3
“We’re the ultimate crew, for the ultimate ship,” Doctor Aelfwyrd explained as the three men walked out of the Genesis Chamber. “Men and women born centuries after our time, the best men and women of their age, sat down and solved the equation. We could not be better suited for our jobs, and our ship - our boat -” He paused to laugh. “- Our vehicle is all that they could have plotted and calculated and devised. Yes, it’s even better than your Falcon.”
Charlie, Aelfwyrd, and Allambree had walked out in the center of a shining white city. It reminded Charlie of pictures he’d seen of Florence or Paris and yet also of ancient Angkor Watt. The stone was carved in massive and intricate patterns. There was no metal, no plastic, and no wood, apart from the trees, as far as he could see. He didn’t see any cars or roads, but walk-ways made of the same bright ivory rock. There could not have been as much marble, if it really was marble, on the whole of planet Earth.
And he could not imagine what cranes or other construction machines could have been used to raise the massive pillars and trellises and statues. Great skyscrapers rose up as tall as anything he had seen on Earth, but they appeared to be cut out of one stone. In fact, he didn’t see any creases or hinges. The entire city looked like it had been carved out of a single block.
The air smelled of vanilla and blackberries. There were trees and flowers, grassy areas. He could see a long walkway covered with saplings which roses grew out of. He recognized most of the plants as fairly normal, but, remarkably, not all. The rose trees were new. A series of long blue blades waved back and forth in a breeze which did not match the wind. Red pastel ivy grew over some of the buildings, which gave the impression that they had stood there for decades.
Above them, the sky was an undulating web of green and purple lines, a massive exaggeration of the Aurora Borealis humming and thrumming only as high above as one might expect to see clouds. Beyond them was the soft blue of a normal afternoon’s sky.
“How old is this city?” Charlie asked.
“The whole ship was created over-night,” Allambree answered.
“How long ago?”
“That is an excellent question,” Aelfwyrd said with concern. “Am I the second version of myself or the fifth? We will have to see what information the others have. They will have recordings.”
Allambree pointed at the red ivy, which grew so lushly over the closest tower. “That building and that ivy may have been made exactly how they would have been if they had been there for a hundred years. We can’t judge the age of anything summoned up out of nothingness with our senses.”
“Alright, well, where’s the ship?” Charlie asked.
“This is the ship,” Aelfwyrd answered.
“It’s a bloody big ship,” Allambree laughed like a little boy.
A bright blue bird flew past. It was followed by a speeding green and fat insect which rushed past the bird and dashed under an ornate bridge covered with statues of angels and elephants. As the three men walked on, an animal cried out in the distance. It sounded a little like a hyena and a little like a bugle.
Charlie found himself looking at the pattern on the wall. A series of geometric shapes almost formed a hand, but almost did not. It was a masterpiece which moved him, although he could not quite say why. “The greatest ship which mankind can conceive and the greatest crew which mankind can conceive… and the greatest doctor humanity can imagine is a sociopath.”
Aelfwyrd quickly turned his glance away. He was doing a poor job of pretending to not hear him.
Allambree was leaning over a railing and looking down at a lower level of street below them. He spun back and faced Charlie, even as Aelfwyrd turned away. Allambree was smiling with enthusiasm. “Even the hardest working computer program is limited by its programmers.”
Charlie shook his head and muttered to himself. “No. Not always.”
They walked down a wide and palatial stairway. When they had gotten about half-way down, Charlie could see a long reflecting pool which mirrored the green and vibrating sky above it. The pool was shaped like the profile of a woman’s body with ample bosom and derriere.
Allambree gasped. “As we explore our own home, it will be like exploring a lost civilization. The people who built this are from the far future. What do we know about them? They might be as different from us as true Martians would have been. What was their attitude toward human bodies? Sexuality? What do all of these shapes and animals mean to them? It might not be the same as it is to people of our times.”
“What year were you born?” Aelfwyrd asked the Aborigine.
“2259, September 25th.”
“You’re from my far future,” Aelfwyrd mocked.
“When were you born, doc?” Charlie asked.
“2130.”
“That’s sixty years later than the last calendar I saw.”
