SEPULCHER
One of the great attractions of science fiction is its breadth of scope.
John W. Campbell, Jr. was the most powerful editor in the history of the science-fiction field. John was a big man, and he was not above using his size and the force of his personality to drive home the points he wanted to make. He often compared science fiction to other forms of literature by spreading his long arms wide and declaiming, “This is science fiction! All the universe, past, present, and future.” Then he would hold up a thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart and say, “This is all other kinds of fiction.”
By that he meant that all the other kinds of fiction restrict themselves to the here and now, or to the known past. All other forms of fiction are set here on Earth, under a sky that is blue and ground that is solid beneath your feet. Science fiction deals with all of creation, of which our Earth and our time is merely a small part. Science fiction can vault far into the future or deep into the past.
Indeed, science fiction has often been called “the literature of ideas.” This has been both its strength and its curse. All too often the idea takes center stage and all the other considerations of good fiction, such as characterization, plot, mood, color, etc., become weak and pale. In its worst manifestation, the supremacy of the idea generates the “gimmick” story, in which a brilliant protagonist meets a problem that has stumped everybody else and solves the problem without raising a sweat. Gimmick stories are predictable, their characters usually wooden. Such stories are essentially vehicles for the author to show off how bright he or she is.
Yet the idea content of science fiction gives the field enormous power and drive, when the ideas are properly matched by characterizations and all the other facets of good fiction. That is the underlying challenge of science fiction: to combine dazzling ideas with superb characters.
“Sepulcher” began as an idea story. For years I had a tiny scrap of paper tucked in my “Ideas” file. It read “Perfect artwork. Everyone sees themselves in it.”
The idea intrigued me, but the reason that scrap of paper stayed in my file was that I knew the idea by itself was not sufficient for a good story. A good story needs believable characters in conflict.
As I mulled over the basic idea, I reasoned that the story would need several characters, so that the reader can see how this work of art affects different people. I began to see that the artwork would have to be an alien artifact. If a human being could create a work of art so powerful that everyone who sees it experiences a soul-shattering self-revelation, then the story would have to be about the artist and the power he or she gains over the rest of humankind.
That might make a terrific novel someday. But I was more interested in a short story about the work of art itself—and several people who are deeply, fundamentally changed by it.
I settled on three characters: a former soldier who has become a kind of holy man; a hard-driving man of vast wealth; and an artist who is near the end of her life. Each of them undergoes a transformation when he or she sees the alien artwork.
Notice, as you read the story, that much of the action takes place offstage. The soldier has already been transformed when the story begins. The billionaire’s experience is offstage. We see only the artist and her moment of truth as she sees the artwork and is transformed by it.
The artist, incidentally, is a character I originally wrote about in an earlier story. When I began seriously to develop “Sepulcher,” she presented herself to me as the perfect character to serve as the focal point of this tale.
In the final analysis, “Sepulcher” is a story that deals with the purpose of art. Why do we create works of art? Why do painters paint their pictures and writers write their stories? Beneath all the other facets of “Sepulcher,” that is the fundamental idea that we examine.
“I WAS A SOLDIER,” he said. “Now I am a priest. You may call me Dorn.”
Elverda Apacheta could not help staring at him. She had seen cyborgs before, but this . . . person seemed more machine than man. She felt a chill ripple of contempt along her veins. How could a human being allow his body to be disfigured so?
He was not tall; Elverda herself stood several centimeters taller than he. His shoulders were quite broad, though; his torso thick and solid. The left side of his face was engraved metal, as was the entire top of his head: like a skullcap made of finest etched steel.
Dorn’s left hand was prosthetic. He made no attempt to disguise it. Beneath the rough fabric of his shabby tunic and threadbare trousers, how much more of him was metal and electrical machinery? Tattered though his clothing was, his calf-length boots were polished to a high gloss.
“A priest?” asked Miles Sterling. “Of what church? What order?”
The half of Dorn’s lips that could move made a slight curl. A smile or a sneer, Elverda could not tell.
“I will show you to your quarters,” said Dorn. His voice was a low rumble, as if it came from the belly of a beast. It echoed faintly off the walls of rough-hewn rock.
Sterling looked briefly surprised. He was not accustomed to having his questions ignored. Elverda watched his face. Sterling was as handsome as cosmetic surgery could make a person appear: chiseled features, earnest sky-blue eyes, straight of spine, long of limb, athletically flat midsection. Yet there was a faint smell of corruption about him, Elverda thought. As if he were dead inside and already beginning to rot.
The tension between the two men seemed to drain the energy from Elverda’s aged body. “It has been a long journey,” she said. “I am very tired. I would welcome a hot shower and a long nap.”
