Sunborn Read online

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 Waystation

  Chapter 2 Mission Unwelcome

  Chapter 3 Ed and the Stars

  Chapter 4 Food for Thought

  Chapter 5 Unscheduled Departure

  Chapter 6 Triton Station

  Chapter 7 Almost Like Home

  Chapter 8 Deadly Encounter

  Chapter 9 A History Lesson

  Chapter 10 Packing for Departure

  Chapter 11 Dreams Awaken

  Chapter 12 Two Minds

  Chapter 13 Approaching the Star

  Chapter 14 *Brightburn*

  Chapter 15 Out of the Star

  Chapter 16 Earthward Bound

  Chapter 17 Aftershocks

  Chapter 18 Traveling in the Dark

  Chapter 19 A Deadly Detour

  Chapter 20 The Mindbody

  Chapter 21 Ready to Break

  Chapter 22 Through the Gap

  Chapter 23 The Translator Speaks

  Chapter 24 Into the Heart of Starmaker

  Chapter 25 Ik’s Stones

  Chapter 26 Distant Memories

  Chapter 27 *Thunder*

  Chapter 28 Boarding Party

  Chapter 29 Departure

  Chapter 30 Against the Flow

  Chapter 31 A Visit to a Star

  Chapter 32 In Flight

  Chapter 33 Sentinel

  Chapter 34 Captive

  Chapter 35 Into the Sun

  Chapter 36 In the Fire of a Star

  Chapter 37 Plunge into Darkness

  Chapter 38 Regathering

  Chapter 39 Arrival

  Chapter 40 Home

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  SUNBORN

  VOLUME FOUR OF

  THE CHAOS

  CHRONICLES

  Jeffrey A. Carver

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  SUNBORN

  Copyright © 2008 by Jeffrey A. Carver

  All rights reserved.

  Author's web site: http://www.starrigger.net/

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I've prepared this special e-book edition for a limited, free offer. Read it, enjoy it, share it with family and friends! But please don't post it on other websites. Tor Books has graciously approved this free promotion, but I don't want it to hurt Tor's forthcoming commercial ebook distribution. Commercial and derivative uses are not authorized without express permission. Thanks. Enjoy the read.

  [The following details are reproduced from the Tor print edition of the book,

  for completeness.]

  Edited by James Frenkel

  Cover art by Stephan Martiniere

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Carver, Jeffrey A.

  Sunborn / Jeffrey A. Carver.—1st ed.

  p. cm.—(The chaos chronicles; v. 4)

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-86453-8

  ISBN:10: 0-312-86453-1

  1. Life on other planets—Fiction. 2. Cataclysmic variable stars—Fiction. 3. Cosmology—Fiction I. Title.

  PS3553.A7892 S86 2008

  813'.54—dc22

  2008034301

  First Edition: November 2008

  Books by Jeffrey A. Carver

  *The Infinity Link

  *The Rapture Effect

  Roger Zelazny’s Alien Speedway: Clypsis

  From a Changeling Star

  Down the Stream of Stars

  *Battlestar Galactica (novelization)

  The Star Rigger Universe

  Seas of Ernathe

  *Star Rigger’s Way

  *Panglor

  *Dragons in the Stars

  *Dragon Rigger

  *Eternity’s End

  The Chaos Chronicles

  *Neptune Crossing: Volume One

  *Strange Attractors: Volume Two

  *The Infinite Sea: Volume Three

  *Sunborn: Volume Four

  *denotes a Tor Book

  This one is for Chuck,

  who helped make it possible.

  It’s also for you readers,

  who have waited patiently for too many years.

  I thank you all.

  Acknowledgments

  This book has been long, long in the making, and there were times I thought I would never finish it. Without the help of the people I’m about to thank, I probably would not have. I know acknowledgment pages can start to sound like a broken record, the same people being thanked over and over, book after book. There’s a good reason for that: the assistance of generous, smart, caring, loyal friends and family who help unceasingly, year after year, book after book. So it has been in my writing life.

  Without my family, forget it. You wouldn’t have a book to hold. My wife, Allysen, and my daughters, Julia and Alexandra, continue to be indispensable sources of love, encouragement, and critical feedback. My brother, Chuck, has encouraged in ways large and small, and my sister, Nancy, as well.

  Without my writing group, several decades old now, you might have a book to hold, but you wouldn’t enjoy it as much. Craig Gardner, Richard Bowker, Victoria Bolles, Mary Aldridge: four people working in the background who have helped me improve this novel in every conceivable way. You don’t even want to know how many drafts they read and marked up; I lost count, myself. They even helped me confirm that the title the story has carried for the many years since its gestation was the one it should keep.

  Jim Frenkel edited this book as he has so many in the past—slowly and with great care. Thanks, Jim, as always. And thanks to Tom Doherty of Tor Books for his patience and faith, and to Patrick Nielsen Hayden and all the other folk at Tor who provide such a fertile ground for books to grow in. And thanks also to my agent, Richard Curtis, who, if he had doubts, kept them to himself.

