Forever Magazine - January 2017

by Wyrm Publishing

  “And all the machines got sick?”

  “Not at first. It slept quietly for years, and then at a pre-ordained signal it struck everywhere, simultaneously. All the smart electronics died at that moment, and the Cosmopolis was shattered. To re-create the technology that humans or Sarasvati relied on, we will have to build from the beginning again: steam and iron. It is a long road, but I have walked it before.”

  Jemmi did not trust Yee, and she didn’t think she liked him, but she would follow him anywhere if it would save Sara.

  “In fact, Roycer and I were able to uncover some information towards that end while you were out,” he told her. “We learned that Sarasvati originally had a shuttle port at either extremity. These were large and busy, so they likely contained several shuttles at the time of the Fall, but they were quite prominent and I expect they were plundered generations ago. There were also several emergency evacuation portals scattered throughout her. These have been lost, and there is a chance that one may be untouched. They will have to be searched out.”

  That seemed like a lot of work to Jemmi. “Why don’t you just ask Sara?”

  Yee scoffed. “And what would the question be? The ships and orbitals are very simple beasts, and even if they understood, they couldn’t form an answer. But come, I will show you how it’s done.” He stepped over her groceries and led her back down into the street.

  “What we need is people who seem persistent and resourceful, and whose absence will not be noted overly much,” said Yee. “People like you and me—but expendable, of course.”

  Yee approached a laborer in a floppy, grease-stained cap pulling a heavy cart, and smiling and clasping his long pale hands together, asked him if he knew anything about the old-days shuttle port at the end of Sarasvati’s long axis. The man, obviously annoyed, shook his head and looked at Yee as if he were cracked. Yee appeared disappointed, and observed it was a pity, since it wouldn’t do to go spreading this around, but he was eager for news of any undamaged shuttles, and was more than willing to reimburse the man who brought that news quite handsomely. A fortune, really. At any rate, if he heard of anything, Yee lived right over there—the house with the veranda, can you see?—and would be delighted to receive any news. The man moved on as if he was glad to be rid of Yee. His steps became increasingly more hesitant though, as if something was unfolding in his mind. Finally, about a hundred paces down the street he abandoned his cart completely with a furtive look back, and sprinted away along the quickest route out of Port-Town.

  The next man Yee spoke to developed a frantic urge to make the grueling trek to the ruins of the shuttle port at Sarasvati’s far end and return to report on his findings. After that, four others became fascinated with the pressing need to locate one of the lost evacuation ports scattered along her length. It seemed to Jemmi that before they hurried off, each of them had been struck by the sudden inspiration for a scheme that simultaneously delighted them and tortured them.

  “If a man sees it as a struggle to express an idea from within, he’ll exhaust everything he has to bring it to fruition,” Yee explained, as the last one began to run. “Well, after your success in the market this morning, I believe I can leave the rest to you. You’ll need to send out about another dozen or so.” He turned to go.

  “Neh, why so many?”

  “One of the first things you must learn, Jemmi, is that one man acting alone will change nothing. To have progress, you must mobilize a society. Once we are on a world, you will see how quickly entire kingdoms move forward when they embrace the goals we give them.”

  Yee returned to the house and stepped over the groceries on the veranda as he went in. Jemmi stalked the street recruiting searchers for the rest of the afternoon, and the food sat out there until evening, when she reckoned she had snared enough.

  There was no dawn the next morning. Jemmi jumped out of her big bed with a sense of foreboding and a gut feeling that it was later than it looked. She ran down the wooden stairs and out onto the road in her bare feet. Shock and woe were palpable in the air and the soil, and Sara was lamenting with all her heart. Then it hit Jemmi—Albiorix was dead. He had weakened and gone still and fallen slack in Sara’s embrace, and she was nearly paralyzed by loneliness and the weight of this new failure.

  People in the villages high overhead began to wake and light lamps and fires as they tentatively started their day. The scattering of weak sparks in the darkness was a pale imitation of the stars Jemmi had seen through Sara’s eyes. Yee stepped out onto the veranda and silently leaned over the rail to look upwards and sniff, as if he were tasting the weather.

