The entire ship now stood visible to them all. At least a mile in length, and nearly half that in height and width, with huge cylinders arrayed around its stern. Massive serpentine cables lay draped across the ship’s midsection, and great gouts of smoke or steam or other vapor issued forth from long horizontal vents on both sides, rising toward the upper reaches of the chamber.
Illuminated openings appeared in the ship’s belly, like caverns lit by smoldering fires. Platforms emerged, slowly lowered, and came to rest on the chamber floor. Within moments the aliens began to move toward the ship. They walked deliberately toward the platforms, most still weak and awkward. A few lagged behind, as if unsure of what to do or where they were, perhaps even unsure of who they were; but others spoke to them and urged them along, and eventually all followed and joined in the boarding.
The Emissary spoke, and Harlock’s voice said, “You may join them. You may board the ship and travel back to one of our worlds, which will likely be one of your worlds also. You will not be harmed, and you will be provided for.”
“What about Harlock?” Aliazar said, scrambling to his feet and looking up at the alien, who was nearly twice his height. “What about my brother?”
Harlock made a few gurgling sounds, then stopped.
“I do not understand your meaning,” the Emissary said.
Aliazar pointed to his brother, then leaned over and attempted to remove the masked helmet. The Emissary put its hand on Aliazar’s shoulder and gently pulled him back, speaking once more.
“The mask cannot be removed,” Harlock’s voice said. “He would immediately perish.” The alien made an odd scooping motion with its hand that must have had some meaning but which was indecipherable to Cale. “There is great benefit. He will accompany me, and he will serve us all, he will aid in the communication between our people, he and others like him.”
“He’ll die anyway!” Aliazar said with anguish. “He’ll die of thirst, or starve.” He made drinking motions, then brought his hand to his mouth and chewed imaginary food and made an exaggerated swallow, tracing a path with his finger down his throat to his stomach.
“He can take food and drink,” the Emissary said. The alien knelt in front of Harlock and pushed a depression on the right side of the helmet. An opening at Harlock’s mouth appeared and the Emissary pointed toward it.
Aliazar dug into Harlock’s suit and found the end of the liquids tube, then stretched it and brought it to his brother’s mouth. Harlock sucked greedily at it, leaning forward. When Harlock had finished drinking, and ate one of the nutrition packets that Aliazar fed to him, the Emissary eased Aliazar to the side and pushed the depression again, closing the mask.
“You have a strong attachment to this person,” the alien said. When Aliazar nodded, the alien continued. “You may stay with us and help care for him, and help with our efforts to interact with your people.”
Aliazar nodded again. The Emissary turned back to Cale and the others.
“Do you not wish to board the ship?” the alien asked. “Eventually we all will leave and there will be no one here. There is no way to survive in this place. As well, you cannot leave this place the way you entered. Do you understand this?”
Cale nodded and held up a hand, hoping the alien would understand the gesture. He glanced at the ship, saw that more than half of the aliens had boarded, then turned to Sidonie and Cicero.
“I want to see more,” Cicero said. “I’d like to stay at least for the next ship, I’d like to see what happens with this one.”
“If there is another ship,” Sidonie said.
“The alien implied there would be others,” Cicero replied. He gestured at the walls where row upon row of lockers still rose up into the darkness. “There are going to be a lot of other aliens, and a lot of other ships.” He breathed deeply once. “We’ll never have the chance to see anything like this again in our lives. We can always go with Aliazar and Harlock when the alien takes them.”
Cale looked at Sidonie. “I’m with Cicero,” he said. “I want to experience this as fully as possible.”
She nodded. “Then I’ll stay, too.”
Cale turned to the Emissary and tried to mime as simply as possible the launch of the ship, the resurrection of more aliens, the appearance of another ship with more aliens boarding it, and then himself and Sidonie and Cicero boarding.
“I understand,” the Emissary said. “You wish to stay and board one of the other ships. Is that accurate?”
Cale nodded.
“Yes,” the Emissary said. “There will be many other ships and you may board any of them.” The alien joined them, then slowly looked around the vault and added, “This is wondrous to behold.”
They stood together and watched the remaining aliens board the starship. When the last of them had stepped onto the platforms, railings came up and surrounded them, then the platforms ascended and delivered them into the ship’s interior.
More time passed with little change, then another rumble disturbed the air and the far wall seemed to crack and split. The crack widened, and Cale realized that somehow the walls were moving and separating from one another, the entire vast chamber opening to whatever lay outside. A stab of fear spiked through him as the gap widened and stars appeared against the blackness of space and he imagined all the air rushing out of the vault and sucking them out with it. But he felt no change to their atmosphere, and the fear eased as he realized that some invisible force maintained the integrity of the chamber.
The walls continued to move, sections on either side of the widening gap overlapping the remaining walls. Before long the gap was large enough for the ship to pass through, and the walls gradually came to a standstill.
Cale could not stop staring at the stars glittering in the blackness of space somehow kept at bay, the stars shining through that expansive opening, the stars beckoning to him, calling him to whatever might be home.
