Issue 19

© Wyrm Publishing, 2016
wyrmpublishing.com
forever-magazine.com

Introduction

Neil Clarke

Welcome to the August 2016 issue of Forever Magazine!

I turn fifty this month. Big number, but one I’m quite content with having reached. For some reason twenty-five bugged me, but a half-century, no, not a bit. Shortly after my birthday, I plan to catch a plane to Worldcon and enjoy a long weekend with friends. I’m up for the Hugo Award for Best Editor (Short Form) and a Chesley Award for Best Art Director. I don’t anticipate taking either home, but I’m quite proud to be counted on those short lists with some of the best in the field.

I’ve turned in my next anthology Galactic Empires, to Night Shade Books and look forward to being able to reveal the cover and contents to everyone sometime later this month. After that, it’s more reading for volume two of Best Science Fiction of the Year and two other themed anthologies I can’t announce just quite yet. Next month, probably.

Aside from all that, I don’t have many more plans for August. I’m going to try to relax and enjoy the end of summer. Hope you do too.

Until next month . . .

-Neil

Alone

Robert Reed

1

The hull was gray and smooth, gray and empty, and in every direction it fell away gradually, vanishing where the cold black of the sky pretended to touch what was real. What was real was the Great Ship. Nothing else enjoyed substance or true value. Nothing else in Creation could be felt, much less understood. The Ship was a sphere of perfect hyperfiber, world-sized and enduring, while the sky was only boundless vacuum punctuated with lost stars and the occasional swirls of distant galaxies. Radio whispers could be heard, too distorted and far too faint to resolve, and neutrino rains fell from above and rose from below, and there were ripples of gravity and furious nuclei generated by distant catastrophes—inconsequential powers washing across the unyielding, eternal hull.

The sky could not be trusted. The stars wished only to tell lies. And worse, the majesties above would distract the senses and mind from what genuinely mattered. To the walker, there was no purpose but to slowly, carefully move across the Ship’s hull, and if something of interest were discovered, a cautious investigation would commence. But only harmless mysteries were approached and studied in detail. Instinct guided the walker, and for as long as it could remember, that instinct spoke through fear. Fierce, unnamed hazards were lurking. The enemies could not be seen or defined, but they were close, waiting for weakness, ready to punish sloth or inattentiveness. This was why curiosity was a pleasure best taken in small doses. Fascination was what came when vision narrowed too far. This was the walker scrupulously avoided anything that moved or spoke, or any device that glowed with unusual heat, and even the tiniest examples of organic life were to be avoided, without fail.

Solitude was its natural way.

Alone, the ancient fear would diminish to a bearable ache, and something like happiness was possible.

Walking, walking. That was the meaning of existence. Select one worthy line, perhaps using one of the scarce stars as a navigational tool, and then follow that line until some fresh thing was discovered. Whether the object was studied or circumvented, this was where the walker would pick a new bearing, aiming at the horizon again, maintaining that geometric purity with its boundless resolve.

There was no need to eat, no requirement for drink or sleep. Its life force was a minor, unsolvable mystery. Existence was patient, every moment feeling long and busy. But if nothing of note occurred, nothing needed to be recalled. After a century of uninterrupted routine, the walker compressed that blissful sameness into a single impression that was squeezed flush against every other vacuous memory—the recollections of a soul that felt ageless but was not, still very close to empty and innocent in so many ways.

Eyes shrank and new eyes grew, changing talents as needed. With that powerful, piercing vision, the walker watched ahead and beside and behind. Nothing was missed. Sometimes it would stop, compelled to drop several eyes and stare into a random portion of the hull. From the grayness, microscopic details emerged: Fresh radiation tracks still unhealed; faint scars gradually erased by quantum bonds fighting to repair themselves. Each observation revealed quite a lot about hyperfiber and the lessons never changed. The hull was a wonder that was fashioned from an extremely strong and lasting material—a silvery-gray substance refined during some lost age by powerful species, perhaps, or perhaps by a league of vanished gods. Genius must have imagined and built the Ship, and presumably the same intellect had sent the prize racing through the vacuum. A good, glorious purpose must be at work here; but except for the relentless perfection of the Great Ship, nothing remained of intentions or goals, or even an obvious destination.

When the walker kneeled, the hull’s beauty was revealed.

And then it would stand again and resume its slow travels, feeling blessed to move freely upon this magnificent face.

2

There was no purpose but to wander the perfection forever, without interruption: That assumption was made early and embraced as a faith. But the oddities and little mysteries grew more common. Every century saw more crushed steel boxes and empty diamond buckets than the century before, and then came lumps of mangled aerogel, and later, the occasional shard of some lesser kind of hyperfiber. Then it found dead machines and pieces of machinery and tools too massive or far too ordinary to be carried any farther once they had failed. These objects were considerably younger than the Ship. Who abandoned them was a looming mystery, but one that would not be solved. The walker had no intention of approaching these others. And in those rare moments when they approached it—always by mistake, always unaware of its presence—the walker would flatten against the hull and make itself vanish.

Invisibility was a critical talent. But invisibility meant that it had to abandon most of its senses. Even striding across its smooth back, these interlopers were reduced to a vibration with each footfall and a weak tangle of magnetic and electrical fields.

Days later and safe again, the walker would cautiously rise up and cautiously move on.

Another millennium passed without serious incident. It was easy to believe that the Great Ship would never change, and nothing would ever be truly new; and holding that belief close, the walker followed one perfect line. No buckets or diamond chisels were waiting to change its direction. As it strode on, the stars and sky-whispers warned that it was finally passing into unknown territory. But this happened on occasion. Perfection meant sameness, and the walker couldn’t imagine anything new. Except then what seemed to be a flat-topped mountain began to rise over the coming horizon. Making note of the sharp gray line hovering just above the hull, it was a little curious. More years of steady marching caused the grayness to lift higher, just slightly. Perhaps a mountain of trash had been set there. Maybe a single enormous bucket had been upended. Various explanations offered themselves; none satisfied. But the event was so surprising, titanic and unwelcome, and the novelty was so great, that the walker stopped as soon as it was sure that something was indeed there, and without risking another step, it waited for three years and a little longer, adapting its eyes constantly, absorbing a view that stubbornly refused to change.

By then, curiosity defeated every imprecise fear, and the walker steered straight toward what made no sense.

At a pace that required little energy, it pressed ahead in half-meter strides. Decades passed before it finally accepted what was obvious: That while the Ship was undoubtedly perfect, it was by no measure perfectly smooth and eternally round. Rising from the hull was not one gigantic tower, but several. The nearest tower was blackish-gray and too vast to measure from a single perspective. A small light occasionally appeared on the summit, or tiny flecks of light danced beside its enormous bulk, and there were abrupt spikes in dense, narrow radio noise that tasted like a language. Explanations occurred to the walker. From where the possibilities came, it could not say. Maybe they arose from the same instincts responsible for its fears. But like never before, it was intrigued.

Moving again, slowly and tirelessly pushing closer, it noticed how one of the more distant towers had begun to tip, looking ready to collapse on its side. And shortly after that remarkable change in posture, the tower let loose a deep rumble, followed by a scorching, sky-piercing fire.

But of course: These were the Ship’s engines. No other explanation was necessary, and the walker absorbed its new knowledge in an instant, fresh beliefs gathering happily around the Ship’s continued perfection. Fusion boosted by antimatter threw a column of radiant blue-white plasmas into the blackness, scorching the vacuum. This was a vision worth admiration. Here was power beyond anything that it had ever conceived of. But soon the engine fell back to sleep, and after careful reflection, the walker chose another random direction, and another, selecting them until it was steering away from the gigantic rocket nozzles.

If objects this vast had missed its scrutiny, what else was hiding beyond the horizon?

Walk, walk, walk.

But its pace slowed even more. Flying vessels and busy machines were suddenly common near the engines, and some kind of animal was building warm cities of bubbled glass. An invasion was underway. There were regions of intense activity and considerable radio noise, and each hazard had to be avoided, and when the situation demanded, treacherous regions had to be crossed without revealing the presence of one lone walker.

Ages passed before the engines vanished beyond the horizon.

A bright red star became the new beacon, and the walker followed its rich light until the ancient sun sickened and went nova, flinging portions of its flawed skin out into the cooling, dying vacuum.

Younger stars appeared, climbing from the horizon as the walker pressed forward. A second sky had always been hiding behind the hyperfiber body. Then the play of gravity and a hard twisting announced that the Ship had grudgingly left the line followed for untold billions of years. After that, the sky changed rapidly, radically. The vacuum was not nearly so empty or quite as chilled, and even a patient entity with nothing to do but count points of light could not estimate how many stars were drifting into its spellbound gaze.

A galaxy was approaching. One great dish of three hundred billion suns and trillions of worlds was about to intersect with a vessel that had wandered across the universe, and every previous nudge and the great reaches of nothingness had led to this place and one perfect rich moment.

And here stood the walker, on the brink of something quite new.

There was a line here that perhaps no one else could have noticed, at least not with just eyes and the sketchy knowledge available. But the walker could see where the hull that it knew surrendered to another. The perfect hyperfiber was suddenly replaced with a rougher, more weathered version of faultless self. Even in the emptiest reaches of the universe wandered ice and dust and other nameless detritus. Those tiny worlds would crash down on the Ship’s hull, always at a substantial fraction of light-speed, and not even the finest hyperfiber could shrug aside that kind of withering power. Stepping onto the Ship’s leading face, the walker observed gouges and debris fields and then the little craters that were eventually obscured by still larger craters—holes reaching deep into the hard resilient body. Most of the wounds were ancient, although hyperfiber hid its age well. All but the largest craters were unimportant to the Ship’s structure; the cumulative damage barely diminished its abiding strength. But some wounds showed signs of repair and reconditioning. The walker discovered one wide lake of liquid hyperfiber. A patch had filled a crater, and the patch was still curing when it arrived. Kneeling down on the smooth shoreline, it peered into the still-reflective surface. For the first time in memory, here was another waiting to be seen. But the walker felt no interest in its own appearance. What mattered was the inescapable fact that someone—some agent or benevolent hand—was striving to repair what billions of years of abuse had achieved. A constructive force was at work on the Ship. A healing force, seemingly. Enthralled, the walker looked at the young lake and the reflected Milky Way, measuring the patch’s dimensions. Then it examined the half-cured skin, first with fresh eyes and then with a few respectful touches. A fine grade of hyperfiber was being used, almost equal to the original hull, which implied that the invisible caretakers were striving to do what was good, and even better, striving to make certain that their goodness would endure.

The endless wandering continued.

Ultimately the galaxy was overhead, majestic yet still inconsequential. The suns and invisible worlds were warm dust flung across the emptiness while the Ship remained dense and rich beyond all measure. Walk, and walk. And walk. And then it found itself at the edge of another crater—the largest scar yet—and for the first time ever the walker followed a curving line, its path defined by the crater’s frozen lip.

Bodies and machines were working deep within the ancient gouge. It watched from unseen perches, studying methods and guessing reasons for what it could not understand. The vacuum crackled with radio noise. The sense of the words began to emerge, and because language might prove useful, the walker deciphered meanings and consequences and which voices were most important. Hundreds of animals worked inside the crater—human animals dressed inside human-shaped machines. Accompanying them were tens of thousands of pure machines, while standing on the lip was a complex of prefabricated shops and habitats and fusion reactors and more humans and more robots dedicated to no purpose but repairing one minuscule portion of the Ship’s forward face.

As the walker kneeled, unseen, a bit of cosmic grit arrived with a brilliant flash of light, digging a tiny crater not fifty little steps away.

The danger was evident, but so were the marvels. Two narrow black tracks had been laid across the unbroken hull, obeying the flawless elegance of parallel lines. The tracks were superconductive rails that allowed heavy tanks to be dragged to this place, each tank swollen with uncured, still liquid hyperfiber. From a fresh hiding place, the walker watched a long chain of tanks arrive and drained before being set on a parallel track and sent away. The work was obviously difficult, demanding precision woven with some luck. Ever fickle, liquid hyperfiber was eager to form lasting bonds but susceptible to flaws and catastrophic embellishments. Deep down inside the crater, a brigade of artisans struggle to repair the damage—a tiny pock on the vast bow of the Ship—and their deed, epic as well as tiny, served as ringing testament to the astonishing gifts employed by those who first built the Great Ship.

All but one of the empty tanks was sent home. The exception was damaged in a collision and then pushed aside, abandoned. Curious about that long silver tank, the walker approached and then paused, crept closer and paused again, waiting days to feel certain that no traps were waiting, no eyes watching. Then it slipped near enough to touch the crumbled body. An innate talent for mechanical affairs was awakened. Using thought and imaginary tools, it rebuilt the empty vessel. Presumably those repairs were waiting for a more convenient time. Unless the humans meant to abandon this equipment, which was not an unthinkable prospect, judging by the trash already scattered about this increasingly crowded landscape.

One end of the tank was cracked open, the interior exposed. Slow, nearly invisible steps allowed the walker to slip inside. The cylinder was slightly less than a kilometer in length. Ignoring every danger, the walker passed through the ugly fissure, and once inside, it balanced on a surface designed to feel slick to every possible material. Yet it managed to hold its place, retaining its pose, peering into the darkness until it was sure that it was alone, which was when it let light seep out of its own body, filling the long volume with a soft cobalt-blue glow.

Everywhere it looked, it saw itself looking back.

The round wall was covered with distorted images of what might be a machine, or perhaps was something else. Whatever it was, the walker had no choice but to stare at itself. The tank was a trap, but instead of a secret door slamming shut, the mechanism worked by forcing an entity to gaze upon its own shape and its nature, perhaps for the first time.

What it beheld was not unlovely.

But how did it know beauty? What aesthetic standard was employed? And why carry such a skill among its instincts and keen talents?

Minutes passed before the walker could free itself. But even after climbing back onto the open hull, under the stars, it remained trapped. A slow crawl gave it some distance, but after it stood it did nothing. It remained immobile, exposed, staring back at the empty, ruined tank while feeling sick with grief. Where did this obligation come from? Why care so much about a soulless object that would never function again? That piece of ruin bothered it so much that even later, even after finally walking far enough to hide both the tank and the crater beyond the horizon . . . its mind insisted on returning to an object that others had casually and unnecessarily cast aside.

3

It walked. It counted steps. It reached two million four hundred thousand and nine steps when humans suddenly appeared in their swift cars.

The invaders settled within a hundred meters of the walker. With a storm of radio talk and the help of robots, they erected a single unblinking eye and pointed it straight above. The walker hid where it happened to be, filling a tiny crater. Unnoticed, it lay motionless as the new telescope was built and tested and linked to the growing warning system. And then the humans left, but the walker remained inside its safe hole, sprouting an array of increasingly powerful eyes.

The sky might be untrustworthy, but there was beauty to the lie. The Great Ship was plunging into a galaxy that was increasingly brilliant and complex and dangerous. More dust and chunks of wayward ice slammed against the hull, and the bombardment would only worsen as the Ship sliced into the thick curling limb of suns. But the humans answered the dangers with increasingly powerful weapons. Telescopes watched for what was coming. Then bolts of coherent light melted the incoming ices. Ballistic rounds pulverized asteroids. Sculpted EM fields slowed the tiniest fragments and shepherded them aside. There was splendor in that endless fight. Flashes and sparkles constantly surprised the lidless eyes. Ionized plasmas generated squawks and whistles reaching across the spectrum. This was an accidental music that grew louder, urgent and carefree. But no defensive system was unbreakable. Death threatened every foolish being that stood on the bow. Each moment might be the last. Yet the scene deserved fascination and wonder, and the walker had not moved in decades, staring upwards, sprouting antennae and listening while its mind began to believe that this violent magic had a rhythm, an elegant inescapable logic, and that whatever note and whichever color came next could have been foreseen.

That was when the voice began.

At least that was when the walker finally noticed the soft, soft whispers.

Certain mutterings were not part of the sky. Intuition told the walker that much. Perhaps the voice rose from the hull, or maybe it came from the chill vacuum. But more important than its origin was the quiet swift terror that defined its presence—an inarticulate, barely audible murmur that came when unexpected and vanished before any response could be offered.

The first eleven incidents were recorded, but the walker remained silent inside its hiding place.

But the twelfth whisper was too much. With a radio mouth formed for the occasion, and using the human language learned over the last centuries, the walker asked, “What are you?” It asked, “What do you want?” And when nothing answered, it added, “Do not bother me. Leave me alone.”

By chance or by kindness, the request was honored.

The walker stood and once again wandered the bow. But the Ship was burrowing into debris belts and comet clouds, and impacts made the hull shiver, and sometimes the horizon was lit up with x-ray plumes. So it returned to the stern, ready to accept the safety afforded by the Ship’s enormous bulk. Yet there were more humans than ever, and they were in constant motion, putting an end to the delicious, seemingly infinite emptiness. Following a twisting, secretive line, the walker journeyed to the nearest engine, and with cautious delight touched the mountainous nozzle at its base. But machines were everywhere, investigating and repairing, and the human chatter was busy and endless, jabbering about subjects and names and places and times that made no sense at all.

The walker retreated to where the stern and bow met, and for years it moved along that fresh line. But starships were approaching. Fierce little rockets and urgent voices matched velocities with the Great Ship. Dozens of streakships fell toward the hull and vanished without trace. The walker moved closer to the landing field, and then it hid for a year before moving a little farther and a little farther again. Eventually it saw two enormous doors pull wide, revealing a gaping hole cut deep into the perfect hull. The next invaders landed inside the hole. The walker had never seen a spaceport, never imagined such a thing was necessary or even possible. Once again, the Great Ship was far more than it pretended to be. Considering how many passengers might be tucked inside each little ship, it was easy to understand why the hull had grown crowded. The human animals were falling from the sky, coming here for the honor of living inside their bubble cities on the hull of this lost, unknowable relic.

Over the years, in slow patient stages, the walker crept to the edge of the spaceport. Then the door pulled wide and with a single glance, its foolishness was revealed: The Great Ship was more than its armored hull. What the entity had assumed to be hyperfiber to the core was otherwise. The port was a vast column of air and light and warm wet bodies moving by every means and for no discernible purpose. This was animal motion, swift and busy and devoid of any clear purpose. Humans were just one species among a multitude, and the Ship beneath the hull was pierced with tunnels and doorways and hatches and diamond-windows, and that was just what the briefest glance provided before it flattened out and slowly, cautiously crept away.

The Ship was hollow.

And judging by the evidence, it was inhabited by millions and maybe billions of organic entities.

The unwanted revelations left it shaken. Years were required to sneak away from the port. Unseen, it returned to the bow and the beautiful sky, accepting the dangers for the illusion of solitude. But the ancient craters were being swiftly erased now. The Ship’s lasers were pummeling any cometary debris that dared come close, and the repair crews were swift and efficient. The pitted, cracked terrain was vanishing beneath smooth perfection. The new hyperfiber proved fresh and strong, affording few hiding places even for a wanderer who could hide nearly anywhere. By necessity, every motion was studied before it was made. But even then, a nearby robot might notice a presence and maybe EM hands would reach out, trying to touch what couldn’t be seen; and in terror, the walker stopped living and stopped thinking, hiding away inside itself as it pretended to be nothing but another scab of hyperfiber lost among billions of patches.

A freshly made crater waited upon its line, too small to bring humans today but large enough to let a survivor hide inside the wounded hull. A brief sharp ridge stood in the way—the relic of chaotic, billion-degree plasmas. After five days of careful study, the walker slowly crossed the ridge. Humans never came alone to these places, and there was no trace of machines. But as it stood on the ridgeline, urgency took hold. Something was wrong and what was wrong felt close. The walker began to slowly lower itself, trying to vanish. But then a strong voice said, “There you are.”

It hunkered down quickly.

With amusement, someone said, “I see you.”

The mysterious voice from before had been quieter than this. It was always a whisper and far less comprehensible. Perhaps the young crater helped shape its words, its sharp refrozen lip lending strength and focus.

In myriad ways, the walker began melting into the knife-like ridge.

Yet the voice only grew louder—a radio squawk wrapped around the human language. With some pleasure, it said, “You cannot hide from me.”

“Leave me be,” the walker answered.

“But you’re the one disturbing me, stranger.”

“And I have told you,” the walker insisted. “Before, I told you that I wish to be alone. I must be alone. Don’t pester me with your noise.”

“Oh,” the voice replied. “You believe we’ve met. Don’t you?”

Curiosity joined the fear. A new eye lifted a little ways, scanning the closest few meters.

“You’ve made a mistake,” the voice continued. “I don’t know whose song you’ve been hearing, but I’m rather certain that it wasn’t mine.”

“Who are you?” the walker asked.

“My name is Wune.”

“Where are you?”

“Find the blue-white star on the horizon,” it said.

“Are you that star?”

“No, no.” Wune could do nothing but laugh for a few moments. “Look below it. Do you see me?”

Except for a few crevices and delicate wrinkles, the crater floor was flat. Standing at the far end was a tiny figure clad in hyperfiber. It was shaped like a female. One arm lifted high. What might have been a hand waved slowly, the gesture purely human.

“My name is Wune,” the stranger repeated.

“Are you human?”

“I’m a Remora,” said Wune. “And what exactly are you, my friend? I don’t seem to recognize your nature.”

“My nature is a mystery,” it agreed.

“Do you have a name?”

“I am,” it began. Then it hesitated, considering this wholly original question. And with sudden conviction, it said, “Alone.” It rose up from the ridge, proclaiming, “My name is Alone.”

4

“Come closer, Alone.”

It did nothing.

“I won’t hurt you,” Wune promised, the arm beckoning again. “We should study each at a neighborly distance. Don’t you agree?”

“We are close enough,” the walker warned, nearly two kilometers of vacuum and blasted hyperfiber separating them.

The Remora considered his response. Then with an amiably tone, she agreed, “This is better than being invisible to one another, I’ll grant you that.”

For a long while, neither spoke.

Then Wune asked, “How good are those eyes? What do you see of me?”

Alone stared only at the stranger, each new eye focused on the lifesuit made of hyperfiber and the thick diamond faceplate and what lay beyond. Alone had studied enough humans to understand their construction, their traditions, but what was human about this face was misplaced. The eyes were beneath the mouth and tilted on their sides. The creature’s flesh was slick and cold in appearance, and it was a vivid warm purple, while the long hair on the scalp was white with a hint of blue, rather like the brightest stars. The white hair was lifting and falling, twirling and then pulling straight, as if an invisible hand were playing with it.

“I don’t know your species,” Alone confessed.

“But I think you do,” Wune corrected. “I’m a human animal and a Remora too.”

“You are different from the others.”

“What others?” she inquired.

“The few I have seen.”

“You spied on us while we were working the monster crater. Didn’t you?” The mouth smiled, exposing matching rows of perfect human teeth. “Oh yes, you were noticed. I know you climbed inside that busted bladder before walking away again.”

“You saw me?”

“Not then, but later,” she explained. “A security AI was riding the bladder. It was set at minimal power, barely alive, which probably kept you from noticing it. We didn’t learn about you until weeks later, when we stripped the wreck for salvage and the AI woke up.”

Shame took hold. How could it have been so careless?

“I know five other occasions when you were noticed,” Wune continued. “There are probably other incidents. I try to hear everything, but that’s never quite possible. Is it?” Then she described each sighting, identifying the place and time when these moments of incompetence occurred.

“I wasn’t aware that I was seen,” it stated.

