The Stars Like Gods Page 9

  She sank onto the couch and dropped her head into her hands. It was too much to ponder…and yet, somehow, right. True. She knew it in her soul. Still she resisted, though, because it was also ridiculous.

  “How can you be sure? I might have made it all up and told you grand stories in order to sound impressive.”

  Maris laughed warmly. “You were never much for lying. But you didn’t have to lie to me. I’ve been there for it all, for I, too, am First Generation.”

  She looked up, startled. “The memory of the founding of Mirai…it wasn’t our ancestors? It was us?”

  “I remember the day fondly. Gods, that water was freezing!”

  Nika’s head spun. Fragments of pieces of memories and incongruities scrambled to rearrange themselves within a frame whose contours had finally been revealed. This was why the encrypted memories spanned so many millennia, yet why they all felt so intensely personal.

  “And Grant? Are you suggesting he’s also First Generation? That’s why you know him?”

  “Indeed.”

  “But he’s just a…craftsman.”

  “He’s living a life of his choosing. Such as it is for most of the remaining First Generation, few though they are. They left behind politics and power games long ago to find their purpose in the smaller joys of living. You and I are rather unusual, to continue to lead public lives in the service of the Dominion government after so long.”

  There was a larger point in what Maris had said that she wanted to think on, but her overwhelmed mind was firmly stuck on the previous reveal. “I’m a little weirded out by the fact that he slept with me while knowing this about me—knowing who I used to be.”

  “You were lovers? Some things never do change. My dear, you’ve known Grant for 700,000 years, and you were unattached for sizeable slices of those millennia. This dalliance you apparently enjoyed with him the last few years? Trust me, it wasn’t the first time.”

  Nika’s jaw dropped. She felt dizzy.

  “What? You like each other. You always have.”

  “But…we don’t love each other?”

  “Precisely. It’s a perfectly natural way for friends to pass the millennia. And don’t worry, you didn’t cheat on Dashiel with him. Or with anyone. So boringly faithful always.”

  “It’s not boring to be faithful to someone you love.” She stood. She needed to pace. She needed a drink. “Okay, I’ll file Grant away for now, because there are more important issues. What you said about most of the other First Generation—do you mean the other Advisors aren’t?”

  “Blake is, I regret to say. He’s like a cockroach. Everyone wishes he would die off, but he just keeps sticking around. We’re all the Advisors, though. Charles Basquan, our current benefactor, whom you’ve met, is also First Generation. I dare not guess whether you’ve met any others. I didn’t anticipate Grant, so who can say?”

  “And the Guides—former Guides.”

  “No. They’re all quite old, but none retain their original psyches.”

  She grabbed a glass from a kitchen cabinet and set it too hard on the counter, then poured the rest of a bottle of cabernet into it. “Do they know about us?”

  “Oh, yes, which makes their decision to psyche-wipe you triply reprehensible. To willfully attempt to extinguish a life that has thrived across so many aeons.” Maris shivered visibly. “But they failed, and now they’re being punished.”

  Nika gulped down a sip of the cabernet and tried to focus. Questions needing answers. “What’s ‘sunsetting’?”

  “That’s what we call it when one of us willingly erases themselves and undergoes a full Retirement and Reinitialization. Sailing off into the sunset, as it were.”

  “Does it happen a lot?”

  “My dear, do the math. When we arrived on Synra, everyone was First Generation. All 38,118 of us. Now, there are at last count twenty-eight of us drawing breath as our original selves.” Maris cast a soulful look toward the afternoon sunlight streaming in the windows.

  She wished she could feel the loss of so many souls in the way Maris obviously did. But she didn’t remember who they’d been. “Why did it matter that Grant thought I’d…sunsetted? What rules was he talking about?”

  “Time and many heartbreaking experiences taught those of us who persevere a difficult lesson. When we encounter someone out there in the world whom we recognize is a new incarnation of someone who used to be First Generation, we can’t tell them the true extent of their heritage. Only pain and sorrow results from doing so, for us and for them. They don’t understand how they could have ever given up such a heritage or those millennia of memories and experiences. But at the time the individual sunsetted, they had their reasons for it, and we have learned we must respect those reasons.”

  She sank back onto the couch as a very big, very problematic puzzle piece snapped into place. “Is this why I never told Dashiel about Steven Olivaw?”

  “You remember Steven, then? Of course you would make a point to include him in those encrypted memories. You’re too sentimental not to. Yes, and no.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Yes, this is why you shouldn’t have told him. Why I counseled you vigorously and repeatedly not to tell him. But I don’t think it was the rule or my pleas that stopped you. Rather, the reasons behind the rule are the same ones that convinced you to keep your secret. The confusion and frustration everyone feels on finding out their prior incarnation sunsetted? It would be magnified a thousand-fold for Dashiel, because in his case, his prior incarnation also walked away from you. Left you behind, alone, so they could take the easy way out and die. Can you imagine what this knowledge would do to him?”

  She frowned. Maris was logically correct in her assessment, but…. “I hear what you’re saying, but to keep something like this from him? To keep my very nature a secret? It was wrong.”

  “What you mean to say is that it was hard. When you live as long as we have, you learn to endure hard things.”

