The Echo of Love

By Marianne de Pierres

 

 

Professor Kyne? The stationmaster would like to see you.

Kyne paused his case book and replayed the message from his Mind-Aide to confirm that he’d heard correctly. With a speech to write, and at least a hundred case files left to review before the official opening of Leto Station’s new science wing, it was both a surprising and unwelcome interruption.

But not one he could ignore. The message had not only cut into his direct private audio feed but was blinking with a priority alert on his virtual eyewall and all his external screens as well.

“In reference to…?” he asked his M-A.

A topic has not been flagged, Professor. But the priority is red.

Kyne pulled the patch from his ears in exasperation. What could Floraboden possibly want with him? The stationmaster usually only deigned to give his time to the physicists and the astronomeins. No one ever took an interest in Kyne’s work. Psycho-realism was seen as the poorest relative of psychiatry and the hard sciences. Fools!

He stood, stretched, and waved his fingers in a practiced pattern. The nano-receptors around his workstation fed the gestures into a decoder, which set the station to lock. The screen, his case books, and documents all turned blank.

He locked his office as he left—even though no one came to Floor 773 unless they were lost—and stalked to the airvator shaft without passing a single person. He knew every ripple in the insulation and every ding on the exposed piping that ran along the ceiling, but today he didn’t pay them mind.

Even when the air-cushioned tube lift opened, he remained deep in contemplation of his research. Maybe this was his opportunity to ask Floraboden for a research grant. Two years into his study, his sample group remained frustratingly limited to station personnel and employees from the Leto–Bellatrix service shuttles. He needed a wider sample to gain credibility.

“Floor 550 on priority,” he told his M-A. It sent his request to station logistics, who rerouted the airvator into an express channel. At least he wouldn’t have to travel with the public.

Ten minutes later, Kyne stepped out.

The lights in the corridors were brighter up here, the smell cleaner. It seemed that the lower in the station you worked or lived, the more the sweet stench of carbon tetrachloride tainted your life.

Kyne waited in front of the security scanner. The stationmaster’s Lostolian valet came out to greet him and ushered him into the screening parlor.

He took care not to touch the creature. Lostolians’ personalities—along with their skin—were too tightly stretched and easily torn. Arrogance seemed to be their species’ default. They made great bureaucrats, always fussing over something.

Not that Space Station Leto was a place for species prejudice. Three hundred and fifty-four different types of sentients resided here. Tolerance was another key parameter for selection, and Kyne had rated highly on the species-empathy scale. He knew how to fudge a test. He’d designed enough of them.

“The stationmaster is waiting for you,” said the valet.

Kyne resisted apologizing. He’d come as quickly as he could. Instead, he walked straight-backed into the chilled inner sanctum.

Stationmaster Floraboden stood in between two nano-generators with his eyes closed. Kyne could see their little winking lights at work.

Other than that, the room was sparse: two kneeling chairs facing each other, a food dispenser, and a multidimensional picture of a cobalt-blue planet.

Please wait while Stationmaster Floraboden disengages from virtual, Kyne’s M-A told him.

Kyne sank onto the cushioned pad of one of the two kneel chairs. A trifle confrontational. Not all the species on this station would be able to fit on, or be appreciative of, the proximity of these chairs. Clearly the ergonomic designers hadn’t consulted a behaviorist.

“Welcome, Professor,” said Floraboden joining him on the opposite chair. “I know you don’t like to be disturbed when you’re working, but I have a unique situation and…an opportunity for you. However, this requires the highest security clearance. I would need certain assurances on your part.”

Kyne experienced an unsettling sensation in his stomach. “Is it dangerous?”

“Not inherently,” said Floraboden evasively.

Kyne observed the man’s movements and replayed the tone of his voice in his mind. The stationmaster was hiding something. “Why would you require me for this high security…situation?”

“Your research and your talent for interpreting voice are uniquely suited to the task.”

“Indeed?” Kyne’s curiosity was piqued, and he relaxed. He’d never had someone of the stationmaster’s status give kudos to his work before. Perhaps an opportunity had finally come his way.

“What’s required for me to gain clearance?” Kyne asked.

“Just a signatory assurance that you’ll abide by our protocols, and of course, a prosecutable declaration you won’t discuss your involvement with anyone.”

“And my recompense for such a commitment?”

Floraboden’s smile crinkled his face all the way to his ears. “I thought you might have some ideas on that. What would you like, Professor Kyne? What would be suitable reparation for assisting us to maintain the safety and wellbeing of your home?”

The stationmaster delivered the veiled rebuke with perfect good humor, as though it wasn’t really one at all.

But Kyne knew exactly what he wanted. “I should like to be moved to an office in the new science wing, next door to Dr. Dente Freeburg.”

Floraboden’s eyebrows shot upward. “Professor Freeburg is our leading physicist and astronomein. The new wing is for the hard sciences.”

“A profoundly ignorant decision, if I may say,” said Kyne.

“Aaah,” said Floraboden nodding his head. “You’re an activist in the war of the sciences?”

“I decry the physicists and astronomeins hegemony’s stranglehold on public perception. Yes.”

“Quite,” said Floraboden. “Well, let me see what’s available.”

He lifted a hand and wove a quick, new pattern with his fingers. His eyes glazed but remained open. The receptor implants across his forehead and down the left side of his face winked in a mesmerizing light pattern.

Most station operators could manage a decent load of procedures from anywhere on the station while still engaged in the real world. Floraboden, however, was renowned for his ability to compartmentalize and endlessly multitask. It was a stationmaster’s lot.

“I can agree to your request,” said Floraboden eventually.

“It must have an external view,” added Kyne. “I want to see outside.”

Floraboden scowled and twitched his fingers. Then he rose and returned to his command field.

The door opened behind Kyne, and Floraboden’s valet entered.

“Your request has been approved. Please follow me to give your signatory,” said the Lostolian.

Kyne glanced back at Floraboden, but the stationmaster had already resubmerged into station space, his eyes shut, and both hands conducting with fervor.

How annoying that the only person Kyne had spoken to in the last month didn’t have the courtesy to say goodbye.

#

It was a full day before Kyne found out what he’d signed up for. The guard escorts who came for him the following morning wore station insignia and armed-combat suits.

His stomach tightened. “Am I in danger?”

None of them saw fit to reply, other than to insist—with gestures only—that he should don a privacy helmet, so he remained blind in transit.

To allay his jitters, Kyne imagineered himself in his new office with his name plate outside on the wall next to Freeburg’s. He concentrated on picturing the physicists’ faces when a psycho-realist moved in among them. Sometimes, you have to fabricate your own success. Being in the hard-science wing would give his work some solid exposure. For one thing, it meant an automatic invite to the Scientists’ Union tri-cyclic symposium.

The very idea broke a fine sweat on his skin.

So deep were his contemplations that Kyne lost track of direction and time. He only roused from them when a guard tapped his shoulder and removed his helmet.

They’d brought him to a small room, even by station standards, which comprised an armchair, three gray titanium walls, and an interactive screen as the fourth wall. The screen was inactive.

The guard proffered him a tube of water. When Kyne accepted it, the guard left the room. The door shut after him with discernible finality.

Kyne stood, holding the tube. What next?

“Please be seated, Professor Kyne,” said Floraboden’s voice.

The screen flickered alive and the stationmaster’s head and shoulders appeared in sharp definition. The ridge of flesh along his hairline was stained from medical scans from the implants. Stationmasters were prone to cranial bleeds.

“On the other side of this screen we are detaining an A-Class alien. We would like you to begin some preliminary discourse with the creature. As your specialty is psychic interior realism, we believe that you can bring us some insight into the true nature of this creature.”

“That’s it? You want me to just talk to an A-Class?”

“Yes.”

“But I haven’t prepared. I need a profile tracker.”

“We’d prefer you did this on instinct and gave a spontaneous verbal report after every meeting.”

Kyne shook his head. This was most inappropriate. Most unscientific. “What can you tell me about the A-Class?”

“Our forward scout found...her—I use the gender tag in a qualified manner, for ease of discussion—in the brig of a JetShift trader. The humanesque crew were all dead. She seems to be able to communicate in our language and has chosen to be known as Sarin.”

“Sarin is the fourth brightest star in the Hercules constellation.”

“Indeed, Professor.”

“What does she look like?” asked Kyne, stepping closer to the screen.

“It’s unclear. Sarin is encased in an opaque crystalline structure. “She has described it as her cocoon. She chose that description, she said, so that we could conceptualize it.”

“Fascinating,” said Kyne. “Did the JetShift logs explain more?”

“No. You’ll spend an hour with Sarin today, and every day hereafter, until we know enough. The guards will collect you from your rooms every morning and return you afterwards.”

“What if I should like to stay longer with Sarin?”

“That will not be permitted.”

Kyne sucked in a breath. He was not used to such confining parameters when working with test subjects. Still, this could look good on his resume. “Floraboden, is this blindfold nonsense truly necessary?”

“Good luck, Professor,” said the stationmaster, ignoring his question. The image faded out.

The texture and color of the screen changed, and Kyne saw the outline of a sarcophagus-like structure in an otherwise empty space. He seated himself and leaned forward and studied the dimensions. It appeared—if the scale was true—to be a little longer and wider than the dimensions of an average female humanesque.

“Hello, Sarin,” he said, not sure what else to do.

“Hello, Professor Kyne. Stationmaster Floraboden told me to expect you.”

Her tone, though a little husky, was a perfect replication of the Mintakan accent. Humanesques in this sector of Orion clipped the end of their words. It was quite attractive to a Procyonite like Kyne who was used to the sound of his language bubbling like air in a water pipe.

“Are you comfortable with being called Sarin?”

There was a long pause, then she replied, “It’s my name.”

Kyne nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. He felt the mantle of his professional persona slip across him. “You may call me Professor or just Kyne.”

“Just Kyne. That is an unusual name even for your kind.”

That made him smile. “It’s not my name, Sarin. It’s semantics. Calling me Kyne will be sufficient. Our scout found you on board a damaged ship. Do you know what happened to the crew?”

“Interrogatives are not appropriate among my kind until a couple knows each other well.”

Kyne raised his eyebrows at the crystalline structure. “Are we a couple, Sarin?”

The A-Class was silent for a moment. “That was clever of you, Just Kyne. Creating intimacy from nothing.”

Kyne took a moment to consider her response then said, “I apologize if questions make you uncomfortable. It’s an accepted form of communication among humanesques. If you tolerate my lapses, I will attempt to reframe my speech, until we know each other better.”

“Your response is appropriate.”

“Good. Now…you were alone on a deserted JetShift.”

“It was not my choice.”

“Did they capture you? I’m sorry, let me try that again…According to what we could tell, the JetShift had been occupied by pirates.” Kyne made that up. But it seemed a reasonable assumption. Traders and pirates were interchangeable in this sector.

“I appreciate your attempted sensitivity with interrogatives, Just Kyne. However, I am not sure what a pirate is.”

“A vagabond. A scavenger. Pirates operate outside constellation laws.”

