Starving • Cornucopia • A Descent • Six Hundred Cycles Late • A Favor • The New Ones

The stones stood at the highest point in the surrounding countryside, and Drywanu led us down. “I will take you to our village, Morgenrothross, named for the Last One who founded this place and kindled the life within us.” She glanced at us, almost shyly. “Do you… know him?”

“I’m afraid we haven’t had the pleasure,” I said.

The land was rolling hills, topped by stands of trees, the slopes covered in lush grass. We followed a well-worn path, leading us through wooden gates in low stone walls. There should have been animals grazing in a place like this, but there weren’t. Maybe they were sleeping. I hadn’t grown up around agriculture, and wasn’t quite sure how it all worked. Eventually we reached a sort of dip in the ground, filled with a handful of low houses, some built partly into the ground, and others made of wood and earth, all with roofs of living grass. There were small chimneys poking out of some structures, but the night was warm, and no smoke rose. The village was organized around a central structure that looked a bit like a gazebo, strikingly different from the rest of the construction because it was made of shining bright metal.

“The Last Ones have heard our pleas!” Drywanu shouted. Figures emerged from the houses, watching us, some pointing, some gasping, some falling to their knees. The people here were variously winged, horned, spined, and scaled, a variety and profusion of shapes that reminded me of the fantasies and fairy tales of my youth… but these beings were not frightening: they were frightened.

“Zax, they are starving.” Minna shivered. “I can feel their life flickering. These are the strongest. The old and the young are too weak to come outside. They are dying.”

“We mean you no harm!” I called “We’re here to help, if we can.” They all just stared.

“The cornucopia.” Drywanu gestured to the gazebo. “It has failed. We were forced to eat our animals, not just a few, but all, and when we request more, none appear. We have tried to eat the grass and the bark from the trees, but they do not sustain us. Some of us set out on a journey to find more animals, more food, but beyond the valley there is a shimmering wall of hard light, beyond which none may pass, and it does not break, or even crack, no matter how great the blows turned upon it.”

Was this place some kind of terrarium? Were these people created as toys or entertainment?

Drywanu went on. “When we approach the cornucopia, it does not give us plenty any more, but only shouts at us, in unfamiliar words. Some of the more superstitious folk think the cornucopia is a god, and that it is angry, as it never spoke before. They try to appease it with blood or milk or liquor, to no avail. I do not believe it to be a god itself, but rather a tool of the gods – a miracle wrought by the Last Ones.” She looked at me, her eyes damp. “Isn’t it?”

“It is not a god,” I said. I had never yet been to a world where there were gods, though there were some with creatures powerful enough and vain enough to claim they were. “May Minna and I approach the cornucopia?”

“You are the Last Ones. This world was made by your hands. It is all your domain, and the permission is not mine to give.”

Minna and I went to the gazebo-thing. The structure was five meters high, made of gleaming vertical struts of metal that seemed not to be welded or bolted together but somehow grown into their current shape. The roof above was a graceful dome, and on the ground, in the center, there was something like a well, a circle two meters across, made not of stones but metal. The circle was full of some liquid that glimmered like quicksilver.

We approached the well, and it did indeed shout at us, a mechanical voice in a language different from the one spoken by Drywanu. The linguistic virus managed to translate it, though: “ERROR! SERVICE NEEDED. HUMAN AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.”

I cleared my throat and said, “I’m human. How do I give authorization?”

“INSERT APPENDAGE INTO APERTURE FOR VERIFICATION.”

The humanoids all gasped. “It has never shouted those sounds before,” Drywanu said, standing outside the gazebo. “And those words you said… Are you speaking with the cornucopia in the tongue of the gods, Last One Zax?”

“I’m trying.” I looked at the shimmering liquid, thinking of mercury poisoning, and of other dangerous outcomes… but in a pinch Minna could always grow me a new arm, couldn’t she? I extended my right forefinger and touched the liquid. It was icy cold and buzzed against my flesh.

“HUMAN STATUS CONFIRMED. SERVICE ENTRANCE UNLOCKED. PROCEED TO PLATFORM AND DESCEND.”

I pulled my finger out, and the liquid withdrew, disappearing down invisible drains and revealing a platform, flush with the level of the ground. “I think we’re supposed to stand there.” I offered Minna my hand, and helped her step over the lip of the well, then followed her. Drywanu and the others had all fallen to their knees and bowed their heads, and they were making various murmurations. “No, no, none of that,” I said, embarrassed. “We’re just here to help. Please. You can stand.”

