"Say that again?" Derica prompted, waving her hand before Kirya's vacant stare.
* * * * *
The colonizer stared a long moment at the grey-skinned members of Selerael’s crew. They stared at him in turn. The grey-skinned Enorians had no memory of Enor, but they knew him; somehow, they knew his face, as one of them had recognized Selerael, years before.
Selerael explained how they had been lost in hypersleep for billions of years; his own ship and fellows had been lost in the same cataclysm.
“When did you come here?” Adam wondered, though inside, he was more interested in why the colonizer hadn’t lost his memory. However, his guts told him something was at work that he didn’t understand, a force he didn’t want to understand. He decided not to ask the other question.
“We awakened a million years ago.”
“A million?” Adam stared at him. A million years? By what standard of time? He decided he didn’t want to know that, either.
“Yes,” the colonizer replied. “We called this world Igraeilen, back when it belonged to the red star, before the blue star formed.”
“Valeria?” Adam asked.
The colonizer smiled. “If you wish to call it that. Yes. Valeria is only a few thousand years old.”
Adam immediately stared up at the sky. But how–how was that possible?
“What about the people here?” Adam asked.
“The native people of this world had already evolved to nearly their present state when we met them. So the answer is no, we are not all Enorian,” the colonizer replied.
“But–the transition–”
“Yes,” the colonizer nodded. “When the planet was drawn by the great gravity of your Valeria, there was a horrible period of climactic upheaval, an upheaval that did not end for many years. As they had helped us when we arrived, we in turn aided them to survive.”
Selerael met his eyes, sensing that the colonizer had tried to forget those events, so recent in his memory. Already the world had healed itself, in only a short time. She did not doubt that the people had progressed with the aid of Enorian technology.
Meanwhile, a low groan sounded from Enlil, the sound of great hull plates grating, underneath the sound they heard several hundred approaching human voices; one of the twisted, burned hull plates clattered to the ground.
Hundreds of grey-skinned humanoids began to emerge from the aperture, gathering on the charred field around Enlil and Selesta. The large Orian population emerged, a slow trickle that crawled out to meet the Enorian emissary who had joined Selerael's party; then, growing into a river, thousands followed the venturous few out onto the open plain of upturned soil. The coloring of the Orian skin, similar to the natives', brought forth many low whispers from the colonizer’s small train.
Their words formed into a collective whole.
"What are they saying?" Toriso asked. "What is ferai-lunei?" He added, looking to Selerael, but it was Sorbin who answered. He should not have been able to comprehend anything they said, he told himself. And granted, he couldn’t understand much of anything they said, but the hum that formed into the two words ferai-lunei exactly matched those words in his own language.
"It means 'comet riders'.” He breathed.
* * * * *
Adam had never met the lom-vaia people, but he found himself thinking about their story in the days that passed. They had spoken of "a creator" that had metamorphosed them into a humanoid form, a man who had come alone to their world and seeking companionship, had recreated humanoid forms like himself from the sentient plant species he had found.
The crew had spent several days unloading supplies from the two ships. The colonizer had called in the natives to help move some of the supplies to the proposed community by the lake, but he discouraged them from interacting with the crew.
While the unloading was still going on, the colonizer at last met with Selerael, Adam, the bridge specialists, and a few representatives of the Orians–the Garen and some elite officers, as well as Sobrin and Alessia's other scientists. The meeting was called in Selesta's largest intact conference room.
The colonizer had brought his own wife and young daughter with him but none of the other natives. His only explanation had been that the others were not ready to come into contact with the advanced civilization they were to find here on Selesta.
* * * * *
“Certainly you came from an Enorian colony,” The colonizer said, his steady eyes fixed on Selerael.
“No,” she protested, silencing him.
“Most of us are from the binary planets known as Tiasenne and Orian,” Adam explained, “but there are many of us who came from other worlds, the third largest population having come from a planet called Earth." The colonizer regarded him with a glint in his eye, as though he doubted the truth of Adam's words.
Or else he knew something different that they didn’t.
The colonizer sighed, wondering why they refused to see the truth. He could recognize the descendant of a colonizer, for he was a colonizer himself. He looked down at his own daughter, Falia, who had taken on the characteristics of her mother–the same gray hair and eyes, but she had his face–and that was Enorian.
"What do you call this planet?" Kesney wanted to know.
The colonizer shrugged, returning to the present. "The inhabitants now call it Narana."
"And these people," Toriso began," the ones that are helping us move our supplies to the territory you've found for us–are they your people?"
The colonizer took a deep breath. Should he tell them? he deliberated a moment. Though they had forgotten their heritage; he could see that they had, though he knew this was for the best. However, they had all been shaped by Enor, perhaps by another ship of colonizers that had escaped the end.
He decided to tell them what he could.
“No,” his voice was like a beautiful chord of music, but his words were in English. After only a few short days, he had learned much of Earth and its history from Adam and Selerael. Now it was his turn to represent the history of this planet.
“I’m afraid they are yours.”
