Zach Hughes - Deep Freeze

Iain led the way, saffer rifle in hand. Pete and Vinn carried hand weapons. Sarah moved awkwardly in the heavy gear. They walked down a blank corridor. A door opened into a room that was furnished oddly but attractively. A woman in a silver gown that reached to her shapely ankles stood up to smile at them.

"Goddamn," Iain said in surprise.

The female voice was pleasant as it spoke English. "If I make you uncomfortable—"

"Not at all," Pete said. "You're very attractive."

"I am nothing more than an extension," she said.

"You are the Watcher?" Vinn asked.

"Yes. I felt that you would be more at ease if I spoke with you in this form."

"May I?" Vinn asked, stepping close. The woman held out her hand. It was smooth and cold. "In whose image are you formed?"

"In the image of they who have come."

"We're here," Pete said. "You said it was time to talk. We're ready."

The Watcher was, of course, able to function on many levels. Physical contact had been established with the orbiting ship. Lines of force now connected the Watcher with the Crimson Rose. As the extension smiled and talked with the four who were inside, it was a simple matter to send a significant fraction of the energy of the planet's field into the mind of the one who monitored the instruments on board the ship. The force detonated inside the skull of the female, shattering bone and turning her brain into a pale gray soup.

The Watcher, in the form of a maturely attractive woman, waved one hand gracefully toward chairs arranged in a conversational circle. Vinn Stern nodded at Pete and Iain and set the example by accepting the Watcher's invitation.

Sarah de Conde sat on the edge of her chair, her hands in her lap. She stared at the Watcher with her eyes squinted belligerently.

The material that covered Vinn's chair made a dry, crackling noise as he lowered his weight. The furniture was functionally simple in design and made for the humanoid form. As Vinn leaned back and crossed one leg over the other, a faint whiff of age and dry rot emanated from the chair.

The walls showed a faint geometric pattern. Light came from a glowing square in the ceiling, which was an expanse of otherwise unbroken white.

In the center of the circle of chairs was a low table on which sat a free-form sculpture. Pete de Conde picked up the piece, judging it to be carved from a stone very much like marble.

"I am sure you have questions," the Watcher said, through the extension. "If, however, you will allow me to speak, I think that most of them will be answered."

"We are your guests," Pete said, inclining his head toward the extension.

"It is in the intent of creation that each living thing consummate the purpose for which it was intended." The extension leaned forward slightly and spoke in a low, intense voice.

"What gives you the right to speak for creation?" Sarah demanded.

The Watcher ignored the interruption. "Life is the apogee of the cycle of cosmic evolution and no one form of life is more favored than others. I'm sure that you think me wrong, for you consider yourselves to be the penultimate achievement of creation and evolution. I say penultimate rather than ultimate because you are not content with life as it was given to you. You cling to the belief, or the hope, that there is something after this life, that you are destined to evolve into an even higher form. Once you were so certain of this uncertainty that you manipulated your genes to take the form of that to which you aspire."

"Are you speaking of the fossil remains of winged beings on Erin Kenner's world?" Vinn asked.

The extension nodded, causing her dark hair to sway forward onto her cheeks. "An excellent example of perverting the intent of creation. Of course, such blatant manipulation of form and intent had disastrous effects on the mental balance of the winged ones."

"That's very interesting," Iain said, "but what does it have to do with us?"

"As far as we know," Vinn said, "our race evolved on one planet, Earth."

"Be patient, and you will understand," the Watcher said. "Your narrowness of vision is another of your weaknesses, but your most serious fault is the result of your having postulated for yourself an exalted existence after death. By relegating your life to secondary importance, you have given yourselves an avenue of evasion down which you can travel to rationalize away your failure to accept the responsibilities that are inherent to the living."

Vinn was being very human. Resentment toward the Watcher's condescending lecture made him bristle. "You know so much about us in such a short time?" he asked.

"I know enough," the Watcher said. "You told me that you are familiar with only a small portion of this galaxy, but you send your exploration ships into unknown areas searching for that rarest of treasures, a planet which can support life; and when you find such a planet what do you do?

You immediately begin to alter the balance that nature has developed."

"Is this wisdom your own, or was it implanted by your creators?" Vinn asked. "Because if you're forming your opinion of our entire race from what you've learned from a few individuals, you have only a tiny piece of the picture. You speak of balance, but the balance changes. It is natural for a newly evolving species to compete with an established species and there can only be one winner. Of course, a growing population of humanity on a world alters that world. That in itself is the nature of things."

"The problem is that you actively and often maliciously attack the symmetry of creation," the Watcher said. The extension fixed her large blue eyes on Vinn. "In nature, development of a particular species can be looked upon as somewhat experimental. It's as if creation says—ah, let's see if this will work. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but if a species vanishes it was not the experiment that failed, but the subject of that experiment. You overturn the entire scheme of things by, in effect, taking over the experiment yourself. You are not content to live in your environment, you change it to suit your desires at the moment. Let me give you an example. Through you I know the planet you call Terra II. Ithas taken centuries of effort to even partially repair the damage you did to it."

"That was thousands of years ago," Vinn said. "And speaking of altering the environment, what do you call what was done to this planet?"

"It is not necessary to justify the actions of the Creators," the Watcher said. "However, I will tell you that eradicating life from this planet was a part of the restoration of balance. Unlike what you did to your Earth, the actions taken by the Creators were essential. You know so little about your own mother planet, but you do know that you soiled it, used it up, and then charred it. You made it unfit for life except in its lowest forms."

"You know Earth?" Vinn asked.

"Only through your knowledge of it, but I can describe it to you. Once it thrived with living things. Creation has a talent for seeking out and filling with life all possible habitats. There were millions of species of vegetation.

There was an extravagant diversity of animal life and bird life, not to mention insects and microbes and other microscopic forms. Then evolution produced you and you altered the experiment. You lifted yourselves beyond the purpose for which you were intended. For just such a situation have we been waiting."

"You have been waiting to do what?" Iain asked.

"We will discuss that," the Watcher said.

"How long have you waited?" Vinn asked.

"No matter, you have come. Now we must decide."

"We can't decide anything with nothing more than hints about you and your purpose," Vinn said. "Before we attempt to make any heavy decisions, we have to have the answers to a few basic questions."