Foreigner

  Afsan thought about shouting out, about waking the others, about declaring to one and all that he could see—he could see!—he could see!

  But, no, this was a moment to be savored by himself. The stars tonight were for him and him alone. He leaned back on his tail and drank in more of the spectacle.

  It came to him, after some time of enjoying the sight: the reason his low mind had finally relented, had finally given up the fight, had finally allowed him to see. It, too, now knew what Afsan had come to understand on the conscious level.

  His time was almost up.

  Still, he reveled in the sight, the glorious sight. He watched silently as a meteor made a tiny streak across the firmament.

  Chapter 32

  They crowded together in the room, their love for Afsan enough to keep the territorial instinct at bay for a short time. Novato was there, the mother to his children, the person with whom he had discovered the truth about the universe. Emperor Dybo was there, too. Afsan’s longtime friend. Huge, vastly old Captain Keenir, who had first introduced Afsan to the far-seer, was also there. And others, as well…

  Afsan had eventually gone back to sleep, and when he awoke, it was morning, the brightness, the glorious brightness, stinging his eyes. He called for Dar-Mondark, who immediately summoned Arson’s friends.

  Although he could now see, Afsan’s condition was worsening. He’d vomited blood this morning, and the pain in his chest was spreading. He lay flat on his belly, his breath coming out in long ragged hisses. “Dybo?” he said.

  The Emperor nodded. “It’s me, Afsan.”

  “It is good to see you.”

  Dybo clicked his teeth. “It is good to be seen.”

  Afsan turned his head slightly. “And Novato—I’d know that face anywhere.”

  “Hello, Afsan.”

  “You look—” He paused, as if wondering whether to give voice to his thought. “You look wonderful. Beautiful.”

  Novato dipped her head. “Thank you.”

  “And Captain Var-Keenir.” Afsan rallied a little strength. “Ah, the times we had aboard the Dasheter!”

  “Greetings, eggling,” said Keenir, his gravelly voice cracking slightly.

  Afsan clicked his teeth. “Don’t you think I’m a bit old to still be called that?”

  “Never,” said Keenir, a twinkle in his eye.

  “And this long-shanked fellow,” said Afsan, “is doubtless my good and loyal friend. Cadool, the kilodays have been kind to you.”

  Cadool bowed deeply.

  Afsan was quiet for a moment, but then his tail began to twitch as if he were very, very sad.

  “What’s wrong?” said Novato.

  Afsan shook his head. “I—I don’t know who the rest of these people are. I should know, but I don’t.”

  One male stepped slightly closer, and then, ignoring the sharp intakes of breath around him, reached out and briefly clasped Afsan’s shoulder. “I’m Toroca.”

  Afsan’s voice was breaking. “My son.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “What a fine, handsome Quintaglio you are.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I want you to know how very, very proud I am of you.”

  “I know it, Father. I have always known it.”

  Afsan turned to the next one, a female who, incredibly, had a horn growing out of her muzzle. “And you are?” he said.

  “You mean you can’t tell?”

  “Well, I can now: I recognize your voice, Babnol.”

  “Toroca had never mentioned my, ah, horn?”

  Afsan shook his head, and saw that Babnol was pleased.

  Afsan’s tail was shaking again, beating back and forth with the strength of his emotions. “It is good of you all to come,” he said. “I know I don’t have much time left, but of all the sights I could have seen once more, none means more to me than seeing the faces of my friends…and my family.”

  There was no point in even trying a comforting lie; Afsan could see the color of their muzzles now. “I’ll miss you, Afsan,” said Dybo. “I’ll miss you terribly. You’ll not be forgotten. There will be statues of you in every province.”

  “To be remembered by my friends is enough,” said Afsan, and they saw from his muzzle that the sentiment was sincere.

  “You will be remembered by all Quintaglios,” said Novato. “You saved us. You saved us all. We’re making enormous strides, Afsan. We have our own flying machines and the tower into space, and we’re studying the projectile weapons salvaged from the Other ships. We will get off this world before it disintegrates. I promise you that.”