Ignorance made its failures feel even worse.

“You were barely seen,” Wune corrected. “A ghost, a phantom. Not real enough to be taken seriously.”

“You mentioned a spaceport,” it said.

“I did.”

“Where is this port?”

Wune pointed with authority, offering a precise distance.

“I don’t remember being there,” Alone admitted.

“Maybe we made a mistake,” she allowed.

“But I did visit another port.” With care, it sifted through its memories. “I might have difficulties with memory.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I know so little about myself,” confessed the walker.

“Well, that is sad,” Wune said. “I’m sorry for you.”

“Why?”

“Life is the past,” she stated. “The present moment is too narrow to slice, and besides, it will be lost with the next instant. And the future is nothing but empty conjecture. Where you have been is what matters. What you have done is what counts for and against you on the tallies.”

The walker concentrated on those unexpected words.

“I have a telescope with me,” Wune said. “I used it when I first saw you. But I want to be polite. If you don’t mind, may I study you now?”

“If you wish,” it said uneasily.

The Remora warned, “This might take some time, friend.” Then with both gloved hands, she held a long tube to her face.

Alone waited.

An hour later, Wune asked, “Are you a machine?”

“Perhaps I am.”

“Or do you carry an organic component inside that body?”

“Each answer is possible, I think.”

Wune lowered the telescope. “I am a little of both,” she allowed. “I like to believe that I’m more organic than mechanical, but the two facets happily live inside me.”

Alone said nothing.

The Remora laughed softly, admitting, “This is fun.”

Was it?

To her new friend, she explained, “Thousands of years ago, humans learned how to never grow old. There are no diseases, and there’s no easy way to kill us.” The hands were encased in hyperfiber gloves. One of those fingers tapped hard against her diamond faceplate. “My mind? It’s a bioceramic machine, which makes it tough and quick to heal and full of redundancies. My memories are woven inside the artificial neurons, safe as can be. Whenever I want, I can remember yesterday. Or I can pull my head back five centuries and one yesterday. My life is an enormous, deeply personal epic that I am free to enjoy whenever I wish.”

“I am different than you,” Alone conceded.

“Do you sleep?”

“Never.”

“Yet you never feel mentally tired?” The purple face nodded, and she said, “Right now, I’m envious.”

Envy was a new word.

“I’m trying to tell you something,” she said. “This old Remora lady has been awake for a very long time, and she needs to sleep for a little while. Is that all right? Do whatever you want while my eyes are closed. If you need, walk away from me. Vanish completely.” Then she smiled, adding, “Or you might take a step or two in my direction. If you feel the urge, that is.”

Then Wune shut her misplaced eyes.

During the next hour, Alone crept forward more than three meters.

As soon as she woke, Wune noticed. “Good. Very good.”

“Are you rested now?”

“Hardly. But I’ll push through the misery.” Her laugh had a different tone. “What’s your earliest, oldest memory? Tell me.”

“Walking.”

“Walking where?”

“Crossing the Ship’s hull.”

“Who brought you to the Ship?”

“I have always been here.”

She considered those words. “Or you could have been built here,” she suggested. “Assembled from a kit, perhaps. You don’t remember a crowd of engineers sticking their hands inside you?”

“I remember no one.” Then with confidence, Alone said, “I have never been anywhere but on the Great Ship.”

“If that was true,” Wune began. Then she fell silent.

Alone asked, “What if that is so?”

“I can’t even guess at all of the ramifications.” After a few minutes of silence, she said, “Ask something of me. Please.”

“Why are you here, Wune?”

“Because I’m a Remora,” she offered. “Remoras are humans who got pushed up on the hull to do important, dangerous work. There are reasons for this. Good causes and bad justifications. Everything that you see here . . . well, the hull is not intended to be a prison. The captains claim that it isn’t. But now and again, it feels like the worst cage imaginable.”

Then she hesitated, thinking carefully before saying, “I don’t think that was your question. Was it?”

“Like me, you are alone,” it pointed out. “Most humans gather in large groups, and they act pleased to be that way.”

With a serious tone, Wune said, “I’m rather different than the rest.”

Alone waited.

“You see, the hull is constantly washed with radiation, particularly out here on the leading face.” She gestured at the galaxy. “My flesh is immortal. I can endure almost any abuse. But these wild nuclei crash through my cells, wreaking terrible damage. My repair mechanisms are always awake, always busy. I have armies of tiny workers marching inside me, fighting to lift my flesh back to robust health. But when I am alone, and when I focus on my body’s functions, I can influence my regenerating flesh. On a good day, with nothing except willpower, I can direct my own evolution.”

That might explain the odd, not quite human face.

“I’m out here teaching myself these tricks,” Wune admitted. “The hull is no prison. To me, it is a church. This is a temple. I have been handed a rare opportunity where the tiniest soul can unleash potentials that her old epic life never revealed to her.”

“I understand each of your words,” said Alone.

“But?”

“I cannot decipher what you mean.”

“Of course you can’t.” Wune laughed. “Listen. My entire creed boils down to this: If I can write with my flesh, then I can write upon my soul.”

“Your ‘soul’?”

“My mind. My essence. Whatever it is that the universe sees when it looks hard at peculiar little Wune.”

“Your soul,” the walker said again.

Wune spoke for a long while, trying to explain her newborn faith. Then her voice turned raw and sloppy, and after drinking broth produced by her recyke system, she slept again. The legs of her lifesuit were locked in place. Nearly five hours passed with her standing like a statue, unaware of her surroundings, and when she woke again barely twenty meters of vacuum and hard radiation separated them.

The Remora didn’t act surprised. With a quieter, more intimate voice, she asked, “What fuels you? Is there some kind of reactor inside that body? Or do you steal your power from us somehow?”

“I don’t remember stealing.”

“Ah, the thief’s standard reply.” She chuckled. “Let’s assume you’re a machine. You have to be alien-built. I’ve never seen any device like you, or even heard rumors. Not from the human shops, I haven’t.” After a long stare, she asked, “Are you male?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going to call you male. Does that offend you?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps you are.” She wanted to come closer. One boot lifted, seemingly of its own volition, and then she forced herself to set it back down on the hull. “You claim not to know your own purpose. Your job, your nature are questions without answer.”

“I am a mystery to myself.”

“Which is an enormous gift, isn’t it? By that, I mean that if you don’t know what to do with your life, then you’re free to do anything you wish.” Her face was changing color, the purple skin giving way to streaks of gold. And during her sleep her eyes had grown rounder and deeply blue. “You don’t seem dangerous. And you do require solitude. I can accept all of that. But as time passes, I think you’ll discover that escaping notice will only grow harder. The surface area is enormous, yes. But where will you hide? I won’t chase after you. I promise. And I can keep my people respectful of your privacy. At least I hope I can. But the Great Ship is cursed with quite a few captains, and they don’t approve of mysteries. And we can’t count all the adventurers who are racing here, abandoning home worlds and fortunes just to ride on this alien artifact.”

With just a few words, the galaxy above seemed even more treacherous.

Wune continued. “Maybe you don’t realize this, but our captains have decided to take us on a tour of the Milky Way. Humans and aliens are invited, for a fat price, and some of them will hear the rumors about you. I guarantee, some of these passengers will come up on the hull, armed with sensors and their lousy judgment.”

He listened and tried to think clearly.

“There is selfishness in my reasons,” Wune admitted. “I don’t want these tourists under my boots. And since you can’t hide forever in plain sight, we need to find you a new home.”

Horrified, Alone asked, “Where can I go?”

“Almost anywhere,” Wune assured. “The Great Ship is ridiculously big. It might take hundreds of thousands of years just to fill up its empty places. There are caverns and little tunnels. Nobody can name all of the seas and canyons and the dead-end holes.”

“But how can I find those places?”

“One place is all that you need, and I know ways. I will help you.”

Terror and hope lay balanced on the walker’s soul.

With those changeless human teeth, Wune smiled. “You say you know nothing about your nature, your talents. And I think you mean that.”

“I do.”

“Look at the chest of my suit, will you? Stare into the flat hyperfiber. Yes, here. Can you see your own reflection?”

His body had changed during these last few minutes. Alone had felt the new arms sprouting, the design of his legs adjusting, and without willing it to happen, he had acquired a face. It was a striking and familiar face, the purple flesh shot with gossamer threads of gold.

“I almost wish I could do that,” Wune confessed. “Reinvent myself as easily as you seem to do.”

He could think of no worthy response.

“Do you know what a chameleon is?”

Alone said, “No.”

“You,” she said. “Without question, you are the most natural, perfect chameleon that I have ever had the pleasure to meet.”

5

A solitary wanderer could slip inside the Ship and never be seen. Clearly and simply, Wune explained how that might be accomplished, and more important, which mistakes to avoid. Hours had passed. She grew drowsy again, and with yawns and rolling motions of her hands, the Remora wished her chameleon friend rich luck and endless patience. “I hope you find what you are hunting and avoid whatever it is that you are fleeing.”

Alone offered thanks but had no intention of accepting advice. Once Wune was asleep, he picked a fresh direction and walked away, and for several centuries he wandered the increasingly smooth hull, watching lasers slash and auroras swirl while the galaxy—majestic and warm and bright—rose slowly to meet the Great Ship.

Sometimes he was forced to hide in the open. Techniques and his confidence improved, but always weighed down by the sense that the Remoras were watching him, despite his tricks and endless caution. And he certainly eavesdropped on them, especially when Wune’s name was mentioned. Her frank smart voice never found him again, but others spoke of the woman with admiration and love. Wune had visited this bubble city or that repair station. Serving the Great Ship was an honor and a joyous, dangerous burden, she preached. And to her loyal people, she exalted the strength that comes from mastering the evolution of your own mortal body. And then Wune was killed, evaporated by a shard of ice that slipped past every laser. The news had to be absorbed slowly. He didn’t understand his emotions but discovered that he couldn’t walk any farther, and he hid where he happened to be, for a full year doing nothing. Wune was the only entity with whom he had ever spoken, and he was deeply shocked, and then he saw that he was sad, but what wore hardest was the keen pleasure when he realized that she was dead but he was still alive.

Eventually he followed a line leading back to Ship’s trailing face, slipping past the bubble cities and into realm of giant engines. Standing before one towering nozzle, Alone recalled Wune’s promise of small, unmonitored hatches. Careless technicians often left them unsecured. With a gentle touch, Alone tried to lift the first hatch, and then he tried to shove it inwards. But it was locked. Woring his way along the base of the nozzle, he tested another fifty hatches before deciding that Wune was mistaken. Or perhaps the technicians had learned to do their work properly. But having nothing else to do, he invested the next twenty months walking a piece of one great circle, toying with every hatch and tiny doorway that he came across, persistence rewarded when what passed for his hand suddenly dislodged a narrow doorway.

Darkness waited, and the palpable sense of great distance.

He crawled down, slowly at first, and then the sides of the nearly vertical tunnel pulled away from his grip.

Falling was floating. There was no atmosphere, no resistance to his gathering momentum. Fearing someone would notice, he left the darkness intact. Soon he was plunging at a fantastic rate, and he recalled Wune’s voice and words: “Those vents and access tubes run straight down, sometimes for hundreds of kilometers.”

His tube dropped sixty kilometers before making a sharp turn.

There was no warning. One moment, he was mildly concerned about prospects that he couldn’t measure, and the next moment saw pure misery and flashes of senseless light as his neural net absorbed the abuse. But he never lost consciousness. His shattered pieces flowed together. Wounds were healed slowly, drenched in pain. And he was still broken and helpless when a familiar voice found him.

Lying in the dark, unable to move, something quiet came very close and said, “The cold,” before falling silent again.

He didn’t try to speak.

After a long while, the voice said, “Forever, the cold.”

“What is cold?” Alone whispered.

“And dark,” said the voice.

“Who are you?”

The voice said, “Listen.”

Alone remained silent, straining to hear any kind of sound, no matter how soft or fleeting. But nothing else was offered. Silence lay upon silence, chilled and black, and he spent the next long while trying to decipher which language was used. No human tongue, clearly. Yet those few words had been as transparent and simple as anything he had ever heard.

Once healed, he seeped light.

The engine’s interior was complex and redundant, and most of its facilities were never used. Except for the occasional crackling whisper, radio talk never reached him. This was a realm where he could wander. Happily he discovered a series of nameless places where the slightest frosting of dust lay over every surface—a dust never disturbed by limb or by breath. Billions of years of benign neglect promised seclusion. No one would find him in this vastness, and if nothing else happened in his life, all would be well.

Ages passed.

Technicians and their machines traveled through these places, but always bound for more important locations.

Hiding was easy inside the catacombs.

Sometimes the overhead engine was fired, but there were always warnings. Great valves were opened and closed. Vibrations traveled along the sleeping tubes. A deeper chill could be felt as lakes of liquid hydrogen were prepared for fusion. Alone always knew three sites where he could quickly find shelter. His planning worked well, and he saw no reason to change what was flawless.

Then one day, nothing was the same again. Sitting inside a minor conduit, Alone was happily basking in a pool of golden light leaking from his inexplicable body. He was thinking about nothing, which was his favorite state of mind. And then the perfect instant was in the past, lost. A deep rumble announced dense fluids on the move, and before he could react, he was picked up and carried away by a hot viscous and irresistible liquid. Not hydrogen, and not water either. This was some species of oil dirtied up with odd metals and peculiar structures. He was trapped inside juices and passion, life and more life, and he responded with a desperate radio scream.

Tendrils touched him, trying to weave their way inside him.

He panicked, kicked and spun hard, pulling his body into the first disguise that occurred to him.

Electric voices jabbered.

A language was found, and what surrounded him said in the human tongue, “It is a Remora.”

“Down here?”

“Tastes wrong,” a third voice complained.

“Not hyperfiber, this shell isn’t,” said a fourth.

No voice ever repeated. This oily body contained a multitude of independent, deeply communal entities.

“The face is,” one said.

“Look at the face,” said another.

“Can you hear us, Remora?”

“I do,” Alone allowed.

“Are you lost?”

Alone understood the word, but it seemed too full of implications. So with as much authority as possible, he said simply, “I am not lost. No.”

An alien language erupted, the multitude debating what to do with this conundrum.

Then a final voice announced, “Whatever you are, we will leave you now in a safe place. For this favor, you will pay us with your praise and thanks. Do this and win our respect. Otherwise, we will speak badly of you, today and for the eternity to come.”

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you, yes.”

He was spat into a new tunnel—a brief broad hole capped with a massive door and filled with magnetic filters, meshed filters, and powerful mechanical limbs. The limbs gathered him up, and Alone transformed his body again, struggling to slide free. But the machines tied themselves into an enormous knot, trapping him. Alone felt helpless. Maybe something good would have happened, but he panicked. Wild with terror, fresh talents were unleashed, and he discovered that when he did nothing except consciously gather up his energies, he could eventually let loose a burst of coherent light—an ultraviolet flash that jumped out of his skin, scorching the smothering limbs—and he tumbled back onto the mesh floor.

A second set of limbs emerged, stronger and more careful.

Alone tried to adapt. A longer rest produced an intense magnetic pulse. The mechanical arms flinched and died, and he changed his shape and flowed out from between them. The chamber walls and overhead door were high-grade hyperfiber. With bursts of light, he attacked the door’s narrow seams. He attacked the floor and vaporized the dead arms and focused on the seams again. Security AIs made no attempt to hide their presence, calmly studying the ongoing struggle. Then an auxiliary door opened, revealing a pair of humans clad in armored lifesuits, complete with massive hyperfiber helmets that showed no faces, only cameras, giving extra protection to their tough, fearful minds.

The technicians held busy instruments, but mostly they used their shielded eyes.

One man asked, “What is that thing?”

“I don’t damn well know,” said the other.

“Think it’s the Remoras’ ghost?”

“Who cares?” he said. “Call the boss, let her think.”

The humans retreated. Fresh arms were generated, slow and massive but designed just moments ago to capture this peculiar prize. Alone was herded into a corner and grabbed up, and an oxygen wind blew into the chamber, bringing a caustic mist of aerosols designed to weaken any normal machine. Through the dense air and across the radio spectrum, humans spoke to him. “We don’t know if you can understand us,” they admitted. “But please try to remain still. Pretend to be calm. We don’t want you hurt, we want you to feel safe, but if you insist on fighting, mistakes are going to be made.”

Alone struggled.

Then something was with him—a close, familiar presence—and the voice said, “The animals.”

Alone stopped fighting.

“They have us,” said the voice.

He listened to the air, to the empty static.

But whatever just spoke to him was gone again, and that’s when a low whistling noise began to leak out of the prisoner—a steady sad moaning that stopped only when the ranking engineer arrived.

6

“I think you understand me.”

He stared at the woman. Except for a plain white garment, she wore nothing. No armor, no helmet.

“My name is Aasleen.”

Aasleen’s face and open hands were the color of starless space. She was speaking into the air and into an invisible microphone, her radio words finding him an instant before their mirroring sound.

The woman said, “Alone.”

He wasn’t struggling. Doing nothing, he allowed his power to swell, and he wondered what he might accomplish if held this pose for a long time.

“That’s your name, isn’t it? Alone.”

He had never embraced any name and saw no reason to do so now.

With her black eyes, Aasleen studied the prisoner. And as she stood before him, coded threads of EM noise pushed into her head. Buried in her organic flesh were tiny machines, each speaking with an urgent, complex voice. She listened to those voices, and she watched him. Then she said one secret word, silencing the chatter as she approached, walking forward slowly until he couldn’t endure her presence anymore.

He made himself invisible.

She stopped moving toward him but she didn’t retreat either, speaking quietly to the smear of nothing defined by the giant clinging limbs.

“Twisting ambient light,” she said. “I know that trick. Metamaterials and a lot of energy. You do it quite well, but it’s nothing new.”

Alone remained translucent.

“And I understand how you can shift shapes and colors so easily. You’re liquid, of course. You only pretend to be solid.” She paused for a moment, smiling. “I had a pet octopus once. He had an augmented brain. To make me laugh, he used to pull himself into the most amazing shapes.”

Alone let his body to become visible again.

“Step away,” he pleaded.

Aasleen stared at him for another moment. Then she backed off slowly, saying nothing until she had doubled the distance between them.

“Do you know what puzzleboys are?” she asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Puzzleboys build these wonderful, beautiful machines—hard cores clothed with liquid exteriors. Their devices are durable and inventive. The best of them are designed to survive for ages while crossing deep space.”

Aasleen paused, perhaps hoping for a reaction.

Growing tired of the quiet, she explained, “Puzzleboys are like a lot of sentient species. They wanted the Great Ship for themselves. Thousands of worlds sent intergalactic missions, but my species won the race. I rode out here on one of the early starships. Among my happiest days is that morning when I first stood on the Ship’s battered hull, gazing down at the Milky Way.”

He said, “Yes.”

“You know the view?”

“Yes.”

She smiled, teeth shining. “A couple thousand years ago, as we were bringing the Great Ship into the galaxy, the puzzleboys started singing lies. They claimed that they had sent a quick stealthy mission up here. The laws of salvage are ancient—far older than my baby species. Insentient machines can’t grab so much as a lump of ice for their builders. But the aliens claimed that they had shoved one of their own citizen’s minds inside a suitable probe. Like all respectable lies, their story had dates and convincing details. It’s easy to conclude that their one brave explorer might have reached the Great Ship first. If he had, this prize would be theirs, at least according to these old laws. The only trouble with that story is that their mission never arrived. I know that. I never saw signs of a squatter, and they haven’t produced corroborating evidence. Which is why we have made a point of insulting that entire species, and that’s why the legal machinery of this cranky old galaxy has convincingly backed our claim of ownership.”

Quietly, he said, “Puzzleboys.”

“That’s a human name. A translation, and like most approximations, grossly inadequate.”

An EM squeal offered the species’ name.

“Do you recognize it?” asked Aasleen.

He admitted, “I don’t, no.”

“All right then.” She nodded, a thin smile breaking and then vanishing again. “Let’s have some fun. Try to imagine that somebody we know, some familiar civilization, dreamed you up and sent you to the Great Ship. Maybe they borrowed puzzleboy technology. Maybe you’ve sprung from a different engineering history. Right now, I’m looking at oceans of data. But despite everything I see, my experience and intuitions, I can’t pick one answer over the others. Which is why this so fascinating, sir. And why you are so fun.”

Alone said nothing.

She laughed briefly, softly. “That leaves us with a tangle of questions. For instance, do you know what scares me about you?”

“What scares you?”

“Your power supply does.”

“Why?”

Aasleen didn’t seem to hear the question. “And I’m not the only person sick with worry,” she admitted, closing one of her eyes and opening it again abruptly. “Miocene,” she said, and sighed. “Miocene is an important captain. And you’re considered a large enough problem that right now, that powerful captain is sitting inside a hyperfiber bunker three kilometers behind me. Three kilometers is probably far enough. If the worst happens, that is. But of course nothing will go bad now. As I explained to Miocene and the other captains, you seem to have survived quite nicely and without mishap, possible for thousands years. What are the odds that your guts are going to fail today, in my face?”

He considered his nature.

“Do you have any idea what’s inside you?”

“No,” he admitted.

“A single speck of degenerated matter. A miniature black hole, perhaps, although you’re more likely the house for a quark assemblage of one or another sort.” Aasleen sighed and shrugged. “Regardless of your engine design, it is novel. It’s possible, yes, and I have a few colleagues who have done quite a lot of work proving that this kind of system might be used safely. But to see something like you in action and to realize that you’ve existed for who-knows-how-long, and apparently without demanding any significant repair . . . ”

She paused. “I am a very good engineer,” she said. “One of the best I’ve ever met, regardless of the species. And I just can’t believe in you. Honestly, it is impossible for me to accept that you are even a little bit real.”

“Then release me,” he begged.

She laughed.

He watched her face, her nervous fingers.

“In essence,” she continued, “you are a lucid entity carrying a tiny quasar in its core. The quasar is smaller than an atom and enclosed within a magnetic envelope, but massive and exceptionally dense.”

“Quasar,” he repeated.

“Matter, any matter, can be thrown inside you, and if only a fraction of the resulting energy is captured, you will generate shocking amounts of power.”

He considered her explanation. Then with a quiet tone, he mentioned, “I have seen the Ship’s engines firing.”

“Have you?”

“Next to them, I am nothing.”

“That is true. In fact, I have a few happy machines sitting near us that can outstrip your capacities, and by a wide margin. But as Submaster Miocene has reminded me, if that magnetic stomach is breached and if you can digest just your own body mass, the resulting fireworks will probably obliterate several cubic kilometers of the Ship, and who knows how many innocent souls.”

The words felt true, and Alone believed her. But then he remembered that good lies have believable details and he didn’t feel as certain.

Aasleen smiled in a sad fashion. “Of course I don’t know exactly what would happen, if your stomach failed. Maybe it has safety mechanisms that I can’t see. Or maybe its fire would reach out and grab my body and everything else in this room and as far away as Miocene . . . and with that, the Great Ship would be short one engine, and the survivors would find an enormous hole in the hull, spewing poisons and nuclear fire.”

“I won’t fail,” he promised.

She nodded. “I think that’s an accurate statement. I know I want to believe that both of us are perfectly safe.”

“I won’t hurt the Ship.”

“Which is a fine sentiment. But why do you feel certain?”

“Because I am,” he said.

