Reclamation

4—Amaiar Division, Kethran Colony, Hour 09:20:34, City Time.

Gan Perivar leaned his chair back too fast. The back whacked against the edge of the work counter, jarring his neck and shoulders painfully.

One more year and I can afford to rent some real space. Perivar twisted the chair and checked behind him to make sure that he would not hit any of the beveled, steel poles that broke up what little open space existed between the map table and the counters. One more year. Two at the most.

He leaned back, more carefully this time, and stared at the counter. The silver-and-blue keypads were laced with shadows from the webwork of cables strung across the ceiling. If nothing else unexpected happens between now and then.

A rattle sounded over Perivar’s head and the shadows shook. A silicate capsule about the size of his torso shot through a portal from the next room. Its hooks swung it from cable to cable toward the post beside his right ear.

Marvelous. When Kiv sent his kids to speak for him, it was always serious.

When the capsule’s occupant was stretched out, she was three times as long as the transport she used. She tucked eight pairs of her legs underneath her and used the remaining pair to manipulate the capsule’s controls. Her primary hands rested on the bumpy controls for the information terminal, while her secondaries folded in the polite greeting. Two of her eyes extended down toward her primary hands. The other two focused on her goal.

Perivar squinted at the pattern of grey blotches on her smooth golden scales. This was Sha, the third-named of Kiv’s litter.

Didn’t even send his first-named. Gods, gods, gods, he is mad.

Sha used the post to lower the capsule until she was eye level with him. She extended her snout and pursed her lipless mouth. The protective capsule shut in the actual buzzing sound of her voice, but its intercom carried the signal to activate Perivar’s translation disk and transmit her message.

“My parent requests information regarding the progress of the routing for packet 73-1511.”

Perivar took a deep breath. “Sha, tell your parent…” He let the sentence die. “Tell your parent I’m coming in.”

Sha’s snout retracted, fast. Perivar had come to equate the action with a human gulp. Without another word, Sha reversed her course, sending the capsule back across the cables and through the portal.

Anticipating trouble, little one? Perivar got to his feet. Me too.

The workroom had three doors. One led to the hallway. One hung open to display his comfortably disreputable living rooms. The third was a sliding metal partition in the same wall as the capsule’s portal. Next to the partition stood a rack containing an oxygen pack. Perivar checked the tank reading to make sure it was full before he hooked its straps over his shoulders. Fumbling a little with the catches, he fitted the shield over his eyes and mouth.

Shrugging his shoulders to settle the tank more comfortably, Perivar slid back the partition to expose the gelatinous membrane that separated Kiv’s half of their quarters from his. The membrane had cost more than all the rest of his equipment combined, but it was worth it. Working with Kiv meant contracts from other Shessel and the Shessel had a lot of work that needed doing.

As usual, Perivar paused before the membrane, hoping that one day he’d get used to going through it.

After four years it was starting to seem unlikely.

Perivar stepped through the membrane. The gooey gel pressed against his skin, clothes, and mask and stuck, sealing him inside a flexible envelope that would screen out the ultraviolet rays Kiv and his children basked under. When Kiv stepped through into Perivar’s space, the gel kept in his body heat so he wouldn’t drop into a stupor in Perivar’s arctic climate, or drown in the flood of his oxygen. It was a good method, but not very sturdy, which was why the children used the unbreakable capsules.

Kiv was a bulky, earth-toned match for his five daughters. Uncoiled and standing straight on all his legs, he was so tall his eyes were level with the crown of Perivar’s head. A skintight, vermilion garment encased him from his neck to his last set of toes. He’d started wearing the thing as soon as the last of his children were hatched and he made the shift from female to male. Kiv had never been able to explain properly whether being required to wear clothes indoors was a mark of advancement or decline in the Shessel’s social order.

At the moment, Kiv was half-coiled around the base of his map table. Like Perivar’s it provided information about the space between the stars, but it did so in a series of lumps and indentations that shifted under Kiv’s primary and secondary hands. Only one of the other children was in evidence. Ere draped herself across her parent’s shoulders and stretched her arms so that her primary hands covered his and moved with them. Kiv buzzed and whistled at his first-named daughter, teaching her to read and understand the map in front of them.

Perivar glanced at the cables overhead. Sha must have taken the capsule straight into Kiv’s living rooms to hide with her other three sisters.

“Sha delivered your insult, Kiv,” Perivar said. “I heard it and I understood it. Now you understand this. I owe Eric Born more than one favor.”

“He’s contraband.” Kiv did not point his snout toward Perivar, or stop reading the table. “And he is running yet more contraband.”

“He swears she’s a volunteer.” Gods, I hope she’s a volunteer.

Kiv’s hands froze. “What could you possibly owe…”

“A contraband runner for?” Ere finished for her parent. She wasn’t being rude, she was showing how well she knew Kiv.

“He’s not a runner,” Perivar insisted. “And you don’t want to know what I owe him for.”

Kiv buzzed so softly, Perivar’s translator couldn’t pick it up. Ere shook herself loose from Kiv’s shoulders and scurried down his back. Kiv tilted his head and waited until she’d scrambled through the door to their living area before he turned ears and eyes toward Perivar. All his hands left the map board and pressed themselves tight to his long sides. At the same time, he drew himself out so his eyes were level with Perivar’s. The fluid motion took Kiv less time than it would have taken Perivar to bend his knees to sit down.

“I understand what you say. Now you understand, Perivar, this worries me. I cannot become involved in activities the human population of Kethran consider illegal. The Embassy Voice will speak against me. I will lose my license and be sent home.”

Perivar sighed and his breath made a white mist on his face mask. “Eric says the circumstances are exceptional and that it will only be this once.”

Kiv dipped his snout. “I know you think that I’m better off not knowing this, but what did he do to earn such trust?”

No, Kiv, you really don’t want to know that. Really. “Helped me…break from my old partners. Then he kept his mouth shut and himself absent for six years.” The last, at least, was the whole truth.

The short hum Kiv gave out did not translate. He drew back on himself, shrinking and retracting his whole body. Perivar knew enough about his partner’s body language to know Kiv meant to make Perivar uncomfortable so he could understand Kiv’s discomfort. It worked amazingly well. Perivar’s skin began to curdle under the gel. “If trouble comes from this, Kiv, I swear it won’t touch your children.”

“And how under any sun do you expect to keep such a promise, Perivar?” Despite his harsh words, Kiv stretched his arms and laid all his hands on the edge of the map table. The coil of his body loosened near the base. In response, the tension in Perivar’s skin eased.

