The first year: Out of the Capital
By Gok, Sept-Nov ’02
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Setting: 2264, somewhere past ‘The Rim’ (the edge of officially explored space).
** This story occurs three days before ‘Summer’s Shade’, the first fic published in this series. **
Rated: PG 13 or maybe ‘Mature’.
Summary: Telepaths - refugees and survivors. Not that much plot, but description and characterisation that will later be vital. :)
Dedicated: to Jesse, for being the first to ask for this; and to Jaxa, who took several hours to email back and forth with me, clearing ideas up that I have included here. Thanks!
Author’s Note: THIS SERIES HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED STORIES OF MINE. Please ignore them when you read this, even if you think they involve the same characters. These are individual stories (but interconnected) set - as you can guess - in the very first year of settlement on my favourite world. I admit (since most of you know already) that this will be the same world mentioned in a few previously-written stories, but those all come MUCH later in the timeline. *This* world is still a secret; there are no soldiers here apart from the very occasional and very unofficial Ranger/Anla’shok member. The Telepath War has not yet officially begun; the Psi Corps/Metapol is still very much in existence. Okay? Just to prevent confusion. Babylon 5 ran from 2257 to 2262 - this takes place more than a year after the series’ main arc ended. (And is A.U. anyway, especially since jms does not seem to have time to address certain issues I tackle here!)(tbc...)Note cont.: If you have seen enough of Babylon 5 to know what kind of crap the telepaths (humans especially, but I extrapolate here to include several other species) were having to put up with, it will help you understand why they were willing to go to such extremes to get away. I have read the Psi Corps Trilogy, and while it was helpful in getting details on how telepathy might work, I’m not sticking to canon according to it, either. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let certain nasty criminals/evil people get off that easily in my version of this Universe! For one thing, being able to “sing” while he died is much too simple. I intend a considerably meaner, slower, and more painful fate than going ‘foom’ in a chemical fuelled ball of flame. For one thing, the delay will give the rogues time to realise for themselves what a pansy their leader was. (No offence to R.A.D, but he should have stuck to playing Morann!) So this went A.U. during _Phoenix Rising_: Bester and his cohorts were stopped by security, the rogues all got away, and no one on the station has clapped eyes on Lyta since that moment. But I haven’t made things a lick easier for the rogues, otherwise . . . Garibaldi still cleaned out Edgars industries, btw, and G’Kar still set off on his exploring the universe trip, but they did that without telepathic help.
Legal disclaimer: JMS and WB and whoever else owns the B5 universe, owns it. I sure don’t have any legal rights to it! I’m not making any money off this; this is homage; this is not my playpen, I will put all the toys back safely when I’m done with them. Mostly. ;) This is only slightly connected to the main B5 universe, so be warned it’s NOT a ‘central character in station surroundings’ type story. But I made up this particular world, and most of what you will find on it is all mine, and most of the characters are 100% my own creation. The ones that were not mine to begin with - well - they’ve had more than a year to change personalities, to grow (or regress); so, expect as much change as could be expected during a year of the canon show. If you want to use any of this, just 1) ask me first and 2) let me read it once it’s done - I might want to post it on my ‘Other’s Fanfic’ page if I like it. :)
Second note: Any of my long-time readers will already know I have been shifting my style of writing quite frequently, trying to find one (or several) that I like. But for the sake of series continuity, I’ll try to keep this one to being close to the other stories in _The First Year_. Other series (Homecoming & Ice Breaker, Arrival, Alternate Histories, etc) have their own style that I try to stick to, within the boundaries of each.
Responses are welcome. As are flames, suggestions, questions, ideas, comments, anything you want (except porn and lawsuits), to h_raelynn@hotmail.com. Praise is very welcome, btw. :)****
Out of the Capital (1/2)
Light was just starting to creep past the top edge of the patched curtain in the doorway, not so much as to actually beam in, but reflections came bouncing in off the walls of the pale stone corridor outside; just enough that it was no longer completely dark. This little room, being as humble as it was, would never have sunlight enter it directly - it was just too deep into the base of the plateau. The sun was probably above the horizon already, Alexander thought, and she hurried to close the unfamiliar buttons on the outer shirt she’d just put back on. She was going to be late if she did not hurry, even though she no longer had to walk around to the easternmost village in order to pick up her ride.Out of the Capital (2/2)Instead, her lover had brought the horse to her, right to the little grassy yard outside the communal door; the one she had prearranged to borrow. It had been right when the sky had begun to pale from black into purple along one side in preparation for starting dawn itself; she had already been awake and worried at his absence, standing outside the house and looking around. With a kiss to stop her pacing, Byron had made an apology for distressing her by presenting the early-fetched mare, already harnessed and blanketed. There was no saddle available that would fit, but Alexander had never ridden on a saddle anyway. He had said - truthfully - that moving the heavy sidepacks off the riding one would speed the journey, so that it was done faster; once her work was complete she would be able to return home that much sooner. He’d also brought a second horse, laden with more supplies than Alexander felt any one traveller deserved, nevermind how long or difficult the journey might be; she’d softly argued that the gelding would be needed here. Horses were extremely scarce and she did not need two of them; she’d had enough food and water in the sidepacks she’d chosen to last her until she was far enough from the settlement to forage safely.
She had not been able to get him to return the extra food, as vital as it was to feeding all of the others, because of the distraction. He had wanted to end their argument, break the frustration of the past few days; he had wanted to ease his ill mood at the need for her to temporarily leave him. Now, he was asleep, an old blanket covering his still-damp body, naked and weary and slightly scratched up. She, too, bore scratches; he had been considerably more aggressive than usual - his frustration had almost overwhelmed her. He did not want Alexander to take this trip even though she was needed at the mountain settlement. Alexander wished she could join him in their bed again, that she could stay, but she had been more delayed by their goodbye than even getting the horse would have made her.
