The Shattered Sky

by Paul Lucas

  EIGHTEEN

  The three general “Schools” of sentient life uplift are Artisan, Functionalist, and Experimentalist. Each represents a broad grouping of known races according to characteristic directions and philosophies the Builders apparently took in modifying base life-forms. Whether these Schools actually represent different factions of Builder bioengineers or merely different recurring “fads” in uplift practices during the Builder Era is unknown.

  The ARTISAN School seems to have produced the most number of races, about 40% of known intelligent species. Artisan-class sentients seem to have been designed primarily to appeal at least partially to human concepts of beauty and aesthetics. While Artisan intelligences fulfill a very broad range of ecological niches available to sentient species, the primary concern in their creation seemed to have been elegance of design and an aesthetically pleasing form. Not surprisingly, this School includes most transhumans and has the largest number of species with human-like physiologies and behaviors.

  Examples of Artisan uplifts include: Centaurs, Dragonkin, the Fae, Felinoids, Merfolk, Myotans, Otterkin, and Vulpinoids.

  The FUNCTIONALIST School is the second most numerous classification, comprising about 35% of known sentient species. This School is characterized by intelligences that are optimized to perform a very specific function or to fully exploit a certain ecological niche. Much less emphasis was placed on making them pleasing to human perceptions as to ensure they could perform their designed function with maximal efficiency.

  Examples of Functionalist uplifts (and their niches) include: Delphs (predators), Kobolds (burrowing scavengers), Orcs (warrior humanoids), Trundles (construction specialists), Ursoids (omnivore grazers), and Xique (predators.)

  The EXPERIMENTALIST School is the third major classification, making up about 15% of known races. The creators of experimentalist sentients seemed to have been most concerned with pushing the limits of uplift science and originating intelligences that were truly divergent from the human baseline. Not coincidentally, they are also the sentients that are the least human in both form and culture, and this category includes almost all invertebrate uplifts.

  Examples of Experimentalist races include: Cephalopods, Dryads, Spider Swarms, and Wolflings.

  The remaining 10% of intelligent races are those that seem to straddle one or more Schools and therefore defy easy classification. For example, Mantas were clearly designed to be large ocean grazers, making them candidates for the Functionalist School, but their very divergent form of intelligence could also easily make them Experimentalist uplifts.

  --From A Basic Guide to the Outlands, 546 “What the @&%$*! Is That Thing?” edition, Haggerty Press, Borelea.

  * * *

  “Gossamyr, that was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done!” Lerner stalked back and forth across our modest apartment like a cornered carnivore. “Skies of Earth, I almost pulled my hair out with worry while you were unconscious!"

  I stuck out my tongue playfully. "Blech. The last thing you need is to be less furry, husband." But instead of smiling he only scowled deeper.

  I laid on my back on our wide sleeping mat, my leg wound bound tightly and expertly by Windrider's efficient hands. I did not remember much of my rescue, as my loss of blood kept pushing me in and out of consciousness. I only fuzzily remember being swept up in strong, gentle hands--my husband's?--and the bumpy, frantic ride in the human airship. I must have completely blacked out then, for the next thing I remember I was waking on my sleeping mat, surrounded by worried faces, as Windrider called a healing spirit for me.

  "I'm serious, Goss!" Lerner said. "What did you think you were doing, going out into a Xique-infested forest by yourself?"

  "I was looking for my husband who had done the exact same thing, as you well know. I thought my spirit callings would give me an advantage..."

  "Your spells mean nothing to those killers! It wouldn't matter how many fire or sleep 'spirits' you summoned, they wouldn't have stopped until they killed you!"

  "But it had been days since anyone had heard from you."

  "All they did was chase me out of radio range with the walkie talkies we have in the tower here! I was fine! I told you I'd be fine! Xique don't think like humans or Myotans, Goss. To them, it doesn't matter that I live with our people here. I wasn't Myotan, so therefore I wasn't an enemy. You didn't have to risk yourself by going out there! If McDevitt's crew had shown up even one minute later . . ."

