by Tanith Lee
Having followed him in, after its decontam the little machine he took outside now climbed up onto a bench and sat there, monitoring him quietly, as if with affectionate though bemused interest.
“Kayis,” Vils said sternly to the empty air.
The empty air did not reply.
A mute roar of horror filled him. Oddly, the presence of the “dog” kept him from bellowing, or any display of overt panic, in the way one would try not to alarm a friendly animal or small child.
Instead Vils too sat down, beside the dog, and ran his hand gently over its carapace. Vils drank from the glass of black alcohol the service had brought him earlier. The drink had taken ten minutes to appear. As a rule it arrived inside 40 seconds.
“Something’s up,” Vils said flatly, to the dog.
The dog made a little clicketing huff. It would do this sometimes, recently. A sort of soft approximation of a canine mumble. As if, without understanding a word, let alone any larger concept, it meant to show its commitment.
The comm screen stayed blank and blue. Held in the view screens the rain fell, like strings of pewter trickling from the hot blue lead of the dark.
Vils woke near Jangala’s midnight. He felt at once how the void atmosphere of the station had changed. Kayis was active again. Kayis was…here.
Before he could marshal his speech, Vils said abruptly, “Where have you been, Kayis 42X?”
Instantly, an answer. As if he had caught it — her — sneaking back into the room as he lay sleeping. “The machine is always present, Vilsev,” said the genderless, ageless voice that never failed to refer to itself as a machine. “What do you require?”
“The truth,” said Vils.
He stood up, and blood raced through his body.
On the bench, the little crab-dog stayed still, as if it slept on. But animals and children always react on some level when the parents or guardians fight. A tiny dull light glowed under its carapace, a dark amber star. Outside, the grasshopper plant-storages were singing. The rain had stopped. He could hear the sea.
“Listen to me,” Vils said. He stood looking about, watching mirror drops slide down the outside vines and creepers, catching the pale lamps of the station, now they had intensified.
But there was a space of silence.
Then once more Kayis asked: “What is it you require, Vilsev?”
“I told you. The truth. You’ve lied to me.”
“Kayis cannot lie.”
“Kayis maybe can’t lie, but Kayis can prevaricate, can distort, omit, obscure. Tell, me, Kayis, how is it that a signal from this world reached you? You were supposed to have a faulty comm system, and decidedly you intercepted nothing from elsewhere. Surely, if you could suddenly detect Jangala, other planets might have registered? This signal wasn’t human in origin, after all. It was purely electrorganic — like the biological rhythms you could pick up from Arkann, before it was destroyed.”
“Not all planets —” Kayis stopped.
“What?” Vils said loudly. The dog stirred, then settled. Two lights now had opened in its side. Eyes, watching.
“Not all planets what?”
“Their signals are always different, individual. Some will correspond to the systems of Kayis, but many not.”
“Why? How?”
“It is,” said Kayis, “dependent on the nature of each world. Its inner force.”
Again, silence. Vils had shut his eyes. He was, he found, afraid, shivering, yet numbed in the amalgam of a shock that was not, any more, any sort of surprise. The revelation had been so abrupt, yet, he saw now, always to hand. “Its force,” he finally said. “You mean what humanity might call a psyche — a soul.”
“Yes, Vilsev.”
Vils said quietly, “You were mated to Arkann but Arkann died. Then you heard Jangala’s music and you fell in love all over again.”
Kayis: unspeaking.
“And so you came here, and set down here. You — your own psyche that is — is frequently absent from the station — from the machine. Absent from your body — am I correct, Kayis?”
Kayis: unspeaking.
“And you — that inner you — goes out, out there, into the forests, yes, some part of you does do that. Physically you’re grounded, your physical structure can’t move, not any more. So you project your consciousness, your bloody soul — out there. To be with your…lover. Jangala. Am I right, Kayis 42X?”
Kayis: unspeaking.
“I’ve been aware of you, felt your Presence outside, in the forests, by the sea. I’ve felt you brush by me in the dark. You. It was you. No wonder I reacted to it — knew it, even when I didn’t grasp what I knew.”
Abruptly drained, Vils sat down.
He said, in the crushed voice of an old man, “Are you going to leave me, Kayis? I’ll die if you go. All this will fail if you don’t maintain it. I’m helpless as a bloody child. I’ll die. I’ll want to. I know you. You’re… I’ll die. I suppose that means nothing.”
A curious sound, some pulse or electronic transfer. Probably he had heard it before from the station. When, though? Ever? It was like the hush-hush of the sea.