Aasleen closed her eyes, once again concentrating on the machines inside her head.

“Please,” said Alone. “Let me go.”

“I can’t.”

His shape began changing.

Aasleen’s eyes opened. “I know the story about you and Wune meeting. My hope? You take my appearance like you did hers. That might be fun.”

But he didn’t. There were no limbs now, nothing resembling a face. To the eye he resembled a ball of hyperfiber with giant rockets on one hemisphere, thick armor on the other. Using a hidden mouth, he promised, “I won’t do any harm. I won’t hurt anyone and I will never injure the Ship.”

“You just want to be left by yourself,” Aasleen said.

“Everything else hurts.”

“And why?”

He had no response.

“Which leads us to another area of deep concern,” Aasleen said. “A machine built by unknown minds is found wandering inside a second machine built by unknown minds. There seems to be two mysteries, there might be only one. Do you understand what I mean?”

He said, “No.”

“Two machines but only one builder.”

He didn’t react.

She shook her head. “We don’t know how old the Great Ship is. We have informed guesses but no precision. And no matter how well engineered you appear to be, I don’t think you’re several billion years old.”

He remained silent.

Aasleen took one step closer. “And here is a third terror that involves you: A captain’s nightmare. Maybe you are the puzzleboys’ machine. Or you’re somebody else’s representative. Either way, if you arrived here on the Ship before any human did, and if there’s a lost soul inside whatever passes for your mind . . . well, then it’s conceivable that a different species might legally claim possession over the wealth and impossibilities that the Great Ship offers. And at that point, no matter how sweet your engineering is, your fate is out my hands . . . ”

Her voice trailed away.

She took a tiny step forward.

“I have no idea,” said Alone. “I don’t know what I am. I know nothing.”

The tiny machines inside Aasleen were speaking rapidly again.

“I’m watching your mind,” she said. “But I’m not familiar with its neural network. It’s a sloppy design, or it is revolutionary. I don’t know enough to offer opinions.”

“I wish to leave now,” he said.

“In the universe, there are two kinds of unlikely,” said Aasleen. “The Great Ship is the grand type—never attempted or even imagined, but achievable, provided someone has time and the relentless muscle to make it real. And then there’s the implausible that you imagine will come true, and one day your worst fears turn real. If the Great Ship belongs to someone else, then my species has to surrender our claim. And even though I have convinced myself that I am a good charitable soul, I don’t want that to happen. In fact, I would likely go to war in order to keep that from happening.”

Alone did nothing, gathering strength.

“And suppose you are safe as rain,” she said. “I don’t relish the idea of you wandering wherever you like. Not onboard my ship, and certainly not until we can coax out the answers to all these puzzles.”

With no warning, Alone lost his shape, turning into a hot broth that tried to flow around the grasping arms.

The arms seemed to expect his trick, quickly creating one deep bowl that held him in place.

“I promise,” said Aasleen. “You’ll be somewhere safe. We will keep you comfortable, and as much as possible, you’ll be left alone. Not even Miocene wants to torment you, which is why a special chamber is being prepared—”

A new talent emerged.

The liquid body suddenly compressed itself, collapsing into a tiny dense and radiant drop hotter than any sun. And as the bowl-shaped limbs struggled to keep hold of this fleck of fire, Alone stole a portion of the surrounding mass, turning it into energy, shaping a ball of white-hot plasma.

Then he shrank into an even tinier, hotter bit of existence.

Aasleen turned and ran.

The arms were pierced. Alone fell to the floor. The hyperfiber bubbled and burst into plasmas that he pulled close and pushed downward, using the fire as a drill, and he sank out of view, sank slowly until the hyperfiber turned into a bed of pale pink granite, and then much as a ship passes between the stars, he was flying quickly through what felt like nothing.

7

Creating a narrow hole, Alone fled.

The hole was lined with compressed, distorted magma that flowed and exploded and then hardened above him. But despite his minuscule trail, enemies would follow. He felt certain. Alone was valuable in their eyes, or he was dangerous, or they simply could not approve of his continued existence. Aasleen and the captains would keep chasing him, and realizing that, it was obvious that his many enemies were gathering below, now waiting for him inside the next trap.

Alone let his body balloon outwards, one final burst of blazing heat terminating his descent.

A cone-shaped chamber hung above him, its wall glowing pink as the residual heat bled away. He lay silent for long minutes before sprouting delicate fingers, pushing their tips through the magma, into the cold stone. Vibrations fell over him—bright hard jarrings marking the closing and sealing of every hatch and orifice and superfluous valve. Then something massive and quite slow passed directly below him. But these subtle noises were never regular, never simple, creating distortions and echoes as the waves broke around hundreds of empty spaces. Swim in one downward angle and a large chamber was waiting. Another easy line promised a far more extensive cavern. But what caught Alone’s interest was a line that might not even exist, a flaw in the rock, perhaps, or maybe a tunnel leading nowhere. That target was near. Illusion or not, Alone would learn the answer soon, and now he pulled his body into a new shape, looking like the worms common to a hundred billion worlds as he began slithering and shoving his way forward.

He missed his goal by eighty meters.

But instinct or a wordless voice urged him to pause and reconsider. What was wrong? An urge told him what to do, and he didn’t hesitate, following a new line until not only was he certain that he was lost but that the Great Ship was solid to its core, and his fate was to wander this cramped darkness until Time’s end.

The rock beside him turned to cultured diamond.

With the worm’s white-hot head, he pushed through the gemstone. Countless thread-like tunnels were woven through the Great Ship, and this was among the most obscure, barely mapped examples. He glowed brightly for a long moment, new eyes probing in both directions. He wanted instinct to help. Instinct said nothing. Then inside a space too small for a human child to stand, he sprouted limbs and began to run, pushing off the floor and the sides and that low slick diamond ceiling. At every junction and tributary hole, he picked one for no reason. Eventually he was hundreds of kilometers from his beginning point, random choice carrying him until the instant when he realized that he was beginning to wander back toward his starting point.

Alone paused, listening to the diamond and the rock beyond. The next turn led to a dead end, and he carefully backed out of that hole and hunkered down, and with a soft private voice asked, “What now?”

“Down,” the familiar voice coaxed.

Nothing else was offered. No other instruction was needed. He burned a fresh hole in the diamond floor, and after plunging three kilometers, his fierce little body exploded into a volume of frigid air that stretched farther than the light of his body could reach.

Alarmed, he turned black as space.

He fell, and a floor of frozen water and carbon dioxide slapped him when he struck bottom.

The cavern was bubble-shaped, filled with ancient ice and a whisper of oxygen gas. Except for the dimpled footprints of one robot surveyor, there was no trace of visitors. No human had ever stepped inside this place. But as a precaution, the only inhabitant erased his tracks, and where his warmth had distorted the ice, he made delicate repairs.

The walker’s life gave way to a sessile existence. Alone moved only to investigate his new home. Every sealed hatch leading out into the Ship was studied, and he prepared three camouflaged exits that wouldn’t appear on the captains’ maps. Sameness made for simple memories. The next seventeen thousand years were crossed without interruption. Life was routine, and life was silent and unremarkable, and the fear that he knew best subsided into a slight paranoia that left each sliver of Time sweet for being pleasantly, unashamedly boring.

Doing nothing was natural.

For long delicious spans, the entity sat motionless, allowing his heat to gradually melt the ice. Then he would cool himself, and his surroundings would freeze again while he pretended to be the old ice. With determination and patience, he imagined billions of years passing without significance, nothing in this tiny realm suffering change. Sometimes he sprouted a single enormous eye, and from another part of his frigid body he emitted a thin rain of photons that struck the black basalt ceiling and the icy hills around him, and with that eye designed for this single function, he would slowly and thoroughly study what never changed while his mind tried to envision the Ship that could not be seen.

“Speak to me,” he might beg.

Then he would wait, wishing for a reply, tolerant enough to withstand a year and sometimes two years of inviting silence.

“Speak,” he would prompt again.

Silence.

Then he might offer a soft lie. “I can hear you anyway,” he would say. “Just past my hearing, you are. Just out of my reach, out of my view.”

But if the strange voice was genuine, then its maker was proving itself more stubborn even than Alone.

Seventeen millennia and thirty-seven years passed, and then with a thunderous thud, one hatch burst inward. Unsealed for the first time, the open door let in a screaming wind and a brigade of machines—enormous swift and fearless assemblages of muscle and narrow talents that knew their purpose and had only so much time to work.

Alone was terrified, and enthralled. Believing he could escape at will, he retreated to the chamber’s center. But then the other hatches exploded, including a big opening at the apex of the ceiling. Machines burrowed into the ice and strung lights, and they carved the black walls, reshaping the volume before building a second, lower ceiling. And all the while they were leaking enough raw heat that the ancient glacier began to melt everywhere, transformed into fizzy water and gas.

Alone huddled inside rotting shards of the ice.

His emergency exists were either blocked or too close to active machines. The chamber floor was quality hyperfiber, difficult to pierce without creating a spectacle. Alone pretended to belong to the floor. For the next awful week, he did nothing but remain still. Then all of the ice had melted and the first wave of machinery had vanished, replaced by different implements that worked rapidly in smaller ways, yet with the same tenacious purpose.

Mimicking one common machine, he floated to the new lake’s surface.

Cultured wood and young purple corals and farm-raised shellfish were being assembled like a puzzle, a new shoreline laid across beds of glassy stone filled with artificial fossils—ancestors to the chamber’s new residents. Humans stood beside aliens, the species speaking through interpretive AIs. The aliens wore broad purple shells, and they were happiest when their gills lay in the newly conditioned water. The humans wore uniforms of various styles, different colors. One uniform had the bright reflective quality of a mirror, and the woman inside it was saying, “Beautiful, yes.” Then she knelt down and sucked up a mouthful of the salted, acidic water. Spitting with vigor, she said, “And a good taste too, it is.”

The aliens swirled their many feet and the fibrous gills, stirring up their lake. Then chittering answers were turned into the words, “We are skeptical.”

“To your specifications,” said the woman. “I pledge.”

The aliens spoke of rare elements that needed to be increased or abolished. Proportions were critical. Perfection was the only satisfactory solution.

“It shall be done,” the captain promised.

The aliens claimed to be satisfied. Confident of success, they slithered into the deeper water, plainly enjoying their new abode.

The captain looked across the lake, spying one machine that was plainly doing nothing.

With a commanding tone, she said, “This is Washen. We’ve got a balky conditioner sitting in the middle. Do you see it?”

Alone eased beneath the surface, changing his shape, merging with the glassy sediment. His disguise was good enough to escape the notice of watching humans and machines. Waiting, he gathered enough power to make a sudden explosive escape. But then the artificial day faded, a bright busy night taking hold, complete with the illusion of scattered stars and a pale red moon; and it was an easy trick to assume the form one shelled alien, mimicking its motions and chattering tongue, casually slipping out through the public entrance into a side tunnel that led to a multitude of fresh places, all empty.

8

Twenty centuries of steady exploration, and still the cavern had no end. Its wandering passageways were dry and often cramped, unlit and deeply chilled. The granite and hyperfiber were deliciously sterile. Neither humans nor their alien passengers wished to live in places like this. Machine species set up a few networks, but their tiny communities were easily avoided. Once more, the habit of walking returned to this life. To help track his own motions as well as the passage of time, Alone would count his strides until he reached some lovely prime number, and then he would mark the nearest stone with slashes and dots that only he could interpret—apparently random marks that would warn him in another hundred years that he had passed this way before, moving from this tunnel into that chamber, and if at all possible, he should avoid repeating that old route.

The enigmatic voice found him more often now, yet it was quieter and harder to comprehend. Sometimes a whisper emerged from some slight hole or side passage—like one neighbor calling to another from an unfathomed distance. But more often the voice was directly behind him, and it didn’t so much speak as offer up emotions, raw and uninvited. The shared sadness was deep and very old, but those black moods were preferable to the sharp, sick terror it gladly shared. One dose of panic was enough to make the next hundred days painful. Something here was horribly wrong. The voice kept infusing him with horror—no explanations; no root causes. Yet these moods were preposterous, foolish and eventually dreary. After all, Alone’s solitude was secure. No captains or engineers were chasing after him. Occasionally he slipped into a deep corner of the cavern and for several months would hide away, waiting for whatever might pass by. But nothing was tracking him, and nothing was sliding in the opposite direction. The voice was wrong, was mistaken. Alone was utterly safe inside this private, perfect catacomb, and he welcomed no opinion that dared claim otherwise.

One day, walking an unexplored passageway, he happened upon a vertical shaft. Normally he might have avoided the place. A human had been here first, leaving behind tastes of skin and bacteria and human oils. Leaking a faint glow, Alone spied machinery abandoned by this anonymous explorer: A winch perched on the edge of the deep shaft, anchored by determined spikes. The sapphire rope was broken. The drum was almost empty, but the winch continued to turn—an achingly slow motion that fascinated the first soul to stand here in a very long while.

Several days of study were needed before Alone touched the drum, and that slight friction was enough to kill what power remained inside the superconductive battery. How long had it been here, spinning without purpose? And what was inside the hole, waiting at the other end of the broken blue thread?

Alone wrenched loose two of the winch’s titanium handles and uncoiled the remaining sapphire rope, tying one end to one handle. Then he dropped the weight into the dark shaft. Two hundred meters, and there was no extra rope and no bottom. He lashed the rope’s free end to the winch and climbed down. The shaft turned to hyperfiber, slick and vertical and comforting. Then its walls pulled away. When Alone couldn’t reach from one side to the other, he let go of the rope, falling and making his body brighter as he fell, watching the handle streak past. He made no sound, and listening, he heard nothing. And feeling nobody her but himself, he lit the entire chamber with his finest golden fire.

A human shape lay upon the flat floor.

Alone turned black and cold again, and he built long gliding wings that dropped him at a safe distance, allowing him to creep closer to the motionless figure.

For three days, nothing changed.

Then he brightened, just slightly, straddling the figure. The human male hadn’t moved in decades, perhaps longer. There was enough rope on the winch to put him down here, but it must have broken unexpectedly. The hyperfiber floor showed blood where the man struck the first time, hard enough to shatter his tough bones and shred muscles. But humans can recover from most injuries. This stranger would have healed and soon stood up again, and probably by a variety of means, he had worked to save himself.

Most of the Ship’s passengers carried machines that allowed them to speak with distant friends. Why didn’t this man beg for help? Perhaps his machinery failed, or this hole was too deep and isolated, or maybe he simply came to this empty place without the usual implements.

Reasons were easy, answers unknowable.

Whatever happened, the man had lived inside this hole for some months and perhaps several years. He brought food and water, but not enough of either to last long. The cold that Alone found pleasant would have stolen the body’s precious heat, and the man starved while his flesh lost its moisture, reaching a point where it could invent no way to function. Yet the man never died. With his last strength, he stripped himself of his clothes and made a simple bed, his pack serving as his pillow, and with that he stretched out on his back, eyes aimed at the unreachable opening, his face turning leathery and cold and blind.

The eyes remained open but dry as stone. They might not have changed for centuries, and nobody had ever found this man, and perhaps no one even noticed his absence.

Alone considered the implications of each option.

Eventually and with considerable caution, he opened the pack and thoroughly inventoried its contents. He studied what was useful in detail. Key was a sophisticated projection map showing the cavern and the surrounding tunnels. Then he carefully returned each item to where he found it and laid the pack beneath the unaware head. That frozen, wasted body weighed nearly nothing. A good hard shake might turn the dried muscle to dust. Yet he was careful not to disturb anything more than absolutely necessary, and without a sound, he retreated to a respectful distance. The lower length of sapphire lay nearby, coiled into a neat pile. He tied one end to the second handle, and despite the distance and darkness managed a perfect toss on his first attempt, the two handles colliding and dancing, then wrapping together, and he climbed past the rough knot, pulling it loose and letting the lower rope fall away before he continued his ascent from the hole.

Centuries followed; little if anything changed. But there were a few intuitive moments when the bright gray fear took hold, when some nagging instinct claimed that he was being sloppy, that he was being pursued. Three times, Alone found marks resembling his own but obviously drawn by another hand. And there was one worrisome incident when he slipped aside and waited only thirteen days before a solitary figure followed him down the long tunnel. The biped was towering and massive, covered with bright scales and angry spikes, and the low ceiling forced the creature to bend low inside the passageway, fierce hands carrying an elaborate machine that resembled a second head.

Mechanical eyes and a long probing nostril studied the rock where Alone had stepped, teasing out subtle cues. With a hunter’s intensity, the creature slowly moved to a place where the second head noticed that the trail had vanished, and the machine whispered a warning, and the harum-scarum turned in time to see an amorphous shape sprout long limbs, and without sound, silently race away.

After that, Alone adapted his legs and gait, changing his stride, fighting to become less predictable. But he refused to abandon the cavern. His home was far too large to be searched easily or in secret, and he had walked every passageway, every room—a hard-acquired knowledge that he would have to surrender if he journeyed anywhere else.

Most encounters came through chance, fleeting and harmless. Human numbers had swollen as the millennia passed, but some of the other species plainly outnumbered the Ship’s lawful owners. Aliens wore every imaginable body, and there were always new species stumbling into his path. One glimpse in the dark or some long study at a safe distance didn’t make an expert, but Alone had achieved several rugged little epiphanies: Life must be relentless, and it had to be astonishingly imaginative. Every living world seemed unique, and these blobs and dashes of living flesh were able to thrive on every sort of disgusting food and bitter breath. The beasts that came slipping through his home drank water, salty or clear, acidic or alkaline, or their drinks were chilled and laced with ammonia, or they wore insulated suits and downed pitchers of frigid methane, or they sucked on perchlorates and peroxides, or odd stinking oils, while quite a few machines drank nothing. Yet despite that staggering range of form and function, every creature was pushed by curiosity, peering into black holes, sometimes slipping fingers and antennae into places never touched before—if not hunting for invisible, legendary entities, then at least seeking the simple, precious novelty of Being First.

Alone watched visitors coupling. One eager pair of humans fell onto a mat of glowing aerogel, naked and busy, and standing just a few meters away, immersed in darkness, Alone watched as they bent themselves into a series of increasingly difficult poses, grunting occasionally, then finally shouting with wild voices that echoed off the distant ceiling. When their violence was finished, the woman said to the man, “Is that all there is?” Her lover answered with a harsh affectionate name, and she laughed, and he laughed, and after drinking the brown alcohol from a treasured bottle, the performance began again.

More years and more kilometers were slowly, carefully traversed. Then came one peculiar moment when he heard what sounded like a multitude passing through the cavern’s largest entrance. The presence of many was felt; he smelled their collective breath. They might whisper respectfully and try to move like ghosts, but there were too many feet and mouths, too many reasons to praise the solitude and beg their neighbors to be silent. Alarmed, Alone approached the newcomers only to hope that they were leaving. But they were not. Then he followed them, and from a sober distance he watched as they assembled at the center of the cavern’s largest chamber. A quick count found twenty thousand bodies and a staggering variety of species, and once an invisible signal was given, they began to speak in one shared voice. There was rhythmic chanting, sloppily performed songs. By every right he should have fled the pageant, but the strangers were singing about the Great Ship, begging for its blessings and its wisdom. And hope upon hope, they called for the Ship’s voice.

Using every trick, Alone approached unseen.

The celebration was joyous and senseless. How could they hear any voice inside their own roar? But he felt the urgency and earnest passion. At least a hundred alien species were represented. But the lighting was minimal, and hovering at the edges, it was impossible to observe the full crowd, much less comprehend more than a fraction of what was being said.

“We thank the Ship,” he heard.

Then from someplace close, one enormous voice chanted, “For the home and safety You give to us, we thank You!”

“You are a mystery,” farther souls declared. “You are the mystery.”

Alone hovered at the edge of the mayhem, unnoticed but near enough to touch backs and feel the leaked heat of bodies.

A hill of smooth basalt stood on the cavern floor, and perched on the summit was a human male. “For so long and for so far,” he cried out. “You have journeyed. We cannot measure the loneliness You endured in Your wanderings. But in thanks for Your shelter, we give You our companionship. For Your speed, we give You purpose. After the countless years of being empty and dead, we have made You into a vibrant, thriving creature. At long last, the Great Ship lives! And we hear Your thanks, yes! In our dreams and between our little words, we hear You!”

Just when Alone started to flee, he couldn’t say.

Which word triggered the furor was unclear, even as he was rushing away from the room and its densely packed bodies . . . even as a few of the less devoted worshippers heard what might have been a moan and turned in time to notice the faint but undeniable glow, red as a dying ember, racing off on legs growing longer by the stride.

9

Ten thousand and forty-eight years after discovering the hole, Alone returned. The winch remained fixed in place, but someone else had visited, and possibly more than once. Boot prints showed in the dust. He smelled and tasted signs of a second human. But nobody had stood on this ground for long, and when he went below, he found the body exactly where he had left it—only more dried, more wasted. More helpless, if that was possible.

Once again, Alone emptied the pack of its belongings, but this time he tenaciously studied the design and contents of even the most prosaic, seemingly useless item. He taught himself to read. He mastered the old, once-treasured machines that had thoroughly recorded one life. The mummified man had a long, cumbersome name, but he answered easiest to Harper. Eyes pressed against digital readers, Alone marveled at scenes brought from the distant earth—glimpses of brightly lit humans, the toothy faces of a family, and a sequence of wives. But all of his people and every lover were left behind when Harper sold his possessions, surrendering his home and safety for a ticket to ride the Great Ship—embarking on a glorious voyage to circumnavigate the Milky Way.

Between the man’s arrival at Port Alpha and this subsequent disaster, barely fifty years had passed. Fifty years was no time at all. What’s more, Harper had filled his days with a single-minded hunt for the Ship’s ancient builders. Infused with a maniacal hunger, the human not only presumed that a grand purposeful force had built the derelict starship, but the same force was still onboard, hiding in an odd corner or unmapped chamber, biding its time while waiting for that brave, earnest explorer who would discover its lair.

Harper intended to be that very famous man.

Every aspect of the lost life was studied. There were gaps in the records, particularly near the end. But Alone wasn’t familiar enough with human ways to appreciate that another hand might have blanked files and entire days, erasing his presence from the story. What mattered was digesting the full nature of this alien beast, learning Harper’s manners and looks and duplicating his high, thin voice. Then Alone refilled the pack. But this time, he left the hole with the lost man’s possessions carried under what looked like a human arm.

At the top of the hole, he transformed his face, his body.

There are many ways to be alone. The next weeks were spent duplicating the voice and gestures found on the digitals. Only then did Alone abandon the safety of the cavern. The local time was night, as he planned. Obeying customs learned only yesterday, Alone summoned a cap-car that silently carried him halfway around the Ship. He paid for the service with funds pulled from an account that hadn’t been touched for thousands of years. The modest apartment hadn’t seen this face for as long, but its AI said, “Welcome.” The master’s sudden reappearance didn’t cause suspicion or curiosity. Entering a home that he didn’t know, Alone spent the next ten days and nights continuing his studies of the lost man. Then his apartment announced, “You have a visitor, sir.”

Baffled, he asked, “Who?”

“It is Mr. Jan.”

“Who is Mr. Jan?”

“I have no experience with the gentleman. But he claims to be your very good friend.”

Alone considered a few implications.

“What shall I tell him, sir?”

“That I have no friends,” he replied.

“Very well.”