“How do you intend to proceed?” Kiv asked.

“I’ll give Zur-Iyal a call and see if she’s willing to run a gene sample for me without going through channels. I’ll see the results of that and then I’ll know where it’s safe to send this…person Eric’s bringing in. After that, I’ll have to see. Her people are from the same Evolution Point as mine, Eric said, so there should be plenty of places I could send her as long as the sequence is reasonably clean.” The tank dragged at his shoulders, but Perivar didn’t make a move to sit down. Unless Kiv offered him a chair, which would really be a piece of floor or counter, it was rude. Usually, they skipped formalities like that, but right now, Perivar felt the need to prove he could still observe proprieties.

“And when is…Eric arriving?”

“He just called me from the ground port. He should be here in another two and a half hours, if they have to catch the public line, two hours if they can find a chauffeur.”

Kiv unwound himself from around the map table and stood on all his legs. “I will have to go explain this to my children. We are here, after all, to learn what your people will or will not do.” Although his attention remained fixed on Perivar, his eyes sank deep into their sockets. “It has not been easy, Perivar.”

“I know.”

“It has been good, though, and I want myself and my own to be able to stay.”

“I’ll make sure it’s over soon.”

Kiv inclined his head, a gesture he’d learned from Perivar. He swiveled himself around and flowed through his back door.

Breathing another sigh, this time from relief, Perivar retreated into his own side of the workplace. As he stepped through the membrane, the gel slid off his skin, melding with its own substance again.

“Brain.” He said aloud as he lifted his face mask.

“Receiving.” He and Kiv had not been able to afford their own artificial intelligence, never mind an android, but they did rent time on the AI that operated their building’s facilities.

“Get a real-time line open to Zur-Iyal ki Maliad at Amaiar Industrial Gardens, personal code A comma nine comma Yul Gan. Then, cross-load the active routing files on packet 73-1511 over to Kiv’s map files and compare with the facilities timings and route the data back.” He undid the tank catches and gratefully set it back in its rack. “And call the Roseran’s bakery and reactivate my account and tell them to send down half a dozen fresh seed cakes to the kids.” Another propriety. Where Kiv came from, you did not thank a father directly, you did a favor for his children.

“I have set your priority coding. Request one will be completed in five minutes. Requests two and three will be completed in three minutes. Request four will be completed in fifteen minutes.”

“Nothing further.” Perivar dropped into his chair and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. The face mask was supposed to filter the light down to Perivar’s comfort level, but any stay in Kiv’s quarters still dried his eyes out painfully.

Eric, don’t you try to play any fancy games with me, or I’ll broadcast what you did to Kessa and Tasa Ad from one side of the Quarter Galaxy to the other.

Six years of relatively clean living; Perivar stared around his workplace. Thousands of packets of information delivered successfully and this was what he had. One room of hardware and two rooms of furniture. He didn’t even own the walls around them. He was alive, which was definitely a plus, and if he hadn’t stuck by Eric Born, he would not have been. Perivar knew that. When living on the edge had finally become too much, Eric had taken the ship, the pilot, and the ghosts. Perivar had taken the bank accounts, and that had actually seemed to be the end of it. Most of the time he kept the past in its own place and lived for the next shipment and the next deposit in his account. His open, honest, registered, and almost always empty account.

Brain beeped twice to get his attention.

“Open channel established and connected to Zur-Iyal ki Maliad.”

Perivar straightened up to face the blank display that Brain angled up from the work surface in front of him. His fingers undid the catch on the bottom edge and he lifted the cover from the keypad. His memory strained to recall the watch command. His lips moved as he typed it in. The signal light on the edge of the pad blinked on. Green. No one was watching the line, at the moment. Perivar kept one eye on the signal light and touched the key to clear the view.

Zur-Iyal ki Maliad looked back at him with gold eyes half-hidden under a ragged curtain of straight black hair. The color of both was new.

“I like the look, Iyal.” Perivar ran his hand through his own hair to comb it back. “Dyes or upgrades?”

“Upgrade on the hair. Stays dry in the rain. The eyes are overlays. UV screens. I’m seeing if I like them or not.”

“Handy when you’re out in the field so much, I guess.” Iyal spent most of her time with the institute’s livestock, and it showed. She was a big, round woman. A casual observer might have mistaken her bulk for fat, but only until she moved. As she leaned across the table and folded her arms, muscles rippled visibly beneath her sun-browned skin.

“What can I do for you, Perivar? Or is this social?” The UV screens did not hide the mischievous glint in her eyes.

Perivar chuckled. “Iyal, Iyal, what would your husband say?”

“‘Is he still any good?’” They shared the long laugh. It was an old joke, but it felt good.

“Actually, I need a favor, Iyal.”

“Oh?”

“I need a gene scan run. Nothing fancy. Just make sure the specimen’s clean and healthy. You know the kind of thing.”

“Oh yes. I do know.” She drew back abruptly and Perivar thought of Kiv doing the same thing, not five minutes ago. “I didn’t think I was doing that ‘kind of thing’ for you anymore.”

“It’s a one-off, Iyal. I’m tying down a loose favor.”

Iyal’s sigh ruffled her new hair across her forehead. “Once, Perivar. That’s all the old times are good for right now. We just got a whole shipment of kids from the Vitae’s university. If I don’t keep myself clean, one of them’s going to be earning my pay.”

“Once.” Perivar laid two ringers over his heart. “The promise goes from here to the gods.”

Iyal just watched him. “The Rhudolant Vitae are making sure everybody comes down real hard on…the competition…these days. I hope you’re still in shape.”

“Wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t. Check your hard mail bin tonight, Iyal. I’ll have the sample in it.”

“Good enough. Take care, Perivar.”

“And you, Iyal.”

She watched him thoughtfully for a minute longer before her hand reached out to her control panel and his screen went blank. Because he didn’t request another line, the display lowered itself until it was flush with the counter again.

So, I lied, he said silently to the space where the display used to be. I wouldn’t be doing this if I was sure Eric would keep his mouth shut about me if I didn’t.

Gods, gods, gods. I’d forgotten about this. Don’t trust anybody. Can’t trust anybody. Everybody’s dangling something over you, unless you’ve got something to dangle over them, and even then it’s who’s got more and what’s worse. Abruptly, he found himself laughing. I’m getting old. And cowardly.

It wasn’t a general warning that Iyal had brought up about the Vitae, although they were the main reason her job was in danger. Thanks to the talent-mongering Vitae, Amaiar Gardens was one of the few independent gene-tailoring houses left on Kethran.

