Even with the viewport filter dialed down, the glare from the two distant contra-spinning black holes sucking in material from their companion star stung Elena’s eyes. As she watched her previous transport, the LS Euclid, temporarily block the glare while crossing the scene, she felt uneasy about her arrival in this far-flung system. All her senses seemed off-balance, as if the universe had been nudged sideways when she wasn’t looking. The manner of her summons didn’t help either. This unease intensified when the Euclid failed to wink out of normal space, as a ley-ship normally would do once it was ready for its next destination. Instead, the ship matched speed and trajectory with her new craft, both of them orbiting a small rocky planet.
A high, raspy voice called her name from behind.
Elena turned around to see a tall, thin man with short-cropped blond hair speckled with iridescent green. Clad in the standard neotek uniform — a short white cape, grey tunic with diagonal red bands, and grey trousers — he hurried toward her with a bobbing stride, his right hand outstretched.
“Yes,” she said, ignoring the hand. She observed his pale green eyes as he lowered his arm, but they revealed no sign of annoyance. Typical.
“My name is Mexel Prot. I am the secondary neotek on board the Expeditionary Ship Marlowe. Thank you for coming.”
“I had little choice.”
She indicated the three parakur off to the side. Their gold-striped, black armor, matte black, half-face helmets with gold-rimmed eye sockets and raised electronic eyepieces, along with gleaming wire-mesh implants on bare skin, announced they were a tiger team. They had arrived on her home planet, Weirim, with non-negotiable orders and had been her constant, silent shadows ever since. The biggest of them, their leader, Dushok Ven, his eyes cold and unblinking, turned her way. With a hand resting on his sidearm, he lowered an eyepiece, examined the surroundings using the all-frequency sensors it contained, then stared at her.
She ignored him and shifted her gaze back to the neotek.
He moved toward the arrival bay exit. “Yes, yes, I understand.” He palmed a lit panel. The door slid open. “My apologies. We have a desperate situation here.”
“Has it anything to do with why the Euclid settled into orbit instead of continuing on its way?”
“To some degree.”
He waved her through. Several meters behind them, the tiger team kept pace.
“But why me?” she said. “Surely there were nexers much closer to this system.”
He nodded like a bird pecking at seeds. “There are. But, unfortunately, they were,” he paused, “unavailable.” Like all neoteks, above each ear he had three small, silver, fluted cooling vanes embedded in his skull. These hummed softly as he spoke, then fell silent.
His words, along with the non-departure of the Euclid, caused the vague feeling at the back of her mind to solidify into a grim thought: Are we stuck here? She felt a flicker of fear, but then opted for curiosity. She smiled to herself.
Mexel and Elena turned into a corridor. After a few strides, they entered a small room that contained a bank of screens, several rows of steel-backed chairs and, near the far corner, a rostrum with a crescent-shaped control panel. Only the parakur leader entered with them.
Mexel stepped up to the rostrum and faced her. “May I ask a question?”
Elena nodded and sat straight-backed on the cold seat.
“Did you have an inkling regarding this mission?”
Elena understood his meaning: had she experienced a kyph, that intuition-spark nexers sometimes felt, which often compelled them to search for a specific harmful situation and heal it.
She shifted her chair so she could see both men. “You are well-informed.”
Bitterness tinged her voice, and Elena didn’t care if they noticed. Both their kinds had acted against the Nexer Guild over the centuries, and she had no doubt these two would rebuff her, or worse, if they got the chance. Yet, they needed her expertise, and this pleased her sense of reckoning.
“We try to be,” Mexel said, with no reaction to her tone.
She absentmindedly patted the almost-invisible embroidered rose on the right sleeve of her dark-blue robe. “Well, to answer your question, no.”
Mexel’s expression briefly showed disappointment, then his training turned him calm and rational again.
“Maybe something will come to you.”
“Not likely,” she said. “You have been misinformed if you think all nexers have such experiences before they perform their work. Those types of inkling, which we call a kyph, have a level of compulsion that drives a nexer into completing a service no matter the cost. We also help people upon request.” Though usually not the parakur or their keepers, the Unity Council, rulers of the Imperative.
“Is there any difference in the outcomes?” he said.
Elena smiled. “I’m sure your records have plenty of information about our services.”
“But we don’t know which of them were triggered by kyphs.”
“That’s not likely to change.”
She inclined her head toward the parakur. “So, why did the Unity Council order me here? Surely a nexer discussion doesn’t warrant the expense of a ley-ship.”
Mexel gestured at his controls. The center screen flickered to life, showing the two black holes spinning around their massive star, each drawing matter from its corona into accretion disks that blazed with the chaotic turbulence of particles colliding and breaking down. The three bodies, along with their streams and spirals of energy, resembled two astrological symbols morphing into each other as the black holes gradually moved in elliptical orbits around their sun. Gathering the footage must have taken months of observation.
“What do you know of the Sagan Signal?” he said.
“Only what I remember of the reports on GalMedia years ago. That a signal had been received from a distant system. That it suggested an alien presence. That these things have happened before, even pre-Shattering, and have always ended up as false positives.”
“Not this one.”
She took a deep breath to calm her racing pulse. A momentous occasion for humanity. Yet why summon a nexer to verify it?
“I presume the source of the signal is somewhere nearby.”
He indicated the screen. “You’re looking at it, though not how it was over 120 years ago when it transmitted the signal.”
He adjusted the controls, and an animation displayed the three bodies in a different configuration.
“We’ve modelled how the signal was created.”
The simulation showed the two black holes abruptly spinning closer to their sun and ripping out massive amounts of plasma. The swarming, thick ribbons of energy curled and coalesced into pulsing masses that exploded in series, sending narrow, focused X-ray bursts out of the system.
“The signal reached Earth 21 years ago. It didn’t take us long to figure out its significance.
“Why is that?” she said.
The screen went blank and then displayed two images side by side. Mexel highlighted the right one, an angled view of the black holes and the central star against their galactic backdrop.
“That was taken after the Sagan Signal arrived and we traced its source to this solar system, which we called Chandra Dai. We then searched our archives for any further information about that region of space.”
Mexel highlighted the other image, which depicted a typical arrangement of star clusters, along with the faint smudges of distant galaxies.
“That is a close-up from a star map survey conducted 150 years ago.”
He layered the two images. With only some minor variations in star positions, the backgrounds aligned perfectly.
“How can a solar system appear out of nowhere?” Elena said.
“Obviously, the work of an advanced civilisation that wanted us to discover this system. And once we realised the situation, the Unity Council dispatched the Marlowe from New Alexandria. There were no junts within ten light years of this system, so naturally the trip took time to get here.”
Elena rose from her chair. “But what has this got to do with me? I’m not an astronomer-neotek who can help solve cosmological mysteries.”
Mexel raised his palms. “Just a little more information will help me answer your question.”
The screen returned to the first image, then zoomed out to reveal a small planet located some distance from the triple system.
“When our expedition arrived, we found that single planet. The strange thing is, the planet, which we’ve called Phaeton, is much heavier than Earth or New Alexandria, even though it is much smaller than either of them.”
