Noema looked across the endless sea. Jubal the Minstrel has died and Elloshin the Forger and three score more. The curse has come here as everywhere we have been.
Tubal gazed on the foam below. We shall find a land where the curse does not dwell. There was a time when the curse was not. There shall be a time again.
Noema laid her hand upon Tubal’s arm. We have spent centuries beyond count seeking it.
We have centuries beyond count yet, and in all the wide expanse of heaven is there not one world we can call our own? We the deathless ones.
Not deathless, murmured Noema.
Not made for death, Tubal replied.
Noema turned away and spoke no more. The waves beat against the stone, and rose, higher and higher, until they engulfed the place where we stood.
I gasped and opened my eyes. My hair and face were wet. It was raining. I did not know where I was nor how I had come to be there. My first instinct was not to move. I had no memory of what had happened to me but a dull pain in my forehead told me I had been injured, how badly I did not know. In the dim light I could make out a vast, green canopy above me. Keeping my head still I glanced around. A forest floor all about and, to my left, a pack. Next to it a pile of berries and nuts. On my right a spacesuit. What was a spacesuit doing here?
Next to the spacesuit was a brown earthenware jar. It held a clear liquid. I smelt then tasted it. Water.
Rather suddenly the rain ceased. After a few minutes I tested my limbs. Everything seemed fine except the pain in my forehead. Slowly, I raised my hand and touched it. There was something—a cloth of some kind—wrapped around my head, covering the wound. I could not feel any dried blood. It seemed the injury had been cleaned and properly tended.
I waited a little longer then gingerly sat up. There was no-one to be seen. Cupping my hands to my mouth I called out: Hello. Can anyone hear me? Two minutes passed. There was no reply.
I ate a berry then a nut and sipped on the water, mildly wondering how the provisions had come to be there. I had a pack and suit and I was in a forest of some kind. Had I crash-landed? There was no sign of a ship or vehicle or anything of human manufacture.
The light was dim and getting dimmer. Night was falling. Carefully, I stood up. I could not wander far before darkness fell, but a completely blank mind is as curious as a cat. I needed to look around and gain some idea of what had happened to me. I set out across the open space between the trees, with the thought that I would look behind the far row of tree trunks and see if anything was there.
As I stumbled through the forest growth I was aware of being a little lightheaded. The original thought remained: I would get as far as the first tree trunk and look behind it. Light-headedness became dizziness and it occurred to me, quite calmly, that I was not going to be able to stand. I fell forwards, hands in front of me. Now down on all fours I vaguely wondered what was going to happen next. What happened was a surprise, even in my befuddled state.
A pair of hands gripped my arms and raised me up. I turned my head to see who had lifted me and became aware of a female face with strangely large eyes, partly covered by long white hair. I noticed vaguely that she wore clothing of some kind.
“You.…are not.…well.” The words were slowly enunciated, with a strange accent.
“Feel bit strange.…dizzy.” I replied.
“You….lie….sleep.”
“Good idea.”
“Come.”
I didn’t argue, but with her support shambled slowly back to my starting point.
When I reached it I lay down without a murmur. I looked up at the face bent over me and smiled. “Kind of you.”
“Rest.…now.”
I closed my eyes and passed out.
When I awoke again it was day. As I lay there my memory gradually returned. The mission, the alien vessel, my few days exploring it and finally, the encounter of the previous evening. As the last memory surfaced I sat bolt upright. A woman. Where was she? I stood up and peered around me. A kaleidoscope of green, yellow and brown growth suspended in silence—and that was all. She was nowhere to be seen, but I was certain she was somewhere, watching me.
She had spoken to me too. A peculiar laboured English but English nonetheless. Where had she learnt that? As I munched on a handful of nuts I did some serious thinking. The only way to learn a human language from space was to listen to audiovisual, radio or data transmissions from Earth. That presupposed a considerable amount of technical sophistication to decipher the incoming signals. But added to that there was the problem of range. The signals emitted by early warning military radars could be detected hundreds of light years away, and they were by far the most powerful transmissions sent from Earth. But they contained no information other than that an intelligence had produced them.
