That morning they walked parallel to the avenue of trees, keeping a good three hundred metres distant. They kept noticing movement on the path. It was almost subliminal. Shadows that flickered between the trunks, vanishing when any attention was focused on them. The apparitions certainly weren’t as vivid during the day.
A couple of hours after they started, they realized they were finally catching up with the other travellers. The group had remained in the avenue. They now looked as if they were walking into a strong wind, leaning forwards to push on doggedly, their cloaks streaming out behind them.
‘They’re Silfen,’ Orion said. ‘I’m sure they are.’
Ozzie zoomed in. The boy was right. ‘Another spike,’ he muttered.
‘Are we going to talk to them?’
‘I dunno.’ Ozzie was torn. They hadn’t seen any sentient creature since leaving the Ice Citadel world. On the other hand, the Silfen never made a lot of sense at the best of times. ‘Let’s see where they’re at when we catch up with them.’
As they hiked on, a big gap slowly became visible in the avenue up ahead. They could see the trees carry on the other side, but for over a couple of miles the canyon floor was empty. ‘I can’t see any fallen trees,’ Ozzie said as he scanned the ground. ‘Looks like the people who planted them wanted a break.’
‘Is there anything built there?’ Orion asked.
‘Can’t see any ruins.’
They were catching up quite quickly on the Silfen group now. Ozzie estimated they should be level with them just before the gap in the avenue. The dark spectral shadows still flitted along the path, accompanied by the occasional mournful gabble. He was fairly sure it was the same language he’d heard the jelly aliens use when he’d been inside the projection.
When they were only a few hundred metres behind the Silfen, Tochee raised a tentacle. That is not natural, its patterns claimed. The tentacle was now pointing directly at the canyon wall in the long gap.
Ozzie studied the rock, trying to see what Tochee was looking at. Some of the vertical crevices did look a bit too regular . . . He shifted his sense of scale, and gasped with astonishment; the edifice was so large he hadn’t recognized it for what it was.
Millennia ago, the cliff had been carved with the profiles of the jelly aliens. There were two of them, a mile apart; each one must have measured nearly half a mile high. Entropy had slowly gnawed away at them, rock falls and slippage pulling away huge segments, distorting the outline. The piles of scree along the cliff base below them were exceptionally tall. But even after nature’s vandalism, the shapes were still distinct enough for him to identify. Between them was a palace that used to stretch nearly the entire height of the cliff. He assumed it was a palace, though it could easily have been a vertical city or temple, possibly even a fortress. The architecture was vaguely reminiscent of Bavarian castles he’d seen built to crest rugged Alpine peaks, although in this case one built by termites. It was almost as though the curving turrets and half-moon balconies had grown out of the rock, not that there were many of them left, and none were complete. Overall, there was even less of it remaining than the giant statues which guarded it on either side. Flying buttresses protruded from the sheer surface, curving upwards to end in jagged spikes as whatever structure they once supported had snapped off to plummet onto the vast foothills of rubble strewn along the base. Stairways and pathways zigzagged all over the exposed surface. Hundreds of rooms were visible as small cavities where their front halves were missing. Thousands of open black caves showed where passages tunnelled back into the rock linking interior rooms and halls.
‘What happened here?’ Orion asked. His voice verged on the reverential.
Ozzie shook his head, for once humbled by the scale of the tragedy. It was profoundly disturbing that a species obviously so capable and intelligent could allow their civilization to fail in such a fashion.
‘I think we should ask the Silfen.’
As soon as they started to angle back towards the avenue they discovered why the Silfen were making such hard going. It wasn’t the wind which pushed against them – the memories of the old road were growing stronger. All the past travellers who’d used the ancient highway were retracing their journey, each of them using the canyon at the same time. They lacked the solidity which the apparitions of last night had possessed, but they more than made up for that by the sheer weight of numbers.
At first Ozzie merely flinched as the phantoms flew towards him sporadically, bracing himself as they hit, only to find they’d passed straight through him without any resistance. Some of the aliens, the majority, were simple walkers. Others drove their rickety carts, or rode animals. A few were in mechanical contraptions.
