Robert Sawyer - Foreigner

“A priest advised you to do this?”

Afsan shifted uncomfortably. “I rarely speak to priests,” he said.

“Of course, of course,” said Mokleb. A topic for another time. “But Helbark isn’t the only one of your children to have passed on, is he?”

Quietly: “No.”

“There was Haldan and Yabool.” A pause. “And Drawtood.”

Still quiet: “Yes.”

“How do you feel about what happened to them?”

Afsan’s tone was bitter. “How would you expect me to feel?”

“I have no expectations at all, Afsan. That’s why I ask.”

Afsan nodded, and then, “They say I’m gifted when it comes to solving puzzles, Mokleb.” He fell silent, perhaps reluctant to continue.

Mokleb waited patiently for several beats, then, as a gentle prod, she agreed: “Yes, that’s what they say.”

“Well, most puzzles don’t count for anything. Whether you solve them or not doesn’t really matter. But that one…” He fell silent again. Mokleb waited. “That one mattered. That one was for real. Once Haldan had been murdered“—the word, so rarely spoken, sounded funny, archaic—”once she had been murdered, the puzzle was to figure out who was responsible.”

“And you did,” said Mokleb.

“But not in time!” Afsan’s voice was full of anguish now. “Not in time. Don’t you see? It wasn’t until Drawtood killed again, taking the life of my son Yabool, that I figured it out.”

“Murder is such an uncommon crime,” said Mokleb. “You can’t blame yourself for needing more data.”

“More data,” repeated Afsan. He made a snorting sound. “More data. Another body, you mean. Another dead child of mine.”

Mokleb was silent.

“Forgive me,” Afsan said after a time. “I find these memories difficult to deal with.”

Mokleb nodded.

“It’s just that, well…”

“Well what?”

“Nothing.” Afsan’s blind face turned toward the crumbling edge of the cliff.

“No, you had a thought. Please express it.”

Afsan nodded and apparently rallied some inner strength. “It’s just that I always wonder why Drawtood committed those murders.”

“You were with him when he passed away.”

“Yes.”

“It’s commonly believed that he confessed to you before swallowing the poison that killed him.”

“I’ve never discussed the specifics of that night,” said Afsan.

Mokleb waited.

“Yes,” said Afsan at last, “Drawtood did speak of his reasons. He… he did not trust his siblings. He was afraid of them.”

“Having siblings is unheard-of, Afsan. Who knows how one is supposed to react?”

“Exactly. But if having siblings is unknown, so is, is—let me coin a word: so is parenting.”

“Parenting?”

Afsan clicked his teeth. “Saleed would have scowled fiercely at me for turning a noun into a verb. He hated neologisms. But, yes, parenting: the job of being a parent. And I mean ‘being a parent’ far beyond just having been involved in fertilizing or laying eggs. I knew who my children were, had daily contact with them, was in part responsible for their teaching and upbringing.”

“Parenting,” said Mokleb again. The word was strange indeed.

“That’s the worst of it,” said Afsan. “I was Drawtood’s parent, his father. All children have something in common with their parents; studies in plant and animal heredity make that clear. But my role in Drawtood’s composition was greater than that. I knew him! And yet he ended up a killer.”

“I don’t see your point,” said Mokleb.

“Don’t you? Maybe some responsibility goes along with being a parent. Maybe I failed in some way at what I should have done.”

Mokleb shrugged. “There’s so little data in this area.”

“Data again,” said Afsan. “Perhaps if I’d seen my children more as children and less as data, things would have been different.”

“But most children have no parents, not in the sense that you’re using the word.”

“That’s true,” said Afsan, although he didn’t sound mollified. “Still, it’s something to think about: the relationship between parent and child.”

Mokleb stared out over the precipice at the choppy waters beyond. “It is indeed,” she said at last.

The four ladders finally stopped growing; no new rungs emerged from the apex of the pyramid. The ladders stood silent, stark against the harsh gray sky of stormy Fra’toolar, rising up and up until they faded into invisibility. The whole pyramid seemed dead: nothing was happening at all. Still, Novato waited a full day before she, Garios, and Delplas finally entered. The openings in the centers of each of the pyramid’s sides were fourteen paces wide: wide enough that three of them could walk abreast with a minimally acceptable seven paces between each other. The sounds of their toeclaws echoed loudly as they made their way down the long blue tunnel, a tunnel that was miraculously lit with dim red light from panels in the ceiling. The floor, although made of the obdurate blue stuff, was roughened to provide traction, as if inviting people to walk down this terrifying path into the very heart of the structure.

Novato’s pulse raced. She glanced left and right, saw that Garios and Delplas had their claws exposed, saw the nervousness in their expressions. The whole pyramid was about three hundred paces wide, and Novato was silently counting off paces as they continued into its heart. The tunnel continued right into the center: a hundred and forty paces into the vast structure. Novato tried not to contemplate the huge weight of alien material over her head.

At last they came to the central vertical shaft. The inside base of the tower was square, fourteen paces on a side. The sides of the interior shaft were the bases of the four great ladders. They rose up and up, as high as Novato could see, converging to a point some fantastic distance above her head. Novato was sure the apparent convergence occurred long before the actual top of the tower was reached.

She looked at the stretched ladders, large open rectangles running up their impossible lengths. A brave wingfinger, apparently not perturbed by the alien structure, had built a nest on the crosspiece at the bottom of one of the ladders, and the flying reptile’s white droppings streaked the gleaming blue material.

Novato tried to picture the kind of giant being that might climb such a ladder, but she knew, of course, that it had not been physical giants who were responsible for this structure. Indeed, the absolute opposite was true: incredibly tiny engineers had built this. And yet the image of giants would not leave her mind. The builders of this tower to the sky were giants in comparison to the Quintaglios. She leaned back on her tail, looking up, humbled.

And then her heart began pounding erratically; she had to force herself not to run out of the structure. Something was approaching from up above.

The thing moved silently. Only moments ago it had emerged from the vanishing point far overhead, but already it was looming larger and larger, coming down one of the corners of the shaft. It was big and metallic, and it was moving quickly although it wasn’t actually falling.

Soon it began to slow—and a good thing, too, for otherwise it would have smashed into the floor. Novato could hear a faint descending whistle as the object came closer. It was as big as a shed or large carriage, and its bottom fit perfectly into the right angle made by two adjacent inner tower walls. The rest of it was rounded, like a beetle’s body.

Novato, Garios, and Delplas quickly moved across the tower’s base so they, quite literally, would be on the safe side. The giant beetle came to a stop at ground level. There it sat for a few moments, then its whole surface seemed to turn brighter, more shiny, as if it were liquefying, and suddenly a large rectangular opening appeared in its side, revealing that its interior was almost completely hollow. Once the door had appeared, the structure’s surface became duller, more solid-looking.