7
Forty-four thousand years was a sliver of time. The galaxy had moved only in little ways since people dared slip inside Where-Peace-Rains, and nothing inside but the least stubborn, most trivial details had changed within the cave. The same genetics and honored language were in play. Stock beliefs continued to prosper. And there was still a round expanse of cool red granite where the captain had once played one round of chance, the stone dished in at the middle by generations of worshippers and their mortal feet.
Of course there were many more faces, and there was far less peace. Following the terms of the ancient agreement, archaics produced their own power and clean water and rough, edible foodstuffs. Carefully invested funds had allowed them to purchase a scrap star-drive—an ugly-eight reconfigured to generate electricity, not thrust. The drive was set on the cavern floor, not a thousand meters from the holy place where a chunk of diamond determined the world. The machinery was designed to run forever without interruption, provided that it was maintained regularly. And the ugly-eight had run for thousands of years without trouble. But it was being used in an unusual capacity, and not all of its wastes were bottled up. Lead plates and hyperfiber offered shielding, but the occasional neutron and gamma blast found ways to escape, and the childless men working nearby were prone to murderous cancers.
One engineer had worked fifty years in the most critical job in the world. A bachelor named Jon, he was still holding out hope that the tumor in his liver could be cut out of him, and then smarter, friendlier radiations would have a fighting chance to kill the cancers that had broken loose.
Jon lived inside a small apartment within walking distance of the reactor. Everyone in Where-Peace-Rains lived in a small apartment, and everyone lived close to their important places.
Jon arrived home early. The foreman told him that he looked especially tired and needed to sleep, and Jon had agreed with the prognosis. Nothing felt unusual when he arrived. A key worn smooth by his fingers went into the lock, and the lock gave way with a solid click. But as the door swung inwards, he smelled a stranger, and a strange voice spoke out of the darkness.
"Just be aware," it said. "You're not alone."
Robberies weren't uncommon in the world, and sometimes thieves turned violent. But this was no robbery. The intruder was sitting in Jon's best chair, the seat reserved for guests. The human was relaxed enough to appear lazy. That was the first quality Jon noticed as the room's single light came on. The second detail was the man's appearance, which was substantial, and the beautiful face, even and clean-shaven. His clothes looked like the garb worn by fancy hikers and novice explorers who occasionally passed through the local caverns. Some of those people asked to come inside the archaic community. A few of the immortal passengers were intrigued by archaics, and the best of the interlopers left behind money and little favors.
But there were bad immortals too. They came for one reason, to coax people out of their home, out into the true world—as if one place was truer than another, and as if a person could simply choose his life.
"I let myself in," the stranger said.
Jon took off the daily dosage badge. "You want something," he guessed.
"Yes, I do."
"From me."
"Absolutely, yes."
Nuclear engineers earned respectable salaries, but nobody in this world was wealthy. Jon's fanciest possession was an old ceramic teapot, precious to him because it had been in his family for three thousand years.
The stranger was surely older than the pot.
Stories came back to Jon, unlikely and probably crazy stories. He had never believed such things could involve him, but when he met the man's blue eyes, something passed between them. Suddenly they had an understanding, the beginnings of a relationship. Jon found himself nodding. He knew what this was. "You think that I am dying," he said.
"You are dying."
"But how could you know?"
The immortal shifted his weight, perhaps a little uncomfortable with the subject. Or maybe quite a lot was balanced on the next moments, and he was making his rump ready for whatever Fate saw fit to throw at them.
"I've seen your doctor's files," the man said. "She tells you that you might survive to the end of the year, but I know she's being generous."
Jon had sensed as much. Yet it hurt to hear the news. A new burden, massive and acidic, was burning through his frail, middle-aged body.
He dropped into his own chair.
"I'm sorry," said the man.
Maybe he was sorry, because he sounded earnest.
"You want my life," Jon said.
The pretty face watched him, and after a moment he said, "Maybe."
"Why maybe?"
"Or if you'd rather, I'll pay for your treatments elsewhere."
