Another laugh, and without the help of mood enhancers or alcohol.
What a day!
A final piece of honest ground allowed the two machines to stand beside the gelatinous blue. That’s when a historic conversation commenced, or there was no conversation. Either way, they spoke to the river and nothing happened. Mere and Rococo offered words, and nothing changed, and nobody should be surprised. The captains had taught this world the Ship’s common language, but that was before the carnage. That was before most or all of the original river boiled away. This new creature might be as ignorant as a baby. They might have to start from the beginning, teaching the baby how to talk and what to think about them. And superstitious or not, it was hard to ignore the luck required to reach the return ship and reach it with time to spare.
That first streakship was Amund’s home for too many years. He never liked it and always dreamed about escaping from it. Yet there were moments, baffling frustrating moments, when he caught himself grieving for that frail machine.
“Salvation.” That was their nickname for the return ship. Standing like a mechanical hill, like a castle of superior hyperfibers and fusion engines, Salvation had landed years ago. It set down on a small coastal island. The onboard AIs were always awake, busily sending out promises that the machinery was healthy, fueled and eager to help. But those giant engines were configured to launch directly into space, not rise slowly and then conveniently set down beside them. Half of the continent needed to be crossed. There was no other way. And without a wild river to ride, this living river had to help. Otherwise the walk would take months or years to complete, and long before that was done, the Great Ship would be unreachable.
And Amund would most likely be dead too. A thousand obvious causes offered themselves. Accidental falls, self-inflicted wounds. Cancers born from myriad decaying atoms. Or inevitable age. But not Mere and not Rococo. Even marooned on this broken world, their modern guts would learn to digest the native organics, and the fallout would cause nothing more than odd, beautiful blemishes. Standing together or apart, the immortals would be able to watch the stars slowly shuffle positions in the night sky. Three hundred thousand years later, the Great Ship would come back around, and those two machines might still be standing here. Except for little changes wrought by the experience, they would be the same machines. And blessed with perfect memories, they would have the power to see Amund’s face and hear his voice, remembering every word that he shared as well as his bitter little laugh. In that fashion, the human would be kept alive long after his time.
The sun moved today, and the machines didn’t move. What was human about them looked bent-shouldered and worried.
“We’re screwed,” Amund muttered.
Then came a slight pressure. The patch on his neck was being touched by a finger, but not his finger. And with the pressure came heat, not scorching but distinct and out-of-place.
A voice was behind the finger.
“You,” it said.
Not a man’s voice, not a child’s. Female, perhaps.
“What about me?” he asked.
“A pure river.”
Amund began to turn, but several warm fingers grabbed hold, fixing his head where it was.
“Who’s a pure river?” he asked.
“You are.”
The voice was close, and she sounded scared. Except nothing about the voice could be trusted. A vast strange and utterly gigantic creature was projecting noise for the same reasons that anything spoke to anything. To be understood, and hopefully, to manipulate her audience.
“You are the pure river,” the alien said. “You are the undiluted true river that came from the stars to join us.”
A few words, and one man’s life shifted.
“That’s how I look to you?” asked Amund.
“How you look, how you are,” she reported. Then a long blue digit appeared beside his head, jointless and rigid and very thin. What wasn’t a real finger was pointing at Mere and Rococo. “Machines,” she said.
“My companions?”
“You call them ‘machines.’ ”
“So. You’ve been watching us, have you?”
“Since your arrival,” she warned.
This surviving trickle of a river had an unsuspected reach. Studying them through the flying bugs, perhaps? Amund smiled at the news, feeling nervous and alive. “What do you think about those two machines?” he asked.
“They terrify us.”
That deserved a good laugh. But Amund stifled the reaction. “Why are you scared?”
“They attacked us.”
“Did they?”
“Yes.”
“But how did they attack you?” he wanted to know.
Silence.
Holding a hand to the sun, the pure river cut the glare in his eyes. “What weapons did they use?”
“Poison,” she said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Poisonous beliefs,” she said.
Amund nodded politely, understanding nothing.
The blue digit was retracted.
“Those dangerous machines down there,” Amund said. “They’re hoping to reach that second starship. Which leads to the question: Are you going to help them?”
“No.” “No?”
“They are dangerous, and I won’t help them.”
Amund lowered his hand, sunlight burning his eyes. “Believe it or not, you sound like the pure little rivers I grew up with.” “
How do I sound?”
“Like a cowardly little puddle of piss,” Amund said.
The giant river said nothing.
“Those monsters don’t scare me,” he added. And after that, Amund felt as if he could take his time, sitting quietly while deciding what he wanted most, and then finding the very best way to make it all come true.
5.
Bold action or bolder inaction. Those were possibilities, but only once. Only at the beginning and for a ludicrously narrow moment. Ignorance was the chief problem, but there was also a reflexive sense of duty, and at least in Rococo’s case, thousands of years of hubris stirring him to action. Those living rivers were a grand mystery, and mysteries always generated curiosity. The actual voyage
