by Hugh Howey
“And what looked like a problem at first, the Big Crunch, actually turned out to be a golden opportunity. Travelling between galaxies was prohibitively expensive. Space begins stretching faster than you can cross it, so there’s no way for one species to spread out and ensure their survival. Even if you got there, what had you accomplished? Long term, I mean? Even galaxies are doomed as they collide into one another. That means no one place is safe, and even with hyperspace, not all places can be reached. How much better, then, to wait until all places come to you!” Byrne beamed at Cole, clearly excited to be having the conversation.
“The first seed made the next universe even more conducive to life. The very laws of nature were tweaked. Carbon was made more eager to chain with itself. Water was given a wider range of fluid temperatures. The primordial elements, the building blocks of life, were put into place ahead of time. Everything needed to create more Bern and to educate them, to prepare them for the next trip around—”
“I’m sorry,” Cole interrupted, “even if all this is true, I don’t see what it has to do with us. Besides, why didn’t we stumble onto this Program? If we were made just like you, why don’t we know this stuff?”
“You do stumble onto them,” Byrne said. “Fragments, anyway. You see them in visions and dreams, and you hear them as voices in your heads. They are the very elements of your religions and your superstitions. This is why so many of them have so much in common. Your species plays these slices of our instructions over and over, but you hear only small chunks, and you hear them out of order. You inspect shards of the Program as if they were the whole.”
“You say that like we’re some sort of computer drive.”
“That’s a perfect analogy. Only, we write with four bits instead of two, and we coil them together in what you call DNA. The problem is, your drives are fragmented. Everything is haphazard, even as you continue to read them sequentially.” Byrne laughed. “The priceless irony is that you label as junk the most important parts of your DNA!”
Cole shook his head. “That’s not possible.”
“Look around you and say that again.”
Cole didn’t have to. It sounded foolish and naive the first time he had said it.
“This entire cluster of galaxies is infected. That’s why you’re different, why our code didn’t take, not fast enough anyway. There’s a mutation here that threatens everything. Everything my people—billions of generations of them over thousands of cycles—have worked to create.”
“What?” Cole placed a hand on his chest. “Us? We’re the mutation?” He crossed his arms, shoving his hands in his pits to keep them warm. “So being the Chosen One isn’t really a compliment, huh?”
“Not from our perspective, no. The Drenards in your galaxy named you that. They hold out hope for our extinction, thinking a Human will be the one to effect it. Some crazy old bat foresaw the end of our entire race. A complete impossibility, of course, but enough of her other predictions hit home that some of my people became worried. As this Prophecy spread, it made many of us nervous. We began looking for the signs, for someone both a Human and Drenard. We had a few scares, years ago, but now—after thousands of years—things are finally playing out in our favor. And as everything falls together, new programs are being written for the next passing, new defenses erected in case of—”
“Defenses? Against us? Or against the Drenards?”
“The Drenards?” Byrne laughed. “They are a non-issue. There’s always a few species that evolve and put up a noble fight. None of them matter, even if they defeat an entire galaxy full of Bern. What is their conquest? Temporary lordship over a small cluster of stars for twenty billion years? The end will consume them, and our seeds will spread on the winds of finality.
“No, the real threat is much smaller and more nefarious. It’s the substance that polluted this entire galaxy, the mutation that threatens all of creation—” Byrne’s voice climbed and continued to climb as he went on, “—it’s the foul slime that coats and smothers our program, eating all!”
Cole leaned away from the outburst, pulling his arms tighter to his chest.
“Cyclidinous,” Byrne hissed, his voice full of venom.
“Do what?”
“The organisms, the single-celled monsters that move the stuff of life through hyperspace, spreading throughout your cluster of galaxies. Cyclidinious is what they’re called. That’s the mutation I speak of, not you.”
“Never heard of it,” Cole said. “But if it’s screwing you guys and helping us, I’m a fan.”
“Oh, you’ve heard of it,” Byrne said. “You reek of it. It’s your damned fusion fuel! That’s what it’s made of.”
Byrne’s angry words drifted off, swirling in a pocket of calm air around the mast. And in a land where time did not agree, where events did not always happen at the same time, at the same pace, or in the proper order, it was an unusual and lucky circumstance for his annoyed utterance to linger at that very moment.
For the very substance Byrne cursed, the answer to a riddle that had gravely puzzled Cole, suddenly brought forth a small group of armed men. A raid—a suicidal mission through hyperspace—being launched against the very first group to ever attempt such a thing.
They came, focused, clad in white and wielding invisible swords. They were looking for the One, not knowing it was far too late for prophecies.
Or perhaps, just unwilling to accept it.
Part XIII – Visitors
“We are all of us—everywhere and at all times—mere visitors.”
~The Bern Seer~
19
While Anlyn guided the Bern ship toward one of the distant structures, Edison repeated his speech one more time, just in case anyone was listening. Anlyn felt soothed by his sonorous voice, even though the words sounded like complete gibberish. Unlike his English, she laughed to herself, which only sounds like half gibberish.