  A voice called from the doorway. "She would have been dead."

  I greeted our visitor with a smile. “Windrider."

  "Good day, daughter," Windrider said.

  "This is not a good time," Lerner grumbled.

  Our shaman raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. "Pfah. Silly arguments can wait. Her injuries cannot."

  "Fine," he snapped, grabbing his jacket. "I'll be talking to our visitors." He was quickly out the door.

  "He is angry with me," I said, crossing my arms. "He was so affectionate after I woke up, but now...."

  Windrider sauntered up to my bedding, pulling out herbs and poultices from her bandoleer pouch. "Can you blame him? He almost lost you to your own recklessness. How do you expect him to react to that?"

  "What was I supposed to do, Windrider? Hide in the Tower while Lerner risked his life to help us? Sit quietly and safe while he could have been dying under Xique claws?"

  "No one doubts your courage or your love of your Mate, Gossamyr. But please, next time have some consideration for those who worry about you."

  I smirked. "Like you?"

  "Yes, like me, silly child," she grumbled as she pulled the blanket aside, exposing my wounded leg. "I tend to worry about you far more than I do most of our other people, and it is not just because you are the daughter of my heart."

  "Why is that?"

  “The others do not think they can fight a dozen Xique by themselves with a single human gun and few spirit-callings." She carefully removed the human-made gauze bandages and sniffed at the blood-caked gashes, crinkling her nose. She slowly nodded in approval. "It is hard to tell from the smelly juice the humans put on the wound--"

  "Antiseptic," I said.

  She glared at me. The one aspect of human technology she was deeply unimpressed with was their medicine. "--But I can detect no infection. Still, I should put a proper poultice on it."

  I shook my head. "The antiseptic works just as well, Windrider. You do not need to go through the trouble of mixing a poultice for me."

  I could tell from her furtive glance at her herb pouch that she already had. Oops.

  Our shaman pursed her lips. "Very well. How is the pain?"

  "Better, especially since you gave me the Afghuri tea mix," I said. "It is beginning to itch a lot, though."

  "That is from the healing spells. Your flesh is knitting itself back together. I should renew the spell."

  "I can do that myself."

  "No!" she insisted. "Calling spirits, especially for healing, is taxing work. I do not want you to tire yourself."

  "But it is a simple calling . . ."

  "Hush! I am Shaman, I will call the spirits. It is the least you can let me do after making me worry so."

  What could I say to that? The matter settled, Windrider laid her tool-fingers on either side of the gashes, closed her eyes, and began chanting. She continued for many minutes.

  I did not feel anything when the spell was completed, nor would I. Healing spells worked slowly, as the nanites within me would be made to help my body's natural systems in regenerating the traumatized tissues. In order to do that, they had to draw upon the building materials already in my body, like proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and other nutrients. While the spell was in effect, for about twenty-four hours, I would have to eat and drink about twice as much as usual to give the nanites the building materials they needed, so I would not lose too much muscle or fat to the healing process.

  Or so Lerner and other humans had explained it to me when they had taught me fu
lly about the Nanotech Matrix. It was one of the few things Lerner and I had argued bitterly about in our first year of marriage. Even though I had originally been eager to learn all I could about human-style magic and spells, the concept of the Nanotech Matrix and its Shard-girdling system of nanites was still something my mind continually balked at. And not because I found trillions of microscopic machines in every cloud and river and rock and bird just a little icky. No spirits were involved anywhere? The winds of life that the Sky-Spirit had given every object in the world was just a misinterpretation of a powerful Builder tool? My spirit-callings were just how ignorant people called the thought-programming used to command the Matrix?

  It was something my oh-so-pragmatic and agnostic husband argued often with his very spiritual wife about. I had to wait until I had made my pilgrimage with Lerner to his Known Nations and was shown the nanites with a microscope before I began to truly believe he was right.

