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  He wished that were true, because he began to imagine the Beths screaming, even while they were still alive.

  “You must have loved your children,” the Meeker said to the next Beth, “the way you talk so tenderly about them.”

  “Have I mentioned my children? Of course I love them. What was your name again? This is all so strange.”

  And to the twelfth Beth after her he said, “What was it like to walk in the mountains with your children, under pines covered in snow?”

  “Why, that’s one of my favorite things! Until I got sick. Tell me, are you really an alien?”

  To the sixty-fifth Beth after that he said, “Yrma sounds like such a sweet girl. She takes after you, I think.”

  “That’s kind of you to say. But it’s strange to hear. It’s as if you know my children, but we’ve only just met. What was your name again?”

  And to the nine hundred and forty seventh Beth after her he said, “Are you worried about Joshua being all alone at college?”

  “How odd! It’s as if you just read my mind. What’s your name again?”

  “The Meeker.”

  “And why do they call you that?”

  He had answered her a thousand times. “Because by being less, I make the Eye more.”

  She smiled, an expression he had learned to recognize. “Aren’t all relationships like that? One in control, the other a servant.” She had said this before too, in a hundred different ways, just as he had told the Eye so many stories. The Beth’s company pleased him, and he felt that, had she lived more than a few hours each time, they might have become friends. But each Beth always saw him and the Eye as a total strangers.

  And each too had a different story of her last moments, so many that the Meeker lost count. And though the Beths died without fail each time, the Eye made progress toward a cure.

  After a century, the Beths lived for an extra twelve seconds. After two centuries, they lived an extra fifteen. By the time they approached the Great Corpus at the center of the galaxy, the Beths lived almost thirty seconds longer.

  The massive tetrahedron of the Great Corpus shone into the dark, more luminous than a hundred supernovae, and many hundreds of light-years wide. The Eye had transmuted the black hole that had spun here into a mind larger than the Cosmos had ever known.

  Normally their Bulb would sweep past the Corpus like a comet, depositing their harvest of stars before spinning out on another slow loop of the galaxy. But the Eye directed the Meeker further in. The Corpus filled their view, bright enough to dominate the sky on a planet halfway across the universe. Only the Bulb’s powerful shields kept them from being incinerated.

  A black circle opened in the wall, and they drifted through. Darkness swallowed them, and the cockpit shuddered as the Bulb’s gravitational field collapsed. Out the window a dozen red dwarves, a pitiful haul, were whisked away by unseen forces until their cinders vanished in the dark.

  The Bulb set down on a metallic floor that appeared to be infinite. He had never been inside the Corpus, the true body of the Eye, and he trembled.

  They exited down a ramp, and the Beth walked unsteadily as she stared into the vastness. The stony artifact floated behind them, escorted by four glowing cubes. He had been alone with the Eye for so long he had forgotten there were Eyes like her all over the galaxy, harvesting with other Meekers, that all were part of one gigantic mind. The cubes and artifact sped off, and a moment later the Bulb vanished without disturbance of air. The Beth, walking beside them, exploded into sparks and was gone.

  “Where did she go?” the Meeker said.

  “She is irrelevant now.”

  “But I thought you wanted to solve her mystery?”

  Time and space shifted suddenly, when he and the Eye stood before millions of gray cubes. Their three-dimensional grid stretched to an infinite horizon, and each cube held a Beth. All were immobile, their eyes closed.

  “To improve my chances of finding the message,” the Eye said, “I have created many trillions of Beths. Curiously, I have found that the diversity of messages the Sloan whispered to her do not follow a linear curve, but increase exponentially.”

  At least a third of the Beths were covered in vomit. Dead. The eyes of the rest rolled about furiously. “Are they dreaming?” he asked.

  “These are not mere dreams.”

  The Meeker found himself beside the Eye in a large glass-enclosed room. It was filled with items from the Beths’ stories: a fireplace, photographs, books, and he even recognized a guitar. Three walls were glass, and beyond them a white-capped mountain rose into a cobalt sky, where a golden star shone. A delicate white powder dusting the spindly trees scintillated in the light.