  “Yee—Do you know? Albiorix is dead,” Jemmi said.

  “I’m not surprised,” answered Yee. “He was stubbornly fixed on his old route, and I had to relieve him of much of his strength before he would accept my course. We’re lucky I made it this far.”

  Jemmi’s hands were fists. “How could you do that?”

  “I know what you’re thinking—and it’s not a problem. Albiorix has always been trailed by younger males as he makes his rounds. I’m sure Horus or Xolotl will be here by the time we are ready to move on.”

  “But she was going to have his baby!” Jemmi managed.

  “Not likely. The orbitals and ships are improbable beings, so they must be part animal, part machine,” Yee told her. “I’m certain you’ve noticed Sarasvati is no longer the paradise she was intended to be. Since the Fall, they have been unable to replenish the nanomachines that they need to grow and heal themselves. I doubt there would have been any offspring.” He shrugged.

  Jemmi tried to say something, but her grief and rage were like a solid mass that seared through her throat and chest. She had no words to express the depth of his sin and blasphemy. She knew that to strike at Yee would be suicide, so instead, she forced herself to turn from him and raced down the darkened street. When her legs tired, she walked through Port-Town as she had on her first night, staying to the shadows and peeking in windows.

  It was hours before she got bored with wandering and returned home. Yee was out.

  “Roycer!” Jemmi said. “Where’s the jar, then?”

  “Which jar, Jemmi?” he asked.

  “The one he brought with him off Albiorix. Where does he hide it?”

  He paused, and she flicked the boy’s mind to give him just a bit of encouragement. “In the tub room. Underneath the floor stones.”

  “Show me.”

  Roycer led her to the room with the tub and lifted a flat stone away. In the space beneath was the gray canister Yee had carried when they had first seen him. Jemmi pulled it out. It was obviously very old, because it was made of a single piece of something very smooth and very strong. She grasped the cap, but it would not turn. It had an indentation the shape of a palm on top, but nothing happened when she pressed her hand against it. She handed it back to Roycer and told him to return it just as they found it. He could demonstrate astounding attention to detail when prompted.

  As he moved the stone back into place, Sarasvati stirred herself to remember her duty, and her sky sullenly flickered and kindled with morning light, half a day late.

  Jemmi and Yee and Roycer continued to live together over the next dozen or so days, but Jemmi saw Yee as little as possible. She also began to avoid looking directly at Roycer. The boy seemed brittle and stretched thin, and he was getting weak and clumsy. He was no longer pretty. Jemmi suspected he would be replaced shortly.

  The laborer in the floppy hat returned after a few days, limping and exhausted as if he had run all the way up to the old shuttle port and back. It had been picked clean, he reported, and nothing bigger than a wagon-wheel was left. Several nights after that, the searcher that had been sent to the far end of Sarasvati crawled across the veranda and scratched weakly at the door. He could not speak, but he had just enough strength left to convey that he had also found nothing. Roycer dragged the body inside before the neighbors noticed.

  Jemmi approached Yee the next mor
ning. “Neh, Yee, how long will the other searchers be gone?”

  Yee snorted. “Were you expecting them back? The task you gave them was to return only when they could report something of value, and to continue searching until then. I’d be surprised if many of them are still standing. Your old Sarasvati is worthless to us, as I expected.” He seated himself and picked up his book.

  “You and I should begin planning our departure. One of the younger orbitals further rimward is more likely to have what we need.”

  Jemmi slipped outside and sat in a corner of the veranda. She stretched her mind out across the emptiness, and touched Sara.

  All of Sara that was not dedicated to the physics of regulating her inner environment was still in mourning for Albiorix, and she was in no mood to notice Jemmi.

  Please, Sara! I’m going to have to leave if you don’t . . . We’re all going to have to leave! She visualized Sarasvati’s interior deserted and bare, and prodded her with the image. Resentful, Sara turned part of her attention to Jemmi, and sluggishly recognized her as one marked as her own.

