Gradient

by Anders Cahill

  She ignored my question. “We are bringing you out,” she said.

  A tiny pinprick of light appeared, far away in the distance. With my longsight, I peered through it, into my field chamber. Xander and Adjet were standing over my body, looking worried. Adjet’s fingers tapped a pattern on the lumina console, and then I shot up to the light, breaking through it, gasping and coughing for air.

  I heard Xander’s voice. “Adjet, help me. He’s too heavy.”

  There was a rustling sound. I slid back down into the basin, sinking into the liquid.

  As I drifted into darkness, Adjet whispered in my ear and stroked her hand on my chest, “Hush, pausha. Breathe. You pushed very hard. But you are back.”

  * * *

  When I woke, Neka was there beside me. As our meditician, it was her job to work with Reacher to look after the mental and physical health of our team, and my little foray into our nascent field network had managed to put both at risk. She looked down at me, sadness edging her cinnamon eyes without saying anything. She just held my hand and watched me.

  “Neka,” I said. “I know what you’re thinking, but please don’t be angry.” She stayed silent, so I continued. “You must have felt it. The full potential of this planet. We can save the people of Eaiph from the coming disaster, and in the process we can build something truly special here. This will be the settlement that finally stands as a mirror to our great Forsaran homeworld.”

  Something shifted in her eyes. Anger, maybe. Or fear. She spoke in quiet, measured tones. “We can only handle so much at once, pausha. Even you. And especially on the first dive. You were getting pulled apart by the energies of the planet. And where would that have left us? What if you had started a quake before we were ready to channel its power?”

  “I would have stopped it.”

  “If you could have. We have traveled so far to come to this place, but you risked destroying yourself, and maybe all of us with you. You’re strong, but you’re not invincible. If you drink too much, you will drown.”

  I shook my head and waved away her concern with my hand. “I appreciate what you’re saying, Neka, but we can’t afford to go too slow. There is so much more to do, and we just don’t know how much time we have.”

  * * *

  “We’re certain they’ll be safe?” Neka asked. Xayes, Sid and I stood with her in a circle around the holosphere on Reacher’s main deck. The four of us were in geostationary orbit, ten thousand feet above the planet of Eaiph. Cordar, Xander, and Adjet were down on the surface. Below it, to be more precise, connected in the three field hubs that formed a triangle at the outer edges of the target zone.

  “As certain as we can be in any of this,” Sid said.

  Neka’s face was unreadable, but I knew she was nervous, especially for Cordar, her closest companion.

  “Show me the fracture points,” I said, peering at the schematic on the holosphere. It displayed the underground fault line, a thick, jagged corridor running through the shelves of land. Reach highlighted three intersections where thermal veins came together, forming key energy lines along the continental shelf.

  Once we detonated the explosives, energy would ramify through the veins, triggering an earthquake, which is exactly what we were planning on. But our goal was not to destroy the earth and the people on it. It was to protect them. By catalyzing the quake on our terms, we hoped to contain it, using the thermal energy to fuse the tectonic plates in this region together, ensuring thousands of years of future stability.

  That’s where Cordar, Xander, and Adjet came in. Working in unison, they would use the field to channel and guide the thermal energy. It would be too powerful for them to master, but if all went according to plan, they could, with Reacher’s guidance, ‘open’ and ‘close’ thermal veins at strategic moments, sending the energy where we most needed it, while mitigating the worst damage.

  “Reach, overlay the sky view.” A second projector lit up, showing us the surface of the planet from our sub-orbital vantage, like looking through a window. There was the ridge of the nearby mountain range. The band of the river, sparkling in the sunlight. The fjords in the north, cratered green pools of water. All of it mapped out in front of us. We looked at this fragile beauty in silence.

  Reacher merged the two images, and the golden-blue holo was imprinted beneath, the schematic of thermal veins shining up through the lakes and river and mountains. I looked at Neka and said, “Will you do the honors?”

