Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

  Over the next three days, Alistair and Giselle had no opportunity to renew their dalliance. Alistair was limited to daydreaming with a tiny smile at one corner of his mouth and Giselle, when she saw this, looked away with a pleased smile of her own. There was some grumbling among the others, complaints that Giselle had distracted and therefore ruined him for the important work about to be done, though in truth it may simply have been a convenient excuse of reproof for a woman who discriminated against them in conferring her favors.

  Near the end of the three days, they came to a slope rising slowly at first and then increasing in steepness. At its top the hill became rockier, and vegetation less abundant. The horses’ hooves clattered on the hard ground, and it was decided they would dismount and walk. As the evening sun was immersing itself in a ruddy and purplish light, they came to the comparatively flat summit of the stony hilltop and were greeted by the silhouette of a man standing at the precipice marking the hilltop’s abrupt end. Behind him was an expansive valley, densely forested a few hundred feet below the summit of the hill. Beyond it was another series of hills leading to snow-peaked mountains, and encircling the entire valley was the same precipice with its curved wall.

  The party stopped several yards from the stranger, at the tip of his shadow, and he, calmly and deliberately, turned to inspect them. He was dressed in a white robe with a black sash tied around his waste. The robe had a hood but it was hanging from the back of the neck. He wore sandals but no other garment. His black hair receded far from his forehead, leaving much of the top of his head bald. His eyebrows, as if compensating for the loss, were thick and unkempt, and the features of his dark face were sharp, almost menacing, so that he seemed to glare at them without trying. His well weathered face belied the age suggested by his uniformly jet black hair, and Alistair guessed him to be near sixty.

  “My name is Shukri,” he informed them without preamble, speaking easily in Mandarin but with a thick accent of a native speaker of Arabic. “We have watched you coming for the last few hours.”

  “Who is we?” demanded Wei Bai.

  “My fellows and I.”

  “He’s not Gaian,” said Duke in a low voice.

  In the interim wherein they regarded the man – and he them – in silence, a horse snorted. Another shifted on the rocky terrain; the clop of its hooves interrupted the silence.

  “If you want to tell us something, be quick about it.” Mordecai finally said.

  “You carry Gaian weapons but you are not Gaians. This interests us. You are also traveling towards Floralel with these Gaian weapons. This fascinates us.” When the man called Shukri mentioned the Gaian city, he turned and swept his arm across the immense vista behind him, and in the center of the valley forest they saw the shimmer of a translucent hemisphere, like a bowl turned upside down. Through the shimmer one could just make out the rope bridges going from tree top to tree top, or a wooden platform built around one of the colossal arboreal giants. A few soft lights illuminated different areas within the shimmering force field, and there was even a building in the center of the city whose top they could spy.

  Casting his scrutiny on the area, Alistair asked, “Is this Srillium’s Birth Crater?”

  “It is. And none but a Gaian is permitted entry.”

  “Is that what you came to tell us?” demanded Duke.

  “I came to invite you to dine with us tonight. And to talk.” When the party gave him dubious looks, he continued, “Surely you do not intend to enter the Gaian Valley right now, as the sun is setting? Please come with me a short distance. I believe you will be glad you did.”

  He did not linger to watch them deliberate. Alistair was sure he would not have waited a moment for them if they opted to decline his invitation. They did not decline, his offer being too enigmatic and therefore too tempting to forgo. Hardly had Shukri reached the steep slope of the hill when the eleven party members, ten volunteers and one prisoner, were leading their horses after him.

  Chapter 72

  Shukri led them down the steep slope to a large outcropping of rock situated at the point where the gentle part of the slope ended and the earth took a more severe turn upward. In a dark nook, there was a tall but narrow opening and he headed for it, assuring them their horses would fit. He was proved correct, and they followed him down a man made passage that turned into the hill. Before them in the widening tunnel was a black curtain and a soft white light spilled out around it.

