Stephen Baxter - Transcendent

Bale only smiled.

Reath seemed less interested in the statues than in the sand in which they lay. He squatted on his haunches and lifted a handful of dirt, letting it run through his fingers. “This was the bed of a lake, once. Or perhaps an ocean. These grains are clearly water-formed — see how they are rounded? But the ocean surely vanished billions of years ago.”

Alia confronted him. “What have these monuments got to do with me?”

“Monuments?” He got to his feet, a bit stiffly. Pooling ocean-floor sand in his palm, he rubbed the rounded grains gently. “Almost all these grains are of silicate materials. Silicon is ten times more abundant than carbon in Earth’s crust, you know — and presumably several times more abundant still here on this ball of sand. Have you ever wondered why it should be the scarcer carbon, then, and not the more abundant silicon, that emerged as the basis of Earth life?”

Alia snapped, “Everybody knows that. Because carbon can form multiple bonds. Carbon can make molecules that are complex enough to store a genetic code.”

“True, true. But you can form complex structures of silicon, at least in its crystalline form…”

“So what?” Alia knocked his hand, scattering the sand grains. “Reath, I’ve had enough of this. What are we doing in this sculpture park?”

Reath’s face was as expressionless as ever, but he seemed a little lost. He looked about at his feet, as if the grains she had spilled were the only ones on the planet. “It was the Campocs who brought you here,” he reminded her.

Alia was distracted by a spark of light that shot over the arc of the sky. It was a ship, she saw immediately. Moving gracefully it descended toward this plain of sand, and as it neared she made out its details, complex, fragile, beautiful.

It was undoubtedly a shuttle from the Nord.

As soon as it landed a hatch popped open and a woman climbed uncertainly out. It was Drea. Alia ran.

Drea stumbled a little in the unfamiliar gravity, and she coughed as the Mist kicked in. But then she ran, too, heavy-footed across the sand toward Alia. The two of them collided in a tangle of limbs, laughing.

Alia felt unreasonably joyful to see her sister. “Thanks for coming all this way,” she said.

“I’m not sure if I had a choice.” Drea smiled. “A summons from Reath is pretty forceful. Anyhow I missed you.”

“And I you. You’ll never know.”

A dusty breeze stirred Drea’s hair; she pushed it out of her eyes. “I’ve got to tell you — on the Nord they’re having a constellation naming ceremony.”

This happened every decade or so, as the stars, slowly shifting across the Nord ’s sky by the ship’s sublight crawl, adopted new configurations. The names of the new patterns were chosen by popular votes, amid much friendly rivalry.

Alia winced. “I wish I could be there.”

“They are going to name a constellation for you, Alia! It will be called ‘The Skim Dancers.’ Everybody voted for it.”

Alia grabbed her sister’s hands. “So you’re in it, too!”

“But it’s you they are proud of, Alia. Everybody is. Although nobody’s quite sure what you’re doing out here.” She glanced around. “Not much of a place, is it?”

Alia said, “Mostly I’ve been finding out unpleasant things about myself. I’m sorry.”

Drea looked mystified. “Sorry for what?”

Alia smiled. “For pulling your hair when I was three…”

“And I’m sorry, too.” It was Bale; he had come to stand a couple of meters away from the sisters.

Alia introduced him quickly, and the other Campocs. But the Campocs didn’t acknowledge Drea, who suddenly seemed lost, turned in on herself. Alia’s unease quickly deepened. She glanced at Reath. He looked deeply uncomfortable now, but he stared at the ancient sand at his feet.

She turned back to the Campocs. “What’s going on here, Bale? Why is Drea here? And what are you sorry for?”

His smile was thin. “For what we have to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

Drea staggered.

Alia grabbed her sister’s shoulder to support her. Suddenly it was like handling a doll; Drea’s limbs shook loosely, her head lolled, and a line of spittle leaked from the corner of her mouth.

Alia turned on Bale. “What have you done to her?”

“Alia, you must understand that—”

She hit his shoulder. With her long space-dweller’s arms she was capable of delivering a powerful blow, and she sent him sprawling in the dirt. He gaped up at her, his mouth a round circle of shock.

Denh and Seer came to stand between her and Bale, and stared at her warily. “Don’t hit him again,” Denh said. “She isn’t being harmed.”

“But you’re doing this to her.” This was the other side of their interconnection, she thought, the dark shadow of the cosy family gatherings she had seen on the Rustball — this power to reach into the head of a stranger.

Bale got shakily to his feet. “She’s in there. She’s safe. It’s just that she can’t — connect.”

Alia stared at Drea’s slack face. “ Safe? She must be terrified.” She turned on Reath. “Did you know about this?”

He looked shocked. “Of course not. They asked me to bring Drea here, but for you, not for this. I knew of this world, the statues — I thought this would be educational. I didn’t anticipate this!”

For the first time she saw truly how weak he was, and how little help she was going to get from him to resolve this sudden crisis. “Do you know what they intend?”

Reath grimaced. “Don’t you? ”

She stared at him. Then she closed her eyes. She was aware of the minds of the three Campocs, but they were closed to her, hard black spheres in her universe of thought. And Drea was there, a tiny bright thing, trapped and struggling in a cage.

She snapped her eyes open and took deep breaths. The Campocs were not Transcendents, but they were powerful beyond her knowledge, and they were malevolent. She was alone here, beyond help from anybody. And all the time she was aware of that frightened, trapped little creature in her sister’s head, who utterly depended on what she did next.

She was trembling, as much from fear as from anger. Some Transcendent she was going to make! But she had to find a way through this. She clung to her anger; it would be more useful than fear.

She glared at Bale. “All right. What do you want with her?”

“Why, nothing. We want you. Or rather we want you to do something for us.”

“Then why not just take me, rather than her?”

“That wouldn’t be enough,” Bale said. “We need you to act freely.”

“I’m not free if you are holding my sister!”

“Then without our conscious commands. You have to want to work for us, Alia.”

“How long are you going to hold her?”

“As long as it takes.”

“For what?”

Reath stepped forward. “I think I see. As long as it takes for you to join the Transcendence, Alia. Do you see? Through your sister they hope to control you, and through you they hope to gain some leverage over the Transcendence itself.”

The thought seemed shocking to Alia, almost blasphemous. “How dare you challenge the Transcendence? And to do it in such a base way, through taking a hostage of a helpless human being—” The contrast between the audacity of their ambition and the shabbiness of their methods was astonishing.

“We have no choice,” Bale said grimly.

“We are frightened,” Denh said.

“By the Redemption,” Seer finished.

“The Redemption? Witnessing? What’s that got to do with anything?” She stared at them, baffled, angry, increasingly scared.