Sky for land and land for sky. Then down, zagging past the treetops.

We’re coming in, Sylan shouted. And they roared through branches into darkness.

CHAPTER 2

Ethan sped downhill, jumped a dew-soaked path, and dove into a thicket growing dense around a tree. Tearing through the brush, he slammed his back against the trunk and held still until his blood stopped drumming and he could hear the forest.

The tramping of his pursuers receded; the rustlings of the dusk grew bolder. As night veiled the sky, rivers of fog descended into gullies. He began to shiver. An hour later, the world gray and black, he got up on numb legs and peered into the shadows. Seeing no sign of his pursuers, he picked his way down the hill, feet lost in fog.

As he crossed into the lamplight of the paved expanse that marked the observatory, Torna came to his side. She was in her eighties, middle-aged, but looked older after months of army life in this forest.

Ethan knew that he, too, looked too old for his thirty-nine years, his hair already whitening. The army could do that. But it also meant a chance to protect Perditan civilization.

We were worried for you, Warchief, said Torna.

He nodded. The rebels are encamped by Sorel Falls. They’ll be gone by the time we can send a team out, but they may leave behind some evidence to lead us to their network. I’ll organize a search and radio my report to Lashen. He lifted his eyes to hers for the first time. Did anything happen while I was gone, Lieutenant?

Everything’s well, sir. Get some sleep.

You can give me your daily report tomorrow morning. He plodded past her, past makeshift wooden buildings and night guards. He scarcely saw the grand white tower of the telescope that was the observatory, the eye to the beyond.

≈•≈

Hurry. They’ll be on us soon. Sherayna’s voice was just loud enough for the fifteen remaining Borderal soldiers, including Leric, to hear.

Yes, it was the right tone of voice, Leric thought—confident, careful, but her footsteps were weary. He watched her hair escaping from its knot at her neck, dark in the blue night fog, though he knew that it was gold. He watched her pause to retie it, then go back to stuffing her bedroll into her pack, her expression cold.

He saw Illia was studying Sherayna too, observing all that Leric saw and probably more. Illia, dark in the daylight, was a shadow in the moon. But he could see her shoulders droop, and that was a bad sign for her.

We did what we could, Illia ventured to Sherayna.

Sherayna glared at her foster sister. The fourth time. It seemed she whispered to keep from shouting. The fourth time that man has found a base of ours. We came to Iltan to close down the observatory, and instead we run and run.

An old story, Commander, said one of the northerners, walking past.

That doesn’t mean that I accept it. Sherayna cinched her pack shut and crossed the camp to review the escape plan with the next-to-last walking group.

It’s the nature of a guerilla war, called Illia. We’ve always known what to expect.

Leric came over and slipped an arm around her waist. You’re trying to douse a volcano with a bucket. I should get my ladies home.

His thought was shattered by thunder. Out of nowhere came a roar, then a screech. Everyone plunged into the undergrowth. A shrieking yellow swept past them, trailing a wind that made the leaves jump. The branches were still billowing when the pitch lowered fast and a single boom shook the ground.

≈•≈

Silence. Cautiously, the Borderals emerged from the brush and spoke in hushed voices.

A jumper, said Illia. It crashed.

The jumper routes don’t run over this part of Iltan, said Sherayna.

Navigational error?

Or it’s not an airship at all, but some weapon the City’s deploying against us.

Gods, I hope it’s a weapon, said Leric. I’d like to think their aim’s that bad.

A weapon we’re meant to bring ourselves to, said Sherayna.

Weapon or not, said Illia, We have to find out what it is. Ignorance is not power.

Yes. Sherayna cut her off. I’ll go. With Tyora, Enom, and Illia.

And me, said Leric.

Sherayna hesitated. He knew what she was thinking—she still didn’t trust him, after all these years, to be serious and do the job—always accusing him of talking too much.

I did break the Iltan–Mesa code last year, he reminded her. It might well have been the wrong thing to say, because she didn’t trust his interest in ciphering either.

But she answered, Yes, all right. Leric instead of Enom. The rest of you head fast for the new site. Resolutely, she stepped out from the shadows, and the moon Olay shimmering through the mist outlined her in silver.

≈•≈

Ethan had scarcely closed his eyes when he was shaken awake by the trembling floor and a memory of sound. Voices shouted; footfalls thumped. He switched on his lamp, head still swimming. Groping for his boots, he flung open his door to the freezing night fog, saw a footman running toward him.

Warchief, she called out.

Well?

A ship’s crashed, sir, about three measures northeast.

Ethan plucked his jacket off the floor. I wasn’t informed of any ships crossing Iltan airspace tonight.

Neither was I, sir.

Ethan pushed past her out into the night. Identification?

Unknown, sir. Lieutenant Torna is trying the radio in field control.

I’ll join her, then. Return to post, Footman.

≈•≈

Ethan blinked in the fluorescent light of the control center, his steps echoing through the makeshift building. He sat beside Torna.

No response. The lieutenant pulled off her earphones. They could be badly damaged.

