The Ghost Sister

by Liz Williams

  “Have you been looking for me all night?” I asked guiltily.

  “No. I went back to the boat; I had to get some sleep. Shu is still conjuring.”

  Automatically, I glanced in the direction of the boat, and frowned. I could see something sailing into the caldera like a leaf on a fast current. The growing dawn light glittered green from its flanks. “That's the other boat,” I said. I looked up at Mevennen.

  “I thought you said she'd left it in Tetherau.”

  “She did. Perhaps the other ghosts summoned it back.”

  “We'd better get down there,” Mevennen said. I was still not used to moving about. Landblindness was like walking with one eye shut and both ears deafened; it seemed to affect my balance, somehow, and I realized why Mevennen had often seemed so frail and vague. She must have spent half her time concentrating on staying upright.

  “I'm used to it, remember?” she said grimly. “Now the world's silent rather than drowning me out, but I still know how to use my feet and my eyes.” Firmly, she took my arm and led me down the path to the mesa, but we were too late. As we reached the floor of the caldera, we saw both boats lift up and fly out through the turns of the red rocks until they had vanished into the morning light.

  “They've gone,” Mevennen said disbelievingly “They've left us.”

  “Shu wouldn't leave,” I said. “I know that. Something must be very wrong.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, and then Mevennen gave me a little shake and said doggedly, “We have to go back, Eleres. We have to go down beneath Outreven, to the room. It healed me once, remember? Maybe it will do so again.”

  I did not want to face that chamber full of secrets and spirits again, but anything was better than this wan, dead state. I let her help me up. She took me by the arm and led me down the path. Retracing my recent flight, we walked back through the maze of streets, down between the high walls. Somewhere in the winding streets I heard a strange, sad sound like a bird on the wind: it was a moment before I realized it was a child, crying. I stood for a moment, listening, and then we went below, heading for the chamber where I had met the Jhuran. There, we found again the door that led beneath the ruins. I placed my palm against it, and it opened.

  The chamber seemed different, or perhaps it was only that I myself was so greatly changed. The place seemed empty and lifeless; no presences thronged its passageways. Holding my breath in desperate anticipation, I once again stepped through with Mevennen at my side, but there was nothing and no one, just a bare room. We made our way through to where the device stood. Its iridescent surfaces were dull, and it was quite silent. The place was dead. I was numb with change and anger. I tried to speak to the chamber, pleading with it in the silence of my mind to let me back in, restore me to understanding.

  I might have been a puppet, but now my strings were cut. The room was as still and empty as before, and I dropped to my knees in the center of it and said, inside my mind, “Ancestor or not, help me. Help us all. Return us to Dreamtime, because it's where we belong.”

  There was nothing but silence. After a while, stiff and cold, I got up and walked to where the glistening panels still stood along the wall. I put my hand against one of the panels, to feel whether it was really as dead as it looked and, to my surprise, it was warm. As I touched it, it began to move. A part of the panel coalesced around my hand, encasing it. I tried to pull away, but it had trapped my hand. A voice said, “Please specify nature of request.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, holding my breath.

  “Interface has been reactivated.” Then it said, as it had said before, “I am the voice of Teilu Zharan, colonist, who defied Shikiriye and later sent this interface to the generator, that others may know of his heresy.”

  “The 'generator'? Is that the device that is now silent?”

  “Biomorphic field generation has now ceased from primary source. Epistemic interfaces have been correspondingly terminated at primary source; remain stable in secondaries.”

  Mevennen looked at me, questioningly I did not understand all the words, but I knew what a source might be, versed in water as I was. I said, “Primary source? What do you mean? And if the device does not work any more, how is it that you are talking to me?”

  “This interface is separate from the main system. Primary source is Colony Zero One Zero, known as Outreven. Secondary sources remain intact.”

  “Secondary sources? Do you mean that there are other places like this chamber?”

  “Secondary sources are multifarious and lie in the autonomous global system.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The biomorphic system has been disseminated throughout settlements. Remaining data is to be found in the settlement fields.”

