by Unknown
Overcoming his initial shock, he signaled for his staff. Collins and Brooks were quick to arrive, with Gonzalez only moments behind them.
Lieutenant April Collins saluted smartly. “Yes, Commander.”
Hawthorne returned the salute vaguely. “Have a seat. All of you.” He handed Collins the sheet. They passed it around and read it in silence, Collins exhaling strongly and seeming to deflate, Brooks showing no emotion, and Gonzalez saying simply, “Ballisa. Damn.”
They sat quietly for a few moments.
“Major Gonzalez,” said Hawthorne, “you’re the logistics officer. Is there any way for us to bring additional supplies in from human-controlled space?”
“No sir, the only charted space lane and wormhole system runs through Ballisa. Any other path would be too risky.”
“We’re going to have to try,” said Hawthorne. “With the fall of Ballisa, we’re thirteen light-years behind enemy lines, cut off from our supply lines and any contact with humanity. It’s only a matter of time until the Andreans find us and take this planet, and we can’t count on the fleet to defend us. Hell, they can’t even get here, and I suspect they’ve got bigger problems than worrying about a few stragglers on a prison planet. We have to try to evacuate the camp.”
Gonzalez, the logistics officer, shook his head slowly. Hawthorne nodded to him to speak.
“Two things,” Gonzalez said, holding up a pair of fingers. “First, we don’t have enough working ships to evacuate everyone, and second, even if we did you could never convince me to board one. I’d rather take my chances on laying low and hoping the Andreans don’t notice us.”
Collins nodded her agreement. “Searching for an unmapped wormhole is suicide,” she said. “The Andreans would almost certainly detect us if we try it.”
“I see,” said Hawthorne. “I think we’ll forget the military protocol for a while and allow everyone the option of staying or going. If we have more people wanting to leave than our available ships can carry, we’ll draw lots.”
“What about the prisoners?” asked Brooks.
“You’re asking if we should release them and let them make their own home on this planet?” Hawthorne said.
“I suppose so,” Brooks replied. “Or whatever needs to be done.”
The twelve hundred captured Andreans imprisoned in the Xeno Containment Sector were the reason a jungle outpost had been established on the planet. Inside the containment field, their extraordinary long-range telepathy was limited to short distances. Hard experience had taught that the Andreans would stop at nothing to liberate even one prisoner. Therefore, the prisoners remained behind the field to prevent them from communicating with their own kind.
“I’ll have to think about it.” Hawthorne said.
As the elder of my people and direct descendant of Hawk Thorn the Founder it falls to me, as is proper, to guide them in times of crisis. Rumors are rampant, and the doomsayers, normally dormant, have come out in full force.
I must consult with the spirits in the ancient temple, but cannot do so without much trepidation. The spirits, always bitter, often violent, are not to be braved lightly. Nevertheless, I must remain strong and remember that the abuse only exists within the confines of my mind, and hope that one of the spirits is minded to illuminate me on the signs that we have seen.
I have little hope of this, however, as the spirits are never deliberately helpful. They dwell in the gloom of the temple, keening sadly, unable to rest, victims of some long-forgotten atrocity.
Our people have been dependent on signs for our survival since the Founding. We have used the migration of the reptiles to plan for winter. The cycles of the tides to time our crops. The lunar eclipse to begin the harvest. Every sign is long awaited, expected, and greeted as a friend. Some are met with trepidation, but all are a comfort to the people. A new star in the firmament must be a sign of colossal magnitude, but new signs are never a source of comfort, and this one was of particular concern. I am certain that God did not intend for stars to move in the way that this one does.
She no longer thought of herself as Lieutenant Collins. All signs of military discipline had broken down months ago. Only two hundred of the camp detail had remained behind on the planet. The rest had decided to take their chances on the uncharted star lanes.
Walking across the green plain, April reflected on the changes that had come over Hawthorne, and the effect they were having on her.
His initial idea of hiding from the Andreans had become an all-consuming obsession. He had ordered the satellites brought down from their orbits. Then he had disconnected the ground transmitters, and ordered all the components smashed and burned for good measure. He had done it all in the name of a safety that many felt existed only in his mind. Was it possible that the Andreans would never find them? Many in the group that remained behind felt Hawthorne had gone to extremes. The universe was a big place.
She had mixed feelings regarding Hawthorne’s plan, but considering how she felt about the man himself, that was nothing unusual.
She’d been fascinated how he took charge following the exodus. Taking the role of leader had not been a given for Hawthorne. There had been multiple factions and many of them wanted to usurp his authority.
His extreme views regarding the eradication of all technology had only made matters more difficult. Nevertheless, through a brilliant combination of convincing oratory, overflowing passion and simple intelligence, he had won them over one by one and taken his place as the leader of this tiny group of humans thirteen light years behind enemy lines.
He had also won April’s respect, and a lot more – she’d helped him methodically destroy every link to the outside universe, save one.