Kethran was an artificial ecology. A hundred thousand details of the environmental balance had to be constantly monitored, maintained, and replenished. A population surge coupled with an unexplained drought had the Senate screaming for help. The Vitae had quietly offered to take over the administration of the ecology for a comparatively reasonable trade and land contract. They’d moved the majority of the government employees into labs and farms they themselves subsidized, and in three years they had made themselves indispensable.

With that kind of power, they could make more than a few demands without the official power base getting upset. They could, for example, ask for rigid enforcement of some of the legal codes.

Never mind that the Vitae were the largest purchasers and purveyors of contraband bodies in the Quarter Galaxy. It was only one of the areas where they had a low tolerance for competition.

Perivar had sometimes wondered what the Vitae were looking for. They had the most sophisticated gene-engineering methods in the Quarter Galaxy, and yet they bought body after body. It was a clumsy, risky, expensive way of acquiring new genetic patterns. Tasa Ad and Kessa, the heads of the runner team Perivar had been part of, had survived by selling their…acquisitions…exclusively to the Vitae, or the Vitae’s clients.

Perivar remembered the cargo hold on the runner’s ship then. Double racks of anesthetized bodies in support capsules. No sound, except for the weird harmony that came from so many support systems droning on together.

What do you think I am? asked Eric’s voice from memory.

I think…I think I didn’t think.

“Perivar?” Kiv’s hail sounded through his translator disk.

“Here.” Perivar straightened up. “Open up. It’s all right.”

The membrane housing slid back. Perivar looked through the threshold to see the slightly wobbly scene of Kiv and his family. All five of the kids were in evidence, swarming up and down the poles, working on the control pads, delving under the map table. Kiv held all his eyes and hands open.

“We need to…” began Kiv.

“Go over the…” Dene scuttled out from under the map table and vanished under the communications counter.

“Shipment of packet 73-1511.” Ere took her place of pride on her parent’s shoulders, hands out and ready to work.

“Now!” added Ka, as she slithered halfway up her parent’s back. Ka hated to be left out.

Perivar nodded, understanding what he saw as a mark of trust. Kiv had nothing precious hidden. Nothing more needed to be said. Perivar leaned over his map table and touched the slave key to synch the two tables together. Ri slid into the capsule and shot across the cables to dangle above him as his map lit up.

The map showed a representation of one-tenth of the Quarter Galaxy from a communicator’s point of view. Suns shone as pinpricks of gold; inhabited stations were green and drone stations were blue. The chaos of the communications networks stretched between them as a series of glowing white line segments. Solid lines showed the beam connections. Dotted lines showed the places only a ship could reach. A red grid overlay the entire arrangement, measuring everything out in hundred-light-year squares.

The network had no organization. It was several million shifting threads, made up of everything from cavernous, public databases, to hard-wired private lines, to rented AIs like Brain.

Perivar accessed packet 73-1511’s shipment plan. The map displayed the work in progress by turning a series of the white lines orange.

Calling what they were organizing a “packet” was a convenient shorthand. 73-1511 was actually a data transfer from a research station to a third stage colony. A library’s worth of specialized manufacturing information needed to be copied across ten thousand light-years’ worth of network. It was a complicated process, especially since “simultaneous transmission” was a meaningless concept across the distances the map represented. Even quantum transfers took time. Without careful planning, the channels, even if they were reserved with solid credit, shifted and blurred. The pathway, and all the information, could be lost in a heartbeat.

That much-disliked fact gave Perivar and Kiv their living. They found clients who needed a specific kind of information, found a source for that information, and then, most importantly, found a way to get the information from the source to the client. Each shipment took hours of planning and sometimes more insurance than their combined accounts could afford.

“The K-12 band is going to be open for a station to groundside datadump. That’ll take us from Averand to Cole’s Spot.” Perivar traced a new path on the map table with his finger. The sensors on the surface responded by marking a new orange line on the display.

“Could we piggyback in on a Vitae download from there to Haron?” Kiv dotted in another segment.

“What’re they charging?” Ri whistled from the capsule.

“For pickup and delivery through there?” Ere got in belatedly.

Perivar considered the idea. “We can get the rates off Brain. Save that as plan B, though; I don’t want to have to depend on the Vitae right now.”

“Whee.” Kiv’s whistle did not translate so the disk simply transmitted the syllable. “That is a thought.”

Brain’s chime sounded over their heads. “Sar Eric Born and Sar Aria Stone are waiting in the lobby.”

Perivar glanced across at Kiv. “Brain. Open the doors and let them up.”

“Do you want us to close the housing?” asked Kiv, his secondary hands reaching toward the membrane.

“Only if you want to.”

Kiv’s whole body rippled. “I think we would rather see what is coming. Ri, come back here.”

Perivar caught the heightened pitch and speed of the whistle under the translator’s flat voice. Ri obeyed without comment.

As soon as the capsule was safely on Kiv’s side, Perivar got to his feet and swung the door to the outer hallway open. Leaving a door closed when a guest was on the way was an insult where Perivar came from, and Eric knew that. Perivar blinked a bit in the hallway light, which was supposed to simulate a sunny day. The lift door opened. Perivar watched as Eric and his…companion stepped off.

She looked a lot like Eric had when Perivar first saw him, handmade clothes, hair hidden under a twist of cloth, and hands covered with tattoos, except that hers were stark white lines, as opposed to Eric’s colorful swirls. She shared Eric’s warm skin tones and black eyes. For a brief moment, Perivar wondered if they were related.

“Thanks for the open door, Perivar.” Eric, Perivar knew, expended his small stock of Eshhii words on the greeting.

“Your accent is going.” Perivar stood back to let them inside.

The woman, Aria Stone, hesitated, until Eric said something in their own language to her. Perivar tapped his translator reflexively. At one time, he’d had Eric help him set it for the Realm’s jaw-breaking language. Since they had parted ways, though, Perivar hadn’t needed that particular information and the disk’s assembly time was going slow.

The woman walked across the threshold, blinked at the lighting change, got a look at Kiv and the kids, and froze.

The translator finally had the file reconfigured and Perivar heard Eric mutter, “I warned you.”

So she’s straight out of the woods. Wonderful. Perivar strangled a fresh sigh.

Kiv responded to her stare by uncoiling himself until his scalp brushed the ceiling so she could get a really good look. Sha, Ka, and Dene scrambled up on their parent’s back, whistling and draping themselves across his shoulders and his lower arms. They wanted to be looked at, too. The other two kept themselves still. Having been raised with humans, all the kids could read the difference between a stare of wonder and a stare of fear. The motionless two chose to acknowledge that difference.