But when she grabbed her cloak and checked for any stray items that might have been forgotten, she reminded herself that a few minutes did not matter, there were no clocks here, not anymore. One or two timekeepers might still function, if they had been brought in on a ship recently; but no electronics worked after a few weeks of being exposed to the surface’s atmosphere, a few weeks at the very most. Hurrying down the hallway, the open lightwells above her kept it bright - a glimpse of pale blue, just to one side of the glossy white moon, high above, right above. Staying quiet so that she did not wake any occupants of the other rooms, she paused just long enough to grab the last grain bun out of the clay breadkeeper on the kitchen table - there was no fruit left, but some would hopefully be picked and carried into the distribution centres later this morning - then she darted out the doorway to the yard, where the horses had waited placidly for her. Taking the last bun did not worry Alexander too much, as she knew most of the others had food hoarded; and last evening Shoja - a neighbour, almost too young to be pregnant but rounded-fat and expecting to birth after the next eclipse - had brought home a large basket of dried berries to share. She had traded her old shoes, still with laces and soles intact but too small to fit her anymore, for the basket and a pitcher of fresh goats milk. Shoja had not offered to share the milk, but grudgingly gave some of the smallest children in the household a taste before she finished it.
The horses had nibbled at the sparse bits of grass that peeked out in clumps from the heavy grey soil, but when she listened for a moment, Alexander did not sense any hunger from them, just a mild thirst and the impatience to be useful again. Smiling, she let them look her over and sniff at her face. She had not met the pack horse, but the mare remembered her from the week previous, the last ride taken - memory/images of galloping along a firm dirt road, wind and air and the joy of speed, in the coolness that followed an eclipse - and nuzzled Alexander’s open hand in pleasure. This horse liked to be able to run, and grasped that today she would not have to haul heavy sledges or turn a millwheel, smelling the grain being crushed while not being able to eat any.
“She like you,” a high sudden voice said, startling Alexander.
Looking up and behind her to the edge of the roof, to where it met the high part of the courtyard wall, Alexander smiled when she saw the child perched there. Starting low at the street and the gate, the wall was just high enough to keep young children from straying away. Once at the side of the yard - leading back towards the joined houses - the thick stone blocks were stepped up, becoming a favoured climbing toy as much as a passage to the roof; officially used whenever a rainstorm or eclipse approached, to cover over the lightwells with shutters, sealing them tight against leakage. The roof itself was unevenly shaped to look more natural to distant eyes; gently sloped from an average of six or seven meters above ground level where it butted right into the cliff, down to just two meters high at the front, where the door and sole wall-window was. That was part of the masking design; to have the tops of the long, narrow, shared-wall houses look like a natural level of plateau. All the inner rooms of the house - apart from the furthest one in - had small raised-rim ‘skylights’ for allowing fresh air and sunbeams in, even those few rooms chiselled out of the cliff itself; those had a diagonal cut leading downwards from the vertical face and a longer passage to reach the rooms. The houses across the street - in all the villages that had mushroomed together around the base of the city - were also made to look like natural outcroppings in an orbital scan, even with their wide streets and little walled courtyards. It was near the top of the forementioned wall-step that the observer was sitting, looking down with calmness and curiosity. After swallowing the bite in her mouth, Alexander asked cheerfully, “have you been taking care of these two for me?”
This young neighbour was another of those whom Alexander shared the kitchen space and the corridor with, named Sandeep. The girl’s family - those that had lived long enough to make it to this new world - all worked to cut rock in the nearby quarries. Alexander had met them often, both in this common house and while working. Most mornings, Alexander helped carry the largest of the mined and shaped blocks to the plateau and up to the top, where the city itself was being made. Other people carried other blocks up, all day. After her blocks had been placed, Alexander would spend the remainder of those days assisting with the planning; the large ideas and the details, and talking to the people that no one else wanted to speak with because they were the ones in charge. Most of her time ‘On Top’ would be spent in mediating, in soothing wounded souls and deflating oversized egos; then she and her lover - who started his day in the heights - would return to the house to eat, to talk and learn, to sleep.
The others in the house were all human, though the various families had no one language in common; many were from worlds other than Earth. Some had been lucky and were still latents. Some had been rogues most or all their lives; unknown to authority, hiding on the farthest, poorest, harshest colonies just to stay free. A few - like Alexander - had been bred by the Corps, had been raised in it, but had managed to escape to become rogues; known and hunted and never able to remain still for long. A few of the others were family members; they were normals, but had refused to give up the connection to the ones they cared about, choosing to run with them rather than the usual abandonment. It was a good thing most of the house-mates were telepaths, despite how neurotic the rogues were, because it was the only thing binding them together so far, that and the Music - which needed no words. The ones who’d had psi-training were able to assist the others, keep them from leaking emotions and nightmares all over the place; in doing so, they had also helped break language barriers. The children were picking up second and third languages even faster than their parents - or aunts and uncles, where there were no parents. “Big one is carry things - your things? Or tools, food? Lots of packs.”
Alexander paused. “I do not know. This one-” she indicated her usual sidepacks, almost lost beneath the larger bags and crates, “-has another set of clothing for me, some food and water canteens. I probably need to fill those.” Alexander pulled out one of the bottles to show Sandeep. It was indeed empty - her lover hadn’t gotten everything prepared, at least. She hated being coddled and he knew it.
