Merchants and Maji: Two Tales of the Dissolutionverse (Dissolution Cycle)

by William C. Tracy

  “You will wait for me to finish with them first,” Origon told him, rubbing his neck. “I may not be leaving anything to complain to. Help me out.”

  The captain undid his restraints and Origon nearly fell from his chair, rolling in the light pull of Ksupara. He stood on the former wall and stretched, barely catching himself before he stretched straight into the air.

  “Be careful,” the captain warned. “You are far lighter on Ksupara. Lighter than on any homeworld—even Etan.” Origon let out a short laugh. His arms and legs were barely able to hold him up, even here. If he had been standing on one of the homeworlds, he would have fallen over from fatigue.

  Chairs and equipment hung sideways in the capsule, unlatched buckles dangling like hanging vines, casting shadows from the chemical lights on the center hub, now to his right at head level. One lamp was cracked and sputtering, but the others threw out harsh orange light. They had landed partially capsized, the flat bottom of the capsule in the air and the base of the rounded dome planted in the surface of the moon. The other side of the floor was now a peak far overhead.

  Cabinets on the far side of the capsule hung open above them and Origon saw a jar fall out of them, curiously slow, to land next to one of the crew. Supplies were tossed about and underfoot and the crew was separating them into piles, useful and not, broken and whole. The thick glass viewing window had not broken in the crash, though there was a crack running its length. It was vertical, now, the lower edge buried in gray-green dirt and the upper portion higher than Origon’s topfeathers.

  “Well, captain,” he said, slumping back against his horizontal chair, “what is to be the plan? Are we ready to go back to Methiem? I believe I may be managing a portal, if you are giving me some few minutes to build up my strength.” He could barely hear the Symphony. He had used up more of his song in the flight than ever before. He knew he should be angrier at what the capsule designers did to him, but was too tired to summon the emotion. His crest sagged in exhaustion.

  “Oh no,” the captain replied, sounding scandalized. She brushed her hair back, trying to make it lie straight in the light pull of the moon. “We will be the first inhabitants of the colony on Ksupara. All supplies are included to turn this capsule into our base of operation. The plan,” she looked around sadly at the ruins of her upturned capsule, “was to have the station function as it landed, but since things did not go, ah, quite as expected,” she gave Origon an apologetic half-grin, “we will make due. The tanks of air are planned to last us two days, though my mechanic tells me one developed a leak in the…landing. Likely we will have a day or so before they will need to be recharged by a majus.”

  “One of the House of Communication,” Origon added automatically. They were the only ones who had the ability to achieve such a task. The captain looked confused and Origon dispelled his words with a wave of his hand. “It is not mattering. I will be leaving shortly, so anyone wishing to come back to Methiem should accompany me.”

  “Dipara will have to go with you, of course,” the captain said. “And probably the doctor. The rest of us will stay here, and hope a replacement physician can come up with the next majus.”

  “Fine,” Origon told her. He looked around at the crew. There was another cry as a crew member set the unfortunate Dipara’s broken bone. He recalled he didn’t know any of the other crews’ names, nor that of the captain. He was more interested in getting back to Kashidur City, and seeing the look on Rilan’s face. And taking a nap. His eyes were ready to close as he stood, and his breathing was labored, as if he couldn’t pull enough oxygen into his chest. He listened to the Symphony, intending to use his song to refresh the stale air, but the music flashed by faster than he could concentrate. The beat was indecipherable. He flailed at the notes, and they slipped away from him as if greased.

  He walked slowly across the curved side of the capsule, hoping the movement would refresh him. The thought of Kashidur City reminded him of the cloaked figure, running through the crowd. The assassin—the reason he was here. He hoped Rilan had uncovered more evidence. Maybe enough to capture the assassin himself when he returned to Methiem. He stood a little straighter, his crest righting itself. His eye caught the featureless plain through the window, a rounded mountain rising in the distance.

