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  “We may. But we would be less than human if we did not make the attempt.”

  She sent out a call to the rest of the tribe. They gathered in a loose sphere with Gunai at the center.

  She told them that Earth, ancestral home of humanity, was dying. She reminded them of Old John’s stories, which they all knew from their earliest days—fables of trees and mountains, castles and whales. She raised the spectre of isolation. She recalled the tragedy of Kula’s loss, and reminded them of regrets at things left undone until too late.

  She called to their hearts.

  There was debate. There was anger and acrimony. But in the end Gunai prevailed, for no one—not even Enaji—was cold-hearted enough to leave Old John to die of loneliness. Even if it meant risking their own lives.

  The tribe scattered to forage. They would need all the energy they could muster for the journey.

  Old John had been silent the whole time, sitting alone just outside the sphere of the meeting. Listening. After the last of the tribe had left, he came to Gunai.

  “Thank you,” he said. The words were tiny, but they filled Gunai’s heart.

  Some time later, the tribe gathered together to begin the journey. Rubbing and jostling, they pulled into a single mass—a teardrop shape with a hard, smooth outer surface. Intuition told them it was the best shape for this task. Then they channeled their energies together and pushed.

  The motion was not immediately apparent, but they kept on, straining and huffing, pouring energy into acceleration. From time to time one or another member would relax for a moment, borne along by the others, then would resume the effort. But frail Old John never rested—he kept up a constant, steady thread of power.

  As their velocity increased, they began to be peppered with particles of dust. Matter was thin here, but each particle stung, and they encountered more and more as they went faster. Soon they had to divert some of their energy to shielding the tribe from the impacts, and they all stared forward with eyes and intuition for larger masses that could do more than hurt.

  The stars ahead appeared to brighten, their color changing from red to yellow and then to blue, and they seemed to smear out to the sides. As the eye swept to the side and back it could see a spectrum of colors, fading to red and finally to black behind them. The starbow.

  “You told us about something called a ‘rainbow,’” Teda said to Old John. “Did it look like this?”

  “Something like it,” he said, “but brighter, not so diffuse.” He paused, panting, for a moment, then said, “I think that the eyes I had then would not even be able to see the starbow. I wonder what a rainbow would look like to the eyes I have now?”

  On and on they pushed, watching the universe flatten from a sphere into a ring of stars around them, fending off a rain of stinging impacts, feeling their motivators burn from unaccustomed effort and their bellies ache from hunger.

  Finally they could push no more. They relaxed and coasted, though they still had to expend energy on shielding and course corrections. They coasted for a long time—fourteen years by their intuition, a thousand years or more by the stars. Most of them spent most of the time asleep, conserving energy. Gunai made sure there was always someone awake to maintain the shields and watch out for obstacles.

  At last the time arrived to turn about. Guided by their intuition, they reformed themselves into a flaring saucer shape, catching the hail of dust they had been avoiding before. Even with shields, the dust burned their skins, but it helped them to slow. They began to push again, motivators aching. The universe expanded to a sphere, fading from a starbow back to a simple background of stars.

  One star was much larger than the rest. They had come to a halt only a few hundred light-minutes away from it.

  More than half the tribe had never been this close to a star before.

  None but Old John had ever been so close to this particular star.

  Sol.

  The mother star looked sick. Its disk was turgid, yellow mottled with red, and its magnetic field roiled like their starving bellies. The wind of charged particles flowing from it battered the tribe as they separated from a traveling mass into a tribe of individuals. They took a little nourishment from the solar wind, but it was barely worth the effort. Old John said it was “like trying to drink from a hailstorm,” whatever that meant.

  Gunai took on a streamlined shape, to resist the wind as best she could. She sent Enaji, Huss, and the rest of the best foragers out to look for zeren, and guided the rest of the tribe to the shadow of a nearby comet. Molecules of water and methane, burned from the comet by Sol’s angry heat, chilled their skins, but the comet’s rocky body shielded them from the wind.

