Beyond the Veil of Stars

by Robert Reed

  Then Porsche was saying, “No, we come from a warm world. It’s more like yours, and there are many millions of us.”

  The faces tilted, if only slightly.

  “On the earth,” she said, “we have cities larger than yours. We have too many people and terrible long fights. Like you, we have a killing nature. Like you, we need to follow it.”

  “Human, what are you telling me?”

  It was pure bluster, Porsche saying, “We are a vanguard. We’ve been sent crawling into a hole, seeing what there is to see. If we never come home, others will come here seeking vengeance. Do you understand vengeance?”

  “I understand everything.” A pride shone in the voice.

  She smiled, glanced at Cornell and said, “It understands everything.”

  “I heard,” he whispered.

  “It knows how to travel between worlds.” She kept smiling, bringing others into her bluster. “It knows how to fly. It knows how to make rain. It can build stars inside tiny bombs and lay to waste whole cities.”

  People nodded.

  “You know everything,” she told the City.

  The creature seemed puzzled, wary. There was a lost quality in every eye.

  “Follow your nature,” Porsche advised. “Kill our minds, then take our little bodies.”

  Nothing. No change in the expressions, even when the mind exhaled again. The roof opened, giant blowers kicked on, and again the air smelled of the sea.

  “I know what you are thinking,” she told it. “You’re wondering if I am lying to you, threatening you with nothing behind my words.”

  The faces stared at them, saying nothing.

  “Lying,” she admitted, “could be our nature.”

  The City said, “You are very strange. I know that much.”

  “What is your nature, City? I mean your essential nature. What do you treasure before and above all things?” Then she answered her own question, saying, “Life. First and last and always, you love to breathe and eat, make shit and live.”

  The bodies before them straightened their backs.

  “Let us leave,” she advised. “At worst, you are out a few little bodies meant for thin dry air. At best, we will go home and tell of your kindness and your strengths, and none of us will ever come to bother you again.”

  No response.

  “But you understand everything. People working together, like us, what can we accomplish? What could a thousand million of us, given anger, do to you inside this little stone house of yours?”

  Silence.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Porsche.

  The City made simple sounds with various mouths, then lapsed back into silence. Empty hands lifted, then fell, and Logan’s faces gave a little jerk to one side.

  “What will you do, City?”

  And all of the bodies, Logan’s and the thousand of others, attempted a human-style smile, needlelike teeth framed by thin lips and a single voice saying:

  “I know.”

  With finality.

  “I know what I will do, I know.”

  The mind ate and breathed, and breathed, its inhalations becoming regular and expected, every process as regular as a heartbeat. Cornell decided that everything would be fine, and he let himself feel relief as the roof opened between breaths, when it wasn’t expected. Above should be stars, diluted by lights and the thick air but stars nonetheless. Yet he saw something oval and black, something blotting out the sky. It was as large as the City’s mind, or larger.

  “An airship,” whispered Porsche.

  A blimp, not much of a leap for this technology.

  “Tell your species that I want to be respected.” The City spoke as cords were lowered through the opened roof. “Tell them what you’ve seen here, what a powerful presence I am. Tell them.”

  Porsche allowed herself to wink at Cornell. “We will tell them.”

  The cords were tied to their harnesses, and someone tried to grab the nearest cord, ready to ride into the sky. But her body was pulled away, forced to its knees. Then the City said, “I select. A single body for each mind, and I keep the rest of you.”

  Nobody spoke; nobody moved.

  Then the City made its selections, keeping the strongest, healthiest bodies for itself. One of Cornell’s had a festering wound on its left hand, and it was lashed to his mind like an infant. He looked at Porsche, and she returned his gaze, nothing to say. Then came the pulse of engines, the whirring of propellers, and they were lifted without warning, with a smooth strong tug of the cords, off the stone floor and through the open roof as the City exhaled once again.

  A heavy mist fell against one of Cornell’s faces.

  Untying himself partway, he looked down at the City, marveling at its brilliance and scope once more. The orderliness; the unity; the stark perfection of trust. He remembered being a boy and thinking of the aliens in just these terms. When he was twelve, this was the future. And in one sense, it was his future. Four of his bodies remained below. Already he could feel the threads between his mind and them diminishing. The City was stealing their eyes and hands for itself. Parts of him would exist on in this Utopia, the poor things, and he thought to wish them luck just as the threads were severed.

  How far would the blimp carry them? he wondered. And could they drag their minds all the way to New Reno?

  “Novak,” shouted Porsche. “Hey, Novak.”

  He turned his one head, squinting with just two eyes. In the starry gloom, he saw Porsche’s body untied and clinging to her mind with hands and toes, doing something…something, and he couldn’t quite decide what she was doing…asking, “What—?” and then knowing the answer.

  He joined her.

  It was a childish and useless gesture, and it seemed perfect, Cornell untying his body and turning around, rump in the air and the City far below, too large to miss.

  Too vast to anger, he hoped.

  Laughing aloud. Looking ahead. The great mass of the Breaks rough and black, and the airship still climbing, fighting for altitude, tiny bodies standing at its lighted windows, watching so that some blind pilot would know exactly where to steer.