One or two of them did, Drywanu among them, but the rest, if anything, only groveled more.

The platform began to descend slowly, and I wished we’d asked for a lantern or something. Minna’s body began to glow faintly, which helped, illuminating a smooth shaft of metal around us. I wondered what we’d find at the bottom.

After two full minutes of descent, we stopped before double doors, which slid open. The large room beyond was dusty, with tubes in the ceiling flickering to provide life, but half of them didn’t come on at all, and half the remainder were dim. The walls were covered with dark screens and blinking lights, mostly red.

When we stepped out of the elevator, one of the walls sort of… unfolded, reshaping itself into a large screen and tilting a control panel covered in dials and buttons toward us. A map flashed on the screen, showing some kind of floor plan, and then a row of the tiles beneath our feet illuminated, blinking on and off in series down the length of a passageway. “PROCEED TO POWER STATION B AND REPLACE DAMAGED COUPLER.”

I looked at Minna, shrugged, and followed the illuminated floor. The hallway was lined with doors, some with round portholes of glass in their centers. Minna peeked into one, and then another, and then a third, gasping each time. “Zax, look, they are full of animals and plants!”

She was right. One porthole showed an aquarium inside, full of flickering fish, from the size of my hand to the size of myself. Another had birds fluttering beneath an artificial sun. There were things like sheep in another, in an underground meadow, and one with something resembling cows in a field, and another with short-eared rabbits hopping around in the grass. The habitats were narrow, but seemed to extend endlessly back, farther than we could see.

We finally reached a door without a porthole, marked with unfamiliar symbols, and it slid open to reveal a wall of… well, fuses, probably, or circuit breakers, or something – there were fist-sized cylinders slotted into holes in the wall, gleaming with glass threads and silver wires. One of them, about eye level, was melted and black, the silver threads dark. “Just pull this out?” I asked the air. “Where are the replacements?”

A drawer slid open to one side, revealing a neat row of fresh components. It took me a minute to figure out how to remove the old coupler – there was a little tab to push to make it pop out – but it came free easily enough once I did, and a new device slotted into its place easily. A new hum began, and the lights in the hallway flickered as some dying system came online. “SERVICE COMPLETE. SUSTENANCE DISPENSER NOW ACTIVE.”

“Let’s go back up and see if the cornucopia works!” Minna said.

“Soon. We should check on a few other things first.” I raised my voice. “Are there any other components in need or service? Or that will need service soon?”

“SEVERAL,” the mechanical voice replied. “SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE HAS NOT BEEN PERFORMED FOR OVER SIX HUNDRED CYCLES.”

“I’m impressed this stuff still works at all,” I said. “The Last Ones built to last. Tell us what needs to be done.”

Minna and I spent the next hour pulling open panels, re-securing wires, tightening bolts, resetting switches, replacing lights, and generally doing what felt like a century’s worth of maintenance all at once. When everything was running as optimally as possible, we dusted off our hands and returned to the elevator.

Then I paused. Things here would run smoothly for a long time, probably, given how well it had worked so far, but what if something else broke after we left? Drywanu’s people wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, and the summoning circle didn’t seem to be much help if we were the only assistance it had produced in all those scores of full moons. “Is there a way to allow non-humans to access this place?” I said. “To let the… locals come down?”

“ALLOWING CHIMERAS ACCESS TO THE CONTROL CENTER IS NOT ADVISED. THEY MAY ALTER THEIR BIOME AND THEMSELVES IN UNANTICIPATED WAYS.”

I considered. It probably wouldn’t be good to let just anyone come down here, especially since the locals were totally unfamiliar with the technology – they might break open the rooms where the animals were bred to get them all at once, for instance, upsetting the artificial ecosystems that kept their populations stable and made them available for requisition from the cornucopia. But we could show Drywanu, and she could show any others she thought were trustworthy – or even tell everyone, if she thought that was the best decision. Giving one person such power was dangerous, but Drywanu was clearly devoted to her people, and part of being a harmonizer is judging how someone might best contribute to society. I thought Drywanu would be a capable caretaker. “Can we create a password that allows access, instead of a biometric test?”

“YES. SPEAK DESIRED PASS PHRASE.”

Before I could think of something, Minna said, “Thank you, Zax” in the language of the chimeras.

“REPEAT PASS PHRASE.”

“Thank you, Zax,” she said again.

“PASS PHRASE ACCEPTED.”

I looked at her curiously. “Why did you make that the phrase, Minna?”

