Beyond the Veil of Stars

by Robert Reed

  “What do you see?” Jennifer would ask periodically. One of her guarding bodies would whisper the question, as if a native might hear anything louder. “Have you found anything?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “I haven’t either.”

  “Keeping trying,” he coached, positioning his four bodies out of the desiccating winds. This was more drudgery than adventure. A native would need an enormous range in these mountains. It was poor, cold country, and it would have to roam enormous distances, towing its mind to the rare oasis. But that scat had been fresh. Fresh enough to stink, he realized, and it hadn’t smelled quite the same as human scat. Humans had subtle differences, perhaps because of diet. Or maybe there were little imperfections in their translations, a slight alienness always clinging to them.

  He watched the valley and the desert below. In the afternoon, dust clouds formed, moved with the wind and then collapsed again. Aborted storms, he guessed. Could people last here? Were there humans who had gone native, as rumored? Maybe a few; maybe someday they would have children. But would the children retain their human qualities? And would that be a good thing?

  He’d have to ask Porsche what she thought, soon as he saw her again.

  Soon.

  Then there was a motion. Sudden; minuscule. Moving slowly, Cornell turned just one head. A solitary body was walking below him at a modest, casual pace. Where had it come from? It was whiter than the ground. Was it mindless? A body lost by someone careless, or dead? But then a second body emerged from the valley’s wall, and a third came after it.

  It was not human, he knew, without any doubt.

  Cornell stared, sensing that the alien’s mind was tucked in a tiny hole. He couldn’t feel the connections between bodies and mind—he was too far away, and the creature was too small—but he knew that a camouflaged burrow would be the perfect home.

  As the three bodies made for the greasewood, he watched them, admiring the details. They moved efficiently, wasting nothing, every calorie spent to gather as many calories as possible. Ripe nuts were harvested, slung over their shoulders and brought home. Whenever possible, they walked where the dust was blown from bare stone, leaving no tracks. The creature was shepherding its energies. Maybe it would remain here until the food was gone; maybe it had a regular cyclical pattern that it followed. Like the greasewood itself, it might be extremely old, extremely tough…

  What should he do? Cornell went through the motions of deciding, but he knew the answer. There was no guilt, no nagging sense of duty. Once the bodies returned, vanishing into an apparent stone wall, he crept off the ridge and moved elsewhere.

  “Have you seen anything?” Jennifer whispered.

  “Nothing.”

  “No?”

  “Nada,” he said. “Zip.”

  One more day hunting the natives, it was decided. Cornell made the decision. Jennifer was disappointed but compliant, admitting to him, “I’m feeling odd. Just like they warned us.”

  “I haven’t felt right yet,” Harold complained. “Not for a minute.”

  “How about you?” she asked Cornell.

  He was fine. Perfect. And he was happy being able to say so.

  Later that night while Harold slept Cornell decided to take his turn at speculating. “What if it happens the other way?”

  “What if what happens?”

  “Aliens come through the intrusions, visiting the earth…how would they look, do you suppose?”

  She considered the prospect. “Like us, I guess.”

  “It depends where they enter,” Cornell argued. “In the ocean, they might end up being whales or dolphins. Up in the Himalayas, they could become yetis, instead. What’s important is accepting that they can cross to the earth—”

  “But so what?” asked Jennifer.

  “You were right before.” If not in quite the way she had meant it. “We come here, and naturally we’re going to remake our home world. Within our limits. But why shouldn’t they be the same? Except that aliens might be more advanced technologically. Of course some of them would be.”

  She nodded with one head. “I suppose…”

  “What is the universe?” He paused, then answered his own question. “It’s an enormous set of tiny geometric compartments, packed close together, and linked wherever life touches compatible life. Each compartment’s history is different, and every lifeform is unique.”

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  “Think of the earth,” he told her. “What’s likely for the future? More people every day, less room for the masses. Sure, we can fly the short hop to Mars. There are places that are nice and dead, ready for colonies. But for how long? A thousand years? A million?”

