Winter

by James Wittenbach

  Winter

  World Without End

  Copyright © 2005 James G. Wittenbach

  Desperado-Everlong Press

  www.worlds-apart.net

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Wittenbach, James

  Worlds Apart Book 04: EdenWorld

  I. Title

  ISBN 0-0-9763384-0-8

  .

  C h a p t e r O n e

  Three hundred and eight days have passed since Pegasus departed the Bodicéa system for the last time.

  Pegasus – Captain’s Quarters

  “What is this?” Prime Commander William Randolph Keeler demanded, waving a sleek, titanium-alloy datapad in the nose of a large gray tabby cat.

  Queequeg pretended never to have seen it before. “It looks like a personal datapad of some kind. A fairly standard one, although the engraving on the side reflects a highly refined sense of taste. Clearly, this belonged to an individual of great distinction, probably ahead of his time, misunderstood and unappreciated by his contemporaries, but one whose genius history will judge as … “

  “Allow me to acquaint … or reacquaint … you with its contents.” Keeler cleared his throat and read.

  “’I think the main reason he will not prosecute is because he does not want to risk offending the Republicker half of the crew. The captain may profess to despise politics, but this does not mean that he does not understand them.’” He glowered momentarily, then thundered, “Accuse me of understanding politics, would you?”

  Queequeg flicked his brushy tail. “Oh, you meant that datapad…” With a wave of his hand, Keeler raised the lighting in his quarters and then settled into a large overstuffed chair. William Randolph Keeler was a large, stout, round-faced man, who doubtless would have worn a well-trimmed and distinguished gray beard had not the follicles for facial hair gone dormant at some earlier point in human evolution. He waved the datapad at his cat. “So, you’ve been keeping an unauthorized log of our voyage.”

  “I would think as a historian, you’d want to incorporate the view of an every-cat into your observations, so future generations can see our voyage from my perspective.”

  “What’s that, a half-meter above the deck?”

  “My species has been with yours for ten thousand years,” Queequeg began to explain, purring. “We have always been by your side, judging you, and giving you the unbearable feeling that whatever you achieved, it would never be quite enough earn our respect. A few centuries ago, you raised us up so we could communicate at your level, and you were finally able to hear that silent judgment we had been casting on you all those millennia.”

  “The biggest mistake my species ever made,” Keeler commented.

  “Opening that wormhole that swallowed Alexandria IV was pretty bone-headed. The collected wisdom of 10,000 worlds sucked away into the nether realms. Then, there was the time you thought you thought you could genetically engineer people not to be evil,” Queequeg rolled his eyes. “That was a shining moment for human intellect.”

  “Enough!” Keeler roared. If Queequeg started listing examples of human stupidity, this could go on all night. Instead, he turned to the book “You wrote this first entry after we visited Meridian, over two years ago.”

  “What a stinkhole,” said the cat.

  “Indeed. And to think, after we left that planet, we thought that having an alien virus genetically re-engineer your planet into a facsimile of its own world was the worst thing that could happen to you.

  What do these little symbols mean?” Keeler asked, pointing to some orange and blue hieroglyphs at the bottom of the entry.

  The cat leaned over and laid a paw on the datapad. “Those are my shorthand classifications for the effect of the mission on the ship, the crew, and the planet we visited. If you hold the cursor over them, a legend will come up.”

  Keeler removed the pad from the cat’s reach. “Ah, za, I can see it now. Your summary of Meridian: Ship threatened. Crew threatened. Planet screwed.”

  “I try to keep things concise for the benefit of future generations.”

  “So, if I skip ahead to EdenWorld … I see you decided: Ship okay, crew mostly okay, planet screwed.

  Mostly okay?”

  “Well, aside from you getting your hand nearly incinerated, and some people dying, most of the crew came through that uninjured… only the psychological injuries were long-lasting.” Keeler read. “‘EdenWorld, I think, will remain in our memories as a monument to frivolity, to excess, to decadence.

