The Gate to Futures Past Page 3

  If it became overt, the Clan would become fewer; a loss I wouldn’t mourn.

  Morgan waited. There was palpable weight to his patience when it involved me and a point he wanted made. Feeling it, I eyed him askance. What was he after this time? I set my face to innocence.

  “Gently,” he repeated.

  “Nyso,” I said stiffly, “was a thoughtless, selfish child, even for Clan.” A Choice delayed by over seventy standard years made me, despite my appearance, the eldest here, a detail I’d happily refresh should Nyso prove obstinate. “I see no signs of improvement.”

  A brow lifted.

  “I promise to resist the urge to knock their stubborn heads together. Will that do?”

  Hefting his pack into place, Morgan smiled at me. “I ask no more.” He gave me a quick kiss, beard soft, lips cool and dry.

  Good-bye, that was. My turn to look a question. “You aren’t coming.”

  Tossing the placer up, my Human caught it with a flourish. “Time to stretch my legs. There’s mapmaking to do, Witchling.”

  Something he enjoyed. I kissed him back, adding a flash of affection. “Happy hunting.”

  I concentrated, forming the locate of the Core, and pushed . . .

  . . . to find myself surrounded by busy Clan who paused to gesture a polite greeting before going back to whatever they’d been doing: making beds, soothing children, talking, carrying burdens, finding clever ways to store belongings and keep Choosers apart from unChosen, doing what they must to share a limited space.

  However much the di Kessa’ats disliked being here, I thought sadly, edging through the crowd, I knew someone who could hardly bear it.

  Morgan.

  Interlude

  WASN’T RUNNING, Morgan assured himself. A brisk walk stretched legs in need of exercise, a fact of shiplife he enjoyed pointing out to the Clan. Just as well Sona’s levels were a maze of corridors. Most still open. Most still to explore. Why, he could walk like this for hours. Had done, pulling the coat from his pack come shipnight’s chill.

  He wasn’t running from the powerful Nyso di Kessa’at and those like him, despite their being the sort of Clan who’d thought nothing of ripping apart Human minds to make pliable servants and pawns.

  They couldn’t touch his and knew it.

  He kept his alien nose clear of Clan business, that was all. With him there, Nyso might dig in and force a confrontation. One the Clansman would lose, yes, but Sira would be miserable. She disliked exercising her authority at the best of times.

  He wasn’t, he told himself, running from the decent among the M’hiray, either, even if they—unconsciously or not—saw in him all they’d lost.

  And who’d taken it.

  The Om’ray? Well, they’d accepted he was real, but he suspected most lumped him with the ship and other incomprehensible technology now ruling their daily lives. Something to respect—from a safe distance.

  Not running. To prove it, Morgan stopped and lifted his scanner instead of the placer, aiming it at another of what appeared a door but was, in effect, the outer casing of a power cell.

  As usual, the scanner insisted there was nothing to scan behind the door, a small red flashing light its objection to squandering what remained of its own power.

  Still a result, the Human thought, switching the device off and tucking it back in his vest. A significant one. The scanner might be old tech, but it would have given a reading for solid metal or vacuum. Nothing was—interesting. Evocative.

  Or incredibly disturbing.

  Morgan rubbed his beard. He’d shaved last onboard the Fox and hadn’t found the inclination to do so since. The result entertained the Clan youngsters and if it reminded the rest what he was? Well enough. “Too late to change course.” The words echoed down the curved hall, losing themselves in distance.

  Not that he was flying this one. Not that he could pilot the ship or even talk to it or, so far, been able to do anything productive except map where the Clan couldn’t go.

  He’d hoped to find something better.

  Trade Pact starships—proper starships—had controls. Controls related to internal systems, standardized across species by physics and common sense, systems accessible for maintenance.

  Oh, he’d searched for them. Searched with growing desperation for the first, what, five shipdays—and some nights. Kept searching till he’d been forced to an unsettling conclusion, one he’d yet to share with Sira. Sona might not be a starship, not in the true sense. It might be nothing more than a gigantic lifepod: a well-supplied box programmed to ferry its naïve cargo to their destination.

