The Assassins of Altis (31 page)

Coleen, plainly enjoying sharing this information, pointed to one part of the ship. “This was where the crew lived and worked. Because the trip was so long, the original crew aged and died along the way, and their children continued in their stead, and so on until this world was reached.”

Mari ran her finger under one large word, the text odd but readable. “
Demeter
. The name of our world. Just like on the texts. That’s how it was originally spelled and pronounced?”

“Yes. It was also the name of the ship.” The librarian indicated another portion of the diagram. “And this area was where the passengers were, along with all of the animals, fish, plants and other creatures the ship brought.”

“There couldn’t have been very many passengers,” Mari said. “That area is a lot smaller than the crew area.”

“There were thousands of passengers.” Coleen’s face lit with awe as she spoke. “Our ancestors knew how to take newly created children from the bodies of their mothers, then freeze them so that they would exist unchanging for many years, until thawed and allowed to grow into babies.”

Mari stared at the other woman, shocked. “They took children newly created from the mothers?” Mari became aware that her hands had dropped down of their own accord, covering her own lower abdomen protectively. Alain had noticed her gesture as well and seemed unusually startled by it. But why should he be? Perhaps because he was a man he couldn’t grasp why that would appall a woman. “That’s horrible.”

Coleen shook her head, speaking gently. “No. It harmed neither mother nor child, and every mother and father who gave their unborn children to this purpose did so by choice, so that their children could live here someday.” She gestured to the equipment around them. “The ship also carried devices which could serve as mothers to bring the children to term.”

“Machines?” Mari demanded. “Machines in which babies grew until they were birthed?” She had worked around machines most of her life, she loved machines in many ways, and yet the idea felt incredibly repulsive.

“Machines of a sort,” the librarian agreed. “It was necessary. Upon arrival here the devices brought to birth a first generation of passengers, and when those were old enough to care for babies another generation, and so on until every passenger had been born. Since then,” she added with a slight smile, “every birth has been in ways more familiar to us.”

“The animals, too?” Alain asked. “This is how the first animals came here?”

Mari thought Alain was still rattled, but then she was used to spotting subtle signs of how he felt.

“Yes, the animals as well,” Coleen replied, then turned a serious look on Mari. “And this is how the Mechanics Guild came to be and to control so much, and why so little of our history is truly known. When the great ship reached our world, most of the crew felt that they and their ancestors had done the work to reach here and deserved to be rewarded far more than the passengers. So they decided to violate the orders that had been given long ago on Urth. These crew members allowed only a small portion of the science and technology they had brought here to be made known to the passengers as they grew. The crew members also never told the passengers where we had all come from. Those who chose to create the Mechanics Guild claimed to be the only humans who could build and repair mechanical devices. The passengers knew only what they were told and were too busy laboring to build the first cities and scatter life through this world to dream of the truth.”

Mari felt a sense of anger as well of relief. “Then the Mechanics Guild was always about power and wealth. It never had any higher purpose, never had any other justification.”

“And what of the Mage Guild?” Alain asked. “Did the Mages on the great ship make an agreement with the Mechanics Guild in those days?”

Another librarian answered. “We have no records we can read and no memory passed down to us of any Mages being on the great ship,” he said. “The first mention of Mages comes more than a generation after the ship arrived here.”

“None of the ship’s records we have been able to read speak of Mages as real beings,” Coleen added. “We found only children’s stories and fantasies and other fictions which feature humans able to do supernatural things.”

Mari stared at Alain. “Mages didn’t come on the ship along with everyone else?” She felt a sudden, awful, sinking sensation, wondering if she and Alain could ever have children.

But the librarian who had spoken before was shaking his head. “All people here came from the ship. There was no one on this world before its arrival. Something happened after people came here, or perhaps on the voyage itself. There are words which may hold the answers, though we no longer understand enough about them. Mutation. Genetic drift. Something called genetic engineering, which was able to change the very nature of a person’s body, may have been involved. We don’t know. All we do know is that a generation after the arrival of people here there began to be reports of people who had magelike powers, weak at first but growing in strength and variety. More and more of these Mages appeared, and eventually they were strong enough to form their Guild.”

“And,” Mari added, feeling some relief to know Alain was as human as she, “strong enough to be able to survive the attempts of the Mechanics Guild to destroy what it couldn’t understand. But Mages are…like us? I mean, in all of the important ways?”

A woman librarian frowned slightly at Mari’s question. Then her expression cleared as understanding came and she looked at Alain. “As far as we know, yes. You should not need to worry on that account.”

“Thank you.”

Alain was looking concerned again, but that was easy to appreciate given the topic. “From where did the librarians come?” he asked.

“Not all members of the crew agreed with the decision of the majority,” Coleen explained. “Some of the crew were what were called…”

Another librarian spoke up. “Data Storage and Media Retrieval Technicians.”

“Yes. It meant librarian, in part, and so our ancestors reverted to the simpler and more complete name.” Coleen gestured around to include the entire tower. “The plan for settling this world included the construction of this tower in a safe place, as a refuge in the event of disaster and a secure location to keep records and equipment of value. When those who established the Mechanics Guild made their decisions, the ancestors of we librarians were forced to agree to their terms. In order to prevent the Mechanics Guild from destroying these records and devices, our ancestors agreed to remain silent about them. In exchange, the Guild knew all of this remained available to them if it was ever needed.”

The librarian sighed, she and the others looking guilty. “It was a bargain with demons, but necessary. The alternative would have been the loss forever of everything here and all we knew. For century after century the librarians have remained hidden here, protecting the past but unable to share it, hoping for the day when the Mechanics Guild would fall and we could once again give our knowledge to the world.”

