The Silent War

ASTEROID 67-046

“What do you mean, Dorn’s not available?” Humphries shouted at the blank phone screen. “Get me the officer on watch aboard the Humphries Eagle.”

“All exterior communications are inoperable at the present time,” replied the phone.

“That’s impossible!” “All exterior communications are inoperable at the present time,” the phone repeated, unperturbed.

Humphries stared at the empty screen, then turned slowly toward Elverda Apacheta. “He’s cut us off. We’re trapped in here.”

Elverda felt the chill of cold metal clutching at her. Perhaps Dorn is a madman, she thought. Perhaps he is my death, personified.

“We’ve got to do something!” Humphries nearly shouted.

Elverda rose shakily to her feet. “There is nothing that we can do, for the moment. I am going to my quarters and take a nap. I believe that Dorn, or Harbin or whatever his identity is, will call on us when he is ready to.”

“And do what?”

“Show us the artifact,” she replied, silently adding, I hope.

Legally, the artifact and the entire asteroid belonged to Humphries Space Systems. It had been discovered by a family—husband, wife, and two sons, ages five and three—that made a living from searching out iron-nickel asteroids and selling the mining rights to the big corporations. They filed their claim to this unnamed asteroid, together with a preliminary description of its ten-kilometer-wide shape, its orbit within the asteroid belt, and a sample analysis of its surface composition.

Six hours after their original transmission reached the commodities market computer network on Earth—while a fairly spirited bidding was going on among four major corporations for the asteroid’s mineral rights—a new message arrived at the headquarters of the International Astronautical Authority, in London. The message was garbled, fragmentary, obviously made in great haste and at fever excitement. There was an artifact of some sort in a cavern deep inside the asteroid.

One of the faceless bureaucrats buried deep within the IAA’s multi-layered organization sent an immediate message to an employee of Humphries Space Systems. The bureaucrat retired hours later, richer than he had any right to expect, while Martin Humphries personally contacted the prospectors and bought the asteroid outright for enough money to end their prospecting days forever. By the time the decision-makers in the IAA realized that an alien artifact had been discovered they were faced with a fait accompli: the artifact, and the asteroid in which it resided, were the personal property of the richest man in the solar system.

Martin Humphries was something of an egomaniac. But he was no fool. Graciously he allowed the IAA to organize a team of scientists who would inspect this first specimen of alien intelligence. Even more graciously, Humphries offered to ferry the scientific investigators all the long way to the asteroid at his own expense. He made only one demand, and the IAA could hardly refuse him. He insisted that he see this artifact himself before the scientists were allowed to view it.

And he brought along the solar system’s most honored and famous artist To appraise the artifact’s worth as an art object, he claimed. To determine how much he could deduct from his corporate taxes by donating the thing to the IAA, said his enemies. But over the days of their voyage to the asteroid, Elverda came to the conclusion that buried deep beneath his ruthless business persona was an eager little boy who was tremendously excited at having found a new toy. A toy he intended to possess for himself. An art object, created by alien hands.

For an art object was what the artifact seemed to be. The family of prospectors continued to send back vague, almost irrational reports of what the artifact looked like. The reports were worthless. No two descriptions matched. If the man and woman were to be believed, the artifact did nothing but sit in the middle of a rough-hewn cavern. But they described it differently with every report they sent. It glowed with light. It was darker than deep space. It was a statue of some sort. It was formless. It overwhelmed the senses. It was small enough almost to pick up in one hand. It made the children laugh happily. It frightened their parents. When they tried to photograph it, their transmissions showed nothing but blank screens. Totally blank.

As Humphries listened to their maddening reports and waited impatiently for the IAA to organize its handpicked team of scientists, he ordered his security manager to get a squad of hired personnel to the asteroid as quickly as possible. From corporate facilities at the Jupiter station and the moons of Mars, from three separate outposts among the Asteroid Belt itself, Humphries Space Systems efficiently brought together a brigade of experienced mercenary security troops. They reached the asteroid long before anyone else could, and were under orders to make certain that no one was allowed onto the asteroid before Martin Humphries himself reached it.

“The time has come.”

Elverda woke slowly, painfully, like a swimmer struggling for the air and light of the surface. She had been dreaming of her childhood, of the village where she had grown up, the distant snowcapped Andes, the warm night breezes that spoke of love.

