Further: Beyond the Threshold Read online

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2012 by MonkeyBrain, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Image © Algol, 2012. Used under license from Shutterstock.com

  Image © Marcel Clemens, 2012. Used under license from Shutterstock.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781612182438

  ISBN-10: 1612182437

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Part Three

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  When I woke up, surrounded by talking dog-people, it was clear we’d strayed pretty far from the mission parameters.

  The rest of the crew had gone down a few weeks out from Earth, when Wayfarer One passed Neptune’s orbit, but I’d opted to stay awake almost until we reached the sun’s heliopause. As I arranged myself in the narrow sleeper coffin, the hibernation gasses gradually slowing my body’s processes to a near halt, I closed my eyes, knowing that when I opened them, four decades and 4.3 light-years later, it would be to look at a sight no humans before us had ever seen.

  Wayfarer One’s automated systems were programmed to wake us a few weeks out from Alpha Centauri B as the engines fired and the ship began to decelerate. According to the mission specs, by the time the ship’s velocity slowed to zero we would be within visual range of our destination, a tiny Earth-like planet known only by a registry number that might one day be a new home for humanity. I was born a century after an asteroid toppled the most powerful nation on Earth, and knew all too well how vulnerable our planet was to another such disaster. A larger strike could well mean the extinction of life as we knew it. Establishing a toehold on another world would only serve to increase humanity’s chances of surviving into the distant future, but first we had to find a world capable of supporting life.

  That was the mission my colleagues and I had accepted. We knew it would mean sacrificing anything like a normal life, as our friends and relatives would age and die back on Earth while we traveled between the stars, but it was a sacrifice we were willing to make. We would be carrying life into lifeless space, the first humans to reach another star.

  It came as something of a surprise, then, when I opened my eyes and looked up to see a trio of space suit–wearing dogs standing over me, their tongues hanging out as they barked enthusiastically.

  More surprising still, they seemed to be barking at me in English…

  PART ONE

  ONE

  My father was always a fan of science fiction books and movies, a taste no doubt inherited from my grandfather, so when I was growing up I was exposed to a lot of it as a matter of course. Whenever a new edition of one of his favorite movies was released, Dad would insist that my brother and I drop whatever we were doing and join him in the family room. Watching the restored cut of Star Wars or a new scan of Forbidden Planet was to him a kind of communal activity that brought the family together. My mother, usually at the lab and occupied with her research, was naturally exempt from attending, but no excuse was sufficient to get my brother or me off the hook. It was only later that I realized that, when he himself had been growing up, watching these sorts of movies had been nearly the only common ground my father and his own father had shared, and in his own way he was trying to ensure a sort of continuity with his own sons, cementing our relationship with him. As a callow kid, though, I’d only known that my father was forever interrupting me when I’d rather be reading my Earth Force Z manga or watching the latest episode of The Adventures of Space Man, so while I myself had inherited a taste for the fantastic visions of science fiction, I resented the obligation.

  One of the movies we watched again and again was Planet of the Apes. I loved it when I was young, and must have enjoyed it a dozen times before my brother finally ruined it for me. LJ, who was four years younger than me, couldn’t have been much older than seven or eight when he paused the playback just at the moment when Charlton Heston’s character, Taylor, wounded and incapable of speech, scratches out a message in the sand to his ape captors—“I CAN WRITE”—quickly erased by the manipulative Dr. Zaius, played by Maurice Evans.

  LJ turned to us, Dad and me, and said, “Wait, why does he think they could read English?” While I was still chewing that over, he quickly added, “And why are they speaking English?”

  My father chuckled and said something about suspension of disbelief, but for me, the flaw was unforgivable. My love for Planet of the Apes had died. But I think
I heaped more scorn upon myself for not realizing the obvious flaw in the plot before my younger brother pointed it out. I felt like I’d been duped, misled.

  When I opened my eyes and heard the barking voices of the space-suited dog-men standing over me, it was with considerable suspicion that I realized that they were speaking English. Or a rough approximation of English.

  “It is not in agony to dry,” the first dog-man said, sounding like an overexcited terrier. “It spreads out, and if to be living continuously, it is your doubling it wins, and if in long time but it is damaged, the side type chart.”