"I can't abandon Peace," said Jon. "And even if I did, your doctors and your autodocs can't legally cure me."
"Cancer is not the problem," the man said. "I am talking about full treatments. I'm ready to give you that gift, if you want it. Leave your realm and live forever anywhere you want inside the Great Ship, inside the endless universe . . . except for here . . . "
"No."
Did Jon think before answering? He wasn't sure.
But giving the offer serious consideration, he said, "Never, no."
"Good," the stranger said.
Jon leaned forward. The room was small and the chairs were close together, and now they were close enough to kiss. "Are you wearing a mask?"
"Not much of one, if you can see it," said the man, laughing.
"You want my life," Jon repeated.
"Apparently you don't want to hold onto it. Why shouldn't I ask the question?"
They sat and stared at one another. Next door, a newborn was starting to feel her empty stomach, and her cry quickly built until there was no other sound in the world.
Suddenly she fell silent, her mouth full of nipple.
Jon thought about that mother's fine brown nipple. Then he wasn't thinking about anything, waiting for whatever happened next.
Out from a hiker's pocket came a weapon—a sleek gun designed by alien hands. "Except it's not a gun," the man explained. "In my realm, this is a camper's torch and portable grill. For me, the worst burns would heal inside an hour. But the torch can transform ninety kilos of your flesh and bone into a fine white ash, and I can place your remains in whatever garden or sewage plant you want on my way out of town."
Jon stared at the alien machine.
The man dropped it into Jon's lap, and then he sat back.
Its weight was a surprise. The machine was more like a sketch of a weapon, lightweight to the brink of unreal.
"I won't use the tool on you," the stranger promised. "You'll have to use it on yourself."
"No."
Did he think that time?
Jon hadn't, and after hard deliberation, he said, "Maybe."
"And for your trouble," the man began.
He stopped talking.
"I would want something," Jon said.
Not only did his companion have an offer waiting, he knew everything about Jon's living family. Nuclear technicians didn't dare make babies, what with mutations and cancers and the genuine fear that their sons and sonsin-law would follow them into this grim business. But he had siblings and cousins and a dozen nephews, plus even more nieces. Accepting this illegal arrangement meant that each limb of his family would receive enough extra money, dressed up in various excuses, and their lives would noticeably improve.
Jon passed the fierce machine from one hand to the other.
What looked like a trigger was begging to be tugged.
"No, not like that," the man said, patiently but not patiently. Something in this business was bothering him. "And when you do it, if you do it," he said, "stand in the middle of the room. We don't want to set a wall on fire."
Jon considered standing and then didn't.
The man watched him, weighing him, probably using an outsider's magic as well as his eyes.
"It's not enough," Jon said at last.
"It probably isn't," the man agreed.
"If I do this, you walk out of here with my life. Is that what happens?"
"Yes."
"So this isn't nearly enough. Everybody that I will think . . . they'll have no choice but believe . . . that I abandoned them and our cause . . . "
"That can't be helped," the man said. "It sucks, but what other way is there?"
Jon studied the machine once more.
"I picked you and just you," said the man. "Nobody else fits my needs. And sure, yes, the others will be free to tell themselves that you got weak and gave up. But you know that won't be true, and I'll live forever knowing that it wasn't true. And besides, when I give up this life of yours, I can send a confession back here. I'll tell them that you died in your home. Hell, if you want, I can tell the world that I murdered you, which will sure make everybody smile."
Jon started to hand back the alien hardware.
He paused.
The stranger reached up, and in one sloppy motion he tore off the mask, revealing a new face, a genuine face. It was Jon's face, rendered completely— the washed-out, hollow-eyed face already halfway to ash.
"Now I have one more gift, if you want it," said the man.
"What is that?"
"I'll tell you who I am."
Jon shrugged. "What do I care? Your real name doesn't matter."
Reaching into a pocket, his tormentor and salvation brought out a diamond with one hundred and forty-four faces.
