Chapter Seven
Sol
Apex had not realized just how empty space would be. Outside the thin metal skin of the little hopper there was only the barest trace of aether for him to absorb; if they were to spend any length of time here, he would inevitably drain the interior. They would need to adjust their plans for that. Against the vast emptiness, his home; Earth. From here, he could see exactly what B had tried to describe for him – the wide cracks in the surface of the world right down to the center that glowed with a heat he could see plainly against the chill purples of the frozen, shadowed nightside, and the drifting fragments of the moon he’d loved and the planet itself, bound to their paths by long-ago spells of desperation. His heart twisted in pain at the sight, an ache of bottomless sorrow at what had been lost. The thin rim of daylight warming the edge in a red heat was beautiful, not dangerous, from here, but he knew it spelled death for the unprotected there.
“I retract my previous statement,” he said, watching the shadowed orb beneath them and its fiery wound grow smaller between the bright pinprick points of heat that marked the familiar stars. “The ambient aether inside this craft is not sufficient to sustain me for any lengthy period of time in such an aetherless void.” Oreo paused her preparations at that.
“You need us to turn around?” she asked, eyes wide in concern, hand moving to the wheel.
Apex shook his head. “No, I am merely noting that I would also require food for longer trips. It is something to consider when we land, but not urgent.”
“Gotcha,” Oreo said, turning back to the console. “Like we said, the jump itself won’t take long – it’s making sure we’re not going to jump into anyone else that’s the time-waster.”
B hadn’t looked up from her own chair at this brief conversation, busily toggling things and flipping switches, quietly conversing with far-away people monitoring the skies of this other planet they were heading to. It seemed extraordinarily complicated, compared to sailing. Certainly, you still had to worry about the wind speed and direction when launching, that he understood, but there was also this fuel that they carried and needed to move, and the mechanisms directing it all that had to be constantly monitored. The jumping process itself was an entirely separate mechanism by itself – they had told him it was based on thorough research into the way teleportation worked, from before the great war, and as such required aether to function. Theirs was apparently older, inefficient, and only held enough aether for small jumps. They should really charge it after each one, to be safe, though they were going to ignore that at least once during this trip.
Many things had been based on that research, apparently – their communication networks were linked across planets and moons throughout the galaxy by the devices they called teleconduits. B had shown him the one they used to connect to the secret underground network when she’d pulled it out to transfer the prisoner files – a small thing, barely the size of his little finger. Portable, she had said, so they could connect from anywhere. Theirs had an identifying signature too, because it linked with a specific type of inbound connector, and the underground network had to know to look for it – it would simply refuse all unknown connections. It all seemed terribly… exhausting, to keep up with. They had assured him that most things simply worked without needing to know how, but he still found just the thought of everything new tiring. Instead, he was carefully thinking about only what needed to be done right now. He could afford to be tired later, when his brother wasn’t still out there, alone and broken.
The orb in the window disappeared abruptly, though the stars around it barely moved. Apex looked around to see another, much larger orb in front of them; this one bore no such great wound, bright shifting clouds drifting across the surface trailing cooler shadows in their wake below them. The warm and welcoming dry red and yellow heat of the landmasses – so different here, so unfamiliar – was complimented by the cool chill of the green and blue waters surrounding them. The bright colors dimmed to cold purple, and then near-black where the shadow of night fell, glistening spiderwebs of light tracing the paths of humanity across the dark surface. He’d been told there were two moons, but only one was visible at the moment, and his heart twisted again with the thought that this is what their Earth had looked like before. A beautiful, gently spinning globe in a glittering sea of darkness, shining with warmth even in the cool purples of the falling night. He hadn’t realized how desolate Earth’s nightside had been until now, when he could compare the clearly marked footprints of cities and towns and roads on this new planet to his own.
He thought he might cry.
Alpha Centauri
It had taken him some time to recover his composure after that dual shock, but his two companions had been busy landing the craft and hadn’t noticed. Or at least, they were pretending not to have noticed, and he was grateful either way. There was paperwork to be filed for their brief stay – supplies to be paid for and forms filled, and B had left to handle that. Oreo, meanwhile, had said she’d take a quick trip out to pick up some extra food for him just in case. They might not be planning on staying out in space long enough for it to be a problem, but she’d rather be prepared.
Left to his own devices, with the windows blacked and shuttered for his protection, he couldn’t deny an overwhelming sense of curiosity. He had seen the planet as they had landed, but he wanted to experience it, to feel the foreign wind on his face and taste the alien rain he could hear tapping on the roof. He had noted that they had landed in a spot that was past nightfall – the longer he thought about it, the more he was tempted to shift his alignment to umbral so that he could explore without worry people would see him.
