Payback

He came to me, desperation twisting pale features on his young face, seeking from me a key.

That was not unusual, though it seemed to me that it had been a while since the last one had come to ask. How long I did not know, and did not try to remember.

I floated a half-turn in my chair and reached into the store of keys behind me, which even to my eyes flickered in and out of the universes in which I was planted. I pulled out one of many red, soft-skin boxes, and handed it to him.

The light that I produce on what passes for my skin flooded his skin and his light blond hair, making his paleness look ice-white. His pastel eyes glittered. In that moment, he looked for all the universe like the proverbial frozen child.

After a quick, doubting look at me, he opened the box. Inside was the key: a flat piece of crystal containing documentation and diagrams and directions. On it was all the technology he would need to address his people’s particular problem.

“This is it?”

“Yes.”

He disbelieved, of course. Most do. Something for nothing? Who would think it?

Me. I would.

He frowned. “And what do I give you in return?”

I had seen his reaction countless times. With something given back, the key wasn’t a gift. Or so he hoped. Then, maybe it wouldn’t be dangerous.

I could not stop myself. I laughed.

“Nothing. This is what you asked for. This is the solution to the plague that attacks your homeworld, which would in time take all the life on your planet.”

It did not seem possible, but his face paled further.

“Take it home,” I said. “Give it to your scientists. They’ll know what to do with it.”

“I—”

He stumbled over his words. I waited patiently.

“I’m grateful. I don’t know what to say.”

“Say whatever you like. Do whatever you like. Avail yourself of my guest quarters. Walk in the gardens. Or go home and with each few minutes save a hundred more lives.”

He inhaled sharply and stood. “I will go. But repayment—”

“No repayment. I do not accept such.”

“But surely—”

“No. I do not desire anything in return.”

He turned reluctantly, walked up the ramp to the door, which I opened for him. There he stopped and turned partway toward me, not looking at me, his pale features sharp, like carved ice. His voice was flat as he spoke. Flat and hard and resolved.

“We will repay you.”

Then he left.

The mechanical device squatted in front of me, two arms drawn up around it, fitting flush against the rest of its metallic cylindrical body, the other two limbs out, crab-like.

“I have a delivery,” it said.

I quested for the input jack, tasted the protocol, and flashed it a stream of bits, shortening our interaction to a fraction of a second, after which it left.

I quickly checked my storage area. This would set a bad precedent, I knew, but I hoped that accepting the many tons of platinum would cause me less trouble than refusing it. The device claimed it would not leave until the gift had been accepted, but I could change the device’s programming to take the delivery back if I wanted to.

And I did want to. But in times past, when I refused such gifts, my action eventually led to an attack on me and my home station. Messy to deal with and discouraging to others who might come to petition me. If I took their gift, perhaps they would leave me to continue as before.

What, I wondered, did they suppose I would do with even an ounce of these metals that they thought were so precious?

I sighed, or something like it, and had the stuff put into my storage area, where I suspected it would sit uselessly for many millennia.

They stood before me, two of them, their limbs all hard angles with small, sticky openings everywhere. With just a taste of the wine that was my continuum, I knew these to be specialized mouths. On their world, food life had wings and flew. These mouths kept them fed.

“We come to seek the Key Giver, the one told of in myth, sung of in song.”

In recent times, there had been more petitioners coming to me. They would say that they had heard of me through the songs that wound their way through galactic trading centers. The songs all came from the lighthaired race, who were becoming well-known for their efforts.

I was a bit surprised; I had thought that the ice-skinned folk would have forgotten me some time ago.

“Yes. And you have found me.”

The two who stood before me spoke together, each providing pieces of the sound that made up their words. The words tasted like a dozen other languages I’d heard over the ages, but it splashed into old corners with new colors.

“We have talk to make with the Key Giver.”

I gave them a smile they would understand.

“I am in time and space with you.”

They stood stiffly, minor scent changes from their mouths indicating that they were ill at ease.

“We come to see the One. The Key Giver. We must make talk with him.”

“Ah,” I said, as if only now understanding. “I make an image of your meaning in my mind. This—” I pointed at myself, “This is the one you seek. The One. The Key Giver.”

They simply stared at me.

