by Paul Hughes
Lilith went home to meet the mother she’d only known through dreams, through whispers at night, through that tickle at the base of the skull. Role-reversal: child becomes adult, adult becomes child. They fed on one another, fed on this war created by silver. One died as one lived.
I miss her. She’s right here in my arms, in my heart, but I miss her. For the first time in so long, that touch is gone.
Let me fall; let me join her soon, but not before vengeance. Please give me strength.
Whistler and Nine safely transported her home to a dead world, a dying parent. Maire and Whistler and Nine and Hank and Lilith, all strapped into Gary, turning Earth inside-out in his departure, killing our home that we barely knew, feeding from the entire system to fuel his journey beyond light. Maire knew the target, knew even then: a systemship within which Hannon had hidden a star, a dying god, the last remnants of his species.
They flew.
I remember Machine’s capture, the collision and scraping. I remember the draining bubble, torches cutting into my prison, that tug of language behind the eyes as they lifted me out.
i don’t feel worthy of her sometimes. i’m trying to learn, but it is difficult. she is beauty beyond beauty, kindness beyond kindness, that soul and those eyes that i’ve felt and seen for so long and now with whom i’ve finally been re-united.
she sees beauty in things that i’ve taken for granted for years.
i’ve never felt that complete: arms around my girl, in that place, in that moment.
i saw beauty in the forever we share.
The child speaks to me without words, begging. Begging. Time is paused; this weapon
The truth I saw finally in Hannon’s eyes, the lifetimes he saw in mine. He’d found me, or maybe I found him, drawn together between stars and times by the ineffable, inexplicable. Our paths intersected and it was the way it was supposed to be.
Moments of proof and realization.
Maire’s attack on god, that clandestine infection of the host body, the release before her exile... The infection had spread to every world in Hannon’s system. Immediate, deadly, certain. This was a different silver, pure from the lumbers, pure from Maire’s time on the edge of the system. Will we ever know where it came from?
It spread from Berlin and Hannon’s command vessel above the silenced first planet, using the carrier lines to crawl to each planet, disseminate in each atmosphere, attack and kill everything without the marginally-protective Y chromosome. It was neither a quick nor painless death. Hannon was allowed to watch his wife and daughters writhe in agony from afar, become infertile, silvered. Afflicted. Within a century, all would be lost. There would be no next generations.
They developed a way to contain the infection with a cardiac shield placed above and around their hearts. It only prolonged; it didn’t solve.
His was a systemship of men. By the time he found me, there were no more women.
I remember looking at the shielded star hidden at the vessel’s core. So lonely. And within…
What placed me in this body, this mind, this soul? What made me a part of this jihad, made my life any more significant than the trillions of others who have fought and died in this war? Why does a man become a focal point of history and existence when he would have so much rather lived in blissful anonymity? There are strands that connect us throughout time and space, drawing us together, pushing us apart. I just wish I knew why I wasn’t born into someone else, someone who died in the initial invasion, someone who rests now, unknown, forgotten forever. I don’t want this.
I saw so much when I touched Judith, when I touched God, but I never saw the answer. I never found out why it has to be me. I don’t think she knew; the silver is something so much more than a dying ancient. The silver transcends time and space, comes from somewhere we can neither comprehend nor acknowledge. It screams from beyond, itches under my skin and there is the trigger, cool and unyielding, yet it could yield if I applied pressure. Voices.
The heart speeds toward
How human they were, how exactly like us except for two hearts, black blood, less oxygen in their atmosphere. The same uncertainties, the same power plays, the same emotions of loss and rage against Maire. She was our creator; forty thousand years hidden below the surface, directing our evolution, bumping our ancestors a few steps up the ladder. We were born of her.
How human they were, fraught with the same desires, the same weaknesses. We were born of a defect: Maire and her prey: Berlin. She called to those early men, drew them into caves, altered their course toward
How human they were.
I remember shiver and tickling, that resonance that allowed us to pass through miles of solid glass into the trapped and wounded solar system.
I saw the first signs of Hannon’s troubles, the fireworks of his civil war. Even in that moment, they fought from within, internal power struggle threatening to ruin everything Hannon had set into motion, the great showdown between the remnants of his species and she who had ended so much.
Great fleets of vessels within the systemship, men fighting a war because they could, not because they really understood the severity of the situation. Maire had killed because of a plan gone horribly awry, an attempt to make a statement about her species’ dependency on the machines. She wanted to kill, yes, but that desire became ultimate. The taste of blood drowned her senses. Machines no longer mattered; she was consumed by silver machines herself. She lashed out, initially with Berlin and Kath’s help. They realized their mistake, and paid for it with everything.
Visions of a night sky, stars unlike these or home, great wailsong of the lumbers in schools, blotting out the stars with blackness miles long. Warmth of skin, cool of air, the hope that they could change things, that they could retake their homeworld from machines with the simple technology reaped from giant flying trees.
Maybe some of the men on Hannon’s vessel felt they no longer needed God. Maybe they thought if they surrendered her to Maire, the plague would end. So they fought, vessel to vessel, surrounded by glass, a sun trapped within metal and phase, lances of light enacting endings on their brothers.
