by S. J. Ryan
The men gave deference to their apparent leader, who was designated by an elaborate emblem inset into his breastplate. It illustrated a seed with three sprouts groping to the stars; Carrot recognized a stylized version of the Star Seed Project logo. The leader raised his helmet visor, revealing a middle-aged, mustached face. It might have seemed kindly, except for the stern glare.
“You are forbidden to be here,” he barked. “Go back to where you came.”
“I have come to see the Wizard's People,” Carrot replied.
“Go back now.”
“I am here by invitation.” She gestured to the swords by her feet. “The king of the trolls gave me this silver sword, which he says came from your people. I am returning – ”
“Bowmen, mark!”
Confronting a half-dozen trembling arrowheads, Carrot realized they were reacting to her mere 'reaching' for the sword, even though her hands were more than a meter away.
What to do? Well, of course! She lowered her head, closed her eyes and concentrated.
The leader commanded: “Go back now, or you will be – “
“Her hair!” another man exclaimed.
She opened her eyes. The bows had drooped and the men were trading glances. The leader was open-mouthed. For seconds that seemed eternal, no one moved as the breeze tossed strands of her incandescently orange hair across her cheeks. Carrot sensed that she had the initiative.
“My name is Arcadia,” she said. “My mother's name was Prisca. Does that mean anything to you?”
The leader twitched. A man raced to his side. They whispered in what seemed gibberish: “Itway oodkay eebay a iktray!” “Eshay oesday esembleray Iscapray. Ethay adylay ofway ethay eepkay illway ohnay. Etlay erhay eeseyeday!”
An Earthian language, Carrot thought.
The leader turned to her. Carrot noticed for the first time that his mustache and beard were peppered with gray. That in turn led her to notice the bulging of belly between the gap in torso and waist armor plates. She sensed the other men as middle- to high-middle-age also. These were not professional soldiers, she realized.
“You will come with us,” the leader said. “Do not attempt resistance!”
Carrot bowed. She gestured to the swords. “May I have my weapons?”
“We will hold them for you. You may have them when you return to your land. You will move away from them now.”
As she stepped away from her weapons, one of the 'knights' retrieved both. Carrot felt her stomach churn with the expectation of a bodily search. But they did not think to look for the dagger hidden beneath her shirt.
With the prisoner in their midst, the knights clumsily remounted their horses and proceeded northward. Carrot remembered the last time she had been the focus of a ring of arrow tips. She had been under arrest for the murder of the Emperor Hadron. She wondered if she'd blundered into another trap. What would Matt think of such naivete?
They passed through woods again. On the other side, a community came in sight. Carrot's first impression from the number of buildings was that the population must be in the thousands. Then she noticed how empty the streets and dark the windows were. She revised her estimate down to hundreds. If the plague had struck here, it had been far worse than almost anywhere else.
But no, she sensed another reason – in how the streets were all the same width, the blocks the same rectangular layout, the buildings the same simple style. As if they were stamped by a machine. Or something like a machine.
“Excuse me,” she said. “What is that city?”
“You should know,” the leader replied. “It is named Arcadia.”
That, for Carrot, was final confirmation that she had returned to the homeland of her mother.
The entourage came upon more woods, another hill, and if not the end of the world, at least the end of Britan.
The Northern Sea was an expanse of dark gray flecked with white caps that extended to a horizon that seemed as far as Aereoth. The Arcadian Road dipped and wound north toward a peninsula that jutted from sheer cliffs with sharp rocks upon their beaches that defended against relentlessly crashing waves. At the tip and prominence of the peninsula reared a building of stone blocks, so gray as to seem black. It towered twenty meters above the barren soil, rectangular and windowless. It would have been large even for Rome, yet all the more impressive in that it had been built in the middle of nowhere
The leader of the knights seemed to read the question on her mind, and answered, “Wizard's Keep.”