  As patiently as I could, I said, “Describe a settlement field.”

  “The primary source of this generator was at Outreven. Secondary biomorphic fields were distributed along the energy lines emanating from Outreven, which over time became self-sustaining and independent from the Outreven generator. They feed knowledge back into this system. Descendants of the colonists built their settlements along the energy lines, apparently attracted by these wells of biomorphic knowledge. Each separate clan settlement now has a ring of bioenergy around it, which is closely linked with the inhabitants. It is as though each individual's brain-wave patterns are a key, which fits the particular energy configuration surrounding the place of their birth. Full awareness is activated when a child crosses the energy barrier on its return to its birthplace.”

  I thought for a moment, trying to make sense of this. Pregnant women were compelled by tradition and taboo to remain within the house for the entire duration of the pregnancy. It was said that crossing the house defense during pregnancy would damage the child. Then, a few months after its birth, the child would be taken out of the house and into the world. In order for it to leave the house, the defenses had to be down. If you tried to pass through an active defense, or so it was said, the shock could be severe enough to drive you mad. The only time that anyone ever crossed an active defense was when a child reached its age of return and passed back across the defense that surrounded the house of its birth, to become human and aware. If the house defenses acted in the same way as the now-empty chamber, to impart knowledge to those who lacked it …

  “I have become landblind, now. But I am self-aware, not like a child. If I crossed the defense of Aidi Mordha again, what would happen to me?” I asked.

  “You would receive recalibrated parameters.”

  “Explain.” I despaired of ever getting a straight answer out of the thing.

  “The house defenses impose balance on an individual in correspondence with Shikiriye's instructions. A child would gain self-awareness. An adult would suffer from epistemic overload.”

  “What about someone who is landblind? Who has no sense of the world?”

  “They would be placed in balance.”

  I glanced at Mevennen, who had indeed been landblind and who had never crossed the defense. “Mevennen,” I said. “Do you remember any of this? When you came back from the wild, the storm was so bad that we broke with tradition. We fetched you in across the damaged defense. Perhaps it gave some knowledge to you, changed you, but not in the right proportion …”

  “Are you telling me that crossing a defense could heal me, now that this chamber is silent?”

  “The defense must be the one that is linked to your own brain-wave patterns,” the device said.

  “You said that my mind was a key,” I told it. “If I returned to Aidi Mordha where I was born, and stepped across the defense, would I be healed?”

  “It is a possibility. However, it is not known how the destabilization of the primary source might affect the system as a whole.”

  But I had heard only one word: possibility. The chamber, unprompted by my questions, fell silent. I looked at Meven-nen. And told her we were going home.

  15. Shu Gho

  “I'm trul
y sorry,” Bel said. She sounded as though she meant it, too. “But I couldn't let you undo all that we've accomplished.”

  “Accomplished!” Shu spat. “Hardly the right word, is it? What you've managed to do is destabilize the entire population. You've turned them into neurological cripples.” She struggled against the nanobonds that were strapping her firmly to the crash couch, but they only clamped more tightly to her flesh.

  “I don't understand you,” Bel said, in utter and genuine incomprehension. “We came here to see what had become of the colony, and to set it back on the right path if we could. That was our mission, Shu. That was what we came here to do.”

  “I don't think so.”

  “The goddess sent us here to liberate these people. Just think. If we really have freed these people from the hold that Shikiriye's machine has over them, and they know that it's us who have liberated them—we can bring them back to the goddess, Shu.”

  “Have you ever considered that these people may already be closer to the goddess—to the world herself—than we are? Have you thought that in trying to come as close as we can to nature, we've actually driven it away? That our need to impose order is as pathological as the Mondhaith's tendency to violence? They're not the only ones who've lost sight of the goddess, it seems to me.”

  “I don't see how you can say that,” Bel snapped. “Anyway, Shu, you've told us that you're not an absolutist—you don't believe in a single moral authority. You're a relativist, you said.”

