“Of course.”
“But what is the purpose for most living forms? What could conceivably be the point of being alive if you’re a tree? Or an amoeba?”
I passed the question to Alex. “Hakim,” he said, “we just don’t have answers to questions like that. But what about you? Would you rather be alive or dead?”
“To be honest,” he said, “I’m not sure.”
Eventually, they asked why we’d come. “There are so many stars. If you are what you say,” said Sestor, “what brought you to us?”
“We’ve been looking for someone,” said Alex, “for ten thousand years. It was inevitable that eventually we would arrive here.”
That brought smiles. Seepah, changing course, whispered a response. “And thank God you did.” His voice shook.
When the band took over, the nineteen-year-old, whose name was Barnas, asked me to dance and told me I was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen. Was I doing anything tomorrow evening? He suggested a walk along the riverbank. Or possibly a canoe ride. In the moonlight. Actually, he added, he wasn’t sure the moon would be up, but he’d do what he could to arrange it.
“You know, Barnas,” I told him, “you’re going to be a heartbreaker one day.” Unfortunately, I didn’t know the word for “heartbreaker,” so I said it in Standard. But he knew what I meant.
He responded with an expectant grin. “Is that a yes?” he asked.
Alex asked Viscenda if we could speak with her privately. She nodded and led us into a small room across the corridor from the library. “I’ve been wanting to sit down with you anyhow,” she said. “When your rescuers come, is there anything we will be able to do to facilitate matters?”
“Thank you, Viscenda,” he said. “You’ve already done everything we could have asked.” A fire was burning placidly in a small stove.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Your people have a long history. I was wondering about your prospects. What does the future hold?”
“I take it you’ve noticed that the situation is not good.”
“I’ve noticed too few children. I’ve noticed you have empty rooms.”
Her eyes closed. I suspected she’d been an attractive woman in her youth. And somehow she didn’t seem old. Beaten down, maybe. But not old. “We have about thirty children altogether under the age of twelve. It’s not nearly enough to sustain us.
“Life here is difficult. People work very hard. The weather is inconstant. The sickness is getting worse. We are not always able to manage a harvest, so more die off each year. We try to store food for lean times. But—” She looked up and stared for a moment at the stove. “Many of our residents have given up. People do not want to bring children into this world. It’s too painful. We remember what we had less than two generations ago. And we look around now and see what’s left. Many of our older people tell us they wish they’d died during the Dark Times. Those were the lucky ones. You hear it all the time.” She looked at the dark-stained walls. On one hung four or five family sketches. Images of Daddy and small animals and kites and boats. Drawn in better times, maybe. “It appears,” she said with a sad smile, “that God has decided to end it. And that the end is not quite what we’d expected. It has not been quick and clean for all of us. A few survivors were left, for whatever reason, perhaps to contemplate what has happened, and to ask ourselves why.”
Alex looked intently at her. “Viscenda, we can help.”
She shook her head, beating down any impulse to hope. “I’ve been praying that you would be able to. That you would wish to. But how—?”
“I’d like you to call a general meeting. Let me speak to your people.”
The meeting was set for the following evening. Meanwhile, we sat down with Viscenda, Seepah, and some of the other community leaders to get as much information about our hosts as we could. Alex asked what the world population had been before the onset of the Dark Times, a term that seemed to refer both to the general disaster and to the aftermath. “I would guess,” Viscenda replied, “maybe a billion. Possibly not quite that many. I don’t think anyone ever did a count.”
Had there been nation-states?
The concept was foreign. Most people had lived in regions centered on cities.
Had there been wars?
“Not for a long time, until the lights went out,” said a man named Argo. “There’ve been a few, here and there. But for centuries they’ve been rare. And usually, people tend to be horrified when the killing starts. Historically, the wars have always been short-lived.”
One of her people asked about the Confederacy. How many worlds did it encompass? What other aliens were there? He and the others had a hard time believing that the Mutes could read minds. “How is it possible?” asked Viscenda. “By what medium do thoughts travel from one mind to another?”
As usual, we didn’t know the answer.
“Don’t take offense,” she said, “but you and Alex, for members of an advanced race, seem remarkably incurious.”
I didn’t know how to explain that our world was full of wonders. That we simply accepted them and didn’t concern ourselves with the mechanics.
They described the years before the Dark Times as a golden age. “It’s true,” said Seepah. “It was a good life back then. But we didn’t appreciate it until it went away.”
Next morning, I wandered into the dining hall and found a woman in tears. She’d heard that Alex wanted to speak, and she had guessed it would be about the future. She was seated with three or four other women. When she saw me, she tried to get control of her voice and stood up to face me. “There is no future for us,” she said. “Let Alex know, if he hasn’t figured it out yet.” One of her companions stood and tried to pull her back into her seat. But she would not be restrained: “You know what I think, Chase? I think it’s immoral to bring children into a world that’s cold and dead.”
Her friend wrapped an arm around her, and a long silence followed.