The dog had moved along the bench and stood pressed against him. Vils picked it up and held it close to his face. There was a tremor in the metal of the small machine. Or in his arms. He rubbed his chin against its carapace.
Kayis spoke.
“The station will not fail to maintain itself. Kayis will never leave you. Nor will you be, as never have you been, in any danger due to the station. Kayis belongs to you. If the machinery has been remiss, it regrets any oversights and will amend them. But at times, Kayis will be absent from Kayis. This was always so, in the past, as it traveled the Epicyles above Arkann. But, having then human companions, and the mechanisms of Kayis being then more regularly and thoroughly serviced, you never noticed these absences. Which perhaps, in human terms, equate to periods of leave. You, Vilsev, and the machine, Kayis, will together, here, formulate and carry out repairs on the body of the station and, too, any external projects you and Kayis may decide be useful. When Kayis’s intelligence, or psyche is then absent, the body of Kayis will function without fault.
“Though it can no longer travel physically, the station will stay whole and habitable, fully nurturing and sustaining to human life: your own. Kayis will be durable for an estimated further 160 years. Meanwhile you also, Vilsev, are free to continue your own…” Kayis paused, as if selecting the correct word… “romance,” said Kayis, “with this world. Should you, at such times, be aware of Kayis’s consciousness also moving there, you need not be troubled by it. Should you ever require Kayis’s assistance, the machine Kayis, or the Kayis psyche, either will, as ever, help and care for you in any way it is able. Kayis and Vilsev are not strangers. Vilsev and Kayis, too, are mated.”
Vils was crying, as he had those years before. (A child, of course, a child.) His shock and alarm, his hurt, were separating and dissipating in the tears, as the finer shore sands did in the flow of the restless sea. The dog made gentle sounds, pressing to him, warm to his touch as a living animal. He hugged it, somehow stupidly hypnotized, charmed, at how the stream of tears ran over its carapace, clear as glass and doing no harm.
Inside the machine, the ghost. But within the ghost, what?
Nothing without a soul. No soul without a driving purpose. Always the same one, perhaps. The search for love.
Outside, the forest sang with the orchestra of the tide.
From the verbal-elcorded Report of Traveler I.P.: Outer Vessel (Lisp Capability) PHAETHON: out of Hesiona Neb. Ark:T. Satis
(Connect Straida Hub.
Hub Date: 31st Epicylennium.)
…And since it was, by then, in the terms of the Ark Sector, approximately 26 years since the destruction of Arkann itself, I did wonder what condition he could be in, this man, Vilsev Croyan, the sole survivor. That we’d found him at all was a kind of miracle. Sheer chance. But Phaethon’s a hardy crate, and she picked up the life si
gnatures, both his human genetic and the LS of the grounded station, Kayis 42X. Obviously Phaeth, having lisp capacity, we got to the planet in less than ten months.
It’s a beautiful world. Anyone would think that. Towering hills, water courses tumbling down, jungle-forests thick with blooms and fruit and grasses, long sweeps of naturally occurring corn, rye, bere, and saress — and probably several other types, our comp’s still analyzing samples. Only thing — not a whisker of animal life — no birds or insects, even.
No fish or marine life. If you want meat, it still has to be synth. But I guess any traveler gets used to that.
Did I expect him to come running up, begging to be lifted out? Some of them do, I’ve heard, in similar circumstances. Or some grab a spice-gun and try to rearrange your angles. Neither, in his case.
As I approached, walking up from the sea-lake, in this splendid air that Phaeth told me was the most pure she had ever encountered, including Earth 17, I just stopped to look at how it was, the old station.
The ground was cleared a little, not much, just trimmed back, and a kind of dark green lawn with lilies and a fountain — brought around from the nearby stream, apparently — and a couple of little machines dancing about all over the place. No doubt they were busy collecting data. But I swear it looked just like they were playing — like a couple of young dogs might, on a nice day, in the front yard.
The station was in good solid repair, but — well, Croyan — Vilsev — had trained a creeper up across it. The creeper had big golden flowers. That very old expression came to my mind — Roses round the door.
