Alpha Rising

by G. L. Douglas

  She stared.

  “Oh, please … come on,” he pled. “Say something. Do something. I want to see your coin trick.”

  The mine’s unblinking eyes seemed glued to her mannequin-like face.

  Star stood back, watching. They were looking for a mime with three painted tears under each eye. Bach had found her. Now it was time for a little reverse psychology. Star elbowed him. “Let’s go, Bach. That’s not her. The one we saw had different face paint.”

  The mime leapt in front of Bach in a confrontational stance. She shoved her hands into her pockets and stood motionless with a blank look on her face. Bach’s anticipation seemed a pressure cooker about to blow. Finally, to the sound of his heavy breaths, she pulled her clenched fists from her pockets and, with slow, agonizing moves, held both downturned fists straight out.

  Bach knew he was supposed to choose, but didn’t want to play. “Just show me what’s in both hands,” he snapped.

  Her face seemingly set in stone, the mime poked her hands back into her pockets and walked away.

  “Stop!” he called out. “Don’t go. I’ll choose.”

  The girl stopped, but didn’t turn around. Bach stepped in front of her, stared at her blank face, and fought to control the irritation in his voice. “Your coins are sacred, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. There’s a reward for their possession. I’ll help you receive it.”

  The mime seemed made of stone.

  Star pulled on Bach’s arm. “Come on. She’s a poor performer. Let’s find the one who worked magic with her coins.”

  The mime’s poker face twitched. She stuck her hand into her right pocket, then threw a nonexistent coin onto the street. She repeated the move with her left hand, but this time flashed a coin at Bach before forcefully throwing it to the ground. The coin rolled under a booth. Bach flattened himself to the pavement, retrieved the coin, and hurriedly turned it over and around. Then he realized that an x spanned the circumference.

  “An x!” he groused in exasperation. “It’s not a symbol at all, it’s a dumb x.” He tossed the coin onto the vendor’s counter, grumbling, “I’m going back for my philo.”

  “We should move on and check out the residences,” Star said.

  “If our lunch is still on that bench, I want to eat the rest of it. We don’t know when we’ll get fresh-cooked food again.”

  Their meals were still on the bench, and as soon as they finished eating, Bach took the trays to a receptacle alongside the door of a jewelry store where several people had stopped in front of the picture window to watch goldsmiths working inside. He stood with the spectators for a minute or so, watching two male artisans set colored gemstones into bracelets, and a female, with black hair reaching halfway down her back, working at a buffing wheel.

  The lady polished a gold piece, turning it over and around before holding it up for final inspection. The crossed-circle icon sparkled in her hand.

  Bach rushed into the store. “Please, may I see the piece you’re working on?”

  The sloe-eyed woman handed him the gold piece. “It signifies reverence for land, wind, fire, and water.”

  Star had seen Bach enter the jewelry store, but when he didn’t come back out after a few minutes, she got up to find out why. When she stepped inside the store, he handed her the symbol.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said to the woman. “Is it your own design?”

  “No. My future husband, Yang, designed them. We’ll wear matching ones.”

  Bach looked at the two male goldsmiths, wondering which one might be Yang, but the woman pointed to the vendor’s booth where the pair had bartered for food. “Yang’s concession is outside.”

  Bach stammered for the lady’s name. “Uh, Miss….”

  “Yin,” she said.

  “Yin?”

  “My name is Yin,” she said again.

  “Yin? You’re Yin and he’s Yang? Oh, my gosh,” he muttered. Pointing to the symbol in Star’s hand he asked Yin, “Can we take this to Yang’s booth? We’d like to talk to him.”

  “Yes. I’ll go with you.”

  When they arrived at Yang’s kiosk, Yin said, “These people want to talk to you about your artwork.”

  He nodded with a half-bow and noticed Star’s necklaces at the same time. “We anticipated a sign from the Creator. We are ready.”

  “Excellent!” slipped from Bach’s lips. “We have far to go and must hurry.”

