by Greg Bear
Anna looked for some sign of insanity in the man but couldn’t find any. He was calm, rational, and seemed to be following a plan.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“We have good evidence you’ve found artifacts here. We intend to get our share of the sale of any such finds. That’s legal. We’re prepared to use slightly illegal means, however, to convince you.”
“Legal or illegal, I don’t know what you’re talking about. We haven’t found anything here since the first landings. Who’s been telling you these lies?”
“That doesn’t matter now. Alae—”
“What’s she doing to Yoshio? Have you got something planned?”
“Things are working out fine as they are. Your husband is strange.”
Anna laughed.
“We’re serious. We lost just about everything we valued when this place turned into a bust. We have nothing more to lose, and a lot more to gain. We’re taking you back to our ship.” He reached into his collar and drew out a tiny sliver of silvery metal.
“What’s that?”
“It’s Crocerian. Our employers—our original employers—provided them in case we should get in trouble at our post. The Aighor ship wasn’t allowed to have registered weapons. We weren’t rich enough to have a few rulings reversed. These will do, however. Alae has one.”
“Yoshio isn’t well—he took a fall several days ago.”
“We have med units on the ship.”
Anna shook her head. “I don’t believe this,” she said. “You’re everything I thought, you’d be. Everything! I shouldn’t have even let you land.”
“We were prepared for that, too.”
“What will you do when my ship finds we’re gone? Hold us for ransom?”
“No. They won’t know where you are, and we won’t tell them. We’ll just keep you until you tell us what you’ve found, and make a recorded confession.”
“We haven’t found anything!” Anna shouted. “Oomalo brought up the sliver.
“Be calm,” he said. “I’m calm. Nothing will go wrong.” He pointed to the peristyle and the air lock. “We’ll put on environment packs and walk to the lander. Let go.”
Forty-Two
Kawashita faced the unseen barrier with a frown. He placed one hand on apparently empty air and pushed.
“What are you doing?” Alae asked. She stood five paces behind him, fingering the cutter.
He didn’t answer. He backed away and felt the pressure stop. The illusion, the restraints, were slowly letting up. Two days ago none of them could have even considered leaving the assigned pathways. Now, with an effort of will, at least he could do so. He squinted and saw a few patches of fog.
“See anything?” he asked.
“Nothing. What are you doing?”
“There’s a wall or building here. We can’t see it. But something is changing. If I concentrate, I can see it a little and feel it.”
“Who are you trying to fool? You knew there was something here, you knew it the day we met. You planned it all from the beginning, to keep us out, keep us away from what we deserve. And then you arm yourself to kill us.” She didn’t bother to remove the sliver from her collar. She extended the cutter’s field.
Kawashita looked over his shoulder at her and felt the slice across his arm. He held his hand against the blood and winced at the searing pain. He forced his watering eyes open and stepped back against the invisible wall. Alae gritted her teeth and moved in to finish her work.
Forty-Three
They stood in the air lock, Oomalo behind her, waiting for the cycle to complete. Their fields came on simultaneously.
“Out,” he said. They walked away from the dome.
At first the ground looked like it was covered by mist. Then the mist began to rise, filled with captured rainbows, forming walls, then buildings, then blocking their view of the lander. A city rose around them, ancient and decrepit, walls collapsed, rubble scattered. Oomalo twirled around and shouted something. Anna shut her eyes for a moment and reached into her pocket. He was facing away from her as she extended the field and cut the back of his hand. The sliver dropped. He screamed and rushed to merge their envelopes. The second swipe caught him in the neck, and he swayed, then went down, clutching at the gash, taking the cutting tool with him.
She started screaming and calling Yoshio’s name.
Forty-Four
Record of Yoshio Kawashita. Impounded in the Archives of Anna Sigrid Nestor. Not for release until A.D. 2600.
Transcription of all-body record:
The pain and darkness are complete. He is on his back, staring at the dark blue sky, watching stars move and fall one by one, then return. Like universes dying and being born. Then the images steady and the pain subsides. “Hello,” Yoshio says. “Where is she? What did she do to me?”
He thinks he hears somebody speaking, but he can’t see anyone around him. He can’t see the woman who cut him. He can see a spreading pool of blood, and feel a bitter taste in his mouth, and hear the voice—and there are buildings all around—but nothing makes any sense.
