Beyond the Veil of Stars

by Robert Reed

  His speech would become a series of whistling words, his bodies able to speak, with one voice, or several. He might hold six different conversations with six other people, impossible as that seemed. Shaking his head, Cornell had to ask the computer, “Whose language will I be speaking?”

  “We presume it’s the native language.”

  “Have we made contact yet?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the point of making contact? What are we after?”

  “Knowledge, of course. The betterment of the human condition.”

  He offered a little nod.

  “Tomorrow,” promised his tutor, “you’ll begin classes with human teachers. Our staff will show you how to make stone tools and braid your fur into harnesses.”

  “With three fingers,” Cornell muttered.

  “Yes.”

  “Will I be right-handed?”

  “Yes. On HD, handedness transfers over.”

  He shut his eyes, imagining the new hands and how it might feel to have twelve of them. Twelve hands, and twelve three-toed feet. Controlled by cat-quick reflexes. Seven hearts, including the mind’s head, and seven sets of lungs. Except the lungs were more like gills, the thin cold air flowing through them, exhaled out the rear.

  “More questions?”

  “If I lose a body,” he began, “what happens?”

  “A surviving body becomes pregnant. It replicates itself in a very brief period—”

  “Suppose I lose all of my bodies. Nothing’s left but my mind.”

  “That wouldn’t be good news,” the voice warned.

  “I guessed that.”

  “If you can be found in time, then brought back through the intrusion, you will survive. But minds cannot produce new bodies, to our knowledge. Without bodies, you cannot function on HD.”

  Cornell touched one of the cubicle’s close walls. “If I die there, what happens to my soul?”

  “I have no idea, sir.”

  He straightened and asked, “All right, what’s next?”

  “Geography,” said the tutor. “Navigating on the open desert is a critical skill.”

  The screen showed him New Reno, then the view pulled back to where he looked down on the big gray world. Mountains stood in the north, rough and extensive. South of New Reno, in the extreme distance, was a series of arroyos leading into deeper canyons. Cornell noticed how the map varied in details. There were gaps and vague stretches. That southern area was called the Breaks, and one canyon system looked like a high-quality photograph. “Is this where the aliens live?”

  The tutor said, “Perhaps.”

  “It’s like dreaming, isn’t it?”

  “How do you mean, sir?”

  “People go there, but they can only bring back memories. Isn’t that like dreaming?”

  “In that sense, I suppose it is. Yes.”

  Cornell couldn’t speak, arms wrapped around himself and his eyes shutting, his throat making a steady low moan. He was thinking:

  I don’t believe this.

  Then:

  Who in his right mind would believe it?

  And he knew who. Knew exactly who. He opened his eyes and relaxed his arms, thinking now sometimes this world seemed thick with coincidences and ironies. Dad would swallow it all in an instant.

  The tutor said, “Sir?”

  “Go on,” said Cornell. “I’m listening.”

  6

  He awoke long before the alarm, watching sunrise from his window and dressing in old clothes. His keys and wallet ended up tucked inside spare shoes at the back of the closet. Breakfast arrived early—scrambled eggs and chicken sausage—and Cornell barely sampled it. He had a clear premonition of death, which wasn’t unusual. Premonitions had accompanied every trip he’d taken in years. One final check of his room, then he went down to the lobby.

  Jordick was already sitting near the front door. He looked at Cornell as if he didn’t remember him, then swallowed and made room for him on the firm sofa. Neither man spoke. A van arrived—not theirs, they realized—and several people disembarked, one young woman crying. Her companions clustered around her. Cornell’s first assumption was they were giving comfort. But no, it was more protection than comfort. A shielding of bodies. The other people were alert, arms locked together. Cornell thought of musk oxen on the tundra, the strong ones guarding their weak citizens from the wolves.

  “Just back,” Cornell whispered. “I wonder from where.”

  With a stiff voice, Jordick said, “We can’t ask. You know the rules.”

  “Know them? I believe them with all my hearts.”