“Then you are going away. Far.” This was spoken with an obvious pout. As crowded as the house was - Alexander and her lover, with a total of just two, were lucky to even have the small room to themselves, even though it was intended to just be a storage room - this little person didn’t want her favourite neighbour to leave. It would be easier on everyone once more houses were finished; when it became less crowded. The thick sandstone walls would not only insulate from heat and cold, but from sound and psi. When more houses were ready, this one would go to house a single family, though a large one. There were places for children, parents, grandparents and cousins; it was made to remain suitable for the generations that would hopefully live inside it’s walls. It was, at the moment, barely less crowded than the refugee ships had been; very noisy in the morning and evening when the shifts were changing over at the quarries and the upper level of the plateau. The one small bathing room was forever busy with children needing to pee and be cleaned of play-dust, with adults trying to wipe off the grime of the day, trying to rinse off the great heat that was part of equatorial life. The house was a home, however. Inks made from leaves and inedible grains had been used to colour murals on the walls. There was already furniture that had been made and was being used - a large wooden table and chairs that could not hold even a fourth of those who would gather for a meal. There were colourful new blankets for the crowded beds and hammocks; there was clothing washed clean each day and laid out on the wall to dry. It was cool inside when the street outside was hot, and warm inside from the little fireplaces when their world plunged behind the gas giant in the monthly eclipse and all things outside were gathered in so that they would not be harmed by the few days of chill. It was theirs to use and care for and that made it a real home.
Alexander could feel all this radiating off the child, and pride in having something of her own, even if ‘her own’ meant shared with more than 30 others, at least for now. All the children, and most of the adults, were glad to have this house. They remembered the ships from before, remembered living on streets and in shoddy tenements while in the Alliance colonies; even the coldness of the tents that had been home before this house had been ready. Alexander was glad to have it; for shelter, for the flurry of life about her again, for the security of thick rock about them, for the singing and playing and occasional bit of laughter. Alexander thought that all those good things outweighed the bad: the press of minds about her, the distress of memories and nightmares. Yet Byron would only grumble softly and tell her about the spacious apartment they would have in the city growing above them, with a balcony and a view of the forests down river, with their own bathing room and no competition for the toilet. “Yes, I am going now. I am needed, far away, to work. Then I will come back again. Will you miss me?”
“Yes,” came the honest reply. “And he will be more grumpy, today. I want - we want - him to stay On Top. He only come down at night, when you are away. His dreams are full of death, it make the babies cry.”
Alexander could only sigh, and adjust the straps on the pack horse to make the load sit easier on the gelding’s back. She had already finished the bun, and was still feeling hungry.
“I heard you. After he came with these ones.”
That made Alexander pause. “Has your mind started to hear more, then? You said yesterday that you were practising.”
“No, my ears heard!”
The pale sky was just bright enough to show that Alexander’s pale face had turned red from a deep blush, and the observer chuckled.
“But I practice too. It is safe here, Rajeet says, and I like to listen to the Music. I came out here to listen - not enough people to leak emotions in, too.” She lifted her chin to show the street past the short, thick stone wall; already it had people out and about, though only a few were to be seen, a few humans and slightly more non-humans. The villages of the workers were not segregated as to species: the housing went to families by order of age - those with very young, or very old, had priority. If not for the status both Alexander and Byron held - because of when they had arrived on this world and what they had done before - they would still be in a tent out in the fields, or living in a soddy. Both adult and girl knew that in a short while, the same view would be packed full: the little yards in front of all the houses full of shrieking children at lessons (for the schools had yet to be built), a few adults left to look after them. A few more adults would also be left to talk in groups while they practised the new-to-them ancient crafts they needed to master in order to survive on a world that tolerated no technology. Most of the adults who were able to work did so in the quarries and construction lots, because building homes was the priority, right after being able to eat. Any time a large harvest needed to be planted or gathered, the scaffolds and workshops would be emptied until the seed or food had been secured. The day workers would soon be up and gone, off until the sun vanished in the evening; but until they had all left the streets would be very busy.
“It is safe here,” Alexander reassured. “The barrier is very protective, have you felt it yet? When it lets in or keeps out?”
“Yes, and when it destroy the ship that follow ours. I know here is safe, not like before. Here is safe to practice. To learn. I only need remember do not be rude. I have had a long time to get better.”
“ ‘A long time’. How long ago did you come? Even I wasn’t here 5 months ago, and I was with the very first.”
“Very long time. The city from before, the one with wood, it was still burning a little when we came here.”
“That is longer than most still alive. Almost 3 months.”
“When will you be back home,” the small girl asked.
“I do not know. But it’ll be more than a month I need to be there.”
Sandeep’s young face looked very disappointed.
“Plus time to travel,” Alexander added.
“You were going to go on that ship that crashed yesterday,” she stated.
“Yes - no. He-” Alexander nodded towards the doorway into the house, where a few sounds could be heard of awakening, “-wanted me to, to make it faster. I wanted to go on land, not waste fuel on a ferry-trip.”
“We could hear and feel you fighting. He was very mad that you are leaving.”
“He does not control me. Here, no one controls anyone else. They can suggest and guide, but never force - force was before. Not for here. I am sorry that we disturbed you.”
The child shrugged, and instead of speaking words she did not yet know, brought up the idea and tried to think it loud enough to be heard; the concept that she was so used to violence that a few days of suppressed verbal arguing seemed very mild. Changing the topic, she asked, “How far away are the mountains?”
“Very far. It will take many days to ride there.”
“How many is that many?”
“More than a week, but less than a month, I hope.”
“A here week?” she asked, disbelieving. “Or a before week?”
“A here week. Eight days and the nights that go with them.”
“And it is only you and the - um . . .” The child pointed to the horses. “English words?”
“Horses. One horse, two or more is horses.”
“Horses,” she repeated, sounding very wise to have learned this. “Do they have names?”
