by Josi Russell
The first humans that stepped onto the Edenic planet of Empyriad were unprepared for what they saw. A sea of humanoid beings--the Stracahn, stood watching the Earthlings come out of the ships. The humans were cautious, tense, as they faced the Stracahn. Slightly confused by the striking similarities between themselves and this new race, the Earthlings climbed down and stuck out their hands. They didn't know then that those hands would kill this planet.
"Look, Cev, I'm--I'm sorry about what we, what we did--" he gestured broadly, and Cev averted his eyes from the barren hillside that sloped above them. Laska realized that his words, meant to sooth the situation, were making it worse. How could he apologize? How could he make up for what humanity, in its naive curiosity, had done to Cev’s planet, to his whole civilization?
Laska felt the weight of it and knew that sometimes there was no apology great enough. The thing had been done, and there was no undoing it.
They walked together, this tragedy between them, until the sound of chaos hit. Laska looked up, but he couldn't see what was happening around the mass of people. There was only shouting and slamming doors. Cev's friends broke into a run.
"May your journey bring discovery!" Cev called as he sped up to catch them.
Laska called the traditional parting back to him. Suddenly, he felt very alone.
Sixteen ships stood in loose rows; their tapered noses pointed toward the sky. The pilots had started some of them. Already the heat of their exhaust washed over the crowd. Already, their compact Coulombic engines were emitting the high pre-flight whine. Already, the pentagonal windows that studded the ships held faces, human and Stracahn, gazing down at the trembling remains of Empyriad.
Laska saw Salah boarding the Excursion, the big red ship just ahead of him. If he wanted to see her at all for the next few months, he had to make it on that one. The geologist ran as best he could, the suitcase bouncing behind him. The papers on top started to shift. He turned and loped sideways, trying to hold the sweater-wrapped bundle securely on top of the suitcase.
He heard a crewman shouting from a ship to his right,"Too many! Close the doors!"
But the ship wasn't full. The passenger limit sign, glowing red above the door, still read 127. The crews were panicking under the press of the crowd. If they weren't filling the ships to capacity, there was even less time. According to the sign, the ship he was heading for still had room for 63 passengers, and he thought he could make it. Gripping his research, he pushed forward.
The sweater caught on the arm of a passing biologist, and the bundle fell, spreading Laska's work out on the ground.
He cried out and dropped to his knees, scooping and grabbing at the papers as Stracahn and humans rushed past him up the ramp. The bare black stone of Empyriad bit into his knees and scraped his knuckles as he reached for his records.
The Excursion rushed to life. A wall of heat from the initial reaction in the engine pushed out through the crowd. Many of the papers, now torn and smudged, blew beyond his grasp, and he saw them take flight. Laska watched as his observations scattered back to the slopes and crevices where he had made them.
He secured the ones he could reach and scrambled to his feet. He grasped the suitcase handle suitcase tighter and ran a hand over his shoulder bag. It was secure. The notebooks with his most valuable data were still there. He could try to replicate some of the observations. But for now, he had to get through this crowd and into a cabin on the ship to take stock of what had been lost. The limit sign read 20, and there were close to that many in front of him now. He moved up the ramp, his eyes on the door.
It was a moment's glance. If he had kept his eyes on the door, if he had stepped more quickly, he would never have seen the child.
A shining child about nine Earth years old, whose turquoise hair caught the light and tossed it back to him, stood at the edge of the ramp, weeping. No one seemed to see her. Even the soldier guarding the door looked past her as he waved to Laska.
"Come on, Sir, come up here. I'm closing the doors. All citizens of Earth must board now!"
Laska paused. "Where are your parents?" he asked the child in Stracahn.
She looked up. Laska was not prepared for the moment she looked him in the eye and pointed to the ship.
"They're aboard?"
"COME ON, SIR!" The soldier was barking.
The child nodded.
Laska knew what he had to do. He took the little girl's hand and led her through the crush of people. Above the door, the passenger limit sign counted down.
15, 14, 13. People were flowing onto the ship.
12, 11, 10. Laska tried to count, saw that they would make it, but just barely.
9,8,7,6. He was close enough to feel the breeze coming from the ship, and the freshness of it, the taste of rich oxygen, revived him.
"It's all right. We'll get you on board and find your parents," he soothed. The girl looked up at him again, nodding earnestly. He sensed that he had just made a promise.
The Stracahn viewed statements as fact, as promises.
And then they were at the front of the line, and the soldier was reaching for his arm, to help him in. The little girl followed, clinging to the geologist’s hand.
Laska glanced up and stopped.
1.
The passenger limit sign stood at 1. One passenger would be allowed onboard. There was no breaking this rule, no bending it. The safety of everyone on board prohibited that.
Laska shook his head, trying to think. The little girl would die, then. He took the knowledge and held it, blocking out the commands from the soldier. The door was half-lowered, and when he stepped through it would close.
He disentangled his hand from the child's and took a step forward. He had to get his research back to Earth. There would be nothing left to study. He had to make it home.
But he had promised. Smoothly, Laska swung around.
"SIR!" the soldier barked.
