11. Regenerative machines couldn’t fix natural conformity.

ELEVEN

Regenerative machines couldn’t fix natural conformity.

The planet consisted of ten major landmasses, all of which shared the same general ecosystem as the first we’d landed on. The shape of the continents implied the planet still grew into its true identity, with the coastlines bearing striking similarities to where it had been one mass and broken apart over time.

The similarity of the species on each of the continents implied the separation hadn’t been long ago.

None of our ventures yielded any evidence of mammals, and by the time we entered orbit to begin our three day quarantine, we’d seen at least fifty different species of birds and been cuddled by them all.

My bird, whom I’d named Squeakers for her tendency to squeak when it was time for her meal, didn’t seem to mind captivity, although she protested her various appointments with the Veloc, who worked on her wings in the hopes of restoring some comfort. None of them knew if she would ever fly, but unlike with me, they doubted she had ever been able to fly at all.

Regenerative machines couldn’t fix natural conformity.

Their machines did help her beak, although they only did enough tests to determine her beak could be regrown. As they did not want to teach Squeakers the meaning of fear, they utilized only painless treatments.

Squeakers simply disliked the cold tools, and we’d conquered those by taking the time to warm them to a temperature she didn’t mind.

On the third day, we introduced Squeakers to Palta. I stood ready to defend my bird from harm, but somehow the Veloc communicated to the cat the bird wasn’t food but family. Rather than try to kill and eat the defenseless bird, the cat settled in, purred, and nuzzled her new friend.

Squeakers adored the cat, burrowed into her fur, and made contented cooing sounds.

“Perfect xenodiversity,” Alban murmured so as not to startle the pair. “Palta took much time and training to teach the difference between prey and friend. Squeakers simply does not understand that Palta could have been a threat.”

“Palta’s pretty amazing.” I turned wide eyes to the cat’s owner. “You taught a cat to be friends with birds .”

“It was necessary! The Veloc keep a lot of songbirds and other avians as pets, and Palta needed to understand which birds she can eat. We actually had to hire a psychic to help us imprint on her the difference, but it’s pretty easy to teach her now. She won’t attack any bird that looks anything like Squeakers.” Waldren smiled at the pair. “And if Squeakers can’t go with you on your apprenticeship for any reason, I can watch her for you. She likes Palta enough she won’t feel abandoned.”

I doubted the bird understood abandonment, but rather than voice my concern, I nodded. “That might be the best for her. I’m not sure we should teach her to fly unless we release her back to her own world. She’d be killed right away.”

“You are likely right,” Herserael replied. “Flightless but not in pain would be the best result for her. We already are seeing some results. She is more energetic and eating more, which are good signs. Perhaps there was something to your theory that the shiftgem gate did not want to do anything for us but instead wanted to find an appropriate protectorate for her world. Your compassion is unmatched, and we Veloc will not allow this planet to be destroyed through greed.”

While it was only one of many theories, it was the one I liked the most. “How much is a planetary bounty?”

“A billion standard credits is the typical amount, paid out by the various planets in the group that oversees exploration,” Alban replied. “We may end up with some compensation for creating a protectorate. It happens sometimes when there are unique ecosystems like this. A billion is truly a small price to pay for a whole new world. But it’s also a small price to pay to protect that world.”

After the split, the credits would have been enough to set me for life—and buy several spaceships, entire colonies of kittens just like Palta, and never have to worry about paying for anything. Rather than get upset over what I wouldn’t be able to enjoy, I considered Squeakers. “The universe truly is a strange place, isn’t it?”

“It is strange, yes,” Alban replied. “It is also wondrous. As soon as we are in comm range, we will send the map, claim protectorate status over the planet, and bring a more robust expeditionary force here. Then we’ll begin making plans to set up a spaceport. That would pay for the care the planet requires, lure researchers over, and potentially give us a method to fund further expeditions.”

Waldren sighed. “So much paperwork.”

“You will surely survive,” the Veloc replied with zero evidence of sympathy.

