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  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 bitterest. 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 Miles Sterling had 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. Sterling? And 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 they were on this nameless asteroid, waiting to see the alien artwork. Just the three of them. 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.

  Sterling’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.

  Sterling was pacing across the plush carpeting when she arrived at his quarters. He had changed from his flight coveralls into 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.

  “Do you know who this Dorn creature is?”

  Elverda answered, “Only what he has told us.”

  “I’ve checked him out. My staff in the ship has a complete dossier on him. He’s the butcher who led the Chrysalis massacre, fourteen years ago.”

  “He— ”

  “Eleven hundred men, women, and children. Slaughtered. He was the man who commanded the attack.”

  “He said he had been a soldier.”

  “A mercenary. A cold-blooded murderer. He was working for Toyama then. The Chrysalis was their habitat. When its population voted for independence, Toyama put him in charge of a squad to bring them back into line. He killed them all; turned off their air and let them all die.”

  Elverda felt shakily for the nearest chair and sank into it. Her legs seemed to have lost all their strength.

  “His name was Harbin then. Dorik Harbin.”

  “Wasn’t he brought to trial?”

  “No. He ran away. Disappeared. I always thought Toyama helped to hide him. They take care of their own, they do. He must have changed his name afterward. Nobody would hire the butcher, not even Toyama.”

  “His face . . . half his body . . .” Elverda felt terribly weak, almost faint. “When . . . ?”

  “Must have been after he ran away. Maybe it was an attempt to disguise himself.”

  “And now he is working for you.” She wanted to laugh at the irony of it but did not have the strength.

  “He’s got us trapped on this chunk of rock! There’s nobody else here except the three of us.”

  “You have your staff in your ship. Surely, they would come if you summoned them.”

  “His security squad’s been ordered to keep everybody except you and me off the asteroid. He gave those orders.”

  “You can countermand them, can’t you?”

  For the first time since she had met Miles Sterling, the man looked unsure of himself. “I wonder,” he said.

  “Why?” Elverda asked. “Why is he doing this?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.” Sterling strode to the phone console. “Harbin!” he called. “Dorik Harbin. Come to my quarters at once.”

  Without even an eyeblink’s delay the phone’s computer-

  synthesized voice replied, “Dorik Harbin no longer exists. Transferring your call to Dorn.”

  Sterling’s blue eyes snapped at the phone’s blank screen.

  “Dorn is not available at present,” the phone’s voice said. “He will call for you in eleven hours and thirty-two minutes.”

  “God damn it!” Sterling smacked a fist into the open palm of his other hand. “Get me the officer on watch aboard the Sterling Eagle.”

  “All exterior communications are inoperable at the present time,” replied the phone.

  “That’s impossible!”

  “All exterior communications are inoperable at the present time,” the phone repeated, unperturbed.

  Sterling stared at the empty screen, then turned slowly toward Elverda. “He’s cut us off. We’re really trapped here.”

  Elverda felt the chill of cold metal clutching at her. Perhaps Dorn is a madman, she thought. Perhaps he is my death, personified.

  “We’ve got to do something!” Sterling nearly shouted.

  Elverda rose shakily to her feet. “There is nothing that we can do, for the moment. I am going to my quarters to take a nap. I believe that Dorn, or Harbin, or whatever his identity is, will call on us when he is ready to.”

  “And do what?”

  “Show us the artifact,” she replied, silently adding, I hope.

  Legally, the artifact and the entire asteroid belonged to Sterling Enterprises, Ltd. It had been discovered by a family—husband, wife, and two sons, ages five and three—who made a living from searching out iron-nickel asteroids and selling the mining rights to the big corporations. They filed their claim to this unnamed asteroid, together with a preliminary description of its ten-kilometer-wide shape, its orbit within the asteroid belt, and a sample analysis of its surface composition.

  Six hours after their original transmission reached the commodities-market computer network on Earth—while a fairly spirited bidding war was going on among four major corporations for the asteroid’s mineral rights—a new message arrived at the headquarters of the International Astronautical Authority, in London. The message was garbled, fragmentary, obviously made in great haste and at fever excitement. There was an artifact of some sort in a cavern deep inside the asteroid.

