Further: Beyond the Threshold

by Chris Roberson

  A lift in the central post carried us up, where our captors ushered us into a cramped, darkly lit room, which I assumed was located in the dome atop the platform. The others and I kept our mantles in complete extension, covering our whole bodies, but once we were inside the pressurized dome, the Iron Mass began to remove their black insect suits, keeping watch over us in shifts.

  I got my first glimpse of an Iron Mass, and it was a sight I won’t soon forget.

  The Anachronists with poor taste who’d impersonated the Iron Mass at the Further reception had gotten no nearer the mark with those re-creations than the zoot suiters had gotten to 20C clothing. They had been cartoons, broad caricatures, but seeing the real thing was something else entirely. The Anachronists had seemed faintly silly with their black skin and horns. But seeing the Iron Mass, their hair engineered to grow into a series of small horns from their foreheads to the napes of their neck, like cornrows of rhino’s horns, their skin coded jet black to make them more resistant to radiation, the effect was quite arresting.

  The Iron Mass were anthropoids like Jida and me, but deeply engineered. They had spurs growing from their knuckles, and one on each elbow, doubtless for use as weapons. And when they blinked, a third inner eyelid slid momentarily over their catlike piercing blue eyes, a nictitating membrane. They were surprisingly short and compact, the tallest of them coming roughly to my chin, the shortest several centimeters shorter than Jida. But they were broad shouldered and thickly muscled, with no hint of body fat. These were stripped-down, streamlined biological machines designed for survival.

  The Iron Mass believe that evolution will one day produce God, whom they call the “Divine Ideal.” If the Iron Mass’s morphology is any kind of indication of what their God will look like, I’m in no hurry to see Him for myself.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Our captors had hardly spoken to us since we left the cairn forest, but once they’d all gotten out of their pressure suits, dressed now in high black boots, loose-fitting white trousers, and sleeveless white tunics, their leader turned once more to address us. She was a woman, as it happened, but there was little that seemed feminine about her.

  “You!” She pointed at us, her finger tipped with a talon-like nail. “You will to remove protective.”

  Our interlinks had managed to compile a workable lexicon of Iron Mass words, but were still struggling with syntax and usage.

  ::Captain?:: Zaslow sounded as uncertain as I felt.

  ::Hold on, crew,:: I said. ::Let’s see where this goes.::

  “Remove protective clothing,” the Iron Mass woman repeated, her piercing blue eyes flashing. “Now!”

  The others glanced at me, and I faced the woman and said, “We’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Our mantles were our only defense, the only thing standing between us and the points of the Iron Mass’s spears, and I wasn’t about to give them up.

  The woman shook her head angrily and motioned to one of the other Iron Mass. “Bring it!”

  Two of the Iron Mass hurried out of the room, leaving the others and me to exchange confused glances. In a moment, they returned, carrying a large cylindrical mechanism of some sort, like a bazooka with a battery pack strapped to it.

  “You will remove your protective clothing,” the woman said, her lips pulled back over pointed teeth, “or suffer consequence.”

  I glanced at Jida. “I think that we’re still—”

  “Fire!” the woman shouted, and a gout of light leapt from the end of the cylinder, hitting Zaslow squarely in the chest, blasting through his mantle, through his chest, finally shimmering on the wall behind him.

  The planetary scientist looked down at the gaping hole in his chest, circuitry and biological visceral incinerated in an eyeblink.

  :: Zaslow!:: I shouted.

  “Oh…” he said, and then collapsed in a heap on the ground—dead.

  The woman motioned, and the cylinder was swung around and pointed at my chest now.

  “You will remove your protective clothing.”

  It didn’t make much sense to argue.

  SIXTY

  The three of us—Jida, Bin-Ney, and me—were marched through narrow corridors to an even smaller room, dimly lit by a strip of some green luminescence on the floor. We were shoved unceremoniously through the hatch, which was then shut behind us, closing with a resounding clang.

  Zaslow was dead. And all I’d ever really known about him was his name. If I’d been quicker on my feet, if I’d been faster with a response, would he still be alive?

  I swallowed hard. There’d be time for self-recrimination later, if I were lucky. For now, I had the surviving members of the team to worry about—let the dead worry about themselves, for the time being.

