We see only two more bodies as we cross through the regions once dominated by the lake, now obscured by stored material, machinery, ships, and thick fuzz. They look like crushed mosquitoes wrapped in gray cotton.
Joe moves closer. Borden turns to listen. “Can you hear DJ?” he asks.
“He’s alive,” I say. “I don’t know what he’s seeing or doing.”
“Has he been attacked? Or any of the others?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know,” I say.
“Bird Girl?”
“They’re already down on her world.”
If she’s dead, if they’re all dead, then the package we’re carrying, slung between us, may be the most precious thing on this godforsaken ship.
The mechanical vehicle, with all its manipulators folded, finally reaches the forward terminus, after we’ve long since gone numb, our hands and arms buzzing. It stops, rotates on the track, and seems to deliberately shiver us away, as if it’s done with us. Then it makes a jerking movement in reverse, and we cooperate to join hands, leap, catch ourselves—leap again.
We’re at the base of where the needle prow once began. The ribbon room is intact and seems unchanged. We climb along the bands of starry illumination, then pause before the asterisk, as if taking in that strange cathedral window one more time, for orientation, for instruction.
The ribbons now carry imagery from around the ship—the Milky Way, the slowly rotating shadow of Sun-Planet, its belt of ice still visible beneath the continually rolling breakers of the aurorae, like an ocean of light flooding over overwhelming darkness. The air has not changed.
Beyond the ribbons and the asterisk, the curtain is still there, looking tattered, oddly, as if reflecting the condition of our mimic, the master of all the illusions that hide behind it. This proves to me at least that Ulyanova is still in charge of the spaces and processes important to us.
We search the nests and find DJ, Ishikawa, Kumar. They emerge from a kind of dreaming nap and gather around us, hopeful we may know what’s going to happen next. Litvinov and Bilyk are not in evidence. I assume the polkovnik is still tending to his efreitor, like a father devoted to his last son.
Kumar and Ishikawa take charge of the egg. “What do we do with it?” Ishikawa asks.
“Get it home,” I say. “After that—whatever we can, wherever we end up.”
“Looks like they’ve equipped it for a few months, at least,” Ishikawa says.
Joe says to me, and aside to DJ, “You’ve got to learn what she plans.”
Then they all embrace us, a most unexpected response, as if we’re heading off to our own deaths.
I ask Ulyanova for permission.
Vera emerges and takes us behind the curtain, through the thick wool and fog. Despite the changes and death elsewhere in the ship, the illusions beyond the curtain are still there: the tile floor, the hallway, and now, cold winter sunlight through the window at the end of the hall. The air in the apartment has chill currents, mixing with the heat from the radiators.
We are greeted warmly by a skeletal Ulyanova, and spend time with both of them in that steam-heated apartment. The mood seems relaxed, casual, despite the starshina’s appearance. Vera watches me closely. Ulyanova sits me down in an overstuffed chair and pulls up a stool. She might as well be a corpse, with her lips drawn back, her eyes like those of a lemur, her skin pearly gray and showing signs of cracking. Vera looks only a tiny bit better.
They serve us soup and tinned fish, mackerel in tomato paste. Tastes good. Tastes real.
“I am here,” Ulyanova says. “Ghosts are here. They still make plans, as if I agree, and I follow their plans.”
“Right.”
“Ship still listens as if I am Guru. But ship is about to do what it has been instructed for decades to do—make journey downsun, cross to other side of system, far quarter of Kuiper belt, to visit another new planet. Along the way, we will pass close to Mars and then Earth to pick up Gurus and their most favored Wait Staff. Once we retrieve all of the Wait Staff and Gurus, their ships will be available to carry you where you wish to go.”
“Convenient,” I say.
“I plan well, right?”
“You plan well. We are grateful.”
“Do not be. I am now more than half monster. You cannot guess what knife edge I will fall from, any second, and slice plans. Verushka and I are both monsters—but we remember.”
“We will stay here,” Vera says sadly.
“To finish,” Ulyanova says. “This is our home. We have friends, out there.” She points through the window to the Russian winter, the lowering butter-colored sun and bunched, snow-packed clouds.
“It’s a dream,” I say.
“A good dream for old soldiers,” she says. “Bilyk is very bad. He will not survive return to Earth. Tell Litvinov we have a place for both here. And a job he can do.”
“I’ll tell him,” I say.
“Now this is what will happen around Mars, around Earth,” Ulyanova says. “Ship will demand that all Gurus and their servants return, or destroy themselves, in preparation for new dispensation, new show.”
“All the old shows have been canceled?” DJ asks.
They both nod.
“Fucking righteous,” DJ says.
Vera smiles.
“This will be ship’s last journey,” Ulyanova says.
“As we discussed?” I ask.
“After you leave, I will fly into sun,” she says. “Wait Staff, politicians, generals who never fought—men and women who made great money from wars and deaths—we will share big party behind curtain. Make fancy places for them to live, to feel they have escaped. Earth is moving away from their influence. Already there is anger. So last refugees of war wait for us to save them.”
I mull this over, looking at the plate of cookies, the butter, the cup of tea.
DJ has put down his cup.
Almost against my will, I have to say, “Sometime back, you told me you knew the real reason the Gurus did all this. Can you tell me now?”
It seems that if one of us touched her, she would crumble. But she moves with grace, and her look toward Vera is still alive enough to convey affection.
“Yes,” she says. “Ghosts tell me Gurus are like game wardens. They make little wars, allow little kills, to protect us against bigger passions. Without them, we would kill ourselves.”
Vera adds, “But Gurus lie.”
I squint at the watery sun outside the window. “Yeah.”
Ulyanova rises from the stool. “Journey downsun will bring deep sleep, as before. Only I will feel the time. Time weighs heavy—bad memory.”
Vera takes my arm, lifting me from the overstuffed chair. DJ gets up as well.
Gray and dusty, Ulyanova looks at us sadly. “Go home and tell,” she says. “I hope you will land where you need to be. And I hope Earth is alive when we go back.”
“You don’t know?” I say.
She shakes her head. “No saying from brain, from ghosts. And at some point, ship must offload spent-matter reserves.”
“Ship lets you do that?”
“Ship knows how to make more, if needed. But can travel without—and do not want it in sun.”
I had forgotten about that. “Or Earth,” I say.
“Will find best, safest place. Go now.”
And we go. Back to the others, to the nests and to the ribbon spaces. So many more questions to ask the Queen! But we will not meet again. Perhaps she and Vera prefer the ship’s illusions. I would, if I could convince myself…
All wars end in whimpers. And those who serve the Gurus most faithfully, most selfishly, never learn. They rise again and again to the emotions that lead to self-destruction. There is not nearly enough energy to exact vengeance.