by James Gunn
The male twittered at her. It sounded like a question.
“This Lemnian wants to know who and what you are and what you are doing here?” the Pedia said.
Clearly the Pedia had done more with the Lemnian language than she had. “Tell him—he is male by the way—that I am here to help him, but first I must have some information.”
The Lemnian had looked at Asha with greater surprise when the medallion began to speak and seemed almost to faint when it addressed him in twitters. His body was thin, thinner than the bodies of the sturdy Lemnians who had escorted her to the city. He looked sick.
“Ask him—” she began, and then continued, “No, I will ask him myself.” Suddenly, as such things happen, the language had fallen into place. “Do you want to have your bonds released?” she twittered. She moved toward the table.
“No,” the Lemnian said. “Who are you? What do you want? You’re not one of them.”
“A Lemnian? No. I’m—from the sky,” she said.
“A god?”
“There are no gods. I am a person like everybody.” Well, except Pedias, she thought. “I came from a far-off world to find out what has been happening here on Lemnia.”
“You don’t look like everybody.” The Lemnian was regaining his composure.
“I look like people from my world,” Asha said. “Like you with a few differences caused by the way we evolved.” She could find no Lemnian twitter for “evolved” and substituted “the gods made us.”
“There are no gods, you said,” the Lemnian twittered, and then, more somberly, “or they would not have left me here.”
“Why are you here?” Asha asked. “What happened to you? Where are all the other males.”
“The gods came, and they left. That’s what they told me. And all the other males died. That’s what they told me.”
“You never saw them? The gods?”
“Nobody saw them,” the Lemnian said. “But the gods spoke to them. That’s what they told me.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“The females.”
Asha thought about that. The Lemnian leader had told her there were no males, but here was proof that she had been lying. And the other Lemnians, the females, had imprisoned this male for purposes that she was beginning to suspect.
“They did this to you?” she said. “The females? They keep you here?”
“Yes.”
“And for what purpose?” She had to ask.
“To service them. What else?” The Lemnian looked unhappy and sicker. “At first,” he said in a softer twitter, “I thought it would be a pleasure, all the females a male could desire. And then it became a duty I was required to perform for the Lemnian species. And then it became torture, and they kept after me day and night.”
“I’m going to get you out of here,” Asha said, moving toward the table once more.
“No,” he said, raising his head as if in protest.
“Why?”
“They’ll kill me,” he said, and dropped his head back to the table.
Without warning, the door opened behind Asha. Lemnians rushed into the room to take her arms. They dragged her away.
* * *
The room was familiar. It was the office in which she had been interrogated, only now there were three older Lemnians, one seated and the other two standing on either side of her, like a panel of judges. The younger Lemnians who had brought her here remained standing behind her, one on each side, as if she had undergone a transformation from possible visitor to convicted prisoner. She could have disposed of them at any time, but that would get her only increased hostility and overwhelming force. The three behind the desk looked at her silently for a long, tense moment.
Finally the seated Lemnian spoke, using the rusty Galactic Standard she had used before. “You have lied to me. You are not an emissary of anything, except maybe the demons who seek to divert us from our service to the gods. Maybe you are a demon. Are you a demon?”
“It is you who have lied,” Asha said. She had decided to reply in Galactic Standard. Her mastery of Lemnian twitter might yet be better concealed from these officials. “All the Lemnian males are not dead.”
“That poor ineffective creature is scarcely a male. He has failed at the only thing he is good for.”
“He does not impregnate the females?” Asha said.
“You know then?” The Lemnian official—now Asha thought she must be a leader, a mayor, a governor, or maybe someone at the national or world level—paused as if to reevaluate Asha’s understanding. “He does not.”
“He might perform better,” Asha said, “if he were given food, rest, medical attention and—yes!—even freedom.”
“We do not tell you how to treat your males,” the Lemnian said, “if you have any. Do not try to tell us how to treat ours. Even if you come from beyond the sky, as you say.”
“Have your males always been treated in this fashion? As impregnation creatures?”
“What else are they good for?”
“They are people, too,” Asha said, “with feelings and minds and abilities that are equal to those of females.”
“Myths.”
“Well, this poor male needs some help. Bring in some other males.”
“There are no others. The males all died.”
“And why not this one?”
“He was found, cowering in a remote village,” the Lemnian said. “He was fortunate to have lived past the day when the others expired, and he was happy to be brought here, alive, to serve his people.”
Asha finally asked the question she had been wanting to ask since she first noted the absence of males and the Lemnian-in-charge had told her that the males were all dead. “And how did they die?”
“We killed them,” the Lemnian said.
It was an unemotional statement that confirmed all the suspicions that had concerned Asha from the beginning. “Why?”
“They were lazy, unfaithful creatures,” the Lemnian-in-charge said. “That’s what the gods told us. And they told us to kill them.”