  Jennifer said nothing, watching the stars.

  “But there are other ways to make room,” he said.

  Her hands fidgeted, and she said, “What do you mean?”

  “Look at us now.” His voice was sharp, excited. “We’re adapted to scarce food, water and air. Maximum intelligence; minimal volume. Maybe this is the way every intelligent world moves. Miniaturization. Not with biology, necessarily. But it could be done with computers and microscopic machines, people shrinking themselves. Where ten people felt crowded, a thousand people could live in comfort. Or a million. Laser-interfaced minds smaller than dust, and our world has an enormous amount of room left over.”

  She tilted her heads, shaking them as if to clear her ears.

  “Suppose it happens, at least sometimes.” He was breathing fast, kicking up clouds of dust when he exhaled. “Aliens could visit the earth, becoming sort of human…and they could build industries on the sly, fancy machines and flying craft. It might take a few generations. Maybe it happened a million years ago. Who knows? But the point is, they could miniaturize themselves, vanishing from our view. There could be a million New Renos, and we’d never see them.”

  “They’d build sin cities on the earth?”

  No, he didn’t mean it literally. He just meant…well, he wasn’t sure where he had been heading. He said nothing, trying to think. Then the one-time clerk told him, “You need to sleep, I think.”

  She was tired of speculations, eager for tomorrow’s hunt.

  “I’ll bed down in a minute,” Cornell promised; then he didn’t move for hours, staring at the sky and the dark world below, his bodies losing heat until they shivered, and Cornell still lost in thought. Still struggling to make sense of it all.

  They searched other valleys in the morning, and somewhere Jennifer became lost, her bodies wandering down a towering ridge and ending up above the little bowl-shaped valley with its greasewood grove. “Did you know it was here?” she asked.

  Cornell waited an instant too long, then said, “Sure.”

  Her guarding bodies stared at his bodies, judging him. He hoped she would grow bored and move on, but no, she was hungry. She climbed down and found fresh scat and tracks. “Small tracks,” she whispered, excitement mixed with a sudden caution. “I can see where they lead. Come up here, will you?”

  Cornell was trapped, no excuse ready. He was angry with the alien for being careless, for letting itself be discovered twice—

  “Should we go?” Harold asked Cornell.

  Jennifer glared at him. He was a liar, she knew, or an incompetent. Suddenly her two bodies squatted and began drawing in the soft dust, making a map of the valley. Inventing a plan. “We come in from three sides, at once and straight on. Okay?”

  It wasn’t a plan, it was a charge.

  “Don’t we have another choice?” asked Harold.

  “Don’t you want the big bonus?” she asked. “Because if you don’t, I’ll do it alone.”

  And Cornell said, “We move close and talk to it. Reason with it.” He tried to sound self-assured. “This isn’t a war.”

  Jennifer’s bodies stood and said, “Straight at it.”

  In review.

  Twelve bodies; three groups. Cornell took the south flank, passing through the stunted forest wit
h spears held high. He could just smell the native, and he was almost on top of it. A secretive creature, he knew. All of them were solitary, intensely private…and not at all human, he reminded himself. True aliens.

  Jennifer’s bodies found a hole covered with a gray door made from skin.

  “Slow down,” Cornell warned her. “Take it easy.”

  But she was too excited, probably thinking of the bonus. The first trap, hidden where the dusts had pooled, was triggered by a foot. It made a solid whap, wooden spikes driving into her thighs. The body crumbled without a sound, but the pain made her guarding bodies shiver, fur standing erect Another body, pausing to help the injured one, stepped into a different trap. Smaller spikes pierced its foot driving straight through the tiny bones.

  Now she screamed, with every mouth.

  The alien burst from its hole, three bodies with spears. Fancy stone heads glittered in the sunshine. A whistling voice, shrill and clear and wrong, shouted, “Leave me leave me leave me.”