  I tried to swallow, hoping to respond, but my muscles seemed to have lost the trick of it, and a diffuse pain radiated out from my neck, coursing down my chest and up over my chin.

  The second dog-man shook his head, something resembling a sad expression on his snout, and said, “Your ship first crooked it did not revive.”

  Well, perhaps not even a rough approximation of English, after all. But they were recognizable English words, for all of that, which simply shouldn’t have been issuing from any alien mouth, however familiarly dog shaped.

  The third dog-man drew near and lifted a small object over my head, a silvery lozenge with irregular protrusions from top and bottom.

  “It sleeps go,” it barked gently.

  My eyelids grew too heavy to keep open, and I slipped away into blackness.

  TWO

  When I woke, I felt like one enormous, dull ache. My eyes still shut, I tried to lift my arms, but my muscles refused to cooperate.

  I groaned, the sound of it surprising in my ears.

  “The sleep that spreads out it awakes,” barked a gentle voice at my side.

  I opened my eyes and looked up into the grinning muzzle of one of the dog-men. The ceiling and wall beyond its head was a smooth, unbroken curve of white, studded here and there with strangely shaped protuberances. It was not a view I recognized from Wayfarer One. Had I been moved since last I woke, or had I been too groggy before to realize where I was?

  “Wh-where…?” I managed, just barely.

  The dog-man paused for a moment, head cocked slightly to one side as though listening to a sound I couldn’t hear.

  “In mining boat,” it yapped, at length. “Of the Pethesilean Mining Consortium.”

  “Alien…?” I croaked.

  The dog-man paused, again cocking his head to the side.

  “No. Me it is commander. Executive.”

  I struggled to lift my head, but couldn’t. It felt as though I were pinned down by multiple gravities, as though in a ship at high acceleration, but the dog-man stood casually upright, suggesting the problem was instead with me.

  “Can’t…move…” I croaked.

  Again the pause, the cocked head, and the dog-man answered. “It spread out and it degenerated the inside long sleep. Remainder and to spread out and recuperate.”

  I drew a ragged breath, blinking slowly, drained by the exertion of simply filling my lungs.

  “How…long…sleep?”

  The dog-man listened to the silent voice and nodded. “It is year T8975.” Then it reached out and patted my head, gently, as though soothing an ailing pet. Its other paw held the silver lozenge device over my eyes, and the dog-man added, “It sleeps go.”

  I was asleep before I could groan another syllable.

  My sleep was dreamless and dark. When next I woke, the ache I’d felt before had subsided somewhat, now concentrated mostly in my joints—knees, elbows, and wrists, particularly.

  I lay for a moment in red-lidded darkness, listening close. I could hear soft footsteps some distance to my right, the sound echoing faintly off of a wall nearer to my left. Less than a meter from where I lay, I could hear the rhythm of regular, calm breathing, sounding for all the world like a content puppy at rest.

  I tried to lift up on my elbows and surprised myself when I levered into an upright position. Startled, I opened my eyes in a panic, my hands reflexively shooting out to either side to steady me. My muscles seemed to have regained their strength as I slept, and it now felt as if a gravity one-third that of Earth’s was pulling on me. Like that of a large moon or a ship under acceleration.

  My head swam as my insides struggled to realign themselves. I hadn’t felt so disoriented since the time on Ceres when Laurentien had insisted I share what she euphemistically called a “peace pipe” to seal our negotiations, but the figure advancing on me now shared little in common with the Dutch queen, so there was no chance this experience would end anything like the same. The dog-man was saying something, speaking a strange, guttural language of growls and barks, and though I had no clue as to his meaning, his agitated manner was plain enough.

  “Stay back…” I said, raising my hands in front of me in a defensive posture. But they weren’t my hands, were they?

  I flexed, and the fingers moved, slow and tentative. The joints were thick, the fingers gnarled, the backs of the hands covered in liver spots.

  These weren’t mine. These were the arthritic hands of an old man.

  The dog-man was within arm’s reach now, brandishing the silver lozenge like a weapon. It let out another string of barks and growls, but then paused, seeming to remember something, and in a gentler voice, yapped, “Sleep.”

  I felt a faint tickle, somewhere in the back of my mind, and my eyes closed on the world once again.

