Mother Death

2

The Core was dead, and the rest of the galaxy was in chaos: Civil and intersystem wars were common. Apocalyptic religions were spreading. Refugees moved in desperate waves, searching for new homes. Half of the Families were officially disbanded, while the other half were spending their days hunting for Chamberlains and Sanchexes and anyone else who wouldn’t surrender their godly powers.

Yet despite the enormous turmoil, the mother world was enjoying peace.

The Earth had never been richer than it was today. And if the truth were told, Alice Chamberlain was responsible for most of its recent success.

The most famous criminal in Creation was being held in solitary confinement, inside a deep-mantle facility built and maintained specifically for her. The Earth’s Council paid the bills, but those expenses were trivial. What terrified people, civilian and Family alike, was the possibility that someone would steal Alice away. After all, she was the black angel who had brought a judgment day. By owning her, any borderline movement or newborn faith would move into sudden prominence. Or a disgruntled god from one of the disbanded Families might be tempted. More than a few of them had declared that Alice’s imprisonment was obscenely cruel, and at its heart, pointless. Their prisoner wasn’t the woman who helped destroy the Core. That creature was dismantled long ago. What was sitting inside the tiny white cell was nothing—a bit of dermis left behind by a murderer’s hand, scrubbed free of blood, and identity, and its essential soul.

Renegade Chamberlains were considered the most dangerous enemies.

Various specialists, human and otherwise, did nothing but assemble and update lists of potential attackers, and the same name reliably occupied the first slot:

Ord.

He was the last Chamberlain. The Baby. Alice had befriended him during the days leading up to her surrender. She had felt sentimental toward him and the innocence of youth, perhaps. But some years later, Alice slipped away from her first prison cell, and in those critical minutes, she met with the boy, in secret.

Alarms had sounded across the system, accomplishing nothing.

Then the black angel returned to her cell, accomplishing the trick just as easily and as suddenly as she had managed her escape.

That’s when Ord vanished. With his brother Thomas, he went to the edge of interstellar space, pausing at a secret location where great portions of Alice were being stored. There they found fabulous machines composed of strange matter. There were talents that only a god could embrace, and perhaps no god could entirely control—all waiting to be cataloged and studied, and eventually destroyed. But together, the two Chamberlains broke into the facility and stole much of what Alice had been. Then with a terrific acceleration, Thomas and the Baby left the solar system, and eventually, they left the Milky Way, too.

An emergency team chased them, and eventually caught them.

But the team was beaten and sent slinking home again—tens of thousands of years later—bringing the terrible news that Ord was still alive and wielding Alice’s most dangerous powers.

He was the black angel reborn.

Perhaps.

No one knew where to look for Ord. But if he was still streaking across the universe—a likely prospect—little time had passed for him. He was still the Baby. Impulsive, and powerful. And most disturbing, a novice in everything important.

What if the boy-god returned to free his sister?

That was a potent, enduring question.

And there was a rash answer that was equally enduring. “We should kill Alice,” millions proposed, often with the same blunt certainty. “A simple execution,” they advised. “Or we let her escape, then vaporize her. Or we arrange any kind of accident. The more preposterous, the better. Whatever it takes to get rid of the old butcher!”

But the simple and the rash never have simple, clean consequences.

It was a Nuyen who dismantled any hope for an easy homicide. Like every untainted Family, hers had retained its seat on the Earth’s Council. “Let me remind you of three cold certainties,” she shouted from that seat. “First of all, young Chamberlains are usually possessed by a strong, often inflexible sense of morality. If that boy returns someday and learns that we signed Alice’s death warrant, then he may feel obligated to punish each of us in some suitable way.”

A collective shudder passed through the Council’s chamber.

“Certainty two,” said the Nuyen. “Alice may wish to be martyred, and we would be helping her in her cause. Speaking for myself, helping that monster is something I don’t intend to do any day soon.”

Most of the Council members gazed off into the distance, asking themselves how ordinary people could decipher the wants of a creature like Alice.

“Certainty three.”

She said it, then said nothing else, drawing their eyes. A black-haired creature of unknown dimensions and astonishing age, she sat high in the chamber, her seat craftily positioned so that she seemed to hold no special office, yet none of her smaller, weaker colleagues could turn in their seats without noticing her. The archaic face was smiling, they realized. She was wearing a big mischievous grin. Surprising, and in its fashion, discomforting.

After awhile, the Nuyen repeated herself. “Certainty three.”

“We heard you the first time!” shouted the Council president—a fearless little ectotherm of no certain gender or political persuasion. “Just tell us!”

The grin became an austere glare. “Alice is valuable only while she lives,” the Nuyen explained. “And should that boy ever come to rescue her, then her value is magnified a thousandfold.”

“Value?” the president whispered.

She heard him from halfway across the chamber, and with a nod, she replied, “As a lure, she’s precious.”

