Hesitant at first to approach too near, Robbins was now examining the length and breadth of the alien body. “It’s dead.”
Low made a face. “Can’t fool a reporter of your experience.”
She ignored the gentle sarcasm. “I wonder how many times those life crystals can revive the deceased?”
“We’re about to find out.” Digging into a pocket, he brought out one of the green shards he had retained from Brink’s private hoard. Leaning over an oddly jointed shoulder, he placed the glowing fragment atop the Cocytan’s chest in much the same manner as before. The interior of the chamber suddenly filled with darting, swirling sparks, like bits of flame that had become estranged from their candle.
Straining unsuccessfully to break through, one of the fretful, watching Cocytans drew back from reality. “This can’t go on. They cannot continue to resurrect the Creator.”
“Why not?” A hundred thought-forms passed through the objector, with no harm to either.
“Because the process is exhausting. The Creator had no patience when alive. In death it has less.”
“Would that we could share the experience,” bemoaned a thousand-and-three. “Death is so physical.”
Alas, for every Cocytan present save one, death was no more attainable than the caress of a single sunbeam.
Low took Robbins’s arm and drew her back as the crystal melted into the broad chest. It being her first encounter with the remarkable phenomenon, she looked on in mute fascination.
For the second time that day Cocytan eyes fluttered open, the beaklike mouth twitched, and an inhuman respiratory system manipulated air. For the second time the tall, muscular form raised itself laboriously to a sitting position. Turning slowly on the powerful, arching neck, the head stopped when eyes caught sight of the two humans. Under that forceful stare Robbins unconsciously moved a little closer to Low, who, without thinking, put an arm around her waist. This time she didn’t shrug him off.
The resurrection was not a miracle, only a phenomenon so far beyond the capability of Earthly science as to seem like one, an in vivo validation of Clarke’s law. Certainly it was such to the Cocytan. Rather than revel in its revivification, it remained motionless atop the platform, plainly less interested in its restored life than its tiny audience. Though he had no effective basis for such an interpretation, Low thought the alien looked bored.
“Try,” he whispered to her.
Taking a hesitant step forward, Maggie let her recently acquired knowledge flow from her lips. Though it was the reaction and response they’d hoped for, it was still something of a shock when the Cocytan turned its gaze on her alone and replied.
“I can understand it.” Muted awe underlined her reaction. “Not perfectly, but I can understand. I guess I didn’t spend enough time at the inducer.”
“Talk to it,” Low encouraged her.
She looked back at him uncertainly. “What’ll I say?”
“Don’t ask me. You’re the journalist. You’ve done interviews before.”
She swallowed. “This is a little different, you know.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he murmured impatiently. “Just start a conversation. Ask if it knows where more of the round plates are. Ask it how we can get home. Ask it—”
“I can’t ask it anything,” she hissed, “if you don’t shut up.” Low obediently subsided.
It was extraordinary to hear the guttural singsong flow from the mouth of Maggie Robbins, more remarkable still to see and hear the Cocytan reply. She did her best to translate for her companion.
“I introduced us. In response it says it’s called the Creator. That’s the name, or appellation, that its kind bestowed upon it. As near as I can translate, anyway.”
“Impressive moniker. Keep going.”
She spoke again, and for the second time the entity responded without prompting. “It doesn’t think so. In fact, I get the distinct impression it’s not happy with the title. But it’s short, and it says that it’s real name is much too long and complicated for me to handle. I’m not about to argue the point.”
“The plates,” Low urged her. “Ask it about the plates.”
But the Cocytan had its own conversational agenda and refused to be led. Robbins was compelled to explain not only who but what they were, and how they had come to be marooned on Cocytus. After a while, she was given a chance to translate for Low.
“It hasn’t been dead so long that it’s forgotten its sense of curiosity. It is somewhat interested in us.” She turned back to the alien, which was speaking again.
“I cannot tell you how to reactivate the asteroid-ship, as you call it. I have no interest in that.”
“But we have.” Within the context of the complex Cocytan grammar she tried to emphasize the importance of the request. “This isn’t our world, isn’t our home.”
“It is no longer mine either,” the entity replied. “Or any other thinking being’s. It is a place of cognitive death, where all that survives of the thinking are machines. Long may they thrive.” The bitterness of the alien’s words came through clearly. “They were built well. In the case of one, far too well.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. Tell me what happened here. Where are all the others? What happened to this world?”
The vestigial wings fluttered slightly, and a great sigh came from deep within the massive chest. “Very well. I will tell you. I will do my best to keep my words simple and straightforward so that you may be sure to understand. And when I have finished, I would ask that you leave me to my chosen destiny and disturb me no more.”
She nodded understandingly. Low was close and anxious.
“Well?”
“It’s going to explain some things,” she told him. “In return, it wants something from us.”
He frowned. “What could it want from us?”
Bright blue eyes stared back at him. “Death.”
CHAPTER 18
The questions flowed fluently. It was startling how easy it was, as if she’d known the language since childhood. The words poured out of her, her mind managing the difficult translation effortlessly. Only when she encountered a word or term that had not been imparted to her by the Educator did she have trouble. It was as if she were performing simultaneous translation from the Russian with the odd word interspersed in Quechua.
“Who are you? Not a name. Tell me an individual.”
“As I told you, I am called Creator, a designation I did not choose for myself. Builder would have been more appropriate. Designer, Conceptualizer. I should prefer Engineer.”
She remembered to translate for Low. “It’s an engineer.”
“That’s something.” Low allowed himself to feel hopeful.
“You’ve been dead,” she observed, unselfconsciously restating the obvious.
“Pleasantly. Soon I will be again, if you will stop interfering. I long ago grew tired of life, the follies attendant upon it and the absurdities to which even the supposedly intelligent are heir.”
Low responded to Maggie’s translation. “Tell it we’re sorry to have disturbed its … rest. We respect its wishes to remain dead and promise not to revive it again. Tell it we both share strong desires. It wants not to live and we very badly want to go home. But we can’t do that without help. We didn’t ask to be brought here anymore than it asked to be revived.”
Robbins nodded and translated. When she’d finished, fathomless alien eyes shifted slightly and came to rest on the Commander.
“Yet you are here. I see that some background is in order.
“Long ago, this world of—I will use your far simpler nomenclature for it—Cocytus was a strong and vigorous place. We discovered how to bend the material world to our needs, much as you are learning to do.”
Robbins frowned. “How do you know that? You know nothing of our world.”
It turned back to her. “You would not be here now if you were not technologically inclined. Only a technically advancing species would have the ability to reach one of the Messengers.”
“Messengers? Is that what you call the asteroid?”
“Patience, little biped. We believed that our society and philosophy had matured along with our technology. We found a way not to exceed the speed of light but to bypass it. I cannot think of a simpler way to put it and I assure you the technical description would be beyond your comprehension.”
“That’s for sure,” she responded. “I can’t even program my VCR.”
“We chose not to utilize this discovery for personal travel because search times were very long. Integral to the process is a boomerang effect. So while out-search travel times are quite long, returns take comparatively little time. Otherwise you would have aged greatly during your journey.
“We sent out many such probes to systems that harbored planets and that we hoped might also prove home to other intelligences. It is a vast universe in which to be alone and we avidly sought the companionship of other species. Each probe was disguised, camouflaged, as a natural phenomenon so as not to alarm the local inhabitants.”