Jon jumped up, and then he nearly keeled over, fainting. The alien machine hit the dirty carpet, humming for a moment, leaving an arc of charred fiber.
"Careful," said the one-time captain.
"Let me hold it," Jon said.
The man placed the diamond into his palm and closed the hand around it. The immortal's flesh was exactly as cool and sick as Jon's flesh, which was another wonderful detail.
"Is this the same die?" Jon asked.
"No, that trinket got left behind long ago," Pamir said.
Inspiration came to the dying man. Forcing the diamond into the fugitive's hand, he said, "Throw it. Or roll it. Pick your number either way, and if she stands on top, I will do whatever you want."
Pamir closed his hand.
He breathed once, deeply.
"No, I played that game once," the lost captain said, and with that he dropped the diamond back into his pocket. "I'm done letting chance run free."
8
Three hours of sleep and the humans were sharing the day's first meal. Tailor wasn't with them. Since boarding on the fossil ship, the alien had spent most of his time cuddling with a distant control panel, trying to coax the sovereigns into saying one coherent word. But despite ample power and reassuring noise, the AIs remained lost, crazy or rotted and probably gone forever.
G'lene felt sorry for the old beast, chasing what wasn't there.
And that was where her empathy ended. Like most aliens, the Kajjas man was a mystery and always would be. She accepted that fact. Dwelling on what refused to make sense was senseless. What G'lene cared about, deeply and forever, were human beings. That was true onboard the Great Ship, and her desires were even more urgent here in the wilderness.
But her three human companions were burdens, odd and vexing, usually worse than useless. The twins never stopped whispering in each other's ears. They went so far as creating their own language, and deciphering their private words was a grave insult. Yet despite their vaunted closeness, they did nothing sexual. With a defiant tone, Rondie claimed that sex was an instinct best thrown aside. "That's what my brother did, and I did, and you should too." Preaching to a woman who couldn't imagine any day without some lustful fun, the muscle-bound creature said, "Each of us would be stronger and five times happier if we gave up every useless habit."
G'lene was entitled to feel sorry about her loneliness. That's why she kept smiling at Jon, the Luddite. She smiled at him one hundred times every day. Not that it helped, no. But he was the only possibility in a miserably poor field, and she reasoned that eventually, after another year or maybe a decade, she would wear some kind of hole in his cold resolve.
This was Jon's third breakfast as a living crewmember.
G'lene smiled as always, no hope in her heart. Yet this morning proved to be different. The odd homely conundrum of a man suddenly noticed her expression. At least he met her eyes, answering with what might have been the slyest grin that had ever been tossed her way.
She laughed, daring to ask, "Are you in a good mood, Jon?"
"I am," he said. "I'm in a lovely, spectacular mood."
"Why's that?"
"Last night, I realized something very important."
"Something good, I hope."
"It is. And do want to you know what my epiphany was?"
"Tell it," she said, one hand scratching between her breasts.
But then Jon said, "No," and his eyes wandered. "I don't think that you really do want to know."
G'lene knew thousands of people, but this Luddite was the most bizarre creature, human or otherwise.
The twins were sharing their breakfast from the same squeeze-bowl. They stopped eating to laugh with the same voice, and then Rondie said, "Give up the game, dear. That boy doesn't want you."
What a wicked chain of words to throw at anyone.
"But you can tell us your epiphany," Maxx said.
Jon glanced at the twins.
G'lene felt uneasy in so many ways, and she had no hope guessing why.
Tipping her head, Rondie said, "Whisper your insight inside my ear. I promise I won't share it with anyone."
Her brother gave a hard snort, underscoring her lie.
"No, I think I should tell everyone," said Jon. "But first, I want to hear a confession from you two. Which one of you strangled me?"
Maxx laughed, lifting a big hand.
But his sister grabbed his arm, bracing her feet inside the glass strands before flinging him aside. "No, I'm quieter, and I have the better grip. So I did it. I broke your little neck."
Jon nodded, and then he glanced at G'lene.
"All right, that's done," G'lene said. "What's the revelation?"
