The Last Crucible

by J. D. Moyer

  Cristo handed his crossbow to Antonio, who had some trouble taking it while maintaining control of his long pike. Cristo stepped forward, slightly jostling Jana, rolled up his sleeves, and extended his arms. Jana noticed his hands were trembling slightly, but she took no pleasure in this observation. It made him braver than her, that he was actually scared. She’d felt no fear at all, not even a trace. Her body – it was just a thing, a vehicle for her mind. She realized most people didn’t feel the same, that her sense of complete duality was unusual. To them, body and self were one. When Filumena saw her reflection in a mirror, she saw herself. But when Jana passed a highly polished surface, she felt no connection to the image she saw. And that disassociation extended to all of her bodily senses, including pain. It was nothing, pain, just signals traveling within her nerves, like the vibrations of a horn transferring to the air and making sound.

  After Cristo’s show of bravado, two other young men stepped forward and let the beetles sample their blood.

  “Can we get one more person, please?” Ingrid called from the hovercraft. “A woman, someone older?”

  Several people looked to Sperancia, but Jana knew better. It wasn’t that the old woman was scared, but she wouldn’t let the visitors read her blood. Her body was different, on account of the fine threads that were visible beneath her skin. Those threads had penetrated every millimeter of her flesh, including her brain. Sperancia had explained it all to Jana, how the Crucible worked.

  “I’ll do it.” Vissenta, Cristo’s mother, stepped forward, but not before shooting a look at Sperancia, which garnered no reaction. Vissenta cried out and stumbled as the beetle raised its wings and flew off. Cristo rushed to support his mother, cursing loudly.

  “I hope you have what you need!” he shouted at the visitors.

  “We do, thank you,” Ingrid replied, either not registering or ignoring Cristo’s hostility. “We’ll need a few minutes – please be patient.”

  Jana watched them closely. The older brown-haired woman – Lydia – was busying herself with the beetles, doing some kind of fine work with small tools. Perhaps she was a doctor or healer, like Sperancia. Ingrid sat on the edge of the craft and smiled at the townsfolk of Bosa, waving back at several small children in the crowd who waved and cheerfully shouted at her. Ingrid was the face of the visitors, and their tongue. The two younger visitors spoke quietly with each other. Jana wondered what their roles were.

  “Good news!” Ingrid called out. “It’s safe for us to get closer. May we approach?”

  Gregoriu, the mayor, finally stepped forward. He was a short, slight man, older and balding, with tiny tufts of black hair sprouting from his nostrils and ears. He was timid, but thoughtful and unwaveringly fair, which had led to his election five times. Not five times in succession; Micheli had been elected for a single interim term. But that had gone poorly, and the townsfolk of Bosa had reinstated Gregoriu as soon as was possible.

  “Yes, you may approach,” shouted Gregoriu in a wavering voice. “I am Gregoriu Serra, mayor of Bosa. Welcome to our town, and welcome to Sardinia!”

  The crowd shuffled back as the hovercraft glided in, spraying the front line with sea mist. Tem, the young man with long hair, nimbly jumped to the dock and tied the craft to a post with a length of black line. Jana eyed the rope enviously. It was thin but she guessed it was strong, much stronger than the scratchy oak-bark rope that had snapped at Pinna’s first heave.

  “Thank you for the kind welcome,” said Ingrid. “We are from a town called Ilium, in the Po Valley, approximately seven hundred kilometers to the north.”

  “Ilium,” Sperancia repeated.

  “Have you heard of it?” Ingrid asked. Too casually, Jana thought. Maybe Ingrid was not as simple and naïve as she appeared.

  “No,” Sperancia replied, with a stubbornness that made Jana sure that she had.

  “It is not as beautiful as Bosa,” Ingrid continued, “with your castle and colorful houses and wonderful stonework. We are a very young town, only thirty years old, about as old as Tem here.” She gestured to the long-haired man, who was watching Sperancia closely. Had he noticed something different about her?

  “Why are you here?” asked Iginu. It was a blunt question, but a fair one. Everyone wanted to know.

