by Ben Bova
“Fourteen times,” he answered.
“It has not harmed you in any way, has it?”
He hesitated, then replied, “It has changed me. Each time I see it, it changes me more.”
“You … you really are Dorik Harbin?”
“I was.”
“Those people of the Chrysalis …?”
“DORIK HARBIN KILLED THEM ALL. YES. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR IT, NO PARDON. IT WAS THE ACT OF A MONSTER.”
“But why?”
“Monsters do monstrous things. Dorik Harbin ingested psychotropic drugs to increase his battle prowess. Afterward, when the battle drugs cleared from his bloodstream and he understood what he had done, Dorik Harbin held a grenade against his chest and set it off.”
“Oh my god,” Elverda whimpered.
“He was not allowed to die, however. Yamagata Corporations medical specialists rebuilt his body and he was given a false identity. For many years he lived a sham of life, hiding from the authorities, hiding from his own guilt. He no longer had the courage to kill himself; the pain of his first attempt was far stronger than his own self-loathing. Then he was hired to come to this place. Dorik Harbin looked upon the artifact for the first time, and his true identity emerged at last.”
Elverda heard a scuffling sound, like feet dragging, staggering. Martin Humphries came into view, tottering, leaning heavily against the wall of the tunnel, slumping as if his legs could no longer hold him.
“No man … no one…” He pushed himself forward and collapsed into Dorn’s arms.
“Destroy it!” he whispered harshly, spittle dribbling down his chin. “Destroy this whole damned piece of rock! Wipe it out of existence!”
“What is it?” Elverda asked. “What did you see?”
Dorn lowered him to the ground gently. Humphries’s feet scrabbled against the rock as if he were trying to run away. Sweat covered his face, soaked his shirt.
“It’s … beyond…” he babbled. “More … than anyone can … nobody could stand it…”
Elverda sank to her knees beside him. “What has happened to him?” She looked up at Dorn, who knelt on Humphries’s other side.
“The artifact”
Humphries suddenly ranted, “They’ll find out about me! Everyone will know! It’s got to be destroyed! Nuke it! Blast this whole asteroid to bits!” His fists windmilled in the air, his eyes were wild.
“I tried to warn him,” Dorn said as he held Humphries’s shoulders down, the man’s head in his lap. “I tried to prepare him for it.”
“What did he see?” Elverda’s heart was pounding; she could hear it thundering in her ears. “What is it? What did you see?”
Dorn shook his head slowly. “I cannot describe it. I doubt that anyone could describe it—except, perhaps, an artist: a person who has trained herself to see the truth.”
“The prospectors—they saw it. Even their children saw it.”
“Yes. When I arrived here they had spent eighteen days in the chamber. They left it only when the chamber closed itself. They ate and slept and returned here, as if hypnotized.”
“It did not hurt them, did it?”
“They were emaciated, dehydrated. It took a dozen of my strongest men to remove them to my ship. Even the children fought us.”
“But—how could…” Elverda’s voice faded into silence. She looked at the brightly lit tunnel. Her breath caught in her throat. “Destroy it,” Humphries mumbled. “Destroy it before it destroys us! Don’t let them find out. They’ll know, they’ll know, they’ll all know.” He began to sob uncontrollably.
“You do not have to see it,” Dorn said to Elverda. “You can return to your ship and leave this place.”
Leave, urged a voice inside her head. Run away. Live out what’s left of your life and let it go.
Then she heard her own voice say, as if from a far distance, “I’ve come such a long way.”
“It will change you,” he warned.
“Will it release me from life?”
Dorn glanced down at Humphries, still muttering darkly, then returned his gaze to Elverda.
“It will change you,” he repeated.
Elverda forced herself to her feet. Leaning one hand against the warm rock wall to steady herself, she said, “I will see it. I must.”
“Yes,” said Dorn. “I understand.”
She looked down at him, still kneeling with Humphries’s head resting in his lap. Dorn’s electronic eye glowed red in the shadows. His human eye was hidden in darkness.
He said, “I believe your people say, Vaya con Dios.”
Elverda smiled at him. She had not heard that phrase in forty years. “Yes. You too. Vaya con Dios.” She turned and stepped across the faint groove where the metal door had met the floor.