  She made a tight-lipped smile, exhaling through her nose. Then she nodded. “Initiate the separation,” she said.

  I kept my eyes on the holo schematic. For a moment, there was nothing. Then, simultaneously, the thermal intersections Reach had marked off on the holo bloomed with light, sending ripples of energy through the veins, creating the impression that the whole planet was translucent, and we could see its blood running bright.

  “Look! There!” Xayes gestured.

  We watched a flood of thermal plasma snake and weave, coursing alongside the fault line. It was as if an invisible wind was buffeting the magma, altering its currents, sending it first one way, then shifting it back in the other direction.

  “They’re doing it,” Sid whispered.

  “Reach,” I said, “how are they down there?”

  “They are at peak mental activity, but all biosigs are within a manageable range.”

  “Pausha.” Neka’s voice was commanding in its evenness. I looked at her, then followed her eyes.

  The peninsular mountains. The range that skirted the edge of the ocean was shaking and cracking. Massive slabs of rock splintered and broke off, sliding downwards in an avalanche of scree. We watched as a hunk of land rippled like water, then sank into the earth. Ocean water came rushing in to fill the gap. More land fell away, and more water rushed in, forming a bay at the foot of the mountains.

  “Reach,” I said, my voice rising with concern.

  “The energy is spilling over, pausha,” he said. “Cordar has his attention further north, but Xander and Adjet are working to contain it.”

  Even as Reach said that, a river sourced high in the glacial peaks began leaking out of its centuries-old pathways. A wide torrent of water sluiced its way to an ancient caldera in a stunted peak in the middle of the range, a remnant from a volcanic eruption, or, perhaps, an asteroid impact. The caldera started to fill with water, and within minutes, it had become a lake.

  “The final outcome is beyond their influence now,” Reach said. “They have done everything they can.”

  As he said this, the tremors seemed to subside.

  “Is it-?”

  Before I could get the question out, the quake roared again, and in a final, catastrophic schism, the tip of the peninsula sheared off, taking the mountain at the end of the range with it. The bay at the foot of the mountains transformed into a strait of ocean water, water surging through passage, more than a farrun across from shore to new shore.

  We all looked at each other, silent. We had just witnessed the birth of an island.

  “Status report?” I said, my voice little more than a whisper.

  “It seems the worst of it is over,” Reach said. “Cordar, Adjet, and Xander are exhausted, but they are alive. and the fault line has been sealed.”

  “Was… was anyone hurt?” Sid asked.

  “As far as I can tell from my initial scans, no native peoples were harmed.”

  Neka started to laugh, all the tension she carried melting out of her.

  Sid, Xayes, and I joined in.

  We had done it.

  * * *

  Smaller aftershock tremors continued for weeks, but the inflection points had been well planned, and there were no more significant geological mishaps. Once she learned that no one had been harmed, Adjet had, of course, taken great delight in the whole situation. She dubbed the newly formed caldera lake in the mountains ‘Oren’s Puddle,’ and the name caught on like wildfire with the rest of the team.

  What could I do but la
ugh? I had made my puddle. Now I had to swim in it. What really mattered was our new island.

  Manderlas.

  We all agreed it was a suitable name. More than thirty thousand years ago, Eledar and the first Coven had founded Manderley, the worldheart of Forsara. Now, we were doing the same, building a worldheart here on Eaiph, and the island was an unexpected boon.

  The possibilities stretched out in front of me. The island gave us privacy from the local peoples, while also ensuring we would be close enough to observe them and learn from them as we decided when and how best to make contact. It was the perfect staging ground.

  I stood alone on the shore, looking out across the new ocean canal to the mainland. The salt air was sweet and bracing. From my vantage, the mountains we’d disturbed with the quake still stood proud and beautiful on the horizon. I took solace knowing that the canyons and gorges that we had cracked open would bring their own beauty and wonder to the future generations we were preparing for.

