I ate it all, hardly noticing, and watched Oddny eat, ever so delicately, and with rapt enjoyment of each taste, every new sensation. Alive for the first time in her life? Hard to know. Hard to ask. And how old is she? I thought back to the night she was first delivered to my bedroom door. Two years? Maybe a little more than that? God. I imagined her coming to life in a clonage vacuole, more or less like awakening in a coffin full of bloody mucilage.
What must that have been like?
Why am I afraid to ask? I've seen it done, I know what it looks like, seen how they react when they see first light. Seen the amazement, bewilderment, confusion.
I think if I ask, it'll make her unhappy. Afraid that she'll remember how she was delivered to my bedroom for ceremonial rape and unwilling orgasm, afraid that she'll remember the terrible rider in her head, my happiness her will to live.
Oddny looked up at me, eyes aglitter, wiped the shine of K-Y Margarine from her lips with the back of one hand, and smiled. “I used to wonder,” she said, “at the evident pleasure with which you ate. I've begun to understand."
After dinner, as we drank from what looked like used paint buckets filled from entire bottles of a gassy beverage that tasted horribly like cheap muscatel mixed with quinine water, the Titanides set up a projector that tossed a cube of misty light into the air before us, a cube filled with 3D images. “On the trip back from Jupiter,” said Vaad, “I told you something of the broader outlines of history, filling the billions of years from your time to ours."
"How many billions?"
He shrugged. “We just don't know. Three, maybe? The Immortals meddled with the sun, kept it lit and Earth's geochemical cycle running for a long, long time."
"They erased the evidence,” said Oddny.
"Yes,” said Aruae. You could see the curiosity in the tiny woman's eyes, her questions obviously similar to mine: What can it be like to be such a creature? But a woman will wonder about it differently than a man.
The cube of light filled with the shape of a slim young girl, a little more than a child, you could see, but not much. Slim, pale, without breasts, short mouse-colored hair on her head and between her legs. Pretty, I suppose, but not much else. Vaad said, “This is what Immortals made themselves to be, not long after the end of the Machine Man Era. All we know, we know from scraps of old art found among the last ruins they left, on Venus and on Earth's moon."
I said, “What's on Earth itself ?"
"Nothing. At some point, it was burned clean, seas boiled, crust reduced to lava. It's cooled in the two hundred million years since, but ... stone and salt water, air that's mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide. If the sun were still as hot as in the past, no one would be able to go there."
Oddny said, “Were they all women?"
Aruae said, “No. They made themselves genderless, and the female appearance is merely an illusion from the absence of male externals. If they had anything internal, or any mechanism for sexual activity, we don't know about it."
Vaad: “To us, these people aren't even the stuff of legend. We learned about them only recently, through archaeological research on the inner planets.” Like Sumer and Meluhha, forgotten to history, resurrected by science. “No, all we knew about them was...” The image in the cube swapped out for one of the supposed kaldanes, like a frightful head riding on the back of a giant crab.
I said, “We saw an image of one of those aboard the derelict ship at Uranus, surrounded by spearmen of your race. It looked to be a little taller than you."
He nodded. “Maybe a third of your own height."
I wonder how I would feel, confronted by any sort of human being close to twenty-five feet tall? I'd feel afraid.
Aruae said, “These are what we call the Souls on Mars."
Oddny said, “Why souls?"
The woman smiled. “Old legends. No more than that. In holy books, the story is, the Souls on Mars knew their kind would one day be gone, and they made a successor race to live on planets they created around Jupiter."
"So where did the Souls come from?"
Vaad said, “From what we've been able to piece together, they are what's left of the Immortals."
"What changed them from that to this?"
"You'd have to ask them. We don't know."
I said, “They look like something from a story."
"A Dream Time story?"
"I guess you'd call it that."
He frowned. “Maybe they knew the story. And do we...” You could see the idea made him unhappy. These beings are the gods who made men, made us, and to think it might have been something trivial...
I said, “Maybe. Are they still there on Mars?"
He nodded. “The Zeians took up space travel more or less on a whim, just a few hundred years ago. Established commerce among their four worlds, settled the empty world they found around Saturn, sent ships to explore Mars, Earth, and Venus..."
Oddny said, “That doesn't tell us about the Uranus vessel, or about the hyperdoors."
Vaad said, “A little while after the Titanide War of Independence, we started sending probes to Mars. Satellites to photograph the surface, then manned ships that set down in a remote place far from where the Zeian ships were lost."
"Why?"
"We could see whatever lived on Mars had technology beyond our wildest dreams. Technology we coveted.” He waved a hand around, taking in the city, the whole of his little world. “Everything you see here, everything that makes us better than the Zeians, makes it impossible for them to come and put us back in their control, was the fruit of that first expedition."
"I take it there was another one."
"The first expedition identified what we thought was an interstellar vessel from the Age of Immortals, one of the ships they used on resource expeditions to the nearby stars. Some theorized further, that it might be a Machine Man starship..."
Aruae said, “Whatever it was, we wanted it."
"Especially after the second expedition sent an encrypted report about other things they'd found. When we found out about Martian Transcendence Portals ... well."
