Forgotten Suns (59 page)

That was much better than Aisha had been expecting. She
couldn’t let anybody see how relieved she was, but she managed to say, “Thank
you, Mother. I won’t disappoint you.”

“I would hope not,” Mother said.

Aisha could feel what Mother was feeling: a complicated mix
of love, grief, anger, and pride. Her own feelings weren’t too different,
except that there was less anger.

All this time, Pater hadn’t said a word. He was usually the
one who started shouting first. Aisha raised her eyes and made herself look
into his face.

He always scowled. He used to do it, Mother had told her
once, because he was so young to be the head of a major expedition, and he had
to do whatever he could to back people down. Now he really was older and eminent
and had such authoritative eyebrows, he couldn’t help himself.

He had been so scared. She didn’t mean to see and feel that,
but there it was. Every morning he’d prayed that she would come home alive. At
first he’d wanted her mind and body whole, too. Then he would just settle for
having her back.

She launched herself over the table—she flew; and she
couldn’t help that, either. His arms opened to catch her.

She clung to him and wailed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

He held her close and let her howl herself out. That took a
while. It had been building up since before she left.

Now she was back and she had saved the world, or enough to keep
the expedition on it for another season or two at least. That was a good thing,
but she’d hurt people in doing it. She’d hurt Pater. He’d never forgive her,
ever.

That came out in her wail. Pater answered it in his soft
rumble of a voice, in Arabic that had been first language she ever heard. “God
always forgives. Should I refuse to follow his example?”

She pushed back till his grip loosened, so she could see his
face. There were tears on it.

Pater, crying. She gaped at him, all the drama shocked out
of her.

He actually smiled. It was like sun breaking out after one
of the ferocious storms that tore across the plains. “We’re good, then?” he
said.

She swallowed. Her throat ached too much for speech. She
nodded.

“Good,” Pater said, and now he looked and sounded like
himself again. “Good. Now get to bed. Morning comes early, and you have work to
do.”

When the rest of the universe caught up with the
Ra-Harakhte
’s whereabouts, a whole
chorus of hammers would fall. But the beginning brought so much archaeological
and anthropological euphoria that Khalida could glide along all but unnoticed.

The mages put up a tent city beside the river and moved all
their baggage into it, along with their stores. They would not ask anyone to
help or feed them, but the tribes came on their own, bringing whatever they
could spare after the winter.

It was a gift, and the mages accepted it. It helped them
find their feet in this new-old world, and proved that they were welcome.

When they planted the first of the year’s crops, the tribes
worked beside them. The land was hard to farm, the sod was so thick and the
grassroots so densely knotted, but the mages had ways to take care of that. No
shyness about it, either, and no reason to think they needed any.

They were an ongoing revelation for the expedition. Rashid
looked absolutely furious, which was his way of expressing joy incomparable. He
closed down excavations and concentrated on the living artifacts instead,
setting his teams to helping the arrivals as they could, and recording every
action and word.

“Your brother has the scholar’s passion,” Daiyan said in the
evening a tenday after the arrival. There had been no formal banquet yet, and
no rituals of welcome beyond what little had marked the arrival, but mages and
expedition had begun to cross-fertilize.

On this first nearly warm night of spring, Daiyan and a
handful of her fellow mages had come to dinner in the compound. Khalida had
invited Daiyan; the others had followed, somewhat to Khalida’s dismay.

That was short-lived. What intentions she had had for the
ritual of meeting the family were better served by this more casual gathering.
It was hardly the first time any of the mages had been inside the compound, but
it was the first meal they had eaten there.

It was warm enough with heaters for everyone to eat on the
roof. For once there was no storm within sight or sense; the stars were out,
and the moon was nearly full.

Rashid was deep in conversation with Elti and a pair of twin
mages who happened to be Daiyan’s cousins: identically tall, identically dark,
and very differently minded when it came to the finer points of the sacred
language. Rashid already had his own views, now he had access to the texts and
the history behind them, and he was in no way shy about expressing them.

