The aliens swirled their many feet and the fibrous gills, stirring up their lake. Then their chittering answers were turned into the words, “We are skeptical.”
“To your specifications,” said the woman. “I pledge.”
The aliens spoke of rare elements that needed to be increased or abolished. Proportions were critical. Perfection was the only satisfactory solution.
“It shall be done,” the captain promised.
The aliens claimed to be satisfied. Confident of success, they slithered into the deeper water, plainly enjoying their new abode.
The captain looked across the lake, spying one machine that was plainly doing nothing.
With a commanding tone, she said, “This is Washen. We’ve got a balky conditioner sitting in the middle. Do you see it?”
Quietly, Alone eased beneath the surface, changing his shape, merging with the glassy sediment. His disguise was good enough to escape the notice of watching humans and machines. As he waited, he gathered enough power to make a sudden explosive escape. But then the artificial day faded, a bright busy night taking hold, complete with the illusion of scattered stars and a pale red moon; and it was an easy trick to assume the form of one shelled alien, mimicking its motions and chattering tongue, casually slipping out through the public entrance into a side tunnel that led to a multitude of new places, all empty.
8
Twenty centuries of steady exploration, and still the cavern had no end. Its wandering passageways were dry and often cramped, unlit and deeply chilled. The granite and hyperfiber were quite sterile. Humans and aliens didn’t wish to live in places like this. Machine species set up a few homes, but their communities were tiny and easily avoided. Once more, the habit of walking returned to his life. To help track his own motions as well as the passage of time, Alone would count his strides until he reached some lovely prime number, and then he would mark the nearest stone with slashes and dots that only he could interpret—apparently random marks that would warn him in another thousand years that not only had he had passed this way before, but he had been moving from this tunnel into that chamber, and if at all possible, he should avoid repeating that old route.
The voice found him more often now, but it was quieter and even harder to comprehend. Sometimes a whisper emerged from some slight hole or side pas-sage—like a neighbor calling to a neighbor from some enormous distance. But more often the voice was directly behind him, and it didn’t so much speak as offer up emotions, raw and unwelcome. The sadness that it gladly shared was deep and very old, but that black mood was preferable to the sharp, sick fear that sometimes took hold of Alone. One dose of panic was enough to make his next hundred days unbearable. Something was horribly wrong, the voice insisted. Alone couldn’t define the terror, much less the reasons, but he didn’t have any choice but believe what he felt. He had his solitude; there was no cause to be scared. No captains or engineers chased after him. Occasionally he slipped into some deep corner of the cavern, and for several months he would hide away, waiting for whatever might pass by. But nothing showed itself, and whatever the voice was, it was wrong. Mistaken. Alone was perfectly safe inside this private, perfect catacomb, and he welcomed no opinion that said otherwise.
One day, walking an unexplored passageway, he happened upon a vertical shaft. Normally he might have avoided the place. A human had been here first, leaving behind tastes of skin and bacteria and human oils. Leaking a faint glow, Alone spied the machine abandoned by this anonymous explorer: a winch perched on the edge of the deep shaft, anchored by determined spikes. The sapphire rope was broken. The drum was almost empty, but the winch continued to turn—an achingly slow motion that for some reason fascinated the first soul to stand here in a very long while.
After several days of study, Alone touched the drum, and that slight friction was enough to kill what power remained inside the superconductive battery. How long had it been here, spinning without purpose? And what was inside the hole, waiting at the other end of the broken blue thread?
Alone snapped two handles from the winch and uncoiled the remaining sapphire rope, tying one handle to one end. Then he dropped the handle into the dark shaft. Two hundred meters, and there was no bottom. Then he tied the rope’s other end to the winch and climbed down. The shaft turned to hyperfiber, slick and vertical, and then its sides pulled away. When Alone couldn’t reach easily from one side to the other, he let go, falling and making his body brighter as he fell, watching the dangling handle fly past. Then feeling no one but himself, he lit the entire chamber with his golden fire.
A human shape lay upon the flat floor.
Alone turned black and cold again, and he dropped hard and repaired his body and then carefully crept close to the motionless figure.
For three days, nothing changed.
Then he brightened, just slightly, straddling the figure. The human male hadn’t moved in decades, perhaps longer. There was enough thread on the winch to put him down here, but it must have broken unexpectedly. The hyperfiber floor showed blood where the man struck the first time, hard enough to shatter his tough bones and shred his muscles. But humans can recover from most injuries. This stranger would have healed and soon stood up again, and probably by a variety of means, he had worked to save himself.
Most of the Ship’s passengers carried machines allowing them to speak with distant friends. Why didn’t this man beg for help? Perhaps that machinery failed, or this hole was too deep and isolated, or maybe he simply came to this empty place without the usual implements.
Reasons were easy, answers unknowable.
Whatever happened, the man had lived inside this hole for some months and perhaps several years. He had brought food and water, but not enough of either to last long. The cold that Alone found pleasant would have stolen away the body’s precious heat, and the man starved while his flesh lost its moisture, reaching a point where it could invent no way to function. Yet the man never died. With his last strength, he stripped himself of his clothes and made a simple bed, his pack serving as his pillow, and then he lay on his back with his eyes aimed at the unreachable opening, his face turning leathery and cold and blind.
