Authors: Robin Owens

Heart Journey (42 page)

BOOK: Heart Journey

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It wasn’t often that Raz was reminded that his mother had been a scholar; she’d always been such a charming hostess and caring mother.

She cleared her throat and began hesitantly, pausing between sentences, then continued smoothly.

All of my life I’ve lived on the Ship. I was born here and thought I’d die here like the generations before. I would look out the portholes at the black and white of the darkness and stars, the other colors I sensed but could not really see, and knew that the Ship was my home.

Like the two other Ships I could sometimes see out the portholes . . . the shining things not shaped like
Lugh’s Spear
.

I didn’t believe in the “mission” to get to another planet, a home world that was like those pieces of rock that we would occasionally pass.

I didn’t believe that there were actually “golden ones,” people who had boarded on Earth and not been born on the Ship, those who were whispered to sleep until we reached a planet. Which no one believed we would. Even kids knew that we were off course and there would be no planet.

Then word spread that there was a mutiny on
Nuada’s Sword
and one of the most golden of the golden ones was awakened to handle this.

Everything must have changed there, because it affected us here. One of the few golden ones that traveled with us, instead of the newer
Nuada’s Sword
, was awakened, too. He did have a golden glow around him. They said it was the remnants of the liquid in the tube that he slept in for so many years.

But they were wrong. I saw him once, the new Captain, walking in the hallway. There was a glow to his skin, but his aura also glowed. Golden.

And today for the first time in my memory, the Ship didn’t just automatically alter course to avoid something, but
turned
. And we faced a green-tinged brown and blue and white sphere. I was in one of the viewing lounges when we turned and saw it for a moment.

They said it would be our new home. Celta. Named centuries ago back on Earth.

I am terrified.

Raz’s mother paused.

“Imagine seeing a whole new world from a spaceship.” Del’s hushed voice sounded dazed.

Raz’s sister shivered. “I’m quite happy here on the ground.”

Raz’s mother set the book facedown on the table and went to the kitchen, came back with a tray with carafes of caff and cocoa and six mugs, poured and doctored each cup. When Raz took his he found caff hot and strong and sweet, perfect. Del’s dimples showed as she sipped her cocoa.

His mother drank deeply of her own caff, then picked up the book again and began to read.

The Ship broke!

“Landing” was horrible! I was gathered with my bunkies midship, like everyone else, in those rooms built to sustain stress. We were tossed around like dice in a cup. I have bruises everywhere and terror still lives in my heart.

Screaming and yelling started, but Captain Hoku controlled it. Said in that deep, calm voice of his that only the lower hull had been breached, that only people in Section Four who hadn’t gone to their safe places were hurt and dead. I don’t know that I believe him.

Doors all around the Ship opened and we were told to exit in an orderly fashion, taking only what we could carry.

I ran with the big satchel I’d made, taking these diaries.

Out into the light—a different light than I’d always known. Someone said it was too blue or white or something. But there were no walls! Even in the great greensward in the Ship, there was the hint of distant, curved metal walls.

Nothing surrounds me now. Anything could come from the sky, or from around me.

People fell down on the ground and screamed and shouted and cried.

I did, too.

Raz’s mother paused, turned a page, and continued.

I am calmer, not so scared that I can’t take writestick to paper and record my thoughts, and my fears, and my doubts. I’d always thought that I was a strong woman, but I shake nearly every minute of every day. I know nothing will ever be the same and I fear—everything, even people.

People I’ve known all my life have changed. Some broke and can’t deal with the sky and the dirt and the trees and the horizon in the distance. I feel like that, too, but I will not beg to go back into the Ship.

They say we will have a gathering tonight, and everyone who wishes will speak and we will all decide on options. That is very strange. Me, a baker, having a voice in how the Ship—how the settlement is run? It makes me shake more.

I yearn to go back and live in the Ship. Many of us do. But the golden ones speak of making a town. So far no one has been allowed to reenter the Ship, our home.