“The time has come.” It was Dorn’s deep voice, whisper-soft. Startled, she flashed her eyes open. She was alone in the room, but Dorn’s image filled the phone screen by her bed. The numbers glowing beneath the screen showed that it was indeed time.

“I am awake now,” she said to the screen.

“I will be at your door in fifteen minutes,” Dorn said. “Will that be enough time for you to prepare yourself?”

“Yes, plenty.” The days when she needed time for selecting her clothing and arranging her appearance were long gone.

“In fifteen minutes, then.”

“Wait,” she blurted. “Can you see me?”

“No. Visual transmission must be keyed manually.”

“I see.”

“I do not”

A joke? Elverda sat up on the bed as Dorn’s image winked out. Is he capable of humor?

She shrugged out of the shapeless coveralls she had worn to bed, took a quick shower, and pulled her best caftan from the travel bag. It was a deep midnight blue, scattered with glittering silver stars. Elverda had made the floor-length gown herself, from fabric woven by her mother long ago. She had painted the stars from her memory of what they had looked like from her native village.

As she slid back her front door she saw Dorn marching down the corridor with Humphries beside him. Despite his slightly longer legs, Humphries seemed to be scampering like a child to keep up with Dorn’s steady, stolid steps.

“I demand that you reinstate communications with my ship,” Humphries was saying, his voice echoing off the corridor walls. “I’ll dock your pay for every minute this insubordination continues!”

“It is a security measure,” Dorn said calmly, without turning to look at the man. “It is for your own good.”

“My own good? Who in hell are you to determine what my own good might be?”

Dorn stopped three paces short of Elverda, made a stiff little bow to her, and only then turned to face his employer.

“Sir: I have seen the artifact. You have not.”

“And that makes you better than me?” Humphries almost snarled the words. “Holier, maybe?”

“No,” said Dorn. “Not holier. Wiser.”

Humphries started to reply, then thought better of it.

“Which way do we go?” Elverda asked in the sudden silence.

Dorn pointed with his prosthetic hand. “Down,” he replied. “This way.”

The corridor abruptly became a rugged tunnel again, with lights fastened at precisely spaced intervals along the low ceiling. Elverda watched Dorn’s half-human face as the pools of shadow chased the highlights glinting off the etched metal, like the Moon racing through its phases every half-minute, over and again.

Humphries had fallen silent as they followed the slanting tunnel downward into the heart of the rock. Elverda heard only the clicking of his shoes at first, but by concentrating she was able to make out the softer footfalls of Dorn’s padded boots and even the whisper of her own slippers.

The air seemed to grow warmer, closer. Or is it my own anticipation? She glanced at Humphries; perspiration beaded his upper lip. The man radiated tense expectation. Dorn glided a few steps ahead of them. He did not seem to be hurrying, yet he was now leading them down the tunnel, like an ancient priest leading two new acolytes—or sacrificial victims.

The tunnel ended in a smooth wall of dull metal.

“We are here.”

“Open it up,” Humphries demanded.

“It will open itself,” replied Dorn. He waited a heartbeat, then added, “Now.”

And the metal slid up into the rock above them as silently as if it were a curtain made of silk.

None of them moved. Then Dorn slowly turned toward the two of them and gestured with his human hand.

“The artifact lies twenty-two point nine meters beyond this point. The tunnel narrows and turns to the right. The chamber is large enough to accommodate only one person at a time, comfortably.”

“Me first!” Humphries took a step forward.

Dorn stopped him with an upraised hand. The prosthetic hand. “I feel it my duty to caution you—”

Humphries tried to push the hand away; he could not budge it.

“When I first crossed this line, I was a soldier. After I saw the artifact I gave up my life.”

“And became a self-styled priest. So what?”

“The artifact can change you. I thought it best that there be no witnesses to your first viewing of it, except for this gifted woman whom you have brought with you. When you first see it, it can be— traumatic.”

Humphries’s face twisted with a mixture of anger and disgust. “I’m not a mercenary killer. I don’t have anything to be afraid of.”

Dorn let his hand drop to his side with a faint whine of miniaturized servomotors.

