Moon-Flash (27 page)

A sound broke out of him, of sorrow and terror.
Now what?
he thought, his heart pounding.
Now what?
A woman bent over her washing at the far side of the river stopped moving. She stared across at him, sensing something. She touched the woman beside her, pointed.

There was a hiss inside the house. Terje coughed on a sudden wave of smoke. Korre’s mother had put the fire out. The women across the water rose slowly, wet clothes in their hands.

And then, as he looked back at them, helpless, afraid, and lonely, the world straightened itself out under his eyes.
Everything is simple,
Icrane had said.
Look.
He was still Terje of the Dome and of the Riverworld. He stood on familiar earth, watching the River he had been born beside. He knew no ritual words, but he knew what was in his heart. The future—any future—was simply one step at a time out of the heart.

He sagged against the doorway, feeling the tears on his face. Icrane himself had seen the world beyond the Falls, had summoned change into the Riverworld. Terje was part of the change, and somehow the dream of Terje had brought peace to the Healer.

Regny was walking up the river toward him. But Terje lingered in the doorway, death at his back, the life of the Riverworld in front of him, knowing, without knowing how he knew, that every step he took now would be a step into the Healer’s final dream.

NIGHT HAD seeped again into the white city, and the alien and the computer were still talking. Kyreol sat in a corner and watched. Now and then a screen would light up, show a graph or a sweep of stars or an image from Niade’s watery surface. The alien would make noises at it, and the screen would darken.

Kyreol’s eyes closed, opened again. She had eaten something dry from her pack. The alien did not seem interested in food. Its children were sleeping, little motionless bumps of color in its neck fur. Kyreol wondered at them ceaselessly, fascinated. They were so tiny, compared to the seven-foot alien. They seemed to need nothing except what they found burrowing into the thick fur. Did they drop off like seedpods when they grew too big to be carried? And after, did they still cling to their parent, like human children, needing to be given food, shelter, knowledge, understanding? Or did they become self-sufficient very fast? She imagined a swarm of fur-puffs with legs, all coming up to the alien’s knee, making demands
in their high voices, practicing all the noises they knew. How many were there? Once she had counted six. Another time ten. Ten children, all growing up at once. Did the alien have to raise all of them all by itself?

Her eyes closed again. She tugged the raincoat closer, chilly in the moon’s night. She didn’t want to sleep, she wanted to watch the screens. But her eyes kept falling . . . She let them stay closed for just a moment . . .

She saw her father’s face. He was smiling at her, peacefully. His lips moved; he seemed to say her name.

Kyreol.

She opened her eyes, stared into the shadows. Her throat made a small, scratchy sound. What was that? A dream? But she hadn’t been asleep . . . And why Icrane’s face here, on a moon far removed from the Riverworld?

She remembered then the dark, harsh, sorrowing face Terje had held in his hand in her last dream. She made another noise, shaking her head. The alien turned to gaze at her.

It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. Icrane’s face had been so calm, as if he were handing her a cup of morning tea. But what was Terje doing in her other dream, with the River in his hand and the Moon-Flash on his forehead?

What was going on in the Riverworld?

She pushed the blanket aside restlessly and stood up, went to the alien’s side. Its big hands moved across colored lights and clusters of symbols. The image on
a screen shifted, turned white. Kyreol watched it a moment, then sighed. It was just the moon’s surface, on the day side, with one of its interminable dust storms. The image changed. More dust storm.

The alien made a sound like a shrieking tea kettle.

It patted Kyreol on the back and pointed to the screen. Kyreol blinked, her mind working very slowly.

Images of the moon . . . on the day side . . .

How?

Cameras, somewhere. Or some kind of information-gathering equipment.

So?

She shook her head slightly, her breathing quickening. The image changed again, this time to a line of twilight melting into black. “We can see,” she whispered. “If they’re out there—Joss or your people—we can see them—” She moved closer to the screen, staring at it, waiting for the next change of image to bring her Joss’s face. The alien made a small pop, like a mud bubble breaking, and went back to work.

It terrified itself once, miscalculating. The great dock gate overhead began to grind closed with a noise like a building collapsing. The alien sat down on the floor, wailing; all its eyes disappeared and its hands covered the younglings. Kyreol, alarmed, touched a light at random. The computer wailed, too, an astringent, ear-splitting complaint at misuse.

“I’m sorry!” Kyreol shouted at it, her hands over her ears. The alien’s head went down between its knees at the racket.

