But of course, the answer was right outside. They just did not want to look, to process the sight of what was there.
**There are old Ideas treating those concepts as separate, but this is not the time to—**
**Stop. Just perceive.**
Together, they looked out of the vessel.
Silver sands stretched far to black mountains that were webbed with silver streams, rendering them visible against black sky.
**No place in the World has a desert like—**
**We’re not on the World.**
**That’s hardly—**
**This is Magnus.**
A landscape of silver and black.
They had seen it all their lives: on the face of the largest moon floating overhead. And now they were upon it, and it was vast, as big as the World.
Slowly, slowly, the ship extruded a tongue-like ramp of its own. She had not communicated with them in coherent flux, but this message was clear. Or was this whole flight a senile interpretation of everyone’s wishes back at the dig site? She was so very old.
**What do we do?**
Old Ideas told of distant worlds that were airless, but this was different, and disconcerting: they could breathe, yet flux did not tumble through the air; it was attenuated to a faint echo of normality. There might be danger, but their course of action was obvious.
**We Seek.**
In a human chain, they walked down the ramp.
**A new world!**
Then the Seekers disengaged physical contact, leaving only Seeker-once-Harij and Zirkana holding hands. The fluxsilence was eerie.
When they looked back, the ship was unmoving. It seemed a promise that she would wait for them, though of course they might be wrong. But something winked on the distant mountainside, and a few heartbeats later, it did so again.
Nine Seekers and Zirkana felt the lure of new knowledge upon them.
It was time to Seek.
The passing of time was hard to reckon, but it took longer than a normal night to reach the black mountain. There was nothing to eat and nothing to drink as they trekked across silver sand, but Seekers were used to privation, and Zirkana was determined to match them. The closer they drew to the mountain, the more certain they were that buildings of some kind awaited them.
And so they did. Huge and ancient. Tall and shining, formed of obsidian and silver, all clean lines and cold beauty. Also empty, as if they had never been lived in.
Zirkana cast her opinion:
**There were never inhabitants.**
All ten were holding hands at that point, considering what to do next.
**Never? Then who built them?**
In a polished, bare hall, they turned in circles, overwhelmed by the structure.
**A ship, or something like it. Something that went ahead.** Seeker-once-Harij stared up at a high arch, considering this.
**Why would it build them, my love?**
**For us to live in.**
**Surely that’s not—**
**I mean our ancestors. The ship was supposed to carry them here, to Magnus.**
The Seekers were unsure.
**You really think it’s the Ark?**
**You really think it isn’t?**
But as they searched amid the polished magnificence, it was the absence of food and drink that was growing in their minds: so mundane a detail, but without supplies there could be no exploration. Zirkana would not let them set off early because of her; but soon enough, the Seekers, experienced wanderers all, were in agreement. They had reached the cut-off point, beyond which returning to the ship was dangerous.
**We’ll come back with supplies. Plenty of them.**
**You think the ship will carry us back and forth from the World?**
**What else does it have to do?**
Perhaps it was true – perhaps even a ship needed a purpose in life. The thought made it easier to abandon the empty, unexplored buildings and begin the reverse trek, steadily moving across glistening sand, plodding antiparallel to their own footprints. There was always the possibility that the ship would have decided not to wait; but they had trusted her, and she remained in view as they approached.
Finally, on board, they sank down on the metallic deck, hamstrings aching, ankles sore, and waited for something to happen. But nothing did.
**Ship. Take us home.**
The opening did not seal up. There was no thrum of power to whatever mechanisms allowed the ship to fly; only her steady background hum remained, as if she were waiting for something. But whatever it was, they could not give it to her.
Desperately, the Seekers tried geometrically intricate flux patterns and every trick of rhetoric they knew, but nothing produced a response from the ancient vessel. Perhaps she really was senile; perhaps she had finally completed her original mission – as she saw it – and was resting here until she died.
No one railed at her for long. Fatigue and hunger were met-amorphosing into lethargy, and soon enough they would be unable to do anything as their bodies shut down and that was that: the end of them. But they were Seekers, and one Seeker’s wife, and they could summon composure if nothing else.
Eight Seekers sat cross-legged in a circle, hands joined as they entered flux-trance, chins on chests and drooping forwards as their strength failed, sinking fast inside themselves, preparing. Lying apart from them, Seeker-once-Harij and Zirkana clasped each other, merging their thoughts.
**I love you.**
But death would soon be here.
Whether Seeking carried with it a sense of fatalism, Zirkana could not quite say, but she alone roused herself at the tiniest pinprick of distant energies, of disturbance propagated only faintly through the insulating medium of air, this strange dead air that Magnus possessed. She squeezed Seeker-once-Harij, who roused himself – it would be so easy to slip back into sleep – and forced himself to move, to shake the other Seekers into wakefulness.
And slowly, painfully, to shuffle to the exit and down the ramp.
Standing on the silver sand, they watched a huge vessel – or was it a creature? – move slowly in the night sky. Then, with twin bursts of pure white light, two more craft burst into being. All three bore some kind of resemblance to the ancient ship that brought them here; but they were different also, slowly morphing in shape, uncurling external tendrils, billowing gently.
From them, streams of bubbles began to descend.
**What are they, Harij?**
**I don’t know, my love.**
But each bubble, as it approached the ground, clearly contained a person. Or rather, a near human lacking silver skin. Seeker-once-Harij felt none of the panic that he experienced with the other soft-skinned beings – no sense of abomination, of that inhuman group mind – and Seeker-once-captive looked equally calm. That was good, because it took the last of their energy simply to stand here and wait.
For whatever was about to happen.
Each bubble, as it touched the sand, dissolved. Its former occupant walked clear. When there were some thirty folk gathered, they walked slowly forward, approaching the Seekers and Zirkana; and then they halted.
Seeker-once-Harij cast a greeting.
Two of the strangers moved their mouths in an odd fashion. One had ordinary human eyes (perhaps lacking protective membrane) despite the soft skin; the other’s eyes were pure black: polished obsidian.
**Communication.**
That was the oldest Seeker, searching his memory for Ideas, then touching each of his fellows in turn with his fingertips, sharing his thinking: words without flux, nevertheless cast upon the air. But the two newcomers looked to be thinking equally hard, blinking as if at sights only they could see – and suddenly the black-eyed stranger, surely a woman, raised her hand and a silvery mist spread outwards – from her ring, Seeker-once-Harij thought – and spanned the gap between her and the nine Seekers plus Zirkana.