The Man Who Talked to Suns Read online

  The Man who Talked to Suns

  Stephen Andrews

  For Niva and Zuri

  My special thanks go to my best friend, Steve. Without his tireless eye for detail and friendly challenge this book would not have made it to publication. Any mistakes that are left are my own.

  I also want to thank to James for the striking cover design.

  Finally, I want to thank Rebecca for her patience and encouragement while I spent hours at the keyboard.

  Prologue

  The sky had cracked. One half boiled with oil-black cloud, the other shone blue radiance and held a sun in its centre. Flashing explosions lit the underside of the dense dark mass, while opposite, the open sky was dotted with ships bringing the enemy to the shores of the world. The air itself smelled of super-heated death. Everything under the cloud was crisp and blackened, crumbling into the smoke and ash that rose to hide the tragedy below from the sun above.

  They had run into the light from under the threatening darkness. They had run fast and far, and they had run for their lives. The little group of men, women and children were scared, hungry and desperate. War had found them where they expected only peace. Armies dropped from above for no reason they could fathom, and set about killing and destroying. Those who might save them, the pilots and the ships they commanded had been disabled. Nothing worked, nowhere was safe. The only thing they knew for sure was that fear gnawed at them like a beast growing in their guts, and the enemy hunted them. ‘Why?’, they asked each other? ‘Why has this happened?’ None of them knew, and there was no one else to ask.

  The group sheltered in a building that was at once comforting and disturbing. Inside it was pristine, untouched by war; a reminder of how things had once been. It was a place where families had lived and grown. If any remained now, they hid. Despite the invasion, the only violence committed here was the entry forced by two of the men. It left a door broken and the interior forlornly asking for their identity and purpose. The group found food and set about making it palatable. There was no power to cook with and none of the little bio-engineered helpers were left alive. The house had almost stopped working, and in the process it had stopped feeding the runabouts that served the human masters. Everything people had built to make life comfortable was dead or still. The embossed murals that once would have moved and flowed with a life of their own — dark green revealing burnished silver beneath — were stalled. They could almost believe this building had killed itself in an act of sorrow.

  They stayed away from the windows after discovering it was no longer possible to darken them. Inside they darted from one secluded area to another as if watched by hunters. Fear made them irrational. The enemy that stalked them would not rely on sight. Its senses would sniff the air, probe chemistry, look for biological traces, sample DNA, listen for micro-sounds and perceive the tiny electrical pulses of life each human made, and it would never give up. Not being seen was the very least of their worries. When the enemy saw them they would already be long found and at its mercy. ‘Who is it?’, they asked themselves. ‘Who could hate us so much, us of all people?’ None of them knew, and the places they might seek answers were now heated and melting, joining the dark stain that clouded their once perfect sky.

  It was one of the children who spotted it first. A long way off a craft was skimming low and fast. She pointed and jumped up and down, shaking her hands as fear wrote its message across her face. She said nothing, but made a keening noise. It stopped the adults in their tracks and one peered around a section of wall to see the craft. She too made a noise and terror spread amongst them all. She had seen it move like only a military vehicle would, and briefly spotted the bumps that showed it cared nothing for aerodynamics. It was moving as if the laws of physics were at its command, making impossible changes of direction at impossible speed, defying momentum and a host of laws that others things obeyed.

  Another woman snapped a command and the little party fled into the centre of the house, away from the betraying opacity of the walls. There they huddled; living things, afraid and alone, surrounded by technology that had no purpose now but to remind them of their powerlessness. One of the children was crying and a man took her in his arms to comfort her. He shushed and soothed, telling her it was time to be quiet, that she needed to remember her schooling and let her head rule her heart. He sang the rhyme adults taught children to start the first little steps of emotional intelligence, and the child

  calmed. The adult calmed too, the school rhyme working its magic on them both, and the focus on the child acting as a welcome distraction from his own fear.

  There was silence for a while, and a few in the party exchanged looks laden with meaning. Perhaps the craft had gone, sensing nothing here to interest its occupants? Perhaps it was not a threat at all but someone risking rapid flight from the invaders. They gathered close, keeping the children huddled to them, and whispered a plan. One of them would look outside, carefully and with as much stealth as they could muster, but someone must look. No one volunteered. An uneasy silence hung in the air, each of them testing the courage of the others against their own. One of the men shuffled and made to rise just as a low subsonic thud reverberated through the body cavity of each of the humans.

  The noise was not heard, it was felt. The breath was knocked from each person and dust was agitated into the air around them. The noise reset their senses, leaving each of them dazed and searching for a sensory re-boot. For a moment there was a deep silence and then another louder thud intruded. That one was both felt and heard, and it was quickly followed by the sound of substances crumbling and shattering. An adult cursed and children made pitiful noises as they tried at once to cry and refresh lungs that had been shocked empty of breath. Each person in the little group was in their own world of numbness and suffocating fear. Any small cohesion they had once maintained had been entirely lost.

