Moon 514- Blaze and the White Griffon

by Drew Briney

  “Arrest him,” Jerron cried.

  Evelia feinted.

  Turmoil ensued.

  HIS HEAD WAS SPINNING. One minute lauded a hero, the next minute accused of treason, the next moment under house arrest – and now, imprisoned in his own room by subordinates, Blaze felt once more like his world was falling apart too quickly to make any sense of it.

  Truth be known, he was content to have some time to think – he needed it. Now, perhaps he could sort out some of the contradictory claims he had been hearing. Could it be that Dr. Boyd really was trying to do what was right? Faced with external limitations, he could only take so many people with him. Food storage only goes so far. At some point, large carrier ships have to have renewable, sustainable food sources. With limited resources, limited room, and knowledge that an attack from the natives was inevitable, Dr. Boyd made some very tough decisions to minimize the suffering of the people he had spent his life with.

  Blaze hated the doctor for making those choices. At the same time, when the doctor lay dying in his arms, expressing his last desire to be understood by Blaze – no one else could even make sense of his dying words – the young warrior felt an inexpressibly strong duty to try to understand Dr. Boyd’s decisions. To some degree, he did understand those decisions. To some degree, he even empathized with Dr. Boyd for having to make those decisions. But at some level, it just didn’t make any sense – why didn’t he just ask other wise men and women for their thoughts and suggestions? Why did he proactively kill when he could have allowed others to die because he just wasn’t able to save them? And then, even if Blaze could reconcile all of these issues in his brain, there was yet another horrible quandary to consider: why did the doctor send several hundred of his men to be slaughtered in battle when they could have simply stayed inside the protective walls of the ship and began their journey unscathed?

  Perhaps he was going mental, he concluded. That conclusion made him feel better about the aging scientist. Blaze spent his entire childhood looking up to Dr. Boyd as one of his heroes – the leader of the Order, the pioneer of medical science of his generation, the friendly and loving man known for his kindness. Believing that he had gone crazy somehow seemed more palatable. It made the pain less intense. And it made sense – even though it was wrong. But not knowing that he was wrong, Blaze accepted this conclusion and determined to live with it. It was easier that way.

  Why did Jerron kill the magic woman? Blaze couldn’t place that act within any paradigm that made sense. It seemed a random act of violence – but then, following that act with an order to arrest Blaze made little sense either – especially when he was Blaze’s subordinate. The fact that anyone listened to Jerron at all was not only shocking, it was mind boggling. It simply didn’t make sense from a militaristic point of view. Maybe they are all just undisciplined, he surmised. Maybe they were never really taught to strictly follow orders. Come to think of it, that could explain several problems on the battlefield …

  If these conundrums weren’t enough, Blaze couldn’t make any sense of the magic woman’s final statements either – wouldn’t she know that a statement like that would be interpreted as an admission that she had somehow caused Dr. Boyd’s death – and that Blaze had helped her somehow? He guessed not. But of all the things she could be worrying about in her last moment of life, why had she chosen that as her most important message? He still didn’t understand why she cared about humans at all – or the earth that bore them. What did any of their affairs have to do with her? What did the earth’s affairs have to do with her? Why should they matter to her at all?

  And then there was Evelia. He had no doubt but that she was still on his side but now he couldn’t speak with her. He had seen her eyes when they cuffed him and bound him over (until the autopsy was complete – that would be a few days he guessed) so he knew that her surprise was as genuine as his own. Now, if the autopsy didn’t go well, he would be tried for his alleged involvement in the murder of Dr. Boyd – but she would know very well that he had nothing to do with his death and she would stand by his side. She would believe in him when no one else would. And while Blaze wasn’t overly concerned with the results of the trial – he implicitly trusted that the truth would come out – that didn’t stop him from wanting to talk with someone who knew he was innocent, someone who understood what he was going through.

