The inner chamber’s walls still carry a coat of frost. We’re cramped, cold, and silent. A few dozen meters away, surrounded by bluish gloom, a crystalline oval lies at the center of a shadowy space. There’s a small cherry glow around the oval. The glow expands. Warmth radiates slowly outward. Thawing here is a more delicate task than with the monkeys and their foliage. Whatever lies inside the oval is not so robust. Nell and I move closer.
“Someone’s inside,” she says.
The light rises. The glow comes from a translucent capsule just large enough to hold one body—shorter than Nell, smaller than Tsinoy or Kim, smaller even than Tomchin. A body about my size.
“Another mummy,” Kim suggests.
“I don’t think so,” Nell says.
My skin tingles.
“It looks female,” Kim says.
I had thought for a moment it might be another version of me inside the capsule, and I feel both relief and disappointment when I see it is not. She is not. But dismay follows disappointment. Her naked limbs are skinny, emaciated, as if she has been starved of both food and time. Her face is deeply wrinkled. Her eyes, as they open, are bleary and yellow.
She looks at us slowly, still groggy.
For the first time, we are witness to a living human being who is not young, not fit—who is, in fact, very, very old. Yes, she has been preserved, frozen along with the rest of the sphere. But she lived a long time before the capsule accepted her ancient frame, before she took this last option—this last outstretched voyage to our present, her future.
The capsule sections slide up, melt away. A sweet, musty scent rises from around the naked old woman, like perfumes from a grandmother’s dresser. I half expect to see round mirrors and blue jars of skin cream and combs felted with gray winter gleanings from ten thousand lonely nights.
She studies us one by one, showing no surprise, no dismay. Our appearance does not shock. Our forms do not concern her. The monkeys have allowed us to come here; the sphere has warmed…. She accepts us all, but perhaps she is too old—perhaps she can no longer summon enough energy to care whether we signal defeat or victory, or are simply another step in a plan she must have been integrally concerned with, hundreds of years before.
“Hello,” she says. She raises a thin arm, gestures with near-skeletal fingers. Four of the monkeys bring forward clothing worn, bleached, tattered, and still crisp with frost. She smiles and shakes her head. “Cold,” she says.
The monkeys pass the gown to us. Nell and I rub it with our hands to warm it.
“That’s fine,” the old woman says. She manages to float free of the capsule.
We dress her. She seems as light as a leaf. After her ancient nakedness has been concealed, she lifts her shoulders, squares them, shakes out her thin arms, and draws a finger along her lined cheek. Then she looks at us one by one and asks, “Which of you is Teacher?”
The others point. I’m too stunned to move or speak. Just touching her hands and limbs makes me ache. I’ve been through all sorts of suffering in my short existence, but not this—the painful prolonging of biological time.
“Is it really you?” the old woman asks, her eyes moving up to my face. I realize her sight has faded. “Closer.” She reaches out to me, and the monkeys help her forward like faithful handmaids. “I hope you remember. We would have been important to each other, once.”
The old woman’s features take on new focus. I map her eyes, her cheeks, the shape of her jaw. I draw her face over two other memories—my Dreamtime partner, the one I was destined to go to planet with. And Mother, back in Hull Zero Three.
My mouth is as dry as dust. “I remember,” I say.
“If something had gone wrong with your making, you wouldn’t remember anything about me. I’m so glad you do. I always remember you.”
“You’re Destination Guidance?” Nell asks.
“The very last,” the old woman says. “Now, please, you’ve brought me such lovely gifts, these odd creatures tell me. I didn’t design them, you know. That was Selchek. He’s gone by now, surely. There were three others. They’re gone, too, by now.”
“Yes,” Nell says.
The bodies.
“They brought themselves back one by one, to live out their lives and fight for the soul of the Ship. I presume that’s how it happened,” she says. “None of us was supposed to live forever, or even longer than a normal human being. So we had to cobble together an apparatus and carry it piecemeal from the hulls… along with these creatures!”
The monkeys do not seem offended by her appraisal. “She is the last,” they agree.
She grasps Kim’s huge arm in frail hands. “I’m sure there are better clothes somewhere. The monkeys care nothing for dress, you know. Please take me someplace warmer.”
Nell grimaces at me, but the sphere is merciful, and the monkeys have been busy cleaning, clearing, and preparing. I get the impression that in the monkeys, something remains of the others and that they are attendant on this meeting, listening. Perhaps they are pleased and finally willing to waste a few resources, for however short a time we will be here.
It has taken us so long to be created and gathered.
“Someplace warm,” the old woman repeats. Then, to the monkeys, the sphere, she calls out, in a surprisingly loud and firm voice, “Light the fires. Bring out the feast. It’s time!”
My heart thrills. We’ve never met, but knowing her is my validation.