Relic

by Alan Dean Foster

  “True,” Yah’thom readily agreed. “While we have plenty of time, Ruslan does not.” It was a cold assessment of the situation, but not a brutal one. He turned his attention from handler to guest. “Are you familiar with a world settled by your people called Treth?”

  Ruslan’s thick gray brows drew together. “I’ve heard of it. Can’t say I’m familiar with it.” Where he expressed doubt, Cor’rin and Bac’cul showed no such uncertainty.

  “It is the world we encountered after finding Seraboth,” Cor’rin explained. “The most recently human-settled planet yet found.”

  Yah’thom gestured affirmatively, then returned his attention to their guest. “Human civilization appears to have persisted on Treth longer than on Seraboth or on any of the other several dozen worlds settled by your kind that we have thus far found and explored. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that knowledge that has been lost elsewhere might still exist in the records of such a place.”

  Within Ruslan’s mind the tiniest flicker of interest began to froth. “As an administrator, I have to agree with you. That doesn’t mean there’s anything more to be learned about Earth’s location in the planetary records of Treth than there was on Seraboth, or anywhere else your people have visited.”

  “No,” admitted the elder scientist, “but it strikes me as a good first place to look. We will begin our search there.” He did not need to seek confirmation from his colleagues. The proposal was too rational to debate. “Do you wish to accompany the expedition?”

  Ruslan was visibly startled. Coming to the meeting, he had not expected to be presented with a blank tender. Now that it had been made and accepted and a plan of action decided upon, he realized that for him to participate would mean giving up the bland but comfortable life that had been made for him on Myssar. Mightn’t it be, he considered, that he was too old to go exploring? It was not as if his presence on such an expedition would be necessary. If by some miracle the Myssari actually located Earth somewhere in the vast firmament, he could then accompany the initial expedition designated to explore the ancient homeworld. That was what he sought: the result, not the work.

  But he felt he could not refuse. While he saw his physical presence as contributing little more than deadweight, it might add a sense of urgency to those doing the actual research. He had never been to Treth, of course. Being a human-occupied world, it might hold some things of interest, some things worth seeing, even if its surviving records did not contain the location of old Earth.

  “Of course I’ll come along.” His apparent enthusiasm belied an unspoken uncertainty. “Does Treth have oceans? Water oceans?”

  Yah’thom ventured the Myssari equivalent of a smile. “Yes, as I recall, it most certainly does.”

  That was enough to reassure Ruslan concerning his decision, if not fill him with conviction. “I’ll be ready to go whenever you can mount the visit. Assuming I’m still alive.”

  Bac’cul did not smile. “That is all you have to do, Ruslan. That is all you have to work at. Not dying.” A three-fingered hand gestured at the figure seated beside the human. “Kel’les will endeavor to assist you in achieving that end. Or rather, non-end.”

  Noting the suggestion of apprehension on his handler’s sharp-edged, triangular face, Ruslan struggled not to smile. “So we will go to Treth and try to find a hint as to the location of Earth, and meanwhile Kel’les here will attempt to keep me breathing long enough to complete the journey.” He covered his mouth with his right hand and coughed into it.

  Then he added, “I think s’he has the more difficult job.”

  3

  The snapweft pilot was already deep in dream down in the center of the twilldizzy. From the beginning of his acclimatization to Myssari culture, Ruslan had always had the most trouble learning scientific terms. His general ignorance of physics of any kind only rendered comprehension that much more difficult. Trying to understand a nonhuman version only tied his thoughts in knots. So he asked for explanations, freely accepted the results, and translated them into terms that made a vague sort of sense. To him, anyway. Since there were no human physicists around to correct or contradict him, his improvisation served his needs quite well.

  It was all magic anyway, this business of traveling between the stars. Certainly his own species had been quite efficient at it, though the last starship to visit Seraboth had come and gone two or three hundred years before he was born. Whether humans had utilized a system similar to that employed by the Myssari he had no way of knowing. When queried, Kel’les could only convolute his nine fingers and surmise that it must have been the same or very much so, because all known space-traversing species used a variant of it.

  Once aboard the orbiting starship, Ruslan had a few moments before it would be time for him and the other passengers to enter stasis. He used them to query Cor’rin. Bac’cul was nearby, chatting with another traveler. Among the trio assigned to monitor and study his life, only Yah’thom remained behind. Smitten with assorted infirmities of old age, the crusty senior scientist felt that his presence would slow the group’s progress. They had not yet departed Myssar orbit and already Ruslan missed the elder’s insightful personality. He even missed the scientist’s sarcasm, perhaps because so little of it was ever directed his way.

  “I have two questions,” he said to Cor’rin. “One involves the means and nature by which interstellar travel is accomplished. The other is about sex.”

  The scientist replied without hesitation. Now, as on previous occasions, he was struck by the bright metallic violet of her eyes. The insouciance of her response emphasized how at ease she was with his queries.

  “An odd coupling, one might say, though both involve thrust. I am expert in neither.”

