Voyage

by C. Paul Lockman

  Garlidan nodded. “How can I help?”

  “Well, it’s not easy. Falik and I have been discussing it for a couple of days. We have come into possession of some very interesting information regarding the science research outpost at Holdrian. Do you know of it?”

  His eyebrows raised. I’d never seen him look so surprised. “Oh yes, of course. Goodness me. Holdrian is almost a legend among a certain group… How on earth…?”

  I waved away the question. “Not important right now. I’m a celebrity, and sometimes that is useful.” I sounded a little nonchalant. It wasn’t like me, but I certainly didn’t want to get into details of how I fucked the Captain’s wife with Xathan; that I had gained industrial secrets through prostitution, was another way of looking at it. Garlidan was unlikely to have a sense of humour about that.

  “They have completed some research at Holdrian which might help me. Look”, I leaned closer, “I know you can get me home. You got me here, after all.” Garlidan was nodding. “But what’s the point in getting me home if eighty fucking years have passed and the planet has meanwhile destroyed itself?” My voice took on the angry edge again. I took a breath.

  “I see. Yes. I have heard rumours. I’m not a celebrity like you, but I’m connected. My sources never forget me.” He seemed proud of his contacts, but also thoughtful. “I believe I can help you. Is the Captain prepared to make the journey? Have you asked him?”

  I nodded. “Falik has been working on him about this. We need something with Daedalus’ engines to have any hope of making the trip in reasonable time. It is going to cost him a lot of fuel, but we’ll make arrangements.”

  Garlidan was still deep in thought. “So, you have travel in hand. What about resources?” I looked at him quizzically. “My dear boy”, he chuckled, “don’t tell me you’re just going to go back there and warn them?”

  I shrugged. “That was the plan, yes.”

  Garlidan burst out laughing. Several waiters’ heads turned. This was hardly discreet. “For God’s sake, man…” He calmed down gradually, dried his eyes.

  “How many”, he was still chuckling, inwardly, “how many people do you think there are running around in the early 21st Century on Earth predicting doom and telling everyone to change their ways? Half the population is doing it! The media is struggling under an avalanche of opinions to exactly that effect. And what difference does it seem to have made, at this handy remove? Eh?”

  He was right. For all the campaigning and advertising, the world had still wound up going straight to hell. What was missing?

  “You can’t just talk about it. You’ve got to do something. Radical, far-reaching change. Look…” he brought out his lectern, “I’ve done some preliminary thinking already, while you were enjoying your late breakfast”. He gave me a cheeky smile. I threw part of a breadstick at him.

  “Earth, 2008, right after you left. We carried out a deep-space scan, actually… well, we carried out a whole survey effort while you were in transit, to make sure you would have information on your home when you arrived. It wouldn’t do for you to have a thousand questions and all we’d have is ‘it’s a pale, blue dot’!” He chuckled again. He sure was in a jolly mood today. I wondered if one of his contacts was a Raptor who was pleasing his ancient boner. Anything was possible, I reasoned.

  “Here’s the scan. Levels of CO2 are rising, as are global temperatures. There is a realignment of the saline situation in the North Atlantic caused by melting of the north polar cap. Sea levels are on the up because of the disintegration of the south polar cap. There’s a lot of water there, and nowhere for it to go but onto your precious land.” I recognised the whole scenario. Only this time I knew it had already come to pass.

  “And then, to make things infinitely worse, you’ve got for-profit media, massive, self-interested corporations, hugely corrupt politicians who can be bought for campaign contributions, and a largely brainwashed, materialist consumer society.”

  Yeah, I know. Thanks for the reminder. “So, what can I do to change all that?”

  “You tell me, Earth Boy! What’s the biggest cause of pollution, to begin with?”

  I thought for a second. “Power production. Maybe transport is bigger, I don’t know.”

  Garlidan tapped his lectern. “They’re one and the same thing. The need for electricity, however it is used. Electrical power gives you lights and computers and manufacturing, but it also gives you turning wheels, charged batteries and spinning aircraft engines. You need electricity more than anything, and it is hurting you more than anything.” I waited for him to get to his point.

