The Shoreless Sea

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Map of Forever

  Principal Characters (Glossary at End)

  Part One: Signal—2207 AD

  Map of MIcavery

  Prologue

  Chapter One: Voice

  Chapter Two: Dream Drunk

  Chapter Three: Visitor

  Chapter Four: Gordon

  Chapter Five: Abyss

  Chapter Six: Spinning Worlds

  Chapter Seven: Rain

  Chapter Eight: Imposter

  Chapter Nine: Voices

  Chapter Ten: Into the Tank

  Chapter Eleven: Lost

  Chapter Twelve: Rabbit Hole

  Chapter Thirteen: Together

  Chapter Fourteen: Broken

  Part Two: Inthworld—2212 AD

  Chapter One: Stained

  Chapter Two: Strange Winds

  Chapter Three: Down to the Stars

  Chapter Four: Into the Inthworld

  Chapter Five: The Inthnauts

  Chapter Six: A Sky Full of Stars

  Chapter Seven: Run!

  Chapter Eight: Loop

  Chapter Nine: Allies

  Chapter Ten: In the Mist

  Chapter Eleven: Breakthrough

  Chapter Twelve: Lilith

  Chapter Thirteen: Jackson

  Part Three: Thief—2229 AD

  Map of Darlith

  Chapter One: Thierry

  Chapter Two: Fear

  Chapter Three: Trapped

  Chapter Four: Burn

  Chapter Five: Cryptic

  Chapter Six: Fugitives

  Chapter Seven: On Edge

  Chapter Eight: Plan

  Chapter Nine: The Call

  Chapter Ten: Misdirection

  Chapter Eleven: Whatever May Come

  Chapter Twelve: Tree of Life

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  More from J. Scott Coatsworth

  Readers love the Liminal Sky series by J. Scott Coatsworth

  About the Author

  By J. Scott Coatsworth

  Visit DSP Publications

  Copyright

  The Shoreless Sea

  By J. Scott Coatsworth

  Liminal Sky: Book Three

  As the epic trilogy hurtles toward its conclusion, the fight for the future isn’t over yet. It could lead to a new beginning, or it might spell the end for the last vestiges of humankind.

  The generation ship Forever has left Earth behind, but a piece of the old civilization lives on in the Inthworld—a virtual realm that retains memories of Earth’s technological wonders and vices. A being named Lilith leads the uprising, and if she succeeds in setting its inhabitants free, they could destroy Forever.

  But during the generation ship’s decades-long voyage, humanity has evolved. Liminals with the ability to connect with the world mind and the Inthworld provide a glimmer of hope. They’ll have to face not only Lilith’s minions, but also the mistrust of their own kind and persecution from a new government as homotypicals continue to fear what they can’t understand.

  The invasion must be stopped, the Inthworld must be healed, and the people of Forever must let go of their past and embrace what they’re meant to become.

  So many people had a hand in this book, but I am especially grateful to my mom, who got me started reading from her sci fi shelf when I was in third grade and forever sparked my love of fantasy and sci fi, to my dad, who didn’t understand what in the blazes I was doing when I drew hundreds of pages of maps of other worlds but let me do it anyway, and especially to my husband Mark, who supports my writing even if he does think sci fi means “someone in the story has two heads.” Well, some of it does! Love you all.

  Acknowledgments

  I WANTED to acknowledge and thank my beta readers for dedicating a big chunk of their lives to making this a better story.

  L.V. Lloyd, Pat Henshaw, and John Michael Lander all gave me fantastic feedback on the whole story, and Pat especially kicked me where it hurts a couple times, which resulted in The Shoreless Sea being a much better book than it otherwise would have been.

  I also wanted to thank the two beta readers who read the story with an eye to improving my first ever deaf character, Kiryn, and helping me to get the details right. My undying thanks go out to Sam Thorne and Julie Banks.

  I also attempted another first in this tale—a nonbinary character named Destiny. Jeanne G’Fellers and Amy Leibowitz Mitchell were amazing helping me with this one, making sure I didn’t stick my cisgender foot (too far) down my own throat.

  Finally, I wanted to acknowledge the other folks who made this happen: Rose Archer for unfailingly guiding me through this series as my editor, Gus Li for doing some amazing maps, Aaron Anderson for being the visionary behind the stunning covers of all three books, Lynn West and Elizabeth North, who believed in me enough to publish the whole damned trilogy, and all the freaking amazing folks at DSP Publications who helped make it happen.

  And finally, I wanted to acknowledge Angel Martinez, Ben Brock, and Rory ni Coileain, the people I run to when everything goes pear-shaped. Together with Mark, these folks have single-handedly helped keep me sane as I navigated the writing of this trilogy.

  Foreword

  WE’VE OFFICIALLY arrived at the end of things together, my dear reader. By the time this final book in the Liminal Sky series reaches the first buyer’s hands, it will have been almost six years since I started writing the first part of book one, The Stark Divide. And twenty-four years will have passed since I penned the original (never published) novel on which the series is based, On a Shoreless Sea. I addressed that whole situation in the foreword for The Stark Divide, if you want to know more.

  “Aha!” you say. “So this is that book, retold!”

