Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 3 Read online

  Severin's forehead wrinkled, denoting another frown. "This isn't pleasant for me," he said. "But since you're the chosen speaker for your people, I must inform you that all of your young must come with us. Our government feels it would be unfair to leave them behind."

  "What?" Akuna's expression portrayed stunned amazement. "You're taking our children?"

  "No!" It was more an expletive than exclamation. Pangalia shrugged off his father's hand. He knotted his fists, as if readying for attack. "I won't go. None of us will. You can't make us!"

  Akuna again put a restraining hand on Pangalia's shoulder. "Be quiet," he ordered him. "You," he demanded of Severin, "What's the meaning of this?"

  The other man raised his shoulders in an apologetic shrug. "It's my government's will. They've decided we can't deny your children our civilization. Of course, anyone is free to come with them."

  "Will they ever come back?" Akuna's look, as his tone, was a pleading one.

  Severin gave a gentle shake of his head. "I don't think so, not for some time anyway, because we won't be coming back."

  "This is kidnapping!" Pangalia shouted.

  Akuna knew his son tottered on the verge of physical violence. "Is there no one we can appeal this issue to?" he asked in an effort to avoid any such angry outburst.

  "I'm afraid not, Akuna. We leave soon."

  "You deliberately waited until the last minute just so there wouldn't be time for anyone to hear our case?" Akuna's words dripped with a distilled resentment, a decanted animosity.

  "No. We just thought that making it quicker would make it easier."

  "For whom?" Akuna's voice rose in direct proportion to his growing rage, "you, or us?"

  "No!" Pangalia was off and running. His long legs ate up the distance down the beach, sand spraying out behind him as his bare toes dug into it. "I won't go!" he yelled.

  "It won't make any difference, you know." Severin's voice held a note of calm apology as he watched the boy's flight. "We can find you wherever you are."

  "Why?" Akuna tore his eyes away from Pangalia's fleeing figure, fixed them upon Severin. "What's the real reason behind all of this?"

  Severin breathed a long sigh before saying, "Try to comprehend. We've had enough of death, of dying. We will suffer it no more."

  "You exaggerate! You haven't conquered death, only delayed it."

  "Delayed? Perhaps you're right, Akuna, but for so long a time as to make your objection pointless. Still, embrace your own mortality if you wish, but you won't make your children embrace it with you. We'll see to that."

  "And my son, won't you please leave him?" Akuna was begging now.

  "No." The single word rang as a death knell. "All children must come with us."

  "You steal our guruwari, our seed power for the future."

  Severin turned, began walking back toward his ship. "It doesn't have to be that way, Akuna," he called over his shoulder. "You could come, too."

  Akuna was tempted to run after him, use his knife to slit the arrogant bastard's throat, to see if Severin's blood would really gush scarlet like any other man's, but he knew it wouldn't change anything. Sighing, he turned and started after his son. Akuna trotted in the firmer sand along the edge of the water, leaving the alien-like Severin and his equally alien vessel behind him.

  Odd, Akuna thought as he ran. Now Pangalia and I see things much the same way, but maybe, too late. . . .

  Pangalia and Akuna ran for days through the parched bush country. They had only the searing sun, baked blue sky, and thirsty landscape for company. Finally, exhausted, they had taken refuge in a small cave behind a narrow waterfall. The little cascade, hidden deep in a shadowed canyon, was not much more than a seasonal cataract. Still, it was enough. Initially, their sanctuary had been little more than a hollow carved out of sandstone by the flowing curtain of water in front of it, but they had extended it. They'd reinforced the space with stones and clay mortar. It wouldn't last long, but all they needed was a temporary asylum until the Golden Ones departed for good. Akuna hoped the water and rock would act as a shield against infrared detectors. Apparently, it didn't.

  "Father!" Pangalia shouted.

  They'd been sleeping, curled up together, trying to husband their strength for lack of food. Akuna awoke groggy, disoriented, not certain what was happening.

  "They're coming," Pangalia shouted. He jumped to his feet.

  He was wrong. They were already there. Two invaders now stood before them, appearing like twin sentries guarding the gates to some strange civilization. They held what looked like flashlights. One aimed his at Pangalia.

  "No!" Akuna shouted, leaping up. "Don't!" He launched himself at the one pointing the device.

  "Father, wait—" Pangalia yelled. It was too late.

  The Golden One swiveled with astonishing swiftness. He depressed a button on the thing he clutched. There was no light, no flash, nothing, but suddenly, Akuna felt paralyzed. He was unable to move a muscle. Still, his momentum carried him. The Golden Ones parted to avoid any collision with him, protecting their sacred selves. The frozen Akuna toppled past them, through the water curtain, as if he were now a thing of stone. The spray blurred his vision for a moment, for he couldn't close his eyes. Nevertheless, he managed distorted glimpses of the rocks below. They gleamed up at him, a slick wet pile, a blood red jumble, as he tumbled toward them.

  At least, he thought in the instant before impact, there won't be any pain.