They marched onto the peninsula. On both sides of the road, vapor arose from the ground and huddled as bowls of steam in the hollows. Even through pavement and boots, the soles of Carrot's feet felt the warmth. She wondered if the heat was generated by more technology, but decided that the edifice had been purposely constructed over natural hot springs. As for why, she did not know.
The ground rose in elevation toward the tip of the peninsula. Her view of the sea improved, and she saw clearly along the length of the coast. Her attention was drawn to a sprawling structure in the water about a kilometer away, of arching, broken poles of bleached white. It seemed as if a fire had gutted a great building, leaving only the reinforcing beams.
“What is that thing?” she asked.
“The remnants of a sky dragon,” the leader replied.
“What is that?”
“What it sounds like.”
“A sky dragon. I have never heard of such a thing.”
“We see them rarely, over the Western Sea. That carcass washed there after a storm. Only the bones remain of that one now.”
Imaging the curvature of the poles extending to a full arch with a covering of skin, Carrot realized that yes, it did look like the skeleton of a great serpent. Yet it had to be a kilometer long! She could not imagine that something that size could fly, for it dwarfed even the largest design of airship that Archimedes had predicted the Romans might build. Perhaps the poles were only the trunks of dead trees whose ground had sunk into the sea with an earthquake, and the leader was testing to see how gullible she was.
I wish Matt were here. He would know.
The road terminated at the entry of the keep. The double doors were two stories high and wide enough to admit a pair of wagons side by side. They were made of metal – iron, or perhaps steel. Carrot could not think of a time when she had seen more metal in one place.
The leader and the six other knights dismounted. They strode to the door on the right and formed a line. At chest height on the door ran a row of seven holes, each about thumb size, and one by one the knights inserted notched metal bars into the holes. When the last bar was inserted, Carrot heard an echoing click from within the bowels of the building, followed by the hiss of steam. The ground rumbled. The knights retreated, leaving their keys in the locks.
Hinges wailing, the doors glided open on their own. The leader looked at Carrot, then inside. Despite having no torches or lanterns, the passage was illuminated, albeit dimly.
“Do you see the one within?” the leader asked.
A man was standing about ten meters away. He was wearing a blue jump suit with the Star Seed logo. He resembled Matt, only he had a beard and was about forty years old.
Carrot knew that the image was only an illusion, for the figure glowed and had no scent. She assumed the illusion was created in the same way that the Pandora of Rome had placed images in her mind. There was an iron-containing protein structure in Carrot's brain, Matt and Ivan said, that functioned like an antenna and fed into a region that functioned like an audio/visual transceiver. Apparently the genetic mutation had been designed to facilitate rapid communication between the Pandora of Rome and her Sisters, and for better or worse Carrot had been endowed as well.
“Yes,” Carrot replied. “I see him.”
“We have been instructed to wait outside,” the leader said, with some relief in his voice. “You will go.”
He motioned Carrot into the building. His men shoved the doors shut behind her with a
determined clang. Her eyes adjusted to the light, which was streaming from rectangular panels on the ceiling as a faint but steady bluish glow.
The illusion standing before her smiled and Carrot heard a voice in her head that sounded just like Matt accompany the image's moving lips:
“Hello, Matt. It's me, Matt. Surprised? Well, probably not, if you've survived on this planet long enough to get here. And come to think of it, I don't know if you're actually Matt, do I?
“Unfortunately under these circumstances I don't have access to visual pattern recognition or voiceprint technology for identification purposes, but that's probably irrelevant since they can be duplicated anyhow. I'm also reluctant to request passcodes as that presents security problems of its own. So I'll have to do this the old-fashioned way.
“I'll ask a simple personal question that only you and I would know. If you can't answer, no harm will come to you and you may leave unharmed. If you can answer, you will be granted entry. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Carrot replied, doubting that she was.
“Just so you know, that wasn't the question.” The illusion grinned broadly. “Here is the question: What's your favorite verse of poetry?”
