Free The Gate to Futures Past by Julie E. Czerneda

with a smile, “My Birth Watcher’s expecting me at breakfast.”

    I ’ported to what had been the Council Chamber and was now
Sona
’s galley, not bothering to look for my Birth Watcher. Little Andi sud Prendolat had made friends on the ship and had more interesting things to do with her time than check my eating habits. When Aryl and I needed her, she’d be there to help. Let her be a child till then.
    My hair, having expressed its opinion, settled politely down my back.
Put you in a net,
I warned it, rewarded by the
feel
of Aryl’s smile.
    Powerful Chosen females had hair that could be a nuisance—none, in my experience, as much a nuisance as mine. A di Sarc trait.
    I’d left the name behind, Sira Morgan having a happier ring. Strange to think it was unknown, now, among the Om’ray. The M’hiray of Cersi had swept the name from the planet, along with its Power.
    To be reborn,
Aryl commented dryly.
    As an infant. To me, Aryl di Sarc stood strong and proud, a black-haired Clanswoman of vast Power and shockingly new Talents—for her time. A natural leader. My confidante. “Reborn?” I couldn’t imagine it. How could she be as she’d been?
    She’d followed the thought.
Being born will do, Sira. Trust me
.
    Aryl had walled away her
grief
at losing her Chosen; the blood red of that inner barrier ample warning to stay clear. Behind it lay, I suspected, her desperate need for freedom, too. She’d traded a stone prison for one of flesh. Could hear, after a fashion; see through my eyes when I helped, though that made her dizzy.
    My fingers would turn the wide bracelet on my wrist without my intent. Carved and hammered to resemble water curling over stone, it had been Aryl’s once, made by Enris from the Oud’s green metal.
    None of it a replacement for a body of her own. None of it what she deserved.
    You’re welcome to hurry things along in there,
I sent, keeping it light.
    Amusement.
It will help if you feed us both. Where’s our breakfast?
    Working on it.
    The ship’s other modifications either mystified or inconvenienced. Not this. Gone from the former Council Chamber were the tall arched windows that had looked out on the grove, replaced or covered by a featureless wall of pale blue. Tables of gleaming green metal sprouted from the chamber floor, complete with benches. The benches themselves were topped with ayielding material patterned in swirls of the same varied hues as the floor. Our ancestors had relished color.
    Or known its importance to those born under a sky.
    Unchanged was the raised dais. When we’d arrived here, there’d been a solitary, innocuous-looking pillar set into it. Called a Maker, it was a machine allowing a Cloisters to manipulate the minds of its Clan. Not that Om’ray thought of it that way. Generations of Om’ray Keepers had used theirs to provide teaching dreams, or to break the connection between Om’ray—a last resort to protect healthy minds from a damaged one. Aryl and the first M’hiray had used this very same Maker not only to sever themselves from all other Om’ray, but to erase their memories of Cersi, allowing them to take Passage to Stonerim III and the Trade Pact.
    Aryl’s mother, Taisal di Sarc, had remained behind, sacrificing herself to operate the machine. We’d found her clothing and Speaker pendant by the pillar’s base.
    Our arrival, and my touching the pendant, had awakened the machine. Without Morgan and Aryl, our true selves would have been lost in the new personas it forced on us, and all likely would have died trying to fit into a Sona that didn’t exist. For the Maker’s real function was to prepare volunteers for their part in an appalling experiment: to see if isolated groups of Om’ray, put under different stresses, might develop the ability to access and control the M’hir.
    The meddling in our reproduction had started