But somehow, eventually the alien found courage enough to uncurl itself and sort out the problems. It
pointed at the screen again, and Kyreol settled down to watch, scarcely breathing, lest she miss small figures fighting through the dust.

After half an hour, her eyes were heavy; she could scarcely hold them open.

Dust.

Dust.

More dust.

Why, she wondered, breathing deeply, pulling herself straight, would people put cameras all over such a wasteland? Unless they were just seeing the same patch of land again and again. The images were coded; their coordinates were marked; but what two blues and four yellows and forty-eight other different colors meant, she had no idea.

For shuttles, maybe? To watch their flight across the surface?

Another screen, above the first one, blinked awake. Niade. Its moons, in varying stages of light and dark, arranged with eerie beauty around the planet. The stars.

Thanos.

She jumped when she saw it. It filled the screen; she recognized the green and brown swirls of land beneath the clouds. And there was the river—her River, crawling down half the world, parting the deserts to reach the sea.

Home.

She pointed at it, turning to the alien. Its beak clicked unintelligibly. Its fingers skimmed across the panel of lights and buttons. A sound came out of the panel, a warning. Then a beam of color streaked out
of it, angling upward through the open roof, shooting far out into the night.

Kyreol stared at it. The alien, sinking downward once again in the dust, sang softly.

The signal. Color coming from a colorless moon. The message.
We are here.

Kyreol looked at the alien. Its eyes were pale again, but the sounds it made seemed content. It stroked the sleeping fur-balls; one eye shut, and then another.

You sleep,
Kyreol thought.
You just saved our lives.

She watched the screen again, marveling at the alien, determined to find its people for it. It was big, ungainly, ugly, loving, nervous, and so intelligent the intricacies of the Dome would probably be child’s play to it. She had told it once where her world was; and in spite of all its own fears and troubles, it had remembered . . .

Images changed on the screen every twenty seconds. Dust. Dark. Dust. Dark. Once, she saw her own ship, a mangled silver bird, barely visible in the light of a neighboring moon. Nothing moved . . .

“Joss,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

Her thoughts strayed to Terje. What was he doing with the River in his hand? And his face full of sunlight? He was supposed to be in shadows, watching a ritual, so silent within the Riverworld that he disturbed not even a pebble. A sudden, despairing impatience rose up in her. Joss, and Terje, and Icrane . . . What were they all doing, impinging on her dreams, hinting of mysteries, hinting of death? She might as well have been trapped in a vacuum as on
that moon, where all her questions were soundless and there was no one to ask.

A tear rolled down her cheek as she watched. She brushed at it with her wrist. I’m just tired, she thought. More dust. Shadows in the dust. She saw Icrane’s face again, tranquil, saying her name soundlessly.

The death-statue in Terje’s hand.

Terje holding the River.

Her eyes stung. She whispered, “No. Not now. I have to watch . . .” The dust blurred in front of her eyes. “Nothing,” she said calmly, “is certain. Nobody can tell me anything yet—no one even knows where I am. There’s nothing to be sad about yet . . .” Her voice sank again into a whisper. “Which one? Which of them is the message about?”

The alien stirred behind her. She heard a noise from it. She didn’t turn, but instead stared stiffly at the screen, willing herself quiet.

Shadows. Shadows in the wind.

She held out her hand to the alien, gesturing without looking, without knowing if it could understand the gesture.

Something is out there.

It stood behind her, its beak chattering. It touched a light; the image held.

White dust and shadows. The day side of the moon. Dark patches moving against the wind. They were moving closer to the camera, but they weren’t getting any clearer. Still dark, smudged beneath streaks of dust. Kyreol blinked, her eyes stinging with tiredness.
They moved so slowly, it seemed; their faces would never become clear.

The alien made a mewing sound. Kyreol stared at the screen, her bones frozen. She tried to blink the image clear, but that’s all there was of it: dark, faceless shadows moving across the stormy daylight of the moon. Not human. Not tall, furry aliens. A third kind of people.

She sat down in the dust with a thump. More strangers, another language, more mysteries, more confusions. The alien thumped down beside her. All its eyes closed. Kyreol buried her face against her knees. After a moment, she shifted closer to the bright fur, comforting herself with the warmth and the softness and the random noises of the alien young. The big fingers stroked her hair lightly. The alien made a noise like a sorrowing whale and was still.