  “Forgive me, but I don’t recall the ins and outs of such an allegedly critical skill, and I’m not comfortable with having kept this from him.”

  Maris deposited her drink on the counter and grasped both of Nika’s hands in hers. “Nika, listen to me carefully. Do not tell him. I remember Steven Olivaw a lot better than you do, and let me tell you something: he was a godsdamn tortured soul from the day he walked out of the lab. Don’t you dare turn Dashiel into one as well.”

  Then Maris nodded perfunctorily and retrieved her drink. “Now, I’ve had my say, and we’ll leave it there. You have other questions.”

  Thousands. Millions. “How do you manage it all? How have you not gone mad? It must be too much, for too long.”

  “That is the party line, isn’t it? I’ve forgotten more millennia than I remember. I’ve reinvented myself a hundred times over. I’ve had splendid years and dreadful centuries—or I assume I have. Most of the dreadful ones, I erased. I manage, we all manage, because for us life is not about the past. It’s always about the present, this moment, and the future moments awaiting us.”

  Nika chuckled wryly, or possibly wildly. “It is the Asterion way.”

  “And we are the living embodiment of the Asterion way. I’m not even joking. We are the threads that run through our people’s past, present and future, subtly guiding the pattern they weave. Trying to ensure it’s a beautiful one.”

  Compelling, even hypnotic words, but Maris’ poetic musings were more than she could take right now, when her world was busily spinning apart once again.

  “Does it even matter, though, when I can’t remember so much? I’m all for living in the present, but who cares how long I’ve done it if all I have left are a few fleeting glimpses of the past?”

  “It matters because you are you, and you have existed across aeons. To have done so is precious beyond measure.” Maris motioned toward the dining area. “Besides, you have your journals. They’re not quite memories, but they’ll have a great deal to show you.�
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  “What journals?”

  “Seriously, Nika. What did you use all that space encrypting memories for?”

  “Other than the founding of Mirai and the end of the SAI Rebellion? Sex with Dashiel…meeting the Taiyok Elder for the first time…more sex with Dashiel.”

  “Ah, valid choices to be sure. Come with me.” Maris strode past the dining table to the mirror decorating the wall behind it.

  Confused, Nika followed her.

  “Hold your hand up, palm open, in front of the space to the left of the mirror. Eye level.”

  The instant she did so, the mirror and a section of the wall slid away to reveal a hidden room. Row after row of shelves packed full of data weave cases lined every interior wall. On the right, just inside, a control pane waited for input.

  “What is this?”

  “Your journals. Seven hundred thousand years’ worth of them. Many are after-action reports of meetings, negotiations, political clashes and so on. Many are personal reflections. Though you could access the memory of any interaction in minutes or often seconds, you found taking the time to write about the event to be a valuable exercise. Recording not merely what happened, but why it did, the personalities and circumstances which caused it to happen the way it did, and your personal thoughts on the result.” Maris nudged her gently. “Go ahead. Ask the interface for a journal entry. It’s all intuitively cross-referenced.”

  Her brow furrowed. Where to even begin? She settled on something she already remembered, for simplicity’s sake and for confirmation, and entered ‘Toki’taku first Elder meeting.’

  Location: Row 8, Column 15, Slot 6

  She scanned a few rows until she figured out the organization, then retrieved the indicated data weave.

  Date: Y98,714.231 A6

  Subject: Taiyok Relations

  After two hundred thirty-three years of negotiations, the Taiyok Elder has at last agreed to a face-to-face meeting on Toki’taku. I am simultaneously eager and trepidatious, for to make it a success will not be an easy task.

  She jumped when Maris touched her shoulder. “I’ll leave you to your reading.”

  She started to protest, but the words died in her throat. She still had thousands, millions of questions…but it was possible Maris had just handed her the cipher to most of them.

  “Thank you. For everything.”

  11

  * * *

  NIKA’S FLAT

  Nika met Dashiel at the door to her flat with a kiss. She smiled against his lips. “All empty. It’s just us tonight.”

  She gestured grandly to the living room to reiterate the point, then frowned, only now noticing how the chairs off to the left remained pushed up against the walls and several of the tables were smushed together by the windows. “I do still need to clean up—”

  “It’s fine. Wonderful, in fact. I’m simply glad for the peace and quiet. Besides, you’ve been a little busy.” He hung his coat on a hook by the door and followed her into the living room. “What did you do today? I got caught up in meetings for hours.”

  “I, um….” She trailed off, almost as if her vocal chords had seized up when faced with the weight of the words she was asking them to transmit.

  This was going to be harder than expected. How to tell him that her entire world had again been upended, but also expanded beyond her capacity to absorb? How to begin to tell him of the wonders and tragedies she’d discovered within her journals, and how much still awaited her?

  “Nika? Is something wrong?”

  How to tell him she wasn’t and had never been precisely who he thought she was?

  But the millstone of the lie her present self hadn’t yet spoken pressed down on her, poised to burden every step she walked down that path. She couldn’t not tell him.

  She shook her head in answer and went over to the mirror. Drew in a deep breath and unlocked the library.

  “What the hells?”

