Children of Zanar 1: The Zanari Inheritance Read online

  ‘Apparently,’ Thea said, ‘that was a false assumption. He’s alive, and he’s trying to resurrect the zanari race.’

  The blood was hammering in Kaya’s ears now, so much so that it was hard to hear Thea speaking. ‘How?’ Kaya asked, her voice soft.

  ‘He’s created a retrovirus which rewrites human genes. He somehow released it on Sadrine’s Drift. Your parents may not have been zanari, Kaya, but you are. Genetically anyway. Narra never could get over the idea that genetics weren’t the be-all and end-all of everything.’

  ‘O-oh,’ Kaya managed.

  ‘I’m sorry, but it’s worse than that. It seems like someone found out about Narra’s plan and they decided to continue the job the Bowrains started three hundred years ago. Someone wiped out your entire colony to kill the few people who were born there as zanari.’

  Part Two: Lessons for Life

  Oracle of Zanar, Sadrine’s Drift System, 55/1/483 BCC.

  Kaya’s eyes drifted open slowly as her brain got used to the idea of being awake. The room was dark. She was floating. When had she gone to bed? What was the time anyway?

  ‘You’re awake then?’ Thea’s voice was soft, as though she did not want to disturb the atmosphere.

  ‘I don’t remember going to bed. What time is it?’

  ‘Just after six hundred, and you wouldn’t remember going to bed. I put you to bed. Lights, soft, ten percent.’ The bedroom lights came on, a soft, warm glow bright enough to see by, but not uncomfortable. Thea was sitting in a chair outside the bed’s field, dressed in the same sort of outfit as Cassandra and Sienna. She put down a tablet, which she had presumably been reading, and smiled at Kaya. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Kind of like I’ve been sleeping too much. I don’t really remember. I spent a lot of time dozing or feeling… lost after the funeral. I came out and you were there with Cassandra and Jay… And then I met Sienna and she told me something…’ Kaya frowned, trying to make her mind pull up the memory of what Sienna had said…

  ‘It’ll come back,’ Thea said, watching carefully.

  Sienna had said… ‘Oh,’ Kaya said flatly. Twisting, she reached out to the bed post nearest her and deactivated the field. When it let her down to the floor, she dropped onto her knees and put her head in her hands, breathing slowly and carefully.

  ‘Better than yesterday,’ Thea commented.

  ‘What happened? I remember… Well, going a little nuts.’

  ‘You were hyperventilating, which we could understand, by the way. Sienna was watching for signs of… shall we say “discomfort?” She put you to sleep. It’s one of her abilities, a suggestion which is difficult to ignore. Geo can do the same trick a different way, but Sienna’s good at reading emotions as well. In case you hadn’t noticed, Geo isn’t especially good with emotions. Other people’s anyway.’

  Kaya let out a short bark of a laugh. ‘I’d sort of noticed. So… So, you’re all psis?’

  ‘Yes. We’re all zanari and, at least physically, so are you. Frankly, we’re as unsure of what to do about this as I’m sure you are. As far as we knew, with a few exceptions, the only zanari left alive were the ones aboard this ship.’

  ‘Five. Only five zanari left alive?’

  ‘There are a couple more you haven’t met yet. Sienna likes her alone time, but they tend to isolate themselves in their rooms and won’t come out unless we drag them. The loss of Zanar hit some of us harder than others. There were more of us. The Oracle was built to handle up to a hundred and twenty people, but we got out with less than sixty and our numbers have dwindled since, for various reasons. Not all of them died, but many did. We are what’s left.’

  Kaya nodded and, finally, lifted her head. ‘Is that some sort of standard zanari outfit?’

  Thea’s lips curled a little. ‘It was a commonly worn shipboard outfit. Zanar Prime was not quite as hot as Sadrine’s Drift, but we had a warm climate, and this tunic has spinal reinforcement which helps in high-acceleration situations. Would you like me to get one fabricated for you?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I could wear that without blushing. I don’t have the figure for it.’

  ‘Nonsense. However, your clothes are there.’ Thea indicated the garments hung up beside the bed.