  Breaths came in gasps between adult curses and children’s pleas for their mothers and fathers. It all stopped when a series of blinding flashes lit the air like repeated lightning strikes, and the smell of electricity filled their nostrils. They all saw the flashes and felt the charge enter them, but it did not burn, jolt muscles or bring pain. On the contrary it soothed and relaxed. Fear began to melt away and the prospect of soft deep sleep beckoned. It turned from a thought into an irresistible urge, and the children succumbed first, drooping against their adult companions like abandoned soft toys. There was now no possibility of resistance or flight. Bodies and minds had been disabled as easily as a person shuts off an engine.

  He had been with this group since the attack. Just a few days ago they were all strangers. War had thrown them together and now they were learning how to survive. The adults had found the children at the edge of a path, and listened to heart breaking stories of separation from parents, and acts of juvenile courage. If the children can do this they had thought, we adults can too. Just days before he had been jumping the void, drifting in slow space between solar systems, negotiating with his ship and a sun to drop them where they wished to be. Where they had wished to be was here — the place where war had come soon after. He did not know if he was an unlucky victim or on a losing side. All his connections and communications were broken. As was his heart. The ship that had been his partner and source of joy, had rejected him when they landed. It had simply withdrawn his permission to communicate with it, and he had been left alone and bereft.

  He watched his companions dropping into slumber with increasing alarm and waited for the weapon to take its affect on him, but nothing happened. Did his training or genetic heritage protect him from the witchery of the enemy? It was possible, but, unlikely.

  The answer came quickly. A symbiot
drifted into view. It was grown from a gene spliced mix of DNA from living things and the tiny simple minds of engineered nano-technology. It made no sound as it moved into view. There was no hint of triumph or elation, but its silence spoke volumes. He had been found. They had all been found. He did not know what to do. He had no military training and was ignorant of the capabilities of such things. What was certain was that a single human male was not likely to be faster, stronger or more potently armed, and so fear held him rigid. His only choice it seemed was to freeze and pretend he was asleep like the others. If it took a victim perhaps it would be someone else. He asked himself if he could live with his own guilt if it chose a child.

  He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, fighting the impulse to look and flee. His muscles relaxed and he felt himself settling into an uncomfortable slouch. Voices reached his ears. Humans were close and speaking rapidly in his own language. There was a deep, older voice that sounded in charge and several others that may have been transmitted through the imperfect sound boxes of armoured suits or engineered throats. Heavy bi-pedal things crunched on debris and drew closer. He tried to stay calm, but his composure fled when a large armoured fist latched onto his arm and pulled him up. He screamed, or rather he squealed like one of the infants, and opened his eyes wide, to be confronted with the multi-eyed armoured face of some suited warrior or vat-grown fighting horror.

  He instinctively pulled away, but was held fast with no effort at all. The fist that encased his arm did not move. He looked wild-eyed, for a weakness to strike at. He was no soldier but his race’s survival instinct was strong. Nothing presented itself as a target. The hulk that held him was nano-forged or bio-engineered or both, and looked as if it could lift the entire building. He pulled and twisted, rage growing in him. He was hurting himself, bruising skin and twisting muscles, but the fight was life or death, and a living pain was far better than a painless death.

  He had stopped caring about any impact to his own body. Only the fight mattered and he let his own rage swell within, giving him strength and the will to fight. He thrashed and spat and kicked. Blood trickled into his hands, and he knew it could only be his own from a knuckle worn skinless by multiple impacts on the sandpaper surface of his captor. He made the noises of desperate conflict. Sounds from his past, returned now to vocalise his hopeless aggression. He heard himself, and above his own wild, instinctive fight he heard another voice. This one was calm, almost melodic and perhaps a little resigned. It was the sound of a man in control of himself, and of events. It said the same thing over until at last he heard it.

  “Stop” it said. “Stop hurting yourself. We are not here to harm you. We are here to rescue you.”

  Chapter 1.

  Here, where the ships came and went, the altitude was high and the air was thin. The great expanse of the port rests on a plateau below mountain peaks and above valley floors. It sits on the snow line. Travellers were warned of the dangers of altitude and cold; many had experienced neither and occasionally some succumbed. And then there were the frost forests. Guides and libraries prepared the naive for the jungles that surrounded the port and survived in the high places. The flora and fauna thrived in the cold, soaking energy into skin and carapace in the ultraviolet-rich environment. All were fantastic, some were dangerous, and few were native. Plants the size of trees embraced the chills. Species of fist sized insects helicoptered amongst bulbous leaves, insulated against the frozen air. There was great beauty to welcome the arrived and salute the departing.