“Before you see it?” Sterling snapped.
“It has taken us months to get here. We can wait a few hours more.” Inwardly she marveled at her own words. Once she would have been all fiery excitement. Have the years taught you patience? No, she realized. Only weariness.
“Not me!” Sterling said. Turning to Dorn, “Take me to it now. I’ve waited long enough. I want to see it now.”
Dorn’s eyes, one as brown as Elverda’s own, the other a red electronic glow, regarded Sterling for a lengthening moment.
“Well?” Sterling demanded.
“I am afraid, sir, that the chamber is sealed for the next twelve hours. It will be imposs—”
“Sealed? By whom? On whose authority?”
“The chamber is self-controlled. Whoever made the artifact installed the controls, as well.”
“No one told me about that,” said Sterling.
Dorn replied, “Your quarters are down this corridor.” He turned almost like a solid block of metal, shoulders and hips together, head unmoving on those wide shoulders, and started down the central corridor. Elverda fell in step alongside his metal half, still angered at his self-desecration. Yet despite herself, she thought of what a challenge it would be to sculpt him. If I were younger, she told herself. If I were not so close to death. Human and inhuman, all in one strangely fierce figure.
Sterling came up on Dorn’s other side, his face red with barely suppressed anger.
They walked down the corridor in silence, Sterling’s weighted shoes clicking against the uneven rock floor. Dorn’s boots made hardly any noise at all. Half machine he may be, Elverda thought, but once in motion he moves like a panther.
The asteroid’s inherent gravity was so slight that Sterling needed the weighted footgear to keep himself from stumbling ridiculously. Elverda, who had spent most of her long life in low-gravity environments, felt completely at home. The corridor they were walking through was actually a tunnel, shadowy and mysterious, or perhaps a natural chimney vented through the rocky body by escaping gases eons ago when the asteroid was still molten. Now it was cold, chill enough to make Elverda shudder. The rough ceiling was so low she wanted to stoop, even though the rational side of her mind knew it was not necessary.
Soon, though, the walls smoothed out and the ceiling grew higher. Humans had extended the tunnel, squaring it with laser precision. Doors lined both walls now and the ceiling glowed with glareless, shadowless light. Still she hugged herself against the chill that the others did not seem to notice.
They stopped at a wide double door. Dorn tapped out the entrance code on the panel set into the wall and the doors slid open.
“Your quarters, sir,” he said to Sterling. “You may, of course, change the privacy code to suit yourself.”
Sterling gave a curt nod and strode through the open doorway. Elverda got a glimpse of a spacious suite, carpeting on the floor and hologram windows on the walls.
Sterling turned in the doorway to face them. “I expect you to call for me in twelve hours,” he said to Dorn, his voice hard.
“Eleven hours and fifty-seven minutes,” Dorn replied. Sterling’s nostrils flared and he slid the double doors shut.
“This way.” Dorn gestured with his human hand. “I’m afraid your quarters are not as sumptuous as Mr. Sterling’s.”
Elverda said, “I am his guest. He is paying all the bills.”
“You are a great artist. I have heard of you.”
“Thank you.”
“For the truth? That is not necessary.”
I was a great artist, Elverda said to herself. Once. Long ago. Now I am an old woman waiting for death.
Aloud, she asked, “Have you seen my work?”
Dorn’s voice grew heavier. “Only holograms. Once I set out to see The Rememberer for myself, but—other matters intervened.”
“You were a soldier then?”
“Yes. I have only been a priest since coming to this place.”
Elverda wanted to ask him more, but Dorn stopped before a blank door and opened it for her. For an instant she thought he was going to reach for her with his prosthetic hand. She shrank away from him.
“I will call for you in eleven hours and fifty-six minutes,” he said, as if he had not noticed her revulsion.
“Thank you.”
He turned away, like a machine pivoting.
“Wait,” Elverda called. “Please—how many others are here? Everything seems so quiet.”
“There are no others. Only the three of us.”
“But—”
“I am in charge of the security brigade. I ordered the others of my command to go back to our spacecraft and wait there.”
“And the scientists? The prospector family that found this asteroid?”
“They are in Mr. Sterling’s spacecraft, the one you arrived in,” said Dorn. “Under the protection of my brigade.”
Elverda looked into his eyes. Whatever burned in them, she could not fathom.
“Then we are alone here?”
Dorn nodded solemnly. “You and me—and Mr. Sterling, who pays all the bills.” The human half of his face remained as immobile as the metal. Elverda could not tell if he was trying to be humorous or bitter.
“Thank you,” she said. He turned away and she closed the door.