The next most powerful signals would come from the satellite-based internet network—no, I corrected myself—the old television signals had been far more powerful. The problem here again was information. About half a television transmitter’s power had been locked up in the video carrier signal, which had a great range, about a tenth that of military radar. The other half contained the picture information, and its power was only a thousandth that of the carrier signal. So an alien technology on the nearest stars would know a civilisation on Earth existed from its electromagnetic transmissions, but it would know nothing about the content of those transmissions unless it got close.
Then there was the question of time. Radio or radar signals travelled at exactly the same speed as light: one light-year per year. Humanity had started transmitting signals detectable at a great distance after the Second World War, when the nuclear threat provoked the development of the early warning radars. Say, a hundred years ago. That meant that no alien planet further than a hundred light years from Earth had yet become aware of our existence.
The vessel I was in had to have come from somewhere nearer. Much nearer. Once the aliens had received the first signal from Earth time would be needed to ready a craft and send it across the incomprehensibly vast distances between one star and the next. How long would that take? Even if the ship travelled at the theoretical maximum possible speed—that of light—it would still take as much time to reach Earth as Earth’s signal had taken to reach the alien planet. Which meant a hypothetical maximum distance of 50 light years between the alien planet and Earth.
But no material object could travel anywhere near as fast as light. Even if powered by the enormous energy of an antimatter drive the ship was still unlikely to reach much beyond a tenth of lightspeed unless a large part of its mass was taken up by propellant. Doing the maths that meant something like 90 years to make the voyage from a point about 10 light years away, after allowing 10 years for Earth’s signals to reach the alien world in the first place.
How many stars with habitable planets lay within a radius of 10 light years from Earth? I knew the answer without having to look it up—none. The nearest possible candidate was Tau Ceti e, in the Tau Ceti system, 11.9 light years from Earth. That planet had a surface temperature of 70 degrees centigrade and a mass 4.3 times that of Earth, which made it an improbable home for the life forms I had seen on the alien vessel.
The nearest candidate with reasonably earthlike conditions was Gliese 667 Cc, 22.7 light years away from Earth. But it was dimly lit by its red dwarf sun, with daylight brightness only about 20% that of Earth, quite unlike the illumination in the alien vessel.
Perhaps the aliens had decided to acclimatise themselves to what they would find on Earth. Even granted that, the fact that Gliese 667 Cc orbited a red dwarf meant it was tidally locked, with one side in perpetual daylight and the other in perpetual night. This posed all sorts of problems for life, and almost certainly ruled out the possibility of anything more developed than plants. Furthermore red dwarfs emitted solar flares far greater than those of the Earth’s sun, doubling their brightness in a matter of minutes. The enormous mass of charged particles from these flares would in all likelihood strip any atmosphere from the red dwarfs’ planets, making them uninhabitable.
No, the alien vessel had to have come from an earthlike planet orbiting an earthlike sun, and that ruled out any possibility that its makers had picked up Earth’s signals on their home world and come to investigate. The vessel had been in space a long time when the first signals from Earth reached it.
Which meant it had set out for Earth before it ever learnt of humanity or it had been going somewhere else and had decided Earth was a more interesting destination. Either way, we had not been part of its original plan. The fact that it could perfectly accommodate human life and was inhabited by near-humans was a pure coincidence. My rational mind accepted this conclusion but my sense of dissatisfaction did not go away. Something did not add up.
Anyhow there were two encouraging details. The alien female had taken the trouble of learning my language and keeping me alive. If she had learnt my language then she was probably the mistress of the vessel, smart enough to receive and decipher electromagnetic transmissions from Earth. She was not a Neanderthal passenger with a taste for jewellery and hieroglyphics.
Her mastery of English also meant she was interested in humans, probably because we resembled her so closely. Given that warp holes and hyperdrive remain the stuff of science fantasy, actually coming across another civilisation would be an extraordinary event for aliens. They would not feel threatened (how do you fight a war across distances that would take tens or hundreds of years to cross?) but would more likely be curious. Mutual intelligence would be a common denominator to begin with. Tradable products or services would come next. All very good. I just had to wait on my hostess’s timetable and show myself to be friendly. When she met me in my concussed state I had done as I was told and smiled my thanks at the end. For a first meeting it hadn’t gone too badly.
