“He asked—’are you a colonizer’s child?’“ Adam said, and a mark of concentration creased the flesh between his eyes; Cameron noted the gesture and rapidly processed its significance.
Could it be possible? Could it be believed? The Enorian leader had mistakenly thought Selerael was an Enorian, or a colonizer that had to have been a part of the Enorian civilization, for the Enorian leader had no memories of any time before the Great Collapse! What did it all mean, though? Had it just been a misunderstanding? Of course, a mistake like this, if mistake it were, was bound to distress Adam.
“What’s a colonizer?” Cameron demanded, his voice rising.
Adam stopped and turned back around, wearing an expression that Cameron had never seen before. Adam’s face was unsettled, unhappy, and his eyes were haunted, and for the first time, Cameron had an answer to his question: Adam was not infallible. And if he kept the secrets of human thought to himself, it was for good reason. Any lesser man would not have been able to fight back the overwhelming force of all of the self-wrought evil that plagued the human race: for Adam carried the thoughts of all men with him, good and evil. Unbelievable as it was, Cameron now saw that Adam’s life was less blessed than Cameron had ever before imagined. And for all that Adam did know, he would never have the knowledge he craved the most. Everything about his own existence was and would remain a mystery to him.
“That’s what my mother wanted to know.” Adam said, evading the whole truth once more, and then once again his face was unreadable.
* * * * *
Two days later, Selesta drew into an orbit over the fourth planet of the nearby white star system. Cameron insisted on checking on whether or not any other Enorian escape vessels had made it to the planet, for Selerael said she had “read” that the grey-skinned Enorian people had come from an Enorian colony planet called Lexcar before their memories faded away.
The scout team, Cameron among them, descended to the fourth planet, a living green world with one giant continent and vast oceans. Despite Cameron’s advanced age, Adam often marveled at the tall, gangly man’s enthusiasm for terrestrial exploration, but he supposed Cameron had inherited a double dose of intrepidness from his grandmother, Dr. Knightwood and grandfather, Dr. Sergei Zhdanov.
Adam had taken the little boy Cameron on his first venture more than ninety years ago; after that first venture, the boy Cameron had always refused to be left behind. He had also followed his childhood hero Adam all over the ship for several years. As a scientist, Cameron had later worked with Adam in compiling new data on several terrestrial forays, including trips to the planets Kamia, Sakar, and Goeur. Cameron Zhdanov had even made Adam godfather to his children. But while Cameron had grown old, Adam still appeared to be a young man; to Cameron’s absolute, reasoning mind, this “miracle” daily reminded him that there was neither a finite limit to knowledge nor to the ability and potential of the human race.
“Heading in,” the pilot said.
The air shuttle landed near a rich field of dark green foliage, the edge of a great plateau covered in plant life. The team found no advanced intelligent species, but scans from the atmosphere had shown an abundance of edible vegetation and animal forms, so they boarded another shuttle to slowly comb through the environment. The ground shuttle bounced over hilly terrain, hugging the surface with gripping belts as the team moved farther from the clearing where the air shuttle had landed and towards the edge of the great green fields where they hoped to take samples.
The green fields looming closer at last stretched wide before them, filling the view ahead. The scientists disembarked at that point and approached their destination on foot. They stepped down into the plateau and into the green fields, where various plants grew from ankle to chest height. After a moment, one of the former Goeur slaves exclaimed excitedly.
“Milacu! Milacu!” she cried, capturing Cameron’s attention with her people’s word for “discovery”.
The aged woman had a mother-of-pearl complexion, limpid amethyst orbs that passed for eyes, and feathery hair that folded away from her face in perfect snow-colored wings, hair that had once been a dark silver-black, like starlight on midnight seas. She was known to possess an abundance of good common sense and a sharp sense of perception; though she rarely instigated conversation, her answers were always thorough and well-thought.
“What was this all about?’ Cameron wondered.