  Cul-de-Sac

  1

  “We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.”

  —Pascal

  This time it was F. Smith, but in a different office, larger and set higher in the building, and the office’s occupant was with her, a cheerless round-faced fellow with the deep full voice of a disc jockey. Porsche was there, too, sitting beside Cornell, not quite close enough to touch. This was Cornell’s fourth interview today, and the easiest. F. Smith began by saying, “I’m thankful both of you made it,” and then she smiled in a brittle, sad fashion. “Only two lost in your party. That’s amazing, particularly when you consider what you’ve been through…”

  They had been carried to a place high in the Breaks, then lowered and left to fend for themselves. One body per person meant slow going, bodies joining together to help the minds over the roughest ground. But the rains had saturated the desert, reaching as far as the Rumpleds. Ancient salt pans became lakes. Hidden spores and seeds had burst into life. Queer little creatures grew and bred and died again in the temporary lakes, and they kept Cornell and the others alive in the week-plus it took to reach New Reno.

  It was a time of wealth and irony. More than a hundred people had died in the floods, and New Reno was being abandoned. High Desert was being closed down for good.

  “We just want to make certain a few points,” F. Smith cautioned. “While they’re fresh in your memories.”

  Porsche said, “Of course.”

  Cornell remained silent.

  “This organism you met…that you conversed with—”

  “The City,” said the round-faced man, in case anyone had forgotten.

  “Yes.” She paused, her head lowered. “Did you see any technology that you’d categorize as advanced? In human terms, I mean.” She looked at Cornell until
he shook his head, then watched Porsche until she did the same. Then she asked, “In your best judgment, could this creature, the City, pose any threat to the earth or humanity?”

  This was a new question. Cornell was a little startled.

  “We’re just getting your general impressions,” explained the disc jockey voice. “No need to worry.”

  “The City is too large to move,” Cornell responded. “It can’t reach the intrusion, and if it could, there’s no analogous organism on the earth. Is there?”

  The man rolled his eyes. “Guess not.”

  But he already knew that.

  “What about the desert dwellers? Could they come here eventually?”

  Cornell almost spoke, almost saying, “It’s harder work crossing into an everted world.” Porsche had told him so. And he had no business knowing it, pausing and looking foolish with his mouth hanging open.

  “I can’t see how they’d invent the technologies,” Porsche offered.

  The man gave a satisfied nod.

  Then F. Smith admitted, “We’re taking precautions just the same.”

  “What precautions?” asked Cornell.

  “New Reno is going to be leveled. What the rains started, we’ll finish. Buildings dismantled. Trash buried. Nothing left around the intrusion.” She looked older today, particularly in the eyes. “Another rain or two, and nobody could tell we were there.”

  Somehow that made Cornell sad, if only for a moment. Then he was wondering about the men and women who might have gone native—assuming they existed—and how they could prosper on the wet desert. Make babies, even. An entirety new kind of High Desert citizen, and what if they rebuilt New Reno for themselves?

  What happens in the next thousand years?

  “Anyway,” said the nameless man, “we’re pleased you made it. Sorry about the casualties, but pleased for you.”

  Cornell watched Porsche tilt her head, the rich brown hair spilling over a shoulder.

  “We’re glad to be here,” she offered. “And we’re glad to have had the opportunity to take part, too.”

  The man smiled, the expression calculated to lull his audience into trusting him.

  “Imagine,” he told them, “you’re two of the first humans to ever meet with an alien intelligence.”

  Two faces grinned, struggling not to laugh.

  Walking in the hallway, heading to their respective rooms, Porsche asked if he wanted to come visit. It was night, almost late, and for the next ten hours they were free of their interrogators. It was much like their first evening together, Porsche standing at Cornell’s door; only now she was making the invitation, offering her room.

  “Sorry,” said Cornell. “I’m tired.”

  She looked straight at him.

  “I need sleep,” he said with a calm, certain voice.

  One of Porsche’s big hands grabbed him at the elbow. She lifted his hand to her mouth, saying, “Fine,” as she put his index finger into her mouth, sucking on it for an instant and then getting a devilish look. He felt teeth, sharp enamel grabbing him behind his knuckle, and now Porsche started to back away, towing him after her, keeping the pressure on his poor wet finger and Cornell alternating between pained complaints and laughter.

  Her door wasn’t far, thank God.

  She released him when they were inside, lights turning on for them. “Subdued lighting, please,” she said, and the computer left only a corner lamp and the bathroom lit up. The room was a mirror image of Cornell’s room, its furnishings reversed and reliably institutional. What he noticed at first glance were the touches, those signs that showed she had lived here, off and on, for years. There were decorations and wall hangings that couldn’t belong to anyone else. A top-quality photograph of a Siberian tiger was hung over the drawers. It stared at Cornell, sitting unconcerned in the snow; and she told him, “Back in a minute, love,” while closing the bathroom door, making the room even darker.

  Cornell was happy and expectant, and worried. Just a little worried. He stood in front of the tiger, giving himself a light touch, his penis familiar but not. Natural, but not. All this time and longing, and what was he doing? Checking his pipes like a plumber, fearing some kind of cataclysmic failure.