  Later, Akuna felt the Ancestor Spirits must have him, for he knew he couldn't have survived the fall. He must be dead, now just part of the dreaming of this place. Yet, he thought thoughts as if still alive. Would he now meet with Baiame, the All-Father?

  "No, no," a kangaroo rat said. It perched on Akuna's chest, staring at him with beady eyes of blackest obsidian. "You aren't deserving of such a wonder. You've failed your people."

  I've failed my people, Akuna thought, agreeing with the precocious kangaroo rat. For some reason, he wasn't in the least surprised it talked.

  "And your son," said one of the Mouyi, a white cockatoo. Its eyes glared, accusing him. It hovered for a moment in the air above the kangaroo rat, as if about to pounce upon it. However, the bird just held its position, beating soundless wings. Then it shot off out of sight, a speck disappearing into the purple mists that surrounded the prone Akuna.

  "The nanobots are repairing the spinal cord," a distant voice said. "He won't die."

  "He won't die," the kangaroo rat repeated, but now it sounded more like Pangalia. "Yowee, Spirit of Death, great monster of the tree trunk, doesn't want you." Then the rat disappeared. The fog at last closed in over Akuna.

  When he woke, it was to see Severin bending over him. Akuna glanced from side to side. He lay on a bed in a hospital-like cubicle, everything white and sterile. A blanket covered him.

  "Good to have you back with us. It was a near thing," Severin said. "They didn't stop you in time from falling, but we rushed you here to the ship as quickly as possible. Do you feel any pain?"

  Akuna shook his head.

  "Good. The nanobots are working well then. One never knows with older people. They bond better with the young."

  "Pangalia?" Akuna whispered the question through dry lips.

  Amber glints of regret sparked in Severin's eyes. "Gone, Akuna," he said. "All the children are gone now. You've been out a long while. You were even hallucinating. Our ship took them. We only came back to drop you off. Or will you change your mind and stay with us, be with your son? Many others have chosen that."

  Akuna twisted his head sideways, looked away from Severin. One silver tear, Pierrot-like, slid from the corner of his left eye, as he said, "He wouldn't want me to. He'd be shamed. I can't."

  "Be that as you will, but there is one thing."

  Akuna turned back to face Severin. "What?"

  "The nanos are an integral part of you now. Nobody can remove them. That means that you won't age, won't get sick."

  "So be it," Akun
a murmured. He turned his head away again. "The kangaroo rat was right. Yowee won't have me now. You child stealers have seen to that."

  * * *

  It was long decades later when Akuna again met with Pangalia. He'd come to Earth with several others. The boy was a man now, and looked exactly like all the other Golden Ones. He even behaved as they did, having adopted their mannerisms, ones that as a boy he'd derided as being so superior, so godlike.

  "How are you really, Father?" Pangalia asked. They were strolling along the same beach they'd once walked so long ago. Until now, they had spoken of only superficial matters, mundane things. They acted more like two mere acquaintances in a chance meeting after a long absence, rather than as father and son. "Are your nanobots holding up?"

  Akuna shrugged. He felt embarrassed with his calloused bare feet, dressed as he was in only a ragged loincloth, while his own son now sported the refinement of his new people. He'd barely recognized Pangalia upon his arrival, so changed was he, having lost all hair, but gaining a deep yellow tan and those gilded eyes.

  "The things won't go away," Akuna told him. "What's more, I've passed them on through my new wife, Adina, to our children. So have many others, apparently. The nanos seem to infect our whole population. I suspect it was what Severin and the others planned all along."

  Pangalia nodded his shining head. Gold eyes, once so chocolate brown, reflected affection for his father. "Yes, for their greater good," he said. "They took us children to entice most of you to join them. Those few who stayed here were also deliberately infected. They want no one to die. Individual choice was not a factor."

  "They forced you to stay with them?" Akuna asked.

  Pangalia shook his head. "Not really. After a while, virtually all of us chose it of our own accord. We realized what we'd been missing. Anyway, now you are like us."

  "Maybe, but we shall follow our own path," Akuna said. He stopped in his leisurely walk, turned to his son. "Are you happy with the path you've taken? Is it truly your own choice now?"

  Pangalia also halted. He gave another, but slower nod. "Not at first though," he said. "You were right about how I viewed things back then, twisting reality with my own perspectives. Now I'm happy with what I am, with the people I now belong to. I've changed a lot, I guess. Time does that."

  Akuna nodded. "Yes," he said softly. "Time does, for all of us. You'll be going back to them?"

  "Yes. And you'll be staying?"

  "Oh, yes. My life is here. I've tried to make it as I imagined you'd wanted me to, trying to live the life I'd thought they'd stolen from you. Now, I've made it my own."

  "Until your Dreamtime returns," Pangalia said, and then added in a hesitant voice, ". . . Dad?"

  Akuna reached up with one hand, touched his son's jaw in a hesitant gesture of gentlest love. "And yours, son," he said. "We're taking different roads, surely, and perhaps with your people's way lying amongst the stars. Still, it is to the same destination, I think."

