The First Crossing

Orin refused to explain the first crossing.

The refusal followed them back to the Wayward, where Sera spent forty minutes checking seals that had already passed diagnostics. Cael recognized the ritual and, for once, did not tell her the numbers were good.

Numbers were not why she was checking.

She ran one hand along the scarred edge of the pilot console and stopped at a shallow gouge beside the throttle. The mark predated Cael. So did most of the ship.

"You trust her?" he asked.

"The Wayward?"

"Yes."

"No."

Cael looked at her.

Sera tightened the last manual latch. "I know her. That's better."

Only then did they return to Orin.

Cael tried asking directly.

"What failed?"

Orin looked at him.

"Yes."

"That wasn't the question."

"It was the answer."

Sera leaned against the dead city's wall with her arms folded.

"I like him."

"You like anyone who makes conversation difficult."

"I like you."

Cael ignored that.

Sera let him.

A month earlier she would have pushed until he reacted. Now she knew the small signs: the way he pressed his thumb against the side of his index finger when frightened, the extra precision in his questions when he felt out of control.

Cael knew things about her too.

He knew not to touch her from behind in engine spaces.

He knew she slept better with the Wayward's old circulation fan running, even though it consumed power she complained about wasting.

He knew she always checked the nearest exit before sitting down and never admitted doing it.

Neither had formally exchanged this information.

They had accumulated it.

That, Sera was discovering, was one way a person became difficult to lose.

The chamber had remained awake after their brief contact with Max. Images of primordial Earth hung in the air around the open ring: shallow water, mineral surfaces, cells dividing beneath light from a younger sun. None of it looked extraordinary until Cael remembered that the records could not reasonably exist here.

"Who recorded this?" he asked.

Orin walked toward one of the images.

"No one."

"Something recorded it."

"Yes."

"Then who?"

Orin touched the image. It broke into points of light.

"You keep asking for a person."

"Usually useful when assigning verbs."

Sera smiled.

Orin did not.

"This place did not begin with people."

Cael looked at the black sphere beyond the chamber walls.

"Did Ameeba World?"

Orin's white lines dimmed.

"No."

There it was.

Not an answer large enough to understand, but large enough to change everything around it.

Sera pushed away from the wall.

"Who built the city?"

"We did."

"Who built the place the city is in?"

Orin looked upward.

"I don't know."

Sera nodded.

"Finally. A trustworthy answer."

The unknown process flickered on her portable terminal.

"Before."

Orin turned toward it.

For the first time, his expression became unmistakably emotional.

Fear.

"You should not be here."

The process answered in a child's voice.

"Home."

"No."

"Home."

"No."

The terminal display filled with static.

Sera stepped between Orin and it.

"Don't yell at my haunting."

Cael looked at her.

"Your haunting?"

"It lives on my ship."

"That's not ownership."

"Tell it that."

Orin approached slowly.

"What are you?"

The process answered:

"Still."

Orin's face changed.

"Still what?"

No response.

Cael said, "A Custodian vessel called it the Echo."

Orin recoiled.

The reaction was small.

Enough.

"You know that name."

"Names are routes."

"Everyone keeps saying that."

"Because you keep using them."

Sera lifted the terminal.

"Fine. No names. Do you know what this is?"

Orin stared at the screen.

"Not anymore."

The process whispered:

"Me neither."

For once, Sera had no joke.

They spent six hours inside the city.

Orin remembered in fragments.

He remembered maintaining systems after "the closing," but could not initially say which closing. He remembered other keepers. He remembered a sky, though the city had no sky. He remembered being told never to answer if something knocked three times.

"Why?" Cael asked.

Orin looked at him.

"Because three means it knows there is someone inside."

Sera stopped checking the wall.

Cael asked, "Null?"

Orin's expression remained blank.

"Warden."

"Which Warden?"

"Warden."

"That's not specific."

"It was then."

Cael exchanged a look with Sera.

First Warden, he thought.

He did not say it.

The trilogy of ancient terms in his head—Custodian, Warden, Severance—felt suddenly less like history and more like layers of people reusing words whose first meanings had been forgotten.

Orin led them beneath the ring chamber.

The stairs descended farther than the geometry above should have allowed.

Sera counted.

At four hundred steps she stopped.

"This city is cheating."

Cael was breathing harder than he wanted her to notice.

"Maybe the outside is larger."

"That is not better."

At the bottom waited a room containing one object.

A stone.

Not crystal.

Not machinery.

An ordinary dark stone, suspended inside a transparent field.

Cael looked at Orin.

"This is the first crossing?"

"No."

"What is it?"

"Earth."

Sera stared.

"That's a rock."

"Yes."

"From Earth?"

"Yes."

"How?"

Orin looked at the stone.

"It came through."

Cael approached the field.

"When?"

Orin answered with a number.

Cael's translator failed.

Not because the number was too large.

Because the unit had no modern equivalent.

He tried again.

"Before humans?"

"Yes."

"Before Ameebas?"

Orin looked at him.

"Before us."

The unknown process began to cry again.

Sera lowered the terminal.

Cael looked at the rock.

The first crossing had not been a person.

Maybe that was the mistake in the question.

"What failed?" he asked again.

This time Orin understood.

"The first crossing did not fail."

Cael waited.

Orin looked toward the ceiling, toward the chamber where the image of Max had appeared.

"We did."