“Yeah, we studied you in school.”
Charlie frowned. He felt like he was being called a cave-man. “So, what happened after the war?”
“You did.”
Charlie was still frowning.
Aelfwyrd continued. “You picked up the country and you fixed everything.”
“Hardy-har-har,” Charlie faked a laugh.
They got to the bottom of the staircase. The reflecting pool was about ten yards ahead of them. A vast tree was carved into the gleaming ivory floor. It reached roughly forty yards out to the sides and the distance between the stairs and the pool. There weren’t any cracks. There weren’t any chips. There wasn’t a single pebble out of place anywhere that they looked. The stone felt soft and smooth against their hands and their fingers. There were no rough edges, not a single imperfect detail in the sweeping monolith which they walked through. Even the bushes and grass looked like they had been tended to within the last few days.
“This city is just for a dozen people? It seems like such a waste of money. Thousands of people could happily live here together,” Charlie commented.
“This is from a civilization past the need to ration resources. They don’t need to work to make things. They create them. They print them. Imagine if you were playing a video game – you wouldn’t worry about people having to build every wall in the game. They just tell the computer what to make and it does it,” Allambree explained. He spoke with admiration and excitement.
“Could they do that in your time?” Charlie asked.
Allambree shook his head. “No, but we started to suspect the technology which could make it reality.”
“Suspect the technology?” Charlie questioned.
“I lived and work on a planet called Griffon. It was named after the man who discovered it. It had another name which sounded a little like wind and water.” Allambree then made a very specific series of blowing and squishing sounds in his mouth before continuing. “It was home to an alien race centuries before we discovered it. But they, along with most of the other native species, all died out from crises brought on by overpopulation. On Earth it would have been the 15th century when the inhabitants of Griffon finished killing each other off for food.
“By the time we got there, there wasn’t anything more advanced than insects still living on the planet. But, their buildings were still there, their cities, their literature, their architecture, their history. For me, and the other archeologists on Griffon, it was Heaven. And while the natives never did develop a space program, they were ahead of us in many ways. They-”
Allambree had meant to go on, but Aelfwyrd raised a hand to silence him. He pointed past the big man to a figure in the distance. It wasn’t a statue. The person was moving towards them.
And then there were three figures.
And then a half dozen.
A couple of seconds passed and they became clearer in the distance. These peoples’ faces looked disfigured, like they had been in a fire, like they were melted.
They drew closer, and the three men could see that the figures were naked, and their pink bodies were shaped like half-dripping wax. Their skin was pin
k and rosy, like many mammals, but it clung to their bones like chunks of mud.
They were not human.
Charlie found himself thinking about all of the robots which The Machine had sent against him and his friends. Some of those had been shaped like people; others had been like huge spiders with guns mounted on their backs. The advancing figures were made of flesh, loose slovenly flesh which hung about their bodies as if it was going to fall away at any moment. They were chaotic – the opposite of the robots. They were terrible.
From out of the bushes a hand emerged. Allambree turned and looked at it, still smiling.
“G’Day, mate.” The big man greeted the creature which arose just inches away from where he was standing. He sounded sincere. Allambree wasn’t frightened, but delighted by the new discovery, no matter how disgusting it looked.
A second hand followed the first, and then a third. They all had the same owner and that man of melted wax and pink mud reached those hands out and grabbed Allambree. Charlie began to move forward, to try to protect him, but the creature was too fast. With a surprising strength it simply bent the bone in Allambree’s arm and broke it right in half.
As Allambree screamed, the monster climbed on top of him, the loose flesh on its body suddenly lifting up and reaching out for him. It reminded Charlie of video he’d seen of an octopus lurching for its prey underwater.
Aelfwyrd raced backwards up the first few steps of the stairway they had all come down. Charlie grabbed one handful of the creeping flesh and began beating the thing’s head with his right fist. “Get off of him,” Charlie growled in a deep and echoing, almost operatic voice.
Allambree screamed one more time and then suddenly stopped. By this time, Charlie was pounding on the attacker’s head and back with all of his power. It was bleeding red blood and dark welts were appearing in its flesh. He was hurting it.
