by Mike Ashley
Despite everything, she did.
They got the first tubes into her through her hollow right boot and the plastiflesh seal of her stump, after the left foot had proven to be frozen solid. They didn’t tell me at first – not until they had convinced themselves she was really alive.
When the rescuers reached Cathy and Nikhil, Cathy calmly guided the medic to her paralyzed husband, and as soon as she saw that he was in good professional hands, gave herself a sedative, and started screaming until she collapsed. She wasn’t available for interviews for weeks. But she’s fine now, and laughs about it. She and Nikhil live in a large university dome on Triton and host our reunions in their house, which has no roof – they’ve arranged for the dome’s rain to fall elsewhere.
Miranda my wife spent three years as a quadruple amputee, and went back into Miranda the moon that way, in a powered suit, to lead people back to the Cavern of Dead Ends. Today, it’s easy to see where the bronze weathered flesh of her old limbs ends and the pink smoothness of her new ones start. But if you miss it, she’ll point it out with a grin.
So, having been to Hades and back, are the four of us best friends? For amusement, we all have more congenial companions. Nikhil is still a bit haughty, and he and Cathy still snipe at each other a little, but with smiles more often than not. I’ve come to conclude that, in some strange way, they need the stimulation that gives them, and a displacement for needs about which Nikhil will not speak.
Cathy and Randi still find little to talk about, giving us supposedly verbally challenged males a chance. Nikhil says I have absorbed enough geology lectures to pass doctorate exams; so maybe I will do that someday. He often lectures me towards that end, but my advance for our book was such that I won’t have to do anything the rest of my life, except for the love of it. I’m not sure I love geology.
Often, on our visits, the four of us simply sit, say nothing, and do nothing but sip a little fruit of the local grape, which we all enjoy. We smile at each other and remember.
But don’t let this studied diffidence of ours fool you. The four of us are bound with something that goes far beyond friendship, far beyond any slight conversation, far beyond my idiot critiques of our various eccentric personalities or of the hindsight mistakes of our passage through the Great Miranda Rift. These are the table crumbs from a feast of greatness, meant to sustain those who follow.
The sublime truth is that when I am with my wife, Nikhil, and Cathy, I feel elevated above what is merely human. Then I sit in the presence of these demigods who challenged, in mortal combat, the will of the universe – and won.
THE REST IS SPECULATION
Eric Brown
When I first sent out enquiries to authors regarding this anthology, Eric Brown was the first to respond with a new story. He took my requirements of “sense of wonder”, “positive and uplifting” and “awe-inspiring” to heart, producing this magnificent Wellsian-like homage to the last days of Earth. It inspired the illustration on this book’s cover.
Brown (b. 1960) has written over twenty books and eighty short stories, since his first collection The Time-Lapsed Man (1990). His first novel was Meridian Days (1992). Recent works include The Fall of Tartarus (2005) and The Extraordinary Voyage of Jules Verne (2005). He has twice won the BSFA short story award, in 2000 and 2002. I also had the pleasure of collaborating with him in compiling The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (2005).
THE DEAD CITY THRUST itself from the escarpment above the vanished sea, its soaring towers and minarets a lament in stone for the race that aeons past had lifted it, block by block, towards the heavens. Something about its vaulting design might have inspired awe long ago, but now evoked mere sadness. And the great scoop of the drained ocean, which fell away from the city to a desiccated seabed split by chasms and fissures miles below, was just as monumentally tragic.
I know that I was born and that I died, but the rest is speculation. My death I recall but dimly: my passing had about it an odd elusive sense of déjà-vu, as if I had been travelling towards this familiar place all my life. I was surrounded by loved ones, I think, and I was not in pain; death was a sadness, not so much a longing for more but a desire to have it all again; death was a diminishing of the senses, a dwindling towards a beckoning darkness. And then came the light.
“Where am I?”
After my initial panic and confusion I was flooded by a sense of calm.