At the moment, the woman called to another Goeur technician, an amber-skinned man even older than Cameron and they conferred; then the amber-skinned man nodded furiously, agreeing with her as they both surveyed some weed she held flat on her palm, a weed that she had uprooted from the soil.
“Now what are they going on about?” Cameron asked in mock irritation. Beside him, Selerael and Adam were the only creatures not wearing helmets with their uniforms to protect them from any possible contamination, nor were they carrying atmosphere packs to help them to breathe.
Meanwhile the Goeur woman Hil-ku-nay approached Selerael and held out the small plant she had pulled from the ground. It had a thick, long white root that struck Cameron as a cross between an Earth carrot and turnip, with strange “eyes” like a potato. The amber-skinned man Korveg followed, and the three of them began talking and gesturing about the fields. Cameron gave in to curiosity and approached them.
“What is that?” He asked, pointing to the plant with the white tap root.
“It’s an urbin root,” Hil-ku-nay replied. “Very popular on Goeur, but rare now,” she added. “Korveg says there are mika plants here, too, and firan all over the place. I don’t know where we are, but I do know these plants came from different territories of the Goeur Empire. Why they’re growing here I can’t imagine,” Hil-ku-nay shook her head.
“So in essence what you’re saying is this planet must be—some kind of giant greenhouse?” Cameron laughed nervously, running an eye over the fields. “Then who put it here, and why haven’t they come back to harvest all of this?” he motioned to the great expanse that stretched to the horizon.
“Are you complaining, Cameron?” Adam laughed heartily, an intelligent, complete laugh. Did he know that his mere laughter had the power to calm and at times to provoke those around him, that his friend Cameron was conscious of the fact that the sound was unattainable in himself?
“Still don’t like to eat your vegetables, do you?” Adam threw out.
Cameron sighed.
* * * * *
“Selesta hasn’t responded to us, sir,” one of Enlil’s radar specialists announced from the far side of the Great Leader’s command center. Like a creature of stealth, the giant spaceship Enlil had approached the planet and pulled into a geosynchronous orbit almost on the other side of the planet from Selesta.
Good, Sargon thought, rising decisively from his command chair.
“Great Leader, scattered visuals have just detected a large group from Selesta on the planet below,” one of the bridge officers interrupted him. “They must have gone to the surface before we arrived.”
“Bring up the image,” Sargon shouted and waited impatiently for the holo-monitor to magnify the view of the planet below. An image of a green plateau filled the monitor, and Sargon was struck by a sudden desire to abandon the Enlil and descend to the planet. He shook off the feeling, then suddenly came to new life.
“Alessia!” he called, his face a glow of excitement. The field of his elite officers working on the Enlil’s bridge looked on, struck mute by the unprecedented change in their Great Leader.
For the past generation, he had kept much to himself, seeming remote and sullen even when he could be found. He had disappeared several times in the last hundred years, sometimes only for a tenday and once for two Orian years, sometimes within the ship, sometimes on a planetary surface. However, at the present, the Orian elite tore their eyes from the Great Leader, curious to see what was on the surface of this world that had evinced such an unimaginable reaction from him. They knew nothing of an “alessia”, but it had to be
something interesting.
Meanwhile Sargon narrowed blue eyes on the image and leaned forward. He was youthful in appearance, lean, and well-muscled like an animal, with pale ghostly grey skin. His face was handsome.
“No—is it?”
A group of blue-clad humanoids filled the screen, loading plants onto their shuttle; two of their number wore no helmets, a man with milk-white skin like sea foam and gold hair—clearly some kind of alien—and a Orian woman. One of their own? No! C—could it be? Alessia! It was her!
Zariqua Enassa, ice pounded through the Orians’ veins as the creature’s face turned into the monitor briefly. Suddenly, a tormented sound filled the room, and they stopped, wordless, not daring to interrupt the bizarre outpouring of emotion from their leader.
“Alessia?” Sargon demanded to know. “Will she face me again, after all of these years?”
We shall see.
Yes, I know it, father, I know it now. Sargon thought after a moment. I have let my love, my bitterness and hatred, destroy me—and I blamed it on her. I needed her love, her approval, father, always.
