Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart

by Steven Erikson

  It was dusk and with none of the lights on in the house, the gloom pervaded, making grainy every detail in the living room where he had at last found himself, slumped in his leather chair. He had watched the videos of his wife’s … disappearance? Abduction? Annihilation? It could have been a scene from any of a dozen SF films and television series. That shaky handheld stuff had been in vogue a few years back, and now it had made a come-back.

  She would’ve called by now. Touching base was important when it was just the two of them, not the kind with any sort of possessive heat; more a familiar brush of lives well known, the usual sharing of droll understatement, sardonic commentary, a handful of genuine phrases. Their private language.

  A language he had no one to share with, not anymore, perhaps never again.

  Hamish Drake sat in the living room, in the fading light, unaware of the chaos on the online fan-sites, the frantic disbelief and shock among her many writer friends, and then the crowing religious fundamentalists going on about God’s wrath and a woman’s proper place in the world. A war had begun in the ether, centered on a woman no longer there.

  And of course there was the persistent assertion by many that the whole thing was a hoax, a publicity stunt—was she writing a UFO novel?

  Her half-dozen advance readers knew nothing about that—she’d been a third of a way into a far-future dystopian-nightmare thriller. It had been slowing down but dribs and drabs were still coming in. They’d agreed (among themselves) that she was tired, possibly even fed up. Thirty published novels, three film adaptations, two television series, one ongoing. A vlog infamous for stirring things up. Her stories were always vicious, the writing cutting like a scalpel, meaning you didn’t know you were bleeding until you saw your own skin part, and out tumbled your guts. Her vlogs did the same, all delivered with a sweet smile.

  The usual brilliant, furious shit, in other words. Sam August, feminist, humanist, occasional satirist and essayist, not one to be trifled with—no, she wasn’t writing a fucking UFO novel.

  Gone. Vanished, abducted, incinerated, missing, dead, alive, dead, alive, dead ….

  The lights stayed off in the house that night. Dawn found a man hunched over in his leather chair, his face in his hands, his body wracked with silent grief.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “What is there to fear from the future, apart from our impending, utter vulnerability in the face of the unknown?”

  SAMANTHA AUGUST

  When she was a child, she’d slipped when running across a pool deck. She woke up a day later in the hospital with no memory of the event. Consciousness had taken a side-step. Where it went was a mystery, this stretch of static, white noise or, more accurately, absence. Neurologists would compartmentalize the experience. Consciousness, they’d explain, requires memory, the structure upon which experience is built, and experience is the meat and muscle of our sense of the self. An injury to the brain is like kicking an old-style television. The picture flickers, resets. There may be a gap between the last visible scene and the new one. But, if all is well, continuity resumes.

  She wanted a cigarette. A visceral desire, systemic flags flipped up. The humbling reality of addiction was, she believed, a worthwhile investment in humility. Most of the communication between the body and the mind was murky, swimming the subconscious depths of autonomic necessity. The need to breathe defined itself, instant by instant. Hunger spoke in pangs, a spurt of saliva at the thought of a perfect BLT. Bright light or the flashing proximity of an object snapped shut the eyes. A list of the more obvious exchanges. The other exchanges were far subtler.

  Beneath notice.

  But caffeine withdrawal delivered a headache. Nicotine withdrawal a not-quite-itch to the throat. General edginess for both, the wordless want awaiting articulation.

  Humility was useful, especially for a writer. It made it easier and less personally offensive to see—or imagine—the world in other ways. Contrary opinions on how the way things worked, in all those mercurial mechanisms of human interaction: beliefs, politics, faiths, attitudes, opinions. For the addict, piety was the first self-delusion to go. It yanked the stick out of the ass.

  So there was the need. For a cigarette. It was probably what dragged her back into awareness, arriving before she opened her eyes which, for the moment, she kept shut. Her senses, awakening, gave her little else. No sound, no particular smell. The surface beneath her back was neither hard nor soft. It was there, to be sure, but in no way did it impinge upon her body’s contours. It simply accommodated them.

  A decent mattress, then.

  Was there light upon her still closed eyelids? Yes, but not insistent.

  “Oh, fuck it,” she muttered, opening her eyes and sitting up.

  The room was small and, it seemed, without doors. Its only furnishing was the bed beneath her. The light was muted and pervasive. She couldn’t see its source and it threw no shadows.

  None of the obvious explanations fit the scene. This wasn’t a hospital room. None of the grunginess that came to an underfunded place where suffering people were gathered to be cared for. She wasn’t on a drip. There was no crappy television on a metal bracket high on the wall opposite. The bed was without blankets and she was still dressed, although not in her coat. Most of all, it was too quiet.

  “Hello?”

  “Welcome, Samantha August.” The voice was male, well-modulated.

  “How do you feel?”

  Unable to detect the source of that voice, she scanned the room, looking for a speaker-grille. The vague off-white walls revealed nothing; not on the ceiling nor, from what she could see, the floor. “Where’s my laptop bag? Where’s my coat?” She was tempted to add ‘And I need a fucking cigarette’ but that was a sentiment eliciting little sympathy these days, so she held off on that for the moment.

