An ice planet.
Its equatorial region held a modest spaceport — the Port — where a lone man had arrived.
Captain Farrow, the port’s commanding officer, met him in the single small lobby. The man gave a slight bow, then swept his eyes around the room — nothing but iron benches — and asked,
“No immigration gate? No baggage scanning system?”
“None,” the captain replied. “Few people ever want to come to this planet. In my ten years here, you’re the first.”
The man gave a small shrug.
“I didn’t want to come, either.”
He said it with a sad smile.
“But I have to know. If I don’t, I can’t move forward. I seem to have been cursed that way.”
“I see.”
Farrow didn’t understand, but he held his questions back. People have their own lives. It wasn’t his place to pry. That was Farrow’s way.
“Well then. I’ll pray that your journey proves worthwhile.”
He led the man to a one-person ice-terrain buggy parked outside.
“Please, go ahead. The tires are specialized, but otherwise it drives like any regular buggy.”
The man got in.
“The navigation will guide you to your destination. When you arrive, hold this card to the reader to unlock the door.”
Farrow pressed a small card into his hand.
“Visitor Card.”
The man read the words aloud. Then, with a wry smile:
“Hah. Visitor. I suppose that’s right. Though perhaps it’s more accurate to say I’m a Visitor on this planet, too.”
Farrow didn’t understand what he was fixated on. He asked nothing.
“Take care.”
At those words, the man pressed hard on the accelerator.
He drove north, alone. About one kilomead.
This planet had no color.
The sky was blanketed in thick gray cloud with no break anywhere. The ground was the same — dense, murky gray ice and snow, endless in every direction. Even in summer the temperature barely climbed to forty below zero. In winter it dropped to minus one hundred and thirty. Wind hardly blew, which meant the landscape never changed.
No sound, either.
Driving through that silent monochrome world, the man began to feel as though time itself were nothing more than a human misunderstanding……
Then, abruptly, the navigation spoke.
“You have arrived at your destination.”
At the same moment, a jet-black cube — two meads by two meads — rose from beneath the ice. The man stepped off the buggy and held the card toward it.
The front door slid silently open.
Inside: no control panel. No floor indicator. No interior light. No emergency button. Only silver walls. But this had to be the elevator.
He stepped in.
The door closed immediately.
The room went completely dark. In that darkness, his body felt momentarily weightless. Descending fast, he guessed. How many meads down? After about ten seconds, the elevator stopped.
The door opened.
Beyond it was his destination.
A prison cell.
Inside — one old woman.
Heavy, old-fashioned chains of dull iron, around both wrists and both ankles. Chained to the wall, she sat flat on the silver floor. She must have sensed the elevator door opening. Yet she didn’t look up.
The man tried to step toward her, but a panel of hardened transparent glass blocked the doorway. He couldn’t leave the elevator.
“Mama.”
He called to her.
Before she could answer, a computerized voice filled the underground space.
“Visiting time is five minutes.”
“Hold on. I traveled an unimaginable distance to hear what she has to say. Five minutes won’t cut it.”
The computer repeated, unchanged.
“Visiting time is five minutes.”
The man turned back to the old woman.
“Mama! It’s me! You know who I am, don’t you? Come on — look at me.”
The old woman still wouldn’t look up. Instead, she let out a low, quiet laugh.
“Don’t go calling me Mama so easily. I had plenty of daughters, but not a single son. Men — they strut around like they own the place, and when it actually matters, they’re completely useless.”
The man slammed his palm against the hardened glass.
“Mama! I want the truth! That’s all I’m asking. The truth about her!”
“And what do I get in return?”
“In return?”
“Of course. You think I’m going to dredge up those memories for nothing? Those god-awful times?”
She sneezed once. Then, with visible effort, she straightened up and leaned her back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling.
“I make it a point to forget anything not worth remembering. These days, there are only three women I still carry with me.
One was a woman I tried to kill.
One was a woman who tried to kill me.
One was both.
One was Pure.
One was a Visitor.
One was both.
All three held a different kind of justice in their hearts. And in that moment, the fate of the world rested in the hands of those three women.”
With that, the old woman finally looked at the man’s face.
“So. Which woman’s truth is it you’re after?”
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