Before their very eyes, the Great Leader crumpled to his feet as though suddenly overcome by exhaustion or defeat. His legs splayed on the ground with one knee propped up at an angle, his arms reaching behind him, his palms flat to the ground in support. Then he buried his face in his hands, an elbow on his knee. He did not cry, no, not him. But that might almost have been preferable to the frenzied behavior of the Great Leader. His fingers dug like little spikes into his temples, drawing blood that miraculously cleared as the wounds in his face spontaneously healed.
The Orian crew hesitated to interrupt. Their Great Leader was not known to be kind to those who interrupted him or to those who bore bad news.
Sargon was helpless. He was utterly free, too. He was immortal, or very nearly so. He needed no material good in all of the universe to sustain him; he was dependent on nothing for his own survival, but that had made him apathetic. What was the challenge in something so easily conquered? He could even manipulate matter at will. Absolute power had left him no great purpose, no great ambition that would make sense to anyone who had not traveled a moment in his situation. There was but one thing he needed to preserve, to attain his self-worth; he needed the woman who had brought him to his present tormented condition to accept him, to adore him, yes, to be with him again. He needed the normal life he had wanted, that he would never have.
By the time the Great Leader recovered, the expression in his eyes turning from regret to anger and hatred, it was too late to send an Orian cruiser or fighter squadron. Selesta’s team had already loaded all of their supplies and returned to their ship.
“They’re still out there, aren’t they, the Orians?” Cameron said as he entered the bridge.
“Yes, I’m afraid they are,” Adam replied, turning around.
“What do you suppose they want with us?” Cameron sighed; there was no answer to this question in his own understanding of the universe.
“I wish I knew.” Adam agreed in the same tone of voice. The Enlil had been following the ship more closely than ever in the year since the team had left the planetary greenhouse.
“Sir, we’ve got a planet on radar.” Specialist Taylor, a dark-headed Earthling, interrupted.
“Where?” Adam asked, alert but not afraid.
“At the edge of the elliptical galaxy we’re heading towards.” One of the specialists answered.
Minutes passed. All was silence.
Then, as they passed the second planet from the yellow star, the bridge picked up the faint signal of a radio transmitter from the surface.
“What is it?” Cameron asked one of the Goeur technicians on the bridge.
“I don’t know,” he shook his head, his thick hair white like a cloud, though he was a young man; all Goeur natives had hair like his, which darkened to grey with age. “The second planet seems too hot for humans to survive very long.” Cameron’s eye wandered to the image of a crater-pocked world with little atmosphere, no surface water, and great active volcanoes. Cameron did not see how it would be possible for anything to exist on the world below them.
“Cameron, is it possible that there are lifeforms down there?”
“I suppose,” Cameron replied, a note of uncertainty in his voice. “Not likely, though.”
Then as the visuals relayed from the surface, the bridge crew stared at a great metallic dome on a rock-strewn plateau, connected to a large artificial crater by a network of thin white lanes.
“Looks like a mine of some kind,” Adam commented.
Cameron’s eye strayed from Adam back to the image. “Any life readings?”
“No,” specialist Taylor responded.
Cameron was about to head back to his laboratory when Adam’s expression caught his eye. “No, Adam,” he protested, sensing the man’s plan. “You’re not thinking of—”
“Going down there?” Adam laughed, this time a laugh of resolution. “You said it yourself, Cameron. We’ve been running low on all of our minerals and ores ever since the Goeur expansion.”
“What about the Enlil?” Cameron reminded him.
“She’s still back by that binary star system.” Derica updated, dismantling his argument.
“That isn’t enough time for a scout—”
“Well then, you’ll just have to stay behind on this one.” Adam slapped him on the back, a dissembled gesture of protective sentiment. “I’ll go by myself.”
“Adam—”
“We need new supplies. How do we know if we’ll ever get an opportunity like this again?”
