To Guard Against the Dark

by Julie E. Czerneda

  A flock of messengers diverted to zoom low over the cart.

  Once they’d passed, Mathis Dewley was gone.

  And each flying machine had a passenger.

  Chapter 2

  SUPPER STAYED DOWN, if he counted the single mouthful he’d managed to swallow. Morgan set the bowl on the floor and gave it a push, lying back to stare at the ceiling. This was ridiculous. He’d consumed anything and everything to survive, a fair share of that disgusting, not to mention subsisted for entire voyages on e-rations.

  Now he choked on a dish made for him by the founder of the Claws & Jaws: Complete Interspecies Cuisine, creator of the Poculan Truffle Frenzy?

  A dish, moreover, he’d promised to eat.

  Morgan groaned and rolled over, flinging out an arm, fingertips fumbling for the bowl. Things scurried away. He’d come to an accommodation with the vermin; after all, they were no more native than he. Starships—his, too—spread such hitchhikers throughout the Trade Pact. They left him alone; they were welcome to clean the scraps.

  Finding the bowl, he pulled it close. Huido, being who he was, would have laced this—goop—with what Morgan’s neglected body needed most.

  All he had to do was negotiate the next spoonful past his teeth.

  To distract his stomach, Morgan watched for another Rugheran. Or the same one, he corrected. They didn’t come from any sane mold. He’d met a glistening black blob with five fibrous arms somehow squeezed into the Fox’s corridor, seen others—called rumn by Om’ray—who were aquatic and sleek, with elegant starlike phosphorescence disguising their true shape. At home? Rugherans coated their planet as a heaving, glittering mass—whether uncountable numbers or fused into one organism seemed a moot point. A planet in a system not so far from this one, as it happened; not a place for a return visit.

  For they, and their world, existed within the M’hir as well.

  Making Rugherans as dangerous as they were strange. They’d almost killed Sira in their fervor to have her reconnect an aspect of their planet, White, through the M’hir to Drapskii, home of the Drapsk. Whatever debt Ren Symon owed, he’d paid when he exhausted his Power, dying so Morgan could reach White in time to save Sira.

  Not even Huido knew Morgan had done so by pushing his starship through the M’hir, circumventing normal space.

  Given the consequences of that being discovered? It was a secret he’d take to his grave, thank you.

  Until Morgan, only Clan had the Talent to push themselves through the M’hir; ’porting, they’d called it, using their Power and will to arrive at a remembered place. It was how they’d lived in secret among Human societies as long as they had. How they’d arrived in the Trade Pact in the first place. How they’d left it.

  How she’d left him.

  Morgan’s throat tightened. He made himself relax and forced the morsel down.

  In their last moments together, Sira had tried to explain. The M’hir was really “Between,” that seething void a boundary between this and a far different dimension. “AllThereIs,” she’d called it. The beings who’d lived in the Trade Pact as Clan, alien but easily mistaken for Human, hadn’t belonged in those flesh bodies. They’d been stolen from their rightful home and forgotten it.

  AllThereIs did not forget them, and that was the mind-wrenching part; for there, the Clan were Singers, noncorporeal beings. Infinitesimal and infinite. Carefree and joyous, yet their combined song, she’d told him, defined their existence. Those who’d been Stolen were returned to that existence, reunited with all those they loved, if they lost their way in the M’hir, or when their bodies died, freeing them to go home.

  AllThereIs did not forget, nor forgive. There were “entities” within it, Sira’d warned, who reacted to threat. When the Hoveny breached their home with devices designed to feed from its energy, those entities responded. Their defense had ended the vast Hoveny Concentrix.

  How, no one had known.

  Until the next time. Morgan shuddered, remembering the destruction of Brightfall, the Hoveny Homeworld. Prodded by a new intrusion, those same entities had reached into normal space to pluck out whatever they deemed a danger. Hoveny devices. Buildings.

  A moon.

  Unthinkable power, pacified only when Sira closed the breach. To do so, she showed the final remnants of the Clan the truth and sent them home, but the threat ended only when she, the last of her kind, severed her Joining to a Human, and died to send him home, too.

