Rift in the Sky (58 page)

The knees pulled out of the light. “Don't care.” Very quiet. Very sure.

Aryl pulled out the image disk. “This was with my things—from before.” She turned it over and over in her hands. It had finger-sized depressions on both sides but poking them accomplished nothing. “I think it's broken.”

“You aren't doing it right.”

She held it out without a word or smile. A shadow became Yao, who took the device. Careful not to touch skin.

Too young for the caution of an adult; too old to forget it now.

She could have intervened at the start, Aryl realized with sudden guilt. Being First Chosen, it was her responsibility to speak up for those who looked to her.

Yao didn't go back to the other side; she did, however, stay out of reach. “Like this,” she announced, holding the device in both small hands. She pressed several places at once.

No wonder it hadn't worked for her, Aryl thought with wry amusement, then stared as four figures took shape above the fire.

“They aren't real,” Yao assured her.

Two adult females, two children. Human, if appearance could be trusted. The one adult had long red hair, and held the youngest. A girl. The older child was a boy.

“Why would I have images of strangers in my pack?”

“They aren't strangers,” as if she was being silly. “This is his family. Marcus'.”

The name from the artifacts. Aryl swallowed, staring at the Humans. “Marcus Bowman.”

“That's right!” Yao smiled. “I wanted him for my father because . . . because . . . “ Her smile faded. “I don't understand,” she said, her voice trembling. “Why do I think my father—my real father—how can I think he didn't love me before?”

Because he hadn't. Aryl knew it, as surely as she knew her own name. Hoyon d'sud Gethen had spurned his own daughter, his only child, until arriving on Stonerim III. Why, she couldn't imagine, feeling sick inside.

“We don't—we don't remember our lives before coming here, Yao. Maybe that's for the best. Your father loves you now. You know that.”

“Will he love me tomorrow?”

Children made a game of falling. Dared the worst to happen. Taught themselves to survive. She wasn't as brave as a child anymore, Aryl realized. She didn't dare answer such a question.

Then the image changed. “I didn't do that,” Yao said quickly.

A face gazed at them over the sinking fire. “It's all right,” Aryl heard herself say. But it wasn't. It wasn't all right. Her breath caught in her throat. Her pulse pounded. She
knew
that face, even battered and bruised.

The lips moved. Yao did something and the quiet voice rose to every ledge in the Buried Theater. The voice that belonged here.

“My name is . . . Marcus Bowman. This . . . device contains my . . . final message for my . . . daughter. Karina Bowman . . . Norval, Stonerim III . . . Anyone who finds . . . this. Please take . . . it to the nearest . . . offworld authority . . . Make sure she . . . hears this. Please.”

The image and voice vanished.

Yao calmly passed the disk back to Aryl, who took it with numb fingers. “Can I come with you? To find Karina?”

“What?” Aryl shuddered back to reality. “No. We're going home, to the Tower. You don't have to go with Oran,” she added before the child could 'port away. “But I need you to promise to stay with your mother until I get back.”

“From finding Karina.” Yao sounded satisfied. “I won't tell anyone.”

“I'm not—” Aryl closed her mouth, remembering that tormented face with green-brown eyes.

Apparently she was.

She looked up, into the darkness above Yao's little fire. There were hundreds of millions of Humans living within the layers of Norval.

“How do I find one?” she said out loud.

Even Yao didn't have an answer.

“
A
RYL DI SARC IS NOT in the Tower.”

“I know Aryl's not here,” Enris glared at the panel. What use was a machine that gave answers he knew? “Where did she go?”

“I am unable to answer that question. Do you wish me to initiate a missing person's report with the constabulary?”

“No,” Naryn said firmly. She reached by him to turn off the Tower interface. “Enris. Aryl's shielded herself from any of us. If you won't
send
to her, at least let me contact one of our Humans.”

“ ‘Our Humans?' ” he repeated acidly. “When did the mind-wipes become property?”

Naryn's eyes flashed, but she restrained her temper. “The name Yao gave us is the one from the artifacts. If Aryl uses it among Humans who aren't—sensitive—to Clan concerns—she could stir up trouble we can't control or survive. Have you thought of that?”

“Aryl has.” With all the
belief
he had in his Chosen. “You know she would never endanger us. She wants to deliver a father's dying message, a message entrusted to her. There's nothing wrong with that.”

“A Human's message.” Cetto shook his big head. “From the Homeworld. It makes no sense, Enris.”

Not for the first time since Yao's return—by herself—Enris was grateful he only had two members of Council under the same roof. “You should trust her,” he insisted.

