The Last Human Page 10

  By no means!

  If your species would like to continue its development in isolation, it is free to do so. If that is the case, you will simply need to agree to a few simple requirements, and your solar system will be marked off-limits to the rest of the galaxy. You may even change your mind in the future; all you need to do is let the Network know.

  WHAT ABOUT THE RUMORS?

  Even with perfect mental communication and instant access to facts, rumors have a way of spreading. Thus, you may have heard tales of species who have refused Citizenship. Since such stories are almost always exaggerated, this document will attempt to clarify this scenario.

  The Network is the only possible way for millions of species to coexist in a single galaxy. It is designed to be self-correcting, tending toward equilibrium, and the only reason this is possible is that every Citizen species desires equilibrium. In other words, the galaxy must want to work. If even a single species were forced to join or forced to remain, this system would fall apart. This is why any Citizen species is permitted to renounce its Network Citizenship at any time, or to refuse Citizenship in the first place. However, in both cases, the following must occur:

  All Network registrations must be revoked (and with them the freedom of faster-than-light travel and communication).

  All Network technology must be returned.

  The species in question must return to its own solar system.

  The species must agree that it will not develop anything on the list of illegal technologies (FTL, nanotech, weaponry, artificial intelligence, etc.).

  To ensure that these requirements are kept, the species must submit to a Network sentinel intelligence in its home solar system.*1

  WHAT IF THE SPECIES DOESN’T SUBMIT?

  Many new species look out upon a peaceful galaxy and assume that it has always been so. This could not be further from the truth. The society whose invitation your species now considers was formed in a crucible, in millions of years of war and famine and genocide. The Network was created because this society decided: no more. Eons later, there is no war because the Network leaves no room for war. There is no genocide because the Network leaves no opportunity for genocide. These and a thousand other species-wide crimes have been wiped out. If a species decides to reject half a billion years of work toward this end, that is its own choice. If, however, it decides to undermine said work, then the Citizens of the Network are themselves left with no choice. They must assume that the species in question wishes to introduce that which others have spent eons eradicating.

  And thus, the species itself must be eradicated.*2

  We hope to hear from you soon.

  *1 This sentinel can certainly keep itself on an out-of-the-way moon or minor body. The Network is not unreasonable.

  *2 In the eons that the Network has existed, its invitation has been refused very few times. In fact, only one species has ever triggered the Network’s last resort.

  It has been fifteen hours since Sarya watched her mother die.

  She has not spoken during that time. She has not cried either. She has shouted, yes, screamed herself into exhausted unconsciousness at least once. She has done violent things, which is why there is blood crusted on her face and the backs of her hands. But she has not spoken and she has not cried, and now she stands in the flickering light of a foreign corridor and wonders if she will do either of those things ever again.

  Fifteen hours ago, she shot backward through vacuum while the sky split around her. Below her blazed the fire of the gas giant, frozen in its silent roar. Behind her stretched the infinite star field. Before her spread the shrinking gold-lit amalgamation of geometry that contained nearly every memory she’s ever made. Watertower Station, Section F. She hurled epithets at the suit, cursed Eleven as a coward and a traitor, physically reached for the bright spot of the station airlock they left behind, that rectangle where she knew she would see the familiar silhouette of her mother any second. No matter that she had just seen what she had seen, there’s no telling what a Widow can survive—even conquer. But ultimately it didn’t matter because above, bigger than anything she’s ever imagined, there was something else.

  The ice ship.

  Eleven’s interior display laid out the scene with all the life and feeling of an architectural diagram. The section they just left, in which a laughing Widow stood before a river of silver death—that was [Dock A]. Far to her right, that clutter of cubes was [Residential]. That’s where her neighbors still lay on a synthetic floor, eyes open and fluids congealing. Below that was the dome of the [Arboretum], where she’d spent so many afternoons while her mother slept. And that part, toward which the needle spike of the ice ship swung like an impossibly long, brilliant blade—that was [Reactor B].

  Watertower didn’t explode, then, so much as it simply ceased to exist. It was destructured, unbuilt, homogenized into elementary particles. The process flashed Eleven’s interior a blinding white, and when Sarya could open her eyes again the station was gone. The ice ship continued on its massive arc, now missing its first few kilometers but otherwise unharmed. And that was it. That was the end of everything that Sarya had ever known.

  She doesn’t remember much past that. She doesn’t remember entering another ship, though it must have happened because here she is. She vaguely recalls the shock of frozen air that hit her when Eleven’s shell cracked open and its gangway lowered. She has a faint memory of two figures bundling her out of the suit and up a freezing ladder. She went with them because what else could she do? She remembers that one was huge and one was her size, and that the big one wouldn’t stop trying to thank her for something, but all she wanted was for them to go away. They must have done just that, because the next time she looked up she was lying on the floor of a bare room with two stacked bunks against a wall and a standard sanitation station in the corner.

  And that, as near as she can recall, is when the screaming began.