  Ingrid nodded. “The short answer: we are here to trade. We’d like to exchange both knowledge and goods. We can help each other. We have medicine that can heal your sick—”

  “We already have a healer,” Iginu interrupted. He pointed with his chin at Sperancia, who looked displeased.

  “Let her speak!” The angry voice was from Enzo, Pietro’s father. Pietro himself, unable to walk, was not there, though Jana was sure he would want to be; the boy was curious and adventurous.

  “We have medicine, we have supplies, and most of all we have knowledge of the world we would like to share with you.”

  “And what do you want from us?” Gregoriu asked.

  “We want to know what you know,” Ingrid answered without hesitation. “Your history, your way of life, exactly how you have survived through the ages.”

  “I think you already know,” said Iginu accusingly. “You’ve been spying on us, haven’t you?”

  To Jana’s surprise, Ingrid nodded. “Yes. For many years we watched you from a distance. Never too close, but there were people on the island observing you, taking notes. Anthropologists. But they meant no harm – they were only there to learn.”

  “I knew it!” Iginu shook his fist.

  “But that was many years ago. We stopped that practice long ago. We decided among ourselves that it was unfair, unethical.” Tem leaned in and said something to Ingrid in a language Jana didn’t recognize. Could Tem understand Ingrid’s Italian, but not speak it himself? “And yes, as Tem points out, it was a decision made after one group in particular expressed their displeasure.”

  “How many groups are there?” Sperancia asked.

  Ingrid smiled. “We don’t know. Far more than we initially thought. So far we are in contact with six communities, including yourselves. We guess there are far more, possibly hundreds.”

  “That’s all you want?” Gregoriu asked. “Knowledge of how we live?” The mayor sounded relieved.

  “Mostly. We’d like to trade foodstuffs as well. We get tired of eating the same foods all the time.”

  “We don’t,” Vissenta bragged. “We eat well.”

  “You especially,” quipped Iginu. Vissenta flicked his ear, eliciting a howl of pain from her husband. But the tiff provided a moment of entertainment and levity at the old couple’s expense. The crowd’s mood lightened.

  “Would you be willing to give us a tour of Bosa?” Ingrid asked. “And after that, maybe we can sit somewhere and talk, the four of us with four of you? Yourself, Gregoriu, and others who make decisions?” She looked pointedly at Sperancia even though the maghiarja had said little.

  “Yes, of course. Please, make some room for our guests. Let them through!”

  The visitors left their hovercraft tied off and unattended, though a clear glasslike shell slid over the passenger compartment as they walked away. The machine probably had its own defenses, and she hoped Cristo and the others would not be foolish enough to attempt boarding it. The young men loitered on the dock, stupidly holding their weapons, as the town elders led the visitors toward the old town.

  “Antonio, lend me your knife,” she said when the visitors were out of sight.

  “Why?”

  “Just give it to me.”

  Antonio frowned but reluctantly handed Jana his knife, a dark steel blade with a polished handle that his father had fashioned from a sheep’s horn.

  “What are you going to do?” Cristo asked.

  “What are we going to do. We’re going to move that rock.”

  There was a long coil of the black rope on the dock next to the post wher
e Tem had tied off the hovercraft. Despite the sharpness of Antonio’s blade, it took her over a minute to cut through its tough fibers.

  “What are you doing?” Cristo shouted. “You’ll start a war!”

  “You’ll ruin my knife!” Antonio protested.

  “Don’t worry, boys. They don’t seem very warlike, do they? And I’m sure they have plenty of rope.” She examined the edge of Antonio’s knife; it looked duller but undamaged. “Just needs a good sharpening.”

  “If they have plenty of rope, they’ll be happy to trade for it,” said Antonio. “You shouldn’t steal.”

  “Didn’t you listen to what the woman said?” Jana protested. “They’ve been spying on us for years. They owe us.”

  Cristo and Antonio agreed to meet her at the field after they put away their weapons, and somewhat to her surprise they arrived soon, with Pinna the red ox in tow, ready to work. All three of them were happy to have something to do while the elders met with the visitors.

