by J L Forrest
We were then as far from Earth as the Earth is from Sol.
The Savannah expanded before us as if, rather than traveling through space, we had traveled through time and found ourselves not in Africa IV but in Africa I, perhaps in Kenya, perhaps in the nineteenth century. Golden grasses and brush thrived in every direction and, behind me, much the same scene appeared, as the tunnel had spit us from a hillside. Punctuating the land, acacias stood as lone sentinels, casting deep shadows on the reddish earth. A palpable heat enveloped us.
Alongside us thundered a herd of wildebeests. Zebras accompanied them, and farther off wandered a tower of giraffes—a giant male, six females, and two calves. An odor of vegetation, dung, and dander infused the air, strong but not unpleasant.
“You might want to close your mouth,” said Mr. Avidità, chuckling at me, “before it fills with flies.”
The land drew my gaze farther still, and the horizon swept upward, a view I understood from a lifetime in Station, but here the scale exceeded reason. Clouds rolled through this volume, layered weather systems. As my focus shifted ever higher, I squinted, shaded my eyes, then closed them. Above us, the so-called sky shone piercingly bright.
As Avidità Corporation had mined Africa IV, the company reinforced its outer surface, leaving thick walls of composites, iron, and nickel. As it built the terrarium’s atmosphere, bringing oxygen, nitrogen, argon, and trace gases from around System, it also nudged the planetoid’s major axis into alignment with Sol. By then, engineers completed the arrays which reflected light from the terrarium’s axis, a superstructure generating an artificial sun, “rising” every day in the “east” and “setting” each day in the “west.”
Mr. Avidità’s chuckle became a full-throated laugh, more genuinely happy than I’d ever heard him. “Breathtaking, isn’t it?”
We rode the rest of the day in our transport, Imka at the controls, the AIs flanking us in their jackal bodies. At a watering hole, a parade of elephants trumpeted, bathed, and rolled in the mud, a calf playing amongst their legs. A wide river meandered through this land, its banks thick with reeds and rushes. I spotted a crocodile in a pool of gigantic lily pads.
In the west the reflecting array contracted, fading through yellows, oranges, and violets, and the land darkened. As it did, a moonlike glow appeared halfway down the axis, silvery white, creeping along the terrarium’s spine.
Night fell. As if by magic, “stars” freckled the sky, roaming the axis in the millions, more like fireflies than distant, burning spheres of gas.
As our quiet-running vehicle neared the blast-door entrance from which we’d first emerged, the cackle of hyenas reached my ears, and Imka eased on the brakes.
Ahead of us, in the faint light, strolled a leisurely pride of lions. Two lionesses gazed at us, their jaws half open, their lower fangs bared. Afraid of nothing.
“Let’s get back to the staff quarters,” said Mr. Avidità.
“Yes, sir,” replied Imka.
“I’m famished. How’re you, Aur?”
I hadn’t thought about food all day, couldn’t now, could think only of the lions as they slunk into the shadows between the tall, dry grasses. “Hungry, yeah.”
Back “underground,” in facilities of steel, aluminum, titanium, and carbon, we gathered with three-dozen personnel. Their number included veterinarians, biologists, ecologists, engineers, doctors, scientists, and programmers. In a dining room we sat around a long wooden table, and a cook named Fred brought pots and platters of food.
We feasted.
“You’re to be commended,” Mr. Avidità told the team, applauding. “The data look excellent, populations are managed, bacteria and fungal growths measure well within norms, energy usages register optimal, waste management is doing as well as in any of the Stations. I’m proud of you.”
Many thanked him. Sighs and laughter and smiles—their relief and joy were tangible.
“But we have a problem,” he said, “which is why I’m here.”
They waited, bracing themselves.
“We’ve intercepted communiques from Nesteler Group,” he said. “Nesteler has learned of this facility, and they mean to target it.”
Shocked whispers passed around the table. Expressions faded from triumph to terror.
“They would take it from us,” he said, “or destroy it.”
One woman covered her mouth.