  If so, he hadn’t found controls or system accesses because there were none to find. Galling, yes, but didn’t that lock into the pattern he’d seen on Cersi? The Clan were pieces in a game, property, unable to act on their own until free again.

  Putting away the placer, for this area he didn’t want on any map, Morgan walked until he came to a junction, then took the right-hand corridor.

  Free again. He’d known freedom once, had relished the life of an independent trader, however often he’d survived by his wits and luck. A luck aided by a Talent for tasting change, to be sure, but everyone had their tricks for dodging danger. Avoiding traps. Making the trades no one else could.

  When Sira stumbled aboard the Fox, when she’d touched his heart and filled the emptiness inside, his life—their lives—had been perfect.

  He should have known. Should have turned the Fox and run the instant he’d tasted that overwhelming warning. Stayed free.

  Morgan snorted. “Had to find a partner with a conscience.” Not that he’d have done differently. It helped to grumble in private.

  The lift doors split on diagonals, four sections pulling apart in silence. He’d have preferred doors that made a proper whoosh of effort, a clue to the sort of mechanism he’d need to maintain or repair in future.

  At least, he thought wryly, there were lifts. He stepped inside, the sections meeting behind him. The Om’ray Adepts, familiar with their Cloisters, had been shocked when the conveniences appeared overnight in various walls. Before, they’d moved from level to level using the ramplike corridor that spiraled around the outermost wall of the building, or taken the smaller, more discreet internal ramp that became, in some areas, a ladder. When Sona morphed into a starship, well, lifts were effective time- and space savers. The Human approved.

  Once he’d figured out how they worked. The Makers—the Hoveny, Morgan corrected to himself, still feeling the thrill of that discovery—had been humanoid, meaning a design suited to hands like his as well as a placement of sensory organs like his. Eye level readouts. Finger-ready panels.

  Even better, once they left the planet, he’d discovered the lifts accepted verbal commands. In the right language, but he had that now. “Thirty-four,” he ordered, feeling the mechanism engage.

  Sleepteach, reinforced by daily use, had made him fluent to the point where the Human caught himself thinking in the Hoveny tongue every so often. He’d begun to acquire the written language. Nockal di Mendolar had been his first teacher; while bedridden, she’d been glad to trade lessons for stories of other worlds. The elder Adept from Amna had an unClan-like curiosity about aliens; that she’d lost an arm to the Oud might have been part of it.

  There was a fierce courage in all the Om’ray Morgan enjoyed.

  The readout flashed symbols too quickly to read. No matter. He’d made this trip often enough to step forward before the door fully opened.

  Shifting his pack to one shoulder, the Human strode down the bright corridor. A narrower hall, this, lacking the cushioned flooring and touches of art of the main living areas. When he’d discovered it, he’d felt at home. Closer, anyway. What did that say about him?

  Morgan grinned. “Once a spacer, always a spacer.” The walls, here true bulkheads, returned hollow echoes. Alone, at l
ast.

  Never lonely, not with Sira’s warm, if presently distracted, presence along their link. Before her company, he’d had the Silver Fox, hard as that was to explain to grounders, the finicky old ship the ideal companion for a telepath who’d struggled to keep out the noise of other minds.

  Not a problem around Clan, taught from childhood to shield their innermost thoughts and emotions. Anything they leaked was deliberate. By invitation.

  To make a point.

  Not a problem, regardless; with Sira’s training, he’d added Clan shields to his own cobbled-together training. Morgan’s lips twitched. Besides. Other Human minds?

  No longer a problem.

  He passed two doors, stopping in front of the third. The corridor curved right, with an upward slope. It led to a section of more and larger portals, widely spaced and locked.

  Morgan chuckled and rapped his knuckles on the door in front of him. Once, twice.