Her quarters consisted of a single room, comfortably warm but hardly larger than the compartment on the ship they had come in. Elverda saw that her meager travel bag was already sitting on the bed, her worn old drawing computer resting in its travel-smudged case on the desk. Elverda stared at the computer case as if it were accusing her. I should have left it home, she thought. I will never use it again.
A small utility robot, hardly more than a glistening drum of metal and six gleaming arms folded like a praying mantis’s, stood mutely in the farthest corner. Elverda stared at it. At least it was entirely a machine; not a self-mutilated human being. To take the most beautiful form in the universe and turn it into a hybrid mechanism, a travesty of humanity. Why did he do it? So he could be a better soldier? A more efficient killing machine?
And why did he send all the others away? she asked herself while she opened the travel hag. As she carried her toiletries to the narrow alcove of the bathroom, a new thought struck her. Did he send them away before he saw the artifact, or afterward? Has he even seen it? Perhaps.
Then she saw her reflection in the mirror above the washbasin. Her heart sank. Once she had been called regal, stately, a goddess made of copper. Now she looked withered, dried up, bone thin, her face a geological map of too many years of living, her flight coveralls hanging limply on her emaciated frame.
You are old, she said to her image. Old and aching and tired.
It is the long trip, she told herself. You need to rest. But the other voice in her mind laughed scornfully. You’ve done nothing but rest for the entire time it’s taken to reach this piece of rock. You are ready for the permanent rest; why deny it?
She had been teaching at the university on Luna, the closest she could get to Earth after a long lifetime of living in low-gravity environments. Close enough to see the world of her birth, the only world of life and warmth in the solar system, the only place where a person could walk out in the sunshine and feel its warmth soaking your bones, smell the fertile earth nurturing its bounty, feel a cool breeze plucking at your hair.
But she had separated herself from Earth permanently. She had stood at the shore of Titan’s methane sea; from an orbiting spacecraft she had watched the surging clouds of Jupiter swirl their overpowering colors; she had carved the kilometer-long rock of The Rememberer. But she could no longer stand in the village of her birth, at the edge of the Pacific’s booming surf, and watch the soft white clouds form shapes of imaginary animals.
Her creative life was long finished. She had lived too long; there were no friends left, and she had never had a family. There was no purpose to her life, no reason to do anything except go through the motions and wait. At the university she was no longer truly working at her art but helping students who had the fires of inspiration burning fresh and hot inside them. Her life was one of vain regrets for all the things she had not accomplished, for all the failures she could recall. Failures at love; those were the bitterest. She was praised as the solar system’s greatest artist: the sculptress of The Rememberer, the creator of the first great ionospheric painting, The Virgin of the Andes. She was respected, but not loved. She felt empty, alone, barren. She had nothing to look forward to, absolutely nothing.
Then Miles Sterling swept into her existence. A lifetime younger, bold, vital, even ruthless, he stormed her academic tower with the news that an alien artifact had been discovered deep in the asteroid belt.
“It’s some kind of art form,” he said, desperate with excitement. “You’ve got to come with me and see it.”
Trying to control the long-forgotten longing that stirred within her, Elverda had asked quietly, “Why do I have to go with you, Mr. Sterling? Why me? I’m an old wo—”
“You are the greatest artist of our time,” he had snapped. “You’ve got to see this! Don’t bullshit me with false modesty. You’re the only other person in the whole whirling solar system who deserves to see it!”
“The only other person besides whom?” she had asked.
He had blinked with surprise. “Why, besides me, of course.”
So now we are on this nameless asteroid, waiting to see the alien artwork. Just the three of us. The richest man in the solar system. An elderly artist who has outlived her usefulness. And a cyborg soldier who has cleared everyone else away.
He claims to be a priest, Elverda remembered. A priest who is half machine. She shivered as if a cold wind surged through her.
A harsh buzzing noise interrupted her thoughts. Looking into the main part of the room, Elverda saw that the phone screen was blinking red in rhythm to the buzzing.
“Phone,” she called out.
Sterling’s face appeared on the screen instantly. “Come to my quarters,” he said. “We have to talk.”
“Give me an hour. I need—”
“Now.”
Elverda felt her brows rise haughtily. Then the strength sagged out of her. He has bought the right to command you, she told herself. He is quite capable of refusing to allow you to see the artifact.
“Now,” she agreed.
Sterling was pacing across the plush carpeting when she arrived at his quarters. He had changed from his flight coveralls to a comfortably loose royal blue pullover and expensive genuine twill slacks. As the doors slid shut behind her, he stopped in front of a low couch and faced her squarely.
“Do you know who this Dorn creature is?”
