by S. L. Viehl
The structures were also arranged in tall clusters of cylindrical white stone tubes that led up to oval chambers of the darker white-gold stone. What alloys they had used were pure gold in color and seemed to serve only as some sort of exterior decoration.
As beautiful as the Jxin colony was, I didn’t see any drones, equipment, or other variety of technology. There were plenty of people in various colored robes, and the dwellings, but nothing else. To my eye the place appeared almost barren.
Some of the Jxin glanced at us as we walked into their settlement, but the majority walked by us as if we weren’t even there. I didn’t attempt to speak to any of them as Shon and I stopped in the center of the colony, where we stood and watched a large group forming a standing circle in between the largest dwelling clusters.
I didn’t like this. I hadn’t yet seen one child or elderly person; everyone in the colony appeared to be a young, healthy adult. “What are they going to do? Sacrifice their young, or eat their old people?”
A female in a yellow robe walking past me heard what I said and turned around. She came over and touched my cheek, and then said, “We do not make sacrifices. We have no young or old among us. We do not eat.”
My jaw dropped as I recognized her face. “Maggie?”
“We have no names.” She tilted her head. “You do not belong here.”
“Are you forgetting who you’re talking to? It’s me, Cherijo. The surrogate daughter you’ve been tormenting for the last ten years.” When she didn’t react, I went to her and grabbed her by the arms to give her a shake. “No more games. Why did you do this? Why bring the ship here? Did you send the protocrystal to infect Shon so you could get me down here?”
“I do not know you, Cherijo.” She said my name slowly, as if she was uncertain of the pronunciation. “We do not have children, so you cannot be my daughter. I have no control over you, this male, or your ship. I have no reason to bring you here.”
“You’re lying.” I was so angry I could have beaten her into the ground. “Don’t deny it. How else would you speak my language so perfectly? You came to Terra. You helped my father create me. You pretended to be my mother. Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you?”
“I absorbed your language when I touched you. I have never left our world.” She seemed amused now. “I am too new. It will be a very long time before I am sent out to give life.”
I glanced around us. “You’ve never left this world.”
She laughed. “To depart, one must gather and perfect and purify for many eons. I have lived only a thousand years. I cannot leave.”
“She speaks truth,” Shon said to me. “Jxin child.”
My hands dropped away as I tried to sort it out. “She’s only a kid in this time?” He inclined his head. “So what now? Am I supposed to stop her from leaving? Kill her? Make sure I’m never born, something like that?”
“You cannot stop this,” he said, pointing toward the circle of Jxin.
The people in the circle had joined their hands, and held their faces up toward the sun. The light streaming over them intensified and reflected into the center of the circle, where it formed into a glowing ball that grew brighter and whiter by the moment. When it was almost too bright to look at, some of the people in the circle let go of the others and began walking toward it. When they reached the light, they disappeared into it briefly, and then reemerged a few seconds later, their bodies glowing with the same energy.
“What the hell are they doing?” I murmured. “Sunbathing?”
“It is purification of the essence,” Maggie said, smiling at the circle. “Soon our elders will attain the perfection required to shed their bodies forever. Then the Great Ascension will truly begin.”
“You’re dumping your bodies to become a big ball of light?” I shook my head. “Truly stupid, more like.”
“It is so much more than you could possibly understand.” She gave me a pitying look. “How tiresome it must be, to have such a primitive mind.”
I showed her my teeth. “At least I’m not trying to turn into an ambulatory spot emitter.”
The last of the Jxin in the circle went in and came out of the light, which faded as they joined hands and appeared to reabsorb it into their already glowing bodies. After that, they wandered away in different directions, their illuminated bodies making the watching Jxin smile and nod and laugh.
I suppose the whole deal would have sent a xenobiologist into raptures, but I found it about as interesting as watching a bunch of drones switch on.
“What happens to the people who can’t purify their essence, or whatever?” I asked Maggie.
“There are no such people here.”
I folded my arms. “Every species has failures.”
“Not the Jxin.” She made a negligent gesture. “Once, long ago, before we attained all that we are, there were such disappointments. They were known as undesirables. Our ancestors culled them from our bloodlines and sent them away.”
I remembered the other civilization our long- range scanners had detected. “Were they sent to another planet in the next solar system?”
She nodded. “They were given a new world of their own, where they could indulge in their imperfections and harm and maim and destroy one another without our interference. Perhaps you should visit their planet.”
I ignored her snotty suggestion as I mulled it over. How convenient for Jxin, to simply purge their gene pool until it was sparkling clear, like their crystal art. I could guess who those nasty rejects had grown up to be, but it wouldn’t hurt to get a confirmation. “What do they call themselves, these undesirables?”
“We do not have contact with them,” she told me. “We do not care. I am finished speaking with you now.” She started to wander off.
“Oh, no.” I caught her arm. “I have it on good authority that we need to talk more.”