  "To the time before time?"

  Akuna nodded. "Or now the time after. They're probably the same place. There is one thing, though," he added and then paused.

  "Yes?" Pangalia prompted. "What is it?"

  "I miss the thought of death, our old enemy, Yowee. He may have been a monster, but he did take away the responsibility of eternally having to make one's own decisions, living forever with one's mistakes. He did allow for an ending, a final rest from it all. You know, I miss that sometimes."

  * * *

  Kether Station

  Written by C. L. Polk

  Illustrated by Laura Givens

  The Faithful spend their last credit to stare at the Kether Nebula. They squat in the crawlspaces of their new Jerusalem, migrate from window to window like Monarch butterflies, and all Crown can do is limit viewing to a half minute six times a day, and curse Jefferson Minneapolis for insisting his space station have picture windows.

  If Crown Array and Power had the shields down now, the Faithful would see stars born in the spiraling birth canal of hydrogen gas that throws off so much juice the phrase "Power Crisis" is obsolete. They'd see an independent cargo hauler called the Copenhagen Star, parked out front with a full array of batteries fed from raysails that soak up starbirth energy like plants in the sun.

  And if one of the Faithful looked closely they might see Lana Miraflores, who used to be Lana Lima, doing the EVA backstroke toward a maintenance lock.

  But the shields are up, and Lana has the many-armed dance of Kether—known as the Crown of Creation, the Life Matrix, and the Great Star Mother—all to herself. It's majestic and awesome, but she doesn't much like it.

  It makes her feel small.

  * * *

  Fresh, grown food was what lured Lana to the station she hated most in all the galaxy. She bought a bowl of real soba with ostentatiously fresh vegetables from Adroa on every run, and buried herself in her reader while she ate and felt strangely heavy.

  Lana was absorbed in the part where the story's heroes were meeting the first aliens mankind had ever seen when a shadow fell over her table.

  "Sister?"

  Lana looked up from her story at a woman dressed like a Sister of the Star Mother—hair grown long and authentically oily, black tunic the backdrop for a lightwave pendant of the nebula. The Sister leaned forward and the pendant dangled in Lana's eyes, bearing the motto "She changes everything she touches."

  Lana set her reader by her cooling soba. "Yes?"

  The sister swept one welcoming hand toward the windows. "It's nearly time."

  Crowds had gathered by the shielded windows while Lana had buried herself in the opening chapters. Lines of the Faithful held hands and sang syrupy songs of praise.

  Lana ignored the Sister's outstretched hand. "Oh, that's all right. Thanks anyway."

  "She will welcome you, Sister. As soon as you are not afraid."

  "Groovy," Lana muttered, and buried her nose in the reader. The Sister of the Star Mother went away.

  The shields came down, and the ruckus was enough to make Lana peep over the top of her reader at the Faithful. They gaped at the cavern of light, dancing around its crèche of stars. The Faithful wept. They laughed. They rushed the window as if they could touch its glorious light—

  Except for the boy stealing whatever wasn't nailed down.

  He slipped in and out of the fringes, lifting commerce chips, identity cards, even someone's briefcase until animal instinct made him freeze and look up at Lana, who grinned at him and gave him a get-out-of here toss of her shaved head.

  The boy dashed off with a smile of his own, the two front teeth large and square in his child's head.

  Lana watched, and then recognized—Sergei—

  She tried to lunge out of her seat, but the table was still locked down. Her half bowl of soba tumbled and slopped down her right leg; her reader fell to the floor and shattered. She pried her way free as her kidnapped son ducked between a beam and a Church of the Crown kiosk and disappeared.

  * * *

  He would have been eight years, seven months, and twenty-two days old. No. He is eight. I saw him.

  Lana never had her POV cameras removed; those micron-thin optic wires had settled into her brain for too long. She'd have had to train herself to see all over again, with grown eyes and synaptic therapy. Besides, they were too useful.

  She huddled in a commode and looped his face turning toward her, replayed the shock and fear. The relief that she wasn't going to rat him out, and his answering big-toothed smile just before he took off like a dart.

  She never had her parasymph removed either. Boredom, bouncing left foot, the crown of shifting muscles as she smiled, with a touch of tingle of her scalp. The tiny, total tension over her shoulders and abdomen, her eyebrows rising, the jolt of fear in her guts as she connected that eight-year-old face to her memories—

  "What, did you die in there?" a man's voice demanded.

  No, Lana wanted to answer. I died back there, when I saw my son picking p
ockets.

  But she banged the stall door open and glared down at him, her head shaved slick and bald. The man backed away from the spacer, the intimate friend of abyssal nothing.

  She smiled, all teeth and no kindness. "Sorry. Just got in after three weeks. It's all yours."

  She stepped aside with a grand gesture, and made the mistake of glancing down the line, into the shocked face of recognition.

  "Lana. It's you. I knew it was you," Maddy said.

  Lana fought nausea. "That's not my name."

  Some of the light faded from Maddy's eyes, rekindled again a bit cooler.