  You have to help us find a shuttle, or else he’s going to take me far away. There was no reaction to the words, of course. Jemmi tried to make an image of a shuttle, but she had no idea what a spacecraft would look like. Instead, she imagined people flying in and out of Sarasvati.

  Sara responded with a picture of a flawless white fish, smoother than an egg and shaped like a teardrop, with stubby fins. The fish dove out of a hole in the side of Sarasvati’s asteroid and swam across empty space.

  That must be it, then! Where?

  But Sara did not have a mind that could answer a question like that.

  Jemmi leapt onto the veranda railing and caught hold of the edge of the roof, then scrambled on top of the house. From its peak she could look down along Sarasvati’s entire inner length as it curved over her head in lieu of a sky.

  Is it there? she asked, looking at a spot directly across, and kept the interrogative at the front of her mind as she moved her eyes across Sarasvati’s interior. When Jemmi reached a point that was far off—90° around and two-thirds of the way towards her other end—Sara stirred, and Jemmi’s vision of the spot came into clear focus. She had a sudden image of the white shuttle in a smooth white cavern, clasped by metal arms that held it suspended over the floor.

  Thank you, Sara! Thank you! Now I’ll never have to leave you.

  Jemmi gently withdrew and left Sara to her grief. She remained on the veranda until she had collected herself, and went inside.

  “Neh, Yee,” she said as if she was discussing the weather. “I’ve found a shuttle.”

  Yee looked up from his book, as cold as ice. “Do not even think of toying with me, child—you would die before you hit the ground. Run along.”

  “It’s smooth and white, in a big white room. One of my searchers made it back.”

  Yee was out of his seat and gripping her collar as if propelled by lightning. “Where?” he demanded. “Let me talk to him!”

  She shook her head. “Can’t. He’s dead now. But I know where it is.” She took him to the mullioned window and pointed out the spot to him.

  “There? Where the river makes the bend around the tip of the cloud forest?” He calculated. “That’s a three-day journey. Roycer—the packs!” Jemmi heard heavy footsteps running frenetically through the house, and Roycer burst into the room carrying two loaded rucksacks and an enormous backpack.

  “We leave now,” said Yee said to her. “Prepare anything you need to take.”

  He left the room. Jemmi could think of nothing, so she sat and waited. When Yee passed through again, he had the gray canister slung over his shoulder, and he didn’t pause to see if they followed him.

  Three days later, Jemmi was farther from home than she had ever been. They had had men pull them in carts day and night for most of the way, but the last one had dropped from exhaustion just as they decided to leave the road, and they had hiked through the brush on their own.

  They stood in a clearing in a jungle. Humid air, blown erratically out of an obstructed duct from one of Sarasvati’s lungs, met the cool currents overhead and sent a thick perpetual cloud rolling through the trees. Moisture dripped from the leaves like rain. In front of them was a symmetrical grassy mound, like a small hill standing alone.

  “This is assuredly an evacuation portal,” said Yee, pacing around it. “That’s the entrance, and it is overgrown and partially buried, so the space beyond certainly could have remained intact. But how did your source know what was inside?”

  He shot Jemmi a glance. She shrugged.

  “No matter. We are very close, and our day is at hand.” He removed two packets from his rucksack and tucked them in the tumbled stones that filled a door-shaped indentation. “Roycer, light this string here and here, please, then join me quickly.” He strode away. “Jemmi, you might care to accompany me.”

  She followed Yee back into the trees. Roycer came running up, and then there was an explosion that sent earth and spinning shards of timber flying past them. The cloud amongst them jumped, and Sarasvati flinched violently under their feet.

  A third of the mound was blasted away. The explosion had removed the layer of soil and stone covering it, and laid bare several yards of a deep purple-pink gash that oozed and glistened wetly. Jemmi wondered if the wound was as bad for Sara as it looked, or if on her miles-long body it was less than a scratch. Of the doorway only smoke and rubble remained, but beyond it was a steep shaft that led down through Sarasvati.

