Devorandum

I got them to show me where Jack had gone. They pointed to the long grasses that bordered the river, as tall in some places as I was. I ducked into the shuttle and took the machete from the locker. Outside, the grays milled about, talking amongst themselves in that strange low way that they did, their soft voices carrying only as a murmur. I could not make out their words.

As I re-emerged they grew still and looked up at me, their eyes wide. I was their leader, and they were used to doing as they were told. But until now I’d only been following protocol. There was no protocol for this.

I beckoned to the one I’d called George Eliot, who stood slightly apart from the others.

‘George and I will go and look for Jack. The rest of you must get inside the shuttle and stay there. Seal the doors after I’m gone. I’ll stay on the radio. Do you understand?’

There was an undulation of nods from the silent assembly, and one by one they filed into the small shuttle. I handed George the machete. She looked at it, then looked at me.

‘To cut the grass,’ I said.

We went up to the river’s edge and looked across. The water was clear and flowed with a fast current. A few rocks pierced its surface, and I instructed George to step onto the first one. The river was not very wide, but we would have to cross four or five of these stepping stones to get to the other side without going in the water. The temperature in that region was low, and I knew the water would be cold.

George stepped out, her pale blue plimsols gripping the jutting stone. She stood there on the little island, smoothing down her tunic.

‘Now to the next one,’ I said, pointing. ‘I’ll follow you over.’

I did so, watching where she put her feet and copying. Some of the stones were slippery, covered in an indigenous moss-like plant. I saw George almost fall, but she dropped down quickly to her haunches to steady herself. While crouched like this, she dipped her pale hand into the water and watched it flow over her skin.

We reached the bank quite quickly and then began the task of fighting through the forest of reeds and tall grasses, beyond which we could see nothing. George went first, at my instruction, hacking back the plants with the broad machete blade.

Finally we emerged in a clearing. The river snaked around us, so that we were almost surrounded by it and by the fence of reeds that bordered it. The ground here was marshy, and we sank a little way down with each step. My boots were perfectly waterproof, being designed to withstand many harsh environments, even the void of space. But George’s plimsoles were already sodden and soiled. She did not seem to notice.

We crossed the clearing and entered the reeds again, hoping to find our way to more solid ground. We were lucky; our path took us to a gentle upwards slope, which we topped to find a long grassy plain sweeping down into a wide valley. The river switched back again through this valley, but now it was much broader, and the banks were quite clear.

I was about to tell George to begin walking down this slope when I noticed a shimmer of movement away to the east. I pulled George down and backwards, and we crouched together, partially hidden by the tall plants. I pressed a finger to my lips.

A vessel was approaching along the river. A boat of some kind. It had tall white sails and its hull seemed to be made of a lightweight metal. It gleamed in the sunlight as it swept on by. I could not see if there was anyone crewing it. Apart from the dead satellite I had found orbiting the planet on my arrival, this was the first sign of life we had come across. No other mission in the history of the corporation had ever reported the existence of intelligent alien life. Thousands of missions like mine, thousands of agents like me – of course we had never discounted the possibility, but after all this time it had seemed so unlikely…

George stood up and pointed.

‘Get down!’ I whispered, but she did not respond. I looked to where she was pointing and saw Jack, standing on the deck of the boat. He didn’t see us. There was no-one else there. He was holding on to the railings and laughing, the wind whipping back his sandy hair from his face. Spray from the water flew up from the boat’s knife-edge hull, glittering in the sunlight like diamonds.

‘Would you like to join him?’

The voice came from behind us and I got to my feet. Pushing his way through the tall grasses was a man. He looked human. He was wearing human clothes. He had human skin. He had human eyes. He stopped a little way off from us and smiled.

‘What… What are you?’ I asked, after a brief silence had elapsed. George was standing beside me, watching the man, but I could not read her expression.

‘I am a boatman,’ he said. ‘That is my vessel.’

‘Why is Jack on your boat?’

‘Your friend expressed an interest in my boat. I asked him if he’d like to take a ride on it, and he said yes.’

I watched as the ship drew close to us on the loop of the river, where it slowed and came in to the bank.