The starship began to move, the platform beneath it sliding forward as if on a track leading to the opening. As the bow of the ship reached the gap in the walls, a shimmering ripple appeared in the air around it, and Cale imagined that the ship was now passing through an energy barrier of some kind, whatever barrier protected the vault from the vacuum of deep space.
The ripple expanded as the ship moved through it, surrounding the craft with an incandescent corona. The ship was a long time moving through that barrier, partially outside and partially inside, but steadily progressing until at last the starship’s stern with its huge cylinders passed through the barrier and the rippling corona dwindled and disappeared.
The platform supporting the ship fell away as though hinged at the vault’s perimeter and the starship drifted free, cut loose from any kind of mooring. It drifted with almost no motion until dozens of tiny thrusters fired, silent and strangely insubstantial flickering streams of light pushing the immense ship away from the chamber with almost painful slowness. Some minutes later the thrusters cut out and the starship continued to move slowly away.
Brilliant and silent explosions of swirling light appeared in the massive cylinders at the ship’s stern. The sky around the engines seemed to twist, stretching out the light of the surrounding stars. The swirling flames of blue and white and deep red brightened and flared so that soon the ship itself was hidden, and there was nothing to be seen but the flames and the stars.
The starship accelerated, picking up speed and growing smaller in apparent size. As it did, the platform that had dropped away came up and retracted and the walls began to move again, this time advancing toward each other, slowly but steadily closing the gap. When the walls had completely closed, cutting off all signs of the great starship and the stars outside, Cale felt a sense of loss, despite knowing he would see it all again.
The Emissary turned away from them and looked at the nearby wall. Once again the lower rows of lockers became outlined with a glowing light from within the walls, once again the deeper and louder rumble began.
Cale stood side by side with Sidonie and Cicero, Aliazar and Harlock just a few feet away, and watched the next stage of the resurrection begin. Nothing would ever be the same for human beings again.
EPILOGUE
Months later, after making their way back to Lagrima, Cale and Sidonie found his mother working in the greenhouse that had been so long abandoned but now showed a few tentative signs of new life: a cleared worktable; a mound of fresh dirt on the floor nearby; half a dozen small plants in ceramic pots lined up on a shelf. Cale’s mother stood at the table with a gardening trowel, a soil-filled pot, and a seedling that she carefully worked into the soil, carving out a place for it with the trowel. Sidonie placed her hand gently and briefly on Cale’s shoulder, then without a word retreated into the House, leaving him alone with his mother.
Neither spoke at first. Cale waited for her to turn toward him or acknowledge him in some other way. She finished with the seedling, then seemed to study it. Though she did not look at him, she did finally speak.
“I’ve been told you’re responsible for all the . . . what? Distress? Consternation?” She paused, thoughtful. “Perhaps panic is the best word. Releasing millions of aliens upon the various worlds of human beings.” She shook her head. “Who would ever have imagined such a thing?”
“Father started it,” Cale said.
His mother looked at him with a frown. “What do you mean?”
“When he took me with him, he was searching for what I found years later, searching for what became the key to resurrecting the Jaaprana. He started it, and I suppose I finished it. Of course, in one sense it’s only just begun.”
His mother was silent, then she turned away and poked absently at the dirt in the pot before her. She set the trowel beside the pot and gazed out through the broken panes and across the still barren garden. “How did you know they wouldn’t try to destroy us?”
“I didn’t,” Cale answered. “I believed they would be well-intentioned, but I couldn’t be sure.”
“And you revived them anyway?”
“It felt like the right thing to do.”
“The right thing for who?” she said with a strange smile, still not looking at him.
“For us. For them.”
She nodded. “There has been bloodshed, of course, but most of it seems to be our own doing. The Jaaprana are showing remarkable restraint.” She turned to him. “Yes, Cale, it was the right thing to do.” Then she turned away as though unable to look at him for very long.
She went to the outer door of the greenhouse and opened it, stepped outside, and sat on the old wooden bench next to the weed-choked path.
He walked through the greenhouse and out through the open door, and sat next to her, leaving a wide space between them. The air was warm, and a breeze rustled the dead leaves on the ground and rattled the few dry branches that still sprouted from the dirt. Yet he also smelled the subtle odor of damp earth from his mother’s new plantings and the faint aroma of a few young buds and blossoms.
“I should get to know you, Cale.” She pulled at the fabric of her trousers just above the knee, then released and smoothed it, pressing hard with her fingers.
“There’s time, now,” he said.
She nodded, but said no more. They sat beside each other in silence, the skies clear and the sun shining down on them with warmth and light.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I again thank my wife, Candace, for all of her contributions to this book. She read the entire manuscript several times and made innumerable suggestions and corrections, improving it markedly.
I’d also like to express my deep appreciation to the four people I’ve worked for during the past ten years: David Ballew, Mike McCarthy, Ken Pedersen, and Russ Reid. In addition to being fine employers—generous, respectful, and always appreciative—they have been incredibly supportive of my writing career, providing me with all the flexibility I could ever ask for, and constantly encouraging me over the years. Thank you.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
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