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  Neka also had a gift for languages, and she had taken to handspeak with speed and confidence. Cordar was the quietest among us, and he often used handspeak to express feelings and ideas that he otherwise struggled to articulate. When Neka learned to speak it with him, their connection grew even deeper.

  These similarities made the apparent contrasts between them that much more interesting and pleasurable. Cordar, tall and lanky, his braided, shoulder-length hair pulling his fair skin tight around his forehead and temples, making his sharp face even more severe, underlining his introverted disposition. Neka, a head shorter, with ebony skin, thick brown curls trimmed tight, dark, expressive eyes, and a graceful kindness that put everyone who met her right at ease.

  Cordar reached his long arms around her and pulled her close, kissing his lips to her forehead. She turned her cheek, resting her head against his chest. I took that as my cue to give them some privacy, and slipped back into the field currents of the ship.

  * * *

  “Oren,” Adjet said, her voice in my mind. “Are you still lurking out there?”

  “Of course, Adjet. As the ship’s pausha, my duty, first and foremost, is to lurk.”

  She chuckled. “Come up to psychomed,” she said. “I’ve got something fun to show you.”

  An instant later, I was there.

  Adjet’s body lay prone on a medical bed, her long hair spilling over the top edge like a current of mercury. She wore a white, form-fitting baselayer a shade darker than her alabaster skin. The top covered most of her torso, but it was sleeveless, bands of fabric running up over her collarbone and bending in a gentle ‘U’ below her neck, leaving her arms, shoulders, and her upper chest exposed.

  “Are you experimenting on yourself again?” I asked. Adjet specialized in genetics, and our ship carried a panoply of information and samples. With Adjet’s guidance and Cordar’s unique expertise, we were equipped to run a wide range of adaptive experiments that would help us better understand how non-native life might survive and thrive on Eaiph, our destination planet.

  “Watch,” she said. A surgical lantern hovered in the air above her body. With a thought, she made it flash over her right arm. A moment, later, her crystal white skin turned plum purple, like ink dyeing a linen sheet.

  “Eledar's breath! What are you doing? Are you sure its safe?”

  She laughed. “What is skin color?” she asked. “A series of generational adaptations based on ancestral exposure to ultraviolet light. Lighter skin means less exposure. On Glas, where my people come from, the black hole Rorok gives us many forms of radiation to contend with, but UV is virtually non-existent. Unfortunately, that means that on a world like Eaiph, sunlight that might give you, at worst, a nasty sunburn, is seriously harmful to me. Maybe even fatal.”

  She flashed the lantern again. It must have been on the same spectrum as the light from her home world, because her skin reverted to its translucent paleness.

  “Remarkable. Like a khamail lizard,” I said.

  “Precisely. It’s actually based on the early work of Graxes Ben Or.”

  “Ben Or? Is he a relative of the twins?”

  “Their grandfather. He developed adaptive refractors that block ultraviolet radiation. They can be layered into organic matter. Very practical stuff. Xander and Xayes both have the tech in their eyes.”

  “Because they have no natural pigmentation in their irises?”

  She nodded. “Without it, they would either have to wear bulky protective lenses or they could never leave the cold light of Tuk. Their colorless eyes could not handle our twin suns on Forsara, or even the light of Eaiph’s humble star.”

  “So why don’t you just use the same tech?”

  “Well, I actually already have a version in my eyes, but where’s the fun in the same old tricks? With some splices and edits to Graxes original concept, I have figured out how to alter skin on a cellular level to adaptively responds across the whole spectrum of light radiation.”

  “Amazing. Have you showed either of the twins what you are working on here?”

  “Not yet. I still have some work to do to refine the process, but eventually, I’ll be able to control it at will, shifting my skin through a variety of hues. That’s something neither of them can do. At least, not until I show them how.”

  I could sense that she was pleased with herself, and I knew that if we were in our waking bodies, she would flash me her mischievous smile.

  “Show off,” I said. “People back on Forsara would probably pay thousands of credits for this kind of adaptability.”

  “They would,” she said. “But it would mainly be an aesthetic choice. Some expression of fashion, or, perhaps, a commentary on racial history. Down there, on that planet, it will be essential to my survival. Maybe to all of ours.”

  “You never cease to surprise me, Adjet.”

  “It is one of life’s greatest delights to keep you on your toes, Oren.”

  * * *

  A voice filled up my field awareness, and the immersive image of Adjet’s body lying prone on the medical table receded from view.

  “Orenpausha,” it said to me, echoing in my mind, “we are nearing the outer edge of the optimal orbit. The planet is on longsight, approaching as predicted.”

  Reacher. Our faithful companion. Our shipheart.

  A ship’s heart represents the crowning achievements of our interstellar dreams. It is always beating. It gives the ship life, pulsing every microsecond, feeding every component with essential information, pulling back measurements, converting atomic matter into necessary materials and nutrients, making adjustments and refinements.

