Аллен Стил - Arkwright

“It was much larger when it left Earth,” Nathan said as he guided their craft closer. “It once had a sail larger than Providence, but that was discarded once it reached Eos. The lander we visited was once attached, as well. Now there’s only this.”

Hovering before them, slowly tumbling through the night, was a slender, cylindrical object about a hundred rods in length. Sunlight reflected from its silver hull, and what looked like sticks, dishes, and barrels stuck out here and there. In no way did it look like a deity, though, or in fact like anything except a toy some imaginative child might have cobbled together from discarded household implements.

“This is Gal?” Kaile’s eyes were wide, her voice weak.

“This is what you call Gal.” Marilyn was apologetic. “I’m sorry, Kaile, but yes, this is all there is.”

Sanjay looked down at Eos again. It took him a few moments to recognize the shape of the land that lay below, but the finger-shaped peninsula protruding from the northeast corner of an equatorial continent was probably Cape Exile, which meant that the large island just off its coast was Providence. Calliope was beginning to set to the west, which meant that anyone looking straight up from the island would see the very same thing they saw.

“He’s telling the truth.” Sanjay’s mouth was dry as he turned to Kaile. “We’re above Childstown.” He pointed through the windows. “This is what we’ve seen whenever we’ve looked at the sky.”

Kaile didn’t speak, but when she peered in the direction he was pointing, her face became ashen.

“Now I want you to hear something, Sanjay,” Nathan said as he did something with his controls that caused the yoke to lock in place, and then he bent forward to push more buttons. “Many, many years ago, while Galactique was on its way here, one of your ancestors on Earth sent a message. Her name was Dhanishta, and her father, Matt, helped her send this to Galactique . The ship received the message and stored it in memory, and we found it when we arrived. Here’s what Dhani had to say.”

The glass panel lit again, this time to display a child’s face: a little girl, probably no older than seven or eight sixyarn, as dark skinned as any islander but with a yellow flower in her long black hair. She was sitting upright in a chair, smiling brightly, and as Sanjay watched, she began to speak.

“ Hello, Sanjay. My name is Dhanishta Arkwright Skinner, and I’m calling you from Earth…”

The image was grainy and occasionally shot through with thin white lines. The girl’s cheerful voice had a blurred tone to it, but nonetheless her words were distinct. “ I know you’re still asleep and so it will be many years before you see this, but when Galactique finally gets to Eos, I hope you will…”

A slight pause; she looked flustered. “ I mean, I hope you’ll see this. Anyway, I wish I was there with you, because I’d love to know what the new world looks like. I hope it’s as nice as Earth and that you’ll have a great time there. Please think of me always, and remember that you have a friend here. Much love, Dhani. ”

The girl stopped speaking. She blinked and then looked away. “ Is that okay? Did I— ”

Then the glass panel went dark.

Sanjay didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t tell which astonished him more, the fact that he could see and hear a little girl speaking to him from across the worlds and yarn or what she’d said. When he raised his eyes again, he found both Nathan and Marilyn smiling at him.

“She said her name is Arkwright,” he said.

“That’s correct.” Nathan nodded. “Dhanishta Arkwright Skinner … Arkwright is her middle name. She’s your ancestor. Mine too.”

“But how did … how did she know I was here?”

“When she was much older,” Marilyn said, “Dhani wrote her memoirs … her life story. She explained that Matt Skinner, her father, had told her that there was a little boy named Sanjay aboard Galactique, and he let her send that message to him.”

“But the little boy didn’t really exist,” Nathan continued, “so her father sent another message to Galactique , telling its AI—its machine mind—to alter its original instructions. As I said, many of the people who helped build Galactique were allowed to contribute eggs and sperm who’d later become the original colonists … the people you’ve called the Chosen Children. One of them was a woman named Kate Morressy, who was Dhanishta’s great-grandmother and also the granddaughter of Nathan Arkwright.”

“The person you’re named after.”

“Correct. Well, without telling anyone, Matt instructed the AI to rename that particular genome Arkwright instead of Morressy and that its first offspring was to be a male child named Sanjay.”

“He did this as a gift for his daughter but never told her about it,” Marilyn said. “In fact, we didn’t know about it, either, until we reached Galactique and downloaded—I mean, listened to—its AI.”

“My great-great-grandfather’s name was Sanjay Arkwright.” Sanjay could barely speak; his voice came as a dry-throated croak. “He was one of the Chosen Children.”

“That was the little boy Dhani imagined was aboard Galactique, ” Marilyn said. “He never heard it, though, so in a way, the message was meant for you.”

Something small and wet touched Sanjay’s face. Reaching up to brush away the moisture, he looked over at Kaile and realized that she was crying. Her tears didn’t roll down her cheeks, though, but instead clung to her skin as tiny, glistening bubbles.

“Do you believe us now?” Marilyn asked, quietly and with great sympathy.

Kaile didn’t say anything. She simply nodded and continued to weep for the god who’d just died.

“Yes … yes, I think we do,” Sanjay said quietly. “So what do we do now?”

Nathan and Marilyn looked at each other. For once, they were the ones who were at a loss for words.

“That’s up to you,” Nathan said quietly. “What do you think we should do?”

Sanjay gazed out the window for a little while. “I think I know,” he said at last.

The craft shook violently as its wings bit into the atmosphere, and for several minutes, its canopy was enveloped by a reddish-orange corona. Sanjay clenched his teeth and held Kaile’s fore tightly within his own; he felt weight returning and regretted losing the brief euphoria he’d experienced high above Eos. Nathan had warned them that returning to the ground would be like that, but it didn’t make it any less frightening. He just hoped it would be over soon, although he wasn’t looking forward to what was coming next.

The trembling gradually subsided, and the corona faded, revealing the darkening blue sky of early evening. Through the canopy windows, the ocean came into view; Aether and Bacchae were coming up over the horizon, and Sanjay gazed at them in wonder, understanding now that they weren’t really sisters but instead two dwarf stars just like Calliope, the three of them sharing the same center of gravity.

Indeed, everything familiar seemed new again. Eos, his people, their place in history, even Gal … no, Galactique … itself. What had once been the works of an all-powerful creator, he now understood to be something different, small yet significant aspects of a vast but knowable universe.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Although Nathan didn’t look away from his controls, Sanjay knew that he was speaking to him and Kaile. “You can always change your mind, y’know.”

“I’m not sure we’re doing the right thing.” Marilyn spoke to Nathan, ignoring the passengers seated behind them. “It’s a primitive culture. The shock … maybe we should take this slowly, introduce it over time.”