I smiled and said I’d pass the message along. As I was walking away my link activated. “Chase.” Belle’s voice. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“StarCorps is here.”
“What? Already? That can’t be right.” They weren’t due for almost two days.
“Shall I patch them through? It’s audio only.”
“Yes. Please.”
A momentary delay. Then: “Belle-Marie, this is the Vanderweigh, IEAA patrol craft. We were in the area when your code white was relayed to us. What is your status?”
The voice was female. It was also reassuring and calm. Everything’s under control.
“Vanderweigh, this is Chase Kolpath. I’m the pilot of the Belle-Marie . I’m currently stranded groundside with my passenger. There is no emergency. We are in no immediate danger.”
“We’re glad to hear it, Kolpath. We’ll achieve orbit in about nineteen hours and will send a rescue vehicle as soon as we have a window. Is there anything else about your situation we should know?”
“My passenger, Alex Benedict, has a broken leg and will require medical care.”
“We read you. We’ll be with you as quickly as we can. Vanderweigh out.”
FORTY-ONE
When people say how fortunate they are to have been born during the present age, they tend to be thinking of the fact that the supply of food is assured, we all have roofs over our heads, and we need not worry about invading armies showing up at the city gates. But there’s more to it than simply the tools of survival. Had we slipped from the womb in, say, the twelfth century, we would not only have faced a short life span, but we’d have had no method of communication more competent than a horse. What was going on in the greater world, if indeed anything was, would remain a mystery unless the barbarians attacked. Or the Nile went into flood stage. We would have no books. No easy way to wash clothes. No pictures of the kids. No understanding of how the sun rose and set. It was a world full of gods, demons, and miracles. It is no
wonder sanity in that era was so rare.
—Blackwood Conn, Life at the Edge
I passed the news to Alex. He was making notes, prepping for his presentation. “Well, that’s good,” he said. “I’ll be glad to get back to a normal life. And a normal weight.”
“How’s your leg?”
He smiled. “I’d have a little trouble down at the dance. Otherwise, it’s okay.”
“You know what you’re going to say tonight?”
“More or less.” He rearranged himself in the chair. The leg was propped up on a footstool. “We can provide all kinds of help. Supplies. Medical assistance—Did you hear? They have another case of the Sickness to contend with—”
“I heard.”
“I keep thinking how different it might have been here had someone back home, twenty-eight years ago, spoken up.”
Alex was an accomplished speaker. He had a sense of humor, was good at winning an audience over, got to the point quickly, and kept it short. He was exceptional that night. The dining hall was filled when Viscenda introduced him. “We all know him,” she said, “as one of our two friendly aliens. Let’s welcome Alex Benedict.”
The crowd stood and applauded. I was struck by the similarity of social customs, retained even after thousands of years of separation. Or developed separately, whichever it was.
Alex walked to the lectern and thanked Viscenda. Then he turned to the audience. “Chase and I owe all of you a debt of gratitude. You provided a home for us when we were in trouble. And I should also say thanks especially to Turam—Where are you, Turam?” He knew perfectly well where Turam was because I knew he’d pinpointed him before going up there. “Ah, there you are. Turam, stand up, please. He’s the man who pulled us out of the fire. Don’t know where we’d have been without you, partner. Well, in fact, I guess I do know.”
The audience applauded, and from that moment, they belonged to him.
He described his reaction to Akaiyo, how fortunate we’d been to come down near the facility. “There are places,” he said, “that don’t like strangers very much. This is not one of them.
“To the degree that we can, we’d like to reciprocate. We can never do for you what you have done for us. But we can help. We received information a short while ago that a rescue vehicle has arrived and will be taking us off, probably sometime tomorrow morning.” They sat quietly. “We’ll be leaving for a short time. But we’ll be back.” Fist-pumping and cheers. “With supplies. With help. I can promise you that you will never again have to worry about where your next meal is coming from.”
That blew the roof off.
He waited until they quieted. Then he continued: “Something else. I’m sure the word has gotten around that we’ve been saying your ancestors developed a method to travel to other worlds. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but it’s true. You, your forebears, visited Zhedar. It happened a long time ago. So long ago that you’ve forgotten it. But we’ve seen the evidence. We’ve been there.
“I’ve heard some of you wonder whether your lives are worth living. Whether it isn’t time to give up. But we would not wish to lose you. And I suspect that you would not allow it to happen even if we were not here to help.
“But we are. When you get up tomorrow, it’s possible Chase and I will be gone. But we’ll be back.”
We hadn’t heard from Belle during her last few passes. It might have been because she knew Alex would be speaking, and we hadn’t given her the precise schedule, so she wouldn’t have wanted to interrupt. We spent an hour after the address talking with our hosts. They were ecstatic about what we were saying, and I think we shook hands with everybody in the place. Including the kids.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that, since the nights were several hours longer than the nights on Rimway, we ran on a different cycle from the general population. We were often exhausted in the daytime and awake half the night. It was the middle of the afternoon, but our bodies were at about their 3:00 A.M. point in the sequence. I’d lost count, but it felt like it. When the event was finally over, and we were back in our quarters, Alex carefully lowered himself into a chair, and I said something about how glad I’d be to get off Echo III. StarCorps couldn’t arrive too soon.
