The Forgotten Nomad

  ”I just want away!” Fabian said, ”I want to break away from all the demands put on my shoulders. Not to escape from you, but to win something of my own: Something I haven’t found yet, something extremely vague, but at least own.”

  Belle interrupted the conversation, and joined with the freedom fighters.

  * * *

  The circumstances changed the next day. For some reason the aliens revealed their enemies. They did threatening sweeps in the periphery. No one could concentrate on the work. Finally, it was up to Fabian to do something: He tore off a harpoon and went up to confrontation.

  The other workers followed him.

  The creatures swam around the ring of light. Some made swift attacks on the workers. But the workers stood in a circle, with their backs to each other and responded. Someone picked up a gun.

  Shots were fired but no aliens took damage.

  Finally, Vincent discovered what was going on and approached the others. He put in everything he had in the attack: The submarine was loaded with harpoons, even explosive shots that he found in an old cupboard.

  It became a war between Vincent and the leader of the alien flock. The smaller aliens circled around Fabian’s gang, while the main battle was fought a short distance away. The leader used its compact head like the others: A bursting projectile to smash the windows of the submarine. This was successful.

  But Vincent wasn’t fooled. He saw the submarine fill with water, and used the wetsuit to maneuver in flooded condition. He saw the panels brake. He fired volleys of explosive shots and injured the leader. The other workers moved away and came to the rescue, but were attacked by the warriors. A bloodbath ensued: Red blood from the workers and blue blood from the aliens. Their brilliant membranes oscillated: Green light pulses that distracted the workers. But with the help of Vincent’s intelligence and the workers courage, Vincent could make use of the explosive shots and kill the leader.

  The humans had won.

  There was a celebration in the kitchen the evening that followed: Drunken workers bandaged their wounds and talked about the battle: The longer the night the more forceful the expressions. And it was like a legend was born: A story that just got better as time went by. Vincent and Fabian became friends. Vincent thought that Fabian’s first initiative hadn’t been that bad. These creatures weren’t sympathetic. They weren’t looking for symbiosis, rather death and destruction. And in some ways he understood Fabian’s reaction.

  They were drinking and had a party. Someone threw up and was lying on the floor until morning.

  When Fabian returned to his room he found two men standing at the door. They were wearing black jackets. They had black pants and light gray shirts: Even spotted ties. The men explained to Fabian that he’d been revealed, and had no other choice but to follow them home. This was Mars, the ruler’s home planet and the place where Fabian would meet his enemy.

  4

  PRISONER ON MARS

  He ended up in a room different from any room he’d ever been to. This was the opposite of the room on Europa, under the ocean’s surface. Here, it was bright and futuristic. Instead of horrible blood trails, there were tropical plants, red orchids from the jungles of Africa. There were also smaller petals, in blue. A shelf had a glassed-in booth, where miniature figures made a striking image: A group of colonists, living in spiritual, social and material prosperity.

  He thought he was locked in the room. He saw himself as a political prisoner. But he went to the door and pushed, and the door opened. He came into a larger space, not just open, but made up of different sections. It was light and airy. There were exercise machines lined up in different places. Was he meant to stay in this place for a long time? Where were the guards?

  He stood by the window and looked out. In a meadow, which stretched hundreds of yards away, he could see genetically engineered cattle. It was like a forgotten valley from a time before the machines. But the high technology was real. It seemed that the colonists had been longer on Mars than on Europa.

  A man came into the room. Fabian turned around. It was a long and lanky figure, something noble and yet familiar in a strange way.

  ”You!” Fabian said.

  He stared at the man who stopped a short distance away. The man was escorted by two beautiful women, slightly shorter than himself.

  ”A happy reunion.” The man said, ”It was only a few years since before. Previously, we were fighting for freedom and justice: You and me. Now it’s not the opposite. Just that one of us has changed sides.”

  ”Bastian?” Fabian said.

  ”That was my name.” Bastian said. ”And I still hold on to it.”

  ”I thought…”

  ”Yes, it seemed that I was killed. It was three years ago. But I didn’t get shot; I was taken to Mars to inform the others of Eliah’s plans.”

  Fabian couldn’t make a sound. Not much had changed over the years. He still felt drawn to his childhood friend: The furrowed face, extended: The cheekbones that were clearly marked: The lips that barely were seen. Bastian had always been hungry, even with a full stomach.

  ”It’s a miracle you’re still alive.” Bastian said. ”The rebels have always been a step ahead, but we’ve put up more resources recently, as you may know.”

  ”How could you?”

  ”It’s not for selfish reasons as you might think! No, I’ve learned that the fight is destructive, and that the people are looking for stability.”

  ”You do it because you never searched for freedom!”

  ”You’re right! But I’m one of the people now! I want to feel good and give from my abundance! And because of this I’m of benefit both to myself and others.”

  Fabian looked more carefully at Bastian’s clothes. He had a white coat, a garland of flowers around his neck. The pants were pleated, and shaded by the afternoon light.

  ”Our childhood wasn’t easy.” Fabian said, ”But I can’t understand why you changed sides.”