  “Are you two all right?” I asked, looking to the others.

  Bin-Ney nodded, but Jida kept silent, her attention fixed on the hatch, her hands clutching at her throat.

  “Jida, are you hurt?” I asked.

  She turned to me, as though startled to hear her name, and for a moment, she stared at me with blank confusion. Then she slowly lowered her hands and shook her head. “No, I’m not hurt. But I’m afraid we’re all far from all right.”

  “I was still in my original incarnation,” Jida said, her voice sounding small and faraway in the dimly lit room, “with only a handful of bodies comprising my legion, when the Iron Mass was sealed off forever from the Entelechy. It’s been more than five thousand years since any of us last had contact with them, but that clearly wasn’t long enough.”

  “What can you tell me about them, Jida?” I asked. “They’re some sort of religious zealots, right? They believe in a supernatural creator?”

  Jida shook her head. “The deity of the Iron Mass, which they call the ‘Divine Ideal,’ is not the creator, but rather, the created. The universe, the Iron Mass believes, is evolving into a unified consciousness, and all life that has ever arisen in the universe is a part of that process. The symbol of the Iron Mass is the triumvir—three interlocking circles within an equilateral triangle, representing mind, body, and soul—and all individuals bear a responsibility, which the Iron Mass calls the ‘great effort,’ to improve themselves on all three axes, to help give rise to the Divine Ideal. However, the Iron Mass believe that if any of the three aspects of being are neglected, it is an offense to their deity. So an uploaded consciousness represents the reduction of body and soul in the interest of preserving the mind, while an artificial intelligence is a perversion of the three. The Iron Mass have no objection to genetic engineering, which they consider a vital aspect of the Divine Ideal’s development, just as much as is evolution and procreation, but they reject anti-senescence, believing that aging and death are a necessary aspect of being.”

  “Wait,” Bin-Ney said, disbelieving. “They let themselves age?”

  Jida nodded. In the low light, I could see her shooting a hard look at Bin-Ney. I knew she was remembering the time only a few days before when Bin-Ney had disguised himself as an Iron Mass as a re-creationist game. But I doubted that Bin-Ney thought history quite so romantic, quite so worthy of idealized re-creation, when staring it right in the face.

  “For centuries,” Jida went on, “the Iron Mass were considered little more than cranks, more or less harmless with their strange notions. And since their beliefs were all inwardly directed, concerned with their own bodies and minds, they posed no nuisance to their neighbors. But then a charismatic leader arose from among their ranks who came to be known as ‘Scourge of the Divine Ideal and Unconquered Master of the Infinite Worlds, Lord-of-the-Fortunate-Conjunctions Zero Perihelion Iridium.’ It was said that he’d been born with blood filling his palms, a sign that blood would be shed by his hand.”

  Jida paused and looked down at the palms of her hands, her thoughts momentarily a million miles—and five thousand years—away.

  “Zero Perihelion Iridium preached that not only were digital and artificial intelligence perversions, and an o
ffense to their deity, but that if the three aspects of being were thrown out of balance on a universal scale, then the Divine Ideal would never arise at all. As a result, Iridium urged the Iron Mass to adopt what he called the ‘lesser effort.’”

  The way that she intoned the last words spoke volumes about her thoughts on the “lesser effort,” the syllables dripping with venom.

  “The First Lesser Effort, led by Iridium himself, was the cause of the threshold to the Iron Mass’s home world being temporarily isolated. Members of the Iron Mass spread throughout the worlds of the Entelechy, preaching their peculiar brand of hatred, staging protests, and harrying synthetics, digital consciousnesses, and others of blended provenance. When the Iron Mass refused to stop harassing other citizens of the Entelechy, the Consensus convened and quickly decided to isolate the Iron Mass for a probationary period, their threshold enclosed in fullerene-reinforced diamond.”

  Jida sighed, and her left hand fluttered briefly to her neck for only an instant, like someone suddenly afraid she’d lost a treasured necklace. But her fingers found nothing there, and she slowly lowered her arm.