  I turned and looked in towards the island center. The geological tumult had left the land scarred and riven with water, but the potential was there, a broad, flat plain of land, sweeping up towards the lone mountain. Clouds drifted above its peak.

  “Now we begin,” I whispered.

  18 Smoke and Painted Clay

  “Oren. It’s Neka.”

  “Yes? What is it?” I said, touching the bone at the base of my ear to activate the transponders we had recently embedded beneath our skin, allowing us to communicate across many farruns.

  “I know you’re busy,” she said, “but I am at your puddle.” She paused. “I mean the caldera in the mountains. And… well, you should get up here.”

  Cordar and I were on Manderlas, going over the gene sequences he’d worked up with Adjet to splice Forsaran and Eaiph seeds. “Neka,” I said in a playful voice, “I don’t have time to join you on every one of your jaunts to the mainland.” I raised my eyebrows at Cordar, smiling.

  He grinned and touched his transponder to join in on the conversation. “The pausha is here assisting me on very important matters, dearest. Surely you don’t mean to take him away from me?”

  “Look, boys,” she said, impatient with our teasing, “I promise you this is worth it. Take one of the hoppers and get up here. You can come too, Cordar, if you can bear to pull yourself away from your precious seeds.”

  Cordar chuckled and shook his head.

  My curiosity was piqued. “Okay, Neka. We’re coming. This sounds interesting.”

  “No, pausha. My dearest Cordar’s work with plant genetics is interesting. This is something else altogether.”

  * * *

  The images in front of us left me speechless. Neka let go of Cordar’s hand, stepped forward, and waved her light across another patch on the rock wall. She looked back at us. “These are no accident,” she said.

  Cordar touched his hand to his heart. “We must tell the others,” he said in a hushed voice.

  I hung my head as a sob welled in my chest, a bubbling of sadness and joy that I couldn’t hold it back. “Oh, Saiara,” I whispered.

  Neka touched my arm.

  I looked up at her, tears in my eyes.

  She exhaled, but she did not say anything more. She just turned and passed her light back and forth across the beautiful, ancient hieroglyphs carved on the cave wall.

  * * *

  “Look. Look here!” Siddart said. “What is this thing?” He pointed at a figure painted on the cave wall, a human body with a monstrous, animalistic head. It had a thick nose, and short, stout horns above its dark, round eyes. Dense, fibrous fur covered its face and neck, running down to its bare, human shoulders. It was naked from the neck down, and its genitals looked large and heavy.

  “They look as if they are worshipping it,” Neka said. She pointed to smaller figures, kneeling near the feet of the beast man.

  “Some sort of deity,” Adjet said. “Thank the Scions that this place was not destroyed in the quake.” She touched her hand to the image of the horned god, and her silvery eyes sparkled in the glow of our portable lights.

  “They’re amazing,” I said. “But we didn’t bring you all here just to see cave paintings. What do you think these are?” I pointed up to the sky in this ancient tableau. Three spheres were carved in the rock, trailed by lines, a gesture of falling towards the earth. Above the spheres, the wall had been cracked and split in the quake, but there was clearly some sort of object in the sky.

  “Is that…?” Siddart asked.

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  “They made it,” he whispered. “They actually made it!” His voice was getting louder. “Those are probably explorer drones.” He pointed to the falling spheres.

  “And this!” exclaimed Adjet. The images showed a column of light crashing into the mountains, causing a large explosion of debris and fire. “Maybe… maybe it wasn’t a meteor strike or an eruption that made this caldera.” She looked back at me, her face mixed with awe and sadness.

  No one said anything. The implications of Adjet’s observation were clear. If the first party of Architects crash-landed in these mountains, then we might be standing near their final resting space.

  Finally, I spoke up. “None of this is definitive. If they made it this far, then we must not give up all hope. If there was a crash, it is possible that at least some of them survived. If they are alive, we will find them.

