Angler Fish

by Ian Reeve

The city was more beautiful than anything I had ever imagined.

Gleaming spires of crystal, a thousand shades of glittering green, reached up to the sky. Between them, the streets didn't run straight, but had a very slight curve. Just enough to keep them from disappearing to vanishing points in the distance. Instead, every line of sight ended with a wall of buildings or a line of trees, or one of the abstract works of art that stood at the centre of every junction. Nothing was repeated. Every building was a different shape, a different arrangement of beams, moldings, arches and pillars so that you could roam for hours and never see the same scene twice. The Faerons had valued originality, it seemed, although it was impossible to know for sure as the city was empty, just like every other city on the planet. The people who had created it had disappeared.

Our ship was the first to land on the planet for over a million years. Not just the first human ship, but the first ship from any other world in the Galaxy. Until recently, the planet had been surrounded by an impenetrable energy barrier. The peace loving Faerons, the stories said, had never wanted anything to do with the rest of the universe. Their first exploration vessels, sent out in the youth of their race, had seen only violence and warfare between the other races of the Galaxy, and they had recoiled from it. They had returned to their world, and as soon as their technology had reached the necessary level they had shut themselves off from the rest of the universe forever.

The force barrier had been perfect. Nothing had been able to get through it. Would-be invading armies had tried to breach it, and had failed. Even the fearsome weapons of the Gral-Things had made no impact on it. Pirates and peaceful traders alike had been stopped dead by the solid wall of force and been forced to turn around and go home. No-one even knew what a Faeron looked like, as their first exploration ships had been unmanned and the energy field scattered any light that tried to go through it. Looking up, I saw a sky that was nothing but a wall of white, like a brightly overcast day, as the light from Fearon's sun was spread evenly from horizon to horizon, and looking down from orbit the planet had been a featureless expanse of blue.

All that was known of the Faerons came from those very rare individuals who had managed to touch their minds across the light years during deep, meditative trances. Only the wisest, most enlightened people had ever managed to make contact in this way, but they all reported that the Fearons had created a perfect world for themselves. A world without conflict or suffering. A world in which everyone had lived in comfort and plenty in which they created art and poetry and contemplated the mysteries of existence. A world in which everyone had lived in joy, love and delight and in which no-one had needed to be afraid or feel alone. A world without anger or hatred or jealousy. A world in which no-one could even imagine pain or fear, in which the concepts didn't even exist. A true utopia, the like of which every other race had dreamed of creating but with only partial or temporary success.

The Faerons had succeeded, though. And not just a temporary success but one that had lasted for a million years. The other races of the Galaxy, even the Eternals and the Ancients, even the Firstborn Themselves, were speechless with admiration and envy. When we, the people of Earth, had heard of them, and learned that their world was only a couple of dozen light years away, we hadn't been able to resist the temptation to go see for ourselves.

Our ship had been given orders to go look, therefore, and here we were. The first thing we discovered when we arrived was that the fabled energy barrier was beginning to fail. We'd pushed our ship against it, and to our surprise and delight we'd managed to break through. When we landed, we saw why. The Faerons were gone, and the machines they'd left behind were beginning to fail from neglect.

"They must have ascended," said Brian Hawkeswell, another security guard like myself. Lieutenant Alan Brent, the man we were guarding, was standing a short distance away, staring up at a line of birdlike flying creatures perched on top of a nearby building. He was being observed in turn by a pair of what we'd come to call Chimps; shaggy bipedal animals about the size of a man. We kept our hands near our weapons, but the creatures seemed friendly, and a moment later they scampered away, barking to each other with voices that sounded almost like laughter.

"They evolved into pure energy or something," Brian continued. "Ascended to a higher plane of existence. Left all their machines behind for us to find. It's ours now. Imagine what we'll be able to learn from it."

Something in the tone of his voice made me think he wasn't happy with the idea, although I had no idea why that might be. He should have been overjoyed. It was a fantastic prospect, after all. An entire planet full of technology for beyond anything possessed by mankind. It was a goldmine, a treasure beyond price, so what was bothering him?

I thought I knew. "As soon as the rest of the Galaxy finds out, they'll all be here to plunder the spoils," I told him. "The Errati. The Pavonians. We won't be able to keep this world. They'll take it from us, and with their superior technology we won't be able to stop them."

Brian nodded, but I got the impression that I'd missed the mark. "All the more reason to grab what we can, while we can," he said, though. "Imagine if we can figure out their energy shield technology. The kind of tech that would normally be thousands of years out of our reach."

He was talking to keep himself from thinking about something else. I was suddenly certain of it. "You okay?" I asked him.

"'Course I am," he replied, a little sharply. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Our ships are soon going to have shields," I said. "That's good, isn't it?"

He nodded, but without enthusiasm. "And the rest," he said. "The food machines. The machines that keep the buildings in perfect condition. The automatic repair systems."

"Automatic repair systems?" I said.

"This city's been abandoned for a long time," Brian told me.

"We don't know that. They might have Ascended yesterday, if that's what happened."

"Of course that's what happened!" Brian snapped at me. Then he looked down and rubbed his eyes. "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm just..."

"What's on your mind, mate?" I asked. "What's eating you?"

"Haven't you figured it out yet?"

"Figured out what?"

"That Kilvian mystic told us that no-one's been able to make telepathic contact with a Fearon for hundreds of thousands of years. That's how long they've been gone."

"Maybe they just got fed up talking to less spiritually evolved races," I suggested. "They're were hoping to inspire others to achieve the same level of enlightenment. When they failed, they gave up."

"Maybe," Brian conceded reluctantly. "Maybe that's what happened. I just keep thinking about the Chimps, though."

