He walked to the top of the rotten steps, looked up at the cathedral and made a sign of the cross. Then he descended the steps, sinking from view.
There was nothing for more than a minute, but the video kept running, the pattern of wavelets kept approaching the shore, birds kept wheeling in the sky.
In a series of small surges, the prow of the naomhóg emerged from under the pier, then Más’s head, his face towards the town, then the rest of his body and the boat.
I had to hand it to him. He could have launched his vessel at dead of night from the little boathouse where he had built the others, but he chose the part of town most visible to the cameras, at a time when few people would be around to stop or report him.
With each pull on the oars, he sculled effortlessly through the gentlest of swells, his teeth bared in joy.
His yellow oilskins shone in contrast against the dark greens of his boat and the surrounding water as he made for the mouth of his harbour and the open sea beyond.
Yet fish there be, that neither hook, nor line, nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine.
The Residue of Fire
ROBERT REED
Robert Reed sold his first story in 1986 and quickly established himself as one of the most prolific of today’s writers, particularly at short fiction lengths, and he has managed to keep up a very high standard of quality while being prolific, something that is not at all easy to do. Reed’s stories count as among some of the best short works produced by anyone in the last few decades; many of his best stories have been assembled in the collections The Dragons of Springplace and The Cuckoo’s Boys. He won the Hugo Award in 2007 for his novella A Billion Eves. Nor is he nonprolific as a novelist, having turned out eleven novels since the end of the ’80s, including The Lee Shore, The Hormone Jungle, Black Milk, The Remarkables, Down the Bright Way, Beyond the Veil of Stars, An Exaltation of Larks, Beneath the Gated Sky, Marrow, Sister Alice, and The Well of Stars, as well as two chapbook novellas, Mere and Flavors of My Genius. His most recent books are a chapbook novella, Eater-of-Bone; a novel, The Memory of Sky; and a collection, The Greatship. Reed lives with his family in Lincoln, Nebraska.
“The Residue of Fire” is another story set in his long-running series about the “Great Ship,” a Jupiter-size spaceship created eons ago by enigmatic aliens that endlessly travels the Galaxy with its freight of millions of passengers from dozens of races, including humans. In this one, an immortal being investigates a race of passengers aboard the ship for whom time doesn’t exist, and has a showdown with a nemesis from millions of years in his past.
“My face,” said the human.
“Yes.”
“Make the count, please.”
Legs rigid, the jeweled eyes stared at the never-moving sun. But the 31-1 was also searching his memories for the friend’s face. An army of sensors linked the subject’s mind to a bank of diagnostic AIs. The human watched quantum whirlpools breaking out inside each one of his singholes, every swirl growing larger and brighter. An inventory was being taken, but the 31-1 wasn’t counting. Counting was an act that had to cross time, and time was a falsehood, an illusion. As far as the alien was concerned, he was simply chasing a reality where the answer was known, and that was the juncture when every whirlpool was linked with the central mind, and having experienced that reality, the creature felt confident enough to offer a considerable yet very reasonable tally.
The human’s face was unique in a thousand ways, but after that, completely unmemorable. He wasn’t large for his species, but the lanky body gave him a tall man’s build. His hair was gray, the skin deep brown, and eyes that were blue in the night were black in this glorious morning/afternoon light.
“What are my faces doing?” he asked.
“Many drink tea beside your tree,” the 31-3 reported. “Others drink beside our river. And I see three faces enjoying beverages elsewhere onboard the Great Ship. Poured into a single cup, all of that tea would create an ocean.”
Ash laughed at the joke.
His companion appreciated that reaction. Telemetry proved so, as did the front leg’s sudden flexing.
Inspired by the subject, Ash decided to brew a fresh pot. But his supplies were indoors, and he had to drag his own cables into his home with him, and then drag them out again.
In the midst of those chores, the alien offered the word “Urgency.”
“Yes?”
“I see urgency inside you.”
Ash was studying the 31-1’s mind, and in the same way, his friend was privy to the quantum noise inside a tiny, nearly immortal human brain.
“I see emotions that are controlled but distracting,” the alien said. “Some portion of the universe can’t be ignored, yet you wish that portion were as far from you as possible. Which leads you into urgency.”
“I’m scared,” Ash confessed.
“Quite a lot scares your species. But in this case, an impressive terror is living inside you.”
To the 31-1s, the universe was a sequence of fixed, eternal realities. Each reality was spectacularly detailed, encompassing the tiniest quantum event as well as the farthest stars. Like photographs inside an infinite album: That was how the universe was organized. The most similar realities stood next to each other, close enough to touch. To the 31-1s, there was never any need for time. Time was an illusion embraced by weak species. Humans, for instance. Seconds and centuries were cheats that helped the humans navigate through the realities. And in the same fashion, the 31-1s lacked any concept of motion. They couldn’t run or even imagine running. No creature walked or swam or fell. Ash certainly didn’t balance on narrow legs, and data cables didn’t leave drag marks in the dust. These two good friends were simply passing from one mathematical purity into the next, and the next, and a trillion other nexts. And then they reached a reality where the human had his water and blisterwing tea and a favorite pot and two well-used cups.
“Urgency,” the alien repeated.
“Is that what you see inside me?”
“In your head. Considerable urgency.”
But the fear wasn’t enough to make him stop doing what he loved. Kneeling in the shade behind the young bristlecone, Ash arranged bits of dried foliage before applying a spark.
“I see us talking in this fashion just once,” said the alien.
“Now,” said Ash.
There was no “now.” But better than most, this 31-1 understood what the impossible word meant to his companion.
“Why ask about your faces?”
“To test your memory,” said Ash.
“You don’t need tests. Your memory knows our minds very well.”
Here was the key to quite a lot. Ash came to this habitat to study one unusual species. He intended to stay for a few years, no longer, but then he fell in love with the changeless weather and that low, never-moving sun. That’s when he planted the bristlecone that had finally grown enough to cast a reasonable shadow. And with the native rock, he built the hearth where a new fire stood protected from the hot, unending wind.
Ash lived inside a comfortable cave just a few steps away, and this habitat was a much larger cavern. The 31-1s’ home was built from granite and hyperfiber and convincing, interwoven illusions. What looked like a K-class sun was fixed to a distant wall. What wasn’t sky wore the pinks of airborne dusts. To a human eye, the scene was baked in perpetual dawn or twilight. But of course the locals had no sense of day and night. They lacked any instinct that told them that any sun should move. What looked like glass roadways clung to the canyon walls, and there were hundreds of 31-1s below them, each passing from one reality to the next, and below everything and everyone was a sturdy little river that was equally fixed in time. Water didn’t flow, and the 31-1s did not walk. But if that river found its way into a man’s mouth, he tasted the glaciers hiding on the world’s night side. That mixture of cold pleasure and rock flour made for a delightful tea, and that was another factor in Ash’s decision to linger in this good place.