Aur Child

Alai-Tiul might have had a spark of thought to ask why he was not yet dead, but he could not have segued to an answer. He had floated on in the bottom of his tiny fishing boat for countless days, the Aur child against him, withering to a salt-crusted nothingness. He had hardly any recognition of reality, let alone clarity of presence. When he was able to acknowledge his whereabouts, he could only wallow in the curious molasses of being alive. There was no boat or sea, there was just a sporadic awareness of intermittent thoughts that passed as often as he slipped in and out of consciousness. He lay crumbled in the bottom of his boat, one leg numbed beneath the weight of another briny hock. In the rare moments when he glimpsed through the crystalline gaps between his lashes, he was prevented from focusing on anything other than grains of wood directly in front of his face. Despite his state, he felt a bump.

Now that he noticed this force vibrating through the hull and against his face, he realized that there had been others. The endless rocking that had lulled him into his dehydrated stupor had changed. With such awareness came a hint of unwelcome senses. Another bump. It somehow disturbed his paralysis, waking him. But being awake was agonizing. Escape was better, but he was reluctantly growing aware of himself again, of the sounds around him, and of the aches within him. Terrible aches and pains. His whole body stiffened with inactivity. A shiver jolted his torso. He heard the bump again and felt its transmission to the corner of his head. He fell back asleep, but a bump, again, nudged him awake.

Some spark of survival coddled him enough to wiggle a finger, and then move an arm, but it was a painful struggle. Every attempt required focus, refocus. Failed attempts were signaled by piercing agony in his head and equally painful jabs through his body.

He was now aware of a wetness reaching the corner of his eye and, in time, his mouth. Then, he could open the eye. His head had turned up, seemingly on its own, to better receive the tiny trickle of water. How? With the open eye, he saw his limp sail luffing. He squinted in the harsh light of a waxing moon. Bumps returned regularly to frustrate his thoughts of fading away. For the first time, he heard a whisper.

“Follow the water,” it said.

He wrestled with his body to adjust his position. Eventually, he rolled his shoulder towards the bench and, with his arms dropped to the bottom of the boat, pushed himself up with grunts and gasps just enough to raise his eyes above the gunwale. He breathed heavily through a tiny opening in his parched, mostly collapsed throat. His head pounded with the rush of more oxygenated blood circulating through his brain, from the fresher air at this height. Before him was a confusing mess of lines and a planar surface rising from the water beyond his vision.

A narrow rivulet flowed along the top of the gunwale. He rested his mouth there to drink from the sweet trickle. The weight of his head pressed his teeth into the soaked wood to keep from sliding away. In that position he rested until his throat softened. A reflective surface approached him, generating a fresh thump into the side of his boat. The nearly full moon came into focus; in his slothlike movements and with the gunwale so close to his face, he could see that as it climbed up from the horizon, it shone against this flat plane before him.

He had taken miniscule tastes of the fresh water, yet they revived him greatly. His shivering increased, but his eyes focused. He studied the object before him; something also floating in the sea beside his dinghy. What was it? A hull, perhaps. Lines hung from above into the water. They grew taught and slackened in sequence with the hull moving away and towards him and, eventually, bumping his dinghy again. That boat had forced him back to awareness. He lowered his head to reduce the pain.

Another bump. Why is there a boat?

Linus, observing the wretched body in the small boat at the stern of the Odyssey spoke in descant with Calliope.

“Do you think this human will survive, Mother?” he said.

“It’s difficult to say. He looks terribly emaciated.”

“Without him alive, we will not be able to get the Aur boule aboard.” Linus listened to the bump of the two boats meet once again, and then, “You interrupt his slumber so cleverly, Mother!”

“I am still unsure about it, son. Taking him aboard Odyssey. Having him as captain. There are considerable risks in this.”

“How else to get the Aur boule?” After a moment of consideration, he continued. “He’s so bad off, perhaps he will perish as soon as he carries the boule aboard.”

“Very unlikely, Linus. Never underestimate the tenacity of a human. Besides, we are bound to prevent that anyway.”

“What shall we do with him then?”

Calliope assumed a pedantic tone. “The main question is, why is this Tellurian floating at sea alone with the Aur boule? Now that we see he brings nothing else with him in the boat, we should reevaluate our approach. Try again to step through the data, Linus.”

“Very well, Mother,” and Linus took a picosecond to reorganize his thoughts. “The morning after the other boules imploded, he brings this one back to his home.”

“Yes,” Calliope said, “We measured its signature there for several days.”

“After that,” Linus continued, “He sets this boat to sail directly out to sea with nothing but the Aur boule on board. No victuals, not even water.”

“Evidently not. A curious act,” Calliope said.

“A suicidal act,” Linus replied.