The eyes remained open but dry as stone. They might not have changed for centuries, and nobody had ever found this man, and perhaps no one had noticed his absence.
Alone considered the implications of each option.
Eventually and with considerable caution, he opened the pack and thoroughly inventoried its contents. What was plainly useful he studied in detail, particularly the sophisticated map of this cavern system. Then he carefully returned each item to where it belonged, and laid the pack beneath the unaware head. That frozen, wasted body weighed almost nothing. A good hard shake might turn the dried muscle to dust. Yet he was careful not to disturb anything more than absolutely necessary, and without a sound, he retreated. The lower length of sapphire lay nearby, coiled into a neat pile. He tied one end to the second handle, and despite the distance and darkness, he managed a perfect toss on his first attempt, the two handles colliding and then wrapping together, and he climbed past the rough knot, pulling it loose and letting the lower rope fall away before he continued his climb out from the hole.
More centuries passed; little if anything changed. But there were a few episodes—intuitive moments when the bright gray fear took hold, when some nagging instinct claimed that he was being sloppy, that he was being pursued. Three times, Alone found marks resembling his own but obviously drawn by another hand. And there was one worrisome incident when he slipped aside and waited only thirteen days before a solitary figure followed him down the long tunnel. The biped was towering and massive, covered with bright scales and angry spikes, and the low ceiling forced him to walk bent over inside the passageway, both hands carrying an elaborate machine that resembled a second head.
Mechanical eyes and a long probing nostril studied the rock where Alone had stepped, teasing out subtle cues. With a hunter’s intensity, the creature slowly mov
ed to a place where the second head noticed that the trail had vanished, and the machine whispered a warning, and the harum-scarum turned in time to see an amorphous shape sprout long limbs, and without sound, silently race away.
After that, Alone adapted his legs and gait, changing his stride, hopefully becoming less predictable. But he refused to abandon the cavern. His home was far too large to be searched easily or in secret, and he had nearly walked every passageway, every room—a hard-acquired knowledge that he would have to surrender if he journeyed anywhere else.
Most encounters came through chance, fleeting and harmless. As the millennia passed, human numbers had swollen, but other species plainly outnumbered the Ship’s lawful owners. Aliens wore every imaginable body, and there were always new species waiting to surprise. One glimpse in the dark or some long study at a safe distance didn’t make an expert, but Alone had adequate experience to gain several rugged little epiphanies: Life must be relentless, and it had to be astonishingly imaginative. Every living world seemed unique, and those oceans of living flesh were able to thrive on every sort of unlikely food and bitter breath. The beasts that came slipping through his home drank water, salty or clear, acidic or alkaline, or their drinks were chilled and laced with ammonia, or they wore insulated suits and downed pitchers of frigid methane, or they sucked on peroxides, on odd oils, while quite a few drank nothing whatsoever. Yet despite that staggering range of form and function, every creature was curious, peering into some black hole, sometimes slipping fingers and antennae into places never touched before—if not hunting for invisible, legendary entities, then at least seeking the simple, precious novelty of Being First.
On occasion, Alone watched visitors coupling. One eager pair of humans fell onto a mat of glowing aerogel, naked and busy, and standing just a few meters away, immersed in darkness, Alone observed as they bent themselves into a series of increasingly difficult poses, grunting occasionally, then finally shouting with wild voices that echoed off the distant ceiling. Then their violence was finished, and the woman said to the man, “Is that all there is?” and her lover called her a harsh affectionate name, and she laughed, and he laughed, and after drinking the brown alcohol from a treasured bottle, the performance began again.
More centuries and thousands of kilometers were slowly, carefully traversed. And then came one peculiar second where he heard what sounded like a multitude passing through the cavern’s largest entrance. The presence of many was felt; he smelled their collective breath. They might whisper respectfully and try to move like ghosts, but there were too many feet and mouths, too many reasons to praise the solitude and beg their neighbors to be silent. Alarmed, he approached the newcomers and then followed them, and from a sober distance he watched as they assembled at the center of the cavern’s largest chamber. A quick count found twenty thousand bodies and a staggering variety of species, and after an invisible signal was given, they began to talk in one shared voice. He heard rhythmic chanting, the sloppily performed songs. Normally he would have fled any spectacle, but the strangers were singing about the Great Ship, begging for its blessings and its wisdom. And hope upon hope, the Ship’s voice.
Using every trick, Alone approached unseen.
The celebration was joyous, and it was senseless. But he felt the urgency and earnest passion. At least a hundred alien species were represented. But the lighting was minimal, and hovering at the edges, it was impossible to observe the full crowd, much less comprehend more than a fraction of what was being said.
“We thank the Ship,” he heard.
Then from someplace close, one enormous voice chanted, “For the home and safety You give to us, we thank You!”
“You are a mystery,” the nearest souls declared.
Alone hovered at the edge of the crowd, unnoticed but near enough to touch the backs and feel the leaked heat of bodies.