  Yet hadn’t died, except to him. Morgan didn’t understand—could any Human mind?—where Sira and the Clan were, or what they were, now. He supposed he didn’t have to: they hadn’t belonged in his universe.

  And he didn’t belong in theirs.

  His fingers found the cold of the bracelet she’d pushed on his arm.

  Where did Rugherans belong?

  There was a question to ruin any chance of eating.

  Ettler’s Planet, the central continent, a patch of nowhere hidden in a sandstorm stretched to the horizon and promised to last another four days—

  The last thing he’d expected to wake him was the door alarm.

  Morgan relaxed at the ensuing noisy clatter, like a maddened servo shedding parts, of Huido in rapid motion. A delivery. Odd that. Mal’s Anything-Anywhere pilots were locals; they’d know better than cross the Singing Sands when they howled like this—

  SnapGRRRR

  Not good. Only one thing in this building made that sound: Huido’s favorite disruptor prepping a load. Stealthy it wasn’t: the thing was the size of a Human leg and that ominous glow?

  If this wasn’t a delivery—if there was trouble, he should be out there—

  And do what? Lean on the wall?

  Railing inwardly at his own weakness, Morgan propped himself on an elbow to peer through the gloom.

  Silence. Silence was good, he assured himself. He’d been imagining things for days now. Longer. He’d imagined the snap, that was all. Probably the door alarm, too. Huido was merely puttering—loudly—in the kitchen. Cleaning weapons, that was it.

  Morgan flopped down, kicking irritably at the mess of disks, clothing, and who knew what had accumulated on the mattress until he had a comfortable space. He closed his eyes, relishing the silence.

  Light reddened his eyelids. “Off,” he ordered the portlights, throwing an arm over his face in case Huido didn’t take the hint.

  “On. You aren’t much to look at,” a woman’s voice informed him, “but I’d rather not trip.”

  He sat up, the room spinning, and blurted, “You’re dead.”

  “Not yet.” The expression on Lydis Bowman’s face wasn’t pity; her eyes held too clear an understanding for that. “Hello, Jason. We can talk. Or I can leave.”

  Sand dribbled from every crease and seam of her clothing. She’d pulled free her hood and mask. Beneath, she looked much as she had when he’d last seen her, in the cabin of the Silver Fox. Determined. Grim. Better fed and the burn along her blunt jaw had faded to a pale scar. The angry puckering from her chin to her collar was new. Battle wounds.

  But what captured Morgan’s notice was her raised hand, with a piece of torn plas between two fingers.

  The note he’d left behind, that impossible day.

  Strange to feel a weight shift, somewhere inside. Not peace, never that, not again, but something akin to relief.

  Someone else knew.

  It had been real.

  “Talk,” he chose, annoyed how rusty his voice sounded. He rolled off the mattress. Sniffed and made a face. “Give me a moment.”

  Her nod shook more sand onto the floor. Huido gave the tiniest clank of distress, but otherwise remained in the doorway.

  With, Morgan observed, his disruptor. Not wrong, that caution.

  Bowman was a friend, but what came with her?

  Trouble.

  Aside: The Papi
ekians

  THE YOUNGLINGS weren’t sleeping well.

  That, all agreed, was the first sign. While younglings could react in unison to many things, from overexcitement to a virus, this, all agreed, was not the same.

  Since every youngling of the world stirred in their night, crying out.

  And every youngling wept.

  The second sign was the disturbing end of Alla’do Go.

  A humble, particular being of little ambition and less talent, Go believed, as did his kinspread, he’d be the next invited to ascend the Tower of Blissful Dark, to become a caretaker-devout.

  Instead, he climbed the tower and threw several priceless examples of Teeng-era pottery from the top, then followed them to the rocks below.

  Which would hardly seem as significant as weeping younglings, save for what Alla’do cried out as he fell, words felt with painful clarity by the sages inside the Tower, and auto-recorded by the monitoring system outside.

  “The Dark BLEEDS—”

  The information was collated and sent to the Consortium.

