Daughter of Time 1: Reader (13 page)

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled. 
—Plutarch

The next few weeks found my body healing, and my sense of self returning to me once again. I was still thinner than I ever had been, and the sight of food always made me sick to my stomach. Memories of that horror still are with me. I forced myself to eat, because whatever had happened, whatever my life meant anymore from my old perspectives, the words I had heard after waking on the Xixian ship had struck a deep chord. I didn’t know who or what I was anymore, nor did I know what I could possibly want from this existence, but if I could make a difference, if I could help
turn the tide
in a universe I felt had indeed gone very wrong, then that is what I wanted to do. Perhaps in that I might find something for myself. But even if I didn’t, I had to live and see what my role might be.

Most of the other humans who had been on the smuggler death-ship with me had been removed to another place, off-ship. Only a few remained, I think chosen by the Xix for their Reader powers, as well as to keep me, their prized hope, from being isolated from my own kind. I became more and more grateful for this as time went on. While the Xix were gentle and kind, if always sharp with their probing, they were fundamentally alien. Even their smells offended some deep part of my primitive instincts. To have other humans around in this alien environment helped keep me sane.

We all worked together with the Xix. First, we were used to help pilot this craft. The Xixian ship was so different than those of the smugglers or the Sortax. Their architectural lines were so elegant, flowing, yet not wasteful. The other ships seemed thrown together by comparison, walls, floors, doors thoughtlessly and crudely assembled, showing signs of decay and impermanence. The Xixian ship seemed ageless, as if it had been made yesterday and would never show sign of wear.

Xixian navigators were onboard, but when we were brought to the navigation pods—small, womb-like boxes as unlike the stalls on the smuggler ship as I could imagine—the native navigators gave way for the humans. We were instructed to help pilot the ship on a strange and roundabout course. Thel, who was ever at my side during my time on the ship, explained that they sought unpredictable and less-traveled paths through the Orb String Tree, as they called the many branching and reconnecting paths of the hyperspace portals. Planets rarely visited by the Dram. Places where their ship would not be searched.

I wondered at this, as I could find no reason why the Dram should be after us. After all, it was only the Xix that had thought me of any value in this alien universe. The Dram had examined me, branded me, and auctioned me off to the lowest of extraterrestrial life. As time went on, I came to understand that it was because of the Resistance. Some of the high-ranking members had to be onboard this ship. That’s why they needed such secrecy. Well, the last place I wanted to be was with the Dram again, so I did all I could to help steer us as the Xix wished. And for several months, we never saw signs of any other vessel. The transit times were on the order of several days per hyperspace jump. Unlike the smugglers, we took our time, and the Xix planned each step carefully. They also did not wish to tire us too greatly by using us as navigators, although the work was hardly much compared to what I had known. Instead, they wished us to focus our energies on the training and tests they lined up for us day after day.

Unlike the tests on Earth, or in the Sortax training ship, the Xix tests were much deeper, more challenging, and, as I came to understand, much more instructional in nature. Very soon, I had gone so far beyond the other human Readers that I got my own time, private lessons if you will, with Thel and some of the other Xix Readers and scientists. While I was clearly the subject of their tests, I never felt like a lab rat in their cages. Instead, it felt more like they were my teachers and I their student. I mentioned this to Thel, who seemed surprised that I was confused about something that seemed so obvious to them.

“Ambra, what good will you be to yourself, or us, or others, if you are not nurtured to become truly yourself? We of Xix cannot see an object only as a means to an end, but instead as a seed that must be nourished to become.”

“To become what?”

“What it was meant to be.”

Sounds cheesy, I admit, but these bizarre-looking things really meant what they said.

For the first time in my life, someone began to try to explain what it was that I was doing, what I was
seeing
, in the way all Readers
saw
. I was constantly amazed at the Xixian translators, which somehow pulled out of thin air the simple human words for ideas in math and physics I knew must be much more complicated in Xixian thought. Thel confirmed this for me.

“I will try to explain, Ambra, but you must remember that human language, even human thought, is far more primitive than Xixian. I don’t say this to insult you, but to let you know that the words you hear are simplifications, and because so, distortions of the truth. But it is the best we have at our disposal.”

I nodded, sitting patiently in the place I called the Practice Room, where every day, twice a day for several hours, I had my private lessons.

“I was trying yesterday to explain your Reader vision. Calling it
vision
is a good analogy, because like vision, or smell, or hearing, or taste, it is a sense. It is a part of your body interacting with the world around you in a way that gives you information. But it is also a poor word, tying you to a concept that distorts the information you are receiving, just like explaining sight in terms of hearing would be. When you
Read
, Ambra, your neural organ, that growth you call a tumor, is sensitive to particles like your eyes. Not photons, but particles that carry information about space and time. We might call them something like what your physicists call gravitons, if those were real particles that described the physics of our universe. But the gravitons you detect are of a different nature than Earth physics comprehends at present, yet they carry information of the fields of space and time just as photons do of the electromagnetic world.”

Physics
. I wished I had explored it much more carefully in my searches of the past.

“What is important to understand is that space and time are always changing, in flux, like electricity and magnetism. Your ideas about them are very primitive ones, and your recent physics of the last two hundred years on Earth has only barely scratched the surface of their complexity. But like you once could see the world, what had happened, and what would happen, with your eyes, so you can see such things with your tumor. More directly.”

“It doesn’t feel like that.”