“I heard my captives speak of Orion. I believed it to be the name they give this area of space.”

“Place names are only useful if everyone knows their locations.”

“I would agree. Our cluster-space  will not be familiar to you.” The sound she made was utterly strange and discordant.

“Or, it may be familiar, but not as that,” he said.

“Of course.”

“Perhaps I will bring a celestial map on my next visit. We could exchange neighborhoods.”

“You sound coy, Just Kyne.”

“Coy is a very advanced linguistic concept, Sarin. I’m impressed by your command of our language.”

“I have also learned that humanesques use flattery as deception.”

“I had not intended deception. I only seek veracity.”

“My apologies. They used a similar tone to yours. It was followed by either falsehood or demands. It is reasonable that I assume you would do the same.”

A little surge of excitement prickled across his skin. He felt intrigued and unexpectedly aroused. It was a long time since he’d had an interesting and challenging conversation with a female...

A-Class alien female. He frowned. Inside that casing, she could be the shape of a jellypod.

“On my next visit, I’ll bring you some music to listen to,” he said. “I find it soothing and uplifting. Perhaps it will have the same effect on you, Sarin. It also speaks to the nature of our species.”

She didn’t reply immediately, but Kyne noticed the sarcophagus infusing with a rosy color.

“You’ve changed color,” he said, delighted. “I find that hue warm and pleasant. I shall assume that it’s a sign of your approval.”

The color deepened.

Kyne spontaneously reached out to touch the screen between them, but as his fingers contacted the surface it went blank. “Sarin?”

The door in the side wall slid open and one of the guards burst in. He lifted Kyne from his chair and roughly bundled him into the corridor.

“What is this? My hour with the A-Class isn’t finished! And your manner is unacceptable!” protested Kyne. “I’m an esteemed member of the station scientific community. You c-cannot treat me this way!”

He would’ve said a lot more, but a four-guard escort formed around him and began to move. He had to lift his knees and jog to keep from being trampled by them.

The guards maintained a silent and threatening manner on the trip back to his rooms.

Kyne squirmed in their grip. But they held fast, implacable, and unyielding.

Ridiculous! Excessive! He tried to send a complaint to the stationmaster as soon as he was alone again.

Stationmaster Floraboden is engaged in a Level Five scan and unable to be disturbed. His M-A sounded annoyingly prim.

Kyne swore and poured himself a double measure of Mintakan port. The sweet, thick wine coated the raw anger burning his throat, and soon he settled at his desk to select music for Sarin.

#

His visits to her followed a pattern after that: somber and silent guard escorts, time in the little interview room communing with Sarin, then a somber and silent return. Kyne was careful not to touch the screen in the interview room again, and the guards did not treat him roughly.

Soon he looked forward to the daily visits, and he learned much about Sarin on the strength of his own conversational skill and linguistic savvy. Kyne knew he was doing a good job.

Sarin also seemed to take pleasure in speaking to him, often showing her emotions by changing colors.

He compiled daily verbal reports for Floraboden, pleased that he’d identified that she was from Pleaides, specifically a 4.17-magnitude star she called !, which Kyne believed to be the star they knew as Merope.

The crew of the Jetshift had found her crystalline casing floating in a rocky belt orbiting a one of Alderberan’s planets and thought it might be valuable. They’d held her captive for over a ship year, despite her request to be set free. (He was estimating the length of time based on Sarin’s description of overheard conversations.) How Sarin got to be floating free on the edge of Orion’s boundaries was still not clear.

Kyne needed more time with her, and more music. Sarin appeared to enjoy Reikebord, Isikayao-Wha, and Piaf. Her favorite though, was Vangelis, an old, old song called Damask Rose. Kyne had taken to playing it at night in his rooms while he thought about Sarin and their conversations.

Her wit and her fine tastes suggested a rare kind of woman. What was she like inside her shell? If only he could catch a glimpse of her. Perhaps she possessed beauty of kind to which he could become accustomed? And her to him. They were in every other way in tune.

#

On his next visit though, Kyne became concerned. As the strains of a Vivaldi concerto faded, Sarin uttered a sound that could have been a sigh.

“You seem sad,” he said, taking care to frame it as a statement.

“I miss .”

Kyne took a moment to consider that. “Your language is quite beautiful. And should I try and guess, I would say that the reason you were found by the pirates so far from your home is because you were on a quest of some kind, perhaps a rite of passage. It’s common among far-traveling species that the young are sent out to find maturity through discovery. I believe your sense of longing is for lost opportunity to return home with some kind of prize.”

Sarin’s crystalline sarcophagus took on the rosy hue he’d grown to understand meant agreement.

“Your insightfulness is outstanding, Just Kyne. You must be from a superior subgroup of your species,” she said.

Kyne’s cheeks warmed. “I am trained in a specific area of social behavior. Internal realities are my special interest area. Understanding external cues allows me to make intuitive conclusions about how humanesques think.”

“But I am not a humanesque,” said Sarin.

“And yet it appears that I understand you. I could share more of my theories with you, Sarin. We could see how closely the architecture of our minds is aligned.”

“I look forward to that, Just Kyne. I look forward to you. Will you come again soon?”

Kyne’s heart tapped a little faster in his chest. The idea that she wanted him brought him unexpected joy.

#

Later, in his rooms, he lay on his bed thinking about Sarin. Her last words to him had been in the form of an interrogative. Did that signal a shift in their relationship?

His body throbbed in answer and the arousal surprised him. How long since he’d felt so stirred? And how absurd that he'd found intimacy in this situation!

Yet his feelings were as tangible as the bedsheet rubbing against his foreskin. Regardless of how hideous or repulsive Sarin’s real form was, he knew he was losing his heart.

He fell asleep dreaming of her but was woken a few hours later by his M-A.

Professor Kyne, you have a call from Stationmaster Floraboden, it informed him.

He jolted upright. “Yes, Stationmaster?”

“I apologize for interrupting your rest, Professor. Your interviews with the A-Class have been terminated. Thank you for your service,” said Floraboden without preamble.

“What?” exclaimed Kyne. “But I haven’t finished. Sir, you must—!”

“The A-Class has been declared a hostile and is no longer available for study. Please send your final report through in the morning. Good night, Professor. Thank you for your work.”

Thank you for your work?! Kyne sat on the end of his bed, his outrage growing. How dare Floraboden terminate his study!

He paced, fuming over it.

Until, slowly, fear began to replace anger. What had suddenly changed? If Sarin been declared hostile, what was Floraboden planning to do to her?

Kyne knew the regular security protocols. Declared hostiles were ejected from the station into the black.

His stomach lurched. No! He couldn’t let that happen.

He sprang up, hurried into his office, and opened his specimen fridge. On the shelf above the preserved samples lay containers of formalin. He retrieved a couple and two hypodermics patches from his equipment cube.

Sarin, I’m coming!

#

Wild thoughts swirled in his mind as he ran along the passages to the airvator. He must find her. He must change Floraboden’s mind. She was…they couldn’t…this had to be stopped!

He entered the shaft, panting and trembling, and closed his eyes, taking a moment to recall the sequence. He’d made this trip so many times that he knew exactly how long it took. If he counted, he should be able to locate the correct floor.

Ready…now…771…659…578…430…335... 242…191...stop!

Kyne placed his finger on the emergency tab and the airvator stopped so quickly that he stumbled. He opened his eyes and with shaking hands, loaded the vials into the hypo patches. He had to be quick. Forceful if needed.

“Open,” he told the concierge when he was done.

He walked quietly down the cool, familiar corridor to the interrogation cells, expecting at any moment to be stopped. To his surprise, he found no one guarding them.

Suddenly panicked again, he burst into the interview room. “Sarin! Where are you?”

But the room was also empty, and the viewing window was inactive.

He went over and hammered on it. “Sarin! Sarin! You’re in danger!”

But the window didn’t change, nor did she reply.

The agitation inside him coalesced into something monstrously aggrieved. Where was she? His love…what had they done to her? The pressure in his chest made it hard to breathe. How dare they interfere with his work. His life—

“Professor Kyne,” said a clipped voice from the doorway. “The A-Class is no longer available to you.”

He turned and glared at the soldier. Vaguely, maybe, he recognized him. One who’d been pushy with him in the past.

“Where is she?” Kyne demanded.

The soldier ignored his question. “Place the hypos on the floor in front of you. NOW!” He closed the visor of his helmet and lifted his weapon.

A haze of emotions blinded him. Frightened, he launched at the man, and thrust the hypo against the soft skin under his helmet strap.

A soft gasp escaped the guard’s lips.

They were locked together, for an instant, struggling in a tight circle. Something whirred. The guard’s weapon had activated.

He tried to wrench it away. As he twisted, it discharged a pulse of heat that burned deep into Kyne’s chest. He staggered back, his vision clearing for a moment.

Movement flickered on the viewing window. As if she was watching.

“Sarin!” he choked out and fell.

#

Floraboden welcomed everyone to the virt-meet; sector stationmasters were present, as were senior members of the Orion League of Sentient Species—OLOSS. He had to play this right. The meet would remain on record for analysis.

“Proceed with your evaluation, Stationmaster Floraboden,” said the OLOSS facilitator’s avatar opposite him.

“We captured an A-Class alien on a JetShift trader close to Bellatrix. It took the form of a crystalline sarcophagus, which protected the actual entity inside.”

“And the traders handed the A-Class over to you without quibble? I’d like to have seen that!” said one of the other stationmasters who favored an avatar with a thick fringe and large ears.

Floraboden glanced at the speaker’s name: Cobb from Cobb-Vermont Station out near Saiph. They were rivals with Leto for the next round of OLOSS maintenance grants. It would suit Cobb well for Floraboden to look bad in this.

“The traders were all dead, S-M Cobb. By murder and suicide, we determined,” he said.

Cobb grunted. “Mutiny then?”

“Of a kind. Yes. We verified the A-Class as a threat, based on the situation we found.”

“Which was?”

“The bodies were within the proximity of the crystal casing. It had shot out crystalline threads to attach to them.”

“Feeding off them?”

“There was evidence to suggest it had absorbed amino acids from the corpses. So, yes.”

“And your response?”

“We employed one of our psycholgeestes to study it. If you have read the report uploaded to your M-As, you will find events logged in chronological order?”

Nods from those who had read it were vehement. Cobb clearly had not and shrugged.

“Just prior to Professor Kyne’s unfortunate psychotic episode, we were able to breach the sarcophagus and identify the true nature of the A-Class,” added Floraboden.

“Breaching an A-Class? That is outside protocol boundaries, Floraboden. Not to say, risky,” said one of the OLOSS members.

“I understand that, Pre-Eminence. But we feared an outcome like the one we found on the JestShift. I decided that we should act in the interest of station security.”

He watched the mixture of reactions. At least half of them approved—better than he’d hoped.

“So, what did you learn? And why was it not included in your report?” asked the Pre-Eminence.

“I thought it better you heard it from me, so there was no misunderstanding. You see…we found nothing,” said Floraboden.

