Zolan was full of energy now; hardly the same man who a few hours earlier had suffered a massive heart attack.
"Come here, boy," Zolan said, "Sit next to me. Sit," he paused to stare at the glowing Little One, "where you can see ... the Eye of God."
Tom leaped on to the claw beside the old man. "Now, Tom," Zolan began, "this is a story about the Guardian here." The boy's eyes reacted with interest, "And its a story about that," he said pointing at the flaring star racing towards them.
"Are you in the story?" Tom asked.
Zolan chuckled and rubbed the boy's already mussed-up hair. "Ho-ho, indeed I am!" Zolan cackled heartily, "Without me, you see, the whole world would be a very different place today."
He paused momentarily, fighting back a wistful frown before continuing, "Now, once upon a time…”
Thalick listened to Zolan begin, though part of his attention was preoccupied with computating a jumble of facts about angels and Redeyes. But of most immediate concern to the old Stinger was the Little One inexorably approaching its zenith overhead. In an hour, it would be directly above the oasis and if what Zolan had said was accurate, he would soon lose one of the closest human beings he had ever known.
The Stinger stared at the star, thinking back across the sands of time, through the centuries of memories, following Zolan's storyline to its remote beginning. The Days of the Dark seemed so long ago, even to the eon-old Stinger, more like a bad dream rather than another lifetime. It could, in fact, have been easily forgotten by the old Thelerick, had it not been for the shadowy, wavy face of Valry Phillips who haunted his dreams as much as she haunted those of Zolan.
Valry, the child.
Valry, the savior of a world.
Thalick stared at the Little One above.
And he began to remember.
It had begun with the journey through the Great Void, in the company of nine other Thelerick Stingers. So very long ago…
Here life has death for neighbor,
And far from eye or ear,
Wan waves and wet winds labor,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither,
They wot not who make thither,
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.
SIX
The Present
For eons, they trekked through the interminable void between galaxies, searching for a new home.
In a much larger galaxy than their own (and one in which they would soon be entering) a small, insignificant little world referred to the Thelerick Stingers' origins as the Small Magellan Cloud. And though from an astronomical standpoint, it was the closest galaxy to the Milky Way, it had taken the Stingers nearly ten thousand years to bridge this petty distance between star clusters.
Now, as the Stingers approached the bloated Milky Way with its hundred million suns, it appeared that greater journeys would still be necessary for them to make. The wasteland boundaries of the Milky Way were disappointingly lacking in suns; more dismal still was the distinct scarcity of habitable planets that the Stingers could look forward to colonize. Out here, only faint dwarf stars or immature suns not even a billion years old scattered across the galactic rim. What few planets clung to these useless fireballs were either airless slabs of iron, or the more typical gas monstrosities that seemed to comprise the majority of stellar retinue in the universe. Both categories of world were useless to the weary Stingers, which meant that hopes of an immediate landing were quickly shattered.
The central core of the Milky Way lay thousands of more light years beyond -- corresponding almost directly to the number of years more it would take for the Stingers to reach this new destination. With resignation, but not without the determination that had made such previous, gargantuan journeys possible heretofore, the Thelerick Stingers plunged ahead for the brilliant galactic center.
For the last time, the Stingers glanced back to the cloudy nebulae from whence they came. The Magellan Clouds were the most prominent celestial bodies against the blackness of space, far outshining even the impressive hue offered by the giant Andromeda galaxy nearly two million light years further away. Billions of years before the Stingers flashed into existence, the two mist-covered galaxies of the Magellan group had collided with one another. The impact had smashed a million stars into the gaseous waste of scattered hydrogen and helium, and this detritus issue still cloaked most of the Magellan galaxies in rainbow mists that concealed their retinue of stars within. Because of the dense gas that prevailed, the Stingers were unable to pinpoint their home star so far away. Even in its present nova state, the Thelerick sun was obscured completely by the thick, ionized hydrogen clouds that comprised most of the two galaxies relatively small volume.
Perhaps, in another million years, as the Therick sun contracted to a supernova state, it might radiate sufficient light to be seen through the soupy fog of gas. But it wouldn't matter then, for after this brief, poignant farewell glance, the Stingers would never again look to their home star.
There were only ten of them. And they were the last of their kind. Though the Thelerick race as a whole could have easily escaped the impending nova, it had decided against such action. Collectively, a million Stingers had opted to perish with their flaring sun. Only ten, rebellious members from the suicidal world wished to avoid a sizzling finale and seek safer grounds.
The Thelericks were as old as creation. They were, perhaps, the first beings to ever exist in their small portion of the universe. Virtually immortal, they were ten billion years old, and even more astounding, not one Thelerick Stinger had ever died in that time. As if to compensate for her gross oversight, however, nature had deprived the Stingers of reproductive capabilities. Consequently, the number of Thelerick Stingers that had ever existed had always remained constant and fixed. Over the ages, a seemingly charmed and divine life span, had become nothing short of tedious for the ancient Stingers.
