A Thousand Words For Stranger (10th Anniversary Edition) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  INTRODUCTION

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  BROTHERS BOUND

  BROTHERS BOUND

  PRELUDE

  “BETRAYAL . . .”

  Barac watched Rael add the word to the facts she had just obtained from his mind. He saw reluctant conviction settle small lines around the edges of her mouth. “Yes. You’re right, of course,” Rael said slowly. “How else could such attacks be timed? But who? The Council may use pawns like Kurr or Dorsen, you or I. But not Sira. I can’t believe they’d risk her in any way.”

  “You know what they’re capable of, Rael,” Barac argued. “What would they do if she was escaping them?”

  Rael drew in a startled breath. “What do you see that I don’t? What do you think has happened to Sira?”

  A THOUSAND WORDS FOR STRANGER

  “Ms. Czerneda proves herself a born storyteller with the happy knack of making readers’ eyes leap from one page to the next.” —Romantic Times

  “A wonderfully entertaining SF adventure with fascinating, well-developed characters. A must read!”

  —Josepha Sherman, author of The Shattered Oath

  “Julie Czerneda has resurrected the classic SF themes of Norton, Heinlein, and Moore—the young amnesiac protagonist searching for her identity in a universe of space-ships, exotic alien races and high adventure—with a distinctly modern sensibility.”

  —S. M. Stirling, coauthor of Ship Who Fought

  “A wonderful new voice in science fiction—sure to be one of the fastest-rising stars of the new millennium.”

  —Robert J. Sawyer, author of Rollback

  The Finest in DAW Science Fiction

  from JULIE E. CZERNEDA:

  The Trade Pact Universe: A THOUSAND WORDS FOR STRANGER (#1) TIES OF POWER (#2) TO TRADE THE STARS (#3)

  Stratification:

  REAP THE WILD WIND

  Species Imperative:

  SURVIVAL (#1)

  MIGRATION (#2)

  REGENERATION (#3)

  IN THE COMPANY OF OTHERS

  Web Shifters:

  BEHOLDER’S EYE (#1)

  CHANGING VISION (#2)

  HIDDEN IN SIGHT (#3)

  Copyright © 1997 by Julie E. Czerneda.

  New material for this edition copyright © 2007 by Julie E. Czerneda.

  “Brothers Bound” copyright © 2004 by Julie E. Czerneda. First appeared in Sirius: the Dog Star edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Alexander Potter, copyright © 2004 by Tekno Books and Alexander Potter; published by DAW Books, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved.

  DAW Books Collectors No. 1070.

  DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

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  For Joy Starink

  Well, Mom, this is what happens when you give a kid who complains about the ending of a book a handful of blank paper and that challenging raised eyebrow of yours. I only wish you and Stan could have stayed around to read this one. Thanks again, with all my love.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Can’t do it. I’ve been given so much support in birthing my first book that there isn’t room to name you all. I humbly hope you’ll know who you are and that you know I really do thank you for your help, whether it came as critical comment or a bottle of dragon wine.

  Here goes the list I can fit: Thank you, Linda Heier, for being the first to read and believe. Thank you, Trudy Rising, for making me pull this manuscript out of its home in my drawer. Thanks also to Roxanne Hubbard and Jonathan Bocknek, for your support and wonderful editing. Thank you, Jan and Steve Stirling, for being both mentors and incredible friends. And thank you, Josepha Sherman, for taking me under your falcon’s wing every time it looked like doomsday!

  My thanks to the Ontario Arts Council for its kind support during the early stages of this new venture.

  Thank you, Sheila Gilbert, for your insightful comments that helped me pull the last loose pieces together. (And for letting me have as many pages as I wanted!)

  Thank you, Jennifer and Scott, for your patience and encouragement. Well, kids, now you can find out what Mom’s been doing after supper! Hope you like it.

  Last, but first as well, thank you, Roger. It just wouldn’t have happened without you. Maybe that’s because I’ve never had to look very far for a hero.

  INTRODUCTION

  Happy Birthday, Sira and Morgan!

  Oh, characters and stories can have birthdays too. Trust me. Ten years ago, I walked into a store—SciFi World in Toronto, Ontario, to be exact—and saw my first copy of A Thousand Words for Stranger on its shelf. Plus stacks on a table. Ten years ago, that day, I autographed my first copy for Peter Halasz, a gentleman who has since become not only a dear friend, but a collector of my work. (He collects many other people’s work, too, but I retain bragging rights—I’d never imagined, ten years ago, being collected at all!)