  One of the faceless bureaucrats buried deep within the IAA’s
multilayered organization sent an immediate message to an employee of Sterling Enterprises, Ltd. The bureaucrat retired hours later, richer than he had any right to expect, while Miles Sterling personally contacted the prospectors and bought the asteroid outright for enough money to end their prospecting days forever. By the time the decision-makers in the IAA realized that an alien artifact had been discovered, they were faced with a fait accompli: the artifact, and the asteroid in which it resided, were the personal property of the richest man in the solar system.

  Miles Sterling was no egomaniac. Nor was he a fool. Graciously, he allowed the IAA to organize a team of scientists who would inspect this first specimen of alien existence. Even more graciously, Sterling offered to ferry the scientific investigators all the long way to the asteroid at his own expense. He made only one demand, and the IAA could hardly refuse him. He insisted that he see this artifact himself before the scientists were allowed to view it.

  And he brought along the solar system’s most honored and famous artist. To appraise the artifact’s worth as an art object, he claimed. To determine how much he could deduct from his corporate taxes by donating the thing to the IAA, said his enemies.

  But over the months of their voyage to the asteroid, Elverda came to the conclusion that buried deep beneath his ruthless business persona was an eager little boy who was tremendously excited at having found a new toy. A toy he intended to possess for himself. An art object created by alien hands.

  For an art object was what the artifact seemed to be. The family of prospectors continued to send back vague, almost irrational reports of what the artifact looked like. The reports were worthless. No two descriptions matched. If the man and woman were to be believed, the artifact did nothing but sit in the middle of a rough-hewn cavern. But they described it differently with every report they sent. It glowed with light. It was darker than deep space. It was a statue of some sort. It was formless. It overwhelmed the senses. It was small enough almost to pick up in one hand. It made the children laugh happily. It frightened their parents. When they tried to photograph it, their transmissions showed nothing but blank screens. Totally blank.

  As Sterling listened to their maddening reports and waited impatiently for the IAA to organize its handpicked team of scientists, he ordered his security manager to get a squad of hired personnel to the asteroid as quickly as possible. From corporate facilities on Titan and the moons of Mars, from three separate outposts among the asteroid belt itself, Sterling Enterprises efficiently brought together a brigade of experienced mercenary security troops. They reached the asteroid long before anyone else could and were under orders to make certain that no one was allowed onto the asteroid before Miles Sterling himself reached it.

  “The time has come.”

  Elverda woke slowly, painfully, like a swimmer struggling for the air and light of the surface. She had been dreaming of her childhood, of the village where she had grown up, the distant snow-capped Andes, the warm night breezes that spoke of love.

  “The time has come.”

  It was Dorn’s deep voice, whisper soft. Startled, she flashed her eyes open. She was alone in the room, but Dorn’s image filled the phone screen by her bed. The numbers glowing beneath the screen showed that it was indeed time.

  “I am awake now,” she said to the screen.

  “I will be at your door in fifteen minutes,” Dorn said. “Will that be enough time for you to prepare yourself?”

  “Yes, plenty.” The days when she needed time for selecting her clothing and arranging her appearance were long gone.

  “In fifteen minutes, then.”

  “Wait,” she blurted. “Can you see me?”

  “No. Visual transmission must be keyed manually.”

  “I see.”

  “I do not.”

  A joke? Elverda sat up on the bed as Dorn’s image winked out. Is he capable of humor?

  She shrugged out of the shapeless coveralls she had worn to bed, took a quick shower, and pulled her best caftan from the travel bag. It was a deep midnight blue, scattered with glittering silver stars. Elverda had made the floor-length gown herself, from fabric woven by her mother long ago. She had painted the stars from her memory of what they had looked like from her native village.

  As she slid back her front door, she saw Dorn marching down the corridor with Sterling beside him. Despite his longer legs, Sterling seemed to be scampering like a child to keep up with Dorn’s steady, stolid steps.

  “I demand that you reinstate communications with my ship,” Sterling was saying, his voice echoing off the corridor walls. “I’ll dock your pay for every minute this insubordination continues!”

  “It is a security measure,” Dorn said calmly, without turning to look at the man. “It is for your own good.”

  “My own good? Who in hell are you to determine what my own good might be?”

  Dorn stopped three paces short of Elverda, made a stiff little bow to her, and only then turned to face his employer.

  “Sir, I have seen the artifact. You have not.”