  Their rooms adjoined on one side and had a doorway that would open if both sides vocally ordered the locking mechanism to unlock. He wondered whether or not that mechanism had been deactivated by the soldiers. They were both under house arrest so maybe they didn’t care if they interacted. On the other hand, maybe they would want to keep the prisoners apart so they couldn’t conspire any further or rehearse their stories or testimonies. Either way, if no one deactivated the locking mechanism, he guessed that Evelia would have released the lock on her side of the rooms by now. Since the explosion, she had been the level headed one. She had been the most rational. She would have been thinking about figuring things out together and discussing their plans rather than wasting time in self misery. For the first time in his life, Blaze felt embarrassed that he had been such a slave to his emotions – it was very contrary to his normal, disciplined self. Regardless of his embarrassment, he wanted to talk to his best friend from the Order.

  It was worth a try.

  I better take my staff, he considered before approaching the passageway, unsure what might happen if she was being interrogated and he showed up in the middle of questioning. He was grateful for the final functionality he had requested for his staff – the functionality that everyone told him was foolish – the cloaking function – the one that essentially rendered it unfindable unless you physically touched it. Sure, it presented the risk of being lost but situations like these were the very reasons that he had thought ahead – and he was grateful that he activated that functionality before he went to the deck. He hadn’t felt any gut feeling telling him to do so. He didn’t have any hunch. He just thought that it would be a good habit to start in this new, unpredictable environment – and now, he was glad that he was thinking ahead – even though this need had been entirely unforeseeable. Invisible behind the toilet, even the most diligent soldiers abandoned their search before they left his room.

  After Blaze retrieved his staff, he walked over towards the passageway.

  “Unlock,” he ordered, suddenly wondering whether or not he would be better off thinking through his challenges on his own and whether or not Evelia might prefer to do the same. This time however, he did have a hunch that he had better talk to her if he could. He heard the mechanism move.

  “Open,” he ordered again – and it did.

  “BLAZE!” EVELIA ALL BUT YELLED despite her efforts to keep her voice subdued. She was sitting right in front of the passageway, legs crossed, dressed in her old Order clothes instead of her new uniform, and cradling the infant in her arms. Despite his preoccupied and somber thoughts, Blaze couldn’t help but notice that she looked stunning.

  “Evelia, how are you,” he asked, genuinely concerned by her countenance.

  “I am holding up,” she answered, shivering a little. Despite her efforts to stay in control, she began to softly cry.

  Blaze felt awkward. This was one of those situations where he didn’t know what to do. It is customary in many cultures to embrace someone in need of comfort. At the same time, neither Blaze nor any of his friends just went around hugging people so it seemed like an act that was reserved for couples who were courting or who were married. That left him in a catch twenty-two. Conflicting considerations notwithstanding, Blaze reacted fairly quickly. Kneeling down next to her, leaning on his hip, and placing his arm around her, he held her while she wept. Part of him mourned with her. Part of him was every bit as sad as she was. But part of him was happy to be at her side and somehow, that seemed to overshadow his sadness. Somehow, comforting her comforted him so that they were both stronger together.

  No words were exchanged for
a very long time but that was okay. Blaze remembered a saying that you knew you were friends with someone when silence was as comfortable as communication. He thought it was true and wondered if Evelia felt the same.

  “Blaze.” Evelia’s voice seemed to crack a titch as if she was about to fall back into tears but she composed herself. A few moments later, she started to speak again. “Blaze, the magic woman spoke to me before she died. As I held her in my arms, listening to her breathing … she struggled so hard to breath … as I held her, she spoke to me in my mind – you know how she does that?”

  Blaze nodded, focusing intently on those mesmerizing hazel eyes.

  “She told me that she put all of her knowledge … all of her memories … she put it all in my mind. I have it ...” Evelia stopped, thinking about what that might mean. Blaze immediately wanted to ask her questions but decided to give her more time to speak. He didn’t think she was finished and he was right.