Only because she was in love with him allowed her to continue walking. She had a job to finish.
The alien pen – the euphemism Xeno Containment Sector had fallen by the wayside – came into view a few hundred yards away.
She walked through the containment screens, a concentric ring of electromagnetic fences which surrounded a large concrete structure. Humans felt only a slight tingle on penetrating the screens, but for Andreans, with their different mental structure, it was torture. Crossing one of the containment screens was incapacitating, and two would probably be fatal, although that was theoretical; none of the prisoners had ever been desperate enough to try it.
April stopped just outside the innermost screen. Even her limited human senses could feel the telepathic minds of the Andreans within, concentrating, as always, on their art. Not a single surface of the pen was free of some kind of alien clutter: painted walls, sculpted rock. The concrete of the walls had been chiseled, forming the shapes of humans, Andreans, and other less identifiable beings.
A single Andrean approached her from inside the shadowed depths of the pen. One of the first findings that observation of Andreans in captivity had yielded was that they had no specific leader – it was never the same individual who received the human emissaries.
Today, however, the creatures within did something remarkable. They all turned to watch.
Andreans, the sworn enemies of humanity, had been vilified as the pure essence of evil since they were first discovered.
They certainly looked the part.
Large, exoskeletoned, hive-oriented creatures with multiple legs capable of reading minds over inconceivable distances were highly unlikely to get along with individualistic mammals with a paranoid streak.
April had been in charge of feeding and watching the prisoners since the founding of the camp, and had come to anthropomorphize them to the point that she had given some of them human names.
Despite the alien appearance and multiple legs, some gestures, especially the continuous nodding, were utterly human. And their art. Their art sang to her in a strange way, a mixture of loneliness and desperation, but with an undertone of pure hope.
She supposed telepathic races must, inescapably, pick up some mannerisms and thought processes from other intelligences they contact.
The emissary rubbed its hind legs together, warming up the membranes to speak with her. Its black exoskeleton glistened in the sunlight.
Even before April could open her mouth, it spoke to her.
“Do not do this thing,” it said.
Language barriers had never been an issue with a telepathic race, and the Andreans were able to reproduce an amazing range of sounds with their membranes, even though, as a telepathic race, they did not converse among themselves.
April stared back at it. So they know, she thought. “We must,” she said. “We have no other choice.”
“There are always choices,” the Andrean said calmly.
“But we cannot risk them. We don’t know if there are any other humans left in the galaxy,” explained April, as if pleading for understanding. “What if we are the last? We must do anything and everything to survive. We cannot risk having your telepathic signals reach your fleet.”
“We are willing to promise not to project our thoughts.”
“I believe you,” said April, “but I cannot risk the future of the entire human race on your promise.”
“Promises are sacred to our race.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No!” the Andrean shouted at her. “At least spare one of us! If you kill us all, there will be none to transfer our knowledge, our memories, to the race. This you cannot do! It is an atrocity of the highest order.”
So saying, the Andrean charged the screen.
April was so surprised that she managed only to take one step back, but that was sufficient.
The Andrean fell at her feet, whether dead or merely unconscious it was impossible for April to tell. A ripple flowed through the rest of the aliens, as if they themselves had felt the pain of crossing the screen. Which, thought April, they probably had.
She prepared herself to flee the inevitable desperate charge, but the remaining Andreans only stared at her.
Despite their completely monstrous insectoid appearance, their accusing stare, knowing as they did – from her mind – that they would all be dead before the end of the day was somehow moving.
And very human.
She felt tears rolling down her face as she turned to go.
The violence had been expected, but not the excitement, the joy, the feeling of long awaited revenge. I had learned nothing in the temple save that the spirits, when the mood takes them, can be worse than anything imaginable. Their hatred for all living men had broken through even my most rigidly constructed mental barriers, and I had only managed to extricate myself from the temple through sheer animal instinct.
I know that I must find the explanation if I am to save The People from tearing themselves apart in a panicked frenzy. I must find the strength to rise and consult the books of wisdom once more. There may be some passage in the moral treatise ‘Vanity Fair’ that may shed light on this crossroad or is this the doomsday predicted in the metaphorical prophecy ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’?
I do not yet have the answer, but cannot bring myself to believe that the books are unable to assist. They have been the spiritual guide to our people for all of history. They cannot fail us now.
For the new star has, in this brief interlude, grown larger.
The library had been cleaned out years before, but Hawthorne still scanned the shelves out of sheer paranoid habit, looking for anything that might endanger the future of the colony. Nothing. The shelves were innocent of any technical literature. Even Victorian fantasy had been burned if he judged it to contain too much scientific detail.
It had cut him deeply to lose Verne and Wells, constant companions to his voyages among the stars. Hardest of all had been Frankenstein. He had kept it under lock years after he had stopped mourning the loss of the other books.
Until the night of April’s death. On that night, he remembered once again that the enemy they were hiding from was implacable and could reach out across the void to take human life.
