The Alien Stars by Tim Pratt

Author:Tim Pratt [Pratt, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857669292
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2021-03-31T23:00:00+00:00

THE ALIEN STARS

Dear Elena,

Hello, it’s me, your friend, Lantern. I know we haven’t talked in a long time, and I haven’t been a very good friend lately. I wanted to write to you now, though, because something has happened. Soon I have to go away. I have to try to be a light in the dark. I’m afraid I won’t come back, and I don’t want the last words I give you to be a bunch of little nothings.

I said I hadn’t been a very good friend. In truth I haven’t even been a very good colleague, or much of an ally either. When you or Callie or Shall or Ashok have asked for my help these past few years, I haven’t come to see you myself – I’ve sent my kindlings instead. I know from the messages I’ve received that they’ve done well, and are credits to New Meditreme Station and the Trans-Neptunian Alliance. Crowbar really enjoys working with Ashok, and Windowpane is finally doing something ambitious enough to suit her dreams by serving on President Shall’s cabinet, and Solvent is studying hard under secretary Uzoma, learning everything there is to know about human technology.

It’s important for me to send my kindlings out into the world, and see them make their own way. You joked in your last letter – the one I didn’t answer, the latest one I didn’t answer – that you never imagined me as a stay-at-home mom when we were out fighting the Axiom and plying the spaceways together. I never imagined myself that way, either, and to be fair, being a kindler isn’t exactly the same as being a human parent. I programmed and tended the incubation pods, and when conditions were right, I sparked the life within them to growth. Unlike humans, when my people are born, we don’t have a long period of helplessness. We come out of the pods nearly two-thirds of our adult size (barring post-birth alterations), and since my people are capable of passing on our collective memories, once the kindlings are fed the right neural buds, they know things – like how to feed themselves, sure, but also the history of our people, or at least a history. Most of my people have no history, as you know. My kindlings are rare, because they know both the truth about our origin, and the truth behind the truth.

Still, knowledge isn’t always the same as understanding. I birthed five kindlings that first year, Solvent and Crowbar and Windowpane among them, and seven the next year, and six the next, and two the year after. My sect always had a contingent of twenty-one people on our space station, and it seemed right to kindle enough young to meet that standard, even knowing most of them would leave, rather than lurking and spying on the fringes of the system like my generation did. The station is full and boisterous, though, with my people – my family, even if the relationship isn’t quite like that of mother and child.

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