  Yang abandoned a line of hungry people and wove his way through the crowd to find a rickshaw. Yin, Bach, and Star returned to the jewelry store for the second symbol. Within minutes, Yang pulled up with the rickshaw and the four were on their way. They would gather animals at the sanctuary.

  During the short ride the bright sky dimmed, as if someone had altered the daystars, and a sinister darkness swept in. Within minutes, rain exploded from the once-bright sky and the hot breeze turned frigid and vaporous. Panicked people raced around the distant harbor as a half-dozen waterspouts, thousands of feet high, swirled from the cresting sea and rolled toward the wharf.

  Yang yelled to the others, “Five minutes before waterspouts touch shore.”

  As the faithful four neared the sanctuary in the rickshaw, they witnessed a miraculous happening in progress. Elephants had knocked down the gates and barriers, and animals both large and small raced toward the Alpha herded together, the smaller ones riding on the backs and heads of the larger ones, as relentless cyclonic gusts pushed them onward.

  Bach, Star, Yin, and Yang helped the wet, cold beasts board the ship.

  While Star hurriedly secured the new arrivals in their quarters, Bach closed the ramp and watched the monitor. A waterspout leveled what was once the animal sanctuary and now swirled toward the landing pad.

  *****

  The big ship roared from Colosse, barely escaping the waterspouts. When the flight path leveled off, Ivy and Obbo came from the environmental module into the main cabin and brought Yin and Yang with them.

  Star motioned for Yin and Yang to look at the viewscreen. Their city had been spared the waterspouts’ fury, but the sanctuary and the landing pad where Alpha had been parked were destroyed.

  “We’ve never experienced waterspouts of such magnitude,” said Yang. “I sensed evil.”

  “Yes, I did too,” Star replied.

  Yin changed the subject. “Ivy told us more about your mission and that we can hear the journal reading for the next planet.”

  With the journal in hand, Star and the five others gathered mid ship in the alcove wall hammocks. “Planet Zarephath is next.” She opened the book and scanned the page. “There’s a glassworks factory, and it says they’ve used their planet’s minerals in ways thought impossible.”

  “No, no, not Zarephath. Not the time to go to Zarephath,” Ivy warned.

  Star sighed. “We can’t keep rerouting. We’re two days behind.”

  Ivy waved her small finger. “You better check. Not the time to go.”

  Star returned to the cockpit. “Okay, I’ll check it out, but we’re almost there.”

  Yin grasped Ivy’s little hand. “Why shouldn’t we go?”

  “Specter angry. Fiery furnaces, people die.” She stood and walked in a circle with her hands clasped behind her back. “Furnaces spewing, spewing. Specter angry.”

  Yang looked into Ivy’s eyes. “How do you know what’s going on elsewhere? Have you been there?”

  “Zarephath comes to me!” she said.

  Ivy’s vision stopped instantly when something hit the ship that sounded like golfball-sized popcorn exploding in a metal bag. Dark splats plastered the cockpit windshield, coming harder and faster by the second, and the view fogged to a sheet of silvery gray.

  Star turned to alert the passengers to go back to the E-module, but they were already gone.

  Bach yelled above the noise. “Where did this stuff come from? We detected nothing.” He checked a data feed. “Something just triggered it and now we’re in a huge oil cloud orbiting the p
lanet like a moon. Gotta break free, or we’ll shut down.”

  What should have been a clear view of astral space was now black as night. Bach increased engine power in an attempt to escape, but the massive thrusters stalled with a shudder, leaving the Kingship adrift in greasy smog.

  Star’s fingers flew across a keyboard. “There has to be a way to escape it.”

  Bach grabbed a hand-held device. “There are no emergency instructions for restarting engines in something like this.” Using an earphone with recorded instructions, he rattled off options to Star, but everything they tried failed. He looked at his watch in disgust—Earth time—another two hours lost.

  Star ran a sim for an atypical approach to restart the engines. Within seconds, the ship lurched, lights flickered, and the thrusters ignited. They emerged from the black tomb and re-entered clear space.