  Putting a hand to the curtain’s edge, he turned to them and explained, “The curtain is a precaution.” With that, he drew it aside.

  At the point where they entered, the cavern did not have a wall that formed a neat ninety degree angle with the floor. Instead, the ceiling slanted down to meet the floor. This meant their passageway sliced through the ceiling of the cavern until the latter, in slanting up, achieved sufficient height to be a proper ceiling. They were therefore obliged to move forward several feet to fully view the cavern.

  The most salient feature was an electric light affixed to the ceiling maybe seventy feet above. This simple and crude apparatus, hearkening back to the Dawn of Technology, was, in a place like Srillium, so arresting that they stared at it with mouths agape. The glass of the bulb was thick and irregular, blown into an ovular shape a bit larger than a rugby ball. An imperfection, a large bubble in the glass, caused a distortion in the light and cast a faint but permanent shadow on the wall. Also affixed to the ceiling, and running from the base of the light bulb into a dark tunnel on the opposite side of the cavern, were a pair of naked copper wires.

  The stalactites were gone, leaving behind squat, jagged stumps on the ceiling, but many of the stalagmites were left in place. Most of these were encircled by levels of shelves and served as conical storage units, holding sacks and boxes and crates and bottles of blown glass filled with liquids of various colors. In the far right corner there was an irregularly shaped pool. It was impossible to say how deep it was, but from front to back and from left to right it was around fifteen feet. On the left side of the cavern there were a number of wooden structures. A few of them were small, box-like things Alistair supposed were just large enough to be sleeping quarters. Another of the structures was a dining area built like a gazebo. One long, rectangular table dominated the floor of this squat building, situated next to a long slit carved out of the left wall of the cavern which he realized was an oven from whose hot interior a few aromatic odors were wafting.

  Also on the left side, but closer to the front, there was a great fissure in the wall forming another passageway. It was filled in with sand and gravel, but was wide enough that a series of pens fit in it and these pens contained a number of chickens, a handful of pigs, two horses, a bunch of sheep and a few cows all recently brought in for the night. The odor of the animals was apparent, even over the smells of cooking, and their snorts and grunts and other noises filled the air.

  The cooler temperature of the cavern was a pleasant sensation after so many days of tropical heat. Apart from that, the only other thing to attract their attention was the muffled roar of what must have been an underground river somewhere down the lightless passage across from the entrance. Alistair suspected this was used to generate the electricity for the light bulb.

  There were four others already in the cavern, dressed like Shukri with white, hooded robes and a black sash, and all were advanced in age. Two shared the same hair color and dark olive skin as Shukri, another was an indiscernible mix of races resulting in the same skin tone, while a fourth was Oriental. Two were women and two men, and one of the women wore a sleeveless white robe, and Alistair realized she had lost her arms all the way up to the shoulders. None of the four registered anything like surprise when the party entered, and they stopped their work to gather around the group and be introduced.

  “This is Amina Abdirahman,” said Shukri, his arm extended and the hand held palm up, pointing to a woman of about the same age as himself. “And this is her sister Faisa Abdirahman,” he contin
ued, indicating the armless woman about the same age as Amina. Pointing to the Oriental, Shukri said, “This is Akihiro Sawagato.” The apparently Japanese man, older than the rest, bowed his hoary head. “And this is Raja Gulyanov.” The last of them, with the mixed ancestry, a Hindu name, a Russian surname and easily the youngest at around forty years of age, nodded with a serious smile. “I, as you know, am Shukri. Shukri Abdiaziz. You are all welcome in our humble home.”

  “Shukri Abdiaziz,” Alistair repeated, testing the name.

  “Abdiaziz means servant of God.” A smirk appeared on Shukri’s face. “Which is proof, if proof were needed, that there is nothing of importance in a name. I serve a very different master.”

  “But not Gaia,” said Alistair.

  “Not Gaia. Although like Gaia, and Allah, and Yahweh, the master I serve does not exist. Unlike them, he will exist one day. One day soon.”