I don’t know what to do. Everything is too strange. The shakes have come again and I can’t write.

Raz’s mother’s voice ended on a wobble. She leaned against his father, as his sister and husband angled together.

Del sat straight in the chair beside him. He put his arm around her shoulders and she relaxed a little.

“How awful, I never thought . . .” Raz’s sister said.

Her HeartMate murmured love words, stroked her hair, said, “It all worked out. After all, we are all here.”

“How courageous she must have been, they all must have been,” Raz’s mother said.

“Especially the generational crew,” Del said. “The cryonic folk had it easier, the FirstFamilies.”

“Yes,” Raz’s father said heavily, “those who survived the sleep.” He leaned over and kissed his wife and HeartMate tenderly on her lips. “Can you go on? I’m fascinated.”

“We all are,” Raz said, his hands itching to hold the diary, to read, to act out this most personal Family memory.

Raz’s mother nodded, glanced down at the page. Raz’s father pulled his chair closer, followed her gaze as if he would read along with her.

His mother jolted in her seat, and they all stared at her.

After a long breath in and a short one out, his mother continued.

The Ship is gone!

We all woke to this terrible noise, this rumbling, breaking shaking noise! I staggered from the tent with the others and saw the ground give way and the Ship tilt down and more ground cover it up. Some people ran to it and were lost, too.

My home is gone.

“She saw it go down,” Raz’s father said. Everyone else exclaimed, too. Raz wasn’t sure what came out of his mouth. Del’s voice cut through the babble.

“Did she leave a map, give any directions?”

“No,” his mother said. “Still no map. More about her feelings and less about her surroundings.”

Del frowned, said slowly, “A woman like her, who’d lived on a starship all her life, might not be good at distinguishing flora and landmarks. You shouldn’t hope for a map.”

“Certainly we haven’t seen anything at first glance,” Raz’s father admitted. “Skip to the end of your book, darling.”

Raz’s mother nodded.

I have thought long and hard. This is a pretty place, but I want more people. Hoku, he says not to call him Captain anymore, told us that the crew and most of the colonists—those who paid for the Ships and the trip and slept in the cryonics—have begun to build a big city where
Nuada’s Sword
landed. Their machines work.

I don’t know what a city is.

But I know what walls are and I think walls are a good thing.

The walls of
Lugh’s Spear
are gone forever.

The walls of the shelters—houses—being built here are not big enough for me. They only surround one group of families.

I will go with the two-thirds of us to this new city of Druida.

I only shake a couple of times a week now. But they are not our Ship “weeks” anymore. They are longer.

I had no say in that.

Raz said, “So she ends that diary when she ended her time at the settlement near where
Lugh’s Spear
landed.”

“Seems so,” his father said, opened his own book, cleared his throat, looked down. With a shake of his head, he said, “I can’t read this. I thought I could at first, but the letters are all squiggly.” He smiled at his wife, then at Raz. “You two were the ones who studied the old language.” Puffing out a breath. “Just for this moment, eh? In case we found the diary?”

His wife elbowed him with a mock frown. “I thought that was why you married me?”

“Yeah, I was trying to work out the script on those old cards. The divination cards! Raz, you still got those?”

“Yes. They weren’t harmed in the break-in in my apartment. The pouch was opened and they were scattered, but the deck’s complete.”

“Lucky.” His father’s breath whooshed out. His thick brows lowered. “But there isn’t much info on the cards, is there, just drawings and the ancient script titling each card?”

“That’s right. Though I found a couple with
Lugh’s Spear
in the background.”

“Really?” asked his sister. “Which ones?”

“Eight of Cups and”—he lifted Del’s hand to his lips—“The Lovers.”

His sister frowned. “Change.”

“Ah, right,” Raz said.

“Cards,” his father murmured. “She might have mentioned them in here.” He tapped the volume, then reluctantly slid it over to his wife. “You might see if a ‘search volume’ will find it.”