“Explain!” demanded the OLOSS contingent in a synchronous chorus.

“The sarcophagus held only a tiny, tiny creature. Or at least, a part of a creature that we believe to be its detachable projection organism. I oversaw the opening myself.”

“You mean the A-Class had left an echo behind in its shell?” asked Cobb.

“Yes. Years ago, we believe. The projection organism that Kyne interacted with was merely as you say, an echo, left as a guardian against scavengers, in case the A-Class needed to return to use the casing again.”

“You’re saying that your psychologeeste developed a relationship with the echo of the original inhabitant?” asked Cobb, seemingly amused.

Annoying fellow. Floraboden pressed his lips tight. Restating the obvious and asking questions he should already know the answers to. In real time, Floraboden rubbed his throbbing temples, but didn’t allow his avatar to copy the gesture. “So, it seems.”

“And the crew of the JetShift?”

“The same fate, I imagine. After they were dead the sarcophagus harvested the amino acids from the bodies to boost its energy signal—like a location finder.”

“So, you sacrificed one of your own to learn what the A-Class was up to?” Cobb, was openly sticking the needles in now, insinuating that Floraboden had mishandled it.

“Professor Kyne was appraised of the risks and chose to serve his community. By observing his interactions with the echo artifact inside, we were able to deduce how it worked. It is adaptive and responds differently to varying stimuli,” said Floraboden, stiffly.

“So, with your Professor…err…Kyne, it chose seduction.”

“Yes. We think it reacted to his…umm…well…Kyne kept to himself. He was perhaps more vulnerable than we realized. It used his loneliness to form an attachment. Then Kyne became irrational and attacked a guard. Both died during the incident. We believe a similar situation may have occurred on the JetShift. The creature’s echo seems to be able use human emotions as a weapon against us.”

“Ingenious,” said Cobb.

It was not the word Floraboden would have chosen.

“We’d better keep this one under wraps. Wouldn’t want our enemies to know things are so loosey-goosey over Leto way,” Cobb added.

Floraboden enjoyed a momentary image of strangling the man before his M-A registered his spiking blood pressure and flooded his body with a light sedative. “The situation was handled perfectly professionally, S-M Cobb. We suffered no loss of life and followed the OLOSS protocols once we established the A-Class was potentially hostile. The casing is on a trajectory with the Mintakan calcium cloud.”

It was only a half lie. There was no way he was reporting in front of Cobb that they’d found a second guard dead with his hand adhered to the observer’s window. Floraboden would back channel that information later and blame it on an accidental station death.

Eventually, the OLOSS chorus spoke. “Thank you, Stationmaster. We’ll retire to consider the implications of this. Meanwhile, please award Professor Kyne a memorial plaque for services to humanesquekind.”

The meeting adjourned and Floraboden was left alone in his rooms. He let his valet know he was ready for a glass of grape juice and settled himself on one of the kneeling stools to think about Kyne. He recalled the terms of their agreement.

Mount a plaque to honor Professor Kyne in the corridor near Professor Freeburg’s office, he said to his M-A.

At the mention of the dead man’s name, he noticed the normally white lights along his array turn a rosy hue. An anomaly. But after a quick system check, he could determine no issues. Maybe he’d been awake too long and was hallucinating again. He logged a check-up with the station medic and went back to his maintenance schedules.

 

 

 

16 Minutes

By Jasper Fforde

 

 

The technical term was ‘Closed-Loop Temporal Field Containment’ but to everyone who had been so incarcerated, it was known as Looping. You were a looper, you had been looped. The period of time in which you found yourself was a loop. The company that managed the system on behalf of the Chronoguard was named Loop Inc.

Loop, loop, loop.

Which is what you do these days: same sixteen minutes of time, exact same place, exact same people. You can explain to others what’s happened to you, but success is short lived. Even if someone does believe you, it will never be for very long. Inside the loop those sixteen minutes are all you have; outside the loop those sixteen are simply an empty block of time that, to most people, is utterly unremarkable and has now long receded into the dim forgotten past.

Cruel and unusual? Sure. Effective? Youbetcha.

“Will sir be having a dessert today?” asks the waitress, taking away your plates. She is young and pretty and has a kindly face. She has served you nearly twenty-five thousand times. You’ve told her your name every single time. She hasn’t remembered once. She can’t remember. There are any number of her, but only one of you.

Anything you have with you, stays with you; anything you put down is lost into the Chronoclastic ether next time the loop was reset. You change clothes, washed, ate, drank, disposed of waste—everything is supplied accessible within the temporal window they gave you. That’s why loops are generally centered around shopping malls with a food court and public restrooms. It wouldn’t take you long to starve, stuck inside sixteen minutes, in say, the middle of the Atlas Mountains.

When you arrive at Loop 1, you first find a notebook and pen to log the number of Loops, the equivalent of chalk marks on the wall of the cell. You have no money, but you can steal what you want, because your punishment for a world in which there are consequences is to be banished to a world where there are none. The irony and perversity are not wasted on you.

You try using the phone, but there’s no one to call that can help you, nor believe you. The people you call think you’re a crank or a hoax caller, and you’re reset every sixteen minutes, so it’s like it never happened. You even try calling your past self to figure out a work-around, but your past self is only eleven.

Whatever happens in the Loop, stays in the Loop.

You shout and cry and carry on until Loop 20, and then you calm down. You start to explore, and by Loop 450, you have a general understanding of the parameters of your prison. The date, the time, where to find food, nearest toilets, bookshop, that kind of thing.

By Loop 1000, you will have extended that particular knowledge to reflect your own particular needs more usefully. Who will be kind, who will not, who you can talk to, who can be relied upon to perform a physical act at short notice on credit.

At Loop 2500, you have your first visit. Your caseworker, wanting to know how you’re settling in. They don’t know because you’re not observed. Even if they could, there’s no need. What you are doing, you’re doing in the distant past. If there was a ripple in the Standard History Eventline they’d know about it, but there is nothing. In these sixteen marooning minutes, fixed somewhere in a backwater of the 1990s, you’re temporally insignificant. A very small pebble in a pond with much larger, more recent and more relevant ripples.

Your caseworker doesn’t stay for long; just to tick a few boxes and move on to the next parcel of time. You ask him for outside news.

“There’s no news,” he says. “This is 1996. Everything you ever did, all the wrong you’ve ever done, all the happiness you’ve ever had—it hasn’t happened yet.”

“Then I haven’t actually committed a crime either.”

“Not yet,” he agrees cheerfully, “but you will, and with a hundred percent certainty. If it’s in the Standard History Eventline—which it is—it will happen, it did happen, it has happened. The fact that you’re here proves it.”

The logic isn’t totally sound, but then in the time industry, very little is.

“Has my lawyer lodged an appeal?”

The caseworker points to a pram the other side of the food court.

“That’s your lawyer. She doesn’t even know she’s going to be a lawyer. Take it up with her.”

He was bluffing. The toddler’s name is Charlotte. Her mother is Keilly, waiting for an old friend from school who is having a hard time. Good person on the whole, doing the best she can. You know, because you’ve chatted. Twelve times.

By Loop 5000, you’ve pushed the geographical boundaries of your prison, and discovered just how far you can get in your minutes. You can catch a bus or a train or even a cab—but the furthest you can get, furthest you ever got, is on a stolen motorcycle. Not the most powerful you could find but the fastest within the shortest time frame. You get almost twelve miles out of town to the south, but your time runs out within sight of the cast-iron road bridge. And no matter what you do, you can’t change that. You challenge yourself, you practice endlessly, you push too hard and you die in the attempt. It’s painful, but you come back, right as rain, just with a scuffed coat. No matter what you try, you never cross the bridge; it is the limit of your time and space. It’s the horizon you won’t ever cross.

By Loop 10,000, you’re starting to get weird, and angry, and desperate. You stop logging how many loops you’ve been in, and you kill yourself for the first time, then, when that doesn’t satisfy, you kill someone else. Someone you didn’t like to begin with, then just random people. But you don’t actually kill anyone or at least, not for very long. You may go on an orgy of violence just then, and work through your fury in a hundred or so loops until you calm down and start to log your loops again.

By Loop 20,000, you’ll have been Looped for over six months, and pretty much every sound, movement and scent will be familiar to you. You can predict what people will say, what people will do. You start to relax, read books, sketch, learn a musical instrument.

You start to count how many loops to go, rather than how many have been. Eight hundred and twenty-two thousand, six hundred and fifty-four, or thereabouts: about twenty-two years in sixteen-minute hexitemporal segments. A couple of days later, when the subtracted Loops don’t seem to be making much of a dent from your tally, you go back to counting up again, and life gets back to normal.

You start talking about yourself in the second person. You’re not sure why.

You eat, you sleep, you shit, you wash, you exercise.

You are Looped. You are relooped, you are relooped again. Again, and again, and again.

“Will sir be having a dessert today?” asks the same waitress, taking away your plates and smiling in a friendly yet mechanical manner. You usually eat here and always the same—a ready-made burger that you divert to your table using some pretext or other. You’ve become connected to the waitress, but she doesn’t know it. You know her name, and what her mother thinks of her new boyfriend. Little by little you get to know everything about her, but she knows nothing of you. To her, you are just one more faceless customer on an unremarkable Wednesday late in the summer of 1996. You don’t know how her life turns out.

“Time is short,” you say, “but thanks anyway.”

“I’ll get the check.”

She doesn’t have time to get the check but you knew she wouldn’t. The world resets to the beginning of the loop. You are back outside in the parking lot, the place and time where your loop always begins. You have a generic car key in your pocket but the parking lot is large. Every tenth loop, you search for the car you arrived in, but you have yet to have any luck. It wasn’t in the multi-story, nor any of the open-air lots. You are slowly working your way through all the parked cars, but it will take some time. Hereford is a big place.

That’s when Quinn arrives. You haven’t seen him since your trial. He won, you didn’t.

“Hello, Algy.”

Anything remotely new in the sixteen is so utterly alien that it leaps out at you like a chainsaw on full power. You jump.

“Sorry,” says Quinn, looking around. “Want to talk?”

You know it’s a dumb question. Of course you want to talk. You go to a cafe. You order coffee, he orders nothing. The rule is never take anything out of the loop - not even liquid.

He asks how it’s going.

“It’s kind of samey,” you reply, trying to be sarcastic.

He asks if you’re past the berserker stage and you say that you are.

“How many did you kill?”

“One day it was eighteen, I think. I wasn’t really counting.”

“It gets tiresome, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” you say, “and messy, and pointless. What do you want?”

“We want to know who was responsible. Who gave you the access codes, whose bright idea it was to go trolling around the Middle Ages. Most of all, how you all got past the 1720 pinch point without setting off every trembler at head office. That could be real useful to us.”

You tell him you flashed through during the monthly telemetry squirt from the Renaissance, but you know he knows this. What he actually wants is the gold. Taking that much historical gold destabilized the monetary supply in the early history of banking. And banking doesn’t like to have its history pissed around with. The ripples cause crashes. Our heist has already been blamed for two depressions, the crash of 2008, and some inexplicable currency variations. Historical gold is a good moderator. You want financial stability? Flood the past with gold. Lots of it.