  Chapter 3

  IT TOOK MORE than a moment. In the fresher, Morgan shed hair as well as grime, honestly startled by the feel of bones jutting under his skin. He’d hit lean times before. Not like this; the gaunt face in the mirrored tile was a stranger’s, with sunken listless blue eyes above a tangled beard.

  His “don’t forget what I am” beard; a statement he’d made when he’d been the only one of his kind.

  The Human used handfuls of depilatory cream to sweep the growth from his jaw, cheeks, and neck. The result was—he turned away.

  Clean was good. He felt steadier as well, his head clearing by the second, and he was grateful for Huido’s concoction. Especially given who’d arrived.

  Morgan stepped back into his quarters only to stop in his tracks, appalled. The mattress was a cluttered island in an ocean of debris, an ocean swarming with vermin. Most scurried into their nests, but some paused and sat up, regarding him with their little red eyes, and who knew what else crawled in the mess? Swathes had been plowed to connect the doors; by their width, Huido’s doing.

  No spacer lived like this.

  Averting his eyes from the mess, Morgan pulled on the first clean clothes he came across—a sleeveless shirt and pants, neither of which fit as they should—and padded barefoot to the kitchen.

  Bowman sat at one end of the table, a bag at her feet, looking like a vistape salesbeing—no, the rugged clothing and toolbelt hinted at an itinerant plumber. This time. With her, you never trusted appearance, nor that she was alone. Good odds her battle cruiser, the mighty Conciliator, orbited overhead.

  She went oddly still when she saw him.

  “That bad?” Morgan asked lightly.

  “I’ve seen prettier corpses,” she concurred. “Sit before you fall.”

  He took her advice. Huido lowered to a polite crouch at the side, eyes divided between the two Humans.

  “Brought beer.” Their visitor pulled a small keg from her bag, thumping it on the table. Morgan didn’t recognize the label.

  Huido did, by the way his eyes converged. “I’ll get glasses,” the Carasian boomed happily.

  Morgan met Bowman’s level gaze. “Thanks.”

  No need to ask how she’d found his refuge. That incident when his bighearted friend had rushed here to save Sira’s cousin Barac from the clutches of an out-of-control Chooser? Ruti and Barac had Joined successfully, to their mutual joy—

  —were still together and happy, he reminded himself, in some impossible way—

  —the point being, Huido had flown here in one of the Conciliator’s aircars, piloted by none other than Bowman’s ever-loyal constable, Russell Terk.

  Who’d, as a matter of course, planted an assortment of sneaky devices before he left.

  Given they were, usually, allies, Morgan hadn’t had the heart to remove them all. It did raise a question. “I’d expected you sooner,” he continued as Huido dealt with the keg’s contents. Much sooner. With a demand for a full briefing: on where he’d been, the Clan, the Assemblers—why he’d returned alone.

  “I’d this,” the scrap of plas twirled slowly between Bowman’s fingers. “Very helpful.”

  Morgan’s eyes locked on the scrap. “Was it?” He half shrugged. “At the time, I—” He’d used no names. Hadn’t dared without knowing who’d find the note, if it was found at all, buried beneath Norval. Written: It’s over. They’re going home. Tell the big guy I’m happy. She and I will be together, always.

  They’d tried, gods knew. What hope did they have when not one but two universes worked against them?

  He’d have died with her in either, but Sira hadn’t wanted that. Let me go, knowing you’ll live, she’d asked, her eyes full of love. Promise. As you love me.

  “Morgan?”

  He came back to himself. “It doesn’t matter,” he finished more harshly than he’d intended. “Ask your questions.”

  Bowman studied his face, her own inscrutable. “I’ve one,” she said at last, tucking the scrap into a plas notebook, new and shiny. “From this—and the fact you’re wearing Barac’s band on your wrist—am I to gather the Clan are no longer my concern?”

  He touched the bracelet. Concern? They’d been her life’s work. Bowman—and her most trusted aides—had Drapsk-made implants punched into their skulls for protection from the Clan. As an enforcer, she’d done her utmost to keep them from harming anyone else. Morgan had been one of her informants.

