They waited in their seats while the pod doors opened and the air rushed out. Alistair heard only breathing, his own and his comrades’, as they exited the pod and surveyed the landscape before them. The Spirit of the Revolution could be seen, a toy hanging in space half a kilometer distant. Above them the stars shone beautifully and steadily, some with hints of blue or red in their hue. The many shadows of the pillars crisscrossed over the marines, and as they moved around the lights blinked in and out as the pillars alternately covered and revealed them.
“You’re being scanned,” the communications officer’s voice broke out in their helmets. “No indication of hostile intentions.”
Alistair went to the base of a pillar, which towered several meters above him but was more slender than his torso, and laid a hand on its surface. It was smooth, made of a material that, though it did not correspond directly to anything he had ever seen, seemed more metallic than anything else. Looking back at his men, he saw several of them were inspecting pillars of their own.
“We’re going to approach the main structure.”
The sergeant formed the troops into a spread formation, and thus scattered they left their clearing and moved into the pillar forest, rifles making broad sweeps. Alistair noticed, out of the corner of his left eye, a soft bluish light mix with the harsh white ones. Looking up, he saw a large door sliding open near one end of the U-shaped main building, and from it poured azure light.
“Halt!” he called and pointed his rifle at the opening.
The eyes of his troops followed the line of his gun, and they turned to face the new development. Silently, the door finished sliding open, leaving a portal about forty feet tall and sixty feet wide.
“Hold your positions. Check in front and behind.”
The material of Alistair’s helmet’s shield was resistant to condensation, for which he was grateful. From his heavy breathing, normal glass or plastic would have quickly fogged.
“No further movement,” came the sergeant’s voice.
Katherine spoke up. “This whole thing feels like you’re being invited. It doesn’t seem dangerous.”
“That’s easy to say from your position,” growled the sergeant.
“Alter course, sergeant,” said Alistair. He swallowed a lump in his throat. “Let’s move towards it. Slowly.”
They crept along, soundless perhaps but easy to spot, even with the naked eye, in their white spacesuits. They drew close enough to the entrance to be able to see some of the interior. There was a dais with a structure on it, its top faintly illuminated by the blue light. When they reached the threshold, one of the marines stepped forward and scanned the immediate area inside, finally issuing an “all clear” signal.
“Still no movement,” Alistair announced.
He could see the dais was a circle raised two feet from the rest of the floor. On it was a semi-circular altar, or something of that nature. The source of the blue light proved to be an irregular river of light suspended just below the lofty ceiling and running along its length until the bend in the building blocked his view. This river did not flow, but moved randomly. Drops would detach from the main river and then be reacquired, certain portions would thin while others expanded. Dips and bulges formed at its edges, only to disappear. To the right, towards the middle of the main structure, he spied another dais complete with its own altar, and then another after that, and another after that, continuing until the bend in the building hid the rest from him. If there were any hosts in that alien vessel, their presence was not evident.
“That’s enough for now,” said Alistair. “Let’s bring in the science team.”
***
Alistair and his men took up positions around the opening while Katherine and her team stood at the threshold, the soft blue light illuminating the fronts of their space suits, the harsh white light shining on the backs. She was waiting only for her team to finish a few cursory tests before she entered. They detected a force field at the opening, but it proved to be one they could pass through without difficulty. It served, however, to keep an atmosphere inside.
“The air inside is breathable,” said one of the men. “Doesn’t match ours exactly, but its got oxygen and nitrogen. No carbon dioxide.”
“No carbon dioxide,” repeated Katherine. “Because CO2 is a byproduct we make; we don’t need it to breath. It’s welcoming us.”
“Maybe,” said Alistair. “How does it know what our requirements are? It’s likely just the atmosphere from whatever homeworld this species comes from.”
“I’m going inside now. It’s asking us to come in.”
“Keep your helmet on, all the same.”
No true believer ever approached the idol of his worship with more awe than Katherine approached that alien dais, nor ever moved with more careful reverence through his temple. Upon crossing the threshold, she could hear, faintly through her helmet, her footfalls, the air inside permitting sound once again. In a matter of a few dozen steps the middle Ashley child was standing at the edge of the dais, trembling and sweating but determined. She saw a semi circle made out of a smooth, whitish, translucent material standing around eight feet tall.
When she raised her left leg and placed her foot down on the dais, the semi circle lit up white, startling her.
“Katherine, step back!” yelled Alistair, but she raised a hand to calm him down. Nevertheless, he was at her side a moment later.
“This would be a very strange and elaborate way to kill somebody, if that’s what it wants.”
Alistair gripped her arm through their suits. “There is no way to know the intentions of an alien species. A little caution costs us nothing.”
Katherine turned to face him and put both hands on his shoulders. “Alistair, I’m OK. I’m going to get on the dais now.”