  After a time Enaji returned. “There’s nothing here,” he said, visibly shaken. “No zeren. Not a trace.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Gunai. “Zeren forms from the energy of space itself. There’s always something.”

  “The theory says zero-point energy cannot be consumed,” said Old John, “but there’s no denying it’s getting scarce. Apparently, around here, humanity managed to find a way to use it all up.” He went quiet for a moment. “This might explain why Sol is dying young.”

  Gunai fought the urge to contract in fear. She needed to present a confident facade. “Perhaps one of the other foragers will find something.”

  But as they came back, each had the same story: Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  Gunai’s heart tore as Huss, the last to return, came in sight. She was glad to see him safe, hopeful that he might have found forage, but after so much disappointment she was certain he would bring more of the same.

  “Bad news,” Huss called. “Just one patch of zeren. Very thin.”

  Gunai felt her edges flare in relief.

  The tribe gathered together and left the comet’s tail, pushing into the battering solar wind. The stronger individuals shielded the weaker as much as they could, but all were pummeled. Gunai moved at the head of the tribe, taking the wind’s full force.

  “You’re pushing yourself too hard,” said Enaji privately. “You should rest. Let me lead the tribe for a time.”

  “No. I made the decision to come here. I should live with the consequences.” She tightened her leading edge and shoved herself forward, spreading wide to give Teda and Old John a little protection.

  The chill wind rasped her skin. She gnawed on the pain, a bitter taste that deepened her martyred mood. How could she have been so foolish? She should have listened to Enaji before. She should listen to Enaji now. But to rest would spoil her self-punishment.

  Finally a field of zeren appeared at the edges of perception. It was small, and thin, but it was here and it was what they needed. They spread over it eagerly, reveling in the zeren’s sweetness. Gunai was too tired to protest when Enaji channeled some of the energy he’d gathered to her; too tired to compliment Teda when she did the same for Old John.

  They were all too tired, too hungry, to notice the wolves that circled the field.

  They came knifing in from the dark of space, three hard black needles that cut through the tribe with inhuman screams. They lacked intelligence and intuition, but their natural abilities and instincts had been honed by eons of competition with the humans who had copied their bodies, and their hunger was sharp.

  The first took Rael, piercing her through the center and carrying her away in one piece. Her cries were cut short before she was out of range. The second came at Gunai, but she dodged and lost only a few percent of her mass to the wolf’s raking fields.

  The third hit Teda. Hit her hard, tearing away a huge part of her substance. She pinwheeled, screaming in agony, fields and mass spewing into the vacuum.

  The shock of the impact ran through Gunai, hurting her more than the injury she herself had just suffered. She hurried to Teda’s side, shielding her from the wind with her body, soothing her with strokes and healing energies. Teda’s screams became whimpers, then began to fade.

  “Here they come again!”
cried Enaji.

  Gunai whipped around to face the threat. Enaji and several of the others had firmed into needles, matching the wolves’ forms—hard to spot, hard to hit. Most of the rest were tightened into balls. “Make yourselves thin, like Enaji!” Gunai called to the tribe. “Enaji, Duna, Huss! Defend!” She moved out with the three she’d named, positioning herself between the tribe and the incoming wolves, making her skin as hard as she could. Prepared to sacrifice herself to save the others.

  Thrashed by the wind, her attention focused on the wolves, Gunai did not see Old John moving up until he was already past.

  “John!” Gunai screamed. “Get back behind me!”

  Old John’s voice was determined as he accelerated away from Gunai, toward the wolves. “No,” he said. “You get back. This old body still has a few surprises in it.”

  Then three bolts of energy sprang from Old John, three ragged lines of force that touched the wolves and tore them into pieces. Their death screams were briefer than Rael’s.

  When Gunai and Enaji reached Old John, his awkward form was glowing red. “Stay back,” he called weakly. “I’m too hot to touch.”

