The Last Legends of Earth

by A. A. Attanasio

  “That is bad!” Pahang cried, curled up in his sling. “What does it mean?”

  “Means that with a planet this massive, we have enough thrust for only one shot out of here. We won’t be taking any tours, or picking and choosing among the O’odes. We get one, and if we’re lucky we get away.” Ned blew a sigh. “You can come out now. The needlecraft can’t follow us this deep. Too close to the O’odes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they haven’t hit us again.”

  “But they know we are here. They will be shooting at us, lah?”

  “See those static streaks on the screen? Those are bolts. This time our shadowary hull is protecting us. They’re shooting wild.”

  Pahang had time to mutter a chant before the ship began vibrating so violently he could barely breathe.

  “Stabilizers—are—out!” Ned shouted. “We have to glide in—without ramstat. Brace yourself!”

  The ship convulsed too severely for Ned to work the console. They would have to trust autopilot to guide them through the dense clouds and land them near an O’ode.

  Cruel minutes later, the strohlkraft pounded a hard, bumpy surface and lurched to a stop. Pahang hung in a daze, staring at thick fog rubbing against the visor. Ned’s wavery fingers plucked at the console, and the visor lit up with a false color outline of the surrounding terrain.

  Apparitions of skewed geometries drifted across the visor as the scan circled the horizon. “We’ve landed in something like a city—or something artificial. Look at the size of those structures. They dwarf even the biggest lynks.” At Ned’s typed command, the outlying geometries rotated three-dimensionally, and they determined that they were on the floor of a basin in an abstract clutter of precise, sinuous shapes large as mountains. The spiral megaliths seemed woven, textured like spun fabric. Some had frayed, and bundles of filaments, streaming a hundred meters long, wavered in the fog, elegant as feathers. Beyond the city, sand reefs and volcanic cones’ serrated the horizon.

  Ned punched a query about the location of the O’ode. Aisles of color spoked the visor display, leading to the white blip of the strohlkraft and a bright grain of light beside it. “We’re sitting on the O’ode. Gai’s program dropped us right on top of it.” Ned unslung himself and hunched over the console, working the control for the bay doors and the cargo-hoist. A high, thin whine seeped up from the belly winch. “It’s small—size of a coconut.” A thud announced the closing of the bay doors. With a whirr, the planet’s gases evacuated and breathable air flushed the bay. “All right—let’s open her up.”

  Ned lifted a grid at the back of the flight pod and released a magnetic lock. Panels petalled open, and the hoist lifted into the pod a black sphere small as a skull. At Ned’s touch, the globe powdered to ash, leaving a black circle with a blue pearl at its center, humming with light.

  Ned cast an alarmed look at the console, registered that the object was not radioactive. Pahang placed his hands near its glow and felt no heat. He glanced at Hawk for a nod, then picked it up. It felt silken, soft.

  The console lit up with full power, air vents thrummed louder, and the hoist sunk back into the bay. “What’s this?” Ned watched launch configurations scroll across the monitor and waved Pahang to his sling. “Gai’s program is kicking on. Somehow it knows we have the O’ode.” He hurriedly fit the grid back into the floor and scurried into his sling as the intact dorsal thrusters fired.

  Inertial drag and hysterical vibrations from the destabilized strohlkraft threw the men to the brink of blackout. Even in the blur of the ship’s seizure, Ned eyed the warning strobes on the visor, pleading for a less steep ascent angle, then demanding stop-thrust, and, with a shrill siren, threatening to burst the flight pod. With jaws fused, joints twisted and shaken, the men rode their terror into a thunderclap of silence and a flare of stars.

  Free of the atmosphere, the strohlkraft steadied enough for Ned to read the data banks. The ramstat cells had fully charged, and the ship arrowed at maximum speed for the skylynk where they had come through. “I don’t understand. Something down there charged us up.”

  The fist where Pahang held the O’ode had squeezed so tightly he had to pry his fingers open. The blue sphere looked hard and shiny. “Maybe the power is here.”