  “She gave it to me but I can only access it a piece at a time. She told me … after she was dead … I heard her voice telling me that she started giving me this gift that night when she killed all of those soldiers – I felt it then but didn’t know what was happening … I thought I was just stressed. She finished transferring her information the next morning. I felt it again but still didn’t understand what was happening.” She trailed off in her thoughts but Blaze remained quiet. He could tell she was just working through this new thing.

  “Blaze, she told me that I could access portions of her knowledge at a time, that I could just will that information to come … and it would. I could learn her magic … learn those powers … But she said it would change my worldview, my beliefs … my culture. She also said that it would be a great blessing to our species.” This last statement made her laugh a little. “She is funny like that, huh?”

  Part of Blaze was ready to correct her for using sloppy speech. The bigger part of him determined that he didn’t care about that anymore; he didn’t want to correct his friend over something that might not really matter. Besides, he understood her well and he agreed so he smiled at her and said nothing.

  “I am unsure what to think. Why would she do that for me? Why would she choose to give me that information instead of you … or Elayuh? Should I access that information or not? What do you think?”

  This was the first time Blaze recalled Evelia asking his opinion about anything very important. He wondered why she would value his opinion now – right when he seemed to be making a slew of poor decisions. He felt a duty to answer her truthfully. At the same time, he wasn’t sure he was ready to say the only thing that came to his mind so he paused a moment until he became determined to tell her his feelings.

  “I like you how you are Evelia,” he began. “I am not sure I would like to see you change very much.” A silent moment or two passed. There, I said it, he thought worriedly.

  But she smiled a genuine smile in return. “Well, hopefully I would only change for the better,” she laughed light heartedly.

  “Maybe not,” Blaze cautioned, unsure whether or not that was true.

  “Maybe her powers could get us out of the bind we are in,” Evelia proposed. Silence bound the couple for many long moments before Blaze ventured a response.

  “Maybe,” he conceded. “Maybe not.”

  “So,” she tried again. “Should I do it?”

  Blaze felt like he was tied in a straightjacket. The last thing he wanted to do now was give bad advice. Mostly, he trusted the magic woman’s judgment. But there was that nagging part of him that felt distrustful of her when she was gone. Part of him worried that she was just using everyone to her own best advantage, that she was somehow malevolent. However, when he thought these things through, he always ended up believing she was a good woman. He was, after all, very trusting in nature. Then again, risking an error in judgment in this situation could have disastrous consequences – Evelia could turn into someone evil – someone powerful – someone with the same control over Blaze that the lithe little alien had exercised over Dr. Boyd. He tried to offer Evelia an answer but none came. He had nothing to offer.

  “I know,” she ventured. “So many drastic things have happened, it is difficult to make another big decision … or to consider anything risky. Maybe I should just sleep on it for a couple days.”

  “Yes,” Blaze readily responded. A few days of thinking over problems sounded like a fabulous idea to him. “That sounds like a safe solution.”

  “Hmmm,” she pondered vocally, reconsidering her decision as quickly as she had made it. “My heart burns. It sounds wonderful to be able to do those things she can do – to have power to heal, to have power to control animals, to be able to speak to the earth! Does it not sound wonderful?”

  Put like that, Blaze was almost jealous. It did sound pretty wonderful.

  “And if her beliefs are in error, there is nothing stopping me from just rejecting them … right?”

  It seemed an easy proposition to accept but Blaze’s mind had been opened to alternate views of reality lately so nothing seemed simple any more. The very fact that her proposition seemed so intuitively true and beyond rational questioning was the very reason why he doubted it. “I do not know,” he confessed. “It seems true but I cannot be sure that it is true. What if she can control your mind this way? How would you know? How could you resist?”

  Then, after asking these rather serious questions that might make him appear a pessimist when he was usually an optimist, he decided to lighten up the conversation a bit: “What if you started imagining that you were twitching your tail or that you could breathe underwater? What then?”

