The Loneliness of Stars

by Z. M. Wilmot

  ~Prime Minister Paoul Czercznzniak of Lithestatvia, in his speech naming Joseph Antiocus as his nation’s representative on the Ambassador expedition

  The next day, upon waking, we all ate our breakfast of potatoes and drank a few sips of water. Michaela told Mikhail and Stephen about what had happened last night as they slept. If they were upset, they didn’t show it – they just nodded calmly throughout the whole tale, and made no comments afterwards. When we were done, Michaela and Adam went to go fetch more water and potatoes, while Stephen and I went out to explore. Mikhail volunteered to stay behind.

  Stephen was rather attractive. His hair went down to the nape of his neck, and was a nice chocolate color. He had a smooth face, unmarred by… well, anything – and nice lips and beautiful eyes. I think he felt my eyes on him, for he gave me several uncomfortable looks, and scarcely said a word to me.

  Neither of us were sure what we were looking for – more water, more potatoes, and more survivors was what I had in mind, as well as anything else interesting that might happen to be around.

  We walked in the direction that Adam and I had walked the day before, when we had seen the storm approaching. Stephen and I reached the spot more quickly than Adam and I had, and stopped again at the tree line, looking at the distant mountains. Stephen squinted. “Jak – is something moving out there?” He pointed.

  I looked at where he was pointing, squinted my eyes, and indeed saw something moving. It looked like a man. I wondered if it was the cloaked man or another survivor – it was too far away to tell. I took a few steps closer, and focused on him more intently. I saw that the figure staggered drunkenly, and almost fell over several times. It was definitely not the cloaked man. Stephen and I exchanged a look and walked rapidly onto the plains towards the man. Several seconds later, we broke into a jog as he suffered from what looked to be a nasty fall.

  We reached him in about two minutes. He had not gotten up, and was lying face-down in the dirt. I knelt beside him and turned him over.

  It was Fineas Sparten.

  His face was weathered and horribly scarred, his beard filled with dust, and his eye patch mostly gone, revealing a gaping hole leading directly to his brain. The hole was lined with red dust. He opened his good eye at my touch. “Who’re you?” he muttered at me.

  “I’m Jak. That’s Stephen.” I jerked my head in his direction.

  He blinked, very slowly and deliberately. “Who?”

  I resisted the urge to sigh. “We’re from the Ambassador.”

  “The what?” He looked confused. Stephen and I looked at each other. Something was not right with him.

  “Right, Fineas, you’re coming with us,” Stephen said. He walked to Fineas’ other side and grabbed his arm, just below the shoulder. I did the same. We lifted him to his feet, ignoring his weak protestations. Each of us put his respective arm over our shoulders and grabbed his hands, and then we began to walk him slowly back towards camp.

  It took a few hours to finally reach the crack in the dense clump of trees that hid our shelter, and it was hard getting Fineas through. I had to go in first, and Stephen practically shoved him through into my arms. Mikhail noticed us as we dragged him the final stretch, and walked out to greet us. Michaela and Adam followed close behind, having already returned. We laid Fineas face-up on the ground.

  “Is he alive?” Michaela asked.

  I nodded. “And he can still talk. He doesn’t look too good, though – he doesn’t seem to remember anything about the ship. He’s not in his right mind.” Of course, he hadn’t been since the Ambassador had crashed.

  Fineas opened his eyes, then looked suspiciously at all of us. “Who’re y-you?”

  Michaela rested a hand on his shoulder. “We’re your friends. That’s all you need to know right now.”

  He smiled calmly and closed his eyes. A second later, they were open again. “Do not leave us, ever. We are so lonely.” He spoke with the strange voice that I had heard him use when I had hidden with him from the Deviant.

  I jumped and stepped back, looking down at him fearfully. I realized now why the voice had sounded so familiar to me – it was the voice of the slug-thing from my dreams; Psy. No one else seemed to notice his change of voice, or his referring to himself in the plural. I hoped I had just imagined it, but I didn’t think I had.

  “Don’t worry – we won’t. Here, drink this.” Michaela held a makeshift cup of water to his lips. When she judged him ready to drink, she let some of it trickle into his mouth. He drank greedily, and after a few minutes, the entire cup was gone.

  He sat up, looking much better than before. “Food?”

  Michaela glanced to Adam, who threw her a potato. She caught it and broke it in half. Crushing and mashing the potato in her hands, she fed small portions of the softened potato to the helmsman. She only let him have half, and threw the other half back to Adam.

  “Sorry, Fineas. We need to see how well your body will handle food before giving you any more.” He only nodded and closed his eyes. Within moments, he was asleep.

  Adam and Michaela went off half an hour or so later to go look for more survivors. Stephen, Mikhail, and I sat around, making sure Fineas didn’t do anything strange or stupid. We didn’t really need to, because all he did was sleep.

  Mikhail and I followed his example, me a few minutes after Mikhail. I was awoken what seemed like seconds later by Stephen shaking me. “Get up! You have to see what Adam and Michaela found!” I sat up slowly, stood, and stretched. “I’ll stay here with Fineas – I’ve already seen it. Just go out of the crack, then left thirty or so meters.”

  Mikhail had already left, so I jogged up the path towards the crack in the trees. I slipped out, turned left, and ran forward, curious. Stephen had sounded scared.

  I soon saw Michaela, Adam, and Mikhail standing in a circle around something on the ground. I stopped when I reached them, breathing heavily. “What is it?”

  Michaela turned to look at me. “You have eyes. You can see.” He pointed down.