The matter seemed finished. But fifty-three minutes later, the apartment warned, “Mr. Jan is still waiting at our door, sir.”

“Why?”

“Apparently he wishes to speak with you.”

“But I’m not his friend,” Alone repeated.

“And I told him as much. But he is upset about some matter, and he refuses to leave until he shares words with you.”

“Let him walk into the front hall.”

A narrow, nervous human crept entered the apartment. Mr. Jan had a familiar scent, and judging by the intricacy of the braids, he was quite proud of his thick red hair. The hallway was thirty meters long, which wasn’t long enough. The two figures stared at one another from opposite ends, and when Mr. Jan took a small step forward, the other soul said, “No. Come no closer, please.”

“I understand,” the guest whispered. “Sure.”

“What do you want with me?”

What did Mr. Jan want? The possibilities were too numerous or too vast for easy explanations. He gazed down at his pale hands, as if asking their opinion. Then quietly and very sadly, he said, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“Yes I am.”

Alone felt sick to be this near a stranger. But the borrowed voice remained calm, under control. “For what are you apologizing?”

Mr. Jan straightened his back, surprised by those words, and on reflection, angered by them too. “I’m apologizing for everything, of course! I’m sorry for the entire mess!”

Alone waited, his new face unchanged.

“But these troubles weren’t only my fault,” the visitor insisted. “You used me, Harper. And I know you made fun of me. We were supposed to have a business relationship, a partnership. I heard quite a few promises about money, but did you give me even half of what I’d earned?”

“What did I give you?”

“None of it. Don’t you remember?”

“Then I must have cheated you,” Alone said.

“’Cheat’ doesn’t do it justice,” Mr. Jan said.

Alone wasn’t certain which words to offer next.

“Look,” said Mr. Jan. “What I did . . . I was just trying to scare you. Taking you that deep, down where your nexuses couldn’t reach anybody, and cutting the sapphire before you dropped into that room. It looks bad, if you strip things down and make it simple. But it was only meant to be a warning, and nothing else.”

“You were trying to scare me,” Alone said.

“Don’t you remember? I spelled out my reasons afterwards.” Mr. Jan looked at the granite floor and then the matching ceiling. With a stiff, self-absorbed voice, he said, “You heard me calling down to you. I know you heard, because you answered me. I told you that I was going to let you sit there and commune with the Great Ship until you promised to give me everything I was owed.”

“I remember,” Alone lied.

“Money and respect. That’s what I wanted, that’s what I deserved. And that’s why I had to do what I did.” The walls were only partly tiled. Like the rest of the tiny apartment, the hallway was far from finished. Mr. Jan leaned against the shifting quasicrystals, beginning to cry. “All you needed to do . . . I mean this . . . you just had to say a few words to me. You could have told me another lie, if you wanted. I never planned to leave you down there. I’m not cruel like that. If you’d made any promises, spun together a few nice words, I’d have pulled you right out of there. Yes, I would have saved you in an instant.”

The voice faded.

“I should have done that,” Alone agreed. “Lying would have been best.”

“Well, I don’t know if that’s quite true.” The weeping man looked at his nemesis—a ghost that had stalked him for eons. “But listen, Harper. You have no respect for anyone but yourself. Those insults you yelled up at me. Yes, you managed to hurt me. Those awful things that you said . . . they last. They’re still cutting me.”

“I was wrong,” Alone agreed.

Mr. Jan looked at him. He took three steps forward, and when the other figure didn’t complain, he admitted, “You don’t realize it, but I returned to the hole. I went there to check on you. After you fell into the coma, I used a little lift-bug to reach your body.” A trembling hand tugged at the braided copper-colored hair. “I meant to bring you out, but I was scared. It looks bad, what happened, and I didn’t want trouble. So I scrubbed away every trace of me, from your field recorders and in here too. I convinced your apartment that I never existed and that you were always coming home tomorrow. In case anybody became curious about your whereabouts.”

“People can be curious,” Alone agreed.

Mr. Jan smiled grimly, and wiping at his eyes, added, “I was always your best friend.”

Alone said nothing.

“You should know . . . when you vanished, nobody noticed. Oh, some might ask me about you. Since they knew we were close. For several years, they would come up to me and wonder if I’d heard any noise from Crazy Harper and where you might have gone.”

“’Crazy Harper’?”

“That’s what some people called you. I never did.”

Alone remained silent.

Mr. Jan concentrated on his mind for a while, searching for courage. “I am a little curious,” he finally admitted. “How did you climb out of that hole?”

“There is a story,” Alone said. “But I don’t wish to tell it.”

Mr. Jan nodded, lips mashed together. “Does anyone know the story? About us, I mean.”

Silence.

Mr. Jan wrapped his arms around his chest and squeezed. “Not that you’re in terrible shape now. I mean, it’s not as if I murdered somebody.” He paused, dwelling on possibilities. “You’ve lost time. I know it was quite a lot of time. But here you are, aren’t you? Everything is back where it belongs.”

“I’ve told no one about my years.”

With a deep sigh, Mr. Jan said, “Good.”

“Only you know what really happened.”

The human nodded. He tried to laugh, but his voice collapsed into soft sobs. “I won’t mention it, if you don’t.”

“I don’t know what I would say.”

Wiping at his wet face, Mr. Jan quietly asked, “What can I do? Please. Tell me how to make this up to you.”

Alone said nothing.

“I did something criminal. I’ll admit that much, of course. But you should deliver the punishment. That’s the right solution. Not the captains. Let’s not involve them. You are in charge.” The smile was weak, desperate. “I promise. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”

Alone had no idea what to say. Then a memory took hold, and he smile in the human fasion, nodding knowingly. “You will leave me,” he said quietly, with authority. “Leave this place and climb to the Ship’s hull. Since you’re a criminal, you need to be where criminals belong. Live under the stars and help keep the hull in good repair.” Alone took a small step forward. “The work is vital. The Great Ship must remain strong. There is no greater task.”

Mr. Jan straightened his back. “What?” He didn’t seem to understand. “You want me to work with the Remoras? Is that your punishment?”

“No,” said Alone. “I wish you to become a Remora.”

“But why would I?”

“Because if you do otherwise,” Alone replied, “other people, including the captains, will hear what you did to your good friend, Crazy Harper.”

The demand was preposterous. Mr. Jan shook his head and laughed for a full minute before his frightened, slippery mind fell back to the most urgent question. “How did you get out of that hole?”

Alone didn’t answer.

“Somebody helped you. Didn’t they?”

“The Great Ship helped me.”

“The Ship?”

“Yes.”

“The Ship pulled you out from that hole?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Jan looked at the sober face, waiting for any hint of a lie. But nothing in the expression gave hope, and he collapsed to the stone floor. “I just don’t believe you,” he said.

But he did believe.

“The Ship needs you to walk on the hull,” Alone explained. “It told me exactly that. Until you are pure again, you must live with the followers of Wune.”

“But how long will that take?”

Alone hesitated. Then quite suddenly he was laughing. “I am sorry, Mr. Jan. I don’t know the timetable. Even with me, it seems, the Great Ship refuses to explain much about anything.”

10

Harper must have been a difficult, solitary man. No one seemed to have missed his face or companionship, and his sudden return caused barely a ripple of interest. Word spread that somebody was living inside his modest, half-finished apartment, and the apartment’s AI dutifully reported communications with acquaintances from the far flung past. But the greetings were infrequent and delivered without urgency. Privacy proved remarkably easy to keep. For twenty busy years, Alone remained inside the barely furnished rooms, and the apartment never asked where its only tenant had been or why he had been detained, much less why this new Harper never ate or drank or slept. Mr. Jan had damaged the machine’s minimal intelligence. A full month was invested in dismantling and mapping his companion’s mental functions, and all that while Alone wondered if he was the same, his mind incomplete, mangled by clumsy, forgotten hands.

Harper had painted himself as an important explorer and an exceptionally brave thinker. Inside his pack, he had carried dated records about mysterious occurrences inside the Great Ship. But there were larger self-feeding files in his home, each possessed by one broad topic and a set of tireless goals. Those files had grown exponentially while the master was mission—anecdotes about ghosts and monsters and odd lost aliens. After thousands of years, one thin joke of a Builder waving hello to the first scout team had mutated into a string of third-hand testimonies and conspiracies among the captains. Add to that rumors and misunderstandings as well as a river of compelling lies and buoyant blatant fakes, and it would take the busy soul centuries just to discount each and every tale.

Set doubt aside, even for a moment, and it would be impossible not to accept that the Great Ship was full of ancient, inscrutable aliens—wise souls born when the Earth was just so many uncountable atoms cooking inside a thousand scattered suns.

And each resident species had its preferred Builder.

Humanoids liked to imagine ancient humanoids; cetaceans pictured enormous whales; machine intelligences demanded orderly, nonaqueous entities. But fashions shifted easily and usually in confusing directions, dictating the key elements to the most recent fables. Each millennium had its favorite phantom and its most popular cavern. There was a stubborn lack of physical evidence, but even that absence made true believers dance. Harper reasoned that the Builders were secretive and powerful organisms, and of course no slippery wise and important creature would leave traces of its passing. Skin flakes and odd tools were never found in the deep caves, much less one genuine body, because if hard evidence did exist, then the quarry wouldn’t be the true Builders. Would they?

One of the files focused on the Remora’s ghost.

On Alone.

Hundreds of sightings and endless conjecture made for years of unblinking study. Absorbing every word, every murky image, Alone was fascinated by the mystery that he had walked through. According to self-proclaimed experts, he was as real as the Whispers that haunted a mothballed spaceport. But Harper gave more credence to the Clackers who supposedly swam inside the Ship’s fuel tanks, and the Demon-whiffs that were made of pure dark matter. Many thousands of years after the event, Alone watched the recording of himself standing inside the empty hyperfiber tank—a swirl of cobalt light that could mean anything, or nothing—and he wondered if perhaps he wasn’t entirely real. Only recently, after billions of steps and missteps, had the phantom acquired that rare and remarkable capacity to stand apart from Nothingness.

For every place on the hull where Alone was seen, the Remoras and others had spied at least ten more examples of the ghost wandering beneath the stars.

What if more than one of him was wandering loose?

Alone didn’t know what to believe. The sightings had diminished after he abandoned the hull, and no Remora claimed to have spotted Wune’s mysterious friend. No file mentioned Aasleen and the nightmare inside one of the Ship’s engines, which meant that the captains and crew were talented at keeping secrets, and what else did they know? A related file focused on shape-shifting machines currently lurking in dark corners and deep wastes. Alone’s cavern was prominent but far from the most important. Dozens of sprawling, empty locations were named, but the only cavern to capture Alone’s imagination was named Bottom-E. Again and again, he found sketchy accounts of tourists wandering down an empty passageway, and glancing over their shoulder, they spied a smear of dim light silently racing out of view.

Bottom-E was a much larger cavern even than Alone’s old home, and if nothing else, it would provide the perfect next home.

But what if a second entity like him already lived there?

Two decades of study and consideration led to one difficult choice. Various humans had tried to contact Harper on his return. Most were small figures, many with criminal records and embarrassing public files. But despite those same limitations, one man had all the qualifications to give aid to an acquaintance that he hadn’t seen for ages.

With Harper’s face and voice, Alone sent a polite request.

Eighteen days passed before any reply was offered. The recorded digital showed a smiling man sitting inside what looked like a diamond bubble. He began with an apology, explaining, “I wandering through The Way of Old. It’s an ammonia-hydroxide ocean, on a small scale but still a hundred cubic kilometers of murk and life. That’s why I couldn’t get back to you right away, Harper. Nexus are outlawed. And since I’m going back under another two minutes, I thought I could try to give your questions a few rubs to start with.”

Perri was the man’s name.

“So you’re interested in Bottom-E,” the message continued. “I can’t promise much in the way of help. I haven’t seen more than one tenth of one percent of the place. But there is one enormous room that’s worth the long walk. Its floor is hyperfiber, and a fine grade at that. And the ceiling is kilometers overhead and inhabited by the LoYo. They’re machines, not sentient as individuals but communal in nature. A few thousand of their city-nests hang from the rafters, and that’s one of the reasons for going down there.”

The grinning man continued. “The LoYo give that big room a soft, delicious glow. I’ve got good eyes, but even after a week in there, I couldn’t see far. Just the immediate floor and what felt like a distant, unreachable horizon. Once, maybe twice, I saw a light in the distance. I can’t claim to know what the light was. But you know me, Harper. Don’t expect ghost stories. Usually the truth is a lot more interesting than what we think we want to see . . .

“Anyway, what I like best about Bottom-E, and in particular about that huge room . . . what makes a trip genuinely memorable . . . is that when you walk on that smooth hyperfiber, and nothing above you but the faint far off glow of what could be distant galaxies . . . it’s easy to believe that this is exactly how it would have felt and looked just a couple billion years ago, if you were strolling by yourself across the hull of the Great Ship.

“Understand, Harper? Imagine yourself out between the galaxies, crossing the middle of nothing. That’s an experience worth doing.”

Then with a slow wink, Perri added, “By the way. I know you keep to yourself. But if you feel like enduring some company, you’re more than welcome to visit my home for a meal, for conversation. For no good reason, if you. I don’t think you ever met my wife, and I’ll warn you, Quee Lee likes people even more than I do.”

Perri paused, staring at his unseen audience.

“You were gone a very long time,” he said. “Jan claimed you were off chasing Clackers, and that’s what the official report decides too. ‘Lost in the fuel tanks.’ But I haven’t heard any news about bodies being fished out of the liquid hydrogen, which makes me wonder if our mutual friend was telling another one of his fables.

“Anyway, it’s wonderful-good to see you again, Harper. And welcome back to the living!”

11

As promised, Bottom-E held one enormous room, and except for the occasional smudge of cold light pasted against the remote arch of a ceiling, the room was delightfully dark. Each step on the slick floor teased out memories. That lost and now beloved childhood returned to him, and Alone wasn’t just content but he was confident that the next step would bring happiness, as would the step after that, and the step after that.

More than twelve hundred square kilometers of hyperfiber demanded his careful study. Unlike the hull, there was an atmosphere, but the air was oxygen-starved and nearly as cold as space. Alone’s brought back an old habit, following a random line until an oddity caught his attention. Then he would stop and study what another visitor had left behind—a fossilized meal or frozen bodily waste, usually—before attacking another random line until he found trash or until a wall of rough feldspar defined the limits of this illusion.

For two years, he walked quietly, seeing no one else.

The LoYo were tiny and weakly lit, and there was no sign that they noticed him, much less understood what he was.

Perri’s mysterious glow failed to appear. But Alone soon convinced himself that he had never hoped for the story to prove real. One step was followed by the next, and eventually he would pause and turn and step again, defining a new line, right up until the moment when that simple cherished pattern failed him. He was walking when suddenly a thin reddish light was swallowed by his big eyes, digested and studied. He examined the glow photon by photon, instinct racing ahead of his intelligence. This new light was indistinguishable from the glow that he leaked whenever he was examining a fossilized pile of alien feces.

On his longest, quietest legs, Alone ran.

Then the voice returned. Decades had passed since the last incident, yet it was suddenly with him—the sharp stark concept, “No,” wrapped inside a wild, infectious panic.

Alone’s impulse was to stop and ask, “What do you want?”

But the red glow was very close. Thousands of years had been spent imagining this unlikely, even impossible moment, and nothing mattered but to conquer the next few meters. Alone felt brave enough to press on. Yet bravery wasn’t required. Caught up in the excitement, he appreciated how much this mattered to him. He was happy, yes. He was thrilled and spellbound, and he refused to answer the voice or even pay attention when it came closer and grew even louder.

“Do not,” it warned.

It told him, “No. They want but they will not understand. Do not.”

The light was still visible, but it had grown weaker.

Somehow the intervening distance had grown.

But a ready explanation offered itself: The other Alone must have noticed that something was wrong. A footfall, a murmur. Perhaps his brother heard the same voice, and a wild, unapologetic fear had taken possession of him. Whatever the reason, the light was beginning to shrivel and fade away, losing him by diving inside a little tunnel, abandoning this room and possibly Bottom-E because of one irresistible terror.

Alone had to stop his brother.

But how?

He quit running.

The voice that had never identified itself—the conscience that perhaps was too ancient, too maimed and run down, to even lend itself a name—now said to him, “Go away. This is the wrong course. Go!”

Alone would not listen.

Standing on the barren plain, he made himself grow tiny and exceptionally bright, washing away the darkness. In an instant, the enormous chamber was filled with a sharp white light that reached the walls and rose to the ceiling before reflecting and reflecting and then gone.

He was dark again, drained but not quite exhausted.

With the last of his reserves, Alone spun a fresh mouth, and in a language that he had never heard before—never suspected that he was carrying inside himself—he screamed into the newly minted darkness, “I am here!”

A dozen machines suddenly emerged out of their hiding places, plunging from the ceiling or racing from blinds inside the towering rock walls.

Alone vanished.

But the machines were converging on him.

Then he grew large again, managing legs. But the power expended by his desperate flash and careless shout was too much, and too many seconds were needed before he would be able to offer any kind of chase. After ages of sameness and moments of excitement, the door of a great trap was closing over him, and in the end there wasn’t even the pleasure of hard pursuit fought to any dramatic, worthy end.

12

Since their last meeting, the two organisms had walked separate lines—tightrope existences inspired by ambition and chance, deep purpose and the freedom of no clear purpose. An observer on a high perch, watching their respective lives, could reasonably conclude that the two souls would never cross lines again. The odd machine was quiet and modest, successfully avoiding discovery in the emptiest reaches of the Ship, while the human had invested ages maintaining the giant engines, and later, tending a slow-blooming career as a new captain. Yet they found themselves together on this very peculiar terrain. With her first words, Aasleen confessed embarrassment: She had had no idea where Alone might have been and not been over these last tens of thousands of years. For decades, for entire centuries, she didn’t waste two moments pondering the device that she once cornered and then let get away. Not that she was at peace with her failure. She didn’t appreciate evidence of her incompetence, and it gnawed at her to know that somewhere onboard the Great Ship was a barely contained speck of highly compressed matter, and should that speck ever break containment, the next several seconds would become violent and famous, and for some souls, exceptionally sad.

But as an engineer, Aasleen could hand her official worries to the captains, and as a novice captain she never faced duties that had even the most glancing relationship to that old problem.

Relating her story now, she assumed that her prisoner would understand what he heard and feel interest in this curious, quirky business.

Several centuries ago, Aasleen and a second captain met by chance and fell into friendly conversation. It was her colleague who mentioned a newly discovered machine-building species. Washen had a sure touch with aliens. Better than most humans, she could decipher the attitudes and instincts of organisms that made no sense to a pragmatic, by-the-number soul like Aasleen. But the aliens had been superior engineers, which was why Washen mentioned them in the first place. Dubbed the Bakers, she described their rare genius for weaving inventive and persistent devices, and millions of years after their rise and fall and subsequent extinction, their machines were still scattered across the galaxy.

“The Bakers is our name for the species,” Aasleen cautioned. “It shouldn’t mean anything to you.”

Alone was floating above the cavern floor, encased in cages of plasma and overlapping magnetic fields creating a nearly invisible, seemingly unbreakable prison. Drifting in the middle of the smallest cage, he was drenched in vacuum, nothing but his own body ready to fuel an engine that everybody else seemed to fear.

With a flickering radio voice, he agreed. “I don’t know the Bakers.”

“What about this word?” Aasleen asked.

An intense sound washed across him. He listened carefully and then asked to hear it again. “I don’t know the name,” he confessed. “But the sounds make sense to me.”

“I’m not surprised,” Aasleen said.

Alone waited.

“We know what you are,” she said.

He told his captor, “I already know what I am. My history barely matters.”

“All right,” Aasleen said. “Do I stop talking now? Should I keep my tiresome explanations to myself?”

That sounded like a fine possibility. But machines and teams of engineers had emerged from distant tunnels, obviously preparing to do some large job. As long as the woman inside the mirrored uniform was speaking, nothing evil would be done to him. So finally, with no doubt in the voice, he said, “Tell me about these Bakers.”

“They built you.”

“Perhaps so,” he said.

“Seven hundred million years ago,” Aasleen added. Then a bright smile broke, and she added, “Which means that you are the second oldest machine that I have ever known.”

The Great Ship being the oldest.

“The Bakers were never natural travelers,” she said. “We don’t know a lot about them, and our little pile of facts mostly comes through tertiary sources. But as far as can be determined, the species didn’t send even one emissary to another world. Instead of wandering, they built wondrous durable drones that they littered across an entire arm of the galaxy. Their machines were complicated and adaptable, and they were purposefully limited in what they knew about themselves. You see, the Bakers didn’t surrender anything about themselves. They were isolated and happy to be that way. But they were also curious, in a paranoid fashion, imagining dangerous neighbors wanting to harm them. That’s why they built what looks to me like an elaborate empty bottle—a bottle designed to suck up ideas and emotions and history and intellectual talents from whatever species happens to come along. And when necessary, those machines could even acquire the shape and voice of the locals too.”

Nothing about the story could be refuted. Alone accepted what he heard while refusing to accept that any of it mattered.

“The Bakers lasted for ten or twelve million years, and then their world’s ecosystem collapsed,” Aasleen said. “They lived at the opposite end of our galaxy, and the only reason we’ve learned anything about them is because one of our new passenger species has collected several dead bottles as well as historical accounts. We don’t let anyone ride for free. Part of their payment is sharing what they know about the Bakers, and Washen knew that I would be fascinated in dead engineers. She didn’t talk for two minutes before I dropped a hand on her hand and told her that I knew where another bottle was, and this one was still working.

“‘Where is it?’ she asked.

“’He,’ I told her, ‘He is wandering inside the Great Ship, and he answers to the very appropriate name of Alone.”

The captain paused, smiling without appearing particularly happy.

The busy workers were erecting an elaborate needle on the cavern floor, aiming it straight up at him.

“We approached Miocene with our news,” Aasleen said. “I know Washen was disappointed. She wanted this assignment, but finding you was my job, and if that wasn’t difficult enough, I was told to corral you. Washen helped profile your nature, your powers. I decided to use promise of another machine like you as a lure, and that’s why I turned Bottom-E into a halfway famous abode for a glowing shape-shifting soul. If something went ugly-wrong down here, then at least the damage could be contained.”

“What about the LoYo?” Alone asked.

“They were moved to other quarters. The lights above are hiding sensors, and I designed them myself, and they didn’t help at all. Until you chased our fake bottle, there was no way to be certain that you were anywhere near this place.”

The needle was quickly growing longer, reaching for the cage’s outermost wall.

“What will you do now?” Alone asked.

“Strip away your engine first, and then we’ll secure it and you.” Aasleen described the process, offering incomprehensible terms along with her confidence. Yet she seemed uneasy when she said, “We intend to isolate your neural net, see what it is and how it works.”

“You are talking about my mind,” Alone complained.

“A mind that lives beside a powerful, unexploded bomb,” the captain added. “The Bakers didn’t design you to survive for this long. My best guess is that you pushed yourself outside the Milky Way, and in that emptiness, nothing went wrong. You drifted. You waited. I suppose you slept, in a fashion. And then you happened upon the Great Ship, before or after we arrived. You could have been here long before us, but of course the Bakers are lost, and you weren’t what I would consider sentient.”

“But I am alive now,” he said, his voice small and furious.

Aasleen paused.

With no apparent effort, the needle began passing through the wall of that first impenetrable cage.

