Trace the Stars

by Nancy Fulda

  “Danai is a world in hiding. Now, we must come out of hiding and escape before the cycor attack.

  “We must master a hundred thousand years of technological advancement in the next four years. Everyone must do all that they can, or we shall all die in the attempt.

  “We can’t lean upon the skraals for help. We can’t hope that some great leader will save us. The time has come for each of us to be great.”

  Anduval stood for a moment, looking sober and hopeful.

  “I don’t know if I can be great,” Tallori said. “But I know I can do more than other people believe a child can do.”

  Thus, as Tallori began to understand the dangers, she often longed to return to blissful ignorance. Just as she wept for her ignorance, she soon learned to weep for her enlightenment. She began to understand why Anduval was such a brooding and driven young man.

  He worked for twenty hours a day, napping for a few minutes in the afternoon, sleeping two hours a night, taking only moments to cram a bit of food into his mouth. Then he would get back to work.

  He became a shell of a young man, and Tallori became more than just his pupil. She began to feed him, care for him.

  She soon found that the entire world was in turmoil. Their world was called upon to evolve, but the going was extremely slow.

  Before a ship could be built, Magus Veritarnus had to design and manufacture its various components.

  Before the components could be constructed, factories had to be erected, tools had to be created, and workers had to be trained how to do their jobs.

  The factories in most cases required nuclear power systems to run the various smelting and metal-working tools.

  Of course, before the power systems could run, the fissionable metals had to be mined.

  So the skraal consorts ventured across the land, urging potato farmers to dig for uranium here, begging that sailors manufacture selenium crystals there.

  At every step, the lack of technology and training became a stumbling block. It seemed that for every day of progress that was made, Magus Veritarnus discovered three more days of work to be done.

  For instance, to build the basic hull of the ship—the easiest component to fabricate—the people needed to create selenium crystal beams and plates capable of resisting impact with space debris while traveling near light speed.

  The selenium first had to be mined from rock, ground up, and dissolved in an acid bath.

  The selenium solution was then placed in tanks and an electric current passed through it. The charged selenium particles would bind to a titanium plate and begin to form crystals. In this way, beams and plates could be “grown.”

  But once they were grown, the selenium crystals were so tough that even diamond could not cut through them. So in order for them to be shaped and fastened together, laser cutting torches were needed.

  Thus a single rod for the hull could not be finished until the titanium was also mined, the acids and their containers created, the electrical systems installed in the baths, the laser cutting torches made, and so on.

  Confusion reigned, and the people of Danai hit setbacks at every turn. Much of the planning for the construction took nine months to complete. Too many questions had to be answered. What facilities needed to be built, when and how? Who would do the work, and who would manage the workers? How could you train a stone-age woodcutter to build a gamma converter or a crystal AI?

  Some work was done in fits and starts while other projects were planned, but farmers who had to dig for ore with picks and shovels proved too slow, missing deadlines. The factories were not completed on time.

  After a year, the work had hardly begun, and some of the skraals began to worry about human saboteurs. Cessari called the magus and Anduval to task, insisting they launch a search for the imaginary saboteurs.

  But good work did get completed. Anduval helped devise an early warning system in case of a cycor attack. Graviton-detecting telescopes were built and aimed toward the heavens. The gravity drive on a cycor ship would register as a massive planetoid or black hole racing toward Danai. Simple farmers were trained to man the scopes.

  Listening stations were constructed to eavesdrop on cycor ships.

  Meanwhile, the magus provided holographic interfaces for himself, Anduval, and dozens of project leaders around the world. The devices were simple silver bands that went over the forehead and wired straight into the optic and aural nerves. Thus, they could relay sights and sounds from one leader to another, so that the magus and Anduval could personally monitor situations and take care of training from afar.

  But in the third year, a hurricane hit the hull’s manufacturing facilities, and the factory was swept into the sea. A week later, at a separate construction site, a small nuclear power plant went into meltdown, and four hundred square miles of land had to be evacuated—along with a newly completed rebreather for the life-support systems.

  Upon learning the news, Cessari himself burst into Anduval’s laboratory.

  “Now will you search for the saboteurs?” he demanded.

  Anduval had only learned the news of the meltdown the day before; he’d spent a sleepless night trying to figure out how to get the work back on schedule.

  “No, I will not,” Anduval said. “There are no saboteurs. None of our people caused the hurricane, and the meltdown was an accident. The fuel rods are cooled by water from a nearby river, but the floodgates that control the water flow broke. They froze shut, and could not be reopened.”

  “Where is the man responsible for opening them?” Cessari asked. “I want to question him myself.”

  “He died this morning from radiation poisoning,” Anduval said. “He stayed far too long at the site, struggling to cool the reactor’s core even after it had gone into meltdown.”

  Cessari raged in the way of his kind, striding back and forth, striking the air with his empty fists. Finally, he turned back to Anduval.

  “The deadline for completion of the project is coming quickly. You must meet the deadline.”

  “We all are doing the best that we can,” Anduval said.

  Tallori knew that even their best was not good enough. “But we will not meet the deadline. Our only hope is that all cycor ships are far, far away.”