  It was a joke, but his companion seemed offended. Their van arrived, and they boarded it and waited, and waited. Its robot driver did nothing, and Cornell wondered if this was some final test. Should they dismantle the driver and take themselves to the proper place? But no, someone else was coming. Logan. He climbed onboard, somehow looking changed. More calm, even placid. He sat in the front, alone, smiling as the door closed, and only when they were moving did he turn and acknowledge his companions. “Morning, boys.” The smile brightened. “Ready for fun?”

  “Sure,” said Cornell.

  Jordick said nothing, staring out the window.

  There were security fences, four sets of them, then a field full of giant tents and an unpaved lot with parked vans and other official vehicles. Uniformed guards met them, leading them into a small prefabricated hut. Logan joked with the guards, asking about their girlfriends and wives. “I’m not getting any where I’m going, you see.” The guards were amiable, laughing because Logan was a superior. He slapped one of them on the back, saying, “Want to join us? Room for a fourth!”

  “Thank you, no. Sir.”

  “Sure?”

  “Maybe next time, sir.”

  A door opened at the back of the hut, and orange light poured over them. They stepped beneath an orange-colored tent, and Cornell saw the bare ground worn smooth by boots and bare feet. There were clicks, pops. Someone said, “Undress, sirs. If you will.” The tent was enormous, not tall but covering several acres; and he spotted machinery standing at the tent’s center. Again there were clicks and pops, then a constant deep hum.

  “Know how we found the intrusions?” Logan asked the question, his voice soft, almost respectful.

  Jordick asked, “How?”

  They were naked, walking forward. Three nude men, orange-colored. It was silly and solemn in equal measure.

  “How did you find them?” Jordick asked again.

  “This was a weapons lab, a long time ago.” The man’s voice picked up speed, sounding more like his old self. “They would try out all sorts of fancy toys here. Neutron beams and laser beams, that kind of fun. And they found places where the machines didn’t work quite right. Where energy got lost, or maybe the sensors malfunctioned. The science types joked about the places being haunted, and they moved their equipment a few feet, which solved the problem.”

  They entered a forest of machinery, following a dirt path past bulky ceramic housings and humming transformers.

  “One of the weapons boys went to work for the CEA. And what he did, he started playing games with the Russian’s equations. The equations that say Earth is many shapes and space is full of twisted worlds? That boy figured out there were imperfections. Seams, I guess you’d call them. And he remembered this haunted ground here, and of course the CEA had the money to investigate, and look at it!”

  They had come to open ground, or what seemed open at first glance. Sophisticated machines stood on every side of them, a strange liquid blackness in the middle. Then Cornell looked again, noticing distortions in everything. The edges of the machines were drawn out, seemingly pounded flat yet never quite reaching the black zone. The air smelled dry and perfectly clean. Already they were walking on a squishy half-real surface—this wasn’t the earth’s surface anymore—and nothing made easy sense. Cornell looked down as he stepped, everyone’s feet miles away, pink and nervously wiggling.
Here he was! And beyond, forming without a motion, a great swirling hole smaller than the point on a needle—

  “Move,” shouted someone. Logan.

  And Cornell was walking, then jogging, the hole opening for him, as if it had been waiting for him for all the ages.

  Everything was bizarre, and everything was ordinary. The insanity felt reasonable. Time was comfortably odd. Distances were what the mind wanted to perceive. From somewhere came a mammoth sound, a thousand jets roaring at take-off, yet Cornell felt no pain. Jordick appeared beside him, body lean and pale, flecked with big red pimples. Then Logan came up on the other side of him, muscles and a jiggling belt of fat riding his middle. Cornell was thinking this was some kind of supernatural locker room, and he laughed aloud, without sound—

  —pressing ahead, always faster.

  The twisting blackness had a bright throat some thousand miles across. He stared ahead, eyes focusing, finding a curtain of radiant dust. What was that? Then he remembered: An old-fashioned sky full of stars, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them. High Desert was deep inside a cluster or a galactic core, no one could guess where…

  If I can see stars, he reasoned, I must be halfway.