  Jennifer’s healthy bodies pressed closer.

  Cornell shouted, “Wait!”

  He had watched the creature’s careful stepping, and he should have guessed there were traps…

  “You prick,” Jennifer yelled. A curse without any translation.

  The alien saw everyone, eyes tracking the mismatched bodies. Surprise didn’t resemble human surprise, but the voice had an unmistakable terror. “Strangers,” it whistled. “Insane strangers, I smelled you…demons demons demons!”

  Cornell was past the crippled bodies, staying on the rocky ground.

  “Kill your pieces, I will. I cut kill eat shit your pieces!”

  Cornell tried to speak, tried to say anything to defuse this mess. But Jennifer was stabbing at the closest body, clumsily and repeatedly, the alien slapping her spears aside. Then it stabbed, just once, neat and swift and one body falling dead in an instant, its heart punctured by a long razored blade.

  “Oh, my,” cried Harold.

  Jennifer had one healthy body left in the fight. “Will you fucking help me? Come help me!”

  Nine bodies against three. No amount of skill could save the creature, and the battle couldn’t be defused. Adrenaline, or whatever its equivalent, put them in a skirmish line, and it was a war. Harold tossed a spear—a clumsy, desperate toss—and it caught an arm, slicing to the bone. The alien responded by charging, its two healthy bodies screaming and thrusting. To scare them; to drive them away. Cornell stepped back and jabbed, and jabbed, and clipped a chest, a face. And the little white bodies fell, a thin spatter of bright red blood everywhere. Harold and Jennifer—the one-time executive and clerk—pinned the bodies and cut them apart, faces grim and enthralled.

  Where was the third body?

  Cornell approached the hole, the rat skin stretched and cured to resemble the gray stone. “Surrender,” he shouted. Was that a native concept? “We’ll take care of you…we don’t want to hurt—”

  A sound, a whistle. A combination of prayer and curse, he sensed; then came a solid rumbling noise. The door lifted with a burst of wind, Cornell feeling it against his faces. Another trap? For whom? Then came dust and the smell of blood. The body must have kicked away the burrow’s supports, the ceiling collapsing. Cornell didn’t know what he was thinking, too stunned, too tired, squinting until the dust cloud had blown away and his companions were standing over the corpses, Jennifer’s wounded bodies writhing in misery. Doomed now, he sensed.

  “What happened?” asked Harold. “What did it do?”

  Behind the skin door were stones, dry and still; Jennifer jabbed at them, shouting, “Serves you right. Serves you right. We would have fed you and kept you happy, you bastard!”

  This was wrong, Cornell knew. All wrong.

  “Fed and happy,” she screamed. “Fat and happy. Safe and happy, and you deserve this, you fuck!”

  13

  “Disappointing,” said F. Smith. A shake of the gray head, a tightening of the jaw. “It should have been handled differently, of course.”

  Cornell sat across from her. The same office, the same window and sunshine and great green lawn. He had come straight from the intrusion, as ordered, wanting to get through his debriefings as quickly as possible. Was he in trouble? Who would they blame?

  “Differently,” she repeated, plainly waiting for him to speak.

  “Jennifer shouldn’t have charged the burrow,” he argued. “I told her, more than once—”

  “Yes, she did test as impulsive and aggressive.” An agreeble nod. A tense smile. “I’m sure you did your best. And we’ll let the girl recover in New Reno, produce new bodies before her next assignment.”

  The girl should be sent home, he thought to himself.

  “More and more, the HD natives seem antisocial. Death is always preferable to being with another of their species.” A shake of the head, then she said, “I can’t give details. But let’s just say this wasn’t the first incident. Our first example.”

  “They’ve killed themselves before?”

  She seemed to nod once.

  “If I’d been told—”

  “And you should have been,” she admitted. “There’s no reason to send people out ignorant.”

  Yet F. Smith volunteered no other lessons now.

