Brooks was a little shocked by that. But no - the border of Shoggoth territory was hundreds of miles from Perry.

"I understand your confusion," Kell said, reading his face. "You have walked only a little but travelled far."

"I don't understand," Brooks replied.

Kell motioned for him to follow, and Brooks did so. The crowd of beings continued to watch him, their faces passive to a degree that was in itself disturbing. None blinked.

Something about their faces looked . . . unfinished. They lacked the most subtle details, he could see as he got closer. Like dolls, nestled deeply in the uncanny valley.

It caused a fear to swell inside him, and suddenly the thought came to him, that he'd heard others bring up before; just why was it that humans were so terrified of things that looked almost like them, unless they'd met such things in the past?

Moving beyond them, he saw that Kell was walking up an ice ramp, and he followed.

This ramp was more steeply inclined, and Brooks struggled up it slowly, while Kell waited at the top.

When he came out, they were no longer near Perry. They were hundreds of miles distant, in the mountains.

His system struggled for a moment before telling him that he was on Mt. Darwin in the Xi Range of the transantarctic mountain range.

Nearly two thousand miles from where he'd recently been.

"How?" he asked breathlessly, snapping his eyes to Kell.

"There are ancient ways to travel," Kell replied. "Long-forgotten. My kind are the only ones who still know how they work."

Brooks's mind struggled, trying to understand this. "Your people have technology?" he asked.

Kell did not look at him, merely out upon the snow that blanketed the land for as far as they could see.

"We only know how to use it," Kell replied, but offered no more.

Something that implied strange secrets, Brooks thought. And tantalizing; he'd never known of any history given by the Shoggoths - technologically or otherwise.

His words implied his kind had not created it - but if they hadn't, who had?

Something stayed him in asking, though. Kell's face seemed unusually intense as it stared out at the flat plains of the diminished Beardmore Glacier to the East.

"These mountains are tall now," he said. "The ice has shrunk away." He glanced to Brooks for a mere moment. "I recall watching these glaciers grow from nothing. I was saddened to see them disappear."

Brooks took in his words in confusion. It took his mind several moments to understand them, to put them in a context.

Obviously the ice had decreased, even in the heart of the continent. But the glaciers that covered Antarctica had formed tens of millions of years ago.

"How old are you, Kell?" he asked.

They'd believed ten thousand years or so would be possible; but it had only ever been a guess. This was not the first time a Shoggoth had claimed to have witnessed something ancient, yet he'd always taken it as a general statement of his kind.

But this was a personal recollection.

"As old as life itself," Kell told him. "I am of this world. Sometimes I wonder if I should ever have left - if we should have spoken to you."

He turned now, facing Brooks, his face serious. "But you left us little choice."

"As old as life? Kell, are you being literal? We understand that abiogenesis was nearly four billion years-"

Kell said nothing, not interrupting him with words, but a simple, clear nod.

Brooks staggered back.

That was impossible - impossible. No being could live for billions of years. It was incomprehensible.

Or was it? he asked himself. Could he truly say it was impossible?

Shoggoths were not like humans, or fish, or even bacteria. They functioned differently.

Truly, he had to admit, he could not rule out the possibility of life that simply did not age.

But the odds of surviving in a dangerous world for that long seemed incredible. The extinction events, the changing world - shifting continents, the oxygenation of the atmosphere, so many things that nearly ended life, certainly ended many types of life over and over and over again, yet his kind - this particular individual - had lived through all of it?

And the sheer scale of that deep time caused a wave of dizziness to sweep over him. What would one's mind become on such a scale? How could they not go mad? Not give up on life, simply lay down and let the ages wash over them until nothing was left?

How could a being live that long and still wish to be?

Kell was watching him, perhaps seeing the emotions roiling across his face.

"I had been told you were from here," Kell said to him. "When I learned you were here, I came."

"Why?" Brooks asked, his voice sounding hoarse in his throat.

The wind howled around them, pitiless, and Brooks began to feel cold. His suit was not set up for the temperatures he now felt, approaching negative eighty degrees centigrade.

"Because this land is also my home," Kell told him.

"That's significant to me," Brooks said. "It is to you as well?"

"I suppose," Kell replied. "I do not derive meaning as you do. But it is something we share."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

A silence fell, and Brooks fiddled with his suit's controls, trying to make it warmer. It could not quite deal with the temperatures, though, and he began to shiver.

He was about to tell Kell he had to leave when the being spoke again.

"You afford me trust, Captain," Kell said. "And you have earned some from me. That is the deeper reason I came to see you here. All of the others of my kind are satisfied by meeting you, and have left. We are truly alone now, and thus we can speak freely."

Brooks wrapped his arms around himself, the cold reminding him of the days of his youth.

Kell suddenly noticed, and gestured slightly with his hand. Brooks thought he was gesturing a direction to move, but was not sure where he was pointing.

Yet suddenly the wind was not hitting him any longer.

He let his arms slip to his side and looked around. It was still blowing - but it was not touching them. It curved around them, as if hitting something that could not be seen.

"Soon there will be an action by one of your people," Kell said. "That action will have negative repercussions."

"You mean Director Freeman, don't you? At the inquiry," Brooks replied. "They've said they're just after me."

Kell said nothing, staring out at the mountains. He tucked his hands behind his back.

"The man has arrogated to himself many things," Kell replied. "Things that he ought not have. He seeks more."

"What is it that he wants?" Brooks asked.