“We operate on redundancy here,” he said, “so I can evacuate half of you. You’ll take a shuttle Earthward and, if everything turns out fine, we’ll rotate you right back. The rest of you are too critical, this facility too sensitive, and you’ll have to remain. As you know, we’ve automated ninety-nine-point-nine percent of everything which happens here but, more than elsewhere, we need your human eyes working alongside the AIs.”
One woman nodded. “We understand, sir.”
Her gray hair marked her as older than the others. I admired her bearing, the clarity of her expression. The terrarium’s commander, I figured.
“I’ll help sort the stayers and the goers,” she said.
“Thank you, Tilda.”
“What happens now?” asked the cook.
“I brought military assets with me,” Mr. Avidità said. “In fact I deployed them on arrival.”
During our flight I’d spotted none, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Always, Mr. Avidità kept his secrets.
He continued, “Unfortunately our nearest Dreadnaught, the Alstad, will be some hours getting here. In the meantime I’m doing everything I can to keep you safe.”
Tilda inclined her head. “Thank you, sir.”
I watched Mr. Avidità’s face, read in it a practiced weariness, a mastered gravitas. “I can’t guarantee anything,” he said, “though I’ll answer any questions you have. First, though, what about dessert?”
IX. Thresholds
2131.4.9.21:28 PST
58°45’57.2”N 132°37’14.4”W
Alt 219m
British Columbia (Dissolved)
Stikine Region
119km to Destination
I hold the baby while Fitzpatrick empties my pack and searches my gear. Garth stashes my pistol and ammunition in his satchel, and his loaded carbine either hangs from its sling or rests in his hands. Once Fitzpatrick completes the search, they let me reorganize my pack, the baby fidgeting under a blanket beside me, and I jam the tent into its bag.
Adjusting my headlamp, I get my first excellent look at them. Garth like a badger. Fitzpatrick like a weasel. With the manners of men doing a job, neither at ease nor unduly concerned, they divide their attention between me and the woodlands.
“The baby needs downtime,” I say.
“Soon,” says Garth. “Our journey won’t be long.”
Longer than I like, as it turns out. Three hours.
Half the time the baby sleeps, some of the time I get him to suckle a pacifier or my finger, and the rest of the time he cries. From one side of the valley to the other, anything could hear him.
The silvered moonlight and cloudless stars hint more than light the way, but Garth and Fitzpatrick march confidently, familiarly along a game trail. It widens, joins another trail, and converges into a true road, leveled and laid with gravel.
To either side of it the trees tower, giants, boughs vaulting the road. Pines array themselves like soldiers, like the cyclops Polyphemus and his hundred sons waiting to ambush us. The road empties into a clearing. Around it hunker several wooden buildings, their windows intact, their walls solid. Yet no candles or electric lights shine from the interiors.
A way-station it looks like, a customs house, a border control now abandoned and no longer needed. I imagine its story—for a few years, thousands upon thousands would have followed this route from the east. Then, thousands would have trickled to dozens, and now to me. The world has emptied, populations committed to solitary and tribal lives, gathered into new centers, flown to space, or dead. Now the way-station waits to rot. The scent of liv
estock irritates my nose, piles of drying manure and hitching posts nearby, but no animals are here. The river murmurs through walls of vegetation, and ahead a bridge crosses a narrow, rushing tributary. Past it the road extends into shadow.
Poles decorate the clearing’s center, reminding me of the stakes upon which the Christians died. In the dozens, animal skulls adorn the poles. Atop each is a ram’s skull, and ribbons flutter from the horns. Difficult to tell, in the dark, but I’m certain the ribbons are all blue, red, or purple.
Garth halts. Fitzpatrick waits behind me.
“What now?” I ask.
Footfalls sound across the bridge, hollow and heavy, a man approaching. He stands taller than Garth, even ignoring his peculiar headdress, and by description I know what he is, though I’ve never seen anything like him with my own eyes.
