David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Zeus shook his head, then wandered back to the bench. From his basket, he silently brought out a single candle, lit it, and set it between their plates. Once again he became lost in contemplation.

“Please,” he said after a moment, “let us not mar a fair dinner with foul conversation.” He raised his glass of wine in salute. “To my fair Maggie, who through her kindness has already won for me all the freedom I’ve ever known.”

Zeus drained his cup, and Maggie followed suit. The wine was stronger than any Maggie could remember having tasted, with a fruity bouquet, mildly sweet.

They ate quietly. The food was superb. Despite her dark thoughts, Maggie found that the wine and surroundings lightened her mood. The stars shimmered, the aroma of roses washed the air. A slight warm wind breathed through the gardens, while burbling pools made their own music. Maggie felt light-headed.

Zeus refilled her wine. “No, no more for me,” Maggie apologized. “I’m feeling foggy.”

“Ah, I’m sorry, Zeus said, breathing deeply. “You’re right. I’ve had too much, too.” He stood. “Will you walk with me?”

Maggie tried to stand; the ground seemed to wobble under her. Zeus caught her elbow before she fell, steadied her.

He laughed. “Take off your shoes. The grass here feels good under your feet.”

He pulled off his own shoes. Maggie did the same. He led her down a trail to the north, through the thick carpet of grass, along a dark border of roses.

The sky blazed with stars, for Brightstar was now setting. Maggie heard a faint whooshing noise and looked up. Under the starlight, dozens of creatures, like small florafeems the size of plates, hurtled through the night sky in a bouncing gait, like stones skipping through heaven.

Zeus led Maggie to a palace wall. They looked over darkened wheatfields. “There are the meadows of freedom,” Zeus said, “where I want to run.”

“How far do you think you need to get?” Maggie asked. She had thought Zeus would want to leave the planet. Now she wondered if he might only want to get away from the palace, live in the desert, as unpleasant as that sounded.

“I must get off-world, get lost in the wider universe. If I do, Felph might not follow. I hope he’d let me go.”

“He has your genome in stock,” Maggie said. “If you fled off-world, it would be easier to build a replica of you than hunt for you.”

“I’ve been thinking of the Milky Way,” Zeus said absently. “So far away. It sounds exotic. Do you ever consider returning?”

“Yes, I’ll return,” Maggie said.

“Where to?” Zeus asked. “Tell me about the world you long for.”

The question troubled Maggie. She could not return to Tihrglas, not legally. Higher technologies were outlawed there thousands of years before she was born. The wights enforced that ban, artificial beings she’d been raised to believe were malevolent spirits. On Tihrglas she’d been ignorant of the larger universe-of space travel and genetic enhancements, of telecommunications and nanotechnology. In a coastal village she’d worked in an inn from sunrise to sundown, wearing out her hands and her joints. Nearly everywhere in the universe, life was easier than it had been on Tihrglas. Droids did the dirty work. AIs handled tasks that were too tedious for mankind. Genetic engineering and medications removed most afflictions from life.

Yet Maggie, was beginning to suspect that technology had really failed to make her life much richer. It did not give life a purpose, a sense of fulfillment.

As Maggie considered what kind of world she dreamed of, she considered her memories of life on Tremonthin where the Inhuman had downloaded the images from a hundred lifetimes filled with struggle and toil, craving and desire. People had access to life-enhancing technologies on Tremonthin, yet it had brought mostly sadness in the lives she recalled. It merely gave men a goal, perhaps a false goal, to struggle for. No, if it was contentment she wanted, her thoughts returned to Tihrglas, to the eternity she’d sometimes felt at the end of a rugged day when she finished cleaning the kitchens at Mahoney’s Inn, or the enjoyment she’d had just listening to old Dan’l Sullivan play his fiddle by the stove on a winter’s night, while the old folks reminisced.

I know too much , she realized. Six months earlier, when she’d been on dronon with Gallen trying to fight the invaders or their home world, her mantle had filled her with elation at discovering the secrets of dronon technology.

She’d imagined that the heart-pounding wonder would never end. Learning the secrets of dronon technology would help give her life focus, the purpose she’d always sought.

She’d been so naive. Now she knew better: true, the dronon built powerful gravity drives, better than those mankind had developed, The plasma cannons on dronon warships shot farther than those mankind used. Their walking hive cities were marvels of technology by any standard.

All of it was worthless.

Maggie had dropped her brogue accent months before. Now for Zeus’s sake, she affected it. “On my home world, it’s like this we’d be talking, and it’s not the kind of place you’d brag to your mother after.”

Zeus laughed at her accent, thoroughly charmed.

“The streets get all full of mud after a rain, and when I was a lass, I liked to look in the puddles, to see how they mirrored the sky, and to see how the dark pine trees glowered above me. It’s a smart man who knows how to keep to the margin of the road when he’s riding a horse, for many a horse will slip and fall in the muck.

“The rain was dear to me-the smell of it. Not the tang of a thunderstorm on the horizon, but the smell afterward, when the air is all washed-out, and it’s only pine trees you’re smelling.

“And the colors: in spring, the rain cleans the trees and fields and makes the whole world a brighter green-or at least that’s how me ma told me. She didn’t have a true notion why grass gets greener after a rain, or why crocuses looked brighter. She’d never heard of nitrogen in the air, and how rainwater fertilizes the ground. She just knew it happened, so she said the rain `washed’ things.

“That was the way of folks on Tihrglas. We found easy answers to questions, and we were happy with them.

“After a rain, Ma, she would flutter about the house, her hands busy stitching clothes or setting a new fire or kneading bread or washing a dress, and she’d sing, happy as a sot with a new bottle. I’d ask her why she sang, and she’d say, `Frogs sing after the rain. Birds sing. So should we.’

Then she’d dance round the house.” Maggie smiled.

“It sounds a happy place,” Zeus said.

It had been, it had been, Maggie realized, before everything went wrong, before her parents died. Tihrglas was a good world. It had just gone bad for her. Maybe that’s the way of it, she told herself. Maybe most worlds are fine, till the weight of misfortune crashes down on us. She looked up at Zeus, who stood dark against the stars, staring over the countryside, and offered, “I’ll help you get away.”

He shook his head thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Maggie. I’ve been thinking. Even if I can get away, should I?”

Maggie did not follow his logic. After a moment, he explained, “Consider this. Imagine I escape, with your help, and Father decides to build another like me. What would be my point? I’d have my freedom, but my clone wouldn’t have his. Father would only tighten his grip, hold this one more fiercely. He’d never let it go.

“I … don’t know if I could live with the guilt of knowing I had purchased my freedom at the price of another’s. Hera and Arachne are on Felph’s side, yet I’m afraid if I leave, he will treat them harsher for it. I can’t tolerate the thought of leaving them behind “