‘Who’s controlling it?’

‘I am,’ the man smiled. ‘I don’t need to be onboard to do that. It’s quite useful when I come abroad like this.’

‘That’s some technology,’ I said.

The man frowned at me for a moment, then smiled. ‘Yes. It is some technology.’

Jack was getting down off the boat, still grinning. He ran through the reeds, his tunic wet with spray.

‘It was wonderful,’ he said breathlessly, as he skipped up to George. She looked at him carefully, and brushed some of the vegetation from his clothes.

‘Where do you live?’ I asked the man.

‘Over the hill there is our city. I live there.’

‘There are many others like you?’

‘Oh yes, many others.’

‘What are your intentions?’

He frowned again.

‘Your intentions towards us,’ I clarified.

‘We have none.’

‘You must know that we… aren’t from around here.’

‘We saw your shuttle land two days ago.’

‘But… We look so alike. You look exactly like me.’

‘Yes. It’s not what we expected either.’

The city was a marvel. It seemed to be powered entirely by some clean energy source that I could not identify. There was no smoke, no steam, no factories, no signs of industry. It was almost as if the city had sprung up organically from the soil. And yet it was not primitive; the buildings were tall spires of glass and the same silvery metal the boat was made of. Immaculate lawns bordered streets that were made of a light-coloured durable polymer, apparently impervious to dirt and damage. Colourful flowers grew in window-boxes and everywhere the citizens walked and talked and laughed, their voices soft and musical.

We rode in the boat. The river ran through the centre of the city, a sparkling sapphire band. The boatman docked in the harbour, the ship apparently responding to his whim, for he touched no controls. As we took in the city, I watched George carefully. There was something about her manner that unsettled me, although I could see no cause for alarm. These people seemed human. Perhaps they were human. Some long-lost strain of our gene that had got lost in the tracts of space somehow. The descendants of one of the first explorers, maybe, that had never returned. They spoke my language, they looked like me, they felt like me. They were certainly more authentic than any of the grays – even George – who were manufactured.

The boatman showed us around. I asked many questions, and he answered them as best he could. As alike as we were physically, there were numerous differences in our cultures, as you might expect for a colony so long separated from its parent planet. It seemed there was no crime here, no money, no greed, no business. Everyone lived quite contentedly, with no desire to compete or conflict with one another. It was everything we would consider a utopia, but I could not understand how they maintained it. We have attempted plenty of utopias in earth’s history, but they have all proved themselves unsustainable. There is always some rotten thing at the heart of them that brings them down. But here, in this fantastical metropolis, everything seemed pure.

I was sad to leave, but I had to return to the other grays. I still had a mission to complete. If I did nothing else during this journey, I must tell earth of this place. The treasures we could learn from this colony were boundless.

The boatman returned us to the river plains, and waved us farewell as we made our way back through the reeds and over the river to the shuttle where we had made camp. It was like a curtain had fallen behind us, and the wonderful city we had visited was just a stage production, as the reeds fell back in place and once more obscured the land beyond.

For several weeks, we saw and heard nothing of the local population. I must admit that I was disappointed. I figured that to them we must have seemed so primitive and base, and they perhaps feared we would taint them with our proximity. We saw the boatman pass by once or twice, but he never stopped. Jack was in the doldrums for days after we returned from the city. His duties at camp were so mundane now, even though they were the thing he had been created to do. He had a taste of something more now. I hadn’t realised the grays were capable of such feelings, of desiring more than their purpose. Only Jack behaved this way, so perhaps he was faulty. George remained her usual stoic self, clearly not swept away as Jack had been by our encounter. But there was a change in her that I could not put my finger on. I didn’t like it.

We were in our seventh week when Jack disappeared again. We had been following our mission brief, collecting samples, making notes, taking measurements. Our task was almost complete. We had successfully cultivated several plants. The soil was certainly viable. We’d reaped a bounty in the forest and in the river, producing enough meat and fish for us all to live on quite comfortably. In a few days’ time we would prepare to leave and return with our observations to earth. It would then be up to the committee to decide if Devorandum would be selected for colonisation.