  “Fifty years later, the probation was lifted, and the threshold to the Iron Mass world was again opened. Time had not mellowed their tempers. Zero Perihelion Iridium had been a young man when the threshold was isolated, and as the result of the Iron Mass’s rejection of anti-senescence, he was now of advancing years. The Iron Mass had prepared themselves for the reopening of their threshold, and with their way to the Entelechy reestablished, Iridium launched what he prosaically called the Second Lesser Effort.”

  The last words were choked out, like they were barbs caught in her throat, ripping her mouth as she spoke them.

  “The Iron Mass managed to kill nearly a billion citizens before they were finally stopped. Nearly all of those who were killed were restored from backups, but as the Iron Mass had destroyed their interlinks along with their corporeal forms, there was a tremendous loss of memory. And the…the trauma…for those who survived the attacks was considerable and…lasting.”

  “That’s…” Bin-Ney began, struggling to find the words. “That’s…I studied the Iron Mass, but only in popular dramas. I didn’t know about…”

  Jida’s glare was so hot and intense I was surprised it didn’t bore a hole through him, like poor Zaslow.

  Bin-Ney averted his eyes and said, his voice low, “I just found their aesthetics appealing, is all.”

  Jida ignored him. “The Consensus needed little time to deliberate. Once the Iron Mass were forced back through the threshold to their home world, the threshold was permanently closed, the stabilizing arch dismantled, and the juncture allowed to evaporate. That was the last recorded contact anyone had with the Iron Mass.”

  Jida’s hands had drifted back to her neck, her fingers wrapped around her throat on either side, almost like she was trying to choke herself. Or hold something in.

  “Jida,” I said softly, carefully, “what happened to you when the Iron Mass attacked the Entelechy? How were you hurt?”

  She looked at me, her eyes wide, as though she were seeing past the millennia, as though it were happening again, right in front of her.

  “I was….she was…” Jida paused and straightened her shoulders before continuing. “One of my bodies was there when the door to the Iron Mass home world was opened. I was curious to see what would happen. I was…”

  She trailed off for a moment, seeming out of breath.

  “It’s OK, Jida,” I said. “It was a long, long time ago.”

  Jida nodded slowly, but her expression looked unconvinced.

  “My interlink was active when it happened, of course. So what happened to my body in front of the Iron Mass threshold was experienced by the entire legion. The Iron Mass had these hooks and these knives, and they…”

  Her hands were wrapped so tightly around her neck now that her voice sounded choked off, her air passages constricted. I leaned forward and gently pried her fingers away from her neck, having to labor to lower her strong arms to her sides.

  “They gutted me,” Jida gaped, wide eyed, teeth bared. “They ripped out my throat when I started to scream, and then opened me up with their knives, and then…” She squeezed shut her eyes, misted with tears. “I wanted to shut that body out, close down the interlink to the rest of the legion, but I couldn’t look away, couldn’t leave her alone…couldn’t leave me alone like that. I’ve lost countless bodies to accidents, to age, to misadventure, but that was the first and only time I’d lost one to pure, unreasoning hatred. I couldn’t leave that part of me to look into those unfeeling eyes alone. So that part of Jida Shuliang died with my words of comfort in her mind. And I’ve lived all the days of my life since with her screams of horror and pain in mine.”

  SIXTY-ONE

  I’d long since lost track of time, but the voice of Zel i’Cirea meant that eighty minutes must have passed.

  ::Captain Stone, can you hear me?::

  ::Loud and clear,:: I subvocalized, on the chance that the Iron Mass might be listening in—and in the hopes that they hadn’t detected the interlink communication frequencies. Anyone looking in would see three people sitting quietly, their expressions carefully blank and affectless.

  ::We’ve sighted a ship that we believe, based on its markings, to be from the lost culture of the Iron Mass.:: ::We’ve done more than sight them down here, I’m afraid.:: ::What is your condition, then?::

  ::Jida, Bin-Ney, and I have been taken prisoner. Zaslow’s been murdered.:: ::And Maruti and Xerxes?:: Zel asked.

  ::We’re right here, sirs,:: came the voice of Maruti.

  ::Perhaps if you defined ‘here’ it might be more informative, mmm?:: added Xerxes.

  ::We’re still investigating the cave systems. We tried to interlink you a short while ago but just assumed that we were out of range. We didn’t even know you folks were missing.:: ::Well, we were,:: put in Jida.