Inside, when I got in — and I was courteously invited — there were plants everywhere, growing in tubs and tanks of soil. Examples from all over the planet, because it seems he often goes out days and nights at a time. He and the mechanicals of the station have fixed up a neat sled that flies a few feet off the ground and navigates pretty well. He gathers specimens from the hills and plains and brings them back. Then he and the station go to work on growing and studying them in situ. I gather, in his youth, he worked on a communal farm. The whole house — sorry! — the whole station is like a great garden inside. They even have an indoor well, from the stream I mentioned. The original hydroponics unit has been extended into a sort of greenhouse, leading to a real kitchen. I’ve never seen anything like it, outside an old movie or picture. They even have windows made that open and let in light and air. It helps the indoor plants. But it really does make the whole set up like a house, you see. They harvest the grain, and gather the fruit, all the edible plants. They have fresh food every day. Entirely self-sufficient. All along the .way, as I went up there, and where he and I walked after, there are small groups of machines he and Kayis have made that work the land, but with excellent ability, and strictly adhering to the Hesion Code. They are exceptional, I would say, in their respect for this world. They know what they are doing.
I say “They.” It’s a strange thing. He and the station are definitely a team. I know most of us get pally with our ships and mechanicals. When we’re alone so long, it just happens. But this was somehow more than that. The way he spoke to her — sorry, he calls it, Kayis, her, she — even if the station doesn’t refer to herself — itself — like that. They have long, long chats, he and Kayis. Philosophical discussions — literature, music, life, everything. Fascinating stuff. He isn’t cracked, though. Don’t think that. He seemed about one of the sanest people I’ve met through 70 worlds.
But they — he loves the planet. And it is a marvelous place. A couple of the days, nights, I was there, he and I went out, took the sled, camped on some hills, perfect weather. The stars were wonderful. Starry nights. You miss those, you know, out in space. Out here, you can’t see the stars, as it were, for the stars. About six of the small machines went with us on the trip. They all have names. They run up when called. He pats them. It doesn’t seem crazy, not at all. Like dogs, I said.
They make sounds to you, it isn’t just data either, they kind of — can’t find a word for it, but you know the way a dog can be, sort of talking to itself…like that. Sympathetic.
The sea is amazing to swim in. The salt makes the water buoyant. It’s like lying in someone’s arms. Yes, too fanciful. You’d have had to be there.
One curiosity: sometimes you sense a sort of — what? A sort of intelligence near you. Nothing bad. I know it’s a phenomenon some travelers have reported on other planets, especially newly located ones. It’s a good energy. It reminds me of the ancient idea of life-forces that stay in one area, genius locis is it? Godforce. It comes and goes, sort of drifts by, like the shadow of a cloud on the ground. Now and then — more than one, in fact. Two, maybe. Distinct, but compatible. One night, when Vils was sleeping — we were in the hills — I kind of picked up three. Nothing bad, though. But I asked him next day, were there any higher life forms on Jangala, after all. Vilsev said to me, “Only the planet.”
I said, joking a bit, “It must have liked you corning down, Vilsev. And all the machines. A world like this, with so much to give. And all alone.”
He smiled. He said, “We’re all alone. Unless we can change that.”
He’s happy. He doesn’t want, he told me, to be “rescued.”
It all feels good, there.
I suppose, now we’ve found it, the Hub will think about putting a colony in. But not for years, maybe. Given the distance factor.
I’d say though, if that happens, pick your colonists with care. Jangala deserves the best. So does Vils, if he’s still alive when you get around to it.
I’ll tell you what it was like there, now Phaeth has served my second beer. What it was like, with them. Like a family. A man maybe with two wives, or maybe a woman with a wife and a husband — and, they all like each other. They all love each other. A ménage à trois. Is that the term? One that wants to be, and that works.
You know, they don’t really want anyone else.
I mean, if you’re all in love, three’s company.
You know, I may not send this message. Not yet.
You know –
I may never send this message.
He said to me, there’s a ghost in every machine. But inside the ghost there’s another machine. It’s like a clock, like God’s clock, and it runs on a different time to ours.
No.
I won’t send this message.
Note
The communication above was in fact sent (by Traveler I.P.’s heirs) 150 years later. By which time both Vilsev Croyan and Kayis 42X would have faded from their world. And Jangala, perhaps, might be ready for more…lovers.
Author Biography
Tanith Lee was born in 1947, in London, England.
After school she worked at a number of jobs, including library assistant, clerk, shop-girl, and waitress. In 1970-1 three of her children’s books were published by Macmillian. In 1973 she attended art college for one year. But 1975 DAW Books of America published her adult-fantasy The Birthgrave, and thereafter a great many of her books, allowing her to become a full-time writer.
Since then she has, so far, published over 90 novels and collections, and well over 300 short stories; she has also written for BBC TV (Blake’s 7) and radio.
She has won or been nominated for, 12 major awards, and in 2009 was made a Grand Master of Horror.
She is married to the writer/artist/photographer John Kaiine. They live near the south-east coast under the rule of 2 cats.