There was an electric silence.

“Consider this,” she said. “If we make ready for Ord’s return, we’ll need resources and capital. My Family is prepared to donate both to such a good cause. The other Families will do the same. And I’m quite certain that once the situation is explained to them, every responsible government for a thousand light years will be just as generous with their gifts.

“After all, it’s in their best interest to have us holding Alice for them. Squirming on the proverbial hook, as some might say.”

A brief pause, then she added, “If the boy does arrive, we’ll be ready.”

“And if he doesn’t?” shouted the president.

“That will be fine, too,” she replied. “The Earth will be left richer and more secure than ever, and I should think, happy beyond measure…!”

Since that historic day, the Nuyen had been replaced on the Council by a succession of sisters and brothers. The Earth’s population had tripled, and the solar system was an urban park singing with nearly twenty times as many citizens as before. New refugees arrived by the minute. A few still came from the Core, but most were fleeing smaller, closer catastrophes. As a rule, they were wealthy or uniquely talented. Otherwise they couldn’t have booked passage on a starship or paid the draconian immigration fees. Only the most privileged could afford citizenship on the Earth. Many would impoverish themselves for the security it offered. The galaxy had turned deadly; a glance at the night sky proved as much. “But the mother world is safe,” parents would promise. “A storm roars outside, but we’re under a good strong roof here. Do you see?”

“I do, Father.”

This family came from a modified M-class sun not fifty light years distance. Half of their fortune had purchased the starship, and the rest had ensured them the honor of becoming new citizens. Mother and Father made an attractive couple: Tailored for a lush tropical world, they were barely a meter tall, equipped with prehensile three-tipped tails, expressive wide faces and the oversized, florid genitals that once were the fashion on their world.

A dead world now.

The boy never knew his parents’ home. A quiet and pleasant nearchild, he was born during the voyage and had spent his entire life inside the same cramped cabin. The prospect of being anywhere else obviously thrilled him. Drifting before a universal window, he was using it as a simple window, studying the Earth with his blue-black eyes. There were no continents anymore, no visible oceans. Every square kilometer was adorned with towering cities, graceful and oftentimes famous, and the crust beneath was a sponge filled with lesser cities and pockets of ocean and elaborate farms where enough food for a quarter of a trillion people was produced every day.

There were two major moons. The nearer was the Earth’s natural satellite, and, like the Earth, it was a crowded, lovely place. But the other was different. A simple framework of ordinary superconductors enveloped a round mass of dark matter and bizarre plasmas—a liquid blackness swirling rapidly, hinting at fantastic energies barely kept under control.

The boy knew exactly what it was, but for appearance’s sake, he asked, “What’s that ugly thing do, Father?”

Someone replied with a snort.

Pretending to be startled, the boy spun around. Floating in the doorway was a uniformed woman—an immigration officer who interviewed the new refugees. She was taller than most, and strong, and her features were untailored. Purely archaic. A boy from a distant place was entitled to double his surprise. Blinking, he pretended to be flustered, and with a voice designed to mislead, he shouted, “That’s a Sanchex face! Are you a Sanchex—?”

The father growled at his son, then offered a clumsy apology.

Like the Chamberlains, the Sanchexes had been disbanded ages ago. Their wealth was cataloged and divided among the Core’s victims, and by decree, every last one of them was ordered to surrender to the nearest authorities, then allow their powers to be stripped away. Then they were supposed to be tried, and if found innocent of important crimes, they were given their freedom and a small stipend to help them build new lives.

Utterly ordinary hves.

That was this Sanchex’s fate. But she didn’t offer any autobiographies. Instead, she approached the youngster, placed her face close to his, then with the warm stink of garlic and fish innards, said, “A lot of us work in customs. And I bet you can guess why.”

“Because you’re mean,” he said.

“And spiteful,” she added. “And suspicious. And easily angered. And just as quick to act on that anger, I’ll warn you…!”

She looked and sounded like a certain female Sanchex, but the name drawing itself on her uniform, in a thousand languages, was never Ravleen.

An old childhood friend.

“To answer your extremely rude question,” she continued. “That ‘ugly’ object belongs to our defense network, and it’s beautiful. It’s a wonder, and I love it, and I don’t know what it does, and neither of us will ever know anyone who will know what it does. Do you understand that, young man?”

“Yes, Miss Sanchex.”

The woman recoiled, then took a long suck of air before warning, “We don’t use that name anvmore. The Sanchexes are extinct.”

“Yes—”

“Madam Voracious.”

“Yes, Madam Voracious.”

She showed everyone a grim Sanchex smile, then thundered, “Now let’s discuss your names…?”

The boy answered first, in a low voice.

“Excuse me?” said Madam Voracious.

He repeated himself, almost smiling, and for a slippery, mischievous instant, it sounded as if he had said, “Ord.”