  We do not need to pass judgment on this rotting shell of a world. History has already made that determination for us.’ And just who are you to make that determination, Ranking Cat?”

  “Hey, look, it was you small-eared, big-brained mammals that decided to play God and create all those freaks on that planet. To those of us who still walk on four legs, it’s no surprise that your creations ended up enslaving and eating you.”

  Keeler flipped ahead. “Medea. Ship okay. Crew okay. Planet… hmmm, you have the screwed symbol repeated three times.”

  “Medea was screwed three times over.”

  “I would concede your point, except that we planted the seeds of a unique civilization in the ashes of that world. In another few centuries…”

  “You’ll be lucky if those and/oroids you left don’t rise up and crush you like rodents… rodents! You know, some species would have looked at EdenWorld and decided not to play God on the very next world they encountered, but you hairless idiots…”

  Keeler flipped ahead. “I think you’re wrong, but if you aren’t, at least it will make life interesting for our grandchildren. On to Bodicéa. Ship threatened. Crew threatened. Planet screwed. You know, I am beginning to note a depressing pattern here.”

  “Don’t look at me, Big Brain. I would have hit the Aurelians with a full Nemesis strike and blown them all to Kingdom Come.”

  “Along with most of the inner Bodicéa system.” Keeler continued, “Let’s see what you wrote about Coriolus. ‘ Why do the Aurelians get to all the nice planets first? ”

  “I may have wrote it, but it was you who first said it.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember that now.” He thought sadly of Coriolus, a deep blue world surrounded by swirls of paper-white clouds and a thousand Aurelian ships stripping its natural resources and enslaving, exterminating, and sucking the brains from its inhabitants. Pegasus weapons were so depleted from their first engagement that the crew could not risk a strike against them. However, Thanks to Commander Redfire, the Aurelians would have an unpleasant surprise for them to find when they fired their gravity engines to leave orbit. The surprise would be short-lived, but then, so would the Aurelians.

  “Ship Not Threatened. Crew Not Threatened. Planet Screwed. Why ‘Not Threatened,’ as opposed to

  ‘Okay?’“

  “The effect of seeing one world after another falling to the Aurelians depressed the psyche of the entire crew,” Queequeg explained. “There was even talk of turning the ship around and returning to Sapphire and Republic to defend the homeworlds.”

  “Where was there talk of turning the ship around?”

  “Various places,” Queequeg said, trying to come off casual. “Certain areas within the structure of this ship. I’m not on trial here!”

  “I never heard any such talk.”

  “You need to get out more.”

  “In any case, because we are not turning back. Oz has spoken.” He a
dvanced again. “Templar colony was a wash. No inhabitable planets in the system. Which brings us to Fiddler’s Green.”

  “We never seem to have much luck with Green planets,” Queequeg observed.

  “Aside from existing outside the boundaries of normal human cause and effect logic, I don’t remember anything especially wrong with Fiddler’s Green. Ah, here’s a good one. Independence Colony: ‘After twenty-two months in space, at last, an intact world with a thriving, advanced human population.’ Ship good. Crew good. Planet good. Well, I think good is an understatement. The Indies were almost on a par with our own home worlds. They were free. They had technology, spacefaring capability. Their records showed us the way to twenty-seven nearby colonies we had no previous knowledge of, including the system we have just entered. All you can say is that they were ‘good’”

  “All that is true, but also, they were boring.”

  “Oh, pardon me. So now, a planet can only be interesting if its inhabitants try to kill us. Is that what you’re saying?” Keeler looked at one of the images in the journal, the city of Presidio Capitat where they had met the planetary leadership and signed the Friendship Treaty. A civil engineer told them they took an existing island and filled in the land until it was perfectly round. When the city filled up, they built spars extending into the sea and filled in another ring around. “Very impressive engineering,” Keeler muttered.

  “One good hurricane and its flotsam,” said Queequeg.

  “You mean jetsam,” Keeler corrected.

  Queequeg held up a paw. “Whatever the difference is, don’t explain it to me.” Keeler couldn’t suppress a grin. “It was wonderful that nobody on Independence tried to kill us.”

