Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

geography had eroded away. Many of the buildings were
airy confections of glass and light that wouldn’t have looked out of
place on Mars. But these modern cities were fragile flowers that grew
out of mighty ruins, covered by drifts of red dust.
    Mela picked out patterns. ’Look. Lots of those old ruins have got
circles in them. See, Symat?’
    She was right. Sometimes the circles were obvious, rings of
foundations or low walls that could be kilometres across. In other
places you could only spot the circles by the way other ruins fitted
around them, filling up their interior spaces or crowding around
their circumferences.
    Luru’s eyes, black as night, gleamed bright as she peered out at
this ancient architecture. Perhaps in these traces she saw some trace
of her own long life, Symat mused.
    In every city they passed over Symat spotted transfer booths. Even
Earth, which Luru and her Ascendents had laboured so long to save,
was draining of its people.
    Wild things lived on the lands between the last cities. The
flitter passed over what looked like plains of grass, even forests of
stunted trees, and occasionally its passage scattered herds of
animals. But there were swathes of vegetation that wasn’t even
green.
    The flitter at last swept over a southern continent that seemed
even more worn-down than the rest, and came to rest at the outskirts
of yet another city.
    Symat deliberately jumped down from the hatch, falling a
half-metre or so to the dusty ground. He fell slowly, though once his
feet were planted in the dirt of Earth, invisible inertial systems
ensured his weight felt normal to him. Gravity was indeed low here,
he thought, somehow lower than Mars’s. But Earth, the mother world,
had always defined the standard of gravity: how, then, could its
gravity be reduced?
    He looked around. The city was unprepossessing. You could clearly
see the usual circular tracings, but the structures they had
supported were razed to the ground. Amid these ancient foundation
arcs stood only a small, shabby cluster of more recent glass
buildings.
    There was nobody about. The Ascendent was quiet as she wandered
around the circular profile of one vanished wall.
    Symat asked, ’Luru, why have you brought us here?’
    ’I think this place means something to her,’ Mela said. She
guessed, ’Did you grow up here, Luru? Were you born here?’
    Luru’s face remained impassive, but she nodded. ’Yes, I was born
here, or rather in the ruins of a still older city on this site -
born in a tank, actually, for that was the way in those days.’
    Symat found it hard to imagine Luru Parz ever having been young,
ever being born.
    ’The whole of the Earth was in the grip of alien conquerors. They
built this city, erasing the ruins. They called it Conurbation 5204.
These circles you see were the bases of domes of blown rock. The
place was beautiful, in its way. There were plenty of places to play,
for me and my cadre siblings.’
    ’It was home,’ Mela said.
    ’Oh, yes. Even a prison becomes a home.’
    The Curator looked at her almost with compassion. ’You never told
me any of this.’
    ’You were told what you needed to know,’ Luru said harshly. ’I
worked here, for an agency called the Extirpation Directorate. My job
was to erase the human past. We humans were useful to our conquerors,
but troublesome. To detach us from our history, to strip away our
identity, was their strategy to control us.’
    Symat felt disgusted. ’And you did this work for them?’
    ’I had no choice,’ she murmured. ’And the work was challenging,
intellectually. To eradicate is as satisfying as to build, if you
don’t think beyond the act itself. Of course we failed. Look around
you!’ She laughed and spread her arms; it was a grotesque sight.
’Since the great levelling of those days, more cities have been built
on the foundations of the old, only to fall into ruin, over and over.
History just keeps on piling up, whatever you do.’
    Mela asked curiously, ’Did you have children, Luru Parz?’
    ’Not that I knew of. If I had I wouldn’t have lived so long. There
is a logic in immortality.’
    ’Lovers, then,’ Mela said. ’You must have had lovers.’
    Luru smiled. ’Yes, child. One lover. But we fell out. He was a
ragamuffin. He escaped the conquerors’ cities, preferring to live
wild. We were on opposite sides of the argument on how to deal with
the Occupation, you see. He died well, though. He died for what he
believed in.’ She