House of Reeds

Gretchen scrolled through the data, frowned, loaded some AI to process the raw feeds, frowned again, slid out of the chair and sat cross-legged on the floor. Without looking up, she took a notepad from her jacket pocket, found some writing pens and began making notes. Her soup grew cold. Magdalena turned onto her side, bowl empty of entrails, curled her tail over her nose and went promptly to sleep. Parker was already snoring.

Late afternoon sunlight crept across the floor, washing over Anderssen's back, and vanished as the sun passed into the clouds again. Malakar stirred after watching for a long time, picked up all the dishes and shuffled off into the kitchen. Anderssen's face remained tight with concentration, her brow furrowed. The comp hummed warmly in her hands. Her control stylus made faint squeaking sounds on the panel. At one point she took off her field jacket and carefully examined the durafiber surface for marks.

'Ahhh…' An hour later, Gretchen looked up with a grimace and stretched her back. She creaked and said 'Ow!' before rubbing her sore muscles.

Malakar appeared at the doorway. 'What did it see?'

'Nothing.' Anderssen laid the comp down on the rug. She looked disappointed and relieved at the same time. 'Nothing but dust.'

'How can this be?' Malakar knelt beside her, leathery tail flipping around and out of the way. 'I felt the air tremble with unwholesome power! Such strange lights there were in the old fane! Those technicians did not fall unconscious for no reason…did not your mind reach across thousands of pan in the blink of an eye, giving warning?'

'I did.' Gretchen spread her hands on either side of the comp. Her face was impassive. 'Yet, none of my instruments detected anything. All of this data just shows the kalpataru standing inertly in the shrine. No power fluctuations, no radiation emissions from the tree itself – nothing but the generator signatures of the kujenate equipment.'

'Nothing?' Malakar rolled back on her heels, claws tapping her snout. 'But -'

'We heard you!' Parker tapped his earbug, confused. 'Both Mags and I heard you clear as day -'

'Whatever happened was beyond the capability of these sensors,' Anderssen said, trying find the words to explain. 'But I saw…' She paused, remembering something which Hummingbird had once said.

'A teacher once said to me: Every time we do something, anything – eat, sleep, read a book – we leave an impression upon the world. Usually, normally, the impressions are wiped away by new things happening – someone else comes into the room, opens the door, picks up the book – but if a solitary object has been in one place for a very long time, if the same things keep happening in its immediate presence, then that repetition leaves a mark, a memory, a shadow of substance upon the pattern of the world…that pattern can be enormously strong.'

'Hoooo…' Malakar twisted her head from side to side. 'You saw – experienced – what the divine tree had done in the ancient past.'

Gretchen nodded, wondering how much to tell. The food she'd eaten lay in her stomach, undigested and heavy. I can't tell them everything – that the artifact woke to life, if even for an instant – what if they told someone else? The Company would tear down the whole city just to dig out the fragments of the thing…

She took a breath, and then said: 'The gift of the kalpataru was to reveal the unseen, to reach across the abyss of space and yield up sight, sound, vision, allowing instant communication across thousands of light years. Over millions of years of use, the artifact gained such a massive pattern of repetition it began to twist the fabric of time and space around itself, even when there was no power to drive the ancient machine.

'I think…when the kalpataru first came into the hands of the Jehanan, great wonders were revealed to them, even though the device had failed thousands of years before they laid claw on the divine tree. So strong were those events, so much power had been loosed in its presence, the memory is immanent in the metal itself. If one of the ancient Jehanan was…sensitive…if the machine was disturbed by a power-source…then that Jehanan's mind would have been filled with stupendous, terrifying, ecstatic visions.'

Gretchen felt a chill steal over her. And that was the salvation of Jagan. The beacon was damaged, unable to reach across the void to touch the sleeping thoughts of its makers, summoning them to feed upon the Jeweled-Kings and then the Jehanan. Not unless a truly powerful mind blundered into the trap. Oh Holy Mother, preserve me from gaining such skill!

'For some time – centuries? decades? – it seemed the kalpataru was still functioning. But there were only fragments of the past, only this…residue, repeating over and over. Mechanical sensors, like this comp, can't even detect the pattern. But my mind is…more sensitive.'

'I knew it,' Parker said quietly, watching her with wide eyes. 'You were different after you came back from Ephesus. What…what did that old nagual do to you?'

'Nothing, Parker. Mind your own business.' Gretchen glared at the pilot. 'Go back to sleep.'

'Wait a minute.' Parker said, distressed. 'What will the Company say about all this?'

'Nothing,' Gretchen said, hands clasped around her knees. 'I'm not going to tell them what really happened. I'll file a 'survey-found-no-evidence-to-indicate-First-Sun-artifact' and leave well enough alone. So, no bonus.'

'Crap.' Parker flopped back on the bed. 'I break half the bones in my body for this?'

Anderssen said nothing, resting her forehead on her arms.

Oh, Sister of God, what am I going to do? The Company won't even pay us back for all the gear we lost… What a black hole this was.

Parker lit a fresh tabac with an angry gesture and puffed smoke at the ceiling. No one said anything.

The Petrel Townhouse

Near The Court of the King of Heaven,

Central Parus

Leaning down, Mrs. Petrel picked up the broken half of an alabaster dish incised with tiny blue geometric figures. With a groan, she held the ancient plate up in the sunlight streaming through the porch windows. Her fingers appeared behind the translucent shell-like material, glowing pink and rose-red.

'That was a beautiful piece,' a raspy voice said from behind her.

Petrel nodded, but did not turn around. Instead, she set the plate down. The terrace was scattered with debris. Broken cups and plates and statuary. Fire had charred the perfume trees in the garden and the rice-paper shoji between porch and the house proper were torn and ripped. Some of the panels had been wrenched from their tracks and lay askew. In some places, blood dried on the floor.

'Everything here was carefully chosen,' Greta said, wondering where to start cleaning. 'I was just trying to make a harmonious room…'

Leather sandals shuffled on the sisal-carpeted floor and a wizened old NГЎhuatl woman moved into her field of view. Itzpalicue leaned heavily on her cane, casting about for somewhere to sit.

'There are no chairs,' Mrs. Petrel said in an empty voice. 'All stolen.'

'Ah.' Itzpalicue hunched over a little more. 'Your servants?'

'Gone. Dead.' Mrs. Petrel looked out into the garden. The ground was torn up, as though the rioters who had invaded the house had been digging for buried treasure. Someone had taken an axe to the fruit trees, though the limbs and trunks lay where they had fallen. 'Even old Muru, who has been with me since I was a little girl.' She lifted her hand, pointing at the garden buildings at the back of the property. 'The Marines found their bodies behind those sheds.'

The old woman tapped her cane on the floor and shifted her feet. 'You made a fine place here, but -'

'Yes, I did.' Mrs. Petrel turned, fixing Itzpalicue with a steady, even stare. 'I was happy here, my husband was happy. This was a planet with promise, Skirt-of-Knives, before you came meddling with your wrinkled old fingers.'

The NГЎhuatl woman did not reply, merely returning the Anglish woman's gaze.

'Tell me one thing,' Greta said. 'I happened to pass a little time with your man Lachlan while Bhrigu's troops were securing the hotel, and he says all of this…' Her hand made a wide circle, encompassing the ruined house, the troubled city outside, the sky, the entire planet. '…was to find