“I’ll read the opening page first,” his mother said.

I did a sketch of the one now calling herself Dame Sea—after that old belief system they talk about all the time—and she liked it and gave me more paper. Now I can earn my way on this trek. People, those beginning to call themselves the FirstFamilies, and the upper echelons of the crew, are paying me for my sketches.

It is a relief.

There is no baking to be done while we travel.

Divination cards have always worked for me, and I need something to keep my mind and hands busy on this journey, so I have decided to make some. I would prefer flexiplastic, but I don’t have the resources of the Ship.

I think I will always miss
Lugh’s Spear
.

“See if she mentions a map.” T’Cherry shifted restlessly in his chair. When Raz’s mother continued to scan the pages, he tapped it, said, “Find the word
map
.”

“This volume is four hundred years old. Surely you don’t think . . .” Raz’s mother started, but the pages flipped.

“Some of her descendants read it, bespelled it. There were Flair security shields on the box and books.” He craned to see, shook his head, and muttered, “Still can’t understand it.”

“I can,” his wife said smugly. She ran a finger down the page, then read.

Every night when we gather around after dinner, he-who-was-Captain shows us a map of where we have been and where we are going and the progress that has been made. It is not like the only other map I have ever seen which was the inside of our lost
Lugh’s Spear
. Like most everything else about this strange journey, the few who were in the cryonic tubes of
Lugh’s Spear
have an easier time reading the map, though I study it. It is a top-o-graph-ic map.

I want to learn. I don’t want to be stupid.

Stupidity has taken a toll on this trip, people have died or wandered away and never been seen again.

Those who were in the tubes and Hoku-who-was-Captain say we are lucky that it is summer. Again, it is something the rest of us do not understand, though our leader has patiently explained it more than once, a season is when the temperature and plants around us vary.

I try hard to learn, because not to learn will be to die.

“Cheerful,” his sister said with a shiver.

“We can’t possibly understand what they went through.” D’Cherry patted her daughter’s shoulder.

“The captain had a map.” T’Cherry scowled. He rubbed his cheek. “What happened to it?”

Del shrugged. “Who knows? Do we even know what Family name he took?”

They all stared at each other. “ResidenceLibrary, are there any notations in any of your archives as to what Family name the
Lugh’s Spear
Captain chose? He would have been a FirstFamily, wouldn’t he?”

“No record,” said the ResidenceLibrary’s light female voice that sounded a lot like D’Cherry. “The Captain of
Lugh’s Spear
was offered membership in the FirstFamilies, of course, but he declined.”

“He
declined
!” Raz’s sister sounded astonished.

“Hard to believe,” T’Cherry said.

“The entry regarding him states he was very tired of leadership after
Lugh’s Spear
and the responsibility of bringing the colonists from the landing site to Druida City.”

“He was a great man,” Raz’s sister’s HeartMate said.

“Yes.” More lines dug into T’Cherry’s forehead. “The original settlement, those who stayed near
Lugh’s Spear
, died out, right?”

“History has it that the settlement was moved several times from the original location, then, yes, after a couple of generations the people were gone . . . dead or migrated to Gael City or Druida City.”

“Sad,” Raz’s sister said.

“Yes,” Raz said. “Celta is
still
a hard planet on her human inhabitants, and for new colonists . . .”

“Fatal to many,” Del said.

“But not Mona Tabacin,” D’Cherry said. “Not her. Let me read the final page . . .”

So I am finally settled in Druida. It isn’t what I expected, but I have a fine stone house and a man and am happily pregnant. I have a Family.

Life is better for me than it was on
Lugh’s Spear
. There I would never have been more than a minor crew member working in the kitchens. Here, I bake better than anyone else in the city.

I don’t shake much anymore, the journey got so tiring that I had no energy to do so, and I am happier, have accepted this new life and new ways.

I am no longer Mona Tabacin. I am Cerasa, Dame Cherry.

BOOK: Heart Journey

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