It was often thus. Few races arise from the soup of life to travel between the stars without great struggle. What are they to think, then, when they find that there is no struggle at all needed to accomplish their goals?

Their expressions changed. They were willing to consider that my words might be truth.

“We are not pleased with you.”

“Are you not.”

“No. We object to what you do.”

I smiled again, a friendly smile.

“I make an image of your meaning in my mind, but it is unimportant to me.”

“Why do you do this?” one asked, breaking harmony with the other. The second stared at him, startled, terrified at the sudden loss of their harmony.

“What is it you ask or seek?”

Again the first shook his head, refusing my question and its implied offer. The second keened, and then the first with him, and together they fell back into step, their sounds and speech weaving together again.

“We come to show you the error of your ways. To show you that you must stop.”

“You waste your time, and mine, too. Speak of what you seek, and I will give you a key, if a key exists.”

Together they cried their outrage. “You must put all your keys away! Listen to us: you destroy commerce. You ruin rare resource planets. You cause intergalactic wars. You must stop.”

“This is what you seek? For me to stop?”

Their little mouths all widened.

“Do not tease us with your words. We respect you, Key Giver. Is there any starfaring world that does not tell stories of you and the wonders you give? Indeed, we ourselves thought you a myth. Then our enemies suddenly learned the rites to make space ships that our trackers could not find, and they began to destroy us. They say that this was your gift to them.”

“Yes. I gave them a key. They used it.”

“We could come asking a key to use against them, could we not?”

“Yes.”

“And it would be just as effective as theirs?”

“Yes.”

“And—you would give it to us?”

“Yes.”

They shook. The scent of fear mixed with frustrated anger wafted off them like waves of heat.

“We do not wish it. We do not wish you to give such gifts to anyone anymore. We believe it is not good for races such as we and our enemies to have such tools. These gifts of yours upset all balances. They give advantage where it is not earned.”

“Many have come to me before with this theory. You are not the first.”

“You do not understand. We have made peace with our enemies. We now look beyond our small, simple disputes to the greater good, the benefit of all living intelligences. Your keys upset this great goal.”

I eased myself into greater light. They squinted against me.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Please, Key Giver. You must hear us.”

“I hear you. I listen for the key you have to ask of me. When you tell me what you seek, I will give you the key.”

They did not sing, for a long moment. They stood like statues.

I am no stranger to great tensions. I waited.

“We are lost,” they said at last. “If there were a key to make you stop giving keys, Key Giver, we would ask that.”

I floated a turn in my chair and dug into my store, to the very bottom, and brought out a box. I recognized the box; I had brought it out before. Infrequently.

I presented it to them.

“Listen,” I said, becoming very bright indeed. “Others have come before you, to ask this same thing of me. They have taken this box and they have opened it and they have used the key inside. Yet still I sit here before you.”

The room smelled of their climbing fear.

“Will this key really do what you say it will do, Key Giver?”

“Yes.”

“And—what will become of you?”

I smiled. “That is not your concern.”

“Then—what has happened to those to whom you gave this key?”

“They perished.”

“You destroyed them?”

“They perished,” I repeated carefully.

“Our race. What will happen to our race if we use this key?”

“Your race will perish, along with the life of this universe.”

After many of their heartbeats had passed, they handed the box back to me.

“That is too high a price to pay.”

“Then I accept the key back. Do you wish to ask for another?”

“We have come to make you stop,” they said. “What else is there to ask for that does not defeat our purpose?”

I blinked, in just the way they would have, to indicate that there was no answer to their question. They sighed as one, and I joined them. We exhaled long and then were silent, as their kind is when grieving, sharing in quiet company moments of great loss.

The one who stood before me now looked very much like the young pale one who had come to me so long ago, the one whose race had sent me tons of metal as a gift and had made songs and poems about me that now ranged across the galaxy. I dipped into the continuum to confirm my guess that he was long dead, and this one was not him. An ancestor, then. The likeness was charming.

I cocked my head at him, to indicate my interest. “Yes?”

He dropped to his knees, put his head to the ground in front of me in a gesture of great reverence.

“We realize the error of our ways, Great One! We see now that the precious metals our fathers and mothers sent you was insulting. We see how even our trite songs and poems tire you. Now we know that you want us to show our gratitude not in things or in song, but in the very essence of our bodies.”