The day of our departure, I woke to a soft and gentle song. Unable to determine where the music, similar to a bird’s melodious cries, came from, I ventured to the bridge to discover everyone staring at the viewport at the world we would soon leave to return to the Veloc’s home.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“The planet sings,” Alban replied in a hushed tone. “Her song penetrates even the vacuum of space.”

“How?” I blurted, my eyes widening at the thought of the impossible being possible.

No one had an answer for me.

“Where’s Squeakers?” I asked. Everyone pointed at one of the chairs, where the bird cuddled with Palta. I smiled at the odd pair. They both slept, unaware of the planet’s song, which infused the ship and brought with it a strange sense of peace. “Do you think the planet is sentient?”

The first day of classes, in the torrential downpour of information on what we needed to learn before we could venture off world, the possibility of a sentient planet had been brought up, although everyone had quickly dismissed the idea.

“It’s disturbingly possible,” Waldren stated. “If we translate the melody into mood tones, this song is along the lines of a soothing but triumphant finale. A song of closure and joy. Did you know we have databases that can evaluate music like that?”

I hadn’t, so I shook my head.

“The singing started about two hours ago. I woke first, and I checked on the animals. Squeaker’s beak is almost fully regenerated now, by the way. Take a look.”

Sure enough, the bird’s bill resembled what I remembered of her brethren on the beach below. “That’s a lot of growth.”

“Most of it started when the planet began to sing. Her wings are unchanged, but I don’t think the planet is capable of fixing that. She was born that way. Her beak was broken—her wings were not.”

“Are you saying the planet is trying to tell this little bird goodbye?”

Waldren glanced at the Veloc. The predators shrugged. The man heaved a sigh. “I don’t know what I think. But I ran a scan on the sand we brought in for its composition. It’s evolvulite. The sand, the dirt… it contains or is fully made up of evolvulite. The sand has the purest concentration. Our surface scan is implying that the planet’s crust and upper surfaces are at least sixty percent evolvulite. It’s very much like Earth in that regard, and Earth has one of the highest known concentrations of evolvulite in the universe.”

I held my breath, staring at the screen with wide eyes. “What do we do?”

“We keep our plan the same as before,” Alban stated. “We will install a spaceport, and we will do very careful—and expensive—tours of the planet for those interested. We will allow minimal research. We will work with the other clans to ensure this planet’s survival. We will adjust our purpose to make sure this jewel remains a jewel until the day it faces Earth’s fate. And unlike Earth, we will be prepared to rescue as many of the birds and animals as we can, creating sanctuaries for them so she is never forgotten. But she is a young world, and it will likely be many a long year before she shares Earth’s fate—assuming she does.”

“Perhaps we should name the planet Melody,” I suggested, gesturing to take in the planet and the song she sang. “She sings .”

“A good plan. I’ll say one thing, I’m going to be doing a great deal of thinking on our way home,” Waldren replied.

I would, too—assuming we found our way home.

We traveled for well over thirty hours before the planet’s song faded away to silence. If we flew every hour without stopping, we wouldn’t reach the nearest shiftgem gate in our lifetime. It would take several lifetimes to reach one.

Our only hope for making our way home involved luck and an undiscovered gate. As the only ships to venture this way had been generational ships lacking the equipment to identify possible habitable planets from the distance they’d been from our discovery, we would have to do sector scans and hope for the best.

Even with a planet full of evolvulite, we couldn’t create a shiftgem gate.

Nobody knew what made them appear, why, and what made them vanish as though they’d been ghosts or some strange mirage in the first place. Fortunately for most, shiftgem gates tended to stick around, although there were known incidents of them disappearing without warning.

The voyage had turned from an experiment for my adaptability to an exploration of our resilience and determination to go back to the places we knew.

Perhaps one day, life would stop surprising me.

One unasked question loomed, and rather than stew in uncertainty, I asked, “What are our odds of finding our way back to known space?”

“Higher than you might think, lower than I like,” Waldren replied, and he gestured to the main monitor, which brought up a large-scale star map. A red dot appeared. “That is our current position.” After a moment, a pale yellow field covered most of the map. “That is known space, defined by having a shiftgem gate within three months of space travel.” A purple dot appeared on the far edge of the yellow zone. “That is your world.”