  “Yes, which is why I think the Mondhaith have a right to their own self-determination.”

  “But by that reasoning,” Bel said, “if all beliefs are granted the same status, then we have as much right as they to insist on the correctness of our beliefs over theirs. And sophistry aside, don't you think it would be for the best? I know how sad you were over Sereth's death. But where do you think the cause of her death lies, Shu? It lies in the bloodmind, in Elshonu Shikiriye's sins. For which Sereth paid, as have so many others. Don't you think it would be better to solve these people's problems for them? I can't believe you're questioning me.” She sounded sincerely amazed.

  Shu looked at her, and in Bel's face she saw something that she had not wanted to see. Bel's face shone with earnestness; there was no doubt that she believed what she was saying. So must her mother Ghened Zhur Ushorn have sounded to her followers. Centuries of spiritual arrogance, and refusal to face the truth. Shu wondered just how many doubts such certainty concealed. We have become too accustomed to control, Shu thought. We govern even the littlest element of our world; we are spoiled children who can no longer take no for an answer. Bel doesn't want me to agree with her, not really. She just wants to impose order onto any bit of the world that still might be amenable to her control.

  She wondered exactly what it had been like for Ghened Zhur Ushorn's daughter, brought up into the automatic assumption of theological privilege and spiritual superiority. She thought of the manicured environment of New Irie St Syre: a world tailored to beauty. Was that what Dia and Bel had hoped to find here, or hoped to make? The thought filled her with a sudden, defensive rage that took her completely by surprise.

  “This is a terrible place,” Bel Zhur said in a whisper. “Dia was right. Elshonu Shikiriye was a madman, a heretic. They could have ReFormed Monde D'Isle. They brought the technology with them. It would have been so easy.”

  Shu did not know what to say that would not offend the girl. She thought of the wastes beyond, changed to sunlit meadows; perfect weather, gentle rain. The superficiality of the vision appalled her. And she thought of Irie St Syre: its beauty, its tranquillity no more than a flickering anomaly in the timescale of the planet. By now, perhaps even Irie St Syre would have shrugged off its tailored skin and gone the way that planets do.

  Worlds don't give a damn, Shu thought. Heresy perhaps, but still the truth. She thought of what the colonists of Monde D'Isle had become: no longer human, utterly dysfunctional, and yet finding meaning in that dysfunction, living with it, lending it dignity and significance. Finding their own way in their own world, however misguided their beginnings. Was that to be reduced to nothing more than the workings of an outmoded piece of equipment, an experiment gone wrong and now to be terminated? Was that simply to be tidied up, sacrificed to the human need to impose order upon its surroundings, like Irie St Syre? And with a rush of astonishment that outweighed the shock of Dia's death, Shu realized that she had fallen in love; not with a person, but with a place, with the world itself. With its bleakness, and its refusal to compromise. Now, the knowledge lay like a seed in her heart. She would die here, and she found that she was content never to leave.

  And she knew for the first time what it meant to be a Gaian; what it meant to be in thrall to the deity that was a planet. Not Bel's gynocentric spirituality, focused firmly on the human, but something entirely different. It had taken Dia's death for Shu to learn what she had become: not quite human herself, any more. But more than that, she could see the loss of Eve in Bel's face. Shu said, “Yes, Ghened Zhur Ushorn's daughter, I'm questioning you. And it's high time someone did. Is this still about Eve? You couldn't save Eve from her own nature or the sea, so you're going to save someone else? Everyone else? Is that it?”

  But Bel just stared at her, and Shu knew then that this was a battle she was never going to win. That wasn't going to stop her having one last try, however.

  “Bel, let me go,” she said.

  “No,” Bel said, simply and coldly. The aircar twisted down toward the camp.