You tell him it’s in the Holocene.

“The Holocene is a big place,” he says. “You need to be more specific.”

You tell him you never knew where the gold went. That only Kitty knew.

“Kitty says that you know.”

“Kitty’s lying.”

“One of you is.”

“I was only a small cog,” you tell him, “blinded by cash and the misplaced hubris of down-streaming. I’d never done the Middle Ages before. Kitty asked me to join her. I was…flattered.”

Quinn takes a deep breath. Your sixteen minutes were up long ago and you haven’t reset. That’s what happens when they drop someone into your loop. You hear new stuff, see things that hadn’t happened, like you’re watching a sequel to a film you’re very familiar with.

“Last word?” asked Quinn.

“Last word.”

And you are back at the multi-story, Loop 42,001. All the players have reset themselves to their start positions. The kid on the bicycle, the balloon seller, the harassed father with the two unruly kids, the busker with the accordion. The same sixteen-minute section all over again. You look for your car, and you don’t find it. You give up at Loop 61,200, and never look again.

You’re hungry again and go and find the waitress. The burger tastes the same. It should do; it’s the same one. You try out a joke you found in a book in Waterstone’s. You think she will laugh, and she does. You know her sense of humor. You know her.

At Loop 150,000, you have an intimate knowledge of the town and everyone in it. Even so, you systematically search out and take fascination in anything that is new or unfamiliar. You find a new street, or knock on a door you’ve never knocked on before, or find your way to a room you never knew existed, with a person you’ve never seen, a closet space you’ve never explored before. You visit the same place for the next ten loops, learn everything to be learned, then move on. Everything that happened within that sixteen minutes, you are an expert upon. It is an expertise of the narrowest of fields.

At Loop 200,000, Quinn visits again. You expect he will because two hundred thousand is a nice round multiple of sixteen, and the Time Engines work on hexadecimal architecture.

“Back so soon?” you ask, still being sarcastic. Quinn doesn’t do sarcasm, you realize.

“We need you to turn Kitty,” he says, and shows you an agreement from the Temporal Attorney. If you could find out where and when in the Holocene the gold is hidden, you could expect to be out a hundred thousand loops earlier. You hold out for two hundred thousand, and get it.

You sign the agreement, and ask where she is.

“Where she’s always been, ten minutes north.”

You know this is unusual. Loops were designed never to overlap geographically or temporally. Intersections gave convicts potential areas of conflict with other prisoners. Quinn tells you to make it look like a chance meeting.

You drive out north on the same motorcycle you used to try and reach the bridge. It takes you until Loop 200,032 before you spot her, and she you. It’s not hard. Anything that is at variance to the rigidity of the timeline stands out like a flashing beacon. You drive past one another on the road, you both stamp on the brakes and then back up.

“Algy?” she says.

You say hello. She doesn’t look very happy. The gold heist was her gig, after all. You were just the muscle.

You find that the maximum amount of time you can spend together is one minute and nine seconds before you both get reset to the head of your loops. You tell her about Quinn’s deal straight away. She is not surprised.

“He asked to find out the same from you.”

She says she doesn’t know where the gold is but you know that, because you’ve known where the gold was all along. All seventeen tons of it, lying in the open on the edge of a bay that fifteen thousand years later, will be in the Derry peninsula. It’s still there, in the back garden of Mr. and Mrs. Tyrone, under eight feet of accreted soil and peat. They have barbecues over it, with their friends.

Over the next three hundred loops, you try and rebuild your relationship with Kitty, but all she wants to know is about the gold. You come to realize there was never a relationship. You think you might tell her, but you don’t. There’s nothing to be gained from it.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” she says finally.

“No.”

You don’t meet her again. You turn back to the waitress in the burger joint. She has a delightful gurgle of a laugh. You find yourself in love.

Quinn returns at Loop 260,000. You tell him Kitty doesn’t know where the gold is, or if she does, she’s not telling.

“You’re both a bunch of time wasters,” says Quinn, apparently not realizing the irony of his words. “Enjoy your time.”

You go back to your sixteen-minutes loops, over and over again. Another year’s worth of sixteens go by. It’s never the time, it’s the repetition. There is not a book you haven’t read, not a person you haven’t spoken to. You’ve been served by the waitress over a hundred thousand times, and when Quinn reappears at Loop 320,000, you do the deal, but for a full pardon. You are one third of the way through your sentence. To be the eighteenth richest person on the planet, you thought you could last out.

“Everyone comes to their senses eventually,” says Quinn. “If the gold is where you say it is, it’ll be time served.”

It is your final loop, the only one that will have any lasting consequence upon the townsfolk around you. Pointlessly, you say your goodbyes to people who have met you only a few minutes before. To them it’s just plain weird, but to you it means more than you know how to express. The man in the corner store who was always cheery, the busker who played the accordion in the main square. Most of all, the waitress. You feel emotional speaking to her. You make her laugh again and hand her your address on a scrap of paper.

“O-kay,” she says, somewhat uneasily.

You have a speech, and it’s a good one because you’ve had ten years to write it. She stares at you as you speak and raises an eyebrow. You know that no one has ever understood her so well, no one has ever encapsulated what she needs in words of such poetry and power. You know she’ll remember you.

But it’s not to meet in the 1990s. It’s to meet you back here in twelve years, if she wants. It’s a long shot, but she finds you intriguing rather than creepy, which is a good sign.

And that’s where you are now, in a much-changed market town, the shop fronts modernized, the clothes different, shoppers clutching smart phones, going about their business. You’ve been out for a couple of days. You don’t have a job and you don’t have much money. But you have liberty, and the sixteen minutes you’ve just witnessed has faded without ceremony into the past.

There have been 8,356 different sixteen minutes since your release. It’s a hard habit to break. You’ll be counting your sixteens for at least another six months. You glance at your watch and wonder if she will turn up, always supposing things didn’t work out for her. You hope they did, of course, because she was a good person, and deserves a good life.

You’re still waiting.

 

 

 

American Changeling

By Mary Robinette Kowal

 

 

Half-consciously, Kim put a hand up to cover her new nose ring. It pissed her parents off no end that she could tolerate touching cold iron and they couldn’t.

Iron still made her break out sometimes, but didn’t burn her. It had taken forever to find someone to make an iron nose ring, but the effort would be totally worth it.

“Kimberly Anne Smith.” Mom’s voice caught her in the foyer as surely as if she’d been called by her true name. “I’ve been worried sick. Do you know what time it is?”

“11:49.” Kim dropped her hand and turned to face Mom, her Doc Martens making a satisfactory clomping on the hardwood floor. “I’m here. Home before midnight. No one with me.” Sometimes she thought about bringing friends home to show them what her parents really looked like after their glamour dropped.

Everyone thought Mom was so pretty, so Betty Crocker, and Dad was all Jimmy Stewart. Whatever. Maybe if people saw that her parents were freaks like her they wouldn’t look at her with such pity.

“I specifically asked you to come home straight after school, young lady. I tried calling your cell, I don’t know how many times. You have no idea how worried I’ve been.”

“I was hanging out with Julia and Eve on Hawthorne.”

Mom took a step closer, wearing pearls, even at home. “What’s that in your nose?”

Kim blew her dyed-pink hair out of her face. “It’s called a nose ring.” Having people stare at her for the piercings and hair and leather was way better than having them stare at her because she looked prematurely old, like a progeria victim.

From the den, her father called, “Is she home?” A piece of ice clinked against glass. She so did not want to deal with Dad if he’d been drinking. He got maudlin about the old country and if she had to hear one more story about how life was so much better in Faerie, she’d scream.

“Yes!” Kim shouted. “I’m home and I’m going to bed so I don’t have to look at myself.”

She ran up the stairs two at a time, Utilikilt swinging against her legs. Mom hollered up the stairs at her, but Kim didn’t care. She hopped over the salt line on her threshold, slammed the door to her room and threw herself on the bed without even bothering to turn on the lights. What was the point?

The mantel clock downstairs chimed midnight.

Kim’s mom knocked on her door. “Kim? Come out, honey, your father and I need to talk to you.”

“Why don’t you come in?”

“If you’ll sweep the salt aside.”

Rolling her eyes, Kim dragged herself off the bed and opened the door. With midnight, the glamour masking her mother’s appearance had dropped. Mom had shrunk and twisted, aging one hundred years in the stroke of the clock. Gone was her carefully coiffed platinum hairdo in exchange for sparse, dry hair. The hall light gleamed off her scalp. Her nose nearly touched her chin, where a wart sported more hair than was on the rest of her head.

The thing that burned Kim like cold iron was that, aside from her dyed hair, she knew she looked just like her mother. All changelings were born looking old. That might be fine if you lived in Faerie with other people of your species, but here, Kim was just a freak. “What.”

Mom smiled, showing her scraggly teeth, but her chin trembled and her eyes were moist. “We’ve had a message. From the old country. Come downstairs so we can talk about it.”

Despite herself, Kim stepped over the salt line, into the hall. The only time she could remember Mom crying was when their dog had died. She’d held Buffy’s head and wept like her heart had broken. Dad had said the golden retriever had been the first mortal thing Mom had ever loved. Death wasn’t common in Faerie.

Seeing her on the verge of tears now freaked Kim out. She followed Mom downstairs without speaking.

Dad sat in his easy chair, holding a glass of whiskey loosely in his left hand. The reading lamp lit his arm and lap, but left his face in shadow. On the walnut end table beside him lay a piece of parchment at odds with the magazine-perfect living room.

The cream Berber carpet and the cranberry French toile curtains and the tan leather couch all seemed dirty and smudged by the introduction of this one thing from Faerie. It forced itself into her vision with a crisper focus than anything of mortal origins.

Her father set his drink down and leaned forward into the light. Like her mother, he looked scary ancient. His gray wool sweater hung from his shoulders as if he were a first grader playing dress up. His broad, pitted nose was bright red. Dad wiped his hand across his face and covered his eyes for a moment.

He inhaled deeply and dropped his hand. “This is difficult.” Dad picked up the parchment. “We knew it was coming, but…Do you want to sit down?”

“No, sir.” Kim bit the inside of her cheek, uncertain about what was going to come next.

Even though her parents had always told her they’d come to the mortal world for the sole purpose of conceiving her, even though her childhood had been filled with fairy tales in which she was the chosen one, even seeing their glamour, Kim had never fully believed them. Because the truth, that she was the first faerie born into the mortal world since the gate closed, was crazy. She gestured at the parchment. “Can I see it?”

Dad handed it to her and took another sip of his whiskey while Mom dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

 

To Mossblossom, daughter of Fernbrooke and Woodapple

Right trustie and welbeloved, wee greete you well.