  Bach launched two hand-sized drones to clean the exterior windows and check for engine contamination. The shiny metal devices, shaped like giant jacks from a childhood game, collected samples from Alpha’s hull and relayed information to the ship’s electro-brain. He looked at Star with concern. “Alpha’s a mess. There’s oil covering the nozzles and sensors.”

  She checked the readout. “It’ll burn off. We’re okay.”

  A terrain scan showed planet Zarephath obscured by a dark haze. Bach commented, “It’s unapproachable. What would fill the atmosphere with oil?”

  Star shot a laser pen at the middle of what looked like an empty picture frame. The panel lit up with a liquid-like display. “Nothing detected in the rest of the zone. It came from the planet itself.” She turned to Bach, “Remember Ivy’s nervous pacing? And when we were on planet Gihon, a little red-haired lady told me the Specter would create havoc.” She checked the panel. “Let’s reroute to Maon. It’s not that far off course.”

  Bach changed course a full ninety degrees, worrying to himself about fuel and time loss.

  Star read from the journal, “‘Unique atmospheric conditions enhance the soil’s fertility and make possible rapid growth of crops and all living things. The Specter’s scientific control over Maon’s environment disrupted the growing cycles, resulting in abundance or famine.’”

  “What kinds of crops do they grow?”

  “Fruits, vegetables, and grains. They also grow flowering plants for their fragrances and nectar. There are no animals left. Over time, rapid growth caused them to die too quickly, before they could reproduce.” She read more. “‘People of Maon are blessed with total recall memory.’ And it says that ‘males outnumber females by five to one.’”

  Bach sighed. “That’ll make it harder to find our pair.”

  *****

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  From above, planet Maon’s artfully arranged crops appeared as a tapestry woven in shades of green, brown, red, and gold. With no signs of cities or civilization in any direction, the Alphamates set down on a small landing pad bordered on one side by tilled land, and the other by hundreds of acres of abundant fruit trees, vegetable plants, and berry bushes.

  Star powered down the flight systems while Bach stepped outside to examine the ship for damage. Other than the expected oil coating, a quick walk around the Alpha showed nothing serious. But, something high on the space station’s hull grabbed his attention—the name ALtemus Rider’s Kingship crudely painted, one word under the other in three horizontal rows. Strange. Instead of Alpha, Altemus named it after himself. And why the capital L? He went to the foot of the ramp and yelled through the cabin. “Hey, Star, come out here … something I want you to see.”

  She studied the writing with a shrug. “Perhaps he tried to confuse the enemy.”

  “Maybe. But I’m going to think about it while we search for the symbol.”

  *****

  The tilled land to their right stretched for miles with no signs of habitation. To the left, a small walkway of triangular yellow flagstones led from the landing site through lush vegetation. They followed the stones and entered a massive expanse of perfectly spaced plants.

  “Holy cow. Look how tall these crops are!” Bach called out. He waved his arm over his head. “They’re more than twice my height.”

  Star nodded. “That’s why we didn’t see buildings from the aerial view; they’re obscured by this giant foliage.”

  In fields ripe for harvest, giant flowers were commingled with the crops, and the combined scents of berries, vegetables, and flowers created a presence so calming, Star felt the need to whisper as she ventured farther in. “This is breathtaking. I’m amazed to see all these beautiful flowers growing like this.”

  Bach expanded his chest with a deep breath and touched what looked like huge green beans growing on a tangled cluster of vines six-feet high. “These are the largest vegetables I’ve ever seen.”

  The two continued along the yellow flagstone pathway, but when it came to an end in the middle of the crops Bach looked around, scratched his head, and said, “That’s odd. I wonder why it led here … to nothing?” He moved a few yards deeper through the crops and listened for signs of life. “Dead still,” he called back to Star. “Don’t tell me we have to find our way through a maze of crops to find civilization.”

  She walked ahead, peering down row after row. “It seems they go on forever. How will we find the right direction?”