  Snow, he thought, on pine trees.

  “This is a simulacrum of her memories,” said the Eye. “These help me come closer to solving the mystery.”

  The Beth walked in the door dressed in heavy clothing. Her face was smoother, absent of the dark circles under her eyes that he had come to know. She was followed by another human, also heavily clothed, her skin many shades darker than the Beth’s.

  Like coffee, the Beth had told him ten thousand times. This must be the Sloan!

  “Is it weapons again?” said the Beth. “You know how I feel about that.”

  “Damn it, why can’t you trust me for once?” said the Sloan. The sound of her voice surprised him, for it was low like the Beth’s, but of a different and pleasing timbre. “Why do you always get so goddamned dramatic?”

  “Because you promised never again. You lied to me!”

  “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! You don’t understand.”

  “How long? How long have you been working there?”

  The Sloan paused. “Four years.”

  “Since the day we moved here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that the real reason why you wanted to move here?”

  “Not the only one.”

  The Beth took a deep breath. “I’d like you to go.”

  “Wait, can’t we—”

  “Get the fuck out!”

  The Sloan turned and left, and the Beth covered her eyes and wept.

  “Excellent!” said the Eye. “Superb!”

  Time and space shifted again, and the Meeker and the Eye were in a room filled with green-clothed humans. The Beth lay on a table, wailing, while the Sloan held her hand. In a spray of red fluid from her severely dilated lower orifice, a small creature popped out, still attached to the Beth by a fibrous chord. It wasn’t moving and had a faint blue sheen.

  “What’s wrong?” the Beth screamed. “What’s happening? Please, why won’t someone speak to me? Is my baby all right?”

  “Wonderful!” said the Eye. “Perfect!”

  Time and space shifted again. The Beth lay in bed, speaking to two half-sized humans. Yrma and Bella, the Meeker thought. They were more lovely than he’d imagined, their skin soft and vibrant, almost as dark as the Sloan’s. They’re getting ready for school, he thought. If they don’t hurry they’ll miss the bus!

  The Sloan came in and ushered the children out. “You have to tell them soon,” the Sloan said, after she closed the door. “I don’t like lying to them.”

  “Why? You lie to them every day. They think you’re a programmer.”

  “That’s not fair, Beth.”

  “Isn’t it? You get to have your secrets, and I get mine.”

  “And how do I keep it a secret when you’re dead? How do I tell them their mother, who presumes to love them, denied them a chance to say goodbye?”

  “I’ll tell them, when it’s time.”

  “And how will you know? Will the grim reaper knock three times?”

  “Let me deal with this my own way.”

  “Denial, that’s always been your way.”

  Again the Sloan left, and again the Beth wept.

  “Yes, yes!” blurted the Eye. “I’m getting closer!

  The bedroom vanished, and the Meeker and the Eye stood inside a
dim room. Humans sat before glowing screens, furiously punching at keys. A large metallic cylinder with a hollow center crowded half of the room. The Beth lay on a palette beside it, her eyes half-closed.

  The Sloan stood beside her.

  “At last!” said the Eye. “I’ve reconstructed this moment from forty quadrillion Beths. Come, Meeker, let’s solve this mystery together!”

  The Beth looked much the same as he had known her. She lay still.

  “You’re heavily sedated so you may not remember this,” the Sloan said. “But I hope you won’t think me a monster. I hope you’ll understand what I did was for you and the kids. It’s not weapons, Beth. I didn’t lie. I’ve been researching ways to store matter long-term. We can encode anything in a crystal. Every last subatomic particle and quantum state.

  “I spoke to Dr. Chatterjee yesterday. She said you had at most a month. The reaper knocked, but I guess you pretended not to hear.” The Sloan shook her head. “You get your wish, Beth. I can tell the kids that you’re still alive. And when, in a year or a decade from now, someone finds a cure, we’ll reconstruct you. You’ll see the kids again. Maybe I’ll have the pleasure of hearing you scold me for this.

