“But you’ll get Mei?” Nuri hated that her vision was blurring with tears, and she swiped angrily at her eyes.
“We’ll get Mei. And now you rest, all right? Tomorrow’s a big day. You’ll be getting a new implant and … there’ll be meetings with the press and important role-players.”
“Who’ll all want to suck up to me now, right?”
Raphel snorted. “Absolutely right, luv.”
23
High Acres Memorial Forest was, as the name suggested, situated far above the ground. The building itself spanned several blocks in the northern part of The Spires, the entirety of its terraced rooftops descending in graceful, tree-covered steps. Nuri made her way along a rough-stone path to the location her AR indicated for the planting. She clutched a sad bunch of flowers – real blooms, already wilted – that she would be placing once they were done with laying Fadhil to rest.
No coffin, no shooting remains into the stars or similarly strange end for him. He hadn’t even uploaded an avatar to the web. His body had been prepared in a kind of – cocoon? – and was being planted, so that he might return to the earth. All right, not quite earth, but almost. It was pretty here – even if the vegetation was too orderly to be truly wild. It was chilling to realise that every tree here grew on the remains of a person. Hundreds, if not thousands of trees spreading their branches to the sun. While some had clearly been planted recently, many stood two storeys or more high, with ferns growing in the crooks of their boughs, their trunks bearded with moss.
They don’t go to the stars. K’Lutri sounded genuinely puzzled. As always, the Sjihaam remained part of Nuri’s awareness, colouring her world with emotions and thoughts.
No, said Nuri.
We are all star stuff. It seems a waste to spend time here before moving on.
It’s not like that! Nuri laughed. They don’t see things the way you do.
At times, Nuri glimpsed the vastness of K’Lutri’s mind, of the Sjihaam’s connection to the stars, and the gravity that drew her to the spaces between. It was like standing on the edge of a bottomless chasm, and each time Nuri gazed a little further into infinity, she shied back, nearly overwhelmed by her own insignificance.
It was simpler if she tried to immerse herself in the drama surrounding her having become a new avatar. The past few days had flown by in a dizziness of debriefings, interviews, media appearances … So much so that she’d hardly had time to contemplate the magnificence that was K’Lutri.
The Sjihaam didn’t hover so much as inhabit her surrounding space. The light bent around her shining flanks. K’Lutri’s dorsal, ventral and lateral vanes with their translucent, glass-like webbing moved as if to the whispers of an unfelt breeze. Like an ornamental carp sculling in water, she’d heard the Sjihaam described. Always, the sleek, tapered head was pointed in Nuri’s direction, K’Lutri’s regard constant and curious. She grew noticeably each day, though it wasn’t at all clear from where she drew her sustenance except that the air around her shimmered with a heat haze, a mirage. On the occasions that K’Lutri had tried to explain to Nuri how she accessed the sphere beyond this one, what she called the doleth, Nuri had to protest that none of it made sense.
It would, in time, and for now accepting things as they were was fine by her. As it was, she was having to deal with enough change. She was no longer hunted, starving and cast away. Nuri felt the sun on her face, not yet too warm, and breathed in the leaf-mulch scent of the memorial forest.
Ancestors, there were birds flittering in the boughs – not that she could see them – but she could hear warbling and rustling about. Even here, nearly a kilometre above the ground, there was life. Verdant, abundant life. It was appropriate that Fadhil’s final resting place was both of the sky and the earth.
Nuri quickened her pace, her footfalls muted on the pathway, which had been perfectly sculpted to meander between the tree trunks. Ahead lay a clearing, with shorn grass so green it didn’t look real. Except it was. She paused to trail her fingers over the springy surface, then looked up at the group were gathered, waiting for her.
They were all there, all her friends: Mei, Byron, Raphel, F’Thr, and even Opna, who raised a hand in silent greeting. Joy burst up through her and she hurried to them, only remembering about her not-quite-healed ankle when it gave a warning twinge.
She’d only spoken to Mei via video call, so to see her friend in person brought her near to tears as they closed the distance between each other.
Mei wrapped her in a tight hug, her hair smelling like the jasmine shampoo she so liked using. The scent of a safe place.