  “And that makes you better than me?” Sterling almost snarled the words. “Holier, maybe?”

  “No,” said Dorn. “Not holier. Wiser.”

  Sterling started to reply, then thought better of it.

  “Which way do we go?” Elverda asked in the sudden silence.

  Dorn pointed with his prosthetic hand. “Down,” he replied. “This way.”

  The corridor abruptly became a rugged tunnel again, with lights fastened at precisely spaced intervals along the low ceiling. Elverda watched Dorn’s half-human face as the pools of shadow chased the highlights glinting off the etched metal, like the moon racing through its phases every half minute, over and again.

  Sterling had fallen silent as they followed the slanting tunnel downward into the heart of the rock. Elverda heard only the clicking of his shoes, at first, but by concentrating she was able to make out the softer footfalls of Dorn’s padded boots and even the whisper of her own slippers.

  The air seemed to grow warmer, closer. Or was it her own anticipation? She glanced at Sterling; perspiration beaded his upper lip. The man radiated tense expectation. Dorn glided a few steps ahead of them. He did not seem to be hurrying, yet he was now leading them down the tunnel, like an ancient priest leading two new acolytes—or sacrificial victims.

  The tunnel ended in a smooth wall of dull metal.

  “We are here.”

  “Open it up,” Sterling demanded.

  “It will open itself,” replied Dorn. He waited a heartbeat, then added, “Now.”

  And the metal slid up into the rock above them as silently as if it were a curtain made of silk.

  None of them moved. Then Dorn slowly turned toward the two of them and gestured with his human hand.

  “The artifact lies twenty-two point nine meters beyond this point. The tunnel narrows and turns to the right. The chamber is large enough to accommodate only one person at a time, comfortably.”

  “Me first!” Sterling took a step forward.

  Dorn stopped him with an upraised hand: The prosthetic hand. “I feel it my duty to caution you—”

  Sterling tried to push the hand away; he could not budge it.

  “When I first crossed this line, I was a soldier. After I saw the artifact, I gave up my life.”

  “And became a self-styled priest. So what?”

  “The artifact can change you. I thought it best that there be no witnesses to your first viewing of it, except for this gifted woman whom you have brought with you. When you first see it, it can be—traumatic.”

  Sterling’s face twisted with a mixture of anger and disgust. “I’m not a mercenary killer. I don’t have anything to be afraid of.”

  Dorn let his hand drop to his side with a faint whine of miniaturized servomotors.

  “Perhaps not,” he
murmured, so low that Elverda barely heard it.

  Sterling shouldered his way past the cyborg. “Stay here,” he told Elverda. “You can see it when I come back.”

  He hurried down the tunnel, footsteps staccato.

  Then silence.

  Elverda looked at Dorn. The human side of his face seemed utterly weary.

  “You have seen the artifact more than once, haven’t you?”

  “Fourteen times,” he answered.

  “It has not harmed you in any way, has it?”

  He hesitated, then replied, “It has changed me. Each time I see it, it changes me more.”

  “You . . . you really are Dorik Harbin?”

  “I was.”

  “Those people of the Chrysalis . . .”

  “Dorik Harbin killed them all. Yes. There is no excuse for it, no pardon. It was the act of a monster.”

  “But why?”

  “Monsters do monstrous things. Dorik Harbin ingested psychotropic drugs to increase his battle prowess. Afterward, when the battle drugs cleared from his bloodstream and he understood what he had done, Dorik Harbin held a grenade against his chest and set it off.”

  “Oh my God,” Elverda whimpered.

  “He was not allowed to die, however. The medical specialists rebuilt his body, and he was given a false identity. For many years he lived a sham of a life, hiding from the authorities, hiding from his own guilt. He no longer had the courage to kill himself, the pain of his first attempt was far stronger than his own self-loathing. Then he was hired to come to this place. Dorik Harbin looked upon the artifact for the first time, and his true identity emerged at last.”

  Elverda heard a scuffling sound, like feet dragging, staggering. Miles Sterling came into view, tottering, leaning heavily against the wall of the tunnel, slumping as if his legs could no longer hold him.

  “No man . . . no one . . .” He pushed himself forward and collapsed into Dorn’s arms.

  “Destroy it!” he whispered harshly, spittle dribbling down his chin. “Destroy this whole damned piece of rock! Wipe it out of existence!”