by Scott Mackay
“Ben, is that any way to talk to your sister?” said Cody.
Ben, at the age of nine, had learned the joys of tormenting his little sister.
“Daddy, are they really big and hairy?” asked Catherine.
“No one knows what they look like, sweetheart.”
“When I get older, I’m going to study the Builders,” said Ben. “I’m going to run tests on the main construct on the Island of Charity in the Sea of Humility. I know I’ll be able to make some breakthroughs. I have the primary-color mosaics on my computer already.”
Ben, at the age of nine, had discovered the joys of computing.
“But they’re really not big and hairy, are they, Daddy?” asked Catherine, growing more and more concerned about it.
Cody stopped, looked at the Tower of the Helping Hand rise into the thick misty atmosphere, a beacon of sorts, a testimony to a race who had had their time on this planet and now were gone. In a few years he would be 50. There would come a time when he too would pass. He felt, curiously, a poignant grief for the Builders. The truth was, no one knew anything about them, hadn’t been able to interpret any of the available evidence into anything that gave even the dimmest picture of who they might be and of how they might have lived. All they knew for sure was that the Builders were gone.
Cody and his children entered the forest. Cody put his hand against the nearest wartwood. He’d grown to love the feel of the bumpy trunks. Yes, the Builders were gone. In his correspondence with Claire Dubeau (it now took more than six hours for their messages to travel back and forth) he had learned something interesting about rogue planets. Theoretically they could keep life going much longer than an ordinary planet, up to thirty billion years, because they didn’t have to worry about a sun going supernova on them. So why, then, had the Builders disappeared?
And would they come back? His daughter raised a good question. Would they come back, now that Carswell wasn’t going to crash into the sun? Were they out there somewhere among the stars keeping an eye on things? Had they been content to let Carswell crash into the sun? And if so, would they now recognize the Meek’s legitimate claim to Carswell?
He took out his hatchet and hacked a sizable hunk out of the nearest tree. He would carve a cat for Catherine. And a pony for Benjamin. He wasn’t going to worry about the Builders, how they had disappeared, or how the Meek might someday disappear as well. He was going to give his present life on Carswell his undivided attention. He would leave the wider concerns to others. He didn’t want to end up with the same doubts Artemis Axworthy had had, didn’t want to reach a point in his life where he realized that despite his best intentions, his best efforts, he shouldn’t have been a husband and a father after all. He would worry about the Builders when and if they decided to return. He looked at his children then glanced back at the burgeoning city of Builders’ Mound.
For now, he had more important things to think about.
Cody woke in the middle of the night. Sat up. Listened. The wind was blowing and he felt a lightness in the air, knew a rare high-pressure system was moving in. He pulled on his boots and stood up. He looked at the 26-hour clock. Daylight was precisely three hours and 42 minutes away. Lulu stirred beside him.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m going outside,” he said. “I think the clouds have cleared.”
She nodded. “I’ll be out in a minute,” she said. She, too, liked the sight of a clear sky. “I’ll make some tea.”
He went out into the yard and looked up at the sky. Sure enough, the nearly perpetual cloud cover had moved off, something that didn’t happen more than five or six times a year, something he particularly liked to see at nighttime. Stars. In a sky as black as coal one star was bigger than the rest. The sun. Bigger, but even so, just another star now, a glimmer in the darkness, nine billion kilometers away. He checked the thermometer nailed to the side of the house. Six degrees Celsius, well above freezing; the volcanism, radioactive decay, and greenhouse gases were, as predicted, keeping the planet warm. Lulu came out the back door with two cups of tea. She handed one to Cody and looked up at the sky.
“Have you ever seen so many of them?” she asked.
“That big one over there is the sun,” he said. “The one that’s setting in the west.”
She nodded. “So these over here in the east,” she said, “the ones that are rising. Those are the ones we’re heading toward?”
“Those are the ones we’re heading toward,” he confirmed. “The astronomers predict we won’t be within probe range of any of them for at least another 500 years. Unless we make some miraculous strides in spacecraft propulsion. For you and me, and for generations to come, Carswell is it.”
She looked at him demurely, slipped her arm around his back, and pulled herself near. “Is that so bad?” she asked.
He looked down at her, smiled. “No,” he said. “Not at all.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scott Mackay is the author of several novels in the science fiction, mystery, and thriller genres, in addition to numerous short stories. He is the winner of the Okanagan Award for literary short fiction and the Arthur Ellis Award for best mystery short story, and he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best SF novel. He lives in Toronto, Canada.
ALSO BY SCOTT MACKAY
NOVELS
Outpost*
The Meek*
Orbis*
Omnifix*
Tides*
Phytosphere*
Omega Sol*
*available as a JABberwocky ebook
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