  Moments later, they slid through the skylynk: Gray vastness exploded around them, hung with mirrory lumps of time. The display for the ramstat cells declared full power. “It must be the O’ode,” Ned conceded. “That lynk should have drained the engine cells.” He accepted the tiny sphere from Pahang. Its texture surprised him. He pressed it between his fingers, and thought he felt prickly energies.

  He placed the O’ode in a freefall net on the command deck, and a smile wavered up in him. This was the weapon that would kill the zōtl, that would break the Emirate and topple N’ym. A bead. A drop of gaugeless power. He knew he should feel some anguish before it, yet he did not. The dark mood that had troubled him on the flight out had given way to hope. Here waited the seed of his future. If Chan-ti could be saved, this would lead him to her. If not, nothing would matter. He felt clearheaded about that, as though the rough ride into and out of Rataros had shaken him free of himself. He smiled, and Pahang dared a laugh.

  “We are heroes!” the Malay shouted. “The gods themselves stand in awe of us.”

  Ned unlatched Pahang’s sling and gave it a shove that set it twirling. “We are the heroes of nothing. All this has already happened in my past. The zōtl are dead and N’ym is fallen. The gods are laughing, Pahang.”

  Pahang jerked in a splash of limbs, struggling to right himself without gravity. Ned reeled in the Malay’s sling-cords and pulled him up close. “Have you forgotten about our torque—how time is twisted around us? When we go through the lynk at Chalco-Doror, the computer says we’ll jump hundreds of years forward—into my future. The O’ode has to arrive in the time I came from, if this is the O’ode that made the history I remember.”

  “You dizzy my head, Hawk.”

  “We are heroes of nothing,” Ned told him. A laugh appeared in his strong stare, though his expression hardened, too severe for laughter. “We can’t deliver the O’ode. Gai will have to come in and get it. We are just shades of history. Not heroes. No one will remember us.”

  “So, who cares who kills the spiders? You are here for Chan-ti. You are her hero. Now Gai must show you where she is held.”

  If she was dead, physically or in her heart, nothing would matter. But if she lived, if he could find her— The joy in his eyes brightened. The fall of N’ym, the destruction of the Aesirai were not his crimes. No villain or hero, he lived only as a man seized by powers greater than he understood. Instead of bearing witness to himself from his blood—which would only indict him for his betrayal of his forefathers—he chose then and there to make his freedom with his own mind, from his own strange destiny, from the spirit that he had first recognized in the feathers of dusk on the streets of N’ym, the same spirit that had led him to Chan-ti and that he had found living in her.

  “Was there ever a Chan-ti in your life?” Ned asked.

  Dismay troubled Pahang’s round face, and relented to a sad smile. “My second wife was my soul. She was born in the very month of my manhood rite. When I first saw her playing in the dust with the other children, I knew then she would be my wife. I knew then she was me. I courted her at the proper time, after I made my first fortune—I am embarrassed to say it now, it is so mere before the marvels we have seen—a fortune of eels, nets and nets of them driven early in the season to the cove where clear fortune had led me alone. I was welcomed in every village on the coast. For days, I traveled like a prince. I returned with a wealth of cowrie and won her—and with her my soul. For a while, we knew happiness. But our lives belong to the gods. My second brother, possessed of a lewd and greedy jungle spirit, stole our village chief’s cowrie and my second wife, carried her into the jungle. I followed, but I never saw them again. The jungle killed me.”

 
Ned lowered his gaze. When he looked up, Pahang grinned giddily. “I do not regret losing my life for her. As I was dying, I did regret. But that was before Squat taught me how to love. He was a strict teacher, lah?”

  “What did he teach you?”

  “That my second brother was right. We must hold what we love. We must take what we love into our lives. That is why I was right to leave my first wife and our children to chase her. I was right and there is no shame in it, though I died. Lah. I would do it again.”

  “If you come with me, you will be taking the risk of dying again, even more horribly should the zōtl get you—a terrible risk and no second wife to take back into your life.”

  “Second wife is gone forever. I know that. But Chan-ti may be saved, if the gods favor us. That is a risk worthy of my small life. Do you think I have forgotten you saved me from Squat?”

  “You saved me, Pahang. On Squat’s beach, you were the one who knew Gai—the Mother of Night I think you called her.”