“We have spoken at length. I find you too limited to be of any interest to me.” She looked down at my hand. “The Jxin do not feel pain, and we cannot be injured. Tightening your grip will do nothing but hurt your hand.”
“I came here from the future,” I said. “I have some information you may find of interest.”
“You are not advanced enough to travel so.” But even as she said that, she looked closer at me and Shon, as if seeing us clearly for the first time. “But you are not us, and you are not them, and there are no others.”
“See? You worked it out, all on your own.” I didn’t want to discuss this out in the open, not when I wasn’t sure how Maggie or the Jxin would react, so I gestured toward the cluster dwellings. “Which mushroom is yours?”
She pointed to one of the top levels of a smaller cluster. “I commune there with other new ones.”
“That’ll work.” I led her in that direction, glancing back to see Shon walking to where the circle had been. He turned his head and gave me a nod.
“Do you have any star vessels on this planet I can borrow?” I asked Maggie as we entered the bottom level of her dwelling.
“We do not use star vessels. Why do you require one? You have one here and one in orbit.”
That squashed my idea of escaping back to the Sunlace in a Jxin launch. “It’s a long story.”
They might have looked simple and beautiful on the outside, but on the inside the Jxin’s homes were breathtaking. As they had evolved past the need for such commonplace things as water, food, and heat, the Jxin had evidently eliminated all the customary trappings that went along with them. Their homes were instead filled with art, music, and plants. The general theme connecting everything was native crystal: sculptures carved from it, music made by it, and plants growing from stunning arrangements of it.
The material used to construct the dwellings allowed the sunlight through, which made everything around us sparkle. It was a bit like walking into a home decorated almost entirely in diamonds. The only spaces I saw that weren’t being used as display areas were several regularly spaced, arch-shaped recesses in th
e walls.
Maggie took me up to an observation deck that looked out over the forest and at the same time magnified the view so that I could see nearly half the continent beyond the settlement. As I gawked a little—all right, my jaw landed on the floor and stayed there for a good ten minutes—she grew impatient.
“You keep me from my interests,” she told me. “Tell me what information you possess.”
“The undesirables your ancestors evicted from Jxinok call themselves the Odnallak,” I said, peering out the other side of the deck. “They’re in the process of trying to ascend. In the process they will create a malignant substance that is harmful to all intelligent life. Is that really the valley of the waterfalls over there? I thought that was like a couple thousand kilometers away from here.”
“It is the valley. You are mistaken about the undesirables. As they were, are, and will be, they will never ascend.” She didn’t even sound a little worried. “Can you find your way back to your little ship, or will you need directions?”
“Why do you think the Odnallak will fail to evolve like you?” I countered. “Up until you kicked them off the planet, they were you.”
“The undesirables are impure beings, and as such have no hope of perfection. They first refused correction of the flaws ingrained in their cells and then the impurities could no longer be removed; it was why they were sent away. If they do anything, they will destroy themselves.”
“Oh, they’re going to do that, too,” I assured her. “Their creation of the black crystal almost wipes out their species. The few survivors become shape-shifting criminals and killers who forget about all the nasty things their ancestors did.”
She sighed. “And this is all the information you have?”
“This is what is happening in my time,” I corrected. “What you told me was my reason for being. In the future, you created me to be immortal so that I would live long enough to find a cure for the black crystal. But there is no cure, Maggie. It can’t be destroyed, or reasoned with, or sent someplace where it can’t do any harm. It’s infected nearly every inhabited world in my time. It’s caused billions of species to suffer and become diseased or insane and die terrible deaths, and that’s just while it’s been napping. Someday it’s going to wake up and start eating worlds, and no matter how long I live, I won’t be able to stop it.”
“You are immortal?” She inspected me from my head to my footgear and back again. “How did I make you so?”
“I don’t care,” I snapped. “Didn’t you hear a word of what I just said? Billions of beings are going to die unless you stop the Odnallak from trying to follow in your footsteps. You have to keep them from creating the black crystal.”
“But you are here,” she said. “I created you, you said, to cure this black crystal. Thus, the black crystal cannot be destroyed or averted by me as I am now.”
“You can still do something now,” I insisted. “You can change the future.”
“Obviously I cannot,” she said. “If I had tried and were successful, you would never have come here, Cherijo. You would not exist.”
Eleven
As much as I hated to admit it, Maggie was right. If there were some way for her to prevent the black crystal from being created, I would never have come to Jxinok. I’d have winked out of existence the moment the events that led to my timeline were altered. No black crystal, no reason for her to create me in the future.
I wandered back into the interior chamber, absently admiring the crystal version of the valley of the waterfalls. They really were beautiful, especially the tiny, interlocking specimens she’d used to form the flowing water; the play of light over them made them look just like real liquid. Then I frowned and bent closer.
The water crystals were three-sided.
So were the green crystals she’d used to form the flora around the falls, and the golden brown crystal she’d shaped into the rocky ledges.
I didn’t let myself get excited until I inspected a dozen more sculptures and confirmed my suspicions.