"Starting now," said Jon, "we are changing priorities."
"Priorities," Maxx repeated, as if his tongue wanted to play with the word.
"You've been spending your last few days assembling weapons," Jon said to the twins. "That crap has to stop."
Similar faces wore identical expressions, puzzled and amused but not yet angry.
"Our enemies won't arrive inside a starship," said Jon. "Unless I'm wrong, and then I doubt that we could offer much of a fight."
"Our enemies," Maxx repeated.
"Do you know who they are?" G'lene asked.
Jon shook his head. "I don't. Do any of you?"
Nobody spoke.
Jon teased a glob of meal-and-milk from his breakfast orb, spinning the treat before flicking it straight into his mouth.
The ordinary gesture was odd, though G'lene couldn't quite see why.
"Tailor claims that we have to be ready for an attack," said Jon. "Except our sovereign isn't particularly forthcoming about when and where that might happen. His orders tell us nothing specific, and that's why they tell us plenty. For instance, this crazy old wreck is worth nothing, which means that it's carrying something worth huge risks and lousy odds."
The twins didn't look at each other. Thinking the same thoughts, they glanced at G'lene, and she tried to offer a good worried smile. And because it sounded a little bit reasonable, she said, "That Kajjas is so old and so strange. I just assumed that he's just a little paranoid. Isn't that what happens after millions of years?"
"My experience," said Jon. "It doesn't take nearly that long."
"You want to change priorities," Rondie said, steering the subject.
"Change them how?" Maxx asked.
"Forget munitions and normal warfare," said the Luddite. "We have one clear job, and that's to finish loading the fuel and dismantling the streakship. Its entire mass has to be ready to burn, when the time comes."
"That would be crazy," said Maxx. "If you can't get the pulse engine firing, then the other ship becomes our lifeboat."
"Except we aren't going to fly any streakship," said Jon. "Streakships are brilliant and very steady and we love them because of it. But if we have enemies, then they'll spot us at a distance, and believe me, streakships are easy targets. On the other hand, the Kajjas pulse engine is a miserable mess full of surges and little failures. Teaching us will be a very difficult proposition. And that's why today, in another ten minutes, I want the two of you to start mapping the minimum cuts to make that other ship into a useable corpse."
"But you promised," said Maxx. "Our enemies aren't coming inside a warship."
"What I promised is that we can't beat them if they do come. We don't have the munitions or armor to offer any kind of fight. My little epiphany, for what it's worth, is that our foes, if they are real, will have one of two strategies: They don't want anybody to have this ship or its cargo, which means they destroy us out here, in deep space. In which case, boarding parties are a waste. Or they want to have whatever we have here, and that's why we have to make ourselves a lousy target."
Rondie scoffed. "Again, we know nothing."
"Or there's nothing worth knowing," G'lene added.
"Physics and tactics," Jon said. "I see our advantages as well as our weaknesses, which is why my plan is best."
"Impressive," said Maxx with a mocking tone, one leg kicking him a little closer to Jon.
G'lene didn't like anybody's face. Where was Tailor? In the distance, hands and long feet working at a bank of controls—controls that hadn't been used since she was a broth of scattered DNA running in the trees, waiting for mutations and the feeble tiny chance to become human.
Jon's gaze was fixed in the middle of the threesome.
"You know quite a lot for a simple drive-mechanic," Maxx said.
"Simple can be good." Jon winked at that empty spot of air. "Now ask yourselves this: Why did our captain hire children?"
"We're not children," Rondie said.
Maxx said.
But G'lene sighed, admitting, "I wondered that too."
"Real or imagined, Tailor's enemy is treacherous," said Jon. "Our Kajjas wants youth. He brought only humans, which is a very young species. And he wants humans that aren't more than a thousand years old, give or take. That way he could study our entire lives, proving to his satisfaction that we aren't more than we seem to be."
"I'm not a little girl," said Rondie.
"You're not," Maxx said.
But Jon was a thousand and the siblings weren't even five centuries old, making them the babies in this odd group.