He ran an eye over the flight logs. The nearest flight scheduled is over Mesa. Two hundred measures is more than a little off course.

This may sound insane, but could it be a rebel ship?

The way they feel about air and space tech? Much more likely rebel sabotage.

They did restrict guns for a while, and gave it up when they found that arrows are seldom a match for bullets. When it comes to it, their denial of high tech is pragmatic. When Ethan made no response, she added, Either way, the ship’s crashed a good measure nearer their camp than ours.

Yes. Ethan rose. And whether the Borderals planned it or not, they’ll be there.

≈•≈

Sherayna motioned her companions down into the ferns and flattened herself beside them, breathing in the damp soil. In the blue light of Olay, now bright overhead, the ship lay in a wreckage of decapitated trees, a lopsided oval with a flat projection slanting upwards. A few flames were failing in the dewy undergrowth. She could smell wood smoke on the fog, and other, strange things, tangy—unnatural.

Look at the poor trees, whispered Tyora. City things!

Sherayna hushed her with a gesture. Do any of you know that type of ship?

It’s a fish, said Leric.

Leric, for our love for the gods—

Commander, look, there’s a mouth, an eye—that shadow looks like a gill. That wing thing is painted with veins like a fin. You can even make out scales.

He’s right, whispered Illia.

Sherayna nodded. I’ll investigate. The three of you fan out. Leric, you’ll assist me if I find anything. She was glad now she’d let him come. On a ship like that, there might be machines they’d need his help to deal with.

She crept through the branches, scarcely snapping a twig as the ship loomed before her. It was some 115 meters long; close up, the painted scales were obvious. But the gill was not paint. It was a door, partly open. And dangling out of the door was a hand. Sherayna stepped over the last ravaged branches. Her handgun ready, she stooped and watched for movement.

Nothing.

She pulled at the heavy door. A shape slumped to the ground in a crackle of leaves. Even as Sherayna drew her gun, she knew there was no need; no one feigning unconsciousness fell like that, hard against the head. She knelt by the body: a woman in a long gown with a bruise across half of her forehead.

She whistled a cricket call for assistance.

Leric came to her side. How is she? He touched the bruised forehead lightly.

Not bad, I think. I want you to carry her to our new camp.

Any files for me to crack?

Sherayna glanced through the black entrance. I think the machinery’s dead. Wait, and I’ll check.

She pulled the door back, letting in a flood of moonlight, and climbed inside. The room gave off an earthy smell, like a forest, but not like the one outside. There was no sign of active power, no instruments Sherayna recognized, though her knowledge of airships was scanty.

Slumped over a panel was another body: a young man. Sherayna checked him over, releasing his safety straps in the process. She’d gotten him slung over her shoulders when an owl call sounded: the City approaching.

From the west, supplied Leric as Sherayna leapt down from the door.

Leric carrying the woman, they staggered back the way they’d come. A shot rang out to the west, just as they reached the cover of the ferns. They split apart and followed separate paths to the new camp.

≈•≈

A human shape rustled out of the brush. One of Ethan’s footmen fired, and everything went still, even the crickets.

Shall I see if I got him, Warchief? said the footman.

No, said Ethan. Just keep watch. A moment before, through the trees, he’d seen the ship rise out of the fog like a whale from the ocean. One glimpse of its dome had told him it wasn’t any licensed ship. Experimental perhaps. His mind went to his father, and his pulse quickened with the old dreams of space.

He wanted to race through the trees. If he knew the rebels, their band had already retreated. Even so, how odd this impulse to throw caution to the wind!

He led his team onward with wary steps.

At last, they stood before it. Lieutenant, do you know what this is?

I’m not an air-transport specialist, sir.

It’s a Kiri ship. Look at the painting. The forward sensors are made into a mouth.

And that hatch is open. Someone’s come out, or gone in.

Yes, said Ethan, I’ll look. Oh, to see this in the daylight! He switched on the icy beam of his hand lamp.

The layout of the controls meant nothing to him, but the vegetation on the walls was quintessentially Kiri, so too the carvings on the chairs, the designs on the curtains. Behind one of the curtains lay an empty sleeping room; behind the other, two bodies were strapped to beds: a man and a child perhaps nine or ten, both unconscious but breathing. The man was bearded and had dark-brown hair, a common Kiri trait, rare on Perdita. The girl had hair a little lighter.

No ship from space had come to Perdita in six hundred years. The ship that had crashed then held a crew of the genetically engineered beings called sverra, like humans but stronger and longer living. Only three had survived. They had brought the news of the end of the War, the Samas’ defeat. And long ago, they had vanished into legend.

He wondered what legends were in the making now?

CHAPTER 3

The boy awoke first, just after they reached camp. He was fifteen or sixteen, Sherayna guessed, brown-haired and dark-eyed, wearing an odd knee-length shirt and tight pants. The woman had small, firm features, and hair blood red in the firelight. Illia seated the boy by the fire in the great tent, the woman on a bedroll beside him. When Illia offered him water, he bathed the woman’s head. Sherayna posted four guards behind the prisoners. She and Illia sat in front of the prisoners placing all four on equal standing, suitable for talking, not intimidation. For though the strangers were City, they were civilians—at least the boy—and so not to be treated like army prisoners.