  But to pluck another feather, how many days of one’s life were spent standing on the surface of a moon? He stroked his moustache. It was the first space exploration of any of the ten species. And he was the first majus in space. There was time to revel it his accomplishment.

  He stumbled the rest of the way toward the viewport, his feet bouncing off the floor with every step, skirting a pile of salvaged supplies fallen from the cabinets. His long and colorful robe, not as handy here as on the surface of a homeworld, swirled around his legs as he moved, showing a nearly indecent amount of ankle. He pushed it down, but the robe caught something and nearly sent him tumbling into the banks of controls. He grasped at a panel in a clatter of supplies, glaring around, daring the crew to comment. Most looked quickly back to their work. An urn of some sort clattered out behind him with a heavy crack, but he ignored it, striding slightly too fast to the window, catching himself on the wall to stop his forward motion. He flashed another look at the crew, dutifully minding their business. They would watch him as soon as he looked away. If he had not been falling-down tired…

  And why would someone want to bring that dreadful urn he tripped over? Perhaps it carried dried foodstuffs. He shook his head and peered out the newly vertical viewport.

  The surface of Ksupara was bleak; uninteresting. It was gray rock, pitted with crevices, stretching to the slopes of the eroded mountain. Dust stirred up by their landing clouded his view, but he could glimpse the stars above, clearer here than on any homeworld. His father, an impossibly religious Kirian, always told him each star was the soul of an ancestor who had gone before. Origon never believed it until now. The pure glory of each dot of light was hypnotizing. The patterns of stars were far different from on Kiria. There was no Ploughman here, nor Philosopher, nor—

  “Majus!”

  Origon turned irritably to chasten the errant crewmember. He stopped short, mouth still open.

  There was a dirty, uneven ball, like skin stretched around pus, floating higher than his head above the pile of supplies. It was directly over that ancestor’s-cursed urn, broken in shards. Origon watched the ball slowly expanding, unaffected by Ksupara’s light pull, though everything else in the capsule was.

  The surface touched a bag, hanging by one strap from a chair bolted to the floor, and with a crackle of energy, the cloth disintegrated, pulled into the pale skin of the ball. Origon heard a gasp from someone, and realized he had pushed back against the window, trying to get as far away from the thing as possible. He forced his crest flat, forced his shoulders to unknot. The maji were always to be seen as calm in the face of the unexpected. He reached for the Symphony of either house by instinct, but it was still faint, like music played in a different room with the door closed. The notes were slippery and he ground his teeth as he tried to catch even one.

  The growing ball intersected the chair next. There was a screech like metal being torn and the chair distorted, pulling like putty into a swirl around the thing.

  “Holy Vish!” someone cried, and Origon pulled back, his eyes widening. There were tiny bits of leather and cloth floating on the ball’s opaque surface. It did not move but for its slow expansion. It was as if the sphere was planted in the air, grown from the size of a child’s rubber ball and inflated like a balloon. Now it was almost half the size of a man. The crew crowded toward the walls of the crashed capsule, trying to get as far away as possible. Origon shivered.

  “What is it?” the captain called.

  “I do not know,” Origon called back, his voice thin in the chill air. He eyed the wall above where the chair had been. “But it may be eating through the capsule wall as easily as it did the chair.” He had to contain it, stop th
e threat. He had to change the Symphony. Such a thing should not be a struggle.

  He shook again, rubbing his fingers together. It had been cold inside the capsule from the very beginning, yet the heater in the center hub gave out warmth. Now it felt as if the air itself was freezing. A knife of cold sliced up his back and he turned to the window behind him to see ice crystals condensing on it, blocking the view of the moon’s surface. They spread to the metal walls like spiderwebs.

  “Can you stop it, Majus Cyrysi?”

  What did the captain think he was doing? Origon gave only a grunt in return. His pointed teeth chattered violently and he bit his tongue. The shock of copper and cold gelled his thoughts and the Symphonies of his two houses grew in his mind.