  “Imagine if there was no longer a need to produce electricity on Earth.” I thought about it. “What would happen?” He tapped his lectern, but kept it hidden so that I had to guess. He could be an asshole.

  “CO2 levels would stabilise after a while.” He nodded, waving me to go on. “The temperature rise would cease, perhaps even drop back a bit. The poles could freeze again, we’d stop the rise in sea levels, and most of the shit which went wrong… wouldn’t.”

  “Exactly. So, you need a method of completely clean power-production.”

  I waved him down. “Yeah, sure I do. I know. They’ve been chasing that for decades. But say for a moment we figure out a way to bring a fusion generator with me, or something, and I just show up and say, ‘hey, check this out! I invented fusion power in my garage in my spare time!’ They’ll never believe it. And even if I show them it works, it’s just such a dumb notion that… these are sceptical people, Garlidan. I can’t drop that kind of thing on them.”

  The waiter brought our starters, poured more drinks, and left. “I’m not suggesting that’s what you do. Whatever solution you come up with absolutely must be based on existing technologies. You’ve just got to do it better than they currently are. Better, bigger and faster.”

  He sketched out his plan. The requirements were considerable, but with only one ship and two pieces of equipment from Takanli, and some serious help from the Holdrian scientists, it could be done.

  The veal was excellent. Garlidan finished sketching out the plan, transferred it to my lectern, and ordered dessert. “We’ll need to refine this, and some of it will depend on the Holdrian team and what they can do. But, it looks good.” We clinked glasses. I felt a glimmering confidence about my planet for the first time in months. “I’ve worked with them before, of course. The technology which brought you here… you’ll remember your inadvertent encounter with deep space when you woke up a little early…”

  “Hard to forget that one”, I quipped.

  “Well, that was an early design for a Faster-than-Light system of travel. It is still imperfect but, well, we thought it worth the risk. They’ve since perfected a spacecraft drive based on the same technology. We hope to receive an engineering test example soon. Most exciting.” Wow. Heading home at super-light-speed. This could save me years.

  We took a digestive stroll outside to kill the remaining hour before the glider would return and take us to the elevator nexus. “Take a look around,” Garlidan said expansively. He took a deep, cleansing breath. “These people, I find them so utterly amazing.” I surveyed the scene. The plazas I had seen last night from atop the temple were lined with impressive stone buildings.

  “How long ago were these built?”

  Garlidan had a twinkle in his eye. “Guess. Apply your Earth experience to this problem, and you tell me.” I looked around again. I had been lucky enough to travel a lot on Earth and had seen my share of ancient temples and palaces. “Well, let’s see. The temples at Angkor in Cambodia are about 1100 years old, some of them, with the better-preserved ones more recent.” I thought about the splendid quincunx of Angkor Wat with a pang of nostalgia for my gap year in Asia. “The Mayan temples at Tikal and Yaxitlan are older still, getting on for 1400 years, so they told me. But some of them were reconstructed.”

  Garlidan was waiting for this lengthy process to achieve a number. I tried. “3000 years? Even..
. I don’t know... older than the pyramids in Egypt?”

  Garlidan smiled wisely. “The oldest buildings in this national park, which are currently in view, are 560,000 years old, give or take.” I gawped at him. “It looks just like stone, doesn’t it? Well, try this. How do you think a civilisation which was still building with stones hewed from the ground produced this?”

  He led me the short walk to the park’s main attraction, a gigantic upstanding stone stele which reminded me of the obelisk from Clark’s 2001. It was pure white, unblemished, and had a complex of written symbols engraved on it in very, very fine lines. In fact, it looked like it was written with a laser.

  “It took some time for our researchers to get to the bottom of this, but this stone tablet”, he patted it gratefully, “is a star chart. It explains the location of this planet in relation to our sun, the other planets, and the system from which its builders came. This”, he paused for effect, “is an alien artefact, left here well over half a million years ago.” I took a close look. Lines and rings indicated planets and their orbits. Garlidan continued. This seemed to be among his favourite subjects.