“Why is that?”
“Our scans from orbit reveal intense concentrations of high-order metals and immense power hotspots. The entire planet appears to be one vast machine.”
“A machine for what?”
“We don’t know. We sent a five-member team to investigate a chamber uncovered by our mining bots. Two guards stayed outside, while the others went inside. Only one of those returned alive. Barely. Our primary neotek, Riella Brovin.”
Elena quietly recited the nexer prayer for the dead: Blessed is the door opened for you and for us.
“What happened to the others?”
“Some sort of electrical wildfire ravaged their neural pathways. The men had been trying to unblock a doorway at the back of the chamber. Maybe they were attacked by a defense mechanism, which spared Riella because she had moved away from the clearance work. Or maybe she was just lucky.”
“In my experience,” Elena said, “there’s no such thing as luck. Everything has a purpose.”
Mexel gave a quick snort. “We neoteks don’t believe the universe is ordered or planned in that way. It is the human mind that imposes a pattern on the universe’s chaos, even if there are laws governing some of the movements and interactions of its parts.”
Giving a quick nod, Elena said, “I once thought that.”
“What changed?”
“I experienced nexspace.”
“Ah, yes, the magical domain that gives you your power.”
“We see it as the undercurrent of the universe, the vibrant nothing supporting everything.”
Mexel waved his hand in dismissal. “So much mumbo-jumbo.”
Elena leaned forward. “And you call yourself a scientist.”
He stiffened and gripped the console with both hands. “What do you mean?”
“Surely the scientific method requires you to formulate a hypothesis, test it, and repeat the experiment for confirmation.”
He tilted his head and stared at her. “Yes.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Well, unless you conduct the experiment of practising the skills required to access nexspace, you can’t deny its existence.”
He pondered her words for a few seconds before replying. “You mean, I should become some sort of mystic?”
She nodded, pleased for this chance to address some misconceptions about the nexers and the experiences shaping their worldview. Glancing at the parakur, she hoped he was processing her words, but he stared impassively at the screen. Then she recalled a rumor that some parakur were failed nexers. That might explain their antagonism.
A triumphant smile spread across Mexel’s face. “Yet the scientific method requires falsifiability.”
He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and Elena knew he was accessing his internal-calc database. He shook his head, as if re-grounding himself.
“Furthermore, your claim that this nexspace is the consciousness that creates the universe is nothing new. In reality” — he smirked briefly at the pun — “it is the latest in a long line of claims for the existence of a supreme being. Like all believers, you assert that if one doesn’t believe in this supreme being or experience it, then one hasn’t tried hard enough. You are talking about faith. How can your claims be falsified?”
Elena had heard many variations of these arguments over the years.
“We never advocate faith,” she said. “We advocate experience, as many have done over the centuries, though some might call that experience God, the collective unconsciousness, or the whispering void. Try our methods and consider the results. No different from any other encounter with what the universe offers.”
She leant back and steepled her fingers in satisfaction.
He didn’t look at her. Instead, he turned off the screen. “I am not a philosopher of science. There are more critical things to consider.”
Realising her need to redress false conceptions had sidetracked the conversation and possibly damaged the situation, Elena waved her hands in apology. “You’re right. How can I be of help?”
“Thank you.” Mexel stepped down from the rostrum. “This way.”
He led her out of the room, the three parakur, as before, hanging back.
A few minutes later, Elena, Mexel, and Dushok Ven entered the ship’s medilab. The other two parakur remained outside. In a glass-enclosed space near the far wall, a large woman lay motionless on a medibed, while a nurse beside her checked the monitors and the overhead scanner.
Mexel pointed to the bed. “That is Riella Brovin. She is an expert in languages and symbol systems, which is why she formed part of the first team on site. We need you to use your skills to discover what happened. We don’t have much time.”
They’re not telling me everything. How useless. Elena slowed her breathing to keep her annoyance from showing in her speech and features.
“Is it something to do with why the Euclid hasn’t jumped?”
After glancing at the parakur, who gave a quick nod, Mexel shut his right eye. His rippling throat muscles told Elena he was using a sub-vocal com-link and likely reading data on an internal eyelid display.
Seconds later, both eyes open and clear, he said, “After we arrived, we received reports that networks of junts were vanishing. We were lucky to find a sequence that could bring you here. Now, that network is broken. The intelligence behind the Sagan Signal is taking away what makes the Imperative a credible galaxy-wide civilisation. Our calculations tell us the last junts, the earliest ones established, will disappear within the week.”
Elena remembered her intuition upon arrival and realised the universe had been more than nudged sideways; it had been toppled. What can we do now?
To steady her thoughts, she walked up to the window and peered at the scene inside the glass room: the blinking machines, the attentive nurse, the slow rise and fall of the patient’s large belly under the pastel blue sheets. Large belly.
The comatose woman was pregnant.
“I didn’t think the Unity Council would send a heavily pregnant woman on a long-haul trip, with its periods of cryo-sleep, even for a mission as important as this one.”
“She wasn’t pregnant when we left.”
“Then surely the usual precautions would have been taken.”
“She was given nano-meds, as we all were.” He glanced at the woman and drummed his fingers against the glass. When he turned away, moisture rimmed his eyes. “She fell pregnant on the surface. Three weeks ago.”
Elena stared at the belly. “She looks almost full term.”
“Exactly, and we don’t know what she is carrying.”
He tapped a sequence on his sleeve datapad. A screen appeared on the glass wall in front of them.
“We scanned her and found this.”
The screen displayed a fibrous dark mass surrounded by the lighter tissue of the womb. Nothing moved within the mass, although every thirty seconds, jagged light illuminated the screen, and when this subsided, the contours of the mass had shifted.
“What could do this?”
“Whatever created this system and brought us here with its signal.”
He flicked his finger across the screen, which brought up another set of results.
“This is a record of her brain activity.”
Waves of different frequencies, amplitudes, and wavelengths, in varying colors and brightness, filled the display. As Elena watched, the waves modulated into a single intense line before snapping back into their previous multitude.
“And this is a live scan of the brain itself,” he said.
Small purple worms of energy dove into and out of the front part of her brain, growing longer and thicker with each transition.
“What are those?”
“We don’t know, but when they reach a certain mass, they shoot down her spine.”
“Toward her womb?”
He nodded. “And others, thinner, smaller, travel the other direction.”
“Did you try surgery?” Elena said.
“Whenever the medics tried anything invasive, she convulsed and her brain waves became even more chaotic. Simultaneously, the ship’s life-support systems began to fail. As soon as the medics stopped the procedures, life support returned to normal. We’re dealing with inexplicable matters here.”
Elena shrugged. “I can’t see how I can be of help.”
Mexel turned to her. His cooling vanes hummed at a higher pitch, as if his brain and its assistant circuitry were being overworked. “Without going into the source of your power and perceptions, my understanding is that nexers supposedly can read the fate-lines of their clients, which are probably no more than the psychic trajectory of their lives. You help your clients correct any misalignment these lines may have with the universe, with their true path, whatever that is.” He paused and shook his head a little. “It has been said you can experience these fate-lines and see the whole network of destinies associated with any particular client.”
