The Starry Rift

by Jonathan Strahan

  He’d come upon her in his youth, on one of the plateaus amidst the sea of three-hundred-foot-high red grass covering the southern continent on the planet Yarmit-Sobit. He’d often wondered if it was random chance or something predestined that he’d have chosen that place at that time of all the places in the universe to set down his shuttle and explore. The village he came upon, comprised of huts woven from the red grass, lying next to a green lake, was idyllic in its serenity.

  The people of the village, sleek and supple, the color of an Earth sky, were near-human in form, save for a ridged fin the length of the spine, ending in a short tail, orange eyes without irises, and sharp-sided fingers perfect for cutting grass. In their sensibility, they were more than human, for they were supremely empathetic, even with other species, like his; valued friendships; and had no word for cruelty. He stayed among them, fished with them off the platforms that jutted out over the deep sea of grass for the wide winged leviathans they called hurrurati, and joined in their ceremonies of smoke and calculation. Zadiiz was one of them.

  From the instant he first saw her, flying one of the orange kites crafted from the inflated bladder of the hurrurati on the open plateau, he had a desire to know her better. He challenged her to a foot race, and she beat him. He challenged her to a wrestling match, and she beat him. He challenged her to a game of tic-tac-toe he taught her using a stick and drawing in the dirt. This he finally won, and it drew a laugh from her—the sound of her joy, the most vibrant thing he’d encountered in all his travels. As the days went on, she taught him her language, showed him how to find roots in the rich loam of the plateau and how to wrangle and ride the giant, single-horned porcine creatures called sheefen, and explained how the universe was made by the melting of an ice giant. In return, he told her about the millions of worlds beyond the red star that was her sun.

  Eventually the mother of the village came to him and asked if he would take the challenge of commitment in order to be bonded to Zadiiz for life. He agreed and was lowered by a long rope off the side of the plateau into the depths of the sea of red grass. In among the enormous blades, he discovered schools of birds that swam like fish through the hidden world, and froglike creatures that braved the heights, leaping from one thick strand of red to stick to another. Even deeper down, as he finally touched the ground, where very little sunlight fell, he encountered large white insects that went about on two legs, with antennae and six arms each. He’d hidden his ray gun in his boot and thus had the means to survive for the duration of his stay below the surface.

  Upon witnessing the power of his weapon against a carnivorous leething, the white insects befriended him, communicating through unspoken thoughts they fired into his head from their antennae. They showed him the sights of their secret world, cautioned him to always be wary of snakes (which they called weeha), and took him to stay overnight in the skeletal remains of a giant hurrurati, where they fed him a meal of red-grass sugar and revealed their incomprehensible philosophy of the sufficient. When he left, they gave him an object they’d found in the belly of the dead hurrurati, which they had no name for, although he knew it to be some kind of metal gear. Two days later, the rope was again lowered, and he was retrieved back to the plateau. Zadiiz could hardly believe how well he’d survived and was proud of him. During their bonding ceremony, Gaghn placed the curio of the gear, strung on a lanyard, around her neck.

  It wasn’t long before the astronaut’s restlessness, which had flogged him on across the universe, finally returned to displace the tranquility of life on the plateau. He needed to leave, and he asked Zadiiz to go with him. She courageously agreed, even though it was the belief of her people that the dark sea beyond the sky was a sea of death. The entire village gathered around and watched as the shuttle carried them up and away. Legends would be told of the departure for centuries to come.

  Gaghn docked the shuttle in the hold of his space vessel, the Empress, and when Zadiiz stepped into the metal, enclosed world of the ship, she trembled. They spent some time merely orbiting her planet, so that she might grow accustomed to the conditions and layout of her new home. Then, one day, when he could withstand the impulse to travel no longer, he led her to the cryo-cradle and helped her to lie down inside. He tried to explain that there would be long, intricate dreams that would seem to her she was awake and living her life, and that some could be quite horrendous, but to remember they were only dreams. She nodded. They kissed by fluttering eyelashes together (as was the custom of her people), and he pushed the button that made the top of her berth slide down over her. In the seconds before the gas did its work, he heard her scream and pound upon the lid. Then silence, and with a troubled conscience, he set the coordinates for a distant constellation and went, himself, to sleep.