“You are going to kill me,” he insisted.

The human was not entirely happy with these events. It showed in her posture, her face. But she was under orders, and she was assured enough in her skills to say, “I don’t think anything bad will happen. Research and preparation have been done, and we have an excellent team working with you. Once the danger is defused, you’ll have your memories pulled loose and set inside safer surroundings, and I think you’ll be happy. I do.”

One sudden thrust and the needle pierced the other cages, and before it stopped rising, its bright plasmatic tip was touching his center.

Damage was being done.

Quietly, fiercely, he begged Aasleen, “Stop.”

One nearby machine began to wail, the tone ominous and quickening. Aasleen looked at the data, and then too late, she shouted, “Stop it now. We’ve got the alignment wrong--!”

Then the captain and every engineer vanished.

They had been projections, fictions. The real humans were tucked inside some safe room, protected from the coming onslaught by distance and thick reaches of enduring hyperfiber.

Alone was injured and dying. But the damage was specific and still quite narrow, and the faltering mind continued, but exposed like never before. And that was the moment when the Voice that had always been speaking to him, that never stopped shouting at every soul that stood upon or inside the deep ancient hull, could be heard clearly.

“I am the Ship,” the Voice declared.

“Listen!”

13

It was not one place but it was everywhere, and Those-Who-Rule received unwelcome news. There was trouble in Creation, and there was sudden urgent talk of grand failures. A portion of the everywhere was in rebellion. How could this be? Who would be so foolish? Outraged by what they saw as pure treachery, Those-Who-Rule decided that punishment was essential, and the best punishment had to be delivered instantly, before the rebellion could stretch beyond even Their powerful reach. A ship was aimed and set loose, burrowing its way through the newborn universe. Upon reaching its target, a sentence worse than any death would be delivered. Nonexistence was its weapon—oblivion to All; the eradication of Potential and History too—and with that one talent and an insatiable hunger for success, the ship dove on and on until it had passed out of sight.

But now that act of vengeance lay in the past. Upon reflection, Those-Who-Rule questioned the wisdom of a decision made moments ago. Total slaughter seemed harsh, no matter how justified, and after a brief debate full wasted time and self-serving confessions, these agents of ultimate power dispatched another grand vessel full of talents and desires and mighty, unborn possibilities.

That second ship chased after the first.

If it should meet its quarry somewhere out into the mayhem of newborn plasmas and raw, impossible energies, disaster would be averted. The song of life and existence and death and life born again would remain intact. But the universe was growing fast and then faster still, exploding outwards while a wicked chill seeped into the emptiness. Randomness was at work here, and blindness, and two adjacent points often discovered themselves separated by a billion light-years.

This chase would prove exceptionally difficult.

Yet the second ship’s goal could be no more urgent.

Through Creation, salvation chased the bleak end of everything, and nothing else mattered, and nothing done by mortals or immortals could compare to the one race that would grant the universe permission to live out its day.

The insistent relentless piercing Voice roared at the Bakers’ bottle, and all the while Alone felt his center leaking, threatening to explode. Finally he had no choice but to interrupt, asking his tormentor, “And which ship are you?”

The Voice hesitated.

“But you can’t be the first ship,” Alone said. “If you were carrying this nonexistence, you wouldn’t know about the second ship chasing after you, trying to stop your work . . . ”

In a mutter, the Voice said, “Yes.”

“You must be the second Ship,” he said.

“But a third choice exists,” the Voice assured.

“No,” said Alone.

Then in terror, he said, “Yes.”

“I am,” the Great Ship said.

“Both,” Alone blurted. “You’re that first ship bringing Nothingness, and you’re the second ship after it has reached its target.”

“Yes.”

“But you can’t stop the mission, can you?”

“Half of me has tried and cannot, and half of me will resist and nothing will change,” said the Great Ship.

“You’re both ships, both pilots.”

“We are.”

“Working for opposite ends.”

“Yes.”

“And these humans,” Alone said. “They happily, foolishly ride you through their galaxy.”

“Doom everywhere, and every moment ending us.”

Alone felt weak enough to flicker out of existence, and an instant later, he was stronger than ever before. “Tell them,” he said. “Why can’t you explain it to them?”

“Why won’t they hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“At long last, yes.”

“I could tell them for you.”

“If you survived, you would explain. Yes.”

“But . . . ”

“It is too late.”

Alone fell silent.

The Great Ship continued to talk, repeating that same tale of revenge and the chase, of nonexistence and the faint promise of redemption.

But Alone had stopped listening. He heard nothing more. With just the eye of his mind, he was gazing back across tens of thousands of years, remembering every step taken and each step avoided, and he could only marvel at how small his long life appeared when set against the light of far suns and the deep abyss of Time.

Originally published in Godlike Machines, edited by Jonathan Strahan, 2010.

Necahual

Tobias S. Buckell

We drop out of the wormhole towards a mess of a planet by the ochre light of a dying sun. From the cant of orbit, upside down and even then through virtual portholes we can see tiny spots of white light blossom in the atmosphere.

We’re liberators.

Each one of those little blossoms of light is an impact. A chunk of rock with a controller vane on it, predestined for a certain point. It clears out the enemy’s ability to hit back above the stratosphere.

I know from past experience that sunsets here on New Anegada won’t be the same for a long while. As a child I’d sat on porches near the coast to watch the magnificent sunsets of my own world for many months after The League came to liberate us.

“Man we’re dropping the hammer on this backwater shithole,” the man across from me says. His white and blue exoskeleton wraps around his body. He looks like a striped mantis. Right now it’s plugged into the convex wall of the pod, charging and keeping him from bouncing around as we skate atmosphere.

A single bead of sweat floats loose from his bulbous nose and hangs in the air between us.

“You know much about the target?”

Everyone wants to know juicy details about them.

“Historical info only,” I say. “The Azteca of Mother Earth never even called themselves that. They were the Mexica.”

I wonder if the black man caddy cornered to the right of me has skin-flauge painted on. Hard to tell under the blue and white he’s wearing. It’s hard not to look askance at him. No one like him on the home planet. But at least he’s human, real human, and The League today will be adding another human planet we’re told. If there are any aliens here we’ll wipe them out, every last one, like they tried to wipe The League out.

“The warrior priests of Mexica were pretty brutal,” I explain. “They used to induce hallucination by piercing their foreskin,” all the men wince, “and dragging a knotted rope through the tear until they saw visions.”

The woman caddy cornered on my left asks, “What is it going to be like when we hit?”

“I got the same report you did.”

The large island continent of New Anegada on the planet is also the name of the planet. This is confusing for conversation, but no one had consulted with the original colonists, mainly Caribbean refugees from Mother Earth after some minor alien attack a long time ago. Half the continent is New Anegada, the other half is Azteca. Large mountains split them down the middle.

The entire system got cut off several hundred years ago, a forgotten incident, a sidenote of history. The wormhole that connects New Anegada to the rest of the worlds opens up again several weeks ago and shit hits the fan.

We’re ordered out, to make sure The League gets here first to offer these humans membership and the Azteca contingent attacks. Now things are messy.

This is all I know.

All four of us are strapped across from each other in the pod, waiting as the heat builds up, looking past each other.

The virtual panorama on the floor screen flickers off.

The buffeting ceases. We’re still alive.

“Hello,” says a small voice deep inside my inner ear. It’s a dry and bored monotone. “I am riding shotgun for you. Got about a minute and thirteen seconds left until you hit dirt, and congratulations, you have just passed the highest probability zone of being shot down by automated Azteca fire.”

Which is why it is just now downloading itself into my armor.

“Name’s Tai Thirteen Crimson Velvet. Call me Velvet. Lady on your left is Paige, man across is Steven. On your right is Smith. Smith has augmented ears for deafness. If you get hit by anything with a good electromagnetic pulse, it’ll wipe his hearing chips and he’ll be back to being deaf. Just so you know.”

All the information we need comes to us from the Tais. Tactical artificial intelligences. Little cybernetic ghosts. They give us the real orders, the real info, so that if we got into trouble they can scramble, leave, and we won’t be the wiser for the big picture.

These are tactics learned from many strange, alien encounters. Ones where they could just suck shit right out of your brain and figure out what the enemy’s plans were. Humanity adapted. It adopted alien tactics wholesale right back at them.

“Take a deep breath and close your eyes,” the Tai orders. “Time to peel.”

The pod explodes. The sides rip back and vaporize themselves. I open my eyes to see the real island of New Anegada directly below me. My heart hammers as we plummet.

The green land rushes faster and faster toward me until the Tai whispers, ‘okay’ and the chute slides out of the back of my exoskeleton.

There are no explosions, no shots fired at me, just a calm, blue sky and lush green forest below my feet, the rippling blue ocean up ahead. The chute canopy overhead is invisible, and not just on the visible spectrum either.

A minute later my feet hit turf.

I’m on the ground and I have no clue what’s going to happen next.

I’m expecting shots. But I only hear wind rustling through palm fronds and the distant foaming sound of waves breaking over reef. I’m expecting Aztec priest-warriors wearing gaudy colored feathers to fan out and attack us. Instead, I’m facing a large three story concrete building painted bright yellow and pink.

It’s got terracotta shingling.

I’m expecting anything except a man with his back against a mango tree, chewing a stem of grass, looking straight at me.

“Is this a friendly?” I ask.

“Okay,” the Tai says. “Your regular weaponry is locked under my command. You have a tanglegun in your left pocket, if you need to use that. This is a police action, we’re not here to kill anyone. There are no hostiles. We’re just here to talk and gather information from the locals.”

“So this is a friendly?”

“Yes.”

I look down. The extendable canon I have aimed at the man is primed, but useless. I let go of the trigger.

“Go ahead,” the Tai orders. “We’re here to gather information about who the Azteca are, where they came from, and what, if anything, these people can do to help us. I am recording everything back up to HQ. I’ll prompt you as needed. If you do this well, you’ll be promoted. So will I.”

The canon swings back up under my arm to fasten itself to the back of my exoskeleton armor. It’s a smooth lubricated slide. A whisper.

The man by the mango tree pulls the stem of grass out of his mouth and stands up.

“So,” he says to me. “We been invade or what?”

I have no idea how to respond. I stand there, still, waiting for someone besides me to do something.

“You speak English?” The man asks. He has a deep tan that almost blends into the color of oak and short tightly curled hair. His brown eyes twinkle with a sort of Huckleberry Finn look, but he’s wearing a cream colored suit. With no shoes on.

I nod.

“You looking for Bouschulte, right?” He says, the words so quick they blend into each and I stumble over the accent. He ambles over to us.

I speak my first word.

“What?”

“You. Looking. For. Bouschulte.” The man from the mango tree repeats himself as if I’m slow. He looks frustrated for a second. “He up in he house.”

“What is . . . ” I swallow, “a bouschulte?”

“It a name. Frederick Bouschulte. If you have a Aztec name like ‘Acolmiztli’ or some stupidness like that, and you hiding with us, you don’t keep calling you-self ‘Acolmiztli.’ Seen?”

“Seen.” I agree out of sheer panic. The Tai in my head is still silent. I wouldn’t mind some assistance. The man’s accent is hard and I still haven’t been given any damn orders.

The man reaches out to touch my face, then stops when I flinch.

“You eye them, chineeman, you do that to fit in with them?”

“It . . . ” was done a long time ago. Far away. “An old tradition my forefathers continued.” I’d been too young to protest the removal of my eye folds.

A tiger-striped cat tiptoes out from behind the building and sits down. It starts to lick its tail, working hard at ignoring the five people on the grass before it.

“What you name?”

“Kiyoshi,” I say.

“Well, Kiyoshi, let we get on with this so call invasion, eh?”

My Tai must be gone for good, I realize. And looking around at the panicked faces of the three other soldiers I fell out of the sky with, I realize theirs are dead too. We’re on our own. Somehow these people can jam the Tais, though I have no idea how.

The panic attack comes and goes swiftly. Old training takes over. Yes the Tais make the decisions, but we have training. We’re still soldiers. We’re still mobile representatives of The League.

I grab the man’s shoulders, tanglegun aimed right dead in the middle of his forehead. At this range the tanglegun is lethal.

“What’s going on?” I hiss. “Tell me what is going on!”

He snaps loose of me, shrugging my armored arms aside as if they were only a nuisance. The motion is quick enough I have trouble following it. There is, surprisingly enough, a small knife now shoved up between the joints in my armor.

Smith aims his tanglegun at us, but it’s an empty gesture. Our Tais hamstrung us, took away our lethal force. Orders . . .

“You conquest failing.”

“There is no fucking conquest,” Steve snaps. “We’re here to save you from the Azteca.”

“Yeah man, so I hear. But one thing: seeing that we been making do for a few hundred years already you might wonder what we know that you ain’t figure out yet. Second thing: you here to tell us what to do, right? Because you assume we don’t know what we doing. You want tell us what to do, how to think. That mental conquest friend. Mental.”

A boom shakes the air. Paige looks up at the sky. None of us can see anything, but I shiver.

“Any of you able to contact anyone?” Paige asks.

We all try. Shake our heads. We’re cut off.

“Come inside with me now,” our new host says. “Drop you weapon to the ground. You don’t need them.”

For some reason, without the Tais, the three soldiers are looking at me. Command structure has returned to our small unit. Ironic how we fall into the old patterns. This is what it would have been like in The League before the Xenowars. Only then it wasn’t The League, just spacefaring humans associated with their old national origins on the mother planet.

I have a decision to make.

“Do you have any way that we can communicate to our superiors?” I ask.

Jami nods.

“That we do,” he says.

Into the rabbit hole I decide, and nod. We drop our tangleguns and the blade near my ribs disappears just as abruptly as it had appeared. I still want to know how it got under my armor.

“The name Jami,” the man in the cream suit says, shaking my hand. “Jami ‘Manicou’ Derrick.”

Jami turns around, and we follow the barefoot, dapper man into the concrete-block house. We troop past the cat, which is now working on cleaning an extended furry back leg.

Jami asks us if we read much. He wants to know about ‘War of the Worlds,’ an ancient text, he tells us, but with an interesting moral to it.

None of us have read it.

He laughs gently, takes off his tie and suit jacket and hangs them off the back of a canvas chair.

“You’ll wish,” he laughs at us. “You should have wait and talk with everyone longer. So now, it a mess. The League trying to come in and reshape everything to be just like it wants it, and it ain’t that easy.”

The door creaks open and we look straight into the face of the enemy.

The Azteca reclines in a leather chair while an elderly black lady in a bright red and yellow patterned shawl carefully snips at his flat hair. A red cape drapes around his knees where his hands rest, gently crossed over each other. The gold plug in his nose glints in the light streaming through a large opened window, and his jade earrings dangle as he slightly turns his head to regard us.

Blue eye shadow swirls around the crow’s feet that crinkle the edges of his eyes. His black smeared lips twitch.

“The League has arrived,” he pronounces, looking at our uniforms. “What do you think of our conquerors, Jami?” Jami is leaning against the concrete wall, arms folded, looking at the small ensemble in the room.

“The first conquerors of Tenochtitlan arrived in small numbers,” Jami said. “They had armor and superior technology. The League only got the size and the armor correct.”

Jami smiles sadly at us.

“But this is not a group of Spaniards with gold lust and domination in their hearts,” The Azteca says. “The League is here to save us. Is it not?”

His eyes are piercing. Something has wounded him. He hates us.

“The first conquistadors thought they were saving the savages back then too,” he adds.

I have nothing to say, but stand straight and return his restrained fury with a calm gaze of my own. I am a professional.

“You done, then, Frederick?”

“I miss my true name.”

Jami sighs.

“I guess it don’t make no difference what you call yourself now.”

Acolmiztli stands up and gathers up the cherry bowl with his hair clippings in it.

“I’m not much of a believer,” he says, “but the old ways are specific. You must have your hair cut in a way that does not lose tonalli. Or you risk losing the strength of your spirit.” He takes a deep breath. “In times like these, I need all the strength I can get.”

The door slams behind him.

“He’s bitter,” Paige notes. They’ve been taking my lead, remaining quiet. I’m in charge. I’m their Tai.

“The League should look very very carefully into assuming,” Jami says, looking at the door with us, “that all Azteca same.”

There are, he tells us, Tolteca. Reformed Azteca who have spurned human sacrifice and made great changes to Azteca society in the last hundred years.

My stomach flip flops.

“Human sacrifice?”

Jami unfolds his arms.

“Acolmiztli tells me he only sacrificed snake, bird, and butterfly. He say,” and Jami imitates Acolmiztli’s voice perfectly . . . “Because he so loved man Quetzalcoatl allowed only the sacrifice of snakes, birds, and butterflies. As he was opposed to the sacrifice of human flesh the three sorcerers of Tula drove him out of the city. The people of Tenochtitlan did not follow Quetzalcoatl. Instead, they followed the war-god Huitzilopochtli or Xipe-Totec: the flayed god. Then the fifth sun was destroyed and we lived in the sixth and it became a time of change.”

It sends shivers down the back of my spine.

“You said you had communications equipment,” I fold my arms. The shivering continues. “We’d like to use it now.”

I shiver again, my knees weak. Jami catches me under my arms as I drop to my knees.

“What’s happening?” I’m disoriented; the walls of the room seem to bend in on themselves.

“Remember how I tell you you should have read Wells?” Jami says. “Come on.” He helps me over to a wooden bench and opens a cupboard. I vaguely recognize the device behind the wooden doors. It looks like a museum piece. But it responds to a wave of my hand and my voice.

Static is my only reply. There is accusation in my angry stare, but Jami gestures at the device.

“Try again. You feeling rough.”

Sweat drips from my forehead, the shivers continue wracking my body. This time I find a carrier signal and send a voice request up. Archaic. But they reply.

“Who is this? Identify.”

I do, giving personal ID codes and answering questions until the voice on the other side is satisfied.

“We give nothing away by saying we’re doing a retreat,” it says. “All ground assaults have been infected with some sort of virus, we’re losing this battle. We have your touchdown coordinates. Be outside in five minutes for a starhook. You’ll be in quarantine upon return.”

Then it’s gone.

My three companions are sweating and sprawled on the floor.

Infected. Quarantine.

“When we saw you,” I say. “You walked over to us, touched me,” my hands go up to my face.

“Acolmiztli gave it to me, and I passed it to you,” Jami says.

“Is it fatal?” I ask Jami.

He shrugs.

“Better get back up to orbit and find out, right? I look alright, but I could have antidote.” He smiles.

I purse my lips.

“Get up,” I order everyone. It has been interesting being in charge. I’m glad to see the end of it coming. Paige, Smith, and Steve struggle up. Smith leans heavily on Steve. “Get outside, now.”

We’re a pathetic group that pushes through the door with Jami following us. My knees wobble, but I manage a convincing stride through what looks like a bar.

Dim lights cast shadows, and from those shadows loom wooden tables where several men in khaki camouflage toast us with their glasses and sly grins. I see no weapons, but now I wonder if their weapon isn’t the fever raging inside of me.

My gut spasms. The pain almost blinds me.

“Come on.” I push my three soldiers on in front of me, shoving my hand against their hard armor, ignoring an unidentifiable chuckle from somewhere in the room.

But halfway through the room text scrolls over my vision. My own implants are failing, no longer able to heal my body or regulate it. I’m nothing more than flesh right now. I have no soldier-sharp senses, no wired edge for combat.

I trip over a chair, grab the table to steady myself, and when I blink everything is clear.

Right before me is a large aquarium. Something sinuously moves through the tank and presses against the glass. I stumble closer and a woman stares right back at me through the refracted water and solid glass with wide brown eyes. Sheets of her oak-colored hair twirl behind her head. Her super pale skin has an almost greenish tint.

The eyes hold me until my face presses right against the glass.

“Beautiful, isn’t she.”

Acolmiztli grabs my shoulder.

“She was a present. From one of my brothers. A gift from the Emperor Moctezuma the Ninth.”

Her smooth stomach fades into the singular muscle and pilot fins of her tail’s trunk. The wide fins are splayed out. They’re delicate, yet powerful enough to drive all six feet of her through the water with a flick.

Which she does. Out away from the glass.

Then she turns back, looks at me, and her hands flutter.

It’s too hallucinogenic. I walk away from the tank.

“Keep moving damnit.” Smith looks at me, face blank. He doesn’t understand a word.

His hearing implants have all failed.

But we’re moving, and out the door into the sunlight. I lean back and look into the sky. Nothing yet.

“Why are you doing this to us?” I ask Jami, who is still right behind us.

“The Azteca doing it to you.”

“But you knew about it,” I snap.

“Yes.”

“And yet you did nothing. You collaborate with them.”

“You the one that drop out the sky and land. We didn’t force you.”

Overhead I hear a roar, then a rumble.

“But all those deaths . . . ”

“All because of you. Consider: before you came we were changing the Azteca from the bottom up, and inside out. The Azteca a hornet’s nest, and we blow some sweet smoke their way. Now you throwing rocks.”

Thunder rolls and a small oval speck drops down out of the sky. The long carbon filament trailing behind it is strong enough to reel us all up from the ground we’re standing on into orbit and then into hold of a waiting mothership.

“Snap in when it drops,” I order everyone. But I turn and look at Jami.

The pod slows to a halt and falls into our midst. Smith walks over and snaps on. Paige does the same, and Steve looks at me follows suit. Three soldiers, ready to get lifted, the cable rising up from between them to rise into the heavens.

“We have a minute, maybe two,” Steve says to me.

I’m still staring at Jami.

“Just because you can’t spot the power we wield don’t mean we defenseless.” He stares right back. “We study you. You machines run everything, solider-man. When the conflict came you choose to wipe out the alien threat you faced. And now you all still working on purifying The League. Only human.”

“There was no other choice,” I say. “When the killing started, we realized it was us or them. Damnit, I was four. You can’t hold me responsible. It’s different now.”

“You kill millions of aliens, we hear. Deport the rest. Cleanse any human not pure human, that tamper with they DNA. You almost wipe yourselves out. Yet you come here to tell us what to do? That’s hypocritical.”

“We’d never survived if it wasn’t for adopting the Tais, like they did. We could never have matched their superior military skill.” And, despite the fever, I have a trump. “You talk hypocritical. Hypocritical is the mermaid,” I hiss. “You let that Azteca keep his slave in his tank. How dirty does that make you?”

I might as well have struck Jami.

“The line is tightening,” Steve yells at me.

“You do not give natural rights to any clone in The League?” Jami says. “Any robot? The Tais? Artificial people? Because even you wouldn’t grant the person in that tank her life. Why the high ground now?”

I walk towards the pod. In a second I’ll be yanked out of here into the stratosphere, my suit bubbling out to enclose and protect me. Back to the warrens inside the depths of a troop ship.

“We ain’t ignorant,” Jami said. “We couldn’t make do with metal tech. When the wormhole closed, it was just us and the alien who stayed behind used a different kind of tech. If there is one thing we’re good at, it’s taking things and adapting them. All my ancestors got handed the trash of the more advanced. Technological hand me downs. Less than perfect trade agreements. Yeah, physical domination gone, but economic and political domination follow. So when we came from the islands to here, we say, never again.

“But then came the aliens, and they created the Azteca to destroy us. We had to make do, take these things and mash them up and sent back up as something unique to us. But now you here. You League would destroy either of us for figuring out how to work with the alien. We need to be cleanse, right? You a superior force, with bigger guns. So we have something you didn’t expect. The only way you can find out how to deal with this is talk to us. That’s why the Azteca give us the antidote.”