  Today, what I find most remarkable is that for all of these past ten years, the story of Sira and Morgan has been available to anyone interested in reading it, and many have. Thank you! My characters. Who knew? What had been a daydream . . . a fantasy . . . a speculation . . . given solid form, beautifully published by DAW Books, with a stunning cover by Luis Royo and edited by Sheila Gilbert. Okay, what’s even more remarkable is imagining my life without Sheila in it. These past ten years of friendship and working together have been a joy I’d never imagined during all those hours typing in the basement.

  Probably just as well. Writers are a curious species; the writing life even more so. We tell ourselves stories, not the way regular people do, but with word-by-word effort.D
reams become insufficient. We’re compelled to lock them down, polish them, hoard them on hard drives and paper. We dare to compare them to the work of others. Worst of all, after months and years of labor, we hand our most treasured fantasies to strangers. And wait.

  Fortunately, I didn’t realize any of this when I wrote A Thousand Words for Stranger. At that time, it was simply Story X, one of twenty-three ongoing meanders into science fiction that interested me. I really was in a basement, studying the evolution of reproductive behavior in Pimephales promelas (the fathead minnow), and writing was two things to me: a pleasant habit and a way to explore Big Ideas. You know, the sort of ideas a young biologist can’t ever test, since playing with the entire human species is beyond the budget and probably reprehensible on all moral levels.

  But I could imagine to my heart’s content.

  I could imagine an intelligent species with a reproductive trait tied, as many are, to a physiological cost. For example, if having more hair makes you sexier, how much hair could you have on your body before it tripped you? Which isn’t safe or sexy. My male minnows, in case you wonder, expend a great deal of energy producing a pad on their heads in order to spread mucus for a nest, then tend the eggs laid there. They are, on the other hand, quite sensible and do this for only a brief time, once a year.

  I could imagine this intelligent species, call them the Clan, having something about themselves that would make it worth pushing this costly trait to an unacceptable limit. I gave them an ability most certainly worth the effort—the Power to move through space. Then I tied that ability to their reproduction. If Power affected who could safely mate, well, you see the problem. If the Clan chooses to breed to increase individual Power every generation, it will be at the cost of fewer individuals able to breed. The future would not be bright.

  If you knew that . . . would you stop?

  If you knew that . . . who would be the character most affected?

  Sira di Sarc sprang out at me then, almost complete as she appears in the book. Everything else in the story fell in place after that. Captain Jason Morgan—who doesn’t love a space trader with a past? I wanted an array of intelligent species and faster-than-light travel, to provide Sira with options—and I love that future. The story became Sira and Morgan to me then. A story that began and ended in A Thousand Words for Stranger.

  Or did it?

  People ask me all the time . . . how do you decide if your story will have sequels? (The other question is . . . did your publisher make you?) The answer is quite simple. A story either fits into one book, or it doesn’t. When I finished Thousand, I’d finished the story of Sira and Morgan. I was happy about that. Until I realized I hadn’t finished the story of the Clan at all. I’d hardly begun to tell it. As for my publisher? Sheila’s always encouraged me to write what I want. She’s a firm believer that passion in a writer produces the best books. In the case of Thousand and what became the Trade Pact, she was also a voice for readers, assuring me there really was interest in the bigger story. While in the basement, you see, I hadn’t imagined getting fan mail. To know those weird twists and odd characters I’d put in for my own fun were so enjoyed? It was like being freed. To be weird and odd, in a good way.

  Ten years is a long time. It’s long enough for a new writer to practice and learn—hopefully. It’s long enough for a career as a writer to take hold and grow. By the time I completed the second book about Sira and Morgan, Ties of Power, I knew the Clan’s problem couldn’t properly be explored and resolved in a three-book story arc. By the time I finished the third, To Trade the Stars, Sheila and I were talking about my move to hardcover with another project entirely, Species Imperative, my most ambitious work to date.

  It was then I realized what I really wanted to do. When the time was right, I would go back, not to Sira and Morgan, but to the Clan itself. I would show how they became what they are by the time A Thousand Words for Stranger begins. I would use all the notes and thoughts I’d had over ten years, and put everything in motion. Thus the two books of Stratification, Reap the Wild Wind and Riders of the Storm, where I show not only how the Clan became divided, with some coming to live among Humans, but why.

  After that . . . it’s time to finish. In the two books of Reunification, which I’m presently writing, I’ll return to where I started as a writer. To Sira and Morgan. I’ll pick up their story and weave it into that of the Clan. And I will end it, at last.

  Ten years. A memorable birthday for my first novel and my career.

  The opportunity to write the true beginning and end of the story that started it all.

  I’m so excited. You’ll have to excuse me.

  It’s time for Sira and Morgan again.

