An alien light, p.1
An Alien Light, page 1
PRAISE FOR AN ALIEN LIGHT
“Deserves high marks for its original concepts, its world-building, and its characterization.”
—Booklist
“This heady mix of fantasy and sf explores humanity’s infinite capacity for change. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“An attractively complex portrayal of an alien species.”
—The Washington Post
“An engrossing novel of love and hatred, self-centered scheming and noble sacrifices, with plenty of tension along the way.”
—United Press International
“This quest for understanding packs more punch than the flashiest battle in space.”
—Locus
“A fascinating story … makes a strong case for human diversity and individuality.”
—Tacoma News Tribune
“Kress’s supreme achievement is in making us see ourselves through alien eyes. It is we who are the aliens in this book, weirdly incomprehensible, perverse beyond belief, insanely alone, and yet we reach for the stars.”
—Futures
“Nancy Kress … has once more demonstrated a stylistic gift uniquely hers—the ability to make the shape of her story mirror its spirit.”
—Orlando Sentinel
“Kress is a master storyteller.”
—Austin American-Statesman
“She has become one of our very best.”
—James Patrick Kelly
“Nancy Kress has the true story-teller’s gift—the ability to make her characters and what happens to them so vital that the reader’s heart aches.”
—Stephen R. Donaldson
FOUR CULTURES—TWO HUMAN, ONE ALIEN, AND ONE CAUGHT IN STASIS BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH. AND ONE QUESTION:
What price survival?
Ayrys, a glassblower and outcast.
Jehane, a skilled female warrior.
Dahar, with a deeply inquisitive mind.
Grax, an alien with profound doubts.
These four and hundreds of others are thrown together in an experiment to determine the fate of humanity, both on Earth and in her galactic colonies. For the Ged, the stakes are nothing less than the outcome of a war. For the humans, ignorant of the larger situation, the rewards for participating are incredible riches. But no one except the alien Ged understand the criteria for being chosen.
As the experiment spirals out of control, it threatens to destroy everything, including the experimenters. Only a small handful of humans come to recognize the true nature of what is on offer in the mysterious city the aliens have built, seemingly from nothing.
When that knowledge comes, there is no agreement about if, how, or when to use it. Some will betray others. Some will sacrifice. Some will die.
And some must succeed, no matter what the price.
Epic in scope, peopled by characters from every strata of profoundly different societies, An Alien Light is an unflinching look at the strengths and weaknesses of the genetic, evolutionary, and historical inheritance that all of us share.
AN ALIEN LIGHT
NANCY KRESS
An Alien Light
Copyright © 1988 Nancy Kress
First Published by Arbor House/William Morrow, 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
The ebook edition of this book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share the ebook edition with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
WordFire Press has chosen to reissue selected out-of-print novels, in hopes of creating a new readership. Because these works were written in a different time, some attitudes and phrasing may seem outdated to a modern audience. After careful consideration, rather than revising the author’s work, we have chosen to preserve the original wording and intent.
EBook ISBN: 978-1-68057-341-1
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-68057-340-4
Case Bind Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-68057-342-8
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CONTENTS
I. The Central Paradox
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
II. Walls
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
III. Kreedogs
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
IV. Double Helix
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
V. Disease and Antitoxin
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
VI. An Alien Light
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
VII. The Island of the Dead
Chapter 82
About the Author
If You Liked …
PART ONE
THE CENTRAL PARADOX
All cities are founded on fear.
—John Anthony
1
“One,” the Ged said. “From the third gate.”
“What does it do?”
“It beats on the wall to escape.”
“Already,” the second Ged said, in the grammatical configurations of an observed fact. The two gazed at the wall screen, which showed a small, brightly lit, windowless gray room with a human pounding on the wall. The Ged closed all but his central eye, so high on his forehead that its field of vision extended to the zenith, against the hurtful brightness. His pheromones took on a faint tinge of discomfort, and the first Ged moved closer to him, his own pheromones smelling of sympathy.
“How many now have come inside the perimeter?”
“Five hundred seventy. We will admit thirty more,” the second said, although of course the other already knew it; that was why he had asked. Both voices were low, vaguely growly, almost entirely uninflected. For a moment the first Ged let his pheromones smell of weariness, and the sympathy smell of the other grew stronger.
“This one?”
“Probably not. If he conquers this violent fear and returns to his mind, perhaps. But he has not even taken the gem. His very desire seems to be lost to his violence.”
The human, who wore the drab tebl of a Jelite citizen, sank to the floor and curled into a tight, trembling ball. The Ged watched, each holding back the strong pheromones of distaste out of courtesy to the other. The room where they stood, inside the double perimeter wall enclosing the empty and waiting “city,” was lit with the dim, orangey glow of the Ged sun; it smelled of the good, methane-based air of Ged; it was a suitable temperature for the seriousness of this Ged project. But it was not Ged, and both of them were homesick. They would have preferred to be on Ged, or else with the Fleet, were they not needed here. Each smelled the other’s homesickness, one strain of pheromones among all the others, but they did not speak of it. There was no need. All eighteen Ged within the perimeter smelled the same.