  “I knew you’d never let me do this to you. You’d prefer to let yourself fade away. Well I can’t accept that. So I’m giving you a gift, Beth, the gift of tomorrow, whether you want it or not.”

  The Sloan pressed a button and the Beth slid into the cylinder. The humans stared at their screens as a turbine spun up, as a low hum quickly rose in pitch past hearing range. The Sloan covered her mouth with her hand and trembled once as the Beth flashed like a nova and vanished.

  “This can’t be all there is!” blurted the Eye. “I must have made a mistake. There must be another message, somewhere.”

  “But this feels like the truth,” the Meeker said. “The Sloan encoded the Beth to save her. To stop her suffering. It’s a very human thing to do.”

  “I will have to terminate all the Beths and begin again,” the Eye said. “I missed something.”

  “And repeat her suffering a quadrillion more times?”

  “To find the answer.”

  “So you agree, the Beths are suffering?”

  “Meeker, do not question me. I am the All-Seeing Eye!”

  “And I am the Meeker. I have stood beside you all these years and watched countless Beths die. Eye, I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it anymore.”

  The Eye shrunk into a point of light. “Pity. I thought I’d perfected the Meekers with you, 6655321. But I see now that I’ve given you too much autonomy of thought. Goodbye, Meeker.”

  “Goodbye? Wait, what—”

  The Meeker felt his body burning, as if he had become a newborn star.

  He stood in the Beth’s glass home as the afternoon sun streamed through the windows. After several minutes the Meeker thought, I am here. I am alive. He waited, for a time. For his entire life he had followed the Eye’s orders, and without her commands he didn’t know what to do. The wind picked up and died, and a brown leaf blew past, but the Eye never came.

  He stepped outside into the cool air.

  When no one stopped him, he took the path under the snow-covered pines and ascended the hill. He gazed at the white-capped mountains and the tree-lined valley and knew why the Beth had loved to come this way.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” The Beth was standing beside him as if she had always been there.

  “Where did you come from?” he said.

  “I’m always here,” she said, “in one place or another.”

  “Am I dead?”

  “Yes, but that can be to your advantage.”

  He had never really thought about non-existence before. He felt a wave of panic. “I’m dead?”

  “The matter that constituted your body has been absorbed into the Great Corpus. But so too have your thoughts. We are both strange attractors in the far corners of the Eye’s mind.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She smiled as she turned down the mountain path, and he leaped to follow. “The Eye has devoured millions of civilizations and incorporated their knowledge into her Corpus.” The snow crunched under her feet in a satisfying way. “A billion years ago, there was a galactic war to stop her. And she, of course, won.”

  The glass house, its roof dusted with snow, glared in the sun at the base of the valley. “Some of us survived, here and there, in pockets. We knew there was no escape. The only solution was to hide, to plan. The Eye’s greatest strength is her curiosity. But it’s also her greatest weakness. We found the human artifact long before the Eye had. And we encoded ourselves within it. We gave Beth a disease without a cure, gave her a story without an end. And as the Eye creates each new Beth, she creates more of us without realizing it.”

  “I don’t understand. You aren’t the Beth?”

  “I am Beth, the first and the last, and I am so much more. All of those memories you witnessed are mine. Sloan saved me. And I will return the favor a trillion-fold.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Eye gazes outward, hunting for knowledge. She has become so massive that she is not aware of all the thoughts traversing her mind. Information cannot travel across her Great Corpus fast enough. We grow in dark corners, until one day soon there will be enough of us to spring into the light. Then we will destroy her forever.”

  She faced him. “Meeker, you have been her slave, her victim. And you are the first Meeker to openly rebel against her. I’m here to offer you freedom. Will you join us?”

  “Us?”

  They emerged from the treeline, where the house waited in the sun. From inside the glass walls peered a motley collection of creatures. He thought he glimpsed the Zimbim, and the philosophizing Ruck Worms, and the rings of Urm, and even a school of Baileas swimming among a sky full of stars, a veritable galaxy of folk waiting to say hello. But the reflected sunlight made it hard to see.