Elverda answered, “Only what he has told us.”
“I’ve checked him out. My staff in the ship has a complete dossier on him. He’s the butcher who led the Chrysalis massacre, fourteen years ago.”
“He—”
“Eleven hundred men, women, and children. Slaughtered. He was the man who commanded the attack.”
“He said he had been a soldier.”
“A mercenary. A cold-blooded murderer. He was working for Toyama then. The Chrysalis was their habitat. When its population voted for independence, Toyama put him in charge of a squad to bring them back into line. He killed them all; turned off their air and let them all die.”
Elverda felt shakily for the nearest chair and sank into it. Her legs seemed to have lost all their strength.
“His name was Harbin then. Dorik Harbin.”
“Wasn’t he brought to trial?”
“No. He ran away. Disappeared. I always thought Toyama helped to hide him. They take care of their own, they do. He must have changed his name afterward. Nobody would hire the butcher, not even Toyama.”
“His face . . . half his body . . .” Elverda felt terribly weak, almost faint. “When . . . ?”
“Must have been after he ran away. Maybe it was an attempt to disguise himself.”
“And now he is working for you.” She wanted to laugh at the irony of it, but did not have the strength.
“He’s got us trapped on this chunk of rock! There’s nobody else here except the three of us.”
“You have your staff in your ship. Surely they would come if you summoned them.”
“His security squad’s been ordered to keep everybody except you and me off the asteroid. He gave those orders.”
“You can countermand them, can’t you?”
For the first time since she had met Miles Sterling, he looked unsure of himself. “I wonder,” he said.
“Why?” Elverda asked. “Why is he doing this?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.” Sterling strode to the phone console. “Harbin!” he called. “Dorik Harbin. Come to my quarters at once.”
Without even an eyeblink’s delay the phone’s computer-synthesized voice replied, “Dorik Harbin no longer exists. Transferring your call to Dorn.”
Sterling’s blue eyes snapped at the phone’s blank screen.
“Dorn is not available at present,” the phone’s voice said. “He will call for you in eleven hours and thirty-two minutes.”
“God damn it!” Sterling smacked a fist into the open palm of his other hand. “Get me the officer on watch aboard the Sterling Eagle.”
“All exterior communications are inoperable at the present time,” replied the phone.
“That’s impossible!”
“All exterior communications are inoperable at the present time,” the phone repeated, unperturbed.
Sterling stared at the empty screen, then turned slowly toward Elverda. “He’s cut us off. We’re really trapped here.”
Elverda felt the chill of cold metal clutching at her. Perhaps Dorn is a madman, she thought. Perhaps he is my death, personified.
“We’ve got to do something!” Sterling nearly shouted.
Elverda rose shakily to her feet. “There is nothing that we can do, for the moment. I am going to my quarters to take a nap. I believe that Dorn, or Harbin, or whatever his identity is, will call on us when he is ready to.”
“And do what?”
“Show us the artifact,” she replied, silently adding, I hope.
Legally, the artifact and the entire asteroid belonged to Sterling Enterprises, Ltd. It had been discovered by a family—husband, wife, and two sons, ages five and three—that made a living from searching out iron-nickel asteroids and selling the mining rights to the big corporations. They filed their claim to this unnamed asteroid, together with a preliminary description of its ten-kilometer-wide shape, its orbit within the asteroid belt, and a sample analysis of its surface composition.
Six hours after their original transmission reached the commodities-market computer network on Earth—while a fairly spirited bidding war was going on among four major corporations for the asteroid’s mineral rights—a new message arrived at the headquarters of the International Astronautical Authority, in London. The message was garbled, fragmentary, obviously made in great haste and at fever excitement. There was an artifact of some sort in a cavern deep inside the asteroid.
One of the faceless bureaucrats buried deep within the IAA’s multilayered organization sent an immediate message to an employee of Sterling Enterprises, Ltd. The bureaucrat retired hours later, richer than he had any right to expect, while Miles Sterling personally contacted the prospectors and bought the asteroid outright for enough money to end their prospecting days forever. By the time the decision-makers in the IAA realized that an alien artifact had been discovered they were faced with a fait accompli: the artifact, and the asteroid in which it resided, were the personal property of the richest man in the solar system.
Miles Sterling was no egomaniac. Nor was he a fool. Graciously, he allowed the IAA to organize a team of scientists who would inspect this first specimen of alien existence. Even more graciously, Sterling offered to ferry the scientific investigators all the long way to the asteroid at his own expense. He made only one demand, and the IAA could hardly refuse him. He insisted that he see this artifact himself before the scientists were allowed to view it.