  “Your best take, then.” Around them, other passengers besides Bac’cul and Kel’les were seeing to final preparations. Since his minder was taking care of necessary details Ruslan did not understand anyway, he had time for casual conversation. “Firstly, as near as I can tell, you, Bac’cul, and Kel’les are of similar age and maturity. Together you could constitute a reproductive trio, a potential procreational triumvirate. Aren’t you concerned that working together away from the supervisorial strictures of Myssarian society could result in a romantic entanglement that might interfere with your work?”

  “You really have learned a great deal about our society.” The dimmer illumination in the access chamber had caused her eyes to darken from violet to purple. “Bac’cul is already mated elsewhere. I am not, nor is Kel’les, but I can assure you our scientific interests easily outweigh and would dominate any thoughts that might incline to the physical.”

  Ruslan nodded his understanding. “I was just curious. From what little I know and what lots I read, my kind were different. Second then, can you give me a better idea how this ship and its ilk actually work?” He gestured at their tubular surroundings. The curved floor underfoot posed no problems for its tripodal designers and builders, but he had to be more careful where he stepped.

  “It is hardly a specialty of mine.” Though she was plainly keen to enter her own travel pod, she was too courteous to arbitrarily dismiss his question. Listening closely, he did his best to assign meaning to her response.

  “As I understand it, the cosmos is not uniform. There are lapses, holes, walls, currents. Different kinds of matter. Some things stable, others less so. Some are fixed, while others move about. By navigating these exceptions, these oddities in space-time, it is possible to shortcut ordinary space and arrive at a destination made suddenly congruent to the point of one’s departure. To do so requires the skills of a snapweft: a highly trained pilot who is half organic and half machine. He or she or s’he is physically attached to the great contorting complex called the twilldizzy, which delicately tracks the disruptions in non-normal space-time. The body of the ship remains steady within while it spins around it, its course directed by the snapweft.<
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  “Manipulation must be constant, unyielding, and faultless. Once control of a twilldizzy is lost, a ship can emerge anywhere in space. If that happens, sometimes a snapweft can reposition it within an anomaly and resume course. Sometimes that cannot be done. Then a ship is lost, never to be heard from again.” She gestured confidence. “But such occurrences are rare. Twilldizzy travel is safe.”

  He was unable to forbear from pointing out, “Except for those unfortunate enough to have been designated the exception.”

  Her reply was even, her tone enigmatic. “It is good to see that you are feeling like your usual self. I need to ready myself for departure now. You should do the same.”

  Having silently joined them mid-conversation, Kel’les now put a hand on Ruslan’s shoulder. “It is possible you will perceive the overflow from the snapweft. A pilot’s projections are very powerful. There is no need to be alarmed. Such reception is perfectly normal.”

  Uncertainty further corroded Ruslan’s already rugged features. “Why would I sense mental emanations from a representative of another species? I didn’t when I was brought to Myssar from Seraboth.”

  “You made that transfer while under heavy medication. It would have dulled your awareness. As to being a member of a non-Myssari species, snapweft projections are sensed across multiple intelligences.” A hand gestured meaningfully. “It is something that transcends species. Sensitivity depends entirely on the architecture of one’s sentience. You may feel nothing at all.”

  They had entered the passenger torus. All around them, other travelers were slipping into waiting pods as calmly and efficiently as he would have slid into bed. Quite unexpectedly he felt a rush of uncertainty. Confronted with the possibility of death, rare as such occurrences might be, it developed that perhaps he was not quite as ready to die as he supposed.

  They halted before a pair of open pods. Bac’cul and Cor’rin had already entered theirs. The transparent covers were closed, the occupants awake and relaxed. He noticed that Cor’rin was wearing a customized sensory eyeband. One of her three hands was conducting a diversion silent and unseen. Interstellar travel was plainly not for the claustrophobic. He eyed his own waiting deuomd nervously.

  “What do I do if I get inside and find that I can’t stand it, or that I’m having trouble?”

  Kel’les eyed him tentatively. “What kind of trouble?”

  The human’s mouth twisted slightly. “If I knew, I’d tell you now.”

  His handler’s voice was soothing. “I have seen how you deal with the unfamiliar, Ruslan. You will have no trouble. But if you do, simply announce the nature of the difficulty. The information will be relayed to the appropriate personnel and your problem will be dealt with promptly.”

  Kel’les’s patient, confident tone was reassuring. Climbing into the deuomd, Ruslan lay back against the cushioned interior. Engineered to accommodate travelers with far more outrageous physiognomies than his, it had no trouble molding itself against him. He felt better already. His weight activated the deuomd’s functions. There was a soft hiss as the cover began to slide from his feet toward his head. He spoke quickly but calmly before the lid could shut out the rest of the universe.

  “If I do have trouble and declare it, what will be the likely response?”

  “Your unit will analyze your observations and react accordingly.” The cover was nearly closed now. “Most likely you will be appropriately sedated and sleep through the remainder of the voyage.”

  After that he could no longer hear Kel’les. It did not matter. The intermet had nothing else to tell him and he could think of nothing else to ask.