  At this, Cessari rushed up to Anduval. He did not dare strike the young man, but he warned, “You cannot fail our queen. If the cycor attack before we are ready, I shall make sure that you are the first to die.”

  Anduval bowed his head in acquiescence. “I assure you, under such circumstances, I would have no wish to live. Yet I must also warn you, even skraal law prohibits murder. I will be within my rights to protect myself.”

  Cessari blurted an obscenity and stalked away.

  “What are you going to do?” Tallori asked Anduval when the skraal was gone. “You have to protect yourself. The skraals are faster and stronger than us.”

  Anduval merely shrugged. “But I am smarter than they are.”

  Tallori grew from a child to a young woman. She found that she could not comprehend the math that Anduval was mastering, but she found her niche. She planned Anduval’s meals, freeing time for him and making sure he did not fall ill due to fatigue.

  When a plant manager looked as if he would miss a deadline, Tallori ran interference for Anduval, bolstering men’s spirits with praise and honors, offering bribes when it was prudent, and, when necessary, reminding them that failure meant death.

  Time and time again, she marveled at what her people had accomplished. There were farmers, working their crops by day and mining by night, breaking their hearts in order to meet a deadline that they did not understand so that their ore could be turned into something that they could not comprehend.

  Old women and children worked in factories from dawn to dusk.

  The world was full of heroes, she discovered.

  In another age, no one would have given her the time of day. But as Anduval’s assistant, it was rumored that she had the ear of the magus,
and all men gave her high regard.

  Thus, she became the mother that Anduval had never had.

  But as she neared her teens and her body began to morph from that of a child into a woman, she wanted more.

  Anduval loved a skraal nymph, and Tallori began to realize that she was in love with him.

  She wondered if Anduval would ever even notice.

  So the day came when, at the age of twelve, she sought out Magus Veritarnus at his laboratory. He’d spent long years collecting seeds, spores, and animal embryos, and then freezing them for storage. As she had anticipated, he was busy when she found him. He was always busy.

  The world on Danai had been divided into ecological zones, and the plants and animals from each zone represented species selected from various worlds. The deep forest at Shadowfest was comprised of plants and animals from the skraals’ home world. It was an impenetrable jungle where boa trees rose up in vast tangles for thousands of feet. The ground beneath them was a silent tomb, filled with fungi that digested the fallen leaves and dead animals.

  Most of the alien proteins in the creatures and plants within Shadowfest were inedible to humans, though some terrestrial animals—like the wild pigs—had begun to evolve the ability to eat them.

  Around the skraal forests, humans lived in the plains and wooded hills.

  So the magus had to store specimens from both zones. Even a few plants and animals from the dragon’s home world still thrived here. Women still planted dragon’s breath vines beside their homes. The vines were prized for the mildly narcotic smell that its flowers emitted in high summer. Old folks, bowed by arthritis, loved to take their ease beneath an arbor of dragon’s breath.

  Tallori had little interest in the magus’s efforts to save the specimens from this world. Whether the people of Danai fled on a worldship or simply tried to weather another cycor attack, the magus’s work was vital. But everyone’s work was vital, from the farmwife who simply tried to feed her husband, to the husband who mined a little each day, to the factory worker, to folks like Anduval—each was essential to the effort.

  But Tallori was too focused upon Anduval’s efforts to build a prototype of the celestial navigation system. So she dared to interrupt the magus, hoping for a moment of his time.

  “How comes the prototype?” Magus Veritarnus asked as she neared. He stood squinting up at his monitor, repairing the damaged DNA of some embryo before he sent it to the freezers.

  “Well,” Tallori said, managing only a mildly sarcastic tone. “We are only fourteen months behind schedule. Anduval hopes to have it finished in three months.”

  “A full-sized starship can be piloted even with a simple prototype. If he gets it working, we will be able to make do.”

  The magus did not bother to mention that everything else was behind schedule, too. The prototype ship would be small, only able to carry a few hundred people.

  But it was vital to the efforts. So many of the holy maiden’s sketches were . . . mysterious. Knowing what a starship’s drive system was supposed to do was one thing, building it so that the nuclear-powered lifters, ion propulsion units, gamma-wave converters, and so on all worked in unison was another.

  “You know we will not make our deadline of four years,” Tallori said.

  The magus nodded. “Some of the skraals hope that it will be done in five years. Anduval imagines that if all goes right, it will take eight. Personally, I do not believe that we can get it done in twenty.”

  He said it casually, in the way of one who has accepted that he will die in a vain struggle.

  “Anduval is not like other people,” she said. “He’s smarter. He sleeps very little, in the way that the greatest of geniuses do.”

  “Anduval is not like other people,” the magus agreed.

  “The thing is,” Tallori said. “I love him. But I feel that I’m too stupid for him. I can’t talk to him about math or physics.”

  The magus had been staring up at his monitor, switching out little blocks of ATGC. Now he peered at her.

  “A man can love a woman for something other than her native intelligence. He can love her for her goodness, her kindness. I know that Anduval is fond of you.”

