Gods and the Stars

by Steve Statham

  For all-too many of the billions of inputs from The City, she had no method for interpreting them.

  So it was with relief when she could set aside a sliver of her conscious mind to sift through Tower's historical records. That was a task she embraced eagerly. That was something she understood, a reminder of the joys of her old life.

  Even if the search was a constant puzzle.

  There has to be more here. Some clue or insight.

  Where do gods go when they disappear into the night?

  She was trying to prepare the residents of The City for the possibility they would never see another god for as long as they lived. Self-sufficiency was her new mantra, and large swaths of the population had bought into it. But she still needed to make every effort to find the missing gods.

  I'm opening the vault of technological and biological treasures so we can arm ourselves to fight, but that might not be enough. We'll need the gods if we're going to survive.

  It was the record on Grey Wolf that was the most frustrating. Or rather, the lack of record. Talia had studied the official histories of the gods for years, of course, and knew their stories backward and forward. She had even taught the histories in the temples.

  That wasn't helping her much now.

  The official histories never told the complete story. Talia knew she would not likely find any clue that revealed the location of Grey Wolf's realm, the Wandering World. The gods jealously guarded knowledge of their whereabouts, and it wasn't just a desire for privacy. It was one of the ways they kept the existence of Divine Space secret. That shortcut through space was a secret of such value that the gods would willingly burn the knowledge from their own minds before letting it fall into dangerous hands. The secret location of the Wandering World was one more level of security for a still weak human race.

  But if she ever did get the opportunity to appeal to Grey Wolf for her help, Talia needed some insight into how to approach her. What was she like? How would she respond to desperate entreaties from a branch of humanity she had left behind 900 years ago?

  Talia scanned through the list of records one more time, digging down into reports within reports. Since taking over The City's systems she had reorganized the data stream into a form that she found easier to navigate. Although Talia had been altered to meld with The City's information net, she did not have all the godlike abilities of Tower, and his method of data storage had not been easy to grasp.

  Talia's new system reminded her of branches of information spread out like roots from a tree. It was easier for her to access the important files this way, but it was also easy to miss an obscure offshoot if she didn't pay close attention.

  Wait. There.

  She passed a file she had ignored the first time and then circled back to it. It was something she had considered insignificant, but the age of the file was noteworthy.

  She burrowed into the cache and discovered it contained a list of incomplete works. Most of it was junk—fragments of reports, requisition charts for abandoned projects, unfinished volumes of history and entertainment.

  But not all the incomplete clutter was without value. One file stood out.

  A chronicler during the first century after the establishment of The City, before the people had been split between The City and the Wandering World, had attempted to write biographies of the gods. Talia was surprised she had never heard of this scribe, but when she read his biography she understood. He was simultaneously a drug abuser and also beset by radiation-related health problems that were rampant during the first years after the establishment of the dome. He had never made a complete contribution to the permanent archives of humanity.

  But he had started something very interesting.

  She accessed the file and suddenly a voice was speaking to her from 900 years ago.

  So few remain who can recall the gods as they were prior to elevation. Most who had first-hand experiences with the men and women who became our gods have died or have left The City to accompany the gods on their various tasks.

  And so I have tasked myself with telling their stories—their human stories—before they fade forever into myth and legend.

  Since the time is drawing near when our people shall be split between those in The City and this new "Wandering World," I am starting with the most difficult of these histories, that of the woman who became Grey Wolf. It is she who will shepherd the Wandering World to its unknown destination.

  Grey Wolf's name is well chosen. She is a product of the cold northern latitudes of Earth, where such creatures as wolves would have lived. It is a stereotype to say that her personality was entirely shaped by her environment, but one cannot escape that conclusion when speaking to those who knew her.

  Her birth name was Bergdis Falkanger, and she was mayor of a small northern coastal city in a land called Norway. Even her supporters admit that in person her manner was cold, but others are more forgiving. She was taciturn, yes, and she did not suffer fools gladly, they concede. But never doubt her devotion to her people. The word that comes up most frequently is "tenacious." She would fixate on a given problem and not release it from her gaze until the trouble was corrected.

  That was a useful trait when Earth's blue sky was ripped apart by the weapons of the Otrid.

  All who survived will never forget those days. Population centers simply disappeared under constant barrage. The sky grew grey with the ash of a million fires.

  Among the wreckage, the Otrid let loose bizarre alien beasts to hunt down any who survived. Most of these terrible creatures died after a short period in Earth's incompatible atmosphere, but none of that mattered to the Otrid. According to our allies the Beh’neefazor, conscripting lesser alien species for fighting was the normal way of war for the Otrid.

  A great number of these expendable aliens were dropped in remote northern lands and slaughtered many people who had avoided bombardment by hiding in the countryside.

  It was during this time that Falkanger secured her reputation.

