Read Online Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent by Stephen Baxter - Free Book Online

today, irreplaceable lives lost
for ever.
    The ship soared upward. Earth quickly folded over into a glowing
blue abstraction, pointlessly beautiful, hiding the gruesome scenes
on its surface; the air thinned, the sky dimming through violet, to
black. The ship began to seek out the orbiting angular structure that
would carry it to the outer planets.
    Hama began to relax, for the first time since Gemo had revealed
herself. Despite everything that had happened he was relieved to
leave behind the complications of the Conurbation; perhaps in the
thin light of Jupiter the dilemmas he would have to face would be
simpler.
    Gemo Cana said carefully, ’Hama Druz, tell me something. Now that
we all know who and what we are - ’
    ’Yes?’
    ’In your searching, has your inquisition turned up a pharaoh
called Luru Parz?’
    ’She’s on the list but I don’t believe she’s been found,’ Hama
said. ’Why? Did you know her?’
    ’In a way. You could say I created her, in fact. She was always
the best of us, I thought, the best and brightest, once she had
clarified her conscience. I thought of her as a daughter.’
    The Virtual copy of her real daughter, Sarfi, turned away,
expressionless.
    Nomi cursed.
    A vast winged shape sailed over the blue hide of Earth, silent,
like a predator.
    Hama’s heart sank at the sight of this new, unexpected intruder.
What now?
    Nomi said softly, ’Those wings must be hundreds of kilometres
across.’
    ’Ah,’ said Gemo. ’Just like the old stories. The ship is like a
sycamore seed… But none of you remembers sycamore trees, do you?
Perhaps you need us, and our memories, after all.’
    Nomi said, anger erupting, ’People are dying down there because of
your kind, Gemo - ’
    Hama placed a hand on Nomi’s arm. ’Tell us, pharaoh. Is it
Qax?’
    ’Not Qax,’ she said. ’Xeelee.’ It was the first time Hama had
heard the name. ’That is a Xeelee nightfighter,’ said Gemo. ’The
question is - what does it want here?’
    There was a soft warning chime.
    The ship shot away from Earth. The planet dwindled, becoming a
sparking blue bauble over which a black-winged insect crawled.
     
    Callisto joined the community of foragers.
    Dwelling where the forest met the beach, the people ate the grass,
and sometimes leaves from the lower branches, even loose flaps of
bark. The people were wary, solitary. She didn’t learn their names -
if they had any - nor gained a clear impression of their faces, their
sexes. She wasn’t even sure how many of them there were here. Not
many, she thought.
    Callisto found herself eating incessantly. With every mouthful she
took she felt herself grow, subtly, in some invisible direction - the
opposite to the diminution she had suffered when she lost her hand to
the burning power of the sea. There was nothing to drink - no fluid
save the oily black ink of the ocean, and she wasn’t tempted to try
that. But it didn’t seem to matter.
    Callisto was not without curiosity. She explored, fitfully.
    The beach curved away, in either direction. Perhaps this was an
island, poking out of the looming black ocean. There was no bedrock,
not as far as she could dig. Only the drifting, uniform dust.
    Tiring of Asgard’s cold company, she plucked up her courage and
walked away from the beach, towards the forest.
    There were structures in the dust: crude tubes and trails, like
the markings of worms or crabs. The grass emerged, somehow,
coalescing from looser dust formations. The grass grew sparsely on
the open beach, but at the fringe of the forest it gathered in dense
clumps.
    Deeper inside the forest’s gathering darkness the grass grew
longer yet, plaiting itself into ropy vine-like plants. And deeper
still she saw things like trees looming tall, plaited in turn out of
the vines. Thus the trees weren’t really ’trees’ but tangles of ropy
vines. And everything was connected to everything else.
    She pushed deeper into the forest. Away from the lapping of the
sea and the