Firechild (33 page)

“Thank you. Thank you, sir!” Thinking about five million dollars, he forgot Blackie Harris. “I’ll get it done.”

38

Little Sister

S
he had left her body because it hurt too much. The thread that tied her to it frayed thin with pain, and she drifted now in a dark and dreadful emptiness. Panchito was somewhere far away, doing what he could to tend her broken body and sad because he knew no more to do.

While he slept on the bed of good-smelling tree limbs, she had touched his mind long enough to dip into a dream. It had been a happy dream of San Rosario, in which she came back with him to his happy
familia
in the small mud town, which was still the way it had been that happy time so long ago when he was only a
ninito.
The dream had vanished when he woke, and her link to him was broken.

She had touched Sax once, soon after the
avión
fell. Lying broken with Panchito among the broken parts, she needed Sax. Reaching back through the dark, she found him in the far
carcel,
sleeping from poisons of the mind the gringos were pouring into his blood.

His mind was still alive, and she brought him for a little while to the place of the accident. He was able to teach her what she must do help Panchito heal himself, but Sax had no knowledge to aid her own body’s healing. Only the dear Vic, who shaped it, had ever known its nature and its ways of working, and Vic was dead. She knew no skills to tend herself.

Since Sax awoke, that last link snapped, she had been lost in the dark. In spite of Panchito’s anxious care, the thread to her own poor body was worn too thin to last. When it was gone, there would be only the empty dark, with nothing anywhere she could ever reach or see.

A cold and heavy sadness wrapped her.

Longing for Vic or Panchito or Sax, she thought she was more alone than they could ever be. They had all been born from fathers and mothers. Vic and Sax had grown up together, sometimes fighting but always loving each other. Vic had loved his Jeri, who smiled when he came home and called the lab when he was late.

In the prison, she had found Sax dreaming of his Midge, who once had been his beloved
esposa.
Even poor Panchito, growing up long ago in that dark little adobe
casita,
had loved and been loved by
la madre
and
el padre
and
sus hermanitos.

She yearned for kinship. It was a joy she could never know, because no other being would ever be like her. She had no father, no mother, no brothers or sisters or kindred. No mate for her had ever existed. Alone forever, she could have no children to love her or be loved.

Lost in that dark nothingness, she clung to recollections of love. The dear Vic, loving her at first because he loved his grand dream of what he wanted her to be and then because he felt her love, Vic had been her father and her mother. Though the dear Sax and the poor Panchito had been strangers at first, who might have hated her for being strange, she had found the spark in them that she could kindle into devotion.

But she was not human. She had never been meant to be. Panchito and Sax had been troubled and sometimes frightened by her strangeness. Now even they were gone. Dying alone, never doing or even knowing the great work Vic had planned her for, she was useless, her life-spark wasted.

“Little—little sister?” She caught the voice calling from somewhere in the blackness. It was far away and very slow, because it had to wait while it searched for words in her. “Where—where are you, little sister?”

Trembling, she fled from it, away into the dark.

“Little sister?” The voice was far behind and very faint. “We feel you somewhere, little sister. We may seem strange to you, but you must not be afraid. We search for you with love.”

She wanted to answer, because the voice seemed so tender, yet she had no strength to speak, no way even to know or say where she was. Listening, she waited to hear it again.

“Little sister? Answer—answer if you can!”

She tried to speak, but no voice came.

“Where are you, little sister?”

“Here—” She was gaining strength from its glow of love. “Here I am.”

“Wait for us!”

She waited, and a shining thing came out of the darkness. It had no shape she had known, though the wings of it made her think of the
mariposa
she had chased one morning when it fluttered across the garden where Panchito had kept her hidden from the gringos. It had no color she had seen, but it was brighter than
el arco iris
he had once pointed out, that great bridge of light bent across the blue rain-curtain beneath a thundering cloud.

“Who—” The strangeness and the beauty of it shook her voice. “What are you?”