“Be easy. You are well. We welcome you.”
I was in a vast chamber seared with sunlight that fell en bloc from a far window, and an odd creature confronted me.
“You are,” I said, “a crab.”
The crab waved one of its four large pincers, as if conducting an orchestra. “I am a member of the race known as the Ky20, and my name is Replenish-362.”
“And my name,” I said, as if constrained by a reciprocal formality, “is . . .” But for the life of me I could not recall my name.
“It is of little matter,” said Replenish-362. The words came from a small silver box slung beneath the chitinous letterbox of its unmoving mouth. I too wore a similar device about my neck. “You may call me Rep. I will call you . . . Channon, I think.”
“Channon . . .” I repeated. I knew I was not dreaming: the experience had the clarity of reality. “Rep, what am I doing here?”
“In time,” said Rep. “In time.”
“But am I on Earth?” I persisted.
Rep waved a pincer. “You are on Earth,” it replied.
Then I noticed we were not alone.
A figure vaguely human-shaped stood behind Rep, and a little to one side. It was twice as tall as an average human, and silver, and across the surface of its face passed a series of evanescent features, as if it were cycling through a sequential amalgam of every human face that had ever been. I did not know whether this being was male or female, but from it I sensed an emanation of such peace and tranquillity that I almost wept.
“I am Kamis,” said the silver being. “Or, rather, that is the name given me by Rep.” Its lips moved, but out of synchronization with its words, which issued instead from its own silver box. “I am from the race which translates in your language as the shimmer-folk.”
Then the ceiling moved, or I thought it did. Startled, I stared up (only then realizing that I lay on a surface canted at a forty-five degree angle) and saw that what descended was not the ceiling but another creature, this one like a manta-ray, a flat golden hovering thing with four eyes set in its underside between an array of waving cilia.
“And Rep calls me Cheth,” it said, “of the villicent people. I greet you, Channon.”
As it lowered itself and levitated beside Kamis, I saw that the creature called Cheth was perhaps five metres broad, and as many long.
I leaned forward, and the surface on which I rested tipped me to my feet. I stood with surprise, and another surprise awaited me as I looked down the length of my naked body. Dimly I recalled my former body, but gone was the stringy, wasted, pain-wracked frame of old. I seemed forty again, trim and well-muscled.
I looked at the three very different creatures before me and said, “Where am I? How did I get here?”
“You are,” said Replenish-362, “in the year 2,405,355,223, by your reckoning of these things.”
“Two . . . .” I just could not comprehend the scale.
Kamis inclined its silver head, and I saw a procession of smiles decorate its face “Call it two billion, plus a few hundred million years,” it said.
“But how . . . ?” I gestured towards the chamber, the sunlight behind the trio.
Rep stepped forward, legs ticking upon the floor. “You would not understand the science of the process, Channon,” it said. “Suffice to say that we accessed your DNA-identity, and enabled you, and brought you to fruition.”
Kamis gestured with a silver hand. “Just as my identity was accessed, and enabled, and brought to fruition. I too am like you, though from an age long after yours. Almost ten million years
after, which itself seen from this age seems ancient history indeed.”
Rep said, “Cheth hails from a more recent age.”
The manta-ray spoke. “I am from Earth of just three million five hundred thousand years ago,” it said. “We were the dominant species on the planet for almost four million years, and that time was a time of peace and prosperity, of learning and high culture. It ended,” Cheth went on, “it ended, as all things must do.”
“Four million years,” I said. Then, “And do you know how long Homo sapiens walked the planet?”
“From the time when you began to keep records,” Rep said, “to your extinction, was but 400,000 years.”
“Which,” said Kamis, “might seem a long time, but is just an eye-blink in the long history of our planet. My people had records of your reign on Earth. You were, if you will pardon me, a primitive species. You . . . fought, waged war, despoiled the Earth.”
“But,” Rep put in, “too they were inventive, and artistic, and philosophically inclined.”