  I did not know where that left me as my people’s future Shaman. I still believed in the existence of spirits, especially the Sky Spirit, but it was obvious now that they were far less involved in the day-to-day workings of the world than I had been led to believe.

  Watching Windrider call her spirits made me nostalgic. She steadfastly refused to believe in the Matrix, and after only trying once to convince her of it, I gave up. In many ways, there was something much purer and exciting in her spirit-callings than in a human Mage's ordering his mind into a Matrix thought-program. To the humans, it was a science, detached, ordered, and categorized; to her, it was a way of living that defined her, her people, and her world. I wished Lerner could see it like that.

  Lerner. Spirits, I hoped he was not as angry as he acted. The night before I had really wanted to make love, but Lerner refused, not wanting to aggravate my injury. Or so he said. But he did sleep next to me the whole night, arm draped protectively over me in one position or another. Usually, we would drift to our own sides of the sleeping mat, but that night he unconsciously hovered next to me. It was so sweet he wanted to protect me even in sleep, but I realized that maybe I had truly scared him...

  "Thinking about Lerner?" Windrider asked. She finished her spell and began rebinding the wound.

  I started, then lowered my eyes. "You are very wise, Shaman."

  "Wisdom is only the ability to see the obvious. What else would a young female be worrying about after an argument with her Mate?"

  "Do you think--do you think he is really mad at me?"

  "Yes. But he will forgive you."

  "He can be so stubborn."

  “So can you. Mates often fly in the same winds.” She tucked in the last of her bandages around my wound and gave it a final inspection with her fingers to make sure everything was in its proper place. "It could have been worse. You could have ended up with Cloud."

  I crossed my eyes and lolled my tongue. Windrider snickered. "That is true," I said. "Cloud would always be mad at me. Spirits, he is always mad at me now."

  "He is still bitter at having lost you to Lerner."

  "But he was Mated himself, to Sunwing, before her accident..."

  "He only Mated with her because you were no longer available, and he was never happy with her. But he did come to care for her a great deal. Her death only adds to his unhappiness, as does his seeing you and Lerner so happy together."

  I frowned. "We are not happy right now."

  Windrider sighed, reaching out to stroke the folded wing membrane along my arm. "Daughter of my heart, listen. When you are young and newly Mated, every argument seems to carry great weight. But take the word of one who has been Mated for four decades now. Arguments pass. Disagreements are forgotten. But what you and Lerner share is genuine and real and will transcend any silly fight. Your spirits are one. Why else would the Sky Spirit have brought Lerner all this way specifically to us, when he could have ended up anywhere in this vast world? He was meant to be with you from the moment the Winds of Life were breathed into his soul, as you were with him."

  "But if that is so," I pouted, "than the Sky Spirit is cruel, in his way. Lerner and I can never have children."

  "Is that what the human doctors told you, when you visited their land?"

  I nodded. My husband and I were separate species, after all.

  She flicked her tool fingers at me. "Pfah. The humans know much, but not everything. They know how to build wondrous tools, can cast spells you and I have never dreamed of, and can travel incomprehensible distances in their sky-ships. Yet when it comes to matters spiritual they are like unschooled youngsters. Trust in the Sky Spirit, Gossamyr. He rewards love like yours and Lerner's. Just remember you two have only not found a way to have children yet."

  She rewarded me with a broad smile and ambled out of the apartment, leaving me to contemplate her words.

  NINETEEN

  The thing about Gossamyr that infuriates me the most is how reckless she is. Always taking risks, never really thinking things through. My heart almost stopped when I scrambled down the helistat’s rope ladder and saw her lying still and lifeless in that field. Shards, half her body was drenched with blood!

  The next twenty hours were the worst of my life. Even Windrider wasn’t completely sure she would pull through, as Gossamyr had lost so much blood, and Windrider is always so optimistic, in her grumpy old Shaman kind of way. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t do or think about anything except sitting beside my wife and praying--me, an agnostic, praying!--that she would come back to me. When she finally fluttered her eyes open the next day, it almost made me believe there was a God. Or Sky Spirit. Or whatever.

