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The Hornhound
kiswi.doc
Keywords male 1290361, female 1174798, otter 38450, squirrel 32924, dragoness 14054, heat 5288, story progression 2220, story series 2181, cold 2027, planet 1756, portal 1561, interplanetary 8
Kiswi

A Silvania Story — SY 4530, Late Summer

~ I ~
The heat wave arrived in the second week of late summer and settled over Riverside Market with no apparent intention of leaving.
Noraxia enjoyed it. She spread herself in the yard in full feral form each morning and absorbed heat through her skin with frank pleasure. The household watched her do this and managed their own feelings about the temperature with varying degrees of success.
Varena moved to the coolest corner of the barn and declined to emerge except for meals. The ghevals drank more and moved less. Chenar was irritable, seeming to have strong opinions about comfort. Lev, who had lion heritage and should theoretically have been heat-adapted, found the humidity particularly unreasonable and said so. Kyren appeared entirely unaffected, which no one could explain.
Tassa had discovered something useful. In furfolk form she ran warmer. In dragon form she ran cooler, her skin shedding heat the way Noraxia's did. She had been attempting deliberate shifting for weeks without sustained success. The heat gave her a practical reason to try. Practical reasons, it turned out, were what she had been missing.
On the fourth day of the heat wave she held her dragon form for six minutes by deliberate choice. She looked at Jukrit afterward with an expression that required no translation.
"Yes," he said. "That was exactly that."
Tane arrived on the fifth day.

~ II ~
He came by hired transport, which was the sensible choice for an otter-taur making a long journey in extreme heat. His equine lower half handled warmth better than cold, and his Bakiswi upper half had the thermoregulation of a water-adapted species. He was, by the standards of the household's current population, managing the heat reasonably well.
He looked larger than Jukrit remembered. Tane pulled up outside the gate and looked at the house and the whisperwood and the catwalk and the various animals visible in the yard. His expression was the same one he'd worn on his first visit: deliberate, comprehensive, interested in everything.
Jukrit met him at the gate.
"You said it was important," Tane said.
"It is."
"You said it concerned Kiswi."
"It does." Jukrit looked at him. "Come in. There's a shaded area in the yard and Noraxia has been keeping cold water ready since morning."
Tane came in. He greeted Noraxia and Lev warmly. He found Kyren at the communications terminal and spent three minutes in silent mutual regard with him.
Then he sat in the shade and Jukrit told him about the portal.
He told him all of it. The cave. The chamber. The six symbols. Yazari. The Swambazi's three centuries of careful patience. He set Orava's translated destination list on the table between them and let Tane look at Kiswi's symbol for as long as he needed to.
Tane was quiet for a long time.
"My father’s people have been gone from there for over a thousand years," he said.
"Yes," Jukrit said.
"My research," Tane said slowly. "The Bakiswi ecological records. The species documentation before the evacuation." He stopped. "That's what Yazari said connected to this."
"She said your research mattered. That you should be part of the conversation before anyone opened the Kiswi terminal."
"She was right," Tane said. He looked at Kiswi's symbol again. "Has anyone opened it?"
"Not yet," Jukrit said. "There's something else you need to know first. About why we haven't."

~ III ~
Raskon had contacted Cygnus Prime ten days after Yazari's visit.
He had not used official channels. Official channels were what governments monitored. He had used older connections, the kind that persisted between people who had once operated in private spaces. It had taken a week to find the right person. It had taken another three days to get a response.
What he learned was this.
The Iskret government had discovered the portal network forty-two years ago. A survey vessel had detected the Cygnus Prime terminal during a routine geological assessment. The terminal was studied. Its function was identified. The six destinations were catalogued. And then the government had made a decision that was not put in writing and was not announced and was implemented through a quiet withdrawal of the survey team and a classification of the entire file.
The reason was Kiswi.
At the time of discovery, Kiswi's surface temperature had been rising. The freeze that had driven the Bakiswi out was a natural cycle. A millennium earlier it had been abrupt and catastrophic. By a few decades ago it had already begun reversing. The government's modeling suggested Kiswi would be habitable again within a century. Possibly sooner.
The Iskret government had decided they did not want to be the ones to tell the Bakiswi diaspora that their home world was warming. The political implications were significant. The resettlement questions were unresolvable at that moment. The simplest option was to know nothing officially.
So they had classified the file and known nothing officially for forty-two years.
Raskon delivered this to Jukrit in a single conversation and then went home. He came back two hours later and sat on the porch and said, without preamble: "I am not my government."
"I know," Jukrit said.
"Nesori knows. I told her."
"How is she?"
"Angry on my behalf," Raskon said. "Which is its own kind of useful." He was quiet for a moment. "I want to be in the group that goes to open the Kiswi terminal. When we go."
"I expected that," Jukrit said.