Mari grasped Coleen’s arm. “I can’t fault your ancestors or you for that decision. I know just how ruthless the leaders of the Mechanics Guild can be.” She took a step toward one case, gazing at some of the small devices within it. “I saw something like these in the Mechanics Guild Headquarters. A very old far-talker that looked like this.” She bent to read the labels. “Rah-dee-oh. What does that mean?”

“It was what our ancestors called far-talkers.”

“Why? What does it mean?”

The librarian looked embarrassed. “We don’t know. Much of this equipment no longer works. Other devices still work, but we no longer know how to operate them safely.” Coleen gestured toward another small device. “This is a mass data storage reader. According to our information, it can hold thousands of books within it and display all of the knowledge, but how it did this we cannot remember.”

Mari stared at the racks near the device, which were filled with what looked like coins. “That’s not money?”

“No. Each of those coins holds a tremendous amount of information. Perhaps. Once they did so, but we do not know if the information on them has deteriorated over time, as the pages of a book will crumble with age.”

“How could something this small hold so much?” Mari wondered, peering at the coins. “And how could the information be read?”

Another librarian spoke up. “I believe something called a lass-er was used for that.”

“A lass-er?” Mari knelt down, digging in her pack and surfacing with one of the texts. “Like this?” She offered the ancient text to the librarian, who took it with trembling hands.

“Yes,” he breathed. “Yes. Just so. Somehow this light could be used to do things which normal light cannot.”

Mari looked at Coleen. “You don’t have copies of these Mechanics Guild texts?”

“No,” Coleen said, leaning to look at the one held by her fellow librarian. “The Guild kept anything designed for easy use and understanding. We have heard of those texts but thought them forever out of our reach. They were supposed to aid the people who came here if they lost more complex equipment or suffered a loss of knowledge. Those texts were designed to provide easy instructions and knowledge for regaining technology that might have been lost in a disaster. The texts are of incredible value now, literally priceless because no sum of money could replace them.”

Mari looked at the text she held, its pages made of some very tough and durable material instead of paper, but which were nonetheless showing signs of age. “You mean if something happens to these, there are no others?”

“Perhaps in the vaults of the Mechanics Guild headquarters in Palandur, where none will ever see them,” the librarian replied. She hesitated, then spoke with great care. “Lady Mari, we are skilled at making exact copies of what records we have. It has been one of our major occupations in the last few centuries, to preserve things whose originals were fading or crumbling. It would be a great service to all the people of this world if you allowed us not just to view the texts you have, but to make copies of them as well.”

“Copies?” Mari turned the text in her hand, thinking of the vast distances it must have come, the hands which must have first held it. Thinking of the perils which she and Alain had faced on the journey from Marandur to here, the times when the texts might have been lost forever. “This came from Urth? This very text? All that way, and it was held by our ancestors?”

“Yes.”

Mari took a deep breath and looked to Alain. He nodded back in agreement.

Another deep breath, and then Mari held the text carefully in both hands as she looked back at the librarians. “Exact copies? You can make exact copies? No errors? Every line, every drawing, perfect and correct?”

“That is our calling and our often-practiced skill,” Coleen confirmed eagerly.

“Then I do wish that you would make copies.” Mari swallowed nervously, then rushed out the rest of her words. “As long as they are exact copies, I would like to take the copies, and leave the originals with you, where they will be safe.”

An extended silence followed her words, then all of the librarians bowed to her, embarrassing Mari. Coleen straightened, fighting back tears. “You may be the daughter of Jules in truth, but you also have the soul of a librarian, Lady Mari. There is no way in which we can adequately repay you for a gift of this magnitude.”

“The texts aren’t mine,” Mari insisted. “They belong to everyone in this world. I’m not giving you anything that you don’t already have a right to.” She looked around, feeling very awkward, trying to find something else to talk about, and her eyes came to rest on the map of Urth and beside it the diagram of the
Demeter
. “What became of the great ship?” Mari asked. “It was so huge. Surely its remains must lie somewhere, or was it completely taken apart?”

“The ship was stripped of all it held and much of its structure.” Coleen pointed upwards. “The bones of the ship remain to this day, far above the sky we know, floating like the moon above this world.”

Mari jerked in surprise. “It’s still there above us? But we can’t see it?”

“Even the remains of the great ship are small compared to, say, the moon,” another librarian explained. “If we trained powerful far-seers on it, we could see the remains, but—”

“But,” Mari continued, “the Mechanics Guild has discouraged or banned anything to do with the study of the skies and the stars. Of course. They didn’t want anyone figuring out where we came from, or seeing the ship.” She shook her head, feeling her jaw tighten. “What incredible selfishness and arrogance.”

Alain had gone back to study the map of Urth. “Why did the ship come here? It must have been a tremendous undertaking.”

“We are no longer certain,” Coleen admitted. “I’m sure the truth lies somewhere in there,” she added, with a wave at the drawers full of shiny information coins. “But we no longer know which of the possible reasons we recall are true. Some say that it was simply adventure and exploration. Some that it was an attempt to spread humanity’s seed to the stars. Others think that such an expensive and enormous undertaking meant that they had no choice, that some disaster loomed which would cripple or even kill all who remained on Urth.”

Mari stared at Coleen. “Like a terrible storm?”

“We do not know,” she replied.

“If what we remember is true,” a male librarian said, “worlds can suffer enough variation in climate to cause serious problems. Then there are said to be huge stones floating in the vastness between stars, and sometimes these fall to a world, as if a mass equal to the entire island of Altis became a projectile to strike Dematr. You can imagine the damage. It is also said stars such our sun and the sun that warms Urth can change, becoming hotter, larger, or even exploding when their fuel is exhausted.”

“What?” Mari shook her head firmly. “I don’t know about the rest, but that last can’t be right. How can something explode after it runs out of fuel? An explosion needs something to feed it.”