  “Who did Gregoriu pick to represent us?” Jana asked.

  “Council members,” Antonio answered. “Sperancia, Micheli, and my father.”

  Those were good choices, if predictable. Micheli was popular, Antonio’s father, Austino, was rich and an active trader, and Sperancia was the oldest, wisest, and most knowledgeable person in Bosa.

  “I don’t trust them,” Cristo said.

  “You sound like your father,” said Antonio.

  Cristo shrugged. “Maybe he’s right this time. They admitted to spying on us, didn’t they? It’s a good time to be cautious.”

  “But they admitted it,” Antonio protested. “They said they knew it was wrong, to watch us without our knowledge. Don’t you think that means they want to have honest relations with us now?”

  “Maybe. But it might be more lies. Jana, what do you think?”

  “I don’t think they’re lying to us. But I do think they’re hiding something. If they’ve known about us for a long time, why wait until now to contact us?” She was thinking of the blue cylinder she’d seen with Sperancia’s telescope, a new object in the sky.

  With strong rope, the work was easy. Pinna hauled the boulder aside, and taking turns at the plow they readied the field for planting well before sundown.

  “You lead Pinna back,” Jana instructed Antonio. “I’ll return the rope.” She hadn’t been worried at the time, but doubt had crept in as they’d worked. It was probably unwise to anger the visitors, even if they had plenty of extra rope.

  “You’d better not blame it on us,” Cristo said.

  “Do you really think I would?”

  Cristo would not admit it, but she knew that he trusted her, even if he didn’t like her.

  The dock was deserted when she returned. She brushed as much dirt as she could from the rope and left it in a neat coil next to the post. She didn’t see anyone around, but several young men had seen her cut the rope. Antonio and Cristo might not rat her out, but someone would likely gossip.

  That was fine. She would defend what she’d done – the visitors did owe them. And now they had two lengths of rope when before they’d had one.

  That night, after dinner and cleanup, she told Papà that she was going to visit Sperancia. He did not discourage her. Though he did not say so, she guessed he was also curious as to what had been said in the meeting with the visitors. What terms, if any, had been agreed to? She knew only that the meeting had lasted nearly four hours, and that the visitors had returned to their hovercraft and left unceremoniously, looking neither jubilant nor dejected. They’d left a length of rope, as a gift, someone had said, which Vissenta had helped herself to.

  News spread like wildfire through Bosa, but apparently none of those present at the meeting had revealed anything. Maybe they’d been too tired after the lengthy discussion. But she knew Sperancia would still be up; the old woman slept little.

  “Ah, I’d hoped you’d visit,” Sperancia said as soon as she opened the door. “Come in, have some tea.”

  Sperancia’s kitchen was lit by several tallow lamps. A large, ancient book was open on a round oaken table. A book of maps. “Here.” Sperancia pointed to a spot on the map that Jana recognized as the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. “That is where Ilium was. An ancient city that they’ve named their new town after. It’s mentioned in Greek myths.”

  Sperancia had told her some of the Greek myths. The stories were memorable: Pandora’s box, the Minotaur’s labyrinth, the flight of Icarus. So were ancient myths from other cultures: Sumerian, Egyptian, Norse, Celtic. “Does that mean their ancestors were Greek?”

  “Maybe some of them, but the visitors have ancestors from every continent on Earth. Before they settled in Ilium they lived on a ringship called the Stanford.”

  “The spinning yellow-orange disc?”

  “Yes, that one. Though they consider themselves independent now.”

  “How many ringships are there?”

  “They mentioned five. The Stanford, the Liu Hui, the Al Hazen, the Hedonark, and the Michelangelo.”

  “The blue cylinder we saw….”

  “That’s the Michelangelo. They’re worried about that one.” Sperancia placed a steaming mug of tea in front of her. Sage, from the smell of it, and maybe dandelion.

  “Why?”

  “From what we remember of the Michelangelo, it was a museum ship – a project meant to house and protect humanity’s great works of art.”