"What about them?" I asked.

We called them Chimps because, we assumed, they were related to the Faerons, in the same way that Chimps are related to Humans. They wandered the streets in groups of three or four and went in and out of doorways as if they owned the place. When we'd first arrived we'd thought they were Faerons. The linguistics experts had spent days trying to communicate with them, getting only grunts and their strange, laughter-sounding barks in reply. Finally they'd taken one into the ship and scanned its brain, finding it to be far too simple to support a civilised mind. They were just animals, they'd concluded, but their discovery was exciting none the less, as it gave us the first hint of what the Faerons had actually looked like. Bipedal. Almost human looking, with hands that were almost like ours.

"Look at them," Brian repeated. "The way they're so at home in the city. The doors are just the right size and shape. The doorhandles are just right for their hands."

I nodded. "They evolved to fit the city," I said. "You're right. They've had the free run of the place for a long time."

He stared at me for a long moment, but then he turned away. "Yeah," he said. It sounded as if he desperately wanted it to be true. "The Faerons Ascended, or whatever, and left their cities behind. The Chimps moved in and found a paradise. Food machines to provide them with nourishment. Defensive systems to keep out predators, diseases and parasites. They stayed, and over a hundred thousand years they evolved to fit. It's the only explanation. The only explanation."

He walked away from me, staring morosely at the beautiful, perfectly preserve buildings on either side of us. I sighed and followed after him. Whatever's on his mind, he'll tell me what it is when he's ready, I thought. Until then, I wouldn't press him. Our Lieutenant was heading towards one of the statues that dotted the city at intervals. We both went with him, in case the energy fences were also failing and a predator had managed to get in. In the meantime, my mind wandered.

What must it have been like, I thought, to live in a perfect utopia? Your every need catered for by automatic machinery. It must have been wonderful, but then I found myself thinking about what it had done to the Chimps. They had once been predators. Pretty fearsome ones. That was clear from their anatomy, but over many generations they had lost most of their muscle mass, along witn their strong teeth and long claws. The good life had made them grow soft. It would be interesting to compare them with their cousins still living in the wild, I thought. If there were any.

I wondered if it had weakened the Faerons as well. Had they grown more slender and graceful, less physically robust, without the need to do any manual labour? And what about their mental faculties? Had their minds also suffered over thousands of generations without the need to plot and scheme and solve problems?

I hesitated as a nagging thought began to creep into my head. How far might the process have gone? Over a million years, their slow downward spiral might have been too slow to notice. With machines that never needed to be serviced, repaired or replaced, they might have forgotten how they worked. Maybe they'd lost the ability to understand how they worked. Maybe the fact hadn't bothered them. Why not just go on living in peace and tranquility while the machines kept on humming flawlessly around them, becoming more alien and incomprehensible with each passing generation? Was that the thought that was troubling Brian? Had he reached that conclusion with his first sight of the Chimps? That the Faerons had kept degenerating more and more, until...

No, I told myself firmly. The universe couldn't be so cruel. The Faerons had earned their utopia. They'd earned the right to be able to enjoy it to the full, without paying such an awful price. And yet, the image of angler fish kept pushing its way into my head. The male angler fish, my brain insisted on telling me, fused with the body of the female. Their circulatory systems connected, allowing the male to receive food from the bloodstream of the female. And then, with all its needs provided, the male degenerated, its organs wasting away until all that was left was the gonads, providing sperm for the female. Even the brain was lost, once it was no longer needed...

I shook my head in horror, and Brian turned to face me. One look at my face was all it took. He gave a sad smile, turned away from me again and walked on.

I still wasn't ready to believe it, though. The idea that the creators of this wonderful city had devolved to become the shuffling creatures that now filled it... It was unthinkable! All their art and culture, their equivalents of Bach and Beethoven and Shakespeare. All gone forever? Lost as if it had never existed....

No, it couldn't be true. The Faerons had Ascended, as Brian insisted. They were even now enjoying a life beyond our ability to imagine in some higher dimension. The fact that no such higher dimension was known to exist didn't matter. Their science had been far beyond ours, and they might have discovered realms of existence that were still unknown to us. I had to believe that, because the alternative was unthinkable.

We'd fallen too far behind the Lieutenant, and we hurried to catch up. The officer was also watching the Chimps, and there was an unhappy look on his face as if he was also harbouring troubling thoughts. Dammit, had everyone on the ship realised the truth before me?

If the Chimps were devolved creatures, there were tests that could be done to prove it. The scientists had already taken blood and tissue samples, and were talking about doing behavioural tests to measure their intelligence. Maybe they would find that the creatures had never been more than they were now, that they couldn't be what was left of the Faerons. I hoped so. I wanted to believe that it was possible to create a lasting utopia, because then it was something we might hope to achieve one day. It would give us, as a species, as a civilisation, something to aim for.

But if it wasn't, then what was the point? What were we trying to accomplish? If my horrible suspicions about the Faerons was right, then where did that leave us?

I walked on, through the deserted streets of the city. From somewhere I could hear the barking laughter of a pair of Chimps. Happy, contented creatures without a care in the world. Unable to understand that the city they were totally dependent on was dying, that they would soon be left at the mercy of a cruel, unforgiving universe that they no longer had the ability to deal with. Were they laughing? Or were they mocking us? Mocking all our dreams of making a better life, free from pain and fear and suffering? Mocking the very idea that such a thing was possible.

I tore my thoughts away from the subject and tried to think of something else. Anything. That pretty redheaded nurse had broken up with the Chief Engineer, I remembered. I wondered whether I'd have any luck asking her out.