I didn’t understand, not quite, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

“You have come to ask for a key?” I asked hopefully.

“We would not so presume. You have already given us the key that saved our race from extinction. What more could we ask from you?”

“Well, anything.”

He shook his head. “We could not so insult you. Now we only seek to glorify you, Great One, in the way that you deserve.”

“I ask no such thing.”

“You would never ask such a thing. We know that. We also know that you are all-seeing. Look, then—look outside your home, into the vastness of space, and see what we have created to honor your glory!”

Dread tickled at my corners. I sent an eye out through the walls into the space around my glittering silver home station.

There, arrayed, were the five spaceships on which this pale creature and his kind had come.

“Yes,” I said to him. “I see your ships.”

He spoke into a device on his wrist. I braced, hoping that he was not signaling for a destructive force to be sent against me. I did not relish the thought of rebuilding my home, as I had been forced to do before in times long past.

Hatches opened in the spaceships, two on each, ten in total. Out of each came unprotected ones of his kind. I watched as they pushed themselves out, toward my station home, arms outstretched as if they were birds in thick atmosphere, not fragile flesh in a vacuum.

They each began a similar series of motions with their arms and legs, in a coordinated dance. I marveled that they could manage this with the complex soup of chemicals that had been put into their blood to keep them from freezing too fast.

In moments, though, their movements became jerky from lack of oxygen and the suffusion of poisons in their systems. Blood came from some of their faces, from eyes and ears and mouth, frothily covering their white features.

They sailed slowly toward my home station, spinning. Some would hit. They would cause no damage, but might smear some of their redness over the silver shell of my home. I did not change their direction, and I did not plan to clean up the mess.

The pale young one before me was still on his knees. His head touched the ground again.

“We give you this dance as a token of our gratitude, Great One. We know we can never repay you for what you have given us, but we will give ourselves in the trying.”

“So you have not come for a key?”

He looked up in confusion, followed by shock that I did not understand, and then that was replaced by despair at his own inability to express himself. He must have been chosen as the spokesperson of his people because of his lineage, not his ability to speak well.

Not that it mattered. I understood him perfectly.

I sighed, so that he would see it and would know that I was sorrowful. Even if he could not understand why.

“If you have not come for a key,” I said, “then I must ask you to leave.”

Outside the bodies spun slowly toward my home.

He stared up. In time, he spoke again. Tentatively at first, then more ardently, saying things he had said before, and, in time, saying new things.

I said nothing to his words, nor to his pleading, nor to his apologies, nor to his agonized whimpers. I watched silently as he wept, and then as he cut himself, spilling some of his own blood on the floor in front of me. I said nothing as he bruised his head on my floor.

In time, he stood, shaking and slumped, and left.

She stood before me, proud and tall, only her skin temperature betraying her tension. When she finally spoke, her voice was low and deep, reflecting the multi-chambered voice box of her kind.

“Great Key Giver, I address you: I have come across great nothingness and fought terrible demons to seek audience with you. Will you see me?”

“I will see you, tall one,” I said, replying in the formal mode of her kind.

She began to groom herself unconsciously, a tension response, then stopped, uncurled, and stood straight.

“Many thousands of years ago, as we notch time,” she began, “there came travelers to the shores of our planet. They claimed benign interest in our ways and joined us in our practices. Long-hved were they, gentle and wise did they seem. They married in threes, and were as devoted to each other as to us. Across generations they stayed with us. In time, we came to regard them as siblings, and we looked on them as kin with great love. Never had such a thing happened to us before, Great Key Giver. We were like children among the sharp rocks.”

“Yes,” I said, to let her know I had heard.

She paused, pretending not to see me, to give silence that I might rest my mind before she continued.

“Indeed, Great Key Giver, these beings gave us much. We now travel between suns and we join interstellar trade routes. We stand tall among the galaxies, and it is because of them that we can.”

Indeed she stood taller then, the curve to her body stretched up into a line.

“Yes, you do.”

She shot me a grateful look, then went back to her story.

“Key Giver, our alien kindred do, in time, have offspring. They require for each child a living host to feed on. We were to be those hosts.”

A look of pain crossed her face and her tail went rigid.

“Please go on.”

