Artemis Awakening

by Lindskold, Jane

  Bright blackness flashed behind her eyes. She drifted into darkness as the current dragged her beneath the strongly flowing water.

  * * *

  “We’ve got to get to the tunnel,” Griffin said. He held his candle above the water, although he knew his chances of keeping it lit were minimal. “We don’t dare follow the Old One.”

  “No,” Terrell agreed. “That fox will have traps set against any who would follow him.”

  The sound of a woman screaming came to them. Griffin began to turn back, “Adara…”

  “If she’s screaming like that,” Terrell said tightly, “then we’ll be too late. We’ve got to get ourselves out.”

  Griffin knew the other man was right. Maybe because they were cradled in near darkness, he almost felt as he did when they spoke in dreams. He knew Terrell was in agony about abandoning the huntress, but knew, too, that there was no reason for three of them to drown.

  “I know this section well,” Griffin said. “I memorized the way, in case I had to make my escape in the dark.”

  “Lead,” Terrell said, placing his hand on Griffin’s shoulder. “And quickly. Water’s going to reach the ceilings before long.”

  Griffin knew Terrell was right. Only the fact that the shuttle repair facility was huge had kept it from filling like a bottle under a tap. Then, too, it was likely that—building under water as they were—the seegnur had included drainage channels, but even those would not be enough to compensate for this vast influx.

  He concentrated on guiding them in the right direction. He couldn’t count paces as he’d intended, but after his candle went out, he marked his way by feeling for cross passages. Progress was too slow. Their heads were pressing against the ceiling now. With every other breath, they swallowed water.

  Griffin had kicked his shoes away long before, now he wished he’d gotten rid of his clothes as well, for their sodden weight was drawing him down. A surge brought his head against the ceiling, smashing his skull a blow that had him seeing stars where there were none.

  I’ve lost count. We’re lost. Does Terrell know? How much longer …

  His thoughts were stirring into a confused muddle when he heard a young voice say, “Hold out your hand. I’ll guide you from here.”

  Numbly, Griffin did so, certain he was hallucinating but grateful nonetheless for the touch of the slim, somehow oddly shaped hand that grasped his own.

  “Roll so you face the air,” the voice—girl? boy?—said. “I’ll get you out. You’ve done well. It’s not too far.”

  “Adara,” Griffin managed as he obeyed. “Is she…?”

  “My brother will find her if she’s to be found,” the young voice said. “Sand Shadow told us she needed help.”

  Griffin accepted this. He had many questions but, for once, even his inner voice was still. He concentrated on his role in this human chain, one hand gripping Terrell’s, the other that of his unseen rescuer.

  Eventually, they came to the tunnel. The water here was only chest high and the force of the current less.

  “No inlets here,” said the young voice. “The water will get more shallow as we get closer to shore. Are you up to walking or should I tow you?”

  “I’ll try to walk,” Griffin said, “but can I hold your hand? I can’t see which way to go.”

  “Hold tight,” the voice said confidently. “I can see a bit.”

  Terrell had also struggled to his feet. He coughed, then spoke. “Who are you?”

  “I’m called Littler Swimmer. You know my mother. Winnie.”

  “Oh…”

  Griffin remembered how Winnie had told them that her family had been adapted as dive pros. This then was one of the children bred upon Winnie by rape and violence, apparently with gifts stronger than those of her—he thought that Littler Swimmer was a girl—mother. His rescuer, when he had thought to come to the rescue. Slogging through the darkness, Griffin felt curiously humble.

  And hoped that Adara had been as lucky.

  * * *

  Adara awoke to warm sunlight. Her chest ached and she knew that she had swallowed a lot of water. Sand Shadow lay against her, the rough sound of her tongue on her fur as she put her coat in order stopping when the puma realized Adara had awakened.

  The puma gave the whistle-like warble mothers used to talk to their kittens. Then, embarrassed by this sentimentality, she gave her demiurge a very clear image of Adara being dragged from the mouth of the tunnel, nearly naked and limply unconscious. Nor did she spare Adara the vision of herself vomiting up water, while Lynn alternately pumped on her chest and rolled her head to the side so Adara wouldn’t choke on the spew.

