Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 (12 page)

“She researches weapons technology?”

“She swears she doesn't. And how do you know that? Have you spoken to her?”

“Was there anything else the Sloan said before you woke up here?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Are you sure you didn't speak about your son, who died in utero?”

“What? No! What the hell is going on here?” The Beth stood, shaky on her two legs. “I'm not answering any more of your questions until someone tells me—”

She put a hand to her mouth and vomited. She screamed and spasmed, and when she was dead, the Meeker said, “Eye, why do you keep the truth from her? Shouldn't she know that her family is dead half a billion years?”

“What purpose would that serve? You saw how agitated she became when she learned the truth. How else will we find this message the Sloan has given her?”

“But she dies in pain each time.”

“Why do you think she's in pain?”

“Because she screams so terribly.”

“Those aren't screams of pain, Meeker, but of joy. Her eternal life energy is free at last from her temporal body. It's the same screams of joy that the civilizations of the Long Gone made when I swallowed their worlds.”

The Meeker had heard her stories a thousand times, he had even told a few back to her. But as he gazed down at the dead Beth and her dripping fluids, he wondered if the Eye was keeping things from him too.

The next Beth said, “Sloan whispered to me about the sunrise we watched that morning in Mexico. We felt as if we were part of the whole Cosmos, not discrete fragments.”

“And nothing more?” asked the Eye.

“Isn't that enough?”

Then she died, and the next Beth said, “Sloan whispered that she'd miss drinking her morning coffee with me. Are you taking me home?”

The next Beth said, speaking of a stringed contrivance used to make music, “Sloan wished I had played
guitar
more often for her.”

“And nothing else?” asked the Eye.

“No.”

The Eye questioned the Beths in the same way the Meeker approached the stars, not head on, but from the side. The Eye poked and prodded, but each Beth told a different story of her last moments, and each one died screaming.

“Eye?” the Meeker said, after the fifty-ninth Beth. “What if you never find the Sloan's message?”

“All problems have solutions, Meeker. All mysteries have answers.”

He wished that were true, because he began to imagine the Beths screaming, even while they were still alive.

“You must have loved your children,” the Meeker said to the next Beth, “the way you talk so tenderly about them.”

“Have I mentioned my children? Of course I love them. What was your name again? This is all so strange.”

And to the twelfth Beth after her he said, “What was it like to walk in the mountains with your children, under pines covered in snow?”

“Why, that's one of my favorite things! Until I got sick. Tell me, are you really an alien?”

To the sixty-fifth Beth after that he said, “Yrma sounds like such a sweet girl. She takes after you, I think.”

“That's kind of you to say. But it's strange to hear. It's as if you know my children, but we've only just met. What was your name again?”

And to the nine hundred and forty seventh Beth after her he said, “Are you worried about Joshua being all alone at college?”

“How odd! It's as if you just read my mind. What's your name again?”

“The Meeker.”

“And why do they call you that?”

He had answered her a thousand times. “Because by being less, I make the Eye more.”

She smiled, an expression he had learned to recognize. “Aren't all relationships like that? One in control, the other a servant.” She had said this before too, in a hundred different ways, just as he had told the Eye so many stories. The Beth's company pleased him, and he felt that, had she lived more than a few hours each time, they might have become friends. But each Beth always saw him and the Eye as a total strangers.

And each too had a different story of her last moments, so many that the Meeker lost count. And though the Beths died without fail each time, the Eye made progress toward a cure.

After a century, the Beths lived for an extra twelve seconds. After two centuries, they lived an extra fifteen. By the time they approached the Great Corpus at the center of the galaxy, the Beths lived almost thirty seconds longer.

The massive tetrahedron of the Great Corpus shone into the dark, more luminous than a hundred supernovae, and many hundreds of light-years wide. The Eye had transmuted the black hole that had spun here into a mind larger than the Cosmos had ever known.

Normally their Bulb would sweep past the Corpus like a comet, depositing their harvest of stars before spinning out on another slow loop of the galaxy. But the Eye directed the Meeker further in. The Corpus filled their view, bright enough to dominate the sky on a planet halfway across the universe. Only the Bulb's powerful shields kept them from being incinerated.

A black circle opened in the wall, and they drifted through. Darkness swallowed them, and the cockpit shuddered as the Bulb's gravitational field collapsed. Out the window a dozen red dwarves, a pitiful haul, were whisked away by unseen forces until their cinders vanished in the dark.

The Bulb set down on a metallic floor that appeared to be infinite. He had never been inside the Corpus, the true body of the Eye, and he trembled.

They exited down a ramp, and the Beth walked unsteadily as she stared into the vastness. The stony artifact floated behind them, escorted by four glowing cubes. He had been alone with the Eye for so long he had forgotten there were Eyes like her all over the galaxy, harvesting with other Meekers, that all were part of one gigantic mind. The cubes and artifact sped off, and a moment later the Bulb vanished without disturbance of air. The Beth, walking beside them, exploded into sparks and was gone.

“Where did she go?” the Meeker said.

“She is irrelevant now.”

“But I thought you wanted to solve her mystery?”