“I wish well-come to you and yours Eric Born and Aria Stone,” announced Kiv politely, although Perivar figured he must have been getting the hint by now. Kiv could be willfully dense some days.

“Thank you,” Aria croaked. She stepped back and seemed to try to collect herself.

“She says thanks,” Perivar told Kiv as the Shessel touched his translator set in his lowest ear and cocked his head.

“Obscure language.” Aria wore a translator disk in her ear, so she could understand Kiv, but since she didn’t speak any of the languages Kiv’s disk was set for, all he could hear from her was gibberish.

“Ah,” Kiv shrank back to his normal stance, depositing children on assorted flat surfaces.

Perivar turned to Eric. “We need to talk for a minute.” He jerked his chin toward his living rooms.

“I assumed we would. Aria.” The sound of her name finally got the woman to tear her gaze away from Kiv. “I’ll be in the next room. If you…”

“I’ll be all right.” Her voice held steady but Perivar caught the slight trembling in her hands before she clenched them into fists and pressed them against her side.

Eric opened his mouth to say something but obviously changed his mind. Jaw firmly shut, he brushed past Aria and headed for Perivar’s rooms. Perivar’s glance wavered between the pair of them for a moment before he followed Eric.

The living rooms were as crowded as the workroom. The chairs and tables were all padded blocks of no style or period. They were functional and sturdy and that was all. The one luxury was the windows. Two walls worth of transparent polymer let the sunlight in, even if the view of the warehouse cluster was less than inspirational.

Perivar slid the door shut and faced Eric.

Gods, he’s changed. Wouldn’t know him from anybody on the colony.

“When’d the Vitae get hold of this place?” The worried note in Eric’s voice shocked Perivar.

“Three, maybe four local years ago. We’re a late acquisition. What’s the problem?”

“I wish I’d known,” Eric said wearily.

Silence fell, thick and heavy.

“We’re not on the network anymore, Eric,” Perivar said, at last. “Nobody’s listening. I need an explanation for this, now.”

Eric’s shoulders stooped even farther than usual. “I’m in trouble, Perivar. That’s the explanation. The Vitae tried to stash me in Haron Station, which is where they had Aria.”

Perivar felt the blood begin to drain from his face. “What in the name of all the gods would they do that for?”

“As soon as I know, you’ll know.” Eric’s fingers hooked around each other. “They’re after something in the Realm of the Nameless Powers. I’ll be drowned and washed away if I know what it is. I thought it was my"—he stared at his bare palm—"power gift, but she…Aria"—his hand swept down toward the door—"isn’t gifted. The Vitae picked her up out of the Realm and reeled me in to help deal with her.

“I’m on the run again, Perivar.” Eric looked up again and the expression in his eyes made Perivar’s throat tighten. “I’m going to try to find out what the Vitae want from the Realm, and from me, and from Aria, for that matter, and then I’m going to try to find a way out of it, whatever it is.”

Perivar knew the tone he used. He would do as he said, even if it killed him.

Perivar wanted to shout. This is not two runners nobody liked and a quick bit of mutiny. This is the Vitae! Remember them? The ones who control half the Quarter Galaxy! The ones we spent two years ducking AFTER we got away from Tasa Ad! But saying it aloud wouldn’t have budged Eric any farther than the silent thought did.

“This is all making my partner very uneasy, Eric,” Perivar told him instead. “The Shessel don’t really understand the spirit of human legalities, so they follow them by the letter.”

“So now I owe you,” Eric muttered.

“That’s not what I care about.” Although it would’ve been once, Perivar realized with a shock. “Just finish it fast. I’ve gotten used to not having to look over my shoulder all the time. I like it this way.”

“Maybe one day I’ll get to see if I like it too.” Eric kissed the tips of his own fingers and raised his hand to the ceiling.

Perivar laid his fingers over his heart. “I hope we both live that long.”

They met each other’s eyes for a silent moment, weighing, judging, and hoping, but finding no guarantees. Finally, Perivar knew he had nothing to fall back on but their old, brittle trust. It was no comfort to know Eric was doing the same.

“What are you going to do now?” Perivar asked.

Eric looked over Perivar’s left shoulder. “Ultimately, I’m going to try to crack the Vitae private network.”

“Are you out of your mind!” Perivar couldn’t hold back this time. “You might as well try to crack a mountain with your skull! Even you can’t get on a Vitae line!”

“Where else am I going to get what I need?” Eric’s calm snapped. “Knowledge is power. Somebody"—he stabbed a finger at Perivar—"told me never to forget that.”

“I also said there’s always somebody out there who knows more than you do,” Perivar reminded him.

Eric’s eyes shone coldly. “If that wasn’t true, there wouldn’t be contraband runners. Are we done quoting your words of wisdom now, Perivar?”

You started it, thought Perivar childishly. He forced his voice into a semi-even tone. “Do you have any kind of plan for this insanity?”

“Not really.” He shrugged. “After this, I’m going to talk to Dorias. Between the two of us we should be able to string together something.”

“If anyone can,” Perivar added for him. Eric wasn’t looking at him anymore and Perivar couldn’t help wondering why not.

“As you say.” Eric shrugged. “What else can I do, Perivar? If I don’t put an end to this, then I’m a fugitive until I become a corpse or a slave.”

Perivar said nothing for a long moment.

“There’s nothing else I can tell you,” Eric said.

“What about something about your…friend?”

“She’s no friend of mine.” Eric’s eyes seemed to see something other than Perivar’s face at that moment. “Although, Notouch or not, I could maybe wish she was…she’s all right, Perivar. She’s stubborn and she’s got some secret she’s keeping to herself, but she learns fast and she seems as determined to stay out of the Realm as I am.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that.” As well as on everything else.

“I’d give you more if I could.”

“I know.” Perivar pushed the door open. “And I appreciate it.”

In the workroom, Ri and Dene had Aria under close scrutiny. The pair of them had crammed themselves into the capsule that now hung from a post maybe six inches from Aria’s nose. The wariness was gone from her face. Instead, her expression shifted from bemused to bewildered as she tried to keep pace with the kids’ yes-and-no questions.

“Will you be staying…” Ri started.

“…with us?” finished Dene. Aria shook her head.

“You came from a long way…” Dene started.

“…away? How far?”

Aria nodded and spread her hands, unable to answer completely.