“Some of us have such skills.”
“Do you?”
“A little. Incidentally, we call the people we help diak, not clients. We don’t do this for gain.” She peered at the parakur, who seemed unmoved by what had been discussed and unconcerned about her.
“Then why?” Mexel said.
A good question. “Why did you become a neotek?”
He gave a brief nod and smiled. “Yes. Because my skills led me there. But that’s beside the point. I personally think your healing successes are no more than the application of superior training in observation and manipulation, combined with the gullibility of these diaks and the placebo effect. Still, the Unity Council believes you can offer some insight into the present situation.” His lips formed a slight sneer. “Are you willing to help?”
“I’m willing to try,” Elena said.
“Good.”
A minute later, Elena sat in a chair beside the woman, who breathed regularly and had a slightly plump face with a round chin, smooth and free of wrinkles. The cooling vanes hummed constantly. Reaching beneath the sheet, Elena took the woman’s right hand and closed her eyes.
Whenever she entered nexspace for a reading or a healing, the experience was always different. Sometimes, she had visions of the diak’s life and could easily pinpoint the exact moment when that life had gone astray, although the correction always needed to be subtle. At other times, she became the diak for an unmeasured period and sensed energies that revealed what was blocked and how to repair it.
This time she saw nothing, felt nothing.
Eyes still closed, Elena slumped back in her chair. The woman wasn’t present. Neither was the fetus, or whatever it was. Where were they?
As she settled once again into the nexing process, Elena slowed her breathing even further, relaxed her body, and focused more intently on stilling her mind and sensing the energies in the woman’s hand.
There.
A pulse of thought.
The faint trace of a quilim, what nexers called fate-lines.
Something to grab.
No.
To become a part of.
Elena’s whole body jerked, and her heartbeat raced and paused without her volition as a vision overwhelmed her.
Standing inside a small chamber, she gazes at the blocked entrance to the tunnel their scans suggest lies beyond. Trevar and Harryn are outside with the two guards unloading equipment from the six-wheeler. She ignores everything else and focuses on the glyphs carved into the charcoal-grey metal surrounds of the entrance. Arrangements of lines resembling ogham or runes. Truncated swirls. Fractal networks. No language known to her. No hint of commonality with any human language structures. She closes her eyes and brings up the images on her internal display. The patterns make no sense, even when her calc-circuitry runs high-speed mapping diagnostics. There isn’t enough data for a full crypto-linguistic combinatorial analysis. She hopes there are more glyphs inside the tunnel itself, which the scanners have mapped for a short distance into the planet. A spiral shape. Left-hand twist. Indentations, as if a staircase.
The mining bots hadn’t been able to venture further than the entrance, which is filled with irregular blocks made of the same metal as the floor and walls. The joints of these blocks form a pattern she’s certain has meaning. Perhaps a circuit diagram or a map of what lies beneath them. She glances at the deactivated bots scattered on the floor, though no command from the Marlowe had caused this.
The team must be prepared for anything.
She steps back and leans against the opposite wall as Trevar pulls out a drill. Harryn stands nearby to clear away debris.
Once more, she reviews the images and her initial analysis. Perhaps the glyphs are distinct signs with no connection between them. But then, who or what carved them? When? Why?
Vibrations under her feet as the drill starts up.
The sounds of screams in her earpiece.
The world pitching underneath her as she runs toward her friends.
More screams.
The cold of metal on her cheek.
Her own labored breath.
Silence.
Blackness…
She pushes herself up from the metal floor. Opens her eyes to an indistinct amethyst shimmer in front of her. She is reminded of a space aurora. Where are Trevar, Harryn, and the two guards?
A voice sounds in her head. “Who are you?”
“You called us,” she says.
“Yes, but who are you?”
The light flares and fills her. She hears a thrumming coming from deep within the light or from deep within her, she can’t tell which. Images kaleidoscope through her mind.
Interlaced crystal mechanisms spinning out streams of multicolored energy.
A panorama of cities under violet or incarnadine skies growing, decaying, growing again, silver spires or flame moats or trundling skyscrapers.
Swirling star systems exploding or being chained together.
Bird’s eye view of the Milky Way, a fleet of spindly spacecraft whirling into destruction.
A Möbius slice of space-time expanding to fill her consciousness, then shrinking into a multi-faceted jewel showing every human face in every human face, before twinkling out of existence.
Another voice sounded, but not from the midst of her vision.
“Who are you?”
Elena jolted awake. Riella Brovin’s hand had slipped from her own, and she wondered if that had broken the connection.
She looked up to see the woman in the bed gazing at her, eyes glowing with soft amethyst light. The cooling vanes were still humming, at a higher frequency, and seemed tinged with red.
Remembering the repeated question, she said, “My name is Elena Rossen. I am a nexer.” An idea struck her. “Who are you?”
“I don’t know.”
The woman struggled to lean forward, so Elena pushed a button that raised the bed to a sitting position. The swollen belly had gone, and she wondered what had become of the black fibrous mass and the purple energy worms. She studied the brain wave monitor. Where there had been fluctuations and long pauses, with high peaks of multiple brain wave frequencies, the pattern was now relatively steady. It was composed of two intertwined waveforms, one a deep delta and the other an elevated beta that flicked down to an alpha every few seconds. Too many mysteries.
“Who am I?” the woman said. “Yes. Fascinating.”
Elena took the hand again. It was hot to the touch. Maybe Riella’s body and mind were fighting the alien presence that had infected them, colonised them. Or maybe the infection was too energetic for her. Hence, the hard-working vanes.
“I presume you are not Riella Brovin.”
The woman nodded.
“The thing in your womb has now become you.”
The woman nodded again.
“Is Riella dead?”
“Asleep.”
“Why?”
“So we can talk to you.”
“Why did the others die?” Elena said.
“An intrusion alarm malfunctioned. We are truly sorry. We will make amends.”
The words were delivered without the usual inflection one could expect from a human apology. Elena wasn’t sure if this was because the alien was lying, was still getting used to its host, or its own way of thinking was totally outside human experience.
“Who is this ‘we’?” she said.
“The dead returned. You may call me, us, Shradhu. We offer you the same thing we offered those others who came before you. Whatever you desire.”
“What sort of things?”
“As I said, whatever you desire.”
An impish impulse struck Elena. “Everything.”
The woman gave a deep laugh that ended in a hacking cough. For a split second, the brain signal monitor went dead.
“Everyone asks for some variation of that. So selfish. So immature. So predictable. Maybe you are no different from the others, as we hoped you would be. You will only have one choice, one gift.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because we no longer need these gifts.”
“You are extinct.”
Again, that laugh, that cough, that briefly-dead monitor.
“No. We have, as you might put it, died here so we can enter another plane of evolution. We wish to help those who follow.”
“How can we trust you?”
A smile. “That is the challenge.”
And at that, the woman’s eyes glazed over and she fell asleep.
The brain wave monitor showed a single pattern, a theta that quickly dropped to delta.