Turning from him, she stepped up and walked towards the shining semi-cylinder. When she came within the ambit of its reach, images appeared on it, flashing by as if it were a computer screen, and a script raced about. Finally, one image appeared and held steady, reaching seven feet in height. It was an alien creature, naked, but Katherine knew from its gaze it was intelligent. She, the first human to lay eyes on another intelligent species, gasped, but not from fear.
It was a deep red color, hairless but for some soft down on its head, taller than humans and more slender. Its face was slightly prognathic, and its skull long, with the top of the head extending several inches beyond where a human’s would stop. The mouth was turned down just a touch, not quite facing the ground but inclining a bit in that direction, and a single aperture she took for a nostril was just above it. It had two arms and was bipedal, but possessed a skeleton and musculature that could never be mistaken for human. Like a bear, it lacked a collar bone and therefore had sloping shoulders. There were vaguely pectoral muscles but no nipples. Its legs were long compared to its body, but were jointed much like a human. Its arms were, in relation to its body, more human-like in length and also jointed like Homo sapiens. The hands had four digits, one of them an opposable thumb, and the feet had four digits as well, though they were much less prehensile. Between its long legs was a small organ she took to be a penis. The image blinked, replaced by a different creature of the same species. This one had a small aperture at the crotch but no penis, more hair on its – her – head, and a single lump on the belly that Katherine decided was a mammary organ.
Her state of euphoric fascination was interrupted when the image disappeared, and she reached out with a hand as if to search for it, grab it and keep it from leaving. A moment later a new creature appeared, this one a hirsute, robust animal on four legs, vaguely equine. She watched as, like a movie, it began to play in front of her, showing her images of the animal eating, mating, running, sleeping. Then it changed… evolved. Its face grew shorter. It lost its body hair, revealing ruddy skin underneath. One of the digits became a thumb. The downward turned mouth moved up to the front of the face. Its arched back curved more and more the other way as the an
imal spent time in an upright position. Occasionally, the animal would divide into two identical creatures, and then those creatures would evolve in separate ways, one of them finally drifting off screen while the remaining creature continued to evolve. Finally, the remaining animal became the original one first shown.
Next, a planet appeared, blue and green like Earth but with a different configuration of continents. She saw images of the species all over the planet, some thicker and shorter, others with dark red, almost brown, skin while still others were a light pink in color. The creatures lived in tribes where the bearers of children were protected, while the other gender maintained more strength. They wielded spears and bows and arrows, wore clothing and developed technologies. Language evolved. They explored and reached out to other tribes of their kind. They worshipped strange gods and spirits, made music unlike anything she had heard before, and she took off her helmet to hear it better. They fought each other, they helped each other, they cheated each other and they loved each other.
Evolution, as on Earth, was inevitable, and any species arising from such a process is one whose individuals have a highly refined sense of self preservation. Community was an advantage for this alien race, just as with humans, but each individual was self interested, acted for his own benefit notwithstanding those moments when a helping hand was extended. Each member sought its own happiness.
As a living organism, each alien placed demands on its environment, needed to use the resources around it to survive and flourish. This created the potential for conflict among them, for sometimes two individuals had different ideas of how to dispose of a resource. The solutions for resolving this conflict, for determining who would be permitted to dispose of the resource and who would not, were remarkably similar among all the various cultures of the species. Indeed, their solutions were remarkably similar to those reached on Earth. The first to acquire a thing became its owner, and could do what he pleased as long as what he pleased did not affect another’s acquisition in a way the other objected to. These acquisitions could be traded or abandoned, but until such a time, the original appropriator was its owner. At first, many of these property rights were held in common by tribes, but with time many were individualized, and it was these cultures which developed and advanced the fastest. Where these simple rules were not well established, or where they were ignored or violated, there was violence.
As on Earth, there were two basic relationships. One in which the various parties agreed to terms, and one in which one party forced its will on another. In the former relationships, the parties occasionally improved their situation by trading. Other times no trade was made because terms were not mutually agreeable, and the self interested parties did not permit themselves to be taken advantage of. In these cases, though no improvement in situation was achieved, neither did they find themselves worse off.
The other relationship was parasitic. From such came theft and assault and all their sundry subsets. In these cases, one party often benefited, assuming the defenses of the second were not enough to cause it too much damage, but the second party invariably was made worse off. At times the dominant party convinced the other its power was legitimate. Government was born and, in the minds of the dominated creatures, became hallowed by time and tradition. Forever after, the balance of power could shift, but the struggle was over how much power government should wield, or what precise form the government should take, not whether or not it ought to exist.
The type of being that came to dominate in government differed from culture to culture, depending on circumstances and cultural values, but there was one commonality. In a democracy, the government leaders tended to be affable, well spoken and power hungry. In a warlike culture the leaders tended to be physically robust, athletic, aggressive and power hungry. Even in a monarchy, where supreme power is passed down from parent to child and might conceivably pass to a beneficent one, the new king found himself surrounded by high officials who got to their position through cunning, back stabbing and scheming all driven by a hunger for power, and contests for the throne often disposed of meeker monarchs.