  Yee tossed aside his pack and hurried in. Roycer and then Jemmi followed him down a long spiral staircase, smooth flowing steps formed by Sarasvati’s living body. When daylight could no longer reach them, the steps above and below them glowed to light their way. They descended so far that Jemmi could feel herself becoming heavier.

  A chitinous membrane blocked the passage and drew them up short. Yee placed his hand in its center, and it dilated open. They stepped through, and it silently closed behind them. Another blocked their way, and the air pressure changed and Jemmi’s ears popped before it opened for them.

  The stairs here were no longer alive. They were mathematically perfect, with precise lines and right angles that had never existed in Jemmi’s world. They were a sterile white, against which Yee and Roycer seemed both more vivid and less whole. Jemmi had left Sarasvati, and was standing in the bare asteroid that protected her soft flesh from the harsh vacuum.

  The white staircase was short, and it opened up into a cavernous chamber walled and floored in featureless white. The vaulted ceiling was a warm silky gray, chased with flickers of colored lights—Sarasvati’s outer surface, pressed tight across the top of the space. At the center, as big as a house, a pristine fish-shaped shuttle was suspended over the floor by a set of jointed steel arms.

  Yee rushed forward with a sound that was part gasp and part sob. He circled the shuttle, reaching out a hand and pulling it back to his mouth as if he were afraid to touch it. Jemmi ran her palm along its side. It was smoother than an egg, and cool.

  “It’s whole, and perfect!” Yee crowed. “At long last, I’ve done it!”

  Jemmi nudged at it. “But, neh, Yee,” she said. “It’s dead. It doesn’t go.”

  “Ah, but it will now.” He caressed the canister he carried.

  “What’s in that thing, then?”

  “Today, it is the greatest treasure in all the galaxy. I have carried it with me since before the Fall, when I first began to suspect that my enemies might take extreme measures to divest humanity of my direction.”

  “I thought you said they were the enemies of Cosmopolis.”

  “I may have—did you think there was any difference?”

  Near the tail of the shuttle, Yee gingerly pried open a tiny drawer in the craft’s skin and inspected its interior with one eye. Then he placed his palm on the lid of the canister and twisted. It came off with a chuff of air. He handed the lid to Roycer, and reverently held the container
out towards Jemmi.

  “Behold—one and a half liters of breeder nanos, sealed away long prior to the Fall.” Inside was a gritty paste. It smelled like hot sand and rising bread dough. “This is quite possibly the last batch in existence untouched by the machine plague. Each speck can replicate thousands of the same nanomachines that built and ran the technology of the Cosmopolis. What I hold here is enough to raise an entire planet from the dark ages back to enlightenment. It is the key to our next empire.”

  He lifted the canister to the intake panel. “It would not do to waste it—would half a spoonful be too much?” He tilted a drop in. “The nanos will find the diagnostic system, and it will activate them to begin whatever repairs it needs.”

  He pushed the little drawer closed and bore those eyes of his into the surface of the spacecraft as if willing it to let him see its inner workings. Nothing happened for as long as Jemmi could hold her breath, and then a faint ticking and hissing sound emerged. Yee cackled with delight. “It will be no time at all now,” he told Jemmi. “In a few hours you’ll have had your first taste of fresh air. You will have seen your first sunset.”

  “But then we’ll come back to Sara, neh?”

  Still preoccupied, he answered, “What’s that? Don’t be absurd. Once you’re on a real planet, you won’t spare another thought for this rat-hole.”

  Jemmi turned her back on him. Near the entrance stood a heavy hand crank and a podium topped with switches and levers. She ran her hands over the alien textures and idly toyed with the switches to hear them click.

  She closed a simple circuit that had remained alive across the centuries, and the floor beneath them disappeared, phasing into transparency. Her heart lurched and she groped for balance. She stood atop a star-spattered bottomless void, and looked between her feet far out into nothing. Suddenly, an edge of the emptiness was occluded by a shape that swung past her. For a moment, staring up into the chamber was a golden-green, slit-pupilled, lidless eye—flat, dead, and far broader than the entire launch bay. It was Albiorix.