Алан Дин Фостер - Relic

Eventually a driftec arrived to carry the original exploration team back to the Myssari outpost. Nashrudden and several of his colleagues went along. Looking back as he prepared to board the transport, Ruslan could see the resurrected humans organizing themselves into groups. As they began their work, repositories would be unearthed, automatics activated, and supplies distributed. Reconstruction would begin soon enough. Aid already promised by the Vrizan and the Myssari would help to speed recovery. Earth, humankind’s Earth, would live again. This time there would be no mistakes.

He entered the driftec and took a seat across from Cherpa, who was engaged in animated conversation with Nashrudden. The two were about the same age, Ruslan reflected. She had never seen a man her own age. Something sharp and painful lanced through him, faded like a burn, and was gone. This was right, he told himself as he watched them. Heavy as it lay within him, he could not find it in himself to object to rightness.

The woman who sat down beside him was one of the first ten following Nashrudden to be revived. She appeared older than the scientist but not by much. Her eyes, Ruslan noted, were very violet.

“You’re Ruslan, aren’t you?” She gestured across the way. “Nashrudden told me about you. You’re a natural immune from, I think he said, Seraboth. I’m Elehna. Elehna Anchez, one of the last to be extracted and have her body put in stasis. Like Nashrudden.” When he said nothing, she smiled. “You know what used to be said: the last shall be first?”

He finally remembered to nod, trying not to stare. “Yes, I’m Ruslan. Ruslan… I don’t remember the rest.”

“Well, Ruslan-I-don’t-remember-the-rest, Nashrudden says that you have lived and survived among these trisymmetrical aliens ever since they plucked you off your homeworld, and I really would like to hear everything you can tell me about your experiences. In detail.”

He found himself, automatically, smiling back. It was a smile that just kept getting wider and wider.

“And me? I’ve waited most of my life for the chance to tell you.”

“There will be others,” she told him. “They’ll want to know what you know, too.”

“I’m happy to start with you.” He truly was. “How many others have to be revived? How much work remains to be done to bring them all back into the light? How many thousands will walk the surface of the homeworld again?”

“Thousands?” She looked at him strangely. “The Project head didn’t tell you?”

He shook his head. “I just assumed thousands.”

Her expression shifted from warm to serious. “Ruslan, there are three billion of us.”

FOR BETSY MITCHELL,

with whom I went through a darned

lot of words together. With thanks,

friendship, and appreciation.

Relic

For Love of Mother-Not

The Tar-Aiym Krang

Orphan Star

The End of the Matter

Flinx in Flux

Mid-Flinx

Reunion

Flinx’s Folly

Sliding Scales

Running from the Deity

Bloodhype

Trouble Magnet

Patrimony

Flinx Transcendent

Strange Music

Phylogenesis

Dirge

Diuturnity’s Dawn

Icerigger

Mission to Moulokin

The Deluge Drivers

Nor Crystal Tears

Voyage to the City of the Dead

Midworld

Drowning World

Quofum

The Howling Stones

Sentenced to Prism

Cachalot

A Call to Arms

The False Mirror

The Spoils of War

Lost and Found

The Light-Years Beneath My Feet

The Candle of Distant Earth

The Human Blend

Body, Inc.

The Sum of Her Parts

ALAN DEAN FOSTER has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of several New York Times bestsellers and the popular Pip & Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of several films, including Transformers, Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and the most recent one, Alien: Covenant . Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from an early-twentieth-century miners’ brothel. He is currently at work on several new novels and media projects.

Relic is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2018 by Alan Dean Foster

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Foster, Alan Dean.

Title: Relic / Alan Dean Foster.

Description: First edition. | New York : Del Rey, [2018]

Identifiers: LCCN 2018009535 | ISBN 9781101967638 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781101967645 (ebook)

Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure. | GSAFD: Science fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3556.O756 R38 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2018009535

Ebook ISBN 9781101967645

randomhousebooks.com

Title page image: © iStockphoto.com

Book design by Dana Leigh Blanchette, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Cletus Adams

Cover illustration: © Jeremy Wilson

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