“That I acknowledge,” Kamis said, inclining its argent head.
I smiled. “I have little memory of who I was, of who my people were.”
Kamis said, “Cheth and I, too, came to fruition with little knowledge of our identities, our histories.”
“You underwent,” Rep said, “extensive trauma in being enabled; of course you will experience certain . . . shall we say . . . cognitive dysfunctions, for a time.”
I looked at the crab-like being. “And can you tell me why I was accessed, enabled, and brought to fruition?”
The crab did a little dance, or what looked like a dance; a quick skittering jig with much chitinous tattooing on the marble floor. Quickly, without replying, it moved around the surface on which I had lain and tiptoed towards an aperture which slid open upon its approach.
“Kamis, Cheth,” it called.
The two creatures complied, moved towards the door; in parting, Cheth said, “Rep will not impart the reason for our arrival in this age, my friend. It says, ‘In time, in time’.”
They joined Rep, who swivelled and said to me, “In one hour we begin our journey, Channon. Your provisions will be brought. Until then . . .” It gestured with a pincer, then left the chamber with Kamis and Cheth.
I stood, alone, bathed in sunlight.
I moved towards a vast window, which bulged out from the room. I saw the great mountain range on either hand, serried peaks falling gradually towards what I guessed was a dried up seabed. I later learned that I was right; that once this was indeed a mighty ocean. The mountains seemed silver, and so the seabed was split with dark fissures like the photographic negative of a lightning storm.
I stopped at the edge of the room, where the marble tiles segued seamlessly into the transparent material of the window.
I gasped, for a city fell away at my feet. It was as if I were levitating in the air, and was gazing upon a series of alleys and stairways as they fell down the shelving slope of the mountainside. I saw buildings like beehives, and towers which speared past where I stood, and a million windows looking out over the desiccated seabed – but I beheld not one figure in all the sprawling, falling cityscape, not one being to suggest that this perpendicular metropolis harboured life. It seemed as dead as the silver, dried up seabed far below.
Then I looked up and saw the sun, and I almost sobbed.
It filled the breadth of the horizon, and was bisected by that far away line of land, a great red fulminating dome that pulsed with life – or rather a semblance of life: magnificent molten eject, spuming geysers, looping strands of liquid fire. I laughed in awe at the sight, and knew it for the most wondrous thing I had ever witnessed.
I heard a sound behind me and turned quickly. Where nothing had stood before, in the centre of the chamber, now reposed upon a silver disc a pile of clothing and what looked like a stylized backpack. I left the window to inspect these things – the provisions, no doubt, which Rep had promised.
The clothing comprised a silver suit fashioned from a material so soft and light that I stood fondling it for minutes, smiling in wonder. The backpack was of a like material, and contained canisters holding what I guessed might be water. There were other objects in the pack: something like a pen, which I could not work, and a silver ball which defied my comprehension.
I pulled on the one-piece overall, which quickly shrank to hug my body and head, with a diaphanous membrane before my face. I looked up, attracted by something, and made out hovering above my head what looked like a halo; I smiled at the thought.
Rep had mentioned a journey; and was I now fully equipped? My curiosity was piqued. A journey, presumably, outside, in that harsh and sun-scorched landscape? And for what purpose? And this, in turn, brought my thoughts to the reason for my . . . what had Rep called it? . . . my fruition? At any rate, my presence in this wondrous age?
I shook my head and moved, as if compelled, towards the bulging window again, and stared out at the ancient Earth tortured by the engorged sun, and wondered what awaited me out there.
The aperture swished open and Rep jigged in on tiptoe, followed by the tall and striding Kamis; behind them, Cheth furled its wings to accommodate its passage into the chamber.
Rep said, “Ah, I see you have prepared yourself.”
“For what, I would like to know,” I said.
“For a journey to the end of the Earth,” Rep said, “with many a wonder upon the way.”
“Which,” said Kamis with a hint of humour, “is as much as our crustacean friend has deigned to tell us, despite our constant questions.”