The captain managed to pull the monster off of Allambree. A sickening distended face looked up at him with sad wet eyes. Malformed and rotted teeth protruded from a weak mouth. The creature was naked, except for a thick silver necklace which Charlie could only then see. Up until then, the accessory had been hidden underneath the folds.
“We need to run!” Aelfwyrd shouted. He was half-way up the stairs again by then, but seemed to have stopped there.
Charlie was, of course, a warrior. He had killed much more dangerous enemies than this in his recent past. He pulled the necklace towards him and rammed his opponent’s head backwards, loudly breaking its neck. As strange as the monster was, that killed it just as it would have any earthly creature.
The other figures moved slowly, but they were still approaching. There were a lot of them.
Charlie looked down at Allambree. Yes, the big man was dead. His dark skin had been drained of color and moisture by the creature’s hungry flesh. What remained was pale, grey, and swollen.
“Charlie, now!” Aelfwyrd was shrieking. “You can’t kill thirty or forty of them with your bare damn hands!”
He was right. Charlie wrenched the necklace off of the monster and ran back up the stairs. He left Allambree where he was lying.
He almost said, “See you soon,” but somehow couldn’t bring himself to make light of the man dying, however ephemeral that death might be.
He ran back up the stairs. When he reached Aelfwyrd, the two men ran on together.
Three large fat green lightning-bugs raced across their path, followed by two more. Each was as large as Charlie’s fist. They glowed like flashlights. The two men kept going until they reached the door of one of the white marble buildings. The door was not locked, but once inside they conveniently found that they could bolt it behind them.
“That won’t hold them long,” Aelfwyrd observed.
The entranceway was filled with thick and expensive carpets and paintings. The paintings looked like they might have come from Italy in the Renaissance. The carpets were covered with scenes from the Arabian Nights. There was a small fountain splashing around a black and gold vase illustrated with a picture of a snake wrapped around a naked woman.
There was no time to appreciate any of it. They ran up the stairs.
The next storey had a shiny floor of red and black marble squares. A series of maybe twenty golden statues of horses dominated the space. Each statue looked to be at least ten feet in height. For some reason, the over-sized and muscular images of equine perfection made Charlie think of Michelangelo’s David.
“This is ridiculous.” Charlie finally stopped. “This can’t be real.”
“I know these horses. They were with me in the royal palace.”
“Which royal palace?” Charlie asked.
Aelfwyrd smiled. He was still frightened of the monsters, but the idea that anyone wouldn’t know what palace he meant was comical. “The Queen’s Palace on Mars. I spent a lot of time there and in her studios during my first life.”
“An alien queen?” Charlie asked.
“Oh, no. Queen Gloryannana was born on Earth. In my day they called her The Voice of England. You could imagine her as monarch, pop star, and talk show host.”
“She sounds like a nightmare.”
“You know she’s on the crew, right? She’s your first officer.”
“You’re telling me, I outrank the queen?” Charlie laughed.
Aelfwyrd was touching one of the statues. He had one hand on the reins and another tenderly touching the side of the golden animal’s head, as if it were alive. “We had stallions this big, you know. The queen charged me with breeding them. It was the first job I did for her. She named this one Winston. That one over there was Arthur.”
“These aren’t the real animals?” Charlie asked with great skepticism.
“Oh, no. These statues were cast in their honor. But they were famous on both planets during my lifetime. These statues are life-sized.”
Charlie was still holding the thick silver necklace which he had wrenched off of Allambree’s killer. He held it out towards Aelfwyrd. “What do you make of this?”
The doctor took it from Charlie and examined it closely. “It’s very advanced… centuries after my time. I think – I think it generates its power from the kinetic movement of the patient.”
Charlie took a look behind him. He didn’t hear the creatures following, but there was another palatial staircase which led up to the next floor. He was considering whether they should put another level between themselves and the monsters.
“It’s a control- yes. I believe this is a control collar. It would dictate chemical and electrical patterns in the patient. It’s so advanced. I don’t even know what this alloy could be.”
“So, who was controlling those creatures?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We were, Charlie. Those are our work force, and someone has allowed them to rebel.”