Soon, though, the walls smoothed out and the ceiling grew higher. Humans had extended the tunnel, squaring it with laser precision. Doors lined both walls now and the ceiling glowed with glareless, shadowless light. Still she hugged herself against the chill that the two men did not seem to notice.
They stopped at a wide double door. Dorn tapped out the entrance code on the panel set into the wall, and the doors slid open.
“Your quarters, sir,” he said to Humphries. “You may, of course, change the privacy code to suit yourself.”
Humphries gave a curt nod and strode through the open doorway. Elverda got a glimpse of a spacious suite, carpeting on the floor and hologram windows on the walls.
Humphries turned in the doorway to face them. “I expect you to call for me in twelve hours,” he said to Dorn, his voice hard.
“Eleven hours and fifty-seven minutes,” Dorn replied.
Humphries’s nostrils flared and he slid the double doors shut.
“This way.” Dorn gestured with his human hand. “I’m afraid your quarters are not as sumptuous as Mr. Humphries’s.”
Elverda said, “I am his guest. He is paying all the bills.”
“You are a great artist. I have heard of you.”
“Thank you.”
“For the truth? That is not necessary.”
I was a great artist, Elverda said to herself. Once. Long ago. Now I am an old woman waiting for death.
Aloud, she asked, “Have you seen my work?”
Dorn’s voice grew heavier. “Only holograms. Once I set out to see The Rememberer for myself, but—other matters intervened.”
‘You were a soldier then?”
“Yes. I have only been a priest since coming to this place.”
Elverda wanted to ask him more, but Dorn stopped before a blank door and opened it for her. For an instant she thought he was going to reach for her with his prosthetic hand. She shrank away from him.
“I will call for you in eleven hours and fifty-six minutes,” he said, as if he had not noticed her revulsion.
“Thank you.”
He turned away, like a machine pivoting.
“Wait,” Elverda called. “Please—how many others are here? Everything seems so quiet.”
“There are no others. Only the three of us.”
“But—”
“I am in charge of the security brigade. I ordered the others of my command to go back to our spacecraft and wait there.”
“And the scientists? The prospector family that found this asteroid?”
“They are in Mr. Humphries’s spacecraft, the one you arrived in,” said Dorn. “Under the protection of my brigade.”
Elverda looked into his eyes. Whatever burned in them, she could not fathom.
“Then we are alone here?”
Dorn nodded solemnly. “You and me—and Mr. Humphries, who pays all the bills.” The human half of his face remained as immobile as the metal. Elverda could not tell if he were trying to be humorous or bitter.
“Thank you,” she said. He turned away and she closed the door.
Her quarters consisted of a single room, comfortably warm but hardly larger than the compartment on the ship they had come in. Elverda saw that her meager travel bag was already sitting on the bed, her worn old drawing computer resting in its travel-smudged case on the desk. She stared at the computer case as if it were accusing her. I should have left it home, she thought. I will never use it again.
A small utility robot, hardly more than a glistening drum of metal and six gleaming arms folded like a praying mantis’s, stood mutely in the farthest corner. Elverda studied it for a moment. At least it was entirely a machine; not a self-mutilated human being. To take the most beautiful form in the universe and turn it into a hybrid mechanism, a travesty of humanity. Why did he do it? So he could be a better soldier? A more efficient killing machine?
And why did he send all the others away? she asked herself while she opened the travel bag. As she carried her toiletries to the narrow alcove of the lavatory, a new thought struck her. Did he send them away before he saw the artifact, or afterward? Has he even seen it? Perhaps …