“I’m so glad you’re all right!” Nuri swallowed a sob.
“Likewise.” Mei pulled back and held Nuri at arm’s length. “Damn it, girl. You’ve lost weight.”
“Stress.” Nuri offered a wry smile.
“That’s all over now. Come.” Mei linked her arm through Nuri’s and brought her closer to the others.
Byron smiled broadly. He grabbed her hand, squeezed and then hugged her so hard she swore she heard her bones creak. “Good to see you again, space trash.”
“Military brat,” Nuri retorted with a smile.
Opna and F’Thr added to the messy group hug. Raphel stood to the side, the sun shining off his clean-shaven scalp. They’d spoken for hours since the emergence, and she was glad he was attending the planting.
The human officiator eventually arrived, trailed by a pair of spider-legged utility bots that carried the pod between them. It was difficult to imagine that the earthen, bulb-shaped pod contained Fadhil’s mortal remains. Diagrams online showed how the deceased was curled into a foetal position – a strange kind of rebirth. Then disquieting thoughts about the tree’s roots growing, spreading, made her shut her eyes and draw a deep breath.
Without needing to be asked, Mei reached out and took hold of Nuri’s hand, and she responded with a squeeze. K’Lutri’s love for Nuri added to a heady swarm of emotion. With rightness. Compassion.
“Dear hearts,” began the officiator, “thank you so much for gathering today, to celebrate the life of Fadhil Tien …”
The elderly woman’s words became blurred after that – Nuri focused on the way the sunlight brought out the gloss of the sapling’s leaves. Her AR helpfully added that this was a milkwood from Old Terra. They were particularly long-lived trees that grew in the coastal regions of a continent called Africa, where Fadhil’s ancestors were said to have lived many thousands of years ago.
The information meant little to Nuri. Fadhil wasn’t here anymore. They were planting his body so that the people who’d known him here and now could remember him. Except that his daughter and his wife were ancestors alone knew where in the galaxy, so Nuri and her friends were the only ones present. In fact, apart from Raphel, Nuri was the only one who’d ever spoken to the man in person.
That he had no friends, peers or family here today, made her almost as sad as the fact that he’d flashed in and out of her life so briefly. As if he hadn’t even been real. Though he was the reason she’d had the opportunity to stand for the emergence. Without him … She’d have been shipped off to a military institution for wayward brats. Or locked up in a facility for juvenile crims. Or she’d have remained enslaved to Vadith.
Or she could be dead.
She had an obligation now to find Fadhil’s daughter. Nuri had been staggered by the amount of money Fadhil had left her, but the bulk of his fortune was intended for his biological daughter, who was lost among the stars.
We will find her, K’Lutri affirmed.
Thank you.
The short sermon drew to a close, and Nuri leant in to Mei, who hugged her closer. Slowly the sapling with its pod was lowered into the hole, and Nuri and her friends were directed to each take a handful of crumbly, loamy earth and sprinkle it around the pod.
“Our lives are brief,” the officiator intoned, “but life is an eternal ebb and flow, of which we are but a small part. Our bodies may return to the stuff from which th
ey are made, but we will live forever in the hearts and minds of those who knew and loved us, and who will continue to speak our names.”
A fresh wave sadness washed through Nuri. To think this is all Fadhil had come to. Her handful of soil pattered down.
Byron and the others were watching her surreptitiously, but Nuri’s eyes stayed dry. The officiator spoke to Raphel, but Nuri wasn’t bothered to try listen to what was being said.
“I guess this is it, then?” Mei said.
“Yeah.” Nuri stubbed at loose earth with the toe of her boot.
The bots started shovelling soil into the hole, and Nuri turned away, leading her friends to the blanket spread out beneath a large yiyi tree. Funny to consider that no matter where one went in the galaxy, the shapes of living things often followed the same templates. Parallel evolution, they called it. The yiyi tree had foliage so dark it was nearly purple, each palmate leaf reaching for the sun. Its pale, creamy trunk was vividly striped with bands of cinnamon.
“I wish you didn’t have to go today,” Mei said to Nuri as they settled.
Nuri glanced up meaningfully at the canopy, then turned to Mei. “K’Lutri must leave the atmosphere. It’s growing too dense for her.”