Chapter Nineteen
"When we arrived on this world,” the colonizer began, “there were already several groups of emerging bipeds."
“Bipeds?” Adam echoed.
“You might call them humanoids, but they weren’t quite that, not then. The strongest group more closely resembled us, having less body hair and a larger cranium. All of the bipeds stood erect, walking on two feet among the animals, but these were more intelligent than the others. They already lived in communities, farming on the land, protecting themselves against the weather.”
“The cold?”
"The world was different back then.” The colonizer shook his head. “We calculated that in earliest history, the planet had begun as a hot planet, then cooled off to a moderate, sub-tropical climate giving rise to a variety of life over millions of years. Yet, as you say, by the time we arrived, the planet's temperature had grown relatively cold all year long.
"Only the hardiest plants flourished in the coldest territories, those that had adapted to the cold. There were no sharp seasons, but the one period of increased warming allowed certain species to endure, adapting to a short flowering period marked by a long period of dormancy. Many land animals likewise adapted to hibernate.”
“The same evolutionary pattern we see today,” Selerael deduced.
“The beginnings of it.” The colonizer agreed. “The nearest orange star was far away, but the planet's internal volcanic activity kept the surface warmer than it would have been. And yet the temperature was falling with every passing year as the magma core cooled. When we arrived, we knew life on the planet was doomed. But for many thousands of years, we watched the early bipeds develop on Narana; we watched as they flourished from the life cultures of our En
or and became more like us every year.
"Our excavations of ancient burial sites revealed to us that some of the first intelligent bipeds had been similar to us in many ways. But none of them were humanoid as we knew it. After some time we decided to help the most intelligent branches to flourish over the earlier species with whom they competed for the planet's few materials. Some of us remained in our ship, but many of us left to aid the strongest group of bipeds.
"For years the Enorian outpost existed independently from the native peoples, but when we knew for certain that they could not survive in the changing climate as they were–we began our project to alter the newest species.”
“You changed their cellular structure?” Selerael guessed.
“Yes,” the colonizer admitted. “Afterward, a few older varieties of life, though related to the other forms of life on the planet through years of shared evolution, would become something also unrelated to the natural lines–a by-product of genetic manipulation, an artificial race.”
“So essentially, you tampered with evolution,” Selerael interrupted.
"Yes, we interfered, but not out of malice.” The colonizer shook his head solemnly. “We would not have done it had we not wished to be of help, to make up for interfering in this universe. But–now your destinies are linked to ours, whether or not you admit it to yourselves, no matter how you feel about it. What has been cannot be changed. Many of you are here because of us.”
“What do you mean?” Kesney demanded.
“After altering the most intelligent race,” the colonizer explained, “we gradually began to intermingle with this native people, guiding their knowledge a little at a time. Some us were content to live out the remainder of our lives among them, to marry and raise families; thus we accidentally accelerated the evolution of the strongest race. After many thousand years, most of us Enorians had been completely assimilated, and Enorian now represents about 37 percent of the genetic material of each humanoid individual here on Narana. So, you see, you are all children of Enor. Your fate began there, as ours did, long ago."
"How is it possible that you could raise families here, with the native populations?" Derica asked, her voice highly skeptical of what she heard despite all she had seen on Selesta.
"Well,” the colonizer said, “unlike civilian Enorians, colonizers were specially created to have a genetic pattern that can change. We were designed on the Enorian home world to blend our traits with the local population of a planet, and pass on to their children certain tendencies and characteristics from the Enorian race.”
"I see,” Derica said. “Not terraforming, but human-forming. Very clever. Yet perhaps a bit vain?”
“Perhaps,” the colonizer admitted. “But we colonizers had nothing to do with our creation. I am merely explaining why we were created. However, even as colonizers, we cannot alter a race as easily as you might believe. You see, the creatures of this world were not human like you or me–only after many long years were we able to shape their evolution, which unsurprisingly turned them towards a more Enorian form. At first, yes, we questioned whether or not we had the right to interfere–but there were few of us, and we were lonely. Forgive us, but we thought we alone had survived, from a civilization of trillions, and we wished to know again the company of those who might be our equals in thought and action.
"And we knew that without our aid, the creatures of this world were doomed to extinction. When the blue star–Valeria–began to form, we realized that its intense gravity would draw Narana from the orange-red star. The radiation would eradicate all life–if anything had survived the upheaval as the planet was pulled across space. Those of us colonizers still living among the populations almost gave up and left to return to the Havens.
"I should say my fellows almost left.” He paused. “For I was among those that remained in our Havens, suspended in time, and all that had happened, all that I now relate to you, happened in the time of my predecessors, in the time of colonizers who awakened before me.”
“You had nothing to do with any of it?” Adam almost laughed.
“Setting up the conditions? No. It was my time to awake shortly before the upheaval of the planetary transfer occurred.” The colonizer explained. “My fellow colonizers had been preparing the population, developing the trait they had inherited directly from us–the ability to reflect light without its being absorbed. But for them to survive we had long exposed the creatures and humanoid population to simulated light, developing among them organs in the skin that absorbed the blue light and channeled it before causing cellular damage.
