Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #217 Read online

  "Go to the surface?” His father shuddered. “No. I belong here, as do you. As for love ... Love requires vigilance. And painful choices. This is what the Talienns made us for. Now come. You have been observing for hours. You must eat something.” He rose stiffly and clambered out of the bubble.

  "I can decide that for myself,” Tomeer said, climbing out behind him. “I am not a child.” Strilikan followed them toward the dining chamber, his claws silent on the spongy walking surface.

  "You are my child,” his father returned.

  "No, I am not,” Tomeer said. “I am a copy—a copy of a copy of a copy."

  His father placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him, and a look of tenderness came over his face that Tomeer had never seen.

  "Do you believe I love you any less for that?” he said.

  Then a high wail echoed through the empty station. The alarm keened through the corridors and thrummed in the walls themselves. And in Tomeer's body.

  For the first time in his experience, someone was approaching the station. Approaching Earth. Someone who did not want to talk to the Guardians, to hear them, only to evade or defeat them. And it was up to Tomeer to help his father fulfill the purpose for which the Talienns had engineered a hand-picked group of humans, making them the first Guardians—the purpose for which all the Guardians who came after had been born, until their fertility dwindled away and they began cloning to reproduce themselves, with less and less success, so that now the only Guardians left were his father and himself. Copies of copies. Only the purpose itself remained.

  * * * *

  "Address them,” Tomeer's father said harshly, still breathing heavily. He signed at the alarm control and the piercing noise ceased.

  Tomeer raised his hand to activate the communications array so he could speak to the approaching ship, but then paused.

  "How long has it been, father?” he said. “How long since they last tried?"

  His father's face worked, trying to control his contempt for the Expelled. “Seventy-six years,” he said finally.

  "Is that a long time between attempts?"

  His father shook his head with a bitter smile. “It matters not how long it has been,” he said. “They will never stop trying. Never. Now speak to them, or I will do it instead."

  "I must look at the ship,” Tomeer said. “I have never seen one, except in the records you have showed me."

  He opened the great Outward Watcher, the huge dome that normally showed only space. The ship was not yet in realspace, but the display would find it and show what it looked like. Meanwhile the station had stopped moving. It would wait here for the approaching vessel. Before wandering again, it would lock the ship to an orbital position directly opposite, so it was always between the ship and the Earth.

  Strilikan pattered into the control room and climbed onto the surface of the hub. Tomeer's father uttered a sound of distaste, but Tomeer only ushered Strilikan gently aside so the display could come up.

  And there it was, shimmering to life in miniature form above the hub ... one of the ships of the Expelled, a great bronze globe, finned and strapped and studded with exterior equipment, like a tiny planet.

  "It is so big,” Tomeer found himself saying. “Much bigger than the station. What they must have inside ... so much room..."

  "The Talienns were kind,” his father said austerely. “They gave the Expelled, the so-called victims, everything they could want."

  "Except permission to land or live on any planet,” Tomeer murmured. Strilikan trilled quietly in response.

  Tomeer's hand trembled over the display controls. A sense of absolute purpose had driven him, running at full tilt, down the corridors of the station to the control room. The design of the Talienns had held true.

  Yet he found that he also felt pity, more than his father ever could. These people would never set their feet on the Earth or any other world, would never experience sunlight or hear wind moving the leaves of trees, or encounter a natural animal face to face. So, too, the Guardians themselves. His hand reached out farther and touched Strilikan, who pecked gently at it, one taloned pincer just grazing the skin.

  Tomeer opened the communications array and spoke as his father had taught him. “Greetings from the Guardians of Earth. State your purpose, but know that there can be no return.” He redistributed the message in numerous languages and in all the known codes. His father nodded in approval.

  The ship suddenly appeared in realspace, filling the dome of the Outward Watcher, and drifted toward the station as if being pulled, the way the tidal waters far below were pulled by the Moon.

  "State your purpose,” Tomeer said again.

  A burst of communication signal erupted from the ship.

  "We ask permission to connect with your station,” a woman's voice said. “Our need is ... unique."

  "You may not dock, and you may not orbit,” Tomeer said, and his father nodded again. “You must depart. You know this."

  Another noise burst.

  "We are only two. We do not seek to return ... not in the way the taboo forbids."

  Tomeer looked at his father, hesitating, as the instruments confirmed that only two of the Expelled inhabited the ship.

  "The taboo forbids all returns, no matter what kind,” his father said. Tomeer looked away.

  Another burst, more white noise. Then a sound filled the control deck that Tomeer had never heard. It took him several moments to identify it as the quiet sound of a single human, weeping.

  Tomeer felt his mouth open to speak, but his father cut him off.

  "You cannot return in any way whatever,” his father said.

  There was another quick signal burst, and this time it resolved not just into sound, but into an image as well. It hovered in front of the control array, dreamlike, present yet removed.

  The weeping woman must have received an indication that her visage was transmitting, for she wiped her eyes and stared into the imager. She said nothing. Her hair was long, a pale red. Her face, damp with her tears and a little older than Tomeer's, held the emptiness of the great dark that surrounded the ship and the station and the planet below.