“You have no words for what we are.”

“Are you
de fuego?”
She tried not to be afraid. “I see you shining like
el fuego en la noche.
Like lire in the night.”

“If you see us as fire, we are fire.” It seemed happy with the word. “You may call us the people of fire.”

“I am Meg,” she said. “Alphamega.
El querido
Vic gave me that name. Do you have a name?”

“None that you have learned to say. You may call us—” She felt it touch her mind. “Call us Elder Brother.”

“Hóla!”
She wanted to smile. “Hello, Elder Brother.”

“Hello, dear Meg.” It brushed her with its wings, and she felt a glow of love. “We have come to find you because we felt your troubles. We welcome you to live with us, if you can live without your body and leave it where it is.”

“No! No! Nunca!”
Her voice came like a whisper. “I must not leave it to die alone. Without it, I can never finish the work Vic created me to do. I must not die!”

“Never fear us, little sister. We will never harm or hinder you.”

“Can you—can you help me?”

“We wish we could.” She heard sadness in the voice. “But your world is unknown to us. We cannot reach it, even to help you save your body. You must learn to live without it. Why should your old world matter to you now?”

“Because of what the great Vic planned me for.” Her voice seemed to flicker in the dark like a candle in the wind. “He told me he had shaped me to help that poor world because he loved it. Men around him were making bad mistakes. He tried to warn them, but their blunders destroyed his dream. He died in the lab before he ever told me what I am to do. Now nobody knows.

“A menos que
—” Looking again at the being of fire, she felt the warmth of goodness. “Unless you know how to teach me.”

The dancing colors dimmed.

“We have no way to see your world.” The voice seemed saddened. “Though we had felt the glow of your mind, we could not feel or reach you while you were in your body. We cannot tell you what your task is, but we can give you new strength and understanding if you will come with us.”

“Can I ever return to wake my body and learn the work Vic meant me for?”

“Perhaps,” Elder Brother said. “If you grow strong enough. If your body lives. If you can find the way.”

“Take me. Show me your land.”

“We have no land.”

“Cómo?”
The rainbow wings were reaching to touch her, but she shrank away, afraid of their strangeness. “How can that be?”

“We know of land,” he told her. “Many of us were born on worlds not too different from your own. We are those who learned to leave them.”

“I—” She trembled. “I have never learned.”

“Let us teach you. Let us lead you.”

His fire-wings wrapped her, warm with love, and their power moved her fast and far. When they slowed again, great new stars were blazing in the darkness, more glorious than
las estrellas
that Panchito used to show her over the garden at night. One seemed nearer than the rest. They swam toward it. She saw that it was not a star, but a spinning pool of fire.

The wonder of it dazzled her. It was brighter than the sun and flat like a plate. Close to the center, it whirled very fast. Farther out, more slowly. The colors of it were very strange, like none she had known, and more splendid than the rainbow.

She felt afraid again.

“We are safe, little sister. Nothing here can harm you.”

“It seems very terrible.” She trembled again, and the bright wings wrapped her. “I thought it was a star. Panchito says the stars are terrible fires, like great
bombas
far in the sky.”

“Once it was a star.” His voice felt warm and calm. “A very great star, greater than your sun. When most of its burning stuff was gone, the star exploded. The shell was blown away. The core fell in upon itself, making something so heavy that it cannot, be seen, because its rays cannot escape. The fire you see comes from broken atoms falling into that dark heart. Perhaps it is a terrible thing, but it also feeds our lives.”

They came nearer. The disk of fire spread very large and very bright, even more terrible now since she knew that it could eat a star. She began to find new points of light flying like moths all around it.

“Our city,” the bright being said. “Your own city now, if you wish to stay.”

The city had no land beneath it, no houses like those she had known. She saw flying bubbles of something like glass, shimmering with colors she had never seen. She saw other shining shapes she had no names for. Some were joined together; others floated all alone.

