CHAPTER ONE
The blue ceramic shard glinted in the light
of Me’Auk’s sun.
Absently turning the piece around in his unusually long fingers, Rick
surveyed the dig from which he retrieved it.
The humid meadow was a checkerboard of tall grass and black earth where
the topsoil had been stripped away.
Hundreds of his people died here.
Perhaps thousands. Those unable to board overcrowded ships chose
poison. Death was preferred over capture
by humans avenging the slaughter of their own colonists. So why did Jamie and I get left behind?
came the same worn thought.
Returning the artifact to its grave, Rick
stood up and brushed clumps of moist dirt from his jeans. He wore an old brown short-sleeve shirt, an
improvement over the business suit he endured at the airport earlier that morning. During the press conference that marked his
arrival on Me’Auk, the media hounds kept asking how
it felt to be back home. Some joke.
Rick drew in the wet smell of green plants and turned soil. Neither offered a sense of belonging
here. He had been raised in New Texas on
Corven, Earth’s former colony. Even had a slight drawl to
prove it. He was Me’Aukin, but what did that really mean? Sure, he could speak his people’s formalized
and often poetic language fluently, but so could several of the humans he would
be working with. Anybody could pick it
up from records left behind by the failed attempt of two races to share one
world. His heritage either rotted away
or disappeared into the stars long ago. Leaving him with human clothes. Human upbringing. Human name.
Trouble was, he
did not look human, not that his kind were physically much different. Skin the color of olives, and jet-black hair,
suggested his early ancestors relied on natural camouflage to survive. Longer fingers and toes furthered the theory
of a tree-born species. He had to have
custom shoes, and shopping for clothes was an exercise in humility thanks to
his four-foot-three frame. He was always
going to be a poor fit with his adopted race.
Being around Jamie was not any better.
The doctors may have been fascinated by their empathic relationship, but
the aggravation of each other’s nearness drove them
apart years ago.
Rick stared up the hillside across from the
meadow. Crumbled spires poked tantalizingly
through the forest canopy.
The discovery of their cryogenic tank had waited
three hundred years while Earth’s attention turned to the colonization of Corven instead.
Simple economics kept Me’Auk fallow – no
insurance company would underwrite anything involving a massacre. Especially with the clans still out
there...somewhere. It was Corven, no longer Earth’s colony, who finally took up the
challenge.
Rick caught the growl of electric motors
and smiled. He still made some good
friends in spite of himself. The yellow
six-wheeled rover emerged from the tree line, bouncing over a serpentine coil
of roots. Its driver was casually
dressed in a faded red plaid shirt she favored while working. The freckled archeologist was cute in a farm
girl sort of way, although the big-boned young woman had been raised among
fisheries instead of fields. Andrea
Gibbs was a half-head taller than he, but their close association as college classmates
erased most of the physical differences separating them. Her brunette hair was clipped short and
business-like – a change from the longer style he last saw her with two years
earlier at the university.
“Thought I’d take my time getting the rover
out of the flyer,” Andrea said, waving at him.
“Give you a little quality time.”
She brought the rover to a halt beside him. “I know how long you’ve waited for this.”
“Twenty-seven years,” he answered with a
wan smile. “Give or take a few centuries
in cryogenic stasis.”
“By the way, Jamie sends her
congratulations on your new job.”
“Happy to hear it,” he replied with a
nod. There was no reason to begrudge his
Me’Aukin counterpart a pleasantry or two, provided
Jamie kept her distance. “How’s she doing
these days? Not stealing any more
freighters in hopes of finding the clans, I trust?”
“Colonel
Jay buried that little fiasco under a pile of money,” Andrea said with a
chuckle. “It helps having Me’Auk’s first governor as your foster father.”
“Well,
we each have our own way of finding our past.”
“As Colonial Curator, you’ll at least be doing
it legally,” Andrea snickered. She reached
back to the rear seats of the rover and grabbed two white helmets. Andrea handed him one. “Company rules.”
Rick worked the straps until it fit tighter. He glanced at the blue letters across the
front of her helmet. “Digger?”
“That’s what Steve nick-named me,” she
said, setting her helmet firmly over a myriad of curls. “It sort of stuck with everyone on my
excavation team.”
Both of them glanced up as a high-pitched
whine grew from the south. Three black
daggers slashed across the sky in close formation, disappearing again over the
forested ridges.
“Speak of the devil,” Andrea murmured. She tapped at her helmet, her tone sweetly
annoyed. “Morning, Steve. Everything’s safe as usual.”
The voice that came from Rick’s helmet
possessed a thick accent. Rick recalled
Andrea saying that her ex-fiancé was Earth Australian by birth before emigrating
to Corven.