‘Where did he go? Who saw him last?’

William Gibson raised his hand, and pointed to the river.

I sighed. He’d been begging to go back to the city for weeks. The grays were meant to be designed to follow my instructions, but Jack had proved increasingly unreliable. He talked of nothing but that boat-ride he had taken with the boatman. He must have gone back to find him.

I called to George, who was standing in the doorway of the shuttle. She held the machete in her hand.

‘Yes, we’ll have to go back through the reeds, George, I’m sorry. We can’t leave Jack out there, can we?’

Or could we? I knew what I would have to do to him, to all of them, before we could return to earth. There simply weren’t enough resources on the shuttle for us all. Why shouldn’t he live out his life here, where he’d be happy? I could tell the corporation he’d been lost. I’d have to log a report for the missing raw materials, but that’s all. It must happen all the time.

But, I reasoned, I needed to make sure he was safe. Perhaps he’d fallen prey to one of the region’s more dangerous predators. Perhaps he’d been swept away by the river.

‘Alright, everyone else stay here. We’ll be back before sunset.’

We were not back before sunset. It took us a full day on foot to reach the city, the route being far longer than it had seemed as we had ridden on the boatman’s ship. The terrain was rough and wild, with jagged crags we had to climb over, deep ravines we stumbled down into, and wide sucking swamps we had to skirt entirely round. The land here was much less hospitable than the patch we had fortuitously chosen to land the shuttle and conduct our experiments; as successful as we had been so far, this factor would have to be included in my report. That the people of this world had forged so advanced a metropolis out of this wilderness was just another testament to their remarkable nature. That they had thrived amid this desert while we destroyed our bountiful world was an even more telling testament to our own.

When we finally crested the rise that overlooked the city, the sun was setting behind us, and the metal and glass buildings glowed with the amber light. George suggested we head straight for the port at which the boatman’s ship was moored; it seemed more than likely that Jack would have gone that way hoping for another ride. As we approached its outskirts, we could hear the city humming softly, the gentle ululations of a populace easing into rest, talking in restaurants, taking in a show, walking through the park. The whole scene was so familiar, but I had never known such a place. It was a memory of a world I wish I’d been able to live in. The dark urban sprawls and torpid sewage rivers of my own home demonstrated all too clearly the sharp line between dystopia and utopia. We had always been taught to believe that a true utopia was a myth, and so I suppose in the end we gave up trying to make one. If only we could have broken free of those ideological shackles, we might have created a world like this.

We walked through the streets, along which a few others strolled, chatting good-naturedly to one another, some holding hands, some guiding laughing children, some alone. As we passed them they looked at us and smiled, no doubt recognising our foreignness, even though we looked so much like them. Their gazes lingered on us and I felt a little uncomfortable beneath them, but wasn’t it perfectly normal to stare when one first encounters a being from another world? It was easy to forget that we were the aliens here, not they.

When we reached the port, there was no sign of the boatman. We checked around for Jack but there were very few places in which he could have been hiding.

‘I guess we should ask around,’ I said. ‘You go east, I’ll go west. We’ll meet back here in an hour. Or radio me if you find Jack.’

‘Yes,’ George said. Her face was expressionless, but again I felt that strange sensation of unease as I glanced at her. What was going on in there, I wondered. Was she having the same thoughts and feelings as me about finding this remarkable civilisation? Did she even understand the significance? She had never seen earth, after all, had never walked its charred and putrid soil or gazed at its sulphur-yellow skies. In actual fact, I realised, this world was hers as well. She had been made in orbit around it, she had taken her first breath of fresh air here, her first drink of fresh water here. She and the rest of the grays were natives here too. It was only I that was the true alien, only I that had knowledge of another world.

We went our separate ways, and I began asking the people I passed in the streets if they had seen Jack. I described his face as best I could, although I confess I had never paid much attention to his appearance. The most notable feature I suppose was his tunic, which was the same style all the grays wore, but was quite different to the casual slacks and natural hemp-like shirts worn by many of the city’s inhabitants.