Carrot was thrown into panic. Matt had never recited poetry to her! What could possibly –
“I forgot to mention,” the illusion said. “One query per day, and you have thirty seconds to answer.”
What do you think I'm doing, you stupid –
She had to get this right. Rome would be missing its agents, would send more, a day might be too late.
Come on, you know Matt! You spent weeks inside his head, living virtual reality simulations of his home, his planet. Surely you must have seen a book of poetry!
Then she remembered. When their minds had been linked, Matt had shown her the telemetry from the day he been launched to the stars. A small box had been placed in the star pod. The box had contained artifacts, including a book that had been old even then. Always fascinated by what others read, she had asked about the book, and at Matt's behest, Ivan had created a virtual copy for Carrot's avatar to hold in her hands. The book's title had been faded but still readable.
Her normal human memory had forgotten the title, but she easily read the cover from her mutant, eidetic memory: Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson.
“Fifteen seconds remaining.”
Matt had said that the book was presently aboard the space station, its pages reduced by a millennium's aging into flakes that crumbled at the touch. But in the VR simulation that she had experienced that day last summer, the reproduction of the book was only two centuries old, and the pages had been intact. As with every book that came into reach of her hands, even books in dreams, she hadn't been able to resist turning the pages. She closed her eyes and concentrated.
In her mind she saw the pages, the lines, every word. But so many! Which were Matt's favorite? She frantically flipped through the pages embedded in memory, skimming line by line:
'Forever is composed of nows' . . . interesting but who would go with that as their favorite?
'Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is enough' . . . words bearing truth, but short the aspirations of a star traveler.
'If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain' . . . Matt was very kind and sweet, but he had hardly dedicated his life to mending broken hearts.
“Five seconds.”
Carrot again reflected upon the inanity of the day: the fate of the world depended on her finding the Box, and that depended on her recollection of ancient poetry. Was she the only one who took things seriously?
What she needed, she realized frantically, were words that encapsulated Matt and Ivan and all of space . . . but where would she find those from a poet who had lived a thousand Aereothian years ago? She suppressed rising panic . . . a day, a day, a day will be too late! Which wasn't Dickinsonian at all.
“Your time is up. What is your answer?”
And then with the turn of a virtual page, the underlined words appeared. Even if they had not been underlined, she would have recognized them as the ones. She knew with certainty as she opened her eyes and met those of the illusion and declared levelly:
“'The brain is wider than the sky.'”
The image of the older Matt shimmered into nothingness. Alone in the passage, Carrot looked about, wondering if she'd guessed wrong. But only for a moment.
The metal wall in front of her rattled and slid aside, revealing an extension of the passage. Older Matt's hologram was standing on the other side of the threshold His hair was slightly different, as if this image had been recorded on another day. This image was not smiling.
“What do you want?” he asked flatly.
“The Box,” she said. Then quickly amended: “I mean, the seeder probe.”
“This way.”
The illusion of an older, businesslike Matt led through the panel-lit stone passages, past rooms filled with chests, cabinets, books, and equipment. Carrot was reminded of the clutter that had filled house of Archimedes. There the treasures of the 'Wizard of Rome' had included a trove of silver coin, devices to measure the wind and espy upon the moons, and designs for a ship that sailed through the air. She tried to imagine the wonders contained in a place constructed by a wizard from the stars.
Perhaps poverty can be ended, she thought. Perhaps the world can be fed.
The figure of Older Matt halted and pointed down a passage. “There is what you seek.”
He shimmered out of existence. Carrot took a few cautious steps, and came to tripod bearing an age-warped, hand-scrawled sign which declared in peeling paint:
CAUTION: DO NOT MAKE ANY STATEMENTS IN THE PRESENCE OF THE PROBE THAT CAN BE REMOTELY CONSTRUED AS 'WISHING FOR CHILDREN.' IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT WOMEN OF CHILDBEARING AGE NOT PROCEED PAST THIS POINT. CONSULT THE OPERATIONS MANUAL FOR FURTHER DETAILS.
