The Gate to Futures Past by Julie E. Czerneda Read Free Book Online Page B

Oud had done to Tuana. To the multitude of Om’ray we hadn’t reached in time. The flat calm of her voice chilled me more than any scream.
    Morgan didn’t move. “Sira, brighten us a bit, please.”
    The control for this bed’s light was behind Eloe. Sona, I sent,
minimal light,
having learned that lesson. I was answered by a gentle glow where the wall met the bed.
    With a relieved shudder, Eloe curled into a ball around the handlight.
    I’ll stay with her as long as it takes,
my Chosen sent, not hiding his
concern.
I felt a
stir
as others, beginning to wake around us, expressed their own.
    Morgan’s here,
I assured them. With the Talent to heal damaged minds. With the risk inherent in its use.
    Not, I’d noticed, that my Human cared about risk when a life hung in the balance.
    Heart heavy, I gazed down at the young unChosen. The Clan way, to consider the unChosen, lacking a bond to mother or mate, expendable.
    It was no longer mine.
    â€œHow can I help?”

    My help, it turned out, involved granting Morgan and his patient privacy, easier asked than accomplished in a chamber full of disturbed and worried Clan. More and more sat up in bed, beginning to rise to their feet despite the lack of light.
    Sona, I sent.
    >
What is your wish, Keeper?<
    Start the daycycle now.
While I didn’t hold my breath, I felt a certain relief when light flooded the Core. I’d feel more when I could be sure the ship’s compliance extended to warming the areas without.
And I want to make an announcement.
    >
At your convenience, Keeper.<
    â€œGood morning,” I said cheerfully, the ship carrying my voice to every corner of the immense room. Adults blinked, startled, but looked to me as I’d hoped, not Morgan. “Sorry to cut the night short, but we need an early start today.”
    Dozens spoke at once. “Are we there?” “Have we arrived?” “Is it the Homeworld?” Frustrated, they fell outwardly silent, sendings darting through the M’hir.
Is it true? Sira, are we home?
Until that space began to roil and I realized my mistake.
    I’d distracted them, all right. Swallowing a curse I’d learned from another species, I raised my arms, asking for peace. They subsided, waiting for answers.
    So was I. Morgan, the only one of us capable of interpreting a starship’s controls, had yet to find any. A preset course implied a destination, yes, but to what? No guarantee “home” meant the world where we’d evolved. Many starfaring species, Humans among them, had left their birth systems so far behind they couldn’t retrace their steps.
    Even if
Sona
took us to that world, what then? Morgan refused to say too much time might have passed, leaving us with a destination surely changed and possibly gone. Wouldn’t say our belief Cersi had been an experiment, succeeding with the return of the M’hiray, was built from supposition and the slimmest of evidence, that if we were wrong, the Om’ray might have been abandoned or exiled or fled from worse—
    Not kindness, that forbearance, to keep us full of hope. Morgan knew what this voyage could become if we had none.
    Tell them the ship’s asked for maintenance, chit.
With familiar wry humor.
    I latched on the idea as if drowning. “Maintenance,” I blurted. “Don’t forget, nine—ten days ago, this ship was Sona’s Cloisters.” There’d been one, housing Adepts and sheltering survivors through changes in their neighbors, per Om’ray Clan. We didn’t know if any others had lifted from the planet. If they had, only the Vyna’s would have had life inside.
    The Om’ray didn’t care for the reminder; the M’hiray exchanged glum looks.
    >
I do not require maintenance, Keeper.<
    I need to keep them busy,
I replied, perhaps a little too honestly.
    >
Understood, Keeper.
<
    I had an instant to appreciate how unlikely that was before the