Alexander half-smiled. “She is Araby, I was told. His name, I do not know. I had intended to only bring my sidepacks, not all this. I had already arranged to ride the one. The use of this second horse and the extra supplies is a surprise. It will speed me, if I go alone - I might meet others in a group who are walking, go with them. It is better to cross the distance with others, in case of an injury, to assist. They might refuse to travel with me - then I and the horses will go alone to the new city.”
“Some others do not like you. They say the First Ones controlled you. They say maybe you still being controlled. But other others say you killed some First Ones. That you were at Coriana 6 for last battle.”
“They are both right, in parts. I was being controlled for many months. And I broke free. Then I killed the one who had hurt me, with help from many others who had strong guns. Then I fought the rest. Before and at Coriana. Later I left, to find this place. Were you told all of that in school, young one? Or do you just hear it?”
“Adults talk. So I learn.”
“Well, I ask you to learn something, and teach it to the adults. Remember the good things, good people, as well as the evil. Whether living or dead, existing or destroyed, if all someone thinks and talks about is the darkness, they lose their own light.” Alexander picked up the lead for the pack horse, then swung her legs up and sat on the mare, now eye level with her neighbour’s blunt stare. “And look for new light, new joy, whenever you can. Create it if you must, but find it and cherish it. I will talk more with you when I return, friend. I promise.”
“Safe journey, friend,” Sandeep echoed back. Grinning, she waved until Alexander had turned the corner and was gone from sight, out into the already busy streets of the workers.
The friendly, honest conversation had cheered Alexander immensely. She wound along, her mount doing most of the steering around light crowds and the few obstacles, only needing to guide the pair at intersections. It was getting busy as the sun rose; but soon she could see the edge - places where green-brown plants lived, past the last of the stone common houses and temporary sod huts. It wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold - just pleasant, and the thought of being away from the thousands of swarming minds pleased her. It would be a chance to relax, though the journey would be long and quite demanding physically. Even with the gentle new training to keep from leaking, the tides of emotion from the many people, the feelings of lingering paranoia and fear and depression as much as joy and calmness, were often overwhelming. Both normals and the telepaths who were the reason for needing to flee to this world in the first place had added training to keep from washing each other out, but at times it just wasn’t enough. The crowds - as much as Alexander liked or outright loved the individuals who made up the crowds - were the reason she had begun to take the daily trek out to the finishing areas of the quarries. The press on her mental shields was the cause for her to take the occasional day-long ride out to the farthest fields and orchards and fish-traps, acting as a messenger. She, too, looked forward to having a less-crowded place to live, even though she did not wish for anything even half as grand as her mate did, the hundred details and comforts that he was yearning to surround himself with seemed excessive to her. What Alexander wanted was to be happy again, to be needed; and - if possible - to have and raise children.
****
It would have been an almost happy departure, but for the fact of Alexander having to soon pass by one of the hospital tents just at the edge of the settlement. It would have been perhaps another kilometre to reach the start of the road she needed to follow; the one that went westward, up the river and then across the plains. She did not know until she was almost there that it was indeed a hospital tent, but the concentration of physical pain was not hard to mistake once she was close enough to filter out the single agony that out-screeched the other sensations being broadcast. Sensing the pain of others was inevitable for a telepath as strong as she was, even when she was still blocks away, but she quickly realised one of them was familiar. Two of them, actually; though she could not yet place the people. The first was a rough clear mind - young, very young - howling with hunger in time to verbal crying; overshadowed by a more familiar mind that was a large formless sheet of anguish, blind to everyone and everything around her. It was definitely female, Alexander sensed, with the heat of humanness to it, and it brought echoes of her own memories from the long months and years which were mulped together in a dark, bottomless space to make the concept of ‘Before’. Memories of hunger, of blood, of watching without the slightest ability to intervene or assist; memories . . . of the baby - too young to even have been born - dying; memories of screaming in desperation and despair and the complete impotence to prevent the blood-flow, then utter blackness and cold.Unnerved, she started to steer Araby in another direction; willing to go back into the less direct and more-crowded sections of the city rather than use the route which held the psionic disruption. Then, wondering why no one was helping whoever was distressed and curious as to who it was, she shifted her stance, encouraging the horse to start walking again. That she had been deeply intimate with the wounded, Alexander had no doubt - but who was it? Not her lover, left to lay in bed, sheltered from the dawn light by a closed curtain; it was not him - he was male and too far behind her, the insulating rock kept her from sensing him. But she knew of no others whom she had been close enough with to share souls, to have had that sacred memory revived; none that had survived the running. Perhaps someone newly arrived on a recent ship, she thought, someone who had been presumed captured and dead but was lucky or violent enough to have gotten free. She nudged the mare over, trying to figure out exactly where the distress was radiating from. Even if she was mistaken in the flicker of recognition she’d had, it was already obvious that Alexander needed to stop because of the sheer level of disturbance being created. All the active telepaths nearby - latents, too, from what she recognised through her loosened shields - were feeling it, even though they tried to shield their own minds as best they could. There was no verbal noise, apart from the young one’s howling in rage; but the normals in the crowd still knew there was something wrong and stayed away out of fear.
There were many others nearby - even in the way, because now Alexander was impatient to move - though they all pointedly avoided walking near or looking at the pair. Decades, even centuries, of control and repression and the need to Not Notice overruled any slight compassion they might have felt. Annoyed at their self-induced blindness, Alexander extended a shield around the source of the disturbance as soon as she could pinpoint the place to do so, easing the outward leakage as she came closer. If for no other reason than old habits of self-preservation, Alexander thought that the rest of the crowd should have at least tried to calm the upset ones down - anyone broadcasting like that would have been a beacon to any of the hunters that had pursued them in the Before. The same hunters that still chased after and tore up - physically, mentally, legally trapped and destroyed - any rogue telepath outside this sanctuary. The woman apparently was just a low-powered telepath; but her grief was being broadcast at incredible levels until Alexander dammed the flow, sending the excess skyward where the people around them would not be quite so effected. The injured that she could hear did not need to have additional suffering. It was with her ears now that she was close to the hospital tent, but she had felt them with her mind from a greater distance; even over the hued confetti of emotions held and felt by the crowd, by the entire city about her. The pair did not need to suffer alone either, she knew, and climbed down from her mount, crossing the lead line to the pack horse over Araby’s blanket so that the gelding would not stray.