My next move was clear: sit tight and do nothing. I ate a good breakfast from the food provided and then made a thorough report of the events of the previous day. After that I rearranged my pack as pillow and lay back, resolved to wait until the female alien paid another visit. Odd that her face seemed to remind me of something, almost like a déjà vu. I shrugged it off. I was getting tired of the unlikely coincidences. One more or less made no difference.
By early afternoon I realised there would be no meeting. My host’s intervention of the previous day had been an unplanned accident. She was not ready to see me in a normal context. Maybe she never would be.
I had already examined the jar. There was nothing remarkable about it. Formed of baked clay in a round shape widening to its lip and with a rounded base, it would have passed unnoticed in a more primitive Third-World culture. Its irregularities showed it had been hand-made without a potter’s wheel. A few minutes reading through pottery articles on my tablet convinced me it had been fired at high temperatures, the only way to make it waterproof. That meant something like a kiln: an open fire would be inadequate. So I now knew that besides designing interstellar spaceships with antimatter drives, the aliens had also learned how to make clay pots. In any case my water supply problem had been solved.
My rational mind told me to wait—days if necessary—until the alien decided the time was right to meet me. It was her ship, I was her guest, and it was my planet I would be asking her to save. But as afternoon wore into evening and the light began to fail I thought to hell with rationality and stood up.
“What do you want of me?” I called out. “What do you want me to do? I’m here, come and meet me. We must talk.”
But the only reply was silence.
Thus far it had rained every other evening in the vessel: on the first and third day of my stay. I hypothesized it would not rain this evening and I wanted a more comfortable bed than the forest floor. The natural depression in the ground I had used the night before would the serve the purpose. A pity it could not be waterproofed against the weather. It might be possible to use branches and large leaves from the fern forest to construct a crude shelter. I resolved to try it out in the morning. Despite having spent the day in idleness, I was soon asleep.
16. The air was a piercing cold, the sun dim and red on the distant horizon, above which it never rose. I stood in a circle with the Wise, their breath misting in the frozen air. One after another they spoke.
We are barren.
The eyes of Noema were on Tubal, his face as cold and unmoving as the endless winter.
We are barren. We must return.
No, said Tubal the Mariner. That way is death.
You have spoken for us and we have listened and all your words have come to nothing. We must return.
That way is death, said Tubal.
There is another way, said Endor the Keeper. Let Noema bear children.
I have a husband and children, said Noema.
No, replied Endor. We will all have her that our seed may not perish.
In Noema’s eyes there was but horror. Speak my husband.
But Tubal’s gaze drifted over the white and empty plain.
Endor spoke again: We are not a third part of what we were. She will bear our seed. There is no other way else we return.
Noema turned and ran, anguish in her face. She was lovely and pure and death was in her soul, and none wept for her except me, my tears running down my cheeks.
I awoke and felt a wetness around my eyes. The dream was still fresh in my mind. Its sharpness stirred up the ghostly outlines of the other dreams from the seabed of my memory, and now I realised what had seemed familiar about the female alien. Her features were exactly those of Noema, only—the large eyes, the thickset build of the men, the snowy white hair—I had not found them strange at all. I knew them. They were my people. But no, already as the details of the dream began to fade I became aware of their strangeness. Noema the Fair, Tubal the Mariner, who on earth were they?
The light was very dim, the predawn gloom that came before day. Deciding further sleep was impossible I rose from the ground, stretched my arms, and looked around. The darkened shapes of the trees rose about me, indistinct shadows between them. Everything was quiet. I no longer found the silence strange. It was a natural thing. Constant background noise was a human creation, something we had got used to to the point of no longer noticing it, but it did not have the tranquillity of a completely motionless world. I felt a sense of peace steal unbidden upon me. It should have been a strange emotion given my situation, but it was not. I have done and will do all I can and the rest I leave to you. Whence came that thought?
I hesitated, then cupped my hands to my mouth and called out: “Noema!”
I waited. There was no response. Well it had been worth trying. If I’d just made a fool of myself there would be no-one to know except me. Another minute passed. I was about to sit down and make up a breakfast when something moved between the trees, a faint shape that emerged from the shadows in the strengthening light. It was her.