  Around her Tomeer could see plants in the dim light, and someone else was there, a slowly shifting figure on a bed in the background.

  Tomeer was transfixed. “Perhaps,” he said, “we could—"

  "Begone,” his father told the woman. “There is no return. Your sadness will avail you nothing."

  He shut down any transmission to the ship.

  "How could you do that?” said Tomeer. “You heard her tell us she was not seeking to return, yet you treated her as if she were lying."

  "That is what humans do,” his father said. “They do whatever they think they must."

  The woman had begun to weep again, although Tomeer could see that she was trying to compose herself.

  "And what must we do, father?” he said. “Huddle here like insects, waiting to destroy any who come near lest they succeed in arousing our interest?"

  "My son,” his father said, and laid his hand on Tomeer's. “We are the Guardians. There is no one else left to protect what we both love—what the Talienns saved by expelling humankind. I had to transmit the great purpose to another. And I succeeded. You felt the call, I know you did."

  His hand gripped Tomeer's.

  "I did,” Tomeer whispered. “I never knew it could be so strong. We are human like them. How can we live with this ... requirement built into our bodies?"

  "It is our fate,” his father answered firmly. “And fortunate for the Earth that we are here."

  They both looked again at the woman. She had heard nothing of their conversation.

  "Please believe that I do not seek to return,” she said, looking earnestly into the imager at her end. “I have only one request, and then I will leave. Hear me, Guardians. Please."

  "Father,” Tomeer said in a low voice. “If she means what she says, if she can have her request granted and go, we ought to l
isten. I have never met a ... a real human."

  His father yanked his hand away as if Strilikan had snapped at it. “Have you learned nothing?” he said. “I cannot believe you wish such a thing."

  Tomeer looked up at him. “When you die,” he said, “I will be alone—for the remainder of my life, unless I succeed in creating a successor as you have. May I not have the memory of someone besides ourselves, some instant of contact with another, that will sustain me through those long years? Help me, father."

  "It is a violation!"

  "I wish it so much."

  His father stared at him as if wondering who Tomeer was. Then he collapsed in a chair, his attitude one of defeat, and passed a shaking hand over his face.

  "I ought to do something definitive,” he said, “something that will resolve your uncertainty—a right action in the eyes of our forebears and in the eyes of the Talienns. But of course I cannot. Because you are my son, and I love you. Nothing I do will change that. And nothing will satisfy you but what you ask for.

  "You may speak with her. Briefly. But then she must go."

  He creaked to his feet, turned his back on Tomeer, and left.

  * * * *

  His father should have come with him onto the ship of the visitors, Tomeer reflected. But he had refused to leave the place where he had spent his entire life. Tomeer wondered if his father was afraid, an idea he could not conceive of voicing. His father had forbidden him to bring the woman onto the station.

  Tomeer went into the transparent preparation chamber and enveloped himself in the soft clear membrane, like the one surrounding the Earth but adapted to his shape, that would protect him from infection while he was away from the station. The Talienns had provided them in case subduing attempted returnees required boarding their ships—he could touch objects through it just as he would normally, but no infectious agent would survive contact with it or pass through it in either direction. One of the station's rarely used translocators, the controls wrapped on Tomeer's left wrist, would move him to the woman's ship.

  He took a great breath before activating it, fearing that it would cause him pain or that he would use the controls incorrectly. But it felt wonderful, as he imagined a wave of water would feel, if such a thing could move through one's body. His father, his face stricken, watched him go from the window in the chamber door, and—

  For the first time Tomeer was in a made thing other than the station. He stood there for a few moments, hardly able to take the fact into his awareness. The space around him vaulted away, the dim edges of the room that encompassed it too distant to see clearly. He felt his chest expand in response.

  A figure in a gray robe approached him through the gloom, and he recognized the woman. His body shook for a moment with the unfamiliarity of her physical presence—of any person's presence other than that of his father.

  Halting a few steps away, she said in a low voice, “I thank you and the other Guardians for speaking with me."

  "Is this—is this the way your entire ship is?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  "It is empty, as you see,” she said. “Only my father and I are left. Until recently, there was another family, but they evacuated themselves out of the lock together.” She bowed her head. He realized that he could smell her body—the protective membrane must know the molecules that made up her aroma were harmless, otherwise it would not allow them through. The smell frightened him with its strangeness, yet he savored the soft tang at the back of his nose. Then he remembered to respond.

  "I am sorry you and your father are alone,” he said. “I am Tomeer the Guardian."

  "I am Ainkia,” she said.

  "I will hear your request, although I cannot say whether it will be granted. But,” he added, “there is time for that. I have never seen one of your ships from the inside."

  Ainkia smiled a little. “Would you like me to show you how we have lived?"

  And so she took him through much of the great ship, although it was far too big for them to walk the whole extent of it. Pathways spiraled through the central part, and plants grew everywhere. It was almost as green as Africa. A miniature sun hung suspended in the very center, and waxed and waned, Ainkia told him, according to human time-needs. This sun had begun to dim, and streamers of pink and orange light rippled through the air around them.