Laska reached for the little girl, lifting her and setting her aboard the ship. She looked at him from across the threshold with wide eyes.
The soldier swore and pulled her further into the ship as the door lowered.
Frantically, Laska slipped out of his shoulder bag and tossed it under just as the seal hissed on the polished silver door.
2
The child stood staring at the solid door. How could a human have done this? How could one of the beings that destroyed her home have saved her? She wanted her mother, wanted to be wrapped in the arms that took the confusion from her mind and the danger from the world.
A heavy hand fell on her shoulder. She looked up at the stern face of the door guard. The soldier was a big man with a broad face and serious eyes. He was, she could see, afraid.
"You need to get to your cabin. We're preparing to launch. Bring your bag." He gestured down the long hallway, where doorways yawned like the mouths of caves. The child had never felt metal surrounding her, had always known the broad mountainsides and earthen huts of Empyriad. She reached down and scooped up the leather bag at her feet. She hugged it to her chest.
The soldier looked at her, and she saw him smile. "It's okay. I'll show you." He held out his hand, and she took it. He walked her to the first doorway.
When the humans had come, Zyn'dri had found that she had an unusual capacity to communicate with them. She could understand their words and mimic them much more quickly than her friends or even her parents. She had become something of a translator for the little band of them in her village, often called upon when they were trying to sort out a sticky problem or arrange details for their work. She had liked them, then, before the plants started to die.
"This is your room," he said, and Zyn'dri heard the strangeness of the "oo" sound that always fascinated her about their language. The Stracahn didn't have that sound in their words. It was a pause, a drawing-out of the word that made her think of the nightbirds that used to call at twilight outside the village.
She had gone, one day, tree climbing in the
jungle behind the village. A nestful of nightbirds lay on a limb above her, and she had ascended to it and scooted out on the limb, as she had done many times.
Zyn'dri remembered the wonder she'd always felt at watching the nightbirds, as gentle and calm as pets, feed their young. But that day had been different. Zyn'dri shivered now at the memory. A mother nightbird, too weak to lift her head, laid breathing heavily in the nest. Her wings were spread over the still, skeletal forms of her babies. Zyn'dri had searched the tree frantically for the bright-beetles, the glowing insects that were the primary food for nightbirds, but there were none.
It was then that she had noticed the brown leaves of the tree, their sickly gleam in the filtered sunlight. She saw, as clearly as the day her teacher had drawn it on the school blackboard, the food chain of the nightbird. Below it, the bright-beetle and the vibrant green leaves of the Charra tree. Above the nightbird, the quick, fluffy raz, with its gray and white coat, and the hunting birds, tennas. She saw that chain and knew that its links were broken. At that moment she had seen the collapse of all she knew looming in front of her like the steep side of Kin'achyt'la.
So she wasn't surprised when the house she shared with her mother and father began to be unbearably hot, even at night. She wasn't surprised when the meals on their table were smaller. She wasn't surprised when her parents came home from a meeting with the Avowed and said that the Avowed had demanded that the humans provide ships to take them away from Empyriad. For their own safety. They would be leaving as soon as the ships could take them.
But she was a little surprised now, as she peered into the small room and saw, out its solitary pentagonal window, the sheer barrenness of her planet. She couldn't see a single plant, just bare rock and the frightened Stracahn scrambling across it to the ships.
The lights came on as she stepped inside the cabin, and she held tightly to the hand of the soldier as she saw the little bed, and the sink and toilet. There was no wasted space. The soldier pointed to a harness at one end of the bed.
"Buckle up and wait for the instructions that come over the speaker," he said. "I have to get back to my post, but I'll be right out there all through launch if you need me." He smiled, and Zyn'dri forced her face into the humans' sign of reassurance, showing him her teeth. Stracahn rarely contorted their faces this way, but she had learned it was an important sign of trust for the humans.
When he left, the door of the little room slid closed behind her and she was alone. She felt again the desperation that washed over her when she had tried to board the ship and couldn't work her way through the press of people, human and Stracahn, to get to the door.
When her parents had left that morning for their onboard meeting with the Avowed, they had made sure she knew which ship it was and when the doors would open for the public to begin boarding. Her mother's sister would come and walk with her, they'd said. But her aunt hadn't come. When Zyn'dri finally decided to leave the house and come to the ships, the scene had been terrifying.
She knew her parents had expected everyone to behave as usual: orderly filling of the ships, practical evaluation of how many people could fit on each. But the humans were panicking, and the Stracahn had seen their planet dying around them for months. The Stracahn did not want to be left behind. Even though their emotions hadn't shown on their faces, their behavior had been erratic. They had moved quickly and blocked the door to the ship. The humans had pushed past them, and the soldiers had closed some of the doors before the ships were full.
Zyn'dri shook her head, trying to dispel the confusion and hopelessness she still felt. Although she was on the ship, everything felt strange and wrong. Zyn'dri had to find her parents. They always had the ability to comfort her, to make her feel safe.
A deep thrumming sound shook Zyn'dri from her thoughts. She peered around the room, frightened. It sounded like the growl of a huge animal. Only it didn't crescendo and then stop. Instead, it reached a peak and continued steadily. She scrambled to the bed, fumbling with the straps.