  Directly the words left Shukri’s mouth, Alistair knew he was a Singulatarian. “And you want to know if we are going to fight the Gaians,” said Alistair in English, well aware of the animosity Gaians and Singulatarians felt for each other.

  Shukri smiled. “We have many questions for you, but we would not want to be such poor hosts as to demand answers before offering you as fine a meal as we can cook.”

  Nodding, Alistair said, “We thank you for that. There is a member of our party who does not speak Mandarin. Would it be impolite to request that we speak in English?”

  “We can speak English,” Shukri said, his accent in that language as strong as in Mandarin.

  “About goddamn time,” Ryan muttered behind Alistair, who, suppressing a wince, prayed none of their hosts heard the comment.

  The meal they were served in the gazebo was lavish by Srillium’s standards. They began with an excellent salad of lettuce, apple slices, oranges, nuts and a tangy dressing, and to drink they had apricot juice chilled in the cold water of the underground river. Slices of leavened bread were served right out of the oven, and the white, homemade butter they spread on it melted on contact while steam rose from the sliced interior. The main course was a seasoned and succulent venison stew with potatoes and chick peas, and it came with a red wine served in stout glasses with the imperfections of homemade glass. Their plates were glass as well, with a blue tint, and the silverware actual metal. The dessert was bread pudding with raisins and cinnamon and a sugary icing on top. All of it had the rich texture and freshness of a meal made right on the farm where the food is raised. Alistair could not remember having ever eaten so well.

  There was little conversation during the meal, for the guests were famished and, used to dry, stale victuals, gave the meal their rapt and unceasing attention. The hosts were sensitive to their condition and did not pester them with chatter. Faisa attracted some notice as she ate, for she grasped the silverware with her toes and fed herself that way, bringing her foot up to her mouth and gripping her fork, spoon and glass with nearly as much dexterity as they had with their hands. After it was over, as the clinks of silverware on plates died down, Alistair and his party slouched in their chairs, hands on stomachs, and stared into space with the satisfied smile of one who has fulfilled a basic need with style and artistry.

  “The meal was to your liking?” asked Amina, her English excellent and her accent hardly noticeable. It was apparent she had studied in England, or at least under English tutelage, for the British tones in her speech outweighed the Arabic ones.

  “A finer repast was never served,” said Duke. “We are in your debt.”

  “Your home here is amazing,” commented Odin.

  “We do what we can with it,” said Shukri by way of acknowledging the praise. “The closer one lives to the Gaian city, the farther one finds oneself from the violence of the tribes.”

  “But you hide from the Gaians,” said Odin.

  Shukri shrugged. “The Gaians know we are here. Whether they know what we have here in the cave… We take precautions just in case.”

  “The Gaians tolerate Singulatarians?” asked Alistair with a penetrating gaze, and several of his party gave him a sharp look, wondering how he had discovered the religious convictions of the white robed hosts, or whether he knew what he was talking about.

  Their hosts smiled at this, save for Faisa whose expression was never far from dour.

  “The Gaians have their instructions from the company,” said Akihiro, the accent coloring his venerable voice confirming his Japanese heritage. “They are to patrol the moon and prevent permanent structures to keep us from advancing as a civilization. If we do not bother them, they take no action against anyone. Even Singulatarians.”

  “If they ever caught us in the Birth Crater they would kill us,” said Faisa in the flat tone. Her accent was as polished as her sister’s, and she looked at her guests with a bitter smile. “You are too polite to ask, but I don’t mind explaining to you. My arms were taken from me on board The Incarcerator. That was twenty years ago.”

  “Twenty-two,” said Amina.

  “Why did they take your arms?” asked Ryan, his voice angry, touched by the injustice of it.

  “No one can come to Srillium with implants of any sort,” explained Shukri. “If the implant is vital to the survival of the prisoner, the prisoner remains on his homeworld. If it is not, the implant is removed before the prisoner is transported here.”

  “My arms were enhanced,” said Faisa in a dead tone.