“We ended up on the exact opposite side of known space?” I asked, my eyes widening.

“That’s correct. We’re actually closer to Earth than your home right now.” A green dot appeared along the edge of known space. “ Homo sapiens amuse most in the universe. Before the planet’s destruction, homo sapiens viewed themselves as the center of the universe. In reality, they’re along the edge of it. The other races did what they could to save our people, but Earth has never been easy to access. I think it’s like this world—there were no shiftgem gates because if there were gates nearby, the planet would be plundered. The first shiftgem gates to appear near Earth did so shortly before the planet’s demise. The other races barely had enough time to prepare homo sapiens for departure—and many died.”

I considered the planet we’d just left behind. “It’s really like Earth?”

“Earth had many predators, homo sapiens among them. I never heard any reports of Earth singing, either.” Waldren replaced the star map on the display with black space, and a red dot appeared. “This is our current location, and I’m zoomed in, so you can see what we have around us within a year of flight.”

I regarded the void, empty save for one tiny planet, with dismay. “We’re looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“We are.”

“How long do we have in terms of supplies?”

Waldren winced. “Six months. The best we can do is explore for two and a half months out and then return to Melody to attempt to resupply, assuming we can figure out what we can eat that won’t completely disrupt their environment. And I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want to do is teach Squeakers and her kin that we’re able to eat them. Perhaps the fish, assuming we can study their behavior and determine they have natural predators in the waters. The one that ate the bird implies they have a more usual ecosystem in the ocean.”

For a long time, I stared at the blank map, the red dot, and Squeaker’s home world, and wondered what the future might hold.

As I lacked any conditioning to help me cope with the reality of our situation, Waldren suggested the Veloc activate my link and start training me on coping with the ability to read data in my head with the help of the implant. As Herserael thought it to be a wise idea, he removed the caps covering the link behind each of my human ears and showed me. The device had a plug meant to hold hair to mask the presence of the link. He showed me how the plug worked, snapping the cap embedded with hair matching mine into place. When installed, most wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

The hair had been cultivated from my head, making use of the ship’s regenerative technology to create a wig. As I liked my hair, I requested it to be covered.

He then showed me the chips, handing me the entry-level set.

Much like the planet we’d left behind, the chips sang. My eyes widened. “They sing?”

The Veloc hooted his amusement, and then he cooed. “Most excellent. No, chips don’t sing for everyone, but those with an aptitude for it may hear such things. Each chip is made with tiny evolvulite crystals. The singing you’re hearing is resonance. Some have it, some don’t. Waldren’s chips sing, and it took him many months to adapt to it.”

The man in question snorted. “I needed a psychic to dampen that part of my brain. I’m overly receptive—but it’s also why I can manipulate the computer systems so well. I have latent psychic abilities, but they’re not accessible. They just make my ability to link stronger. It’s individualistic if the singing bothers you.”

“Will it be louder once it is installed?” I asked.

“Nobody knows. It simply varies too much. We won’t know how you’ll react until you try. Are you ready?”

I nodded, and I tilted my head to the side so he could access the chip ports installed behind my ears. “Does it hurt?”

“No, it doesn’t hurt. You’ll hear a click when the chip is inserted, and then it’ll activate when the cap is put into place. Starter chips won’t work without the caps in place, but advanced chips will operate as soon as they are inserted. The cap safeties are meant to give relief to new linkers. In a way, you’ll have an easier time of it. Waldren will reduce the number of interfaces you can access with your link until you’re used to filtering them out. Are your systems ready for it?”

“The ship is operating on minimal systems. Go ahead with the insert,” Waldren replied.

As promised, I felt nothing during the chip installation, but I did hear a faint click. The chips continued to sing. I tensed when aware of the Veloc replacing the cap to protect the delicate chip and equipment embedded in my skull.

For a moment, the singing intensified before quieting to a whisper. In the upper part of my vision, I became aware of the presence of a prompt like I’d use for a computer. No matter where I looked, the prompt remained, a ghostly overlay.

