Ammonite

They sang their booming hymns of praise, wrapped their young as warmly as they could, and set out south. South, to the mating place of their ancestors, to build a fire to their gods, to appease their anger and bring back the sun.

The trek was hard. Their feet bled on the ice; there was not enough food. When the younglings curled up and stopped whimpering, and died one by one, each was laid on the ice, with a song for a grave. There were not many left when they reached the snow-shrouded forests on the southern shore of the sea.

None of the survivors had ever been near the stones, but memories buried in their bones showed them the way. They went forward through the trees with sure strides. But they had hardly lost sight of the shore when it seemed the sky was split by light and thunder and a bolt from god thrashed down and through the trees in a trail of noise and fire. They were knocked over by the blast, and the ground trembled under their feet as the black bolt ground and smashed through the trees. There was a great burning, and alien smells.

They fled back north, back across the frozen sea, back past the frozen bodies of their young, back to the cold and ice and stunted trees, for they had received a message, and the message was plain: the gods did not wish for them to journey south. They were to obey the gods’ will and return north, return to scratching at the ice for moss and poor shriveled berries, return to their lonely fastness where their numbers would grow fewer and fewer…

“Oh, my people,” Marghe whispered to the dying fire, then looked up, confused. People? Thenike sat, weary and still, drums on the floor. The glitter was gone from her eyes; they were dark and withdrawn. Leifin’s cheeks were bloodless, and she breathed heavily. Gerrel looked bewildered and a little afraid. Wenn and Kenisi were holding hands, drawing comfort from each other. Huellis and Hilt were both looking at Leifin, the former thoughtful, the latter grim. Marghe wondered if she looked the same. She felt Thenike’s hooded gaze resting on her, and turned.

“Thenike…” She did not have the words. Thenike had done something she did not understand and could barely believe. More than that, she had told a story which, if true—and it fitted the facts that Marghe herself had ascertained—held staggering implications. People…

The next day, Marghe worked in the gardens as usual. Thenike did not come. Marghe went to find her.

The viajera was in her room, sitting cross-legged on the bed. Light streamed in, staining the white walls lemon, picking fire from a picture painted directly onto the northern wall. Thenike looked like a tired, dark smudge in the middle of so much light; the dark circles under her eyes stood out clearly, and her skin looked pale, almost translucent. Marghe could see a faint blue tracery of veins under her skin. The room was cool.

“I was wondering where you were,” Marghe said, standing by the half-pulled-back door hanging. Thenike looked insubstantial; Marghe wanted to put her arms around her, make sure she was all there and all right. She cast around for some plausible excuse for intruding and could not find one. “I was worried,” she said simply.

Thenike smiled, a tired smile, but warm. “Come. Sit up here with me. I’ve been thinking about you. Tell me what you thought of my story yesterday.”

“It seemed true. Real.” Thenike waited. Marghe struggled to give her the truth. “You, the story… possessed me.”

Thenike nodded slowly. “Many viajeras have sung for your people. Your people smile and say ‘Very nice,’ but they don’t hear, they don’t see. We used to think you were all blind. Until you.” Thenike seemed to go away somewhere inside herself for a moment. Marghe set aside her curiosity and waited. “You followed me in deepsearch.”

Deepsearch. The Jeep ritual of naming, of conception, of bonding. Deepsearch. She was not sure if she wanted to believe Thenike. “I thought the virus was part of it.”

“Perhaps.”

Did that mean the virus was already inside her? No, it couldn’t be. She tried to remember what Lu Wai had told her about incubation periods; she knew that contracting a virus and displaying symptoms were not simultaneous. But no, it could not be the virus. The FN-17 would still be in her blood, wouldn’t it? She remembered waking in Ollfoss and finding that one soft-gel was missing. Had she taken it or lost it?

Thenike smoothed the coverlet with her palms. “Some viajeras can sing from within trance, from deep inside their own memories. They can bring others into their trance, make them see what they see, feel what they feel. Be what they’ve been.”

“But you’ve never been a…”

“Goth? Perhaps not. But part of what you call the virus may have part of what we call the goth embedded in its essence.”

Marghe realized that Thenike was telling her that the virus contained goth DNA and some of their memories. And then the virus became part of human DNA. She shook her head. That was not possible. She was not even sure she believed that goth existed.