“Suddenly,” she said softly, “we could no longer communicate with them. They had gone into their first breeding season, in all the time since they had arrived, and our words no longer meant anything to them.

“We did many things, Great Key Giver. Among them we sent many of ourselves out to find you. We followed the Trail of Puzzles that leads to you. Then a Giver, a pale one, came to us. Claiming to be your representative, he gave us a key.”

“Someone has misled you, tall one. I have no representatives.”

I felt a tingle somewhere outside me, washing back over me and sucking down again, gone before I could place it. Premonition? Memory?

She bowed her head, confused. “We feared and hoped you would say such, Great Key Giver. This pale Giver claimed to represent your generosity. We petitioned him for help, to save us from our alien kindred. We returned from him with a key. This key.”

She drew out of the folds in her stomach a slim, yellow box. It was the wrong color, and not quite the right shape, but it was otherwise similar to my own.

I must have dimmed. She looked at me a moment, then opened the box. Inside was a crystal, and on it codes.

“It is a formula for a virus that will destroy our alien kindred. We agonized to use it, but as our alien kin began to divide us into camps, some for breeding, some for use as hosts, we made a last effort to fight. We released the virus.”

I knew what had happened. I tilted the bowl of continuum and let the images flow across me. I saw the tall ones’ alien kin begin to fall to the virus and retreat to a ship above the planet.

“They died,” I told her. “But the virus mutated. Your kind also is dying in great numbers. Now your alien kin are attacking you as well.”

“Yes.”

“What do you ask?”

“We ask a key to save our people.”

I reached behind me, brought out a box, and handed it to her. She looked at me with soft eyes, her body curled again.

“What will this key do for my people, Key Giver?”

“It is an anti-virus for the one you were given.”

“What of our alien kin?”

“It will cure them, too.”

“Then we will have the old problem again, will we not, Key Giver?”

“I doubt that it will be the same problem, tall one.” She straightened at my address. “Because the situation is so changed. You are no longer ignorant of what your alien kin are or what they can do.”

For a moment she considered. “Yes. I thank you, Key Giver. The others—the ones calling themselves Givers, they would take no payment. Will you also take nothing in return?”

“No, tall one. Go and save your race.”

She walked up the ramp, very straight and tall. To show her respect, she did not even glance at me again before she left.

The Givers had given her their key. One could even argue that given time their key would result in an outcome where her race no longer had this problem.

I sighed, felt the millennia hanging on me like blood-sucking worms on a bloodbeast.

I remembered those; they had come long ago. Intelligent, peace-loving, blood-sucking worms. They were quickly going through the life on their planet, and had come to me for solutions. They had taken the key I gave them, had used it, and had not insisted on paying me back.

I sat deep, and let the pull of my sigh take me down into the ground that was not ground, into the other universes from where I gained the answers that, in this universe, became keys. There I sat in a deep, long bath.

In time, I told myself, this, too, would become memory.

“Give me the good stuff or I’ll blow your station to quarks!”

The small creature stood before me, in a challenging posture, his few fingers curled around an energy weapon.

“What do you ask or seek?”

“I don’t ask anything. I demand. Tell me where you keep the good stuff.”

I thought of my stores. There might actually be something valuable there. It seemed to me that there was, but it had been a long time and I wasn’t sure.

“I give keys. I give information resources, not physical resources.”

“I do not want your keys. I want something of value.”

“Ask a question. Tell me what you seek.”

He snorted. “I know you and your Givers all too well—don’t pretend that giving garbage and the wisdom of the ages with me—that’s got the value of excrement. I know how Givers collect items of value. You must have plenty.”

“Try a question.”

He pointed the weapon at me.

“Give. Now.”

The weapon would not work on me, nor would the explosives that his ship carried, but confrontation was not my goal.

Someone had, it was clear, hired him to destroy me. The Givers, perhaps. He had come here to take the good stuff before disposing of me.

Outside the station, I glimpsed another seeker beginning docking procedures. I had to speed up this audience.

“I have no time for your threats, little creature of cosmic dust,” I said imperiously. “Ask a question or leave.”

His expression darkened. He spat a curse.

“All right. How do I get into the store rooms where your treasure is kept?”

Finally. I hid my sigh of relief. I reached behind me and drew out a box and handed it to him.