  Instead she asked for a blow-by-blow account of the mission, taking notes and going back over certain issues. How did the recruits perform? What were the conditions in New Reno? How about his own health? She seemed pleased that he hadn’t lost any bodies, or even suffered an important injury. “You’re doing splendidly.” She nodded with authority. “Mentally as well. Wonderfully well.”

  “Can I pick my assignment?”

  A quick smile, almost wise. “Where would you like to work?”

  “In the Breaks. With Porsche.”

  “Ms. Neal, yes. An amazing woman, that one.” Sitting back, she gave the sky a long intense stare. “Actually, I should warn you. It’s all discussion at the higher levels now, but there’s a fair chance that in the not too distant future … well, we might scale back our work on High Desert. At least temporarily.”

  “Why?”

  “You know our goals,” she said. “Our central hope is to find a technological species and learn from it, then bring that knowledge home. For the betterment of humankind—”

  “But why quit now?” he asked.

  “What do we have so far? A species geared for a solitary existence, simple technologies and a tiny population. People report a larger presence, I know. Perhaps you’ve felt it now and again.”

  Cornell gave a noncommittal shrug.

  “But our project heads are becoming impatient. Casualty rates are too high, and morale is poor. Should we keep pressing, using resources and volunteers on something increasingly unlikely …?”

  “What if there’s something there?” he asked.

  “But what? We have a species with no sense of society, no capacity for cooperation. Can such a creature build better computers? What do you believe, Mr. Novak?”

  He rose to his feet, saying nothing, aware of the smallness of the office and wishing he could leave now.

  “There is another factor, too.” She watched him pace, then said, “A tangential factor, and new.”

  He paused and looked at her.

  “It happened a few days ago. Without warning.”

  Cornell felt a sudden quiet dread, not breathing, standing with his arms limp at his sides, waiting.

  “All at once,” she told him. Then she gave an odd quizzical grin, tilting her head—

  “What happened?”

  —and enjoying herself, saying, “The moon changed.”

  The moon? What did she mean?

  “Changed. Everted, just like the earth did.” The grin got larger, teeth catching sunshine. “It turned inside out, in an instant. And what’s more, we think we know why.”

  He wasn’t Sam Spade; he was every bookkeeper ever born.

  “No, it wasn’t too difficult. Not really.
” The bland face smiled, for an instant, spidery hands massaging the air between them. He was an African American, though race seemed inconsequential. His looks and voice seemed designed to be forgotten. The man made a living without ever leaving his vast office, using computers to pry into other computers, charging fortunes for his experience and sheer zest. “I found her in a couple of hours, which is about normal in this kind of case—”

  “She’s alive?”

  “Oh, yes.” The man smiled in no particular direction. “She did a fair job of obscuring her past, and there are gaps in the records. She must have had facial surgery during one ten-month gap, and she changed her hair color—”

  “You found her,” Cornell interrupted. “You actually did?”

  Soft brown eyes closed, then opened. “Sure.”

  “You have an address?”

  “And much more.” A pause. “All in all, she seems like a fascinating person.”

  It was like the business about the moon’s Change; Cornell sat without moving, delaying his response. It was as if he was rationing his energies, waiting for a block of free time to become excited.

  “I’ve got quite a lot of material,” said the man. “If you need help to interpret anything, don’t hesitate to ask me.”

  A thick manila envelope was handed to Cornell. He untied its tab and opened the flap, glancing at the contents. He noticed newspaper clippings, credit reports and official documents. New Zealand, he read; and the detective mentioned:

  “Her current address, phone and E-mail numbers are on top.”

  On a square of vanilla-colored paper, yes.

  “Any questions?”

  The address put her a day’s drive to the east, which was a surprise. Somehow New Zealand seemed more appropriate. The other side of the world, and all that.

  The man sighed and said, “She’s lovely. I couldn’t help but notice.”

  “Is she still?”

  “And remarkable,” he added, almost whispering.