  “But I can never be his equal,” Tallori said.

  “Intellectually, no,” the magus admitted. “Anduval is a special boy. Evolution does not always take place in tiny steps. Sometimes it comes in giant leaps. Anduval is the next leap.”

  The magus fell silent for a moment, and Tallori stood her ground, waiting for him to explain. Reluctantly, he said, “Two million years ago, a manlike creature roamed the earth, a creature called Homo habilis. It had a small brain that could comprehend little. It could make a leaf-shaped house and use a few simple tools—a stone knife, an awl to poke holes in furs, a needle.

  “But one day, one of the creatures evolved. The gene that told the brain how large it should be simply formed a double string, and suddenly a new specimen was born, one with twice the brainpower. It was called Homo erectus.

  “It created a few more tools, better weapons, and over time its genetic superiority was confirmed. The old species died out, and those with the new, larger brains took their place.

  “Eventually, a second mutation occurred, and mankind was born—a creature with dual brains that were connected by a bundle of nerves, so that the two halves of the brain could talk to one another. Each half of a brain was dubbed a ‘lobe,’ and that is where you come in. You can feel the evidence of those two brains. Often you will feel them arguing, struggling for control. When faced with a moral dilemma, one of your lobes may argue one course of action, while the other lobe demands another.

  “But always, it was suspected that evolution would take its next bound forward. As had happened time and again before, a new form of human would be born, one with doubled cranial capacity.”

  Tallori could not understand everything the magus said, but she understood there were genetic reasons why Anduval was smarter than she was. “So, Anduval has a larger brain?”

  The magus shook his head. “He has four brains—two frontal lobes and two posterior lobes. Each pair of lobes is connected by its own corpus callosum, its own bundle of nerves.

  “When you hear two voices arguing in your mind, Anduval hears four in his.”

  The magus now turned and looked her full in the eye. “There are those who would argue, rightly, I think, that true intelligence is not merely the ability to recall correctly, but to make intuitive leaps, to use the stored information to unforeseen advantage. That is Anduval’s gift.”

  Tallori was thinking furiously. She was wondering what that might mean for her future.

  “Anduval cannot have children with you,” the magus said gently. “You are from common human stock, and he has been greatly modified. Even if you were to try to have children, they would not be viable.”

  The words hit her like a punch to the gut, taking the air from her lungs.

  But the magus said softly, “Yet he needs someone to love, and his line must be preserved. If you marry him, I can take your eggs and a few cells from his heart, and create a child, one that will express the best traits in both of you.”

  Tallori looked up at the magus, and for the first time she understood the significance of his oversized head, the bumps on his temple. “Anduval is your son, isn’t he?”

  The magus appeared to be at a loss for words. “Close. His full name is Anduval Nine. My birth name was Anduval Eight.”

  The memory of Seramasia haunted Anduval throughout the years. At night he dreamt of her, sprawled out on her silk sheets, her womb glowing with urgency.

  At such times, he was filled with longing, and he rededicated himself to his work.

  But a thousand days after Holy Maiden Seramasia entered her long sleep, Anduval had a special dream.

  In it, he was preparing his celestial navigation system for testing on the prototype, and he worried over the artifact, a glowing ball of crystal with engravings upon it, shot through with
colored wires and bound in platinum.

  The navigation system was meant to be used by a skraal navigator. But would a skraal be talented enough to pilot the ship?

  Originally, all navigators were dragons whose minds were uniquely adapted to flight.

  Anduval had boosted the ship’s long-range detection capacities in an effort to make it easier on the skraals. Beyond that, he had eliminated the need for physical manipulation of the controls. The skraal’s crystal brain structure created a powerful electric field, a psycho-electric cloud that could easily interface with the control mechanisms without need for physical contact.

  All he needed to do was tune the interface to the proper frequency so that it did not damage the delicate neurons and axons in the skraal’s brain.

  A holographic display would appear in the pilot’s mind, showing the space ahead, and revealing obstacles that could include anything from clouds of dust or plasma to small planetoids.

  As the ship neared such obstacles, lasers would pulverize smaller debris, and the ion shields would route the particles into the fusion drives for use as fuel.

  But the pilot would have to weave a path through the larger obstacles. At slow speeds, that would not be hard.

  Yet he worried still. A skraal would be able to pilot the ship, but would the pilot be talented enough to outrun a cycor vessel?

  Anduval had no way to know. His limited information on cycor vessels was six thousand years out of date.

  So in his dream that night, he was pondering how to speed up the system when Holy Maiden Seramasia suddenly appeared at his side.

  She was a holy maiden no more. In the dream, she was filled with glorious light. Gone was the fat and fragile flesh. Now she was all hard lines. Her skin had turned to blue crystal, and the brilliance radiated from her abdomen, her thorax, even her head.

  Tiny baby skraals were crawling on her back, like large scorpions made of glass. Even as he watched, the newly hatched were exiting her womb.

  Anduval hardly dared look at her, for it hurt his eyes so. A feeling of rapture overwhelmed him as the holy mother addressed him, her thoughts a storm that beat upon him, her love a gale that blew through him.