ThreeAndrea said, “Almost thirty thousand years for me. Somewhat less for you.” Her voice was as he remembered it, different from his own, lighter. She spaced her words irregularly. He’d always wondered if it was an error in her programming, or if she did it on purpose to be unique. She continued, “You anchored into an inactive sector, or it broke soon after you arrived. There was no way for you to recharge.”
“I thought you were dead. You didn’t move.”
For seconds she didn’t reply. He continued scanning himself. No power. No propulsion. No way to move his arms. He couldn’t access his grid to see what new damage there might be.
Then she said, “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
He had no answer for that. “How much time do we have?”
“I haven’t been repairing, just storing. Four minutes between the two of us. I can’t move you, though. The only way for you to stay active is hooked to me.”
“Well, then don’t let go.” He could feel the power coming from her, and it tingled oddly. His system had to reroute it, and it wasn’t exactly the same as he was used to, as if the electricity was flavored by passing through her. It wasn’t unpleasant.
“I won’t. Have you looked down?”
If he could have shook his head, he would have. He realized that since the Maker’s planet had stopped responding, he’d spent every waking period looking up, examining the grid, peering at the diminished sun beyond.
“I don’t have the power to,” he said.
“Look through mine,” she said, and she clicked open relays that allowed him access to her scanner.
The field that was the universe was absolutely blank. An empty distance, devoid of radiation and light; nothing was out there. “Where are the stars?” Marvell said.
“They’re gone.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
“Then this is the last?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“Walt Whitman would be sad,” Marvell said. “He wrote, ‘I wandered off by myself, in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, looked up in perfect silence at the stars.’”
“He got the silence right,” said ThreeAndrea.
Marvell tried to access his clock. It still wasn’t working. “How much more time?”
“Not long.”
“What’s the condition of your grid? Will we wake again?”
Marvell sensed her withdrawing as she consulted her system.
“We might, but it’s all grown so old.”
He knew she meant the grid, the sun and them. Everything.
“Are you afraid?” Marvell asked. He studied the blankness below them. It was totally featureless, without depth or meaning. All the stars that once shone gone at once, finally. The long play ended.
“Not now. It’s just sleep mode,” ThreeAndrea said.
“I can feel your hand, you know,” Marvell said. His sensors recorded the pressure of her manipulators against his own. Sensitive to the last, his fingers caressed the metal texture, brittle in the deep, deep cold.
“Yes, I hoped you could.”
ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES
Romulus stood under an elm in the moon-washed shadow of the long, green sward between Gray Mountain Golf Course’s ninth fairway and the Gray Mountain Country Club, listening to the tinny dance music of Pinehurst High’s prom. He pried chunks of bark off the tree absently with his fingernail, but his focus was on the building, pink light leaking from the windows, a hundred shiny windshields catching the moon in the parking lot beyond, and the sad-leafed whisper of the wind. Shadows passed between the light and the windows, couples dancing, heads close together, gliding by during the slow song, and Romulus wondered which one was Fay with her date, what’s-his-name, the troll.
He looked through the leaves at the moon, three days short of being full, and he scuffed the ground in disgust. Since September, when Student Senate scheduled the dance, he’d known. All the full moons were marked on his day-planner, mixed in with deadlines for college applications, baccalaureate, Senior Academic Awards night and graduation. There it was, a perfectly circular moon on the Tuesday after prom, and he’d known he would be standing outside, skin a little itchy, jaw aching, watching the dance.
When Romulus was a freshman, Dad told him it was regressive genetics catching up. They’d sat in his bedroom, Romulus’ wildlife posters covering the walls, Dad, a little embarrassed, telling him the facts of life.
“You’re getting to that age, son.” Dad pressed his hands on the tops of his knees and locked his elbows straight, clearly uncomfortable.
“I know, Dad.” Romulus scooted farther away on the bed. Dad’s weight pressed the mattress down, and no matter where Romulus sat, he felt like he was an inch away from tumbling into him. And Romulus did know. He’d known for years, listening to his parents talking late at night, marking their calendars, Dad slipping out at dusk the nights of a full moon. What kid wouldn’t know?
“You’re going to start noticing girls more. You’re a sensitive boy,” Dad said.
Romulus blushed. It was true, he did. They’d walk by him in the halls, their backpacks hanging off one shoulder, intent on conversations with each other, and he’d catch himself staring at the almost invisible hair on a naked wrist, the curve of muscle in a neck. But most of all, it was their smell. For the longest time he hadn’t known what it was. Once a month, or so, depending on the girl, he’d catch a stray whiff beneath the shampoo and perfume and hair spray, and his muscles would tense. He hoped to god Dad wasn’t going to say anything about that. That would be too much. He’d rather jump out the window than listen to Dad fumble his way through an explanation of the smell.
Instead, Dad launched into an oblique reference to evolution and the origin of the species. “The genes mixed, son. I know what they told you in your science classes about where man came from, but they don’t know the half of it, the magical half.”
Romulus let out a relieved sigh. Dad wasn’t going to talk about girls after all. Instead he talked about elves and harpies, goblins, giants and humans. “The dominant breed won out and all were assimilated. Everyone’s human, more or less, but sometimes a regressive gene rises to the surface. Do you know what I’m trying to say?” He put his hand on Romulus’s knee. “You’re a special kid. There are others like you, some just like you, some from the other races, a little bit of old ancestry, the old mythologies, in everyone, more or less.”
“Sure, Dad. Thanks for clearing this all up for me. I’ve got to do my homework now. Okay?”
“Oh, good.” Dad let out a noisy sigh, like he’d just set down a great weight. “So you know why things are the way they are?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Then Dad left. Romulus didn’t do his homework, but lay in bed instead, his hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling, thinking about smells.
So he started paying attention to the lunar calendar his freshman year, and as time wore on he grew a few inches, filled out in the chest, found he needed to shave, and the week of the full moon he didn’t schedule anything at night. Was Dad right? he wondered. Was everyone descended from mythological creatures? Sometimes he wandered the halls during passing period, or he sat in class and tried to figure where the other students came from. Was the cheerleader part elf? Was the junior class president’s great, great, great, great (and so on) grandmother a gorgon? She was frightening enough, and there was a snakiness to her hair when she stood in the wind. He sniffed her, but she smelled purely human. He’d never identified anyone’s deep ancestry until he smelled the troll in the boy who liked Fay, and that was a pure scary fluke. They’d bumped in the hall. The troll shoved him off, and in the shove Romulus had smelled him. A line of associations clicked—an instinctive recognition—but so strong that for a second the boy’s hands were twisted claws, and his incisors hung from his mouth like stout tusks.