Shock followed as she finally knelt down, as she could visibly see their faces, as they sat on the dirt just outside the doorway into the tent. ‘Huddled’ was a better description, since the woman was a mixture of collapsed and crouched; the unnoticed, tiny second person lay on the ground next to her, a blanket that had possibly been swaddled around it - once upon a fairy-time - now laying crumpled under the weakly kicking infant. Now there was recognition, and shame at not having recognised sooner. Then more shame; this part being felt for all the others about her which had just walked by like they had been priests or levites and this wide, dusty, footbeaten lane had been the road down from Jerusalem - an oral tale from more than 2 thousand years before, reinacted. Then, all that passed, and pity marched into Alexander’s heart arm in arm with compassion. Alexander picked up and cuddled the infant, cooing softly, and tried gently to be noticed by the elder of the pair. She more than knew this weeping mother, more than knew this baby. She’d spent months with the woman on a small, antique retrofitted freighter; not hauling cargo but searching for a world to settle. A world that might bring some measure of safety or at least a chance for fresh air and food enough to not starve before the last rogue among them was hunted to extinction for the crime of having been born with their genetics.
The woman’s name was Marie Pellowe, and Alexander whispered then shouted it to her, but was unable to pierce the blinding wall of emotion by verbal means; she was unwilling to try to psionically attack or force her way to the woman inside the grief. A light touch on her shoulder - then a shake, gentle but firm - also did nothing to rouse. In Alexander’s arms, still wailing hysterically, the infant felt small and fragile; lighter than she should have felt for her age. Marie’s youngest girl, who had waited a week past her due date to be born; on the very day the freighter had set down on this world, never to take off again. They were the first ship, the first sentients to ever be here, as best as they could determine - the gate they had managed to activate in order to leave hyperspace had been without power, unused and not displaying a beacon, for the better part of four thousand years, possibly even longer. On the worlds past the gate - a single gas planet, and 12 moons orbiting it, with a collection of smaller moons looping around the primary moons - there were no signs that intelligence had ever so much as blinked towards the little system; not until their freighter had stumbled upon it. Alexander had been the closest person in the group to being a doctor that first day, and had helped deliver Lara, alive and healthy. The sun had just begun to rise, that historic first day - clean air, blue sky, and green life growing all about them, thick with blossoms and leaves and hope.
A final signal sent out from the freighter - not knowing if it would be heard at all or if the wrong people would hear it instead - and their fate was tied to the pretty green orb, almost temperate in climate, that was to be their refuge. They could breathe here; the air was rich in oxygen and free from grease and smoke, clear and without any smells of contamination. They again had food; the three day fast that had been their would-be killer crushed to memory by tender new fruits from bushes and trees; many things near them turned out to be not only edible but delicious - plants and animals both. And not just for the humans among them; there was food here safe for the other species that ran, the other races that hunted and were hunted if any individuals inside them were telepathic. If they were unwilling to be chained legally and literally for having an ability, a curse, that the majority of the race did not; the others could safely come here, too, and not starve. For the first time in months - years, for some - there was meat to be had, hot and greasy and tasting like paradise, taken right from it’s bones off the spit where it turned over the fire they’d made with fallen branches. There was water: clean, pure, unspoiled, rivers and streams and lakes and even a huge, salty ocean of it. The gravity was light, a little less than Earth’s. Almost above them, locked into orbit over the huge plateau that would soon be the site of their capital city, a bright pearl in the sky - a tiny methane moon, smooth and blank - provided a soft light as they had drifted off into their first night’s sleep on their new home, able to once again see the stars. There was hope. A few days afterwards, the other rogue ships near them began to arrive, and the exploration of this new world begun in earnest. Marie’s husband and the eldest of her children had come with the rest of this core group. The protective shield around the system, the Interference Vortex, soon proved more than adequate for assisting jumps to and from Hyperspace. The gate was laid with charges and destroyed; the vulnerability of having a navigation beacon to their new world erased in a few hours. The few who knew that there had ever been an actual gate were sworn to silence - all the rest would be left to presume the vortex had always been there. A few weeks later, the actual refugee transports full of various species and races, all banded together because all the other options were used up and gone, had begun to trickle and then to pour in. Marie’s remaining children, both now confirmed alive, both now confirmed free, had been among the first of the flood. It had been early spring; it had been a very happy time.
This first inpouring of hundreds, then thousands of desperate immigrants had been housed as best as possible in tents and wood-slab rooms all cobbled together in tight rows because it was faster that way. But as quickly as they could make even the rough shelters, this temporary camp by the river’s clear water, more and more refugees poured in. Soon the newcomers were cramming under the remaining trees for shelter against the rain and the nightly chill; dismantling the ships that had given out for overuse and lack of spare parts and the absence of compatible fuel cells. The working machinery was cannibalised, the hulls and decks and walls taken as roofs and wind barriers to make more shelter; and still more came. The nearby fields were stripped of grain, of fruit, of roots, of animals as the hungry people found ways to feed themselves. Many things could not be eaten by many races, but each species had at least a few plants, animals, even fish or birds that they could eat safely; between the many species that came and the overall numbers, the area was soon depleted. Others were sent further out, to harvest farther away and bring food back. Many things could be eaten raw, but some foods had to be cooked; and, when the temperature dropped at night, they found ways to light scraps of wood and dry branches in small pits scratched into the black dirt and old half-barrels to make the warmth they needed.
