Transcendental (19 page)

“It looks as if we may get to the other arm after all,” Tordor said.

“And what will we find there?” Riley asked.

“A happy, moist, and warm place without predators,” 4107 whispered.

Tordor turned his massive head so that only Riley and Asha could hear. “She means where there are no grazers like my species.”

“She means the Alpha Centaurans,” his pedia said.

Xi had come up to the group unnoticed. “We will find a place where every being can fulfill its most ambitious dreams, where everyone can be king and need never watch for knives.”

Tordor looked at Xi and 4107 with what in a human would have seemed like condescension. “More practically,” he said, “we might consider what this spiral arm contains: aliens who know nothing of our confederation, who may have evolved in a wholly different fashion, whose culture and technology may be long-cycles in advance of ours, whose very matter may be poison to galactics from our spiral arm.”

“As newcomers,” Riley said drily, “we humans may have a lot in common with them.”

“If these aliens have created a Transcendental Machine,” Tordor said, “they have had an opportunity to surpass anything we might consider common.”

“And the likelihood,” Asha said, “that they may have millions of cycles of advantage over us.”

“Neither of those are necessarily so,” Riley said. “We don’t know that the Transcendental Machine exists, or if it does, what it actually accomplishes. And any such device might arrive out of the blue, some alien genius’s inspiration rather than the crowning achievement of a technological pyramid.”

“How do you think the nexus points between the spiral arms were charted?” Asha asked.

“They could as easily have been identified by explorers from our spiral arm,” Riley insisted.

Asha turned to Tordor. “Galactics protect their charts like treasure maps, so I’ve never asked. But let me ask now: how did they get created?”

“All that is lost in ancient history,” Tordor said.

“They know but will not tell,” Riley’s pedia said.

“At least,” Riley said, “someone from this spiral arm made the journey or we would not be getting the coordinates now, much less the stories about the Transcendental Machine.”

“Maybe stories,” Tordor said. “Maybe reports.”

“My theory,” Asha said, “is that creatures from the other spiral arm evolved first, or developed technology first, moved outward to ours, and maybe the others, leaving behind evidence of their passing in the form of ruins found on many worlds, and charts of nexus points inherited by the galactics.”

“If that is so,” Tordor said, “where are they?”

“How do we know,” Asha asked, “that they are not still among us?”

Riley studied Asha’s impassive face, as if to judge if she were joking, and noticed that Tordor was looking at her, too, though it was difficult to imagine how he would be able to interpret a human expression.

“That is a conspiracy theory to top all conspiracy theories,” Riley said.

“We would have no way to identify such an alien,” Tordor said.

“For that matter,” Riley said, “where did any of us come from?”

“Every culture has an origins story,” Tordor said.

“Most attribute their origins to the supernatural,” Riley said, “and then elevate their discourse to the natural.”

“If they were here,” Asha said, “they wouldn’t necessarily know their origins, either.”

“Millions of years is a long time to remain civilized,” Riley said.

“They could have degenerated,” Tordor said. “They could be any of us.” He swept his proboscis in a wide arc. “Any of us.”

“Or none,” Riley said. “If we’re speculating, they could have planted life adapted to our planetary conditions throughout this spiral arm, and then retreated to their own arm, leaving each of us to develop along lines they laid out, like gods, until they came again to fulfill their own ambitions—whatever they are.”

“That
is
ridiculous,” Asha said.

“No more than any of the other theories, or any other creation myth.”

“Then why have they not returned?” Tordor said. He seemed to be taking Riley’s jest seriously.

“Maybe they have,” Riley said, “and found us wanting. Or maybe the aliens from still another spiral arm planted them to realize their ambitions.”

“Or maybe they just forgot,” Asha said.

“We’ll soon find out,” Tordor said.

Riley found his gaze returning to the screen with its faint line of stars like the promise of a distant shore.