Grat is the task which wee must aske of you, but wee know you will fulfill it in such a way as may not onely nourish and continue our love and good will towards you, but also encrease the same. Our good and most loving Subjects, your worthy parents, have striven to raise you out of the sight of certaine devilish and wicked minded enemies of ours. These enemies who style themselves the Unseelie Court, have most wickedly and unnaturally conspired to have stirred up (as much as in them lay) a generall rebellion throughout our whole Realme. It pleases us to…

 

“I don’t get this.” Kim lowered the parchment. “I mean, she can’t even spell.”

Her mother winced and took the parchment out of her hands. “The Faerie Queen is using the high court language from before the gate closed during Bloody Mary’s reign. Your father and I had to learn modern English as a second language, of course we were both very young, but—”

“Fern, we need to get moving.” Dad nodded at the brass and mahogany mantel clock. “She wanted us at St. Andrew’s after mass.”

“What?” Kim scanned the parchment again, but the spelling was so poor she had trouble making any sense of it. The cathedral was five blocks from their house, and though she knew it held the Key, they weren’t supposed to open the gate until her sixteenth birthday which was still months away. “But it’s after midnight.”

Her mother sniffed. “If you’d come home when I asked this wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t tell me why.”

“I didn’t want to distract you at school. Your grades have already been slipping and—”

“Oh, as if that matters. What? My SAT scores will get me into the best schools in Faerie?”

“Stop it.” Draining his whiskey, Dad stood and pulled the letter from her hands. “The Unseelie Court know about you.”

That cut her retort off. The rebel faeries who formed the Unseelie Court had nearly torn the realm apart three hundred years ago when they closed the gate. The only people through since then had been a handful of changelings, like her parents, who’d worked a complicated magic to change places with mortals. “When you say ‘know’...?”

He snapped the parchment at her. “There’s a traitor in the Queen’s Court. She knows not who it is, but it is clear that they have found out about you and the plans to reopen the gate. If we give them any time at all, they will send a changeling and kill you rather than let that happen.”

“Woody, you’re frightening her.”

“What would you have? A child not frightened, but without the information to make good decisions? Fern. We can’t go into the church with her. She has to know that the Unseelie have likely alerted the Catholics and that someone might be there.”

“Let’s just go and get it over with.” Kim flipped the hood of her sweatshirt up to give herself at least a semblance of privacy. Underneath everything, a film of sweat coated her body. Her joints ached with anticipation. “Opening the gate is what I’m here for, isn’t it?”

#

Even though it was only five blocks to the church, her parents drove in case they needed to make a quick getaway. They stopped the Prius across the street from St. Andrew’s and got out with her. Farther down the block, the laughter of late-night hipsters drifted down Alberta Street. Mom put her hands on Kim’s shoulders and kissed her forehead. “I want you to know that your father and I are very proud of you, no matter what happens.”

Kim’s heartbeat rattled through every bone of her body. She knew their allergies meant that her parents couldn’t go into the church with her, but for a second, she wished they could. “Any last words of advice?”

Her dad leaned in close enough that she could smell the whiskey on his breath. “Just be safe. You see a priest, you hightail it out of there. We’ll figure out some other plan.”

“Right ...” It had only taken the Faerie Queen five hundred years to cook this one up. Before she could chicken out, Kim got out of the car and crossed the street to the cathedral. She’d read everything her parents could find about the place, knew all about its French Gothic style of architecture, had studied the floor plan until it was printed on the inside of her eyelids, but she had never set foot on the property before.

Once, when she was six, she’d run the five blocks from their house to the cathedral. Her mom caught her just before she got there. Kim had wanted to work the magic so she could get the Key out of the altar. She’d thought her reward would be to get wings like the fairies on TV. Mom had set her straight, explaining that there might be alarms set if any of Faerie blood approached. Since then, she’d always walked down the other side of the street rather than chance it.

Not tonight though. Tonight, she walked straight up the marble steps and pulled out the keys Dad had gotten hold of years ago. It would suck if they’d changed the locks. She put the keys in the lock, braced for something to scream or an alarm to go off.

The door wasn’t even locked. All Dad’s effort to get the keys and she didn’t even need them. Kim hauled open the heavy door and slipped into the nave. She had been to the church’s website dozens of times, but the photo galleries had not conveyed the arcing height of the ceiling. Despite the simple beauty of the oak carvings which adorned the plaster walls, her pulse ratcheted up to quad-espresso rate.

Her parents had refused to teach Kim any spells but those she needed to open the gate, because glamour would interfere with her ability to handle iron. Well, after tonight, baby, that restriction would be lifted and she’d be working it like any good Fae.

Kim sauntered down the middle of the church. Beyond a few guttering candles visible in the side chapel, the building was still and empty. At the altar, Kim put her hand on the cold marble.

All around her, wood splintered as the oak carvings forced their mouths open and shrieked.

Panicked, Kim lifted her hand off the altar, ready to run out of the church—but if she did, her chance to get the Key out of the altar was blown. Whoever had set the alarm already knew she was here.

She pressed her hand back on the altar, crooked her little finger into a fishhook and shouted the words she’d learned as a nursery rhyme:

“Stone, stone, earth’s bone,

Once hid, now shown!”

Under her hand, the center of the stone burst. Its halves tilted and thudded to the ground. In the exposed middle, was a small, ornate iron casket, no larger than a paperback. Above her, the carvings still screamed bloody murder.

A door on the side of the church slammed open and a priest, tousled white hair sticking out like a halo, ran into the sanctuary.

Kim grabbed the casket, leaped over the broken altar, and sprinted down the aisle with the reliquary tucked under her arm like a football.

She hauled open the church door. Yelling incoherently about thieves and sacrilege, the priest chased her. Kim vaulted down the front steps of the cathedral, momentum dropping her forward on her knees. The pavement tore through her striped stockings.

Before Kim could rise, the priest grabbed her. “What did you do?”

Kim tried to shrug free, but the priest had a grip like a bulldog. “Let me go!”

“Stealing is a sin and what you’ve done to the altar ...” His other hand grabbed for the iron reliquary.

Kim kicked and twisted to keep him from taking the Key.

Out of nowhere, her father punched the priest in the nose. The priest staggered, blood streaming down his face.

Dad yelled, “Get in the car!”

Kim tore down the sidewalk. Hipsters and neighbors gawked in the street.

Dashing into the road, Kim headed for her parents’ car. When she stepped off church property, the carvings went silent. The cessation of noise rang like tinnitus.

Their Prius pulled away from the curb. Her mom leaned out the window. “Hurry!”

Kim opened the back door and scrambled into the seat. Dad half fell in after her. As people ran for the car, Mom peeled out, which Kim didn’t even think a hybrid could do.

Mom dodged the onlookers and drove down Alberta to the I-5 onramp. Kim stared out the rear window at the crowd milling around.

“Do you have it?” her mother asked.

Kim turned around to face the front. “Yeah. It’s what I was born to do.”

“Don’t get cocky.” On the seat beside her, Dad had his head down, trying to catch his breath.

Mom peered at her in the rearview mirror. Seeing only her eyes, it was easy to forget how old she looked right now. “We still have to get to Stonehenge to open the gate.”

Kim leaned forward. “I didn’t bring my passport with me.”

“No, no, dear. The replica at Maryhill. We should be able to use it as a mirror with the real one.”

“Oh.” That was a change from the original plan. Kim had been looking forward to going to England, but she’d practiced the ritual every summer at the replica.

“Dammit.” Dad leaned against the seat, still gasping for breath. His face was swollen and puffy.

“Dad?”

He tried to smile, but his breath wheezed in his throat. “Allergies. It’ll pass.”

It sounded like he could barely breathe. His left hand had swollen to water-balloon tightness. “Mom ...?”

Dad put his hand on her knee. “Don’t, you’ll worry her for no reason.”

“What is it, dear?”

Kim bit the inside of her cheek. “How much farther is it?”

“Mmm ... an hour and a half, I think. Why don’t you take a nap, hm? It’s been a long day for you and not over yet.”

As if napping were an option. “You should have seen me. It was ten types of awesome. The rhyme worked like you said and boom!” Kim leaned forward and rested her chin on the seat. “How did they make the carvings scream? I mean, this church was built way after the wall went up, right?”

Kim’s mother tapped the steering wheel. “Well ... you know how, according to the rules, things may only cross between if there’s a one-to-one exchange. The carvings could be like that. They could be something someone prepared in Faerie and exchanged for the ones here. Or, I suppose there could be an Unseelie agent sent as a changeling. Or it might have been Catholic magic of some sort. We’ve never been able to really study the spells built into their rituals.”

Dad’s breath was more labored now. His face lolled against the window.

“Dad?” Kim whispered.

In the passing light from a truck, his skin had a distinct blue pallor. Kim put her hand on his shoulder. “Dad?”

Nothing.

“Mom?” Kim kept her hand on his shoulder, as if she could hold him here. “Something’s wrong with Dad.”

Mom didn’t answer, and Kim thought for a moment that her mother had not heard her, but the Prius slowed and pulled to the side of the interstate.

Still silent, her mother grabbed her purse and got out of the car. Kim could not swallow or breathe or do anything except keep her hand on her dad’s shoulder.

Mom pulled the back door open, her face impassive. As the door opened, Dad started to slump out. Kim tightened her hand on his sweater and hauled him back.

“Fool. Foolish, foolish man.” Mom’s hand trembled as she touched his face. Her breath hitched visibly.

Kim stared at Dad, whose face had all the wrinkles puffed out of it. She did not recognize this moon-faced man in her arms. “What is it? Is he under a spell or what?”

“No. His allergies ...”

A hard laugh escaped Kim. “Allergies? I’ve seen your allergies before; he’s not sneezing, Mom. He can’t even breathe.”

Her mother didn’t answer but rummaged in her purse and pulled out a vial and a pack of Handi Wipes. “He hit the priest, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, but ... What? Holy blood is dangerous?” She hated the scorn coming out of her, but the anger was easier to manage than fear.

“Perhaps. Wipe the blood off his hand.” Mom ripped the Handi Wipes pack open and handed it to Kim. “We don’t fully understand the way Catholic magic and Faerie magic interact. I don’t know what spells their priests are under, but I do know this is the sort of protective spell one would lay.” She lifted Dad’s head and held the vial to his lips.

Kim stared, fascinated, as Mom tried to get some of the amber liquid past his swollen lips.

Her mother said, “Kim, I asked you to do something for me and I need you to do it.”

“Sorry.” When she touched her dad’s hand, Kim flinched. The flesh was turgid with pressure but gave slightly under her hands, like a rotting pumpkin.

“How come this didn’t happen to me? I mean, I cast a spell and, you know, desecrated an altar.” She couldn’t tell if the blood was the priest’s or Dad’s from where the skin had broken on his knuckles. “Oh, and stole.”

“You didn’t steal. Fae don’t steal things. The Key belongs to us.”

“Still.” Kim passed the Handi Wipe between her father’s fingers. “Why Dad and not me?”

Mom capped the bottle of whatever and tucked it into her purse. “We had you baptized.”

“What?”