  “What was that?” said Gunai.

  “Gravitic cannon. A weapon built for a war that was fought and lost a million years ago. Right here at Sol System.”

  Enaji asked, “Why have you never done this thing before?”

  “I have, but never where you could see.”

  “Why?” cried Gunai.

  “I didn’t want to burden you with the knowledge of what I am.”

  Gunai was taken aback. “You are Old John. You are the oldest and wisest human I have ever met.”

  “I am a weapon!” His body, now cooled almost to black, trembled. “I gave up my humanity a long time ago. I let myself be turned into a copy of those wolves we just met—but better, faster, more deadly.” He sighed. “For love of God and country.”

  What were God and country? “You are as human as any of us.”

  “You aren’t...” He bit off his words, started again. “You were born this way. You are full and valid individuals, on your own terms. But I cannot forget that I was something else before this. I maintain a familiar shape”—he gestured at his five-lobed form—“but sometimes I feel I am only a parody of what I used to be.”

  Old John was now cool enough to approach. “Let us take you back to the tribe,” Enaji said. “You need food, and rest.”

  “I am tired,” he acknowledged, and closed his eyes.

  The rest of the tribe was badly shaken from their encounter with the wolves. They mourned Rael, and Teda was still leaking substance, despite Kanna’s ministrations. “She cannot heal properly without food,” Kanna said.

  “Gather zeren,” said Gunai. “All you can find. She can have my share.”

  “I have already given her your share, and mine, and everyone’s who could spare any. This field is too thin.”

  “We must find another field, then.”

  “Yes. But we don’t know how far that might be. She might die on the journey.”

  “It’s all we can do.” She called to the tribe. Wearily the foragers prepared for another search.

  Old John moved close to Gunai and whispered hoarsely. “There may be another way,” he said.

  “Go on.”

  “My intuition isn’t as good as yours, but its memory is unsurpassed. The war for which I was... built, it was a long and brutal one. We had caches of energy and supplies all over the Inner System. Some of them may still be there.”

  “You said it was a million years ago!”

  “We knew it would be a long war. Those caches were well-preserved, and well-defended. Only one who knows the old codes could open them.”

  Gunai thought hard. It seemed a thin chance, but Old John’s wisdom had proven itself many times. The alternative was even thinner. “Very well. Take Enaji and Huss. Travel quickly and find one of these caches. I will follow with the rest of the tribe. Good luck.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Old John, Enaji, and Huss formed into a single needle and moved off, while Gunai explained the plan to the tribe. She had expected protests, but her explanation met only weary stares; the tribe was too tired, too demoralized. She was ashamed, knowing her poor decisions had led them to this point.

  The tribe grouped into a streamlined shape, with unconscious Teda cradled in its center and Gunai at the leading edge. She stroked Teda with a field as they melded together.

  Gunai’s motivators screamed in protest as she helped to accelerate the tribe into the oncoming wind. There was no starbow this time—they lacked the energy for those velocities. There was just a steady, slogging push, and the moans of exhausted tribe members.

  The solar wind gusted and keened, battering them harder and harder as they came closer to the dying star. Old John’s signal was a steady, unmoving point ahead of them. The weary tribe passed a gas giant, its surface roiled and its ring system pushed off-center by the wind’s unnatural pressure. They entered a region scattered with chewed-up planetoids and worthless, abandoned hardware.

  Finally they came in sight of Earth itself.

  None of them had ever seen it before, but Old John’s many stories had taught them what it had been. A delicate ball of white and blue, he’d said, clad in the thinnest gossamer of atmosphere, the subtle breath of life.

  No longer.

  The atmosphere had been stripped away—by the war, by the wind, or by human action, there was no telling. What remained was a picked-over skull of a world, a gray mottled thing pocked with craters and circled by belts of detritus. Old John was in one of those belts, in synchronous orbit over the night side of the planet.