No-one I spoke to had seen him. Talking to them was a strange experience; their manners we so similar to humans, but then slightly different in ways that would throw me off-guard. They were shy, almost bashful, when they spoke, as if they were doing something forbidden. They walked right up to me, standing just a little too close. Some of them touched me, stroking my arms and hair. Again, I had to remind myself of the situation. I could not blame them for their curiosity. I was curious too, and sometimes accepted their invitations to touch them back, feeling the fabric of their clothes or the warmth of their hands.

After an hour of fruitless searching, I returned to the port. There I found George in conversation with the boatman. When they saw me, they both looked around quickly. There was an oddness to their expressions, but I couldn’t fathom it. Were they embarrassed? Guilty? I realised that trying to attribute human emotions to either of them was a potentially futile activity.

George shook her head when I asked her if she’d had any luck in her search for Jack.

‘I’ll bet he wanted another ride on my boat,’ the boatman said. ‘But maybe he got lost on the way.’

I could believe that, I thought, thinking of the wilderness we had traversed to get here.

‘I’ll take the boat out in the morning to look for him,’ the boatman went on. ‘But we can’t do anything else tonight.’

‘No, you’re right,’ I said. ‘We had best be getting back to camp.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that,’ he said.

‘What? Why?’

‘It’s dark,’ he said, as if that were an adequate explanation. ‘You can stay at my house tonight and travel with me back to your camp in the morning.’

‘Well, I guess I am pretty tired. We did tell the others we’d be back though.’

‘I’m sure your friends will understand. Come, I’ll make some tea.’

The boatman’s house was as I expected, the same as every other house in the city. Built over two stories, it afforded a beautiful view of the river. Now totally black, the water looked like a velvet band studded with jewels as it reflected the lights of the city.

George ate her food in silence and then retired to the room the boatman had assigned her, drawing the screen door shut behind her.

‘She’s not like you,’ he said.

I looked at him. He was quite attractive, in the candle light. I wonder that I hadn’t noticed before.

‘No, she’s not,’ I said.

‘What is she?’

‘She’s synthetic.’

He shook his head, uncomprehending.

‘She was made. She wasn’t born.’

‘But she’s organic?’ he said quickly.

‘Yes.’

‘She smells different.’

I frowned. Perhaps his race’s olfactory senses had been evolutionarily heightened.

‘That’s interesting,’ I said. ‘I never really thought about that before. To us, the difference is more… on the inside.’

‘You think she has no soul,’ he said.

I stopped chewing and set down my fork.

‘I… I’m not sure if there is such a thing,’ I said, but even as the words left my lips I knew he was right. I may never have thought of it in those terms, but the difference I recognised – all humans recognised – between us and the grays came down to this arcane notion. As a scientist, I had never wanted to put much truck in the concept of a soul, it seemed something born of religion and therefore a fallacy. But if it was not a soul I felt George and the others lacked, what was it?

‘I wonder what could have happened to Jack,’ I said, suddenly afraid for him. He was all alone. What did that mean to him? Was he scared?

‘I’m sure he’ll be fine,’ the boatman said. ‘It’s time to sleep.’

He showed me to my room, and slid the door shut as he exited.

When I woke, it was dark. Something had roused me, a sound perhaps. I felt around for the lamp that stood beside the bed. The darkness was intense, as if it were physically pressing down on me. As I stretched out my arm into the void, an inexplicable panic took hold of me. I wanted to cry out, but my throat made no sound. My hairs stood on end and my whole body shuddered with fear. There was something here, there was something… I saw my arm outstretched before me, the white flesh so pale in that dark, dark, dark, dark– Blood thudded in my ears. I held my breath. My arm reached out into the blackness. I felt the light switch and turned on the lamp. The room filled with light.

I looked around. I was alone; everything was as it had been when I fell asleep. I gasped for breath, clutching at my chest as I coughed the air into me, shaking and sweating. Just a bad dream, a bad dream. I couldn’t even remember it now. Everything was fine.

A knock at the door startled me. I held my breath.

‘Are you awake?’

It was the boatman.

I swallowed.

‘Yes, just a minute.’

I pulled on my jacket and went to the door.