  Upon waking, light years away from Yarmit-Sobit, he opened her cradle and discovered her lifeless. He surmised that a nightmare that attended the frozen sleep had frightened the life out of her. Her eyes were wide, her mouth agape, her fists clenched against some dreamed terror that had stalked her imagination. He took her body down to Eljesh, the planet the Empress now orbited, to the lace forest at the bottom of an ancient crater where giant pure white trees, their branches like the entwining arms of so many cosmic snowflakes, reached up into an ashen sky. He’d intended the beauty of this place to be a surprise for her. Unable to contemplate burying her beneath the soil, he laid her next to a milk-white pool on a flat rock, closed her eyes, brushed the hair away from her face, and took with him, as a keepsake, the gear he’d given her.

  When he fled Eljesh, it wasn’t simply the wanderlust drawing him onward now; he was also pursued with equal ferocity by her memory. He always wondered why he couldn’t have simply stayed on the plateau, and that question became his new traveling companion through intergalactic wars, on explorations to the fiery hearts of planets, pirate operations, missions of goodwill, and all the way to the invisible wall at the end of the universe, after which there was no more, and back again.

  He knew many, and many millions more knew of him, but he’d never told a soul of any species what he’d done, until one night, high in the frozen mountains, near the pole of the Idiot planet (so named for its harsh conditions and a judgment upon any who would dare to travel there). Somehow he’d wound up in a cave, weathering a blizzard, with a wise old Ketuban, universally considered to be the holiest and most mystical cosmic citizen in existence. This fat old fellow, eyeless, but powerfully psychic, looking like a pile of mud with a gaping mouth, four tentacles, and eight tiny legs, spoke in whispered bursts of air, but spoke the truth.

  “Gaghn,” said the Ketuban, “you have sorrow.”

  John understood the language, and moved in close to the lumpish fellow to hear over the howling of the wind. Once he understood the statement, the sheer simplicity of it, the heartfelt tone of it, despite the rude sound that delivered it, he told the story of Zadiiz.

  When he was finished, the Ketuban said, “You believe you killed her?”

  Gaghn said nothing but nodded.

  “Some would call it a sin.”

  “I call it a sin,” said the astronaut.

  The storm grew more fierce outside, and the roar of the gale hypnotized Gaghn, making him drowsy. He drifted toward sleep, his memory alive with images of Zadiiz teaching him to fish with spear and rope and tackle, sitting beside him on the plateau beneath the stars, moving around the dwelling they’d shared on a bright warm morning in spring, singing the high-pitched birdsongs of her people. Just before he fell into sleep, he heard his cave-mate’s voice mix with the constant rush of the wind. “Rest easy. I will arrange things.”

  When Gaghn awoke, the storm had abated and the Ketuban had vanished, leaving behind, on the floor of the cave, a crude winged figurine formed from its own mud. He also realized the Ketuban had taken the gear he’d worn around his neck since leaving Zadiiz on Eljesh. As the astronaut made his way cautiously over ice fields fissured with yawning crevices back to his shuttle, he remembered the mystic
alien’s promise. In the years that followed, though, he found no rest from his need to journey farther or from the memories that tormented him, and he realized that this must be the fate that was arranged—no peace for him, as punishment in payment for his sin.

  More memories of his travels ensued as the ancient astronaut woke and slept, the music from the blue box washing over him, the scent of the lemon blossoms, the heat of the sun, his weak heart and failing will to live mixing together into their own narcotic that kept him drowsy. One last image came—his visit to the laboratory of the great inventor Onsing, inside the hollow planet, Simmesia. The aged scientist, whose mind was once ablaze with what many considered the galaxy’s greatest imagination, was laid low by the infirmity of age, on the verge of death. The sight of this had frightened John, and he’d thought if he went far enough, fast enough, he’d escape the fate Onsing assured him in labored whispers came to all, and would be protected for all by a great machine of Onsing’s invention.