“Perhaps not,” he murmured, so low that Elverda barely heard it.

Humphries shouldered his way past the cyborg. “Stay here,” he told Elverda. “You can see it when I come back.”

He hurried down the tunnel, footsteps staccato.

Then silence.

Elverda looked at Dorn. The human side of his face seemed utterly weary. “You have seen the artifact more than once, haven’t you?”

“Fourteen times,” he answered.

“It has not harmed you in any way, has it?”

He hesitated, then replied, “It has changed me. Each time I see it, it changes me more.”

“You … you really are Dorik Harbin?”

“I was.”

“Those people of the Chrysalis …?”

“DORIK HARBIN KILLED THEM ALL. YES. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR IT, NO PARDON. IT WAS THE ACT OF A MONSTER.”

“But why?”

“Monsters do monstrous things. Dorik Harbin ingested psychotropic drugs to increase his battle prowess. Afterward, when the battle drugs cleared from his bloodstream and he understood what he had done, Dorik Harbin held a grenade against his chest and set it off.”

“Oh my god,” Elverda whimpered.

“He was not allowed to die, however. Yamagata Corporations medical specialists rebuilt his body and he was given a false identity. For many years he lived a sham of life, hiding from the authorities, hiding from his own guilt. He no longer had the courage to kill himself; the pain of his first attempt was far stronger than his own self-loathing. Then he was hired to come to this place. Dorik Harbin looked upon the artifact for the first time, and his true identity emerged at last.”

Elverda heard a scuffling sound, like feet dragging, staggering. Martin Humphries came into view, tottering, leaning heavily against the wall of the tunnel, slumping as if his legs could no longer hold him.

“No man … no one…” He pushed himself forward and collapsed into Dorn’s arms.

“Destroy it!” he whispered harshly, spittle dribbling down his chin. “Destroy this whole damned piece of rock! Wipe it out of existence!”

“What is it?” Elverda asked. “What did you see?”

Dorn lowered him to the ground gently. Humphries’s feet scrabbled against the rock as if he were trying to run away. Sweat covered his face, soaked his shirt.

“It’s … beyond…” he babbled. “More … than anyone can … nobody could stand it…”

Elverda sank to her knees beside him. “What has happened to him?” She looked up at Dorn, who knelt on Humphries’s other side.

“The artifact”

Humphries suddenly ranted, “They’ll find out about me! Everyone will know! It’s got to be destroyed! Nuke it! Blast this whole asteroid to bits!” His fists windmilled in the air, his eyes were wild.

“I tried to warn him,” Dorn said as he held Humphries’s shoulders down, the man’s head in his lap. “I tried to prepare him for it.”

“What did he see?” Elverda’s heart was pounding; she could hear it thundering in her ears. “What is it? What did you see?”

Dorn shook his head slowly. “I cannot describe it. I doubt that anyone could describe it—except, perhaps, an artist: a person who has trained herself to see the truth.”

“The prospectors—they saw it. Even their children saw it.”

“Yes. When I arrived here they had spent eighteen days in the chamber. They left it only when the chamber closed itself. They ate and slept and returned here, as if hypnotized.”

“It did not hurt them, did it?”

“They were emaciated, dehydrated. It took a dozen of my strongest men to remove them to my ship. Even the children fought us.”

“But—how could…” Elverda’s voice faded into silence. She looked at the brightly lit tunnel. Her breath caught in her throat. “Destroy it,” Humphries mumbled. “Destroy it before it destroys us! Don’t let them find out. They’ll know, they’ll know, they’ll all know.” He began to sob uncontrollably.

“You do not have to see it,” Dorn said to Elverda. “You can return to your ship and leave this place.”

Leave, urged a voice inside her head. Run away. Live out what’s left of your life and let it go.

Then she heard her own voice say, as if from a far distance, “I’ve come such a long way.”

“It will change you,” he warned.

“Will it release me from life?”

Dorn glanced down at Humphries, still muttering darkly, then returned his gaze to Elverda.

“It will change you,” he repeated.

Elverda forced herself to her feet. Leaning one hand against the warm rock wall to steady herself, she said, “I will see it. I must.”

“Yes,” said Dorn. “I understand.”

