“But it might not be forever.”
“Of course. There’s no guarantee our distant descendants won’t make themselves into monsters, but there never has been. At least this way they will have a choice.”
“And you expect people just to go along with this?”
“I think the key step will be getting them to accept the necessity of screening infants for defects. Once we have buy-in on that, we have implicit consent to repair those defects. If we can find a way to make lungs handle excess carbon dioxide more effectively, that would be the next logical step. What parent is going to say no to a treatment that allows their child to breathe better?”
“You’re arguing in favor of a slippery slope.”
“I’m arguing in favor of incremental change,” said Rufio. “Change that is necessary for the survival of our race.”
“At some point, it ceases being our race.”
“I suppose so. Humans are said to have descended from an entirely different species on Earth. At some point our descendants will no longer look like us. The question, though, is whether we will have descendants at all.”
“Would it be possible for this process to be reversed?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean, let’s say I accept the premise that we need to adapt to survive on this planet. If all goes well, our great-great grandchildren might master space travel and leave this planet. Eventually somebody will engineer a hyperdrive-enabled spaceship, or reinvent the technology, if the records can’t be recovered. These remote descendants of ours begin to locate other habitable planets. Suppose they find a planet more like Earth. Heavier gravity, less CO2, better soil, more UV radiation. They decide to colonize this planet. At that point, the adaptations we’ve selected no longer make sense. Is there a way for these people—or whatever they are—to have human children?”
“I suppose it’s possible. Obviously a record would be kept of all the changes made over the generations. But it seems rather arbitrary to want to turn back the clock to a particular point in our evolution. They’re as likely to find a planet with lighter gravity as heavier. And of course their physical form is largely going to determine what sorts of planets they want to settle in the first place. People suited to point seven gees aren’t going to find a planet with one gee gravity very attractive.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Rufio, but I think you’re wrong. I know you don’t share my religious convictions, but I can’t help thinking there is something special about humanity. Humanity as it is now, I mean. Without ‘improvements.’ I believe people were created in the image of God, and I take that belief seriously. If the options are to allow the race to die out or to become something that is no longer recognizably human, I will pick the former.”
“With respect, Hiram, it isn’t fair to impose your beliefs on the rest of humanity.”
“No?” said Hiram. “What do you think it is that you’re doing?”
“I don’t intend to force anyone—”
“Of course not. You’re just going to coax them onto a path that has no exits. You know where this path goes and they do not, and at every step of the way you’re going to whisper to them, ‘You’ve come this far. Don’t give up now!’ And they’ll follow you, because as you say, hope is all they have. But I’ll tell you this, Rufio: if you try to do this without my blessing, I’ll be there every step of the way as well, warning them to go back.”
“I see,” said Rufio coldly. “And what is necessary to gain your blessing?”
“A way back,” said Hiram. “If our children have to become something other than human in order for our species to survive, I can accept that. But there must be a way back. Perhaps they will choose not to go back. Perhaps they’ll decide they enjoy being something other than human. But I don’t think so. I think you’ll find that the desire to be human, and to be seen as human, runs deep. These monsters of yours will carry in them an image of God Himself—a memory of their humanity. And that humanity will call to them. Maybe they will not listen. I don’t know. As you say there’s never been any guarantee that our children won’t choose to be monsters. But we must give them the choice.”
Rufio nodded. “All right. There may be a way. I will give it some thought.”
“Good,” said Hiram. “Find a way back, and then we can move forward.”
Chapter Twenty-five
C ommander Tertius Dornen sat in his quarters aboard Varinga, wishing the Izarians had killed him. They had certainly tried, and by all rights they should have succeeded. But here he was, drifting in space with a skeleton crew, a score of CDF marines, and two-hundred and six refugees from a mining colony. He had nothing to offer any of them but a long, dull and ultimately futile existence aboard a crippled spaceship.
Pursued by Izarian warships, Varinga had executed a risky hyperspace jump from within the Voltera system. Her intended destination was Jabesh-Gilead, the only known world besides Earth that might not have been destroyed by the Izarians. There wasn’t much Varinga could do to prevent the deployment of a planet-killer, but Dornen had thought she might at least pick up a few hundred refugees before the Izarians arrived. Then they could try to find another planet where they could start over. Varinga had a food production system capable of feeding two hundred people indefinitely, as well as stasis chambers that would allow the passengers to sleep most of the voyage.
That plan had evaporated the moment Varinga, her hyperdrive damaged by Izarian missiles, had emerged from hyperspace halfway through the journey, nearly eight hundred light-years from Jabesh-Gilead. The second closest Concordat planet, Toronus, was nearly three times as far, and Earth was even farther.
Earth. For most of his life, the existence of Earth had never been more than a theoretical possibility. Now he had seen it. Could the people aboard Varinga find refuge on Earth? Freya had told him the Izarians would never find Earth, but he didn’t believe it. With Varinga out of play, nothing could stop the Izarians. Humanity had lost. In any case, Earth was too far. Everyone on Varinga would be dead before they got there.