  So. Screaming and self-harm: that was her introduction to Ripper or Tidal or whatever this hellship is called. But now those have burned out and a different part of her brain has taken over and negotiated a sterile peace within her. It doesn’t matter, says that part of her brain—not that anything ever really did. You should go somewhere, maybe avoid thinking for a while. There you go. Feeling nothing at all is better than feeling like this; that’s just logic. Go.

  Sarya listened to that part of her brain, and that’s why she’s here now. She has climbed, with these bloodied fingertips, to the top of the ship’s [Backbone]. That’s what her Network overlay labels this vertical spine of metal ladders and grated flooring that connects every deck of this awful ship. There’s a single hatch up here, and she could not care less what is behind it. A stale and mechanical air current dries the sweat on her face and shifts the mangled hair on her forehead. The combined drone of ventilation and old lighting tickles her ears while the subsonic hum of the reactor vibrates through the soles of her boots. The three combine into one sound in her brain, the heartbeat of an old starship in operation.

  She doesn’t know why she’s up here, exactly. All she knows is that she has to go somewhere or she’ll go insane. She gazes down past the tips of her own boots, down the ladder, through three layers of grated flooring, to an orange pressure door set in the floor. It’s well named, this backbone. It’s skeletal. It lends support. It even looks diseased, like its host body has developed bone cancer and refused treatment. The safety cages that surround every ladder on Watertower are missing here; they’ve been ripped away along with large chunks of floor. Hood’s doing, she assumes, since he wouldn’t have fit through those tiny openings. Or maybe it was that big guy who brought her to her room. He looked like the type who makes a hobby of ripping holes in metal gratings. Or maybe it just doesn’t matter, says the dark and soothing part of her brain. Your mother is gone. Your home is gone. Nothing will
matter ever again. Go.

  She breathes mechanically, manually. All right, she tells her body, now reach for the ladder. One hand. Both. Turn around and switch them. One boot and then the other, the metal ringing with every step. The rungs are cool and solid in her hands, rough from the safety paint that remains between gouges. Her head drops below the top grating and then the safety doors recessed into the walls below it. Now comes the [Maintenance] half-level, says her Network unit. It’s so short she would have to duck her head to step off onto the floor grating here. She doesn’t bother; the door is closed, sealed down the center, and her registration certainly won’t change that.

  Another few meters down and she is at [Quarters]. A dim corridor leads toward the back of the ship, ending in a [Galley] full of food bars she probably can’t eat. The hallway is lined with hatches on both sides, which are identical except for one with the talon marks that show evidence of the big guy. Mer, there we go, that’s his name. She remembers him saying it multiple times as he hauled her up the ladders—he said it slowly, like she’s an idiot. Which is nothing new.

  She’s one rung above the orange door in the floor. There’s a switch here, and she burns most of her remaining strength to push its contacts closed. She notices there’s blood on it when she pulls her hand away. And then with a clank and the grind of bad bearings the hatch divides in half, and she is suspended over a hole into darkness.

  Go.

  She very nearly wonders what is driving her right now, what dark part of her forebrain wants her down there in that cargo hold. But that part is in control, and the concern never quite materializes. She hangs on with one hand and watches herself lift the Network unit off her head. The same hand pulls the earbuds out of their homes and lets their magnetic clasps click to the projector. She loops it twice around the ladder and now her gift hangs there, sparkling in the flickering light of the backbone. She went through a lot for that gift, says some quieter part of her mind, and now she’s just going to leave it there?

  Sarya descends. She passes out of the warm air of the top of the ship and into the cold of the cargo hold as if plunging into freezing water. The air is so frigid that her first breath explodes into the white vapor of a coughing fit. She clears her throat violently and spits, then hears the clink and clatter of her frozen saliva bouncing off the deck below. This is cold like she’s never experienced—and still, she can’t bring herself to care. She hits the switch on this side of the hatch. With the sound of tortured machinery, the warmth and light of the backbone above her are cut off.

  She is shivering uncontrollably before she reaches the bottom, another five meters down, her hands already becoming remarkably lazy about obeying her commands. She steps off the ladder onto an airlock door set in the floor, the last barrier between her and the vacuum outside. Tunnels lead in both directions, gaps in the several thousand tons of water ice that reach to the ceiling. This is Watertower ice, maybe the last shipment ever. Apparently bounty hunting alone wasn’t enough to pay the bills. She reaches out and touches its glassy surface, but her hands are already too dead to feel anything.

  If she could be affected by anything right now, she would be shocked by how little she cares about this, about anything at all. Her fingers are already bending more slowly, and that dark part of her brain is telling her that it doesn’t matter. Sure, some small part of her mind is concerned, but that’s natural, isn’t it? Anyway, you can ignore that, says the dark part. It doesn’t matter, because nothing matters. Stay.

  Sarya lowers herself to the shockingly cold floor. She sits with her legs crossed and her hands in her lap, feeling the nerves in her lower extremities first burn and then fall to sleep. She feels some slight warmth from her suit heating elements, and she wonders how long that will last; they’re made for slight chills, not the crushing, killing type of cold she’s sitting in now.

  So here she is in this crystalline silence, her own breaths deafening in her ears. She has no plan. She has no future. She watches each swirl of vapor emerge with a bit of her body heat and dissipate into the darkness. Her mind is empty, her body’s signals coming more quietly and farther apart.