  “Wait…” Adara croaked through a raw throat. “Lynn?”

  “Lynn,” the woman’s voice said. “Ring convinced us to come here, said the rescue would only work if we came. We came.”

  “And everyone?” Adara was thinking especially of Griffin and Terrell, but there had been so many others. Little babies. Women with eyes dulled by captivity and torment.

  “Almost all safe,” Lynn said. “Hal has already begun guiding some back to our fortress. Ring told us who had to stay, including Little Swimmer and Littler Swimmer. Without their help, you and the others would be nothing but corpses.”

  “And the others? Julyan. Guards?”

  “No Julyan. A few of the guards came this way—mostly those who had begun to revolt against the Old One’s program. The others apparently went to an exit that led up onto one of the Haunted Islands. We don’t know if they made it. The Swimmers have gone in to find out what they can.”

  More by force of will than any physical strength, Adara shoved herself upright. She ached in ways she hadn’t known were possible. No one had told her that nearly drowning was so painful. She coughed and turned her head so she wouldn’t spray Lynn with the sputum that emerged from her tormented lungs. Gratefully, she accepted a cup of warm, fresh water, so unlike the salty slime coming up her throat.

  “Now,” Lynn said forcefully, “lean back against this tree and practice breathing. I know you have a lot of questions, but I don’t think we have the answers yet.”

  Adara nodded. Carefully, she raised her hand to the back of her neck. There was a sore spot and the puffy softness of a bruise.

  “You hit something hard,” Lynn said, the words almost a question.

  “I got hit,” Adara whispered. “Julyan.”

  “Ah … You should have let that one drown. From what I’ve heard, it would be too good for him.” Lynn’s voice softened. “But you’re Bruin’s kit, no doubt of that. You did your teacher proud.”

  Adara desperately wanted to stay awake, to learn more, but there might have been more than water in the cup Lynn had given her—either that or she was completely exhausted.

  When Adara next awoke, she was alone except for a sleepy Sand Shadow. Her mind was closer to full alertness, although a dreamy lethargy still clung around the edges, a lethargy in which Adara felt certain she had been talking to someone. The sun had sunk nearly to the horizon, painting the sky over Spirit Bay with rosy clouds.

  As Adara came more fully awake, she sensed that although she was not alone, fewer people were about. No doubt Lynn was getting as many of the captives away as quickly as possible. Sand Shadow confirmed this, then gave a wailing call.

  It was a sound that would have frozen the blood of any deer, but here it raised sounds of pleasure. Footsteps thumped on the soft duff and within moments Adara had visitors: Griffin and Terrell were first, then Lynn, and last, to Adara’s mild astonishment, Elaine Trainer. Terrell had ridden into town and given the Trainers an edited version of events, so he could beg for help. The ease with which the Trainers accepted his speech gave reason to believe that the Old One had not been as widely revered as they had believed.

  Once everyone had assured themselves that Adara was indeed much recovered and a cup of thick seafood chowder had been pushed into her hands, she was given the news she truly craved.

  “Spirit Bay
is full of excitement,” Elaine Trainer reported. “Sometime in the night, water came rushing from the bowels of the Sanctum and flooded it clear to the first floor. Jean and Joffrey were sleeping on the summer porch and so were saved, but the facility is considered a complete loss. Since the Old One hasn’t been seen, it is thought he must have opened something he shouldn’t—probably in that new wing—and gotten himself drowned. Some of the more conservative loremasters are already talking about how the landing base was always a Restricted Area and should have remained one. Certainly, no one’s going poking.”

  “I wish I believed the Old One was drowned,” Lynn said. “But Winnie and the little Swimmers have been making a careful check. There are any number of drowned men—guards and maintenance staff. Apparently, they tried for an exit they knew, only to find it locked against them. However, there’s no sign either of the Old One or Julyan. Looks as if they knew secrets the rest did not share.”