  Origon strained harder than at his test for majus, forty cycles ago. Harder than when he first heard the beautiful music of the universe. A single note rose up in his mind and he brought it to his attention. It fractured into a second note, then a trill, then exploded into a Symphony of its own. He slid down the icy window, concentrating, trying to separate Communication from Power. The Symphonies of the capsule sprang up, giving the musical equivalent of the crew’s hushed words, the dead air in the capsule, the still fizzing remnants of fuel in the lines, the connections from the banks of switches and levers, the dimming chemical lights and dying heater.

  Around the irregular ball there was discord. Notes frayed, veered off pitch, and became dissonant. It was the counterpoint to its slow consumption of the capsule.

  Investing so much of his song into their flight made changing a single note an effort. He might recover his old potential eventually, but it would be many cycles. A person’s song could eventually return to full strength, defined by their every moment in time. He pushed aside the thought. Complaining about it would not change what happened.

  “I shall be shielding it from doing any more damage,” he called out. One of the nearer crewmembers nodded nervously in agreement.

  He adjusted as few notes as possible, a couple each in the Houses of Power and Communication, putting just a little of himself into the change. He would compress the air around the floating thing. It left him breathless, but at least those notes of his song could be reclaimed when he let the air decompress.

  Only a few scholars and maji appreciated the weight of air, and even fewer appreciated it could be compressed hard as rock. Simple air, with the correct transfer of heat, could be a powerful shield or even a prison. He reached out, applying his change, and bright yellow and orange light burst forth around the ball in a cage, squeezing inward. The heat of the action melted ice on the walls. There were calls of appreciation from the crew, watching the physical effects of his change.

  But when the color touched the ball, the crystal yellow and orange lattice, visible only to him or another majus, shattered and dissipated. The changes he crafted in the melody fluttered and tore as the hanging mass’ discord shredded through the Symphony.

  Origon staggered, slipped sideways, and felt bile in his throat as the ice climbed upward again. The captain called out wordlessly at the obvious failure. That part of his song was gone, sucked into the thing before him. He could ill afford it.

  A hand caught his arm. “Majus, are you well?” Worry was all over the woman’s face. “Where did this thing come from?”

  Origon could not summon the will to speak for a moment. He gasped on thin air. Then: “I am fine. I must try again. And I do not know.” He waved the crewmember off, but noted the Methiemum woman stood close, ready to catch him if he fell again. Several others inched closer, pressing around the circumference of the capsule to get to him while staying away from the mass. He did not complain. The effort was not worth it.

  Each person’s song—that portion that intersected the Symphonies of the universe—was connected to everything. There was nothing it could not touch. But the ball had eaten his changes to the melody. Impossible.

  He grasped for the Symphony of Power, not attempting to change, but only listening, for anything to tell him what the sphere of destruction was. There was nothing. Origon blinked, slumped against the freezing window. There was never nothing. Music fractured and died as the ball ate the console attached to the wall of the capsule. But that music was the decaying energy of the objects. Inside the ball, there was no energy, no melody. This sphere did not exist, as far as the Symphony was concerned. It was a void in the universe. It took the energy around it, breaking it down, and…what? What could it do with the energy it took if there was nothing inside it? Energy could not be created or destroyed—that was fundamental.

  Origon grasped for both houses, their harmonious fractal of Symphonies, blended perfectly with every particle of the universe. With his entire composition of his existence, he reached out toward this thing that violated natural law…and failed.

  He could not touch it.

  Origon, for the first time in many cycles, was truly afraid.

  This thing was more important than the assassin and the landing on Ksupara together. How had it come here? Was it made by an intelligent species, or could it be natural to Ksupara? What if it grew forever, eating its way through the universe? He had to bring this information back to the Council of the Maji.