  This wasn’t the first time she’d done something like this, of course. She flew that untested glider that day we were Mated. She angrily confronted that crowd of shouting xenophobes when we visited the KN. She just had to try to make gunpowder, by the pound no less, after she read about it in our small library. According to our neighbors, the smell of sulfur still lingers a bit in the hallway from that blast.

  I guess we’re lucky we didn’t decide to stay in the KN. Given her track record, I have little doubt she would have caused at least three major wars by now.

  Still, I shouldn't complain about her insanity. I’m the one who married her.

  --from the journals of Armand Lerner, entry dated 4 June 546.

  * * *

  I had little to do that day, as I could only barely hobble around our modest apartment, so I spent most of it going over the notes from Lerner’s journal. I had promised to help him organize these for the memoirs he always planned on writing about his experiences with my people, but he never seemed to be able to do more than jot down a paragraph or two once in a while. I could not help him write it, as I had only been speaking Borelean a few short years and writing it even less. But I could try to organize what he had finished so far, and perhaps use it as a bargaining chip in asking for his forgiveness.

  A photo slipped out of the pile of folders arrayed before me on the sheets of the mat. We had replaced the traditional mounds of dried long grass Myotans usually slept in for a human-made mattress about a year ago. I had to admit the human-made bedding was more durable and comfortable, but I sometimes missed that wonderful earthy smell of the grass.

  I recognized the picture immediately, a momento from our visit to the Known Nations. I stood with Lerner’s birth family at their country home in the Known Nation of Borelea. I was in the center, with Lerner draping his arm around my shoulders. His jovial father, large and stocky with a great smooth bald head, stood to our right. His stoic mother, almost as tall as her husband, but willowy like a reed, stood to our left. His excitable teen-age sister, with a bubbly smile and winsomely dark eyes, kneeled before us. It was just a few days before we would return to the Tower after three months in the Known Nations.

  I was giddy with excitement the day Lerner and I left the Tower for his homeland aboard the Dream of Milthrai, a cargo helistat converted for exploration. The monstrous Explorer-class helistats that origina
lly brought Lerner and the other humans to my people were in truth in the minority of the vehicles the KN had plying the Outlands. Only three dozen of them existed. On the other hand, the smaller, cheaper, and more easily-available cargo helistats plied the unexplored regions of the Megashard in numbers over a thousand strong, many of them owned and operated by independent explorers. Unfortunately, they had barely half the range of their larger cousins, even if extensively retrofitted. An advanced base such as the one the KN planned to build at the Tower was designed to help the smaller helistats range much farther than they could based solely in the KN.

  The entire community turned out to see Lerner and I off, with more than a few of my fellow Myotans wearing jealous expressions. I was the first person in all our people’s memory to undertake such a huge journey. Many had wanted to accompany us, Brightwind and Feather especially. Unfortunately, the helistat was just returning from further in the Outlands, laden with a great many samples of the environments it had encountered and discoveries it had made. The crew could only spare enough weight for my husband and myself and our personal effects.

  I was flush with the excitement of the adventure. Lerner had come to us only sixteen months before. He kept calling the trip our “honeymoon,” a quaint human custom he told me of.

  The journey to the KN took nearly six weeks. The crew could have gone faster, but fuel conservation is drilled into them from their first day of training. Unlike old Earth, the MegaShard had no fossil fuels. The KN never enjoyed such vast stores of readily-available combustible fuel, and for many decades had to struggle with alcohol fuels, the supply of which was often threatened by grain shortages or blights. While in the last several decades the KN has developed alternative fuels such as methanol and hydrogen, the mindset toward very strict fuel conservation is still deeply ingrained in their minds. Slow and steady is the KN explorer’s way of life.

  The corridor of land between the Tower and the KN had been fairly well explored by the dozen helistats who had flown the same route before it. The Dream of Milthrai stopped to land every week or so to refuel at an open source of water, cracking it with electricity for hydrogen, and to forage for what supplies we could.