That left Jabesh-Gilead. Jabesh-Gilead was so remote, sparsely populated, and dependent on the other Concordat worlds that the Izarians might not have bothered to destroy it. At maximum acceleration, which would get Varinga to ninety-seven percent light-speed in less than two years, it would take her eight hundred years to reach Jabesh-Gilead. That meant about two hundred years in ship’s time. If the passengers and crew spent ninety percent of their time in stasis, they would age twenty years. That was a long time to be on a spaceship, but most of them would reach Jabesh-Gilead before they died of old age. The odds of there being any survivors on Jabesh-Gilead in eight hundred years were almost nil, though, for the same reason that the Izarians might have overlooked it: everyone knew that the people of Jabesh-Gilead couldn’t survive cut off from the other Concordat worlds.
In the end, though, Dornen had no good options. He ordered the navigator to set a course to Jabesh-Gilead.
*****
For eight hundred and three years, Varinga crawled across space toward the Jabesh-Gilead system. By any conventional standard, she actually traveled incredibly fast, but conventional standards weren’t much use when traveling such mind-boggling distances. At the halfway point, she flipped end-for-end and began to decelerate. Nearly four centuries later she entered the far reaches of the Jabesh-Gilead system. Everyone aboard had aged twenty years. Several of them had died. Children had been born who knew nothing other than life aboard a vast spaceship. Most of those aboard had grown accustomed to the idea that they would live the rest of their lives on Varinga. Commander Dornen himself was near standard retirement age, in biological terms.
Six weeks after entering the system, the initial reports on Jabesh-Gilead came in from Varinga’s sensors. Prepared for the worst, Dornen made his way to the bridge, where he went over the reports with the navigator, Delio Starn.
“It’s still there,” said Starn.
Tertius
Dornen nodded. “Thank God.”
They hadn’t expected Jabesh-Gilead to have been obliterated, of course—only reduced to a lifeless ball of dust and muck. There wasn’t a lot of green on the surface, but there was enough for them to be sure of one thing: the Izarians hadn’t deployed a planet-killer. Two weeks later, Varinga was in orbit. Sensors confirmed their hopes: Jabesh-Gilead was no Eden, but it was habitable. With the food production facilities aboard Varinga—still working at nearly sixty percent capacity after eight hundred years!—they could live the rest of their lives in peace. If the Izarians hadn’t attacked Jabesh-Gilead yet, they probably weren’t going to.
Varinga set down just outside what was once Hadera, one of the most populous and important cities on Jabesh-Gilead. Dornen put together an exploratory team made up of himself, Delio Starn, Dr. Thaddeus Bartol, and five of the marines, including Sergeant Macron. They scouted the city while most of the rest of the passengers remained in stasis.
The city was deserted and largely in ruins. A search revealed no life except rats, a few small brown lizards, and creeping vines and other weeds that were slowly tearing what was left of the city apart.
“Strange,” said Dr. Thaddeus Bartol, exiting a ruined house to rejoin Dornen in the street.
“What’s that?” asked Dornen.
“Well, where is everybody?”
“Dead, I assume.”
“Right, but where are the corpses? Dead men don’t bury themselves.”
Dornen considered this. It was a good point. Bones wouldn’t have turned to dust in a few hundred years, and Jabesh-Gilead had no large predators. Even if the people had died of starvation or disease, they should have found some skeletons by now. Either the people of Hadera had walked away, or someone else had removed them. The Izarians weren’t known for mass abductions.
The crew returned to Varinga and she took flight again. Dornen hadn’t really expected to find anyone alive on Jabesh-Gilead, but they had to try. The population of Varinga was too small to ensure the survival of the species. If they could even find a settlement of a few hundred people, though, humanity would have a chance.
The next city they visited looked much like Hadera, as did the third. At the fourth, however, they made a startling discovery—or it discovered them. Dornen was exploring the ruins with Bartol and several of the marines when Sergeant Macron’s voice spoke in his hear. “Commander,” said Macron, “you’re going to want to see this.”
Dornen and the marine accompanying him, a corporal named Sefrus, hurried down an alley between two dilapidated apartment buildings toward Macron’s position. Macron stood alone in the middle of the street, staring into the distance.
“What is it, Sergeant?” Dornen said. “You figure out where all the….” He trailed off as he saw what Macron was looking at. Sefrus began to raise his rifle, but Dornen put up his hand and he lowered it again.
Someone—something—was walking down the street toward them. It was humanoid, but too tall to be human. It wore only a dingy smock that covered little of its pale gray skin. As it drew closer, they saw that its intelligent eyes were large and black. It appeared to be alone and unarmed.
“What the hell is it?” Macron whispered.
Dornen knew the creature from Freya’s description of them. “Cho-ta’an,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-six
T he Cho-ta’an seemed friendly enough. Dornen gathered, through a long exchange involving a lot of pointing and gesticulation, that it (for they had not determined whether it was male or female) hailed from a settlement some ten miles to the north, and that it was something like an archaeologist, on an expedition to uncover the secrets of the ancient human city, Tiberias. It had planned to spend the night in the city and then begin the journey home on foot. Its name was Yekchalla.
