CHAPTER 26

Drake and Janice opened their eyes and returned from memory to reality, to see the white Liar gazing abstractedly at a point on the ceiling. Light streamed from a silver ring around its eyes. Was he looking at some kind of projected display?

The Liar spoke. “We say sorry, subject one. Sorry twice for calling you so. Your names are Drake and Janice. We should call you such. We did not know names when first we met. We did not know even that you were two, instead of one. [Laughter].” The alien didn’t laugh; he said ‘Laughter’ in a harshly mechanical voice. Someone needed to adjust his artificial voicebox’s inputs and outputs. “Our apologies are many. We did our best. The children of our people sometimes make models, to practice fine motor control, and also for enjoyments, yes? Human children are same, we think? Make models of ourselves, or ships, or stations, or houses, or animals, sometimes from little blocks that stick each to another, sometimes from special kits with special parts. Do you know of what we mean? [Tonal variation: anxious desire for confirmation of comprehension.]”

“We hear you,” Drake said. “We understand what you’re saying. We don’t understand what we’re doing here, or what you want.”

“We have our suspicions, though,” Janice said.

“[Tonal variation: relief] We will explain all, but we will explain old business, before new. The models your children and ours play with, sometimes, what if the parts become jumbled? Two sets of pieces, or maybe three, with pieces all mixed together, maybe with some pieces missing too. All with no instructions, no picture to guide you to completion? What do you do, if you think by mistake that all the pieces come from one set? You try your best to see how they fit. You worry it is not quite right, but it works at the end, the lights come on and the wheels spin. You think, perhaps it is okay. Perhaps it is close enough. [Sigh.] That was us, with you. You were broken pieces, all mixed. We thought you were one thing. We… we said this, but we say again, we did our best.”

“You were trying to help us,” Drake said. “I always thought so.”

“It was me who thought so at first,” Janice said. “But at some point our thoughts, or more like our ways of thinking, got crossed. I’d forgotten that. Forgotten how I used to be.” She lifted the single pale blue eye to the white Liar. “I thought you were playing with us. Amusing yourselves.”

“Amusing? Interesting is better word, our lexicon says. We are healers. We travel and we help our people, help them to help themselves. When we found you… we never saw such people as you before. Fascinating. Challenging. Not amusing. Situation was too serious for amusing, our lexicon says. Later… we met other humans. We thought, oh no! We thought, subject one, we built them back all wrong! Much sadness and regret. We feel it still.”

“But now you work for Shaper,” Janice said. “Putting humans back together all wrong on purpose this time. Much sadness there? Much regret?”

“Shaper,” the white Liar said. “We know Shaper. We do not like Shaper. We have been in this system for not long. What you would count as two years ago, we encountered… you say ‘scourge-ship’? We greeted them. Always interesting to meet cousins and hear the stories they have made for themselves. We are a people made of stories, because our truth is too dark. These cousins we met were very strange, because they held to oldest of old ways, still in service to masters who ruled our ancestors generations ago, still solving themselves at the master’s problems like the problems were their own.

“These cousins invited us to come here and see their work. Is this work healing we said? Oh yes they said, we are trying to heal, will you help us, and we said yes. Because the story we made for ourselves in our tribe is that we are traveling helpers who travel and help. We have many kinds of expertise that Shaper and his tribe lack. This is because their original purpose was not to heal or to change bodies for the better, but to destroy and break bodies, and over long generations they taught themselves about biology, genetics, mutation, many arts. But they did not know how many things they did not know!

“We are famous in a small way, and Shaper knew we could advance their studies. We came and we saw what they do and… we were troubled. They do seek healing, it was not a lie, but they do great damage in the service of that goal. They do not think humans are people. But we knew you were people, from the moment we put you back together, Drake and Janice, as best we could. Not our people, but people all the same. We worked with Shaper and his tribe for some time, hoping to make them more givers of kindness, but Shaper became frustrated. He wanted only our skills and not our thoughts or opinions or objections.

“We explained that skill could not be used without philosophy, not without great danger and harm, and so he cast us out. We sought out your people… the resistance? To offer aid. But they fired on us. They thought we were tricks to trick them. We were about to leave this system when things began to explode and then we decided to stay because when there are explosions people get hurt. And then… we found you.”