  Julie Czerneda Orillia, Canada

  PRELUDE

  THE sign was rain-smeared and had never been overly straight. P’tr wit ’Whix spared one eye to read it as he passed, then chuckled to himself: “Fabulous Embassy Row? Tours daily?” Then again, he thought, why not? After all, Embassy Row was about the only thing worth touring on Auord.

  The necessities of a shared government meant interspecies embassies on every Trade Pact world, no matter how insignificant the world—or the species. And convenience clustered the embassies together, hence Embassy Row, a street along which building styles ranged from the unlikely fluted domes of the Skenkran, barely anchored to the ground, to the lumps of plas-coated imported mud favored by ambassadors from Ret 7.

  Tonight, however, the tour cars sat as empty as the street itself. The first rains of the season had arrived early, setting up a cheerful cacophony from the chimes Auordians strung from every lamppost and door, whether allowed to or not. But a chill wind had slipped in with the rain, and the benefits of seeing and being seen were apparently not enough for most to brave the cold dampness.

  Which was a shame, ’Whix thought. He himself was not fond of uncontrolled water, yet he appreciated that other beings would find the effect quite attractive. Reflectedlights sparkled over the buildings and their grounds, lifting each from the dark. Along the avenue itself, the lamps lining the walkways on either side cast circles of brightness that danced across the wet pavement, transforming its surface into a mosaic of gems.

  ’Whix’s momentary fancy quickly turned to a muted but shrill curse in his native tongue, as his three-clawed foot landed with a splash in one of those light-begemmed puddles.

  It would have to rain on his shift, not his partner’s. It had to be ’Whix out in the drizzle, feeling water flattening the feathers of his crest; ’Whix the one with icy drops sliding under the upraised collar of his uniform, soaking the feathers of his back.

  Muscles twitched maddeningly in a reflex, and ’Whix shuddered with the effort not to shake out the moisture. He knew from experience his magnificent crest would only stick out wildly in all directions, like a chick’s, until the rain matted it against his head again.

  Proper grooming was the only answer, combined with a good rub under a dryer and probably some of his hoarded supply of bertwee oil. All things considered, there was a lot to be said for a space assignment.

  ’Whix rolled down one eye to check his wrist chrono, keeping his other eye faithfully fixed on the pair he followed. His vision, even under these conditions, was keen enough to let him keep a block and a half behind the two—which was why night surveillance fell to him and not his Human partner, Russell Terk.

  The walkway lights were spaced to provide convenient pools of darkness between them, room enough for packages to be exchanged unnoticed, or for a walking couple to slip in and out of sight. ’Whix swung both his eyes forward, and details of the two ahead jumped into clear focus.

  Reflected light played over the female’s elaborately jeweled headpiece—an alluring object of apparel, ’Whix decided, as well as practical. The headpiece covered most of the female’s face as well as her hair. Her male companion was bareheaded—caught, like ’Whix, without protection from the change in weather. His hair was either black or darkened by the rain
. The richly dressed pair could have passed for Human, if ’Whix hadn’t known they were Clan.

  Which was why he trailed them. And why he trailed them at a distance. The Clan were not members of the Trade Pact, being uninterested in alliances of any kind. No Clan Embassy sparkled here in the dark; not surprisingly, since there was no Clan world to represent. The few Clan known to live within Trade Pact space kept to themselves and by themselves, living alone on their isolated estates on Human worlds, preferring the established inner systems where their wealth could be spent in privacy. The latest estimate, doubtless as inaccurate as it was secret, placed their number at a mere thousand.

  So to see one of the Clan on a fringe world like Auord was unusual. To see two together sent alarms ringing through any Trade Pact Enforcer who knew them. ’Whix clicked his beaked mouthparts together thoughtfully. His commander knew the Clan better than most. Which was why applicants to her personal staff were offered a choice: accept a still-experimental mind-shield implant or work elsewhere. ’Whix had to admit the surgeon had done an excellent job of preserving his feathers. It remained to be proved whether the device could protect him from the Clan.

  True telepaths were rare among Humans, scarce at best among the three other Trade Pact species who claimed that power, and completely absent in most. The Clan, rumor had it, were all telepaths of extraordinary ability. Rumor also said that they disdained mental contact with any species other than their own. ’Whix hoped that was true. But like any rumor, the source was suspect.

  Trailing at a distance did have its disadvantages. When a tight group of figures boiled from the darkness of a side street, ’Whix was too far away to do more than bleat a bulletin into his throat com as he started running. Almost as suddenly, he hesitated, slowed to a walk. His orders were specific: to observe the Clan, not interfere.