Elena rejoined Mexel and Dushok Ven. They walked in silence back to the briefing room, the other two members of the tiger team stationed behind them.
Once she and Mexel had sat down, she recounted her vision of Riella’s experience in the chamber. Dushok Ven stood at the back and made no comment.
She leaned forward. “And you overheard our conversation?”
“Yes,” Mexel said.
“Can we trust them?”
“We have no choice. If other races exist out there with advanced weapons or other technologies given them by this ancient race, we need to be prepared.”
Elena glanced at a small screen showing a close-up of the woman, who was breathing quietly. “Is there any evidence of other visitors to the planet?”
Returning to the rostrum, Mexel switched on the main screen. It displayed the triple system in the center, with Phaeton and its two orbiting spaceships circling far away from the violent energies.
“After arrival, we collected samples from various regions of space around the system.” The display pointed these out. “Analysis of the gases and particles spread, plus the size and type of the central sun, tells us the x-ray burst maneuver has happened at least twice in the past million years.”
“So, someone has been here before us, as Shradhu hinted?” she said.
“Or, ‘invited’ at least. Of course, with Chandra Dai somehow disappearing and reappearing, which suggests unimaginable technology, the samples themselves could be a false trail.”
“Where is this other species now?”
He palmed the display away.
“That’s the trouble. None of our junt-transports or robot probes have detected any other race during the 200 years since we first left Earth. No signals. No ruins in space or on a planet. No sign of advanced engineering structures around distant systems or within other galaxies. We are alone. Till now.”
“So, what happened to them?”
Mexel took a chair beside her. “Maybe they didn’t come. Maybe the signal was a false reaction to something detected.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our invitation could only have been triggered by the arrival at Chandra Dai of energies from our first experiments in ley-ships.”
Elena recalled the conflict between the parakur and nexers over the Unity Council’s enforced use of telleks, gifted practitioners first found within the nexer ranks, who could help guide and shift spaceships instantaneously to where junts had been established. When the Unity Council discovered that the death of a nexer led to the disappearance of a tellek and their ship, the conflict ended in an uneasy truce.
She leaned toward him. “Maybe the other race hadn’t prevailed over those types of conflicts and disasters we had and destroyed itself before it could react to the signal.”
Mexel nodded vigorously.
The voice of the parakur leader sounded behind them, a cold, monotone voice. “Or this race is hiding somewhere we can’t detect, using technology similar to what hid this system. We might not be aware of their presence until they invade us. And there might be other races with similar gifts.”
“If there were such a danger, it would trigger a kyph, and nexers would respond,” she said.
Dushok Ven stared at her. The circuitry beneath his helmet glowed brighter. “No nexers received a kyph about this situation.”
Mexel shuffled his feet. “Maybe there is no danger here, only opportunity.”
The parakur raised his voice slightly. “We are under threat. Junts are vanishing, but you two are wasting time speculating about the past.”
Elena stood up slowly and faced Dushok. “The more we know, the better our decisions. You brought me here. Let me work.”
For a minute, nobody moved, then the parakur’s circuitry powered down.
Elena turned back to Mexel. “Is it possible to tell how long Chandra Dai has existed?”
“Not really, because of its disappearing act. However, spectral analysis reveals the central star is first generation. To pick or create such a star system for the home of its planetary machine, not a younger one containing higher order elements, suggests a message of sorts. The builders, this Shradhu, may be almost as old as the universe itself.”
The parakur is right about the lack of kyphs. Elena paced the room. All this information was both too much for her and of the wrong kind.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts. “So, where are these builders now?”
Mexel shrugged.
“Maybe they’re down there,” she said.
“Then we’ll have to see. And choose.”
“How?” she said.
Dushok Ven spoke again, his voice returning to its monotone. “Whatever benefits the race. As has been the way of the Imperative since the Shattering.”
“And who decides that?” she said.
“The Unity Council’s representative,” the parakur said.
“I suppose that would be you.”
He gave a slight inclination of his head.
Turning her back on him, Elena said to Mexel, “We don’t know what’s being offered or how valuable these gifts can be.”
“There are algorithms for making choices based on single presentations of options. I will advise Dushok Ven. He will choose.”
“What of me?”
“My observations of you with Shradhu and my subsequent calculations indicate that you are essential. Perhaps your skills will reveal more about these so-called gifts.”
Elena sighed and thought of the presence inhabiting Riella Brovin’s body. The parakur were interested in power, the neoteks in knowledge, the Unity Council in self-preservation of itself and the race. What were these ancient aliens really interested in?
Two hours later, the three of them were seated in a six-wheeler, with Dushok Ven having left his team behind to serve as message relays, one at the landing ship and one in orbit. Mexel had just launched a drone, and they were watching it approach the entrance chamber. Once it arrived, it released a smaller probe.
Mexel spun his chair to the left and flipped down a control panel. Pushing a button activated a 3D display that showed the probe’s view across all wavelengths. He took the joystick and guided the probe into the room. Its lights illuminated the walls, the blocked entrance and, at waist height, the jagged hole made by Trevar’s drill.
Elena switched on a display above her head and reclined her seat. She asked that the probe hover near the tunnel entrance.
She pointed out the glyphs, which were deeply etched into the shiny metal around the entrance. Closing her eyes, she recalled the female neotek’s vision.
“When Riella stood there, the metal was dull.”
Mexel magnified the view and nodded. “The metal must be self-cleaning, self-repairing, once the chamber is exposed to air. Probably some form of advanced nanotechnology that our scanning and our analysis of samples haven’t been able to detect.”
He directed the probe back toward the middle of the chamber.
“We found her here.”
The probe moved to a space near the right of the tunnel entrance.
“Trevar and Harryn there.”
Remembering the vision, Elena said, “What about the guards?”
“They rushed in as soon as they heard the screams. They found Riella unconscious.”
“No sign of the amethyst mist she saw?”
“Nothing. Maybe it all happened in her mind. Maybe the aliens suspended time.”
At another touch of the controls, the probe flew through the hole into the tunnel beyond.
“We are fortunate,” Mexel said. “Whatever deactivated the mining bots isn’t working now.”
Elena recalled the machines lying at Riella’s feet. “What’s changed?”
He flicked his head upward to indicate the Marlowe. “We must have passed some test through your encounter with Shradhu.”
The tunnel extended a few meters, then formed a wide staircase that dipped to the left. Nothing marked the smooth walls, though every turning featured an empty alcove. The entire structure was made of the same metal as the entrance chamber.
After a few minutes, the probe reached the bottom of the staircase and moved into an enormous cavern with a flat floor.
For the first time since they’d descended from the ship, Dushok Ven spoke. “How long before the probe maps out the whole underground structure? I’ve just received a report that the junt networks are failing faster than previously estimated. We may only have a day or so before total collapse.”
Mexel jiggled the joystick a few times, then spoke over his shoulder while still grappling with the controls. “It doesn’t look like we’re being allowed to go any further.” He pointed to his display. The probe continued to rush forward, only to bounce off an invisible wall. “We’ve mapped all we can. Nothing left now but to go inside.”
After a quick review of the footage, Elena said, “But all the alcoves are empty. No artefacts. No markings on the walls.”