  Without the heart, our ship would be unwieldy. Even seven minds, chosen for our special evolutions, modifications, and training, would buckle under the complexity. If we somehow managed to work in perfect unison and hold all of the pieces together, sooner or later, we would simply burn out from the attentional demands. Reacher amplifies our power, deepens our connection to the ship, and automates much of the workings so we can focus on the essentials.

  “Show it to me, Reach,” I said to the shipheart. I was bursting with excitement at his news.

  A view of towering columns of energy, blooming from the nearby yellow star, filled my awareness. Then the view zoomed to the left of the star, and there it was: a pale, blue dot, hurtling towards us.

  My whole being smiled. We had reached Eaiph, one of the most fertile worlds ever discovered, a glassy blue cauldron of life, waiting for those to live it. In three more galactic weeks, the little waterstone would arrive to meet us on its passage around Soth Ra.

  The first half of our long journey was behind us.

  2 Discovery

  Centuries ago, when the Eaiph first appeared on the starscans, it was clear, even then, that the Fellowship had found a rare and precious world. The wobble of its passage across the small, yellow star described a shape and distance almost too good to be believed. Word spread, and soon every longeye in the sector was trained on these distant coordinates, waiting for the next orbit, waiting to confirm the initial measurements.

  It turned out to be more than we ever could have hoped for: an aqueous planet, orbiting at the optimal distance from a star with still billions of years of unspent energy. The news rippled out from all the major star hubs, spreading across the entire galactic field of the Fellowship. Within a few suncycles on Forsara, the first party of Architects was formed. Their aim was to assess the viability of the planet, and to begin the initial terraforming protocols if it was deemed habitable. I was not selected to be among that original party, but when Saiara told me she was leaving, joining up as the mission’s farseer, I knew, someday, somehow, I had to follow her.

  Six-hundred and twenty-seven years ago, she and the rest of the team should have arrived at Eaiph. When they reached the edge of the stellar system that the astronomists had dubbed Hadeth, they were supposed to have sent word, but there had been nothing from them since they left the boundaries of Forsaran spac
e and accelerated to near-light. Even accounting for the vast, unavoidable time-lag of galactic communications unaided by a network of starhubs like the ones we have built since they left Forsara, there should have been some contact by now.

  Something had gone wrong.

  When the news reached me that they had been officially declared missing, I made it my mission to be on the next ship. But, though my crew and I were loathe to admit it, they were likely already dead. Our universe is a vast and lonely place, with no guarantees. Not even on a planet with this much potential. The simple truth is that, for every settlement that has ever taken root and thrived, dozens more have failed, pulled apart by a thousand variations of the implacable entropy of existence. And if there was an accident during the passage from Forsara to Eaiph, they may not have even made it to their destination.

  So we came to find answers. To seek the truth. And, perhaps, to succeed where Saiara and her team may have failed. For we who travel the far reaches are more than just explorers; we are part of an ancient lineage of galactic Architects who seeded life across the universe, weaving the web that connects us all across space and time, giving rise to a billion cultural and evolutionary permutations, all grounded in the conscious spirit.

  We came here to give birth.

  * * *

  “Are you capturing this, Reach?” Neka said in a breathless voice. After two weeks of satellite surveillance above the planet, we’d stumbled upon something truly unexpected. The data coming back seemed impossible, but now we were in low orbit, and we could not deny our own eyes.

  “On every channel, Neka,” the shipheart replied.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she whispered.

  “Given that you are not currently connected to the field, I cannot be certain of what you are thinking at this moment, but it appears to be a triad of intelligently designed cities, and I can only assume that you also recognize it as such.”

  She ignored Reacher’s overly literal response, too awestruck to tease him for it. “Is it them? Did they make it?” She looked at me, but I was just as dumbfounded.

  “If you are speaking of the first party of Architects,” Reacher said, “my scans show no evidence of Forsaran technology in these urban cities.”

  “So… so what are we looking at then?” I asked.

  “Conscious life,” Neka said in a hushed voice.

  Cordar signed something, his hands flashing from his head to his heart.

  “It appears so,” Reacher said in response to Cordar’s sign.

  “You mean they’re human?” Neka looked at Cordar. “Like us?”

  “Close enough,” Reach said, “that I am unable to discern any substantive differences from this altitude.”

  “Eledar’s breath,” she said. She lifted her hand, making in a loose fist. When her fingers touched her forehead, she opened them in an explosive gesture. Cordar nodded his agreement. It was mindblowing.

  “How many are there?” I asked

  “Approximately twenty-seven million,” Reacher said.

  Neka looked as if she had just witnessed the first spark of hydrogen in a newborn star.

  “Twenty-seven million?” I whispered. “How… how can that be?”

  “Ah,” Reacher said. “You meant the cities alone. That number is closer to one-point-five million. But if we include the areas where I have identified nomadic groups or smaller settlements, the total comes to twenty-seven, spread out across the globe.”