  I looked down, and I stopped breathing.

  There were two corpses lying on the ground, neatly side by side. The one closer to me was Rafael. Half of his face was ripped off, and his skin was badly bruised, torn, and cut. He also had no clothing on – not surprising, considering he had been thrown out into a vicious storm. I was surprised he was still as intact as he was.

  The second corpse was that of Allon. How he had gotten to the surface and out of his box was beyond me. Worrying as that was, what was more worrying were the claw marks all over his body, and what appeared to be bite marks on his upper torso. His throat had been ripped out, and the top of his skull was gone.

  “H-how did they get here? Did you move them?” I asked. There was no way a storm could have deposited them so neatly here.

  Adam shook his head. “No, we didn’t. We found them like this, neatly laid out. And we didn’t dig up Allon either – he was just here, like this, all clawed up.” Adam grimaced. “We went to check the burial site. Allen was still buried, but the box containing Allon was on the surface, ripped to shreds.”

  I swallowed. “D-does that mean that something here is… alive?”

  Michaela shrugged. “We can’t say for sure, but it looks to be that way.” A shiver went down my spine. Was it an animal? Had another one of the Deviants emerged from one of the corpses?

  I spoke my second question aloud, and Adam bit his lip. “If it was a Deviant, it did not burst out from these two – if it had, their bodies would have been obliterated. The wounds could have been caused by a Deviant, but show no sign of electrical shock. I can’t be sure.”

  After a moment of silence, Mikhail spoke. “Are we just going to leave them here? It seems sort of… disrespectful to them.”

  “They both were mutineers – and at least one of them was given last respects. Plus, we don’t want to tip off whatever did this – if something living did do this – to the fact that we exist.” We all nodded – Michaela’s words
made sense.

  “So we leave them here.” There was no question in Adam’s voice.

  Michaela nodded. “Aye. Let’s go back to camp. We probably shouldn’t stay split up for too long.”

  We walked back to camp at a decent pace. Nothing had changed from when I left it to when I got back. We all sat down, and were silent for several moments.

  Then Stephen cleared his throat. “Are we going to move camp? Those corpses were deposited awfully close by – perhaps the thing already knows where we are and is giving us a warning?”

  Michaela sighed. “I don’t know – there might not be another place like this, and if there is, who’s to say that that is not the home of the creature, or closer to where it lives? I guess it can’t hurt to look for another place, but I think our best bet is to stay here for now.” She glanced at me. “Among the carnivorous trees.” I looked at the ground. They still didn’t believe me. After all that had happened, I had thought they would at least give me some credibility.

  We all agreed with her, and ate a lunch of sorts (consisting of, of course, potatoes). Michaela again lamented about how we would need to improve our diet if we were to survive for any length of time. Mikhail pointed out that we couldn’t really help it, and we probably shouldn’t question where the potatoes came from in case no more appeared.

  Adam suggested seeing if the trees were edible. He, at least, did not make fun of my claim that the trees were carnivorous. Mikhail did. “And turn the tables on the trees? That would be ironic.”

  Michaela nodded. “That is actually a good suggestion. We have found absolutely no other life here besides the trees – assuming they are alive – and they could very well prove to be edible.” She frowned. “We need some way to check for poisons though…”

  “I have a simple test I can do,” Adam said. He pulled something out of his pocket. It was a mechanical device of some sort, consisting of a small black body with buttons and a screen, with a tube coming out one side. “Take a sample of the trees, boil it in water, and I can stick this thing in the water and test it for various poisons.”

  “What if the poison is something we don’t recognize?” said Stephen. “Could it pick it up then?”

  Adam thought for a second. “I’m not sure. It works by detecting anything that could be harmful to humans – so I assume that if it was harmful, it would pick it up, and just wouldn’t tell us what poison it is.”

  Michaela chewed her lip. “We’ll take that risk when we need to. For now, our potatoes will do, I suppose. We still need to keep an eye out for other food, though.” Adam nodded and put the device away.

  When we were done eating, we agreed that we should travel in groups of three instead of two, in case the thing that had mauled the corpses of Rafael and Allon attacked us. Only Adam had a weapon, and he only trusted Michaela with it, so it was agreed that one of them would have to go out with every expedition. Since that meant they wouldn’t be both out at the same time (or alone together), I wondered what that would do to their love life.

  Michaela, Mikhail, and Stephen went out in the “afternoon,” while Adam and I stayed behind with Fineas.

  He woke up about an hour and a half after the other three left. He was still very disoriented, but at least seemed to remember who he was, and what the Ambassador was. He wasn’t very talkative, though, and the two of us gave up trying to figure out how he survived the storm and explosion after a few minutes, and we talked to each other instead, mostly about Adam’s past and his life in his native country.

  When the other three returned, we ate supper (with Fineas this time), and then Adam, Stephen, and I went off to explore, looking for survivors and food.

  We found absolutely nothing. No water, potatoes, survivors, shelter, or other foods. We returned to camp and reported our lack of findings to Michaela. She said we would have to visit the water pool tomorrow, as we were almost out of water. We still had plenty of potatoes, though.

  Shortly after we got back, we settled down to sleep, with Adam – and Michaela as well, I think – taking the first watch.

  30

  “Where would we be without individuality? The Communist states of New Testament and Enoch make plain my argument – without individualism, society will not progress. How many advancements have the Communist states made? How many new ideas? How have they raised the standard of living of their populace? No, all they do is remain stagnant, leaching funds from the Terran Home Rule and squandering them on useless items, rather than using them to promote progress!”