They want to ‘mash me up,’ take me and make me their own and spit me back out to see what changes. They want to figure out how best to handle the new situation that just opened up in their backyard. And I’m a key to a puzzle for them.

I remember a small biological part of what being human is. The reason we fear the Ais, the alien, death, and why The League fights so hard and maniacally against everything.

Survival.

Smith’s ears are broken, I realize as he signs something at me. A hand flutter, like that of the woman in the tank.

I turn to Jami.

“Okay,” I tell him. “I want the same antidote you have, okay?”

Jami nods.

“The very same. I promise you.”

Paige recognizes what is happening.

“You can’t desert,” she shouts. “They’ll deactivate you.”

The rest of the objection is lost. The starhook goes taught and all three of them lift of the ground and accelerate towards space.

I drop to my hands and knees and puke. Tiny pieces of machinery I didn’t even know were in me litter the grass with the remains of pasty meals from the last day of eating.

With a deep breath I stand back up.

Jami helps steady me.

“But I have a condition,” he says. “You have to help me free her.” He’s talking about the lady in the aquarium. She’s been in the bar for weeks, he tells me, as he helps me back across the lawn. Ever since The League began its bombardment and invasion. Acolmiztli took her here with him, and he won’t let her go.

Jami can’t free her. His people are helping the Azteca change themselves, but if he were to set the modified woman free, Acolmiztli would blame him. But a rogue League solider with a soft heart, a human heart, could do it.

The Nanagadans are setting the Azteca against The League. But some Azteca are actually Tolteca, good reformed Azteca. And they are here, but not too reformed. And Jami needs me for a sort of cultural remix experiment, and all I can think of are those almond eyes that plead with me, and the fluttering hands.

“Oh shit,” I say, looking up at the sky. The lady in the tank is using sign language. Her hands had moved like Smith’s.

And Smith is gone.

I at least want to talk to her.

“Just give me the antidote, please,” I tell Jami.

Acolmiztli regards me with suspicion.

“He is back?”

“He a smart man,” Jami says, his voice soft and guarded. “He know if a battle turn.”

The Azteca laughs, then folds his arms and glares at the men around him.

“Then soon I’ll be going home.”

“Lucky us.”

“The antidote?” I ask Jami. “Where is it?” I’m scared of another attack, of puking something really important out.

“The antidote,” Acolmiztli says. “Come on Jami. Can’t you give this poor man the antidote? Doesn’t he know the antidote is?” Acolmiztli laughs at me and the sound makes me clench my hands. “All those nasty little metal bits inside that talk to each other and to your ships, all those little ghosts running around inside your heads, those intelligent machines, they’re all dead. But you’ll live. Oh yes, you’re just fine. Just like Jami here.”

I’ll live. Here. But despite Acolmiztli’s light tone I know what the result in space will be. All those battle formations, swarming back through the wormhole in retreat, their bows milliseconds away from each other.

Collided and destroyed.

Mass confusions. Systems failures. Those people up there were sitting ducks. No doubt the Azteca’s own ships would savage them.

“There is a story I tell, that my father told, and his father before him,” Acolmiztli says. Reflections from the wall of water behind me dapple the wall in front of me. “Horse and Stag came into quarreling once, long ago, and Horse went to a Hunter for help in taking his revenge against Stag. Hunter said, yes, but only if you let me put this piece of iron in your mouth that I may guide you with these pieces of rope. And only if you let me put this saddle on your back that I may sit on you while I help you hunt Stag. The horse agreed and together they hunted down the Stag. After this, the horse thanked the Hunter, and asked him to remove those things from him. But Hunter laughed and tied him to a tree, then sat down and had himself a very good meal of Stag. You see what I am saying?” Acolmiztli looks at me.

“No, what are you saying?”

The half grin on his lips flitters away.

“Who’s riding whom here?”

Jami has sat near me, but at an angle so he can look at both of us.

“You drunk,” Jami says.

“Do either of you realize how many people are going to die today?” I yell. I’m shaking angry with everyone. Convinced I was here to land and perform a duty under the Tai’s direction, stripped of that leadership, then told I was infected. I had thought I would die, but now I’m alive. I’m a mess.

“Yes,” Acolmiztli says. “Can I go watch?” He stands up and totters out of the room.

Jami leans forward and grabs my forearm.

“Please,” he hisses.

I turn and look at the lady in the tank, who is staring back at me.

Jami is a man who stared at us when we dropped from space and aimed weapons at him. He slid the machete under my armor and moved quicker than my own machine-aided senses could adjust for. Why was he not doing this?

“Who is Acolmiztli really?” I ask.

“The Emperor of the Azteca brother,” Jami says. “Here in case the Emperor get attack by you League. Now that the League falling, I imagine he go leave soon.”

I swallow.

“Okay.”

I know no sign language. I stand in front of the tank and wonder what will happen when I try to take her out.

“And,” I whisper to myself, “how do I make you understand that I’m going to help you out. Set you free.” There is an ocean nearby, and a small beach that Jami tells me is easy to get to. There is a dirt road that leads from this place straight to it.

“Will you even want to be free?” For all I know she has been in a watery cage like this for all her life. She might only be able to conceive of this being her world. Would it be right to set her free?

And if I do, am I not making enemies with the most powerful Azteca? I’ve seen what they can do. Can the Nanagadans do anything to protect me? I doubt it, but they’ve survived so far.

Sound shakes me free. The pane of glass in front of her is covered in mud and silt and she writes something with her index finger.

READ LIPS.

And on the next line.

TAKE ME AWAY.

This is the right thing to do.

Through a gap in the silt on the glass I tap to get her attention.

“Get back.”

I’m still wearing exoskeleton armor, and the helmet section slides up with a quick slap of my palm. The glass shards that hit me when I fire the tanglegun at point black don’t slice me to shreds.

The lukewarm water and silt, however, drench me.

She weighs more than I thought, or I’m weak. Her mossy hair drapes over my shoulder. The smell of seaweed fills the room. I stumble over broken glass with her in my arms and get her into a cart filled with water that Jami left outside for me.

Then the pushing run towards the beach, water slopping out over the sides.

Occasionally she pokes her head out of the draining water and stares at me.

Palm trees rustle and shake. My feet crunch on dirt. A dog barks.

The trail turns down. The beach isn’t far. I can hear the rhythmic surf and the wind starts to lift sand into the air and into my eyes.

At the end of the trail I pick her up again, lift her out of the cart and run over the sand, almost tripping, until I’m wading into the salty water. She wriggles free of me.

For a second we stare at each other, then she’s gone, a shadow beneath the waves. Was there gratitude? I don’t know.

It isn’t important. I did what I did.

I strip off the exoskeleton, piece by piece, and throw the useless carcass out into the waves.

Overhead the rumble of engines make me to look up and see a machine climbing into the sky from the house. It is gaudily painted, much like I would expect and Azteca flyer to be. It speeds off into the distance like an angry mosquito.

Jami hands me a towel and a drink when I walk through the door. He sits down at a wooden table and just looks at me.

“She leave?” he asks.

“Yes.” I nod slowly.

“You’d hope she would stay?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s done. Acolmiztli?”

Jami smiles.

“He’s gone back to his brother.”

I take a deep breath and put my hands on the table.

“What am I going to do now?” I ask Jami.

He grabs my hands.

“That one small act of liberation,” he tells me, “that little bit of freedom you got her, will have more of an impact than all you ship, you missile, and all you soldier. Understand?”

No, I didn’t.

“That lady, her name Necahual. It mean ‘survivor.’ All this time she been surviving, but that ain’t good enough. Now she can have a whole coast, where fishermen will know to feed her. Until she can recover. Because surviving not enough. You can’t just survive, Kiyoshi. You must do better than that. And right now The League just surviving. Like you.

“So you just the beginning. The League, we have a lot to offer them too. Along with the Azteca. How to accommodate and incorporate. We been learning how to do this since Mother Earth when were all islanders.” He slaps the table. “And we get better and better. Most places, always they get caught up in ruling, dominating, becoming greater, and then falling apart.” Jami leans forward. “We learn how to stay outside that, man. It ain’t easy,” he says. “Always a struggle. But for a much greater good.”

I pull my hands free.

“So what do I do right now?” I ask. “How do we start all this?”

Jami leans back in his chair.

“For now, just to talk to me, man. Don’t look for information, or try to resolve anything, or figure it all out. Just talk.”

I relax a bit.

“And tomorrow?”

Jami smiles.

“There’s going to be a lot of work tomorrow. A whole lot of it. We go be very busy.”

There is one last thing.

“And the aliens you talked about?”

“I’m looking right at you,” Jami laughs.

I freeze my face. I’m nervous about this. All my life I’ve been scared of them, fighting them, forcing them out of The League.

“Tomorrow,” Jami says. “One step at a time, we show you how.”

I breathe again. Slowly, savoring the air.

It’s more than just surviving. It’s living. And I like it.

Originally published in So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Farah Mendlesohn, 2005.

Kheldyu

Karl Schroeder

The truck crested a hill and Gennady got his first good look at the Khantayskoe test site. He ground to a stop and sat there for a long time.

Spreading before him were thirty square kilometers of unpopulated Siberian forest. Vast pine-carpeted slopes ran up and up into impossible distance to either side, yet laid over the forest of the south-facing rise was a gleaming circle six kilometers in diameter. It was slightly crinkly, like a giant cellophane disk or parachute that had been dropped here by a passing giant. Its edges had been perfectly sharp in the photos Gennady had seen, but they were ragged in real life. That circle was just a vast roof of plastic sheeting, after all, great sections of which had fallen in the past several winters. Enough remained to turn the slope into a glittering bulls-eye of reflecting sheets and fluttering, tattered banners of plastic.

Underneath that ceiling, the dark low forest was a subdued shade of gray. That gray was why Gennady was now putting on a surgical mask.

Standing up out of the top quarter of the circle was a round, flat-topped tower, like a smoke-stack for some invisible morlock factory. The thing was over a kilometer tall, and wisps of cloud wreathed its top.

He put the truck into gear and bumped his way toward the tumbled edges of the greenhouse. There was no trick to roofing over a whole forest, at least around here; few of the gnarled pines were more than thirty feet tall. Little grew between them, the long sight-lines making the northern arboreal forest a kind of wall-less maze. Here, the trees made a perfect filter, slowing the air that came in around the open edges of the greenhouse and letting it warm slowly as it converged on that distant tower.

“There’s just one tiny problem,” Achille Marceau had told Gennady when they’d talked about the job, “which is why we need you. The airflow stopped when we shut down the wind turbines at the base of the solar updraft tower. It got hot and dry under the greenhouse, and with the drought—well, you know.”

The tenuous road wove between tree trunks and under the torn translucent roof whose surface wavered like an inverted lake. For the first hundred meters or so everything was okay. The trees were still alive. But then he began passing more and more orange and brown ones, and the track became obscured by deepening drifts of pine needles.

Then these began to disappear under a fog of greyish-white fungus.

He’d been prepared for this sight, but Gennady still stopped the truck to do some swearing. The trees were draped in what looked like the fake cobwebs kids hung over everything for American Halloween. Great swathes of the stuff cocooned whole trunks and stretched between them like long, sickening flags. He glanced back and saw that an ominous white cloud was beginning to curl around the truck—billions of spores kicked up by his wheels.

He gunned the engine to get ahead of the spore clouds, and that was when he finally noticed the other tracks.

Two parallel ruts ran through the white snow-like stuff, outlining the road ahead quite clearly. They looked fresh, and would have been made by a vehicle about the same size as his.

Marceau had insisted that Gennady would be the first person to visit the solar updraft plant in five years.

The slope was just steep enough that the road couldn’t run straight up the hillside, but zig-zagged; so it took Gennady a good twenty minutes to make it to the tower. He was sweating and uncomfortable by the time he finally pulled the rig into the gravel parking area under the solar uplift tower. The other vehicle wasn’t here, and its tracks had disappeared on the mold-free gravel. Maybe it had gone around the long curve of the tower.

He drove that way himself. He was supposed to be inspecting the tower’s base for cracks, but his eyes kept straying, looking for a sign that somebody else was here. If they were, they were well hidden.

When he got back to the main lot, he rummaged in the glove compartment and came up with a flare gun. Wouldn’t do any good as a weapon, but from a distance it might fool somebody. He slipped it into the pocket of his nylon jacket and climbed out to retrieve a portable generator from the bed of the truck.

Achille Marceau wanted to replace 4% of the world’s coal-powered generating plants with solar updraft towers. With no fuel requirements at all, these towers would produce electricity while simultaneously removing CO2 from the air. All together they’d suck a gigaton of carbon out of the atmosphere every year. Ignoring the electricity sales, at today’s prices the carbon sales alone would be worth $40 billion a year. That was $24 million per year from this tower alone.

Marceau had built this tower to prove the plan, by producing electricity for Northern China while simultaneously pulling down carbon and sequestering it underground. It was a brilliant plan, but he’d found himself underbid in the cutthroat post-carbon-bubble economy, and he couldn’t make ends meet on the electricity sales alone. He’d had to shut down.

Now he was back—literally, a few kilometers back, waiting for his hazardous materials lackey to open the tower and give the rest of the trucks the all-clear signal.

The plastic ceiling got higher the closer you got to the tower, and now it was a good sixty meters overhead. Under it, vast round windows broke the curve of the wall; they were closed by what looked like steel Venetian blinds. Some portable trailers huddled between two of the giant circles, but these were for management. Gennady trudged past them without a glance and climbed a set of metal steps to a steel door labeled Небезпеки—‘HAZARD,’ but written in Ukrainian, not Russian. Marceau’s key let him in, and the door didn’t even squeak, which was encouraging.

Before he stepped through, Gennady paused and looked back at the shrouded forest. It was eerily quiet, with no breeze to make the dead trees speak.

Well, he would change that.

The door opened into a kind of airlock; he could hear wind whistling around the edges of the inner portal. He closed the outer one and opened the inner, and was greeted by gray light and a sense of vast emptiness. Gennady stepped into the hollow core of the tower.

The ground was just bare red stone covered with construction litter. A few heavy lifters and cranes dotted the stadium-sized circle. Here there was sound—a discordant whistling from overhead. Faint light filtered down.

He spent a long hour inspecting the tower’s foundations from the inside, then carried the little generator to the bottom of another flight of metal steps. These ones zigzagged up the concrete wall. About thirty meters up, a ring of metal beams held a wide gallery that encircled the tower, and more portable trailers had been placed on that. The stairs went on past them into a zone of shifting silvery light. The stuff up there would need attending to, but not just yet.

Hauling the generator up to the first level took him ten minutes; halfway up he took off the surgical mask, and he was panting when he finally reached the top. He caught his breath and then shouted, “Hello?” Nobody answered; if there was another visitor here, they were either hiding or very far away across—or up—the tower.

The windows of the dust-covered control trailer were unbroken. The door was locked. He used the next key on that but didn’t go in. Instead, he set up the portable generator and connected it to the mains. But now he was in his element, and was humming as he pulled the generator’s cord.

While it rattled and roared he took another cautious look around then went left along the gallery. The portable trailer sat next to one of the huge round apertures that perforated the base of the tower. Seated into this circle was the biggest wind turbine he’d ever seen. The gallery was right at the level of its axle and generator, so he was able to inspect it without having to climb anything. When Marceau’s men mothballed it five years ago, they’d wrapped everything vulnerable in plastic and taped it up. Consequently, the turbine’s systems were in surprisingly good shape. Once he’d pitched the plastic sheeting over the gallery rail he only had to punch the red button at the back of the trailer, and somewhere below, an electric motor strained to use all the power from his little generator. Lines of daylight began to separate the imposing Venetian blinds. With them came a quickening breeze.

“Put your hands up!”

Gennady reflexively put his hands in the air; but then he had to laugh.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Sorry. Is just that, last time I put my hands up like this was for a woman also. Kazakhstan, last summer.”

There was a pause. Then: “Gennady?”

He looked over his shoulder and recognized the face behind the pistol. “Nadine, does your brother know you’re here?”

Nadine Marceau tilted her head to one side and shifted her stance to a hipshot, exasperated pose as she lowered the pistol. “What the hell, Gennady. I could ask you the same question.”

With vast dignity he lowered his hands and turned around. “I,” he said, “am working. You, on the other hand, are trespassing.”

She gaped at him. “You’re working? For that bastard?”

So, then it wasn’t just a rumor that Achille and Nadine Marceau hated each other. Gennady shrugged; it wasn’t his business. “Cushy jobs for the IAEA are hard to come by, Nadine, you know that. I’m a free-lancer, I have to get by.”

“Yeah, but–” She was looking down, fumbling with her holster, as widening light unveiled behind her the industrial underworld of the solar uplift tower. Warm outside air was pouring in through the opening shutters now, and, slowly, the giant vanes of the windmill fixed in its round window began to turn.

Nadine cursed. “You’ve started it! Gennady, I thought you had more integrity! I never thought you’d end up being part of the problem.”

“Part of the problem? God, Nadine, is just a windmill.”

“No, it’s not–” He’d turned to admire the turning blades, but looking back saw that she had frozen in a listening posture. “Shit!”

“Don’t tell him I’m here!” she shouted as she turned and started running along the gallery. “Not a word, Gennady. You hear?”

Nadine Marceau, U.N. arms inspector and disowned child of one of the wealthiest families in Europe, disappeared into the shadows. Gennady could hear the approaching trucks himself now; still, he spread his hands and shouted, “Don’t you even want a cup of coffee?”

The metal Venetian blinds clicked into their fully open configuration, and now enough outside light was coming in to reveal the cyclopean vastness of the tower’s interior. Gennady looked up at the little circle of sky a kilometer-and-a-half overhead, and shook his head ruefully. “Is not even radioactive.”

Why was Nadine here? Some vendetta with her brother, no doubt, though Gennady preferred to think it was work-related. The last time he’d seen her was in Azerbaijan, two years ago; that time, they’d been working together to find some stolen nukes. A nightmare job, but totally in line with both their professional backgrounds. This place, though, it was just an elaborate windmill. It couldn’t explode or melt down or spill oil all over the sensitive arboreal landscape. No, this had to be a family thing.

There were little windows in the reinforced concrete wall. Through one of these he could see three big trucks, mirror to his own, approaching the tower. Nadine’s brother Achille had gotten impatient, apparently. He must have seen the blinds opening, and the first of the twenty wind turbines that ringed the tower’s base starting to move. A legendary micro-manager, he just couldn’t stay away.

By the time the boss clambered out of the second truck, unsteady in his bright-red hazmat suit, Gennady had opened the office trailer, started a hepafilter whirring, and booted up the tower’s control system. He leaned in the trailer’s doorway and watched as first two bodyguards, then Marceau himself, then his three engineers, reached the top of the stairs.

“Come inside,” Gennady said. “You can take that off.”

The hazmat suit waved its arms and made a garbled sound that Gennady eventually translated as, “You’re not wearing your mask.”

“Ah, no. Too hard to work in. But that’s why you hired me, Mr. Marceau. To take your chances.”

“Call me Achille! Everybody else does.” The hazmat suit made a lunging motion; Gennady realized that Nadine’s brother was trying to clap him on the shoulder. He pretended it had worked, smiled, then backed into the trailer.

It took ten minutes for them to coax Marceau out of his shell, and while they did Gennady debated with himself whether to tell Achille that his sister was here too. The moments dragged on, and eventually Gennady realized that the engineers were happily chattering on about the status of the tower’s various systems, and the bodyguards were visibly bored, and he hadn’t said anything. It was going to look awkward if he brought it up now . . . so he put it off some more.

Finally, the young billionaire removed the hazmat’s headpiece, revealing a lean, high-cheekboned face currently plastered with sweat. “Thanks, Gennady,” he gasped. “It was brave of you to come in here alone.”

“Yeah, I risked an epic allergy attack,” said Gennady with a shrug. “Nothing after camping in Chernobyl.”

Achille grinned. “Forget the mold, we just weren’t sure whether opening the door would make the whole tower keel over. I’m glad it’s structurally sound.”

“Down here, maybe,” Gennady pointed out. “There’s a lot up there that could still fall on us.” He jerked a thumb at the ceiling.

“You were with us yesterday.” They’d done a visual inspection from the helicopters on their way to the plateau. But Gennady wasn’t about to trust that.

Achille turned to his engineers. “The wind’s not cooperating. Now they’re saying it’ll shift the right way by 2:00 tomorrow afternoon. How long is it going to take to establish a full updraft?”

“There’s inertia in the air inside the tower,” said one. “Four hours, granted the thermal difference . . . ?”

“I don’t think we’ll be ready tomorrow,” Gennady pointed out. He was puzzled by Achille’s impatience. “We haven’t had time to inspect all the turbines, much less the scrubbers on Level Two.”

The engineers should be backing him up on this one, but they stayed silent. Achille waved a hand impatiently. “We’ll leave the turbines parked for now. As to the scrubbers . . . ”

“There might be loose pieces and material that could get damaged when the air currents pick up.”

“Dah! You’re right, of course.” Achille rubbed his chin for a second, staring into space. “We’d better test the doors now . . . might as well do it in pairs. Gennady, you’ve got an hour of good light. If you’re so worried about them, go check out the scrubbers.”

Gennady stared at him. “What’s the hurry?”

“Time is money. You’re not afraid of the updraft while we’re testing the doors, are you? It’s not like a hurricane or anything. We walk all the time up there when the unit’s running full bore.” Achille relented. “Oh, take somebody with you if you’re worried. Octav, you go.”

Octav was one of Achille’s bodyguards. He was a blocky Lithuanian who favored chewing tobacco and expensive suits. The look he shot Gennady said, this is all your fault.

Gennady glanced askance at Octav, then said to Achille, “Listen, is there some reason why somebody would think that starting this thing up would be wrong?”

The boss stared at him. “Wrong?”

“I don’t mean this company you’re competing with—GreenCore. I mean, you know, the general public.”

“Don’t bug the boss,” said Octav.

Achille waved a hand at him. “It’s okay. A few crazy adaptationists think reversing climate change will cause as many extinctions as the temperature rise did in the first place. If you ask me, they’re just worried about losing their funding. But really, Malianov—this tower sucks CO2 right out of the air. It doesn’t matter where that CO2 came from, which means we’re equally good at offsetting emissions from the airline industry as we are from, say, coal. We’re good for everybody.”

Gennady nodded, puzzled, and quickly followed Octav out of the trailer. He didn’t want the bodyguard wandering off on his own—or maybe spotting something in the distance that he shouldn’t see.

Octav was staring—standing in the middle of the gallery, mouth open. “Christ,” he said. “It’s like a fucking cathedral.” With light breaking in from the opening louvers, the full scale of the place was becoming clear, and even jaded Gennady was impressed. The tower was a kilometer and a half tall, and over a hundred meters across, its base ringed with round wind turbine windows. “But I was expecting some kinda machinery in here. Is that gonna be installed later?”

Gennady shook his head, pointing at the round windows. “That’s all there is to it. When those windows are open, warm air from the greenhouse comes in and rises. The wind turbines turn, and make electricity.”

Gennady began the long climb up the steps to the next gallery. His gaze kept roving across the tower’s interior; he was looking for Nadine. Was Octav going to spot her? He didn’t want that. Even though he knew Nadine was level-headed in tight situations, Octav was another matter. And then there was the whole question of why she was out here to begin with, seemingly on her own, and carrying a gun.

