“This is not a patient animal,” one engineer said. “Assuming fabrication methods we understand, using the resources of this entire body, and with every machine focused on a single job—”
“Fast,” said a second engineer.
“Yeah, it’s quite a show.”
“Because we’re important,” the ranking xenobiologist maintained. “She wants to put on a good performance for us.”
“Wait,” Pamir said.
“To impress or intimidate us—”
“Shut up!”
The greeters had abruptly stopped singing. Limbs were still raised high, but their bodies were rigid, powerful
voices caged deep in their lungs. Into that sudden silence came the ringing of water tumbling over a distant falls. Then a moment later, the falls went dry. And in the next instant a single voice—a seemingly tiny voice—called out from between two of the towering bodies. “Hello,” it said. She said. “Friends. Is that the proper word? Friends, my friends, hello!”
SHE WAS TINY, and she was the world.
The willowy figure wore what looked like a lemon white dress. Approaching, she displayed a human form very much like a half-grown girl, curled black hair spilling down to the narrow shoulders, large curious eyes watching everything while a wide, infectious smile focused on her guests. The humans answered the smile with their own smiles. Pamir couldn’t help himself. In the bright and utterly false sunshine, she was fetching. She appeared charming. With a sweet, vexing gait, she nearly danced toward that huddle of people, the wide mouth displaying tiny teeth as a voice clearly meant to be pleasing said once again, “Hello, friends.”
Everyone gave a nod, muttering, “Hello,” with a reflexive politeness.
Then with a large, almost giddy voice, O’Layle called out, “My world, my savior! Hello to you, darling!”
Behind the figure came a parade of humanlike legs, one after another, each helping to hold high what looked to be some kind of stalk or tendril, as big around as a good-sized arm and stretching far back into the jungle. The closest legs were directly behind the girlish body, and when she walked into the open, everyone saw how the stalk lifted up into her thick black hair, dividing into thousands of strands—an army of neural connections linking those dark black eyes with some vast Gaian sub-brain.
“Superconductive proteins,” the xenobiologist guessed.
“Clumsy,” one engineer muttered.
“Wouldn’t have to be,” a second engineer countered. “She could use nexus-style linkups. No physical connections, and they’d work a lot better.”
Pamir shook his head.
“You’re missing the point,” he warned. “This is supposed to accomplish something. And that’s what?”
For an embarrassed moment, the distant experts said nothing.
“To remind us—” the xenobiologist finally began.
“What this is,” he rumbled. Then to the people standing around him, he said, “Don’t forget to whom we’re speaking.”
The world was taller than she first appeared. Taller than Pamir, and not just a little bit taller. She walked up to them, stopped, and said, “Sit before me,” while a hundred legs bent low. “Close, please, my friends. Join me.”
On the warm slick steel, everyone sat.
“It was a safe journey, I trust.”
Pamir said, “Very safe. And thank you for your considerable, gracious help.”
The shrug was rather like O’Layle’s shrug, complete with a palpable self-satisfaction. Which probably meant nothing besides the telling influence of a single teacher. The black eyes seemed to absorb the faces before her. In a soft whisper, she said each of their names. Except she ignored O’Layle, and with a distinct fondness, she said, “Pamir,” while reaching out with one long hand, fingers like brown wires touching first his nose and then the rugged end of his chin.
He didn’t move.
When the hand was withdrawn, she told everyone, “For my sort, it is important. A meeting such as this.”
“With us, too,” Quee Lee offered.
“We are not all that different,” the voice continued. “In a sense, each of you is a world, the same as me.”
That won a few polite nods.
“Just much smaller than me,” the world added.
Pamir narrowed his gaze, concentrating on one of the world’s delicate hands.
Again the arm reached, fingers quickly touching each of the nervous faces. Save for O’Layle, again.
“All is well on your Great Ship?”
Pamir gave a little nod. “We believe so.”
“Good!” The hand was withdrawn, and after a moment’s pause, the world said, “You must miss your ship, I would think.”
“Quite a lot,” Quee Lee replied.
“Return,” said the world. “Begin now, if you wish.”
O’Layle flinched. “Is that all?” he blurted. Then with a low laugh, he added, “These people came a great distance, my love. And for what? To sit here for two breaths—?”
“Quiet,” Pamir warned.
“I don’t want them to leave,” the man complained. “Not so soon, please.”
The girlish face didn’t quite look in his direction. But the voice deepened noticeably, remarking in a distinctly casual fashion, “You might wish to accompany them. Go home in their vessel, perhaps.”
Confusion grabbed O’Layle. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then with a wounded sound, he asked, “Like that? You want me to abandon you?”
“Or remain with me,” he was told. “A world has its own will, and if you don’t wish to leave, you may remain here.”
O’Layle seemed eager to believe the invitation; he was desperate to feel pleased by the invitation, no matter how weak it sounded. But some force or half-born intuition kept him from celebrating. “I miss people,” he sputtered. “That’s all I meant to say. I thought maybe our new friends and I could wait here for a few years … until the Great Ship was past us, maybe … and then they could go out and catch their home after it clears the nebula …”
He paused, finally noticing that something was wrong now.
“What?” he whispered. “Is it … getting darker … ?”
Pamir had been watching the sky for the last few moments.