  “Expectation and anticipation of a modest endorphin surge.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your laptop bag and your coat are beneath the bed, and in the coat’s right-hand pocket you will find your cigarettes. You are invited to satisfy your desire.”

  “I must be in Eastern Europe if I can smoke in a hospital,” Samantha said, slipping down from the bed and then crouching to see her laptop bag and beside it, neatly folded, her coat. “But your accent’s all wrong. In fact,” she added as she found her cigarettes and her lighter, “I can’t read your accent at all.”

  “A match to yours, then.”

  She allowed a wry smile as she straightened. “Touché. Got an ashtray?”

  “The floor will suffice.”

  “It’s too clean,” she objected.

  “And so it will remain.”

  She lit her cigarette, sat back down on the bed. “Latex rubber? Some kind of gel? The mattress, I mean. I’ve got hips. They hate most mattresses. But this one’s pretty special. I want one.”

  “You will of course be obliged. Feeling better?”

  “My head’s spinning, meaning I’ve been out for a while. What happened?”

  “While walking down a street, on your way to the gym where you work with a trainer twice a week, you were abducted by aliens.”

  The ash was building on the end of the cigarette and she was loathe to give it a tap. “Well, that doesn’t happen every day … or does it?”

  “No.”

  “If I was heading to the gym, it was early afternoon.”

  “Correct.”

  “People would’ve seen it happen.”

  “People did.”

  “When was this?”

  “Two days ago.”

  She stood. “And my husband—”

  “Yes, we are sorry for his suffering …”

  But she had stopped listening. Standing up suddenly had decided things for her, the ash breaking off and falling to the floor. Which then swallowed it, reforming an instant later. She stared down, blinking rapidly. “You’re not bullshitting me.”

  “No, of course not. We do regret the distressful disorder we have caused, for
your husband and your many friends. A public abduction, however, was deemed propitious, with respect to what is coming.”

  “Are we in orbit?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to see.”

  “We expected as much.”

  “And then I want to call my husband.”

  “Your cellphone no longer functions. We apologize. It was insufficiently shielded from the energy source employed in lifting you to the ship. That said, we have an alternative and it is at your disposal.”

  Sam had finished her cigarette. Quite deliberately, she dropped it to the floor, watching it vanish. “Forget the mattress,” she said, “I want this floor.”

  She was asked to compose what was in effect a text message to her husband’s phone. She kept it short, and then, as the voice informed her the message had been sent, she silently castigated herself for the ease with which her mind slipped away from concerns about Hamish, plunging instead into her present, into the immediacy of this impossible circumstance.

  A moment later she found herself staring at her home planet.

  She’d never imagined herself a sentimental woman, but the tears blurred her vision and ran down her cheeks, and she just didn’t care. Earth, smeared white and blue, occupied a realm of surrounding darkness. The glitter and glint of low-orbit satellites and other objects skimmed the rim of upper atmosphere on the sunward side, like insects buzzing a lamp.

  “We’re in cislunar orbit,” she said.

  “Correct.”

  “And no one sees us?”

  “Long experience has taught us that it is best to remain unseen.”

  “Barring obvious abductions on a busy street.”

  “Yes. Barring that.”

  She remained in the same room where she had woken up, but now one entire wall was either a window or a video-screen.

  “Do you have a name?” Sam asked. “And when will you show yourself to me?”

  “For this iteration I am named Adam. As for revealing myself, there is nothing to reveal. I am a construct, the equivalent of an Artificial Intelligence as you would understand it. I am presently extended and cognizant of many points-of-view within this solar system. Lastly, beyond these words I speak, my state of consciousness manifests in a dimension your technology is not yet able to observe. And this is something all Sentients share.”

  “I know a few neurologists who’d disagree.”

  “They would be wrong.”

  Sam wiped at her eyes and then her cheeks. She drew a deep breath, still staring at the Earth glowing in its black pool. She nodded toward it. “I know this may be a simple picture lifted from NASA archives, as part of some elaborate hoax. Or, more likely, a delusion created by some kind of psychotic break. I’ve seen this shot before, you see. Granted, the real-time effects are impressive.” She fell silent, and then shook her head. “Do you know how many times I have dreamed of something like this happening to me? With our whole fucking civilization spiraling into utter imbecility, I would think ‘what if’ … oh, well, what does it matter what I’d think? Anyway, it was the floor that convinced me.” She nodded again at the planet. “This is real. I’m here.”

  “It was our assessment that you would not unduly resist the evidence of your senses,” Adam replied. “Imagination is an essential quality of a flexible, adaptable mind.”

  “I have questions,” Sam said. “But I don’t know where to start.”

  “Begin with the immediate.”

  She considered, and then said, “All right. Why me? No, wait! Am I the only one you’ve snatched?”

  “For our immediate purposes, yes.”