  THREE

  Another world greeted my eyes when next I woke.

  I was in a large room under an enormous, domed ceiling. Lights floated high overhead, like miniature stars, and what appeared to be chairs of various sizes and configurations were scattered irregularly around the reflective floor, surrounding the low table upon which I lay. I sat up, more carefully this time, and felt the reassuring pull of an Earth-standard gravity on my limbs.

  I was dressed in some sort of loose-fitting white robe, like a surgical gown, with bare arms and legs. I looked down and saw that the old-man hands were affixed to the ends of equally ancient arms, thin and roped with veins, and that the legs and feet were no better.

  A human body in a coffin sleeper ages, but too slowly to be noticeable. On the four-decade journey to Alpha Centauri B, the boffins back in Vienna had estimated that our bodies would experience something like a few minutes of subjective time. I’d been thirty-one years old when I climbed into the sleeper. How long had I been under to have aged so much?

  I climbed to my feet, gingerly, the mirror-sheen surface of the floor surprisingly warm against my soles. I held the table’s edge to steady myself, but while my knees creaked and complained, they held my weight, and I remained standing.

  There was a sound from behind me, at once familiar and alien—someone clearing their throat to get my attention.

  I turned, not sure what to expect, here on the planet of the dog-men.

  It was not a dog, and it was not a man. It was the tallest woman I’d ever seen, regarding me coolly.

  She stood over two meters tall, dressed in formfitting black, her calves and feet as bare as her forearms and hands. Her skin was alabaster white, her hair a dark shade of blue, and the perfect symmetry of her features was marred only by the sapphire-colored eye patch that covered her left eye.

  I straightened, hearing things pop and groan in my spine as I did, and lifted my chin.

  “Who are you?” I said, louder than I’d intended.

  The woman answered with a string of syllables, all liquid vowels and fricatives, and paused as though expecting me to answer.

  “I…I don’t understand,” I said.

  The woman shook her head dramatically, a displeased expression spilling across her face. She waved a long-fingered hand toward the table.

  She spoke again, more strange sounds, but a split second after she’d begun I heard her voice issuing from the table upon which I leaned, this time using more familiar words.

  “The crew of my mining ship reports that they indulged you and instructed their interlinks to feed them words and phrase
s in your antique tongue—or at least as many as their ship’s intelligence had in its stores—out of contact with the infostructure, but I’ve no patience for such foolishness.”

  I gaped. Flawless and with a flat accent, it was the voice of the woman speaking English.

  “I am Chief Executive Zel i’Cirea, head of the Pethesilean Mining Consortium,” came the voice echoing from the table as the woman continued to speak her strange tongue. “Now, it is my turn to ask a question. Who are you?”

  I bit back the questions that jostled behind my teeth and answered.

  “Captain Ramachandra Jason Stone, UNSA, commander of Wayfarer One—”

  The woman waved her hand impatiently, cutting me off.

  “Yes, yes, I know who you’re meant to be, but who or what are you, really?” She narrowed her eye and approached the table. She leaned against it casually, careful to keep distance between us, just beyond arm’s reach. “You read as fully biological. Were you fabricated? Or grown somewhere? Who sent you?”

  I shook my head. “Look, I don’t know where…or when…I am, but the one thing I’m sure of—”

  The woman slammed a fist onto the tabletop. Flawless teeth bared, she shouted, “Who are you?”

  “He’s R. J. Stone, of course,” sounded a new voice from the table, “returned to us after all these millennia.”

  An undercurrent beneath the words, I could hear the untranslated words echoing somewhere in the room. The woman fumed as I glanced around, seeking out the source of the sound.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. First dog-men, then one-eyed Amazons, and now a meter-tall chimpanzee in a smoking jacket, cravat, and pin-striped trousers, strolling casually toward us.

  The chimpanzee spoke again, the sounds issuing from him unfamiliar, the words from the table clear and refined English. The corners of the chimpanzee’s mouth rose in a rough approximation of a smile.

  “Don’t you realize, Zel? He’s the solution to all our problems.”

  FOUR

  “Remarkable,” the voice of the chimpanzee echoed from the table, “just remarkable.”

  The chimpanzee clapped his large, hairy hands together, approaching with a rolling, side-to-side gait.