Mama! she cried silently. Mama. The baby—Elverda herself—looked up into her mother’s face and smiled.
And the mother was Elverda, a young and radiant Elverda, smiling down at the baby she had never had, tender and loving as she had never been.
Something gave way inside her. There was no pain: rather, it was as if a pain that had throbbed sullenly within her for too many years to count suddenly faded away. As if a wall of implacable ice finally melted and let the warm waters of life flow through her.
Elverda sank to the floor, crying, gushing tears of understanding and relief and gratitude. Her mother smiled at her.
“I love you, Mama,” she whispered. “I love you.” Her mother nodded and became Elverda herself once more. Her baby made a gurgling laugh of pure happiness, fat little feet waving in the air.
The image wavered, dimmed, and slowly faded into emptiness. Elverda sat on the bare rock floor in utter darkness, feeling a strange serenity and understanding warming her soul.
“Are you all right?”
Dorn’s voice did not startle her. She had been expecting him to come to her.
“The chamber will close itself in another few minutes,” he said. “We will have to leave.”
Elverda took his offered hand and rose to her feet. She felt strong, fully in control of herself.
The tunnel outside the chamber was empty.
“Where is Sterling?”
“I sedated him and then called in a medical team to take him back to his ship.”
“He wants to destroy the artifact,” Elverda said. “That will not be possible.” said Dorn. “I will bring the IAA scientists here from the ship before Sterling awakes and recovers. Once they see the artifact, they will not allow it to be destroyed. Sterling may own the asteroid, but the IAA will exert control over the artifact.”
“The artifact will affect them—strangely.”
“No two of them will be affected in the same manner,” said Dorn. “And none of them will permit it to be damaged in any way.”
“Sterling will not be pleased with you.”
He gestured up the tunnel, and they began to walk back toward their quarters.
“Nor with you,” Dorn said. “We both saw him babbling and blubbering like a baby.”
“What could he have seen?”
“What he most feared. His whole life had been driven by fear, poor man.”
“What secrets he must be hiding!”
“He hid them from himself. The artifact showed him his own true nature.”
“No wonder he wants it destroyed.”
“He cannot destroy the artifact, but he will certainly want to destroy us. Once he recovers his composure, he will want to wipe out the witnesses who saw his reaction to it.”
Elverda knew that Dorn was right. She watched his face as they passed beneath the lights, watched the glint of the etched metal, the warmth of the human flesh.
“You knew that he would react this way, didn’t you?” she asked.
“No one could be as rich as he is without having demons driving him. He looked into his own soul and recognized himself for the first time in his life.”
“You planned it this way!”
“Perhaps I did,” he said. “Perhaps the artifact did it for me.”
“How could—”
“It is a powerful experience. After I had seen it a few times, I felt it was offering me . . .” he hesitated, then spoke the word, “salvation.”
Elverda saw something in his face that Dorn had not let show before. She stopped in the shadows between overhead lights. Dorn turned to face her, half machine, standing in the rough tunnel of bare rock.
“You have had your own encounter with it,” he said. “You understand now how it can transform you.”
“Yes,” said Elverda. “I understand.”
“After a few times, I came to the realization that there must be thousands of my fellow mercenaries, killed in engagements all through the asteroid belt, still lying where they fell. Or worse yet, floating forever in space, alone, unattended, ungrieved for.”
“Thousands of mercenaries?’
“The corporations do not always settle their differences in Earthly courts of law,” said Dorn. “There have been many battles out here. Wars that we paid for with our blood.”
“Thousands?” Elverda repeated. “I knew that there had been occasional fights out here—but wars? I don’t think anyone on Earth knows it’s been so brutal.”
“Men like Sterling know. They start the wars, and people like me fight them. Exiles, never allowed to return to Earth again once we take the mercenary’s pay.”
“All those men—killed.”
Dorn nodded. “And women. The artifact made me see that it was my duty to find each of those forgotten bodies and give each one a decent final rite. The artifact seemed to be telling me that this was the path of my atonement.”
“Your salvation,” she murmured.
“I see now, however, that I underestimated the situation.”
“How?”
“Sterling. While I am out there searching for the bodies of the slain, he will have me killed.”
“No! That’s wrong!”
Dorn’s deep voice was empty of regret. “It will be simple for him to send a team after me. In the depths of dark space, they will murder me. What I failed to do for myself, Sterling will do for me. He will be my final atonement.”
“Never!” Elverda blazed with anger. “I will not permit it to happen.”
“Your own life is in danger from him,” Dorn said.
“What of it? I am an old woman, ready for death.”
“Are you?”
“I was, until I saw the artifact.”
“Now life is more precious to you, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want you to die,” Elverda said. “You have atoned for your sins. You have borne enough pain.”
He looked away, then started up the tunnel again.
“You are forgetting one important factor,” Elverda called after him.
Dorn stopped, his back to her. She realized now that the clothes he wore had been his military uniform. He had torn all the insignias and pockets from it.
“The artifact. Who created it? And why?”
Turning back toward her, Dorn answered, “Alien visitors to our solar system created it, unknown ages ago. As to why—you tell me: why does someone create a work of art?”
“Why would aliens create a work