The words 'do not' were underlined twice. Carrot saw no operations manual.
She proceeded down the passage to the wooden door that had been indicated. It yielded to her press. Ceiling lights flickered alive, revealing a bare cubical chamber. An ordinary table rested against the opposite wall. Upon it lay the seeder probe.
Lights on the probe's top panel blinked and another illusory figure shimmered into existence alongside. This time it was the image of her mother, Prisca – the form that the Pandora of Rome had adopted as its own. Carrot instinctively reached for her missing sword, then stayed herself.
This, after all, was not a vision provided by the Pandora of Rome. This in Britan was a Pandora that had been under the control of the First Wizard. That she still had movement of her limbs indicated to Carrot that the Box of Britan intended no harm. That the Box had taken her mother's form was probably simply a convenience, not a sign that she/it was in league with the Box of Rome.
Probably . . . .
“What is your request?” the Pandora asked, gazing unemotionally. Her voice was that of Carrot's mother.
Carrot recalled the sign in the passage, and the origin stories of the trolls and little people. Speak the wrong words, she knew, and she could leave the room pregnant – and not even the Lords of Aereoth would know with what. It would be the ultimate inanity of the day.
Carrot pondered. “I would like information.”
She considered adding, I do not make any request for children, but feared that might be interpreted as a request for sterilization.
“I will answer your questions within my ability.”
“Are you the Pandora of Britan?”
“I am the artificial intelligence control module for Star Seed Project Seeder Probe DP3 Beta, Revision 3.4a. I am addressed by humans as 'Pandora.' We are located in the region of Delta Pavonis III that is identified as the island of Britan. Therefore, it is possible that the answer to your question is yes.”
Carrot decided that it was. “Are you in alliance with the Pandora of Rome?”
“Are you referring to the artificial intelligence
control module for Star Seed Project Seeder Probe DP3 Gamma, Revision 4.2? She is addressed by humans as 'Pandora.' At last report, she was located in the region of Delta Pavonis III that is in proximity to the city known as Rome. Therefore it is possible that she is the Pandora of Rome.”
“Yes. She is the one I mean.”
“I am not in alliance with her if by that you mean are our actions coordinated with one another in any way toward a mutual objective.”
Carrot recalled what she had learned about artificial intelligence from Matt and Ivan.
“You must have some objective in your . . . programming. What is it?”
“I am programmed to fulfill requests to the best of my ability.”
“What is your ability?”
“To inseminate variations of human lifeforms based on my experimental mutation libraries.”
Carrot, for all her worldliness, had never heard the word 'inseminate' before, but had a fair idea what it meant.
“Who do you obey?”
“As my passcode protection has been suspended, any person may make requests of me.”
Ah.
“The Pandora of Rome wishes to acquire you. Do you know why?”
“I do not know of the Pandora of Rome's intentions as I have been instructed to cease radio communication with her. Do you wish for me to contact her and forward your question?”
“NO!”
What next? Carrot thought.
Simple enough: Take the Box back to Ravencall. When Matt returned from the Other Side, he could talk to the Box and prise its secrets. To remove the Box from the keep, she would have to discuss the matter with the Knights of Keneda. As far as she could see, enlisting their cooperation was the only obstacle remaining to the completion of her quest.
It's almost over.
Carrot smiled firmly and made a sharp nod at the Box. She started to walk away, back to the passage and to the outer world. She hesitated at the threshold of the room. She turned to the Box. It blinked innocently.
Once outside the keep, Carrot realized, the knights would escort her and the Box to Henogal, and then she would be with Mirian and Norian all the way back to Ravencall. There the Box would be under constant guard. This moment here in this room would be her last opportunity to speak privately to the Box, to ask questions which she desperately wanted to have answered but wasn't sure she wanted anyone else to know.