“Humans are often impossible.”
“Look who’s talking,” she mutters. “Still, I did think this was worth a simple try, a few little nudges that might do some good without much upsetting them. I thought we could stimulate discussion, pique curiosity, get a little dissension and rebellion started….”
“Preach the gospel of freedom!”
“One might say that. Given a little time, it might have worked! But now, suddenly, there’s this new thing. This malice. This evil. Something dreadful’s going to happen, I can feel it!”
“Yes.”
“We’re both too old for this,” she says sadly. “Someone younger should be doing this.”
“Asner’s younger. By a few thousand years.”
“He was already an old man when we found him on my former home planet, staring at that ancient statue of you and me.”
“You flirted with him.”
“Pah! I simply asked him if he saw any resemblance between me and the statue, and he said he did! You and I looked very brave and beautiful in our prime. Did I tell you it was sculptured by a man I knew?”
“Several hundred times.”
“Well, we old people forget what stories we’ve told. Life changes around us so much we turn to comfortable things. Old events, old memories. Things we’ve worn smooth with retelling.” She fingers the medallion around her neck. “Sometimes I need to remember what I was like, when I was young. Copying my friend’s work on a pendant means I can look at it and be reminded. I won’t forget him … or us, as we were.”
“Vanity. All is vanity,” he says in an amused voice.
“Your scriptural citations are always correct, old friend. All is vanity. When I stop being vain, I’ll be dead. Vanity is its own resurrection. It gives one hope!”
“And you think this one little world is worth …”
“You are not the only student of ancient human Scripture. Even long dead religions have had truths written in their names. Think of the ninety and nine in the fold and the shepherd abroad in the windy night, seeking the lost sheep on the lonely hills….”
Together they consider the lost sheep: Elsewhere.
8
Boarmus was wakened again in the middle of the night. This time he did not bother with the trip down the hall, the tube, the secret doors, and access routes to the Core. This time he didn’t have to go anywhere, for they came to him, not as mere wraiths but as actualities, as separate presences.
“Your Enforcers are asking the question again,” one cried, waving its hideous arms. “Those with them too, they are breaking our commandments! We can see them. We can hear them!”
Others began to shriek, the sounds making a beast howl in his ears, and Boarmus fought the thrashing sickness in his belly. Only keeping the appearance of calm would save him from them. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “I can’t hear with you all talking at once.”
One voice said, “Your Enforcers should not ask questions.”
“Ask whom?” Boarmus shouted. Silence.
“Asking,” said the voice. “Talking. We heard them saying things. In Shallow! In Panubi!”
Boarmus thought a moment, cursing silently. “You mean, the people we sent to Panubi have been talking with one another? Telling the people from the past about Elsewhere? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“Forbidden,” the voices gibbered.
How many voices were there? He couldn’t tell. Not as many as there should be. A thousand persons had gone into the Core, but there were only a few voices. Since the last time, he had been through the biography book a dozen times. There was that one voice, that one gulping voice, that one name written over and over in blood; there was the female voice that had introduced herself to him; he thought he knew at least two others.
“Why is it forbidden?” demanded Boarmus, forcing the words out against mounting panic.
Silence again.
Boarmus swallowed bile and pressed the point. “Does it really matter if they talk of history or ask questions about Elsewhere? They know about Brannigan. They know the committee members came here. That’s public knowledge, discussed on every Great Question Day. But people don’t know the Core exists, and they won’t find out about the Core because I’m the only one who knows about the Core and I won’t tell them. Let them ask all they like. Let them make up stories. It won’t matter!”
“Forbidden,” cried a horrid voice, joined by echoes, resonances. Perhaps that’s all the other nine hundred and some odd were by now, mere echoes, mere resonances. And yet they were dreadful, horrid, turning his insides to churning liquid, making him feel like a bag of loose guts. How? Why this absolute terror, with him powerless to control it?
“Why?” demanded Boarmus again, struggling to keep his voice calm and reasonable, reaching deep into memory for what he’d read in the corridors below, what Chadra Hume had told him. “I can understand your desire for secrecy at first. Your coming here was secret. You believed the people at Brannigan who weren’t members of your committee might have resented your coming here. You thought they might regard it as a kind of … desertion. You worried that they might be so angry they’d come after you. But that was then!”
He clenched his teeth together and swallowed. “That was then. There’s no danger now! There’s no threat now. Nobody knows about you anymore. Except for a few rhymes and songs, you’ve all been forgotten!”
He knew the words were a mistake as soon as they left his lips. Faces faded into the walls. Luminous, flapping forms succeeded them, turned to show faces once more, then faded again and reappeared,