Mei’s eyes grew bright with tears. “But we barely had a chance to spend time together.”
“I know.” Nuri huffed out a small sigh. “And I don’t think I’m going to be back here for a long, long time.” The immensity of the distance that would yawn between them struck her with a fresh blow.
Mei gripped Nuri’s hand. “Then let’s make a pact. All of us.” She glanced around meaningfully until the others stopped their banter under the force of Mei’s will. Nuri swore she’d felt her friend engage her psi-ability to accomplish this.
Subtle, but present. She suppressed a grin. Mei had more strength than she let on.
“Okay, you lot. Yes, even you, Opna. Even if you flaked out early,” Mei started.
Opna set down the plate he was holding. “What’s so important that you’re getting between a Heran and his cupcake? They’re not going to eat themselves, you know.”
Byron cuffed him lightly across the head for that, and the Heran didn’t duck in time.
“Guys!” Mei said.
“C’mon, you two.” F’Thr’s eyes were mere slits of amusement. Nuri hadn’t had a chance to catch up with him yet either.
“Righty,” Mei said, “it’s been a crazy few weeks. Things have been bad, and they’ve been good.”
“They’re pretty good now,” Opna quipped.
This time Byron’s slap missed.
Mei straightened. “We’re still a team. It doesn’t matter where we are, whether we’re between solar systems or mucking about on some world or station, we’ll still have each other’s backs, right?”
“You’re getting us to make a pact?” Opna leant forward. “You do realise I missed most of the exciting bits.”
“There’s a reason we still want you here, dumbass,” Byron said. “We wouldn’t have asked, otherwise.”
Opna let out a wheezy laugh. “Oh, you know how to flatter, you great big brute.”
“And there I thought we bored you to tears,” F’Thr quipped.
“Like I would’ve given up the invitation to this exclusive shindig?” Opna pressed a hand to his chest in mock outrage. “Hello – bragging rights? Imagine the leverage I’ll have with my family. I’m lucky they haven’t already shipped me off to tutor some snot-nosed youngling who shows more promise than I do.”
“Seriously, guys,” Mei said. “We don’t know what life is going to throw at us during the next few years. We all have family. We all had some sort of safety net when we signed on for this stint at the facility. Except for Nuri, that is. We are pretty much the first proper family she’s ever had.”
Mei gave Nuri a meaningful look, and Nuri had to blink back tears.
“And Nuri’s had a raw deal this whole time. She’s had to deal with horrible people like Stasja during training. Ancestors, she nearly died thanks to the plotting of the Merchanter families. She was ostracised, treated like a crim, and yet she’s still here.”
Mei reached over to clasp Nuri’s hand and didn’t let go.
“We are her found family. I choose Nuri.”
This time the emotion welled up in Nuri so heavy and sweet that the tears rolled freely down her cheeks.
“I choose you,” murmured Byron, followed by F’Thr and, finally, a slightly bemused Opna.
“This is all really quite adorable, people, but I hope you don’t expect me to slit my palm and mingle my blood with yours,” Opna said.
“Argh! Nothing like that, you idiot,” Mei shot back.
Nuri choked with laughter. “You guys are making me all emotional, and I have that final ceremony in what –?”
“Twenty minutes,” added Raphel, from where he sat a slight distance from them.
“Ugh.” Nuri shuddered. “Live broadcast via ansible to the nearest solar systems.” She wiped at her eyes.
“Argh!” Mei grabbed Nuri’s hand. “You’re smudging your makeup.”
“I’ll never get used to wearing that gunk.”
“Lemme sort that out for you. Who did it anyway? You look like a raccoon.”
“I did it myself. And what’s a racoon?” Nuri asked.
“More importantly,” F’Thr asked, “what does raccoon taste like?”
* * *
The final ceremony was everything she’d been warned about and more. Though Nuri was prepared for a spectacle, she wasn’t nervous. Well, she hadn’t purposefully allowed herself to think about being nervous. That was, until they arrived at the massive amphitheatre.
I’m here, K’Lutri said.