  Blushing anyway, Kaya stepped over to them and began dressing. Truthfully, the tops she wore were not that much less revealing than the tunic Thea was in, but there was no way Kaya would look that good in that outfit. Thea filled the tunic out really well and… Dressed, Kaya shook her head to clear it and then turned to Thea. ‘I’m… not even human,’ she said.

  Thea got to her feet, waved for Kaya to follow, and started into the lounge where there were more seats. ‘The term doesn’t have the meaning you think it does. Humans began tinkering with their basic genetics before even the Solar Empire.’ She sat, and Kaya fell onto one of the chairs facing her to listen. ‘First it was longevity. Little hacks to reduce the risk of cancer and DNA mutation. Then the rich wanted to move into space habitats to get away from the mess they’d made of Earth, so the geneticists altered the way calcium was processed in the body and added hacks to maintain muscle mass. Then it was even greater life extension. How long do you think you’ll live, without additional medical intervention?’

  Kaya gave a shrug. ‘Hundred and fifty, maybe even two hundred years.’

  ‘Before all this, people who lived to be a hundred were rare. After it, the modified humans were not really humans. The species had changed. Then the push for colonisation began and humans needed to be able to adapt to a wider range of environments. Gravity tolerance was widened, then there was more efficient processing of nutrition and water, changes to the sleeping pattern, resistance to disease and radiation… By the time of the Solar Empire, even before then, a human from a hundred years earlier would have been unable to breed with a “human” of that time.’

  ‘And psi, right? The original humans had almost no talent for it, but we… I mean they do now.’

  ‘When the structures in the brain which interact with the Hepps–Montague field were identified, alterations were made to enhance them, yes. It also resulted in enhanced intelligence, which was a useful feature. We, the zanari, enhanced those areas further, and further increased lifespan and fitness. You’ll easily make two hundred, probably more like two hundred and fifty or more, but you can learn to extend even that using your biokinesis.’

  Kaya frowned. ‘Last night, you said that Zanar was destroyed three hundred years ago.’

  ‘Yes, about that anyway.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Me? Uh, eight hundred and… sixty… something. It gets pointless keeping count after the first few centuries. Cassandra will know if you want the exact figure. She’s a couple of years older than me. You aren’t going to faint, are you?’

  ‘Don’t… think so. No. Everything’s under control. Eight hundred and sixty… That’s quite an age difference.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Kaya was rather thankful her face was dipped out of sight so that the blush did not show. ‘Nothing. I… I don’t really know anything much about the zanari.’