“No, just like it doesn’t
feel
like that to
see
. Seeing gravitons isn’t like some abstract particle physics diagram. When you were sighted, nearly every moment of your waking day, you were detecting photons, bundles of electromagnetic energy, quanta, wave-particles dualities—light. You didn’t see the physics. You
were
the physics, and your mind experienced the powerful green of an Earth plant, the churning froth of flowing water, the diamond pinpricks of stars in the night blackness. These are experiences that shaped your emotions, your thoughts, your actions. Photons. That is something like the way a Reader can
see
gravitons, and yet as different from sight as sight is from smell. But no different in that it is experienced, extending into all areas of our awareness, our creativity, our dreams. We have a sense others don’t have and can’t really imagine. It’s like explaining sight to a person blind from birth.”

“Why can’t I see the future like I can the past?”

“You can. That is how you navigate the ships, seeing the lines of possible connection.”

“But I
can’t
see the future like the past! The past I can see in detail. The future—when I do, it’s like a dream. So many dreams
.
I don’t even know if they are real.”

“And you know the past is real?”

“I learn things that I find out are true.”

“And so you will with your future dreams. You must begin to tell us of your dreams, Ambra. They may be very important.”

“But I can choose to see into the past, search it, grab details, go where I want.”

“We believe that soon you will learn to do this with the future as well.”

When they weren’t trying to explain what it was about, they were training me to see farther, faster, and with more detail. Most of that work focused on the future. Already, I pretty much could ace anything that they threw at me for reading the past. In fact, I know I could see things that their test couldn’t pick up. But I was clumsy with the future, always going forward and then falling back. I was frustrated, and uneasy. As before, it was Thel who helped me understand why.

“You stumble not because you cannot, but because you
will
not.”

“I will not what?”

“Ambra, you are afraid.”

I sat quietly with this. The truth of it sunk in deep. I knew Thel was right. Always, when I began to peer over the edge of the Now and began to glimpse that giant landscape of what was to come, shimmering like a city at night, I could see the shapes of things I knew, and many I did not. Out there, in the middle of it, were forms of me. Whenever I began to sense them, I felt the landscape snap back and away, my vision darken, and I would lose focus.

“Why am I afraid?”

“You are afraid because you fear what you will see, of what will come to be. But your fear is misplaced.”

“But I am afraid, Thel.”

“You are afraid to see yourself in the future.”

“Yes.”

“You cannot.”

“But I can! I can see shapes…”

“Shapes. Have you ever tried to focus on those shapes?”

“No, I withdraw before I do, without even thinking of it or realizing.”

“Ambra, no matter how hard you try, even if you overcome your fear, you cannot see the details of your future.”

“So, the future can only be seen in general terms?”

“No, that is not what I said. We believe that you will be able to see many details, of many lives, just not your own.”

“Why not my own?”

“Few Readers have ever been able to see much about the future. Those who have seen the future always failed to see themselves. We of Xix believe we understand why. You have begun to study physics in earnest. Do you know the Uncertainty Principle?”

“Something about not being able to know where something is and how fast it’s going?”

“That is an example. The general principle involves the effect of the experimenter on the measured. You cannot detect something with high detail without putting energy into the system, for example, using electromagnetic waves to visualize slides in a microscope or atoms with X-rays. The more precise you try to be, the more detail you seek, the more you disturb the system just by measuring it. Try to determine where an atom is exactly, and you add energy to it and speed it up. Try to measure its speed, and you lose track of exactly where it is. You can’t have all the information in the system. Therefore, you can only know facts at a certain level of uncertainty. Information is blurred. A version of this applies when Readers try to determine their own place in space-time.”

“Can
you
see my future then, Thel?”

“I have tried, as have other Readers on the ship. We cannot. Your mind casts such strong distortions into space-time that it is impossible to Read too close to you in the future.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Ambra, that you have powers even we do not yet fully comprehend.”

This triggered something in my mind. The Xix didn’t understand everything. More than most, or so I was led to believe (and so I was to see verified in my experience and my past searches). But like other creatures, even they did not understand the Orbs. They used them, but like the rest, used only what seemed to be the overflow of power from those mysterious spheres. I had felt the depth and power in them. Something more than anything I had ever experienced. More and more I was drawn to them or, rather, to what lay within them.

“Thel, what are the Orbs?”

Thel was silent for a moment, its eyestalks dancing around. After a few minutes, I thought that it would not answer me, or that perhaps I had offended. When it spoke, it was deeply serious, almost with tones of awe.

“You have made the right connection in this conversation, subconsciously, I am sure. The Orbs. They are great wonders that all species have studied, and still study, and yet which remain mysterious even to us. Do you ever wonder why it is that they are found only near planets with life, and mostly intelligent life?”

I had to admit I had not.

“It is much more than curious, Ambra. The Orbs are not natural objects like stars, nebulae, or planets. They are artificial, built several billion years ago for a purpose which lies locked within them.”

“Built? By who?”

“This is a great mystery. We do not know. Whatever intelligence made them is beyond anything that we currently know in our galaxy – far, far more developed than anything within the Hegemony, even more than we Xix.” I could almost detect a smile again in the tones of the voice.

“We of Xix believe that they were meant as portals. Not for the crude use we make of them, but for something more profound. And we also believe that their presence near sentient worlds is not coincidence but is causal.”

I felt a strange feeling deep inside my stomach. “Causal?”

“The Dram consider this a dangerously threatening line of thought, Ambra. It threatens their rule, their power in the galaxy. But we believe that something far older than all of us, as old as the Orbs, and which made them, also was instrumental in the evolution of life, and intelligent life in particular, on all the worlds near an Orb. Most call them the Ancient Ones. We affectionately call them the Gardeners.”