“Are you laughing at him?” Khalida asked.

“No,” Daiyan answered. “We admire passion. As you should
know.”

She made no physical move, but Khalida felt the warmth of
her down deep. It was a promise, for later.

For now there were worlds meeting, and a world changing.
Even the precogs could not predict where it would go.

Aisha’s voice rose above the babble of conversation. She was
talking to Shenliu and her mother and a cluster of interns. “I’ve started a
dictionary and a grammar of the common language, which is based on a
combination of languages starting with Old Language. Now I’ve got back to a
system set up for something besides the hard sciences, I’ll be able to get
somewhere with it.”

“Oh, come now,” Kirkov said from farther down the table. “You
were doing perfectly well with ship’s web before you patched it all into the
system here.”

“Patches and kludges,” she said. “Though it was useful for
translating science into psi and back again.”

“You really did that?” one of the interns asked. “Put the
two together?”

“That’s how we found our way back. Psi alone couldn’t do it,
and science didn’t know where to start.”

Someone slid onto the bench beside Khalida. She glanced at
him and started.

Rama had been as close to invisible as it was possible for
him to be. He had been avoiding gatherings and keeping his head down in the
fields or among the tents. Khalida doubted that Rashid even knew he was there,
though she suspected Marina did. To everyone else he was simply one more alien
among the hundreds. Most assumed that if the pirate who had hijacked the
Ra-Harakhte
was on the planet at all, he
was safely and discreetly confined to the ship.

His presence here tonight reminded her poignantly of dinners
on the roof before they went on the long hunt. She felt profoundly different
now.

He looked the same, even to the slightly ragged clothes and
the air of not quite being in the world. But he too had changed. The shock of
waking had eased. He had made his peace with this universe, if not yet with
himself.

She passed him what was left of the platter of roast
not-quite-lamb, and Daiyan handed him a cup filled with vineberry juice. It
could, if one tilted one’s perception just so, almost seem to resemble wine.

“Not too appallingly bad,” he said of that. He said it in
PanTerran, which Daiyan was undertaking to learn.

Vikram passed by on his way to the sweets table. His stride
checked; he stopped. “So,” he said. “I did see you working in the farthest
field the other day.”

Rama smiled up at him. “Good evening, Vikram.”

“Good evening to you, too,” Vikram said. “I can’t say I’m
sorry to see you survived. Though I should be. You’re wanted in all the hundred
human and affiliated systems, did you know that?”

“I did,” Rama answered. “Will you be arresting me?”

“Not tonight.” Vikram sketched a salute and went back to his
quest for Marina’s baklava.

~~~

Khalida left Daiyan asleep in her bed and wandered down to
the kitchen for coffee. On impulse she took the long way back, up along the
wall that overlooked the stable.

The sun was barely up. She shivered in her light robe. There
was a bite of frost in the air, though it promised warmth again later.

She saw Rama in the riding arena below, riding leisurely
figures on the antelope stallion.

“He’s been here every morning,” Marina said behind Khalida.
Khalida jumped, then forced herself to relax as Marina came up beside her. “It’s
as if he never went away.”

Khalida wrapped her hands around her mug for warmth, and
took a long sip of blissful bitterness. “Does Rashid know?”

“Not that he’ll admit to.”

“Probably wise of him,” Khalida said. “Otherwise he’ll have
to confront the issue of harboring a fugitive.”

“Technically,” Marina said, “he’s not. As long as the
fugitive is on a restricted world, and as long as he can prove that he’s a
native, he’s not subject to U.P. law.”

“You think that will stop the bastards who are after him?”

“Once they know he’s shown up with almost a thousand of his
own species and laid claim to the planet the bastards have been trying to sink
their claws into since they first realized it existed? Not for a nanosecond.”

“My money’s on the thousand,” Khalida said.

“So they really are psi masters,” said Marina.

“Oh yes. Every last one. Even the children.”

“Even the one in your bed?”

“Especially the one in my bed,” Khalida said through the hot
and sudden flush.

Marina was kind enough not to remark on it. “She looks
interesting,” she said. “I’ll look forward to knowing her better.”

“She said the same of you,” said Khalida.

Marina laughed. “Why don’t we start with breakfast, then. I’ll
get it going. Go down and tell his majesty that he’s to join us. If, of course,
it pleases his royal self.”

“He’s not a king any more,” Khalida said.

Marina’s smile expressed her opinion of that, before she
retreated to the warmth of the house.