Twirling the joystick in small circles, Mexel made the probe spin in place while its sensors tried to pierce the gloom. “Maybe the previous races took everything with them.”
“Then why did Shradhu call us here?” She ran her hand through her long hair. “There must be something. Maybe deeper underground.”
Mexel checked the records of the orbital scans. “The rest of the interior of the planet is machinery, or mantle, or the hot core that's probably powering the machinery. This staircase and its environs are all there is.”
“Then we have no choice,” the Parakur said.
Once a new drill-bot had cleared the entrance to the staircase, Elena, Mexel, and Dushok Ven left the six-wheeler. The mining bot’s success did not surprise them, but they still felt hesitant when approaching the chamber.
Nothing happened when they moved inside.
As the others cleaned away debris, Elena studied the glyphs around the doorway. She wondered if an invited race had left each one, which would explain why Riella hadn’t been able to decipher them as a single language. And if each glyph represented a race, what would be an appropriate one for humanity? She considered the dark blue rose etched on every nexer’s robe but quickly dismissed the symbol as exclusive. She thought the same about the double-infinity symbol of the neoteks. Maybe the jigsaw sphere of the Imperative. Or maybe Shradhu would etch the symbol it thought represented its visitors.
“We’re ready,” Mexel said.
Dushok Ven moved up to the entrance. “I will go first.” Before Elena could protest, he added, “Just in case there is any danger.”
She slightly bowed her head, eyes closed, and was surprised by her act of thanks.
The parakur adjusted his sidearm and took a small surveillance globe from the pack on the ground beside him. He tossed it through the doorway. It squeaked as it flitted in a circle a few feet inside, a sound that announced all was well. Dushok Ven flipped down one of his eyepieces and strode through.
Elena went next, followed by Mexel.
They stood on the landing. The globe cast a pale honey light around them before moving down to the next landing, which Elena knew, from the earlier mapping, contained an alcove. She also knew, with a certainty she hadn’t felt before, that a gift would materialise there.
She tapped Dushok Ven on the shoulder. “How will you decide which gift to take?”
He turned enough so his eyepiece could survey her. “Once we identify a gift, whether it be weaponry, medicine, knowledge or technology, I will communicate with my superiors and ascertain its relative usefulness.”
Mexel coughed slightly. “My algorithms require details about those gifts we reject to estimate the possible benefits of the rest. We can always pick an earlier offering if the algorithms predict nothing better will come.”
Elena glanced at each of them in turn. “I sense there’s more to this challenge than accepting a gift. Surely, we are being tested, and the quality of our response will determine how successful or useful the gift will be.”
“Response to what?” the parakur said.
“The challenge itself. I don’t think algorithms are enough. Too many unknowns.”
Mexel bristled. “Probabilities are all we have. Unless you’re trying to claim your nexing skills can deliver certainty.”
Elena laid a placating touch on his arm. “I’m not slighting anyone or advancing the cause of anyone. I sense the aliens are testing our choice. Maybe there’s only one genuine gift, and our actions might lose it for us.”
“Then,” Mexel said, “as a species, we will be in the same place as we were before we undertook this test.”
Elena glared at him. “But without our junts.”
In a voice heavy with threat, the Parakur said, “This discussion is folly. Let us go.”
As a group, they took the first step, which was as wide as the landing.
Elena felt the back of her neck prickle. She turned around. “Look.”
The entrance and landing had disappeared. Dushok Ven sent his sphere behind them. Its light revealed only empty space, and just like Mexel’s probe, no matter how hard the sphere pressed against that space, it couldn’t move any further.
“So, Shradhu was right: we will only have one choice,” the neotek said. “Whatever technology this alien race has developed, it obviously can manipulate time and space. Just look at what it did with those black holes and the system itself.”
Elena noticed a frown on the parakur’s face and could guess what caused it. “You can’t contact your team or the ship.”
His face went passive, but his eyes flashed with both anger and fear, which caught her off guard. The members of a parakur tiger team were tightly connected, so for Dushok Ven to lose that continuous intimacy would be nothing short of mind-wrenching. Elena knew she would feel the same shock if she couldn’t enter nexspace, wasn’t able to immerse herself in its shimmering nothingness—the comfort, certainty, and excitement of being part of something fundamental.
His eyes hardening, Dushok Ven said, “We go on.”
After nine more steps, they came upon the first alcove, as empty as when the probe flew the length of the staircase.
Mexel turned to Elena. “My equipment…” He looked at Dushok Ven, who waved his hand. “Our equipment shows nothing there. Has another race already taken the gift, or is it hidden in some place or dimension we can’t immediately access?”
Closing her eyes, Elena tried to enter nexspace. Usually, this only took a few seconds, but she sensed something preventing her—a psychic reluctance stemming from somewhere she couldn’t yet pinpoint. Her limbs grew numb, and her stomach clenched savagely at the thought of becoming like Dushok Ven, cut off from what grounded her in the world. Then she realised the blockage came from this very fear of being lost and from her own doubts about the venture. Why me? What if I can’t help them make the right choice? She sunk her mind deeper into herself and dispelled this doubt with memories of times she had taken a leap and flourished — the first time she had entered nexspace, the first kyph she had followed and solved, the last time she had risked her sanity while healing a diak. Suddenly, the warmth and depth of nexspace swelled inside her, and she allowed herself to fall into its embrace.
Once there, she opened her mind’s eye and expected to see something like a quilim, a fate-line for the space-time segment she was observing. What she detected was the stillness, the non-presence she had felt when first trying to contact the entity inside Riella’s womb. This time, however, she did what she had not done back in the medilab: she slid her mind into the dark stillness.
Nothing happened. Nothing existed, except perhaps a whisper that sounded like Shradhu’s voice, which filled her limbs and guided her into the alcove. The stillness parted, and she found herself in a city from the earlier vision.
Or rather, the city lay beneath her as she swooped and swayed in the breeze coming in from the slumbering sea. Flocks of red-bodied humanoids with purple diaphanous wings wheeled around her, but she kept herself apart from them, ignoring their flute-cries and their games, preferring to enjoy the air as if it existed solely for her. She willed her wings to expand to their limits and allow the updraughts from the porcelain towers far below to lift her so high she could see the shadow of night drifting across the lattice-weave landscape of lakes and forests and deep fissures. She rocked her wings and hovered. Above her, the sight of the energy web of the void-ships filled her with pride. Her race had conquered the stars.
Too late, she remembered the cost.
Below her, darkness engulfed the city except for the emerald coruscating flame atop the Tower of Consolidation. The flame called to her, as it called to all who failed to enter the link-halls before nightfall. She folded her wings. Tried to dive into the forest outside the city boundary. Found herself banking toward the tower without making that decision. Others closer to the tower struggled, too, but eventually plunged into the flame. Each time, the flame exploded upward, thinning and stretching until it reached the energy web, which brightened and cast out more strands.
Frantically, she beat against the power of the flame, but with each beat, every cell in her body hungered for release. She spiraled around the tower, and the closer she approached it, the more she realised those who entered the flame did so singing the joy of their sacrifice.