  Not especially funny, Blaze’s jest didn’t score a belly laugh but it did fetch a giggle and a smile.

  “True enough,” she confessed, “these are risks I will have to heavily consider before willing her knowledge to open itself to me … I always thought it would be cool to have a tail though!” She polished her return jest with a charming smile.

  They spoke well into that evening and then late into the night. They shared stories from their childhoods, secret aspirations that no longer mattered since the Order was destroyed, and a great many other things of no major consequence. The only thing that really mattered was that they found the therapy they both needed – the therapy that only comes when you connect with another person and share your dreams and your fears, your hopes and your doubts, your joys and your heartaches.

  They only reluctantly gave into their fatigue and retired to their separate rooms but they both knew that they would somehow make it through these challenges and that they had somehow changed this evening. They would never be the same.

  Especially, Evelia.

  BLAZE AWAKENED, STARTLED. The ship was rumbling. Perhaps vibrating would have been a better word – or maybe … humming. Whatever it was, the thick pulsing sensation awakened the young warrior at precisely 3:00 a.m.

  We are launching, he intuitively concluded without really thinking any words.

  It was surreal. A couple of weeks ago, space travel had been a faded memory from the Second Holocaust. Now, it ranked among the many deceptions Blaze had freely swallowed during his stellar education. From his brief experience touring the ship, it was abundantly evident that technological advancements had been made between the latest space ships Blaze had read about and the technology used aboard this ship. Solar paneling, Ebsolm magnetism, and other so called cutting edge technologies used by Blaze’s Order were entirely obsolete here. Internal panels absorbed ambient energy from outside of the ship and provided every needed form of energy and propulsion. But these were only the beginning of advancements Blaze was discovering.

  Linatech paneling at the captain’s station allowed instant access to information stored in the database as well as control over every other station. Designed for a single man to pilot in case of emergencies, the ship ran more efficiently when controlled by a specialized team. And the pioneering theories of advancing Linatech paneling to Linacu
bing were no theories here – they were living, breathing technologies. Functioning Linacubes allowed the force of launching and landing to be offset enough to forego strapping down the crew; they provided artificial gravitational pulls in deep space; and they allowed the ship to retain its inner heat while traveling through the cold confines of intergalactic travel. Linacubing had advanced other technologies as well but Blaze knew nothing of them. All he knew was that Joseph Lina had pioneered data technology and holographic interfacing – he was the man behind the first cube. Without Joseph Lina, the Order mission to complete the database wouldn’t have been possible. But the idea that Joseph Lina had pioneered functioning Linacube technologies was entirely new to the young warrior – and now that he thought about it, calling a folded up linatech panel a “cube” was somewhat confusing. What then, was a Linacube? He would have to look this up later – surely his updated copy of the database would have this information.

  Blaze felt as if he was moving even though he was still lying in bed. Anyone familiar with Classic Age aviation would have considered that those moving sensations were remarkably insignificant given the speed of the ship and given the fact that the ship was on the verge of passing outside of the atmosphere but to Blaze, he felt as if he was experiencing the tremors of some grand earthquake. With no vehicles in his Order, this was a huge leap in transportation experiences for Blaze. It would be many moons before he would have the opportunity of comparing alternate technologies to become truly appreciative of what he was experiencing this very moment.

  Somewhat excited – and somewhat stressed, he sat up in his bed, tossed off the thin but heavy blanket, lifted his body off of the bed slightly, and practically jumped onto the floor, nearly losing his footing. He liked the flooring in his private chambers – it was almost like walking outdoors – a new sensation that he had unconsciously grown to enjoy – but it was nothing like what he was used to in his Order. But even though he liked it, he was still forgetting during those sleepy moments that his bed was located at the top of a significantly steep incline. Leaping out of bed threatened to throw him stumbling onto the floor. This time, he somehow retained his footing but he reminded himself that he needed to remember to be more cautious the next go around as he only barely escaped crashing to all fours – not that it would have hurt him much but still …