Nikos? I glanced again at Mr. Purple Brainface. Nikos? No, he was dead, surely. And this thing had taken his pants. I flipped Occam’s razor back and forth a few times over that one. Which was the simpler answer: that Nikos had survived — despite Sho’s ancestor gutting him like a trout — and turned into the creature looming above me, or that a monster had showed up after all the other impossible events of the day and helped itself to the dead alien’s pants?
I couldn’t make up my mind so I opted to go with Sho’s implied version. At least for the moment. That and the fact that Reggie was so happy to see me and not barking at or trying to protect me from the monster.
“I saw you die,” I said to the thing, but then amended. “Sho ripped your heart out.”
Laughter bubbled up from several sulci; literally bubbled. I felt like I might be sick.
“That wasn’t my heart,” said the creature. “It was a much less critical organ, my adaptation cluster. Not that I won’t miss it.” Its speech had the same contours as Nikos’s, but the voice was off, more raspy and higher. “Your concern is touching, though.”
I closed my eyes, did a mental count from one to five, and opened them again. Nope. Same oozing brain face.
“Adaptation cluster?”
“Yes, Mr. Conroy. Without it my body has reverted to its true form.”
“That's what you guys really look like?”
“We are archivists and data collectors,” said the monster that I had to admit was really Nikos. “We have to be able to mingle with other races, to walk among them without detection. Each nodule of the cluster contains thousands of physiognomic sequences. Selecting the right combination allows the Uary to express an appearance consistent with nearly any of the intelligent races in our galaxy.”
“So having those, um, nodules cut out wasn’t a mortal injury.”
“Precisely. I was extremely fortunate. A few centimeters to either side and Mr. Sho could have plucked out something vital.”
Nikos set down the padd and then began plucking the metal caps off from his fingertips. When finished, he tapped the object on my forehead and lifted it off. The pain in my chest had already faded and the euphoria followed after.
Nikos stepped back. “That should do it.”
Reggie jumped into my lap as I sat up and I cradled him with both hands. All was right with the world again.
Well, sort of. A quick glance around showed the grape-like cluster that had been inside Nikos, Lorsca’s severed head, and a bit further away the rest of the Svenkali’s body.
“Where’s Nicole?”
“She’s gone to retrieve our vessel,” said Nikos. “I’m a bit too conspicuous now to simply walk out of here, and there’s plenty of room in the glade for her to land.”
“So you’re done and cutting your losses?” I said.
If Nikos frowned at me, I couldn’t tell. “Not every venture can succeed, Mr. Conroy. We sought to learn two new things: Whether we could approximate the Svenkali ability to access the personae and knowledge of those who have experienced mortal death, as well as how your ancient Mayans came to know the future date that your planet would experience contact.”
“And?”
He held up a pair of rings, the one Juan Sho had worn as well as the one I had ripped from my hand and thrown away. “A detailed analysis will be done, but the early data from these devices suggest that our limited success today was only possible because you had already previous experienced the process. The potential may exist in all humans, but without a Svenkali to quicken it, we cannot replicate it ourselves.”
I nodded and kept the relief from my face. No need to let the Uary know that I didn’t think the galaxy was ready for a planet of human beings all able to talk to their own or anyone else’s dead.
“And the calendar thing?”
“We fared a bit better there, but even so the answer was incomplete. Mr. Sho’s ancestor was able to tell us of holy knowledge passed along only to high priests. He spoke of a dead god with bright hair and many voices who came to his own ancestors with a prophecy that time was like a great wheel, and that only years after the wheel had completed its turning would all debts be paid.”
“Cryptic,” I said.
Nikos nodded his big purple-brained head. “Indeed. And not particularly illuminated. We can surmise that the calendrical system came from an extraterrestrial visitor, but even so we still do not know how this ‘dead god’ knew the future.”
Juan Sho had been gathering up the bits of equipment scattered by Lorsca’ s attack, piling everything onto the blanket we had used. As Nikos finished speaking he joined us, shaking his head.
“But that’s not all of it. That’s what he told you, but he was hesitating, holding stuff back.”
“Mr. Sho?”
“He was in my head. I remember what he said, and what he was thinking. Some of it doesn’t make sense, and maybe that’s because it wasn’t in English and while I could understand him it doesn’t really translate all that well.”
“What did he leave out?” I asked.
“Details,” said Sho. “Like why the dead god was called the dead god.”
“Why?”
“Its skin was dead white, like a bloodless corpse. It came to them naked, and had no genitals.”
“And the many voices?” I asked.
“It was a lot more than many. The number had been passed down from priest to priest. One million, eight hundred seventy-two thousand separate voices, all speaking as one.”
“That’s a very precise number,” I said.
“It’s part of the Mayan calendar, the number of days in a Long Count cycle of thirteen baktuns. The last day of the last baktun marked the date of Galactic Contact.”
Nikos sat down suddenly, burying his purply head in his spatulated hands.