I’d never imagined that I would feel sorry for God when I met her. Never imagined that I would pity her.
She looked so young. So scared.
We’d made it through the rebels, through the bubble to the center star, tiny planet in orbit. We descended within, where they’d hidden God, this time not for sleep but for safety and hopefully recovery, but everyone knew. Everyone knew.
We got out of the shiver. This was Heaven.
Men lined the walkway in silence. Men, not angels, guarding the gateway to the kingdom.
They said nothing. They looked at me blankly. They knew.
And I met God.
please protect my loved ones from the evil that is all around us.
please help us to be strong.
please help us to do the right thing.
please help us to persevere.
please help us to understand why there is pain, why there is loss, why we must suffer in this existence you’ve made.
please help us to see the beauty in simple things.
please help us know Love.
please help me to understand that which i cannot: your existence, your eternity, your endless reach.
please cast away that which would do us harm, so that we might live out our lives in peace.
please give me solace.
please give me silence.
please understand that i am trying.
please help me to find home again.
amen.
Prayer, incantation, beseeching, pleading, those whispers behind my eyes each and every night since I could remember. Those words kept me from
She was younger than me.
Huddled, fetal position, shivering. Not what I expected. So young, so fragile. Eyes of pure silver, the lattice crawling freely beneath her skin.
So this was Heaven, a shell carved from a blackened
world drifting lazily around a hidden star. This was Heaven: no angels, no clouds, no shining halos or golden gates or harps. Silent men afflicted with a silver plague, watching a young girl die.
Hannon went to her side, stroked her face. She smiled. Blind, but she knew. Of course she knew.
She struggled to sit up. So weak. Hannon helped her, held her. Both afflicted, neither caring about the possibility of cross-contamination. This was a race that acknowledged its impending extinction. He helped her sit up, and she motioned for me to join them.
you’ve been touched
And she touched my face, my neck and face. Silver eyes seeing but not seeing, looking into and through my own.
this is the one?
And I told her. Everything, although she knew. She was God. Judith.
No words, but I felt her pull those memories from my mind: my mother’s affliction, my father leaving for war, the attack on Earth, leaving on Arch into the Outer. Growing and learning and fighting. Killing. Soldats perdus. She knew all that I knew: of Lilith, of the stillness, the silver, our escape from Maire’s jihad, our separation complete. She knew that I’d had the silver within me always, but only through contact with Lilith was it activated. She knew that I was dying just as certainly as she.
your father... the exile used your father
And I saw his death, collapsed bubble, ejected into space in the binary system. The wounded system within which I had killed Tallis and the angels, from which we ran, from which we had hoped to escape Maire forever.
I saw the species reacting to Joseph Windham’s advance force. They knew that Maire’s vengeance would soon arrive, so they took what they could and ran. Megascale engineering: the construction of Hannon’s systemship, the gentle nudging of a star out of orbit, planets, enveloping all in glass and metal, hiding. They could re-align the night sky, but they couldn’t stop a little girl with an alien disease.
Her touch like fire and
Tears of pain and frustration. Her hand fell from my face as she slumped back, exhausted.
what do you want?
to go home
what do you need?
lilith
Such weakness in her blank eyes. Ancient eyes housed in a dying body. Never believed in God. Never believed in anything more than that which I could see and hear, taste and smell: lips and sweat and blood and eyes. Lilith. I never believed, but she was there, right there, resonating with
she’s coming. the exile will be here soon
My heart dropped. I knew that Maire sought her final vengeance. She would destroy this place, this hidden Heaven. She would kill Hannon, Judith, God. I knew that Lilith and the painter, the cowboy and my ghost would be with her, unwilling participants in this end.
music?
And God’s hand grasped mine, touch like fire and silver, burning, burning, and I saw, and I knew. You know. You do. That touch... For the first time, I believed.
soon, it ends
and I felt the struggle within her touch, not just the dance of silver beneath flesh, but the war inside of God, striving to defeat that crawling metal, that substance without explanation or purpose. Ancient, tired eyes. Tired of fighting, but knowing that she must. Knowing that she couldn’t let the silver consume her until
she’s almost here
and I saw the warship Guerra, weapons charging, felt at its center the child grinning, ready, smug. Vengeance.
For the first time in
I felt Lilith.
it’s you. you have to end this. You
Hannon closed his eyes with interior communication from his ship. Incoming vessel. But we knew already, and there was nothing we could do.
Gary sliced through the systemship hull, venting an ocean of phased silica into the void. A vessel studded with weapons, erupting in fire, cutting through Hannon’s civil war. It didn’t matter. Gary killed without politics.
Judith shuddered, gasped. Such despair in those eyes. Lines of tears that weren’t tears: silver, running down her cheeks. She pulled me close.
remember. remember this. you have to end this. You.
She motioned to one of her guards, who pulled his weapon out of its holster and handed it to her. She opened the charge corridor, ejected the round. Shaking hands stumbled over smooth cylinder.