With a little work, I managed to populate the prompt with an options command. A menu appeared, informing me of my various choices, including an informational database. I discovered I could access the database with a thought, and the wonders within reminded me of a massive library filled with all the knowledge in the universe.

Waldren chuckled. “It took you less than five minutes to locate the primary database. Well done, Camellia. As you become more adept with the link, you won’t even realize the interfaces are there. More often than not, you’ll filter them out of your general awareness unless you need it—and you can summon and dismiss it as you need. The starter chips don’t allow you to dismiss the primary prompt, though. It’s a training tool. Are you experiencing any unwanted noise or discomfort?”

“The singing is a barely noticeable whisper,” I reported. After a moment of thought, I added, “There’s nothing uncomfortable about it. It’s not much different from the computer system we used at school.”

“That’s intentional. When we were setting up your trainer chips, we checked into the computer systems you are familiar with. We used the closest system to what you used to give you the best chance of a quick adaptation. You’ll be able to switch between various operating systems on other chips. My chips have a set of five systems I can use, as that gives me the versatility I need to control my ship completely through my link if needed. Not a lot of pilots do a complete interfacing with their ship like I do. It’s a lot of extra work to learn. But if I’m physically incapable of flying the ship but have retained my mental capacities, I can still fly her.”

“That’s incredible.” I delved deeper into the informational databases, discovering I could also pull up images of plants, animals, birds, and fish with a thought. I understood why everyone had been concerned.

If such images mystically began to appear without warning, I would not have handled the intrusion well. My awareness I controlled—and could dismiss—most of the new inputs kept me from freaking out over the new things only I could see.

“If you begin experiencing any discomfort, let us know,” Waldren ordered. “In the meantime, your job is to familiarize yourself with the system. I’m going to bring up a new system once every two hours. If you hit your threshold for volume, let me know, and we’ll start the exercise over. Ideally, within the next thirty-six hours, you’ll be able to interface with the entire ship, although your chips are restricted on what you can access until you’ve learned how all the systems work. In our current situation, it’s best for you to be busy enough you aren’t worried about where we’re going or if we get there. We’ll all be conjuring similar tasks to keep ourselves busy and mentally sound. You’ll be at the highest risk of a breakdown, however. We’ve been conditioned for this possibility.”

“I haven’t,” I conceded. I considered Squeakers and her feline companion. “But even if we run out of time or must adapt to living on Melody, Squeakers got a second chance.”

“Yes, she did. But the universe works in mysterious ways. I think we’ll be fine.” Waldren’s smile caught me by surprise. “That evolvulite gate took us there for a reason. I suspect we’ll find our way out of here, likely with frightening ease.”

“Why would ease be frightening?” I inquired, furrowing my brows. “I don’t get it.”

“In cases like this, ease means we were not the ones in control of where we went or how we got there. If this goes as I expect, we’ll find a shiftgem gate—and we’ll find it because one of us is going to get an unpleasant surprise.” With a rather wicked chuckle, he gestured to the main monitor. A report about someone having become possessed by a shiftgem gate so it could be used came up.

The man in question, a homo sapiens with gray-green scales and gills, had reported that long after the discovery of the gate, it continued to sing to him, a haunting song reminding him of the time a stone had bent his will.

“How does stone sing?”

“I really don’t know,” Waldren replied. “You know what glass is, yes?”

I nodded. “Of course. We make drinking vessels out of it, and some rich people even use it for windows.”

“You can make glass from shiftgem crystals, and should you apply some friction to the rim of a round glass, you can make it sing. The Veloc have created musical instruments that make use of this property. We’ve found several materials we can create glass from, but shiftgem crystals make the best singing glass. What we don’t understand is how the original homo sapiens had lived on their planet for so long without unlocking the power of shiftgem crystals. They used it as building materials among other things, but they never unlocked its full potential.” After a moment, he shrugged. “But then again, had they, the universe would have been theirs to discover. And humanity is many things, but I’ve always felt that we, perhaps, should not be the rulers of anything other than our personal matters. We always find a way to make a mess of things.”

That we did. “So I learn, and we wait. Is that it?”

“That’s it,” he confirmed. “We will hope for the best and plan for the worst. That’s all we can do.”