Reclamation

Eric licked his lips. "Human beings started colonizing the Quarter Galaxy, about ten thousand years ago, according to the best guesses. The distances involved, however, even with the third level drive and communications systems, were too great for everyone to keep in touch. Then there were revolutions and plagues and famines and all the chaos of history. So the colonies lost track of each other, found each other, and lost track again.

"But not everybody left the Evolution Point. Some, maybe even most, chose to stay there. They already had an advanced technology and a coherent history. While the colonists were going on creating new worlds, they just kept building on the old. Out in the Quarter Galaxy, civilizations rose and fell; on the Evolution Point, they just kept rising.

"But ten thousand years is a long time, and the Nameless alone knew how long humans had been on the planet before then. They had a good enough bio-technology to breed whatever they wanted, even—" Eric waved his hands—"telekinetics or human datastores." He gestured at Aria. She didn't even blink. "But resources still got used up, or the climate got unfriendly, or any of a hundred other changes happened. Ten thousand years is long enough to show up on even a geologic scale.

"So the inhabitants of the Evolution Point decided they needed a new home. What were they going to do? Send out a survey team to find a new planet and take their chances like a bunch of colonists? No. They were going to make very sure that they had a home fitting of their elite status as the first human beings on the first human world.

"They built one. They built May 16.

"The next question they faced was how to get their whole population, that could have very well numbered in the billions, to their new home. The most convenient way would be to move the ground they were standing on to the new orbit. Then they could transfer all the people to the new world using short-range shuttles, or whatever their equivalent of short-range shuttles would have been.

"But not everyone wanted to leave the Evolution Point. The genetically engineered segment of the population, your ancestors and mine, didn't want to move to this new home for some reason. Maybe they were already tired of being slaves and this just pushed them over the edge. They went into rebellion. If they fought, they won and kicked the entire population off the world to become the Rhudolant Vitae. Or maybe they never fought. Maybe the Rhudolant Vitae were the ones who were on space stations or in ships at the time.

"Because what they definitely did, your ancestors and mine, was steal the world. They moved it to a location that was so preposterous they hoped no one would ever think of looking for them. Their calculations went wrong somewhere and that's why most of the place is dead. That was why the Servant, whoever he was, said 'there is no place for you but here,' because this is the only habitable part of the planet.

"Stone in the Wall dena Aria Born of the Black Wall, am I right?"

"The general pattern matches available information but specific details are not here." Aria jerked like she'd been startled. The stone fell out of her hand and thudded onto the ground.

Her hand drifted to her forehead and pressed against her brow.

"Aria?" A fine layer of perspiration had formed on her skin. Eric reached out, ready to use his power gift if she needed it.

"I'm all right," she waved him back. "I…That was the first time…I…" she rubbed her temple. "The stone just told me it thinks so, but it doesn't…we don't know." She blinked at the shining sphere. "It's never felt like that before."

"You never asked it about its own history before." Eric retrieved the stone and held it out. Aria wrapped her hand inside the hem of her poncho before she took it from him. "You said once that you wished you had your ancestress's knowledge. Well, from what Zur-Iyal said of what's inside those stones, I thought you might, at least some of it."

Aria opened her mouth, and closed it again, obviously still a little dazed. She returned the stone to her pouch and drew the laces tight. "So why didn't the Vitae just head for May 16 when the Realm vanished?"

"I don't know. Maybe they got lost." Aria snorted, but Eric kept on going. "It's not impossible. They'd just lost their world, their slaves, and who knows what else. We are talking about a whole galaxy's worth of room. You've seen it over the World's Wall." He swept his hand out. "There might have only been a few of them, or there might have been something here that they still needed." He lowered his hand slowly. "Maybe there was something still here they couldn't live without so they spent three thousand years trying to find it."

Aria laid her hand on her pouch and swallowed hard.

"What I really want to know is this," she said. "If who you consider to be Aunorante Sangh depends on which side of the World's Wall you were born on, who were the Nameless Powers?"