  ‘All right,’ Thea said, settling herself comfortably in her chair. ‘I suggest you make yourself comfortable, perhaps get a drink. This may take a while.’

  ~~~

  ‘The Zanar system was surveyed in year twenty-five seventy-three of the Solar Empire,’ Thea said.

  Kaya had got herself coffee and a bowl of cereal from the supplies in her kitchen. Where they got fresh milk from was anyone’s guess, but she was not going to question it now. Now, she was sitting cross-legged on her seat, listening intently.

  ‘The survey suggested a good affinity for human life,’ Thea went on, ‘but the region was only accessible through a narrow corridor between rifts, from the empire anyway, and it was deemed unsuitable for colonisation at that time. There were easier fish to hook. However, a group of scientists and their followers were looking for somewhere… out of the way to con
duct some experiments in genetic manipulation and psi. Zanar seemed perfect and they set about colonising the most suitable planet in twenty-five seventy-five. A century later, they had a viable, flourishing colony and all the children being born were zanari. Three centuries later, Zanar had four colonies. There were twelve before the end, plus a few outposts, and we were called the Zanari Protectorate.’ Thea paused, taking a sip of her own coffee. ‘You have to understand that Zanar wasn’t just a planet or an interstellar government; it was a culture, an ethos. The original colonists wanted to be sure of the lineage of the new race being born, and they were also heavy on the female population, so Zanar was a matriarchy. We counted our ancestry down the female line and it’s true that women tended to have a higher representation among senators. Science was viewed as key to the colony’s survival and the ethos of scientific discovery trumped everything else. There was an arrogance about it, but it was a peaceful sort of arrogance. Resources went to science before the military. Noble but, as it turned out, not entirely wise.’

  ‘A matriarchy,’ Kaya said. ‘So, women were more respected than men?’

  ‘Technically not, but no system is perfect and you tended to get all sorts. Sienna, for example. I noticed that Jay was looking rather closely at her, but he really hasn’t a chance. Sienna dislikes men quite intensely. She’s respectful enough to Geo, because he’s powerful and exceptionally competent in his field, but she doesn’t really like him. Geo, in turn, doesn’t really like being ordered around by women. Kadal Narra had a huge chip on his shoulder about the matriarchal nature of zanari government, which did not help when he came to present his project plans. He believed, not entirely without foundation, that he might have got permission to run his programme if he had been born a woman. Zanari society was not some perfect utopia, Kaya. We had our problems, just like the empire did and the BCU does.’

  ‘What about religion? Sadrine’s Drift wasn’t exactly a religious colony, but we kept the faith. We all believed in the Universal Mind.’

  Thea flashed Kaya a smile. ‘Zanari were not, generally, religious. Too focused on rationality and… Well, our scientists chipped away at a number of the tenets of Minder faith, making the idea of it rather less palatable to the mind of the rational zanari. There were a few who still believed. Faith, as they pointed out, is not something which can be disproved. If your faith falters in the face of some new scientific discovery which appears to go against it, then you don’t have faith. If your god lives in the places not yet uncovered by science, then your god is diminished by every new discovery. We can show you things which may test your faith, Kaya, but keep it until it no longer serves its purpose for you.’

  Kaya smiled back, though it was a little weak. ‘Things like what’s happened to my family are supposed to test your faith.’

  ‘I suppose they are. Mine was tested a long time ago.’

  ‘When Zanar was destroyed.’

  Thea nodded. ‘Yes, but it didn’t start out like that. I was ninety-four when the Solar Empire found one of our outposts monitoring the hyperspace path back into their territory. Zanari were captured and interrogated, and the empire decided that they wanted what we had: planets and technology. I was already in the military, I fought with all the power I’d been given, and we threw them back through the Gap to lick their wounds. Uh, the Gap was what we called the gap in hyperspace that led to imperial space. Not especially imaginative, but no one thought much about it really. Soon after that, maybe because they’d overstretched themselves with us, or it was just time, the empire began to collapse in on itself. The Gap was watched for a few decades, but it seemed as though our belligerent neighbour was not going to bother us again.’

  There was another sip of coffee, another pause. Kaya was not entirely sure whether recounting the story was painful or Thea needed to collect her thoughts. It seemed obvious enough what was coming.

  ‘And, honestly,’ Thea went on, ‘I can’t blame the government for believing there was no more threat, in a way. It was nearly four hundred years later that they came back. The empire was gone, and the Zanari Protectorate was actually involved in negotiating with the Bowrain family. They’d sent envoys, the Bowrains. They wanted trade. The thing was, the Bowrains were talking to a lot of people about trade, and one of those groups was the Karraph family. The Karraphs took over the imperial worlds on the other side of the Gap from Zanar and they remembered us. Unknown to us, the Bowrains backed them with resources, weapons, and eventually mercenaries to invade through the Gap. We’d watched the Karraphs, but the threat was analysed based on them alone. Military budgets had been backed down… We lost three worlds before the government really started taking it seriously. Then it became a matter of attrition. It took twenty-two years for them to make a serious attempt on Zanar Prime, over a sexagoy to finally break down the defences. The zanari government sued for peace, but it was past that for the Karraphs and Bowrains by then. They had what they wanted, our technology, and they wanted to wipe out the evidence of where they’d got it. Zanar Prime is a radioactive wasteland to this day.’

  ‘But you got out. The Oracle got out. How?’

  Thea sighed. ‘They called it the Zanari Memory Project. As much information about zanari culture as possible was loaded onto the best ship they had available along with as many important scientists as they could get aboard and a few soldiers to keep them safe. I was selected to lead the military contingent. I had five hundred years of experience behind me by then, and I was the best they could find. It was an honour. I hated it, of course, but I had my orders. We ran the blockade and… I’ve done my best to keep us together, but… Well, all we can do is keep living, keep the memory alive of what Zanar was. At least that’s what we thought. Now there’s you.’

  ‘Me?!’ Kaya spluttered right before what Thea meant hit her. ‘There’s someone out there who can replicate the zanari evolutionary process.’

  ‘And maybe we could use that to make a new Zanar Protectorate, somewhere a long way from the rest of human civilisation. Huh, maybe I could even let myself get old and die, but it’s not that easy, is it? Do we even have the right to make more zanari? Should we find Narra and stop him?’

  Kaya finished her coffee, frowning. ‘I have no idea. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do now. My home is gone. It seems like someone wants to hunt me down and… I don’t know what they want with me, but I doubt it’s good.’

  Thea shrugged. ‘We discussed it. Right or wrong, you’re one of us. We’ll help you find out who did this to your world. It’s possible that this has to do with us anyway. You wanted to learn to use your psi abilities; we have the best teachers in the galaxy. We can teach you, see how you get on, and when this is all done with, if you still want to learn… Basically, there’s a place for you aboard the Oracle for as long as you want it.’

  Kaya’s eyes widened. ‘I… don’t know what to say. Thank you. I… You’re right, of course, we should give it some time. Maybe you’ll all hate me.’

  ‘I… don’t think that’s going to happen,’ Thea said, smirking. ‘Unless you snore. Telepathically. I don’t think we could put up with that.’

  ‘There is no way someone can snore telepathically.’

  ‘Of course you can. Why do you think we make Geo sleep all the way down on the med deck?’

  Kaya opened her mouth to protest and then snapped it closed. They did keep Geogracus well out of the way of everyone else and he was a big man with a big nose that might just result in… ‘No… You’re pulling my leg. I do not believe Geogracus sends out telepathic snoring noises in his sleep.’ Thea just smiled. ‘You are joking, right?’

  ‘Well, he’ll be your biokinetics tutor, so you just might get to find out.’