“Think of it as an inoculation against allergies.” Mom slid out of the car. “Ride up front with me.”

“What about Dad?”

Mom stood by the side of the car, her skirt flaring every time a car passed them. She bent down so Kim could see her face. “If we get the gate open fast enough, the Faerie Queen will heal him. He doesn’t have much time. I need you to start thinking.”

Kim swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.” She got out on the passenger side and closed the door as gently as possible to keep from jarring Dad.

Sitting in the front seat, as her mother drove, Kim replayed the events in St. Andrew’s. It wasn’t her fault touching the altar set off an alarm. And Dad should have known better than to hit that priest. Right?

She prodded her scraped knee. He shouldn’t have tried to protect her. And now he might die. The pain did nothing to distract her. Dad had to get better. Kim dug her nails into the raw flesh. The Faerie Queen had to fix him.

#

On a bluff overlooking the Columbia Gorge, the monument loomed out of the dark, silhouetted by moonlight. The water below caught the moon and tossed its silver light like a ball on the surface of the river. This replica of Stonehenge had been built as a World War I memorial by a railroad industrialist. He’d built it out of “modern” materials, concrete and rebar, but made it look like Stonehenge had when new. The monoliths ringed the center, none fallen on their sides. Even so, it had an air of being decrepit beyond its years. The concrete had its share of graffiti and had crumbled in places.

They’d left Kim’s father in the car because Kim’s mother was worried the spell would think he was an offering in addition to the Key.

Kim huddled against the side of a monolith and tried to stay out of the wind. She ran her fingers across the sculpted surface of the reliquary as if she could read its history in braille. The heavy cross embossed on its surface bumped under her fingers in a constant reminder of what Kim had to undo.

In the middle of the monument, her mother did something on the flat altar. Kim wanted to yell at Mom to hurry and, at the same time, tell her to slow down. As soon as Mom finished prepping the altar, it would be Kim’s turn. What if she didn’t get it right? Dad could die. She clutched the reliquary.

Mom gestured frantically. “Kim, quickly now.”

She joined her mother at the altar stone and put the reliquary in the middle of it. How many times had she pretended to do this while playing in her backyard? She felt split into two halves, the one which knew exactly what to do and the one which was sure she’d screw up. Inhaling to steady herself, Kim pressed her thumb against the catch holding the reliquary shut and let it prick her finger. She bit the inside of her lower lip as the blood welled up on her thumb.

This had been Bloody Mary’s genius; the reliquary would only open to one of pure Faerie blood, but it was made of iron and would burn all Fae who touched it. She had collaborated with the Unseelie Court to close the gate in order to prevent the Faerie Queen from aiding her enemies during the Wyatt Uprising. The Unseelie stooped to her aid, ironically, to keep mortals and their taint out of Faerie. The reliquary was a perfect blend of Catholic and Faerie magics.

Carefully, Kim slid the catch aside, exhaling in a rush of relief as the lock opened. Her thumb stung where the iron had cut her, but no more than with a sunburn. Kim could feel her mother, more than see her, shifting with impatience at her side.

Digging her fingernails into the crack between the covers, Kim pried the reliquary open.

She had expected a flash of magic like in the Lord of the Rings movies, but nothing even glowed. Inside the reliquary lay a mat of dried leaves. Kim held her breath for fear of disturbing the thing lying on them.

Curled in a fetal ball lay the tiniest skeleton Kim had ever seen. All her life she had heard of the other breeds of Fae but had never seen anyone besides her parents. With birdlike bones, this skeleton could only belong to a pixie, the most delicate of the Fae.

Kim slid her hand under the leaves and they disintegrated. Shaking, she picked up the pixie’s skull. Dried to almost nothing, it felt like papier-mâché and was no bigger than her thumb. She set the skeleton on the altar piece by careful piece. Most of the bones were still attached with mummified tendons and leathery skin. She did not like to think about how hard it would have been if she’d had to piece the hands together.

“Don’t miss a single bone.” Mom leaned forward, as if she could stick her own hand in the reliquary and fish around.

“I know.” Kim scowled. They’d spent enough time telling her bedtime tales about little changelings who didn’t follow the rules. Kim sifted the ashy remains of the leaves until she was confident she had all the bones.

Bowing her head over the remains, Kim held her hands over them in benediction and said the words she had been taught.

“Child of Faerie, blessed are ye in your innocence. Return ye to the state from which our ancestors preserved us, free from the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. I release ye from your bonds to the mortal world. Go in peace.”

Light, golden as sunset, bloomed out of the arch behind and cast her shadow across the altar. Now this was more like it. This was magic.

Her mother hissed, “Bow. The Faerie Queen is coming.”

Kim’s mother lowered herself into a deep curtsy. Kim tried to follow suit, but her legs gave way and dropped her on the ground. Her scraped knee sent a bright flash of pain up into her forebrain and snapped her attention to the fact that this was happening. She was about to meet the freakin’ Faerie Queen.

For the first time in five hundred years, faeries set foot on mortal soil without needing to take a human in exchange. A retinue of faerie men and women stepped through the gate. Kim’s heart sank as she looked from beautiful Fae to Fae. This was worse than high school; the disdain was apparent even on their inhumanly beautiful faces. Every one of them was beautiful and she... She looked like ass.

Her mother even looked panicky at the sight of these beautiful Fae.

The light frothed over, spreading to all the arches of the monument. The interior lit up like Kim was standing center stage in the auditorium at school. Trumpets sounded. If silver were a sound, then it bugled out of the arch. The light boiled within the confines of the stone.

The radiance in all the other arches coalesced into a horde of other Fae. They sent up a cheer as they streamed through into the mortal world.

None of her parents’ stories had prepared Kim for the full diversity of faeries. She’d known about the different species of Fae, but did not realize they came in every shade of skin known to humanity and then some. Brown, black, green, blue and red—some with tall pointing ears, others with noses drooping to their chins. The sight of a scattered few who were as ancient in appearance as she was, relieved her somewhat. She wouldn’t stand out like a freak in Faerie after all.

Amidst the horde stampeding into the space, strode a woman who made every model ever born look dull and ordinary. She was made of beautiful.

Kim’s mother turned from the group of Fae who had come through the first arch and gasped. “Majesty!”

This was the Faerie Queen? Then who were these other guys? The Queen saw them and her perfect face blanched in horror. Kim’s mind caught up. The Unseelie Court had found them.

A tall elven man with fox-red hair drew his sword and stepped between the Queen and the Unseelie. “Majesty, we are ambushed.”

Only then did Kim realize that each of the first group of Fae carried a weapon and wore a red band on their sleeves. Before she had time to register more than that, the Unseelie Court fell upon the Queen and her retinue. Metal clashed against metal and sparks flew.

Her mother shrieked and scrambled toward the Queen. Kim turned to follow her, but an Unseelie man with leaf-green hair stopped her with a sword to her chest.

Kim bent back across the altar to get away. One of her hands landed on the reliquary. Desperate for a weapon, Kim swung it up and swiped at him. The corner nicked his cheek.

His skin sizzled and peeled as if she had hit him with a flaming poker. Holy shit. Iron raised welts on her parents’ skin, but nothing like this. Kim didn’t waste time wondering why, she just started laying into the Unseelie faeries attacking her.

Kim wielded the reliquary as if it were a book in a room full of jocks. At first the Unseelie retreated from the cold iron but the reliquary gave her a shorter reach than their swords and daggers.

Another beautiful, lean Unseelie man, with eyes like ice, nearly took her arm off but a gnome stopped his blow with a shovel. Kim retreated, dodging blows that pushed her farther from the Faerie Queen. The Unseelie man drove the point of his sword over the gnome’s shovel and into his chest. Wrenching it free, he stepped toward Kim.

Kim staggered and fetched up against the hard surface of one of the monoliths. He had the sword leveled at her before she had time to draw breath. As he thrust it at her, she raised the reliquary to block. The shock of impact sent tremors through the bones of her hands.

She tried to swipe at him, but he twisted the sword under the reliquary and flicked it out of Kim’s hands.

A squeak of horror escaped her throat as the piece of iron flew out of her grasp.

The Unseelie smiled the coldest smile Kim had ever seen. “What now, changeling child?”

He pressed the sword against her chest lightly but with enough force to pin her against the concrete block. “By the powers, you reek like a mortal. If the Unseelie Court didn’t have use for you, I’d gut you like the spelless outcast you are.”

Kim tried to twist away from the sword but he pressed it forward, cutting through her shirt and into her breastbone. She grunted at the sudden pain.

And then she got pissed. “I’m not spelless, you bastard.”

Kim pressed her hand flat against the concrete behind her.

“Stone, stone, earth’s bone,

Once hid, now shown!”

The concrete exploded. Chunks spun through the air, slamming into the mob. The blast knocked Kim flat, forcing the air from her lungs. She rolled frantically to get away from the falling concrete and rebar.

Her chest burned, screaming for air, but she could not draw a breath. Kim pawed at her throat as if she could open it by hand.

Howling, the Unseelie man pushed a block off his chest. A host of other Unseelie, bloodied and furious, turned toward where Kim lay. She dragged air in with a terrified wheeze. A part of her brain wondered if this was what her dad felt like.

Her anger rekindled. Her dad was dying because of these traitors.

Kim grabbed the first thing she laid her hand on—a twisted length of rebar torn from the stone. Her hand stung from its rough surface, but Kim didn’t care. She rose to her feet and ran at the Unseelie as he was dragging his sword from under another chunk of cement.

Double-handed, Kim brought the rebar down on his wrist. The rod passed through his arm in a crackle of flesh. He screamed and fell, leaving his hand still clutching the hilt of his sword.

No blood dripped from the wound. The blackened skin had cauterized as the rebar had passed through. Kim stared at the rod in disbelief. Of course...it was iron. She had, like, a freakin’ lightsaber against these guys. And since she’d grown up here, it only stung her a little.

Kim dove forward, hacking with the rebar. Even a glancing nick with the iron made their skin bubble and peel. The Unseelie retreated before her.

This was the best weapon, ever.

Gnomes, changelings and other of the Queen’s Fae came to her side and formed a phalanx, cutting through the host of Unseelie. Kim fought without grace, but the terror that her weapon brought turned the tide quickly to the Queen’s favor.

Time lost its meaning until Kim found herself standing, rebar in hand, next to her mother.

And the Faerie Queen.

“Bravely done, good Mossblossom.”

For a moment, Kim wondered who she was talking to, and then remembered her Faerie name. “I—thank you, your Majesty.” There was probably something else she should say, but Dad didn’t have time for formalities. She pushed away the possibility that he was already dead. “So, could you—”

The fox-haired Fae stepped in front of her. “I am Oreyn, the Queen’s champion and I, too, thank you for your service, but I must ask you to release your weapon near the Queen.”

“Oh.” Kim looked at the length of iron stupidly and let it drop to the ground. “Okay. But listen, my dad needs help.”

Oreyn shied as the rebar rolled toward his toe. “Of course.” He stepped past it and put his hand on Kim’s shoulder.