When the screaming cells in her body and mind couldn’t be ignored any further, she let herself plummet toward the flame. For those few seconds before she felt it burn skin and wings, she sang the total acceptance of faith, the joy of pure flight without need or concern for ambition, the wonder of giving herself to fuel something higher, more noble, more glorious, the universe opening further to her kind.
Her mind burst with indescribable bliss.
Elena blinked and saw her companions blink also.
“Did you see?” she said.
They nodded.
“What do we do now?” She looked at Mexel. “What do your algorithms say?”
For a few minutes, Mexel stood still, his eyes closed, his vanes humming with the load of his calculations.
“The Shradhu’s challenge is a variation of what was once called the Dowry Problem. The trouble is, all solutions require knowledge of the number of choices, or at least an upper bound. Do we know how many alcoves there are?”
Elena thought back to the probe’s footage. “Approximately twenty turnings.”
“Then we should not pick any till after the seventh gift, then pick the next one that is better than the best of those first seven. Failing that, the last one.”
“But look now,” Dushok Ven said as he sent his surveillance sphere down the staircase.
Elena didn’t dare leave the alcove, for she felt sure it would vanish once she did so.
The parakur reported that the staircase now extended to the center of the planet. When the sphere returned, without being able to probe the bottom, it could not provide an estimate of the number of turnings.
She shook her head. How can we solve this challenge if Shradhu keeps changing the rules?
Mexel turned to Dushok Ven. “What value would you place on this gift?”
“Why? he said.
“So we can measure all other gifts against it and hopefully find one that exceeds it.”
The uneasiness Elena had felt upon her arrival in the Chandra Dai system took on a new form. “But we don’t know the costs of making a choice.”
They both turned towards her.
“What do you mean?” Dushok Ven said. “The technology for powering FTL spaceships without having to rely on telleks is invaluable. Maybe we don’t need to go any further.”
“And the cost of such a choice is the lives and souls of those sacrificed to the technology. And don’t assume the vision is literal. Maybe it’s metaphorical.”
“Even so,” Dushok Ven said, “the principle remains the same: the greater good. The Unity Council requires me to choose whatever is beneficial for the Imperative, for the race as a whole.”
Elena began to move out of the alcove. “I will not allow a choice that will kill innocents.”
Pointing his sidearm at her, Dushok Ven said, “Stay there. We haven’t made our decision.”
Mexel placed himself between them. “Whatever the algorithm, most solutions require us to ignore the first candidate. I suggest we move on.”
With one last glare at Elena, Dushok Ven re-holstered his weapon and stepped aside to let her join them on the stairway. Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed the alcove had vanished, just like the entrance and the steps they had taken.
As they walked down to the next alcove, a whispering started at the edge of Elena’s consciousness. She wondered if the encounter in the alcove had made her more sensitive to the nexspace thoughts of Shradhu and the races it/they had helped. She remembered the alien’s response to her desire to wish for everything: Maybe you are no different from the others…
She stopped.
“What if this is a test of our moral fiber? What if we are being measured against the ideal Shradhu has of appropriate behaviour in the universe?”
“Why do you say that?” Mexel said.
“Their gift destroyed those aliens. That might happen to us also. We need to consider the repercussions of these gifts.” A sudden thought struck her. “Maybe we shouldn’t accept any of them.”
Dushok Ven’s eyes blazed with anger and his circuitry crackled wildly. “Ridiculous. This ancient race has been helping other races for billions of years. Why shouldn’t we take their gift?”
Elena smiled and glared back at the Parakur. “And how many of these races are still around?”
Again, Mexel stepped between them. “The probability of two technologically advanced races being neighbors in time and space is small. I suggest we continue with this task.” He gestured behind them and looked at Elena. “What makes you think the bird-people destroyed themselves?”
“The imagery,” she said. “The beings were condemned to sacrifice themselves to power their success. Self-defeating. Ironic.”
“The next gift may not involve such a cost,” he said. “Maybe the repercussions, as you call them, depend on the nature of the race choosing the gift. My analysis of the standard of humanity shows us to be better than those bird-people.”
Elena sighed and took the next step. What hubris.
When they reached the alcove, she said, “Before I enter, should we ask for something specific? Shradhu must be watching us continuously, or how else could it change the structure of the staircase just when we had developed a system for making the best choice? And it did say back in the medilab, ‘Whatever you desire’.”
“Like Aladdin and his lamp,” Mexel said. “But what would be appropriate?”
“Power,” Dushok Ven said.
Mexel tapped a series of commands on his datapad. “What sort? Physical. Mental. Intellectual. Martial. Medical.”
“The one thing the Unity Council desires most is military power,” Dushok Ven said. “There are threats to our existence that the populace knows nothing about. We need a mighty weapon. Or instantaneous flight to any destination, not just to those that have junts. Such an ability would enable us to deliver our weaponry against any threat.”
“So typical of a ruling elite,” Elena said. “See enemies everywhere and bomb them out of existence. Maybe we need diplomatic power or healing power.”
The parakur slapped his weapon. “With the greatest weapon in existence, merely the threat will keep humanity safe from would-be conquerors. Our way of life would be protected.”
Elena pushed herself into Dushok Ven’s face. “Didn’t you hear what Mexel said earlier? The odds of meeting another advanced race are small. There’s nothing to fear.”
“Small, but not zero,” Mexel said. “Besides, we don’t know if other races in other galaxies are even now negotiating with Shradhu, who could have set up such challenge machines throughout the entire universe. What if such races choose to arm themselves with super weapons or unimaginable ways of traversing space-time? The universe is not benevolent.”
She turned on him. “And here I thought you said the universe was random, not ordered or planned. It would be neither benevolent nor belligerent in such a view, just indifferent.”
She spun back to Dushok Ven. “And even if we had the greatest weapon in existence, any race we did contact would fear us and try to get the weapon for itself. All technologies are double-edged. We need a gift that cannot be used against us.”
The parakur sneered. “And what would that be?”
“Wisdom.”
“Over-rated.” He patted his gun again. “You will take this wish into the alcove: We desire whatever will make us rulers of the universe.”
Elena looked at both of them and recognised a determination driven by insecurity about humanity’s place in the cosmos. She nodded and slid into the alcove. Be careful what you wish for.
For a long time, she felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing. Then something gripped her and yanked her out of the alcove.
Dushok Ven had a grip on her arm. His face revealed exasperation and anger. His limbs trembled and twitched. A swaying Mexel held his head and groaned.
“Don’t ever do that again,” the parakur said once he'd regained his composure.
“I didn’t do anything,” Elena said.
“Something short-circuited our nano-systems for a few seconds.”
She wrenched her arm from his grip. “I told you, nothing happened. Maybe Shradhu didn’t like your wish idea or how you forced me to enter the alcove with it.”
“How would it know?” Mexel said with a screech. He waved his hands around. “Those ancient aliens are not here anymore. This is just a pre-programmed machine. Why would it punish us for trying to explore our options?”