  Then Gaghn woke to the late-afternoon wind of the island, saw the ringed planet had risen in the east, and in the failing light, noticed a tall dark figure standing before him.

  “I’ve traveled far and yet never arrived,” he said.

  The visitor, nearly eight foot, broad as three men, and covered in a long black cloak, the hem of which brushed against the stone of the deck, stepped forward, and the old man saw its face. Not human, but some kind of vague imitation of a human face, like a mask of varnished shell with two dark holes for eyes, a subtle ridge for a nose, and another smaller hole that was the mouth. Atop the smooth head was a pair of horns whose sharp points curved toward each other.

  “You may leave now,” said the old man.

  The tall fellow, his complexion indigo, took two graceful steps forward, stopping next to Gaghn’s rocker. The astronaut focused on the empty holes that served as eyes and tried to see if some sign of a personality lurked anywhere inside them. The stranger leaned over, and quicker than a heartbeat, a long tapered nozzle, sharp as the tips of the horns, sprang out of the mouth hole, passed through Gaghn’s forehead with the sound of an egg cracking, and stabbed deep into the center of his brain. The astronaut gave a sudden sigh. Then the nozzle retracted as quickly as it had sprung forth. The old man fell forward, dead, across the table, his right arm hitting the blue box sideways, sending the crystal plinking onto the stone floor of the deck.

  The indigo figure stepped away from the body and sloughed its long cloak. Once free of the garment, the two wings that had been folded against its back lifted and opened wide. They were sleek, half the creature’s height, pointed at the lower tips and ribbed with delicate bone work beneath the slick flesh. Its entire manlike form suggested equal parts reptile and mineral. From down the mountain came the death cry of some creature, from off in the grove came the sorrowful call of the pale night bird, and beneath them both could be heard, in the distance, the persistent pounding of the sea. The visitor crouched, and with great power, leaped into the air. The wings spread out, caught the island wind, and carried it, with powerful thrusts, into the night sky. He flew, silhouetted before the bright presence of the ringed planet from pole to pole, higher and higher, as the figure of John Gaghn receded to a pinpoint, became part of the island, then the ocean, then the night. Hours later, the winged visitor pierced the outer membrane of the planet’s atmosphere and was borne into space.

  The Aieu, people of the jump bone animal, blended flawlessly with the white trees in the lace forest. A dozen of them—hairless, perfectly pale, crouching still as stone gargoyles among the branches, silently watched the movements of the dark giant. Its wings, its horns, told them it would be a formidable opponent, and they wondered how their enemies had created it. After it had passed beneath them, the elder of their party motioned for the swiftest of them to go quickly and warn the queen of an assassin’s approach. The small fellow nodded that he understood the message, and then, on clawed feet, took off, running through the branches, leaping without a sound from tree to tree, in the direction of the hive. The ones that remained behind spread out and followed the intruder, their leader all the while plotting a strategy of offense for when his force would be at full strength.

  Zadiiz, the powder-blue queen, sat in her throne at the center of the hive, the children of the Aieu gathered around her feet. Nearly too feeble with age to walk, let alone run and climb, she could no longer lead the war parties or the hunt as she once had. She was not required to do anything at all, as her subjects owed her their very existence, but she wanted to remain useful for as long as she could, both to pass the time and to set an example. She instructed the young ones on everything from the proper way to employ the deadly jump bone against a foe to the nature of existence itself, as she saw it. On this day, it was the latter. In her weak voice, quivering with age, she explained:

  “Look around you, my dears. All of you, everything you see, the white forest, the gray sky, your distant past, and whatever future we have left, everything is a dream I am dreaming. As I speak to you, I am really asleep in a great vessel, in the clutch of a cradle that freezes the body but not the dream, flying through the darkness above, amidst the stars, to a far place where I will eventually awake to be with my life companion, John Gaghn.”