~ IV ~
Tane heard the Iskret disclosure with a stillness that was different from his usual quality of listening. This stillness had weight.
"Forty-two years," he said.
"Yes," Raskon said. He had come over to be present for this conversation because it was partly his to deliver.
"My parents spent forty years trying to get anyone to fund a return survey of Kiswi," Tane said. "They both believed the freeze was cyclical. The funding was never approved. The scientific consensus was that it would take another two centuries minimum." He looked at Raskon. "The Iskret government knew they were wrong."
"Yes," Raskon said.
Tane was quiet again.
"They died believing it was still frozen," he said. Not with anger, but with flat precision.
No one said anything. Noraxia, who had shifted to anthro for the conversation, sat across from Tane and looked at him steadily.
"Then we should open it," Tane said. "Before anyone else decides what to do with the information. Before it becomes someone's political asset again." He looked at Jukrit. "Yazari agreed. The Khalzedi agreed. Draneb agreed. What are we waiting for?"
"Nothing," Jukrit said. "We leave for Kigorith tomorrow."

~ V ~
The heat wave followed them to Kigorith, even though the continent was cooler than Pansilva in late summer.  The caves, which had been cool on previous visits, were only marginally better than the outside air.
Harvet's team was present and had been present since the discovery. They had spent three months documenting without activating. Harvet himself greeted the group with a patient expression.
The group descended: Jukrit, Noraxia in anthro form for the passage, Tane managing the narrow gap, Raskon, Wena with her documentation kit, and Vethran who had remained at the survey camp since the discovery.
The crystalids in the upper chamber watched them pass. Their collective attention had shifted since the portal was found. Less focused downward, more watchful outward. As if the question had been answered and they were now waiting for something else.
The lower chamber was cool. Jukrit felt it immediately on descent.
The portal stood as they had left it. Warm. Patient. The six symbol groupings inlaid in its surface, visible in the lamp light.
Tane looked at Kiswi's symbol for a long moment. His hand came up and stopped just short of touching it.
"How does it work?" he asked.
"Vethran?" Jukrit said.
Vethran had spent three months on that question. He had the answer ready. "The central point is the activation. The destination symbol is the key. You press both simultaneously. The Swambazi have tested this on their own terminal." He paused. "What comes through is light first. Then air from the destination. Then a stable passage."
"Air from Kiswi," Tane said.
"If Kiswi is the destination chosen. Yes."
Tane lowered his hand. He turned to look at Raskon.
Raskon nodded once.
Tane turned back to the portal. He pressed the central point and Kiswi's symbol at the same time.

~ VI ~
The light came first.
Not the bioluminescence of the chamber. Something cleaner and colder and coming from the other side of the portal's surface, as if a window had opened onto a different sky. It was pale. Late-afternoon pale, slanted, the color of a sun that was not Silvania's sun.
Then the air.
It came through cold but not killing-cold. The cold of early spring. The cold of a world that had been frozen and was not anymore and was still remembering that fact. It smelled of stone and ice-melt and underneath those things something green. Not abundantly green. Tentatively green. The smell of things that had recently decided to try again.
Tane made a sound.
The portal had opened to a passage roughly two meters wide. Through it, in the pale Kiswi afternoon, a landscape was visible. Ice still covered the far hills. Closer in, the ground was different. Wet. Dark with rich soil that had been under ice for a thousand years and was releasing what it had held. Patches of something low and pale green grew in the areas where the melt had pooled and then drained.
It was not a lush world. It was a world at the very beginning of becoming one again.
"My father's records," Tane said. His voice was steady. "The plant species he documented before the evacuation. The low pale green ones. That's Kiswi ground moss. It was the first thing to grow when the world was young. It's the first thing to grow now."
No one spoke.
Wena was documenting. Her hand was not entirely steady but her notes were precise.
Raskon stood at the edge of the passage and looked through at the pale Kiswi afternoon and said nothing at all, which was more expressive than anything he could have said.