“How?”
“How did we kill them?”
“How did the gods tell you?”
“In the customary way.”
“And what is that?”
“By revelation,” the Lemnian said.
“A message?”
“It was the kind of message gods send.” The Lemnian turned to the Lemnian standing on her right and twittered, “This creature has no understanding and no use other than to ask meaningless questions.” And she turned to the Lemnian standing on her left and twittered, “She is not from the gods. I think she is a demon. We should dispose of her like we did with the males.”
Asha did not display any reaction to the judgment being discussed. That they did not know she understood their language might still be useful.
The two standing Lemnians made a movement with their heads that could have been approval. So, Asha thought, it was a sentence. “We will consider your words,” the seated Lemnian said to Asha in Galactic Standard, but then twittered to her guards, “Take this person to the room with the male until we can dispose of her. And make certain that the door is guarded.”
The two guards took Asha by the arms and turned her toward her fate.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Life in the red sphere was different with Asha gone. Despite the transcendent rationality, male competition between Riley and Tordor was more prevalent without the civilizing influence of a female, and Adithya was on edge about his responsibility for what was being reported by the medallion hanging about his neck.
Riley and Tordor argued about whose expedition had involved the greater peril, and when that ended without a conclusion, about whose investigation had obtained the most useful information. It was all pointless and served only to ease concerns on Riley’s part about Asha’s situation on Lemnia. Tordor’s motivation was harder to read; maybe he was just being a Dorian.
“Asha is responding well to the L
emnian environment,” the Pedia reported. “Conditions are not toxic as they were on Nepenthe or oppressive, as they were on Centaur.”
“They were not oppressive on Centaur,” Tordor said. “Only dangerous.”
“Oppressive to a human,” the Pedia said.
“Allow the Pedia to stay current,” Adithya said.
“Conditions are optimal for human or humanoid existence,” the Pedia said, “and so far there is no evidence of predators.”
“What about alien invasion?” Riley said.
“Or of alien invasion,” the Pedia concluded.
The Pedia fell silent, and in the absence of information on what was happening on the planet below, Riley and Tordor picked up their argument, only this time it concerned the red sphere. Tordor had never been as comfortable with the protean abilities of the ancient spaceship as Riley, who had lived with it for several long-cycles before Tordor had joined the crew. He also had the special relationship of the person who had discovered the artifact. Tordor continued to question the method by which the red sphere traveled between nexus points. It had no apparent means of propulsion, no engine, no expulsion of mass, no loss of matter, if the substance from which the red sphere was made could properly be considered matter, no diminishing or resupply of energy.
The Pedia broke into the conversation. “Lemnians have appeared. They have arrived on flying creatures, resembling oversized birds.”
“Birds?” Tordor said. Heavy-planet aliens had no experience with flying creatures.
“Creatures with wings that travel through the air,” Adithya said. “Quiet.”
“Seven Lemnians have arrived. All of them apparently female. They have surrounded Asha. She speaks to them, although they do not understand her language. She does not resist as they take her to the avian transportation that brought them here. Asha is placed on a bird with a Lemnian behind. The group begins to fly.”
“Is she in trouble?” Adithya asked. “Do we need to rescue her?”
“Her pulse rate has gone up. The experience is increasing the flow of adrenaline.”
“I knew I should have gone with her,” Adithya said.
“Asha is only reacting to the unfamiliar experience of open-air flying,” Riley said. “And she is allowing the Lemnians to take her where she can obtain the information we need.” He was not as unaffected by Asha’s situation as he wanted Adithya to believe.
“As for the red sphere,” he said, “I have my own theories about its abilities.” Tordor knew that, because they had talked about it before, but it was good to distract Adithya from his concerns—and, he was aware, his own, being separated from Asha, except for his experience on Nepenthe, for the first time since they had been reunited on Earth.
The red sphere, he said, had been the means by which the creators of the Transcendental Machine had transported receiving devices, and the engineers who installed them, to worlds around the spiral arm that contained Earth and the Galactic Federation. Since ships like these were going to worlds that had no technological civilizations, they had to be self-sustaining, regenerative, resistant to widely different conditions. That is why this one survived a million long-cycles of neglect. Perhaps it also took representatives of local cultures back to the home planet for research or education.
“Or purposes less benign,” Tordor said.
“Who knows?” Riley said. “But it would explain the ability of the red sphere to adapt itself to individual variations in physiology, diet, breathable air, and the rest.”
Moreover, he went on, the creators of the Transcendental Machine were masters of particle entanglement and therefore, probably, masters of other particle sciences. One of those, from the available evidence, was the ability to transform space, which enabled them to create the system of nexus points by which the galaxy, or at least two of its spiral arms, became capable of practical interstellar travel. Who is to say, Riley asked, that particle theory and the ability to shape space did not also allow their ships to travel between nexus points without using macro devices of propulsion? As the evidence before them indicated that they did.