Hide boots, deerskin leggings, leather tunic, bearskin mantle, a beaver-pelt headdress whose knotted-leather veil obscure the man’s bearded face. Caribou antlers rise from his head. He carries a long spear, its point sufficient to skewer a horse.
A Horned Lord.
“Welcome to Threshold,” he says, his tone soothing. “I admit it’s not much to look at these days.”
The baby quiets, burbles softly. I stroke the top of his head.
The Horned Lord asks, “What’re you seeking?”
“The Queens.”
“Why?”
“To join them.”
“Why?”
“I heard of them in the east,” I say. “I heard they’re like no one else, like nothing the world has ever seen, that I might find safety here—”
He scoffs. “No such thing as safety. If that’s what you’re after, go somewhere else.”
“Food, shelter, some security?” I caress the top of the baby’s head. “Especially for this one, a chance to live.”
With his left hand, the Horned Lord reaches for the baby’s head. My first instinct is to pull away, but the Lord only caresses the little one’s cheek.
The man’s voice low but still gentle, as if he’s speaking to the baby, he says, “Turn off your fucking headlamp.”
I do. To my eyes, the darkness becomes nearly absolute. The Horned Lord leans close and his odor is herbal, medicinal, some blend of marshmallow root, mint, and pepper.
“Look at me,” he says.
As I lift my chin, I guess his height near two meters. I wonder if he detects the tremble in my breath? The baby begins to cry, then quiets again, and the seconds grind on.
What does the Horned Lord see?
He chuckles. “To whom do you owe your allegiance?”
I could say no one, but I have a better lie. “Myself.”
“What’s your name?”
“Aur.”
“What’s your faith?” he asks me.
“I—I’m atheist.”
True enough. Some call Mr. Avidità a God-King, but I never have, not as anything more than a metaphor—Gods of the New Moons—and metaphors aren’t realities. Mr. Avidità was born, has lived, and is only as immortal as the technological singularity on which he surfs. There are no Gods.
Again, the chuckle. “All right, atheist, kneel.”
“What?”
His voice becomes granite. “Kneel.”
Though on my knees, I prepare to defend the infant. The Lord reaches into a pouch at his belt, digs his thumb into it, and in one smooth motion presses his thumb to my forehead.
The pain slams my eyes shut and empties my lungs. I grunt and double over, pressing my left hand to the earth, cradling the baby with my right, even in agony compelled to protect him. The flesh above the bridge of my nose burns and does not burn, the sensation like a cinder pressed to my skin.
No sizzling, though, no stink of ruined tissue.
Chemical maybe, something exciting the nerves, a drug.
I grit my teeth, the pain spreading across my skull. Endurable. Weakening until a migraine would be no worse. I allow myself a grunt, but I utter no words, no scream. The baby, perhaps sensing my pain, perhaps hating the way he’s being held, perhaps wanting nothing more than a nap, shrieks.
“Tough motherfucker,” says Fitzpatrick.
“Open your eyes,” says the Horned Lord.
A chill of sweat spreads across my body. I straighten my back, fill my lungs, and the anger he reads on my face is real.
“What do you see, atheist?” He grins.
My focus remains on him. “An asshole.”
He laughs.
At my periphery, Fitzpatrick and Garth glance at each other, then step back like they might from a wild bear—or an impending murder. The Horned Lord’s rough laughter softens once more into a chuckle.
“All right, Aur,” he says, “I have a camp, a fire, some safety. You and the child can stay there the night, rise in the morning, and be on your way to New Juneau.”
Garth begins, “Hallowed, aren’t you—”
The Horned Lord lifts his hand to silence the man. “Aur is our guest. As did the ancient Greeks, we should treat every strange guest as if he might be the Messenger of the Gods.”
“Yes, Hallowed.”
“In fact,” the Lord says, “tomorrow I’ll guide Aur to New Juneau myself.”