  A two-dimensional map of the planet appeared in front of us. We had run satellite surveys to build a functional cartographical rendering of its land and ocean mass. Now that map was lighting up in the areas that Reacher had pinpointed.

  Even accounting for the geographical distance between the tribal pockets of people, twenty-seven million people was shockingly high. There was a speckling of lights on a modest continent in the eastern corner of the southern hemisphere. The land was surrounded by ocean on all sides, with an arid desert sweeping across the middle. Most of the peoples seemed to hug the edges of the continent, keeping close to the ocean, but there were signs of human life even in the deepest interior.

  “Whoever lives there,” Cordar said, pointing towards the interior, “must live in close harmony with the land. That is rugged terrain, by the looks of it.”

  Neka nodded. “I would like to meet those people some day. But look here,” she said, pointing at a much larger continent in the center of the map. It was lit in many places, and its shape brought to my mind a cut of steak from the haunch of cardhubu, its bottom tip narrowing towards the southern pole of the planet, its broad, rounded shoulder rising above the equator.

  “Migration patterns?” Cordar asked, gesturing to the northwest curve of the continent. A thick bridge of land formed the top border of a small sea that divided the cardhubu steak from the largest continent of all, a mammoth, sprawling landmass. There were pockets of nomadic life scattered across that one, separated by large swaths of uninhabited land.

  But human life was getting progressively denser where Cordar was pointing. Lines of light branched north across the land bridge until they intersected with a luminous halo that marked the largest gathering of humans anywhere on this planet. As I was trying to make sense of the implications of all of this, Neka grabbed my arm.

  “This is the cradle,” she said.

  “The cradle?”

  “The birthplace of civilization on this planet,” she said, practically shouting in her excitement. “Imagine Forsara, before the Curse ravaged the lands. When our nomadic ancestors began to come together and build the first cities.” She spread out her hands as if to encompass all those millennia in a single gesture. “That is what we are seeing here. There are millions of people spread across the globe, but this could very well be its first true civilization.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Not for sure. But what other explanation is there? Look at the patterns of movement south of this sea here.” She swept her hand up the map, following the lines of light that Cordar had pointed out. “People moving northwards towards fertile lands.”

  “It reminds me of the root structure of my epiphytes,” Cordar said.

  “Yes! These rivers here and here must seem like a gift from the gods…” She was pacing now. “If they have gods… Which they must! There are always gods. Especially in the early histories.”

  “Neka,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders, stopping her pacing.

  She looked up at me, making a conscious effort to contain her energy.

  “Find out everything you can,” I said. “You have the next seven orbits. Then we need to gather everyone and decide what happens next.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I am going to tell the rest of the team that our original plans just went out the airlock.”

  * * *

  We were all circled around the holo projector. Neka stood in silence, letting the realtime images wash over us. Children playing in shallow waters, charging through tall reeds of grass, while almond-skinned women knelt at the edge of the great river, washing soiled linens of flax and wool with their rough, worked hands. Men standing in a circle, smoking from reed pipes, laughing, tossing the bones of some small animal, carved with indecipherable runes, into a circle drawn in the dirt at their feet.

  Clay dwellings, built together in dense clusters, ran up the gentle slope away from the river, smoke wafting up through holes in the roofing. The exterior walls were etched with complex hieroglyphs formed from soft curves and lines in the clay, a style perhaps reflective of a people who lived their lives in a fertile river valley.

  Neka looked at Cordar. He nodded, and she cleared her throat. “As I mentioned earlier, using several explorer drones, we were able to discreetly obtain a variety of genetic samples from these people. An hour ago, Reacher completed the analysis of their nucleic structures. That is why we called you all here. There are traces everywhere. These people are children of For
sara.” There was wonder in her voice.

  Xayes asked the question we were all thinking. “But where are the first Architects? If Saiara and the others gave rise to these people, why are there no cultural fingerprints? Their art. Their architecture. Their language. Their technology. It all seems as if it all evolved entirely on its own, without Forsaran influence. As if the first party never existed.” His mop of copper hair bobbed above his shoulders as he gestured with his hands, undercutting each point.

  Cordar touched his right and left index fingers together at his forehead, then shook his head as he separated his fingers in front of his chest. “It was not them,” he said. “There is evidence of histories stretching back thousands of years, well before the first Architects would have arrived. If they ever arrived at all…”

  “Thousands of years?” Xayes said. “How is that even possible?”

  “Maybe earlier explorers, long forgotten, once came here, their influence so distant as to be unrecognizable,” Siddart said.

  I turned that provocative thought over in my mind. “Or maybe these theoretical first explorers were not forgotten. Maybe the Coven knew about this all along.”

  “Knew what? That Saiara and her team were not the first?” Xander asked. “Why would they keep that a secret?”

  “I don’t know, Xan. But we’re not alone here. That’s for certain. If we begin operations on the planet’s surface, sooner or later, we will be discovered. Sooner or later, cultural non-interference will cease to be an option.”

  I paused, letting that land.

  “We need to know more,” I finally said. “We need to know everything we can.”