  “You didn’t know about this room? About all these journals?”

  “No. I didn’t.” His brow knotted up as he took in the shelves upon shelves of data weaves. When he spoke, his voice sounded tentative. “I mean, I knew you kept journals, but I never had any idea….” He leaned back and peered around the corners of the wall framing the library. “How is this room even here? There’s no obvious gap in the layout, no negative space. It’s an astoundingly clever design.”

  His gaze finally settled on her; in the last few seconds his jaw had tensed and his chestnut irises had brightened to a fiery bronze of churning discontent. “I don’t understand. What is this? Did all of your previous generations hold onto the journals of their ancestors and pass them along, time and again?”

  “No. They didn’t.” She exhaled softly, took his hand and led him back into the living room. She sat down on the powder-blue couch, already her favorite, and patted the cushion beside her.

  He regarded her in evident confusion as he sat. “Nika, what’s going on?”

  “I found something out today. Something important. In retrospect, given the memories I’ve recovered and other oddities, I probably should have figured it out on my own, but I didn’t understand the nature of what I was remembering until now….” She cleared her throat and started again. “The tattoo on my back? It’s not there to honor my heritage—or it is, but it’s not a symbol of where my ancestors came from and what they did to bring us here. It’s a symbol of where I came from. Of what I did.

  “The woman in the memory of the end of the SAI Rebellion I told you about, Nicolette Hinotori? She’s not my ancestor. She’s me. Her bonded SAI, KIR? It’s a part of me. The last name isn’t an homage, it’s an accurate, descriptive designation. After our people settled on Synra, they—we—joined together to become an Asterion. To become…me.”

  “Well, yes, in a sense—”

  “I said the same thing at first, too. But, no, not in a sense. In a quite real actuality. Nika Kirumase was born that day, nearly 700,000 years ago. And in all the aeons since then, I never underwent a full R&R. I never retired a psyche and became someone new. When you met me, I wasn’t seventh generation, I was…okay, I haven’t done the math, and I don’t have a clue how many up-gens I did, anyway—hundreds, or more likely, thousands. But that’s not the point. The point is, all those journals?” She motioned to the open door of the library. “They cover the entire history of the Dominion, the entirety of Asterion existence, and I wrote every single one of them.”

  He stared not at her but through her, his eyes as turbulent as the muscles struggling to control his features.

  “Say something, please.”

  “What…no, this can’t be. You were…but how….” His throat worked. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  Uttered on his lips, the question sounded like a betrayal. “I can’t say for certain, though I can speculate. Maris says there are rules the First Genners abide by, and when she explained them they made some amount of sense, but at the same time—”

  “Maris? What does she have to do with this? You’re not saying she’s from the First Generation as well?”

  The tenor of his words was honed to cut sharply through the air, making this one sound less like a question and more like an accusation. She’d expected this to be difficult for him, but she might have underestimated how difficult.

  She nodded and tried to choose her words carefully, but the thoughts and emotions behind them danced in crazed loops to war with each other in her head.

  “That’s how I found out. When pressed, she confessed to me the truth about my history and her own. Dashiel, I don’t have the full answer for why my former self didn’t tell you all of this. But I suspect it had something to do with…” her gaze dropped to her lap “…with the fact that I knew your progenitor, your original, First Generation ancestor.

  “His name was Steven Olivaw, and he was a leader in the SAI Rebellion. I knew him for a long time. I loved him. Then he chose to R&R and was gone. And I think I was angry about it, for a longer
time. Then I met you, and I found love again. Better, stronger love. And I think I didn’t want you to feel any guilt over what someone who wasn’t truly you did an eternity ago. So, I didn’t tell you.”

  “You…dated my progenitor?”

  She winced by way of answer.

  “And you knew this about me when you met me?”

  “No, not when I first met you. Later.”

  The skin around his eyes twitched, and a vein running up his left temple throbbed. He stood and began wandering silently around the living room.

  “I’m telling you now because I want—I need—you to know. Because you should know. You always should have known. But this is all new to me, and—”

  “Who else?”

  She followed his lead and stood. “Who else what?”

  “Who else is First Generation? You, Maris. Who else?”

  “Grant….”

  He spun around, his face contorted. “What?”

  “Same as Maris and everyone else, he believed I’d voluntarily sunsetted—that’s what they call it—and he was following the rules by not telling me who I used to be. Yes, it’s weird, but I really don’t care about any of that right now. I care about you—”

  “Who else?”

  “Um, Satair. And the guy who owns the Pavilion. Charles Basquan.”

  “And?”

  “Those are the only ones I know of. I think it’s everyone I’ve personally met, but it’s not as if I was handed a list. There aren’t many of us left. Twenty-eight, Maris said.”

  His wandering jerked to a halt in front of the center window beside the fireplace. In profile, his jaw trembled. His chest rose and fell, then again. When he finally spoke, his voice had fallen to a gravelly whisper. “How long does it take, I wonder, for someone to become more than a dalliance to you people? To First Genners—that’s how you refer to yourselves, right? How long does it take for a relationship to gain true meaning? Ten thousand years? Fifty thousand? I’m assuming it’s something longer than thirty-two hundred.”