  A special mention goes to the members of Park Avenue Congregational Church of Arlington, Massachusetts, who have taken a special interest in this one—especially Nick Iacuzio and the much-missed Arlene Brown, whose generosity spawned several important characters in the story.

  And finally, you, the readers, who have been waiting patiently (or impatiently) for a new Chaos book for far too many years. Many of you have let me know you are waiting, and a more loyal bunch of readers no writer could ask for. This one’s for you.

  Prologue

  Somewhere in the fire-scored darkness of space, a being that was neither matter nor energy slipped through spacetime like a whisper, a breath, a rustle of a curtain in the night. The being called itself by a name that, if spoken aloud, would have sounded something like De-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ahh-b-b, trailing off into extremely low-frequency reverberations. In visible light, it looked like a cloud of coal dust—except when it shrank to a single particle, or stretched to the breadth of a planet.

  Deeaab moved with ease through the many dimensions of space. Time was a clay to be molded by its thoughts. It had slipped into this universe out of deep time, across a boundary few could even detect, the membrane dividing one universe from the next. It had fled the fading glow of a universe that was dying.

  The crossing was perilous, with no chance of return. Deeaab had seen at least one of its fellows succeed in crossing at the same time, but others had not. Those who had failed were lost forever. The loss was neve
r far from Deeaab’s thoughts; it was like an ever-present pull of gravity.

  Wandering through the star-spiral it now took for home, Deeaab listened to slow mutterings in spacetime that seemed to come from very large bodies—and also to the quick chittering of strange little creatures that flickered in and out of Deeaab’s awareness like shadows. Much that Deeaab heard it did not understand, whether from the great or from the tiny. But it was astonished when it finally realized that the stars were the great bodies that were speaking—that they were alive with thought and awareness. Could this be? Deeaab had never heard a star speak before.

  Marveling, Deeaab approached one sun, at the edge of a cloud. Understanding came with difficulty, but Deeaab could feel the star’s thought. The star seemed glad of its presence, and Deeaab lingered, seeking deeper contact. In time it began to understand the star’s feelings; and what it felt was disturbing. Deeaab felt pain, and fear, and a certainty that this sun was dying—but not of natural causes. Deeaab called the sun *Bravelight*, and wished it could help. But how? There was an inimical force here, unseen, bringing death where there should only be life.

  *Bravelight* swelled and reddened. Deeaab drew away, but continued to keep watch...until the shocking moment when its friend flared with sudden, blinding intensity, exploding with a death-convulsion that sent Deeaab tumbling away.

  After the death of *Bravelight*, Deeaab wandered again, numb with grief and fear. It heard other murmurings, and troubling rumors of other stars dying young and in pain. What could Deeaab do? Had it fled the demise of a universe that was simply dying of old age, only to find a worse place, where death was even crueler and more capricious? Was this just the way things were in this universe?

  In time, it came to another star-cloud, a place where suns were being born, one after another. Compelled by the memory of *Bravelight*, Deeaab felt drawn to the cloud, seeking new friends. But when it felt death lurking here, too, Deeaab withdrew.

  But Deeaab did not leave that region of space. Instead, it stayed nearby, waiting...hoping that understanding might come, and a course of action be made clear.

  Deeaab pondered, and prayed.

  Chapter 1

  Waystation

  The company sped across the light-years for what felt like an eternity, enclosed only by a faintly glimmering force-field bubble. Behind them they had left an ocean world; ahead was the unknown. Inside the star-spanner transport, John Bandicut felt a distinct sense of time and space passing by as a physical stream—stretching ahead of them, flowing around and behind them. He watched as the stars outside the bubble streaked past against the backdrop of space.

  Ik, the Hraachee’an, was the first to notice the gradual appearance of a ghostly, rose-colored nebula ahead. Soon after Ik pointed that out to the others, Bandicut observed the star field crinkling, as though someone were rippling the fabric of space like clear cellophane. A moment later a shock wave rocked the star-spanner bubble. “What—” rasp rasp “—was that?” cried Li-Jared, several of the Karellian’s words dropping out in translation.

  Whatever had hit them blazed golden around them, and for a moment they all seemed to turn transparent and luminous. Bandicut could scarcely breathe.

  *Entering new flight regime. Approaching interstellar waystation.*

  Bandicut blinked at the words of the translator-stones embedded in his wrists. Interstellar waystation?

  “Something’s changing ahead,” said Ik.

  Bandicut pressed his face to the front of the bubble. “I think I see it—some kind of shadow ahead, between us and the nebula.”

  “Hrah. It looks like a channel of some kind.”

  Antares pressed close behind Bandicut, her breath warm on his cheek. “How could there be such a thing in space?”

  No one had an answer, but what had looked to Bandicut like a patch of shadow grew larger quickly, then abruptly wrapped around the bubble like a tunnel. Suddenly they were flying like a high-speed train through a not-quite-solid tube, which began to glow with a pale blue light.