“Problem?” I asked.
“I had not put the pieces together. The Uary had them but never saw the connection.”
“What connection?”
He lowered his hands. “The Uary has of course known the number of days in the Long Count. As you said, it is a precise number, but not a unique one. It is also the number of separate, self-aware committees that come together to form a functioning Clarkeson.”
“Corpselike skin,” I repeated. “And brightly-colored hair.”
Nikos nodded.
“You’re saying the ‘dead god’ that gave the Mayans their calendar was a Clarkeson? Then what’s the bit about debts being paid mean?”
“He was going to tell you that piece, but that’s when the Svenkali showed up. And because Mr. Conroy was here, my ancestor thought he was some kind of instrument of the prophecy. That’s when it all went nuts.”
“What piece? What prophecy?”
“The dead god was from the future,” said Sho. “It brought the calendar and told its story so that it would be passed forward through time to all the priests. It promised that a holy duo from its own past would come seeking a priest, that they would be guided by an incredible god who showed that priest his own future’s children. These three, the holy duo and their incredible god, were also from the future, but a future that was from the dead god’s past. When those two pasts catch up, that’s when the priest was to honor the dead god with the blood sacrifice of the others. That would cause all debts to be paid.”
I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”
“Don’t you see,” said Nikos, despair in his voice. “The Clarkesons possess time travel.”
I stared at him. “No, they don’t. Time travel is impossible. Everyone knows that.”
“You’re right. And the Uary knows this better than anyone. The ability to interact with the past is a story that shows up in all cultures, but its reality would shatter the galaxy as we know it. It cannot exist.”
“Then how do you explain Sho’s ancestor’s story?”
“Coincidence, nothing more.” said Nikos, but it was clear he didn’t believe his own words.
“And the bit about th
e god who would show the priest his future’s children?”
“More of the same.”
“An incredible god,” I said.
“The Mayan had no shortage of gods,” said Nikos. “I don’t think superlatives matter.”
“Unless it’s a translation error, from whatever language Sho’s ancestor spoke to modern English. Maybe it wasn’t ‘incredible’ at all. Maybe the word was something else entirely.”
“Such as?”
I shrugged. “Amazing?”
“Yes. Even you see it.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Uary is a collection of archivists, Mr. Conroy. Each of us exists to contribute to the collective knowledge of the whole. We automatically share with all the Uary, thirty times each day. Moreover, unlike the Svenkali, we spread that knowledge, all of it, to other races throughout the galaxy.”
“Can’t you hold information back?”
Nikos shook his head. “The Uary can no more censor a piece of its archive than you can choose to breathe only certain molecules of the oxygen you inhale. All of the facts have been placed before me and I cannot ignore the obvious conclusion: The Clarkesons have acquired the ability to travel back through time. Moreover, they have deliberately manipulated events so that the Uary would learn this fact, and disseminate it far and wide.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” said Juan Sho.
“Indeed. I cannot envision a greater opposite of good than what would result. Galactic chaos. Devastation on a level the galaxy has never seen. Along with endless studies proving the impossibility of time travel, the Uary’s archive contains models for what would happen if it were somehow possible. The Clarkesons know this as well.”
I connected the last set of dots. “You’re saying they did this deliberately?”
“It is their nature.”
“And all of this was set in motion centuries ago? We’ve just been waiting around for events to catch up with us. We’re already screwed.”
Nikos lifted his head from his hands. His facial lobes pulsed. “Perhaps… not.”
“How not? You know the truth, so it’s part of the Uary archive now.”
“Not yet. Right now, only we three know that time travel exists. The Uary sharing is cyclical and won’t happen again for approximately twenty minutes. At that time, yes, the Clarkeson’s plan will be complete.”
“But that’s your nature, adding to the knowledge base.”
“Then we must prevent that nature. I require your assistance for this; the Uary cannot cause harm. It must be done, before Nicole returns. She must not learn any of this.”
I set Reggie aside and went to see what lay on the blanket that I could use as a weapon. I found nothing, and moved on to search the Svenkali’s body. “Do you need to prepare? Are there any words you need us to say?”
“All has been said. Lead Nicole to believe my injuries were not as superficial as we’d believed.”
A flat square detached from the underside of Lorsca’s boot. It had a pair of slits on opposite sides and a set of recessed switches on a third one. I held it at arm’s length and began pressing buttons. A gleaming beam shot out from the slits to create an aero-ski. Another press and it vanished.
Sho stared at me, realization painting horror across his face. “You can’t… I won’t help…”
Nikos and I ignored him. If I failed, if the existence of time travel became known, someone somewhen would have come back to stop me. No one did.
“Thank you, Mr. Conroy.”
I stood beside the Uary and held the square in front of him, one of the slit ends pressed to his chest. “You’re absolutely sure about your models and projections?”
“It is the sort of thing the Uary is best at,” he said.