  Not so fast. While anyone who read that original tale (a count of people which numbers in the very low tens, assuming all ten editors or their staffs actually read the damned thing, plus me and my friend Shellie) will recognize the places where Liminal Sky is starting to converge with that later tale, this one is its own story (or three stories) that carry the events and characters of The Stark Divide and The Rising Tide another forty-one years into the future.

  And just like The Stark Divide, there’s a story behind the naming of this book too. My original title for The Shoreless Sea, in keeping with the rhythm of the previous two, was The Shifting Current. It was a perfectly decent title, but I had made the mistake of mentioning The Shoreless Sea to my publisher, Lynn, and she wanted me to use that one as well.

  I dragged my heels a little—after all, I’d always planned to rewrite the original story under that title someday. But when I asked Mark and a few trusted writer friends what they thought, they all agreed—The Shoreless Sea was the stronger title.

  In retrospect, I think they were right, and it makes a more fitting title for the final book in a trilogy. The Shifting Current sounds more like a continuation than an ending.

  And what an ending it is. In this book, I wrote my first deaf character and my first nonbinary one, with a lot of help from #ownvoices, and set out to tell three wide-ranging stories that carry us further along the timeline from a hard sci fi to a sci fi/fantasy setting. Along the way, I got to bring back some of my favorite past characters, and give the one who is the heart of the trilogy the ending she deserved.

  I hope you like it!

  If you finish The Shoreless Sea and want more, I suggest you try the Oberon Cycle trilogy—and avid series readers might spot a few connections between that trilogy and this one.

  It’s been a wild ride, but it ain’t over yet. As you read this, I am finishing
a new book set in the same universe, and have plans to come back to Liminal Sky again at a later date.

  Forever never really ends.

  Principal Characters (Glossary at End)

  Aine (varies): The combined consciousnesses of Andy and Shandra in the world mind

  Andrissa “Andy” Hammond (she/her): Daughter of Aaron Hammond

  Belynn Hammond-Clarke (she/her): Andy and Shandra’s daughter

  Castillian “Cast” Drake (he/him): One of the ints in Fargo

  Dax Weston (he/him): Latent Liminal who becomes Kiryn’s boyfriend

  Destiny Sleet (se/ser): One of Eddy’s wards, nonbinary

  Eddy Tremaine(he/him): Former military (NAU Marine Corps), formerly Evalyne

  Gordon “Gordy” Mattson (Astin) (he/him): Kid who worked for the Red Badge in New York City

  Kiryn Hammond-Clarke (he/him): Andy and Shandra’s son; deaf, has special abilities

  Lilith Lott (Jerriah) (she/her): Head of the Red Badge in New York, later was transferred into a biomind

  Marissa (she/her): One of the oldest of the Liminal kids

  Matthew (Matt) Dale (he/him): Marissa’s husband

  Santiago Ortiz (aka Santi) (he/him): Sherriff’s deputy in Micavery, son of Dana Ortiz

  Sean Hammond (he/him): Aaron and Keera’s second child and Andy’s brother

  Shandra Clarke (she/her): Andy’s wife

  Skate (he/him): Thierry’s friend

  Thierry Basel (he/him): Thief in Darlith with Liminal abilities

  Part One: Signal—2207 AD

  Prologue

  “CAN ANYONE hear me?”

  Gordon Mattson perched atop the tallest building in New York, once the pride of the city, and looked up at the stars.

  Below, the streets belonged to the sea. Schools of tuna swam up Fifth Avenue, and sharks patrolled the dark waters where new reefs were taking root.

  “Is anyone out there?”

  There had to be more to life than this. The endless loops had been bad enough. He remembered when he’d first realized he was living the same life over. When Jacky had come….

  But now the fires….

  The flames burned endlessly on the horizon, sending up acrid smoke. Sometimes it would drift over the city, and those it touched would simply disappear.

  The world was ending. He knew it in his bones. Even so, life in the drowned city went on, as dead as the old dame herself.

  Above, the stars sparkled.

  Up there, there was something more. Something greater than this sad little bit of Old Earth.

  There had to be.

  Halfway across the Old City, the roof of one of the superscrapers glowed with an eldritch green glow.

  It grew in intensity until it burst with a great white light, bathing the whole city with the brightness of midday sunlight for an instant.

  Then it was gone.

  As his eyes adjusted once again to the darkness, something ascended toward the stars.

  It meant something. He was sure of it. If he could only figure out what.

  He knew one thing for sure. One day he, Gordon Hawk, would find his way off this desolate dirtball. He’d find a way to go up there.

  He clambered down the side of the building, using the assortment of ropes and hand- and footholds added over the years by the city’s remaining denizens.

  He’d marked in his mind where the glow had come from. He knew this city like the back of his hand.

  He would get there before the next night and find out what it meant. Maybe it would offer him a way out.

  A bigger destiny awaited him. He was sure of it.

  ANDY SOARED above her world on the wings of an albatross, riding the slipstream beneath the glowing light of the spindle.

  Below, the curve of the world stretched up and around her, wrapping over the spindle to touch again somewhere above her head.