They had explored their own galaxy several times over, discovering that they were the only life form residing therein, with the only habitable world circling the oldest star that existed within the Magellanic Clouds. Following this devastating find, the Stingers stayed close to home and confined their activities to philosophical reflection of their god-like state. With only an eternity of life ahead of them, the Thelericks grew sullen and confused; for after ten billion years, what more was there to do with a lifetime. For a million years before their sun novaed, the Stingers wallowed in lethargy. Their great cities fell to ruin, their sciences were neglected, and the few worlds they had occupied within their own solar system were abandoned for the comforting, lazy sands of the home planet.
An eternally peaceful race, the Thelerick past had never been blighted by war, and so had never known the horrors that could be produced by such a grizzly institution. Yet the effects produced out of this stagnatory disease from within was to prove ultimately more devastating to the Stinger civilization than any crude physical violence could have wrought. After a million years, the Thelerick world was a dusty place of ill-kempt edifices and ruins, populated by a lazy collection of creatures that did nothing more than hibernate away the days in the sand. Their sole interest and passion, which missed the intensity to be called an obsession, was the subject of death -- that mysterious state of non-life in which no Stinger had yet been able to enjoy or explore, and which appeared to be eternally denied the race as a whole.
When the sun's impending blow-up was verified, a wild, jubilant mood spread through the Thelerick masses. Fate, at last, was going to shatter its cruel yoke of perpetual awakeness and deliver the exhausted Stingers to glory. Interestingly enough, the Stingers became revitalized, and even scientific curiosity was rekindled as daily observations were conducted to monitor the bulging sun above. As if some great, lumbering beast had been stirred from rest, so did the Thelerick world also reanimate itself in preparation for a much longer, and more permanent sleep to come.
While triumph over th
e monster called life was generally being celebrated in most corners of the Thelerick civilization, there existed a paltry number of individuals who felt quite differently. With ill-concealed horror, they had watched their society rot and crumble and now rejoice in a twisted, racial suicide pact. They did not attempt to dissuade their people from dying, because the numbers against them were too overwhelming, but they did announce their intent to the world in escaping from the nova and invited all interested parties who still craved an iota of living, to join them in their quest for new beginnings.
The recruitment effort met with little success, and one week before the Thelerick sun exploded, only ten hopeful and courageous Stingers took to the icy winds of space.
Using the increased gravitational power from their own imploded sun, the ten Stingers catapulted themselves out into the lonely emptiness between galaxies and towards the nearest island of stars, the Milky Way. Through this sunless wilderness they raced, hibernating most of the time and dreaming of a warm star and a dry, sandy world to come. Ten thousand years later, and they had arrived on the beach of this giant island. And like so many explorers following great, expectant journeys, they found the new land initially disappointing.
But the Stingers were wise, and perhaps more importantly, they were extremely patient. Finding a nearby star, they again launched themselves at fantastic speeds for the promise of the galactic core.
Somewhere, out there, they reasoned, must be a star and unoccupied world that would have no objection to giving them a home.
SEVEN
His name was Thalick. And he was the Sentinel Stinger; the one 'who watched.' For an inactive volcano, on any number of randomly picked planets in any galaxy, ten thousand years marked the span of time it would take to gear up for a truly spectacular eruption. To most planets in the universe, ten thousand years marked an anniversary date for either a coming or parting ice-age. One galaxy in ten thousand, providing its rate of rotation approaches or matches roughly ten thousand kilometers per hour, could achieve a single revolution in the same amount of years.
Ten Thousand years.
A very long time.
Practically an eternity if one must spend such an interval of time awake...and alone!
Yet Thalick could not complain. Indeed, it would not even have occurred to him. He was the leader of his people; a trusted navigator whose duty it was to guide nine others of his kind through the eerie iciness of intergalactic emptiness towards the large family of suns ahead. The others could pass away the centuries in blissful sleep, confident that their course would be maintained by the vigilant Sentinel and not be altered by the indiscriminate bantering of cosmic wind, turbulent waves of quasar radiation, or - regardless of the unlikelihood - advanced, and possibly, meddling races that were also daring the breach of galactic nothingness.
Nine other Stingers would awaken refreshed and rested, virtually oblivious to the slow drag of millennium in which their journey endured. For them, this almost obscene passing of time would appear no more than a blink of an eye, or a moment of blackness in a starless night.
But the tenth Stinger would know no such luxury. He could not enjoy the Nap of the Ages. He could not sleep, like the others. He must watch. He must control.
Ten thousand years. A very, very long time to some; an eternity to others.
The Sentinel Stinger had glimpsed his destiny countless ages ago. The flashes of his future had been brief, foggy and frustratingly enigmatic, but they had nevertheless provided accurate pieces to a puzzle that had started coming together ten thousand years earlier. He had never shared his premonitions with other Stingers, nor the Noble Nine he had saved from destruction floating nearby. He knew that he never would.
On the fringe of this new Milky Way, the Sentinel was again receiving a new piece to the puzzle. The small, blue planet with one moon was near. It would not be a place that his fellow Stingers would like -- but they would have to call it home for awhile. Now, as his fellows slowly began to arouse themselves from an epochal sleep, Thalick knew that his act would have to be convincing.