  “When they arrived, on some kind of exploratory mission like the one we mounted to the Earth 40 years ago, they found an intelligent, beneficent people who welcomed them. They learned to communicate. We believe they may have taken local people to their own home planet, to introduce them to technologies. Whatever happened, there was a technological explosion. In the space of a few short years, these people had learned to build these massive monuments. As a gift, the aliens provided a strengthening agent for their stones and mortars, and gave them new pigments for their artworks, which achieved a staggering level of merit. And they left this tablet here, in the event that this civilisation achieved spaceflight. They never did.”

  “What happened?”

  Garlidan shrugged. “Who can say for sure? The strongest theory is a sudden and massive climate change caused by solar activity, or a greenhouse effect. Possibly a virus or crop blight. Whichever, they were cut off in their prime.”

  I looked around once more at the massive monuments, proudly dominating a landscape which had been their home for half a million years. “Do you see the comparison with your own planet?” I nodded. “Do you see the staggering effect you could have, if we get this right? Literally the salvation of your species, and of every other species on the Earth.” I shivered.

  “Quite a responsibility. I never had an important job or anything back home. I was only a couple of years out of college. I spent most of my time smoking weed and watching football.”

  Garlidan smiled, put a hand on my shoulder. “Time to grow up, Earth Boy.”

  Chapter XXV: Regime Change

  The glider’s ride was as smooth and enjoyable as before, but much shorter. We were whisked down to the equator, where a small city had grown up around the Elevator Nexus. With the help of Takanli’s scientists, and in the hope of boosting the local economy, Numkli had installed a space elevator which extended from the base station at the equator out to a 39,000 mile geostationary orbital point. They had captured a nearby asteroid as it swung near their planet and manoeuvred it into position as the cable’s counterweight. Takanli had provided the cable, a complex carbon nano-tube filament which possessed extraordinary tensile strength. Every seven minutes, a large elevator car, capable of carrying 200 tonnes of supplies and a hundred people, was whisked up to the geostationary asteroid, from where space taxis queued up to transport goods and passengers to their ships.

  Falik, looking radiant after her shower, met us at the Nexus. She kissed me and then, excited, leaned in close. “I think I made sense of the last chapters of the Red Cube”.

  We found a small place for a drink, and caught up. She was buzzing with news of Holdrian’s time travel experiments. “They actually tested the thing, and it worked!” I beamed. “Well, kind of.”

  A brief sigh. “Near enough isn’t good enough, not when it comes to advanced physics, Falik.”

  She drained her drink, thirsty and excited. “They’re working on it. Also, the Captain wants to meet us immediately after we leave orbit. I think he’s going to help too. How was Garlidan?”

  I leaned in, whispered back. “Mind-blowing. He knows exactly what I should do. I need a little help from our friends at the Science Ministry. Can we send a subspace signal before we leave orbit?” Falik nodded. I told her the equipment we needed, and about the extra fuel for Daedalus.

  “Don’t worry about it. They will see this was a routine request. Besides… it’s you, after all.”

  We strapped ourselves into the elevator car’s passenger compartment. The car was a cylindrical shape, divided between people and freight. Various other of the Daedalus’ passengers and crew were on board and several made nice comments about the TV debate. The Raptor was there, in the corner, strapping herself in and wearing far too little, as usual. Our eyes met and she licked her lips. Falik saw this and grinned. I loved her more every day, and not only for her relaxed attitude to our relationship; her flexibility was enabling my work out here, and perhaps saving many lives.

  The initial acceleration was gentle, but as the journey progressed, the readouts started showing speeds which made my head spin. The car whizzed up the carbon nano-tube filament almost silently, as we were in a vacuum provided by a molecular plastic tube which coated the wire on both sides. Another car shot past us on its descent, at 2000 mph. Out of the large windows, we could see the whole continent laid out at our feet. Numkli was a dry, unfriendly, desert land, scarred by human settlement, although I remained amazed that humans could make a home somewhere so… sterile. Was this the future of the Earth? I shuddered again, remembering Garlidan’s plan, and the great responsibility I had accepted.