After generations of being used to electric and chemical heat, generations of steel and concrete and foam housing, the colonists had forgotten that the wood in the fire pits was no less flammable than the wood they had put up as posts and walls and roofs and shelves. Afterwards, they were never able to determine where The Fire had started, but before it was finally controlled and the survivors had crept out of the river and caves and smouldering forest, there were over a thousand charred bodies, few of which could be identified. There were many places where there was not enough left to tell what had been a body and what had been something else, because it was now just white ashes, scattering in the breeze and choking the lungs of whoever it touched. More died, afterwards, from infections and blood loss; some died from just losing the will to go on, and a few were found later, downstream in the river: they had drowned. Many people were never accounted for, afterwards, and there were some relatively undamaged bodies that went unrecognised by any survivor. Unknown, they had to be buried without names. More than half the colonists were gone. All of the rough shacks and tents had been reduced to char and ash; one ship had exploded from the heat getting into its grease and engine components. The other ships had been moved in time.
Alexander had found Marie the day after the sun returned, sitting next to a young child, her weeks-old infant in her arms. The boy, lying very still, had been burned badly; one of dozens who littered the charred field on blankets that stank of oilsmoke. There weren’t enough bandages, wasn’t enough drugs to ease all or even half of the pain, there weren’t enough surgeons or doctors or nurses or even people trained in first aid - on their own species, nevermind the many races that were injured. There just wasn’t. Too many were hurt, too many were dying, and as Marie had rocked the tiny girl and cried over the toddler, Alexander was able to piece together that her husband and other children were not among the survivors. Alexander, doing what little she could, had put blocks in the mind of the boy that would keep him from feeling the pain anymore, just as she had done to the other critically injured. Then she had kissed Marie, given her a drink of water from a filtered bottle, and moved on to the rest of the seriously wounded, the rest of those dying.
They, collectively, had learned from the mistakes made, as they began to bury the dead. They had started to take the extra effort needed to cut stone, and with that began to build a city with wide streets and canals filled with water, a city of sandstone and limestone and granite, of marble and crystal. It would be a city that would not burn, a city that would not fall to attack or earthquake. They’d checked the maps that had been salvaged and sent the remaining ships all over the continents, each to set up its own landing grid; scattering the arriving vessels as not to strain resources in any one area. They continued to bury the ones who died. Groups of those who had learned how to survive on this world were ferried off to the new landing sites, to teach the refugees who still came even as the embers of the first settlement glowed red in the white ash. It took days for the ground there to stop smoking, and weeks for the nearest forest patches to stop burning. It only stopped because of the eventual summer rains. By then, most of the injured were healing or had died. Marie’s boy, though now blinded and too wounded to even sit upright, had survived and had been moved the 18 kilometres upstream, to the outskirts of the plateau where Alexander’s lover was laying cornerstones and digging foundations. And they continued to bury the people who continued to die.
Stone houses grew out of the dirt; their foundations laid with great care, their tops and sides shaped to mask them from orbital detection. Crops were attempting to flourish - those could not be hid. Except for the native flora undergoing domestication, the plants could barely be kept alive so far. And still more refugees poured in from outside. It seemed that few races were exempt from persecution, and any ship or crew who helped the emigrants was risking their own imprisonment or outright destruction. The colonists needed a safer place than the openness of the granite plateau that towered above the worker’s villages, above the hospital tents. It had magnetic deposits and crystal formations buried in it that confused sensors, making anything other than a close visual scan read as empty space. But there were few places like it on this world, and more cities would be needed to hold the thousands more expected to come. They needed the security of deep places, of a rabbit warren - or twenty. They needed to have caves, caverns, holes available to run into, should one of the hunter-ships follow the trail, find their world, and manage to land intact. The vortex surrounding and permeating the system kept them safe from attack from energy-weapons, but Alexander and the other leaders knew they were vulnerable from ground troops, from blades and clubs and other weapons that were purely physical in use. They needed a fortress, a group of castles with hidden tunnels that could be run along to scatter and hide in. They needed to build their new villages and towns in the two mountain ranges that lined the ocean.
So Alexander found a map with a route across the grasslands, to the closer of the ranges, and prepared to go carve a city out of the mountains. Others had gone ahead of her, to gather and preserve nuts and fruits from the forests, to gather herbs and grains from the prairies; storing food to keep the workers alive while they cut passages out of the chosen rock face. With no available lasercutters and no powered drills, it would have to be done by hand, by muscles. The tools to dig with were scarce; but some had been found and were already there. Most of those edges suitable for cutting into rock were already in use in the quarries that fed the construction of the capital, but Alexander was very stubborn and rather persuasive with words. She could have used other, more direct means, but she refused to use anything stronger than words. So all the tools - all but one - that she could get were already at or on their way to the newest settlement. All but Alexander herself, who was one of very very few to have not just telepathy, but a very special addition to her gift-and-curse. She was a tool herself, and she could do a great deal to speed the construction.
But first she had to get there. As long as she cradled a distressed Marie and sat outside this medical tent, she could not carve mountains. Alexander had been able to unfasten the ties and sole remaining button that closed the milk-soaked layers Marie wore, and baby Lara was nursing finally. Her mother, though having been shaped to hold the girl by Alexander’s own arms, did not seem to notice. When Alexander had tried to take her arms away to stand up, the baby had nearly fallen, so it was two pairs of arms that continued to support her. No one else assisted, no one even offered. Some of them had recognised Marie, who had been here before - this was the same tent where the crippled son stayed, Alexander suddenly realised, as she imagined it without the cluster of houses and workshops that had mushroomed up around it since she had last been here. Then, slowly over three heartbeats, she understood why Marie was so upset. Opening her mind a sliver, she lightly scanned past the patched canvas. The boy was not there. Not anymore.