‘I’m sorry, did I wake you?’ he asked.

‘No, I, er, was already awake.’

‘We have to leave now.’

‘What? Why? It’s the middle of the night.’

‘Come with me.’ He took my arm firmly.

George was waiting in the hall. She looked afraid. I’d never seen her face express any sort of emotion before. But now she was afraid. I reached out my free hand to her and she took it. The boatman led us down the stairs. 

‘Where are we going?’ I demanded.

He didn’t answer. He opened the front door. The city lay before us. I gasped, and clutched George’s hand. The buildings gleamed, the trees swayed in the gentle breeze. The water lapped at the harbour, rocking the boats in their moorings. In the centre of the scene, a giant rent was torn like a jagged scar. It was as if some colossal creature had ripped its talon through reality to reveal what was beneath. And what was beneath? I couldn’t describe it. There’s no way I could describe it. It was dark, so dark. Dark, dark, dark, dark–

‘Quickly, this way,’ said the boatman. He led us towards the boat. I heard something coming from the tear. I heard it, I felt it– so dark, so dark, dark– I couldn’t stop looking into it. I couldn’t get away from it.

The boatman pushed us onto the boat and its engines began humming softly as he backed it out of the harbour.

A scream came from the rent, a sound of such terrible rage and despair. ‘No,’ it said. ‘No, don’t go.’

‘Don’t listen,’ said the boatman. ‘Don’t look back.’

But where else was there to look, other than that dreadful place, that dreadful space–

George grabbed my face and turned it towards her. She looked straight into my eyes.

‘Come back,’ she said. ‘Come back.’

The boat sped along the river, its sleek prow cutting the black water like a blade. After we had travelled for about an hour, the boatman brought her into the bank and turned off the engines.

‘What the hell is going on?’ I asked him. I was calmer now, now that the thing was out of sight, out of earshot. ‘What the hell was that thing?’

He took a deep breath and sat down opposite us.

‘I knew it wouldn’t work. I told them, but they wouldn’t listen. I knew it could not be sustained.’

‘What? What couldn’t be sustained?’

‘Did you not think it was strange that we looked just like you? Spoke your language? Understood all the same concepts?’

‘I… Of course, at first, I did. It seemed remarkable odds. But there has to be an explanation.’

‘There is.’

‘We are genetically related somehow,’ I said. ‘That must be it.’

‘That might explain our appearance, but not our language. There are over six thousand different languages on earth. What are the chances of even one of those languages developing in exactly the same way here on a planet that has never had any contact with any terrestrial cultures?’

‘How do you know that? About earth?’

‘We don’t speak your language,’ he said. ‘And you don’t speak ours.’

I frowned, then it dawned on me. ‘Telepathy,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘You are certainly an intelligent species,’ he remarked. ‘And yet you have a remarkable capacity for self-delusion.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘All this time we have presented you with a reality that is basically impossible. And yet you have accepted it happily. You have never examined it. You have never questioned it. It was only because of the massive psychic drain needed to maintain it that it has failed at all. We knew you would accept it, because it was what you wanted to find. A picture of your world, as you would like it to be. Because of this, you accepted it.’

Even as I asked the question, I knew I didn’t want to know the answer. ‘What is the reality?’

‘Some of it you have seen tonight.’

‘What, that… thing?’

‘It is our world.’

‘And you?’

The blackness was around us suddenly, as if someone had flicked a switch. The undulating countryside, with mountains in the distance, lit softly by the growing dawn, was replaced with that sucking darkness, that hungry darkness. And before us, where the boatman had once been, was a thing… A thing… Blacker than black, with a gaping maw, a chasm, a vast… Arms, or something, appendages… tipped with black claws… A huge bulk, groaning, salivating, staring at us, so hungrily…

The darkness was gone, and it was just as it had been earlier in the room. Everything was as it had been, and the memory of it already seemed unreal, as if it had been nothing but a bad dream.

George and I sat, hand-in-hand, staring at the boatman before us. I could feel that her body was rigid, she was barely breathing.

‘Centuries ago,’ the boatman began to speak, ‘our world was an orgy of destruction. My species takes pleasure in the pain of others. We like the blood and flesh of living beings.’