  ~~~

  ‘I don’t suppose you know your way around the hospital in Sadrine’s Landing?’

  Kaya lifted her head and stared at Thea for a second, dragging her head out of the wash of thoughts it had been sunk in most of the day. ‘Uh, well, I’ve been there
a couple of times. Brava broke his foot with a spade one time and they made me have a physical before I could go to university on Abertine.’

  ‘That’ll do. Get your boots on, we’re doing some investigating.’

  Jay looked up from where he was sitting in the communal lounge when Kaya walked out of her cabin with Thea. ‘You’re going down to the planet?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Thea replied. ‘Jinny and Fay found some evidence of an epidemic, some years ago, in the local government offices. There wasn’t much detail and I’m going down to check the hospital. Kaya’s my native guide.’

  ‘I’ll come.’ He was on his feet in an instant.

  ‘We don’t really need–’

  ‘One, I’m supposed to be helping her find out about her family. Two, if I sit here staring at the walls much longer, I will go mad and start running through the halls, naked and screaming.’

  ‘Oh. Well, in the interests of your sanity, and ours, please join us.’

  Sadrine’s Landing, Sadrine’s Drift.

  Sadrine’s Landing General Hospital had obviously been built early on and then added to. Unlike Kaya’s home, the additions had been done with the same prefabricated concrete panels as the oldest parts and it gave the whole place a horribly institutional look. As Kaya led the way through the halls, she pointed out the grassy quadrangles hidden away within the walls for patients to exercise in and get fresh air, but it still felt like you were walking through a military bunker with the wrong signage.

  ‘The power’s out,’ Kaya commented, ‘but I know they had an emergency generator here.’ She pointed at a sign. ‘Services? Sounds good.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Thea agreed.

  They were avoiding the actual rooms as much as possible. There had to have been patients in the hospital when the attack had happened, which meant there were now corpses in the beds. There were a few in the corridors, dressed in meditech uniforms, but Kaya kept her head up and avoided looking at them as much as possible. It was quite possible that one of these bodies had been the nurse who had done her medical check-up prior to leaving and Kaya did not want to know what had happened to anyone else she knew, even briefly. If she thought about that, her mind closed up and she became useless, and she needed to be useful.