"By the time the upheaval occurred, the creatures had already adapted, and the humanoid population, though once red or brown-skinned, had begun to change, to appear as they do now–blue eyes and gray skin, reflecting the light and other radiation. Some of the more primitive species of bipeds that endured adapted white fur, but began to specialize after the upheaval and became different species with the rapid evolution that followed."
"And the other colonizers?" Kirya asked.
"There are a few that still sleep who will not leave the Havens. But the others I mentioned have passed on. As Enorian colonizers, we know the moment when our expiration nears. It was not always so, but billions of years of our evolution has given us this gift." His eyes drifted to Selerael’s face.
“Unbelievable,” Derica breathed.
"No,” the colonizer countered, still eyeing Selerael. “We colonizers do not always live long lives–some of us as long as a million years, others as short as a thousand. But most of the Enor did not wish to live beyond a natural span. We did not seek eternity. We knew the foolishness of it."
"My time also approaches its end.” He said, to all appearances indifferent. “I knew when I would die the moment I survived the Great Collapse, when I came to this universe. I will remain among you long enough to help establish your colony here, almost another hundred more years. And then I will go. As Enor, we upset the balance by entering this universe. We feel the necessity to leave it, and when we die, our energy returns to another place, to another dimension. You may say we feel all the years pulling upon us when our time nears its end."
Silence prevailed. At length, a messenger entered the room, wearing the maroon and grey uniform of an Orian.
"An emissary among the natives has told some of us of a far away city he came from where we might live." The Orian emissary reported. "They say the nearby forest cannot support us all, for there is no food and the trees do not bear fruit. However, I am told there are a great many resources across the forest. The emissary has contacted the city and they are sending transports to take those of us willing to go.”
“Why would they do so much for us?” Derica wondered.
"They’re all calling us brothers,” the emissary replied. “That seems to be why they’ve volunteered to help us in any way possible.”
“What has the Garen decided?” Selerael asked.
“He feels that we should go there.” The emissary replied, still regarding her, still half-afraid to speak to the one his guts told him was the Zariqua Enassa for whom his Great Leader Sargon had searched for so many years. “Many of the Tiasennians are considering joining us as well.” He continued, then turned to address the colonizer. “We wish to extend our thanks to the colonizer for offering his home to us, but the Garen feels that there are too many of us here to remain."
"If they all intend to leave this area, once they have removed all of the supplies from the ship, you must destroy it," the colonizer advised him and the others present. Several of the assembly gasped, turning questioning gazes upon him.
"Yes,” he said. “We of Enor are guilty of interfering with evolution and tampering with the natural order of the races, but at least we have never disclosed the location of our grounded ship, what some call ‘the Havens’. It was much smaller than your vessels, and
we hid it from the inhabitants–but your Enlil, and even Selesta–they cannot be left for the future to discover.”
“Why does it matter?” Derica asked. “Won’t they be covered over in time?”
"You must be more thorough than that. Do not make assumptions and expect all to work out as you intend it to,” the colonizer advised.
“Despite the aid we gave the people of this planet, we have left them to their own further evolution and their own history since the time of the planetary transfer." The colonizer said. "They must be allowed to develop on their own now–please. Any more tampering would be imprudent. Power gained too quickly–it has a tendency to corrupt what once was good. We hoped, despite our interference, that–the harshness of this world would give them a strength of character to rectify what we had done."
"I understand.” Selerael said. “We’ll be sure to clean up the area where Selesta fell. Meanwhile, I’ll have our communications network send the message across Selesta that those who wish to may join the transports to–” she stopped, turning to the emissary. “What is the name of the city?"
"They call it Ariyal-synai." The messenger answered, and withdrew to send the word to the communications center.
“Ariyal-synai,” Selerael laughed.
There was no questioning that they had returned to Seynorynael—the Seynorynael of the past. The black hole singularity, the point of infinite density at which the natural laws of time and space collapsed, had been a gateway through time, had brought them back to their past. They had passed through a black hole from which not even light might escape to emerge in a transient white hole that ejected matter, before it became a black hole–the black hole Kai-rek. The porthole they had taken had brought them across the Great Cluster and into their own past.
“Mother–are you all right?” Adam’s brow furrowed in concern.
"Yes.”
“About the colony here–may we still join you if we wish?" Adam asked the colonizer.
"Yes," the colonizer nodded. "We have but a small community here–mostly colonizers that joined the people just before and after the transfer such as myself, their wives, and children. We call it S'enor-inn-ayel, which means ‘rebirth of Enor’. The people of our colony have already begun to build dwellings for you closer to Lake Firien, between a clearing in the trees. Selerael–" he turned to regard her suddenly. "I meant what I said about Selesta. She must be dismantled. Remember not to leave anything. From what I could see, her interior systems are still partly intact, but the outer hull plates were ripped away. By the way, can you tell me–why did you not slow more in entering our atmosphere? And tell me, what truly caused such a vessel to be damaged to this extent? No ordinary force could damage her."