But the boy did not speak or seem to understand their questions. Yet his eyes were keen, and he could hear, for he moved to noises behind him. Perhaps he’d suffered an injury that had damaged the language centers of his brain.

After a silence, Illia voiced the question: Could they possibly be offworlders?

The City, out to trick us, said Sherayna. And yet these people dressed so strangely, were colored so exotically. . . .

Leric entered the tent and knelt beside her. Tyora’s not back. I want to look for her, Sherayna.

Sherayna nodded. Be careful.

After a time, the woman groaned and opened her eyes. The boy spoke to her in some strange language, not Tapanayn, while he helped her prop herself on her pillow.

Can you understand me? Sherayna asked the woman.

The woman and the boy exchanged glances.

A triflingly, the woman enunciated with great deliberation.

Who are you?

Who are I?

Yes, who are you? Sherayna nodded.

Sylan, said the woman, then pointed to the boy. Jasen. Then she grew thoughtful and muttered words to herself. Of, now . . . She paused, fell into a quick conversation with Jasen. West, she said. West-of-Now.

Sherayna turned to Illia. Does this mean anything to you?

Illia shook her head. But I recognize the language.

And?

It’s Kiri. I heard the words for ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ I read that once in an old story.

You think they truly are offworlders, then?

Sylan was waving a hand to get their attention. She pushed herself into a sitting position. Seek?

The woman’s speech was not simply unskilled; it was old, not so much Tapanayn as Old Dabunè, the Sama tongue from which theirs descended.

Sherayna tried to answer her. We found you.

From the skiff?

The ship. Yes.

Seek daughter my—my daughter—and . . .

Jasen said, Father.

Sylan pointed at Jasen. Her—

His! the boy corrected.

His father . . . and sister . . . from the . . . ship.

Illia leaned close to Sherayna. Did you search the whole ship?

Of course not. The City came.

Then the daughter and her father will be gone. Illia’s tone was not indifferent but hardened by many such sunderings.

Gone—whence? Jasen glared at Sherayna.

She met his eyes. We will search for them.

He started to retort, but Sylan put a hand on his arm. Ydan del-Disal?

Sherayna could only shake her head.

We don’t understand, said Illia.

Sylan closed her eyes in concentration. My mother, Ydan del-Disal, she did voyage hither prior to that we did voyage.

In a spaceship? asked Illia.

Both Sylan and Jasen nodded.

We have never heard of her, said Sherayna.

The mother and son exchanged a few words that rose quickly to the pitch of an argument.

Sylan barked a command that silenced Jasen, and turned to Sherayna again. Convey you me hence—for our ship.

Us, put in Jasen. Us two. He pointed to himself and his mother.

No, said Sherayna. Neither of you. There is danger there. She pointed out of the tent. We will search. We know how.

By rapidness, urged Sylan.

One is searching already. More will search soon. Now, you should rest. She stood. May you help the gods.

With that goodnight, she gestured for Illia to follow her.

We’ll never find them. Illia hugged herself against the chill. The City will already have them. And they’ll use them to learn their tech secrets.

≈•≈

When Nevan was ten, his father had took on a seeing trip into the north of the continent of Shálien, where the firs and the sedúma trees hid their heads in mists and barred the ground from daylight so that grass seldom grew. In the camp, the fire had warmed them at the same time the fog soaked their clothing.

Dad, I need another blanket, he said and opened his eyes onto a low mattress.

His head hammered, and only slowly could he make sense of what he was seeing: a tiled floor, a stony wall, and Miri on her back on a mattress almost touching his. At the sight of her, he sat up with a jolt, pain stabbing his neck.

Lemur-kin, are you all right? He felt for a pulse in her neck.

Even as he found the pulse, a man’s voice answered him. The words were familiar but made no sense. The man repeated them, and Nevan realized that he was speaking some simplified sort of Dabunè. He was saying, "The child isn’t badly hurt. She will be well."

And Sylan and Jasen? Nevan searched with eyes and mind, but they were not nearby.

He turned toward the voice, twisting so that a pang leapt from his neck to his head. A heater box glowed red. Near the box, an electric lamp on a neck of snaking metal cast a white-yellow light. Next to the lamp, the man who had spoken sat cross-legged on the floor.

He was old—that was Nevan’s first thought—but that couldn’t be right: he hadn’t passed the prime of life. His eyes gave the illusion of age, his short hair pale as an autumn field. His clothes were dark blue, a shirt and pants, three gold bars at one shoulder. He was clean shaven like Sylan’s father. The thought snapped Nevan back to his wife and son.

He started to speak in his native Keshnul, corrected himself to Dabunè, blessing the history studies that had forced him to learn the dead language: Where are the others?

We found only you and the child. The four seats in your navigating room were empty.

Nevan shook his head. They would not have left us.

It’s almost certain they were taken by the rebels before we could reach you.

Nevan’s heart fell into