When Lara had drained both breasts and finally relaxed enough to let go, Alexander covered the mother’s front up again and laid the exhausted infant back down, carefully on the blanket, covered against the sun which was climbing above the rooftops. A battered little bag of clean and folded cloth diapers, thankfully, was beside Marie; Alexander used it to keep the infant from rolling away should she move. The baby needed changing, but that meant washing and there was no water here apart from the canteens on the packhorse - which were empty, waiting to be filled. There would still be shade for some hours where they were, from the angle of the houses and tent, but the baby’s face showed signs of a slight sunburn from the previous day and Alexander did not want any further harm done. Alexander hoped the clouds that were gathering, soft and white, might thicken enough to keep the temperature from becoming too warm. Marie showed no signs of moving, but her mental wail continued unabated, still funnelled upwards and away. Letting Marie sit there for a moment longer - Alexander could not have budged her in any event - she went inside.
There were two dozen cots lining the walls, all filled with at least one patient. The smell of cooked flesh was stronger inside, added to iodine and urine. The sounds were of rough breathing, a small fit of coughing, and the soft sound of voices trying to reassure; two young ones were crying, but not as loudly as they had been a few minutes before. A few others who seemed to be family of patients helped with a few of the wounded. There was one healer, a Brakiri male, looking after everyone as best as he could manage. He was setting a broken limb: a Tsar’il who had sandstone dust on her overalls and fur, she was crouched on a low table in the center. Not all the patients were from the day before that one, from the debris-strikes of the ship that had exploded and crashed back to level several blocks of housing at the edge of the settlement; a few were not even burn victims left over from the months previous.
The doctor did not look up at Alexander until he had finished; gestures and telepathically-sent concepts being used to show how to keep the wood, plaster, and rag-cloth splint dry and in shape. Neither of them had a shared language, but it was already becoming common for telepathy to be used to cross the gaps - what before had been repressed, unused, controlled and put down, was actually being useful. It was preventing many fights already, the colonists were finding out. Both sounds and gestures could be misinterpreted, especially when tempers were short, but the idea that was being expressed could be shared as pure concept. That could not be misinterpreted. Even through the weight of long wars against each other, people who had technically been enemies Outside and Before were here becoming friends; apologising for things done wrong that had not been intended to be that way. It was helped that everyone on this world had gotten to it by running, by surviving, by escaping the hunters - they were all, it was sometimes expressed, comrades now. ‘The past can remain outside,’ someone had said the other day. ‘As long as we remember it, and do better - no more wars, here, no more fighting. Here, we are all siblings. Here, we are going to build something that will stand forever, and we will built it freely, without bloodshed!’ Alexander, along with the rest of the crowd in the plaza, had cheered both the words and the speaker.
The Tsar’il gave a growl that sounded pained but vaguely thankful, then bowed and moved off, sparing a single downward nod for Alexander as she passed. The doctor, for his part, startled when he noticed her. Her quiet entrance, added to her near-unique appearance, was enough to make most startle; especially if the person looking was used to feeling a person’s approach from several feet away. His mind was leaking, and she caught his surface thoughts as they spilled out, full of her appearance and his confusion. He saw the long, thick cloak meant to protect her from dust and rain, made of warm wool-like fabric - there were animals much like Earth’s sheep on this world, already proving easy to tame. It was faded red and open to contrast the dark, undyed grey of her actual clothing, new and prepared for the trip itself. Most of the garments were brought by the settlers, often old or unsuitable for the climate here, and most of it was patched with scraps of clothing too far gone to be patched itself. What Alexander wore was among the first of the new fabrics, the new clothing, to be produced. Simple, warm for the cool nights and an underlayer that could be worn alone for the heat of the afternoon, with pockets that were reinforced, it had nothing added for decorations. Already it was a little dusty.
Then he tried to look for species, and examined her face. A face that was genetically pale but freckle-specked brown by the long hours of sunlight; hair like a million strands of fresh copper pierced into her scalp, red like fire or a sunset, bound back into a single braid of flame trailing more than halfway down her back. Tired as he was, he could not remember what she might be, and the who she might be also eluded him, though there was a faint burble of recognition, not yet realised by him.
“Human,” she offered. “If you speak English - trade words - then I do, too.” She followed with a polite mental offer - a flicker, just enough to get his attention - of telepathy, if words could not work. A standard greeting on this world did not include offering your hand to shake.
“Yes, sorry, forgot the colour variations,” he suddenly said, English words and a relatively mild accent. He’d learned from a North American, by the sound of it. “You - you are not hurt?”
“No,” Alexander said. “But I do still need your help - sit, please, you look ready to fall over. And I would help you, if I could - the woman outside, she is very upset, I want to escort her home.”
The doctor, after giving the rest of the patients a glance from where he stood, leaned back to sit on the table. “You might have to wake her - she - no, she did not fall asleep, did she? It was too sudden - did you hit her? To make her stop the screaming?” He looked guarded, weary.
Though he did not sound surprised, he’d still asked if Marie had been deliberately made to mentally shut up. “No,” Alexander said, “I channelled it - upwards - I knew her before, am familiar enough to keep her from leaking all over. But I have not been able to stop her - I want to, but I will not hurt her. Her boy, a young one, burned bad in the big fire, he has died. Yes?”
“The Pellowe boy, yes. Day before last one. Finally - we could not do any more. Was in coma, last few days - no more IVs left, he died . . . several died. How do you do that? She is there, still - she has not moved since she came. Last evening. You can not see her, no line of sight, no one can do that but-” His voice cut off suddenly, and the recognition he’d had suddenly floated to the surface. “You are the one they call Alexander,” he said carefully, appearing ready to either embrace her or drive her off in protection of his patients.