  The crew was staring in horror. Several clutched together for warmth, and one might have fainted. Origon shivered again. The ice had nearly covered the viewing window and the chemical heater was sputtering, though it was not in the path of the void. It was as if…as if the void were draining energy from everything surrounding it.

  “A Drain, that is what it is.”

  “A what, sir?” the woman next to him asked. She had her hand out again as if to catch him. He struggled upright.

  “It is draining energy, so I shall call it a Drain,” Origon said. He discovered the thing, so he should get to name it. It bore down overhead, filling a good quarter of the capsule and growing. Soon it would reach them. Or would it reach the wall first? Either way, the capsule was claustrophobic. He hunched down, seeing the crew doing the same.

  “We must all be going,” he called out. “This, this Drain will be destroying the capsule very soon. I am afraid none of you will be staying here to build a base on Ksupara.” He hoped he could hold the notes still long enough to make a portal. Otherwise none of them would be going anywhere.

  “Majus Cyrysi,” the captain called, halfway across the circumference of the room. The woman looked frustrated, her voice plaintive. It was obvious there was nothing to be done. Origon held up a thin hand, forestalling her.

  “Unless you are able to breathe the cold vacuum of space, and survive that,” he pointed a finger upward at the swirling pale mass, still growing—a second chair disappeared with a screech and the captain winced, “you will go with me. I am unable to alter this Drain. It will be destroying the wall of the capsule in moments. You all must accompany me through a portal back to Methiem.” He drew in a lungful of thin air. The anomaly above them must be eating the very atmosphere.

  “But…can’t you do anything?” another of the crew asked. He was a young Methiemum, barely more than a teenager. He trembled, but held his back straight under the looming menace. Good lad.

  Origon shook his head. “This is to be a matter for the Council of the Maji.” There were mutters from the crew. To non-maji, the Council, each member the head of a house, was almost a thing of fantasy.

  The captain bowed her head, then looked around the remains of her capsule. She spoke in a carrying voice. “Take only essential items with you. Calculations, observations, and mathematical equations have the first priority. If we are scrapping this mission, then by Vish, we’re going to know how to do it better next time.”

  A shudder ran through the capsule. The void—the Drain—had reached the wall, converting it to non-existence. Origon pushed the woman next to him and she started moving. The rest of the crew bustled at the captain’s orders. Origon aimed up-slope, to what had been the dome of the capsule, where there was slig
htly more room to make the portal. They ducked as they walked, the mass ahead reaching down for them.

  The crew scrambled to gather supplies and notes, leaving the dead weight of rations and clothes. The captain was holding the concussed doctor up with one shoulder and three more of the crew hefted a tarp holding the prone Dipara.

  A horrible whistle grew, like a giant teapot coming to a boil. Origon looked up at the mass of the Drain. It had breached the wall and air was escaping into vacuum. Then the whistling stopped suddenly, as the Drain plugged the hole, eating both hull and air. They had moments left.

  Origon set his feet, closed his eyes and strained to hear the Symphony again. The single chord rose up, duplicated, and split into the Symphonies of Communication and Power. He fumbled for the notes he needed, almost falling with the effort. The female Methiemum—one of two not supporting the wounded—caught his shoulder and held him upright. He let her.

  Portals—one way holes from here to there—were one of the first lessons every majus learned. Yet there was resistance here. The Drain was taking his energy. He grabbed the notes, like lifting lead weights, and forced the measures and phrases to alter, blending his song with the melodies of this place and of the portal ground on Methiem until they were the same melody.

  Sluggishly, a pitch black hole swirled into existence, ringed with yellow and orange. It pressed against what had been the top of the capsule, as far away as Origon could get from the Drain. The portal was just large enough to admit his height, but he would have to turn sideways. For all his song in the portal, it should have been half again as high and wide enough for three. The room tilted before him, and he leaned heavily on the woman. He could not faint. Not yet. It would be the death of them all.

  “Orderly through the portal!” the captain called. She was at the back of the clump of Methiemum.