Like every other child on Empyriad, Zyn'dri had watched the big Earthships launch before. She knew that outside a wave of heat was billowing away and that any moment the ship would shoot from the ground at a remarkable speed. She couldn't imagine what that would feel like in here.
She didn't wonder long. Only seconds after she buckled, she felt the force of the ship lifting her. It took her breath away. The growl grew to a fevered wail, and the walls around her trembled.
Zyn'dri was frozen with fear. She had traveled once on the ocean, and when she had looked out on the undulating water around her, she had been paralyzed in this same way by the power of the waves. She closed her eyes, squeezing them until she saw only points of floating light. She held on, repeating the mantra of protection to the Allbeings, until the moment when the engines quieted. The ship steadied.
Zyn’dri was still gripping the bag. After rechecking her buckles to be sure she was safely strapped in, she lay it on the bed before her and extracted its contents.
Four bound books. She opened the first.
On its pages, she saw beautiful and delicate designs. One after another.
Some were photographs, some were rubbings, and some, rougher and less skilled, Zyn’dri assumed Laska had drawn himself, copying something he saw. The photographs were often of lava flows. She supposed that was something he was studying, and it looked, from the books, like he played a game with himself where he tried to find the patterns he was so interested in within the lava flows. He had many photographs where the shape of the magma matched the design he had copied below it.
The drawings were not altogether foreign to Zyn’dri. The patterns were somehow familiar, though she couldn’t remember having seen them before.
She opened another book. This one was also full of designs. Together, three of the books made a huge catalog of the intricate drawings.
She opened the fourth. In it, she found the strange squiggly writing of the humans. The first entry read:
Jamal Laska, Season 2983, rotation 6, Empyriad
Edenic. It is the only word to describe this place. Flowers, grasses, tropical trees for miles. Fruit falling around you. The vast, sweet sea stretching away from the towering volcanic mountains with the villages at their feet.
And the species who lives here: the Stracahn. A united and gentle people, perfectly at peace. How can that be?
Zyn’dri’s reading was interrupted by a voice on the speaker, repeating a message in the human language and then in Stracahn.
"We've overcome the resistance of the atmosphere and accelerated into open space. Our trip should be much more comfortable from now on. You are free to leave your cabins and mingle in the common areas on each deck. For security purposes, and for your safety, we do ask that you return to your cabins immediately following the evening meal each night."
Zyn'dri unbuckled. She had to find her parents, and she should return this bag to the humans. The door slid open, and she glanced down the corridor, back toward the door she'd entered. The soldier waved at her, and she waved back hesitantly.
As she stepped into the hallway, she felt the ridges of the textured rubber matting that covered the floor. It felt empty under her feet, like Empyriad these last few weeks. Before the plants began to die, her home planet had hummed under her feet, leading her along its paths and guiding her to its secrets. But its yarin, its soul, had quieted since the plants died. Her parents had looked at her strangely when she’d told them that, so she tried not to mention it to others. Now, she couldn’t help but think of it, because there was no soul in this machine either, though it thrummed with energy and moved through the vast darkness outside. It was frightening and foreign to her.
Zyn’dri took a steadying breath, shallow as she had trained herself in the hot, empty air of Empyriad since the plague. But soon she found herself breathing more deeply. The air here was crisp and clean, like home before the humans came. Even better, like the first few moments after a hard rain cleared, when t
he last droplets hung in the air, and the new sun made them vanish before they hit the ground. She pulled it into her lungs and drank it greedily as she walked. She felt how it cleansed the fear from her.
Zyn'dri saw others leaving their cabins, and she followed the flow of Stracahn down the corridor to a large common room. In it, a few Stracahn mingled, conversing in tense voices. Some of them looked up as she walked through.
"Zyn'dri!"
The child recognized the voice and looked up to meet the striking violet eyes of Tez, a woman from her village. Zyn’dri’s knew Tez well. She was the mother of Zyn’dri’s friend, Innueo, who stood beside his mother. He smiled as Zyn’dri approached.
"Why aren’t you with your parents?"
“We were separated. Do you know where they might be?”
Tez glanced toward a doorway at the back of the room.
“I suspect that they are somewhere looking for you.” She said. “The soldiers mentioned that there is a registry for Stracahn on the fifth deck. You may go there and tell them your name and your parents’ names. Tell them your cabin number. Your parents might be there looking for you, too.”
Zyn'dri felt tears coming. She blinked quickly and looked away. Only tiny Stracahn children cried in the presence of others. "I'm not sure which way to go." She said.
Tez looked at her, not unkindly. "You'll go through that door there to the stairs," she gestured across the room, "and up several flights. The soldiers said that the door is marked with a blue stripe."
Zyn'dri bowed slightly out of respect and left the common room. Where Tez had indicated, she found a short hallway, and at the end, a set of stairs that zigzagged upward, one flight over the other, into the dizzying heights of the ship. Zyn’dri started to climb.
At each landing, she paused and looked for the blue stripe.
There were only a few flights left above her when she saw it. Through it, she found another corridor. She stepped more quickly as she heard voices coming from an open door near the center of the hallway.