Alien Honor (A Fenris Novel) (6 page)

“The chances are good the cyborgs never went there—if indeed they even built another proto-Teleship. But they could be there, and that’s important to consider. Cyborgs take humans and strip them of humanity to create machine-man melds. It is a terrible fate. We go there for two reasons, the first greater than the second. The first reason is to colonize two beautiful worlds. The second reason is to see if mankind’s grimmest foe has indeed survived and rebuilt a technological base there.

“This will be the voyage of a lifetime, and it could prove to be the battle of a lifetime, too. Naturally, few consider the prospect of meeting cyborgs in what appears a pristine system. I urge you to agree to join this voyage only if you’re willing to face the possibility of cyborgs. We need stout hearts and powerful Specials on this trip, and we will carry a most precious cargo: fifty thousand of Sol’s bravest people.”

Captain Nagasaki scanned the crowd. “Now, your headmaster was kind enough to say this was a privilege for him and his students to hear me speak in person. It is very much a privilege for me to be here. I would like to field any questions you might have.”

Hands rose immediately, and Specials began to question the great captain. Cyrus was content to listen.

He found it interesting that Nagasaki had listed only two possibilities upon reaching New Eden: one, that they would find a pristine star system with two untouched, Earth-like planets and two, they would find cyborgs. There was a third possibility: that they might meet aliens other than cyborgs. Jasper said these aliens might help rid them of the inhibitors. Would it be traitorous to humanity for he and Jasper to seek alien help like that?

What would Spartacus have done? Would the former gladiator have accepted alien help against the Roman legions? Cyrus nodded. Of course Spartacus would have accepted help.

There was a gnawing doubt, though. Cyrus had learned the hard way that nothing came free. There was always a cost—always. If aliens existed in New Eden who could help them get rid of the inhibitors, what would the aliens demand as payment?

It was a question worth some serious consideration.

5

FENRIS SYSTEM
(230 LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH)

The boy Klane had turned into a brooding young man of the Tash-Toi. He had looked upon the Mountain that was a Machine one other time. He had been in the company of the seeker then too.

Klane wasn’t like others of the clan. He was curious about nearly everything. Why couldn’t they fashion iron knives for themselves? The hetman had one and so did the champion Cletus. Those knives were heirlooms, long ago stolen from demons. If demons made them, why couldn’t a flint smith? Why did the gat travel north for the winter and how exactly did its wings allow it to fly in the air?

The young men Klane’s age spoke about stalking game animals, women, and raiding other clans. Otherwise, they were a dour lot unless drunk. While drunk, any warrior could be dangerously foul or very merry. There was no telling which, although Klane constantly sought for a clue.

The young men Klane’s age were similar to each other. They were brown-skinned, dark-haired and uniformly thick with muscles. They carried flint knives, bone-tipped spears, and wore the cured skin or leather of the vargr. Each could run many miles without panting or gasping. Their lungs had no trouble breathing the upland desert air. Nor did they bleed easily when cut by sharp rocks.

Klane had pasty white skin and was nearly as thin as the seeker. He gasped if he ran too hard and his lungs lacked staying power. Worse, the cold air forced
him to bundle up like a pregnant woman. Otherwise, his teeth chattered until his jaws and teeth ached.

It made him sick with grief being so weak. In his younger years, he had fought and wrestled with the others his age. He’d even won a few matches by clouting a stronger boy with a rock or using a cunning trick taught him by the seeker.

None of the warriors included him in the wrestling matches these days. In the matches, the warriors decided who would eat the choice meat or gain the charm of a viable female. The hetman had forbidden Klane from carrying a spear or shield. He was allowed a flint knife, but only to help him fashion bark lanterns or eat his portion of food.

There were only two other choices now for Klane, since the warriors had excluded him from their company. He could leave as an outcast, game for the hunters. Or he could become the seeker’s journeyman.

After a year of attempting to fashion a junction-stone, polishing, oiling, and empowering it, he’d failed to make any stone work. It meant he could never be a seeker. Without junction-stones…

“I am a failure,” he told the seeker.

The old man sat cross-legged before his hide tent. The winds howled across the upper plateau, blowing bits of red sand. In the distance, a gat soared in the air. The seeker wore vargr leather and seemed unaffected by the cold. The moon was high in the sky today, filling half of it with its bright, banded colors.

Klane crouched before the seeker. He was wrapped in thick furs and wore a woolen hat like a woman. He would have preferred to sit near a fire, but the warriors would have howled in laughter at him because of his garments and he could not bear it.

“Why can’t I fashion a junction-stone?” Klane asked.

“Let me see yours.”

Klane dug in his furs to his secret place. He took out a bark container, twisting it until he withdrew a bolt of cloth. It was damp with vargr oil. He unwrapped the cloth and produced a small black stone. It was smooth like an egg and wet with the oil.

“May I touch it?” the seeker asked.

Klane hesitated, then he thrust his hand forward.

With a single finger, the old man touched the stone. He didn’t flinch, nor did his arm wither. Klane’s carefully worked curses were powerless. What made it unbearable was watching the seeker. The old man’s lips stretched into a smile.

Angrily, Klane withdrew the stone. He almost hurled the junction-stone from him. Instead, he wrapped it, put it in the container, and shoved it back into his secret place.

“I sense you’re upset,” the seeker said.

“You mocked my stone,” Klane muttered.

“You’re a foolish apprentice. But that is the way of young men. What troubles me is that you’re stupid, too.”

Klane’s eyes narrowed. Although he had learned to hide it, he hated insults.

“Do you wish to challenge me?” the seeker asked.

“You’re the only friend I have.”

“Ah, poor, lonely Klane, he sulks in his furs and wishes he could be powerful like a warrior. He never once realizes that he has far more potential than any of them.”