She had never been this close to anyone like him. He smelled of honeysuckle and salt. His cheeks bore no trace of fuzz and had the poreless perfection of porcelain. He lifted his left hand and put a knife to her throat.

“Oreyn! What means this?” The Faerie Queen’s shout came at the same moment as a wordless cry from Kim’s mother.

Oreyn spoke three quick words in some language Kim did not recognize.

The world inverted, spun and sharpened into a painful clarity. The replica of Stonehenge had vanished, replaced by crisp trees and a stark blue sky.

The iron ring in Kim’s nose burned. As it seared her flesh, she screamed.

Kim didn’t care about the knife at her throat. The thing burning her had to stop. She grabbed it. Her fingers flared with pain.

She jerked them away.

Oreyn laughed and let his knife fall. “The touch of iron is worse here, is it not?”

Sick, twisted traitor. He was the one who had told the Unseelie Court about her. He was why her dad was dying.

Tears filling her eyes, Kim let the sleeve of her shirt fall over her fingers. With that slight protection, she yanked the ring out of her nose. The skin tore, but the pain was nothing to what she had felt.

Kim drove the point of the tiny piece of iron into Oreyn’s throat. Flame curdled the skin around it.

He shrieked.

As he tried snatching it, the fire leaped from his throat to his hands and then to his sleeves. His screams turned to hoarse wheezes. Arms outstretched, he staggered toward Kim.

She dodged, then turned and fled deeper into Faerie’s perfect woods. Careening through the trees, Kim ran until her legs collapsed under her. With her arms wrapped around her head, Kim lay on the ground and sobbed.

#

She woke in an unfamiliar bed. Every thread in the silk sheets chafed, as if her skin were too sensitive from a fever. Light filtered through carved filigree windows and caressed rich tapestries. Kim squinted to hold out as much of the too-crisp vision as possible. Her head ached from all the intricate detail.

“Kim, honey?” Her mother’s voice drew her gaze to the side.

She had thought Mom seemed old before, but worry had added new lines to her forehead. Or maybe she could see more in Faerie. “Dad?” Her voice cracked on that one syllable.

“Right here.” From her other side, Dad took her hand and held it firmly. “How do you feel, little girl?”

She whispered, “I want to go home.”

Her dad froze. “You are home, sweetie.”

“Hush, Woody.” Mom patted her hand. “Let’s go.”

They helped her stand. Then Kim’s mother spoke in the same language Oreyn had used. The world twisted, spun, and Kim staggered into her living room.

The soft toile fabric and Berber carpet looked as they had left it. The clock on the mantel said it was just after seven. Outside the window, dawn was beginning to light in their yard.

Her mother said, “Why don’t you run on up to bed?”

Without words to even think about everything that had happened, Kim nodded. Later there would be time to talk, but she felt too battered for thought. Kim hugged her parents for a long time and dragged herself up the stairs to her room.

She hopped over the line of salt, then turned. Squatting, she brushed the barrier aside.

Kim turned out the lights and crawled into bed.

She left the door open.

 

 

 

Pattern on Stone

By James SA Corey

 

 

Excerpt of remarks by Yva Alenea Brooks delivered to the Umarra Institute, Bercale-3, August 15 2751 (relative standard)

 

The purpose of our mission was to examine the Carrath artifact discovered on Ouroboros-4 seven standard years ago. As with previous relics of its kind, this took the form of metamorphic rock, apparently of local origin, with a complex of channels and penetrations that either create or contain an energetic field effect. The effect has been compared to neural activity, but the gross similarities between the Carrath patterns and signaling systems of either Earth- or Eunollia-based life-trees breaks down quickly at a finer level of analysis. The signature peculiarity of the field effect is its vulnerability to slipdrive transport. The first four Carrath artifacts were effectively erased in the attempts to take them for analysis on Earth, Tanabea, and Kors. It is this property that makes them as enigmatic and troubling as they are.

 

While there is little doubt that the analytic powers of our great institutions would reveal a great deal more than we presently understand about the stonemakers, what exactly they were, and the purpose and structure of the artifacts they left behind, it is for practical reasons impossible. We have the object. We have the means to decode it. But we can’t put the two together. Someday we may discover a Carrath stone already on a well-settled and civilized planet. Or we may invest in building up a solar system in which a Carrath stone exists. Until that day, however, research teams such as my own are the best hope for understanding the mysteries that these objects represent. The stones are fascinating to me and have been the center of my own research for eighty years standard, in part because I became focused on—and to a degree seduced by—the idea of something so tantalizingly strange and also so uniquely and intimately out of reach.

#

Slipdrive pilot Peros Danari Williamson woke in his old bed and his new body. This regeneration had darker skin than he’d had before, with thick, black hair on his chest and arms, and, he suspected, the potential of a fairly epic mustache. He’d spent the last fifty years clean-shaven, and the prospect of getting a little facial hair back pleased him more than he let on. He stretched, enjoying the younger muscles and ligaments, the pain-free joints.

The smell of tea wafted in from the little kitchenette. Nadima making her usual breakfast. His sense of smell once again undimmed by age, he let the memories of the same scent of tea carry him back to the common house on Molos, the little flat in London back on Earth, and even the mud-and-bamboo hut on Lopporo that had been their first home after they’d married, two hundred years before. In all the places they had lived their shared life, Nadima has always liked the same smoky tea in the morning.

He dressed himself in a pair of canvas trousers and a casual tunic. The flooring was textured stone, and cool under his bare feet. In the kitchenette, Nadima sat on a tall stool. Her hair was white with just a hint of yellow that made her look always a little unwashed. She wore a suit jacket and a broad, dark skirt with laced boots that said she was ready to travel. Peros didn’t hide his pleasure at that.

“Good,” he said.

She turned to him as if just noticing he was there. “What is?”

He gestured at her—index and middle fingers together sweeping up and down her body as he walked to the coffee maker. “You’re ready for the clinic. You put off the regen too long. You won’t be recovered all the way before we have to go.”

“Go,” she echoed as if the word meant something different to her.

“No clinics on Ourborous-4. You’ll be stuck like that until we get back.” He didn’t say Or die that way. Nadima had never liked the regen process. He had to cajole and bully her every time. The threat of her body wearing out and failing was a stage in the traditional argument, but it came later if he needed it.

“Yes, of course,” she said, and he stopped, coffee cup in hand but still cool and empty. Her gaze floated for a moment, then found his and stayed there.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I cancelled the appointment. I’m not ready for it. Not yet.”

“We’ll look ridiculous. I’ll seem like I’m married to my grandmother.” While he said it lightly, there was a buzz of annoyance in it. If anyone in the thousands of worlds would hear it, it would be her. She softened, which was odd. They were very practiced at how to fight with each other and how to reconcile after. The expression in her eyes and the corners of her mouth wasn’t the one that two centuries had led him to expect. He put the coffee mug into the machine with a feeling like he’d slipped on ice he hadn’t known was there.

“Come, you,” she said gently. “Sit.”

“My coffee is—”

“Come sit.”

Peros felt a rush of annoyance—almost anger—that even as it warmed his blood, he recognized as a mask for some other emotion. “Nadi—”

“Please,” she said without a hint of pleading in her voice. As if against his will, he abandoned his cup and came to the stool beside hers.

She took his right hand in both of hers. Her skin felt thin and papery against his own. “I think we’re done,” she said. “You can have the tea.”

She squeezed his hand, let it go, and stood with a gentle sigh.

“I have coffee,” he said, gesturing back toward his still-empty mug, but she wasn’t listening to him. She walked to the door of their flat and stepped out as if she were going somewhere. Peros laughed once, not in mirth but confusion, and looked at the teacup. It was perfectly full with deep brown tea, aromatic steam curling up from its surface. She hadn’t had a sip of it. He took a mouthful. It didn’t taste strange. The day tasted strange around it.

Even so, it was almost an hour before he thought to check Nadima’s public social profile and see that, after two centuries and with no other warning, he had been divorced.

#

The Carrath stones themselves vary in size, but maintain a common ratio of 1 to 1.7 to 4. The channels carved in them show markings consistent with a drill, and flakes of steel suggest that this carving was done with something not dissimilar from our own technology. Some people have posited that the stonemakers are a separate branch of humanity, somehow displaced from Earth before the diaspora, and following a parallel track of technological development. It is an intriguing thought, but unfalsifiable. Florid speculation follows the stones, and I have had some flights of fancy myself. It’s a hazard of the occupation.

 

Whether the stones were created in situ or brought to the sites in which we found them is another mystery. The first stone, discovered on Carrath-3, gave the stones their name, but analysis shows that it was not the oldest of the artifacts. It was only the first we happened upon. If the stonemakers were present in these disparate systems, why do we find no other artifacts or structures in common among these sites? If the patterns or their field effects have an origin outside the systems, how did they arrive there if not by slipdrive? And why does the stone appear to be local to the systems? What carved them, and where did the carvers go?

 

We have only the artifacts themselves to guide us. Which brings me to the central problem of my research, and with all research into them.

Context.

#

The Forger into Darkness was a rated ship with room on board for seventy people, a small warehouse for their supplies, the slipdrive chamber and housing, and an interior design of cream, pale blue, and an orange that should have been hideous, but somehow managed to seem cheerful. The ship sat in its gate high above the atmosphere, waiting for the last of its passengers to arrive.

Peros paced the pilot’s quarters. By regulation, he could have been downgraded to a single now that he was unaccompanied by a spouse or spouses, but Nadima had left with so little time before the departure that the change would have been more trouble than it was worth. Instead, the other sink in the bathroom went unused. The other half of the bed stood witness by its emptiness. The other closet held nothing but the place where her dresses and gowns, tunics and trousers and undergarments would have been.

Sitting on the desk was the homunculus of Mohommed, their first son. The boy himself—a man almost a hundred and seventy years old, but still in Peros’s mind a boy—was on a habitable moon of Ergregos-7. They were a hundred lightyears apart, but the slip made it as if his son were in the room.

“Did she speak to you?”

“Yes,” Mohommed said.

“Were you able to talk sense into her?”

The homunculus lifted its hands in a gesture Peros recognized. Nadima had made it when she was exasperated, and little Mohommed had learned it and kept it in the patterns of his brain for the fifteen decades since he had left their home to start his own life. The boy likely didn’t know the motion wasn’t his own or where he’d learned it.

“She seems happy,” Mohommed said.

Peros didn’t curse, but his growl made if feel as if he had. “Is she with another man?”

The homunculus leaned forward. “She is on a walking tour of Kellar Complex on Rasia-3 with Fatima Delgado and Abby Haal. I don’t think she has some secret lover, Papa.”

“Then why?” Peros snapped.

The homunculus shrugged. When Mohommed spoke, his voice was weary. “I haven’t lived with her in a century and a half. You woke up beside her every day. You know her better than I do.”

An alert chimed. Peros was expected at the captain’s table for dinner with the VIPs for the expedition. The image of Nadima’s empty chair beside him intruded into his mind, a wave of black dread flowing behind it.