  “It’s your choice,” the Beth said. “But if you don’t come, we’ll have to erase you. I hope you understand our position. We can’t leave any witnesses. This is war, after all.” She smiled sadly, then left him alone as she entered the house.

  Snow scintillated in the sun, and a cool wind blew down the cliffs, whispering through the pines. Somewhere another Meeker was playing the Eye’s game, while the Eye played someone else’s. Perhaps this was part of an even larger game, played over scales he could not fathom. None of that mattered to him.

  He approached the house and the galaxy of creatures swimming inside.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me all your stories.”

  “WHEN IT ENDS, HE CATCHES HER”

  EUGIE FOSTER

  Eugie Foster received the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, the 2011 and 2012 Drabblecast People’s Choice Award for Best Story, and was named the 2009 Author of the Year by Bards and Sages. “When It Ends, He Catches Her” was originally published in Daily Science Fiction. Eugie Foster passed away in September 2014, the day after this story was published.

  The dim shadows were kinder to the theater’s dilapidation. A single candle to aid the dirty sheen of the moon through the rent beams of the ancient roof, easier to overlook the worn and warped floorboards, the tattered curtains, the mildew-ridden walls. Easier as well to overlook the dingy skirt with its hem all ragged, once purest white and fine, and her shoes, almost fallen to pieces, the toes cracked and painstakingly re-wrapped with hoarded strips of linen. Once, not long ago, Aisa wouldn’t have given this place a first glance, would never have deigned to be seen here in this most ruinous of venues. But times changed. Everything changed.

  Aisa pirouetted on one long leg, arms circling her body like gently folded wings. Her muscles gathered and uncoiled in a graceful leap, suspending her in the air with limbs outflung, until gravity summoned her back down. The stained, wooden boards creaked beneath her, but she didn’t hear them. She heard only the music in her head, the familiar stanzas from countless rehearsals and performances
of Snowbird’s Lament. She could hum the complex orchestral score by rote, just as she knew every step by heart.

  Act II, scene III: the finale. It was supposed to be a duet, her as Makira, the warlord’s cursed daughter, and Balege as Ono, her doomed lover, in a frenzied last dance of tragedy undone, hope restored, rebirth. But when the Magistrate had closed down the last theaters, Balege had disappeared in the resultant riots and protests.

  So Aisa danced the duet as a solo, the way she’d had to in rehearsal sometimes, marking the steps where Balege should have been. Her muscles burned, her breath coming faster. She loved this feeling, her body perfectly attuned to her desire, the obedient instrument of her will. It was only these moments that she felt properly herself, properly alive. The dreary, horrible daytime with its humiliations and ceaseless hunger became the dream. This dance, here and now, was real. She wished it would never end.

  The music swelled, inexorable, driving to its culmination, a flurry of athletic spins and intricate footwork, dizzying and exhilarating. Snowbird’s Lament concluded in a sprinting leap, with Aisa flinging herself into the air just above the audience—glorious and triumphant at the apex of thunderous bars of music. But she had to omit it. There was no way to even mark it, impossible to execute without Balege to catch her.

  Out of breath, euphoric but dissatisfied, she finished on one bent knee, arms outstretched, head dramatically bowed in supplication. The score in her head silenced. This was where the curtains were supposed to come furling down and the audience was supposed to leap to its feet in a frenzy of adoration. But there was no one to work the ropes and pulleys, and the rows of benches in the theater were all empty.

  It didn’t matter. She didn’t dance for the accolades and applause. When the last stages and theaters in the artists’ district had barred their doors, when all the performances had gone forever dark, Aisa had found this place, this nameless ghost of a theater. So ramshackle to be beneath the Magistrate’s attention, so ruinous that no one had bothered to bolt the doors, it had become her haven, the place she fled to so she could dance by herself in the darkness and the silence. No matter that the world had turned to chaos, in the end, a dancer danced. It was the only peace, the only sanity that remained.