She looked down at him, still kneeling with Humphries’s head resting in his lap. Dorn’s electronic eye glowed red in the shadows. His human eye was hidden in darkness.

He said, “I believe your people say, Vaya con Dios.”

Elverda smiled at him. She had not heard that phrase in forty years. “Yes. You too. Vaya con Dios.” She turned and stepped across the faint groove where the metal door had met the floor.

The tunnel sloped downward only slightly. It turned sharply to the right, Elverda saw, just as Dorn had told them. The light seemed brighter beyond the turn, pulsating almost, like a living heart.

She hesitated a moment before making that final turn. What lay beyond? What difference, she answered herself. You have lived so long that you have emptied life of all its purpose. But she knew she was lying to herself. Her life was devoid of purpose because she herself had made it that way. She had spurned love; she had even rejected friendship when it had been offered. Still, she realized that she wanted to live. Desperately, she wanted to continue living no matter what.

Yet she could not resist the lure. Straightening her spine, she stepped boldly around the bend in the tunnel.

The light was so bright it hurt her eyes. She raised a hand to her brow to shield them and the intensity seemed to decrease slightly, enough to make out the faint outline of a form, a shape, a person…

Elverda gasped with recognition. A few meters before her, close enough to reach and touch, her mother sat on the sweet grass beneath the warm summer sun, gently rocking her baby and crooning softly to it.

Mammal she cried silently. Mamma. The baby—Elverda herself—looked up into her mother’s face and smiled.

And the mother was Elverda, a young and radiant Elverda, smiling down at the baby she had never had, tender and loving as she had never been.

Something gave way inside her. There was no pain; rather, it was as if a pain that had throbbed sullenly within her for too many years to count suddenly faded away. As if a wall of implacable ice finally melted and let the warm waters of life flow through her.

Elverda sank to the floor, crying, gushing tears of understanding and relief and gratitude. Her mother smiled at her.

“I love you, Mamma,” she whispered. “I love you.”

Her mother nodded and became Elverda herself once more. Her baby made a gurgling laugh of pure happiness, fat little feet waving in the air.

The image wavered, dimmed, and slowly faded into emptiness. Elverda sat on the bare rock floor in utter darkness, feeling a strange serenity and understanding warming her soul.

“Are you all right?”

Dorn’s voice did not startle her. She had been expecting him to come to her.

“The chamber will close itself in another few minutes,” he said. “We will have to leave.” Elverda took his offered hand and rose to her feet. She felt strong, fully in control of herself.

The tunnel outside the chamber was empty.

“Where is Humphries?”

“I sedated him and then called in a medical team to take him back to his ship.”

“He wants to destroy the artifact,” Elverda said.

“That will not be possible,” said Dorn. “I will bring the IAA scientists here from the ship before Humphries awakes and recovers. Once they see the artifact they will not allow it to be destroyed. Humphries may own the asteroid, but the IAA will exert control over the artifact.”

“The artifact will affect them—strangely.”

“No two of them will be affected in the same manner,” said Dorn. “And none of them will permit it to be damaged in any way.”

“Humphries will not be pleased with you, once he recovers.”

He gestured up the tunnel, and they began to walk back toward their quarters.

“Nor with you,” Dorn said. “We both saw him babbling and blubbering like a baby.”

“What could he have seen?”

“What he most feared. His whole life has been driven by fear, poor man.”

“What secrets he must be hiding!”

“He hid them from himself. The artifact showed him his own true nature.”

“No wonder he wants it destroyed.”

“He cannot destroy the artifact, but he will certainly want to destroy us. Once he recovers his composure he will want to wipe out the witnesses who saw his reaction to it.”

Elverda knew that Dorn was right. She watched his face as they passed beneath the lights, watched the glint of the etched metal, the warmth of the human flesh.

“You knew that he would react this way, didn’t you?” she asked.

“No one could be as rich as he is without having demons driving him. He looked into his own soul and recognized himself for the first time in his life.”

“You planned it this way!”

“Perhaps I did,” he said. “Perhaps the artifact did it for me.”

“How could—”

“It is a powerful experience. After I had seen it a few times I felt it was offering me…” he hesitated, then spoke the word, “salvation.”

Elverda saw something in his face that Dorn had not let show before. She stopped in the shadows between overhead lights. Dorn turned to face her, half machine, standing in the rough tunnel of bare rock.