“You do good every chance you get, Zax, and never get much in the way of thanks. I like that these people will thank you forever.”

I shook my head, but I couldn’t help smiling. Her gesture embarrassed me, but it was also sweet. We stepped back into the elevator and rode two minutes back to the surface. When we emerged, there were dozens of chimera standing around the cornucopia. We stepped out, and the liquid silver flowed back over the platform. “How do you usually request things?” I asked Drywanu.

She stepped forward hesitantly, then said, “One slowgrazer, please.”

The fluid in the pool shimmered, and then, slowly, something like a lamb rose up through the liquid, shaking off droplets as it came, then making a small lowing sound. Drywanu gasped, and another chimera – this one covered in fur and taller than me – rushed in and picked the animal up, hugging it, and making sounds it took me a moment to recognize as sobs. “We’re saved!” he said.

Others crowded around the cornucopia, requesting grain, and fruit, and other things, and Minna and I drew back, Drywanu with us. “Once this settles down, we want to show you something,” I murmured.

“The Last Ones made us.” Drywanu looked through a porthole in the underground corridor. “This is known. But they made these creatures, too? They made all this?”

“They started with living things that occurred naturally,” I said. “Then they…”

“Grafted,” Minna said. “Combined things in different ways. Probably at first they made their creations just a little different – healthier, hardier, faster to grow, less needful of food. Once they did all that, they changed themselves, or changed other things, and became more creative, and made you.”

“The Last Ones used to live among us, the stories say. Then they left, to live in the sky, but they would still visit us sometimes. Then even that stopped. They created this place here, to sustain us. They made provisions for our wellbeing, even beyond their time on this world. They wanted to take care of us.”

Like pets, I thought, but didn’t say that. I wasn’t sure she would even understand. People really did love their pets, anyway, even if I was opposed to the idea of intelligent creatures being treated that way.

“Thank you, Zax,” Drywanu said. She chuckled. “That phrase will become the mantra and the prayer of my people.”

“Minna did a lot too,” I said. She’d planted some of her store of seeds in the fields to grow into vegetables, because she didn’t want these people to be entirely dependent on the cornucopia, just in case; it turned out the fruits and vegetables produced by the system were seedless, probably to prevent the rise of agriculture among the chimera, but their time as pets was over now. They could develop more freely after we were gone.

“Minna will be revered as a saint as well. For the fields to produce food for us, instead of only grass to feed the animals? That is a true miracle, and one I cannot wait to see.” Drywanu took Minna’s hand and smiled at her, then looked into my eyes with her disconcertingly direct ones. They flashed red. “Is there anything we can do for you, Last Ones? We owe our lives and futures to you.”

“Oh, no, we don’t need–” I said, but Minna interrupted.

“Someone may appear in the summoning circle,” she said. “He looks like a Last One, but he is a… Do you have people here who hurt other people?”

“Sometimes, someone is too angry, or goes mad,” Drywanu said.

“He is like that, he hurts and he might kill, and if he comes with a companion, she is even worse,” Minna said. “You must not trust them, no matter how sweet their words. They will not stay long… but they may ask about us. They mean us harm. It is better if they do not find you at all, but if they do, please do not tell them we came before?”

Drywanu frowned. “We have heard stories of evil Last Ones. I heed your words. But, forgive my impertinence… would it not be better to seal the circle?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“When the Last Ones did not wish to be petitioned, in the days gone by, they would seal the summoning circle, enclose it with an impenetrable dome that let neither light nor sound inside or out. Can you not seal it thus?”

I looked at the ceiling. “Can we seal the circle of stones?”

“PASS PHRASE REQUIRED.”

“Thank you, Zax,” Drywanu said.

“EXTERNAL INTERFACE CLOSED,” the voice said.

That wouldn’t stop the Lector and Polly from sleeping their way to the next world, but at least it would protect Drywanu’s people from their malicious impulses.

“I leave it closed until we have need to call on the Last Ones again.” She cocked her head. “But you… you are not exactly the Last Ones, are you? There are many stories about them – their sport, the tribute they demanded, the ways they liked us to… entertain them. Most of us did not like taking part in those entertainments. You have only helped us, and given us the means to help ourselves, and that is not what the Last Ones did. Their assistance always had a price. They never offered us freedom. Who are you?”

“We’re just travelers,” I said.

“We are helpers,” Minna said. “We go where we go, and we help where we can.”

“You are the New Ones, then. I am glad you came. If you ever return here, we will welcome you. All my people will.”

I wished we could return, but at least when we left this place, we would leave with good memories.