  It’s not quite silent here. There is still the rhythmic sound of her breaths. The deck still hums with the stunning power required to hurl even the most ramshackle of starships across a solar system. Somewhere between the two, a faint and brittle sound repeats every now and again, distantly. That sound is familiar, though she can’t quite place it. There it is again, louder now. What is it?

  It doesn’t matter, says the dark part of her brain. Nothing matters. Stay.

  The ice is changing color. It’s warming from a black-blue, diving down the spectrum into a purple and finally a dull red. Again comes the sound, and again. It’s louder now. She fights her own mind to analyze it. It’s—is it?

  It’s her own name.

  Deep within her, something awakens. A hot fury ignites, driving her to feet that respond like they’re already dead. Freezing muscles curl her into a hunch, but her mind is alive and well and absolutely furious. She has been betrayed by reality itself. She has lost her mother and her home. She has nothing but a Network unit to her name. Her own damn mind has betrayed her, leaving her here in a freezing cargo hold to die. But she has not died, not yet. Her heart still beats, her cells still metabolize, and she is breathing atmosphere. She may be exiled with no mother and no plan, trapped on a budget freighter with goddess knows what for a crew…but honestly, what more does a person need?

  She is Sarya the Daughter, of Shenya the Widow. She will not die today.

  And then she is on the floor again. Her knees rest on metal and one arm is hooked over a ladder rung. Something salty runs to the back of her throat and she tries to spit, but her lips don’t move. It occurs to her suddenly that there is nothing insurmountable in life, nothing she can’t fix…except for the fact that she has trapped herself in a freezing cargo hold and no one knows where she is. “Helper,” she whispers. But she’s left her Network unit up above, where she can’t reach it. The darker part of her mind has triumphed, and this is where it has left her.

  She pushes off sideways, head down, onto hands and knees. The hot flame of her anger sputters but it doesn’t die. What happened to her beautiful sharpened nails? Why are her hands crusted with dried blood? There’s more too, coming from somewhere, drops falling and freezing instantly in beautiful patterns. It must be cold in here. She hears that sound again, her name again, and finds that she is crawling toward it. She heaves herself away from the ladder, down the tunnel of ice, the fierce violet warming to almost-red, so strong and gorgeous she’s going to have to remember when she writes home. These are such deep colors, you could get lost in these colors, and look how the condensation from her breath freezes in place when it touches them, and why are her breaths so loud…

  No, she rages. This is not how a Widow dies. And she doesn’t know much about Humans, but she is absolutely sure that they don’t give up and freeze and die the first chance they get—

  But hush, now. Why be so angry? Why does it seem so important to continue? She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care. If she will just lie down now, it will all be over.

  But she doesn’t lie down. No, this is the Daughter who dragged Shenya the Widow across half of Watertower, and somehow that bitter memory summons the absolute dregs of her strength. She manages one last pull, and finally here is something familiar in her new and alien world. A recessed area of the cargo hold is clear of ice, containing only a gleaming hulk in the darkness. This is the source of the glow: a gaping red cockpit, and a holo ring blazing a blinding scarlet in the frozen darkness.

  “Eleven?” Sarya tries to whisper. Her tongue fights her. Her lips don’t move. She has to blink her sticking eyelids a few times before she can read the glowing symbols orbiting the suit. The ice shatters the light into a thousand crimson shards, each of which shows some distorted version of same word:r />
  SARYA

  Sarya collapses to the frozen deck, her limbs finally giving out. She feels nothing when her cheek presses its textured surface. Her mind rages within her, but all the fury in the galaxy won’t move a body that has stopped responding.

  She has lost.

  But now someone has lifted her off the hard floor. She can’t remember where she is or who this could be, but she is annoyed. She wants to demand that this person put her down, but the impulse dies somewhere between her brain and her tongue and no words emerge. Red light filters through eyes that are squeezed shut. Hot air blasts from above, so hot she can feel her skin burning. Softer, warmer arms take over for the cold, hard ones. They twist around her, wrap her, set her up vertically and hold her there. She cries out when they begin massaging damaged tissues, causing pain everywhere they touch. Somewhere out there, somewhere outside of herself, she hears a hum and a series of thunks as the cold is locked out.

  Somewhere far away, her stomach rises. Her hands drift upward as Eleven shifts its gravity field. Something inside her has a hold on her; it is shaking her with violence, fighting the firm grip of the suit’s straps. This is a dream, says her mind. It has to be, because someone is holding her right now, and who has ever held her except for her mother?

  She can’t close her fists, but she can keep her eyes clenched tight and she does. She draws gasping chestfuls of the warm air, twitching her limbs aimlessly in motions that are half Widow signs and half nothing at all. Eleven’s straps stroke her hair and her back, and a soft sound begins to emerge from somewhere above her: the hissing rattle of a mother Widow soothing her daughter. Sarya’s breath catches at the sound. And then, somewhere inside her, something splits wide open. With a heave and a wrenching cry, she weeps for Watertower.