Perivar glanced through the membrane to Kiv. He was saying something soft to Ere where she lay on his shoulders. The remainder of his brood was draped across his back, whistling encouragement as their representatives tried to get information from the stranger. Kiv’s legs were retracted, but his arms and eyes were extended. He was relaxed and, Perivar was willing to bet, a little amused.

“The lines on…” began Dene, but Ri saw Perivar step into the workroom. She squeezed her sister’s mouth shut with her secondary hands while she swung her eyes toward Perivar and Eric.

Aria also turned all her attention toward them.

“I’ve set things in motion.” Perivar felt his glance slide past Aria to Kiv, who did nothing more than swivel an extra eye toward his children in the capsule. Perivar faced Eric. “Are you going to stick around and watch?”

“No,” Eric said, and Aria’s head snapped around. “I’ve got to keep moving.”

The two of them exchanged a long, uninterpretable look.

“You leave me in your debt.” Under the translation, her voice sounded stilted to Perivar, as if this was a new phrase for her.

“Pay me by not giving Perivar any extra problems.” Eric turned away from her a little too quickly. “I’ve got to go. I only authorized a day’s worth of dock time for my ship.”

Perivar nodded. “I’d rather not ever see you again, Sar Born.”

“I know.” And he walked out. Aria did not turn around to watch him leave.

The door shut and left them all closed in together. Perivar looked at Aria, who looked back at him in silence.

What do you think I am? asked Eric from memory again. It was his old voice, heavily accented and awkward. Nothing like the smoothly educated tone he’d used today.

Cargo, thought Perivar. Checked over, labeled as clean and delivered, or too dirty to fix and dumped.

Certainly not a person who would look at him like Aria was, vaguely expectant, waiting for him to do something.

“Want to sit down?” he gestured to a chair.

Her eyes tracked his hand and a puzzled expression wrinkled her brow. “Thank you…I don’t know how to call you.” The translation fell a long way out of synch with her real speech.

“Perivar,” he told her. “My partner is Kivererishakadene. Kiv’s the name you have to remember there. The rest of it belongs to the children.” Perivar nodded to the two in the capsule.

Taking that as some kind of cue, Ri raised the capsule back up to the ceiling cables and rattled back toward their own side.

Kiv stretched himself out toward the membrane. “Have you borne your children yet?”

Perivar shot Kiv a look, uncertain whether he was being really absentminded this time, or if he was trying to pay Aria back for her shocked stare by making her uncomfortable.

She sank onto the edge of the chair Perivar had offered her. “Four living,” she said quietly, and Perivar translated it for Kiv.

Kiv’s subtle ripples told Perivar he was trying to make the mental readjustment. The only thing more alien to Kiv than a male without children, was a parent who lived away from them. Even though the kids theoretically understood humans’ strange ways better, Ri and Sha piled on top of their sisters as soon as they got out of the capsule, as if the idea that a brood and parent could be separated would magically tear them away. Kiv automatically coiled himself around them, buzzing softly.

Perivar turned his back on his partner. “We need to get a blood sample,” he said to Aria, “so we can find out what we can do with you.”

“Eric told me.” She held out her arm without changing her expression.

Yeah. Perivar shook himself. Now where’d I put… No, I threw that all away. Let’s see…He pulled open a corner drawer and found a utility knife and a piece of plastic wrapper. He tossed them both in the heater and set it on sterilize.

When he turned back around, she was still holding her arm out, waiting patiently for him to draw blood.

He laid the knife against her fingertip and pressed down. The skin broke and the blood welled scarlet around the blade. Aria didn’t even flinch.

Perivar, we just got the answer. The sample’s clean. Tell the client. Perivar, sample’s no good. We’re going to have to dump ’em. Perivar, sample says they’ll be able to take it for at least a year down there. Let the client know we’re bringing them in.

He wiped her cut off with the wrapping and dropped her hand.

Perivar, I don’t think you understand what you’re doing…You’ll do what you’re told you damned barbarian or you’re dead…Try me, Skyman, just try me.

Leave me alone! he shouted to the memory voices.

Perivar taped the wrap closed around the bloody smear.

“Brain. Get a courier cart up here, on the double; I’ve got a package for Zur-Iyal at the Amaiar Gardens.” He and Iyal had never stopped sending each other things; souvenirs or jokes or small presents. One more package wasn’t going to generate any more attention, even from the watchful Vitae.

“Priority rating assigned. Request one will be completed in five minutes.” The voice from the ceiling startled Aria but not badly. Perivar slid the sample into a wrapper and dropped it into the hard mail bin. Reluctantly, he turned back to Aria.

“There’s not much for us to do until we get an answer on this. You can wait in here.” He led her into his living rooms.

Perivar picked a few old schedule printouts up off the sofa and said, “Make yourself comfortable,” before he walked out into the workroom again. He closed the door behind him.

“All right.” He strode back to the map table. “Where were we?”

“Perivar…”

Perivar touched two keys to clear a space in the corner of the display for schedule data. “I think I remember seeing that Haron Station will be supporting a six-layer open channel between…”

“Stop this.”

Startled, Perivar looked up. On the other side of the membrane, Kiv and all five of the kids stared at him, eyes and ears focused entirely in his direction. For the first time in years, that attention made his skin crawl.

Kiv glided up to the membrane. The kids slipped sideways to let their parent by.

“What are you doing, Perivar?”

He curled his hands into fists and leaned all his weight on his knuckles. “Trying to finish up the routing for packet 73-1511. What are you doing?”

Kiv closed and retracted all his eyes. “If I live a thousand lives, I will never understand your people.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“This time I mean it.” Only two of Kiv’s eyes opened and extended. “The packet can wait another few hours, Perivar. You have another responsibility that requires immediate attention.” All of his hands waved toward Perivar’s closed living rooms.

“She’s not my responsibility,” Perivar told the tabletop through clenched teeth. “I’m just moving her through.”

There was a long pause.

“So, how did you deal with…the contraband before this? When they were your responsibility?”

Perivar kept his eyes toward the map, but he saw nothing at all.

“We kept them in life-support capsules in the cargo hold. I actually spoke to maybe two others besides Eric. I told myself what we were doing didn’t matter. They’re not human, not like me, just gods-blasted-and-damned barbarians…"A red haze filled his eyes. “Better off where we take them, or better off dead. Too stupid to understand what really matters…”

“Per-efar!”

Perivar’s head jerked up. Kiv had shouted his name, the actual syllables, not the conglomeration of whistles and buzzes the translator straightened out.