Maggie joined me in front of a wall installation where one of the cluster dwellings had been reproduced in opaque white and gold crystal. “What are you doing?”
“All of these crystals you’ve used for your artwork have three sides.” I turned to her. “Do all the crystals on this planet grow in the same formation?” She nodded. “Do any of them generate power?”
“All of them are alive,” she said, “until we harvest them. The process strips the organics from them. Do you wish me to escort you back to your ship?”
“How do you harvest them?” I pressed. “By hand?”
She frowned. “Why would we do that? What does it matter?”
“Tell me how you do it and I’ll leave,” I promised.
“We use the collectors.” Bored now, she walked over to one of the empty recesses I’d noticed before. “We think of the colors and sizes we need, and the collector gathers the crystals and deposits them here.”
“Show me.”
“You said you would leave if I told you. I have.” When I didn’t budge, she exhaled heavily and turned to the alcove, bracing both hands on either side. She closed her eyes, and a moment later a small heap of dark purple crystals appeared in the bottom of the alcove.
I stared at the crystals. “What if they’re not suitable? Can you send them back?”
“Of course.” She repeated the process, and the dark purple pile disappeared.
“Does the collector work only for you, or can others use it?”
“It is keyed to read the thoughts of any who activate it,” she said.
“Thanks.” I ran to the nearest exit cylinder.
Shon stood waiting just outside the dwelling. As I emerged from the lowest level, I cleared my thoughts. I didn’t know if he could read my mind, or even if what I had planned would work, but I had to try.
I waved at him. “Healer Valtas, I need you in here.”
He slowly walked toward me. “What is it?”
“Something wonderful,” I said. “A cure.”
He stopped and shook his head. “No cure.”
“They’ve just discovered it,” I said. “It will change everything for us. Please, hurry.”
He fell for it, and followed me into the dwelling. I stopped in front of one of the collectors and turned to him, smiling.
“You see?” I gestured to the interior of the alcove. “It’s all right there.”
He peered inside. “I see nothing.”
“I know. I’m lying.” I shoved him inside. “Sorry.”
I braced my hands in the same places Maggie had, closed my eyes, and focused. I didn’t know how to tell the collector to do as I wanted, so I just imagined it: the protocrystal being pulled out of his body and sent back where it belonged, back in space. Then I imagined Shon alive and well again.
I heard Shon make a strange sound as something bright shone against my eyelids. Then the entire dwelling began to shake, and just as abruptly stopped.
“Cherijo?”
I opened my eyes to see Shon standing inside the recess. He looked bewildered.
“Where are we?” He glanced around him. “Why am I in here?”
“It worked.” Exhausted but satisfied, I dropped my hands. “Too bad I can’t fit the Sunlace in one of these things.”
Maggie joined us and looked from the oKiaf to me and back again. “What have you done?”
“I removed the crystal infecting my friend’s body,” I told her, “and now we’re leaving. It’s not really been fun. Bye.”
“Wait,” Maggie called after us as I led Shon out of the dwelling.
“All she’s wanted me to do is get out of here,” I said to Shon, “but the minute I go, she wants me to stay. It’s really sad, how these higher-evolved life-forms can never make up their mind. How are you feeling?”
“Tired.” He flexed his paws. “You said I was infected with another crystal.”
“Yeah, whatever is all over the Sunlace got inside
you. I think it was an accident, but it decided to spring me from the ship and bring us down here.” I glanced to the side as Maggie caught up with us. “What do you want now?”
“You are more interesting than I thought,” she said. “I wish to speak to you now.”
“You had your chance.” Treating her like she was the stupid primitive was probably unwise, given how much power she and her people had, but I wanted a little payback. And then something clicked. “There is nothing for us here. We’re going back to our ship.”
“Wait.” When we didn’t, she added, “Please.”
I stopped and turned around. “Say pretty please with sugar on top.”
“Why would I . . . ?” She saw my expression and quickly added, “Pretty please with sugar on top.”
I was starting to enjoy myself. “Now apologize to my friend.”
Maggie eyed Shon. “I have done nothing to him.”
“He was in trouble, and you did nothing to help him.” I folded my arms. “Well?”
“I apologize to you for my inaction,” Maggie said to Shon.
The oKiaf glanced at me. “This is unnecessary.”
“No, pal, this is what we call fun.” I regarded Maggie. “You know, you may be an omnipotent life-form on the brink of attaining evolutionary perfection, but you’re also rude, inconsiderate, and selfish. We’re not interested in you anymore. Have a nice ascension.”
Maggie followed us all the way back to the launch. Shon looked over his shoulder a few times, but I acted as if she weren’t there. I had the feeling that Maggie had never been ignored or dismissed in her life, especially by two primitives who should have been worshipping at her feet. I was gambling that the novelty might work in our favor.
“You cannot leave now,” I heard her say as Shon and I started up the ramp. “I wish to know more about you. Why did you decide to put the male in the collector? How were you able to operate it? Your mind is too—”