  ”I remember our adventures...” Bastian said.

  * * *

  Their childhood was peculiar. They escaped as seven year olds from an orphanage, a little inland. They were in an underground tunnel, shining in gold, cut through the rock. This tunnel was a boundary mark between the hinterland and the terraced sections along the sea.

  In this tunnel, the children would stay and carve designs on the walls. These were motives burning of childish desperation and longing: The children’s silent protest against the colonization that caught them in poverty and slavery.

  Their parents were dead, their relatives were poor, and no one would know of them, except Eliah who welcomed them into the inner circle.

  Before they were freedom fighters, they made many treks into the cold landscape. They saw mountains formed as giant faces: Decorated by ice and oxidized iron. One of those faces was a glimpse of the forbidden, an old father they never had, that allowed them to live in freedom.

  This was a cliff extending over adjacent rocks. A lake of ice lay in front of it; traces of the children’s feet could be seen. The atmosphere was difficult to breathe. The boys climbed the cliff; they climbed relentlessly along the dangerous bulges. Wounds were torn up by grainy mineral fragments, which formed the cliff’s surface. Finally they sat down in a cave, a cave that Fabian called ”The Big Mouth”. Ropes of fiber lay by their side, and they bandaged their wounds.

  Their differences weren’t greater than their similarities. But Bastian was always hungry and hoped for change. Fabian saw something spiritual in the quiet quest, in the suffering, where the illusory security of the orphanage led him away from The Dream.

  They longed for the twilight...

  * * *

  Bastian abandoned Fabian in the airy space. The afternoon turned into evening and soon the night would come.

  Fabian found himself standing at a shelf, which to his surprise, began to move. He came to a room, where a gigantic telescope stood on large plateau. He sat down on a stool and peered into the telescope’s v
iewfinder. The telescope had been directed against Planet X. It was a gray shard in the sky, minimally lit. Not as round as The Moon, but oval.

  A moment later, three women entered the room, through another passage. It was like the lookout was the center for the entire castle, and that all paths led there.

  The women sat down on stools close to Fabian’s body. They said that everything was done so that Fabian would understand what was in store for all of humanity: That the people were looking for nothing else than the good life, served right in front of them.

  ”I don’t think you understand what I want.” Fabian said, ”I don’t seek satisfaction, nor the lack of it. I want to be taken away to another world, where there is a will to be caught up in something else. Something I haven’t found yet.”

  ”That is what you don’t understand!” One of the women said. She was quite smooth-skinned and full of zeal. She continued: ”What you don’t understand is that the mystery is solved! That the abstract is really tangible.”

  ”What do you mean?”

  ”The search for satisfaction is the search for oneself. And the search for self is the search for the good life: For food, sex and other pleasures.”

  Fabian stood up and looked at the woman horrified. She was like a goddess of Babylon, probably in close collusion with Bastian.

  Bastian came into the room and stopped near the women. His left hand fell on one of them.

  ”What we’re talking about are not new ideas.” Bastian said, ”Even the ancient Romans knew this. But the difference is scientific evidence.”

  ”What do you mean?”

  ”We have evaluated old and young, men and women. They come from Mars, Europe and The Moon. We have made a cross-section of all of mankind: All colonists. And the majority speaks.”

  ”About what?” Fabian exclaimed, ”How can you trust a science that doesn’t rest in the hands of the people? That favors an elite with a lust to power!”

  ”The lust to power is the will to power.” Bastian said calmly, ”To transcend the small and will the large: To give of oneself for the sake of others.”

  Fabian watched his childhood friend with a sense of irony. He never imagined that Bastian would become an Emperor! He never imagined that anyone would utter such words! But with time the dialogue continued. He came into the rich people’s clothing. He got to see Mars, he got to see The Moon, and he saw how it worked inside ”The Castle”.

  It was nothing like he imagined! It was easy to talk to those in power, women were polite and sincere: No one suffered and made others suffer. He began to understand that Eliah’s rebellion was a struggle against inner demons: There was no devil who tried to push humanity into her shoes.

  Terror was terror, no matter how it was pronounced.

  And finally he gave up. Fabian and Caspian would head to the floating island on Europa, to stop the rebels.

  5

  THE HOVERING ISLAND

  They landed but they didn’t know where the rebels were hiding. All they knew was the time of the attack and that the rebels would be hiding on the island.

  The task force had split up, a bunch searched at the huge coils, which held the island floating above a magnetic field.

  Fabian searched for himself. He walked through neighborhoods that didn’t significantly differ from the environments on Mars. It was different to regard the island from the inside than from the terraces along the coastline. Admittedly it was similar to watching it far away, but it was hard to imagine how everything would look: It was a feeling of times gone by: As if Roman times had come back, but not literally. Aqueducts had been replaced by elongated tubes; the sculptures didn’t represent emperors and empresses. Instead, there was a sense of futurism, a future that was built on the skills of the old masters.

  Somewhere here, in an alley that was overshadowed by the bright facades, Fabian met Eliah.

  Eliah was very surprised.