  The tribe passed gratefully into the Earth’s shadow, relaxing as they left the pummeling solar wind. The dying star’s corona flared wildly as it fell behind the horizon.

  They found Old John, Enaji, and Huss orbiting near a battered lump of aluminum and titanium. Old John’s relative position was steady; the other two flailed and fluttered, now falling back, now catching up. They had no experience with orbital mechanics this close to a primary.

  Gunai came up to Old John, who steadied her with a field. Weary though she was, Gunai could see Old John was wearier still—tired as the ruined world below, from which his gaze did not stray. “I’m a million years old, Gunai,” he said. “I don’t think I ever really felt the... depth of that before.”

  “Only as the planets measure time, John.”

  “I think that’s the only way that really matters.”

  They were silent for a time.

  “I’m sorry,” Gunai said at last, “but Teda needs help. We will be passing into the solar wind again soon. What have you found?”

  “It’s not a cache, I’m afraid. It’s a cascade bomb. But it’s still alive, and it responds to my codes. I think I can get it to give up its energies in a form we can use.”

  “This is all you found?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “How much energy?”

  “A lot. More than we’ve seen in one place in... generations.”

  “That’s wonderful!”

  But he did not seem pleased. At last he spoke again. “The bomb’s brain is very old, and not working well. I’m going to have to perform some of its functions myself.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m going to have to go inside the bomb. I have to be in there to release the energies.”

  The ancient bomb was nothing but a shapeless lump of metal, cracked and dented. Yet it seemed to stare malevolently.

  “You’ll die.”

  “Probably.”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “You have to. This is the only known source of usable energy for parsecs. Without it, the tribe will starve here. And Teda will die.”

  “Let me do it. It was my decision to come here. The tribe needs your wisdom.”

  “You can’t. The codes are keyed to my neurotype. And it was m
y foolish whim that brought us all here.”

  The dying sun’s corona began to lick over the horizon. Its light made the stiff planes of Old John’s body seem to dance and flow like a modern person’s.

  “You won’t be talked out of this,” said Gunai. It was not a question.

  “No.”

  She fought to keep her form steady. “What can I do to help?”

  “Form the tribe into a hemisphere around the bomb. Maybe a tenth of a light-second in diameter. Spread yourselves out as thin as you can. Be prepared to let some of the energy through; if you try to catch it all, it may be more than you can take.”

  “Very well.”

  “And one more thing.” He stared at the dead planet for a long time. “Will you carry my child?”

  Gunai was speechless. Finally she sputtered out, “It would be an honor. I thought you could not, or I would have asked long ago.”

  “I can. But I never wanted to, because...” He paused, then began again. “I think of all of you as my children. With my tales, I have given you the good memories and kept the bad to myself. But a true child could receive any of my memories.”

  “Don’t be ashamed of your memories. They are what make you what you are.”

  “There are parts of what I am that I don’t like.” He glanced at the flaring corona. The star’s disk would be over the horizon soon. “No more time.” He pinched off a bit of himself, a packet of mass and memory, and Gunai took it into her body. “Go now. Remember what I told you.”

  “I will remember everything.”

  They entwined their fields briefly, then Gunai departed to instruct the tribe.

  Soon the flaring sun, mottled and spotted, appeared over the horizon. Its wind followed immediately, battering the loose hemisphere the tribe had formed. The members were spread out to molecule thinness, barely visible except edge-on. The open side of the hemisphere was toward the wasted planet below.

  There was a click in Gunai’s ears, then Old John’s voice came as though he were right next to her. “I’m connected to the bomb’s systems now. I can see everything. The whole system.” The battered old bomb began to turn, slowly. “I can even see inside of you. Fields and mechanisms. You are so beautiful... Of all humanity’s creations, you—our children—are the finest of all. We can be proud of you.” The bomb was spinning faster now, panels opening on its scarred surface. “Take good care of the universe.”