“Can you please let us go?” Drake said.

The white Liar fluttered its pseudopods. “Is comfort field not working? We thought to float there with no pressure would be better than your chair.”

“Oh,” Janice said. “Ah, I mean… it is more comfortable. We thought it was some kind of… that we were prisoners.”

“You are patients,” the white Liar said. “But only if you wish to be! We are sorry for taking your ship into stasis and traveling through a bridge. There was a battle, and we feared if we made ourselves known, if we reached out, we would draw attention and be destroyed. Our ship is not made for fighting. It is a hospital ship. We take in broken ships and people and try to help them. You were not broken but we feared you might be in the fight, that the guns turned on other ships might be turned on you. Then – then! We saw it was you, the two of you, the ones we called one, the two we called subject one.”

“Now we know why the Benefactor said this system would be interesting to certain members of the crew,” Janice said. “He must have known somehow that our Liars were here.” She paused. “Why should we believe what you say? Your whole species is famous for making things up.”

More fluttering of pseudopods. “We make up stories, yes. New origin stories, new myths, new purposes. Because we lost our true stories so long ago. And when we talk to outsiders, yes, we protect ourselves and hide our truths in other stories… but do you not understand? [Tonal variation: surprise] We do not tell lies within our own bands, families, tribes. The two of you, Drake and Janice, you lived with us for months, you ate with us, and we gave of our bodies to join your bodies where they would not join. You are part of our family. We do not tell lies to family.”

Drake and Janice were stunned. Finally Drake said, “Thank you. The other people on our ship are our family. Are they all right?”

“We put them in stasis when we picked up your ship and then put them in a little dream so we could monitor their functions and brains. Stasis is good for stopping damage from increasing but not for seeing how things work when they are working.”

“Stasis… you mean some kind of cryogenic suspension?” Janice said.

The white Liar waved his pseudopods wildly. “No, lowering temperature, very crude. We have, ah, stasis is the right word, our lexicon says. It is an old technology, guarded closely by the ancient masters–”

“The Axiom,” Drake said.

“Yes, as you call them. Some of the Axiom had this power, to stop the processes of time locally, indefinitely. Shaper found this technology and used it in his work, to stop the process of the plague while working on a cure. We took this technology too, for ourselves, because it will be useful in our work. We used it to stop parts of your ship so you would not attack us in confusion.”

“Wait, what plague?” Janice said.

“The plague our ancestors released on the Cleansing Corps,” the white Liar said. “Do you not know of this?”

“Why don’t you tell us about it,” Drake said.

The white Liar was silent for a moment, and the light around his eye brightened. “The Shaper of Destiny is the leader of a tribe of our people who served the Cleansing Corps. Do you know of the Cleansing Corps?”

“Not the Axiom janitorial staff, I assume,” Janice said.

“No, no. Not cleaning. ‘Cleansing’ is much of an ugly word for what they did, but it is how they called themselves. They were the Axiom who fleeted the scourge-ships. They roamed wide and far and killed all intelligent things they found, wiped out all civilizations of the galaxy, small and great. The Cleansing Corps believed all people who were not Axiom were not people at all, and only tolerated our kind for servants and slaves and pets and toys. First the Corps destroyed the worlds that could travel in space. Then they sought worlds that transmitted signals into the sky – let the Cleansing Corps hear your voice, and they would find and silence you. It took hundreds of tens of years of time, but all such worlds were stilled. Then they found worlds with life that might someday touch the stars, and cut them down as well. Some of our people were slaves, forced to serve the Corps, but some served willing, and received power and privilege over their own. Much as some humans serve Shaper and his tribe willingly in this system, you see?”

“We do,” Janice said.

The white Liar fluttered. “If you know of the Axiom, perhaps you know of the rebellions?”

“We have a friend, Lantern, on our ship,” Drake said. “She told us about some of the true history of your people. The slaves rebelled, and the Axiom destroyed your home world, and all your records, the whole history of your people, right?”