“The children of fire.” He moved a blazing wing to point them out. “Your own people now, if you will stay.”

She found the children of fire. They made small swarms like
las abejas,
the bees that had come buzzing one day to a tree near the garden. They moved faster than bees on their own shining wings, which had more splendor than the
mariposa’s
wings. Some looked like Elder Brother. Others were different. All of them changed as they flew. Some came from far away, diving toward the fire as if they had grown hungry for it.

One danced out to meet them. It seemed larger than the rest, the light of it brighter. Its wings opened wide to greet her.

“The Father-Mother,” Elder Brother told her. “Coming out to welcome you.”

“Bienvenida, hijita!”

Father-Mother’s voice was like the songs of
las pajaritas
that used to sing in the trees beyond the garden. She felt glad to hear the soft Spanish words, which it must have found in her own mind.

“I am Meg.” She let the strange-blazing wings fold around her, and she rested in the power of their love. “I like you. But how can I be your daughter?
El querido
Vic made me in the EnGene lab. There is no other being like me. There will never be.”

“Dear little Meg, you do not understand.” Father-Mother spoke with no sound at all, yet with a voice that seemed deep and warm and rich with love. “We are all of us your kindred, closer to you than your Vic or any being on the world where your injured body is, because you are what we are.

“We no longer require feeble body-shells like the one in which your own maker formed you. We live and feel and move in the dark radiance that flows from our dark star. We felt you growing toward our way of being, as most of us have grown. That is why we brought you here.”

Feeling too happy to speak, she let the blazing wings caress her.

“Peace, little one. You have come home.”

“No—no puedo
—” Her heart was torn. “It hurts to say it, but I cannot stay.
Gracias a todos,
but I must go back to my own home to do what I was made to do. If you can help me learn …”

Her voice wavered and stopped, because the world of Vic and Sax and Panchito seemed so far away, lost behind her somewhere in the dreadful dark, so far she was afraid she could never even find it.

“If we can,” Father-Mother said. “We will teach you anything we can. But your planet is so far that even the glow of your own new life was hard for us to feel.”

“—stay.” She felt Elder Brother’s gentle voice. “You must stay, because your body is hurt too badly to serve your mind again. Here, we can feed your new life until it grows stronger. Without us, Little Sister, you can’t survive alone.”

“We love you.” Father-Mother’s radiant wings embraced her again. “We are your people now.”

“Not yet.” It was hard to pull herself away. “Because my own world needs me. Its sad people are still my own.
El querido
Vic used to talk about its troubles. He created me to heal them, though he died before he ever told me how. I must go back to do what I can, even if I die.”

“We want you with us.” Their wings grew dim. Darkened, she thought with sorrow for her. “You must stay till you are stronger.”

“I must go,” she told them. “While my body lives.”

Yet she felt too weak to leave. She stayed to let them guide her into their city, which was a great ring of strange-colored wonder, spinning very slowly outside the terrible whirlpool of fire that had swallowed a star. Some of its fire-winged people came out of their bright homes to wrap her in their loving rainbow wings, and she longed to remain here in the shelter of their love.

“We come from far-scattered worlds,” Elder Brother told her. “Worlds of land, some like your far planet. Worlds of water, with no land at all. Worlds of gas, whose people have to float or soar forever. We are those who outgrew those planets when our minds learned to tap greater energies.

“You can do that, Little Sister, here in the dark light of our black star. The change to the new way of life may be hard for you, as it was for most of us. When your mother world is all you know and all you love, leaving it is never easy, but—believe us, Little Sister! We can make you happy here.

“You may find us strange at first, but our star is the world you were born for. We have great wealth to offer you, all the wealth we brought when we left our first homes behind. We can teach you their old sciences and their ancient arts. We can help you know and feel the hopes and joys and fears of many different peoples, of empires rising and races dying.
We
can help you share the history and the drama of many thousand worlds scattered all across the great galaxy, many of them older than your own. Perhaps, Little Sister—”