The density of the spectral travellers increased proportion-ally as they drew nearer to the avenue. With them came their noise, the cries of hundreds of aliens talking and shouting at once. And their numbers finally added up to a little gust of pressure. Ozzie put his head down as he headed into them. He felt something touch his wrist, and jumped in shock. When he looked down he saw Tochee’s tentacle of manipulator flesh coiling round his hand. The alien was also taking hold of Orion’s wrist. Linked together, the three of them pushed in further towards the Silfen.
Inside the line of trees the bygone aliens merged together into a single blurred slipstream of colour. Their voices became a single unending howl. It really was a gale pushing against them now. Ozzie leaned into it, thankful for Tochee’s steadying grip. His shirt and sweater were flapping wildly against him. He set his face with grim determination and forced his feet to move onwards.
The Silfen were easy enough to see, a knot of darkness amid the torrent of colour and light and noise pouring through the avenue. As they forced their way closer he realized that the Silfen were all old. Their long hair was thin and grey; deep creases lined their flat faces, etching dignity into their features. He’d never seen signs of ageing among them before – of course, he’d never seen Silfen children either, assuming there were such things. But age had given them a distinction which humans normally lacked as their years advanced. And even now as they pushed themselves against the road’s history their long limbs never faltered.
‘Greetings,’ Ozzie called in the Silfen language.
One of the Silfen turned. Her wide dark eyes regarded him with the curiosity of a grandmother who’d forgotten the name of her favourite grandchild.
‘It’s me, Ozzie. Remember me?’
‘Never can we not remember, dearest Ozzie, least of all amid this place of remembrance. Joyful that we are to find you here where you sought to be.’
‘Sorry, but I never wanted to be here.’
Her gay laughter seemed to calm the whooping of the ghosts. ‘Demanding you were that all wonders should be shown and known in places far from home. How fast your mind skips and changes with your fickle mood, a delight and a sorrow burn behind your eyes with the beauty of twin stars forever dancing round their perfect circle.’
‘Are these wonders to you? I think they are times long gone.’
‘Hearken to the knowing, Ozzie, as you tread paths through lost worlds. Full with understanding you shall become to the delight of your stubborn self. Wonder begets not only the joy but the sorrow. Both must be for the other to live, for ultimately they are twined into the one. Here you come where few have been, so deep is your need, so loud is your song. Still we love you though you are not ready to fall into the one circle of light and air where the song will be sung to the end be it bitter or be it sweet.’
‘This? This is the answer to the Dyson barrier? Tell me of the imprisoned stars. I would so much like to learn.’
‘So you will as you walk down this valley of death to the shadows that linger and mourn.’
‘You’ve gotta be kidding,’ he muttered in English. ‘You’re quoting the Bible at me?’
The Silfen woman’s long tongue shivered in the centre of her mouth.
‘Is this where I looked to be? Is this inside the
prison around the stars? Do your paths reach through walls of darkness?’
‘Cast aside your numbers and your coarse voice and learn how to sing, sweet Ozzie. Song is the destiny of all who live who love to live.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he groaned through clenched teeth. ‘I don’t know if this is the answer. What is this fucking place?’ He gave the Silfen a look of anguish, and switched back to their language. ‘Why are you here in this dead valley? Why do you endure this?’
‘Here we come to complete our song, small and frail we are, and searching for our place amid that which is to come. Long our journey has been, bright has been the light shining upon us, loud the songs we have had sung to us, hard and soft has been the land upon which our feet have trod. Soon we shall walk no more.’
‘This is it? This is the end of the Silfen path? Will your feet end their walking in this valley?’
‘Ozzie!’ Orion called. ‘Ozzie, the ghosts are going.’
Ozzie looked round. They’d reached the last two trees, and the pressure was fading rapidly. The ghosts were fading away, allowing the full rays of the sun to sweep down across the broken rock of the valley floor. As he looked round in bewilderment their warbling voices dwindled to nothing. He was left stumbling forward, bracing himself against nothing. Stretching above him for the full height of the canyon wall was the ancient crumbling alien palace city.