~ VII ~
They did not go through.
This had been agreed beforehand. Observation only, on this first opening. The air quality was checked. The temperature was measured. Vethran took readings with three different instruments while the portal held steady.
The surface temperature on the visible ground was four degrees above freezing. The atmosphere was breathable. The radiation levels were within safe range. The world was not merely habitable in theory. It was habitable now.
Tane stood at the passage's edge for a long time. The Kiswi afternoon came through around him. Cold air on a hot day. He was very still.
Then he stepped back and Jukrit pressed the deactivation sequence and the portal closed and the chamber was just a chamber again.
Tane sat down on the cave floor slowly.
Jukrit sat beside him. No one else spoke.
"They were right," Tane said. "My parents were right about all of it. The cycle. The return timeline. The ground moss." He pressed one hand flat against the cave floor. "They knew. They spent forty years trying to make people listen and they were right."
"They were right," Jukrit said.
"The Bakiswi diaspora needs to know," Tane said. "All of them. Every community on every world. Before any government decides what to do with it."
"Yazari will help," Jukrit said. "And Wena has the documentation ready."
"Banari," Tane said. "I need to tell Banari first."
"Of course," Jukrit said.
They sat in the cool of the deep cave. Above them the summer heat waited. The crystalids maintained their new outward watchfulness. The portal stood in the worked-stone chamber, closed now, patient as always.

~ VIII ~
The heat wave broke on the day they returned from Kigorith.
Rain came in from the coast in the evening. The household received it completely. Noraxia stood in the yard with her wings spread and her eyes closed. Lev went outside in it without a coat and did not come back for an hour. The ghevals moved through the barn with a visible change in quality. Chenar stopped being irritable.
Varena emerged from her corner.
Jukrit sat on the porch and watched the rain come down and thought about a pale cold afternoon on a thawing world, and ground moss growing in the places where the water pooled and then drained, and a mixed species couple who had spent forty years being right about something no one would fund.
Tassa came and sat beside him in furfolk form. She had been practicing her deliberate shifting all week. Six minutes was now ten. Ten was becoming fifteen.
"It rained on Kiswi too," she said. "When you opened the door."
He looked at her. "There was ice-melt," he said. "How did you know?"
"Wena told me," Tassa said. "She said the ground was wet."
He sat with that.
"Is it a good world?" Tassa asked.
"It will be," he said. "It's just starting."
She considered this. "Like me," she said.
"Like you," he agreed.
The rain went on. Inside, Raskon was speaking to Nesori about what he had seen today. Next door, Tane was sitting with the communications link open to wherever Banari was, waiting for her to answer.
The portal was closed. The conversation about what to do next was just beginning.
That was right. That was the correct sequence.

— End of Episode —
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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What You Release
A Quiet Street
A heat wave settles over Riverside Market. Tassa discovers she can regulate her temperature by shifting deliberately between forms. Tane arrives to be told about the portal, taking the news quietly. The Iskret government found the portal network forty-two years ago, determined that Kiswi was warming back toward habitability, and classified the file rather than face the political consequences of telling the Bakiswi diaspora their home world was coming back. Branjo, Tane's father, spent forty years trying to fund a return survey of Kiswi. He was right about everything. He died believing the world was still frozen. Raskon, learned all of this through old contacts. The group travels to Kigorith. Tane presses the Kiswi symbol on the portal. Cold air comes through first, smelling of ice-melt and something tentatively green. Through the passage, Kiswi ground moss grows in the wet places where the ice has pulled back. The world evacuated a thousand years ago is not yet lush. It is just beginning. They do not go through. That was agreed beforehand. The heat wave breaks on the day they return home, and Tane opens a communications link to tell Banari before anyone else. But with a world back from the dead and a diaspora that has been scattered for a thousand years, who decides what happens next?
Keywords
male 1,290,361, female 1,174,798, otter 38,450, squirrel 32,924, dragoness 14,054, heat 5,288, story progression 2,220, story series 2,181, cold 2,027, planet 1,756, portal 1,561, interplanetary 8
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 5 days, 23 hrs ago
Rating: General
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