her a clinging symbiot, dependent on Exotica. Broaden your horizons, become a bi-galactic citizen, he’d said.
Zer sighed at the dreary prospect of having to be careful. Among those high-strung Earthling people, she’d probably change dimensions constantly and end up teaching biologics from an invisible realm. Unless. If she introduced Exotica—trained so they didn’t suggest even a speck of hallucination—the trees would expand Earthlings’ perceptions by natural means. Let the people enjoy an infusion of tree thoughts. Courier of the fifth dimension, on my way. She laughed.
Leon knew she couldn’t imagine a world without Exotica. “Leon didn’t drop a single hint he wanted me to act as Exotica’s agent.” She wouldn’t let on, ruin his fun.
“You can’t possibly believe—” Vatta shot her a startled look.
Just then the ship reversed drive, swayed, and slowed, approaching the pure, wild center between the Ways. Leon and the elder were about to bless the crossing and the tree seed-cave omen.
Here at the midpoint between galaxies, voyagers stopped to perform the ancient ritual and honor a future with Milky Wayans. Supposedly, when intergalactic matter reached a density that significantly touched in the breach, Zenobians and Earthlings would explore the future together. “What do you think bi-galactic citizens will be like?”
“Curious, and messengers telling the latest on every dock,” Vatta said.
“And messenger birds in every Exotica tree.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“Let’s go see wonder woman,” Zer said.
Near the large screen on the north wall of their pyrid, they joined crewmates to watch Kalila, the only elder on the journey, perform the ritual. It was a rare privilege to have the elder of elders aboard. Elders usually stayed home and dealt with the forces and rhythms of space and celestial radiations impacting their star system. Shipshape, they called it. It helped keep everyone bathed in healthy radiations.
“She’s beautiful, for a couple hundred years old,” Zer said.
Vatta poked her. “One seventy-six. Shush.”
“Welcome.” The elder’s lilting, gentle voice resonated through the sound system.
Zer suddenly felt homesick again though she had plenty of company from home. She lived with nine crewmates in Pyrid Six, one of three hundred pyrids interlocked around the core mothership, which altogether held three thousand-and-three people. The starship resembled a giant, silvery flower. Her people loved flowers.
Zer pressed closer to the screen where she could see the ship hovering over the pure spot. There was no going back. Zer felt the flush of love and pain that went with separation and huddled with her crewmates.
Elder Kalila retrieved a thin probe, previously sent through a tiny opening in the ship’s airlock chamber into space to test for intergalactic dust. She looked amused by the results. “Not a grain. Perhaps we should seed star dust.”
Ha! It would take ages before enough collected for space travel Earthling style, Zer thought.
Voices buzzed around Zer, voyagers wondering if the elder meant it. Keepers of Harmony talked long before changing reality. The pureblooded, golden-eyed Zenobians studied the occult and metaphysics from childhood. Kalila was greatest of all. By age six, she had controlled her slightest thoughts or impulses with such exquisite sensitivity that she need not fear accidentally setting off a cosmic event. With one trill, some said, she could skip one dust mote across a continent.
The elder finished the ritual, invoking ancestral memory. “Eons ago, elders first crossing the breach heard light beings sing . . .”
Everyone knew about otherworldly Ephemerals. Their original blessing had knocked the elders senseless. They’d come-to knowing how to cast brittle iridium, the waste product of the universe, into chimes and metronomes. Sailing beyond the breach and back, they’d made, aligned, and standardized the quality of the instruments with the pure tones and rhythms of star song. In the casting process, they’d learned nuances of light. Ever since, elders had bent reality as music bent light-space.
But it was the chimes that were known, for the harmony they produced in mind and body. Chimes were traded near and far. To this end, Zenobians mined iridium, and elders kept ongoing records of heat-color vibrations of stars, planets, and other bodies in the two galaxies. They used space music to harmonize with the ceaseless motion in space and study cosmic changes.
Zer wished she'd hear the Ephemerals' song. An echo, some said, lingered in the breach.
“We thank you,” Kalila said, “for joining this mission. Your gifts will be needed during cosmic events, which will mark the end of this fifty thousand-year era.”
Zer blew a kiss. That was all the affirmation she needed for her gift of Exotica.
“We await the closing of the Ways, what many consider myth.”
Zer didn’t see how, if Earthlings used old-fashioned space travel.
“We see far ahead, for we are the Keepers of Harmony throughout Andromeda.” Elder Kalila bowed and reset the prime metronome.
Zer felt the click, clicking like a holy touch tingling down her spine. Although she wasn't pure Zenobian, she valued their evolution and history. She grasped the lure and honor of the voyage, of serving. For a moment, she knew why people willingly set off to collect songs or to help on the other side for the old ones. Many had not returned. Her parents had not.
The click-click grew louder as one pilot after another set and aligned a metronome with the beat of the prime. The volume steadily progressed to fifty synchronized beats . . . one hundred, one fifty, two hundred. . . Three hundred-and-one instruments marking time. The sheer, loud power of rhythm pervaded every nook of the ship, vibrated every cell of Zer’s being. She imagined it shook the universes. The rhythmic power hinted at the elders’ ability to bend reality, or transform things.
All but the prime metronome stopped ticking. Pilots began to ring chimes with lower or higher pitches. The different octaves of hundreds of chimes pealing in harmonic intervals produced their magical effect. Crewmates leaped into dance; Zer whirled among them to keep from exploding or imploding. A tangle of tones and bodies swept round and round the work hall.
Leon brushed against Zer, his fingers sliding up her arm. Cupping her neck, he twirled her and whispered, “Happy new world, I’ll be stalking you, the trees are taboo,” and danced away.
Zer sank into the nearest chair, wishing she’d not come. She’d never worried about taboos in Zenobia. She listened to the chimes and bells wind down ringing softly. Through the bells, she heard the choir singing, and it wasn’t her crewmates. Silken voices wrapped around her, an airy, delicate web, easing her grief at leaving home, and when they had, their music teased her fear into the open: She might not return. Her parents had not. Travelers to Earth often died or lost the way back. Zer shivered.
A high-pitched chord in the sound web tickled her brain. The voices turned velvety and slightly gritty, the texture of seed stirring in soil matrix before erupting into light. When the soothing, leafy crown of an Exotica swept her forehead, Zer surrendered and laughed at the paradox. People got what they needed in the pure, wild breach.
Only it was more mysterious. She’d been honored to hear