I glanced at Belle’s schedule and thought I’d say hello. So I called.
But got no answer.
I took another look at the schedule and tried again. “Belle, you there?”
Alex glanced up at me.
“Belle, respond please.”
We listened to the yells of some kids playing ball just outside the window. Then Alex shook his head and held both hands up, palms out, while he mouthed one word: Stop.
He signaled me to pass him the link. But keep quiet while I was doing it.
I removed the bracelet and held it out for him. He took it and studied it for a moment. Then he spoke into it: “My God, Chase. Get down! They’re here!”
My reflexes took over, and I hit the deck.
FORTY-TWO
There is no shock that can rattle the household quite like the approach of an unexpected visitor.
—Harley Esperson, Cringing in the Lodge
Alex shut off the link, gave it back to me, and fumbled for his crutches. “Chase, it’s imperative you stay off it until I get back. If there’s a call, don’t answer.”
“Alex, what—?”
“Do what I say. Please. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
He hobbled off. I ran over to the window and looked out. Nobody seemed to be coming from that direction. And there was no one in the corridor except Alex. So I sat down, put the bracelet on the table beside me, and watched it. As if it were a spider.
My heart was pounding. The Mortician had neutralized Belle. Must have done it when she was out of range and couldn’t warn us. Minutes ticked by. Then, finally, I heard approaching voices.
Alex came back in with Turam, Barnas, and five or six others. Three had rifles. The others had pistols. “Everybody ready?” he asked.
They checked to make sure the weapons were loaded.
“Okay. Chase, here’s what we need you to do—”
The people who’d arrived with Alex began screaming. I turned on the link. “Belle, answer up, please!” Turam pounded on the door. Outside, I could see a couple of older people herding the kids away. One of the others threw a chair through the window. “We’ve got an emergency, Belle,” I said, trying to sound desperate. I don’t think I had to try hard. “Please respond.”
Alex jumped in: “Quick, Chase. Out the back! Get out while you can!”
Barnas broke in: “Too late, bitch,” he said, “you’re dead.”
Two of the guys stuck their rifles out the window and blasted away at the sky. I screamed, “Alex!”
More shooting.
“You’ve killed him,” I shrieked. “You bastard.” I tried to burst into tears.
Turam said, “Sorry, baby. Good-bye.”
I screamed for him not to shoot. Then Turam fired his weapon at the sky again. I cried out. Alex signaled for me not to overdo it, and I went silent.
Alex and I stayed quiet, while Turam and his people laughed and said how they’d take the bodies outside and burn them.
“Praise to the All-Father,” said one of them.
Alex pointed at the door. Everybody out. We left my bracelet on the side table but didn’t turn it off. Outside, in the hallway, a crowd was gathering. They looked a little scared. We shushed everybody and got clear of the area.
In one of the side rooms, Alex thanked everybody for helping. Every now and then, someone went back to our apartment and screamed something unintelligible that sounded bloodthirsty. Then, finally, we stopped.
Barnas and the others congratulated one another and took turns assuring us that if anybody showed up who wanted to give us trouble, they’d deal with him properly.
“What do you think?” said Turam. “Did it work?”
“You did a good job,” Alex said.
“Now,” Tur
am continued, “what happened to the rescuers? Who is this who’s coming to get you?”
“Yeah,” Barnas said. “How about enlightening us?”
Alex sat down. “Belle’s not responding. That tells me that whoever’s up there with her isn’t StarCorps. And I can only think of one other likelihood.”
“The Mortician,” I said.
“Yes—if I’m wrong, I’ll apologize later.”
“It won’t work, Alex.”
“Why not?”
“The Mortician doesn’t speak the local language.”
“She’s probably been doing the same thing we have: letting her AI listen in and act as an interpreter. Even if not, it doesn’t matter. She couldn’t possibly have misunderstood the point of all the shots and screams.” He stopped. Touched the silver chain. “We’ve got an incoming call.”
“It’s probably Belle.” That was my optimism working overtime.
“Text message.” Alex looked at it. Showed it to me.
Benedict:
You can’t seriously expect that ploy to work again? Talk to me. Or I’ll take out your little social center down there.
“It might be a bluff,” I said. “She has no way to be certain we’re not dead.”
Alex shook his head. “No, but she has nothing to lose by destroying the compound.”
“Sure she does. She wouldn’t be able to tell whether she’d gotten us.”
“You willing to bet that’ll stop her?”
“I guess we’d better call.”
We were speaking in Standard, and Turam had figured out that wasn’t a good sign. “It’s not over,” he said. “Is it?”
Alex delivered a casual nod intended to suggest everything was under control. But he didn’t want to mislead anyone. “Probably not, Turam,” he said. He activated his link. “This is Benedict. What do you want?”
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