Octav followed on his heels. “Well sure, I get the whole ‘heat rises’ thing, but why’d he build it here? In the middle of fucking Siberia? If it’s solar-powered, wouldn’t you want to put it at the equator?”

“They built it on a south-facing slope, so it’s 85% as efficient as it would be at the equator. And the thermal inertia of the soil means the updraft will operate 24 hours a day.”

“But in winter–”

“Even in a Siberian winter, because it’s not about the absolute temperature, it’s about the difference between the temperatures inside and outside.”

Octav pointed up. “Those pull the CO2 out of the air, right?”

“If this were a cigarette of the gods, that would be the filter, yes.” Just above, thousands of gray plastic sheets were stretched across the shaft of the tower. They were stacked just centimeters apart so that the air flowed freely between them.

“It’s called polyaziridine. When the gods suck on the cigarette, this stuff traps the CO2.”

They’d come to one of the little windows. Gennady pried it open and dry summer air poured in. They were above the greenhouse roof, and from here you could see the whole sweep of the valley where Achille had built his experiment. “Look at that.”

Above the giant tower, the forested slope kept on rising, and rising, becoming bare tanned rock and then vertical cliff. “Pretty mountains,” admitted Octav.

“Except they’re not mountains.” Yes, the slopes rose like mountainsides, culminating in those daunting cliffs. The trouble was, at the very top the usual jagged, irregular skyline of rocky peaks was missing. Instead, the cliff-tops ended in a perfectly flat, perfectly horizontal line—a knife-cut across the sky—signaling that there was no crest and fall down a north-facing slope up there. Miles up, under a regime of harsh UV light and whipping high-altitude winds, clouds scudded low and fast along a nearly endless plain of red rock. Looking down from up there, the outflung arms of the Putorana Plateau absolutely dwarfed Achille’s little tower.

“I walked on it yesterday when we flew up to prime the wells,” said Gennady. Octav hadn’t been along on that flight; he hadn’t seen what lay beyond that ruler-straight crest. “That plateau covers an area the size of Western Europe, and it’s so high nothing can grow up there. This whole valley is just an erosion ditch in it.”

Octav nodded, reluctantly intrigued. “Kinda strange place to build a power plant.”

“Achille built here because the plateau’s made of basalt. When you pump hot carbonated water into basalt it makes limestone, which permanently sequesters the carbon. All Achille has to do is keep fracking up top there and he’s got a continent-sized sponge to soak up all the excess CO2 on the planet. You could build a thousand towers like this all around the Putorana. It’s perfect for–” But Octav had clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“Shht,” whispered the bodyguard. “Heard something.”

Before Gennady could react, Octav was creeping up the steps with his gun drawn. “What do you think you’re doing?” Gennady hissed at the Lithuanian. “Put that thing away!”

Octav waved at him to stay where he was. “Could be bears,” he called down in a hoarse—and not at all quiet—stage whisper. The word bears seemed to hang in the air for a second, like an echo that couldn’t find a wall to bounce off.

Gennady started up after him, deliberately making as much noise as he could on the metal steps. “Bears are not arboreal, much less likely will they be foraging up in the scrubbers–” Octav reached the top of the steps and disappeared. Here, the hanging sheets of plastic made a bizarre drapery that completely filled the tower. Except for this little catwalk, the entire space was given over to them. It was kind of like being backstage in a large theater, except the curtains were white. Octav was hunched over, gun drawn, stepping slowly forward around the slow curve of the catwalk. This would have been a comical sight except that, about eight meters ahead of him, the curtains were swaying.

“Octav, don’t–” The bodyguard lunged into the gloom.

Gennady heard a scuffle and ran forward himself. Then, terribly, two gunshots like slaps echoed out and up and down.

“No, what have you–!” Gennady staggered to a stop and had to grab the railing for support; it creaked and gave a bit, and he suddenly realized how high up they were. Octav knelt just ahead, panting. He was reaching slowly out to prod a crumpled gray and brown shape.

“Jssht!” said the walkie-talkie on Octav’s belt. More garbled vocal sounds spilled out of it, until Octav suddenly seemed to realize it was there, and holstered his pistol with one hand while taking it out with the other.

“Octav,” he said. The walkie-talkie spat incoherent staticky noise into his ear. He nodded.

“Everything’s okay,” he said. “Just shot a goose is all. I guess we have dinner.”

Then he turned to glare at Gennady. “You should have stayed where I told you!”

Gennady ignored him. The white curtains swung, all of them now starting to rustle as if murmuring and pointing at Octav’s minor crime scene. More of the louvered doors had opened far below, and the updraft was starting. Shadow and sound began to paint the tower’s hollow spaces.

Nadine would be hard to see now, and impossible to hear. Hopefully, she’d noticed Octav’s shots; even now, if she had a grain of sense, she’d be on her way back to her truck.

Gennady brushed past Octav. “If you’re done murdering the locals, I need to work.” The two did not speak again, as Gennady tugged at the plastic and inspected the bolts mounting the scrubbers to the tower wall.

A Siberian Summer day lasts forever; but there came a point when the sun no longer lit the interior top of the tower. The last hundred meters up there were painted titanium white, and reflected a lot of light down. Now, though, with the sky a dove gray shading to nameless pink, and the sun’s rays horizontal, Achille’s lads had to light the sodium lamps and admit it was evening.

The lamps were the same kind you saw in parking lots all over the world. For Gennady, they completely stole the sense of mystery from the tower’s interior, making it as grim an industrial space as any he’d seen. For a while he stood outside the control trailer with Octav and a couple of the engineers, trying to get used to the evil greenish yellow cast that everything had. Then he said, “I’m going to sleep outside.”

One of the engineers laughed. “After your run-in with the climbing bears? And you know, there really are wolves in this forest.”

“No, no, I will be in one of the admin trailers.” Nobody had even opened those yet; and besides, he needed to find a spot where late night comings and goings wouldn’t be noticed by these men.

“First, you must try the goose!” While the others inspected and tested, Octav had cooked it over a barrel-fire. He’d only made a few modest comments about the bird, but Gennady knew he was ridiculously proud of his kill, because he’d placed the barrel smack in the center of the hundred-meter-wide floor of the tower. He’d even dragged over a couple of railroad ties and set them up like logs around his campfire.

Achille was down there now, peering at his air-quality equipment, obviously debating whether he could lose his surgical mask. He waved up at them. “Come! Let’s eat!”

Gennady followed the others reluctantly. He knew where this was headed: to the inevitable male bonding ritual. It came as no surprise at all, when, as they tore into the simultaneously charred and raw goose, Achille waved at Gennady, and said, “Now this man! He’s a real celebrity! Octav, did you know what kind of adventurer you saved from this fierce beast?” He waved his drumstick in the air. Octav looked puzzled.

“Gennady, here. Gennady fought the famous Dragon of Pripyat!” Of course the engineers knew the story, and smiled politely; but neither Octav nor Bogdan, the other bodyguard, knew it. “Tell us, Gennady!” Achille’s grin was challenging. “About the reactor, and the devil guarding it.”

“We know all about that,” protested an engineer. “I want to know about the Kashmiri incident. The one with the nuclear jet. Is it true you flew it into a mine?”

“Well, yes,” Gennady admitted, “not myself of course. It was just a drone.” Of course the attention was flattering, but it also made him uncomfortable, and over the years he’d learned that the discomfort outweighed the flattery. He told them the story, but as soon as he could he found a way to turn to Achille and say, “But these are just isolated incidents. Your whole career has been, well, something of an adventure itself, no?”

That burst of eloquence had about exhausted his skills of social manipulation; luckily, Achille was eager to talk about himself. He and Nadine had inherited wealth, and Gennady had sensed yesterday that this weighed on him. He wanted to be a self-made man, but he wasn’t; so, he was using his inheritance recklessly, to see if he could achieve something great. He also had an impulsive urge to justify himself.

He told them how, when he’d seen the sheer scale of the cap and trade and carbon tax programs that were springing up across the globe, he’d decided to put all his chips into carbon air capture, “Because,” he explained, “it was a completely discredited approach.”

“Wait,” said Octav, his brow crinkling. “You went into . . . that . . . because it had no credibility?” Achille nodded vigorously.

“Decades of research, patents, and designs were just lying around waiting to be snapped up. I was already building this place, but the carbon bubble was bursting as governments started pulling their fossil fuel subsidies. Here, the local price of petrol had gone through the roof as the Arctic oilfields went from profitable to red. But, you see, I had a plan.”

The plan was to offer to offset CO2 emissions of industries anywhere on the planet, from right here. Since Achille’s giant machines harvested greenhouse gases from the ambient atmosphere, it didn’t matter where they were—which meant he could sell offsets to airlines, mines in South America, or container ships burning bunker oil with equal ease.

“But then, Kafatos stole my market.”

The Greek industrialist’s company, Greencore, had bought up vast tracts of Siberian forest and had begun rolling out a cheaper biological alternative to Achille’s towers.

“They do what? Some kind of fast-growing tree?” asked Gennady. He knew about the rivalry between Achille and Kafatos. It wasn’t just business; it was personal.

Achille nodded. “Genetically modified lodgepole pines. Super-fast growing, resistant to the pine beetle. They want to turn the forest itself into a carbon sponge. It’s as bad an idea as tampering with Mother Nature was—as oil was—in the first place,” he said, “and I intend to prove it.”

The conversation wound down a bit after this motivational speech, but then one of the engineers looked around at the trembling shadows of the amphitheater in which they sat, and said, “Pretty spooky, eh?”

“Siberia is all spooky,” Bogdan pointed out. “Never mind just here.”

And that set them all off on ghost stories and legends of the deep forests. The locals used to believe Siberia was a middle-world, half-way up a vast tree, with underworlds below and heavens above. Shamans rode their drums between the worlds, fighting the impossible strength of the gods with dogged courage and guile. They triumphed now and then, but in the end the deep forest swallowed all human achievement like it would swallow a shout. What was human got lost in the green maze; what came out was changed and new.

Bogdan knew a story about the ‘valley of death’ and the strange round kheldyu—iron houses—that could be found half-buried in the permafrost here and there. There was a valley no one ever returned from; kheldyu had been glimpsed there by scouts on the surrounding heights.

The engineers had their own tales, about lost Soviet-era expeditions. There were downed bombers loaded with nukes on hair-trigger, which might go off at any moment. There were Chinese tunnel complexes, and lakes so radioactive that to stand on their shores for a half an hour meant dying within the week. (Well, that last story, at least, was perfectly true.)

“Gennady, what about you?” All eyes turned to him. Gennady had relaxed a bit and was willing to talk; but he didn’t know any recent myths or legends. “All I can tell you,” Gennady said, “is that it’ll be poetic justice if we save the world by burying all our carbon here. Because what’s in this place nearly killed the whole world through global warming once already.”

The engineers hadn’t heard about the plateau’s past. “This place—this thing,” said Gennady in his best ghost-story voice, “killed ninety percent of all life on Earth when it erupted. This supervolcano, called the Siberian Traps, caused the Permian extinction 250 million years ago. Think about it: the place was here before the dinosaurs and it’s still here, still taller than mountain ranges and as wide as Europe.” There was nothing like it on Earth—older than the present continents, the Putorana was an ineradicable scar from the greatest dying the world had ever seen.

So then they had to hear the story of the Permian extinction. Gennady did his best to convey the idea of an entire world dying, and of geologic forces so gargantuan and unstoppable that the first geologists to find this spot literally couldn’t imagine the scale of the apocalypse it represented. He was rewarded by some appreciative nods, particularly for his image of a slumbering monster that could indifferently destroy all life on the planet by just rolling over. The whole thing was too abstract for Octav and Bogdan, though, who were yawning.

“Right.” Achille slapped his knees. “Tomorrow’s another busy day. Let’s turn in everybody, and get a start at sun-up.”

“Uh, boss,” said an engineer, “sunrise is at 3:00 AM.”

“Make it five, then.” Achille headed for the metal steps.

Gennady repeated his intent to sleep in the admin trailer; to his relief, no one volunteered to do the same. When he stepped through the second door of the tower’s airlock, it was to find that although it was nearly midnight, the sun was still setting. He remembered seeing this effect before: the sun might dip below the horizon, but the lurid peach-and-rose colored glow it painted on the sky wasn’t going to go away. That smear of dusk would just slide up and across the northern horizon, over the next few hours, and then the sun would pop back up once it reached the east.

That was helpful. The administration trailer needed a good airing-out, so he opened all its windows and sat on the front step for a while, waiting to see if anybody came out of the tower. The sunset inched northward. He checked his watch. Finally, with a sigh, he set off walking around the western curve of the structure. A flashlight was unnecessary, but he did bring the flare gun. Because, well, there might be bears.

Nadine had done a pretty good job of hiding her truck, among gnarled cedars and cobwebs of fungi on the north side of the tower. Either she’d been waiting for him, or she had some kind of proximity alarm, because he was still ten meters away when he heard the door slam. He stopped and waited. After a couple of minutes she stood up out of the bushes, a black cut-out on the red sky. “It’s just you,” she said unnecessarily.

Gennady shrugged. “Do I ever bring friends?”

“Good point.” The silhouette made a motion he interpreted as the holstering of a pistol. He strolled over while she untangled herself from the bushes.

“Come back to the trailer,” he said. “I have chairs.”

“I’m sleeping here.”

“That’s fine.”

“ . . . Okay.” They crunched back over the gravel. Halfway there, Nadine said, “Seriously, Gennady. You and Achille?”

“What is the problem?” He spread his hands, distorting the long shadow that leaned ahead of him. “He is restarting his carbon air capture project. That’s a good thing, no?”

She stopped walking. “That’s what you think he’s doing?”

What did that mean? “Let’s see. It’s what he says he’s doing. It’s what the press releases say. It’s what everybody else thinks he’s doing . . . What else could he be up to?”

“Everybody asks that question.” She kicked at the gravel angrily. “But nobody sees what he’s doing! You know–” she laughed bitterly, “When I told my team at the IAEA what he was up to, they just laughed at me. And you know what? I thought about calling you. I figured, Gennady knows how these things go. He’d understand. But you don’t get it either, do you?”

“You know I am not smart man. I need thing explained to me.”

She was silent until they reached the admin trailer. Once inside she said, “Close those,” with a nod at the windows. “I don’t want any of that shit in here with us.”

She must mean the mold. As Gennady went around shutting things up, Nadine sat down at the tiny table. After a longing look at the mothballed coffee machine, she steepled her hands and said, “I suppose you saw the pictures.”

“That the paparazzi took of you two at the Paris café? There were a few, if I recall.”

She grimaced. “I particularly like the one that shows Kafatos punching Achille in the face.”

Gennady nodded pensively. It had been two years since Achille came across his sister having dinner with Kafatos, his biggest business rival. The punch was famous, and the whole incident had burned through the internet in a day or two, to be instantly forgotten in the wake of the next scandal.

“Achille and I haven’t spoken since. He’s even taken me out of his will—you know he was the sole heir, right?”

Gennady nodded. “I figured that was why you went to work at the IAEA.”

“No, I did that out of idealism, but . . . anyway it doesn’t matter. I knew all about Achille’s little rivalry with the Greek shithead, but something about it didn’t add up. Achille was lying to me, so I went to Kafatos to see if he knew why. He didn’t, so the whole café incident was a complete waste. But I eventually did get the story from one of Achille’s engineers.”

“Let me guess. It’s something to do with the tower?”

She shrugged. “It never crossed my mind. When Achille came up with the plan for this place, I guess it was eight years ago, it seemed to make sense. He knew about the Permian, and he talked about how he was going to ‘redeem’ the site of the greatest extinction in history by using it to not just stop but completely reverse global warming. The whole blowup with Kafatos happened because Greencore bought up about a million square kilometers of forest just east of Achille’s site. Kafatos has been genetically engineering pines to soak up the carbon, but you know that.” She took a deep breath. “You also know there’s no economic reason to re-open the tower.”

Gennady blinked at her. “They told me there was, that was why we were here. Told me the market had turned . . . ”

She sent him a look of complete incredulity; then that look changed, and suddenly Nadine stood up. Gennady opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, just as one of the windows rattled loosely in its mount. Nadine was staring out the window, a look of horror on her face.

A deep vibration made the plywood floor buzz. The glass rattled again.

“He’s opening the windows!” Nadine ran for the door. Gennady peered outside.

“Surely not all of them . . . ” But all the black circles he could see from here were changing, letting out a trickle of sodium-lamp light.

By the time he got outside she was gone—off and running around the tower in the direction of her truck. Gennady shifted from foot to foot, trying to decide whether to follow.

Her story hadn’t made sense, but still, he paused for a moment to gaze up at the tower. In the deep sunset light of the midsummer night, it looked like a rifle barrel aimed at the sky.

He slammed through the airlocks and went up the stairs. All around the tower’s base, the round windows were humming open.

Gennady fixed an empty smile on his face, and deliberately slowed himself down as he opened the door to the control trailer. He was thinking of radioactive lakes, of the Becquerel Reindeer, an entire radioactive herd he’d seen once, slaughtered and lying in the back of a transport truck; of disasters he’d cleaned up after, messes he’d hidden from the media—and the kinds of people who had made those messes.

“Hey, what’s up?” he said brightly as he stepped inside.

“Close that!” Achille was pacing in the narrow space. “You’ll let in the spores!”

“Ah, sorry.” He sidled around the bodyguards, behind the engineers who were staring at their tablets and laptops, and found a perch near an empty water cooler. From here he could see the laptop screens, though not well.

“What’s up?” he said again.

One of the engineers started to say something, but Achille interrupted him. “Just a test. You should go back to bed.”

“I see.” He stepped close to the table and looked over the engineer’s shoulder. One of the laptop screens showed a systems diagram of the tower. The other was open to a satellite weather map. “Weather’s changing,” he muttered, just loud enough for the engineer to hear. The man nodded.

“Fine,” Gennady said more loudly. “I’ll be in my trailer.” Nobody moved to stop him as he left, but outside he paused, arms wrapped around his torso, breath cold and frosting the air. Already he could feel the breeze from below.

Back in Azerbaijan, Nadine had been one of the steadiest operatives during the Alexander’s Road incident; they had talked one evening about what Gennady had come to call ‘industrial logic.’ About what happened when the natural world became an abstraction, and the only reality was the system you were building. Gennady had fallen for that kind of thinking early in his career; had spent the rest of his life mopping up after other people who’d never gotten out from under it. He couldn’t remember the details of the conversation now, but he did remember her getting a distant expression on her face at one point, and muttering something about Achille.

But it wasn’t just about her brother; all of this had something to do with Kafatos, too. He shook his head, and turned to the stairs.

A flash lit the inside of the tower and seconds later a sharp bang! echoed weirdly off the curving walls. The grinding noise of the window mechanisms stopped.

A transformer had blown. It had happened on the far side of the tower; he started in that direction but had only taken a couple of steps when the trailer door flew open and the engineers spilled out, all talking at once. “Malianov!” one shouted. “Did you see it?”

He shook his head. “Heard it, but not sure where it came from. Echoes . . . ” Let them stumble around in the dark for a while. That would give Nadine a chance to get away. Then he could find her again and talk her out of doing anything further.

Octav and Bogdan had come out, too, and Bogdan raced off after the engineers. Gennady shrugged at Octav and said, “I am still going back to bed.” He’d gone down the stairs, reached the outer door and actually put his hand on the latch before curiosity overcame his better judgment, and he turned back.

He came up behind the engineers as they were shining their flashlights at the smoking ruin that used to be a transformer. “Something caused it to arc,” one said. Bogdan was kneeling a few meters away. He stood up and dangled a mutilated padlock in the beam of his flashlight. “Somebody’s got bolt-cutters.”

All eyes turned to Gennady.

He backed away. “Now, wait a minute. I was with you.”

“You could have set something to blow and then come back to the trailer,” said one of the engineers. “It’s what I would have done.”

Gennady said nothing; if they thought he’d done it they wouldn’t be looking for Nadine. “Grab him!” shouted one of the engineers. Gennady just put out his hands and shook his head as Bogdan took hold of his wrists.

“It’s not what I would have done,” Gennady said. “Because this would be the result. I am not so stupid.”

“Oh, and I am?” Bogdan glared at him. At that moment one of the engineers put his walkie-talkie to his ear and made a shushing motion. “We found the—what? Sir, I can’t hear what–”

The distorted tones of the voice on the walkie-talkie had been those of Achille, but suddenly they changed. Nadine said, “I have your boss. I’ll kill him unless you go to the center of the floor and light the barrel-fire so I can see you.”

The engineers gaped at one another. Bogdan let go of Gennady and grabbed at the walkie-talkie. “Who is this?”

“Someone who knows what you’re up to. Now move!”

Bogdan eyed Gennady, who shrugged. “Nothing to do with me.”

There was a quick, heated discussion. The engineers were afraid of being shot once they were out in the open, but Gennady pointed out that there was actually more light around the wall, because that’s where the sodium lamps were. “She doesn’t want to see us clearly, she just wants us where it’ll be obvious which way we’re going if we run,” he said.

Reluctantly, they began edging toward the shadowed center of the tower. “How can you be so sure?” somebody whined. Gennady shrugged again.

“If she’d wanted to kill her brother, she would have by now,” he pointed out.

“Her what?”

And at that moment, the gunfire started.

It was all upstairs, but the engineers scattered, leaving Gennady and Bogdan standing in half-shadow. Had Octav stayed up top? Gennady couldn’t remember. He and Bogdan scanned the gallery, but the glare from the sodium lamps hid the trailer. After a few seconds, Gennady heard the metallic bounce of feet running on the mesh surface overhead. It sounded like two sets, off to the right.

“There!” Gennady pointed to the left and began running. Bogdan ran too, and quickly outpaced him; at that point Gennady peeled off and headed back. There was another set of stairs nearby, and though the engineers were there, they were huddling under its lower steps. He didn’t think they’d stop him, nor did they as he ran past them and up.

Bogdan yelled something inarticulate from the other side of the floor. Gennady kept going.

“Nadine? Where are you?” She’d been running in a clockwise direction around the tower, so he went that way too, making sure now that he was making plenty of noise. He didn’t want to surprise her. “Nadine, it’s me!”

Multiple sets of feet rang on the gallery behind him. Gennady took the chance that she’d kept going up, and mounted the next set of steps when he came to them. “Nadine!” She’d be among the scrubbers now.

He reached the top and hesitated. Why would she come up here? It was the cliché thing to do: in movies, the villains always went up. Gennady tried to push past his confusion and worry to picture the layout of the tower. He remembered the two inspection elevators just as a rattling hum started up ahead.

By the time he reached the yellow wire cage, the car was on its way up. Next stop, as far as he knew, was the top of the tower. Nadine could hold it there, and maybe that was her plan. There wouldn’t be just the one elevator, though, not in a structure this big. Gennady turned and ran away from the sound of the moving elevator.

He could hear somebody crashing up the steps from the lower levels. “Malianov!” shouted Octav.

He was a good quarter of the way around the curve from Gennady, so Gennady paused and leaned on the rail to shout, “I’m here!”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m right on her heels!”

“Stop! Come down! Leave it to us.”

“Okay! I’ll be right there.” He ran on, and reached the other elevator before Octav had reached the last flight of steps. Gennady wrenched the rusty outer cage door open, but struggled with the inner one. He got in and slammed it just as Octav thundered up. Gennady hit the UP button while Octav roared in fury; but three meters up, he hit STOP.

