The Luminous Citadel: Chapter 8b

The ongoing Sword-and-Planet serial

If you want to start at the beginning, or catch up, you can find all the parts here:

I’ve found some time to write, and now that I’m not tied up in working on Tanager’s Flight, I’ve gotten back into this story in a big way. Should be fun to see what you all think as I start to wrap it up! Right now it’s looking like it will be 11 or 12 chapters total to finish telling the story.

Chapter 8b

Wilt preceded his friend, because the stairs weren’t that wide, and found the hand rail reassuring even if he didn’t use it. He didn’t talk, he was processing the last thing Ard had said to him. When they reached the top of the platform that seemed to ring the entire tree, Wilt stepped aside against the handrail and Ard passed him to lead the way.

“You think I have information...?”

“I know you do. For one thing, you’ll be able to give me an idea just how long I’ve been here.”

“Point.” Wilt followed his friend through a bead curtain into a room which smelled of baking bread and had heaps of cushions stacked against the wall, a low table in the middle of the room, and two more faces which turned up to look at him in recognition. They didn’t know him, and he didn’t know them, but they were not of the people who had been born and raised here.

“This is Wilt,” Ard indicated him. “Wilt, this is Jay and Lodi.”

“Four of us? Just how many did Sooma sucker into his breeding program?”

They all stared at him, with slack jaws. Finally Ard grabbed two cushions, and tossed one at Wilt.

“Sit, and start talking.”

Wilt folded himself down into it and looked around the table at the grim faces. “What did I say?”

“Breeding...?”

“You didn’t know?”

All three shook their heads.

“He just disappeared. And then later Ard and friends showed up in a different place. It took ages for us to all connect the dots.” Lodi buried his face in his hands and took a deep, audibly shaky breath. “What year is it?”

Wilt told him.

“Five years.” Ard said softly. “I’ve been here five years.”

“I’ve been here seven,” Jay added. “How has he gotten away with this? Didn’t anyone miss us?”

Wilt shook his head. “I had Ard for teaching assistant in a class, but you know how TA’s are.”

“Yeah,” Ard winced. “Never missed after the end of the semester. Also,I don’t have any close family, just a great-aunt who sent me holiday greetings like every other year.”

“My family has been looking for me,” Jay crossed his arms and hunched a little. “They must think I am dead.”

Lodi lifted his head, his eyes red around the rims, but dry. “Same for me. We need to tell the others.”

“How many of us are there?” Wilt looked around at each of them, seeing the effects of his presence, his news, on them.

“The three... no, four, of us, plus another seven scattered to villages throughout the sphere and one...” Ard clenched his jaw, then finished. “Gone to the night people.”

“You’d think someone would have noticed how many grad students Sooma was managing to lose.” Lodi quirked his mouth up at one side, but the humor didn’t touch his anguished eyes.

“How long has this been going on?” Wilt asked.

“We aren’t the longest here. The first one here is... was... Den. We lost him to the night people.” Lodi took a breath. “He’d been here ten years, when I got here.”

“That’s... a really long time. I’m not sure Sooma was a professor then.”

“I didn’t know all his story, and he’s gone now.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Wilt didn’t know what to say, really.

Ard sat up straight and took a deep breath. “All right. We need to start talking, not maundering around reminiscing. Wilt, what’s this about a breeding program?”

“Sooma,” Wilt couldn’t bring himself to apply the honorific, not any longer, “told me he is convinced this is a dying population due to lack of genetic diversity, so he’s been bringing that in.”

“Us.”

Lodi and Ard looked at each other. Jay looked Wilt in the eyes. “I have three sons.”

“That sounds like a handful.” Wilt thought about home, and the families he knew. “I don’t think I knew anyone with more than two children, back on Altressa.”

“I have twin daughters, and another child on the way.” Lodi filled in.

Ard just shrugged. “You met Meilei.”

“And I met Dione, which practically made Sooma gloat and rub his hands together in mad science glee.” Wilt shrugged. “I don’t necessarily think his conclusions are wrong, although I don’t have more than superficial observations of this place, and a small part of it, but his methods are never going to pass the ethics board.”

Ard cracked up into laughter.

Lodi deadpanned, although Wilt could hear the amusement in his voice. “Ethics is the least of our concerns.”