Even as he spoke, I could see his veneer slipping. In his human eyes was that hungry black void. His human mouth was wet with drool.

‘We lived in depravity for a long time. But we almost destroyed everything. There was nothing left for us to eat. And so we forced ourselves to change. For three generations, we have eaten nothing but plants. We have taken no pleasure. We have reformed. Then you arrived. We saw you hunting in the forest. Killing for food. We saw you eating. We saw you feeding each other. We could not resist it, we could no longer resist our biology. You had triggered it again in us. We had too long suppressed our urges, and it had hurt us. We are so hungry. We are in so much pain. You have to understand–’

I stood up suddenly. ‘Where is Jack?’ I asked. My voice was weak.

The boatman looked down at his hands.

‘Where is Jack?’

George stood up beside me. Her eyes were bloodshot.

‘What the hell have you done to Jack?’

The boatman lifted up his hands. ‘It wasn’t me. It was the others. I got you out, remember. I told you the truth.’

I screamed at him, my rage and fear a visceral force that I could not stop pouring out of me. I screamed and screamed until I felt myself be sick.

George put a hand on my back. ‘The others,’ she said.

‘Oh god.’

The boatman steered his boat into the tall reeds that bordered the river near our camp. George and I stood at the rail, as far from our companion as we could. I watched his every move. His disguise did not slip again, and his appearance was so convincing I could almost believe the whole experience that night had been a dream. But the sound of a human scream cut through that.

George and I disembarked as soon as the boat slowed, and pushed our way through the reeds. I could see flames and smoke rising from the campsite. As we neared, I saw that a huge bonfire had been built near the shuttle and it raged as if it had been doused in petrol.

The scream came again, from the woods that bordered the clearing. George and I ran on, only vaguely aware that the boatman was behind us.

We followed the sounds through the tangle of branches. The forest that had before been so hospitable, a bounty of resources, now seemed to fight against us, clawing at our clothes and hair with wicked fingers.

We reached a hollow, and a cave mouth that led beneath the mountain. I looked at George as we paused on the threshold.

‘You knew, didn’t you,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘I knew that something wasn’t right, but I didn’t realise the extent of it.’

‘Because you never wanted a world like that,’ I said, ‘you never believed in it as deeply as I did.’

‘That makes sense.’

‘They built it all from my mind, my dreams,’ I realised. ‘This whole world is of my making.’

A cry came from deep inside the cave. We went in, turning on our flashlights. The jagged stone walls leapt about as the beams shook in our hands. The boatman came behind us, and I wished I could have driven him away, but I knew myself to be powerless. Powerless to stop him, and powerless to stop whatever was happening to the grays inside the cave.

‘You can’t blame us,’ he said. ‘It is our nature.’

‘Can’t I?’ I said bitterly.

‘Can you take responsibility for the things you have done?’ he asked.

The question hung unanswered as we reached a cavern. The beams of our torch bounced off a group of people huddled there. Some I could see were the grays. The others were denizens of the false city. They wore their human forms. Or, I suppose I should say, I saw them as human. Why did the illusion persist? Was I so delusional that even now, knowing the truth, I chose to cling on to the dream?

They appeared to be sitting around a table taking tea. One of the grays, who I called William, was pouring from a teapot. Two of the females, Jane and Margaret, were playing cards. Only Jack was missing.

‘What is this?’ I demanded, turning to face the boatman.

‘You’re not seeing what you’re seeing,’ he said, his face concealed by shadow. ‘Your mind has invented a better alternative.’

‘Am I going mad?’

‘No madder than before,’ he said.

I turned back quickly and, for a split second, I glimpsed a different scene. Five dark, writhing, drooling creatures rose from the shadows. They reared over the bodies of the grays, who lay moaning on the floor. Blood was everywhere. Margaret’s limbs had been torn away. William was blinded, clutching his face. The creature rising above Jane licked her face with its long black tongue. She screamed, reaching her pale hand out to me.

Then it was gone, and the tearoom scene returned. They were sitting around the table, laughing and eating cake. I put a hand over my mouth but could not stop myself vomiting.