His companions had activated one of their devices for him, that he might listen to the news channels while he waited, and he did, for a while. Here on Alpha Centauri, the market raid was only a distant, if notable, incident – the topic still dominated many of the channels, but in a more dispassionate sense, as observers, not people truly affected. He sat listening to the same arguments repeated again and again with slightly different words, stroking his contentedly fluffed magpie, and the sense that he had heard it all before was too strong to ignore. More statesmen were making official comments and speeches about the raid now as the news spread, and some of those were actually played repeatedly – for instance, this Senator Allen, of Tau Ceti, had made an especially fiery speech about the audacity of raiding such an old and well-established haven at a time like this, and vowed that it would only strengthen their efforts to get the bill through. “Such an ill-timed crackdown,” he had declared, “Is clearly meant to derail our work in support of the magical community, and I will not stand for it!”
There was no new information to be heard on these channels, not with the raid still so recent. There was only the briefest mention of his brother, among the many words spoken, and he could feel his attention slipping back to the sound of the rain outside. The temptation and his own curiosity eventually proved too much, and he resolved to explore while he had the chance. The bird would not appreciate getting wet, he felt, so he gently moved it from his lap, letting it nestle down by Nadir’s journal in the folds of the blanket he sat on. That was one of the very few things left from that long-ago disaster, having been with him at the time of the attack and then preserved with a spell; he had brought it with them in the hopes that the familiarity of the book might help soothe his brother.
He teleported outside, to the closest location he could sense with no one nearby. That seemed to be the roof of the docking station, and from here he could see the towering buildings composing the central city through the sheeting rain. Many still glowed with warmth, despite the late hour, and he wondered how many people were inside them, working or relaxing or whatever they did at this time. He ambled along the edge of the flat roof, rain running down his skin and wind streaming his robe and hair out to the side in gusts, just looking at his surroundings, taking it all in with each deep breath. If he hadn’t known, Apex could have closed his eyes and thought himself still at home, during a summer night’s rain. He looked further and could see the heat of other buildings out near the horizon, smaller and more widely spaced. Houses, if he guessed right.
A thought, and he was there, walking down empty streets lined with tall lights past the homes of these strange, still-human families. He could see them moving, inside; watched the bright children of this house run by each other as a cooler, slower parent tried to herd them to bed, the couple in that house chatting over steaming mugs of some liquid as their heat signatures merged together on the couch they sat on. The houses were strange too, and yet. And yet. They were clearly houses; their doors were the size they should be, the roofs at the height he subconsciously expected them to be.
He wandered slowly, listening absent-mindedly to the muted voices of the occupants, losing himself in the very smell of the rain on the odd stone of the streets, the gentle hints of growing things that he hadn’t realized he had been missing until now. Nadir had always been the gardener, not him, but he had grown accustomed to those scents in their years together – the earthy wet soil and the sharp pang of bruised grass and leaves, the delicate scents of his brother’s beloved flowers. Some that he smelled now were familiar, but others were completely foreign to him.
Apex followed one such scent to a bush like none he had ever seen before, flowers open wide to drink their fill of the rain, subtle patterns displayed in the warmth of the petals around the heat of the central head. Nadir would have loved these, he knew. If he had been here, one would have found its way back to his journal, to be pressed and later identified, perhaps grown if he could find seeds. They lost their heat patterns when dried, but perhaps… perhaps he would appreciate the thought anyway.
When his ear had vibrated, he had been perched on another taller rooftop high above the city proper, just taking in the various glowing warmths of the houses and lights and buildings, twirling the stem of his freshly plucked blossom between his fingers in thought. He nearly lost his balance at the unexpected intrusion, foot slipping on the wet tiles as he practically jumped out of his skin.
The earpiece, he remembered. He had never bothered to remove it, it being so light and unobtrusive. Apex reached up and fumbled with the tiny thing a moment, and heard the beep as it connected.
The first thing he heard was, “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”
Oreo.
She was both panicked and furious, he sensed through her mark. “My apologies,” he began, feeling somewhat contrite at having caused concern, but he was cut off.
“Just get your ass back here before somebody sees you!”
Easy enough. He sensed both her mark and the magpie’s occupying the same space, and sent his body streaming after his consciousness towards them. He hadn’t thought to exclude the rain from his jump, though, and was still dripping wet when he arrived, water immediately beginning to pool on the floor underneath him. Oreo stepped back to avoid it, as he hastily stepped away from Nadir’s journal. It wouldn’t do for it to have survived all this time only to be ruined by a careless mistake.
“Good fucking god, you’re soaked,” Oreo said. “And what the hell is this?” She pointed at his flower. He sensed both fury and relief battling for supremacy through her mark.
“Nadir is fond of flowers,” he said. “I thought to bring him one he didn’t know.”
“I-” She raised her hands to her head, scrubbing her fingers through her hair, clearly torn between reactions. “I- That’s – You could have asked us to get you one- the hell were you thinking, wandering around alone in the middle of the night and the rain – what if someone called police on you???”
“Nobody saw me,” he assured her. “I would have sensed their attention. I merely wished to see this new planet for myself. It feels very… human. Familiar.”
