Not true, although he had seen a few worlds die.
Mere finally looked at him. “Have I ever told you?” she asked. “You’re a silly, pretentious man, and you have no deep understanding of any creature besides your ridiculous, self-important self.”
A good swing. He granted her that much.
“But simple ideas are pushing us,” he maintained. “They shove us across worlds and through the aeons. You’ve seen it, Mere. More than anyone, you’ve experienced what ideas do to the tiny soul. Yet you still won’t concede the truth. That I know something useful. Because you’re stale and stubborn and full of pride. The ancient, wondrous Mere.”
The woman’s gaze returned to the horizon. Rugged, ice-clad mountains rose into the dusty sky. A valley was resting at the mountains’ feet, and all of that ground should have been the darkest blue-black. But the valley was mostly gray, the air stinking of cinders more than life, and knowing the tragic reasons why, a weaker soul might have sat down and quit.
But there weren’t any weaklings in this group.
Mere had a starved slip of a body that never grew tired, and she had big lovely eyes that looked human and looked alien, managing the trick inside the same glance. The ageless lady had endured the most spectacular life: Raised by extinct, deeply peculiar aliens, she carried a unique outlook toward the Universe. And later, having survived the long, unlikely voyage to the Great Ship, she became the captains’ favorite instrument to investigate the most alien worlds.
Rococo also had considerable experience with every sort of creatures. He was the Ship’s first diplomat, after all. And like a lot of observers, he held the opinion that despite being human, Mere was a species of One.
They didn’t have time to stand, yet the woman stood. For another precious minute, nobody moved. Then Mere finally turned, looking at Rococo when she said, “Water doesn’t dream, you idiot. It’s the salt.”
“The salt?”
“Water’s the container. Ions passing across borders. That’s where our simple lives come from. We’re walking, talking salt.”
Ah. She was teasing him.
Rococo’s laugh was honest, but he cut it short for effect.
Then the captivating woman turned to the third person in their ranks. “Amund, what do you think? Is it water that dreams, or is it salt?”
Amund wasn’t immortal. A luddy by birth and by outlook, he rarely showed any patience for these long debates.
Until now.
The man turned serious. Hands opened and then closed, forming fists. The aging face turned harsh, but the eyes were soft. “You’ve got your shit backward,” the luddy stated. “There’s just one dream. Water and salt, people and rivers. And all of us obey the dream.”
There was no bioceramic brain inside him, just water and salt, and Amund had come here for one exceptionally awful reason. Except the reason had gone missing, and regardless of what happened to his ancient companions, he was certain to die without fulfilling his purpose.
Three people traveling across a half-dead world.
How could anything so simple become so complicated?
Wildfires had remade the land. Combustive wildfires, not nuclear blasts. At least not here. But the dense native air was heavily oxygenated, and the bedrock had been scorched clean of its forests and soil. Which made the walking easier, yes. Just another two days, plus the usual delays for Amund’s fatigue, and they finally reached the valley and the river. Only it wasn’t the river they would have hoped for. Spring water and melted snow fell into a body that made no noise beyond bubbles chewing at pitched rock. The waterscape was thinly populated, every swimming creature ready to eat its neighbors. But of course the water knew how to move, and that was another stroke of luck.
To return home, Rococo needed to reach this river’s end. He dropped the pack that was carrying their survival kit, and wading in up to his waist, he pulled off his shirt and extended the sleeves, setting the garment on its back.
“Do us the favor, friend,” he said. “Learn to float.”
Living clothes were popular with a few sentients—commensal skins and engineered organics, plus slaves worn for one brutal tradition or another. This shirt wasn’t alive, but the fabric carried a tiny mind and many useful talents, including a genius for rebuilding itself into useful and unuseful forms. Gathering dissolved minerals and little breaths of air, the garment expanded and inflated itself, and the man stood over it, offering suggestions and then his approving silence.
Rococo’s home world was massive and bathed in UV light, and that environment had dictated his carefully tailored frame: The long body and short powerful limbs, plus a chest harkening back to an age when power was carried as muscle and big ribs wrapped around the mortal heart. Projecting a sense of youth, his bare skin was brilliantly black in the day’s glare. That handsome face never needed adjustment, an elegant ooid wrapped around widely spaced, deeply purple eyes. His teeth were gold and the gray hair never grew past the point where the nubs were barely felt, and he had a smart voice that could shout until the sky rang, or the voice might say very little and say it softly and everybody heard the words just the same.
Mere wasn’t even a third his size, yet she enjoyed her own power. The black hair was thick and grown long, and her body was as tough as hyperfiber, or at least seemed to be. This woman had outlived her homeworld, and serving the Great Ship, she had traveled alone to the most bizarre realms, risking her life many times. It was easy to believe that no other human, alive or lost to history, was as wondrously peculiar as her, or a tenth