  With death raining from the sky, she urged her people to leave their city and seek safety in remote areas, hidden from alien eyes. Many would not abandon their homes, and others clung to the hope that if they stayed put, Earth's armies would somehow find them and rescue them.

  But others followed Falkanger. She first led her people to a series of ice caves. Their respite from the fighting was brief, however. After a mere two days in this cool and dark warren they were discovered by a small pack of the alien beasts and immediately attacked.

  Although their weapons were few, Falkanger organized an effective defense and killed the bizarre creatures that had beset them. It is said that Falkanger even impaled one of the marauding creatures herself, but I could not verify this by any surviving witness, and it may be an example of the type of legend-building I mentioned earlier.

  The fight in the ice caves was noisy, bloody work, and Falkanger knew that they could no longer keep their position concealed. Once more they sent scouts out in search of safe harbor, and this time they found a more secure location—an underground data center. In this vast subterranean complex, the information servers of nations and industry were stored and efficiently cooled by water circulating from deep-water fjords.

  It was an ideal refuge. Underground, spacious, with its own independent power supply, in normal times people could have lived there comfortably for quite some time.

  In normal times.

  Falkanger's people were not welcomed as warmly as they might have hoped. Many of the facility's staff were encamped in the center and were wary of allowing too many additional people inside lest their limited resources be taxed. Again, Bergdis Falkanger displayed the powers of leadership. She firmly and calmly swatted aside their reservations, made them see that with every day that passed, each human life was irreplaceably precious. What strength we had left would be in numbers, she told them. In this broken world, with aliens bent on exterminating us, living human beings were the most critical resource.


  Her words swayed them, as did a reluctance by the staff to endure the end of the world alone. They were admitted, and it wasn't long before the staff of the facility looked to Falkanger for leadership.

  If not for this union, far fewer people would have escaped the charred Earth.

  Besides its obvious advantages as a shelter, the data center contained another vital resource. The facility was tied into a secure global communications network. It was through this channel that they contacted others survivors. Falkanger began compiling a database of the locations of these scattered groups. It seemed like a futile task, keeping track of the handful of frightened and injured people huddled in shelters scattered across the globe.

  But one day the Otrid moved on, their lust for our eradication sated.

  And then the starship Aurora, sheltered during the conflict by the Beh’neefazor, entered Earth orbit and broadcast a planetary call for survivors.

  The Norwegians were the first to respond. And Falkanger possessed the most comprehensive list of survivors on the planet. That more than 4,000 souls were able to be saved from the dying world is largely due to her efforts.

  Despite all these accomplishments, her selection for godhood was a bit of an anomaly.

  The six other deities of man were chosen to receive divine power largely due to their unique technical skills or specialized knowledge. Other factors were weighed by the survivors, but the insights necessary to unlock the mysteries of the universe were valued above all else.

  Apex had been the lead terraformer on the Mars project. Tower had been a military commander and chief engineer for the very starships that carried the remnants of the human population to safety. Faraway had organized the most thorough experiments on the physical and psychological effects of the deep space environment on human life that had ever been conducted.

  Triton had been the leading authority on alien life, discovering much of what is known about the Beh’neefazor and the Otrid invaders. Apollo was an unusual combination of artist and scientist, a natural showman who had been able to take obscure subject matter and produce massively popular entertainment across multiple platforms.

  Of them all, however, the man who became Maelstrom was recognized worldwide as an intellectual giant. He had been a theoretical physicist and early in his career had unlocked the secret of faster-than-light travel that had allowed humanity to discover the Beh’neefazor.

  Bergdis Falkanger had none of these advantages. She was chosen for elevation thanks to the sheer intensity of her backers. The surviving Norwegians comprised a substantial percentage of the remaining humans, and were adamant in their support for her.

  She had proven her leadership abilities and courage, they insisted. Besides this, I think the Norwegians had tapped into an underlying current of friction among the survivors. Many objected to the idea that the gods should only be chosen from among the intellectual elite, as if intelligence was the only thing that might save us. Many bridled at the idea that the right credential was an unquestioned marker of intelligence anyway.

  Talia saw that there was a break in the text where the author had inserted notes to himself:

 

  The narrative continued.

  Besides the support of her countrymen, there was another factor in Falkanger's favor. Since she had no children she fit into the evolving consensus that those selected for uplift should have no surviving heirs, lest suspicions of hereditary favoritism erode support for the gods. If these men and women were to be granted so much power, the argument went, their focus needed to be on protecting all the people, without the temptation to guide the affairs of family members. And how could a small closed society function if some could claim kinship to gods? Impartiality was deemed a crucial character trait in those being considered for godhood.

  And so Bergdis Falkanger was selected to be one of the seven. She chose the name Grey Wolf and there was never any doubt that she would be one of the protector gods, a silent watcher that would never abandon her people.