  ::All right, settle down,:: I said. ::We’ve got a lot of people on the line. I’m guessing that the Further being in orbit is acting as a relay so that we can communicate on the ground, even if we can’t interlink point to point.:: ::So it would seem,:: Zel answered.

  ::Which means we’ve got just a few minutes before we all lose contact again, and a long while before contact is reestablished. Let’s make it count. Zel, you say you’ve sighted a ship. What’s it doing?:: ::After first sighting, it began to adjust its orbit and is now nearly alongside us. So far, though, they’ve not responded to any communications, whether radio, or pulsed light, or any other mechanism we have available to us.:: ::But they haven’t made any overtly hostile gestures.::

  ::No.::

  ::Captain,:: cut in Maruti, ::we just have to tell you about this remarkable discovery we’ve made.:: ::It’ll have to wait a moment, Maruti,:: I said. ::I’m afraid we’re a little preoccupied at the moment.:: ::Should we send down reinforcements, Captain?::

  ::Thanks for the offer, Zel, but I’m not sure it would do much good. These guys are pretty well entrenched. And since the Iron Mass ship in orbit is obviously watching you, any move to rescue us could force their hand, which could end badly for us down here.:: ::To say the least,:: Jida said humorlessly.

  ::I prefer to keep our options open, for the moment, and watch for any opening.:: ::Sir, about our findings…:: Maruti began.

  ::Not yet,:: I said. ::Further?:: ::Yes, Captain Stone?:: came the voice of the avatar in my ears.

  ::What’s the state of the drive? Could you get away if you needed to?:: ::Sadly not, sir,:: the Further answered. ::We drained the reaction drives in moving into orbit around this planet, and we won’t be able to use the metric engineering drives for another point-nine-two standard days.:: ::OK. So there’s no rush, but if you get charged and ready, and there’s still no sign of us getting free, I want you to fire up the metric engineering drives and get back to Entelechy space. If nothing else, we need to warn anyone else away from this rock and let everyone know that the Iron Mass don’t
appear to have been sitting on their hands the last few thousand years. They’ve been mining this planet for years, it looks like, but mining what, and what they’ve been doing with it, I haven’t got a clue. As for the Iron Mass ship in orbit, so long as it doesn’t make any aggressive moves, just keep your distance.:: ::And if it does make any aggressive moves?:: Zel asked.

  ::In that case,:: I answered, ::I trust you to do whatever’s necessary to safeguard the ship and her crew.:: ::Captain Stone, I must insist…:: Maruti said.

  ::Maruti, you and Xerxes continue your investigations. If you happen to find anything that’s going to get Jida, Bin-Ney, and me out of this fix, and all of us back on the ship, you let me know. Otherwise, keep out of sight, for the time being.:: ::But what about—::

  And then the connection was broken, the Further rotating once more out of range.

  SIXTY-TWO

  The most profound silence I ever experienced was drifting in cislunar space inside the belly of an empty cargo tank. It’s a long story, but the short version is that I was in a shuttle mishap, without a functioning pressure suit, and had to eat a vacuum to get from the damaged control module to the cargo bay, where luckily one of the tanks was intended to transport livestock and so was pressurized and heated. With the engines offline and the radio out, there was nothing to do but sit and wait—a few thousand cubic meters of air and me, surrounded by reinforced ceramic and steel. At least inside a pressure suit I’d have my own breath and heartbeat sounding in my ears, but the vast empty space in the tank ate up any sounds echoing back from the far walls, so it was just me and silence.

  Until Cutter 972 had appeared on the scene like the proverbial cavalry and saved my hide, I’d thought for sure that was it for me.

  The aching sensation of helplessness in my gut was much the same, sitting in the dimly lit cell on the Iron Mass mining platform, but the difference was that there was nothing like silence here: the constant rumble of the drill down below, moving back and forth on an arm spinning slowly around in circles, the drill describing an ever-increasing spiral, the source of the grooves on the canyon floor and walls; the rumble of life-support systems, clanking fans somewhere far off in the walls, echoing through the air vents; and the occasional heavy tread of Iron Mass moving back and forth outside our windowless door. The air in the room was hot and close, and in the dim light, we could barely see one another, but we didn’t have to look to know what expressions we all carried—uncertainty, dread, and fear.