  Afsan was quiet for a moment. “I have a small request,” he said, his voice ragged. “Dybo, this would mean more to me than any statue. I know it will be generations hence before our ships leave this world, but when they go to their new home have them take something of me with them. Let something that I have touched be taken to the soil of our new world.”

  “Your far-seer,” said Toroca at once. “You gave me your far-seer kilodays ago. What could be more appropriate than that?”

  Afsan clicked his teeth. “Thank you, son.”

  “I’ll make it happen, Afsan,” said Dybo. “Your far-seer will travel to our new home.”

  Afsan nodded but then his body racked. “I don’t think I have much time left,” he said. “I care about you all deeply, but you can’t all stay here until the end. It’s too crowded, too dangerous. Go. Go, knowing you are in my thoughts.”

  “I want to stay with you,” said Novato.

  Afsan’s voice was faint. “I’d like that. The rest of you, Dybo, Keenir, Toroca, Babnol—I’ll miss you. Goodbye, my friends.”

  “Afsan—” said Dybo, his own voice breaking. “Afsan, I—I must know, before you…before you…”

  Afsan nodded once. His voice was soft. “I forgive you, my friend. I forgive you for everything.”

  Dybo bowed deeply. “Thank you.”

  “Now,” said Afsan, “please, all of you—God be with you.”

  “God be with you,” said the Emperor. Keenir and Babnol repeated the phrase. The three of them left, along with Toroca.

  “Afsan,” said Novato, moving closer than territoriality would normally allow, “don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid,” he said, his voice wan. “Not exactly. I don’t wish to die, but I’m not afraid.”

  “I have seen it, Afsan,” she said, her voice full of wonder. “The other side. What lies beyond. I have seen it.”

  Afsan tried to lift his head, but couldn’t manage it. “What?”

  “At the top of the space tower, I accidentally opened a door that opened right out into space. The air rushed out, and I thought I was going to die. In a way, I did die. I felt myself leaving my body, and traveling down a long tunnel toward a magnificent light.” She spread her arms. “Heaven…heaven is peaceful, Afsan. A place without pain, without concerns.”

  “You saw this when the air ran out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Novato, good Novato…” His voice was gentle. “When a person is drowning or otherwise starved for air, the mind often plays tricks.”

  “This was not a trick, Afsan. This was real.”

  “I find that difficult to believe,” he said.

  She nodded, not offended. “I knew you would. But you of all people should know that the simple idea is often not correct. There is a heaven, Afsan, and it is more wonderful than our sacred scrolls ever said.”

  Afsan’s tone was neutral. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps.”

  Novato was serene. “And there’s more, Afsan: on the other side, I saw people that I’d known before. Lub-Kaden from my old Pack, our daughter Haldan, others. Do you know what that means, Afsan? Someday, we’ll be together again. And you know what the sacred scrolls say about heaven: in the afterlife, there is no territoriality. That’s why we must hunt in packs, to prepare ourselves for the ongoing camaraderie of the next existence. We’ll be together again, Afsan, you and I. And it
will be different. Different and better. We’ll be able to walk side by side. We’ll be able to touch one another at any time.” Her face was calm, beautiful. “It will be wonderful.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Afsan. “My dear, beautiful Novato, I hope you are right.” But then his body convulsed. “I—I think it’s time,” he said at last.

  Novato reached out to him, placing a hand on his arm. “I am right, Afsan. You’ll see.”

  And then once again for Sal-Afsan, savior of the Quintaglios, everything went dark.

  Two kilodays later

  The large stone-walled enclosure had once been used to house a blackdeath but it had been extensively modified for its new purpose. A second stone wall had been built around the first. The door in the outer wall faced east; the one in the inner wall faced south. There was no way anyone could accidentally wander inside.

  It was late afternoon. Toroca came here every day at this time, going past the warning signs painted on the walls, entering through the eastern door, walking along between the two walls until he reached the entrance onto the field from the south.

