“Yes. I have only been a priest since coming to this place.”
Elverda wanted to ask him more, but Dorn stopped before a blank door and opened it for her. For an instant she thought he was going to reach for her with his prosthetic hand. She shrank away from him.
“I will call for you in eleven hours and fifty-six minutes,” he said, as if he had not noticed her revulsion.
“Thank you.”
He turned away, like a machine pivoting.
“Wait,” Elverda called. “Please. . . . How many others are here? Everything seems so quiet.”
“There are no others. Only the three of us.”
“But—”
“I am in charge of the security brigade. I ordered the others of my command to go back to our spacecraft and wait there.”
“And the scientists? The prospector family that found this asteroid?”
“They are in Mr. Humphries’s spacecraft, the one you arrived in,” said Dorn. “Under the protection of my brigade.”
Elverda looked into his eyes. Whatever burned in them, she could not fathom.
“Then we are alone here?”
Dorn nodded solemnly. “You and me—and Mr. Humphries, who pays all the bills.” The human half of his face remained as immobile as the metal. Elverda could not tell if he was trying to be humorous or bitter.
“Thank you,” she said. He turned away and she closed the door.
Her quarters consisted of a single room, comfortably warm but hardly larger than the compartment on the ship they had come in. Elverda saw that her meager travel bag was already sitting on the bed, her worn old drawing computer resting in its travel-smudged case on the desk. Elverda stared at the computer case as if it were accusing her. I should have left it at home, she thought. I will never use it again.
A small utility robot, hardly more than a glistening drum of metal and six gleaming arms folded like a praying mantis’s, stood mutely in the farthest corner. Elverda stared at it. At least it was entirely a machine; not a self-mutilated human being. To take the most beautiful form in the universe and turn it into a hybrid mechanism, a travesty of humanity. Why did he do it? So he could be a better soldier? A more efficient killing machine?
And why did he send all the others away? she asked herself while she opened the travel bag. As she carried her toiletries to the narrow alcove of the bathroom, a new thought struck her. Did he send them away before he saw the artifact, or afterward? Has he even seen it? Perhaps . . .
Then she saw her reflection in the mirror above the washbasin. Her heart sank. Once she had been called regal, stately, a goddess made of copper. Now she looked withered, dried up, bone thin, her face a geological map of too many years of living, her flight coveralls hanging limply on her emaciated frame.
You are old, she said to her image. Old and aching and tired.
It is the long trip, she told herself. You need to rest. But the other voice in her mind laughed scornfully. You’ve done nothing but rest for the entire time it’s taken to reach this piece of rock. You are ready for the permanent rest; why deny it?
She had been teaching at the university on Luna, the closest she could get to Earth after a long lifetime of living in low-gravity environments. Close enough to see the world of her birth, the only world of life and warmth in the solar system, the only place where a person could walk out in the sunshine and feel its warmth soaking your bones, smell the fertile earth nurturing its bounty, feel a cool breeze plucking at your hair.
But she had separated herself from Earth permanently. She had stood at the shore of Titan’s methane sea; from an orbiting spacecraft she had watched the surging clouds of Jupiter swirl their overpowering colors; she had carved the kilometer-long rock of The Rememberer. But she could no longer stand in the village of her birth, at the edge of the Pacific’s booming surf, and watch the soft white clouds form shapes of imaginary animals.
Her creative life was long finished. She had lived too long; there were no friends left, and she had never had a family. There was no purpose to her life, no reason to do anything except go through the motions and wait. At the university she was no longer truly working at her art but helping students who had the fires of inspiration burning fresh and hot inside them. Her life was one of vain regrets for all the things she had not accomplished, for all the failures she could recall. Failures at love; those were the most bitter. She was praised as the solar system’s greatest artist: The sculptress of The Rememberer, the creator of the first great ionospheric painting, The Virgin of the Andes. She was respected, but not loved. She felt empty, alone, barren. She had nothing to look forward to; absolutely nothing.
Then Martin Humphries swept into her existence. A lifetime younger, bold, vital, even ruthless, he stormed her academic tower with the news that an alien artifact had been discovered deep in the Asteroid Belt.
“It’s some kind of art form,” he said, desperate with excitement. “You’ve got to come with me and see it.”
Trying to control the long-forgotten longing that stirred within her, Elverda had asked quietly, “Why do I have to go with you, Mr. Humphries? Why me? I’m an old wo—”
“You are the greatest artist of our time,” he had snapped. “You’ve got to see this! Don’t bullshit me with false modesty. You’re the only other person in the whole whirling solar system who deserves to see it!”
“The only other person besides whom?” she had asked.
He had blinked with surprise. “Why, besides me, of course.”
So now we are on this nameless asteroid, waiting to see the alien artwork. Just the three of us. The richest man in the solar system. An elderly artist who has outlived her usefulness. And a cyborg soldier who has cleared everyone else away.
He claims to be a priest, Elverda remembered. A priest who is half machine. She shivered as if a cold wind surged through her.
A harsh buzzing noise interrupted her thoughts. Looking into the main part of the room, Elverda saw that the phone screen was blinking red in rhythm to the buzzing.
“Phone,” she called out.
Humphries’s face appeared on the screen instantly. “Come to my quarters,” he said. “We have to talk.”
“Give me an hour. I need—”
“Now.”
Elverda felt her brows rise haughtily. Then the strength sagged out of her. He has bought the right to command you, she told herself. He is quite capable of refusing to allow you to see the artifact.
“Now,” she agreed.
Humphries was pacing across the plush carpeting when she arrived at his quarters. He had changed from his flight coveralls to a comfortably loose royal blue pullover and expensive genuine twill slacks. As the doors slid shut behind her, he stopped in front of a low couch and faced her squarely.