  “And how can you be sure of that? What happened to you when you returned to Pegasus was mighty peculiar.”

  “That had nothing to do with the planet, or the people.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I most certainly am not!” Keeler set the book aside and glanced at another display that relayed the latest on the ship’s heading. Pegasus had just passed the orbital margin of the outermost of the nine planets in the system 14 001 Horologium. The third planet had a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, habitable for humans. Was this the colony called ‘Winter,’ alluded to in the Commonwealth Archives of Independence Colony?

  They would know soon.

  Quarters of Magnus and Kayliegh Morgan, Deck 29

  A good spread was laid across the dining table in the quarters of Magnus and Kayliegh Morgan.

  Vegetable stew and sea-kelp soup accompanied a main course of protein cakes, soylent quiche, brown rice and pongee mushrooms, washed down with great lashings of ginger brew. “You eat at the Food Court far too much,” Kayliegh scolded her brother, Matthew, a captain of one of Pegasus’s four flight groups.

  “I cannot argue with that. It’s good to be eating homemade food.” Matthew and Kayliegh were twins.

  They shared the same height and build, which made her a little tall and strong for a woman and he a little short for a man. Her honey-brown hair was lighter than his, which was nearly black, but they possessed identical brown, quick-witted eyes and the light and creamy complexions common among Republickers descended from Earth’s lighter-skinned races.

  “Married life suits me well and pleasingly,” said Magnus Morgan, a little out of nowhere, but he was a scientist and allowed to approach social interaction from unexpected tangents. He lifted his glass in salute to his wife. He had just turned thirty, making him older than Matthew and Kayliegh by two years. He had a face of ordinary handsomeness dimmed only by a nose that was slightly too large and teeth that were slightly too far apart. “I’ve married Kayliegh twice already and I would do it again if necessary.” The fourth chair at the table was occupied by the ship’s navigator, Eliza Jane Change, whom Matthew had been pursuing romantically, with varying levels of failure since the ship had launched. Eliza, an exotic beauty with gleaming black hair and almond-shaped eyes, ignored their pro-marriage homily as best she could and wished the Morgans had served wine with dinner. Unfortunately, they belonged to some Old Earth Fundamentalist religion that forbade the consumption of alcohol.

  Change realized she was expected to say something positive about marriage or dinner at this point. If she couldn’t think of anything positive, she was obliged to change the subject, but not in so obvious away as to imply that she had nothing positive to say. “Have you tried the new restaurant on the Food Deck?” she asked. “It’s called, ‘Aye, Sì.’ It features food from Independence Colony.”

  “I can’t say that I have,” Kayliegh answered. “Is it any good?”

  “How would I know?” Eliza replied. “That’s why I was asking you.” They laughed without the slightest bit of uncomfortableness and she knew they had believed she was joking. She dug into another protein cake. Matthew had assured her that his religion did not forbid the use of salt, pepper, oregano, mélange or any other spice, so Kayliegh’s aversion to flavor must have been a personal pathology.

  From the desirableness of marriage, the conversation turned to Independence, and how the excitement of finding an advanced, intact human world, with friendly inhabitants, had infected the ship with a certain philia for the colony and its culture. Indy music, Indy food, Indy art, and even Indy slang had enjoyed a sudden and intense popularity on board Pegasus. “A lot of people feel like this was the Turning Point in our voyage,” Kayliegh observed. “After the Aurelians, and the other colonies.”

  “I hope people won’t be too let down if the next world we meet doesn’t measure up,” Matthew Driver said.

  Eliza sipped her ginger brew. Born and raised aboard spaceships, as far as she was concerned, one ball of dirt was very like another.

  Magnus launched into a little speech. “We, the Pathfinders, we were meant to do the tough work, rediscovering these lost colonies. It was our fate, when you think about it, to bear the burden of finding out which colonies thrived and which ones… uh, didn’t. However, thanks to us, the Phase Two ships will help the stronger colonies reach out and raise up the weaker ones. Less stress because they will, mostly, know what to expect, but not as interesting.”