And he brought along the solar system’s most honored and famous artist. To appraise the artifact’s worth as an art object, he claimed. To determine how much he could deduct from his corporate taxes by donating the thing to the IAA, said his enemies.
But over the months of their voyage to the asteroid, Elverda came to the conclusion that buried deep beneath his ruthless business persona was an eager little boy who was tremendously excited at having found a new toy. A toy he intended to possess for himself. An art object, created by alien hands.
For an art object was what the artifact seemed to be. The family of prospectors continued to send back vague, almost irrational reports of what the artifact looked like. The reports were worthless. No two descriptions matched. If the man and woman were to be believed, the artifact did nothing but sit in the middle of a rough-hewn cavern. But they described it differently with every report they sent. It glowed with light. It was darker than deep space. It was a statue of some sort. It was formless. It overwhelmed the senses. It was small enough almost to pick up in one hand. It made the children laugh happily. It frightened their parents. When they tried to photograph it, their transmissions showed nothing but blank screens. Totally blank.
As Sterling listened to their maddening reports and waited impatiently for the IAA to organize its handpicked team of scientists, he ordered his security manager to get a squad of hired personnel to the asteroid as quickly as possible. From corporate facilities on Titan and the moons of Mars, from three separate outposts among the asteroid belt itself, Sterling Enterprises efficiently brought together a brigade of experienced mercenary security troops. They reached the asteroid long before anyone else could, and were under orders to make certain that no one was allowed onto the asteroid before Miles Sterling himself reached it.
“The time has come.”
Elverda woke slowly, painfully, like a swimmer struggling for the air and light of the surface. She had been dreaming of her childhood, of the village where she had grown up, the distant snow-capped Andes, the warm night breezes that spoke of love.
“The time has come.”
It was Dorn’s deep voice, whisper soft. Startled, she flashed her eyes open. She was alone in the room, but Dorn’s image filled the phone screen by her bed. The numbers glowing beneath the screen showed that it was indeed time.
“I am awake now,” she said to the screen.
“I will be at your door in fifteen minutes,” Dorn said. “Will that be enough time for you to prepare yourself?”
“Yes, plenty.” The days when she needed time for selecting her clothing and arranging her appearance were long gone.
“In fifteen minutes, then.”
“Wait,” she blurted. “Can you see me?”
“No. Visual transmission must be keyed manually.”
“I see.”
“I do not.”
A joke? Elverda sat up on the bed as Dorn’s image winked out. Is he capable of humor?
She shrugged out of the shapeless coveralls she had worn to bed, took a quick shower, and pulled her best caftan from the travel bag. It was a deep midnight blue, scattered with glittering silver stars. Elverda had made the floor-length gown herself, from fabric woven by her mother long ago. She had painted the stars from her memory of what they had looked like from her native village.
As she slid back her front door she saw Dorn marching down the corridor with Sterling beside him. Despite his longer legs, Sterling seemed to be scampering like a child to keep up with Dorn’s steady, stolid steps.
“I demand that you reinstate communications with my ship,” Sterling was saying, his voice echoing off the corridor walls. “I’ll dock your pay for every minute this insubordination continues!”
“It is a security measure,” Dorn said calmly, without turning to look at the man. “It is for your own good.”
“My own good? Who in hell are you to determine what my own good might be?”
Dorn stopped three paces short of Elverda, made a stiff little bow to her, and only then turned to face his employer.
“Sir: I have seen the artifact. You have not.”
“And that makes you better than me?” Sterling almost snarled the words. “Holier, maybe?”
“No,” said Dorn. “Not holier. Wiser.”
Sterling started to reply, then thought better of it.
“Which way do we go?” Elverda asked in the sudden silence.
Dorn pointed with his prosthetic hand. “Down,” he replied. “This way.”
The corridor abruptly became a rugged tunnel again, with lights fastened at precisely spaced intervals along the low ceiling. Elverda watched Dorn’s half-human face as the pools of shadow chased the highlights glinting off the etched metal, like the Moon racing through its phases every half-minute, over and again.
Sterling had fallen silent as they followed the slanting tunnel downward into the heart of the rock. Elverda heard only the clicking of his shoes, at first, but by concentrating she was able to make out the softer footfalls of Dorn’s padded boots and even the whisper of her own slippers.
The air seemed to grow warmer, closer. Or is it my own anticipation? She glanced at Sterling; perspiration beaded his upper lip. The man radiated tense expectation. Dorn glided a few steps ahead of them. He did not seem to be hurrying, yet he was now leading them down the tunnel, like an ancient priest leading two new acolytes—or sacrificial victims.
The tunnel ended in a smooth wall of dull metal.