She was dressed in a long, patterned robe of which part folded from the back over her left shoulder, covering her left arm and leaving her right arm bare. The pattern was complex and abstract: made up of circles, triangles and squares, its colour varying from yellow to orange to red and black. She wore nothing on her feet.
Her hair was long, falling almost to her waist, and snowy white. Over it was a kind of headdress, an elaborate thing of intricately woven gold, wrought in leaves, rings and other shapes. What caught my attention however were her eyes. They were disconcertingly large—the one clear reminder that she was an alien—and the irises dark brown, almost black. She looked young though of course that meant nothing as I had no idea of how age would manifest itself in her species. But her attire and her carriage as she advanced towards me were unmistakeably regal, making her seem taller than me even though I topped her by a head. As she drew near I did what instinct dictated. I bowed.
She stopped about three metres from me. “You…are…well?”
The words were carefully enunciated, as though she was trying them out for the first time.
“I am well, thank you.”
“Food…good?”
I smiled. “Very good. You are kind.”
She regarded me, her face showing no expression. Time passed.
I indicated my supplies. “Would you like something to eat?”
Her eyes followed my pointing hand. “Yes.”
I glanced around. There was nowhere to sit except on the ground and that robe did not look like it was designed for squatting. She observed my hesitation and her expression acquired a hint of amusement.
“Come,” she said, turning.
I hastily put some nuts and berries in the earthenware bowl, shouldered my pack and followed her. We made our way between the trees, passing through one vast branch-fluted glade after another. After about half an hour we came across a narrow path that ran in the direction of the vessel’s axis. Following the path we entered a stretch of dense shrubbery, rather like the fern forest I had passed through two days earlier.
During our progress neither of us spoke. The alien woman did not glance back to see if I was keeping up. Her pace was surprisingly fast and she did not stop until we emerged from the shrubbery into a clearing beyond.
We had arrived. In the middle of the space was a small building. It was very simple, vaguely reminding me of a primitive Sumerian mud-brick house. It was pale yellow-brown, rectangular, with a flat roof and unglazed windows. The path led to an open doorway without a door. Steps made of the same yellow-brown material along one wall led up to the roof.
The woman glanced at me and gestured at the house, then approached the doorway. I followed her through a short passageway that led to a small courtyard, hardly more than five metres across. Near each corner a wooden pillar rose up to the ceiling, of which the central rectangular space was open to the sky. Beyond the pillars the courtyard was enclosed by walls each with a doorway. The woman made for a crude wooden bench placed against the far wall, beneath the perambulatory roof that ran around the central open space. She turned and sat, looking towards me. I followed across and placed the bowl with the nuts and berries next to her on the bench, then took my seat.
Neither of us spoke. I glanced across at my host. Her gaze was abstracted, directed across the atrium without seeming to see anything. After a time she stirred and turning to the bowl took a nut and put it in her mouth. I follow suit and waited. Let her start the conversation.
“How…you know my name?” she finally said.
“I dreamed of you,” I replied.
“What…you dream?”
“You were very….sad.”
“You weep for me.” She turned her face towards me. “I see it.”
“Yes.”
She fell silent again. I waited.
“It was.…bad….what they do….bad. You see it?”
“I remember. They had no children.”
“None. But still bad. I am not.…wife of all.”
“What happened?” I asked.
She glanced at me. “You see tombs?”
“Yes.”
“All dead.”
“…and Tubal?”
“Dead.”
The silence fell between us again, heavy in the still air. Suddenly the strange woman stood up.
“You stay. I go now. Food here and bed.”
“You will come again?” I asked, but she was already walking away.
I resisted the urge to follow her and kept my seat until I was sure she was not coming back. Then I took a deep breath and exhaled it. “Jason,” I said aloud, “what on earth is this all about?”
The answer to that question would come in its own time. Meanwhile my next step was to reconnoitre the building. There were a total of six rooms around the central courtyard. Four were bedrooms, three metres wide and from four to five metres long. Each contained a wooden stool and a low bed of woven reeds slung between wooden supports.