Then his hearing clears.
“Who would you have us be? We did not judge, only studied.”
“What?”
“Your reactions told us what we needed to know.”
“Where are you?”
“We conclude our final experiment. You have been curious to know what we are and where we come from. There is no need to conceal the answers now. We are not another species; we are not even self-aware by your standards. We are simply ‘agents’ created to represent another group of beings. Only a few species will be able to survive the end of this universe and seed the next.”
“Have I been worthy?” Kawashita asks. “Why come back and tell me these things?”
“It is apparent that human beings represent no threat to our creators, our interests. You have basic flaws which will prevent you from finishing in the competition. You will attempt to create your own agent, but you won’t understand why, or the functions it must serve, and you will destroy it. Knowing this, we have no further curiosity. You have done well in your thoughts and researches. No more could have been expected, for your circumstances were extraordinary. It is unfortunate that your very nature as a human being has prevented you from reaching your goal. But full understanding is a thing granted to few species, much less individuals.
“The Perfidisians have never been. Now even their illusion passes on.”
The stars fade and fall again. He sits quiet, lips working. “Not kami,” he says. “You took me, you needed me to fail, to make the experiment fulfill…I was not wanting! I was not failing. Everything possible…”
He closes his eyes, takes a deep, shuddering breath, and opens them again.
“But you are wrong,” he says. “Very, very wrong.” He takes out the tapas and tries to smash it on the concrete. After three swings, the recording stops, but not because he has damaged the machine.
Forty-Five
Jason DiNova leaned over the body of Oomalo Waunter and shook his head. “My God, what happened here?” he whispered. The man’s neck had almost been cut through. He picked up the slender piece of metal near Waunter’s hand and examined it.
“What’s that?” Kondrashef asked.
“A Crocerian weapon. Illegal, I think.”
“What were they trying to do?”
“Kill Anna. They must have tried to kill her.” DiNova looked at the dome entrance, then at the surrounding ruins. “I don’t believe all this.”
Oliphant’s voice came over the radio in Kondrashef’s environment pack. “We’ve found Anna. We need a medical unit and transport.”
“Is she hurt?” DiNova asked, standing beside the body.
“Not physically, no. But she’s half out of her mind. Keeps calling for
Alae Waunter. She found Kawashita—”
“How is he?”
“Dead,” Oliphant said. “Somebody killed him with an altered cutting tool.”
“Why?” DiNova asked, dazed.
“Two crazy independents,” Kondrashef said.
They brought the medical unit and a second cart out of the dome and followed a clear stretch between the ruins. Kondrashef helped pick up Kawashita’s body and put it in the back. The medical unit floated ahead.
Oliphant stood by Anna Nestor. She was clutching a tapas pad, silent, looking at the ground. DiNova joined them and urged Anna to return to the ship as soon as possible. She walked away without argument, climbing into the cart, reaching out to touch the bag that held her husband.
“We’ve got to find Alae Waunter,” DiNova told Oliphant.
“Not a trace of her,” the young officer said. “I’ve had two men with sensors out tracking for an hour, ever since we arrived. Nothing.”
“What about the buildings? Where did they come from?”
Oliphant shrugged. “They must have been here all the time. They’re stripped, nothing but extrusions of the concrete.”
DiNova shook his head, not for the last time that day. “I don’t believe all this.”
Addendum to this record:
“Yoshio, I’m ninety now. Sixty-one years I’ve been coming to this planet, once a year, to visit you. I still think about you…about what you found. They were wrong, you know. You were proof by example. They left us nothing but the old shells of abandoned laboratories, where they must have examined millions of others, as they did you—for how many millions of years? We may never know.
“But they were wrong. If it takes my whole life, I’ll prove them wrong. I vow this each time I visit you. Well, I haven’t found them yet. But in the end, when all is said and done, we’ll meet them on equal ground. And I hope we still know how to sneer.
“I think they’re still around. You knew they were. But my advisers look upon that view as unworthy of comment. Old, rusty Anna still ticking over about past grief. No matter.
“Dear Yoshio, each time…You’ve got me crying again. I miss you very, very much. I’ve put a piece of ribbon in your shrine. You are kami to me now.
“And every day I say ‘Hello!’”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1980 by Greg Bear
ISBN 978-1-4976-0872-6
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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