  “But we cannot halt our work on Manderlas. I will oversee the installations with Reacher, Adjet, Sid and the twins. Neka, can you and Cord keep searching for any more signs?”

  She nodded. “Let’s get back to the ship. We’ll start from the sky.”

  * * *

  Three days later, when Neka came to me with the news, I was digging a trench.

  “I suppose you don’t need me to tell you that there are at least a dozen easier ways for you to do that,” she said as she looked down at me from the lip of the ditch.

  “Have you ever used a shovel?” I asked, raising it up in the air.

  Neka shook her head. “Never,” she said. “I didn’t even know we had one on board.”

  I hefted it in my hands. “We didn’t. Reach pulled the design up from his archives. The nanomodelers did the rest.”

  I pointed the shovel head towards her and sighted my eye along the blade. “Molecular precision,” I said. “This thing carves through soil like a plasma torch melting through ice. Makes me nostalgic for home… even though it’s better than any shovel we ever had back then.”

  Reach had taken the liberty of making a few modifications to the design. With its self-sharpening blade, and an angled shaft custom-fit to my height, it was the best I’d ever handled. But it was still fundamentally a shovel, and holding it in my hands gave me a primal sense of satisfaction.

  “You learned to dig in the mines?” she asked.

  I nodded. “My father taught me. Digging is to a miner what takeoff is to a pilot. Even though I spent most of my time in the refinery with my mother, he insisted I learn every aspect of our family craft.

  “One winter, the churners got jammed, and we had to dig them out. My dad didn’t even have to say ‘I told you so.’ He just handed me a shovel and we got to it. That was a long night.”

  “There wasn’t an easier way?”

  “Things were pretty far behind on Verygone. A lot of our equipment was primitive. The shovel. The crescent axe. The riddle. These tools have been used since the first prospector panned for gold in the highland rivers of Forsara. Sometimes the simplest tools are the most effective.”

  “Does a prospector need to solve puzzles?”

  “What? Oh… Ha! No, you use a riddle to separate coarse and fine stone until you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Ah. Of course.” She smirked at me. “But the riddle I still haven’t solved is why in the name of Eledar you’re digging a trench.”

  I looked down at my hands and arms, covered in dirt, then back up at her. “Honestly? My mind has bee
n racing ever since you found that cave. I cannot stop thinking about them. I needed this work to focus my thoughts. If we can’t find a use for it, I’ll probably just fill it back in with dirt when I am done.”

  “If clarity is what you’re after, I could have Reach increase your dosage of gauyasine…”

  “No,” I interrupted, “This is better. Like I said, simple tools.”

  “Well, I am not sure if my news is going to help, but…”

  “You found something?” I dropped the shovel and scrambled out of the trench to stand next to her.

  She took my hand. “It was them, pausha. Reacher riddled every inch of the caldera,” she said, using her newly learned word. “There are only traces, but even with so little to go on, the molecular remnants are clear. We do not know why they crashed, but we know that the first Architects of Eaiph came down in these mountains.”

  “Eledar’s breath. Did… did you find anything that might tell us what happened to the crew? To Saiara?”

  “The crash was catastrophic. If they were still on the ship, they were vaporized on impact.”

  “And if they weren’t on the ship?”

  “It’s certainly possible. If that’s true, I can only see one reason why they came to this part of the planet.”

  “The same reason we did.”

  “Yes,” she said. “If we are going to find any clues, they will be among the people of Eaiph.”

  “Of course. They saw what we saw. How did you say it? The birthplace?”

  “The cradle.”

  I nodded. “The cradle called to them.” I started pacing. “We need to find a way inside. A way to understand their culture, their daily life. If there is any chance they survived, even for a short time, we must find out everything we can.”

  “I agree,” she said. “In fact, I already have a plan.”

  “What?” I stopped in my tracks. “Tell me.”

  “I am going to live among them.”

  * * *

  “Give me three months,” Neka said. “Three months to gather information so we can decide what to do next.”