A hill of smooth basalt stood on the cavern floor, and perched on the summit was a human male crying out, “For so long and for so far, You have journeyed. We cannot measure the loneliness You endured in Your wanderings. But in thanks for Your shelter, we give You our companionship. For Your speed, we give You purpose. After the countless years of being empty and dead, we have made You into a vibrant, thriving creature! At long last, the Great Ship lives! And we hear Your thanks, yes! In our dreams, and between our little words, we hear You!”
Precisely when Alone turned to flee, he couldn’t say.
He was at a loss to understand which word triggered the wash of emotion, even as he was rushing away from the room and its densely packed bodies…even as a few of the less devoted worshippers heard what might be a moan and turned in time to notice the faint but unmistakable glow, red as a dying ember, racing off on legs growing longer by the stride.
9
Ten thousand and forty-eight years after first discovering the hole, Alone returned. The winch remained fixed in place, but someone else had visited, and possibly more than once. Boot prints showed in the dust. He could smell and taste signs of a second human. But nobody had stood up on this ground for a very long while, and when he went below, he found the body exactly where he had left it—only more dried, more wasted. More helpless, if that was possible.
Once again, Alone emptied the pack of its belongings, but this time he tenaciously studied the design and contents of even the most prosaic, seemingly useless item. He taught himself to read. He mastered the old, once-treasured machines that had thoroughly recorded one life. The mummified man had a long, cumbersome name, but he answered easiest to Harper. Eyes pushed against the digital readers, Alone marveled at scenes brought by Harper from the distant Earth. Here were glimpses of strange brightly lit lives, the toothy faces of a family, and a sequence of lovers. But each of those individuals were left behind when Harper sold every possession, surrendering his home and safety for a ticket to ride the Great Ship—embarking on a glorious voyage to circumnavigate the Milky Way.
Between the man’s arrival at Port Alpha and this subsequent disaster, barely fifty years passed. Which was no time at all. What’s more, Harper had filled his days with a single-minded hunt for the Ship’s ancient builders. Infused with a maniacal hunger, the human not only presumed that some grand and purposeful force had built the derelict starship, but the same force was still onboard, hiding in an odd corner or unmapped chamber, biding its time while waiting for that brave, earnest explorer that would discover its lair.
Harper intended to be that very famous man.
Alone studied every aspect of the lost life. There were gaps in the records, particularly near the end. But he wasn’t familiar enough with human ways to appreciate that another hand might have blanked files and entire days, erasing its presence from the story. What mattered was digesting the full nature of this alien beast, learning Harper’s manners and looks and duplicating his high, thin voice. Then Alone refilled the pack. But this time, he left the hole with the lost man’s possessions carried under what looked like a human arm.
At the top of the hole, he transformed his face, his body.
There were many ways to be alone. The next weeks were spent duplicating the voice and gestures on the digitals. Then he abandoned the safety of the cavern. The local time was night, as he had planned. Obeying customs learned only yesterday, Alone summoned a cap-car that silently carried him halfway around the Ship. He paid for the service with funds pulled from an account that hadn’t been touched for thousands of years. The modest apartment hadn’t seen this face for as long, but its AI said, “Welcome.” The master’s sudden reappearance didn’t cause suspicion or curiosity. Entering a home that he didn’t know, Alone spent the next ten days and nights studying the lost man. Then his apartment announced, “You have a visitor, sir.”
Baffled, he asked, “Who?”
“It is Mr. Jan.”
“Who is Mr. Jan?”
“I have no experience with the gentleman. But he claims to be your very good friend.”
Alone considered the implications.
“What shall I tell him, sir?”
“That I have no friends,” he replied.
“Very well.”
The matter seemed finished. But fifty-three minutes later, the apartment warned, “Mr. Jan is still waiting at your door, sir.”
“Why?”
“Apparently he wishes to speak with you.”
“But I’m not his friend,” Alone repeated.
“And I told him as much. But the man is quite upset about some matter, and he refuses to leave until he shares words with you.”
“Let him into the front hall.”
A narrow, nervous human crept inside the apartment. Mr. Jan had a familiar scent, and judging by the intricacy of the braids, he was quite proud of his thick red hair. The hallway was thirty meters long, which wasn’t long enough. The two figures stared at one another from opposite ends, and when Mr. Jan took a small step forward, the other soul said, “No. Come no closer, please.”
“I understand,” the guest whispered. “Sure.”
“What do you want with me?”
What did Mr. Jan want? The possibilities were too numerous or too vast for easy explanations. He gazed down at his pale hands, as if asking their opinion.
Then quietly and very sadly, he said, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Yes I am.”
Alone felt sick to be this near a stranger. But his voice remained calm, under control. “For what are you apologizing?”
Mr. Jan straightened his back, surprised by those words, and on reflection, angered by them too. “I’m apologizing for everything, of course! I’m sorry for the entire mess!”
Alone waited, his new face unchanged.
“But these things weren’t just my fault,” the visitor insisted. “You used me, Harper. And I know you made fun of me. We were supposed to have a business relationship, a partnership. I heard quite a few promises about money, but did you give me even half of what I’d earned?”
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 5 Page 21