She had never been the same following the death of the Andreans, had never been able to reconcile herself to the reality of having given the order to terminate them. Her suicide, though unaccompanied by a note of any kind had been instantly and forever attributed to the Andreans by Hawthorne, though others thought differently.
That very night, Frankenstein had burned. No price was too high to save the settlement. He remembered it as if it were yesterday; the smell of the smoke as the pages caught fire, while he felt the pain of April’s death.
“Are you all right, grandpa?”
Milo, the youngest of his six grandchildren had entered unnoticed. For a moment, he was unable to breathe, struck, as always, by how much Milo reminded him of April. Then, all of their offspring had always looked more like her than him.
The child seemed unsure of how to respond to this silent scrutiny from his usually indulgent ancestor. Tears welled up.
“Now, Milo,” said Hawthorne in his usual, mild voice, “don’t cry.”
Everything was all right again. The child straightened and forgot all about crying, prompting a smile from his grandfather.
“What were you thinking about, grandpa?”
“Books.” The faraway look in his eyes went unnoticed by Milo.
“Books? Like these?” Milo pointed at the shelves.
“Yes. These and many others. Books from the past that I don’t have any more.”
“Why not?”
“Because they were dangerous.”
Milo looked at the books on the shelves. He reached out and tentatively touched one. His finger landed on Othello. He pulled it back quickly. Only when he was certain that it hadn’t hurt him did his hand approach the book again.
“The danger was not in the books themselves but in what was written inside.”
“Then why did you keep these?” asked Milo. He pulled the copy of Othello from its place on the shelf.
“Because books can also tell us who we are, and where we come from, so we never forget.”
“I’m Milo,” said the boy, “I won’t forget that!” He opened the book reverently, as if expecting a message from God to leap out at him from the pages.
Hawthorne tried to remember the age of the child. Seven? Eight? It made no difference. Hawthorne knew the child couldn’t read, and likely would never bother to learn. It was no longer necessary.
He was responsible for this, of course.
Under his watchful and often tyrannical eye, every sign of advanced human technology that could potentially create the slightest risk of detection from space had been eradicated from the colony.
He had fought the Andreans. He knew what they were like. Future generations would not know and, not knowing, would minimize the threat, seduced by the comforts of the technology that Hawthorne had destroyed. It was simply human nature.
It was not enough to eliminate the dangerous technology itself. The very knowledge of its existence had to be erased.
He had done it.
Technical treatises had been used to create a stone-age farming culture and then destroyed. The generators, fusion drives, tri-D equipment, the storage files. All of them had been destroyed.
Even the weaponry had gone. This came near to causing a mutiny until Hawthorne pointed out that against the massed might of the Andrean fleet a few blaster rifles were not going to be of much use. Their only hope was to hide – and pray.
What at first had seemed an impossible dream, with discovery and death the price of dreaming, had in time become simply the way things were. His grandchildren now regarded the Andreans as a bedtime story, space flight as a legend, and reading as something for gods and elders.
The child sat next to him contentedly, pretending to read the book, and creating a world that Shakespeare would never have dreamed possible. Milo would remain forever unaware of the weight his grandfather carried in his soul, unaware that the old man beside him wondered every day if he had, indeed, made the right choice.
The burden of leadership, at least,
was no longer his own. Hawthorne had passed it along the very day after April’s death. However, he could never free himself of the responsibility for what he had done. Its enormity would forever live within him.
The child eventually wandered off, leaving his grandfather to his thoughts.
Hawthorne knew that there was not much time left to him, and realized he should enjoy re-reading his beloved leather-bound copy of Wuthering Heights, happy in the safety of his colony and even more content because his fetish for outdated printed books had at least allowed him to save a small section of human culture for the generations to come.
Death should find him content, safe in the knowledge that he had accomplished the objective for which he had been trained since the first day of officer school, and forever cheated the Andreans out of their final prize.
Somehow, true peace of mind continued to elude him.
My thoughts as I watch the descending ball of flame coming ever nearer is that I truly desire that it be a star and simply erases me from the face of the planet with its falling.
As it approaches, I can tell that it is correcting its course to bear directly at me and correcting once more. I can no longer pretend that it is a star.
I am alone, my people scattered like dust, yet it is for them that I worry. I am old and have little to lose, but they shall witness the truth of our legends as spoken by Hawk Thorn and the elders who followed him.
I can now marvel at my own arrogance. How many times had I scoffed at a legend, berating the theorist as a superstitious fool? Yet, in my mind, I can no more deny the fact of the star machine than I can of my own existence.
I have no evidence that it is a machine built to bridge the gulf between the stars. Yet I know it somehow. Despite my foreboding I will stand fast and greet whatever emerges, nobly representing The People and bringing understanding and peace. God willing it will be so.
Nevertheless, as I stand here resolute on this monumental occasion, I imagine the voices of the spirits in my mind, making an astonishing and disconcerting noise.
A noise much like laughter.