  They felt a series of soft jolts, as though the star-spanner bubble were decelerating in discrete increments. With no further warning, it glided into a platform that reminded Bandicut of a subway station on Earth. The bubble softened and vanished with a twinkle. Bandicut and the others looked at each other. “I guess we’re invited to get out,” Bandicut said. His two robots went first, clambering out onto the surface and pronouncing it solid and apparently safe. Together with his companions, Bandicut followed them onto the platform. It was a strange and wonderful sensation to feel something solid beneath his feet again. /What do you think, Charlie? I mean Charlene?/ he asked silently, speaking to the quarx—presently female—in his head.

  /// I think we’re about to meet someone. ///

  /Oh?/ He turned. A new robot was floating toward them. Or perhaps a holo-image of a robot. It was tall and vaguely humanoid. A silver band encircled its head where eyes might have been. Small clusters of sparkling jewels floated independently along the band—apparently the robot’s eyes, moving to focus on all the members of the company at once. “My name is Jeaves,” it said in a deep voice that sounded both human and familiar. They had heard that voice during their passage in the star-spanner. “Welcome to the Cloudminder Interstellar Waystation. I have been asked to serve as your host, though I am a visitor here myself. The station is largely uninhabited at this time.”

  “Hrah,” said Ik. “Where are—?”

  “I’ll explain everything once we’re inside, and do my best to make you comfortable here,” Jeaves continued. “Including servicing your robots, if you like.”

  “Yes, we—”

  “I have many questions for you, as I’m sure you do for me. But before we can enter the station proper, I must ask you all to stand by just a little longer. I believe you are familiar with the normalization procedure?”

  “Of course,” rumbled Ik. The others muttered agreement. On Shipworld, the vast structure outside the galaxy where the four had met, each had gone through normalization—a mysterious application of alien technology that adjusted their physiologies for local food, air, and so on. It had happened again when they’d gone to the ocean world.

  /// John, I get the feeling

  this isn’t going to be just a pit stop...///

  Bandicut missed the rest of the quarx’s words. He suddenly felt light-headed, and was enveloped in a cottony glow. He started to call out to his companions. But the glow blurred not just his vision but his thoughts and his balance. He felt himself falling, his thoughts leaking out into the light...

  *

  JEAVES PROCEDURAL DIARY: 384.14.8.7

  Preliminary debriefing of the newly arrived company is complete. I performed the procedure during a light trance-state induced during normalization, with the assistance of the translator-stones each member of the company carries.

  Summary:

  The company includes representatives of four organic species, each from a different homeworld (John Bandicut, Human of Earth; Ik, Hraachee’an; Li-Jared, Karellian; and Antares, empathic Thespi Third-female). In addition, there are two robots of Earth manufacture—Napoleon and Copernicus—enhanced to the point of sentience (but not by their original makers). They seem to share a personal bond with John Bandicut. Finally, there is one noncorporeal symbiote—Charlie (or Charlene) the quarx—resident in John Bandicut’s mind.

  The group came together on Shipworld, and by all accounts, distinguished themselves during the crisis brought on by the boojum incursion. (Report on boojum crisis available in Shipworld archives.) Due to urgent need, they were dispatched immediately afterward to assist with a situation on the ocean world known as Astar-Neri, in the Sagittarian arm—where they prevented a deep-sea entity known locally as the Maw of the Abyss from destroying an undersea civilization. Their discovery of the true nature of the Maw—a damaged, near-sentient stargate—is recorded separately in a detailed report.

  The success of this just-completed mission owed largel
y to their exceptional teamwork and negotiating skills. The broad spectrum of their intelligences, empathy, courage, and problem-solving abilities make this company a formidable agent of change. Compared with other operatives who might be called into service in the Starmaker crisis, this company in my judgment offers by far the best hope for success. Plus, of course, they are here now, and available. With the instability in the Starmaker Nebula growing at an alarming rate, time appears to be critical.

  All members of the group emoted a desire for extended rest and relaxation—hardly unreasonable, given their recent service. I can certainly allow them a day to rest and adjust to their new surroundings, which I have attempted to shape for their comfort. However, given the urgency of the situation, I have little choice: I must move quickly to persuade this group to join us in the Starmaker mission. The consequences of failure could redound far beyond the nebula...

  Chapter 2

  Mission Unwelcome

  The robot’s holographic image floated like a ghostly silver mannequin above the dull red cavern floor. “I trust you have enjoyed your respite, however brief,” he said to the assembled company. “A day and a night isn’t much. But now we must speak of a matter that cannot wait. A matter of great urgency.”

  Bandicut groaned. The quarx had been right. This wasn’t just a pit stop at the waystation. Li-Jared answered first, though. “A new job?” he snapped, his electric-blue eyes sparking with anger. Vaguely simian in form, the Karellian paced energetically over what looked like the floor of a water-carved sandstone ravine in the middle of a desert. Somewhere beneath all that rock was the deck of the space station. “Has it occurred to you,” Li-Jared drawled, “that we might not want a new job?”