“How long have you both been . . . enabled?” I asked.
The giant manta-ray known as Cheth replied, “Two days, no more.”
“A day for me,” answered Kamis. “A day of wonders enough, without promise of more.”
Rep was leading the way towards the bulging window; we followed. As the crab-being approached, the transparent material opened like a clam-shell, hinged up to give access to a precipitous flight of stairs wide enough to accommodate even Cheth. I followed Rep, with Kamis by my side and Cheth bringing up the rear.
I had expected fierce heat, a searing wind. The reality was that the atmosphere without differed not in the slightest from that within the chamber. I breathed cool air, was aware of no hot wind.
We moved down the stairs away from the jutting chamber. Ahead, as if discerning my puzzlement, Rep twisted an eye-stalk and regarded me with a black orb. It said, “The suit you wear is equipped to equalize the temperature, to shield you from the worst of this world’s inclemencies.”
I pointed. “And the halo?”
“You might call it a . . . a solar panel,” Rep said, “or at least a solar collector. At any rate, it gives power to your suit.”
I looked at Kamis. “You wear no suit . . .” I began.
Something like a million different smiles chased themselves across the creature’s face. “In my time the sun, though not this size, was almost beyond the tolerance of most living creatures. We adapted, suited our forms to the solar radiation.”
“And you, Cheth?” I asked.
“Likewise,” it replied. “My tegument is adapted, armoured. I use to my advantage that which many creatures would find inimical.”
I smiled. “I am a primitive indeed,” I said.
The humane Kamis said, “The happenstance of your genealogy does not preclude your potentiality, my friend.”
I smiled and nodded and gave my attention to the descent.
It was my guess that the city was not built by human beings, or rather by any human beings that might have conformed to my approximate dimensions. For one thing the steps were too high, suggesting architects with longer legs than mine; for another, the apertures leading from the steps to the dwellings on either side were tall and attenuated: I would have had to turn sideways to gain entry. I imagined a city peopled by a race of long-legged giants.
Seconds later I heard a distant rumble, followed
by a tremor; I staggered. It was as if for an instant my legs had turned to jelly.
Rep explained, “The Earth is old, and suffers quakes from time to time.”
Kamis, beside me, asked Rep, “And this city? Is it a redundancy to ask if it is no longer inhabited?”
“Its last guardians left its shelter and took refuge underground some half a million years gone,” Rep said. “They became extinct long ago.”
“Guardians? But they were not the beings who built the city?” Cheth asked.
“No. The last inhabitants were spider creatures, living here like vermin and hardly sentient, we think.”
“But do you know who did build the city?” I asked.
“A race known as the Effectuators,” Rep told us. “They were a hallowed people, a philosopher race. Their artifacts can be found all over the surface of this old planet.”
“And the stars,” I said to myself. “In two billions years, the stars would have been conquered.”
“Legions of races have left the refuge of planet Earth and gone among the stars, in search of knowledge and wisdom, adventure. And aliens,” Rep went on, “stop by from time to time, with stories of their wanderings, and even tales of the many Terran races they have happened upon out there.”
“And you?” Kamis asked. “Are your people, the Ky20, a star-faring race?”
Replenish-362 raised two pincers in an indecipherable gesture. “We have never left the cradle of our birth, my friend. We leave adventuring to more daring species.”
Cheth asked, “If this, then, is not your city – where do you dwell?”
“We are a subterranean species,” Rep replied. “We live in vast excavated caverns in the cool far underground.”
“But what,” I said, “is the reason for your venturing out on this quest, if I might ask?”
The crab waved four pincers. “That will become apparent in time, in time,” it said.
Beside me, Kamis smiled.
We had passed though a series of shelved dwellings, and now approached an escarpment. To either side were terraced ellipses, which once, in far earlier times, might have been gardens. Now they were parched furrows, from which even the soil had been dried to dust and stolen by the wind.