  “Enhanced?” prompted Wellesley.

  “I added improvements to the flesh I was born with. In time I added so many, and replaced so much frail flesh, that the arms could not stand alone. They deemed my implants non-vital, and removed them.” She gave a bitter smile. “Imagine going into hibernation and waking up with your arms gone.”

  “It was… a difficult time for Faisa,” said Akihiro.

  “What are Singulatarians?” asked Wellesley.

  “Robot worshippers,” answered Taribo without thinking, but he became embarrassed at his response. “I’m sorry… I…”

  Shukri patiently smiled. “We do not worship robots. We recognize the next step in the evolution of intelligence. Carbon life has reached its limit. Organic matter cannot become more complex and still gain benefits, but silicon… The human race is the height of animal evolution, but intelligence can be passed on in a superior form. Minds that can conceive and understand the deepest mysteries of the universe, can think in extra dimensions… the human mind did not evolve for these tasks; we have reached the limit of what we can understand.”

  “Some would dispute that,” said Alistair, his gentle reminder indicating he was one.

  “But whatever the limit is,” countered Akihiro, “it is certainly well below what a computer’s mind can achieve. You can see the beauty of the system. The carbon based molecules of life have, after billions of years of evolution, produced a species capable of investigating the universe. A species whose more gifted members can build a superior intelligence that can go beyond anything they could ever do.”

  “Our duty is to do just that,” said Shukri. “Though governments have forbidden it.”

  “And what happens to humans afterwards?” asked Alistair.

  “I see no reason why the Singularity should not allow us to go on,” said Faisa with a hint of sarcasm. “As long as we do not get in the way.”

  “Faisa and Amina are Fusionists,” Akihiro explained. In response to Ryan’s lost look he continued, “They believe the human body and mind can be the vessel for the greater intelligence. By a process of conversion.”

  A look of understanding crossed Ryan’s face. “Is that why you were…” He faltered and nodded at where Faisa’s arms should have been, “… doing the thing with your arms?”

  “The thing?” she asked.

  “The… improvements. Enhancements.”

  “Yes, that is why I was doing the thing with my arms.”

  “And our religion,” began Akihiro, “although it is not really a religion… but our beliefs were the
cause of our incarceration. Earth is in the grip of the Gaians, like most systems, and a number of years ago there was a great purge. Amina and Faisa’s brother Mukhtar enhanced himself more than Faisa. His life depended on his improvements.”

  “So he could not be sent to Srillium,” said Amina.

  “Either that or they removed his enhancements and it killed him,” said Faisa in a flippantly cynical tone, like what one uses to cover a stronger emotion.

  “The moral of the story is you hold no love for the Gaians,” Odin concluded.

  Shukri smiled again. “We were enthusiastic to see a party of non Gaians approaching the Birth Crater with weapons, a Gaian captive,” Shukri pointedly said with a wicked grin at Bert, “and a very determined air about them.”

  “I am a Gaian,” said Taribo. “But not an extremist.”

  Shukri gave Taribo a tolerant smile of the kind a polite host will give to a guest he believes has just embarrassed himself.

  Taribo grew insistent. “I believe in the sanctity of a planet and its ecosystem. I believe man has a place as the head groundskeeper of a planet’s life. These are good things. Every religion has adherents who stray too far, who take good ideas and… and…”

  “The extremists, as you call them,” said Akihiro, “were the religion’s founders, though perhaps I should call it a superstition. You are, if you will permit me a moment of candor, simply someone who cannot live by the pure doctrine but still wants to derive benefits from the belief system. So you dilute and soften the dogma and call yourself a believer. I don’t mean to make you angry,” Akihiro quickly said when he saw Taribo’s jaw set and his eyes fill with resentment, “but the Gaianism you practice is a watered-down variety. The original Gaians, the ones who made the religion and gave it a name, were far more extreme than you. In fact, they would have imprisoned you for the lifestyle you have led.”