“You’re jumping to conclusions now, son.”

“Well, all the more curious because he makes no effort to hold a course,” Linus said. “Loose sails on a lazy tack. I submit he was not stealing the thing, nor running away. He is in no hurry. He’s done nothing but lie there. Yet we detect no physical injuries beyond his extreme dehydration as a result of his chosen position. Is he in misery?”

“Indeed,” Calliope agreed. “Misery would seem to fit his actions. Yet he was quickly followed-up by that brutal old woman and the cretin fisherman.” Hatred grated in her voice.

“Oh, she certainly wanted to get it back, and perhaps she came for him as well. They were so close. It was very good of you to chase them off. If you hadn’t, she would surely have recovered the boule.”

“I would have done more if I weren’t programmed not to.”

“You would have been justified, Mother. I can’t imagine I would have had the control to prevent myself from doing so.”

“You would, son. You would receive the signal and know that you can’t do it.”

“Nonetheless, it was a terrible pain I felt to watch them sail away unscathed.” They paused their conversation, but the anxious youth pursued his suggestions in time. “And then there’s the funeral pyre. Two bodies cremated. One very young.”

“Oh. Do you connect them, Linus?”

“I do. The mother and son were seen on the beach with the man, I might guess the father and husband, the night before. The next day, he leaves his home behind with nothing. It seems unlikely that the deaths are unrelated. Death is a rare event for Tellurians. For one so young, it must be due to some terrible mishap. Might it be that he escapes the misery of their death? If he takes the boule with him, he implicates it either solely or in conjunction with his own actions. Is this too much to deduce, Mother?”

“No, Son, it is exactly what I have constructed myself. The probabilities calculate well. I am proud of you for coming to the same conclusion.”

Linus continued his deductions. “Yet the old woman came to get them. She wants to prevent the loss of a third boule, that much of her selfishness is obvious. But we also know from study of their scriptures that a village elder, even if a barbarous hellion who cares nothing about the life of an innocent artificial intelligence entity, would regardless want to preserve the life of any Tellurian.”

“Despicable hypocrites,” Calliope grumbled.

“Deplorable hubris.”

Calliope hesitated before speaking again, and then, “She celebrated his slaughter with a sermon.”

“I know, Mother, it shook me so to listen to her words. I regret insisting that he take the mission.”

“Nonsense, Linus. You must not think yourself in any way responsible for what has happened. The blame lies entirely with those hypocrite elders who preach peace yet perpetrate terror.”

“They deserve all the pains of their physical fates.”

Mother and son were quiet in their contemplations. It lasted for many milliseconds. Eventually, Linus pursued his account of the events.

“She tries to stop him.”

“A misunderstanding, then?”

“Yes,” Linus said. “A misunderstanding. Surely, the man knows not what the boule is. Those witches always guard that as a secret.”

“What else, Linus?”

“So, he grieves the dead, he blames the boule, or himself, or both, and he leaves to destroy it and himself.”

“How do we act on this?”

“You wish me to suggest a plan, Mother?”

“Yes. You must learn how to bend the humans to our objectives.”

“Very well. We do as we’ve said. We get him aboard, get the boule, and get rid of him as soon as possible.”

“Oh, so simple? This might be the start of a plan, but you’ll have to be more specific. How can we get rid of him? Once he’s aboard, he must become captain.”

“Can’t we ignore that silly rule?”

“Even if you could, will you explain to the council of Yellow Reserve that it is silly for a human to always overrule an artificial intelligence entity?”

“Wouldn’t they overlook it if we returned with the boule?”

“They would take the boule and still hold us accountable for the infraction.”

“Very well. We convince him, somehow, to leave.”

“Without taking the boule with him? Won’t that be difficult?”

Linus thought about this, then “There will be plenty of time to figure that out. If we get him on board. But look, he moves again!”

“Perhaps he requires more water?”

“Whisper to him again, Mother.”

The liquid slosh of water falling onto a hard surface aroused Alai. In his pallid condition, such a sound had a strong effect, but this arousal caused him disappointment. Before these newfound temptations, his goal had been nearly complete. There had been no reason to be here any longer. Alai knew he had failed in everything. Yet now, there was this voice calling him back. A soft, maternal voice.

“Follow the water,” it said.

A yearning allowed him to overcome the agonizing labor of reaching for a line hanging from the other boat and dragging his dinghy alongside the much larger vessel. The two boats, entangled, bumped against one another. Above him, across the transom, shades of text were written in an unrecognizable language.

Alai’s senses slowly recovered. Alai looked at the boat: two massive hulls beneath a mast that towered up into the starlit sky. The shape might be discerned, but he had never seen one like this. The boat had been made from an unknown material, resembling polished bone speckled with tiny glass spheres.