  Lifting his right hand, he touched his face and felt six faces, new fingers thick and long and shockingly strong. No nose, just slits that could close in a dust storm. A thick luscious fur covered his scalp and neck and almost everywhere else. Six hands, then twelve, began groping and exploring, everything as promised and the transformation strangest for being ordinary. His training didn’t help, or hurt. The magic seemed effortless, Cornell wearing new clothes and a new set of instincts taking charge. There was something he needed to do, to find. Every head was turning…and there was his mind, just where he knew it would be.

  A blunt-nosed football, the mind had brown fur over bone, slick callus below and the vital organs tucked within. There was no trace of limbs or a true head. Evolution had sculpted a dense, armored creature with no senses but the dimmest sense of touch. Its mouth and nostrils were at the rear, hidden by articulating bony shields. Its fur was long, particularly at the front; he found himself picking up hairs, tying rough braids, everything frighteningly natural. It was as if he’d always possessed six bodies, always lived this way. He felt like a person waking from a dream where he’d had no limbs, relieved to discover that he could move at will.

  Cornell felt whole. Complete.

  Muscles and neurons knew how to work. The new hands were deft and rapid. There was an unconscious unity, each body taking hold of the new braids, then pulling—in one motion—and the mind sliding forward on its slick bottom.

  Cornell picked up speed, toes gripping the rubbery surface.

  The stars jumped closer, feeling more like a real sky. Just when he thought he should pop into the new world, his motions slowed, a dense transparent syrup making his every motion hard work. His bodies bent, pulled and pulled, and he glanced up long enough to see body-shapes and a mind in front of him.

  Logan.

  Where’s Jordick? he wondered. A single head turned, his rightmost body searching. The eyes found a huddle of black-furred bodies in front of their mind. No braids; no progress. Cornell tried to shout, but all he heard was a thin whistle. He made his body drop the harness and move toward Jordick. “Come on, come on.” His lips didn’t work properly, but he understood what he heard. He nervously touched his mouth, feeling teeth and biting once, needlelike teeth piercing his skin, a supersalty blood flowing over a slender tongue.

  Spitting, Cornell told Jordick, “Move. Go.”

  The man shook every head, then finally, grudgingly, made himself kneel and grab at his mind’s fur, clumsily pulling at handfuls of the stuff.

  Cornell’s other bodies and mind were far ahead. He felt the distance in the same way someone feels their hand reaching toward a high shelf. And that body ran after the other pieces, catching them and helping again.

  Now the sky was above him, a very slight incline to the rubbery black ground. He could see Logan waiting where the ground flattened, bodies with hands on hips, something both cocky and impatient in their stances. Without warning, Cornell’s lead mouth took its first true breath, a bitter chill numbing it. The toes felt honest dry grit, and he heard the grit moving. Efficient lungs pulled oxygen free and left the cold alone, complicated heat exchangers keeping the night out of his blood. And he was exhaling, every lung together, cold dry bursts of air out of his asses and his mind.

  It was a few hours before dawn, local time.

  Days were longer than on earth, but not much. And it was the equivalent of summertime now.

  Logan asked, “Where’s your friend?”

  The whistling voice had a sharp, accusing tone. Was he blaming Cornell for leaving him behind?

  Then Logan said, “Nope, here he comes. Last. Just like I thought he’d be.”

  Whistled words; another language. Cornell tried an experiment, saying his own name softly. “Cornell, Cornell.” It emerged as a mixture of the native tongue and English, its humanness recognizable beneath a vivid string of notes. He thought of a parakeet taught its master’s name.

  There were whistles behind him, and motion.

  From what looked like ordinary ground—from the center of a ring of white flags and white stones—came bodies and a mind, each of them breathing hard and fast, their exhalations kicking up little clouds of dust behind them.

  Poof and poof and poof.

  It tasted like home, this air did.