  The children looked into her orange eyes and nodded, although they could hardly understand. One of the brighter ones spoke up. “And what will become of us when you awaken?”

  Zadiiz could only speak the truth. “I’m not sure,” she said, “but I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe inside my memory. You’ll know if I’ve done this when, if I appear to die, you are still alive.” Upon her mentioning her own death, the children gasped, but she went on to allay their fears. “I won’t have really died, I’ll merely have emerged into another dream, or I’ll truly have awakened, the vessel having reached its destination.” She could see she had confused them and frightened them a little. “Go and think on this for now, and we’ll discuss it more tomorrow.” The small, dazed faces, which, at one time, back on the plateau of the red grasslands of her own planet, she might have considered ugly, now were precious to her. The children came forward and lightly touched her arms, her legs, her face, before leaving the hive. She watched them scamper out and take to the branches that surrounded her palace in the tree-tops, and then sat back and tried to understand, for herself, what she had spoken of.

  John had warned her that the dreams would come and they would be deep and sometimes terrible, and there were parts of this one she believed herself presently imprisoned in that were, but there was also beauty and the reciprocal love between the Aieu and herself. How many more dream lives would she need to experience, she wondered, before waking. This one began with her opening her eyes, staring up into the pale faces of a hunting party of the people of the jump bone animal. Later, when she’d come to learn their language, they told her that even though many of them thought her dead when they’d found her lying on the flat stone next to the pool, their herb witch listened closely, placing her ear to the blue queen’s ear and could hear, though very weak, the faint murmur of thoughts still alive in her head. Then, slowly, employing a treatment of their most powerful natural drugs and constantly moving her limbs, they’d brought her around to consciousness.

  Zadiiz was roused from her reverie by the approach of one of her subjects. He was agitated and began spouting in the Aieu gibberish before he’d even reached her side. “An intruder, an assassin,” he was shouting, waving his needle-sharp jump bone in the air. She shook her head and put both hands up, palms facing outward to indicate he should slow down. He took a deep breath and bowed, placing his weapon on the floor at her feet. “What is this intruder?” she asked, feeling so weary she could hardly concentrate on his description.

  He put the two longest fingers of each of his three-fingered hands, pointing up, atop his wrinkled forehead. She understood and nodded. He then made as blank an expression as he could with his face, closing his eyes, turning his mouth into a perfect O.
She nodded. When he saw she was following him, he held his right hand up as high as he could and then leaped up to show the stranger’s height. Last he said, “Thula,” which meant “deadly.” In response, she made a fist, and he responded by lifting his weapon and exiting out upon the treetops to summon the forces of the Aieu.

  As old and tired as she was, there still burned within her a spark of envy for those who now swarmed away from the hive to meet the threat of this new enemy. She lit her pipe, ran her hand across the old crone stubble on her chin, and, with a vague smile, found in her memory an image of herself when she could still run and climb and fight. It hadn’t taken her long, once the Aieu had brought her around, before she was back on her feet and practicing competing with the best hunters and wrestlers her rescuers had among them. She took to the treetops as though she’d been born in the lace forest, and a few days after they’d demonstrated for her the throwing technique for the jump bone, she was more accurate and deadly with it than those who were still young when the jump bone animal had been hunted to extinction.

  But it was in the war against the Fire Hand that she’d proven herself a general of keen strategic insight and unfailing courage. Utilizing the advantage of the treetops, and employing stealth and speed to defeat an enemy of greater number, she’d helped the Aieu turn back the bloodthirsty hordes that had spilled down over the high lip of the crater and flooded the forest. It was this victory that had elevated her to the status of royalty among them. She drew on her pipe, savoring the rush of imagery out of the past. As the smoke twined up toward the center of the hive, a distant battle cry sounded from the forest, and in the confusion of her advanced age, she believed it to be her own.