“Okay, maybe people didn’t see you, but what about cameras? Or motion detectors or any of that- no wait, if Bee catches you dripping water all over her precious ship she’ll kill both of us – we gotta dry this before she gets back-” She snagged the blanket he’d been sitting on, dislodging both the journal and the magpie, which squawked at her in a huff before fluttering off to perch grumpily on the back of the copilot’s chair.
“Is water harmful to it?” he asked curiously. “It seems too well constructed for that.”
“No, not really,” Oreo said, dropping the blanket directly on the puddle he was standing in. “Not unless it gets in the fiddly bits inside. But if it stains or rusts it will be my fault and I’ll never hear the end of it-”
This was apparently the highest priority now that he’d been located, as she attacked the wet areas with an unusual ferocity.
“You’d better take that thing off so we can dry it,” she added as she worked, gesturing towards his thoroughly drenched robe.
“You’re lucky I thought to get you something else to wear too while I was out getting food, though I can’t imagine it’ll fit great, you being so tall.” He had just been about to point out he had nothing else to wear, but instead uncurled a single loop of hair to lift the parcel she casually shoved toward him with her foot between wiping motions. He hesitated a moment, then handed the flower to the magpie to hold in its beak.
“Go on,” Oreo said, waving at the hopper’s little cabin. “Make sure you dry yourself off too, grab another blanket or whatever.”
The ceiling inside was even lower than the rest of the hopper, but it did have a curtain he could draw for some semblance of privacy, and he took advantage of that as best he could. A simple spell shed the rest of the water he was coated in, and it was easy enough to unclasp his robe and let it fall to the floor with the water – but on closer inspection the plain black garments she had purchased for him were less friendly. The body of the shirt would fit, he thought, if barely, but the sleeves were simply too thin and too short. He’d never be able to put his arms in them. He turned his attention to the other dark swathe of cloth instead, guessing it must be for his legs. It looked suspiciously as though it might just be a dress intended for a smaller, shorter human – but it did approximately fit around his waist when he pulled it on. The arm holes were still visible, but the shirt was so long that it would probably cover that. If he could sort out the sleeve issue, that is.
“Hey, so,” said Oreo from outside the curtain. “About this mark thing.”
He could guess. “You wish to know more?”
“Yeah. Like, I know currently we’re gonna need it to pull this whole rescue thing off, but after that how do I get rid of it?”
“It is simple enough, really. To atone, you need only give back as much to this world as you unrightfully took. A life taken, a life saved. The mark will disappear once your soul’s weight is balanced.”
There was silence from outside the curtain.
“Is that really it?”
“Yes,” he said, examining the sleeves again. “It is not a complicated spell. Actually fulfilling the requirements may prove harder than it would seem – a life saved could be many things, and could also not be many things – but as a general rule, the idea is not for it to be impossible to atone, merely to bring equal good to balance the harm caused.”
“And remember,” he continued, “I am the arbiter of justice in charge of you, and I have no intention of setting unfair rules or time limits on you. I still feel that marking you was not appropriate with regards to the event in question, but as it cannot be undone, I can at least help you to complete your penance instead.”
After some consideration, he cast another tiny spell, simply severing the problematic bits of cloth so he could pull the shirt itself on without them. Sliding it over the flowers he’d planted in his spine before they’d left was delicate work, but the neck of the shirt sat right below them when he’d finished, a surprisingly comforting support for the tiny stems. He might have to look into getting something similar for them as a permanent addition to his wardrobe. The discarded sleeves he managed to fashion a simple loincloth out of, something she had not thought to include.
A tight fit overall, but it was dry, and comfortable enough. Not so the floor where he’d dropped the robe. The android would likely not appreciate water in this area either, and glancing around, he saw only the blankets on the fold-out bunk to dry the mess with – he doubted that was what Oreo had meant.
“Oreo,” he began, sliding the curtain back open and carefully extracting himself from the tiny room, “You surely didn’t mean to use the blankets from the bed to dry things, did you? I do not see any others.”
She didn’t look up from her attempt to take the flower from the magpie, just said, “Yeah, just take one, we can stick everything in the dry press after and it’ll be fine. We just gotta get the water cleaned up first.”
It appeared she had filled a flimsy disposable cup with water for the plant, and he reached out to the bird, letting it know she could have it. He watched, amused, as it fluffed its feathers stubbornly, reluctant to give up its prize, but it did eventually let her take it. She plopped it in the cup with a triumphant “ha!” then placed it in one of the indents along the wall clearly meant for such things. Once the water had been mopped up, Oreo showed him the dry press built into the wall of the little room – cloth or clothing placed inside was returned shortly both cleaned and dried. A fascinating mechanism. He had insisted on retrieving his medallions before drying his robe on the off chance it would damage them, but the robe itself was returned unharmed, delicate stitching and gold trim and all. Rather than change back again, he decided to wrap the journal inside, pinning it with the medallions as an extra layer of protection. The makeshift outfit he’d been provided with would serve well enough for now.
He tried not to think about the fact that there was also no one left to recognize what the robe meant.