Time and space shifted suddenly, when he and the Eye stood before millions of gray cubes. Their three-dimensional grid stretched to an infinite horizon, and each cube held a Beth. All were immobile, their eyes closed.

“To improve my chances of finding the message,” the Eye said, “I have created many trillions of Beths. Curiously, I have found that the diversity of messages the Sloan whispered to her do not follow a linear curve, but increase exponentially.”

At least a third of the Beths were covered in vomit. Dead. The eyes of the rest rolled about furiously. “Are they dreaming?” he asked.

“These are not mere dreams.”

The Meeker found himself beside the Eye in a large glass-enclosed room. It was filled with items from the Beths' stories: a fireplace, photographs, books, and he even recognized a guitar. Three walls were glass, and beyond them a white-capped mountain rose into a cobalt sky, where a golden star shone. A delicate white powder dusting the spindly trees scintillated in the light.

Snow,
he thought,
on pine trees.

“This is a simulacrum of her memories,” said the Eye. “These help me come closer to solving the mystery.”

The Beth walked in the door dressed in heavy clothing. Her face was smoother, absent of the dark circles under her eyes that he had come to know. She was followed by another human, also heavily clothed, her skin many shades darker than the Beth's.

Like coffee,
the Beth had told him ten thousand times.
This must be the Sloan
!

“Is it weapons again?” said the Beth. “You know how I feel about that.”

“Damn it, why can't you trust me for once?” said the Sloan. The sound of her voice surprised him, for it was low like the Beth's, but of a different and pleasing timbre. “Why do you always get so goddamned dramatic?”

“Because you promised never again. You lied to me!”

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! You don't understand.”

“How long? How long have you been working there?”

The Sloan paused. “Four years.”

“Since the day we moved here?”

“Yes.”

“Is that the real reason why you wanted to move here?”

“Not the only one.”

The Beth took a deep breath. “I'd like you to go.”

“Wait, can't we—”

“Get the fuck out!”

The Sloan turned and left, and the Beth covered her eyes and wept.

“Excellent!” said the Eye. “Superb!”

Time and space shifted again, and the Meeker and the Eye were in a room filled with green-clothed humans. The Beth lay on a table, wailing, while the Sloan held her hand. In a spray of red fluid from her severely dilated lower orifice, a small creature popped out, still attached to the Beth by a fibrous chord. It wasn't moving and had a faint blue sheen.

“What's wrong?” the Beth screamed. “What's happening? Please, why won't someone speak to me? Is my baby all right?”

“Wonderful!” said the Eye. “Perfect!”

Time and space shifted again. The Beth lay in bed, speaking to two half-sized humans.
Yrma and Bella,
the Meeker thought. They were more lovely than he'd imagined, their skin soft and vibrant, almost as dark as the Sloan's.
They're getting ready for school,
he thought.
If they don't hurry they'll miss the bus!

The Sloan came in and ushered the children out. “You have to tell them soon,” the Sloan said, after she closed the door. “I don't like lying to them.”

“Why? You lie to them every day. They think you're a programmer.”

“That's not fair, Beth.”

“Isn't it? You get to have your secrets, and I get mine.”

“And how do I keep it a secret when you're dead? How do I tell them their mother, who presumes to love them, denied them a chance to say goodbye?”

“I'll tell them, when it's time.”

“And how will you know? Will the grim reaper knock three times?”

“Let me deal with this my own way.”

“Denial, that's always been your way.”

Again the Sloan left, and again the Beth wept.

“Yes, yes!” blurted the Eye. “I'm getting closer!

The bedroom vanished, and the Meeker and the Eye stood inside a dim room. Humans sat before glowing screens, furiously punching at keys. A large metallic cylinder with a hollow center crowded half of the room. The Beth lay on a palette beside it, her eyes half-closed.

The Sloan stood beside her.

“At last!” said the Eye. “I've reconstructed this moment from forty quadrillion Beths. Come, Meeker, let's solve this mystery together!”

The Beth looked much the same as he had known her. She lay still.

“You're heavily sedated so you may not remember this,” the Sloan said. “But I hope you won't think me a monster. I hope you'll understand what I did was for you and the kids. It's not weapons, Beth. I didn't lie. I've been researching ways to store matter long-term. We can encode anything in a crystal. Every last subatomic particle and quantum state.

“I spoke to Dr. Chatterjee yesterday. She said you had at most a month. The reaper knocked, but I guess you pretended not to hear.” The Sloan shook her head. “You get your wish, Beth. I can tell the kids that you're still alive. And when, in a year or a decade from now, someone finds a cure, we'll reconstruct you. You'll see the kids again. Maybe I'll have the pleasure of hearing you scold me for this.

“I knew you'd never let me do this to you. You'd prefer to let yourself fade away. Well I can't accept that. So I'm giving you a gift, Beth, the gift of tomorrow, whether you want it or not.”

The Sloan pressed a button and the Beth slid into the cylinder. The humans stared at their screens as a turbine spun up, as a low hum quickly rose in pitch past hearing range. The Sloan covered her mouth with her hand and trembled once as the Beth flashed like a nova and vanished.