Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [74]
“Normally,” Picard replied, “I would be tempted to say yes. But not today. Too much blood has been shed.”
“I understand,” Sam said. “But understanding these events … it might prevent more blood from being spilled.”
Picard gestured for Sam to continue.
“All right,” Sam said. “The Old Ones were dead, as was the perceived threat they represented. But by now the androids’ paranoia had developed to a degree that all intelligent organic beings were perceived as a threat. Though the androids themselves lacked any meaningful space-flight technology—no faster-than-light drive, in any case—they knew that someday, sooner or later, some intelligent organic species would find its way to Exo III. They decided their only option was to wait for the day, take possession of the ‘invader’s‘ spacecraft, and escape, whereupon they would search other worlds for the solution that their creators, they believed, denied them.
“It took a little longer than they expected. Given the state of Exo III, there was little to attract any traveler to it. Conditions on the planet were getting worse, so the androids eventually decided to go into stasis. They left one of their own behind to serve as a caretaker and watchman. His name was Ruk.”
Chapter Nineteen
One Hundred Thirteen Years Ago
RUK WAS ANGRY.
There was nothing particularly new about that. Ruk was always angry. Rage was the bedrock of his being, its fuel and fount. He could no longer remember the catalyst of his rage, but that was unimportant. The anger was, in and of itself, a thing, as real as the chill air that stirred against his skin, as real as darkness, as real as ice.
Sometimes, if Ruk sat quietly long enough, he could almost remember a time when he had not been angry. Or less angry. Maybe that was closer to the truth. He would delve down into the cave of memory and blindly grope around in the musty recesses until he found the unraveled end of some coherent moment. If Ruk was patient, sometimes images would begin to coalesce and voices would float up out of the distant past. Once, only once, many, many years ago, Ruk had listened as carefully as he knew how, had calmed the tides of anger for just one moment and had heard someone say, “Everything fades, Ruk. Entropy is the fate of the universe. Even you will fade someday.”
And this, in turn, had fired Ruk’s rage again and the rest of the half-remembered conversation was lost forever.
He never sought out that voice again and would not have listened to it now, even if it suddenly rose up out of the depths.
In recent years, Ruk spent most of his time sitting and grinding rocks in his hands. He would find two rocks of the same size and composition, hold one in each hand, then make a fist. One of the rocks, eventually, would crumble. To date, the score was left hand: seven hundred and fifty-two thousand, four hundred and two, and right hand: eight hundred thousand, nine hundred and twelve. His right hand had taken the lead in recent years and was showing no signs of slowing down. Ruk had been considering handicapping his right hand—removing the smallest digit would be sufficient—but was uncertain about how to handle the problem of reattaching it when he grew bored. It was a concern.
In the end, Ruk knew, the intelligent solution would be to find something else to do. Unfortunately, intelligence was not Ruk’s gift, or so someone had implied once a very long time ago.
Wait. He loosened his grip on the rocks. Who had told him that intelligence was not his gift? A voice very much like Ruk’s own screamed at him as if from some deep chasm: This is important. Knowing the answer to that question would explain … something. Or everything. Wouldn’t it? There was a reason why he was here. He was suddenly very sure of that. A picture had formed in his mind—many tall figures much like himself, all of them standing and staring at him fixedly. They were all going somewhere, leaving him behind, telling him that he should