“Don’t
let him stub a toe up there, Digger, or I’ll be filling out reports for
days. Company’s got him and his sister
down as bloody national treasures.”
“Jamie’s
not his biological sister,” she replied with a droll expression toward
Rick. “How many times do I have to tell
you that?” Giving an exasperated breath,
she looked west where the three fighters decelerated into a turn, white vapor
sweeping over their wings. “Can’t you do
your flying elsewhere? You know as well
as I do that this place hasn’t had any mine activity.”
Rick
interrupted their conversation with an apologetic grin. “Your caution is appreciated, Major
Keller. I’ll try and watch my toes.”
“I’ve
got a company of EC marines ready with bandages and beer if you don’t,
Doctor. Welcome to Me’Auk. Keller out.”
“You
two are still on speaking terms, aren’t you?” Rick asked Andrea.
“As
long as he doesn’t try and blow up any more sites,” she grumbled. “I can’t look at him without seeing what they
did to the only intact Me’Aukin city we had. That pretty much tore the bottom out of our
getting married.” Andrea shook her
head. “Still, I can’t really blame him
or the Colonel.”
“I
know,” Rick finished. “Clan Weth was where Katherine, was killed.”
“Colonel
Jay still walks away from most conversations involving his wife. The first anniversary of the attack is in two
months, but it might as well have happened yesterday.”
“Which is probably why Colonel Brinwall
didn’t meet me at the airport today.
Bringing me here was Katherine’s idea, you know.”
“He’s
determined to honor her wishes, so don’t worry.” Andrea gestured across the field. “I think you know this place from your
simulations.”
“If not from its infamy.”
Leaning
forward, Andrea rested her elbows on the rover dashboard and pointed along the
adjacent trench. “I pulled two intact
reunion cups from here, and a few more that had to be glued back together. Bones have long since decayed, but based on
calcium traces and jewelry I’d say you’re looking at twenty-four bodies in this
plot alone. My best estimate is somewhere
around eight hundred Me’Aukins poisoned themselves
here.”
“Everyone
who couldn’t jump into a ship,” Rick said, shaking his head. “I heard that some of the Exploratory Corps
marines were taking cups as souvenirs.
You finally put a stop to that?”
“Steve
took care of that for me,” she replied, her freckled face darkening. “With Opening Day only eight months away, we’ll
have our hands full keeping colonists out of these places.” Her expression brightened. “So where do you want to go first?”
Hopping
into the seat beside her, Rick gestured to where the hilltop poked above the
trees. Walls of an old rotunda beckoned
through the shimmer of heat and distance.
She
laughed. “Figured you’d
head to the Circle Hall first.”
The rover
tires dug into the soft earth. It did
not take long for the forest to engulf them.
The lazy song of insects countered the rover’s surging hum. Andrea carefully negotiated the root-buckled
cement pavement of an old Me’Aukin road. Ahead, lichen-encrusted walls rose beneath the
green twilight of overhanging trees.
“The North Valley Gate,” Rick said in
admiration as they passed beneath the heavy arch. He studied this place more than any other,
spending hours in simulated exploration a world away on Corven. “Hold up.”
Swinging out of the seat, Rick walked over
to the left support column and cleared bits of entwining brush from its
base. No simulation could replicate the
abrasive feel of wooden stems, nor the smell of sun-warmed
dirt.
“Careful of pepper worms,” Andrea cautioned,
joining him. “They’ll give you a nasty
rash.”
Rick nodded and carefully uncovered a white
ceramic square engraved with a male and female Me’Aukin
standing side by side. They held each
other’s hands in a lover’s clasp. Their
outer arms were stylized into spread wings.
They can only fly when bound
together, Rick mused, appreciating the metaphor that best symbolized
the Me’Aukin reverence for marriage. “Ashon Co’Ashin of Clan Temble” he
said. “Have you found any gate posts
that didn’t have the founder’s totem on it?”
“Not a one.” She pointed out the ring of green ceramic
blocks above it. “There’s
one-hundred-and-six embracing birds.
They’re probably the families who first founded Clan Maedan.” Andrea gave a good-natured sigh. “You know, we’re never going to get more than
three feet inside at this pace, and you do have a dinner reception at the Brinwall estate tonight.”
Laughing, Rick returned to the rover. “Sorry.
Honestly, as Colonial Curator I don’t know if I should leave this place
as is, or try and restore it. Over three
centuries old and it’s still beautiful.
The walls look like they were grown there.” He pointed to the vine-encrusted buildings
lining the hill’s first terrace. “You
can still see traces of paint. Lots of blues.”
“Well, at least have the Circle Hall
brought back to its original condition,” Andrea said. “So far, the only restoration we’ve done is
with a couple of the escalators. Practical stuff.”