  Talia emerged from the data dive with a grim sense of satisfaction. Much of this history she knew from the memories that Tower had left for her. But some of it was new, and the different perspective helped.

  A picture of Grey Wolf was coming into focus.

  She will do anything to protect her people. She will not be afraid of the cold and the dark. She will be wary. Suspicious. Slow to trust.

  If I can find her.

  Chapter 5

  Tell the Large One

  The flesh around Vance's implants still hurt like slowly smoldering bruises.

  He tried not to scratch. The skin that bordered the implants was red and puffy enough already. The rosy inflammation contrasted with the silvery veins that now ran the length of his arms and neck and up into the stubble of his recently-shaved head. His younger children were shying away again, unsure about this alarming change in their father.

  "Do these new shiny parts bother you, Prina?"

  She shook her head very slightly, but her face gave another answer.

  "These are just tools for daddy's new job, that's all. I get to defend us from the...bad ones...from far away. That's a pretty important job."

  Prina nodded, chewing on her lower lip.

  "Because the last thing we want is monsters in the dome," he roared, and lumbered around the room after them, stiff-limbed, like some demented servitor bot. They fled shrieking and laughing into the arms of his wife.

  Even while playing with the younger ones, however, Vance couldn't help but notice how his perceptions of his children had shifted. The implants amplified the information around him, and not just the electromagnetic chatter that permeated The City. Vance could now detect the temperatures and heart rates of his children, the subtle flushes of warmth that raced across their skin as their moods shifted. Visually, he could see them with startling detail. He believed he could count the individual hairs on Prina's head from six feet away if he ever wanted to take the time to do so.

  It was an unexpected side-effect of this new hardware that was designed for a very non-domestic purpose—to kill Otrid.

  Vance understood the confusion of his children to his altered appearance. In fact, Vance himself was unsure of the person he was becoming. Even on his most restless days he would probably never have volunteered for these implants that had been dredged up from humanity's ancient past. But Talia had put him in charge of the newly assembled City Guardians. As a leader in charge of men, he could not show hesitation or uncertainty. If he was going to ask his men to have these strange technologies grafted into their very flesh, he was determined to be the first to undergo the procedures.

  Even so, he could not help but wonder what future surprises were in store. So much of his transformation was invisible, hidden deep within his body. His own blood riders had been enlisted in the cause of changing him into a new kind of warrior.

  All humans carried blood riders, a legacy of mankind's headlong flight from the Otrid invaders so many centuries ago. Another ancient technology, the blood riders had been dispensed through the population to fight off the degradation from radiation exposure that was an inevitable side-effect of living in deep space. It had recently been rediscovered that there was another purpose behind these microscopic minders—they could be manipulated by the gods to induce certain emotions and behaviors in people. This power had mostly been used benignly—at least by Tower—to lift the spirits of a downtrodden people during their many travails.

  There was clearly more to the blood riders than any current resident of The City had been told, however.

  Talia had instructed Vance that dormant abilities coded into his blood riders had been activated. Where the modified blood riders left off and the implants began, he couldn't say.


  It seemed like a very long time ago since he had been a mere instigator of challenge games to relieve the boredom of City life. The Affiliation of Seekers he’d created was a semi-secret society with a specific agenda. They had devised increasingly elaborate physical and mental challenges to test themselves, and as a way to push back against the often placid nature of life under the dome.

  But The City's protector god was dead. There was no longer a giant to watch over them. There was definitely no more time for games.

  Now Vance had to build an army of fighters.

  He watched as Prina squirmed in Jenna's arms. His wife was well-along in her fourth pregnancy, at that stage where she tired easily. Strands of hair fell loosely over her eyes. Jenna put down Prina and shooed her and her sister Arianna off to their room.

  "Will you be able to eat with us tonight?"

  "I think so. In fact, I know so. I make the training schedule, so I suppose I can decide when we break for evening meal."

  She smiled and exhaled in relief as she eased down into a chair. "You know, Brent can't wait to join you. He was the same way with your Affiliation challenges, but it's even worse now. He and his friends do nothing but practice fighting moves all day. You should see the battle armor they created from the debris they took from the damaged administration spire."

  "I know. Before this is all over, we may need to take them that young," he said, but shifted subjects quickly when he saw the look on her face. "What do you have planned for the day?"

  "I'm taking the kids to Tower's temple," she said. "At fifth hour there's going to be a ceremony. The final book of Tower is going to be inducted into The City's network."

  "Tower? Usually I find you at Apex's temple."

  "Every mother prays for Apex to finish his work so our kids can grow up on the new world," she said. "But I'm ashamed at how little time I spent offering thanks to Tower. We took him for granted for too long. We need the gods—all the gods—now more than ever."