Oddny said, “Is Transcendence what you call time travel?"
Another shrug. “That's what we think. It's not what we know. Our scientists think the only way to travel faster than light is by traveling in time as well."
I said, “Not quite,” and told him a little bit about theoretical travel through the conformal and probabilistic spacetime matrices.
"So they knew these things at the beginning of the Machine Man Era? It would explain a great deal.” It seemed satisfying to him.
I said, “Only suspected."
Aruae said, “But then, you were the first Machine Man, Mr. Zed."
"Am I legend or merely archaeology?"
Vaad said, “Both. You are the Fountainhead in Zeian holy books..."
I heard Oddny's curious indrawing of breath.
Aruae said, “The first expedition brought back a 3D light sculpture of you they found in an abandoned city on Mars. I'll show it to you later. It's quite pretty."
Damn me! This'll be one hell of a burden, if I ever get home...
Later, Oddny and I sprawled in the midst of our Titanide blankets, alone again at last in the smoky red quasi-dusk of a Saturnlit evening, sun having gone down while the ringed orb still hung like a yellow painting in the sky. No idea how they managed that effect.
Oddny lay propped up on an elbow, one leg extended, the other raised at the knee, her face still suffused from our recently spent passion, eyes alive with ... well, alive will do. You could see the person in her looking out, so different from the serene-faced clonegirl, alive only when animated moment to moment by Ylva's dead soul.
When did I start thinking of Ylva that way? And when did this one come to be a different being? She smiled, and said, “I like it when you look at me that way."
I felt a slight pang of shame, but ... “What way?"
"When you look at my face and see me.” She laughed. “I d
on't mind when you look at me other ways, Mr. Zed. And look at something besides my face."
The pose, I knew, was almost certainly something Ylva taught her, something learned by trial and error and added to a machine's rule sieve, or perhaps remembered from the dead woman's lost life. If I do this, it will make him feel thus. I wondered if Ylva's husband had liked her to pose like that as well.
I said, “It was easier when you were just a...” I bit off the last word, which might have been thing. Even when she was a thing, she probably had feelings of her own.
Who was it wondered exactly that about men? Sarah and I lying in a sweaty tangle one fine evening, a few weeks after our relationship began. Lying in the dark, talking about who we'd been, about things of the past, people of the past. By the time you're forty, there's been plenty of time for past to accumulate.
Sarah, after wondering why her ex-husband had done all those terrible things to her, looked at me, eyes liquid glints almost hidden in night, and said, “You seem real, Alan. Are you? Really real, I mean..."
In the here and now, Oddny said, “Don't be sorry, Mr. Zed."
I suddenly wanted her to call me by my real name, but ... no. Alan's not my name anymore. Zed will have to do. Mr. Zed, last man, first Machine Man. That's me.
She said, “I don't mind that I was made from nothing, just to serve you and help you be happy. This interlude..."
"Does it have to be an interlude?"
Her face grew a little remote for just a moment. “What's happened to us hasn't changed my nature as an accelerated clone. If I can't get back to Ylva, then, when I die, in five years or so, she won't remember me, and what I was will be lost."
That hurt. All she'll be, in so short a while, is memories in a mostly computer cyborg? Or, worse, in the fading recollections of a potentially immortal Machine Man? I wondered if I would still be alive when the evocatively named Starfish and Spinfellows, whoever they were, chewed us to bits and sent us creeping home.
Would I become one of those genderless boygirl Immortals then? And later on, a hideous kaldane dreaming on Mars? Hell, am I, even now, somewhere on Mars? Someone has to be last. What if it has to be me?
She said, “I love to watch your face when you're like this, so very far away, eyes looking into some other place, alternately smiling and frowning as fleeting thoughts cross your mind and are gone. It's something I'll carry with me for...” no, not forever. “...afterwards."
"Is that what you really want? Enosis with Ylva?"
"It's my only hope.” A brimming of something in her eyes, I don't know what. Her only hope a return to what she was, a sex toy ridden by a literal ghost in an actual machine? And what would she want if ... only if ... Don't ask. She might tell you.
I said, “I guess if our Titanide hosts are telling the truth, our only hope of getting home lies somewhere on Mars."
She nodded, then said, “Make love to me again, Mr. Zed. Please."
I wanted to ask why, but ... hell, I know why.
The next morning, Vaad and Aruae took us before the Titanide Council, which had a couple of dozen members, mostly older-looking men and women, ridiculous in their leather harnesses and silver helmets, paunchy, slack-bellied folks like something out of a German B&D pornofarce, the sort of thing had been popular a hundred years ago, before the Internet got started.
I remember, back in the early days of ERSIE, I testified before some US Congressional committee or another, a dicey proposition since some people were trying to assert I was still a US citizen and a prosecutable criminal besides. The main thing I remember was, they weren't trying to get at the truth, merely trying to count coup on one another, preening and grimacing for the cameras, as they jockeyed for future campaign contributions.
I'd used those Congressmen's arrogant foolishness against them on that long ago day, and, listening to Vaad's whispered translations, I supposed I could do the same now. What they were afraid of, mainly, was a bad outcome. What they had to be convinced of was, the possible rewards far outweighed the risk.