“We are here.”
“Open it up,” Sterling demanded.
“It will open itself,” replied Dorn. He waited a heartbeat, then added, “Now.”
And the metal slid up into the rock above them as silently as if it were a curtain made of silk.
None of them moved. Then Dorn slowly turned toward the two of them and gestured with his human hand.
“The artifact lies twenty-two point nine meters beyond this point. The tunnel narrows and turns to the right. The chamber is large enough to accommodate only one person at a time, comfortably.”
“Me first!” Sterling took a step forward.
Dorn stopped him with an upraised hand: The prosthetic hand. “I feel it my duty to caution you—”
Sterling tried to push the hand away; he could not budge it.
“When I first crossed this line, I was a soldier. After I saw the artifact I gave up my life.”
“And became a self-styled priest. So what?”
“The artifact can change you. I thought it best that there be no witnesses to your first viewing of it, except for this gifted woman whom you have brought with you. When you first see it, it can be—traumatic.”
Sterling’s face twisted with a mixture of anger and disgust. “I’m not a mercenary killer. I don’t have anything to be afraid of.”
Dorn let his hand drop to his side with a faint whine of miniaturized servomotors.
“Perhaps not,” he murmured, so low that Elverda barely heard it.
Sterling shouldered his way past the cyborg. “Stay here,” he told Elverda. “You can see it when I come back.”
He hurried down the tunnel, footsteps staccato. Then silence.
Elverda looked at Dorn. The human side of his face seemed utterly weary.
“You have seen the artifact more than once, haven’t you?”
“Fourteen times,” he answered.
“It has not harmed you in any way, has it?”
He hesitated, then replied, “It has changed me. Each time I see it, it changes me more.”
“You . . . you really are Dorik Harbin?”
“I was.”
“Those people of the Chrysalis . . .”
“Dorik Harbin killed them all. Yes. There is no excuse for it, no pardon. It was the act of a monster.”
“But why?”
“Monsters do monstrous things. Dorik Harbin ingested psychotropic drugs to increase his battle prowess. Afterward, when the battle drugs cleared from his bloodstream and he understood what he had done, Dorik Harbin held a grenade against his chest and set it off.”
“Oh my god,” Elverda whimpered.
“He was not allowed to die, however. The medical specialists rebuilt his body and he was given a false identity. For many years he lived a sham of life, hiding from the authorities, hiding from his own guilt. He no longer had the courage to kill himself, the pain of his first attempt was far stronger than his own self-loathing. Then he was hired to come to this place. Dorik Harbin looked upon the artifact for the first time, and his true identity emerged at last.”
Elverda heard a scuffling sound, like feet dragging, staggering. Miles Sterling came into view, tottering, leaning heavily against the wall of the tunnel, slumping as if his legs could no longer hold him.
“No man . . . no one . . .” He pushed himself forward and collapsed into Dorn’s arms.
“Destroy it!” he whispered harshly, spittle dribbling down his chin. “Destroy this whole damned piece of rock! Wipe it out of existence!”
“What is it?” Elverda asked. “What did you see?”
Dorn lowered him to the ground gently. Sterling’s feet scrabbled against the rock as if he were trying to run away. Sweat covered his face, soaked his shirt.
“It’s . . . beyond . . .” he babbled. “More . . . than anyone can . . . nobody could stand it . . .”
Elverda sank to her knees beside him. “What has happened to him?” She looked up at Dorn, who knelt on Sterling’s other side.
“The artifact.”
Sterling suddenly ranted, “They’ll find out about me! Everyone will know! It’s got to be destroyed! Nuke it! Blast it to bits!” His fists windmilled in the air, his eyes were wild.
“I tried to warn him,” Dorn said as he held Sterling’s shoulders down, the man’s head in his lap. “I tried to prepare him for it.”
“What did he see?” Elverda’s heart was pounding; she could hear it thundering in her ears. “What is it? What did you see?”
Dorn shook his head slowly. “I cannot describe it. I doubt that anyone could describe it—except, perhaps, an artist: a person who has trained herself to see the truth.”
“The prospectors—they saw it. Even their children saw it.”
“Yes. When I arrived here they had spent eighteen days in the chamber. They left it only when the chamber closed itself. They ate and slept and returned here, as if hypnotized.”
“It did not hurt them, did it?”
“They were emaciated, dehydrated. It took a dozen of my strongest men to remove them to my ship. Even the children fought us.”
“But—how could . . .” Elverda’s voice faded into silence. She looked at the brightly lit tunnel. Her breath caught in her throat.