The first Ged blanked the wall screen, returning the room to normal light, and the two opened their high central eyes. Although it had evolved to sight formidable dominant predators extinct for thousands of millennia and so was now mostly useless, there was still a feeling of discomfort when the central eye was closed. The Ged faces—bilaterally symmetrical, hairless, humanoid except for the three eyes and a lack of subcutaneous muscle—showed no expression. That had been one of the hardest things to grasp during the year spent observing humans outside the perimeter wall: that the grotesque distortions of the human facial muscles carried information. It had been hard for even the Library-Mind, which had taken much longer to find that pattern than the patterns of the language. The Ged had not expected the sophistication of pheromones, but neither had they expected muscle spasms. No other sentient race, anywhere, conveyed information by muscle spasms.
One more bewildering difference.
“Significant data,” the Library-Mind growled softly. Both Ged turned to listen. “Significant data, Level Three. Biology confirms that all humans are indeed of the same species. Central paradox is not resolved by multispecies explanation.” The Library-Mind offered the last two words in the configurations of an explanation discovered to be contrary to fact.
The first Ged hummed softly in exasperation. The other courteously stroked his companion’s back and legs, radiating the pheromones of comfort.
“It would have at least explained their violence to each other!” the first Ged said.
“Yes. Harmony sings with us.”
“Harmony sings with us.”
“May it always sing.”
“It will always sing. We are no closer to an answer than we were, Grax.”
“No. Perhaps when the humans come inside.”
The first Ged glanced at the darkened wall screen. The other did the same. In both minds ran the same thoughts—not because they shared mind, as some species did, but because the thoughts were the ones that all Ged, genetically similar and so capable of intelligent civilization, would have in this situation. They smelled each other’s pheromones and they thought of Ged, they thought of defending their home, they thought of the Fleet, they thought of the importance of resolving the Central Paradox.
They thought of time running out.
2
Between its banks the river was rising, a dark rush of water moving in two directions at once. A Firstnight breeze carried the scent of mountain water to Ayrys, motionless beside her fire. Built on a wide, bare shelf of rock between the river and the upland veld, the fire could easily be spotted from the surrounding hills, a beacon in the deepening gloom. Such a fire for a lone, inept traveler was stupidity, or defiance, or both. Ayrys no longer cared.
A knife, which she did not know how to use, lay on the rock beside her, along with a lumpy bottle of blue glass. Small Moon had risen, veiling the veld in cold white light. The vast stirrings of the veld as threenight began, which a few hours ago had sent her scurrying wide-eyed for the safety of the barren rock ledge, seemed to have finally ended. What next? Town-bred, she didn’t know. Dusk had been bizarre enough.
Just beyond the rock ledge, a huge kemburi plant, which had sprawled quietly soaking up sunshine all threeday, had snaked vast spongy tendrils into a dense ball against the coming cold. One tendril had curled around some small, ragged-eared animal Ayrys could not identify, a small pocket of moving heat, and drawn it inward; the animal had screamed only once.
Beyond the kemburi, spikebushes had fired sudden, sharp, spore-carrying thorns onto the scrubby grass. Small, hectic wildflowers, having grown feverishly in the glare from Firstmorning to Lastlight, just as quickly folded bright petals under spiny outer leaves. Something unseen sprayed pungent moldy scent onto the wind, and something else unseen had responded with quick crackling of twigs. The whole veld had folded in on itself against the night, a dull green spiny skin crawling over the rock beneath, and once those heaving vegetable hours had begun, no animal howled or moved.
They were moving again now.
Wearily, Ayrys moved from the fire to the riverbank, knelt, and thrust her hand downward to grope for the blobs of clay she had stuck under the overhang of rock. Both blobs were still there; the river, then, was not rising as fast as she had feared. It would not flood—at least, not this portion of it—until the threenight had passed. She could wait here, if she chose, until Firstmorning.
Why should she wait? In a few more hours, Big Moon would rise, providing enough light to walk; there was no reason to wait. There was no reason not to wait.
Embry.…
Eyes squeezed shut, hand still cleaving the cold water, Ayrys waited out this fresh rush of pain. It would pass—that she had already learned in her three days of exile. It always passed. She dug the nails of one hand into the wrist of the other and waited.
The fire had burned low. Ayrys rebuilt it, skillfully feeding in bits of grass and twig, making the most of each scrap and conserving the rest. A pile of woody scrub lay beside another pile of the long, fork-tipped grass that inexplicably grew in some places on the veld and not in others. A good fire builder, she thought derisively—all glassblowers were good fire builders. It was the first thing she had done well in her stumbling exile from Delysia.
When the fire again blazed brightly, Ayrys squatted on her haunches and stared into it. Firelight slid over the curves of the blue bottle. On the dark veld the grass rustled, smelling of thornbush and some sharp, thin reek Ayrys couldn’t identify. Beyond the veld stretched more veld, always sloping downward, till somewhere three days behind her lay the wide valley sloping to the sea. And Delysia. And Jela. And ahead, higher in the mountains …
Something with four wings and a huge, bobbing head flew an arm’s length above her head. In the distance a kreedog, night-prowling and vicious, howled at the cold moon.
A sound like jaws snapping, and then a scream.
Ayrys rolled from her blanket and scrambled to her feet. For a sickening moment, not fully awake, she didn’t know where she was, or why. The scream rose again, something flashed white in the gloom just beyond the rocky ledge, and Ayrys sprinted forward. Halfway to the kemburi, her mind, coming from farther away, caught up to her muscles. The scream hadn’t sounded the high pitch of fear; it was something else.