~~~

Rama had no objection to accepting Marina’s invitation.
Khalida lent him a hand with the antelope’s saddle and watched while he cooled
the animal out and curried the sweat from his coat. It was peaceful work in the
rising morning, while the interns assigned to the stables stumbled yawning in
to clean stalls and discover that Rama had already fed the horses.

When Rama was done and the stallion returned to his harem,
Khalida blocked his path to the house. “So,” she said. “You’ll be staying here.
What happens when the Corps comes hunting?”

“I’ll be gone,” he said, “with a nice ripe trail for them to
follow.”

Khalida’s brows went up. “You’ll be gone? Where?”

“Wherever my fancy takes me.”

That was the old antic temper. He moved to step past her.
She moved with him. “They’ll capture you the minute you clear this planet’s
atmosphere.”

“Not if I’m on board the
Ra-Harakhte
under the flag of Beijing Nine. I’ve contracted with the good doctor to
retrieve the rest of her people from their various sanctuaries, then to assist
them in continuing their research wherever and however we may judge best.”

“The Corps will laugh at your flag and your mission.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are we laying bets on it?”

“I’ll win,” he said. “Consider that I know both the identity
and the location of the trigger for Araceli’s worldwrecker. I also know that
the free traders have no love whatsoever for the Corps. Nor do a remarkable
number of scientists and academics. I don’t think Spaceforce is terribly fond
of it, either.”

“You’re talking about sedition,” she said. “Insurrection.
Attacking U.P. from within and without.”

“Isn’t it a lovely prospect?”

“It’s a horrendous and chaotic prospect. I thought you’d
gone sane after you dealt with the eater of souls. You’re crazier than ever.”

“And you aren’t?”

“I’m not going with you. I’m staying here. There’s a whole
new world to build and protect. Which considering what you’re plotting, may be
the only one left by the time Aisha is old enough for university.”

“All the more reason to protect the universities,” Rama
said. “Would she want Beijing Nine, then? I’d have thought she’d be more
interested in the university in Cairo.”

“You’ve been talking to Marina.”

“I’ve been talking to Dr. Ma. She’s taken an interest in a
child so determined to solve an archaeological mystery that she’ll follow it
into the next universe. That’s a born scholar, she says.”

“Or a born insurrectionist.” Khalida stepped aside at last,
to let him go.

He stayed where he was.

Understanding dawned. “You’re leaving today.”

“Tonight.”

Khalida surprised herself with the twist of pain in her
center. She had no love for this living relic, but she was used to him. She
would miss that particular focus for her temper. “Why? Is something coming?”

“Not yet. When it does, it will follow me. This world will
escape its notice for a while.”

“Not a very long one. We’re already in U.P.’s sights. If
they don’t get here first and shut us all down, the first tradeship that comes
through, or the first shipload of tourists, will blast the news to the
universe.”

“News that, as far as the Corps knows, has nothing to do
with the pirate who destroyed them on Araceli. They’ll be much too busy and
much too far away, hunting a ghost.”

“An angry one, I hope.”

He showed her his teeth. He had too many, and they were too
sharp to be strictly human. “None angrier.”

If she had had any pity in her, she might have spared a drop
or two for the Corps. This was a bad enemy. Now he had a world to defend, with
his own people on it.

She was almost tempted to throw in her lot with him again.
Embark on the living ship. Commit herself to a life of adventure.

She had that here, a thousand times over. She would travel
in space again, but not for a while. There was too much to do.