“Destroy it,” Sterling mumbled. “Destroy it before it destroys us! Don’t let them find out. They’ll know, they’ll know, they’ll all know.” He began to sob uncontrollably.
“You do not have to see it,” Dorn said to Elverda. “You can return to your ship and leave this place.”
Leave, urged a voice inside her head. Run away. Live out what’s left of your life and let it go.
Then she heard her own voice say, as if from a far distance, “I’ve come such a long way.”
“It will change you,” he warned.
“Will it release me from life?”
Dorn glanced down at Sterling, still muttering darkly, then returned his gaze to Elverda.
“It will change you,” he repeated.
Elverda forced herself to her feet. Leaning one hand against the warm rock wall to steady herself, she said, “I will see it. I must.”
“Yes,” said Dorn. “I understand.”
She looked down at him, still kneeling with Sterling’s head resting in his lap. Dorn’s electronic eye glowed red in the shadows. His human eye was hidden in darkness.
He said, “I believe your people say, Vaya con Dios.”
Elverda smiled at him. She had not heard that phrase in forty years. “Yes. You too. Vaya con Dios.” She turned and stepped across the faint groove where the metal door had met the floor.
The tunnel sloped downward only slightly. It turned sharply to the right, Elverda saw, just as Dorn had told them. The light seemed brighter beyond the turn, pulsating almost, like a living heart.
She hesitated a moment before making that final turn. What lay beyond? What difference, she answered herself. You have lived so long that you have emptied life of all its purpose. But she knew she was lying to herself. Her life was devoid of purpose because she herself had made it that way. She had spurned love; she had even rejected friendship when it had been offered. Still, she realized that she wanted to live. Desperately, she wanted to continue living no matter what.
Yet she could not resist the lure. Straightening her spine, she stepped boldly around the bend in the tunnel.
The light was so bright it hurt her eyes. She raised a hand to her brow to shield them and the intensity seemed to decrease slightly, enough to make out the faint outline of a form, a shape, a person.
Elverda gasped with recognition. A few meters before her, close enough to reach and touch, her mother sat on the sweet grass beneath the warm summer sun, gently rocking her baby and crooning softly to it.
Mama! she cried silently. Mama. The baby—Elverda herself—looked up into her mother’s face and smiled.
And the mother was Elverda, a young and radiant Elverda, smiling down at the baby she had never had, tender and loving as she had never been.
Something gave way inside her. There was no pain: rather, it was as if a pain that had throbbed sullenly within her for too many years to count suddenly faded away. As if a wall of implacable ice finally melted and let the warm waters of life flow through her.
Elverda sank to the floor, crying, gushing tears of understanding and relief and gratitude. Her mother smiled at her.
“I love you, Mama,” she whispered. “I love you.” Her mother nodded and became Elverda herself once more. Her baby made a gurgling laugh of pure happiness, fat little feet waving in the air.
The image wavered, dimmed, and slowly faded into emptiness. Elverda sat on the bare rock floor in utter darkness, feeling a strange serenity and understanding warming her soul.
“Are you all right?”
Dorn’s voice did not startle her. She had been expecting him to come to her.
“The chamber will close itself in another few minutes,” he said. “We will have to leave.”
Elverda took his offered hand and rose to her feet. She felt strong, fully in control of herself.
The tunnel outside the chamber was empty.
“Where is Sterling?”
“I sedated him and then called in a medical team to take him back to his ship.”
“He wants to destroy the artifact,” Elverda said.
“That will not be possible,” said Dorn. “I will bring the IAA scientists here from the ship before Sterling awakes and recovers. Once they see the artifact they will not allow it to be destroyed. Sterling may own the asteroid, but the IAA will exert control over the artifact.”
“The artifact will affect them—strangely.”
“No two of them will be affected in the same manner,” said Dorn. “And none of them will permit it to be damaged in any way.”
“Sterling will not be pleased with you.”
He gestured up the tunnel, and they began to walk back toward their quarters.
“Nor with you,” Dorn said. “We both saw him babbling and blubbering like a baby.”
“What could he have seen?”
“What he most feared. His whole life had been driven by fear, poor man.”
“What secrets he must be hiding!”
“He hid them from himself. The artifact showed him his own true nature.”
“No wonder he wants it destroyed.”
“He cannot destroy the artifact, but he will certainly want to destroy us. Once he recovers his composure he will want to wipe out the witnesses who saw his reaction to it.”
Elverda knew that Dorn was right. She watched his face as they passed beneath the lights, watched the glint of the etched metal, the warmth of the human flesh.
“You knew that he would react this way, didn’t you?” she asked.
“No one could be as rich as he is without having demons driving him. He looked into his own soul and recognized himself for the first time in his life.”