  The field was two hundred paces in diameter. Most of it was covered by grass, kept short by Pasdo and Kendly, two old shovelmouths who lived inside here. They were tame beasts, as gentle as could be, and the children were crazy about them.

  Toroca stood at the entrance, looking in. There were children everywhere in the playground. Nearby, four of them were playing a game with a ball, kicking it back and forth. Farther along, he saw five youngsters intently building structures in a pit of black sand. Over there, two females were chasing each other. The one in pursuit finally closed the gap, and, with an outstretched hand, touched the other girl on her back, then turned around and began running away. The one who’d been touched now took up the pursuit, her turn to try to catch the other one.

  Toroca watched in amazement. Such a simple game, he thought, such an obvious game. And yet, no one of his generation had ever played it. But here he’d seen it spontaneously invented time and again.

  He caught sight of a movement out of the corner of his eye—something sailing through the air. A ball. One youngster had thrown it and another had caught it. The one who’d caught it was now running with it. Two others gave hot pursuit, leaping onto his back and propelling him to the ground. Jaws swung open, but only so teeth could clack together, and one of the boys reached out a hand to help the felled player back to his feet.

  Toroca beamed. In the center of the field, he saw his sister, Dynax, formerly a healer, formerly of Chu’toolar, who now worked here in this, the new creche. Toroca bowed toward her and she waved back. And there, off in the distance, carrying two youngsters, one on each shoulder, was Spenress, sister of Emperor Dy-Dybo.

  Toroca was sorry that only adults such as these—adults who, like these children, had been spared seeing the culling of the bloodpriests—could come in here. The sight of such intimate contact between individuals (even if they were juveniles) could drive most Quintaglios to dagamant. And, of course, there was always the question of—

  “Father!”

  Toroca turned. The little yellow boy was running toward him, stubby tail flying out behind. “Father!” he called again. Toroca bent his knees and held out his arms. The child ran to him, and Toroca scooped him up.

  “How’s my boy?” Toroca said, holding him close, feeling his warmth.

  Taksan looked at him with golden eyes. “Fine, Father,” he said.

  “And can you say that in the Other language?”

  Taksan nodded. “De-kat, rak-sa. But, Father, I still don’t understand why I have to learn to talk in two different ways. I mean, there’s nobody except you who can understand me.”

  Toroca set the boy down and crouched beside him. “Someday, you will go somewhere where people speak like that.” He patted the child on the shoulder. “Now, run along and play some more.”

  Taksan gave him a quick hug and went off to join his friends. Toroca watched him go, beaming with pride. Someday Taksan and some of this new generation of Quintaglios would go to see the Others again. He wanted Taksan to be able to say hello to them in their own language. But, more than that, he wanted him to be able to tell the Others just how very, very sorry the Quintaglios were.

  Epilogue

  The rest of the starships had left at various times over the last few kilodays. But this last ship hung in orbit above the innermost moon of the fifth planet. Liss extended her forefinger claw and used it to move a selector control. The viewscreen snapped to the image of that moon, waxing gibbous. A vast ocean covered almost everything except the frozen polar caps and the single continent with its archipelago of volcanic islands trailing off to the west, and another, smaller, archipelago in the nearside hemisphere. Many chains of volcanoes had popped up recently along fracture lines in the sub-sea crust. They looked like sutures in the skull of some strange round-headed beast.

  Twisting white clouds moved in neat east-west bands as the moon spun rapidly on its axis. Intertwined with these were trails of black volcanic smoke, the dying gasps of this world.

  Behind the moon was the massive planet they still called Galat-Jaroob, the Face of God. It, too, spun rapidly, causing its methane and ammonia clouds—gold and orange, brown and yellow—to play out into latitudinal bands. An awesome sight, thought Liss. She could understand how her ancestors, five hundred kilodays ago, had fallen into hypnotic stupor when they first saw it.