‘The path we walk and love goes round and round, and thus it can never end, Ozzie,’ the Silfen woman said. She sounded profoundly sad, as if she was telling him about death. ‘It begins when you begin. It ends as you end.’
‘And in between? What then? Is that when we sing?’
‘Walking the path you hear many songs. Songs to treasure. Songs to fear. Come, Ozzie, come listen to the broken song of this world. Here lies the melody you desire to walk further amid the tangles of mystery that is all of us.’
The Silfen had joined hands. Now the tall woman held out her hand to him. Orion was giving him a nervous look. Tochee’s eye patterns asked: What now?
‘Tell our friend I don’t know,’ Ozzie told Orion. ‘But I’m going to find out.’
‘Ozzie?’
‘It’ll be fine.’ He put his hand out to the Silfen woman. Her skin was warm and dry as her four fingers bent supply around his hand. In an obscure way he found that comforting.
Together they started walking towards the vertical ruins. At the foot of the huge pile of shattered stone was a featureless black globe. It was as high as a Silfen was tall. Ozzie wasn’t sure if it actually rested on the ruddy sand or floated just above it.
‘Now you will know this planet’s song,’ she said as they approached the sphere. ‘All it used to sing comes from within its last memory.’
Ozzie almost hesitated. Then he saw the planet floating at the centre of the sphere. He peered forward like an eager child.
It wasn’t the image of the planet, it was a ghost just like the aliens who haunted the roadway along the canyon. Long ago it had floated blissfully in space, known to the Silfen who walked their paths through its bucolic forests. Its inhabitants, the jelly-like aliens, built themselves a peaceful civilization, advancing their knowledge as did most species. They had even begun to explore their solar system, sending crude ships to land on planets and moons.
Which was when the imperial colonizers arrived. Vast starships plunged into the star system on fusion flames, curving into orbit around this quiet happy world. They had taken decades to cross interstellar space, and were hungry for their prize, a new world on which to re-establish their old empire.
The war of conquest was as short as it was futile. The planetary inhabitants resisted as best they could, modifying their instrument-carrying rockets to assault the huge invaders above their beautiful planet. Some damage was inflicted on the big ships, which goaded the imperialists into fierce retaliation.
In the forests and glades below, the Silfen hurried down their paths to regain the peace and freedom denied to those whose home this was. But even the elfin folk whose life was one of happiness and fey interest in the worlds they passed through were troubled by the horrific violence erupting around them. In penance, they watched.
Ozzie was shown the dark armoured starships sending their missiles and kinetic projectiles hurtling down onto the planet below. Explosions ripped through the sleeping clouds, distorting the world’s air. Waves of destruction rolled out. Solid ground rippled like water. Oceans rose in rage. Towns and cities were blasted apart. Aliens died in their tens of thousands in the first few seconds. Ozzie knew them. He felt their death. Their grief. Their fear. Their loss. Their sorrow. Their regret as their homes disintegrated. Their bitterness as their children were torn apart before them. Every one of them was there for him to identify and experience. And the deaths multiplied as the empire’s weapons cast this world into smoking, radioactive oblivion before the starships departed in search of new worlds, worlds easier to subdue.
Ozzie fell back from the globe, curling up into a foetal ball as the tears flooded down his cheeks to stain the dead world’s dry sandy soil.
He wept for hours as the terrible anguish of countless deaths soaked through him. He hated it as he had hated nothing in his life before. Hated what was done. Hated the blind stupidity of the imperialists. Hated the Silfen for standing by and doing nothing. Hated the waste of so much life, so much promise. Hated knowing what a better universe it could have been if only the quiet simple aliens whose world this once was had survived and finally met the gaudy flawed human race as the Commonwealth expanded. Hated that such a meeting of unalike minds would never happen.
Late in the afternoon, when his tears had long since dried up, he stopped his pitiful whimpering lament, and rolled onto his back, blinking up at the cloudless sky. Orion and Tochee gazed down anxiously at him.