  On clear days the blue-green sky was a lens to a ship as it drifted slowly down, revealing size and shape and detail, the atmosphere embracing its return. All ships thrived on borders. They emerged and departed at the edge of atmosphere, high enough to displace the faintest trace of exospheric gas. Over hours they drifted down to stop, just barely, above the ground. It is a ground they would never touch. To do so would court disaster. It would confuse the physics of the ship and the temperament of those who guided it. Yet the ships were not fragile, they were built to carry. Their size and mass described their function; vehicles to take the soft and living, through the vast and empty to the new and alien. The ships knew how to straddle infinite, deep cold. And they did so safely, accurately, and repeatedly. They were the means by which centuries ago, island worlds became a net of life.

  Loading a ship took days. There were tens of thousands of berths to fill and millions of tons of cargo to load. There were security checks, registrations and fee bargaining. All of it required time on the scale of the ship itself. And so, an economy evolved around the port — an economy to serve those in temporary stasis. Lodgings were offered, as was food and entertainment; escorted trips into frost forests and powered glides over the waiting ship were available. Travellers were enthralled and cosseted, if they wished to be.

  Like those around him, he had travelled here to travel on. When his calling came, he had left a new life and gone in search of the old. Two jumps already across the void and a partial circumnavigation of this world had brought him into the high cold. He had followed the other vehicles up and arrived. He found lodging and began the wait to board. As he waited he did enough to look interested, enough to blend in. He expected to be observed. He expected to be followed. He expected never to see those stepping in his wake. All he could do was advance in the stealth of the everyday.

  For him, this was a return. Decades before he had passed here on the way out. Then his heart was as cold as the air, his self-esteem as brittle as the ice. He lived each moment in loss and defeat. He woke daily to a stomach knotted in fear and uncertainty. He had escaped those who had betrayed him and his allies, but the cost of running was high. Is there a word that describes being alive without joy, and living with a sense that there will never again be a place called home? He had been engulfed by those feelings. But, as his mentors and superiors had promised before they sent him fleeing, time was his friend. He re-grew his soul; life centred him again. And, one day, decades later, the memory-purpose for which he had kept himself alive was ignited. On that day he smiled with hope, and later cried with relief and pure, sharp, guided vengeance.

  The recall came from a friend. He had imagined so many ways that he might be recalled — secret codes embedded in his messages, utterances from strangers, cryptic symbols scribbled on his door — but the nod from a friend? It was laughable, and shocking. All these years this friend had been the silent custodian of a secret he had never shared, and the agent of a power he thought obscure to those in his new life.

  On the morning, he was sitting as he often did, sipping a brew and waiting for the small party of friends and co-workers to arrive. This friend had arrived early, and said nothing as she seated herself. Wordlessly she had pressed a fingertip to her tongue, and still silent, placed it gently in his mouth. In that instant of odd and uncomfortable intimacy he had remembered fully. Before he could even react, the genetic release coded into her saliva unravelled a hidden message with the speed of synaptic reflex. As it mixed with his own saliva the code unbound his full memory of mission and the skill to achieve it. Abruptly, the complete knowledge flooded back. He now had purpose beyond that which his conscious mind had kept alive. He had looked at her, and then, uncharacteristically, he laughed. And just as suddenly he was taken by a powerful, irresistible urge to mimic her gesture. He touched his lip and then let the moist fingertip brush her lip. She smiled curiously, breathed out deeply, and died gently. His secret was now his alone.

  That was weeks ago. Today was the day before boarding. He was up early, packing and preparing. Diffuse sunlight penetrated the window he had asked to be opaque the night before. He looked out briefly into layers of tall plants glistening in the frost, then hefted a travel pack and headed out. He had decided to walk down to the ship — a journey of several hours. The fast and agile one man craft he had ridden across the world was now cocooned in padding and sealed for loading. It would be transported on board for him. He would need it at his destination.

>   The journey was mostly down — a winding path from the peak of his lodging to the plateau where the ship rested. A heavy frost had formed in the night, and his shoes crunched a bipedal pattern into the frozen water. Easy to follow me, he thought, but then there are even easier ways. He walked a road of exactly rendered rock. It served both as surface offering traction to wheels and feet and as a drift path for vehicles that floated. The sun had risen only a short while ago and the larger moon was still high, its characteristic purple scar just visible. He stopped for a moment and looked at the sky, and as he did he searched himself for the feeling that motivated him — revenge. It was there, amongst the other feelings of the morning, orbiting his psyche and orienting his purpose.

  Around him the frost forest was punctuated by buildings that did not crowd. Each had its own unkempt garden of life on the edge of freezing. Centuries ago the buildings were made of dead-build; materials that neither lived nor supported life. Now, every one of the lodgings, shops and small warehouses he passed was part of the eco-system. The colours and textures and not-quite-linear shapes gave all the visual clues that buildings were made of life.

  His own lodging — a medium sized place with fifty or so rooms — was in fact a single darkwood plant. Bark and branches were persuaded to grow with purpose. Left un-tended the plant would have grown randomly and become uninhabitable. Instead the horticulturists coaxed the great plant’s genes into growing rooms and corridors of dark smooth wood; a living haven from the cold. In a place where the climate alone could bring death, living minds had persuaded life without consciousness to provide protection from the elements.