G'lene watched the angry faces and Jon's face, alert but weirdly calm. Then she noticed the twins' sticky breakfast floating free of its orb. G'lene was born on the Great Ship. Everybody had been. This was their first genuine experience with zero-gee, and she hated it. Without weight, everything small got lost inside the same careless moment, and she didn't know how to move without thinking, and she wasn't moving now, remembering how the Luddite so easily, so deftly, made that bite of his breakfast spin and drift into his waiting mouth.
Jon had been in zero gravity before this.
When?
She nearly asked. But then Maxx said, "I'm going back to work. Plasma guns need to be secured and powered up."
"No, you're not," said Jon.
Rondie kicked closer to the Luddite, hands flexing. "Who put you in charge?" she asked.
"Life," Jon said.
Everybody laughed at him.
But then he asked, "Do you know what I did last night? While you slept, I changed the pass-codes on every gun. Nothing warms an egg without my blessing."
The twins cursed.
Jon shrugged and said, "By the way, I've convinced our human-built AIs that the only voice of reason here is me. Me."
The twins wrapped some brutal words around, "Luddite," and "mutiny."
The mysterious human showed them nothing. He didn't brace for war or smile at his victory. The milky water from a glacier was warmer and far more impatient. Then the twins' anger finally ebbed, and Jon looked at G'lene. Again, from somewhere, he found the sly grin that unsettled her once more. But it also had a way of making her confident, which she liked.
"You never were a Luddite," she blurted.
Jon didn't seem to notice. "Sleep is an indulgence," he told everyone. "We're working hard and smart from this instant, and we'll launch eighteen days earlier than you originally planned. Everybody can sleep, but only when we're roaring back to the Great Ship."
"You're somebody else entirely," she said. "Who are you?"
"I'm Jon, the drive-mechanic," he told them. "And I'm Jon, the temporary captain of this fossil ship.
"Everything else is electrons bouncing inside a box."
9
The field kitchen had no trouble generating propanol and cyanide, and for that matter, spitting out passable rum—an archaic drink that Pamir had grown fond of. What was difficult was finding the moment when the ship's new captain and the Kajjas could drink without interruption. The streakship was being gutted and sliced up, each piece secured against the scaffolding on the old ship's hull. Pamir's three-body crew was working with an absence of passion, but they were working. When everything was going well enough, he offered some calibrated excuse about his lifesuit malfunctioning. Then alone, he slipped back inside the long interior room, grabbing the refreshments and joining Tailor, drifting before that bank of murmuring and glowing, deeply uncooperative machines.
"For you, my sovereign," said the human, handing over a bulb of poison.
The Kajjas was fondling the interfaces, using hands and bare toes, using touch and ears. But his eyes were mist and dream, and the long neck held the head back in a careless fashion that hinted at deep anguish.
The bulb drifted beside him, unnoticed.
Pamir cracked his bulb, sipping the liquor as he waited.
Then the eyes cleared, but Tailor continued to stare into the machinery.
"I have two questions," said the human.
"And I have many," the Kajjas said. "Too many."
" 'The army is one body masquerading as many,' " Pamir quoted. " 'You are at war with one puzzle, and it just seems like a multitude.' "
"Whose expression is that?"
"Harum-scarums use it," Pamir said.
"I know a few harum-scarums," said Tailor. "They are a spectacularly successful species."
"You should have hired them, not us."
"Perhaps I should have."
Pamir sipped the rum again.
"I'm not oblivious, blind or stupid," the alien said. "I understand that you have taken control of my ship and its future."
"Your plans were weak, and I did what was necessary. Do you approve?"
"Have I contested this change?"
"Here is your chance," said Pamir.
Tailor steered the conversation back where it began. "You wish to ask two questions."
"Yes."
Tailor claimed the other bulb, sipping deeply. "You wish to know if I am making progress."
"I don't care," Pamir said.
"You are lying."
"I have a talent in that realm."