Yes, the blue-white lights were dimming. Already the shadows were softening, a newborn gloom beginning to hide the endless stalk and all those crouching legs that led off into the jungle.
“What’s happening?” O’Layle demanded. Then with a foolish hope, he asked, “Is something wrong with the light?”
The black eyes stared only at Pamir.
“The light,” the Blue World answered. “The light was an indulgence meant for human eyes. But this world prefers to use her energies in more appropriate tasks.”
They were already halfway to night.
“What about my home—?” O’Layle began.
“It has been dark since you left,” the voice reported.
“And your structure has been absorbed and remade:”
O’Layle rose on trembling legs. “But,” he muttered. Then with the pain of someone who was losing the love of his life, he moaned, the sound inadequate and lost and almost too soft to hear. “This isn’t fair. I don’t want this:’
Pamir rose, and everyone but the world did as he did.
“To the shuttle,” he ordered.
But then he stood his ground, watching the girl-shaped bag of water and salt.
Perri leaned toward O’Layle. “Stay if you want,” he whispered. Then with a teasing menace, he asked, “How long can you tread water?”
The man nearly struck him.
It was Quee Lee who took O’Layle by the shoulder, and with a patient and halfway-understanding voice said, “I know. But really, you should remember that you’re alive and have this choice. Hmm?”
The man nodded weakly, retreating with the others now.
For the second time in his life, he was willingly abandoning his home in order to save his tiny soul.
Pamir continued to stare at the entity before him. The world sat with its long legs crossed, a bright little smile hinting at an array of emotions, none of which were
likely or valid. “You took a little slice from each of us, didn’t you? With the touch. Those fingers. You scraped off some of our dead skin.”
“To know you better, yes. I have sent the tastes back to what passes, I suppose, for my mouth.”
“That’s how polyponds operate? When you meet one another—?”
“A sharing of self is essential. Yes.”
“Okay.” For a moment, he imagined his genetics being consumed and disassembled. Then he swallowed his disgust, remarking, “I should get a little taste of you, too. If I understand this ritual.”
“Naturally.”
From beneath the white gown, one of the hands withdrew what seemed to be a hunter’s knife, and with a smoothness of purpose that couldn’t help but unnerve Pamir, the other girlish hand yanked at the stalk, giving it enough slack for the knife to cut through in a single motion, a clean wet hissing accompanying the surgery as the heated steel blade cauterized the wound.
With a slight tremor, this tiny piece of the world stood.
A deep perfect darkness had fallen around them. Only the glow leaking from inside the shuttle showed them where to step. A few moments later, a deep roar began in the distance, in every direction, and grew swiftly into a thunderous mayhem. The jungle was being destroyed. Absorbed. Digested. The Gaian was beginning to clean away what for it was nothing but an elaborate but odd scab on its otherwise unblemished flesh.
“Pamir,” said the figure beside him.
“Who are you now? The world still?”
“When your skin cells are taken, do they remain part of you?”
“You’re separate now,” he surmised.
She said, “Entirely. Yes.”
“Are you a new world then?”
“Again,” she said. “When a cell of yours leaves your body, is it another you?”
“Not really.”
“Not really,” she repeated.
“But it might be, treated in the right ways. If it was allowed to grow.”
“Creation,” she said with a warm and fond and very much spellbound voice. “It is an endless, wondrous process. Creation is.”
They had reached the base of the shuttle. Behind them, the towering greeters began to tilt and fall, crashing onto the bare metal, bones shattering and their flesh splitting wide, the sound of black fluids gushing an instant before a thousand new mouths began to suck and chew, pulling this wealth of organics back into stomachs of every sort. Pamir watched. With the dim glow of the shuttle, he could just make out hills of meat and spent plumage quickly collapsing, everything about this show impressive—which was precisely as it was intended to be.
“Creation,” said the creature beside him.
He started up into shuttle, remarking with more warmth than necessary, “I’m sorry. But we don’t have room for two new bodies. If you come home with us, we’ll have to freeze you inside one of the hydrogen tanks.”
“Of course,” she said.
She didn’t ask about O’Layle’s fate, or lack thereof.
Then with a slow, careful voice, she admitted, “The guest of mine, this O’Layle, mentioned that your Great Ship carries a rather special cargo.”
Pamir said nothing.
“Or a passenger, perhaps. Very old and kept safe at the core.”
The continent shivered beneath them, individual masses of spongework being ripped apart at the seams.
“Very old,” she repeated.
“We don’t understand what’s down there,” he admitted. “But in our communications, I’m sure the Master Captain explained everything that we do know.”
The only light in the world was inside the shuttle.
Washing across her face, it made her look simple and entranced, happier than perhaps any organism had ever been. O’Layle was somewhere above, still sobbing. Otherwise, it felt as if they were stepping inside an empty vessel.
“A prisoner,” she mentioned. “That’s what some call it.”
Pamir said nothing.
“Ancient as the universe,” she exclaimed. “Or more so.”
The world beneath him continued to tremble. Beside him, thousands of tons of freshly killed flesh were being eaten whole. A sad little man was weeping over the loss of his vast lover, and meanwhile the Great Ship was plunging headlong into a black nebula populated with a multitude of very peculiar souls.
The dread was real and abusive. But try as he might, Pamir couldn’t decide which of those problems had the strongest, most dangerous grip.