crashed. And their families, your family, on your ancestors' home planet, never knew. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Play it again, Rogagh. Please, play him again."
Rogagh wound the recorded message backwards, finding my O'Halloran ancestor's greeting.
"My name is Doctor William Steven O'Halloran, Chief Medical Officer of the SS Amity. I am thirty-five, married to my wife Patricia and the proud father of twins Louisa and Richard. I make this voyage of discovery in the grand tradition of humanity, hoping to meet beings as interested in what we will now have to call the Human and Wayth Condition as I am. I am here to serve the crew in healing any injuries sustained during the long duration of the voyage, as well as prepare them for the conditions that we, and hopefully our children and our children's children encounter on the surface of Wayth. I will post new messages as we close the distance to your wonderful world."
Messages...were more...my family was still out there, their voices, never lost?
Rogagh connected with the other frequencies, and fine-tuning them, played them for me. The commanding crew's voices grew older, adults who had once been children laughing in the background now came to the fore, as the first generation slowly gave way to the next, and my ancestor, Richard O'Halloran, married another passenger, and fathered my father. I am the last generation of the SS Amity. I made contact, fulfilled the dream. To bridge the divide the stars had set between Earth and Wayth, Iutha 3 and Epsilon Eridani d.
The cold creeps over me now. I am basking in their voices and Rogagh's low humming, keeping warm despite my ebbing life. I am remembering my real father, John, and mother, Yvonne, holding me aboard the SS Amity, the veneer of cobwebs pulled off, a naked artifact of life as human, as an Earth boy. It is a comforting memory, the flowing saltwater on my cheeks tell me.
I have peace, at long last. I am Jonathon O'Halloran. I am human, and Gyaath. Now I will sleep, their voices not drifting the spaces in vain.
THE SAP HOLE
Excerpt from the war diary of Corporal Archibald Hundley, retrieved from sap crater on the premises of the Somme Memorial some eighty years after the skirmish:
25 Sept '16
Private Dunnleavy is hanging in the wire we couldn't cut. Jerry sniped him where he stood. Found a sap hole once the crack broke the air, but now can't move, can't light a fag without jerry finding me. Lt.'s left hand is still gripping his Webley, but I won't make for it until night.
My throat burns as I write this. Ground water's been poisoned with chlorine. Thirsty and i'm [sic] out of water and my diary folded up in my haversack all that's keeping me from thinking about trench foot, cooties and jerry. Sodding sky rains every hour on the hour and the sap hole gets more muddy so's chlorine is turning my skin green. Don't suppose Cy. B is near to help.
26 Sept 16
Birds and dawn shelling kept me from sleeping. Drenched by cold sap water. Jerry seems quiet today, hoping he decided our shells were enough to move back up Hill 17. Nothing but quiet. Lt.'s Webley is heavy on my leg and mudcaked after the sap wall collapsed under the Lt.'s weight. For a moment thought he was going to rise, blow his whistle and walk the section out of this Godforsaking No-man's-land. Now the bright clouds make his blue eyes stare at me, almost asking if he was dead, which I've nodded and told him over in my head yes. I can hear him yell Hundley in my ears telling me to lead us back to the trench but I don't dare with jerry itching to snipe me too.
After I wrote this I heard jerry make some commotion. Hope a potato masher blew up but my luck says he's coming to search for his dead friends. Moved my leg some to get the Lt.'s Webley closer.
Cold and cooties crawling over my skin. Can't stay in the hole for days but jerry may have it for me if I try to climb out.
27 September
Jerry doing extraordinary battle preparations as I heard a horse but couldn't know how he had rode one in the three foot mud. I know horses and jerry had one. They cackled in their trench while I lie here filling up with gangrene and Lt. and Dunnleavy looking over me the rain pounding him into the trench wire. Some shelling I know is half-mile away; the 10TH must have brought up more shells from the rear and giving jerry all he can handle.
Jerry must really be happy. Turnips may be. Noise just a hundred yards back sounds like they're standing over me.
Took chance and now have Lts [sic] Webley. Put barrel in sap water getting mud out. Nothings [sic] dry here but my throat. Coughing harder and having no luck keeping mum. Jerry hasn't made his way here; how they miss Dunnleavy and his doughy puss I can't know. More horse tromping and jerry's a hell of a loud one now.
Took a look over sap wall to see myself why jerry still not shutting up and saw it-horse was twenty hands tall if I'm nineteen and a month and leaping through his trench. Rider not looking a jerry but've seen funny pickle helmets brought back from jerry's lines. How jerry can keep his parapet so sturdy a mystery. Not brave enough to crawl out and look better.