Iron crashed against iron, leaving the air ringing. "Well, I am enjoying some small successes. According to the rough evidence, this is a cargo vessel transporting something precious. But the various boxes and likely cavities are empty, and the sovereigns' language began ancient and then changed over time, and meanwhile these machines have descended into codes or madness, or both."
"How old are you?" Pamir asked.
The Kajjas' three eyes were clear as gin, and each one reached deep inside the head, allowing light to pour into a shared cavity where images danced within a tangle of lenses and mirrors, modern neurons and tissues older than either species.
"You have posed that question before," Tailor said. "You've asked more than once, if my instincts are true."
Pamir confessed how many times they had met over drinks.
"Goodness." Laughter followed, and a sip. "I have noticed. You are suddenly acting and sounding like a captain. Maybe that was one of your disguises, long ago."
"There was no disguise," he said. "I was a fine captain."
"Or there was, and you were fooled as well."
Pamir liked the idea. He didn't believe it, but the meme found life inside him, cloying and frightening and sure to linger.
"I'm a few centuries older than ninety-three million years," Tailor said. "And while I can't claim to have walked your earth, I have known souls— Kajjas and other species—who saw your dinosaurs stomping about on your sandy beaches."
"Lucky souls."
The Kajjas preferred to say nothing.
"I'm waking our engine tomorrow," Pamir said.
"According to your own schedule, that's far too soon."
"It is. But I've decided that we can fly and cut apart the streakship at the same time. We'll use our hydrogen stocks until they're nine-tenths gone, and then we'll throw machine parts down the engine's mouth."
"Butchering the other ship will be hard work, under acceleration."
"Which brings me to my second question: Will you help my crew do the essential labor?"
"And give my important work its sleep," Tailor said.
"Unless you can do both at once."
The mouth opened to speak, but then it closed again, saying nothing as two eyes clouded over.
Pamir finished his drink, the bulb flattened in his hand.
Tailor spoke. Or rather, his translator absorbed the soft musical utterances, creating human words and human emotions that struggled to match what could never be duplicated. Honest translations were mythical beasts. On its best day, communication was a sloppy game, and Pamir was lucky to know what anyone meant, including himself.
"This starship," said the alien. "It is older than me."
"How do you know?"
"There are no markings, no designations. I have looked, but there is no trace of any name. Yet the ship is identical to vessels built while my sun was far outside the galaxy. Those ships were designed for the longest voyages that we could envision, and then they were improved beyond what was imaginable. They had one mission. They were to carry brave and very patient crews into the void, out beyond where anyone goes, in an effort to discover our galaxy's sovereigns."
"Our galaxy's sovereigns," Pamir repeated. "I don't understand."
"But the concept is obvious."
"Someone rules the galaxy?"
"Of course someone does."
"And how does leaving the galaxy prove anything?"
"That's a third question," Tailor pointed out.
"It's your query, not mine. Not once in my life have I ever thought that way."
"And which life is that?"
"Talk," said Pamir.
"Onboard your Great Ship, I once met a Vozzen historian of considerable age and endless learning. The two of us spent months discussing the oldest species of intelligent life, those bold first examples of technological civilizations, and what caused each to lose its grip on Forever and die away. The historian's mind was larger and far wiser than mine. I admit as much. But you can appreciate how the same principles are at work inside both of us, and inside you. The bioceramic mind is the standard for civilized worlds. It was devised early, and several founding worlds have been given credit, although none of them exist anymore. And since the mind's introduction into the galaxy, no one has managed more than incremental improvements on its near-perfection."
"The brain works," said Pamir.
"One basic design is shared by twenty million species. Of course intellect and souls and the colors of our emotions vary widely, even inside the human animal. At first look and after long thought, one might come to the conclusion that it is as you say: We have what's best, and there isn't any reason to look farther."
"We don't look farther," Pamir agreed.
"Humans don't. But the Kajjas once did. That is point: Our nameless fleet was buried inside a great frozen dwarf world, every pulse engine blazing, driving that shrinking world toward our Second Eye, your Andromeda. The survivors of that epic were under orders to investigate what kind of minds those natives employed, and if another, perhaps worthier mind was found, the fleet would return home immediately.