  The sky turned a deeper blue, then purple, then black, and were in space. And we just kept going. I recalled that, whereas the Cruiser ride into space for lunch from Takanli was into a low orbit, this ride was going all the way up to Geostationary orbit. A couple more minutes, and the shocking site of the planet receding beneath my feet, and we slowed to a stop. We made our way into the docking station, which was a cool silver colour, and the car finally stopped. The doors opened. Falik grabbed my arm and said, “quick, let’s get that signal sent off to Takanli from here while we’re waiting for a taxi.”

  I agreed and we checked our personal communicators. We seemed to be in range, so we agreed on the wording and fired off the email to Beatrice from the Science Ministry. We attached a video of me blowing her a kiss, which we knew she would appreciate.

  The taxis were squat, functional spacecraft, but they were quick. In minutes, we were hovering outside the landing bay of the Daedalus with several other cabs and freight vehicles. Docking permission granted, we signed in, headed to our cabin to leave our bags and take a quick shower (together, of course, but there wasn’t really time for fun) and we took our seats in the dining hall for the burn which would take us out of orbit.

  I had just gotten comfortable and strapped myself in once more when a familiar pair of breasts made their way across the room. The Raptor sat right next to me and clipped herself in. “Hi there.” Oh, Jesus. Falik still found the whole thing amusing and subtly moved on, giggling silently to herself.

  “How are you? Did you enjoy Numkli?” How do you begin a ‘normal’ conversation with an eight-foot, massive-titted sexual volcano from Outer Space?

  “Not really… I’ve been lonely. No-one to keep a girl company.” She ran a hand up my leg, from my knee to my balls, and gave them a little squeeze. “But I was busy, too, keeping my ear to the ground. I have some interesting information for you.”

  I glanced over at Falik, who was still laughing. “What?” I thought to her. “Should I tell her to go away?” Silent communication was certainly the best policy with the Raptor sitting right by me.

  “No, keep her talking. She has something for us, I can tell. She may want payment. If so, let’s take her to our cabin after we speak to the Captain.
We need to keep the whole species on our side. And it could be fun.” She looked at me, slightly pleadingly. I nodded, smiling. What a girl.

  “We are always grateful for accurate information from good sources. And we know that the Raptors are as good as their word. What would you like to share?”

  She leaned in close, put her mouth right by my ear. “There is going to be a coup on Jakalzzi.” Oh, shit, here comes the curve ball. “A moderate, interim government will take charge. This will be the perfect moment for a change on the issue of the Elders. The timing is perfect, do you not agree?”

  I sat back and considered this news. Whatever had happened behind the scenes, it had to look like I had manoeuvred this dispute towards a peaceful settlement; news of scheming Raptor involvement would only bring recrimination and violence. But what of this new government? Certainly, it would be easier to deal with a moderate government than the paranoid trio I had met at the debate. But did the coup signal a genuine shift in the opinions of the populace? Were they softening? Had the debate helped?

  I motioned for the Raptor to go on. “We have found it… shall we say, expedient to engineer political change. We still intend to go ahead with the original plan. Thank you for putting us in touch with Garlidan. He is being most helpful.”

  “But if the moderates are going to be in charge… why do you need to go through with the emotional suppression vaccine?”

  The Raptor smiled, somewhat grimly. “Governments can change overnight. Opinions - long-held, entrenched, prejudicial opinions - can take generations to overcome. That is what the vaccine is for. The change in government is mostly for your benefit. We hope it is useful.”

  With that, she settled back in her seat and closed her eyes. I felt like an idiot. Certainly I had underestimated these beings and their capacity to effect change. I found Falik and telepathically caught her up. She took my arm reassuringly. I always felt better, safer, more in control of my insane life, when I was with her.