  “You have a point,” Matthew Driver told him.

  “I think, though, Phase Three will be a lot more interesting than either Phase One or Phase Two, unfortunately, I probably won’t be around to see it.”

  “What’s Phase Three?” Matthew asked. “I only remember Phases One and Two.” Magnus smiled knowingly. “Phase Three wasn’t laid out by the Odyssey Charter, but it will naturally follow. In Phase One, ships like this one, enormous, well-armed, ready for anything, find the other human worlds and whatever else the galaxy has to offer. Phase Two ships will be smaller. They will follow up on the other colonies, and those colonies will begin building their own ships, the strongest among them anyway. Phase Two will strengthen the ties among worlds, and will explore, but only as a secondary function, and only to known or probable colony sites.

  “In Phase Three, we will begin building ships of pure exploration, to look into uncharted star systems, and explore unknown phenomena. These ships won’t be merely about building the human community or making the galaxy a better place for humans to live. These ships will be about pure science. I only wish I could be around to be on one.”

  “If the Aurelians don’t destroy us before we get to Phase Three,” Eliza interjected, spoiling the moment quite deliberately.

  “We’ll defeat the Aurelians,” said Matthew Driver, with absolute certainty.

  “Or, learn to live with them, somehow,” Kayliegh suggested.

  “I don’t think we will have that choice,” Matthew argued grimly.

  Magnus Morgan looked at his wife. “We don’t need to have this argument again, not right now anyway, this was supposed to be an occasion of joy.” He took her hand in his own. They smiled at each other with the committed glow of two people absolutely in love with each other.

  “I was about to say,” Magnus Morgan cont
inued. “I will probably not be around for Phase Three, but I have hope that my children will be.”

  Matthew was caught off guard for a moment before an irrepressible grin curled across his lips.

  “You’re having a baby?”

  Kayliegh glowed. “I am into my first quarter.”

  Matthew was overjoyed, almost as though the child would be his own. “That’s wonderful. What did you decide to have?”

  “We went back and forth on the girl/boy question, and finally gave up and decided to have twins.”

  “Twins?”

  “Aye, one of each. It took almost a quarter of concentration and meditation, but I did it. I am carrying your niece and your nephew.” She lay a hand on her stomach. “That’s just great. Isn’t it great, Eliza?” Eliza nodded and sipped her ginger brew. “Where would we be without people like you to propagate the species?”

  Amenities Nexus – Deck 23

  Tactical Commander Phil Redfire and Flight Commandant Halo Jordan shared a mutual aversion to cooking. The former husband and wife sat in comfortably padded chairs around a large table in one of the less-quiet corners of the Amenities Nexus, an area just forward of Pegasus’s command towers, with food shops presenting a full array of Sapphirean, Republicker – and now, Independence – cuisine.

  Redfire and Jordan were joined by the two sons, Max and Sam, she had borne during the sixteen years (or eight, because one of Bodicéa’s years was two of Sapphire’s) she had been left behind on the planet Bodicéa. While stranded, she had become the paramour of another man, and this had caused Redfire to invoke divorce under Sapphirean law.

  The havoc interstellar travel played with physical laws was nothing compared to the havoc it played on personal lives.

  The divorce had eased the extremes in the sine curve of their relationship, no more passionate sexual congress followed by arguments heated to stellar interior temperatures. Instead, they had a kind of cordiality, an entante. The Marriage Dissolutionist had required that Phil do his best to mentor his wife’s sons. Max was growing up athletic, strong, handsome, and bold. Sam possessed an artistic temperament, a creative streak as wide as a gulf, and a talent for mischief. Jordan had given the boys names she and Redfire had once agreed on for the sons they never had. She even, somehow, had produced boys whose hair was light red, like Commander Redfire’s although both she and their sire were blond. But Redfire could not look at them without remembering that the boys were the fruit of another man’s seed, sown in his wife’s fertile and willing loins.