He nodded.
Unfortunately, he could not breathe any more life into this site than
she already found for herself. Probably even less.
“Okay, let’s head to the top.”
A wide trail was all that was left of the
avenue extending between the shells of once great buildings. Narrow towers begged freedom from the gnarled
cords seeking to pull them down. The
rustle of animals in the growth was punctuated by the flutter of bright yellow
wings. The bird songs were muted, hushed
in reverence to the ghosts left behind. Ghosts such as himself.
The trail widened further at the steep base
of the hill, becoming part of an overgrown plaza roughly fifty yards
square. Foundation walls marked the
boundaries of what once had been an open market. Rick glanced down side streets that were too
narrow to allow much more than pedestrian traffic. The clan’s designers restricted vehicles to
wider thoroughfares radiating from the lowest ring of the city. He gestured to one of the statues carved into
a wall niche above a ramp leading to the next terrace. Two granite figures gazed out at them. The male wore a loose shirt and billowing
pants. His female companion favored a
similarly casual dress with short sleeves and a more form-fitting bodice. “No doubt a mated pair,” Rick said as they continued
their drive up the ramp.
Andrea nodded. “According to history, the Me’Aukins wouldn’t even talk to our contact teams until a
married couple could be found.” She grinned.
“Two anthropologists got hitched on the spot, so the story goes.” Her expression sobered. “Over eight thousand human colonists wiped
out by radiation missiles. Maybe, when
the main continents are opened for unlimited research, we can find out why it
started.”
“Among other things,” Rick added, chilled
at the thought of tracing his own parents’ footsteps here.
The rover arrived at the hilltop and bumped
its way across another smaller plaza, braced on either side by scored and
blackened concrete foundations. Rubble
lay scattered across the pavement, small mounds of debris hidden beneath a mix of
grass and brush. There also were large
misshapen blocks of mottled blue-and-green material, some of the building
remnants easily twice Rick’s height.
“We walk from here,” Andrea said, bringing
the vehicle to a halt. “This place got
blasted bad in retaliatory strikes, though most
missiles were lured away from the main rotunda.” Swinging out of her seat, she pointed to the
right. “You can see what remains of meeting
chambers. Around the back of the rotunda
and down a terrace is what we call the totemic tower. It’s covered with clan patterns. You can still get up the stairs. The view of the valleys is phenomenal from
there.”
“The view here’s overwhelming enough,” he
replied. Rick handed her a backpack and
got out of the rover. The Circle Hall’s
rotunda was the size of a small exhibition center, with a capacity to host over
a thousand people. Its partially domed
ceiling shone like old brass in the rising sun.
He knew that such Circle Halls were both a municipal and spiritual meeting
place. It was thought that extensive
genealogical records were kept here as well.
For those of his profession, it was a potential treasure-trove. For him personally, it would be salvation
from a hell of unanswered questions.
“Did you ever find anything at all that might have suggested a
She shook her head. “I’ve spent five years scouring Me’Auk for one of those rumored libraries. The first human colonists kept talking about
Calling Places, but never were allowed near one.” Andrea gave him a resolute look. “Such a find could explain why your people
went from sharing this world to burying us on it instead.”
“Not to mention shedding some light on
where the clans fled to,” he added, shouldering his backpack. “Let’s go in.”
“You know they’ve long since ripped all the
cryogenic stuff out of there,” Andrea softly reminded as they continued across
the overgrown plaza. “It’s just a hole
now, Rick.”
“It’s also a place to start,” he countered,
following a path through stalks of high grass.
“And I thought Steve could be stubborn. Working for you is going to be a treat.”
“With me,” he corrected, stopping by a
shattered section of wall. “The field
work here is all yours. So would the
position of Curator be if it wasn’t for the politics.”
“Only because they wouldn’t let you back here
until it was safe.” Andrea gave a reasoning
smile. “Having a real Me’Aukin running the show attracts all the right money,
Rick. Don’t forget that. Besides, while you’re shaking hands, I get to
be out here digging. Don’t be so sure
you got the better deal.”
“If you hadn’t raised all
that hell back on Corven those many years ago, Jamie
and I would still be little more than prize lab rats.” He laughed. “Human rights for aliens. You’re damn lucky nobody figured out who was
behind those signs that crowd carried outside the Institute. Wouldn’t have done your
career much good.”
She shrugged. “It got the press interested. Must admit, I haven’t had much opportunity
here to save society from itself. Just
another Interstar corporate drone trying to pry
secrets from that Stone material the Me’Aukins relied
on so much.” Her grin was genuine. “It’s good to have you here, Rick. Partners, ok?”