Closing her eyes, Elena entered nexspace and checked the quilim of her two companions. Each rapidly vibrating fate-line, saffron for Mexel, scarlet for Dushok Ven, extended in both directions. Complicated knots of energy gathered just before and after their present moment. She widened her gaze. Other quilim swirled around theirs, some intersecting, some diverging wildly. Her own, with corresponding knots, travelled alongside theirs for a short while, yet had gaps she recognised as occasions she had entered or would enter nexspace. Some distance into the future, after parting company with the quilim belonging to her companions, her quilim vanished abruptly, energy sparking around the endpoint. She shivered. The quilim extended itself a short distance before fading away once again. Fate.
When Elena opened her eyes, Dushok Ven made to grab her, but she glared at him. He stopped.
“What did you do just then?” he said.
“I checked the repercussions of what just passed. You have no permanent damage.” She took the next step. “We should go on.”
Mexel pointed to where the alcove had been. “What about the gift in there?”
“It disappeared the instant you pulled me from the space.” Elena paused as she looked back. “If a gift was ever in there.”
She started to move, then noticed the neotek tapping out new instructions on his datapad and checking the results by closing his right eye. He nodded to himself and peered at her. “You suspect Shradhu knew we, and probably everyone else, would choose this alcove to pressure-wish.”
She shrugged. “Shradhu is technologically advanced beyond anything we can imagine. Its ability to analyse and predict behaviour must be orders of magnitude higher than ours as well.”
Mexel smoothed his cropped hair, his fingers lingering on the cooling vanes, as if checking their temperature. “Then maybe that’s what we should accept as their gift.”
Dushok Ven snarled. “Stop talking in riddles. What should we accept?”
“All their knowledge. We can build your super weapons, understand our universe, become like them.”
Elena shook her head. Won’t they ever learn?
“But we are not like them. And how can they analyse us, know what we would do, if they are long gone and have only left machines behind, even organic ones like the thing that took over Riella?”
“Intelligent machines,” Mexel said. “We’ve shied away from such things since the Shattering, but maybe the Shradhu solved the problems we encountered. Or maybe these machines are connected in some way to where they are now, their new plane of existence. Whatever the case, we have no choice but to keep going.”
“Yes,” Dushok Ven said. “Even now, the junt network may be near total collapse.”
As they reached the landing of the next alcove, Mexel pulled his companions towards him, his face flushed with excitement.
“What is it?” Elena said.
“Assuming this machine is tracking our thoughts and our behaviour, it likely is also preparing the next gift to match our desires. There’s nothing to say the gifts exist before a visiting race arrives. The winged aliens took the first one, and we could have done so if we had wanted. The gifts aren’t exclusive. The machine offers us the opportunity to try them as well. We just have to use them better than the previous races.”
“Better than Shradhu?” Elena said.
The Parakur spun around to face her. “They built this place. They evidently survived. Those other races didn’t.”
“But have we seen these builders?” she said. “All we have seen are the bird people and the entities in my vision back in the medilab. We talked with a machine that had taken over a human body. Maybe Shradhu failed, too.”
Dushok Ven pointed around the staircase and said, in a quizzical tone, “And this is their memorial?”
Mexel nodded. “Also, a trap for every other intelligent spacefaring species that comes after them: if we can’t survive, you can’t either.”
Elena touched both their arms. “Or maybe this whole structure is a cautionary tale: don’t do what we did.”
“And every race before us ignored the tale?” Dushok Ven said.
“Maybe not,” Mexel said. “The universe is vast. Maybe those successful races lived their natural cycle before we came to prominence.”
“I still think we should ignore all the gifts,” Elena said.
Dushok Ven thumped the metal wall and glared at her. “And condemn humanity to further centuries of endless travelling at sublight speeds. We need the junt network, or something similar.”
She glared at him. “How about we condemn our race to what lies at the bottom of the staircase?”
Mexel sighed and gave a quick nod. “The final gift will be there, and we won’t be allowed to leave without accepting it. That’s the way such experiments have ended in the past. The best algorithms can’t predict success 100% of the time.”
“You fools,” Dushok Ven shouted. “This is no mathematical game, no experiment. What if there is no final gift? What if it is only an exit to our doom of being vulnerable to other races?” He glared at them and placed his hand on his holster. “I won’t allow it.”
Elena took a step towards him. He whipped out his sidearm and aimed it at her head. She took another step, slowly raised her right hand, and nudged the gun aside.
“If you kill me, we lose anyway. You must trust me.”
“Yes, Dushok Ven,” Mexel said. “She’s the only one who’s had contact with Shradhu. We brought her here because nexers sense something we can’t.” The last sentence was spoken with a tone of puzzlement and appreciation.
“They are renegades.” He holstered his weapon but did not shift his fierce gaze from her. “They think themselves above the standards of our culture.”
“Maybe so,” Mexel said. “And I admit I don’t understand their nexing abilities. You can’t deny her presence helped us see what the first alcove had to offer and how it had been used.”
Through gritted teeth, Dushok Ven said, “I accept that, but how do we know she isn’t sending false visions to us?”
“To what end?” Mexel said.
“To destroy the Imperative.”
“And themselves?”
Elena touched Mexel’s arm. “Thank you for defending me. However, I can defend myself quite simply by making one simple observation: Would Shradhu let me sabotage the test? You’ve experienced its displeasure. Surely, I would suffer more.”
She opened her palms out. “I understand your misgivings, Dushok Ven, and can see sense in continuing the test, at least once more. We have only seen one gift in action. Let us see what else is possible.”
The two of them agreed, and Elena entered the alcove.
This time, when she shut her eyes, space opened up beneath her, and she plummeted into a whirlwind of images that slowly resolved into a composite picture suggesting a fractal holograph. In each image, a cube of dull metal sat at the center. In one image, cables connected the cube to vast machines housing the intertwined crystal entities she had seen earlier. These entities dream-summoned other cubes that opened into regions of space where light, like white lilies blossoming, erupted from nothing. They imagined cubes morphing into many-tentacled machines that fought against each other. Cubes flying through star systems and pulling energy and matter into their gigantic maws so they could rebuild themselves into vast networks of limbs grappling with space-time itself, before bursting into incandescence and imploding into the fissures they had created.
She entered one segment of the fractal picture and became a spherical mass of ultramarine plasma extruding limbs and sensor apparatuses at will. She extended one wobbling limb and plugged it into the metal cube. Her mind filled with images and equations that governed and controlled the images, one of which showed her extending a purple limb, though this time the metal box snapped open and swallowed her.
In another segment, she became a scaly biped with spiky protrusions along its spine and all over her head. Upon opening another of the metal cubes, she drew out small gold disks that she popped into her mouth. At once, understanding flooded her senses, and her insights rippled through the minds of her kind. She watched her race build machines that warped minds and matter to its will. Machines that resurrected their dead and interrogated them. Machines that absorbed the minds of the elite, who wanted nothing more than to indulge in martial and carnal arenas. Soon, everyone was sleeping for a million years at a time, dreaming their desires and indulgences and shutting away their fears of non-existence and boredom in tiny cubes or disks, until another race discovered these, armed themselves with terrifying energy conversion weapons powered by black hole collisions, and blasted the machines and their sleepers out of existence. Then, this latter race discovered a dull metal cube in the center of a vast labyrinth riddled with symbols that flowed like mercury and flared with cobalt-tinged white fire.