  They shared a laugh, and Pahang was satisfied. The bad spirit haunting Hawk had departed. The O’ode truly displayed great power. Now the everlasting risk that is the Life would go well for them. Gai would be pleased and lead them to Chan-ti. They would save her, and Hawk would be repaid with his soul for saving Pahang from Squat. The Malay at last would be free of all debts. And then, all would go well until it went bad again, and even then there would always be something good about their lives, for both of them had made their peace with the incomprehensible. Now whatever there was, would be good enough.

  *

  The strohlkraft came to a shaky stop before the luminous gateway of a lynk in the midst of a null field. The body of a woman lay in the gray field. Before either of the wanderers could consider what to do about her, the communication fixtures lit up, and a female voice they both recognized as Gai’s spoke, vivid with concern: “The zōtl have taken Lod! Do you have the O’ode?”

  Ned and Pahang exchanged worried stares. “We have the O’ode,” Ned answered. “What is this about Lod? How did the spiders take him?”

  “No time to explain. It was all my fault. I need the O’ode immediately. My only hope of saving him is to destroy his captors.”

  “The O’ode is yours,” Ned said into his sling mike. “But we can’t go through the lynk to deliver it. The torque—”

  “I know—I know. I searched the Overworld for someone from this time. She’s outside your ship now. Her name is Lorraine Poole. She’s one of the Genitrix finds, so she will know about me. Give her the O’ode and have her come through.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting about our agreement?” Ned asked. “You promised to take me to Chan-ti. I have the O’ode—but I don’t know how to get to Chan-ti.”

  “There’s a way for your strohlkraft to reach the Dragon’s Shank, where Chan-ti is being held. There’s a Saor lynk where the rotation of Saor’s black body will compensate for your time-torque and allow you to enter this time. But there is a risk of Saor apprehending you, so we will not try to convey the O’ode through there. I will transmit coordinates to your computer.”

  “Coordinates are too unreliable out here,” Ned told the Rimstalker. “I want you to program the flightpath yourself, like you did for the trip to Rataros.”

  “I can’t insert a flightpath over the comm-line.”

  “Then you will have to come here and do it.”

  Silence flinched with vent noise. “I’m not coming in there. It’s too risky. I don’t know what will happen.”

  Ned slung his jaw and passed an incredulous frown to Pahang. “We risked our tocks at Rataros. The focking spiders ripped out one of our thrusters, nearly broke our bones. We put our lives on the line for you, Gai. You want this O’ode—come and get it.”

  “Lod is being held by the zōtl with your Chan-ti. If I program your ship to go directly to her, will you strive to save Lod as well?”

  “We already have an agreement.”

  “Without Lod, I cannot manage the planet orbits. They will fail soon enough and start colliding. You must try to save Lod.”

  “What about you? You are more powerful than we are. And Lod is yours. You save him.”

  “I will be there to help—when the O’ode has destroyed the spiders’ nest world. Until then, you must do what you can. Will you try?”

  Pahang touched Ned’s arm, whispered, “Never refuse the gods. Lie if you must. Lah. But do not refuse them.”

  Ned’s eyebrows shrugged. “You get me to Chan-ti, and I’ll do everything I can to free Lod.”

  The air in the flight pod jellied, and Gai’s voice riveted them, “I’m here.”

  The hair on their heads stood like bristles, and their skin crawled with a viscous static. “We feel you.” Ned dropped from his sling and helped Pahang get down. Sparks snapped at their fingertips. “Maybe we better wait outside.”

  “Yes,” Gai’s thunder-voice dinned. “Lorraine is rousing. Stay with her until I am finished. But first—let me see the O’ode.”

  Ned, who had taken it from the freefall net at their landing, displayed the azure pebble. It floated out of his palm and spun in the air above his hand.

  The air squeezed tighter and relaxed as if pumped in a giant heart. “You have done well, lynk-wanderers. Now the zōtl will die.”

  “And N’ym will fall.”

  The O’ode dropped back into his palm. Gai spoke, quieter, “N’ym has already fallen—in your life. Would you have it otherwise?”