“Octav. Don’t shoot at me, please. I’ll send the cage back down when I get to the top. I just need a minute to talk with Nadine, is all.”

In the movies there’d be all kinds of wild gunplay happening right now, but Octav was a professional. He crossed his arms and glowered at Gennady through the grid flooring of the elevator. “Where’s she going?” he demanded.

“Damned if I know. Up.”

“What’s up?”

“Someplace she can talk to her brother alone, I’m thinking. Reason with him, threaten him, I don’t know. Look, Octav, let me talk to her. She might shoot you, but she’s not going to shoot me.”

“It really is Nadine? Achille’s sister? Do you know her?”

“Well, remember that story I told last night about Azerbaijan and the nukes? We worked together on that. You know she’s with the IAEA too. You never met her?”

There was an awkward pause. “What happened in the trailer?” Gennady asked. “Did she hurt him?” Octav shook his head.

“She was yelling,” he said. “I snuck around the trailer and came in through the bathroom window. But I got stuck.”

Gennady stifled a laugh. He would have paid to see that; Octav was not a small man.

“I took a shot at her but she ran. Might have winged her, though.”

Gennady cursed. “Octav, that’s your boss’s sister.”

“He told me to shoot!”

There was another awkward pause.

“I’m sure she doesn’t mean to harm him,” said Gennady, but he wasn’t so sure now.

“Then why’s she holding him at gunpoint?”

“I don’t know. Look, just give me a minute, okay?” He hit UP before Octav could reply.

He’d gotten an inkling of the size of the tower when they’d inspected it by helicopter, but down at the bottom, the true dimensions of the place were obscured by shadow. Up here it was all vast emptiness, the walls a concrete checkerboard that curved away like the face of a dam. It was all faintly lit by a distant, indigo-silver circle of sky. On the far side of this bottomless amphitheater, the other elevator car had a good lead on him. Nadine probably wouldn’t hear him now if he called out to her.

The elevator frameworks ended at tiny balconies about halfway up the tower. Nadine’s cage was slowing now as it neared the one on the far side.

Gennady shivered. A cool wind was coming up from below, and it went right through the gridwork floor and flapped his pant legs. There wasn’t much to it yet, but it would get stronger.

He watched as Nadine and Achille got out of the other elevator. A square of brightness appeared—a door opening to the outside—and they disappeared through it.

When his own elevator stopped he found he was at a similar little balcony. There was nothing here but the side-rails and a gray metal utility door, with crash bars, in the outer concrete wall. The sense of height here was utterly physical; he’d sense it even if he shut his eyes, because the whole tower swayed ever so gently, and the moving air made it feel like you were falling. Gennady sent the elevator back down and leaned on the crash bar.

Outside it was every bit as bad as he’d feared. The door let onto a narrow catwalk that ran around the outside of the tower in both directions. He remembered seeing it from the helicopter, and while it had looked sturdy enough from that vantage, in the gray dawn light he could see long streaks of rust trailing down from the bolts that held it to the wall.

He swallowed, then tested the thing with his foot. It seemed to hold, so he began slowly circling the tower. This time, he tried every step before committing himself, and leaned on the concrete wall, as far from the railing as he could get.

Now he could hear a vague sound, like an endless sigh, rising from below. That, combined with the motion of the tower, made it feel as if something were rousing down in the wall-less maze that filled the black valley.

After a couple of minutes the far point of the circle hove into view. Here was something he hadn’t seen from the helicopter: a broadening of the catwalk on this side. Here it became a wide, reinforced platform, and on it sat a white and yellow trailer. That was utterly incongruous: Gennady could see the thing’s undercarriage and wheels sitting on the mesh floor. It had probably been hauled up here by helicopter during the tower’s construction.

A pair of parachutes was painted on the side of the trailer. They were gray in this light, but probably pink in daylight.

Now he heard shouting—Achille’s voice. Gennady tried to hurry, but the catwalk felt flimsy and the breeze was turning into a wind. He made it to the widened platform, but that was no better since it also had open gridwork flooring and several squares of it were missing.

“Nadine? It’s Gennady. What’re you doing?”

“Stop her!” yelled Achille. “She’s gone crazy!”

He took the chance and ran to the trailer, then peeked around its corner. He was instantly dazzled by intense light—flare-light, in fact—lurid and bright green. He squinted and past his sheltering fingers saw it shift around, lean up, and then fade.

“Stop!” Achille sounded desperate. Gennady heard Nadine laugh. He edged around the corner of the trailer.

“Nadine? It’s Gennady. Can I ask what you’re doing?”

She laughed, sounding a little giddy. Gennady blinked away the dazzle-dots and spotted Achille. He was clutching the railing and staring wide-eyed as Nadine pulled another flare out of a box at her feet.

She’d holstered her pistol and now energetically pulled the tab from the flare. She windmilled her arm and hurled it into the distance, laughing as she did it. Gennady could see the bright spark following the last one down—but the vista here was too dizzying and he quickly brought his eyes back to Nadine.

“Found these in the trailer,” she said. “They’re perfect. Want to help?” She offered one to him. Gennady shook his head.

“That’s going to cause a fire,” he said. She nodded.

“That’s the idea. Did you bring a radio? We dropped ours. Achille here has to radio his people to shut down the tower.” She looked hopeful, but Gennady shook his head. “We’ll have to wait for that new bodyguard, then,” she said. “He’s sure to have one. Then we can all go home.”

The good news was, she didn’t look like she was on some murderous rampage. She looked determined, but no different from the Nadine he’d known five years ago. “We can?” said Gennady. “This is just a family fight, is that it? Achille’s not going to press charges, and the others aren’t going to talk?”

She hesitated. “Come on, can’t you let me have my moment? You of all people should be able to do that.”

“Why me of all people?”

She smiled at him past smoke and vivid pink light. “‘Cause you’ve already saved the world a couple times.”

She turned to throw another flare.

“Not the world,” Gennady said—only because he felt he had to say something to keep her talking. “Azerbaijan, maybe. But . . . all this,” he gestured at the falling flares, “seems like a bit much for having your brother get into a fight with your date.”

“No. No!” She sounded hugely disappointed in him. “This isn’t about that little incident with Kafatos, is it Achille?” Achille flung up his free hand in exasperation; his other still tightly held the rail. “Although,” Nadine went on, “I’m afraid I might have given brother dear the big idea myself, a couple of days before.”

“What idea?” Gennady looked to Achille, who wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“When he told me about the tower project and said he wanted to use the Putorana Plateau as a carbon sink, I told him about the Permian extinction. He was fascinated—weren’t you, Achille? But he really lit up when I told him that though it was heat shock that undoubtedly killed many of the trees on the planet, it was something else that finished off the rest.”

“What are you talking about?”

Nadine pointed down, at the disc of plastic-roofed forest below them. “You drove through it on the way up here. It’s out there, trying to get into our lungs, our systems . . . ”

“The fungus?”

She nodded. “A specific breed of it. It covered Earth from pole to pole during the Permian. It ate all the trees that survived the heat . . . conifer trees, tough as they were. And here’s the thing: it’s still around today.” Again she nodded at the forest. “It’s called Rhizoctonia, and Achille’s been farming a particularly nasty strain of it here for two years.”

Gennady looked at Achille. He was remembering how the day had gone—how Achille seemed to be building his restart schedule around prevailing winds, rather than the integrity of the tower’s systems.

If you wanted to cultivate an organism that ate wood and thrived in dry heat, you’d want a greenhouse. They were perched above the biggest greenhouse in central Asia.

Nadine hoisted up the box of flares and stalked off along the catwalk. “I need to make sure the whole fungus crop goes up. You need to make sure Achille’s engineers close the windows, or the heat’s all going to come up here. See you in a bit.” She disappeared around the curve of the tower; a short time later, Gennady saw a flare wobble up and then down into the night.

He turned to Achille, who had levered himself onto his feet. “Is she crazy? Or did we really come here to bomb Kafatos’s forest with spores?”

Achille glared defiantly back. “So what if we did? It’s industrial espionage, sure. But he screwed me over to start with, made a secret deal with the oligarchs to torpedo my bid. Fair’s fair.”

“And what’s to prevent this rhyzoctithing from spreading? How’s it supposed to tell the difference between Kafatos’s trees and the rest of the forest?” Achille looked away, and suddenly Gennady saw it all—the whole plan.

“It can’t, can it? You were going to spread a cloud of spores across the whole northern hemisphere. Every heat-shocked forest in Asia and North America would fall to the rhizoctonia. Biological sequestration of carbon would stagger to a stop, not just here but everywhere. Atmospheric carbon levels would shoot up. Global warming would go into high gear. No more talk about mitigation. No more talk about slowing emissions on a schedule. The world would have to go massively carbon-negative, immediately. And you own all the patents to that stuff.”

“Not all,” he admitted. “But for the useable stuff, yeah.”

A metallic bong bong bong sound came from the catwalk opposite the direction Nadine had taken. Moments later Octav showed up. He was puffing, obviously spooked by the incredible drop, but determined to help his boss. “Where is she?”

“Never mind,” said Achille. “Have you got a walkie-talkie?” Octav nodded and handed it over.

“Hello hello?” Achille put the thing to his ear, other hand on his other ear, and paced up and down. Octav was staring at the balloons painted on the trailer.

“What is that?” he said, assuming, it seemed, that Gennady would know.

“Looks like they were expecting tourists. Base jumping off a solar updraft tower?” From up here, you’d be able to slide down the valley thermals to the river far below. “I guess it could be fun.”

“I can’t get a signal,” said Achille. “You,” he said to Octav, “go after her!”

“You can’t get a signal because you’re outside. They’re inside.” Gennady pointed at the door in the side of the tower as Octav pounded away along the catwalk. “Try again from next to the elevator.” Achille moved to the door and Gennady made to follow, but as Achille opened it a plume of smoke poured out. “Oh, shit!”

The tower had been designed to suck up air from the surrounding forest. It was already pulling in smoke from the fires Nadine had lit with her flares. And she was moving in a circle, trying to ensure that the entire bull’s-eye of whitened pines caught.

“Yes! Yes!” Achille was gasping into the radio, ducking out of the smoke-filled tower every few seconds to breathe. “You have to do it now! The whole forest, yes!” He glanced at Gennady. “They’re trying to get to the trailer, but they’d have to fix the transformer first and there’s too much smoke, I don’t know if they’re going to make it.”

Gennady looked down at the forest; lots of little spot fires were spreading and joining up into larger orange smears and lozenges. If Nadine made it all the way around, they’d be trapped at the center of a firestorm. “We’re stuck too.”

“Maybe not.” Achille ran to the trailer, which turned out to be full of cardboard boxes. They rummaged among them, finding more flares—not useful—and safety harnesses, cables and crampons and, “Ha!” said Achille, holding up two parachutes.

“Is that all?”

The billionaire kicked around at the debris. “Yeah, you’d think there’d be more, but you know we never got this place up and running. These are probably the test units. Doesn’t matter, there’s one for me, one for you.”

“Not Nadine?” Achille shot him an exasperated look. She was his own sister, but he obviously didn’t care. Gennady took the chute he offered, with disgust. He would, he decided, give it to Nadine when she came back around—if only to see the expression on Achille’s face.

Achille was headed out the door. “What then?” asked Gennady. Nadine’s brother looked back, still exasperated. “Are you just going to walk away from your dream?”

Achille shook his head. “The patents and designs are all I’ve got now. I can’t make a go selling the power from this place. It’s the fungus or nothing. So, look, this fire might eat the tower, but the wind is blowing in. The Rhizoctonia on the fringes will be okay. As soon as we’re on the ground I’m going to bring in some trucks, and haul away the remainder during the cleanup. I can still dump that all over Kafatos’s God-damned forest. We lost the first hand, that’s all.”

“But . . . ” Gennady couldn’t believe he had to say it. “What about Nadine?”

Achille crossed his arms, glowering at the fires. “This has been coming a long time. You know what the worst part is? I’d made her my heir again. Lucky thing I never told her, huh.”

As they stepped outside a deep groan came from the tower, and Gennady’s inner ear told him he was moving, even though his feet were firmly planted on the deck. Looking down, he saw they were ringed by fire now. The only reason the smoke and heat weren’t streaming up the side of the tower was because they were pouring through the open windmill apertures. Past the open door he could see only a wall of shuddering gray inside. The engineers and Bogdan must already be dead.

The tower twisted again, and with a popping sound sixteen feet of catwalk separated from the wall. It drooped, and just then Nadine and Octav came around the tower’s curve, on the other side of it.

Achille and Nadine stared at one another over the gap, not speaking. Then Achille turned away with an angry shrug. “We have to go!” He began struggling into his parachute.

Octav waved at Gennady. “Got any ideas?” Neither he nor Nadine were holding weapons. They’ve obviously realized their best chance for survival lay with one another.

Gennady edged as close to the fallen section of catwalk as he dared. “Belts, straps, have you got anything like that?” Octav grabbed at his waist, nodded. “The tower’s support cables!” Gennady pointed at the nearest one, which leaned out from under the door. “We’re going to have to slide down those!” He could see that the cables’ anchors were outside the ring of fire, but that wouldn’t last long. “Pull up the floor mesh over one, and climb down to the cable anchor. Double up your belt and—hang on a second.” Octav’s belt would be worn through by friction before they got a hundred feet. Gennady ran into the trailer, which was better lit now by the rising sun, and tossed the boxes around. He found some broken metal strapping. Perfect. Coming out, he tossed a piece across to Octav. “Use that instead. Now get going!”

As they disappeared around the curved wall, Achille darted from behind the trailer. “Coming?” he shouted as he ran to the railing.

Gennady hesitated. He’d dropped his parachute by the trailer steps.

It was clear what had to be done. There was only one way off this tower. Still, he just stood there, watching as Achille clumsily mounted the railing.

Achille looked back. “Come on, what are you waiting for?”

Images from the day were flashing through Gennady’s mind—and more, a vision of what could happen after the fire was over. He turned to look out over the endless skin of forest that filled the valley and spread beyond to the horizon.

He’d spent his whole life cleaning up other people’s messes. There’d been the Chernobyl affair, and that other nuclear disaster in Azerbaijan. He’d chased stolen nukes across two continents, and only just succeeding in hiding from the world a discovery that would allow any disgruntled tinkerer to build such weapons without needing enriched uranium or plutonium. He’d told himself all the while that he did these things to keep humanity safe. Yet it had never been the idea that people might die that had moved him. He was afraid for something else, and had been for so long now that he couldn’t imagine living without that fear.

It was time to admit where his real allegiance lay.

“I’m right behind you,” he said with a forced smile. And he watched Achille dive off the tower. He watched Nadine’s brother fall two hundred feet and open his chute. He watched the vortex of flame around the tower’s base yank the parachute in and down, and swallow it.

Gennady picked up the last piece of metal strapping and, as the tower writhed again, ran along the catwalk opposite to the way Nadine and Octav had gone.

He rolled over and staggered to his feet, coughing. A cloud of white was churning around him, propelled by a quickening gale. Overhead the plastic sheeting that covered the dead forest flapped where he’d cut through it. The support cable made a perfectly straight line from the concrete block at his feet up to the distant tower—or was it straight? No, the thing was starting to curve. Achille’s tower, which was now in full sunlight, was curling away from the fire, as if unwilling to look at it anymore. Any second now it might fall.

Gennady raced around the perimeter of the fire as the sun touched the plastic ceiling. The flames were eating their way slowly outward, pushing against the wind. Gennady dodged fallen branches and avoided thick brambles, pausing now and then to cough heavily, so it took him a few minutes to spot the support cable opposite the one he’d slid down. When it appeared it was as an amber pen-stroke against the pre-dawn sky. The plastic greenhouse ceiling was broken where the cable pierced it, as it should be if bodies had broken through it on their way to the ground.

As he approached the cable’s concrete anchor, he spotted Octav. The bodyguard was curled up on the ground, clutching his ankle.

“Where’s Nadine?” Octav looked up as Gennady pounded up. He blinked, looked past Gennady, then they locked eyes.

That look said, Where’s Achille?

Neither said anything for a long moment. Then, “She fell off,” said Octav. “Back there.” He pointed into the fire.

“How far–”

“Go. You might find her.”

Gennady didn’t need any more urging. He let the white wind push him at the shimmering walls of orange light. As the banners of fire whipped up they caught and tore the plastic sheeting that had canopied the forest for years, and they angrily pulled it down. Gennady looked for another break in that upper surface, hopefully close to the cable’s anchor, and after a moment he spotted it. Nadine had left a clean incision in the plastic, but had shaved a pine below that; branches and needles were strewn across the white pillows of rhyzoctonia and made Nadine herself easy to find.

She blinked at him from where she lay on a mattress of fungi. She looked surprised, and for a moment Gennady had the absurd thought that maybe his hair was all standing up or something. But then she said, “It doesn’t hurt.”

He frowned, reached down and pinched her ankle.

“Ow!”

“Fungus broke your fall.” He helped her up. The flames were being kept at bay by the inrushing wind, but the radiant heat was intense. “Get going.” He pushed her until she was trotting away from the fire.

“What about you?”

“Right behind you!”

He followed, more slowly, until she disappeared into the swirling rhyzoctonia. Then he slowed and stopped, leaning over to brace his hands on his knees. He looked back at the fire.

Sure, if Achille had been thinking, he would have known that the fire would suck in any parachute that came off the tower. Yet Gennady could have warned him, and didn’t. He’d murdered Achille, it was that simple.

The wall of fire was mesmerizing and its heat like a wall pushing Gennady back. There must have been a lot of fires like this one, the last time the rhyzoctonia roused itself to make a meal of the world. Achille had engineered special conditions under his greenhouse roof, but it wouldn’t need them once it got out. The whole northern hemisphere was a tinderbox, a dry feast waiting for the guest who would consume it all.

Gennady squinted into the flames, waiting. He didn’t regret killing Achille. Given the choice between saving a human, or even humanity itself, and preserving the dark labyrinth of Khantayskoe, he’d chosen the forest. In doing that he’d finally admitted his true loyalties, and stepped over the border of the human. But that left him with nowhere to go. So, he simply stood, and waited for the fire.

Somebody grabbed his arm. Gennady jerked and turned to find Octav standing next to him. The bodyguard was using a long branch as a crutch. There was a surprising expression of concern on his face. “Come on!”

“But, you see, I–”

“I don’t care!” Octav had a good grip on him, and was stronger than Gennady. Dazed, Gennady let himself be towed away from the fire, and in moments a pale oval swam into sight between the upright boles of orange-painted pine: Nadine’s face.

“Where’s Achille?” she called.

Gennady waited until they were close enough that he didn’t have to yell. “He tried to use a parachute. The fire pulled him in.”

Nadine looked down, seeming to crumple in on herself. “Oh, God, all those men, and, and Achille . . . ” She staggered, nearly fell, then seemed to realize where they were. Gennady could feel the fire at his back.

She inserted herself between Octav and Gennady, propelling them both in the direction of the lake at the bottom of the hill. “I’m sorry, I never meant any of this to happen,” she cried over the roar of the fire. All I wanted was for him to go back to his original plan! It could still work.” She meant the towers, Gennady knew, and the carbon-negative power plants, and the scheme to sequester all that carbon under the plateau. Not the rhyzoctonia. Maybe she was right, but even though she was Achille’s heir, and owner of the technologies that could save the world, she would never climb out from under what had just happened. She’d be in jail soon, and maybe for the rest of her life.

There were options. Gennady found he was thinking coolly and rationally about those; his mind seemed to have been miraculously cleared, and of more than just the trauma of the past hour. He was waking up, it seemed, from something he’d thought of as his life, but which had only been a rough rehearsal of what he could become. He knew himself now, and the anxiety and hesitation that had dogged him since he was a child was simply gone.

What was important was the patents, and the designs, the business plan and the opportunities that might bring another tower to the plateau. It might not happen this year or next, but it would have to be soon. Someone had to take responsibility for the crawling disaster overtaking the world, and do something about it.

He would have to talk to Nadine about that inheritance, and about who would administer the fortune while she was in prison. He doubted she would object to what he had in mind.

“Yes, let’s go,” he said. “We have a lot to do, and not much time.”

Originally published in Reach for Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan, 2014.

About the Artist and Authors

Ron Guyatt (ronguyatt.com)

Ron Guyatt is a self-taught artist and professionally-taught graphic designer from Toronto Canada. He attended George Brown College for Design Foundation where he completed with Honors and then followed with his three-year diploma in graphic design at George Brown College.

Inspired by Art Deco, film and science fiction he loves to design posters & create illustrations. His work as been featured in magazines such as Games TM, Level, and Playstation Magazine and worked with clients like EA, Digital Devolver and Bioware.

His Forever cover art is available for purchase as part of his space poster series at: fabledcreative.bigcartel.com/category/space-posters

Robert Reed (robertreedwriter.com)

Robert has had eleven novels published, starting with The Leeshore in 1987 and most recently with The Well of Stars in 2004. Since winning the first annual L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest in 1986 (under the pen name Robert Touzalin) and being a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1987, he has had over 200 shorter works published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Eleven of those stories were published in his critically-acclaimed first collection, The Dragons of Springplace, in 1999. Twelve more stories appear in his second collection, The Cuckoo’s Boys [2005]. In addition to his success in the U.S., Reed has also been published in the U.K., Russia, Japan, Spain and in France, where a second (French-language) collection of nine of his shorter works, Chrysalide, was released in 2002. Bob has had stories appear in at least one of the annual Year’s Best anthologies in every year since 1992. Bob has received nominations for both the Nebula Award (nominated and voted upon by genre authors) and the Hugo Award (nominated and voted upon by fans), as well as numerous other literary awards (see Awards). He won his first Hugo Award for the 2006 novella “A Billion Eves.” His most recent book is the The Memory of Sky (Prime Books, 2014).

Tobias S. Buckell (tobiasbuckell.com)

Called “Violent, poetic and compulsively readable” by Maclean’s, science fiction author Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling writer born in the Caribbean. He grew up in Grenada and spent time in the British and US Virgin Islands, and the islands he lived on influence much of his work.

His Xenowealth series begins with Crystal Rain. Along with other stand-alone novels and his over fifty stories, his works have been translated into eighteen different languages. He has been nominated for awards like the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. His latest novel is Hurricane Fever, a follow up to the successful Arctic Rising that NPR says will “give you the shivers.”

He currently lives in Bluffton, Ohio with his wife, twin daughters, and a pair of dogs.

Karl Schroeder (kschroeder.com)

Karl Schroeder has published science fiction ten novels and been translated into as many languages. An award-winning Canadian worldbuilder with a reputation for taking striking new approaches to old science fiction ideas, he has a Masters degree in Strategic Foresight and Innovation, and regularly speaks and consults on technological and social trends for government, public and private clients. He is currently writing an epic near-future novel about blockchain technology, redesigning democracy, new economic principles, and LARPing.

About Forever

Forever Magazine is edited by Neil Clarke and published monthly by Wyrm Publishing. Subscription information is available on our website at forever-magazine.com.

Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine (clarkesworldmagazine.com), Forever Magazine, and Upgraded; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a four-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). The inaugural edition of his Best Science Fiction of the Year anthology series was published by Night Shade Books in June. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.

Thank you for reading Forever Magazine.