‘Ozzie,’ Orion pleaded, his own face close to tears. ‘Please don’t cry any more.’
‘It’s hard not to,’ he croaked. ‘I was here. I was with every one of them when they died.’ He started to tremble again.
‘Ozzie! Ozzie, please!’
He felt Orion’s hand grasp his own, in desperate need of reassurance. A boy lost light-years from home, abandoned by his parents, on an adventure that had become a nightmare for too many months. The frail human touch was what he needed not to fall into that black infinity of horror. And how much of an irony was that? The superindependent Ozzie needing someone?
‘Okay,’ Ozzie said weakly, and gripped the boy’s hand roughly. ‘Okay, give me a moment here, dude, yeah.’ He tried to sit up, only to find his body barely responding. Tochee’s manipulator flesh slid under him, helping to shift him upright. He looked round at the canyon, almost fearful of what he would see. ‘Where are the Silfen?’
‘I don’t know,’ Orion said. ‘They left ages ago.’
‘Huh. Finally got something right. I’d kill the bastards if they’d stayed.’
‘Ozzie, what happened? What did you see?’
He put a hand up to his forehead, surprised at how hot the skin was, as if he’d come down with a fever. ‘I saw what happened to this world. Some aliens arrived in starships and . . . and nuked it to shit.’
Orion gazed round uncertainly. ‘Here?’
‘Yeah. But a long time ago, I guess.’ He looked at the ruined palace city, feeling a fresh wave of sadness.
‘Why did they show that to you?’
‘I don’t know, man, I really don’t. They thought it was what I wanted, for my song. Song, hell!’ A dismissive grunt escaped from his mouth. ‘I’d say we’ve got some serious translation problems here. Reckon I’m gonna sue someone in the cultural department when we get home for like a trillion dollars. I’m never going to recover from this.’ Ozzie stopped, knowing just how true that was. ‘But then, I guess that’s the whole point. It’s a memory that belongs to the Silfen. They’re the ones who watched it all. And they did nothing.’ He scooped up some of the sandy soil, then let it trickle away through his fingers
, mesmerized by the drifting grains. ‘This is for them, it’s their grief, not mine, not the people whose world this used to be. It’s about them. Nobody else knows or cares, not any more.’
‘So what do we do now?’
Ozzie eyed the black globe wearily. ‘Leave. There’s nothing here for us.’
21
Even now, after all these years, Elaine Doi still got a thrill ascending to the rostrum. From the floor of the Senate Hall it looked imposing, a broad raised stage at the front of the seats, with a big curving desk made from centuries-old oak where the First Minister sat directing debates. In reality, when you came up the stairs at the back, the lights shining down from the Hall’s domed roof were so bright you had trouble seeing the last step. The purple carpet was worn and threadbare. The grand desk was despoiled with holes drilled in to accommodate modern arrays, portals, and i-spots.
In the past there had been countless occasions during working sessions when she had to come up here to make a policy statement or read a treasury report. The massed ranks of senators had heckled her mercilessly, their cries of ‘shame’ and ‘resign’ echoing round the Hall, while the reporters in their gallery to the right of the rostrum had grinned like wolves as they recorded her dismay and feeble rejoinders and fluffed lines. Despite all that, she’d been the one they ultimately paid attention to, the one controlling the debate, pushing through her legislation, doing the deals that made government work, not to mention scoring political points off her opponents.
Today, of course, the seven hundred senators in attendance fell into a respectful silence and stood in greeting that was tradition whenever the President got up to address them. They would have shown that much consideration if it had just been her monthly statement of review, but this time she could feel the genuine trepidation running through the Hall. Today they were looking to her to provide leadership.
Her ceremonial escort of royal beefeaters saluted sharply and moved away to stand guard at the back of the rostrum. She always thought their splendid scarlet uniforms added a real touch of class to these moments. Although they were technically assigned to the Presidency as a courtesy from King William during the foundation of the Commonwealth, the Executive security office had long since taken over their funding and organization.