If the ship ever lifts again, her atoms will be scattered among the stars. I hoped she might find this acceptable. She was the only expedition member besides Jang who treated me with kindness.
After Hu Moon's ambiguous disappearance and Dueine's death, I spent more time sitting by the perimeter in the evening, watching the goblins and warriors at their inexplicable activities. One night a goblin came up to the perimeter and sat on a stone no more than two meters from me. It seemed to be wearing a hat made of human skin, poorly tanned. I couldn't tell which of my former companions had contributed the basic material of the hat, though it didn't seem to bear Hu Moon's distinctive tattoos. My first impulse was to bring up the gun I always carried and destroy the thing.
But I didn't, partly because its face seemed a bit less malignant than the faces I remembered from other nights. It still had that intensely knowing look, but the tiny features were almost human now.
«Yes, we've changed,» it said in quietly conversational tones. Its voice was an odd synthesis of Irvane's and Dueine's; it spoke the same Dilvermoon dialect that we had used on the ship. I was as surprised as I would have been had the ground suddenly spoken. The goblin shook its head ruefully. «I'm tinned, by my lights. Took in too much weakness. An impulse that didn't pay off, killing the unformed one. She gave us nothing but softness.»
«Who?» I asked, as if this made perfect sense.
«The young woman, Dueine. There was nothing to her. We are diluted.» It sighed. «So we will die.»
I could think of nothing to say, though my fear of the creature had subsided, and curiosity gripped me.
«And I'm curious about you,» it said.
Apparently it was completely at home in my mind. My skin crawled. «About me?» I said. «What could be interesting about me?»
It smiled, showing small white teeth. «You are different. Give me the phrase... yes...'terra incognita.'
«An unformed shape, a blank slate. We can't see the meaning of your dreams, Leeson. If you have any.»
«No?» It was still a shock to hear my name from the mouth of such a dreadful creature
«No. So, what manner of being are you?» it asked politely.
«Just a man,» I said, though what I thought was: but once I was an artist.
That's what I was always thinking. Some people hear music playing in their heads. I hear that terrible regretful phrase... once I was an artist.
«An artist, eh?» It leaned toward me. «Tell me about artists.»
I considered responding on the most concrete level– some artists daub color onto substrates, some chisel stone, some make sounds, some tell stories.
But I attempted a higher level of abstraction. «Artists make new things from within.» I shrugged. «Difficult, perhaps, to explain.»
«Not at all,» it said smoothly. «We too are artists of a sort, except that our creations are derived from others.»
«So, what manner of creature are you?» I asked.
It shrugged. «You know the basics. We take our forms from your imaginings.»
«Irvane imagined you?»
«That was my beginning, this time. Sad sad that we took the girl. So soft. Our enemies will smell it on us and destroy us all.» Its face sagged into despairing lines. «And no help from you. No one would eat such a blankness as you. Instant cessation, that would be.»
An idea was coming to me, slowly. «You want only the dreadful forms? Never the beautiful ones?»
«You're understanding now,» it said, approvingly. «It's our nature to take terrible shapes, to struggle with our generation, to pit our monstrousnesses against one another, until only the strongest and most cruel is left.»
I shook my head. «You'll all die but one?» I suppose it was my loneliness that made it seem as though I spoke with a real person.
«Of this cluster, only one will survive, when all is done.» It straightened its leathery hat. «But perhaps then one of the old ones will come out from under the mountains, and eat me.»
«You think you'll be the survivor?» I was fascinated. It was as Jang had said, it was like being in a fairy tale, one in which an evil troll sat beside me and said wonderfully strange things. For the moment I almost forgot Irvane's ravaged body and the way Dueine had come apart in their hands.
It sighed. «No, no. Not really. I spoke from simple bravado. The girl's softness... it has finished me.»
A time passed and we watched a pair of skelt fighters standing in the light of the moons. They seemed in no great hurry to address each other.
The goblin snarled soundlessly at them, its small soft lips wrinkling back. «One of them will live to the end. We cannot stand against them. The tattooed woman's own are thinkers, not fighters, and we kill them easily when we catch them. You'll have no issue, Leeson, since you have a broken mind. Soon I will be gone back, no more to feel the moonlight on my face.»
«Gone back to what?» I asked.
«Gone back to the soil in tatters. The cool soil. All my brothers and sisters,» it answered sadly. «Someday perhaps to live again, when next we have visitors.»
I was curious. «Is that where you go when the sun rises?»
«Yes, yes, into the ground or the caves. The caves are good because we remain active and can work at our schemes for dominance, but the ground is comforting, all that cool soil pressing against me, motionless. At peace.» The goblin's tiny face melted with pleasant recall, or so it seemed.
«Who are the 'old ones'?» I wondered.
«Our successes. Our terminal forms. The product of our struggle. Yes, when they become too crafty to waste themselves against other old ones even more treacherous, they go under the mountains and hide. Once in a great while an old one will come out and attack another. More frequently they come forth and eat an incomplete cluster. Like this one.» And the goblin made an expansive gesture with his long knotty arm, taking in the ruins where the monsters went about their business.
It looked at me, its bright wise eyes twinkling with malice. «I would kill you for the useless thing you are,» it said cheerfully. «I could reach across the line and twist off your head, quick as picking an apple. But it would surely shorten my own life, such as it is.»
I was conscious of wary relief. «Why?» I asked.
«You're a nothing, to us,» it said. «No dreams worth stealing. You are completely safe. You could walk through the ruins naked and soaked with blood and nothing would touch you.» It grinned at me. «Tell me what was done to you.»
I rose from my seat and brought up my gun.
«Wait,» it said. It raised both hands and I noticed that the fingers were inhumanly long. «I'll tell you one more story, then I'll leave you in peace.
«A wealthy family stopped to picnic here in the ruins once,» it said.
«It was a disaster for the units that came upon them first. Not one of them, neither mother nor father nor baby, hated anything. Can you imagine? And what did they dream? The father sometimes dreamed of other women, though his primary affection was for the mother, whom he prized. Soon he was knee-deep in doting concubines. By an unfortunate coincidence, the mother was also an admirer of beautiful women. No conflict! The baby? Well cared for and content.»
«What happened?»
«Oh, for many years they lived an idyllic life, the two of them and their lovers, and as the baby grew he found many good friends. Then the old one from the colony came out and took them all. Took their machines under the mountain for toys.» The goblin shook its thick body. «That old one... oh, now, that's something you don't want to meet.»
It rose and looked over its shoulder, where vague shapes drifted in through the broken walls. «I sense that it's time to hide,» it said. «I want to live as long as I can.»