  Once they had landed, Bel allowed Shu to get up from the couch, but her hands remained bound. As they stepped through the hatch, they could see the second aircar, powering down. The small figure of Sylvian climbed out. As soon as she saw Bel, her face crumpled with relief. Dia might be dead, but Sylvian had someone to follow once more. The two women embraced, and Shu experienced a momentary pang of envy.

  The delazheni crouched by the entrance to the biotent, their multiple limbs folded. They looked like sad, dead spiders.

  “I wondered how you got to Outreven,” Shu murmured, glancing at the second aircar. “What did you do—fly the aircar fromTetherau on remote?”

  “Yes.You were right about the town defense, by the way. Sylvian took a look at its data banks; the defense's field over-loaded it. Once the defense went offline, the systems started revitalizing.”

  She shepherded Shu into the biotent, then disappeared. Shu struggled with the bonds for the next half hour, but she knew it was useless. The biotent's computational system would not respond to even her simplest demands. She thought with despair of Eleres and Mevennen, abandoned in the ruins; she wondered what they would think when they found her gone. That she had betrayed them, no doubt, and returned to the land of the dead, never to return. After an hour or so, Bel came back in. The sullenness created by Shu's challenge had gone. She radiated excitement.

  “Shu? I've got something wonderful to tell you.”

  “What is it?” Shu asked wearily. The effects of the stun gun had more or less worn off, but her legs still felt as brittle as sticks and her hands could not stop shaking inside the confines of her bonds.

  “I've managed to contact the other colony,” Bel said breathlessly. The words seemed to hang in the air.

  Shu felt herself gaping. “What other colony?”

  “The colony on one of the moons. In the Sierra Madre Tatras. Remember the talk of schism in the old texts? The followers of Elshonu Shikiriye who disagreed with the path he was taking, and who left Outreven? You wondered at the time where they went, and whether he'd started the genetic program on them before they left, so I got to thinking. I sent a generic signal to the ship; it's been broadcasting ever since on standard wave bands. And now someone's answered. They're still alive, Shu. I think they must be living underground, in biodomes. We can take the lander back up to the ship. With access to their technology, we can keep an eye on things here.”

  “Wait, wait,” Shu said, nonplussed. The more she
heard, the less she liked the expression in Bel's eyes; it was a little too bright, too fevered. “Who exactly did you speak to on this other colony?”

  For a moment, a flicker of uncertainty crossed Bel's face. “There wasn't a name. There was just a message, on repeat broadcast.” She leaned across the table and reached out to take Shu's hands. Slowly, Shu took them; they felt clammy and cold. “We can leave here, Shu, and go to them. We won't have to live here in this terrible place any more.”

  There was a long pause. After a moment, Shu nodded wearily. “Very well, Bel. Maybe you're right.”

  “You agree with me?” Bel asked. “You'll come with us?”

  “I'll come with you. I'm sorry, Bel. Perhaps you were right. Maybe I need to find my way back to the goddess, after all.” The words sounded hollow to her own ears, but Bel smiled, the first sign of warmth that she had exhibited toward Shu for some time. She bent down and released Shu's hands.

  “I'm glad, Shu. We need you. We've a lot of work to do.”

  The rest of the day was spent packing up. They would rest tonight, Bel informed them, and then head for the ship and the colony. As they prepared for sleep, an image crossed Shu's mind, of everyone settling themselves obediently into the lander again and sailing off into orbit. Bel leading, Sylvian and Shu following, a cult of three. And Shu thought, Time to burn some boats. She lingered for a moment in the biotent, looking down at the two women. In sleep, Bel's face had lost its youthful roundness, revealing the formidable will of her mother. A will as strong as that could easily slide into madness. Shu thought of the lunar colony, and whether there was even anything there. She did not like to think of Bel's future, and she turned and left the girl sleeping.

  Outside the biotent, it was bitterly cold. Shu shivered as she walked to the smaller aircar, and she was glad of its comparative warmth once inside. Her hands still felt a little shaky as she took the controls, but her movements became more assured as the aircar whirred up into the heavens and she turned the nose of the vehicle east, toward the rising sun.