"At the very most," said Tailor, "that mission would have demanded eight million years. I was born near the end of that period, and I spent my youth foolishly watched for those heroes to return and enlighten us. But they did not appear, even as an EM whisper. Ten and twenty and then fifty million passed, yet just by their absence, much was learned. We assumed that they were dead and the ships were lost, or the explorers had pushed farther into the void, seeking more difficult answers.
"Few civilizations ever attempt such wonders. I have always believed that, and the Vozzen happily agreed with my assessment.
"Don't you find that puzzling? Intriguing? Wrong? The resources of a galaxy in hand, and few of us ever attempt such a voyage.
"But my brethren did. And afterward, living inside my galaxy, I have tried my best to answer the same questions. It is the burden and blessing of being Kajjas: Each of us knows that he rules only so much, and every ruler has worthy masters of his own, wherever they might hide."
"Sovereigns to the galaxy," said Pamir, his voice sharpening.
"You don't believe in them," Tailor said.
"Have you found them?"
"Everywhere, and nowhere. Yes." The laugh was brief, accompanied by a sad murmuring from the translator. "Everywhere that I travel, there are rumors of deeds that claim no father, legends of creatures that wear any face and any voice. There is even talk about invisible worlds and hidden realms, conspiracies and favored species and species that diminish and succumb to no good opponent.
"About our masters, I have little to say. Except that they terrify me, and because I am Kajjas, I wish that I could lie between their mighty feet and beg for some little place at their table."
Pamir had too many questions to ask or even care about. His crew was noticing his absence. One nexus rewarded him with a string of obscenities from the twins, and with those words, promises to turn him over to the Great Ship's captains as soon as they arrived home.
It was no secret that Pamir could hear them, and Rondie and Maxx didn't care.
And all that while, G'lene said nothing.
"Suddenly," said Tailor, almost shouting the word.
"What?"
"Just two million years ago, suddenly and with the barest of warnings, our old fleet began to return home."
Pamir nodded, and waited.
"The ships appeared as individuals. I won't explain how a person might know in advance where such a derelict will show itself, but there is a pattern and we have insights, and there have been some little successes in finding them before anyone else. The crews are always missing. Dead, we presume. But 'missing' is a larger, finer word. Empty ships return like raindrops, scattered and almost unnoticed, and their AIs are near death, and nothing is learned, and sometimes tragic events find the salvage teams that come out to meet these relics."
"Your enemies strike," Pamir said.
"Yet disaster isn't certain," the alien said. "That might imply that there are no masters of the galaxy. Or it means that they are the ultimate masters, and better than us, they know what is and is not a threat to their powers."
Pamir drifted closer, placing his body in a submissive pose.
Long feet pulled away from the display panel, surrounding the human head. "The old fleet had one additional command," Tailor said. "If no equal or at least different mind could be found in the wilderness, then the Kajjas had to assemble at some sunless world, preferably a large moon stirred by a brown dwarf sun, and there, free of interference and ordinary thoughts, our finest minds would build a colony. Then in that nameless place, they and their offspring would kill preconceptions and create something else.
"They were to build a different way of thinking, yes.
"And that is what they were to send home, however they could and in the safest way possible."
Approximating the Kajjas language, the human said, "Shit."
Tailor stroked the panel with one hand, watching a thousand shades of blue swirl into fancy shapes that collapsed as soon as the fingers lifted. "I don't know this language," he said. "It is older than me and full of odd terms, and maybe it has been corrupted. There are fine reasons to believe that there is no meaning inside these machines. But it is possible, weak as the chance seems, that the truth stands before me, and my ordinary mind, and yours, are simply unable to see what is."
The alien was insane, Pamir hoped.
The hand released the display, and Tailor said, "Yes."
"Yes what?"
"I will help make the ship ready for flight. Obviously, nothing I do here can be confused for good."