The aliens swirled their many feet and the fibrous gills, stirring up their lake. Then their chittering answers were turned into the words, “We are skeptical.”
“To your specifications,” said the woman. “I pledge.”
The aliens spoke of rare elements that needed to be increased or abolished. Proportions were critical. Perfection was the only satisfactory solution.
“It shall be done,” the captain promised.
The aliens claimed to be satisfied. Confident of success, they slithered into the deeper water, plainly enjoying their new abode.
The captain looked across the lake, spying one machine that was plainly doing nothing.
With a commanding tone, she said, “This is Washen. We’ve got a balky conditioner sitting in the middle. Do you see it?”
Quietly, Alone eased beneath the surface, changing his shape, merging with the glassy sediment. His disguise was good enough to escape the notice of watching humans and machines. As he waited, he gathered enough power to make a sudden explosive escape. But then the artificial day faded, a bright busy night taking hold, complete with the illusion of scattered stars and a pale red moon; and it was an easy trick to assume the form of one shelled alien, mimicking its motions and chattering tongue, casually slipping out through the public entrance into a side tunnel that led to a multitude of new places, all empty.
8
Twenty centuries of steady exploration, and still the cavern had no end. Its wandering passageways were dry and often cramped, unlit and deeply chilled. The granite and hyperfiber were quite sterile. Humans and aliens didn’t wish to live in places like this. Machine species set up a few homes, but their communities were tiny and easily avoided. Once more, the habit of walking returned to his life. To help track his own motions as well as the passage of time, Alone would count his strides until he reached some lovely prime number, and then he would mark the nearest stone with slashes and dots that only he could interpret—apparently random marks that would warn him in another thousand years that not only had he had passed this way before, but he had been moving from this tunnel into that chamber, and if at all possible, he should avoid repeating that old route.
The voice found him more often now, but it was quieter and even harder to comprehend. Sometimes a whisper emerged from some slight hole or side pas-sage—like a neighbor calling to a neighbor from some enormous distance. But more often the voice was directly behind him, and it didn’t so much speak as offer up emotions, raw and unwelcome. The sadness that it gladly shared was deep and very old, but that black mood was preferable to the sharp, sick fear that sometimes took hold of Alone. One dose of panic was enough to make his next hundred days unbearable. Something was horribly wrong, the voice insisted. Alone couldn’t define the terror, much less the reasons, but he didn’t have any choice but believe what he felt. He had his solitude; there was no cause to be scared. No captains or engineers chased after him. Occasionally he slipped into some deep corner of the cavern, and for several months he would hide away, waiting for whatever might pass by. But nothing showed itself, and whatever the voice was, it was wrong. Mistaken. Alone was perfectly safe inside this private, perfect catacomb, and he welcomed no opinion that said otherwise.
One day, walking an unexplored passageway, he happened upon a vertical shaft. Normally he might have avoided the place. A human had been here first, leaving behind tastes of skin and bacteria and human oils. Leaking a faint glow, Alone spied the machine abandoned by this anonymous explorer: a winch perched on the edge of the deep shaft, anchored by determined spikes. The sapphire rope was broken. The drum was almost empty, but the winch continued to turn—an achingly slow motion that for some reason fascinated the first soul to stand here in a very long while.
After several days of study, Alone touched the drum, and that slight friction was enough to kill what power remained inside the superconductive battery. How long had it been here, spinning without purpose? And what was inside the hole, waiting at the other end of the broken blue thread?
Alone snapped two handles from the winch and uncoiled the remaining sapphire rope, tying one handle to one end. Then he dropped the handle into the dark shaft. Two hundred meters, and there was no bottom. Then he tied the rope’s other end to the winch and climbed down. The shaft turned to hyperfiber, slick and vertical, and then its sides pulled away. When Alone couldn’t reach easily from one side to the other, he let go, falling and making his body brighter as he fell, watching the dangling handle fly past. Then feeling no one but himself, he lit the entire chamber with his golden fire.
A human shape lay upon the flat floor.
Alone turned black and cold again, and he dropped hard and repaired his body and then carefully crept close to the motionless figure.
For three days, nothing changed.
Then he brightened, just slightly, straddling the figure. The human male hadn’t moved in decades, perhaps longer. There was enough thread on the winch to put him down here, but it must have broken unexpectedly. The hyperfiber floor showed blood where the man struck the first time, hard enough to shatter his tough bones and shred his muscles. But humans can recover from most injuries. This stranger would have healed and soon stood up again, and probably by a variety of means, he had worked to save himself.
Most of the Ship’s passengers carried machines allowing them to speak with distant friends. Why didn’t this man beg for help? Perhaps that machinery failed, or this hole was too deep and isolated, or maybe he simply came to this empty place without the usual implements.
Reasons were easy, answers unknowable.
Whatever happened, the man had lived inside this hole for some months and perhaps several years. He had brought food and water, but not enough of either to last long. The cold that Alone found pleasant would have stolen away the body’s precious heat, and the man starved while his flesh lost its moisture, reaching a point where it could invent no way to function. Yet the man never died. With his last strength, he stripped himself of his clothes and made a simple bed, his pack serving as his pillow, and then he lay on his back with his eyes aimed at the unreachable opening, his face turning leathery and cold and blind.
The eyes remained open but dry as stone. They might not have changed for centuries, and nobody had ever found this man, and perhaps no one had noticed his absence.
Alone considered the implications of each option.
Eventually and with considerable caution, he opened the pack and thoroughly inventoried its contents. What was plainly useful he studied in detail, particularly the sophisticated map of this cavern system. Then he carefully returned each item to where it belonged, and laid the pack beneath the unaware head. That frozen, wasted body weighed almost nothing. A good hard shake might turn the dried muscle to dust. Yet he was careful not to disturb anything more than absolutely necessary, and without a sound, he retreated. The lower length of sapphire lay nearby, coiled into a neat pile. He tied one end to the second handle, and despite the distance and darkness, he managed a perfect toss on his first attempt, the two handles colliding and then wrapping together, and he climbed past the rough knot, pulling it loose and letting the lower rope fall away before he continued his climb out from the hole.