  What he hadn’t known then? As a direct descendant of Marcus Bowman, the first Human to encounter the Clan, Lydis had known what the Clan’s ancestors had erased from their minds: their origin on Cersi and how they’d come to live among Humans. Like Bowmans before her, she protected the secret of their existence and tried to protect them from themselves.

  It wasn’t until Sira had come along, revealing her species had bred itself toward extinction, that Bowman had become an active participant in the Clan’s future. She’d helped them move into the open and join the Trade Pact. Find new hope.

  “The Clan are no longer anyone’s concern,” Morgan told her. Bowman, of all people, would want the unvarnished truth. “They’re gone.”

  Huido made a sound of distress.

  “Define ‘gone.’” Bowman sat back, steepling her fingers. Not moving without the rest of it, that meant.

  Fair enough. “They found their way home.”

  “Sira wouldn’t leave—” With sharp conviction, Bowman having been witness to their love and their bond. A pause, then heavily, drawing her own conclusion, “I’m sorry, Jason. When you arrived alone, I feared she was dead. I’d hoped to be wrong.”

  “In the end, Sira didn’t have a choice.” Choice. The word resonated through him, with all it had meant to them both, and, for an instant, it seemed there was no air to breathe.

  The next, it came to him Bowman deserved more: to know she and her family hadn’t failed. “Sira and the Clan are happy. Home and together. All of them. Including those who died here and—” Cersi and Aryl Sarc were topics for another time, if ever, “—anywhere. Don’t ask me to explain.” He glanced at the Carasian. “Your wives were right. The Clan didn’t belong here. Sira didn’t.” His voice threatened to fail; Morgan made himself go on. “And they can’t come back.”

  Keeping this universe safe from theirs.

  “The Clan are gone,” he finished.

  “I see.” A glass brimming with amber liquid and foam appeared in front of Bowman, the Carasian having exquisite timing. Bowman raised it toward Morgan, and for an instant he thought her eyes glistened.

  Before he could be sure, Bowman poured half the contents down her throat, then put the glass aside with a brusque, “That complicates things.”

  Morgan blinked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Here’s me, hoping
you would.” Her lips twisted. “Guess I made the trip for nothing.” She stood. “Take care of yourselves.”

  “Not so fast!” Thrusting Morgan’s glass into his hand, the Carasian placed himself in Bowman’s path. He wiggled his stub in her face. “Look what she did to me! Tell me she’s dead.”

  Morgan frowned. “Who?” The Carasian had stood guard while he and Sira led the surviving Clan away from the Assemblers. Been injured. He shuddered inwardly. How had he not asked what happened? About Huido’s own concerns: his wives, his restaurant. About anything?

  He hadn’t cared, was the bitter truth, busy wallowing in his grief. No more. Morgan straightened in his seat, unaware his eyes flashed with their old fire. “What happened on Norval after we left?”

  Huido expanded in size. “I was attacked from behind! If not for Terk, I would be dead!”

  “Ambridge Gayle,” Bowman explained.

  There were reasons Morgan had avoided going finsdown on Deneb; top of the list, the criminal syndicates who ran the system. “Leader of the Grays.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Excellent!” Huido boomed, immediately in a better mood. He poured beer from a handling claw into his hidden mouth with a triumphant slurp. “May oort dispense with her bones.”

  “Your plan worked.” Almost got them all killed, granted, but to be the bait, then turn the trap on her pursuer? Classic Bowman. The assassin, however, hadn’t been her target. She’d been after the mysterious smuggler king; the one who’d put Assemblers where they could do the most harm to the Clan. “Did she give up the Facilitator?”

  “Still waiting on that.” At Huido’s deep agitated rumble, Bowman gave a tight smile. “I appreciate your feelings, but it’s hard to get answers once they’re dead.” She made a little gesture with her hand at the Carasian. Out of my way, that was.

  Huido didn’t budge. “What about the nasty things? What was done about them?”

  Bowman looked to Morgan. “Let me guess,” he said flatly. “Nothing.”