“You have had your own encounter with it,” he said. “You understand now how it can transform you.”

“Yes,” said Elverda. “I understand.”

“After a few times, I came to the realization that there are thousands of my fellow mercenaries, killed in engagements all through the asteroid belt, still drifting where they were killed. Miners and prospectors, as well. Floating forever in space, alone, unattended, ungrieved for.”

“Thousands of mercenaries?”

“The Chrysalis massacre was not the only bloodletting in the Belt,” said Dorn. “There have been many battles out here. Wars that we paid for with our blood.”

“Thousands?” Elverda repeated. “Thousands of dead. Could it have been so brutal?”

“Men like Humphries know. They start the wars, and people like me fight them. Exiles, never allowed to return to Earth again once we take the mercenary’s pay.”

“All those men—killed.”

Dorn nodded. “And women. The artifact made me see that it was my duty to find each of those forgotten bodies and give each one a decent final rite. The artifact seemed to be telling me that this was the path of my atonement.”

“Your salvation,” she murmured.

“I see now, however, that I underestimated the situation.”

“How?”

“Humphries. While I am out there searching for the bodies of the slain, he will have me killed.”

“No! That’s wrong!”

Dorn’s deep voice was empty of regret. “It will be simple for him to send a team after me. In the depths of dark space, they will murder me. What I failed to do for myself, Humphries will do for me. He will be my final atonement.”

“Never!” Elverda blazed with anger. “I will not permit it to happen.”

“Your own life is in danger from him,” Dorn said.

“What of it? I am an old woman, ready for death.”

“Are you?”

“I was … until I saw the artifact.”

“Now life is more precious to you, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want you to die,” Elverda said. “You have atoned for your sins. You have borne enough pain.”

He looked away, then started up the tunnel again.

“You are forgetting one important factor,” Elverda called after him.

Dorn stopped, his back to her. She realized now that the clothes he wore had been his military uniform. He had torn all the insignias and pockets from it.

“The artifact. Who created it? And why?”

Turning back toward her, Dorn answered, “Alien visitors to our solar system created it, unknown ages ago. As to why— you tell me: Why does someone create a work of art?”

“Why would aliens create a work of art that affects human minds?”

Dorn’s human eye blinked. He rocked a step backward.

“How could they create an artifact that is a mirror to our souls?” Elverda asked, stepping toward him. “They must have known something about us. They must have been here when there were human beings existing on Earth.”

Dorn regarded her silently.

“They may have been here much more recently than you think,” Elverda went on, coming closer to him. “They may have placed this artifact here to communicate with us.”

“Communicate?”

“Perhaps it is a very subtle, very powerful communications device.”

“Not an artwork at all.”

“Oh yes, of course it’s an artwork. All works of art are communications devices, for those who possess the soul to understand.”

Dorn seemed to ponder this for long moments. Elverda watched his solemn face, searching for some human expression.

Finally he said, “That does not change my mission, even if it is true.”

“Yes it does,” Elverda said, eager to save him. “Your mission is to preserve and protect this artifact against Humphries and anyone else who would try to destroy it—or pervert it to his own use.”

“The dead call to me,” Dorn said solemnly. “I hear them in my dreams now.”

“But why be alone in your mission? Let others help you. There must be other mercenaries who feel as you do.”

“Perhaps,” he said softly.

“Your true mission is much greater than you think,” Elverda said, trembling with new understanding. “You have the power to atone for the wars that have destroyed your comrades, that have almost destroyed your soul.”

“Atone for the corporate wars?”

“You will be the priest of this shrine, this sepulcher. I will return to Earth and tell everyone about these wars.”

“Humphries and others will have you killed.”

“I am a famous artist, they dare not touch me.” Then she laughed. “And I am too old to care if they do.”

“The scientists— do you think they may actually learn how to communicate with the aliens?”

“Someday,” Elverda said. “When our souls are pure enough to stand the shock of their presence.”

The human side of Dorn’s face smiled at her. He extended his arm and she took it in her own, realizing that she had found her own salvation. Like two kindred souls, like comrades who had shared the sight of death, like mother and son they walked up the tunnel toward the waiting race of humanity.