The tunnel sloped downward only slightly. It turned sharply to the right, Elverda saw, just as Dorn had told them. The light seemed brighter beyond the turn, pulsating almost, like a living heart.
She hesitated a moment before making that final turn. What lay beyond? What difference, she answered herself. You have lived so long that you have emptied life of all its purpose. But she knew she was lying to herself. Her life was devoid of purpose because she herself had made it that way. She had spurned love; she had even rejected friendship when it had been offered. Still, she realized that she wanted to live. Desperately, she wanted to continue living no matter what.
Yet she could not resist the lure. Straightening her spine, she stepped boldly around the bend in the tunnel.
The light was so bright it hurt her eyes. She raised a hand to her brow to shield them and the intensity seemed to decrease slightly, enough to make out the faint outline of a form, a shape, a person…
Elverda gasped with recognition. A few meters before her, close enough to reach and touch, her mother sat on the sweet grass beneath the warm summer sun, gently rocking her baby and crooning softly to it.
Mammal she cried silently. Mamma. The baby—Elverda herself—looked up into her mother’s face and smiled.
And the mother was Elverda, a young and radiant Elverda, smiling down at the baby she had never had, tender and loving as she had never been.
Something gave way inside her. There was no pain; rather, it was as if a pain that had throbbed sullenly within her for too many years to count suddenly faded away. As if a wall of implacable ice finally melted and let the warm waters of life flow through her.
Elverda sank to the floor, crying, gushing tears of understanding and relief and gratitude. Her mother smiled at her.
“I love you, Mamma,” she whispered. “I love you.”
Her mother nodded and became Elverda herself once more. Her baby made a gurgling laugh of pure happiness, fat little feet waving in the air.
The image wavered, dimmed, and slowly faded into emptiness. Elverda sat on the bare rock floor in utter darkness, feeling a strange serenity and understanding warming her soul.
“Are you all right?”
Dorn’s voice did not startle her. She had been expecting him to come to her.
“The chamber will close itself in another few minutes,” he said. “We will have to leave.” Elverda took his offered hand and rose to her feet. She felt strong, fully in control of herself.
The tunnel outside the chamber was empty.
“Where is Humphries?”
“I sedated him and then called in a medical team to take him back to his ship.”
“He wants to destroy the artifact,” Elverda said.
“That will not be possible,” said Dorn. “I will bring the IAA scientists here from the ship before Humphries awakes and recovers. Once they see the artifact they will not allow it to be destroyed. Humphries may own the asteroid, but the IAA will exert control over the artifact.”
“The artifact will affect them—strangely.”
“No two of them will be affected in the same manner,” said Dorn. “And none of them will permit it to be damaged in any way.”
“Humphries will not
be pleased with you, once he recovers.”
He gestured up the tunnel, and they began to walk back toward their quarters.
“Nor with you,” Dorn said. “We both saw him babbling and blubbering like a baby.”
“What could he have seen?”
“What he most feared. His whole life has been driven by fear, poor man.”
“What secrets he must be hiding!”
“He hid them from himself. The artifact showed him his own true nature.”
“No wonder he wants it destroyed.”
“He cannot destroy the artifact, but he will certainly want to destroy us. Once he recovers his composure he will want to wipe out the witnesses who saw his reaction to it.”
Elverda knew that Dorn was right. She watched his face as they passed beneath the lights, watched the glint of the etched metal, the warmth of the human flesh.
“You knew that he would react this way, didn’t you?” she asked.
“No one could be as rich as he is without having demons driving him. He looked into his own soul and recognized himself for the first time in his life.”
“You planned it this way!”
“Perhaps I did,” he said. “Perhaps the artifact did it for me.”
“How could—”
“It is a powerful experience. After I had seen it a few times I felt it was offering me…” he hesitated, then spoke the word, “salvation.”
Elverda saw something in his face that Dorn had not let show before. She stopped in the shadows between overhead lights. Dorn turned to face her, half machine, standing in the rough tunnel of bare rock.
“You have had your own encounter with it,” he said. “You understand now how it can transform you.”
“Yes,” said Elverda. “I understand.”
“After a few times, I came to the realization that there are thousands of my fellow mercenaries, killed in engagements all through the asteroid belt, still drifting where they were killed. Miners and prospectors, as well. Floating forever in space, alone, unattended, ungrieved for.”