"Knowledge," Kell replied.

"All humans seek knowledge," Brooks said. "I am not a friend of the man, but it is in our nature to seek to understand. Is that so bad?"

"There are some things, a few things, that to know them is dangerous," Kell said. "Things that he believes work in a way he can control."

"It's about zerospace, isn't it?" Brooks asked. "The ways in which you are connected to it? Is what he seeks a danger to your kind?"

Kell looked at him. "It is a danger to everything," he said.

"What is it, Kell? If you can tell me, we can work to keep it-"

Kell turned, and walked back down into the ice.

"I will take you back to your vehicle," he said.

Brooks recognized that their meeting was over. As much as he wanted to ask for more, he recognized that he had crossed a line by asking for the same forbidden knowledge that Freeman wanted.

So he couldn't know what it was that Kell wished to keep hidden. Only now . . . he had an idea of just what it was that the Director wanted from this farce of justice. He just didn't know how the man aimed to achieve them simply by bringing these charges, though.

But he'd soon learn.

Turning, he followed Kell back down into the ice.

*******

The bullet train took only six hours to carry her to 40 degrees north. The train was lined in giant windows, letting her see everything with her actual eyes instead of just through a screen.

Along the way she saw coastlines gradually moving from tropical to desert to temperate before turning into coastal forests. Out the other side she saw ocean and more ocean.

It fascinated her, though. They moved too fast to study the nearby waves, but the ones out in the distance of the Pacific ocean still captured her attention almost as much as the changing scenery of the coastal side.

A lot of people were on the train, mostly Earthers, she guessed. They had a slightly different walk, she noticed.

Perhaps living in gravity your whole life made you walk a bit different, wore on the bones more and made them sag in some ways and hold themselves higher in others.

She felt suddenly and oddly glad that she had grown up in the colonies.

As they went North, more and more people got off. After New Angeles, most were gone. There were still people aboard, but only a fraction of the original number.

And when they arrived at her stop, she was the only one getting off.

Looking around, noticing her solitude, she stepped out and into a clean, but empty station.

Beauford - who had switched yet again, she thought, this time noticing the point at which another drone smoothly came in and took his place - guided her forward.

Everything was spotless, and the whole station was very small. No signs advertised local specialties or activities, only basic things like bathrooms and lodging. It was like they never expected to have many people passing through this particular stop.

There was an odd smell in the air, and she beckoned Beauford to follow her as she found her own way, following that scent.

It was fresh and pleasant, but tickled her nose in an odd way.

Finding steps - steps! No ramps, no escalators, but honest to goodness steps! - she went up them, to a set of double doors that opened smoothly and quietly for her.

She found herself in a dreamland.

The trees dwarfed her in a way she'd never believed possible. If there were a dozen others with her they could not have encircled the base of the tree.

They seemed to reach into the sky itself, so high that she had to crane her neck all the way back to even see the tops, silhouetted against a cloudy sky, only slightly visible through their boughs.

Like the Earth itself raising praise to the heavens.

She felt a stinging in her eyes as she beheld the forest, so much greater than even in her dreams, and felt her knees grow weak.

Apollonia let herself fall, first to her knees, then her elbows, digging her fingers into the dark soil.

It was a sensation she'd never felt before; to touch the Earth. It was damp and clung to her, and she laughed, tears now streaming down her face.

There was a smell to it, a dankness that nevertheless spoke of life and something that she'd never known; a balance.

It was probably all just her own projections, her own hopes and fears and thoughts that she'd had her whole life, but kept buried.

But right now, she didn't care. This was magic, this was the best thing in her short and miserable life, and suddenly all of those terrible things seemed to pale in comparison to this single moment. This single touch with something so infinitely alive and true to herself.

Raising her head again, she beheld the trees, a lifeform that was larger than anything she'd ever seen.

Clambering to her feet, she moved closer and touched the bark. It was softer than she expected, and had give. Almost spongy, she thought. And thick! Some of the crevasses in the bark she could almost have crawled into.

The thought went briefly through her mind, when she heard someone clear their throat.

She turned, seeing a tall man with a broad grin on a broad face. It looked even broader still from the heavy black beard that covered his face. His skin was tanned, and his shoulders and belly were also wide, in a way she never really saw in spacer folk.

"Don't let me stop you if you want to touch the tree," he said. "Lord! Few enough come around anymore. I usually tell them not to touch the trees, but for you I will make an exception."

"Why me?" she asked, instantly liking the man but still not fully willing to give up her suspicion.

"Not enough come for the touches to break down the bark. And you look like it means a lot more to you." He tilted his head curiously. "What made you come here of all places? There are many carefully-cultivated garden forests rising. But here . . ." He grinned. "Not many amenities. And not many people."

"I suppose I like that. And the fact that it's not manicured."

He nodded, accepting that. "When you're done, come to the ranger station next to the stairs. I'll put on tea."

He turned to walk away, and she watched him go for a moment, before looking back to the tree.

She touched the bark lightly, trying to be gentle. Could a person's touch really hurt it, if there were enough of them? It seemed hard to imagine. But if thousands or millions of people did it enough times . . .

"We've kind of made it hard enough on you, haven't we?" she said to the tree. It wasn't going to answer back, of course, but she still gazed at it longingly for a time, before turning.

She began to head towards the Ranger Station, but on a whim she stopped, and took off her shoes and socks. Twigs poked at her, and it felt squishy.

But now, happily barefoot, she continued on.