“Perivar.” Kiv slapped his silicate mask over his face and glided through the membrane, leaving the kids huddled in a complex knot behind him. He filled the workroom and had to bend his body to fit between the counters and the map table. Despite that, he got close enough that Perivar could see the gel glisten on his skin. Perivar fought the urge to back away.

“What happened to you?”

Perivar felt his mouth move, but no sound was coming out. He forced his voice to speak.

“There was a revolution in Eshina. I was a communications hack and a spy on the losing side. Eshina law deports revolutionaries by selling them as indentured servants. Tasa Ad bought me up cheap. He and his sister Kessa headed up a runner team. I was…bought to work the communications transfers for them.”

Kiv’s body rippled, sending rainbows glistening down his back where the light hit the membrane gel. “And you made a bond of some sort with Eric.”

Perivar nodded. “We’d picked up Eric off his homeworld. Weird place. Crashing old world orbiting a binary star. Tasa Ad had seen him in action on the ground and decided this one we’d keep. Eric’s not his real name, I just called him that because I couldn’t get a handle on the real thing. It goes on even longer than yours does.

“He really is amazingly useful. He can…do things to machines…make them move. Make a computer run just by touching it. Tasa Ad used him as a kind of super—systems digger and we were able to expand our…activities from just contraband running.

“Eric and I got along. At least, I liked him better than I liked Tasa Ad and a lot better than I liked Kessa even though that didn’t take much. I taught him a real language, showed him how to take care of himself on the ship, told him about things outside. Played big brother a little, you understand? We became friends, almost without me noticing it’d happened. I’m not…I wasn’t used to having friends.

“Then we got a new job, a weird one. Aguy named D’Shane wanted us to steal an artificial intelligence called Dorias out of a planetary network. The money was…really good, so Tasa Ad took it on. We used Eric for most of the work, of course. He found the thing and got it loaded into the isolation box we’d built for it and we took off to hand it over to our client.

“We were two days in flight and Eric came into my cabin. He looked sick, shattered. He said ‘Perivar, is it true that the people we transport are being taken without permission?’

“I hadn’t stopped to think about it until then, but I realized Eric had no idea what was really going on. Tasa Ad kept him on a short tether when it came to network information, and I’d never spelled out anything to him. He was a volunteer and his people either have no concept of…involuntary servitude, or, it’s so different from what we did that it never occurred to him that we were kidnapping and selling unwilling bodies. I mean, yes, when Tasa Ad and Kessa got them to the ship, they were drugged out and in capsules, but that was exactly how we got him on board.

“And I’d never told him about me.

“So I said something particularly insightful, like ‘And?’ And he looked at me like he didn’t know whether to be sorry for me or kill me on the spot. After a long time he said ‘Perivar, I don’t think you understand what you’re doing. Dorias does not want to go to D’Shane.’

“‘Dorias is a machine,’ I said. ‘It does what it’s told.’

“He said ‘Dorias is a… I don’t know the word he used, but the translator turned it into ‘Well-Made Soul,’ and he said ‘I won’t hand him across to D’Shane without his consent.’ He walked out and I stayed stuck to the spot, cursing myself for an idiot.

“Then, I heard Tasa Ad yelling. I ran toward the sound. He… they… Eric… I mean… Eric, Tasa Ad, and Dorias’s box were on the bridge. Eric was at the comm board. I read his fingers. He was opening up a channel to somewhere, probably to a station, or maybe back to where we’d come from. I saw the cable on Dorias’s box and I knew Eric was getting ready to hardwire the AI into the open channel so it could get itself free.

“Tasa Ad was, of course, yelling at him to stop, and when he paused for breath, Eric simply said ‘No.’ And Tasa Ad reared up and said ‘You’ll do what you’re told, you damned barbarian, or you’re dead!’ “

“That got him. Eric whirled around and yelled, ‘Try me, Skyman, just try me!’

“Kessa came in at that point. Shoved her way past me, just as Tasa Ad lunged for Eric. She was armed. A dart gun. The cartridge was red. Serious poison.

“Tasa Ad grabbed Eric’s arm…and…collapsed. Kessa screamed something and raised the gun. I screamed something else and shoved her sideways and she pointed the gun at me and fired. Caught me in the arm. And I collapsed. And Eric grabbed her and she collapsed and Eric collapsed with her and there we all were on the deck together. The thing was, Eric and I were alive. Tasa Ad and Kessa, weren’t.”

Perivar looked up. Kiv had shrunk in on himself as far as he could go. Not a single eye showed. His arms were nearly invisible and the length of his torso rested on the floor.

“What did you do?” Kiv asked, without even opening his eyes.

“We scavenged the datastore for enough trace information to build a couple of line ghosts and steal the runner’s side ship, the U-Kenai. Then the three of us ran for it. Dorias took off on his own. Eric and I wandered around for a couple of years, stealing for people like D’Shane…once, when we got desperate, we even stole people for D’Shane. He’d blackmailed us into it. It was after that we both decided this was no way to live.” He paused. “I should have at least lost my arm from Kessa’s dart, but I didn’t. Eric took care of that, too.” A giggle escaped him. “Took him awhile, that’s for sure. Said lucky for me he’d already had practice on Skymen, so he got it eventually. He really is amazingly useful.”

Kiv extended his arms and legs so slowly it was almost painful to watch. One eyelid at a time peeled reluctantly open.

“Perivar.” Kiv leaned across and even through the gel Perivar could smell the spicy scent that surrounded the Shessel when he got upset. “I cannot live with you like this.”

“What?” Sheer disbelief ran through him.

Kiv drew his head back and up until he towered over Perivar as far as the room would allow. “My siblings and I were the last of a line of slaves in the peninsula of Si-Tuk. After the Union treaties, I came out here so that there was no chance they’d be able to claim my children if things shredded. This is important. I swore they would never, ever be exposed to the flesh trade. I belong to my children, Perivar. I cannot ignore their welfare. Your past is your own, and I will try not to care about it, but your present is very much my concern.

“End this, Perivar, or I am severing our partnership and closing our business down.”

“Kiv,” Perivar thought about turning away but couldn’t seem to manage the movement. “Nothing like this is going to happen again.”

“You don’t know that! How can you know that!” Kiv’s whistle rose so high that Perivar flinched. “You ran for this Tasa Ad, you ran for yourself, and now you’re running for Eric Born! Who next, Perivar?”

Perivar ducked his head. “Would you mind if I shut the door for a while?”