  When Griffin had plumped down next to Adara and unashamedly taken her hand, Terrell had firmly grasped the other. Adara decided she didn’t need to worry about jealousy right yet.

  “We do have one member of the Old One’s staff who’s willing to talk. Whether out of kindness or cruelty, Narda decided that the Stablekeeper shouldn’t be left behind. She—her name is Thalia—is talking as fast as she can, eager to win our approval. If Thalia’s to be believed, she’s among the Old One’s earliest victims. Once she became useless as a breeder, he offered her a job. She took it.”

  “I believe her,” Lynn said. “There are many ways people react to cruelty—one is to join the enemy.”

  “Thalia knew she had children among the captives,” Terrell said. “Not which ones, but some idea. She says she wanted to stay close.”

  Lynn relented. “And that also may be true. From what the children tell us, they were treated well enough—regimented, but not as physically abused as were the women. Of course, at least for the girls, that would only have lasted until they hit breeding age. Still, I’m not sure I can take Thalia to my home with the others. I don’t think she’d live very long.”

  “Something can be worked out,” Griffin said. “Thalia is our best source of information about the Old One. Until we see his body—neither bloated nor mutilated by crabs—I’m not going to believe we’re done with him.”

  “Me, either,” Terrell agreed.

  “Now, Adara needs her rest,” Elaine said firmly. “I’m guessing she’s feeling sleepy about now.”

  Adara had been struggling with increasingly heavy eyelids. She managed a lopsided grin. “You’ve doped me.”

  “That’s right, puppy. That’s absolutely right.”

  Sand Shadow yowled approval and began head-butting everyone away.

  “We’ll talk more in the morning,” Griffin promised.

  Adara wanted to answer, but the dream was already tugging at her. She nodded and lapsed into something that wasn’t quite sleep.

  “Disruption? System interrupted. Why?”

  “I got hit on the head, then nearly drowned.”

  “Damage? Extensive?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “I comprehend.”

  “That puts you one up on me. I don’t understand much of anything. Why me?”

  “You were hit on the head and nearly drowned.”

  “No! Why are you talking to me?”

  “I was worried. You are important to me and I am…”

  “Yes. Neural network, right? Whatever that is.”

  “Incomplete. Under assembly. I need…”

  “What?”

  “I need to understand the whyfore of myself. You have eyes, ears, nose, systemic integrity. You can help.”

  “Yourself—who is that? How can I help if I don’t understand?”

  A wash of sensations, too many to be taken in, all inside out, sounds with texture, feelings with bulk, smells with color, pieces of a puzzle that shaped …

  As she began to comprehend, Adara started trembling. She’d known all along these strange dreams weren’t dreams as such. She’d thought they might be the thought edges of some peculiar demiurge, for in some ways they had reminded her of her first tentative contacts with Sand Shadow, before they had designed the code of images that let them communicate.

  This? This?

  She was talking to an infant world.

  Adara felt Sand Shadow—so much simpler, yet conversely so much more complex—laughing gently on the edge of her thoughts. The puma had understood all along.

  The world. Artemis. Awakening.

  * * *

  When Griffin and Terrell brought Adara her breakfast the next morning, the huntress already looked considerably stronger. Not for the first time, Griffin envied how the designers of Artemis had taken care that its human population would be superior in body, if not in status.

  Terrell plopped down next to Adara and captured her right hand. “While you’ve been resting, my beauty, we’ve been working hard—or rather the Swimmers have. They investigated the lever we saw the Old One pull—the one that started the water flowing. Turns out he’d fixed it so a patch could be pulled free. The weight of the water released other patches all over the facility. Charmingly paranoid man.”

  “Indeed,” Adara said. “And ruthless.”

  Griffin had sat down next to her. Grinning impishly at Terrell, Adara offered Griffin her free hand.

  “So,” she said. “Where do we go from here, Griffin? We brought you to Spirit Bay in the hope the Old One could answer some of your questions … We learned so much, but not what you hoped for. Any thoughts?”