Anlyn had arbitrarily chosen the middle of the three major stations to head toward. Each of them was covered with long docking arms to accept massive ships; as a result, they looked like pincushions with the needles inserted at precise intervals. What really looked odd about the stations, however, was that they all stood perfectly empty.
Anlyn glanced over at Edison as he wrapped up his speech one more time. They waited.
Nothing.
“Do you still think it’s a good idea to explore that station?” Anlyn asked in Drenard.
“Absolutely,” Edison said, replying in kind. He peered through the canopy at the distant structures hanging in the void. “It would’ve been quite the raid if your cousin had left the way open. There’s nothing here to stop us.”
“I’m actually shocked he let us through at all. But you’re right, this has been anti-climactic.” Anlyn paused and pointed to her screen. “Hey, according to these charts, we’re going to pass near a major jump point on the way. There’s at least a dozen of those route lines converging on a few spots, probably where they directed outbound traffic. You think we should stop and look for any trace signatures?”
“I don’t follow,” Edison said.
“Hyperdrive traces,” Anlyn said. She turned to him, reminded once again that her betrothed was a genius, but he hadn’t been exposed to everything. He just seemed so comfortable with space flight—and technology in general—that she found it easy to forget he’d grown up around none of it.
“When you jump through hyperspace,” she explained, “you leave a signature. They fade over time, but if someone jumped out in the last few days, we could possibly get a general idea of where they went.”
“Fascinating,” Edison said. He leaned over the ship’s computer and typed away. His fingers paused for a split second. “I found a help file on it,” he murmured, then went back to typing furiously.
“Great,” Anlyn said. “That means I’m going to be the expert on the subject for another five whole minutes.”
Edison turned his head and flashed his teeth, which made Anlyn laugh. Edison snorte
d, which really got her going. The two of them chuckled and wheezed far more than the moment merited—perhaps laughing off some of the day’s anxiety. They laughed with tears in their eyes, with a mind to stop laughing and soon. They laughed with the release of trauma, with the energy that probably should’ve found an escape with a good cry. Most of all, though, they laughed to fake it. They laughed for each other.
It took a moment for Anlyn to compose herself, to keep from carrying on like that forever. She took deep breaths, her heart pounding in her back as the sad echoes of their gaiety filtered aft through the empty ship. She wiped her eyes and looked up at Edison, a somber smile on her face.
“Love, what in the galaxy are we doing here?”
“I’m just following you,” Edison said between pants.
“I’m serious. Are we crazy? Are we wasting our time? What were we thinking?”
Edison finally stopped laughing and gazed out at the wasteland of empty starship stations. He took a deep breath, his chest swelling to fill his tunics. “I’d rather be here than around that table, arguing with your people,” he said. “I was always more up for a good raid than a council meeting.” He turned to Anlyn, his face suddenly full of sadness. “Now my brother, he would’ve preferred the other.”
Anlyn felt a chill at the sudden turn in the conversation. She held her breath, torn between her desire to chase the topic and the fear of scaring Edison away—back to his native English. She toyed with the SADAR using the few buttons she had memorized and watched as he began the trace scan on his own screen. Anlyn took advantage of the distraction:
“You hardly ever mention your brother. Why is that?”
Edison fiddled with the dials along the edge of his SADAR. He cleared his throat, and Anlyn braced for a bout of English techno-babble.
“My brother and I didn’t see the universe the same way,” he said.
Edison fell silent; Anlyn turned to face him. She watched him move to his other display and flip through pages of Bern writing. His head went from side to side as he scanned the lines. She held her breath as he read a few pages and made an adjustment to the scan. Finally, the scan having begun, he turned away and looked out his porthole.
“You don’t have to talk about it—” Anlyn said.
“I killed him,” Edison blurted out.
“Love.” Anlyn reached over and ran her fingers through the fur on his arm. Suddenly, she didn’t want him to talk. She didn’t desire to hear, to know. She felt guilty for ever wanting to drag anything out of him before he was ready. “I didn’t mean to bring that up,” she said. “We don’t have to talk about your home—”
“No.” Edison shook his head. “Before that, before the EMP, my brother and I fought in a bunker. Cole and Molly were there and… and I killed a member of the council with my bare hands. Then I left my brother in there. I left him in that bunker to die, knowing what I was about to do.”
Edison turned and faced Anlyn, tears streaming across his fur.
“I hated him,” he said. “I hated my brother, but exterminating my entire people was easy compared to that—” He stopped, too choked up to continue.
Anlyn reached for him; she wrapped both arms around his head and cooed softly. In the back of her neck, her heart stabbed with pain, hurting at having brought the subject up. Or maybe—at hearing him say the same things in her own language that she’d been used to puzzling through in his rigid English.
“I love you,” she said in the common, Drenard form.
“And I you,” Edison replied.
So they held each other, floating beyond the Great Rift on the Bern side of the universe, Edison with his head snuggled against her tunics, Anlyn with her cheek resting on his fur. They stayed like that for several minutes, precisely the length of time it took the Bern computer to crunch the hyperspace signatures.
And thereby destroy the mood.