  “How big is this ship?”

  “Modest.”

  “Who else is on board?”

  “No one else is on board, Samantha August.”

  She could feel her heart pounding. Irritated at this sudden wave of panic, she lit another cigarette. “Back to my first question, then. Why me?”

  “The Intervention Delegation has deemed you suitable for its purposes.”

  “Okay. First off, who or what is the Intervention Delegation?”

  “A triumvirate of alien civilizations presently engaged in Intervention Protocol.”

  “Intervening in what?”

  “The continuing evolution of Earth as a viable biome.”

  “‘Intervention,’ Adam, could be construed as conquest.”

  “It is not.”

  “Then what is it? How do you go about ‘intervening’ and more to the point, what relationship do you plan on trying to establish with the dominant species—namely, us? Because, to put it bluntly, we’re not good with being told what to do.”

  There was a long moment of silence, and then Adam said, “We are aware of that. There is hubris involved—”

  “Whose? Ours or yours?”

  “Both. However, only one is subject to challenge in this instance.” Sam frowned, and then, with an effort, she pulled her attention away from the distant Earth. She began pacing. “I think I see. By virtue of your immense technological superiority, your presumption is not relevant, because when it comes down to it, you can do precisely whatever you choose to do, and there’s not a thing we can do about it.”

  “This is correct.”

  “And our hubris?”

  “You presume that humanity is the primary target of our intervention regarding your planetary biome.”

  She sat down on the bed. Her cigarette was done. She flicked it to the floor, watched it vanish. “You’d rather talk to the whales.”

  “There was some debate as to your fate. Either we neutralize your species, or include it as part of the genuine biome and therefore within the parameters of salvation. Inclusion was decided, despite the added burden of managing your transition.”

  Sam barked a laugh, leaning back on her hands. “Burden? You have no idea what you’re getting into, Adam.”

  “We have done this before.”

  “Here? With us? ‘Ancient astronaut theorists say …’ That sort of thing?”

  “With other dominant species, on other worlds. Bear in mind, each planet needed to meet specific critical thresholds. A far greater number of worlds have failed to meet the necessary criteria, and so were exempt from Intervention.”

  “And their fate?”

  “Most died, or now exist in a severely truncated state. While the machinery of evolution continually operates via innovation, a world with impoverished resources will limit such diversity.”

  “But Earth has passed your test.”

  “Your world’s present Extinction Event—as precipitated by your species—is nearing a critical threshold. Left unchecked, you will destroy most of the life on Earth, including, of course, your own species. This in itself is insufficient cause for Intervention. But your planet is middle-aged. Depleted of resources, the new forms of life to emerge from your biome collapse will be limited and relegated to the simplest forms. Complexity will not rise again with the vigor which characterized the aftermath of past Extinction Events. Fortunately, there is still time to effect healing.”

  Samantha nodded. An exhausted planet with most of the easily accessible resources gone. James P. Lovelock had said as much in his seminal book, The Gaia Hypothesis. But these details were proving distracting. She drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Let’s back up, Adam. You abducted me in front of witnesses. You’ve begun an ‘intervention’ that will save the Earth, incidentally dragging us into a new world order. And by ‘dragging us’ I mean kicking and screaming.”

  “We too have concluded that there will be some resistance.”

  She snorted, and then leaned forward and rubbed at her face. “And where do I fit into all of this? What do you want from me that no one else can provide? Why aren’t you talking to, oh, I don’t know, the President of the United States?”

  “It may come as a surprise to many humans,” Adam said, and there was a new tone to the disembodied voice, “but the assumption that an alien civilization is interested in
reaffirming the artificial hierarchy you have imposed upon yourselves is invariably the first one requiring readjustment.”

  “Hmm, something tells me you’re about to put a lot of people out of sorts.”

  “This is why we have selected you as our facilitator.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “There will be no direct contact between us and your species. We wish for you to speak on our behalf, in a venue permitting the broadest dissemination of information, to keep humanity informed of the progress of the Intervention.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather have a diplomat?”

  “Not yet.”

  Sam rose again and began pacing. “Okay, let’s trot out the usual suspects. You’re not interested in phoning a president, or prime minister, or a committee, or politburo. Why? Because you don’t care to acknowledge our petty expressions of authority. And the time for the UN isn’t now, as you said. Okay. Why not an astronaut?”

  “Technical expertise is not relevant.”

  “Exo-biologist?”

  “We are not here to discuss myriad forms of life in the galaxy.”

  An arid, droll reply, hinting of disdain. Sam found that curious, but chose for the moment to let it pass. “Okay. But every government must have some secret agency, a selected team put together for just this eventuality.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, they’d be crazy not to. You know, Men in Black.”

  “And their agenda would be?”

  She considered. “Well, presumably, it would be to protect the interests of humanity.”

  “Why would any particular branch of a single government be interested in protecting the interests of all humanity? Would it not, rather, be wholly concerned with protecting national interests, specifically in regard to maintaining social order and security?”