“Thousands of mercenaries?”
“The Chrysalis massacre was not the only bloodletting in the Belt,” said Dorn. “There have been many battles out here. Wars that we paid for with our blood.”
“Thousands?” Elverda repeated. “Thousands of dead. Could it have been so brutal?”
“Men like Humphries know. They start the wars, and people like me fight them. Exiles, never allowed to return to Earth again once we take the mercenary’s pay.”
“All those men—killed.”
Dorn nodded. “And women. The artifact made me see that it was my duty to find each of those forgotten bodies and give each one a decent final rite. The artifact seemed to be telling me that this was the path of my atonement.”
“Your salvation,” she murmured.
“I see now, however, that I underestimated the situation.”
“How?”
“Humphries. While I am out there searching for the bodies of the slain, he will have me killed.”
“No! That’s wrong!”
Dorn’s deep voice was empty of regret. “It will be simple for him to send a team after me. In the depths of dark space, they will murder me. What I failed to do for myself, Humphries will do for me. He will be my final atonement.”
“Never!” Elverda blazed with anger. “I will not permit it to happen.”
“Your own life is in danger from him,” Dorn said.
“What of it? I am an old woman, ready for death.”
“Are you?”
“I was … until I saw the artifact.”
“Now life is more precious to you, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want you to die,” Elverda said. “You have atoned for your sins. You have borne enough pain.”
He looked away, then started up the tunnel again.
“You are forgetting one important factor,” Elverda called after him.
Dorn stopped, his back to her. She realized now that the clothes he wore had been his military uniform. He had torn all the insignias and pockets from it.
“The artifact. Who created it? And why?”
Turning back toward her, Dorn answered, “Alien visitors to our solar system created it, unknown ages ago. As to why— you tell me: Why does someone create a work of art?”
“Why would aliens create a work of art that affects human minds?”
Dorn’s human eye blinked. He rocked a step backward.
“How could they create an artifact that is a mirror to our souls?” Elverda asked, stepping toward him. “They must have known something about us. They must have been here when there were human beings existing on Earth.”
Dorn regarded her silently.
“They may have been here much more recently than you think,” Elverda went on, coming closer to him. “They may have placed this artifact here to communicate with us.”
“Communicate?”
“Perhaps it is a very subtle, very powerful communications device.”
“Not an artwork at all.”
“Oh yes, of course it’s an artwork. All works of art are communications devices, for those who possess the soul to understand.”
Dorn seemed to ponder this for long moments. Elverda watched his solemn face, searching for some human expression.
Finally he said, “That does not change my mission, even if it is true.”
“Yes it does,” Elverda said, eager to save him. “Your mission is to preserve and protect this artifact against Humphries and anyone else who would try to destroy it—or pervert it to his own use.”
“The dead call to me,” Dorn said solemnly. “I hear them in my dreams now.”
“But why be alone in your mission? Let others help you. There must be other mercenaries who feel as you do.”
“Perhaps,” he said softly.
“Your true mission is much greater than you think,” Elverda said, trembling with new understanding. “You have the power to atone for the wars that have destroyed your comrades, that have almost destroyed your soul.”
“Atone for the corporate wars?”
“You will be the priest of this shrine, this sepulcher. I will return to Earth and tell everyone about these wars.”
“Humphries and others will have you killed.”
“I am a famous artist, they dare not touch me.” Then she laughed. “And I am too old to care if they do.”
“The scientists— do you think they may actually learn how to communicate with the aliens?”
“Someday,” Elverda said. “When our souls are pure enough to stand the shock of their presence.”
The human side of Dorn’s face smiled at her. He extended his arm and she took it in her own, realizing that she had found her own salvation. Like two kindred souls, like comrades who had shared the sight of death, like mother and son they walked up the tunnel toward the waiting race of humanity.
My son, if sinners entice you,
Do not consent…
Keep your feet from their path;
For their feet run to evil,
And they hasten to shed blood. …
But they lie in wait for their own blood;
They ambush their own lives.
So are the ways of everyone who gains by violence.
It takes away the life of its possessors.
—The Book of Proverbs
Chapter 1, verses 10—19
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