“You want to find her, too,” observed Naryn, with a lift of one brow.

“Because I don't trust anyone else.” Enris forced his hands to relax. Over the past hours, they'd tended to form fists. “I can't send to her. She's hunting.” He had no other way to describe the way his Chosen
felt,
how her mind had focused until all he sensed were movements, the flick of her eyes side to side, the graceful, careful steps she took, her alert patience.

But Cetto nodded as if he knew what Enris meant. “Best not to distract her, then. She'll
reach
you if she needs help.”

Aryl, call for help? Enris wanted to laugh. Joined for life and deeply in love, yes, but that didn't make his Chosen any less independent. Her first impulse would be to keep him out of trouble, not bring him into it. Which was why she'd simply 'ported back with Yao, picked up some things, and left again without anyone, including the Tower machines, any wiser.

He'd know if she were hurt or afraid. Which could be too late. Power, courage, and strength meant nothing against the kind of weapons possessed by the Humans and other aliens of this world.

She expected him to trust her and do nothing. Which meant pacing in the Tower, while others expected him to do something.

Aryl di Sarc was the most stubborn, annoying . . .

“We wait,” he told Naryn.

And hoped that wasn't a mistake.

S
EEN FROM THE AIR, Norval resembled a mountain, its sides cloaked with green, its peak sparkling with what might have been snow. None of it real, Aryl thought as the aircar went around to the shadowed side and slowed on approach. The city squatted on the ruins of what had been there before, pressing the past into the soft marshy land that had once surrounded it. Not only ruins. On occasion, it had reinvented itself, burying the streets and architecture of before beneath the latest craze in materials and style. Or to hide design mistakes of the past.

Humans hadn't started the process; three other civilizations, of other shape and mind, had built atop one another over time in this place. As usual, Humanity had added its own enthusiasm.

Producing this. A city where access to light was determined by wealth, its outer skin garden-bedecked luxury and senglass, topped by towers of privilege. Broad openings allowed light—and storm runoff—to nourish the businesses below. Narrow openings and pipes shed some light—and all refuse—down through subsequent layers to be used or dealt with by the least wealthy, until the utter dark of the machine domain.

No wonder starships couldn't land anywhere near here, Aryl thought wryly. For all its bulk and history, Norval was a fragile beast, ultimately dependent on pillars and stone no one had seen in centuries.

Except Marcus Bowman. She gripped the slippery memory as the automatics brought the aircar in for a landing. He'd rediscovered the Buried Theater. It had been his place, while he'd been on this world.

Making his the memories Naryn had used to bring them here.

“Amni InterWorld Shopping Concourse, Sun Layer. Your one-stop—” Aryl hit the button to silence the machine voice, though tempted to gesture apology afterward. This was how M'hiray entered the Human part of the world. The automated aircars were everywhere here, buzzing around Norval and Stonerim's other cities like the insects called flies over too-ripe fruit left outside. They waited for their next passengers in quiet parking areas; the M'hiray owned several such, careful to remove all monitoring devices.

The shopping concourse was the only address Aryl knew, having used the system only once, with Naryn. She didn't care to be near Humans, in small numbers or large.

She especially didn't care to be near the ones “influenced” by the scouts. The ones who had only been “encouraged” to trust M'hiray were almost worse.

None of them here.

The concourse lay within a bubble of senglass that erupted from Sun Layer, that cover set to exclude most of the outside world. Why, when the outside was a limited commodity, Aryl couldn't guess. But much of what Humans did confounded her.

Not shopping. She could understand the pleasure of walking through colorful, changing displays as a couple or in a family group. Most of those here, however, didn't appear interested in the displays, though a few attracted the most interest. She joined one such cluster around a storefront, curious, only to find it was display of small furred animals, tumbling around one another.

Aryl walked away before teeth showed.

She had a good plan, she told herself, eyes flicking from side to side. There was a restaurant here, with food she'd enjoyed. More importantly, every table had a comport. Safely in her pocket, with the image disk, was the burst Constable Maynard had given her to summon him.

He would come at once, she'd give him the disk, and then she'd return home.

What could go wrong?

The first thing that went wrong was the constable's arrival—or rather lack of it. Two hours later, on her seventh order of sombay and fifth run to cope with the result, Aryl had began to wonder if she'd misunderstood. It had sounded straightforward. Drop the burst into any comport or reader, he'd know where she was, and he'd come.

She plucked another feather from the decorative bowl and began stripping the soft bits from it, adding to the growing pile.

How long should she wait? she wondered glumly. What if he'd died? How long did Humans live, anyway?