  It turned open, just as it had when he’d banged a fist against it in frustration. He hadn’t found another door which would—likely wouldn’t, as Sona continued to collapse unused levels.

  Besides, he’d enough to explore right here, with no guarantee of time in which to do it.

  Morgan walked through, the door turning closed behind him. From inside, it opened to the same knocking. He suspected he’d have liked the original user of this room.

  Say, rather, workshop.

  He’d recognized it instantly, despite the alien shapes. Countertops lined three walls, crowded with objects in various stages of assembly. A workbench filled the middle of the room, shaped like an X, with four outstretched arms, each brightly lit. A stool stood waiting beside one such arm. On top Morgan had found what had to be tools, laid as if put down mid-use, and a tipped-over glass mug. Someone had left in a hurry.

  A mattress shoved underneath suggested a reluctance to leave some task. Or a task too important to leave.

  Like his. Setting his pack on the nearest empty arm of the bench, the Human perched on the stool before an array of small objects, including the tools from that first day of discovery, sorted by shape and size, with the larger to the left.

  “Which of you today?” The Comspeak sounded quaint, almost foreign to his ears.

  All the more reason to use it. He’d another. The Hoveny language might be replete with scientific and technological terms, but he wanted to think as himself, for himself.

  He had to. Morgan picked up a tool. The handle fit his hand, with indentations for four fingers and a thumb. Some Om’ray—including those Vyna Clan he’d seen—had a second thumblike digit. There was a dimple to accommodate it; for comfort, he decided, not function. The tool resembled a torch. The Human waved it experimentally, the business end aimed away, pressing various combinations of the indentations. It warmed; no more than explained by the heat of his skin.

  “Hmm.” He’d found this tool next to one very like a wrench or clamp, with nothing nearby to be held.

  Shouldn’t make assumptions. Still, the gap was the right size for the end of the torchlike tool.

  Morgan eased the two together.

  clickclick

  Startled, he looked for the source of the tiny sound. It came from a small object toward the end of the array, a plain cylinder that rattled in place, clicking until he pulled the pair of tools apart.

  His scans had pegged the age of the cylinder and its companion objects as older than what he took for tools. Older than the ship. Implying this room contained a treasure trove to make the syndicates of the Trade Pact wet themselves, or whatever they did, with greed.

  Hoveny tech. His, for now, and worth more than wealth.

  “Interesting.” Putting aside those tools, Morgan picked up the cylinder and gave it a little shake. clickclick. Fainter, but still clear. Broken? Maybe. He didn’t think so. A sensor, perhaps, or gauge.

  For what? Holding his breath, the Human gripped the cylinder in both hands and concentrated, letting his consciousness touch the M’hir.

  Nothing. And it no longer clicked.

  Morgan refused to be disappointed. Hoveny tech was activated using the M’hir. As far as he’d been able to determine, Sona moved as any Trade Pact starship through subspace, the only difference being this ship drew its power from the M’hir. There were rooms connected to that other dimension.

  A connection made by the Clan, descendants of the Hoveny. By something inside them. Something Humans weren’t supposed to have, not being Clan.

  “Sorry to disappoint.” Morgan drew on his inner Power and pushed. The cylinder disappeared from his hands, to reappear on his pack. Sending objects through the M’hir he’d mastered. Moved the Fox, hadn’t he?

  “I can do this.” Tech. Tangible. He’d figure it out.

  Before Sona’s ports opened on whatever world would be home. Before they learned the price of their freedom there.

  There was always a price.

  Chapter 2

  IN TRADE PACT SPACE, we’d had our Prime Laws, set by the ruling Council of the Clan. They’d nothing to do with notions of justice held by other species, including Humans. Over my long life, I’d obeyed most, found some irrelevant, and broken, lately, more than a few.

  The Om’ray had their own, by the sound of them a mix of the disturbingly familiar guidelines the Maker had imposed on our memories—and so on those who’d first come to Cersi—and those related to the practicalities of life with alien neighbors.