“Sorry, my reckless son, but I can’t let you go alone.” Selerael interrupted; Adam turned to the entrance on the bridge, where his mother had just appeared, having come from the crew’s quarters below.
“Of course, you were monitoring all along, weren’t you?” Adam laughed in mock exasperation, shaking his head at her. “Being reckless now and again keeps me from feeling my age.” He explained, eyeing her.
Cameron sighed as Selerael gave her son a wink, and glanced back to Adam, whose face wore an approving smile.
“Call me incorrigible, do they?” Cameron wailed, then delighted that Selerael and Adam descended upon him, mussing the top of his thinning hair.
* * * * *
When Sargon received the message that a Valerian fighter had left the Selesta, he knew it was the chance he had been waiting for. Instructing Enlil to divert Selesta’s attention with all of the fighter squadrons, he himself emerged from the opposite side of Enlil in a fighter and flew towards the planet.
From high in the sky, Sargon saw the grounded shuttle, its cargo hold open, and two figures below loading ores of some kind.
It must be her, he thought, overcome by a sense of elation. Alessia!
Sargon did not, however, want to alert her to his presence. He took the fighter around to the other side of a large metallic building and landed out of sight of the shuttle. Descending from the plane, he straightened his maroon and grey uniform and suddenly gasped as the lack of atmosphere hit his lungs. For a moment, he almost panicked, but already he could feel his internal systems adapting to this hostile environment.
A gift long ago from Alessia now saved his life, a blood transfusion of immortal blood that kept him alive, no matter what happened to him, no matter how he suffered.
Sargon crept towards the open mine, the empty atmosphere masking his movement in utter silence.
Adam was loading another block of ore onto the loader, thankful that whoever had abandoned this mine had left so many salvageable extracted pieces lying around. The inhuman strength he had inherited from his mother helped him to load pieces ten times as heavy as an ordinary man could have, but the weak gravity of the planet increased that amount to sixty times.
Suddenly Adam felt as though someone were watching him, and he stopped a moment to calm down; this wasn’t reality. This was his own imagination, not his perception, he reassured himself
. Then he realized that he wasn’t the only one to have experienced the sensation. Looking up, he saw an expression of horror and fear frozen on his mother’s face.
As he stared at her, he sensed an intruder behind them round the edge of the metallic dome. Adam turned around as a young man stepped into view only fifty feet away from them.
Like them, his face and body had been exposed to the atmosphere, the deadly cosmic rays, the oppressive heat—and yet he was still alive. Adam recognized the uniform he wore as one of the kinds seen throughout Selesta, a uniform of maroon and grey coloring—an Orian uniform. The man’s face, coming from the shadows, was the same color as his mother’s in the bright light. His blue eyes stared at her with such intensity that like his mother, Adam was paralyzed by it.
The eyes—startled, then softened by some inexplicable feeling of delighted adoration, betrayed recognition. Then they seemed to scan the pair more closely. The expression on that face turned into uncertainty.
But you’re not Alessia... There was shock in the words… Adam also heard words in the Orian language and understood them. Who are you?
Selerael continued to stare at the intruder. She felt tears sting her eyes. Why was she experiencing this? And why was she fighting them back? What force was this that had made her feel so desperately lost? As she studied the Orian man before her, her mind grappled to suppress an image of fire raining from a darkened sky, an image that sprung from nowhere, an image she recognized, but she couldn’t remember why.
She staggered back, shaking off the memories, refusing to indulge them, retreating from the horror of the Orian creature’s mental barrage.
Adam, get us out of here! She cried telepathically. Adam heard her call, and realized dimly that his mother had frozen, unable to move further. He felt a mind-force around her, a paralyzing assault of control communicative energy unleashed by the unknown man who had found them here. As quickly as possible, Adam ran headlong into that field, keeping his thoughts focused elsewhere, outside the present. It was the only way to protect himself. He thought of long ago, of his parents and Faulkner, of days spent in the forest on Selesta. His own precious memories, summoned to the present, could be used to protect him; they were not meaningless.