  It was utterly silent within the deuomd. There was a surprising amount of space in which he could move around, doubtless because the wider triangle-shaped pelvis of the Myssari demanded it. He did not feel cramped. Whether he would feel the same way in another hour or so was a different matter. With all that had been going on, he had forgotten to ask how long the trip was going to take. Since no one had said anything to him about emerging for meals, or exercise, or voiding wastes, he assumed it would not take very long. No more than half a day, surely. Although it was all relative. The time that transpired inside the deuomd, inside the ship, might not be the same time that passed outside. So much depended on the skill of the cyborg pilot.

  What would snapweft overflow feel like? He looked forward to possibly finding out with a mixture of awe and trepidation. Surely it was not potentially fatal or Kel’les would have so informed him. Unless his handler and the two scientists thought it better to keep certain information from their prize specimen.

  There was a lurch. The ship starting out and away from Myssar orbit? he wondered. Or entering a distortion, an anomaly? Feeling nothing, he was suddenly disappointed.

  An hour passed. In response to his verbal query, the flexible deuomd supplied diversions. Music, visuals, olfactory refractions: anything he could think of that he had learned from the Myssari. It was all very unextraordinary. The deuomd in which he lay was designed to promote sleep without the aid of drugs.

  Somnolence was a state he was on the verge of entering when something stuck the dull blade of demand into his mind and he was cast outside himself. He remembered Kel’les’s words.

  Overflow.

  The snapweft was struggling with a current. Along with the other passengers who had remained awake, Ruslan found himself swimming hard to keep his consciousness from descending into madness.

  The longer it lasted, the more he came to realize that he was overdramatizing. Focusing on regulating his breathing calmed him. No system of interstellar transport that regularly risked the sanity of those who utilized it would remain long in favor. That didn’t mean he was not unsettled.

  He was receiving, or perceiving, a fraction of what the mechasymbiote pilot was sensing as he fought to utilize the outré physics that permitted travel between star systems. The more Ruslan tensed and twitched and grimaced and whined within the security of his deuomd, the more his respect for the unseen snapweft grew. Outside the spherical ship was a universe that was beautiful only in images. In person and up close its aberrations and contortions manifested themselves in shapes and sensations that ran the gamut from off-putting to nightmare.

  What was the thing that brushed against the hurtling orb and left bits of its incomprehensible mentality clinging to those stretched out within? Shards of id, like strips of seaweed damp and chill, stuck to his mind until the snapweft lurched the ship leftward and a force to which Ruslan could not put a name brushed off the subconscious silt. Tendrils of another eldritch shape bigger than a star, but stretched so thin that the atoms of its being seemed stitched together only by lines of cooperating positrons, swallowed the ship. To Ruslan and the other travelers, it was less than a breath; to the snapweft, a mind-wrenching throb. Shrugging it off, the pilot pressed on, dodging and dancing, a juggler of lives and machinery and instrumentation. It was the ship and the ship was it.

  Outside and beyond, stars and nebulae and blobs of unidentifiable matter and antimatter and far smaller things maintained their stately dance through the firmament, coldly indifferent to a minuscule sphere bearing tiny knots of sentience. So easy to vanish in that vastness, such a simple matter for beings that were less than nothing to disappear. Not out of maliciousness but from Nature’s deadly apathy did those who braved the gulf between star systems occasionally perish.

  Finally Ruslan slept. Slept and dreamed and remembered. Even while trapped on a world of the dead and dying, his had been a childhood full of questioning hope. He had passed through adolescence and on into young adulthood while those around him, everyone he knew, had expired from the Aura Malignance. It was the speed that was so daunting, the absoluteness that was so appalling. There was no remedy, no vaccine, no escape. Walk, think, then shudder. Sometimes panic when realization set in. No time for much more as the cerebroneural connections failed. Ey
es fluttering, people staggered, stopped, and toppled over. Usually individually, sometimes in groups, occasionally in rows. He remembered entire streets full of people collapsing like dominoes. No wonder a cure had never been found. Despite walls of redundant prophylactics cast up in attempts to protect them, the scientists and physicians who had tried desperately to find a cure for the apocalypse had perished before they could even understand what it was they were struggling to fight.

  Gradually the streets had grown empty. Eventually even automated public transport stopped. As it had on every other human-occupied world, a stillness and silence descended on Seraboth that was quieter than the inside of his mind when he was sound asleep.

  There had been an old man. Ruslan had encountered him decades ago while wandering the streets of his home city. Searching for others—hopefully at first, then reluctantly, and at last with only the most bitter resolve—found him with only corpses for company. Until the old man.

  The slender elder, his clothing worn, his visage weathered, had not simply dropped dead like hundreds of thousands of others. Something in him, genetics or resolve, had kept him upright a while longer than was typical. When young Ruslan had come upon him, he was leaning against a wall, coughing and starting to slump. With a cry Ruslan had rushed to him, thrilled to find someone else, another human, alive. As he drew near, the man turned toward him. Shaking his head slowly, he bestowed a sad smile on the young man.

  “Don’t worry about it, son. It doesn’t hurt.”