The fifth room was larger, measuring four by seven metres, in the centre of which was a long table flanked by benches. A mud brick kiln sat in one corner with a pile of firewood nearby. A door next to the kiln led to a small storeroom, with earthenware bowls containing various kinds of fruit, nuts and what looked like vegetables, and a large clay jar filled with water. Earthenware plates and cups were piled on a table along with a collection of wooden spoons. Alongside these were a couple of large clay pots, presumably for cooking. Various other implements I didn’t recognise hung from wooden pegs in the walls. I imagined my host in the fullness of time would show me what they were for.
Small windows pierced the courtyard and outer walls. The roof consisted of stout wooden beams laid across the top of walls, supporting a lattice of smaller branches upon which a layer of earth had been packed down. One could walk on it. A low parapet ran round the edges of the roof. Near the parapet were a few stools and a bench.
The overall effect was simple, homely and pleasant. I chose a room adjacent to the dining room where I deposited my pack by the bed then carried my bowl through to the dining room. Filling a cup in the storeroom with water, I took it to the dining table, sat down to finish off the bowl’s contents and did a little thinking.
Four bedrooms. None had shown any signs of occupation so the woman slept somewhere else. This was a guest house, not her home. She had counted on four visitors at the most, which suggested the building had been designed with the crew of the Terra Nova in mind. Four to come over, one to stay behind and look after things. It made sense.
Everything looked as though it had been constructed with the simplest tools. There was not a single object that postdated the bronze age in complexity. Here, as elsewhere in the alien vessel, I had seen nothing that corresponded to the human notion of technology. Everything was either bioengineered or fashioned with the crudest means. Well then, how had the bioengineering been done?
My meal completed, I rinsed out the bowl with the remaining water in my cup then left both in the storeroom. In my bedroom I took out my tablet from the pack and made my report. After describing everything that had happened I ended with some musings. “It is possible that the present occupant of the vessel is not one of its original builders but a descendant who was never taught the technology used to construct the craft and its bioengineered components. She may know no more than how to navigate it through space and interpret transmissions from Earth. Interpreting transmissions would seem to require mastery of sophisticated technology, however it is possible that the vessel itself does that task, leaving the woman with the result—a working knowledge of English. It’s a theory.
“I have as yet no explanation for the dreams. They were clearly implanted in some way, and I suspect the wound on the back of my head—which is now healed—has something to do with it. It is likely the alien woman is responsible, but I can’t be absolutely certain even of that. Montague out.”
The hours passed. I grew bored waiting for my host to return and decided to do a little exploring. From the path that led to the building’s entrance another path split off, winding round the building and off into the ring of shrubbery that surrounded the glade in which the building arose. Following the path through the growth I emerged into the open again and found myself near the green and perfectly motionless water of a lake. It lay between two rows of the giant trees that covered this world, and was about fifty metres wide and of an indefinite length. I could see it curving upwards as it receded from me, following the vast cylindrical shape of the alien vessel.
A flat-bottomed boat was drawn up nearby on the shore. Descending a gentle grass-covered slope I stopped to examine it. It was rectangular in shape, with a raised stern and prow, and made entirely of wood. A punting pole lay on the ground. I looked around then on impulse shoved the boat into the water. Stepping into it I used the pole to push myself away from the shore.
With the pole as a rough plumb line I ascertained that the water was no more than about two metres deep even when fifty metres out. I ceased punting, balanced the pole across the boat then lay back, gazing upwards. Above my head great leafy arches met, through which the glimmering light filtered and warmed my face. It was becoming increasingly difficult to remember I was in a huge ecological ark, and that perhaps a few dozen metres below me the endless vacuum of space stretched unimaginable millions of kilometres in every direction.
But then, wasn’t our place on Earth nearly as tenuous? We live on the surface of a world that would kill us if we ventured without protection more than two kilometres underground or eight kilometres up. Three quarters of that surface is denied us, leaving a sliver covering one quarter of a smallish planet and only ten kilometres thick. In cosmological terms that is as close to nothing as one can get and still exist. The universe, with its unending beauty fashioned by unimaginably terrifying forces, permits living organisms only in the narrowest of circumstances. In a cosmos dominated by fusion-fuelled stars, frozen gas giants, insatiable black holes and the unending vacuum of space, we are, physically speaking, an insignificant anomaly.
