PROMISE

CHAPTER 27

"I know what you're going to say, but I think you ought to see this alone."

Those had been Lilith's words before she'd left him with Memory. The computer, Lilith had called it. Not 'she', or The Head, as Hain had labeled it in his mind.

The prospect of being alone with Memory had drawn a rash of protest from Hain, but Lilith had insisted.

"Trust me," she'd said. "You're going to have a lot to think about by the time Memory is through, and I want you to have a chance to process it before you start chucking questions at me."

She'd been right.

Hain bent forward in the chair, elbows on knees, cradling his face in his hands. That conversation seemed a distant memory. He sighed, and stared into the vacant place in the air where he'd been watching what Memory had to show him for–how long? Hours, maybe? Days? Time passed differently when you were delving into the past.

His eyes drifted over the ridged wall opposite him. He slid his hands up his face, and rubbed his eyes with the balls of his palms.

Images fluttered behind his eyes. People. Cities. War. Peace. Human history that shouldn't have existed.

Flash.

A still image of rough stone the color of dried blood, its surface marred by white handprints.

Cave paintings of Leange Pettakere.

Flash.

A scarlet bird exploded from trees ahead of unseen predators, the notes of warbled birdsong fluttering to his ears in the wake of frantic wings.

Cardinalis cardinalis: extinct.

Flash.

A firebrand hammered a podium while crowds called back to him, arms waving and murder written on their faces.

Adolf Hitler after passage of the Enabling Act.

Flash.

A humanoid figure bounded over a dusty wasteland while a blue sphere hung in the background on a field of black.

Eow-One, humanity's first permanent lunar colony established.

Flash.

Silver hair spilled over the shoulders of a withered old man, his lips moving soundlessly as Hain stared into his eyes.

King Edward III née William Windsor, announcing emergency wartime dissolution of the English Parliament.

Flash.

Hain let out a shuddering breath. This was not a young world. He thought the words, and he heard them, their cadence like the opening of a new prayer.

Hain's body felt full with the knowledge swelling inside him. It changed everything–casting aside the Faithful's dusty lies scribbled in timeworn volumes. This was revelation. True revelation. Practically heaven-sent. The feeling was pleasurable even as it pained him, like peeling sunburned skin to expose raw, fresh pink flesh.

This was not a young world.

Humans had existed for millennia. And, Hain thought with gasping wonder, maybe even hundreds of thousands of them had lived at once. Havens bigger than Promise had dotted the world, their hulks peopled by a race almost unfathomable in its immensity. His race. Humanity.

People needed to know.

Humans had run their fingers along the bottom of the sea, and looked down on the world from the sky's edge. Humanity had once been spectacular in its glory.