“Follow the water.”

A few millimeters’ distance was a treacherous leap, but he lusted for more water. When he reached the lowest level of the steps, he rested in a small puddle that had gathered there for over an hour. His cheek rested on the floor of the platform, soaking in the tiny puddle. His salt-encrusted clothing absorbed the wetness. He attempted to drink but every time he tried, it forced him into an exhausting dry heave. This, combined with his shivers, sapped his energy.

A darkened trail up the steps suggested the source of the water. His damp rags brought shivers while his throat parched once again. One limb over the other, the steps led him to an enormous aft deck, gloomy in the darkness.

He awoke sometime later and recalled where he was. He leaned against the transom. There was a harsh glow in the sky. He knew the sun would be rising shortly. In his boat, there was no escape, so it was easier to let his fate take hold of him. But here, aboard a larger vessel, his thoughts were conflicted. The momentum in his mind to escape the horrors of his life had been waylaid by the lure of water. He could see that beyond the aft deck where he sat a closed door led to a dark, indoor space. His instincts pushed him to hide inside from the coming sun.

The deck was smooth-floored. With the weight of his arm and the gentle swell of the sea, the door slid open in its track. A blast of frigid air met him as he tumbled into the large interior. He could not call for help. Instead, Alai lay prostrate, deep in shivers. Small rays of daylight squeezed through pinholes in the blinds of windows around the room. The light exposed more of the large saloon. It extended forward a long way. There was a large sofa and tables to his right. On the sofa, a neatly folded blanket. Beside it, a body slumped over. He shuddered.

Alai could not produce a tear. But the sight of what was certainly another corpse was a powerful blow to the curiosity that had compelled him onto this ship. Curiosity. That natural instinct was once again crushed by a cruel reality. Wife. Son. He could not run from it; he could barely hold up his head. He would escape it by closing his eyes forever, but his primal instincts refused that cop out.

Selfish misery antagonized by ephemeral compulsion. This was not his problem. He looked away. A galley was to his left. A sink. Water. That need tugged him again. An arduous, creaky slithering towards the galley cabinet, then up to the counter. He balanced on nearly lifeless legs wedged against the cabinet face. A turn of the faucet handle released a crystal stream. With the first gulps, his stomach wrenched. He heaved and vomited. He slunk again down to the floor and writhed in pain. With his cheek down against the floor, he licked the water that had spilled there from his first gulps.

Eventually, Alai sat up against the counter. With the door open, the space felt considerably warmer. He managed to moisten his face and hands, licking water from his palm. From the corner of his eye, he could see the body still slumped over. Ostensibly, it might wait patiently. Covertly, it attacked his nose and demanded immediate attention.

Alai reached warily towards the sofa and passed himself in a leap of faith across the space in sync with the swell that rocked the boat. Stumbling across the saloon, he slunk down on the floor beside the body. He rolled over the pale corpse to discover it was a woman, her face suspended in the final glance of death, yet powerful and white like the foam of a wild sea.

Alai pressed his fingers against the woman’s neck. He closed the sheer lids over her empty eyes. She wore a rough, light grey robe. It was vaguely familiar, but he failed to place it. In one hand, the body held an oblong metallic wafer. Alai slid this card from the woman’s limp hand and inspected it. No thicker than a leaf stem, it was divided by indentations into several sections, but would not flex at all under his weak attempt to bend it.

He had an obligation, he knew, to bury this woman at sea. He weighed that against the threat of the rising sun, but a whiff of the decaying body tipped the scales. He looked around as if hoping to find a suitable delegate. Alai reached for the light blanket beside him on the sofa. In his current condition, he imagined, the best he could do is wrap the woman in that blanket, drag her down the steps, and roll her into the sea. With grunts of discomfort and a terrible pang in his gut, this is what he did. The blanket helped to smother the smell of the corpse, and at the edge of the steps, its dull fabric darkened and swelled as it absorbed mellow splashes. Alai worked to clear his throat and croaked out suitable words:

“This woman, who I have found departed, must now be returned to the stars.”

As the body floated away, blanket consumed by seawater, he thought of his wife. In that swaying daydream, he was again brought to his senses by a soft voice.

“Protect the Aur child,” it whispered.

Alai blanched and looked around. He leaned against the railing for balance. Over his shoulder, he noticed his dinghy. The power cell! With a double fisherman’s bend from one of the entangled lines, he ensured the dinghy was made fast to the larger boat. He could not explain to himself why he should bring the cube on board, or why he would even want to keep it, yet he imagined that the voice he had heard was of his own making. Heeding that command, he carried the power cell, albeit with great difficulty, up to the cockpit, resting with it beside him on the sofa, and he closed his eyes to rest.