  Faces smiled up at him, one familiar and the rest with a familial resemblance. The photograph was taken on a summery day, the light not quite right and the mood effortlessly happy. He picked it up by the frame, thinking Porsche looked five years younger and five pounds lighter. It was a strong handsome collection of human beings. It was the kind of family that everyone admired, and the families living next door would envy. Shamelessly, thoroughly envy.

  The bathroom door opened, water running.

  Cornell set the photograph back on the chest of drawers, not looking over his shoulder. Barefoot motions, the creak of a mattress. But he stared at the tiger instead, saying, “I had a picture of a leopard on my wall.” His throat was dry, his voice slow. “When I was a kid, I mean. Some coincidence, huh?”

  “Funny,” she said.

  She said, “Come here, Novak. Will you?”

  He turned, seeing a nude woman sprawled out on the bedspread. Sprawled was the perfect word, and his breathing stopped, his diaphragm made of concrete. An enormous weakness spread from his toes, and he moved sluggishly, with a shuffling gait.

  “Get naked,” she suggested. “If you’d like.”

  He managed to pull off his clothes.

  She said, “Nice,” and gave a big contented smile.

  Then Cornell saw the spot above her pubic hair, noticeable because it was the only flaw in otherwise perfect skin. What was it? He found himself curious, climbing onto the bed and bowing his head, Porsche saying, “My, my. Aren’t you the forward fellow?”

  It was a tattoo, he realized. A tattooed heart.

  And not the valentine variety, either. It had arteries and veins, the whole thing big as a thumbnail and glowing in the weak light. Practically shining up at him.

  “Say, love,” Porsche whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “If you’re going to be down there long,” she mentioned. “I mean, if you wouldn’t mind…”

  “Just a few more questions,” said F. Smith. Again.

  It was late morning, early afternoon. Cornell wasn’t sure about the hour, sleeplessness doing peculiar things to time. They were back in the upstairs office, the nameless man joined by two other nameless people. A man and woman. Glancing out the long window, Cornell saw nothing but the soft blue sky and its harmless clouds, then the flash of a silver plane climbing and streaking east.

  “About Hank Logan,” said F. Smith. Then she paused, obviously pained by the subject. “You saw him last where?”

  She meant his mind, and Cornell told them again.

  Nods, sober and steely. Then she asked, “How was he during those last days? What do you remember?”

  Porsche didn’t quite look at Cornell, and he kept his gaze fixed on the old woman, telling her, “He was crazy. That’s the only reason she took over for him.”

  A defensive tone, more than he intended.

  And yesterday’s nameless man said, “We know. We accept that. We’re sure it was for the best.” A diplomatic tone, a careful smile. “In fact, we’re thankful for your help, Miss Neal.”

  F. Smith sat up straighter, her face unreadable.

  “We’re just a little concerned,” the man continued. “Some survivors of your group…a few…mentioned that Hank made some silly statements, provocative and false.” A pause, then more of the careful smile. “Delusions of a major sort, if you know what I mean.”

  Cornell said, “What kinds?”

  The new woman warned, “Some things shouldn’t be dignified by being repeated.”

  A shrug of the shoulders, then Porsche said, “Hank and I weren’t talking much. Delusions or not.”

  The new woman turned. “What about you, Mr. Novak?”

  “Once,” he began. Then he paused, as if to carefully frame his answer. “O
nce he talked about the City. I think he was in contact with it long ago, or it was with him. I can’t tell you how.”

  The audience watched him, weighing every word.

  “I didn’t like Logan,” Cornell admitted, “but then I didn’t know him in his prime, did I?”

  “No, you didn’t,” said F. Smith.

  A long pause, and some shared glances between the interrogators. Then yesterday’s nameless man was saying, “Of course we appreciate your help, and I know it’s early, but if you wish to be reassigned…on the strength of your records and talents…we’d love to have you.”

  Yet nobody looked very pleased with anything.

  Porsche said, “I can’t answer for Cornell, but I’d like to wait a while. I could use time off, if you don’t mind.”

  That brought a round of nods and patient smiles.

  “Same here,” said Cornell.

  Then the nameless man made a show of looking at F. Smith, coughing into his fist once before saying, “What do you think? Are we done here?” A little laugh, as if this was nothing but routine. “We let our friends go?”

  Cornell showed them a hopeful, timid face.

  “Go,” said the man. “We’ll be in touch.”

  Such mild words, but why did they sound like a threat?

  2

  It was their second night off the agency grounds, in a Holiday Inn near Salt Lake City, when word came that a charter jet belonging to Tangent Incorp. had crashed in the Pacific Ocean. More than a hundred and eighty people had been onboard, all employees of the corporation and all feared lost. Spokesperson Farrah Smith, visibly upset, told the cameras and the world that it was a tragedy. These people, many of them friends of hers, were returning from a Samoan holiday. No effort was being spared in the search for survivors. Then the woman allowed herself a shudder and a faraway glance; and Porsche remarked:

  “It’s probably been a contingency plan forever. A plane crash over open water, sure.”