“Your mockery stings, Seeker.”

“And your continued sulking has begun to weary me. Go,” the old man said, with a wave of his stick-like fingers.

“Go where?”

“Anywhere but near me,” the seeker replied.

Klane hunched his shoulders. He hated mockery, having endured it his entire life. He’d become used to the young warriors insulting him. Receiving this from the seeker…

“Why did you smile when touching my stone?”

“What?” the old man said. “You’re asking me an intelligent question? Are you feeling feverish?”

“I am your journeyman, Seeker.”

“Do you remember the Mountain that is a Machine?”

“I dream of it all the time.”

“I’m not surprised. You must pack… hmm, three of your best lanterns. Then you must gather jerky for a trek.”

“We’re going to the mountain?”

“No. We’re going under it.”

“When?” asked Klane.

The seeker struggled to his feet and turned to his small tent. “We’ll leave as soon as you’ve gathered the needed items. Now hurry before I change my mind.”

The trek took six days of struggle and two of scaling downward toward the Valley of the Demons. The roar of the Mountain that was a Machine became a constant thunder. The billowing vapors roiling skyward amazed Klane every time he looked at the smokestacks sticking out of the mile’s long terraforming building.

Finally, the seeker showed him a natural entrance to a cave under the Great Machine. It was a dark hole, with coral grass sprouting from the rocks around it. The place was colder here than on the plateau and water dripped from the rocks and boulders.

As the sun sank below the jagged range, the two squeezed through the opening. Inside, the cave seemed vast and ancient, full of terrible wonder.

“Give me a lantern,” the seeker said.

Klane removed one of the bark lanterns from his pack, handing it to the old man.

The seeker moved his hand across his belt, and he held a blue junction-stone. He rubbed the stone and whispered in the High Speech. Then he pointed at the lantern and a flame burst into existence upon the oil-soaked wick.

“Spontaneous combustion,” the seeker told Klane, naming the spell. “Now, you must follow me as I try to remember the path.”

“You’ve been here before?” Klane asked.

“That is a foolish question, as I’ve already implied I have been.”

Klane nodded, too awed at this place to feel bad at the reprimand.

For a time they journeyed deeper into the cavern. A faint thrum began and increased the farther they went. The seeker stopped where the thrum was loudest and he spoke a word.

The flickering light in the lantern increased until Klane sucked in his breath in astonishment. He spied huge columns of polished metal. The columns were five times the thickness of the hetman, the biggest warrior of Clan
Tash-Toi. Klane noticed that the columns were sunk into rock. Perhaps as interesting, they were etched triangles that went up and down the columns in strict rows.

“Is this part of the terraforming machine?” Klane asked.

“That is a prudent question, and the answer is no. This is older by a millennium. In fact, I believe it is older than the demons.”

“Why is it near the Great Machine?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is the purpose of the columns?”

“Purposes are important. A seeker should attempt to discover each thing’s use. What the columns did, I don’t know. What they do for me… yes, I do know that.”

“What do they do for you?”

“Provide magical power,” the seeker whispered.

Klane wrenched his gaze from the metal columns, staring at the old man.

“Squat, young journeyman. Open your mind to the singing gods. Listen to their words and let their power flow through you.”

“Like a junction-stone?” Klane asked.

The seeker nodded.

Klane sat on a cold rock, closed his eyes, and let his chin touch his chest. He opened his mind and suddenly he felt it. To Klane, it was like the time Grad had thrown him into an icy stream during the spring flood. The singing gods—if that’s what they were—swept him along in a fierce mental current. Klane struggled, his mind seemingly gurgling for air. A whisper from the seeker’s mind touched him, urging him to relax, to bob along. Klane dampened his fear, trying to feel what occurred. He heard a soft moaning like a mother for her lost child. He tried to decipher the god words, but could not.

“Journeyman!”

Vaguely, Klane felt someone shaking him. His teeth rattled. He unglued his eyes and turned to the seeker.

“You’ve finally come back,” the old man said. “Did you hear the gods?”

“I think so.”

The old man grinned. “Your lantern has burned out while you’ve listened. I had to use another.”

Klane was shocked.

“Carry us out,” the seeker ordered.

“What?”

“Do it, Klane. Use the power you’ve collected.”

Klane heard a strain in the old man’s voice. The buzzing in his head still made him groggy.

“Think it,” the seeker whispered.

Klane thought about the entrance, the coral grass around it. He blanked out, and there was a ripping sound and the feeling of rushing air. He swayed, opened his eyes, and found himself standing before the cave entrance.

It was a miracle, and he stared at the opening until he felt something wet on his lip. He wiped it and found red—blood—on his skin. He had a nosebleed.

“What happened?” Klane whispered. “How did we get here?”

“When you’re older, I will explain it. Until then, we will never speak of it again.”

“Can I fashion a junction-stone now?” Klane asked.

“Do you believe you can?”

Klane thought about it. “Yes,” he said.

“There is your answer,” the seeker said. “Come. It is time to begin the journey home.”

6

Cyrus ran along a road in the hot sun. It was the middle of the afternoon, almost one hundred degrees. He wore shorts and running shoes, and his lean, steely-muscled torso glistened in the light.

He liked running in the heat of the day. It made him sweat. Afterward, he drank glass after glass of cool lemonade. He would sit then and totally relax. He could never have done this in the slums. He had run often then, but from danger, from Red Blades, usually.

He liked being fit, strong, and he liked the freedom of the institute. He liked the outdoors most of all. Ninety-nine percent of the people on Earth lived underground. What a hideous existence. Soon, though, this freedom, this spaciousness of living on an empty Mediterranean island would end. He would begin his life of service powering the DW shift technology. He would live on ships, inside steel corridors likely for the rest of his active life. The idea of it made him squirm, and it lengthened his stride.