X. Scimitars of Heaven
Recollected
2116.6.24.14:05 GMT
2.3 AU from Sol
Inner Asteroid Belt
Africa IV
On the second night in Africa IV, Mr. Avidità and I camped in a canvas tent, one like any tent of the nineteenth century. The evening had been so pleasant we’d rolled up the sides. In a radius around us, tiny drones maintained a perimeter, projecting high frequencies into the dark, too high for my ears but unpleasant for many animals.
Except the flies. The indefatigable flies.
Out in the darkness, Apollo and Ares stood guard.
“The flies,” said Mr. Avidità, “part of an authentic experience.”
I swatted them, waved at them, cursed at them. One committed suicide at the back of my throat.
“Be thankful,” he said, “we’ve engineered the mosquitoes. Many birds and bats depend on the mozzies, but they’re here in small numbers and seldom wander far from the river. No malaria, no dengue, no yellow fever. We get to sleep without nets.”
“Thank you for bringing me,” I said.
“You’re welcome, Aur. For every creature here, we’ve got a thousand embryos on ice, but a biome is more than its DNA. The mammals and birds teach behaviors to their young, behaviors we’d lose if we iced the population. These animals,” he said, “and the biomes in all the terraria—these are my Flapjacks.”
I understood.
“How worried are you?” I asked. “About Nesteler?”
“Extremely.”
A kilometer or two away, a lion roared. Somewhere a nightbird, whose species I did not know, called repeatedly.
“Are your defenses really in place?” I asked.
“No Rack can torture me,” he said. “My Soul—at Liberty—
“Behind this mortal Bone
“There knits a bolder One—
“You cannot prick with saw—
“Nor pierce with Scimitar—”
“Emily Dickinson.” I said.
He leaned back in his camp chair. “Each time No Rack can torture me comes to mind, I have to forgive her pricking saw and piercing scimitar, but her metaphors don’t detract from her meaning. Dickinson was a stoic if there ever was one.”
I scratched the back of my neck, shooing yet another fly. “Why Dickinson?”
“If I’ve directed the pieces upon the chessboard poorly, you and I will need what is behind our mortal bone, because we’ll be dead within twenty-four hours.”
I startled. “You’re joking?” I said, instantly regretting those words.
Mr. Avidità seldom joked about anything.
He lit a small stove for water, then retrieved a satchel of tea and two cups. My namesake once wrote, Concerning death, it is either a di
spersion of atoms, a vanishing, an extinction, or a translation to another state. Death made no difference to him.
“We’re not leaving?” I asked.
Mr. Avidità’s brows furrowed. “I’ll need to respond to any battle in realtime, not delayed by light speed at a distance.”
I wanted to yell, What about me?! But didn’t dare.
“My scimitar will not pierce,” he said, “but I’ve poised it to swoop, to lop the heads from our enemies, to take them while they still imagine themselves the clever ones.”
“What should I expect, Your Grace?”
“Nesteler’s attack, like my defenses, will rely on AI, on heuristics and stochastics calculated in microseconds. Not much we can do while the AIs duke it out. Afterwards, though, if Nesteler’s sent flesh-and-blood agents, we’ll have to capture as many as we can—or kill them.”
Insects sang or chanted rhythms, a wall of sound, and the lions roared for their territory. Mr. Avidità’s water boiled, he steeped the tea, then handed me a cupful.
After sipping, I asked, “Your Grace, why did you bring me here?”
“I’ve gotten the sense you feel deeply for animals, Aur. Your sensitivity has always defined you, and I’m happy I didn’t misread it. Would it upset you if this place, all the animals in it, were destroyed?”
My chest clenched. “Of course.”
“Would it,” he said, “if it disappeared, and you never got a chance to see it?”
I understood his point.
“We all die,” he said, then he took a long draw of his tea, an excellent oolong. “Best to see the good stuff while you can.”
Twenty hours later, I strapped myself back into the cockpit of the Plato, the trimaran still nestled in its docking bay. The centripetal force of Africa IV’s rotation pressed me into my harness, without which I’d fly from my seat and smack into the windows. Mr. Avidità climbed into his seat, latched himself in, and rotated into viewing position.