  “There has to be something within walking distance. The co-op crews wouldn’t use a landing site far from civilization.” He sprang like a kangaroo, hoping to see over the rows. “Can’t see anything.” He looked around one more time then pointed to the right. “Tell ya what. You make a quick pass that way,” then he pointed left, “and I’ll check this way. As soon as one of us finds something, give a yell and the other can catch up.”

  “I think we should stay together.”

  “It’ll take twice as long if we reach dead ends together.”

  “What if we get lost?” Star asked. “I hated it when I couldn’t find you on Gihon.”

  “Okay, we’ll mark our path.” He glanced around. “There’s an old children’s story where the kids marked their path to keep from getting lost.” A taller plant nearby, with no leaves and a single, yellow, mop-headed flower at the top, caught his eye. Six brown, lemon-sized pods hung from the middle of the plant’s thick stalk. “Here’s the perfect marker,” he said, stepping over to the nearest one. “See this huge plant with one big yellow flower, no leaves, and strange brown pods growing in a cluster? There are more of them than any other. Look, they’re so tall you can easily see them all the way down the rows. Let’s remove the pods off of each stalk as we pass by.” He pulled off a pod cluster to show what he was talking about. “Then we can follow the plants with the bare stems to find our way back.” The pods crumbled into a dry mulch in his hand.

  Star squinted in thought. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Trust me, it’ll work. And it’s easy. They disintegrate at the touch.”

  “I don’t know, Bach….”

  “We’re bound to find something eventually.”

  The two set out in opposite directions, removing the pod clusters from the yellow-flowering plants as they went.

  Bach had pulled the pods from hundreds of stalks, and covered several acres of fields that seemed without end when he came to a clearing. Just ahead, on a flagstone trail, a man and woman struggled to load a harvest of cut flowers and vegetables into their cart. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The two were as small as children, but had the withered faces and bodies of old people. He approached slowly. Involved in their work, the man and woman didn’t notice him. “Hello,” he called out lightly so as not to scare them. “Will you tell me where this trail leads?”

  The fragile, golden-haired woman looked up. “To the Commons.” She had the voice of a child. “We’re going there to work and to celebrate our harvest with a special feast. This is the first crop we’ve had since the 18th period. Would you like to join us?” She stepped to her mate’s side and patted him on the ba
ck. “This is my partner, Clay, and my name’s Calla.”

  Clay adjusted his miniature straw hat. “Did you bring something to exchange?”

  “Not today,” Bach replied, “we’re here on a brief mission. Can I help with your cart?”

  Clay cocked his head to one side. “You said, ‘we’re here,’ but there’s no one but you.”

  Bach didn’t answer for a moment. “Uh, well, my partner, Star, she’s over there.” He thumbed to the right. “I’m Bach, from Jenesis.” He looked over his shoulder and yelled, “Hey Star, I found somebody.” His voice seemed to bounce off the dense foliage, so he tried again, “Yoo hoo, Star, over here! The left direction was the right way.” Again, the crops stifled his call.

  Clay asked, “How far away is she?”

  “I don’t know. We searched in opposite directions. But she’ll find her way back. We marked our trail, removed the dry, brown pod clusters from the yellow-flowered plants.”

  Calla’s eyes widened. She tugged on Bach’s sleeve. “Didn’t anyone tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “On Maon we have a phenomenon of rapid growth—”

  “Yeah, I know about that.”

  She shook her head. “Those seed pods you removed—they’ve grown back by now.”

  Bach’s voice raised an octave. “What?” He darted back to the last yellow-flowered plant and shouted, “Oh, no!” at seeing a new cluster of six brown pods growing in the middle of the stalk. He rushed a few yards out and whistled and yelled for Star, but the impenetrable vegetation devoured his words. Pacing, he looked at Clay and pointed to the right. “What’s in that direction?”

  “Nothing but crops.”

  Hands windmilling through his hair, Bach wailed, “This can’t be! How will I find her?”

  “She’s from Jenesis, right?” Clay asked.

  “Yes.”

  “She’ll find her way. Jenesis people have more brain power than other people.”