Yekchalla had seen Varinga land and was very interested in seeing the ship. After a brief discussion with Dr. Bartol, Dornen agreed to give Yekchalla a tour of the crew quarters and to let it sleep onboard if it wanted. Dornen reasoned that if the Cho-ta’an were hostile, it would be better to keep Yekchalla in sight and under guard. Yekchalla thanked them enthusiastically; Dornen gathered that it had not been looking forward to spending the night in the ruins. When Yekchalla had retired for the evening, Dornen ordered Sergeant Macron to keep an armed guard at its door.
Dornen met with his officers and Bartol later that evening.
“I guess we know what happened to the people who lived on Jabesh-Gilead,” said Delio Starn.
“You think the Cho-ta’an killed them?” said Dornen.
“It’s the obvious answer, isn’t it?”
“If the Cho-ta’an had eradicated humanity on this planet,” said the protocol officer, Clea Marinus, “I would have expected a different reception. Yekhalla didn’t seem afraid or suspicious of us. Just… curious.”
“Frankly,” said Dr. Bartol, “I found its reaction to us a little unnerving. It was oddly subdued, assuming that this was its first encounter with an alien species.”
“Technically this is our first encounter with an alien species,” said Marinus. “None of us has ever seen an Izarian.”
“Maybe the Cho-ta’an are the Izarians,” said Clea Marinus.
“Doubtful,” said Dornen. “All the intelligence the CDF had about the builders of the machines indicated they were very similar to humans. We think the golems were originally designed to stand in for Izarians doing menial tasks.”
“The point is,” said Bartol, “Yekchalla reacted not as someone whose worldview had been suddenly upended by an encounter with another intelligent life form, but rather as someone who’d been expecting us to show up sooner or later.”
“Well, if it’s an archaeologist, as you suggested, then it’s probably spent a fair amount of time in these ruins. It must know of the existence of humans.”
“And it probably knows what happened to them,” said Delio Starn.
“Right,” said Bartol. “That’s what I’m getting at. Even on the off chance it doesn’t know what happened to the human population of this planet, it must know that we suspect the Cho-ta’an of eradicating them. But it showed neither hostility nor awareness that we might be hostile toward it.”
“You think Yekchalla is hiding something,” said Dornen.
“Count on it,” replied Bartol.
*****
The next morning, the exploratory team traveled with Yekchalla—whom they had learned was male—to the Cho-ta’an settlement. Rather than walking, they took two of the battery-powered wheeled vehicles that Varinga carried in its hold. Yekchalla’s reaction to the vehicles was the same as his reaction to every other new and surprising thing it encountered: muted curiosity.
The trip was slow going, as the road north of the city was almost unusable. Along the way, Dornen and Bartol engaged Yekchalla in conversation, trying to find out as much as they could about the Cho-ta’an. This was a laborious process as well, but their translator learned quickly, and by the end of the journey it was passably fluent in the aliens’ language. According to Yekchalla, the Cho-ta’an numbered less than twenty thousand, and the entire population was centered on a city called Kavded, which was where they were going. The Cho-ta’an civilization was primitive by Truscan standards: they did not use electricity and had no complex machines. The vast majority of Cho-ta’an were engaged in activities related to agriculture. Yekchalla said little of the human settlements. He claimed it was widely believed among the Cho-ta’an that humans had died off long before the Cho-ta’an arrived. The Cho-ta’an, He said, had come to Yavesk (their name for Jabesh-Gilead) from another world in a sky ship like Varinga, looking for a simpler life away from the evils of technology. Their gods had left the ruins of the human cities as a reminder. It was said that the gods had destroyed the human civilization for their hubris, but Yekchalla was vague when pressed for the specifics of this calamity. He would only say that according to legend, the humans were reduced to dust and blew away in the wind. Yekchalla, being a scientist
, was hoping to find a more satisfactory explanation, but so far had no better hypothesis.
They stopped the vehicles a few hundred yards outside Kavded and walked the rest of the way into the city. Located in a deep river valley, Kavded was a cluster of a few hundred stone buildings surrounded by farmland.
Having been spotted some distance out, they were greeted by an excited crowd of Cho-ta’an, who stared and pointed, murmuring to each other. There was more of an edge to this encounter than their meeting with Yekchalla, but Dornen saw no weapons and sensed no overt hostility. The marines, hands hovering over their side arms, watched nervously for threats, but none came.
Yekchalla led them to the home of a male called Churrik, who was the leader of the Cho-ta’an. The translator rendered his title as “chief.” He had clearly been alerted to the humans’ arrival, as he was standing outside when they approached. Churrik and Yekchalla had a brief, somewhat tense exchange, and then Churrik invited them all inside.
They sat on cushions in a small room with a high ceiling. A servant offered them refreshments, but Dornen politely declined on behalf of the humans. Yekchalla explained to the chief that the humans, who had brought their own provisions, would not be able to digest Cho-ta’an food. Churrik seemed more-or-less mollified by this.
The War of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic (Saga of the Iron Dragon Book 5) Page 20