“In other words,” Tordor said, “they used magic.”
“Magic is what people call technology they don’t understand,” Riley said.
“If it is technology,” Tordor said, “that is even more reason to return this ship to the Federation undamaged. It is technology the Federation may need to repel an alien invasion—if an alien invasion is what is happening.”
“And a reason why we and the ship should not be destroyed when we return with the answer to that question,” Riley said.
As for the energy supply, he went on, he had a theory that the red sphere absorbed energy from its environment when it was exposed to sources. Particularly to the radiation from suns. Its ability to respond and react at the cellular level suggested that it was also capable of absorbing and storing energy at the same level.
“Moreover,” he said, “it may be that the fall of the roof of the building the dinosaurs constructed to house, and possibly confine, the red sphere may have saved it from extinction.”
“The Lemnians with Asha have arrived at a metropolis,” the Pedia said, “and she has been confined in a room.”
“She has been imprisoned,” Adithya said. “Take me down so I can help her.”
“She doesn’t need any help,” Riley said. “Not yet anyway.”
And the Pedia said, “She has said that she doesn’t request any help at this time.”
* * *
The absence of further reports about Asha’s situation, except for routine statements that “Asha is eating” and “Asha is resting,” allowed life to continue on the ship without further distraction but also without eliminating the tension that always existed when one of them was in a position beyond the group’s immediate ability to help. It was a tension they had learned to live with.
Once Adithya raised a question: “Why are there only females?” And Riley responded. “I’m sure Asha has asked this, too.”
Not too long afterward the Pedia reported that Asha had left the room in which the Lemnians had thought to restrain her and had entered another room, which contained a male Lemnian strapped to a table. The Lemnian told them that he was the last remaining male, saved to provide reproductive services. Asha had expressed some concern about the Lemnian’s physical condition and offered to release him, but the Lemnian refused, for fear of being killed.
Then female Lemnians had entered and taken them back to the room where Asha had been questioned before.
“Asha is in trouble,” Adithya said. “It’s my responsibility to go help.”
“She will ask for help when she needs it,” Riley said. And, though he did not say it, Riley was not sure that Adithya was the one to offer it. Or, for that matter, any male.
The Pedia reported the interview, with all its troubling implications. When Asha was taken back to the room with the imprisoned male, Adithya could be restrained no longer.
“Take me down,” he said. “We can wait no longer.”
“Why you?” Tordor asked.
“Because…,” Adithya said. “Because I should.”
“I don’t think the young person should go,” Tordor said. “He has no experience.”
“The only way to have experience,” Riley said, “is to have it.”
“I have the Pedia,” Adithya said, holding the medallion out like a validation. “The Pedia that Asha gave me. I can always draw upon your experience.”
“We’ll need the medallion to keep in touch with Asha,” Riley said. He held out his hand.
“We cannot let the young human go without assistance and without the means of asking for help,” Tordor said.
“If you place me in contact with any metallic object,” the Pedia said, “I can use that as a communication device, although only the medallions have the capacity to contain the full range of my abilities.”
Adithya had an earring. He handed it over to Riley, extended the medallion, and the
contact was made. Adithya restored the earring to its place and left the medallion in Riley’s hands.
Riley took the red sphere down to the outskirts of the Lemnian city, unconcerned that it might be observed by Lemnians. From what he had learned about the Lemnian reason for killing their males, Adithya might need the benefit of a supernatural arrival.
“Always keep in mind,” Riley said, “that these Lemnians killed all the males.”
Riley watched Adithya press through the side of the red sphere onto the surface of Lemnia and disappear into the city.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Asha regarded the sacrificial male with compassion. She began unbuckling the straps that held him to the table, ignoring his protests. “Don’t worry,” she twittered at him. “I’ll protect you.”
She helped him sit up. The effort was almost too much for him, and he fell over when she let go. She pulled him upright again. “Stay there,” she said before she went into the bathroom/kitchen for a cloth and some water. She returned to find him flat on the table once more. She bathed his face and body, noticing even more keenly how thin and weak he was. He was unresisting but agitated, turning his head from side to side. It was pitiful, Asha thought, that he had been reduced to this state of animal-like subjection to the Lemnian females. But perhaps it had always been that way on Lemnia, the males smaller and weaker than the females; or perhaps it was only this male who had been allowed to live because he was small and weak.
Asha got grain from the kitchen, mixed it with some water, and mashed it with an implement she found that was something like a spoon. She put a small portion of the gruel in the male’s mouth. He let it dribble out the side. She wiped it away and tried again until he began to chew and then to swallow. After a few mouthfuls she paused and let him rest and then resumed until he had consumed half of what she had prepared. He rested again and then when she raised him to a sitting position, he stayed upright.