‘You will let us go.’ I heard the voice above the sound of my retching, small but firm. I turned. George was facing the boatman, her fists clenched at her sides. ‘You will let us go,’ she said.

‘I think it’s too late for that,’ he replied. ‘We’ve had a taste of you, and we’ve been hungry for so long.’

‘You can’t do this,’ she said. ‘It’s wrong.’

‘Is it?’

‘It’s inhumane.’

He laughed. ‘Of course it is.’ His arm shot out, impossibly fast, and grasped her wrist. He pulled her towards him. She did not cry out, and I marvelled at her bravery.

‘Wait,’ I yelled. ‘Wait.’

He paused, his face close to George’s neck.

‘Let us go, and I’ll give you something that will mean you’ll never go hungry again.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You said that last time you fed, you destroyed everything. Every living thing.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You know that the grays are synthetic,’ I said. ‘You know that they were made.’

I saw the glimmer of understanding come to his eyes. He paused in his appraisal of George’s flesh.

‘You have this technology here, with you?’

‘I do.’

‘You will show us how it works?’

I paused. George was staring at me with horror in her eyes. Even after all we had seen that night, it was this look that terrified me the most. And yet I went on.

‘I will,’ I said.

‘Captain, no,’ George breathed. ‘You can’t do this.’

‘I have no choice, George.’

‘My people,’ she said. ‘They will torture my people forever.’

‘We have to get out of here now, George. Who knows what will happen in the future? All I know is what I can do right now. And this is it.’

Even as I said the words I started to believe them, although I felt sick in every part of my body as I did.

‘Show me this device,’ the boatman said, ignoring our debate.

‘Let them go first,’ I said, gesturing to the grays at the table.

He shook his head. ‘Not them,’ he said. ‘I can’t take them away from the others now, it’s too late. They’ve had a taste of their blood. They’ve gone too far into the darkness. They can’t return. But you two may go, if you show me how to use the device.’

I looked back at the tearoom. Just a flicker in the veneer, and I felt the darkness reaching out to me again.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered to them. ‘I’m sorry.’

The boatman took us out of the cave and we returned to the campsite. I had to restrain George to prevent her trying to save the others. I couldn’t lose her too. She railed against me, kicked and spat, but the further from the cave we went the less she struggled. By the time we reached the shuttle, she allowed me to push her along, staring at me like a sullen child. 

Inside the shuttle I disconnected the printing device from the main drive and unfolded its solar panels. It would continue to function indefinitely as long as it was exposed to solar energy, a failsafe designed to ensure its continued functionality even if the shuttle were to lose power.

I showed the boatman how to load the canister of raw material into the chute and programme the printer.

‘These won’t last forever,’ I told him, packing the canisters into their storage. ‘But you can load any organic matter into it and it’ll still produce… something.’

The printer was a remarkably simple piece of technology, designed to be used even by the lowest-grade engineers. After a few minutes’ study, he seemed satisfied.

‘Right, take it then,’ I said. ‘Get off my ship.’

‘Thank you for your generosity,’ he said, bowing slightly. ‘You have ensured the continued survival of my people.’

I tasted the bile in my mouth as he smiled. Then, pushing the printer ahead of him, he disembarked the shuttle.

As soon as he was gone I sealed the hatches and began take-off prep. Our campsite, most of our equipment and samples, were abandoned outside. It didn’t matter. Devorandum would be blacklisted. I would make sure no-one else ever set foot on it again.

I fired the engines, and we waited as the shuttle shook and shook, readying itself to leave the ground. Then we were gone, breaking out of the atmosphere, and the wide, welcoming darkness of space lay before us.

Now, George sits beside me in the co-pilot’s chair. She is crying. I can’t look at her. I don’t know if she’ll ever forgive me for what I have done.

But she’s lucky, in a way. Without the printer I wasn’t able to follow the recycling protocol before leaving. It’s a long journey back to earth, and I was meant to make it alone. We can ration our food and water, I think, but I don’t know about the air. One of us may have to make a sacrifice, but I don’t know anymore which of us it should be.