  Fabian, for his part was troubled: He knew that he would meet the rebels, but he never imagined it would be this way! Not that he would face his Godfather, face to face, during a crucial conflict.

  ”Listen!” Fabian said loud, ”I have gone over to the other side!”

  ”What do you mean?” Eliah said appalled.

  ”I’ve realized that the fight for freedom was a mistake! The force we’ve been fighting was the desire of the people! I’ve been reunited with Bastian in the fight for freedom.”

  ”What freedom?”

  ”The freedom to live and enjoy! Not to throw away your life in a battle that ends in destruction!”

  Eliah took hold of Fabian’s clothing.

  ”I don’t believe a word!” He shouted angrily. ”They’ve done something to you! They’ve taken your strength and turned it into a weakness!”

  ”The only thing that happened was an awakening!” Fabian said, ”I’ve seen how the system works on the inside! I understand the technological advances! And I understand that people are different.”

  ”You are deceived!” Eliah said.

  The two men stood motionless on the ground. Genetically engineered crows flew through the air and sat down on the ceilings. There were screams in the distance, but still not firing.

  At sea, near the floating island, a Medusa was moving. This was a primordial creature, with silk-like sails, revived in laboratories.

  ”Let me tell you a story before the conflict breaks out!” Eliah shouted, ”Let me tell you how it was when I grew up!”

  * * *

  This was thirty years ago. It was in the final stage of colonization where technology had fallen.

  Eliah was not a particularly unusual man. He had a family with a popular wife and several children.

  One day some criminals came into his home and robbed it. The wife resisted and was killed. The children threw themselves on the floor and cried. Before the criminals disappeared through the door, they threw a firebomb inside and burned the building.

  The children burned inside.

  Eliah had been out during the day. He knew nothing of what happened to his family. He was outside like many others out there: Experienced freedom without computers, without vehicles, without radio contact with his loved ones.

  When he finally came home, he suffered a heart-attack. The neighbors came forward and explained what happened: It wasn’t a case of usual criminals. They came from the outskirts of the colony, in the area where Fabian and Bastian had been before.

  From that day Eliah decided to fight crime. He gave up all thoughts of the family and took a job at a prison, where he would meet other criminals.

  At first, his only joy was the sadistic pleasure: Beating criminals behind the backs of the guards: Making it his business to behave like an executioner.

  But something happened: He noticed that some criminals behaved unlike the others. That they came to the prison for political reasons, not private. These criminals weren’t as tough as the others. They burned with a peculiar energy: They had a vitality, an inherent beauty.

  When Eliah tried to make life difficult for them, they didn’t respond in the same way. Instead, they understood: The rumor had gone.

  It ended with the criminals becoming Eliah’s best friends. He noticed that they were fighting for a greater ideal: An ideal of freedom and self-determination.

  He left the prison and went into hiding. He understood that the only free men were the people who’d given up dependence on everything else: To live in the present, to follow the heart’s impulse, to seize every moment.

  The technology had fallen, and the old came back: The physical work, the pets, and ”The Dronts”, a sort of ostriches used as escorts.

  Eliah became a legend, a freedom fighter, and a myth in the new time. But not many joined him in the fight for freedom.

  * * *

  ”And how does this help?” Fabian said aloud.

  ”You don’t understand people!” Eliah said. ”People aren’t as you think! You think they’re looking for pleasure but it’s quite the
contrary!”

  ”What do you mean?”

  ”I mean that everyone says they’re looking for pleasure! That they want to have everything prepared! But what they’re really passionate about is the total freedom! To make their own rules and to follow them! Just as you have done.”

  Suddenly sounds of explosions were heard, screams, even gunfire! The floating island began to move: It began to lean, even slowly rotate around its own axis.

  The old man was terrified, Fabian also.

  The rotation became heavier. The couple was thrown to the ground. The crows flapped away and disappeared into the sky.

  In the distance the total disaster was evident: The rebels had mounted explosives on the giant coils, which kept the floating island in place over the sea. The explosives had detonated. The rebels disappeared into the sky like majestic birds, with jets. Now the island spun several times, leaned more and then disappeared into the sea.

  6

  THE ESCAPE TO PLANET X

  He desperately looked around the crowd, the chaos that ensued after the attack: Swum across a roaring sea, believed in death, but managed to get up on the rocky shore. He didn’t realize how dire the consequences would be.

  The rebels believed that the attack would redeem the people’s will to fight, start a revolution that would lead to liberation. It was rather the opposite: Warlords arose and deceived many. A group of ex-offenders seized power and imposed martial law. Dissidents were exterminated; forces were directed to put an end to the extreme poverty, regardless of the consequences.

  Somewhere in the midst of the chaos Fabian saw his chance to escape. He paid a bunch of criminals to help him gain access to the spaceport, steal a spaceship and leave. He learned to navigate but didn’t have any friends.

  He found himself flying away from Europa, passed the moons of Io and Ganymede, on his way out to Planet X. He thought about the rebels and Eliah, who was pulled down by the ocean currents and drowned.

  The ship hummed with an orderly rhythm, Fabian was alone; bits of asteroids could be seen on the radar.