And she was, her shimmering formation above the stretched-canvas curve of the stage’s backdrop. In front of Nuri, the audience rose in tiers, thousands of faces turned towards her, and nearly all of them, so far as she could see, were grinning for all their worth.
If there had been any mutterings about Nuri being mere space trash, these were certainly not doing the rounds now. Amazing how quickly people could change their opinions.
Nuri pasted on her smile and followed Katha, Alda and T’Atmar as they made their way across to the podium. The roar of cheering and applause that rose from the audience made her feel as if she was drowning, and her knees turned to water.
If it weren’t for the fact that her friends and Raphel were sitting in the front row, she would have made a dash for the wings. Instead, her AR helpfully prompted that her speech cue cards were ready – a speech she hadn’t written, but had had a chance to skim. Big words that promised interstellar trade and much-needed revenue to help stave off a technical recession. Whatever the hell that meant.
This was supposed to be her big send-off – K’Lutri would descend and scoop her up, and the bonding between her and the Sjihaam would be complete. Nuri hadn’t boarded the living quarters and bridge yet, an area, she was told, that had been prepared for her.
The very idea that she was about to live and travel inside another sentient being terrified her like nothing else. She almost wanted to beg one more day here, on the ground, among her friends and the familiar surroundings. Yet at the same time K’Lutri promised her the stars, the excitement of strange new horizons, to not be tied down by all the terrible things she’d experienced in her short life. And she had a hunger to explore.
Soon.
Alda spoke first, empty words so far as Nuri was concerned, while Nuri fretted on her seat. The ceremonial robe she’d been given to wear was too warm, the fabric too heavy and constricting. She concentrated on the fine, amethyst-hued weave, the way individual facets in its threads captured the daylight. Nuri didn’t want to consider how much this garment must’ve cost. Possibly more credits than what many barrens-dwellers held in their palm in a decade.
They come, said K’Lutri, and all the small hairs on Nuri’s body prickled with awareness as she looked up.
Four shapes, dar
k and massive, crowded out the sun, their enormous shadows inking over the city. The sheer bulk of the four Sjihami robbed Nuri of her breath. They did not descend all the way, but came as close to the surface as they dared. Each was subtly different – one pale grey and elongated; two of a similar size, more oblong and coruscating with an aurora of hues; and the last shining with an opalescent gleam, almost oily. Their alien faces were directed at the amphitheatre, their fathomless eyes like holes in the very fabric of reality. If Nuri didn’t understand that these were benevolent beings, she’d be terrified. Their facial features were, plainly put, terrifying. The long grey one had trailing whiskers like a bottom-dweller.
The pressure of their regard on K’Lutri and Nuri was heavy, like being pressed against a wall by a giant yet gentle beast while it snuffled one’s scent.
They wait. We must not be long. I must see the stars.
Her breathing short, Nuri realised that Alda had gestured for her to come forward. Thousands upon thousands of expectant faces turned towards her. Camera drones hovering at every other angle. And she had to speak?
Nuri stepped up to the podium, certain that all her blood was now lodged in her feet. Fortunately, the podium was solid, and Nuri leant heavily on it. The cursor in her AR prompted her to access her speech cue cards, but all she could do was be aware of how frantically her heart was beating, as if it would burst through her ribcage.
She opened her mouth, but her throat was tight, so the first words were quivery, and she thought she sounded like an old woman.
“What an amazing journey. Months of hard training, studying –”
Nuri couldn’t do it. The speech was so artificial, made her sound as if she was reciting an advertorial. They weren’t her words.
“Sod it,” Nuri said, minimising her AR. “I’m not going to say what has been prepared for me.” She clutched the podium, revelling in the rush of approval she received from K’Lutri.
“Look. I’ve had a raw deal in life. Let’s be honest, there’re piles of you listening to this right now who didn’t want me to succeed. I wasn’t right for your plans. I didn’t have a powerful family looking out for me. I don’t have the correct breeding. Hell, so far as I know, I don’t have any breeding.” She laughed at the shocked faces she could pick out in front of her. Behind her, Alda had risen, but Nuri was confident the woman wouldn’t try to interrupt her. Not with all the Sjihami present. Nuri’s pulse was racing.
Sing Down the Stars Page 25