He took it, opened it. “What is this?”

“It is the key you asked for. Your ship’s computer will help you decode it.”

He licked his lips, glanced up at me, the barest hint of uncertainty on his furry face. “But what is it?”

“It is the instructions for unlocking my storeroom.”

He snorted. “You think I am that simple?”

That was not a question I wanted to answer.

“It doesn’t matter what I think, or how simple you might be; you’ve asked for and received a key, and the key will do what you ask.”

His expression told me that he didn’t think he was here for an education. Answers are keys, too, but he didn’t want any of those. As he swore and tensed to draw his weapon, I didn’t offer him any.

He drew and fired. I felt the pulse cover me like a hot blanket, felt it speed up, fly around me, and snap back, crushing him to the floor.

He lay there, unbreathing. The crystal key lay on the ground where the box had fallen to the floor and come open. For a moment, I stared at the tableau and pondered the mysteries that even my keys do not answer.

The newly arrived ship docked, and the occupant was just now finding its way to the passageway that led to my room, where it would, I hoped, simply ask a question.

I cleaned up the mess.

The three arrayed themselves in a triangle, their long limbs crossing each others’ in an aesthetic pattern that I knew meant supplication, but meant supplication with resistance to surrender. Clearly they did not know me. Or perhaps they had had dealings with the Givers. I wondered what message the Givers were handing out these days with their keys.

“We come to ask you to reconsider, Key Giver. Or at least to explain to us the why.”

Something had happened, something not of my making, something beyond my keys. I felt heavy.

“Reconsider what?”

“This.” Two of the twisted limbs handed me a box. It was yellow. A Giver key, not one of mine.

“What am I reconsidering?”

“Your decision about us. We do not wish to be impertinent, but the planet you have given us is not easy to live on. Already we have lost so many, and we are so few already—”

Their limbs clutched, trembling slightly.

I dipped into continuum to understand.

“You are right, the planet is not suitable for you. But I did not give you this planet. You have been deceived. The Givers are not my representatives.”

Their limbs fluttered in confusion and shock.

“Then…?”

“Then you are free to go where you wish, make food of and war on whomever you like. The Givers are merely another race, like yourselves. Deal with them as such.”

“But they quarantine us! They tell us we are evil because of the sins of our parents. After a thousand years, they say, if we behave to their liking, we may rejoin other races in trade. What shall we do?”

I reached behind myself, into my pouch of keys, but all the boxes I touched slid away from my grasp.

“That is not a question for which there is a key. Please ask again.”

“We have been told that we are evil, that we must mend our ways, but we do not know how. Tell us how.”

Again I reached behind me, into the pouch. Again all the boxes slid away.

“Again, your question has no key. Please try again.”

Their limbs tensed, fluttered.

“We wish to survive. We do not wish to cause hardship to others. We never knew our parents. Who are we? What have we done for which we are being punished?”

This time a key box came to me. For a moment I remembered the tall one, with her soft eyes. Somewhere her kind still lived, tucked away, hidden from the parents of these who stood before me.

I handed them the box.

“What is it?”

“It is the truth about what you are, which you and your kind do not learn until it is upon you. It is the mystery of how you live so long, how you make children, and what it is that the young of your kind feed on. Perhaps when you have understood this key, you will go back to the planet the Givers gave you and there live out your short lives. Or perhaps you will come back here for another key.”

They stood for long moments in silence, digesting my words.

“Thank you, Key Giver.”

The Giver ships arrayed themselves around my station. They had a marvelous set of weapons, sufficient to destroy my home many, many times over. If they used them, even a fraction of them, I would have to rebuild my home, and likely myself as well.

They boarded my station with military precision, destroying unlocked doors and securing empty rooms. Pale, with stiff white uniforms, they poured into my room in a stream, until they nearly filled it.

When she walked in, the likeness was so sharp that it only took me a single whiff of continuum to confirm that she was a distant descendant of the one who had first visited me.

She stepped up close to me, her posture one of confidence and challenge.

“We are here for the Giving,” she said to me, her hands moving in what I gathered was a ritual opening for discussion. Then, in a harsher tone: “We will give you one chance, one chance only, to stop calling yourself Key Giver.”