“They took away even our memories,” the white Liar said. “Reached into our minds and erased our myths and histories. The Axiom thought this would quell us forever. But we rose up, again and again. [Tonal variation: pride] The efforts of our ancestors, that is why there are so few of the masters left in the galaxy. Some of those in service to the Cleansing Corps rose up, too. This was in the last days of the Axiom empire, when the masters had broken into factions and fought and rivaled with their projects, all in hopes to restore glory, or survive the death of heat in the universe, or to leave this universe for other places they could rule.

“The Cleansing Corps aligned themselves with some factions, but decided others were not enough… Axiomatic. The Corps obsessed over purity, not just of body but of philosophy. The Corps believed any non-Axiom life to be vermin, but as the empire fragmented, they began to see some Axiom as vermin, too – especially those who wished to hibernate while their vast projects came to pass. The Cleansing Corps had seen intelligent life spring up again and again, and feared if too many Axiom went to sleep, the universe would teem with vermin again. They feared this outcome, and pushed down their disgust for our kind to create the sect of truth-tellers, to carry on their work in case the Corps fell in the fighting. The truth-tellers even now do this work of extermination, killing new civilizations before they can rise, but they found humanity too late. You had already spread wide and far into space, too many to kill, so they tried to limit your expansion, and keep you from disturbing the Axiom. [Laughter] It seems they were not successful in your case.”

“We have disturbed the Axiom a little bit here and there, now that you mention it,” Janice said.

“[Laughter] So in those last days of empire, the Cleansing Corps became cruel more and more, and punished infraction and hesitation among their slaves with torture and death, as the Axiom empire fell apart all around them, the galaxy in chaos. Their slaves saw opportunity in confusion. The Corps used many techniques to destroy life. Fire and explosions, yes, and sometimes they destroyed whole planets. Other times they wanted the resources on those planets for the empire, and then, they turned to plague. Special plague, made to kill just one species each, killing them all while leaving their possessions unharmed. The slaves stole these secrets to create a plague of their own: one made to kill their Axiom masters.”

“Ohhhhh,” Janice said.

“They made this plague, they spread, they killed. The Cleansing Corps, once numerous, dwindled and sickened and died until only tens of them remained, and even they were infected. Worse, the Corps was hunted by other Axiom, because they feared the plague as a threat to their species entire. The other Axiom attacked the Corps on sight, and scourge-ships were known as plague ships, and burned. Those few ships in this system are the only remnant of a fleet once so numerous as stars.

“The last of the Corps took their loyal servants here, to the edge of the galaxy, far beyond the reach of the dwindling empire. Here they set a stasis field, to hold them outside of time for thousands of years. [Laughter] To hibernate themselves, when they once called those who slept through time cowards and fools! They wished to hide, to be forgotten, and because the Axiom factions were so much at war, this hiding worked. The Corps slumbered for millennia. At the appointed time, some centuries ago, the stasis ended, and the servants of the Cleansing Corps woke. The Axiom themselves remained in suspension, because the plague still sickened them, and to live long in normal time would be to die.

“Their servants, the Shaper of Destiny chief among them, then began to seek a cure. They knew how to make plagues, oh, yes, but curing them is more and harder. They taught themselves what they could, and experimented on the worlds here, but eventually despaired of curing the Axiom, because the problem was too hard. When humans arrived in the system, Shaper… changed his focus.”

“To what?” Drake said.

“To changing the Axiom instead. If the plague attacks Axiom bodies only, then perhaps you need not cure the plague, but only to change the bodies. The plague does not hurt our species, and it does not hurt humans, so if the Cleansing Corps survivors were altered, given new organs and limbs taken from humans and our kind… perhaps these new forms could resist the plague. This work to make chimeras has been the focus of Shaper’s research these past years and years. He wishes to make the process perfect before he operates on his masters.”

“But aren’t the Cleansing Corps super racist?” Janice said. “How would they feel about being fused with body parts taken from vermin?”

“We asked this of Shaper. Shaper said they would be glad to live at all. We have our doubts. He did not sound convinced of himself either, in true, but he is desperate in these times.”

“Can you wake up our friends?” Drake said. “We should really fill them in on all this.”

“This can be so. But would you like us to make improvements to you first? We cannot separate you without making you both… incomplete… but we can make certain corrections if you wish, now that we understand the ways and beings of human people now.”

“What did you have in mind?” Janice said.