  Ned stood taller. This he had thought through with his blood, remembering his childhood in N’ym and the spiders who had been paid in human life so that he could live there. His father and brothers had died to defend the City of the Sky. They had thought the zōtl their allies, the necessary evil that sustained the Storm-Tree. Life was suffering, they had told him. There was no other way. Let the weak perish that the strong might endure. That was the Aesirai faith. But he had learned true suffering under Squat, and he would have no human, no matter how weak or distorted, subject to pain so that he might live in comfort. Though his forefathers, warriors all, would find him despicably weak for this breach of their faith, he knew the rightness of his decision. He answered Gai’s question: “The zōtl are the strength of the Aesirai. When the spiders fall, N’ym falls. I would not have it otherwise.”

  *

  Lorraine Poole woke to a luminous feeling. Still in the gray emptiness of the Overworld, she nevertheless felt refreshed and alert—and that frightened her. She had been starving—dying. She sat bolt upright and faced in the chasmic grayness a glowing tunnel, shimmery blue as pool light. Before it, perched with ichor-grimed landing gear on its reflection in a mirrorgray surface, a black vehicle with stubby, asymmetrical wings and predatory lines waited. The squared-off back end of it, which looked like dark sheetglass, had been lifted, exposing a bashed-in underbody and creased fins. From the hull beside the winged-open hatch, the Thunderhawk emblem of the Aesirai glared at her.

  Anger and fear whirled her to her feet. Two men descended from the craft. They had guns strapped loosely across their bodies. One was short in a sloping helmet that reached almost to his shoulders, the other lanky and bareheaded. Something about their incongruous silhouettes and jaunty gait eased her fear. She strode to meet them.

  “We mean no harm,” the short one greeted her with a steady smile, an Asian man with a squint worn deeply into seamed flesh. “We are here to help you.” His voice crackled in the air.

  “You’re hearing us through a translator,” the tall man said, stepping out of the glare from the tunnel and facing her with a brow and nose like masonry and a gentle smile. His rusty hair looked disheveled as a wheatsheaf. “I am Ned and that is Pahang.”

  “You are Aesirai,” she accused in a harsh breath.

  Pahang cut her off with a vigorous shake of his head that cocked his helmet. “We fly the Aesirai ship and wear their garments, but we are lynk-wanderers. We have come to find you, Loryn Poole. We know you. We are here to help you.”

&
nbsp; “Gai found you in a null field,” Ned explained to the befuddled teenager. “The Rimstalker brought you to this lynk. She’s the one who actually needs help—from you.”

  Lorraine knew she had heard him correctly, yet she asked, “Gai?”

  “Yes, Loryn, the Rimstalker. Mother of Night. Lah.”

  The first harmonics of understanding chimed in her, and she realized suddenly why she felt so well when her body had been starved to the brink of death. The Creator of Worlds sustained her. But why? All the memories that Genitrix had given her of Earth, and all the knowledge of Chalco-Doror, ruffled at the back of her mind in a chill breeze. “What does the Rimstalker want?”

  “What do any of the gods want?” Pahang asked, small eyes very big. “Everything. Do not think to resist.”

  “Drop it, Pahang. You’re scaring her.”

  “No, he’s not,” Lorraine said. “I know Gai is not a god.”

  “Oh, really, Loryn?” Pahang asked. “How does a child know this?”

  She regarded Pahang’s challenging pose with haughty amusement. “Gai’s a being from another gravity shell. You know what a gravity shell is, either of you? You want to talk about it?”

  “I’m sorry.” Ned put two fingers to his temple, like he had just realized something. “You look like a kid. How do you know all this?”

  “I’m fifteen. And this is my second life.”

  “Mine, too.” Pahang nodded, and the helmet dropped over his eyes. “Were you hung before the Mother of Night, as was I?”

  “No. Genitrix talked with me when I was twelve. You haven’t told me what the Rimstalker wants.”

  “She’ll tell you herself.” Ned hooked a thumb at the ship. “She’s back in the strohlkraft, doing some programming for me. She’ll be here any moment. This is her first time in the Overworld, you see, and I think she’s a little nervous. The work’s going slower than she thought, and she asked us to come out and stay with you until she gets done.”

  “You remember Earth, Loryn?”