  Cornell looked everywhere at once, noticing details. Logan had five bodies, one of them bloated. Pregnant with a replacement. A manly creature, and it made Cornell laugh to himself. Did Logan get teased by colleagues? When he was on leave, did the other field chiefs slap his butt with towels, asking how his baby was coming along?

  “I’ll take you in, show you your quarters.”

  It was Logan’s voice. Cornell knew it without hearing anything like the old voice. But the five faces had the same square-jawed ordinariness, as if makeup artists had slapped on pigment and phony fur on five identical Logans.

  “Fiddle with the harnesses later, Jordick.”

  New Reno wasn’t far. Cornell could see the Rumpled Mountains in the north, the first buildings due east. Then came the thin stink of smoke. Dung was being burned. Greasewood was the main native plant, with some thorn-brush in the wettest places. But wood fires were outlawed, building materials at a premium. And besides, why burn anything for heat? Everyone was preadapted to this climate. Callused feet; layers of fat; heat-exchanging lungs. They were hardened by a life they had never lived, and all of these preadaptations would fall away once they stepped back onto the earth.

  “Here,” Logan announced. Bodies gestured, a row of tiny earthen hemispheres before them. “Find empties. Get some sleep. There’s a morning assembly in the town square. We’ll make your assignments then.”

  This was the oldest part of New Reno. Not three years old, but already worn out. The buildings were greasewood frames covered with dirt, hides serving as doors and barely enough room inside for one person’s parts. It looked as if every building had collapsed at least once, some repaired and others cannibalized for lumber. Cornell sent a couple of bodies to investigate a likely structure, lifting its dusty doorway and smelling a stranger. A sharp whistle said, “Get out.” His bodies retreated, moved next door and sniffing first. He smelled no one. The place was empty, dark and chill.

  Jordick was telling Logan, “Thanks for your help.”

  Logan watched them with a couple of heads. There was something unnerving about his bodies’ stance, in their bright black eyes and the odd smiles.

  “Thanks for getting me this post,” Jordick added.

  Laughter, then one mouth snorted. “Glad to help, always. Always.”

  They watched Logan drag his mind down the street, turn and vanish. Then Jordick took the next building in the row and did a clumsy job of pulling his mind inside. Front first, or back first? Cornell recalled wha
t a human teacher had told him. The man had spent time on High Desert, offering no reason why he wasn’t there anymore. But he explained, “With most things, and particularly the simplest things…just pause and let your instincts take hold. If you don’t know, do what smells right.” Which meant back first, as soon as possible. His mind needed to be hidden. Pulling it down between splintery timbers felt right, and suddenly he was more at ease: secure, and safe.

  The little home had no furniture, only rat hides pushed against the far wall, and the only light was starlight falling through the ventilation holes overhead. But his eyes adapted. Details emerged. A slab of micalike rock had been hung on the greasewood studs, making a crude mirror. Every fur was infested with slow gray worms, legless and wiry. Some previous tenant had used a knife, carving his name into one stud—Marvin Eugene Hicks, Jr. The confused odors of dozens of visitors mingled, and Cornell’s noses were able to distinguish each one of them. As a dog might, or maybe better.

  He touched himself again, in private spots. His geography was exactly as promised, more sexless than female, dry and not particularly sensitive.

  Then he put a face to the mirror, this whole business thrilling and frightening, and more than anything, funny. A nervous smile; sharp teeth and the sharp tongue; eyes rhythmically opening and closing their inner lids. Three-fingered hands, smooth and dry, stroked the new face. A scab had formed on his bitten lip. No residual pain. A human would feel a twinge, he knew, and he poked at his eyes and cheekbones and the wound, glossy blunt fingernails catching the starlight. Here was a tougher package, no doubt. Quick and tiny and tough. Stepping through someone’s elaborate fence, he had acquired the genetics of a meaner world.

  “Cornell,” whistled the face, “you are lovely.”

  And he kissed his reflection, all of his bodies laughing out loud.

  “Hello?”