*   *   *

The line had grown no brighter by the time that most of the passengers used for their sleep period. Nothing had happened to change the atmosphere of uncertainty in the passengers’ lounge. Kom had not emerged from his cocoon. Passengers had wandered aimlessly through the lounge and through the ship itself, working, eating, conversing, contemplating, or playing what seemed to be games of skill or chance. Anything to make time pass while that distant line edged closer.

Riley climbed back into his cubicle. He had not been asleep for more than a few minutes when he heard the cubicle door open. He prepared for an attack before he sensed, by touch and odor, the presence of another human, a female. “Asha!” he said.

“Shh,” she said.

“How did you get in here?” he asked.

“You always ask that,” she said. “You have your skills; I have mine.”

“What do you mean ‘I always ask that’?”

“I’ll explain later,” she said.

The cubicle was scarcely big enough for one person, but Asha made it seem larger. She was out of her garment effortlessly and he had nothing to remove. He wanted to ask again why she said it was a question he always asked, but his hands were busy in the darkness and soon his mouth was as well.

Even in the dark Asha’s body was wondrous: full where it should be full, slim where it should be slim, firm where it should be firm, soft where it should be soft. She was strong and supple and as sensually aggressive as he, sure of what she wanted and as determined seeking it out.

Their lovemaking lasted for more than an hour before, satiated, they lay side by side in each other’s arms. That would have been romantic if there had been any choice, but suddenly the cubicle that had seemed so large now seemed tiny again.

“That was good,” he said.

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“It seems perfectly natural to me,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder.

“True,” he agreed, finding a convenient place to place his free hand. “We’re the only humans—among the passengers, anyway.”

“Not only that,” she said, “and not because the captain and his human crew are inconvenient, and relationships unwise.”

“I didn’t appreciate how beautiful you were until you smiled.”

“I knew the first time I saw you.”

“Women are smarter about these things.”

“Not just that you were the only man available,” she said. “I knew that I could love you.”

“Love is a big word.”

“We’ve got a big job,” Asha said, “and we need all the help we can get. You and me against the universe.”

“The way it has always been, from the beginning of time.” He gave her a squeeze, feeling an expansiveness of spirit and a warmth that he had not felt for many cycles, perhaps not since he had left Mars. “But why now?”

“What makes you think this was the first time?”

He remembered the unanswered question and the pheromones in the cubicle. “And why did you say ‘You always ask that’?”

“You won’t remember any of this,” she said.

“You think I could ever forget?”

“Oh, you have. Many times.”

“How—?”

“You will remember everything,” he told his pedia.

“You should have told me that before,” his pedia said. “This woman has abilities that you cannot imagine.”

“I have other abilities besides opening locked doors,” she said.

“I believe you,” he said. “But let me make a case for not using them.”

“Go on.”

“Perhaps you can make me forget,” he said, adjusting his body to fit better with hers, “and depend upon my general feeling of affection and appreciation.”

“Yes?”

“But I think it is time to join forces in full awareness of who we are and what we mean to each other. We can help each other far better then.”

She thought for a moment. “Yes. Who are you?”

“There are things I can’t tell you, not because I won’t but because I can’t.”

“Because of the thing in your head,” she said.

He stiffened and then relaxed. “You know about that?”

“I know many things.”

“I am not a pilgrim.”

“Careful,” his pedia said. “I might have to kill you. And if you die, I die.”

“I am—. I can’t say.”

“I know who you are,” Asha said. “It’s something you will have to fight out on your own, but it’s a fight you can win.”

“She knows too much,” his pedia said. “Kill her.”

“And your job is to kill me,” she said.

“Who
are
you?”

“I am the Prophet,” she said, “a reluctant Prophet. And it is time you knew my story.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Asha’s Story

Asha said:

The generation ship
Adastra
was halfway to Alpha Centauri when we were intercepted by a galactic patrol ship. I say “we,” but I had just been born. The crew and passengers did not resist. They had no weapons, and the alien ship, clearly armed, had appeared, magically, out of nowhere. All this I heard from my father, who would repeat it to me, on my birthday, like a tribal history that I should never be allowed to forget. Then he told me about my mother.