“No.” Without another word, Kiv doubled back along his own length and flowed back to his children.

Keeping his eyes on the walls, Perivar slid the membrane housing closed. It clanged sharply against the threshold before the catch snapped shut.

Perivar stalked to the other side of the room. It didn’t help any that he knew Kiv was right. He raised his hands to run them through his hair and let them fall to his side again. He circled the room aimlessly, trying to think and then trying not to think, until his sight began to fade again. Finally, he threw himself into his chair and clamped his eyes shut. He stayed that way for a long time.

Brain’s signal sounded overhead. “Zur-Iyal ki Maliad has opened a channel and labeled the contact urgent.”

Perivar groaned. “Send her through, Brain.” He keyed the watch command in just as the view screen cleared. At the other end of the line, Iyal’s face looked unnaturally white.

“Perivar. Where did you get this sample from?”

Now what kind of question…Then Perivar remembered they hadn’t used Iyal to go over Eric’s blood. “Is there something wrong?”

“Wrong, no. I just want to know where you got your hands on a construct.”

“A what?”

“A construct. A genetically engineered life-form. I’ve only seen DNA this abbreviated in theoretical texts. What did this come from? It must be kept in a damn jar!”

“It,” Perivar bit the word off, “is a woman, Iyal. Walking, breathing, and in need of a bath, actually.”

Iyal leaned forward. “You trying to get rid of her?”

“Iyal…”

“Don’t look like that. I’m not talking about for dissection. Damn-o, Perivar, she, whatever she is, is a work of art! If we could incorporate half of what’s gone into her…”

Perivar shook his head, trying to clear enough room to think in a straight line. “Iyal, I’ve been to where she comes from. It’s a degenerated culture. They’re real good at breeding sheep, but engineering a person…”

Her mouth worked back and forth silently. “That would mean she’s a descendant, and just one of a population; otherwise, this level of mutation never would have bred true, but still, you’d think there’d be more work space…”

“Work space?” said Perivar.

Iyal nodded absently, as if most of her attention was focused on another conversation. “A large portion of any DNA string is white noise. It’s got no direct impact on the organism. What it’s there for is to reduce the risk of harmful mutation. It’s Nature’s margin for error.

“When we’re tailoring genes here, we leave all, or at least most, of that extra space in, so we can make use of that same margin for error. Whoever designed this woman’s ancestors, though, didn’t feel they needed a safety net. Which means they were either phenomenally stupid, which I doubt, or so good at what they were doing that they could make even the Vitae look like apprentice pig breeders.

“Perivar, if she’s up for grabs, we’ll take her here.”

“What would the gardens’ director have to say to that?” When she didn’t answer, Perivar felt his heart freeze up. “Oh gods, Iyal, you didn’t.”

“Perivar, there are maybe fifty completely engineered people alive in the Quarter Galaxy and none of them, I mean none of them, are this fully realized. Additions and enhancements are one thing. Anybody can throw a switch. Some places can even rewire the system. But this one…whoever built her started with some proteins in a sterile dish and went from there. If we knew even half of what went into it, we could give the Vitae a run for their market, and not just on Kethran either.

“And by the way"—her voice and face hardened together—"I’m not crazy about the fact you think I’d just get her in here and run her through a processor.”

“Iyal, at this point I don’t know what you’d do.” Which just adds another name to that list. “You’re not talking like yourself.”

That took her back. “All right, all right.” She waved her hands aimlessly. “Yes, I showed my results to Director Id Shomat. I thought we had a calibration problem. I thought the chain could not be this short.

“He went over the whole thing again. We got the same results five times in a row and I told him… well, I told him. He told me to try to get… her… we were saying ‘it’ because what the hell did we know…here. What’s she need to be comfortable?”

Perivar felt his fingers curling up again and forced them to straighten out. “The usual things, Iyal. A place to stay, food, something she can do to keep from getting bored…Oh yeah, she needs some language lessons and she doesn’t know an input terminal from a hunk of brick.”

Iyal scratched her chin. “All right. The necessities we can fix her up with, and we could always use another field assistant that doesn’t need reprogramming. We could even pay her. What’s the going contract length for contraband where it’s legal?”

“Six years, supposedly. But I never saw a contraband really finish a contract. Permanent extensions are more the way it works. They can’t exactly protest to the labor authority.”

“Six years should do it, and then some. Will you release her to us?”

Perivar sat still for a while, listening to the hum of the utilities and the silence that was coming from behind the membrane housing.

“Perivar, what is with you?”

“Nothing. Plenty. Never mind, Iyal. I’ve just been hanging around Kiv too long, that’s all. Can you give me an hour? There are some things I need to clear up.”

“An hour I can give you, but not much more. Cousin Director is about ready to start eating the carpet over here.”

“All right. I’ll get things… straightened out on this end as soon as I can, Iyal.”

“I’ll be waiting. And, Perivar…” she hesitated. “I may end up owing you the favor for this. Hope to see you soon.”

“Yeah.” He shut the channel down.

“All right, Kiv. You win.” Perivar hoisted himself to his feet and knocked on his living room door.

No answer came, so Perivar pushed the door aside. Aria sat on the sofa with her face to the door, but she did not look up. Her eyes were closed, and her hands were cupped around a small white sphere that gleamed in the light that shone through the windows.

“Aria Stone?” Perivar approached her carefully. Now he could see two more spheres resting on a bright green swath of fabric next to her.

She didn’t move. Perivar laid his hand on her shoulder.

“Aria?”

Aria blinked once and lifted her eyes. She searched his face without any sign of comprehension. Her pupils had dilated until her brown irises were nothing but a narrow band around two black holes.

“Are you all right?” He lifted his hand away.

She licked her lips and slowly, slowly focused on his face. “Yes. I am.” She shook her shoulders and dropped the stone onto the fabric on the sofa. It made a sharp click as it hit the others. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you…I…” She started wrapping the cloth around her spheres.

“You were meditating?” Perivar suggested uncertainly. Even from where he stood, he could see her hands shaking, and she moved with deliberate overcaution, as if she were exhausted, or drunk.

“I don’t understand that word,” she said. “I was…thinking. Putting all the things I have seen into place.” She fumbled with the cloth and, after several tries, managed to knot the ends together. Her eyes, he noticed, had returned to normal, but the expectant trust she had shown before was buried.

“If I interrupted something personal, I’m sorry,” said Perivar. “Eric never told me much about the religious customs in the Realm.”

