A moment, in which Esha’s look made plain that, of the two of them, it wasn’t her place to answer that. And there was strength to be had, in the reciting of names to an old formula. “I am Lynesse Fourth Daughter of the Royal Line of Lannesite,” Lyn declared. “I call upon the ancient compact between my blood and the Elder.” Because that was how you did it. The road of those words had already been trodden, so she could force herself to follow it.
A little mouth opened in the stone beside the door, round as a lamprey’s. “Substantiation of your heritage is required,” the door voice told them pleasantly.
“Shouldn’t have mentioned blood,” Esha cautioned. Lyn stared at the mouth, knowing that there was no good way forwards.
Why else did I come? The recklessness that had brought her to the door in the first place—that would have had her child-self ring the bell, if bell there had been—had put her finger in the opening. True to form, it bit her, a pinprick jab from its single tooth. She hissed and yanked her finger out, seeing a bead of the vaunted blood royal on the tip.
“Your heritage is acknowledged,” the door pronounced, and then opened, separating into six segments like triangular fangs that slid into its stone frame. The hall beyond was smaller than Lyn had expected, because surely a sorcerer could make great rooms within the bounds of a tower. Apparently, such grand chambers were not for casual visitors, though.
She stepped in, Esha following reluctantly at her heels.
“Outpost, Lyn,” she noted. “Outpost of what? And where’s the sorcerer?”
“He’s not likely to be just standing about in his own entrance hall in case of visitors,” Lyn pointed out, but the invisible voice had picked up Esha’s question.
“Remain here. My master is awakening.”
“Sleeping till noon,” Esha observed. “There’s luxury for you,” but everyone knew that sorcerers could sleep for many years, replenishing their powers and sending their minds out to explore magical realms beyond the understanding of mere mortals. And Nyrgoth Elder was the last of the ancient race that brought life and people across the sky to these lands. If there was any living thing in the world that could help them, it was he.
Something within the foundation of the tower groaned, deep and tormented. In the next moment Lyn changed her mind: not a living thing at all, but as though the tower contained vast moving parts only now stirring into motion.
Nyr
MY NAME IS NYR ILLIM TEVITCH, anthropologist second class of Earth’s Explorer Corps. I am centuries old and light years from home.
*
I come to an awareness of myself in the half state between suspension and true waking. Information drip-feeds to me at a precisely calibrated rate, guaranteed comprehensible without being overwhelming. I feel my brain and systems bootstrapping themselves into functionality.
“What messages?” I query the satellites above, as soon as my cognition is complex enough to make the query. There are very few circumstances now under which the caretaker routines would wake me, but the most sought-for is contact from the Explorer Corps.
A quick scan of the contact log reveals no such message. Absurdly quick, in fact, because the log is still empty. No word from home at all, just like last time. No word received for . . .
I am awake enough, mind and body, to clench about the thought. No word for two hundred and ninety-one years, most of which I’ve slept through in the outpost’s suspension facilities.
At first I had myself woken at regular intervals to do my job. I came out here buoyed by the great tide of enthusiasm for rediscovering the old colonies. Humanity had seeded the stars with its generation ships over the best part of a thousand years, and those colonies had been developing on their own for a thousand more, cut off from an ecologically bankrupt Earth. But when we rebuilt, returning to space on the back of improved technology our ancestors could never have dreamt of, everyone had been keen to find the colonies and see how our lost relatives had got on.
That initiative put me out here, on Sophos 4. There was a team of us, although I actually have to query the database before the names and faces of my colleagues come back to me. They left. Things were going wrong at home and I volunteered to hold the fort here, for the love of anthropology, while they headed back. It was only supposed to be a stopgap measure. But the gap grew and grew, and I had to sleep more and more to stop myself growing old in my study here.
I may also have breached various non-contamination regulations, in respect of the locals here, but then the outpost itself, while remote, isn’t exactly invisible, and they came calling. And I was curious, and I was lonely, and there was nobody around to tell me to keep the rules.
I check the maintenance logs next. The outpost system self-repair is within tolerance. The suspension system itself has the most wear, and at first I assume that’s why I’ve been woken: so it can tune up the facilities that are keeping me alive. By now my body is working and I can sit up. I am still very cold, and the outpost has a heated robe and slippers for me, fabricated and disposable, inlaid with arabesques of circuitry in fine gold against the uniform slate grey of the Explorer Corps.
The system pings me to let me know it is expecting a decision on something. I have managed to overlook the actual thing it needed me for, typically. A terribly bleak wave of depression hits me, and I can’t see what the point of any of this is. Almost three hundred Earth years; I have been cut off from home for that long, and I don’t even know why. No word, no visit, not the least transmission. The distance between stars is vast, but not enough to account for so long a silence.
I get a prompt about using my Dissociative Cognition System. It takes considerable effort to make even that decision, but I manage to give my systems the OK and immediately I can step back from the crushing burden of misery, cut off from certain aspects of my own biochemistry so that I can function and make rational decisions. It was an essential mod, for someone who was going to be on their own for long periods of time without any social contact. My emotions are still out there, and I can get fascinating readouts about what that locked-away part of me is actually feeling, good, indifferent, bad, worse, but it doesn’t touch me unless I choose to open the door again. It’s a fine line, I suspect, between useful logic and that pathological numbness that true depression can often lead to, where doing or wanting anything seems like climbing uphill. The DCS is well designed, though, and for now my reason is steady and engaged and the churn of my feelings prowls about its cage and lashes its tail. I set timers and reminders to let it stretch its legs later, when the worst will, I hope, have ebbed, when I can afford to indulge it.
“Report, then.”
“I have admitted visitors from the subject population.”