“Why should I do that?”

“We do not find the title amusing. You insult us and the true Key Giver.”

“What is it you ask or seek?”

Lines of fury appeared in her pale face. She pulled out a small device, pointed it at me.

“Register offender,” she told the device. “Offender of the faith.”

“Behavior?” the device asked.

Her voice dripped with disgust. “Presents itself as Key Giver.”

I was impressed with the device. The artificial intelligence therein would help interpret the rules of their whole, complicated faith. I delved into the software and followed the pathways. Most offenses, I saw, would result in the giving of a key. A Giver key.

Most, but not all.

“Blasphemy,” the device pronounced. “Subject must immediately recant and suffer penance, or be destroyed.”

She nodded solemnly and looked at me.

I decided to try again. “What do you ask or seek?”

Her face began to flush.

“We seek to remove your abominable presence from the great Key Giver’s blessed universe.”

I reached behind me, but no box came to my hand. It was as I suspected; she sought to satisfy conflicting goals.

“There is no key for what you seek. Please try again.”

“You have heard the pronouncement. Recant. Say you are not the Key Giver. Take penance for claiming to be the Great One.”

I reached behind me again. A box came to my hand.

I did not know what this key would contain and I did not look. All would become clear in time. I presented the box to the pale woman.

Startled, she opened the box, frowned, handed it back to a man behind her. “You must recant now, or be destroyed.”

I sparked out in a line, pointing at the box behind her. “Read the key from your computers. You should have no trouble decoding the information.

Behind her, the man put the crystal up to another small device.

“We will,” she said. “We will decode all your impostor keys, once you have accepted our authority.”

“It’s blank,” the man said.

The woman smirked. “Of course it is. He is not a Giver and certainly not the Great One.”

My key was blank? I frowned inside, wondering what this might mean. If there was no answer, then no key should have been possible. But a blank key?

“Do you recant?” she asked.

A blank key. I took a quick sip of continuum. I discovered many things about the woman in front of me and the many races the Givers had influenced, but nothing to explain a blank key.

I wanted time to puzzle out the mystery. I could step away into another universe to create that time, but it would sap my energy here, which would make me less able to withstand her attack, if she gave one. I did not want to have to reconstruct myself in pieces from other universes, not if I could help it.

A blank key must mean that the answer was evident.

“Well? Do you recant?”

Could I? Would it matter if I did?

“Yes,” I said.

Why not?

She blinked in surprise, took a half-step back, then another, to make it seem that she had meant the first. “Then you must accept penance as well.”

“And that is?”

She turned back to whisper to the man behind her. They consulted the computer. Much of the complexity of their religion had to do with penance—penance that would apply to specific and varied races, penance that would provide for the church.

“You must give us all your material wealth. We will insist on making a tour of your entire station.”

Material wealth? It seemed to me that I might have something. Didn’t I have stores somewhere?

“Is that all?”

“And you must stop offering these—” she hurled the box with the blank key to the floor, “disgusting imitations of Giver keys.”

That was easy.

“I accept.”

She eyed me skeptically, but I had agreed to her terms, so she was bound to accept them.

“So be it,” she said. Then to her crew: “Search the station. Take everything.”

I did a quick inventory of the station and found my stores, looking inside to see what I had. There was a large shipment of platinum, covered with dust.

Then I remembered where it had come from. I hid my amusement.

The two stepped inside my chambers and arrayed their long limbs in a simple pattern that meant sorrow and petition. The last time there had been three of them.

“What do you ask or seek?”

“We have read the key you gave us some years ago, great Key Giver. We understand now what we are, and why our kind was banished to a hostile planet. We understand now why the Givers who are not your representatives fear and hate us so. We even hate ourselves. Our parents did not know what they did to their host race. They did not intend harm, but this does not much console us. Key Giver, must we be so? Must we lose all sense and reason to reproduce ourselves?”

“What do you seek?” I asked again. Gently, to let them know that I heard their anguish.

“We seek guidance for our future. The Givers were furious to discover that we had broken our quarantine to come to you. When we returned to our planet, they began to eradicate us. We fight a war with them now. We have lost many. We hide in caves on the planet surface. We have little left.”

“And your third?”

“Our third is dead.”

“I am sorry for your loss.”