“Alexander is a common name, but if they tell wild tales, they are probably about me - whether they are true or not, I cannot say, since no one will face me to tell them to me.”
“You can stop pain from being felt, even after you have left - after the big fire - my wife, you kept her from pain, for more than 4 days . . . she told me, before she died. She asked me to thank you,” and the doctor looked ready to cry.
He could not say it, but Alexander, through an old grief coming on in waves, felt what he wanted to ask. Nodding at him, she moved to the closest of the beds, and performed the same feat she had done hundreds of times in the past few years. Shutting down - or temporarily hampering - the pain centres of each brain. Those dying, she removed all pain from. Those who might recover, if their gashes and burns and broken limbs could be kept clean and free of infection, she lowered the amount they could feel to a dull ache, telling each of them that the wound was still there, so they should not move it or stress the area but let it heal. After a few long moments, the doctor wobbled to his feet and moved with her, his mental blocks and shields back up and under better control. It took a while, but by the time she had seen and laid hands upon the last patient there, gathering whispered thank-yous or other sounds of acknowledgement from the family members, he was able to speak again. “You said you would take her home? The mother?”
“She cannot stay here - no one else seems to care - and you are too busy here,” Alexander said. “Her son - where is . . .”
“He died. Two days ago, mother was here. Held him, felt the end - I did, too, I can feel it when they die - terrible - but no pain, you had already helped that - he had no pain at all. The boy was buried yesterday, the way Humans do it; she went with the bearers. I was told he was put with some other children in a green field in the sunrise direction. It is some distance from the houses, not an especially long walk, but enough to have kept the mother away from the city during the crash. She did not need that too, the pain was very great,” and he looked down at the dirt floor. A moment later, he continued. “She has not left the street, there, since she returned last evening. I can not make her home, I am too busy with the new injured,” and he lifted his hand slightly, motioning to the crowded beds around him.
“The record - the contact address - do you still have it? I will find a way, gentle, to take her home. She needs to sleep. And eat, and bathe, and someone will be asked to watch over her and the baby. She cared for me, before here . . . I too have lost a child. We were on a ship and had no help, no way to stop the bleeding, but she tried to help - she needs me now. Then I will start my trip - it is long enough, part of one day in delay will not matter. There is even a group leaving this afternoon, perhaps it will let me have company. She needs sleep. You need sleep, too - is there another who helps here?”
The Brakiri thought for a moment, then shuffled off towards a back corner, to a small metal cabinet. It was scorched on one side, half-melted to expose a bit of the interior - she could see light through the small hole when he opened the door. “There is no more medicine - they say the ones carrying it, from the fields, are late. But I have run out, I cannot leave them. The other, she went to get some, walking this morning. Maybe there will be a bit on a ship - there are more coming, probably, a few more days. There are always more coming. Not all of these will have died by then, and you have helped with the pain, more than the drugs could. We are using plants now, herbs now, some from here, some brought from outside. They work. Not perfect, but it is better than it was the first month I was here.” He paused speaking to shuffle through a small box of papers, then pulled out a small once-white card. “Here, the house number, it says - she . . .” And he stopped talking. This time he did actually spill tears, staring at the card.
Alexander moved over to look. Scratched out in watered-down ink on a card that had been reused many times already, the name and basic information of the boy and his family, all that was left of it. The address shown was right in the middle of where the ship had plowed down, yesterday. That particular co-op unit, free-standing with a second storey, many little bedrooms all clustered around a large central kitchen and bathing areas, was next to a small park space with swings and a large old climbing-tree. It had been where a fuel cell had impacted - the crater had not left one single stone intact or on top of another. There had not been any bodies pulled out of that house - no furniture, no little images of a lost family member, no spare shoes. It had been pulverised, gone totally. Only in the remains of the next house were there body parts to be found, and it wasn’t until three houses over that anything was found intact. Marie’s home, gone. The estimate so far was over 60 dead, most of which were children. Nothing was left, not even the stump of the evergreen that had stood, proudly, for over 300 of the long local years.
“My . . . my daughter, she was playing there that day, with a friend . . . she . . . has not yet come home, she knows to come here if I am not at our room - I have been waiting, hoping. Praying the comet did not take her away . . . she was the only child of mine who had lived to see this place . . .” and he could not go on. It was a reminder that he did not need, and all the bottled-up emotions and helplessness cracked free. Alexander broke custom long enough to hold the frail little man in her arms, leading him to the edge of a bed where the single occupant was asleep. The family members there looked on, briefly, but knew they would not be welcomed to intervene until he had cried his tears out.
“I will take care of the mother, do you hear me?” Alexander whispered into his ear. He managed to nod, understanding leaking out with his grief. “Grieve, you have earned it. Perhaps she is in another tent - it will be another day before the news can be carried around the city, who is where. Some of the children had time to run, they are merely injured. What was her name, I will ask them to hurry the news to you if she is found.”
Sobbing, he choked out her name, and his own, then the registry number of the hospital tent they were in. “I will ask. You will need to rest, soon, to eat and sleep. You are still needed, friend.”
“Still needed,” he parroted softly through tears.
Giving his shoulder a light touch - showing that it was friendly with the concept from her mind - she stood up and placed the card on the table. It was not needed to be on file anymore, and would need to be reused quickly. “I will take the mother, the baby too, with me - it will take time to heal her soul. I can give that,” Alexander promised.
The healer glanced up, nodding and sniffling.
With a small smile that was meant to reassure them all, Alexander ducked back under the battered canvas, back out into the street.
****