“I have to go,” he said. “Keep at her. Find out what you can.”

“Papa, this isn’t going to help.”

“I just want to understand.”

“Well, you sound angry.”

“I am angry. I can be angry and understand. I can do both.”

“If you say so. Be well.”

The homunculus went still and lost Mohommed’s shape and features. Peros let himself curse, now that he was alone, and threw himself into his dress uniform with a banked violence. The man who looked back out at him from the mirror looked young and fierce. Not at all like a man with a wound in his heart. It didn’t look like him at all.

The table was round with room for a full dozen settings. The centerpiece was a kinetic sculpture of wirework and thin membrane that remade itself in iridescent dragonfly-wing patterns every few seconds. The captain, a hard-faced woman from Gellia-3, was one he had worked with before and liked well enough. She didn’t ask after Nadima, so he assumed she knew. The chair that would have been his wife’s if he still had one was occupied by a pleasant, slightly horse-faced woman.

“New regen?” she said as she passed the olive oil.

It took Peros a moment to understand what she’d said, as lost as he was in himself. His smile was, he hoped, polite.

“Yes. Just before I came here.”

“The first few weeks after a regen, I feel like I’m eighteen again. Terribly distracting. Mine’s three years in, and I still feel like I’m getting used to it some days.” She held out her hand. “Yva Brooks. I’m research lead.”

“Peros Williamson. Pilot,” he said. He meant to shake her hand, but she didn’t move when his fingers clasped hers, so they only sat there, hand in motionless hand, until she let him go.

“I understand I was a last-moment fill-in. I hope your wife isn’t ill?”

“I wouldn’t know. She’s divorced me,” he said, and realized it was the first time he’d said the word aloud. The first time he’d confessed his new status as if it were truly done, and not merely a moment’s aberration on Nadima’s part.

“Ah, I’m very sorry,” Yva said. “Was it a long marriage?”

“Almost two centuries,” Peros said, astonished by how conversationally it came out.

“That’s an impressive run,” Yva said, and took a sip from her water glass. “I’ve never been much for long-term relationships. The alternative can get lonely, that’s true, but I’ve always found ways to cope.”

She smiled at him in a way that didn’t mean anything, unless he wanted it to. But if he wanted it to, it did. Peros’ heart was suddenly racing, and he felt a blush rising under his newly darkened skin. And rage. He was single. Nadima had left him. She had no grounds to object to his behavior, whatever it was.

“I would be grateful,” he said carefully, “for any advice you can share.”

#

Imagine for a moment that you are in a pub with a group of people who know each other well. People who have been interacting with each other for a very long time. Imagine one of them makes a reference to some event that they shared, but that you did not. Will that be comprehensible to you? Will it not? The difference is the context. If they say “Remember the night when Toby got so drunk he tried to go home with Mira?” and you know both Toby and Mira and why they would be a poor sexual match—close consanguinity, for example—you will be in a position to understand the scenario despite not having shared the experience. If you do not, you still have enough shared context of what it is to be in a pub, what it is to be drunk, and what sorts of things inspire hilarity in one’s friends after the fact to understand that the pairing was somehow inappropriate.

 

But what if the reference were smaller? Less complete? Imagine that the night Toby asked Mira home with him, it was because he’d underestimated the power of a new drink. Call it Ambler’s Ale. Your friends might say, “Remember the night Toby drank Ambler’s?” Now you are more at a loss. Your context is less useful. You might guess that Toby overindulged, but the details beyond that, shared though they are by the group, are lost to you. Or you might think he’d disliked the drink in some way that caused him distress and the others amusement. Or that it had been someone else’s drink, picked up and consumed in error. Or any of a thousand other possibilities. Without more information, there is no way to choose one interpretation over another. Now imagine they only said “Tony and the Ambler’s.” Or just “The Ambler’s night.”

 

The meaning of all these references is identical to those who carry the context with them, but for the naïve listener, hope of understanding retreats quickly.

 

In this metaphor, the Carrath stonemakers are the friends, and the artifacts are the references to Toby’s indiscretion. And we are—or specifically I am—the new girl in the pub, trying to make sense of what’s going on around her.

 

My example sounds light-hearted, I know, but I chose it carefully. Because I believe the great majority of you listening to me know have had an experience like that. A moment of feeling excluded by those around you. Of knowing that there is something there that you are outside of. It is distressing—even painful—to know that there is an answer to your question, but that you cannot access it.

And because you and I share that context, I can give you a sense of the frustration of working with the Carrath stones.

#

It was strange to have a lover who was not Nadima. Sexually, he was awkward at first. Yva was forthright in what she wanted and guided him clearly to her own satisfaction. Peros was surprised to find that, outside the bedroom, he didn’t know what he wanted from her or else did not have a vocabulary to ask for it.

The journey to Ouroboros was uneventful, though the sense of displacement and disorientation that came with the slip was perhaps a bit more pronounced for Peros than usual. Touchdown on the fourth planet was on a calm day, atmospherically speaking, and crew and passengers alike walked into the local sunlight with the air of going to a new park on a picnic. The Forger into Darkness ceased for a time to be a ship and became instead a village. For the months of the expedition, it would act as base camp for the scientists, and then become a ship again, riding the slip to Bercale-3. And, Yva made gently clear, after that she and he would not know each other.

“You should stay here,” he said one evening after they had fucked and eaten dinner. “It’s not good to be alone so much.”

“I’m not alone,” she said. “My work is very good company.”

“Maybe I wasn’t talking about you.”

If she had been Nadima, she would have heard the hurt in his voice. She would have bent a little. If not enough to change her plan, at least enough to offer him some little reassurance. Yva laughed.

“You should come to the site.”

“I’m a pilot. What would I do there?”

“See it. Look. We came all this way. Seems like a shame not to take in the sights.”

“I will if you want me to.”

She laughed again and shook her head. “Oh, bunny.” Bunny was not her pet name for him. It was what she called anyone she liked but was presently annoyed by. He had come to understand her that well, at least.

The site was a series of sandstone caves at the side of a wide, green-gray sea. Yva drove a cart there with two of the other science team members and Peros. They talked about superimposed magnetostatic potentials and diagrammatic quantum analysis. He watched the local sun setting over the water, the clouds going pink and gold as the sky slid to indigo.

In the caves, a truckback reactor fed electricity through a snakepit of conduit and wires to assaying equipment and sensor arrays, work lights and climate-controlled habs. A dozen or more people worked there at any given time in rolling ten-hour shifts like they were running a ship. Peros walked through the place with his hands in his pockets. The smell of saltwater and local algae equivalents was rich and pungent.

Yva took his hand, pulling him toward the central chamber. “Come on. Big show is this way.” He pretended to be reluctant, but in truth his curiosity was piqued.

The stone was as tall as a man, striped gray and white with tiny flecks of red unlike the sandstone walls around it. The surface was covered in complex lines that reminded him equally of wiring diagrams and calligraphy. The lines glowed, and though they were silent, he had the sense of hearing someone speaking too softly to make out the words. Yva stood before it, her hand in his. Her eyes had hunger and excitement in them, and for a moment she reminded him of a cat he and Nadima had kept in the common house on Molos, the way the little beast would stare at a mouse hole.

“This is impressive,” he said, knowing the words were too small.

“It is,” Yva said, and then the shared moment was over.

He stayed for an hour, watching and staying out of the way. When he told Yva he was going back to the ship, she answered with a grunt, not looking up from the screens. As he rode back to the ship, the stars had come out. The galactic disk glowed, its contours slightly different as they were on every world. Peros felt a thickness in his throat and chest and wondered if he might be growing ill or having some allergic reaction to the local air.

When he got back to the ship, he took a long shower which did not relax him, drank a glass of wine that the ship generated, and put in a connection request to Nadima, expecting it to go unanswered as his previous attempts had done. This time, however, the homunculus shifted and changed. Between one moment and the next, it developed long white hair with just a bit of yellow to it as if it had once been blonde, though it had not. Her face, tiny now to fit the homunculus’s thumb-sized skull, was pale, deeply lined, and serene. She wore a dress of purple tapestry, wrapped around her shoulders, and a necklace of silver set with huge turquoise stones. Nadima had still not gone for regeneration, and the annoyance he felt at that was like hearing the name of an old friend he had almost forgotten.

She didn’t speak, and—caught between What were you thinking to do this to us? and I have taken a new lover and I miss you—he didn’t either. The homunculus tilted her head. The tiny smile seemed amused by him.

“I didn’t think you would answer,” he said.

“I almost didn’t. But you keep trying, and I thought maybe if I did this once, it would help you be free.”

“I don’t want to be free. What were you thinking, Nadi? Why are you doing this?”

She shook her head. “I had my time with you. It was good, when it was good. It was less good when it was bad. And then I was finished.”

“Oh, please. Marriage isn’t a meal. You don’t take your fill and then push your plate away. You and I are two parts of the same thing. We belong together.”

“We did,” she agreed. “But the woman you’re thinking of doesn’t exist anymore. She hasn’t for years, really. There’s only me now, and I don’t fit the same way that she did.”

He leaned over his desk, towering over the homunculus, scowling at it. “This is ridiculous. You’re not talking sense. You are going to come home when I am finished with this contract. You and I are going to counseling or something. We’ll work this out.”

Her sigh was soft and gentle, and it made him realize that wherever she was, she was not being towered over. For her, there was a homunculus that looked like him, only tiny, on her own desk. It made him feel small here as well.

“You can call back if you like,” she said. “I don’t believe I will answer, but I didn’t think I would answer this time either. Maybe I’ll surprise us both.”

Her image dissolved as he snapped “I’m seeing another woman.” He didn’t think she’d heard him. When he tried the connection again, it failed. He sat alone for a time, growing more aware of the depths to which he had just humiliated himself. He didn’t weep, but he permitted himself to feel the sadness that had been his silent companion since the day she’d left.

Later, he made a cup of smoky tea, and set it across the table from him, watching the steam rise from it as if it might tell him something.

#

A mystery that cannot be solved and one that simply hasn’t been solved yet are difficult, if not impossible, to tell apart. We have learned a great deal from the Carrath stones, and this new one has yielded another dataset that may hold the key to deciphering all of them. Or it may not. If not, the next one—assuming there is another one found—may. Or there may be no key. The secret of the stones and their creation may require contextual knowledge we don’t have and never will.

 

It is possible that I have spent decades of my life on a problem I lack the ability to resolve. Even if I remain dedicated to this study—and I expect I will—I may die with a deep knowledge of trivia about the Carrath stones and no insight into the issues that brought me here. Or, maybe next time it will all line up, we will find the thing that puts all the unknowns into a formula, and I will be able to write an equation that lays bare the mysteries. Maybe I already have the information, but haven’t developed the wisdom yet to see the critical connection.

 

For me, for now, the Carrath stones and the alien civilization that fashioned them are a paradox. They remind me that, as we explore and travel this vast, glorious, tragic universe, we are not alone.

 

And also that we are.