  Liss would be sorry to leave the Face behind, to never bask in the sight of it again. Soon, very soon, this ship, too, would head off into interstellar space. But it was their job to wait, to actually watch the breakup of the Quintaglio moon.

  An alarm sounded. The sensors left on various parts of Land were beaming up signals, warning that the final breakup had begun. At that moment, the door to the instrumentation room opened and in floated Geman. He touched Liss on the shoulder. “The computer can look after the cameras,” he said. “Come on up and watch it with the rest of us.”

  Liss checked the controls one last time, then pushed herself off the wall and followed Geman out into the corridor. They soon came to the observation deck. Thousands of green bodies, and hundreds of yellow ones, floated together beneath the vast bubble of the observation dome. Around its edges, ten giant viewscreens showed close-ups from the ship’s external cameras, from free-flying probes, and from cameras left on the surface. Between two of the viewscreens was a glass case, holding the far-seer that had once belonged to Sal-Afsan.

  Liss looked at the screens. The volcanoes in the southern part of the great ocean flared first, each in turn, like a chain of lights coming on one by one.

  On one of the viewscreens, vast walls of water—waves the height of mountains—crashed against the rocky terrain, smashing the ancient ruins of the old Capital City, then flooding over the damage, sinking it all beneath the waves.

  Soon, other volcanic chains, some with cones still submerged beneath the vast worldwide ocean, lit up. The moon Liss had been born on, always somewhat oblate because of its rapid spin, now took on the appearance of a cracked egg, the fissures aglow in red.

  Another viewscreen was showing the coastline of Fra’toolar and the blue pyramid that anchored the space elevator. The ground was shaking, and the elevator shaft, an impossibly long blue finger reaching up toward the L3 point, was shifting back and forth. Although from the ground the vibration at first seemed minimal, another viewscreen showed the top of the shaft swinging in a vast arc.

  The land was buckling and soon the stone ground beneath the pyramid started to crack. The blue material was virtually indestructible, but slowly the tower’s base began to separate from the rock strata. It didn’t topple, though. Rather, it gently rose up into the sky. The tower had begun to rotate around its midpoint, some 6,600 kilopaces above the surface of the dying moon. Although soon there would be nothing at all left of Quintaglio civilization, the blue tower, a calling card from those strange five-eyed beings who had transplanted life
to this and other worlds millions of kilodays ago, would apparently survive the breakup of this moon.

  When Liss’s world at last fell apart, it did so with each component trailing glowing red streams of magma, like fiery entrails. The globe split into three large chunks and two smaller ones. Each began to move at a slightly different speed. The same differential tidal forces that had torn the world asunder now caused each piece to find its natural orbital velocity based on distance from the Face of God.

  It wasn’t long before the two largest hunks touched together again, silently shattering into hundreds of smaller pieces, the water that had covered them both scattering everywhere, freezing into droplets in space like a trillion new stars, twinkling as they tumbled in the blue-white light of the distant sun.

  In successive orbits, the large chunks, tugged this way and that by gravitational interactions with each other and with the remaining thirteen moons, brushed and bounced together, grinding into smaller and smaller fragments. Already the pieces of debris were spreading into a thin band covering a few percent of the circumference of their orbits around the Face of God.

  As the process continued, the shattered remnants of the home world would grind into hundreds of thousands of chunks, ranging from flying boulders to gravel-sized pieces, slowly distributing themselves into a vast, flat ring around the orange-and-yellow-banded planet.

  The ship’s central computer was an artificial intelligence whose mind simulated that of the greatest Quintaglio thinker of all time. Its neural nets had been configured and reconfigured until they had been trained to give the same responses to the question that the original had, three hundred and thirty kilodays ago, when his words had been recorded by Mokleb, the founder of modern psychological research, who had probed his every thought, every emotion.

  The observation deck was crowded, but Liss was close to one of the pairs of glossy black hemispheres that were the computer’s stereoscopic cameras. “Afsan,” she said, “how long until the rubble actually forms a continuous ring around the Face of God?”