Elena snapped her eyes open and, for a moment, couldn’t see. Tears blurred her vision, and she shuddered with a mix of fear, pity, and relief. Once she regained control, she wiped her eyes and noticed her companions doing the same.
“What do you want me to do?” Her voice quivered.
Mexel shook his head. “Maybe you’re right, and the gifts are curse and blessing, and not really the reason for this test.” He waved a hand at Dushok Ven. “Well?”
The parakur strode over and peered down the stairwell. “There’s nothing there.”
Mexel joined him. “Shradhu has changed the layout again. The next turning leads onto the floor of the cavern. Either we take this gift—I’m not sure I know what it is—or we take our chances down there. What do you think, Elena?”
She looked at them both and felt an intimacy with them that she believed she could never possess with representatives of organisations that had so harmed the Nexer Guild. They were people, members of her own race who, for all their faults, were not malicious towards her or the situation. She reflected on her behaviour towards them at various times and recognised that she too was not without fault.
“We have learned something of one another,” she said.
They both nodded.
She glanced around the alcove. “Maybe that is the whole point of this test, this experiment.”
“But why?” Mexel said.
“To show what we are capable of,” Dushok Ven said. “The gifts are temptations. They bring nothing but extinction. Elena was right when she said this complex is a test of our moral character. And she was also wrong. Shradhu already knows what we are. Its machines probably recorded and analysed everything about us and our adventures long before this system re-emerged and sent the signal.”
Elena nodded. “They wanted to know if we could change, grow, be better, if only for a brief time.”
The soft glow in the parakur’s circuitry told her she had understood his line of thought correctly.
Mexel smiled at them. “Yes, this was never about power or knowledge or wisdom. We don’t need any of the gifts. It’s enough to know Shradhu existed and achieved so much. We already have what we need to become like them.”
Dushok Ven slapped the neotek on the back. “Let’s go down to see what it has to say.” He extended his hand to Elena. She accepted it and left the alcove.
In an instant, they were standing on the cavern floor. A metal doorway materialised before them. Around its edge, the glyphs from the entrance to the staircase shone brightly. The number hadn’t changed. Where’s ours?
The air inside the doorway brightened as the body of Riella Brovin walked through, unaided. A look of sorrow crossed her face. She gave a little shake of the head.
“You had so much potential.”
The three companions looked at each other in puzzlement.
“What do you mean?” Elena said. “We didn’t choose one of your gifts. That was the test, wasn’t it? To believe in ourselves. To know we can be better. Be like you.”
“You didn’t take a gift because you were afraid of being like the others who had chosen. You wouldn’t take the risk that you could be better than those who had failed with their gifts.”
“We are better,” Dushok Ven said. “We took the greater risk, to meet you here empty-handed.”
Shradhu tittered. “And you expect a greater gift because of your choice.”
Before Dushok Ven could answer, Elena strode up to the woman. “Actually, we would reject it even if you offered it to us.” The words tumbled out of her with the power of the kyph that had just struck her. “And the clarity we reached at the last alcove, the understanding that we can grow, we throw back at you.”
“What are you talking about, Elena?” Mexel said. “That’s not what we agreed.”
“I know, Mexel, but I’m now beginning to see what Shradhu is doing. Every time we figure out its strategy, it changes the rules. This is another one.”
Shradhu tilted her head as if appraising Elena anew. “Now you have come to that understanding, what is to prevent me from changing the rules again?”
Elena rode the kyph into the deep silence of nexspace. “You won’t, because we have something for you.”
The woman laughed. “What would that be?”
“Whatever you wish,” Elena said. No, not right. Too pat.
The alien leant back in surprise. “What makes you think you have something a vastly superior race could possibly want?”
The silence whispered to her.
“If you had everything, you wouldn’t be here,” Elena said.
“Our compassion keeps us here. To help species such as yours. We seek nothing in return.”
“Since you wish for nothing,’ Dushok Ven said, “then return our junt networks and let us leave here.”
Shradhu smiled. “They have been working ever since you entered the tunnel.”
“What was the point?” Mexel said. “Don’t you care about all the damage you caused?”
“Oh, we do care, though not in the same way as you. Then again, maybe it was all a game for our amusement, wherever we happen to be. Or an experiment.”
Shradhu turned back to Elena. ‘What were you thinking of offering us? Worship? Friendship?’ Wisdom?”
More whispers.
“Surprise.”
The alien pursed its lips. “What do you mean?”
“To know everything is a burden. There is no mystery. That is why your race moved elsewhere. New horizons. You can have that here.”
“How?”
“This.” Elena wrapped her arms around Shradhu, closed her eyes, and dropped into nexspace.
Her quilim curled back from that future moment of explosion and disappearance. It swirled around a knot of deep darkness that throbbed, twisted, and howled, before plunging into it. A thin, fuzzy tendril that stretched back to the first eruption of light in the universe quivered into existence. The knot shivered as it drew energy from that moment. The more energy it absorbed, the more the tendril firmed, and the more the knot unraveled into shimmering filaments of light that connected with the vast net of quilim now visible. The howling slowly modulated into a melodic humming. When the knot shrank into a globe of glowing amethyst energy, Elena’s quilim withdrew and stretched itself back into its future trajectory, though this one somehow reached beyond its original one.
Elena opened her eyes and stepped back. Her knees buckled, and Dushok Ven caught her. She nodded her thanks, shook herself down, and stood steady.
Shradhu stared at her for a long moment. “That was unexpected. What do you think you’ve done?”
“Helped you and your kind in some way I’ll probably never understand.” As with any diak.
“You expect payment?” Shradhu said.
Elena shook her head. “Consider it a gift.”
Shradhu bowed and turned to move toward the glowing doorway.
Mexel called out, his voice edged with concern. “Will you return Riella Brovin to us?”
“Soon enough. You will join her on your ship, along with her companions who died but a moment, and all this will have been but a moment, too.” Shradhu’s eyes flashed with glee. “Although you have rejected our gifts, as we thought you might, you still shall receive. We have expanded your junt network. And each of you will receive something to benefit your respective duties and destinies.”
Mexel’s voice reached a higher pitch than usual. “I can tap directly into the neotek databanks on nearby ships and systems.”
“My nanotech has increased power,” Dushok Ven said. “And I can link with my team without using the comnet.”
Elena realised the new trajectory of her quilim was her gift.
“Thank you, Shradhu. May I ask one last question?”
The alien nodded, quite formally. “You may ask.”
“Who are you?”
“The remnant of my race. What was left behind when it chose another realm.”
“Another universe?”
“Another phase of this or quite another universe. Or another phase of themselves. Which might be the same thing. I am not yet privy to everything.”
“When will you join them?”
Shradhu smiled and stepped through the doorway. “When you build a place like this.”
Just before the doorway vanished, another glyph appeared.
A spiral inside a heart shape inside a spiral.
End