20
Walter slapped his flightsuit, thumping the Wadi on its head, but the stupid thing just continued to squirm in his pocket. He reached the end of the alley and rounded the corner, having decided to try the building with the thick door first, mostly to stick to the same order as before. Unlike other Palans, he liked order.
As he reached the wooden sidewalk, he merged with a weaving stream of boisterous and drunk nighttime people. He stuck close to the side of the building, wincing at the sound of the traffic blaring in the street.
Just ahead, he spotted a wallet bulging in a back pocket, the badge of a tourist. He scooted forward, drying his hands on his flightsuit, before he remembered what he was supposed to be doing:
He was looking for Molly.
He shook his head, turned, and surveyed the building next to him.
It was lit up inside, but he didn’t see an open or closed sign. He cupped his hands around his face and leaned close, trying to look past the glare of light bouncing back and forth between the glass and his face. The interior seemed shallow, just a bit of standing room and a tall counter that ran the width of the building. Two large Humans worked behind the counter moving boxes and doing boring, officey stuff.
Walter stepped back to look for a sign on the building. The only thing he found was a single line etched into the large pane of glass:
TALLY INC — YOUR ELECTION HQ
That narrowed it down. Walter knew how Molly felt about politics, no way would she have followed Cat in there. Besides, hadn’t that ticket guy said something about a pub?
He turned and squeezed through the crowd, passing the dark alley to see what the other building was. The first thing he noticed was all the neon lights in the windows, the glowing tubes bent into the shapes of frothy mugs and gigantic bottles. Definitely a pub.
A cluster of figures stumbled out the front door—Humans and otherwise—somehow staying upright by clinging to their fellow drunks. Walter frowned at them. He waited for the group to pass before ducking through the entrance and into a small foyer, where he found a second set of double-doors. These were slathered with posters for upcoming events and hand-scrawled pages put up by people selling things. A half-dozen flash drives dangled from the ends of the latter, no doubt loaded with product pictures and info. Walter considered stealing a few—he knew how to wipe and unlock them for general use—then remembered he had an entire sock drawer full of them on Parsona.
He thumped the Wadi one more time before pushing the doors open and stepping into the pub. The blatting traffic and yelling from outside were immediately replaced with a smoky, clamorous din that somehow managed to be worse. A wall of large shouting aliens—Humans mostly—crowded a bar running the length of one wall. The rest of the place was filled with small tables surrounded by clusters of mismatched chairs, but nobody seemed to be sitting in them. Much of the furniture had been pushed aside to create a clearing where another raucous crowd stood in a vibrating mass. Pushing and yelling, holding their beers aloft and splashing their neighbors, it looked like a bunch of Palan pirates gambling on a game of Rats.
Walter stepped closer, trying to peek between the forest of legs, but they were too dense. He went to one of the tables instead and pushed aside the collection of empties and smoldering ashtrays. Using one of the chairs, he stepped to the top of the table and took a quick look at the center of the group, trying to sate his curiosity quickly before one of the barmaids told him to get down.
It was a fight. A big man was beating on a little one, the latter’s face so covered in blue blood he couldn’t even make out its race. He tried to remember how many species bled blue as the little one’s head whipped around from a heavy blow, the crack of bone-on-bone coming just before another roar from the crowd. Long hair flew out in an arc, blonde with streaks of light blue.
Walter recognized the hair, the only thing he’d noticed from the stupid show. The little person was the woman they were after! And she was getting her ass kicked.
Walter looked around for Molly, wondering where she had gotten off to. He jumped down from the table and started for the bar, sa
w the thick wall of patrons there and stopped. He turned back to the fight, not knowing what to do.
The Wadi clawed him through his secret pocket, tiny claws jabbing into his flesh, the stinging pinpricks spreading as the creature’s toxins coursed through his veins.
Walter thumped the thing on the head and fought to come up with a plan. He cursed Molly for disappearing whenever he seemed to really need her.
••••
The man standing over Molly yelled across the room to the others. “Hey boss? I think she is local. Been voting as if, anyway.”
The man with the beard strolled over and checked a small screen. Molly groaned at him, pleading in her head for them to remove the foul rag. She gagged again and started coughing, her cheeks puffing against the tape and cloth.
“Hmmm. Pretty good cyclid count. Either she was born here, or she’s been on-planet a while.” He looked up at the larger man. “Good work. Take it all and label it Bekkie for now.”
“Thanks, boss.” The brute looked down at Molly and winked, as if this were good news for both of them. “Five liters,” he said to himself. “That’s a buck seventy ounces at eight thousand an ounce.”
“Divided by two!” the other guy yelled.
The man frowned and glowered at the speaker. After a moment, he smiled again. “Still, I can’t even do the math, which means a good night. A very good night.”
He whistled to himself and picked up a needle from the tray before inspecting it. Molly raised her head and yelled into the blood-soaked rag; she banged the back of her skull against the metal table and flexed her biceps as hard as she could against the restraints.
“Ah, there’s our vein,” the guy said. He slapped her arm with a flat palm. Molly looked down at her elbow as he brought the needle close. She tried moving it side to side to avoid the plunge, but the man just tightened his grip, causing the purple web beneath her skin to stand out even more.