She used the nails of her right hand to slice into her left palm, let the now-silver blood wash over the round. Faint mist, smoky dance into the still chamber, dissipate. She chambered the round, handed the weapon to me.
you know what to do with this
Hannon exhaled. I looked at him and he nodded. we have to go.
I studied the heft of the weapon, the same weapon I still hold. Cool, featureless black, the round in the corridor now imbued with the blood of the ancient, tainted and perverted into something more than a phase slug. So much power in my hand. No longer helpless for the first time in
I began to stand but Judith placed her hand on my shoulder, pulled me into an embrace. Shaking with pain. She whispered. I felt her sobs as it all came apart.
my son... know that you avenge more than just your own species
i know
and she fell silent, motionless, slumping into my embrace.
God was dead.
I remember numbness, the not-knowing as I gently, tenderly laid her body down to sleep. Silver tears from her eyes, mouth open but silent, pale skin fading to gray as silver catalyst solidified, deprived of her bioelectricity. I don’t know if God perished with its host, but Judith was no more. Hannon closed his eyes.
All vessels, open fire.
Hurried to the tube, hurried to the surface to find the sky on fire, a new moon hanging in orbit around the imprisoned system’s first planet: Gary. Guerra. Mother had brought her war to Hannon’s world at last.
Gary engaged the fleet of destroyers and planetships. Hannon’s men had waited for centuries, millennia for this moment, and they fought with unmatched ferocity, but they were no match. One by ten by a hundred, they fell. They’d struck, and struck hard, but
Into orbit, into the fray. I knew that Mother would escape from her wounded vessel, that she’d take Lilith and the others. Hostages? Guarantee. That we wouldn’t just kill them in orbit.
Judith’s weapon burned at my side.
I saw planetships crumble under Gary’s fire, great swarms of tiny vessels erupt into light. Fireworks. Splashes and ripples of dissolving phase. It reminded me of the day my mother died, the way the sky had looked. It would have looked like that if it had been night instead of morning.
I felt it about to
and then it did. Gary opened up and the combined silver of Maire and Lilith lanced outward, punching into and through the Heaven planet. Hannon deftly maneuvered away from the line of fire, but many of his vessels were caught in the backlash. The planet below glowed with Catalyst, shimmering, glittering Catalyst.
She thought that she’d killed Heaven, but I knew that God had died in my arms. I knew that Maire’s was an empty victory.
Planet venting plasma into orbit, but the silver strike wasn’t enough. I saw a slither detach from Gary’s underbelly, tiny dot compared to the warship, which increased speed and slammed down onto Heaven, shattering into fire and ash, sending great chunks of continent into the sky.
I knew that Lilith was safe on that slither. It entered the burning atmosphere. Landing? The touch of her
my lips remember the echoes of
I saw the webs then, the faint tendrils spreading out from Heaven, tearing through the silica expanse of the systemship. Like the halo spreading from Berlin’s vessel to all of the original worlds, it was happening again.
It’s not at all like Ender, like science fiction books or movies. War isn’t that glorious. It’s a series of shocking images slamming into your mind one after another, giving you no time to react. There is no glory in this, only loss, only raw despair as you just try to survive, to inhale and exhale one more time. Everything becomes that singular goal of seeing her again, h
olding her hand, kissing her. Everything becomes survival until you detach, watch it all in silence, and just breathe.
I saw the shell of the systemship crack from the silver pressure, plates the size of planets lift and spin away. I saw stars outside, more and more stars. And I saw the silver, spreading like spiderwebs, forever outward, forever
I knew there would be no escape for anyone out there. This time, the silver won.
A shard of Gary cut through the atmosphere and impaled our slither. Phase flak. The side of Hannon’s head erupted and we began to depressurize before I even knew we were hit.
He slumped forward in his vacuum chair. Alarms roaring to life, protective bubble washing over me. I saw his jaw move on unspoken words and his eyes blink once. He died.
Chaos to order to chaos: life dissembles. We lose humanity in those moments between and
We lose them all in time, those we love, those whom we’ve learned to love. I didn’t stop to think about the dead mass of flesh in the cockpit next to me. I knew that I owed him my life; he could have killed me immediately upon removing me from Machine, but he didn’t. He knew. And now
He’d given so much, lost so much. I hoped that he was now somewhere better than this dying universe, somewhere beyond the reach of a child, of silver, of loss. I hoped.
I took over the shiver controls and followed Maire’s slither down to the surface. It was time.
No way to stop it now. With this much phase packed into such a convenient containment, I don’t know how far the silver will spread. I have no hope of ever finding anyone else out there. There is only this desert plain, this little girl. And me. Only this, and soon, nothing.
It’s won, but not before I
landed the shiver on the ravaged surface, illuminated by the false incandescence of the silver in the atmosphere, wind still blowing over the scoured expanse. I landed near them but not too close.
They got out of their slither one by one, Whistler helping the child down, then Hank. The ninth incarnation of Hunter Windham. And then
She
saw me from across the winds and dust. Looked from Nine to me to Nine to me. Started running toward me.
Hunter!