“Our race is few. We struggle to stay alive. The Givers have strong weapons and much fury, and we—we are disheartened. We do not know if we should fight back at all. Perhaps we should let the Givers destroy us. Perhaps the universe would be better off without us.”

“And what do you seek?”

“An answer, Key Giver: do we fight the Givers or let them destroy us? If we are to fight, we must have both the will and the means. To have the will requires that we learn to breed without destroying others. To have the means requires that we quickly defeat an enemy of greater power and numbers. We are sure these things are not possible, but we come to you anyway. As our last chance.”

I reached behind me for a key. I handed them the box. Their limbs seemed to freeze in place, despair spiced with hope.

“Surely there is no answer, Key Giver?”

I took a sip of continuum.

“Your concerns are answered on the key, in reverse order, because the Givers will destroy you if you wait long enough to find the answer to your breeding wishes.”

“But we have nothing now—we can barely feed ourselves.”

I nodded. “Do not wait to return home to read the key—I will give you a device to do so. The key will provide you with a formula, the means to pay for the formula’s ingredients, and a map to those who will be willing to help you fight the Givers.”

“A formula to change the way we breed?”

“No. That you can make yourself. This formula is something else.”

They waited patiently for me to continue. It came to me slowly as I sipped at the continuum.

“The formula will produce the Giver plague.”

He pressed his pale forehead to the ground in front of me.

“You are my last hope.”

All over his skin were sores. He was very thin, and his voice was a hoarse whisper.

“You are sick with plague.”

“Almost half of us are dead. Our doctors say it is incurable. And some—” he looked up at me, fearful. “Some say you brought it on us. Some say you are not the false Giver after all, but the real one.”

“Yes.”

He exhaled, his breath weary and full of pain.

“Then we Givers—we have been horribly wrong. We have displeased you. This must be why you pursue our destruction, Great One.”

“I do not pursue your destruction. I offer keys. What do you ask or seek from me now?”

“We are all dying. Great One, I have offspring and mates who I cannot leave, who need me, and I—” he faltered, his head bowed in shame. “That’s true, but no—the real reason is that I don’t want to die. Perhaps I am not worthy to ask my life of you.”

“The Givers may judge,” I said. “But I do not. Tell me what you seek.” He looked up, breathing hard.

“A key to cure myself.”

I reached behind me and handed him the box.

He stood, shaking, and took the box, disbelief stamped on his face. “Truly?”

“You will need to find someone who can supply the formula’s ingredients and administer them to you before you are much weaker. Can you do that?”

“Yes. There is a place I know—this cure, Key Giver, will it cure others as well?”

“If you give it to them, yes.”

He blinked pastel eyes, his pale lashes wetting.

“Should I, Key Giver? Should I save my people, after what we’ve done?”

“The key is yours to do with as you wish.”

His eyes darted around the room, then back at me. “I cannot make such a decision for all of my kind, Key Giver. If we have been so horribly wrong, then—you must advise me, Giver.”

“I cannot,” I said. “I do not judge. I do not advise. I give keys. This is your key.”

“But—if you will not tell me what to do, then how will I know? The Giver faith,” he said bitterly, “is no longer my guide.”

“Do you wish a different key?”

He looked up at me, his face twisted in pain. He clutched the box very tightly to his stomach.

“No. I want to live. I will take the key. The rest—my race—I will decide about that later.”

He walked slowly toward the door, his body bent, his breath labored. At the door, he stopped and faced me, his pale features a shadow of that ice-skinned one, the first, who had come to me so long ago asking for a key to cure his people.

“Key Giver—how can I repay you for this?”

Down deep in my soul, I felt a heaviness.

“No repayment is necessary. None is desired.”

“But if this formula is all that you say it is, Key Giver, if it really will cure the plague—”

“It will. But no payment. I do not want it.”

I saw thoughts flicker across his sunken face. Plans, hopes, decisions.

“Go tend to your own health, and then decide the fate of your people,” I said. “Feel gratitude if you wish. Or feel joy. Or feel hate. But bring me nothing back.”

“Yes, Key Giver. As you wish.”

He said the words fast, as if to pacify me. Somehow, I did not believe that he would abide by them. Then he left.

I stared for a long time at the place where he had been.