  Around the central part ranked layer after layer of rooms, rooms of all kinds: rooms to eat in and sleep in, rooms to play in, rooms in which to make things, rooms in which people could gather in large groups. One after another, so many that Ainkia gave up trying to take him to all of them. It was unimaginable to him, how many people had once lived here.

  "Where is your father?” he finally asked, as they stood in the central part once more. The miniature sun had changed itself into a pale globe, glowing from the center of the forest. He realized this was meant to remind the people who had lived here of the Moon. Starlike particles of light hovered high among the plants, as if one were truly looking out toward the heavens.

  "He is no longer conscious,” she said, and plucked a white flower from a nearby plant. She held it out to him.

  Tomeer had learned about flowers in the Guardians’ archives. He took the blossom in both hands. “What is his illness?” he asked.

  "Age,” she said. “Despair. Surrender. His heart is giving out. It was the same for all the others. That is why there are no other ships left, or at least no one inside them. Nothing specific was needed to destroy our species, you see. Surely the Talienns knew that. The separation from Earth was enough. He will be dead soon. I am grateful to have arrived before the end."

  Even as she spoke, Tomeer suddenly smelled the flower and found himself bending his head to take in its fragrance. Its petals curved, arching back from a yellow center.

  He had never held a comparable living thing in his hands, save Strilikan and his predecessors. He thought of his father, a copy of a copy, far removed from the last Guardian who had been born instead of made.

  "You are all gone?” he said. “All the ships are empty, all the three hundred that the Talienns sent away?"

  For the first time he saw anger in her eyes.

  "All,” she said. “All. All dead. Those not destroyed by the Guardians when they tried to return...” She raised her hands, then let them fall. “Madness, violence amongst themselves, or despair and disease. As with us. As with my father."

  "I am sorry,” Tomeer said. “I wish I could help your father, but there is no technology the Talienns granted us that you would not already have. Our only superiority is in the shield around the Earth, and our weapons."

  "I am aware of that,” she said. “We grew up knowing it."

  She turned to go, and he stopped her with a touch on her arm. Her skin felt warm, smooth.

  "Tell me your request,” he said.

  She took a breath, almost a sob, her head still turned away.

  "Come with me first,” she said.

  He followed her out of the central area of artificial night and up level after level, to a small room near the very top of the ship, where the ceilings leaned in as the great sphere curved to a close. A yellow light warmed the room, unlike the dim places she had showed him earlier. On a bed lay an old man, so thin he looked almost flat under the white sheets. This was what Tomeer and his father had seen when they communicated with the ship, Tomeer realized.

  They approached. The man's eyes remained closed. He seemed older than Tomeer's father. They stood there in silence, listening to the rasp as his chest lifted up, then fell, lifted, then fell.

  "How long has he lain here?” Tomeer whispered.

  "Seven days,” she answered in a low voice. “He can hear me and understand, I believe. But he cannot speak."

  She bent to stroke his forehead. He moaned a little and opened his eyes. But they seemed vacant and soon closed.

  Tomeer followed Ainkia out of the room, not wanting to admit to himself that he was horrified at the sight of the old man, relieved
to be away from him.

  "Once my father has died,” Ainkia said, “I will no longer care about anything. I will steer the ship away from here and take my own life when I am ready. But he is the last of those who did care—those who would have given anything to breathe the air of Earth and drink her waters. When he is dead, there will be no more humans to trouble the Guardians but me, and the purpose of the Talienns will have been fulfilled. I believe it is fitting that he should be buried—there.” And she waved a hand to indicate the surface below.

  "That,” she said, “is my request."

  * * * *

  "The ship is astounding, father,” Tomeer exclaimed. He heard himself go on and on: the plants, the appearance of the heavens created artificially inside the ship, space for so many humans, the beauty and surprise of it—

  "But it is empty! They are all gone after this long time. All except her, and her father. He is ill. So ill he is dying."

  "So am I,” his father said. “You were gone too long."

  Strilikan came into the room chewing the remains of a much smaller insect, likely from some corner of the station Tomeer and his father no longer used. Shreds of torn chitin dangling from his beak, he greeted Tomeer, who held out the fingers of one hand. Strilikan tapped the nails delicately with a pincer for a moment, then wandered away again.

  "He is dying faster than you, father,” said Tomeer. “Within days he will be dead, and Ainkia—"

  He saw his father stiffen at his use of a name for a returnee, and raised his hands in apology.

  "All she seeks is to bury him in Earth's own soil,” he said. “Then she will go away, and when she is ready, she will end her life herself.

  "There is nothing left of them, father,” he went on. “Why would we not grant this request? Even if she herself remained on the surface, nothing could happen to harm the Earth. Thousands of people would be needed to reproduce and grow more numerous, otherwise they would die out quickly."

  "The taboo is a moral imperative, not just a biological solution,” his father snapped. “It is a judgment, and all humans must suffer its effects."