  While we’d yet to sit down together and compare specifics, I expected all would agree to keep those laws meant to guard us from each other. Courtesies to permit the testing of Power without giving offense. Protocols to protect the unChosen and oversee the meeting of Chooser and potential Candidate, mutual safety as important as a successful Choice. Rules to limit the depth within another’s weaker mind to be touched, unless invited.

  Then there was the one about not ’porting into a room unannounced—

  Much as it pained me, flaunting that particular rule would offend the di Kessa’ats, and Morgan wanted them treated gently.

  I hadn’t been entirely fair in my description of Nyso. Yes, he’d been what my Human would call a brat, but as an unChosen, Nyso had shown a gift and love of music I’d nurtured. I’d started him with the keffleflute, delighted to see him quickly soar far beyond my skill to become a remarkable composer. That had been the start of the trouble. Most Clan only dabbled in the arts, more consumers than creators. Few could read his music, let alone play it. His Chosen, Luek, was tone deaf. Worse, she doted on small birds, claiming they required quiet surroundings, not that she and Nyso shared the same home. Or planet, for that matter.

  Infuriated by his own species, Nyso dared the unthinkable.

  He became Human.

  As best he could, anyway. A new name, a rented apartment, and Gersle Nape the composer burst upon the stage like a shooting star, with an unnamed benefactor (himself) luring the finest musicians of Camos with fabulous salaries and the promise they would be the first to play Nape’s work.

  Whoever he was.

  The mystery created quite the stir, as I recalled. Not only among Humans. The Council, notified by a justly alarmed Luek, sent First Scouts to make sure Nyso wasn’t exposed as Clan. They needn’t have worried.

  Nyso, blinded by the chance to hear his music played, took up his shiny new conductor’s wand and walked into the first rehearsal, completely unprepared to face professional musicians, let alone aliens.

  Within minutes they’d tossed him out, as the Human expression goes, on his ear.

  His music, they kept. They called it pure genius, and it was. Sold-out performances went on for years, proceeds sent to Nape’s account, and for years the public clamored for more. Nyso ignored it all. If the Clan had one trait in common, it was pride. His own kind considered him a dangerous fool; his beloved music had been taken by Humans; and he cou
ldn’t even claim credit without resorting to a now-hateful disguise as one of them.

  When his studio and instruments went up in flames, no one was surprised.

  In hindsight, knowing Humans as I now did, the orchestra had treated “Gersle Nape” exactly as they would any Human amateur who’d presumed to lead them. If there was fault, it was in how little any of my kind understood normal Human interactions. We hadn’t cared or needed to, was the truth.

  My job, to make sure they understood Morgan.

  Putting me outside this closed door. I let out a tendril of Power, enough to confirm those on the other side without alerting them, then knocked.

  I counted to five, slowly.

  Knocked again, though they’d surely heard me the first time. Sona’s interior doors transmitted the rap of knuckle.

  But didn’t, I thought all at once, transmit voices. If Nyso and Luek were unaware, they could have bid me enter and be wondering why I hadn’t.

  Or, I glowered, have told me to go away and leave them be.

  Erring on the side of manners, I sent a calm, tactful May I enter? No need to name myself, as a Human might—the feel of my Power identified me to them beyond any doubt.

  Silence.

  Abruptly uneasy, I pressed the door control.

  The tall panel turned open. The space beyond was dark, and I paused to let my eyes adjust, waiting to be acknowledged.

  Like the others on this level, the room was rectangular, being deeper than wide. On Cersi, the Om’ray had used such rooms within a Clan’s Cloisters to house their Adepts.

  And the Lost, Aryl supplied.

  Another difference between Om’ray and M’hiray. When one of our Chosen died, the other’s mind was pulled into the M’hir, dissolving to nothing, the body a dead and empty husk.

  That happens to some Om’ray, she sent, following the thought. And has to less powerful M’hiray. She referred to Deni, whose death had left Cha living—if you called it that. The Om’ray had insisted on tending her walking corpse.