  It was midafternoon, and the plants of Forever far below were aglow too—the golden light of the open plains and the greenish glow of copses of trees and orchards. She flew past the new sea being formed near the North Pole, purified water extracted from a snagged comet in the Kuiper Belt slowly filling it up. One day it would be both a resource and a formidable barrier to the human inhabitants of Forever, a small ocean that wrapped all the way around the world.

  Barriers were a necessary part of any human society and ecosystem.

  Past the lowlands, she flew over Thyre—formerly the Eyre—a small but bustling community that sat at the end of the highlands where the Rhyl dropped down a high black cliff to the lowlands and then out to sea.

  She wondered for the thousandth time if Lanya had been right to limit access to the world mind. Somewhere far below, at the Eyre Estate, the human Andy knelt beside a red berry vine, laying in fertilizer to encourage the plant to keep producing the Estate’s prized berries.

  Andy thought about reaching out to her doppelgänger, about having that conversation for the umpteenth time. But she decided to leave it alone.

  Instead, she let the beautiful bird go on its way.

  The albatross had been created with an affinity for her and her kind. Once called the Immortals, Andy and Shandra had instead taken to calling themselves the Caretakers. Events had proven how unimmortal their kind was, though in theory they could long outlive their human kin.

  She’d had an uneasy feeling for weeks. A sense that something was off. Wrong.

  She had tried to seek it out, in the world mind and in the world at large, but nothing had presented itself.

  She returned to her own virtual garden, where the sun was always in the sky, the rain came every hour, and her red berry vines were the picture of perfection. The privileges of a virtual life.

  “Thought I’d find you here.” Shandra sounded uncertain, as if she wasn’t welcome in Andy’s garden.

  “Yeah, I was just thinking about Andy.”

  “You’re Andy.”

  “You know what I mean.” Andy reached out to touch one of the velvety red leaves of the closest red berry vine. She and Shandra had avoided the trap of becoming too close—of literally becoming the same entity—as Ana and Lex had eventually done. Maybe it was because they had already spent so much time together in their previous lives and had developed a fine balance.

  Sometimes, though, that balance felt more like a yawning chasm between them.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m scared.” Andy looked down at her hands. They were every bit as real as they had been—as they still were—for real Andy. But sometimes she felt counterfeit and lost.

  Shandra put a hand on her shoulder. “Whatever it is—if it’s anything at all—we’ll face it together.”

  It was the first time Shandra had reached out to her in months, literally or figuratively.

  Andy turned to her and held out her arms, and they merged.

  They mingled their essences, sharing an intimacy that had never been possible for their Forever-bound counterparts, and their thoughts mingled too.

  I’m scared don’t be I’m here what if things are never easy but we can handle them together sometimes I just need you I know.

  They separated, and Andy took Shandra’s face in her hands and kissed her gently. “I still need you.”

  “I need you too.”

  Andy reached down to take Shandra’s hand. “Walk with me for a few minutes?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Andy sighed and let go of her anxious fear.

  Together, they wandered through the vines, tasting the ripening berries.

  For now, this was enough.

  Chapter One: Voice

  KIRYN HAMMOND-CLARKE floated in the darkness of space, stars he’d never seen in person twinkling against the velvety black depths.

  The voice came to him from out of nowhere. “Can anyone hear me?”

  In his dreams, he could hear. Like when Belynn let him ride in her mind.

  The voice repeated, sounding stretched and thin. “Is anyone out there?”

>   In the distance, a single star glowed brighter than all the others, though it was still just a small golden dot.

  Kiryn reached out toward the light, his hand naked to the cold of the void.

  Ice crystals formed on his arm, hardening it in place. The cold reached into his bones like knives of frozen glass. It raced up his bicep, the burning cold fire of the void.

  He snatched back his arm, but he was too late. The freezing grip reached his heart, and he screamed silently—

  Kiryn awoke with a start, sitting up in bed in his dorm room drenched with sweat. He ran his hands through his dark hair, letting them come to rest clasped behind his head.

  First Light flashed past in the trees outside his window, brightening up the room.

  The world was utterly silent.

  The silence, his constant companion since birth, was particularly soothing after his rude awakening. It wrapped itself around him like a blanket, a suit of armor, a barrier between him and the hustle and bustle of the outside world.

  Between him and emotion.

  He held his arm out for inspection, half expecting it to be blackened by the void. Instead, it looked perfectly normal. Warm and tan, halfway between his mothers’ sepia and white skin tones.

  He shivered at the memory.

  The bed moved under him, and his date from the night before sat up, his mouth moving soundlessly.

  The man was handsome, a Thyrean sent to the university at Micavery for his higher schooling—long limbs, blond hair shaved short, warm brown eyes.

  His name was Dax. Or Zack. Or something.

  Kiryn’s lipreading was decent, but he hadn’t bothered to spend too much time learning this one’s name. Dax or Zack hadn’t seemed to mind much.

  Kiryn pointed at his ear and shook his head.

  The man’s mouth closed, and he blushed. “Sorry. I forgot.”

  That one was easy enough to read.

  He grabbed the piece of cotton paper and a pencil Kiryn kept at his bedside just for that purpose and scribbled something out longhand, then handed it over to him.