Sweet Lord I hope jerry's got him a saviour! If the cackles I heard aren't death throws [sic] then I'm deader than Lt- and Dunnleavy and Cockrell. Heard pistol shots and few shouts in German I couldn't remember now just a moment ago after I wrote that last sentence. All quiet now [crossed out and rewritten by the Corporal- Ed.] Another bloody scream and I'm crouching down in the sap water and've got the Webley under my diary while writing. Having hard time keeping my fingers wrapped over my pencil and diary. Ears growing cold but echoes keep me listening of the poor jerry and why the horse and rider is tearing them apart. Have no explanation for shouts and bayonet crashing over in his trench. Some poor kraut [sic] gone nutters and attacked his line? Makes no sense but here I hear it all in my sap hole and the gloaming.
28 Sept
Pulled my legs and arms close as we shelled Hill 17 in morning. More mud and ground than I've seen before came in the sap hole and near buried me, but got Lt. good. Hunger pains and cold keep me from want to writing this but heard animal cries over night and wondered if horse and rider were coming from my sap hole next. Jerry is quiet but shelling may be blame. Nothing from his lines since commotion with horse last night. Shelling keeping me from crawling out and going back to our lines.
Fear night now. Keeping Webley in my left hand as I write. Checked and Lt. had put five rounds in. If horse comes for me will not hesitate even if he does kill jerry, he's no friend of mine after all I heard.
Sun not out but day is over and Hill 17 withstood assault. No sign of jerry and fearing worse for the krauts. Would look but right now night is here and I think I hear a horse through the
Editor's note-Recovered diary stops here.
NEPTUNE DIAMOND
i
My eyes gleamed with curiousity. "What is it?"
"It's a diamond. From Neptune." He smiled, my youthful joy warming his heart. "We had to really dig for that one...the blue giant doesn't just give his presents away."
I rolled the glittering blue jewel in my hand, feeling its soft exterior glide on my palm. "It's beautiful."
"And expensive. Don't tell anyone where you found it...the agency doesn't know that I took one from storage on the way back."
I shook my head excitedly. "Promise."
"Good. Now, don't go losing this. We still have tests to do at work, and we're not quite sure the exact composition of it."
"Okay."
I cupped the cerulean jewel in my palms. It was mine for all time. He had promised me a souvenir, and he had come through. If only I could tell my friends; they'd be so jealous.
ii
I couldn't sleep at all. I kept raising my head over my blankets, my eyes roaming until they caught sight of that diamond, a prism that scattered azure triangles onto every surface of my bedroom. I crept out of bed and walked over to it, grasping the otherworldly gem into my tiny hands. I held it oh so tight, afraid that if I'd let go, I'd lose it to Neptune's gravity all over again. I couldn't let it go. It was mine.
iii
I woke up to the sounds of my father announcing t
hat I was perilously close to losing out on breakfast. I found my diamond tucked inside my blankets-where I had kept it for safekeeping during the night-and raced downstairs to eat my way through the morning.
"Do you still have your present?" he asked, in-between chews.
"Of course I still have it. I'm never going to lose it."
"I just know how you are. But, you promised, so I'll let it go."
I got ready for school, packing my diamond into my belongings. I knew not to tell anyone else about it, but I just couldn't go away without having it with me. If only I could lose my fear of somebody coming to steal it back.
iv
I dreamt of strange visions in the sunlight as I sat at my desk, surreptitiously stroking the Neptune diamond in my fingers while I dazed away. Old cities and disjointed faces floated before my eyes, like memories of an ancient day. My skin sweat from the heat of that diamond, like the heat of my own beating heart. It felt alive, as if I was just as much a present to it as it was to me. I couldn't see past the blue gauze cast upon my eyes...we belonged together, that diamond and I, and nothing else mattered. I could hear the fierce winds of some far land, whistling in my mind the names of places and people I strangely recognized, but could not recall. It felt familiar, as if this was what life was supposed to be, even though I was just ten years old.
My home lay far from this place, that diamond told me so.
v
When I was twenty-one my father retired from the agency, and I quickly decided to follow him and pursue a career with the agency. I would have to train for several years to gain a position in the flight corps, but I knew it would just be a matter of time before I was good enough to get a flight to Neptune. Over a decade after the first manned mission to the blue giant, of which my father had been a principal member, the agency was prepping for a follow-up. Competition was fierce, as to be expected, but that diamond wouldn't allow me to fail. We had a personal mission to embark upon, and nothing could stop us from going home.
vi
I held to that diamond tightly as my colleagues suited me in the EVA suit. My gloves gripped the jewel so tightly, nothing, not even the winds of home, could wrench it from my grasp. We were close, oh so close, to the skies over home, I could taste the methane in my mouth, that syrupy cold I remember from my childhood. We had been gone for far too long, kept in this squishy, skeletonized body for more years than I wanted to count. Soon, we would descend, and I could cast that shell off and make my way home, to the liquids and ices I recalled with such fondness. Yes, soon I would be home among the diamonds, one with Neptune.
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