Eventually, the species left its homeworld, spreading out into the Milky Way. Katherine witnessed the growth of cities, and she recognized an architecture that was a match to what remained of The Ruins on Kaldis. It was as close to a confirmation as could be expected: this was the species that built an outpost on that planet three millions years ago, before Homo habilis fashioned his first tool.
The ability to move off their homeworld was initially a boon for those trying to escape from parasitism. As time went by, government tightened its fist, and the vibrant and free colonies, still too small to fend off the homeworld’s State armies, succumbed in war after war. Generally, by the time a colony came to blows with the homeworld, it was already under domination by a parasitic State of its own. The warfare was a cancer for the species. Millions died, and much of what they labored to produce was destroyed. The end came in a manner whose resemblance to her own times gave Katherine chills. In the midst of many battles, when economies were burdened with choking bureaucracies and many struggled to feed themselves, a colonial world was destroyed.
A stable planet fit for colonizing was a rare thing. Even a homeworld of an intelligent species is kept in good condition through biological means, but other worlds needed more than that. Like Aldra, there were conditions on these worlds that had to be balanced out, compensated for, attenuated, amplified or nullified by intervention. This intervention required advanced techniques and expensive machinery, like the oceanic humidifiers and cosmic ray seeders on Aldra. Each planet required its own, special solutions, and such solutions required the input of many millions of beings producing all manner of parts and exchanging them across light years.
The shock of a colony being destroyed caused the system to collapse. Capital decayed and replacement parts could not be found. Even so, disaster might have been averted, but the State chose to take full control during these disasters, with the consent and clamorous pleading of the populace. That institution which had done nothing but hamper their progress was tasked with saving them when things were most dire. As more and more workers were diverted from other tasks and put to work producing the absolute necessities, fewer and fewer of those goods that make life more amenable were produced, and therefore became more expensive. Consequently, more and more colonists returned to the homeworld, where at least habitable conditions did not require a capitalized labor force to be maintained. These flights of colonists were also flights of capital, and it was not long before the great factories and machines making planets more livable shut down and the planets reverted back to their natural states, which were inimical to the colonists. All beings not able to return to the homeworld died.
The massive influx of immigrants produced predictable problems, and Overlay technology played its role. Such awesome power was used by the State of the homeworld to enforce control. Immigrants fought for a life of dignity; natives fought to fend off the incoming tide. Overlay technology was used to control both groups, but it produced side effects. Each use of the technology produced waves and ripples in the Overlay which would, occasionally, combine with the after effects from other uses. Where these waves met violent phenomena occurred, wreaking havoc.
The curvature of spacetime was responsible for the fundamental forces of physics, and it was this curvature of spacetime that served like gravity for these waves in the Overlay. Occasionally, the sun of the home system would pry some of these waves loose from the homeworld. Each time the Overlay was used, more waves were stolen by the sun. Eventually, after prolonged accumulation, the great ball of fire exploded, and the last of the species perished.
This story, told through images and sounds as well as feelings impressed upon the watcher through some mysterious mechanism, brought Katherine to her knees. A tale of billions of lives, so fundamentally like her own, played out before her, of beings with the same hopes and passions, the same insecurities in the same lonely
universe. It was a tale of potential occasionally realized but often forsaken, a tale frequently joyous but ultimately tragic. From the basic stuff of the universe, from quarks evolving increasingly complex relations over billions and billions of years, a species with intelligence and the capacity to be happy and make happiness of profound intensity arose. They then proceeded to entirely wipe themselves out, disappearing from the universe, leaving the galaxy empty until another such marvelous species could arise.
She found herself weeping for all the lives erased, for all the stories never to be told. Then she became sensible to a presence at her side, and turning her head, saw her brother. Having witnessed the same story as she, his eyes were moist but his face was a carefully controlled mask. Like her, he breathed the air of the spaceship. Then she twisted to look behind, and she saw the rest of the science team and the marines, enraptured by the display, each having forgotten his duties, each in a process of slow, faltering, somnambulant migration towards the dais where she and Alistair stood.
The images disappeared, though the dais still shone. Too stunned to speak, Alistair helped his sister to her feet and, arm in arm, they left. When they stepped off the dais, it stopped shining. They were left with only the soft blue illumination of the strange light above them, and the faces of their comrades, ensconced in their helmets, were returned to shadow. No one spoke nor acted. It was the Captain, who saw the tale through the imagers present but who, removed from its immediate presence, was not shaken with the full impact, who spoke first.
“It looks like… this is the last of their ships,” he said, though his voice was full of uncertainty.
“No,” said Katherine.
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