A galactic crew boarded our ship and navigated, in a few Jumps, to the Galactic Council system. I do not remember the process, but my father tells me that I cried every time the ship passed through un-space. He held me tight, trying to be brave but as frightened as I was. The experience of the Jump is terrifying the first time and many times later before it becomes routine, but my father knew what I did not: that our ship had been taken over by monsters with knowledge and powers and hungers we did not understand. For all he knew they were hungry for human flesh and were taking us to a celebratory feast in which we would be the main course.

The Galactic Council system is small, remote, and impoverished. No one would ever travel to the system by choice, or suspect that it was the center of power in our spiral arm. Its sun is small and dim, and its planets are barren and cold. It was an ideal location for the council, whose energy resources made their worlds livable but hidden from everyone except those who needed to know. That knowledge replaced our fear of being eaten—we were as poisonous to them as much of their food was to us—with the realization that they intended we would never leave.

Our ship was taken to the moon of one of the system’s meanest planets, where we were removed to housing that was little better than a prison. Another human crew was already there. Its ship, the
Vanguard,
had set out from Sol twenty years after ours but had been intercepted first. Half its crew and a fourth of its passengers died in a futile resistance. A computer technician named Ren was its highest surviving officer.

We were schooled every day. My father, who was a xenologist, taught human history, psychology, and languages. Ren taught mathematics, science, and technology. Syl, a junior officer from the
Vanguard,
taught composition, communication, and group relations. Instruction was a break from our chief occupation, which was survival—everything alien was poisonous or deficient in human nutrients or trace elements. My mother was the first victim of alien food. After the second and third deaths we were allowed to return to the
Adastra
and its gardens and yeast cultures. The galactics, with their mastery of nexus Jumps, knew we had no chance of escape.

There I grew up, orbiting the moon we humans named Hell, of the planet we named Hades. Half a dozen other children were one or two years older, half a dozen were much older, and two were younger. The imperative to multiply almost vanished when we became prisoners.

Most of our captors remained on Hell, with only a handful of aliens within the
Adastra
itself, rotating frequently as if to avoid contamination. The
Adastra
was as dangerous to them as Hell was to us. Most of them were Xifora, famous for their paranoia and treachery—ideal jailors, the galactics thought. A few were Sirians, solid pillars around which revolved the volatile Xifora. A Dorian was in charge.

My father devoted himself to studying them and their language. He was ready to give up when some of my classmates pointed out that each group had its own language, but they also had a common language that they used to communicate between different species, a language we later learned to call Galactic Standard. We taught my father the concepts we had begun to associate with sounds and gestures, and he began to piece together a grammar until he had mastered the language, as nearly as a human can be said to master any alien language, and spoke to our captors.

All were shocked, as if the apes in a zoo had opened conversation with their keepers.

All this time, we learned, some of the Xifora that we thought were guards were really scientists who had been studying us. They came to the conclusion that we were only clever animals who had been sent on ships built by our owners to test experimental devices before they trusted them with their own lives.

We children had become skillful in recognizing reactions among the Xifora, and even spying on the conversations they thought we were incapable of understanding. We even learned to understand Sirian grunts but never Sirians. Some of us had begun to distinguish among members of the same group, some by markings, some by behavior. We even made jokes about them and gave them names. Now we saw consternation among them, even what we interpreted as alarm.

My father had been teaching us Galactic Standard grammar and then, as we began to pick up proficiency, the rudiments of Xifora and Sirian grammar as he was constructing them. I can’t tell you how liberating those abilities were; we had been able to understand isolated fragments, but now that we could understand our captors’ conversations, we began to understand how they thought. Our minds expanded until I was afraid they would explode. That was the first time I became aware of human limitations.