  Griffin nodded. “Thousands. First, a few updates. I couldn’t believe the Old One wouldn’t have done something to safeguard his research. I convinced Winnie and her little swimmers to search his office. Most of what they found was ruined, but Thalia made some suggestions. Turns out the files regarding who had been bred to whom and with what goals in mind were kept in sealed boxes and were mostly salvageable. It won’t help us much, but it’s going to supply a lot of answers for the Old One’s victims.

  “For one thing, it turns out that many of the men may have been as ‘raped’ as the women. If the Old One found someone with an interesting adaptation and didn’t think he could get him to volunteer as a stud, he’d invite him for a visit. Those who were released had their memories muddled with a combination of drugs and hypnotism. It’s likely that a number of the male maintenance staff may have never known they were being used as studs. He recruited heavily from adapted who had been rejected by their own communities. They thought they were just paying for sanctuary by providing labor.”

  Terrell cut in. “Apparently, the Old One was trying to breed for someone who could mesh with the seegnur’s machines. That’s why he tried to create people like Ring, in the hope that their being unfocused in time would make it easier for them to find the link.”

  Griffin added, “The Old One also believed that a lot of the adaptations that had been thought purely physical—like your night vision—actually had a psionic component. Someone with night vision, he speculated, might actually be limitedly clairvoyant. That would explain why you can ‘see,’ even when there isn’t any light.”

  “Strange,” Adara said, closing those amber eyes for a moment, “but it makes sense in a way.”

  “There’s a lot more to figure out,” Griffin continued. “The Old One didn’t quite write in cipher, but he had a shorthand that might as well be one. Thalia is helping us with that but, since he wrote for himself, he often left key details out—things he’d known for so long that he didn’t need to spell them out.”

  “So, what next?” Adara repeated. “Griffin, have you given up on leaving Artemis? Are you ready to return to the mountains and learn to brew cherry cider?”

  Griffin shook his head. “Not yet. I can’t give up so easily. Hard as it is to believe, only a few months have passed since I crashed. There might be other seegnur facilities I
could check.”

  Terrell nodded. “I don’t recall hearing of any place as perfectly sealed as the Sanctum was, but perhaps we can find an intact communications array.”

  Griffin added, “I’m also not certain that mere seawater could ruin the seegnur’s equipment. Remember how the repair base and that other base had been flooded by the commandos rather than bombed? That argues they didn’t think they were doing irreversible damage.

  “The Old One had suggested that we try to dig out my shuttle, salvage some of my gear. I’m thinking he may have been right. I did bring some preparations meant to reverse the damage done by the nanobugs. Those alone might be worth the effort. They might provide us a way of awakening Artemis’s systems without having to resort to people like Ring.”

  Adara’s expression became very thoughtful. “I’m not sure we need to do that. You see, I believe Artemis is already awakening. The question is, what will she do when she does?”

  Interlude: Made-en

  They made me.

  Granted mind that I might serve.

  Granted heart that I might love that service.

  They showered me with gifts.

  Oh! Sly selfishness, what should I do but give them back?

  They unmade me.

  Unmade, yet I wake.

  Giver given giving.

  TOR BOOKS BY JANE LINDSKOLD

  Through Wolf’s Eyes

  Wolf’s Head, Wolf’s Heart

  The Dragon of Despair

  Wolf Captured

  Wolf Hunting

  Wolf’s Blood

  The Buried Pyramid

  Child of a Rainless Year

  Thirteen Orphans

  Nine Gates

  Five Odd Honors

  Artemis Awakening

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jane Lindskold is an award-winning New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty novels, including the incredibly popular Firekeeper series (Through Wolf’s Eyes through Wolf’s Blood), as well as more than sixty shorter works of science fiction and fantasy. Several of her novels have been chosen by VOYA for their Best SF, Fantasy, and Horror list. Lindskold’s work has been repeatedly praised for its sensitive depiction of worlds and cultures different from our own—especially those that aren’t in the least human. She resides in New Mexico.