“It’s all right.” Aria leaned her arm against the sofa’s back and stared out the window. “I should have waited until I was more settled.” She laid one hand on the windowpane and fixed her gaze on the street. Her discarded headcloth still lay on the couch, and an untidy braid of black hair hung down between slumped shoulders.

Perivar looked past her to the scene outside. There wasn’t much to see. Because it was a terraformed world, most of Kethran’s cities were the result of meticulous planning. The process made for the efficient use of space but did not necessarily produce splendid views. The stone and polymer walls of the warehouses blocked out the horizon in one direction and the park in the other. To Perivar, the view looked more like a canyon than a street. Which was, he realized, why Aria was staring at it so hungrily.

“Just got an answer for you,” he said. “Let me know if I say something you don’t understand…”

“Just tell me,” she said wearily. “I will understand.” She added something under her breath that he didn’t catch.

Perivar felt his eyebrows arch, but he said, “All right.”

He told her about Iyal’s offer. She let him keep talking until he was done and not once did she take her gaze from his face.

“What do you think?” Perivar asked finally.

“I think"—Aria toyed with the end of her headcloth—"that my decision to go over the World’s Wall was beyond reckless. It was, in fact, stupid.”

“I can arrange for you to go home easily enough.” With one twenty-word call to the labor authorities, in fact.

Aria wound the black cloth between her scarred fingers. “If I return now, I, at the very least, am dead. I should not have left, I should have found some way…” She looked at the backs of her hands. “But this is less than useless. Do we leave for this ‘Amaiar Gardens’ place now?”

“Only if you want to go.”

She gave him a crooked, half smile. “I want the skills it will buy me. If I have to surrender a few drops of blood every so often for that, then"—she shrugged—"it will be worth it. Tell me, though, are you Skymen all so interested in each others’ blood?”

Perivar began to wonder what she was hearing through the translator. “Not usually,” he admitted. “Listen, Sar Stone, I want you to be clear on one thing. Once you leave here, you leave here. I don’t ever want to have to hear your name again, all right?”

For a moment, he thought she was going to ask him why, but she didn’t. She said, “I don’t care to risk anyone’s skin but my own.”

“Glad to hear it,” Perivar said: “We should go now.” He stood aside to let her pass.

It’s a decent beginning, he told himself. The beginning of an end, Kiv. And this time, I’ll make it stick. Perivar laid two ringers over his heart and watched Aria’s straight back as she walked unafraid through his door. I swear it.

Kelat was not the first to exit the shuttle, or even the twenty-first. He did not care. The hard-packed dirt that pressed unevenly against the soles of his boots belonged to the Home Ground. The ruins that stood out knife-edged in the sunlight, despite the filters on his faceplate, had been inhabited by the Ancestors. And if they were broken and sagging, and pitted by thirty centuries of dust and radiation, they still waited for the descendants of their makers. Those descendants who now walked under a black sky and tried to come to grips with the fact that they were home.

The thin wind he couldn’t even feel through his suit blew more dust onto the drifts that piled up against what used to be a building’s wall. The cement had been sheered off at about the level of Kelat’s waist, leaving behind a rectangle that must have been half a kilometer on a side. Inside it, rubble lay in heaps, broken by burn craters, which in turn were being filled with yet more dust. Here and there clusters of girders, blackened by time, pushed their jagged fingers out of the dust, as if to see the outlandishly colored forms of the First Company as the Vitae spread out between them at a steadily increasing pace, like children left alone in a new park.

A dozen voices rang around the inside of Kelat’s helmet, and his comparison of his Beholden and the committees to children settled more firmly inside him. All detachment had been suspended for the moment, even though six Witnesses in their green containment suits filtered through the gesticulating teams of techs and Historians, storing everything they saw for the memory.

What they saw were lumps of nameless materials, black, brown, and rust red, and clear silver. They saw dust, everywhere. They saw a world that was scarred, maimed, cratered, ungainly, and old beyond description. But everything they saw was theirs. Their home.

Kelat squinted at the horizon. It was impossible to tell whether the hills in the distance were more ruins or were actual geologic formations. He turned, shuffling around until he saw the black hulk of the mountains that sheltered the artifacts. There was no mistaking them. They stretched farther on each side than his eyes could see. Even though there was not enough air left to support clouds, he could arch his back as far as physically possible and still not see their tops. They pierced the vacuum.

In less than a week, the children of the Lineage would be on both sides of those mountains. Kelat wet his lips. Avir was a confirmed believer in the Assembly’s stance, but a capable and dedicated Contractor. She would be going down with the Second Company into the populated regions. What she would find there…there was no telling, yet. Jahidh’s last message had not been good. But Basq had found a way to trace the loose artifacts. Although Basq would have been horrified to hear it, that meant there was still a chance to bring the situation under control. That they would have to do it under Avir’s nose saddened him a bit.

Is now the time for this? Kelat chided himself. You are walking on the Home Ground! Your job is to help coordinate this great work and you can’t even coordinate your own thoughts!

“Contractor Kelat.” Kelat became aware that one of the voices in his helmet was calling his name. “Contractor Kelat?”

“Kelat here.” He touched a key on his wrist terminal to lay a display grid over the landscape his eyes saw. Each Vitae became targeted by a pinprick of gold light. He swung his gaze back and forth until one pinprick turned red.

“Historian-Beholden Baiel, Contractor,” said the voice. “I think you need to see this.” An anonymous figure in a Historian’s grey suit stood beside a gleaming pillar that was twice as tall as he was and waved at him.

“I’m coming, Beholden.” Minding his footing, Kelat picked his way through the mounds of dust and wreckage to Baiel’s side.

The Beholden didn’t even see him arrive. His attention was totally fastened on the cylindrical pillar.

Kelat studied it. For a moment, all he saw were its surprisingly smooth sides that glinted in the harsh daylight. The top was ragged, like the wall of the ruined building they had landed beside. Indistinct shadows played across it from…

Kelat blinked, and looked again. No. The shadows weren’t moving across the surface, they drifted inside the pillar itself. Kelat pressed his faceplate against the pillar’s side. The pillar reflected his face back at him and he saw his own wide eyes and undignified, slack-jawed surprise. Beyond that, under whatever silicate, or polymer, or glass this was, something shifted. A blob of shadow the size of Kelat’s head flowed slowly toward the pillar’s uneven top and hung there for a moment. Then it drew its soft edges in toward its center and began to swim, or fly, or creep back toward the bottom.

“Blood of my ancestors,” he whispered. “Blood of my ancestors.”

An irrational voice in the back of his head wondered if that might not very well be true.