You know: If you invest fifty dollars now, I guarantee a payoff of ten thousand dollars in six weeks ... Okay? Great! Now, in order to process payment, I'm going to need your bank account number, user name, password, security access code, and challenge questions. The password is your mother's maiden name? Wow! Who'd've guessed that...
What trumped the congressmen's dreams back then was simple. I had the secret of the field modulus device tucked away permanently beyond their reach. Now?
Eventually, the haggling and wrangling and all-around bullshit reached the point where it was Oddny's turn to speak. When she stood, it quieted them, and shortly after she began to speak, you could hear the proverbial pin drop.
What it boiled down to was, without access to a proper computational facility, I'll have to give you a simple outline of the process, but the way time and FTL travel works is as follows...
It ended with her saying, All we really need is a working model to reverse engineer. The rest is simple, just like the firefox space drive. It took another hour of general wanking before they voted to authorize Mars Expedition Three.
We settled back in our blanket bed for a peculiar but nice-enough lunch, and I said, “You did a good job with that, Oddny. I'm convinced."
She said, “I'm sure it'll work, Mr. Zed. These people have better computers than humans had before Ylva and her like came along. And I may not have access to the databases anymore, but I do remember a lot of this stuff.” She smiled. “If not, you've had sixty years to become a good engineer. I think you know more than you're willing to admit."
Maybe so. Hate to jeopardize my reputation as an overachieving underachiever. I said, “What happens if we succeed? Go home?"
A level look. “I think that would be best. I haven't got all that long and ... you'll need an antirad booster, sooner or later."
I'd been trying to ignore that. Sooner or later, as she said, my scales will start to slough off and be replaced by real human skin. My hair will start to grow and ... I dunno. I might live another thirty or forty years after that. “Will your sense of self persist when you're ... re-merged with Ylva?"
She said, “No one knows. When you wake in the morning, are you really the same man who went to sleep?” She laughed, “It's all I've got. And it's more certain than some fantasy Heaven, if you ask me."
Ylva talks like that, too. Sure, I'm dead. Dead, buried, and rotted away to worm castings. All except for a few ounces of nerves pickled and packed in among the circuitry. But those nerves believe they're me. Why should I bother to argue the point? I'm alive, whether the real Ylva is or not.
"Besides,” said Oddny, “I'm accumulating some wonderful memories now. It would be selfish of me not to share them with the others."
I felt cold fingers on my spine.
* * * *
We left Titan the way we came, hunkered down under the bubble canopy of a flying saucer, Aruae piloting, Vaad crouched between us, at the head of a small squadron of same, crewed by survivors of the First Expedition, the ones who'd not disappeared along with the Second. The ship climbed out through redcloud skies, climbed up into starry black space, making for a point in the sky to one side of wan-lit, inner-glowing Saturn and ... there.
The dripping star, hanging in the sky once more.
Vaad said, “It's the only one we have, tunable to a variety of solar destinations, but ... we haven't been able to make another."
Oddny said, “I'm surprised it was portable, given it has to be crosstied to all its destinations."
"So you say. We didn't know. In any case, what we took from Mars was no more than a seed. Until we'd read through a few thousand Immortal reference books, we had no idea..."
The door opened and we went through, red Mars on the other side, hanging ruddy pink in the sky, criss-crossed with a spiderwork of canals. Schiaparelli would be happy to see this, I thought. Not to mention Lowell.
The real Mars, our Mars, was a rugged red moon seen from orb
ital height. If you looked toward a limb, you could see there was an atmosphere only by the line of high haze against the black of space. Here, there was a blur of blue at the edge of the world, and pinkish clouds floating above the red desert.
We went hissing down through the atmosphere, crossing swiftly above blue steel waterways, sweeping through a vast, deep canyon system, hiding ourselves in shadow. I wanted to think it might be Marineris or Coprates, someplace I'd been before, some landmark held over from times gone by but ... no. Too much time. And this canyon had a muddy red river at its bottom.
We landed, the canopy opened, and the Martian air was thin and cold as razorblades in my nose, but breathable. I wasn't surprised to see goosebumps all over the Titanides, Aruae's lovely tan nipples puckering to little knots, Oddny shivering, holding her arms around herself.
I looked down at my own lizardy hide, and said, “I'm usually annoyed I have to look like this, but..."
Oddny said, “You're prettier than you think, Mr. Zed."
Even when I was human, and women told me that, I didn't believe them.
"This way,” said, Vaad, “the entryway is here. Quickly, before we freeze!"
The crewmen trooped our way, ray guns held at ready, queuing up at a metal hatch set flush in the face of the canyon wall, long plumes of hot breath rising above their heads. Vaad spun a wheel and the hatch swung open, revealing a redlit corridor beyond. The men went in one at a time, Oddny and I coming last because we had to crouch low to pass through the portal, which was, at best, a meter high.
I went through head first, expecting I might have to crawl a long ways in the low tunnel, doubly glad for my tough, scaly skin and—
Splat.
On my face on rough gray concrete.
What the...
Asimov's SF, October-November 2009 Page 30