We all act according to our nature. For human beings, this can mean setting aside our insistence on a better outcome and accepting the necessity of actions that will haunt us ever after. Occam’s razor didn’t help here; either side of the blade led to regret.
I pressed a button.
Nikos took about five minutes to die. When I retracted the aero-ski, I saw it had carved a rectangular hole though some critical organ, presumably an Uary-analog to the human heart. The wound gushed more orange syrup and his body convulsed, but he never spoke.
Juan Sho spent an additional five minutes being sick.
Nicole returned with the Uary vessel about half an hour later.
We used that time to clean up the scene a bit. I stripped the Svenkali of the rest of its equipment and fed all of it to my buffalito, then did the same with the Uary’s pair of rings, and everything that Sho had piled on the blanket. With his help, I used it to wrap around Nikos like a shroud. Reggie sat next to the body, whimpering softly.
Lorsca had to do without, but I did fetch its head and set it on its chest.
When Nicole arrived her grief over Nikos’s death distracted her from the lie that Reggie had gone into a feeding frenzy and devoured all our gear.
“I don’t understand,” she said, checking notes on the padd that she’d taken with her, the only object that had survived my buffalito’s impromptu meal. “I checked him over before I left. We both reviewed the instruments’ readings. Other than the loss of his adaptation cluster, he appeared fine.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “If it’s any consolation, he seemed to pass quickly and without pain.” Sho just stared at the ground.
“This mission came first. The attempt to recreate what the Svenkali can do, that was worth everything. Honestly, neither of us expected to survive, not once we knew Lorsca had tracked us to Earth. We’d talked about it. We had a plan that whichever of us it took first, the other was to use that as an opportunity to escape and survive long enough to share what we’d learned with the rest of the Uary.”
“And you’ve done that?” I asked.
“Shortly before my return. We know that technology cannot effectively duplicate the Svenkali’s abilities. And we know that Earth was visited in its past by non-humans. Neither is quite what we’d hoped to learn, but we know more than we did before. For that, you both have the gratitude of the Uary.”
I nodded to Sho. “Is there anything else we can do to help with the bodies?”
“I understand the human sentiment, and I appreciate the intention. But no, the Svenkali will realize soon enough that their seeker has died, and have no special regard for the body once life has gone. The Uary has always taken a similar, pragmatic view. I’ll incinerate all the remains when we lift; the grass will grow back soon enough. Thank you for your care though. ”
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“I’ll take you back to Mr. Sho’s dock. I’ve left a data storage device for him back at the El Presidente with his promised payment of recipes that have long been lost from the known galaxy. And I’ve spoken to the chef there. He’ll be happy to prepare a feast for you both, all of his specialties. It’s the least I can do for involving you in this.”
I offered up a small smile. “Will there be enough for Reggie too?”
She stroked his furry head. “There’ll be plenty for him. But really, what is enough for a buffalito?”
Some questions cannot be answered, even by the Uary. Others shouldn’t be. We climbed aboard Nicole’s vessel and left in pursuit of a meal.
* * *
The End
Timeline
What Happens When in the Conroyverse
1991
Fiona Katherine St. Vincent Wyndmoor is born.
* * *
2012
End of Mayan Calendar, and Humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrials.
* * *
2018
Mexico shocks the world by outlawing most alien races from inside its borders.
* * *
2026
Amadeus Colson defines one edge of Human Space.
* * *
2042
The “Great Texas Temporal Disaster” – a Physics experiment at a Waco univ
ersity goes awry, creating areas of slowed time.
* * *
2044
Texas loses its statehood and is removed from the United States of America.
* * *
2049
Left-John Mocker is born of Comanche parents in Oklahoma.
* * *
2057
Conroy is born!
* * *
2072
Fiona Katherine St. Vincent Wyndmoor dies and, against her family’s wishes, is buried on Hesnarj.
* * *
2076
Conroy is marooned on Hesnarj and takes up hypnosis.
* * *
2079
Conroy meets Left-John Mocker at the Aztec in El Paso, Texas.
Kwarum Sivtinzi Lapalla dies, never to be named by any living Svenkali.
* * *
2089
Conroy steals a fertile buffalo dog off Gibrahl and sets up Buffalogic, Inc.
Gel acquires Barry.
* * *
2090
Left-John Mocker wins the Extra-Solar Poker Classic Tournament.
Buffalogic, Inc. lends its support to an archaeological dig near the Martian city of Seroni.
Conroy meets the Uary and hypnotically regresses an ancient Mayan priest.
* * *
2091
Conroy performs at a club and reminisces about how he became a hypnotist.
Conroy helps an unwilling telepath deal with his ability.
* * *
2092
Conroy visits Brunzibar and falls in love with the Baroness Parmaq.
Left-John Mocker wins a quarter share of the Golden Turtle Palace in Newer Jersey.
* * *
2093
Conroy plays “matter” with Seljor Thu, aka Digger, a telepathic Taurian.
Calendrical Regression Page 6