  Jana was used to Sperancia’s use of we, which she tended to use when discussing the distant past. “Why are the visitors concerned? A museum ship doesn’t sound very threatening.”

  “The Michelangelo has been in the outer solar system for a long time, isolated from the other ringships. Unlike the Stanford, the Michelangelo doesn’t use sunlight for heat and energy, so it’s not confined to a close geosynchronous orbit.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “I’ll explain it to you sometime, but the point is that they’ve been away, and now they’ve come back, and that has the other ringships worried. The Michelangelo won’t communicate – they’ve been dead silent. But they’re sending down shuttles to explore the planet.”

  “So the visitors were lying about wanting to trade with us?”

  Sperancia looked at her sharply. “You don’t trust them?”

  “They seem friendly, but no, I don’t. But only because I don’t understand them. I trust Iginu because I know he wants to be safe. I trust Vissenta because I know she wants a full pantry. I trust Cristo because he wants to fuck anything pretty.”

  Sperancia laughed. “You have that family figured out.”

  “And I trust you, because I know you want to learn everything you can, and you want what’s best for Bosa. But I don’t know what the people from Ilium want, not really.”

  Sperancia nodded. “Nor do I. But I sense they are good, virtuous people. In any case, we have a decision to make. They want to offer us medical care.”

  “Will you allow it?”

  “I’m tempted to. Zicanna has blood cancer, and while I might be able to keep her alive for many more years, I can’t cure it. And I’ve done what I can for Pietro, but his muscles keep wasting. In a few years he’ll be too weak to breathe.”

  Zicanna was Filumena’s mother. She’d been sick for years, mostly confined to her house and very weak, which meant more work for Filumena. More work and more tears.

  “They say they can cure them, completely? Both Zicanna and Pietro? Pietro would walk again?”

  “For the most serious cases, our ill would need to travel to Ilium to receive treatment. But yes, I know for a fact that the disease Pietro has, they could cure it. Completely. The cure – a small genetic edit – has existed for centuries. And they’ve kept that knowledge alive.” Again, Jana heard a tinge of envy in Sperancia’s voice.

  “Pie
tro’s father would never allow it.”

  “They would go together. Maybe his mother as well.”

  “Pietro would love that. He has an adventurous soul. But Zicanna – I don’t think she’d be brave enough to leave Bosa. Can’t they help her here?”

  “Maybe. But I believed them when they said they could cure her in Ilium.”

  Jana sipped her tea. Sperancia had a difficult decision to make. But for young Pietro, some chance at a long, rich life seemed better than certain death in a few years. “What else did you discuss?”

  “Trade. They seem serious about that – they’re interested in the food we make. Gregoriu brought them some of his pecorino, which they loved. And Tem had many questions for Austino – where he obtained his goods, how Bosa’s blacksmiths made their steel, and so on.”

  “And what about the Michelangelo? Should we expect more visitors?”

  “Perhaps. They don’t know. A shuttle landed to the south, in the ruins of Tunis.”

  “Isn’t that very far away?”

  “It’s closer than Ilium. Only five hundred kilometers south of where we stand. If there were another island the size of Sardinia directly to the south of us, you could walk to Tunis.” Sperancia showed her on the map. To Jana, their island seemed very large. In all her life she’d only seen a small part of it. And yet within the Mediterranean Sea, Sardinia looked tiny. The Earth was truly vast in size.

  “This tea is making me sleepy.” Maybe it was the tea, maybe it was the work in the field, maybe it was the events of the day. She felt as if everything in her world had shifted and was now balancing on a precipice.

  “Then sleep, child. It will be a week at least before the visitors return, so we have time to talk. Time to decide.”

  “Should I keep what you told me a secret?”

  “No. If I know Micheli, everyone will know everything by midday tomorrow. At least they’ll know Micheli’s version of it.”

  “One more question – did you tell them about yourself? I mean, did you tell them about the Crucible?”

  “No. But Tem – the young man – he was looking at me intently.” Sperancia touched her temple where the black threads were most visible beneath her skin.