My thoughts darkened. One quarter of a planet’s surface. In a few months that would be gone, covered by endless metres of ice upon which nothing could live. Only a few species would remain at the bottom of the oceans, drawing their energy from a few hundred hydrothermal vents. Life might survive the coming cataclysm, but humanity would not. Time was running out.
I did some mental calculations. Dieter and I had landed on Mars on the 21st December. I had remained on the surface until the 19th January, reaching the alien vessel the next day. This was my fifth day here which made it the 24th. The Terra Nova was due to begin its return journey to Earth on the 22nd February when Earth and Mars were in optimal alignment. That was also the time Ganymed would cross Mars’ orbit. I had less than a month to enlist the alien woman’s help.
Raising myself to a crouch I turned around slowly in the boat, then resuming my seat I laid hold of the punting pole and glanced up towards the shore. And there she stood.
She was by the water’s edge, wearing the same patterned gown and intricate weaving of gold about her head, her gaze towards me. She did not move as I punted the boat towards her and I was again struck by her regal bearing. She did not assume a pose but carried her dignity naturally, like breathing. I remembered the dreams. She must have been something very like a queen among her kind.
Once at the shore I gingerly stepped out into the water and pushed the boat up the grassy slope. That done, I approached her and inclined my head in greeting.
“You.…sail boat well.”
“I’ve done it before.”
“You live.…by lake?”
“No, but my family were not far from a river. We had boats there.”
She looked away, as if digesting the information.
I decided to take the initiative. “There are rivers on your world?”
She glanced at me, her expression indefinable. “Yes.”
“Your boat is well made.”
“It is....old skill.…not used a long time.”
“You built it?”
“Yes.”
“And the house?”
“No. Tubal made it, long ago.”
Her eyes wandered over the water with the same abstracted expression I had noticed in the courtyard. I waited, beginning to realise her lapses into silence were not from awkwardness, but merely because she was unused to speaking. I was the first being she had conversed with for God knows how long.
“Why you go to Mars?”
The question caught me by surprise.
“It is our first time. Maybe one day we will live there.”
“You cannot live there. It has nothing for you.”
“Maybe we can change it.”
She shook her head. “Too much to change. I see you when you find.…snow.…water. You.…were very happy. But it is not enough. Nothing to breathe.”
“You saw me?”
“Yes. I look at you with eye. You dance.”
“…eye? What eye?”
“Eye of great worm. Do you not remember dream?”
I searched my memory. “I remember talk of a great worm. Nothing more.”
The woman gestured around her with a sweep of her arm. “Behold great worm.”
My jaw sagged. “You mean, this entire vessel is living?”
Her amusement was palpable. “Of course. You not see?”
I fell silent. The clues had been there if I had had the wit to notice them. The passageway I had explored on my second day had been shaped as if it had grown that way, and illuminated with the same orange glow emitted by the walls of the elevator creature. The dead tree stumps that seemed to recede gradually into the ground the older they became, even though there was no weather to erode them. Then I glanced upwards.
“The light?”
“Light is not from worm. We make light first, then worm.”
“What is the light?”
She frowned in concentration. “I cannot say.…in your words. We take that which is and make it no more. Great power comes from that.”
“Antimatter drive.”
“Yes, you have that word. Yes.…it is so.”
I turned my regard in the direction of the great unlit cavern at the far end of the vessel. “There is no light over there. Why?”
“Does not need light.”
“But it had it before.”
“Yes, when people lived. Now….enough it is here.”
I examined the ground before me. “Is the worm dying?”
She hesitated. “…not dying, but very old. It will live many years, but not ages it has seen.”
“Forgive me, I ask too many questions.”
She smiled, a strange sweet smile I had never seen on a human face. “Ask. All is new for you. There must be questions.”
“I have one more question.”
She spread her hands in invitation.
“Why did you bring me here?”
Her great eyes narrowed fractionally. “To speak to you. I am.…last of my people. I see no-one.…I speak to no-one, for years without end.”
“I understand,” I said. “What do you wish me to do?”