Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest #10
Page 13
From another perspective, the missiles were an abomination. Politicians spoke of making amends, of greeting the next envoy at a safe distance, armed with information gleaned from the wreckage. But they were wrong.
There was nothing to learn from the wreckage, nothing to steal. Just twisted hunks of technology that human engineers could make no sense of, spreads of ash where, presumably, organisms once walked. Three generations of scientists have built a perilously fragile framework of theories, painstakingly sculpted from crumpled hunks of metal, carbon fragments, and vivid imagination; a children's building-block tower of ideas, constantly knocked down and then rebuilt, never passing a certain stage of growth. Were they invaders, messengers, refugees? We don't know. In a hundred years, they've never come back. In a universe the size of ours, perhaps they never will.
Cinders and rubble slide beneath my feet as I traverse the crater. The wind sings and whispers against the metal spires overhead, but down here there is only ghostly calm. A chain rattles near the entrance. The park is closing.
"Found something, didn't you?” the ranger says as I head for the winding path up the crater's wall. I nod. I want to say more, but I haven't found words for it, so I stick my hands in my pockets and keep climbing.
I understand what he meant now, about no one finding what they came for. In the early days, physicists came here looking for the key to interstellar travel. Generals came looking for weapons, xenobiologists sought a new kind of life. And the architects, the ship's masters themselves? No one knows what they came for, but it's almost certain they didn't find it.
At the crater's rim lies an assortment of little metal effigies, tattered ribbon, and dried flowers; decaying remnants of tributes left by other visitors in earlier times. Hundreds of thousands of mourners came to this overlook in the first years after the crash. Now, though, only a single fresh bouquet rests on the reddish stone. I feel certain that the park ranger brought it.
It is dark. Distant, fragile stars hang over the crater. Across my shoulder and far away I see my car's running lights, pulled to the side of the road and waiting for me. Slowly, I unclasp the necklace I am wearing—the only thing of value with me—and lay it on the dusty pile of offerings. The wind brushes my hair.
* * *
Visit www.apexdigest.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.