He would not tell the others; they would not believe him. Or, they would quite logically, attempt to reshape the plans of fate and form them to their own well-deserved needs.
In part, the Sentinel Stinger would not have been able to disagree with his companions. Further delay to finding a new Thelerick home would be intolerable. The Sentinel Stinger stifled a twinge of regret; in a way, he was now in the beginning stages of betraying those who had trusted him from the start and had followed him unquestionably through the stars.
Yet, for reasons he could not explain or understand, the Sentinel Stinger continued to follow the voices commanding him to lead his people to the blue planet. With extraordinary conviction, he feigned surprise and disappointment at finding no immediate landing point.
The Sentinel Stinger was a brilliant actor. After ten thousand years, he had rehearsed his part to perfection and honed the expected reactions of disappointment to a fine performance. It was a convincing coup; an impressive deception. Any observer or participant would have been suitably duped by the Sentinel Stingers well-meaning wiles. Throughout, he kept his attention on the pinpoint of light that none of his companions had yet noticed, but which would shortly become a spot of disturbing familiarity to them - and to himself - for a few more years to come.
Few creatures in the universe could surpass the perfection of mind and body that comprised any one of the Ten Thelerick Stingers. But already, the Sentinel Stinger was racing ahead of his fellows in ways that he was totally unaware of and which they quite possibly would never discover.
They would be needed shortly.
And so would he.
Only time would tell whether fate - or destiny - had made the correct choice.
In their hurry to gluttonize themselves on the bevy of suns in the constellation of Sagittarius, the great Stingers almost bypassed one intriguing, average star of this new galaxy's periphery. A rush of excitement passed through the Ten as they decelerated to sub light and entered the new solar system. Here was a sizable family of satellites to consider, circling a stable sun that would survive for at least another five billion years. Nine planets could be discerned by the Stingers' senses; from their past experience with stars in their own galaxy, it was an enormous group of worlds for a sun to possess.
The ten Thelericks passed the four outer gas giants disinterestedly. The enormous, swirling globes of ammonia and methane would certainly not do for a new home. With the gas balls well behind them, the Stingers next met with a barrier of floating, asteroid debris. Some mild entertainment was derived out of dodging the great chunks of airless rock but the Thelericks would need more substantial surfaces to wander on other than a few miles of moon junk.
Exiting this chunky wilderness, the Stingers were delighted to find the first, serious consideration for a new world. It was a small, red planet, scarred by intermittent trenches that looked titillatingly artificial. From miles out in space, the symmetrical web of lines stenciling the surface looked skillfully crafted and constructed. It was certainly an appealing little world for the Thelerick Stingers, but the obvious question was what if it should be inhabited already? If this were the case, then they would have to continue their search. The Ten had agreed in the beginning not to usurp another peoples world, or for that matter, even reside on an already populated planet. The Thelerick code of ethics simply wouldn't allow such an imposition, even if the Stingers were to have been invited to stay. An inherently private race, the Thelerick Stingers enjoyed solitude (of which they had plenty in their vacant galaxy), but more than this, they wished to respect the rights of others as much as possible. Up to now, such polite attention had not been bestowed on other races, because the Stingers had not encountered other civilizations aside from their own. But the Ten had sworn to themselves that their moral principles would be upheld in this new galaxy more than ever --even at the cost of refusing an attractive world which already belonged to someo
ne else.
Orbiting the red planet several times, the Stingers hissed a collective, 'lets hope for the best', before descending to the surface.
The red planet had a thin atmosphere - one not unlike that of the home world - and the surface was sheer delight! Miles of soft sand and rock glazed the entire land regions, interrupted only by two frozen mounds of ice at the poles, and one or two active volcanoes. The 'canals' that the Stingers had seen from space turned out to be natural erosions of a network of long extinct rivers that must have webbed across the planets surface ages ago. Some cataclysmic upheaval must have taken place, like a collision with a meteor or a shift of the planet's rotation, which had ripped away the world's water supporting atmosphere. The dune-swept environment which the Stingers found so appealing had been formed from that cosmic mishap, and on initial examinations, this theory proved most satisfactory to them. At last, it seemed, here was a planet they could call their own.
Alas, this hypothesis was founded more on hope than characteristic Thelerick extrapolation -- for the disarmingly, attractive red planet that seemed custom tailored to Stinger requirements, was about to literally reveal a few skeletons beneath its sandy closet.
Several days after they had arrived, and the initial euphoria had subsided, the Stingers began a more extensive survey of their new home. Almost immediately, they discovered the smashed, pummeled ruins buried beneath several hundred feet of sand. The twisted remnants of some ancient civilization glazed the entire world under the veneer of its red surface, and at first, the archeological find had been heralded with hisses of wonder and happiness by the Thelerick Stingers. Here was proof that the universe was probably populated with millions of races! As they had already suspected, their own, fog blanketed galaxy was simply a cosmic freak; other galaxies, like the Milky Way, must harbor countless civilizations. Plunging into study, the fascinated Stingers attempted to reconstruct the history of the red planet's buried civilization.
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