“You planned it this way!”
“Perhaps I did,” he said. “Perhaps the artifact did it for me.”
“How could—”
“It is a powerful experience. After I had seen it a few times I felt it was offering me . . .” he hesitated, then spoke the word, “salvation.”
Elverda saw something in his face that Dorn had not let show before. She stopped in the shadows between overhead lights. Dorn turned to face her, half machine, standing in the rough tunnel of bare rock.
“You have had your own encounter with it,” he said. “You understand now how it can transform you.”
“Yes,” said Elverda. “I understand.”
“After a few times, I came to the realization that there must be thousands of my fellow mercenaries, killed in engagements all through the asteroid belt, still lying where they fell. Or worse yet, floating forever in space, alone, unattended, ungrieved for.”
“Thousands of mercenaries?’
“The corporations do not always settle their differences in Earthly courts of law,” said Dorn. “There have been many battles out here. Wars that we paid for with our blood.”
“Thousands?” Elverda repeated. “I knew that there had been occasional fights out here—but wars? I don’t think anyone on Earth knows it’s been so brutal.”
“Men like Sterling know. They start the wars, and people like me fight them. Exiles, never allowed to return to Earth again once we take the mercenary’s pay.”
“All those men—killed.”
Dorn nodded. “And women. The artifact made me see that it was my duty to find each of those forgotten bodies and give each one a decent final rite. The artifact seemed to be telling me that this was the path of my atonement.”
“Your salvation,” she murmured.
“I see now, however, that I underestimated the situation.”
“How?”
“Sterling. While I am out there searching for the bodies of the slain, he will have me killed.”
“No! That’s wrong!”
Dorn’s deep voice was empty of regret. “It will be simple for him to send a team after me. In the depths of dark space, they will murder me. What I failed to do for myself, Sterling will do for me. He will be my final atonement.”
“Never!” Elverda blazed with anger. “I will not permit it to happen.”
“Your own life is in danger from him,” Dorn said.
“What of it? I am an old woman, ready for death.”
“Are you?”
“I was, until I saw the artifact.”
“Now life is more precious to you, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want you to die,” Elverda said. “You have atoned for your sins. You have borne enough pain.”
He looked away, then started up the tunnel again.
“You are forgetting one important factor,” Elverda called after him.
Dorn stopped, his back to her. She realized now that the clothes he wore had been his military uniform. He had torn all the insignias and pockets from it.
“The artifact. Who created it? And why?”
Turning back toward her, Dorn answered, “Alien visitors to our solar system created it, unknown ages ago. As to why—you tell me: Why does someone create a work of art?”
“Why would aliens create a work of art that affects human minds?”
Dorn’s human eye blinked. He rocked a step backward.
“How could they create an artifact that is a mirror to our souls?” Elverda asked, stepping toward him. “They must have known something about us. They must have been here when there were human beings existing on Earth.”
Dorn regarded her silently.
“They may have been here much more recently than you think,” Elverda went on, coming closer to him. “They may have placed this artifact here to communicate with us.”
“Communicate?”
“Perhaps it is a very subtle, very powerful communications device.”
“Not an artwork at all.”
“Oh yes, of course it’s an artwork. All works of art are commun-ications devices, for those who possess the soul to understand.”
Dorn seemed to ponder this for long moments. Elverda watched his solemn face, searching for some human expression.
Finally he said, “That does not change my mission, even if it is true.”
“Yes it does,” Elverda said, eager to save him. “Your mission is to preserve and protect this artifact against Sterling and anyone else who would try to destroy it—or pervert it to his own use.”
“The dead call to me,” Dorn said solemnly. “I hear them in my dreams now.”
“But why be alone in your mission? Let others help you. There must be other mercenaries who feel as you do.”
“Perhaps,” he said softly.
“Your true mission is much greater than you think,” Elverda said, trembling with new understanding. “You have the power to end the wars that have destroyed your comrades, that have almost destroyed your soul.”
“End the corporate wars?”
“You will be the priest of this shrine, this sepulcher. I will return to Earth and tell everyone about these wars.”
“Sterling and others will have you killed.”
“I am a famous artist, they dare not touch me.” Then she laughed. “And I am too old to care if they do.”
“The scientists—do you think they may actually learn how to communicate with the aliens?”
“Someday,” Elverda said. “When our souls are pure enough to stand the shock of their presence.”
The human side of Dorn’s face smiled at her. He extended his arm and she took it in her own, realizing that she had found her own salvation. Like two kindred souls, like comrades who had shared the sight of death, like mother and son, they walked up the tunnel toward the waiting race of humanity.