The Sorrow Anthology

by Helen Allan

  “I’m fine with that,” Gaea sighed, “I feel the life I have led for thousands of years has been nothing but stasis anyway. Lift off immediately please ship. I will place myself in the life-support regeneration tank as soon as we are off the planet.”

  As her sentence finished, Gaea felt the smooth hum of the ship’s body change from gentle to rapid and knew they were in space. The ship’s trajectory was at the speed of light. It would take weeks, if not months for those left behind to find new codes for the remaining ships and pursue her – but hopefully, her plan would ensure they had no chance of ever finding her.

  She hid the scarab, along with those taken from the bodies of her brothers and sisters, in a specially sealed recess near her life support pod. The pod began to fill with green liquid Natron, and she breathed in gently, allowing her body to adjust to the change from gas to liquid. She looked across at the other tanks in the room, thousands lined the walls - empty, but six contained the severed heads of her fellow Councillors. Only one she had left behind, and even now she knew it had been a mistake. As her body adjusted to the tank, and the inevitable sensation of drowning passed, she closed her eyes.

  She would not open them again for several thousand years.

  2

  Gaea cuddled the small monkey on her lap and considered her next move.

  Earth, the blue planet that Ship 1 had determined was the safest place for her, the furthest from her home planet, was beautiful. Its creatures were entrancing, its local species of hominoid varied. But there was one species she was most interested in and had not expected to find; humans.

  Balancing the monkey on her hip like a baby she looked carefully at the plasma samples in the ship’s infirmary and smiled. The indigenous species here along the Nile, had a similar genetic makeup to her own kind, but with one special difference. Her people, the Gods, were tall, virtually hairless apart from the hair on their large, slightly cone-shaped heads, and immensely intelligent. The local inhabitants of Earth were mentally light years behind her own, but they could learn quickly. Small in body, hairy and primitive, their significant advantage was that they could breed. Gaea smiled and thanked the stars she had been the one to find this planet before those who supported the Council’s recent decisions could think to come so far.

  Those she had left behind would seek her out; she knew this. But she also knew they would not do so until their plans had failed, and since she had stolen all eight of the scarab time transmuters – which were integral to their interplanetary destruction plans, that might be sooner rather than later.

  Leaning back and staring at the map of the planets projected onto the screen in Ship 1’s lab, Gaea sighed.

  Thousands of years she had travelled in stasis, thousands of years during which her husband, her son and his ilk could have destroyed dozens of planets in their search for resources and germplasm. Her people’s intelligence had been their downfall. They had mined and destroyed planet after planet in order to feed their never-ending need for technology and comfort. Yet the one thing they could not fix, could not mine, were children. Their brains had grown at the expense of their reproductive ability. No new Gods had been born in thousands of years. The only Gods to have had children were the descendants of the scarab wearers, though it was not known if this was due to a genetic twist of fate, or due to the influence of the apparatuses they wore that bent time.

  The time transmuters had been in the hands of an elite family known for its ability to bring peace and prosperity to those planets under their protection. By agreement, time could be bent to change decisions that had been detrimental to worlds.

  But in the past few thousand years, some of those who controlled the scarabs had become swayed by the greedy and power-hungry; those who were envious of other worlds. Not envious of lifestyles, for they had the best, not envious of riches, for they had the most, not envious of technology, for they had the greatest. But envious of the ability to create new life – for though the Gods lived for an eternity, they could not recreate themselves – they wanted children. They wanted the council to make this possible. Investigations had been undertaken, studies made, but the Council and the great minds of the Gods could find no solution.

  And so, while other planets’ populations increased, the Gods slowly whittled away, through suicide, accident, intrigue, until one day a new plan was hatched. To use the scarabs to reverse time. To allow the Gods to make use of those on other planets as their slaves, to find and colonise those planets whose indigenous beings had germplasm that could be harvested. To, in short, populate the universe with the Gods, and no other. To go from the protectors to the overlords.

  Gaea shook her head sadly as she traced the images of the planets with her fingers. She had no choice; she had argued and fought long and hard against those on the Council that agreed with this course of action - her sisters, their children, her own son and his supporters and Malachi, her husband, the one who had first hatched this new, diabolical plan. Finally, she had realised she had no other course of action other than to flee and take the scarabs with her. The Gods would still pursue their plans but without the ability to bend time. She would live in this out-of-reach planet, preserve the life here, hide and keep safe the scarabs. But she would have time to teach the humans, to prepare them, and to develop a system of defence for this world. She wanted to ensure her kind never destroyed this planet, as she knew they would so many others in their pursuit of power.

  She set about determining the axis of the earth where she could establish laser defence systems. The most logical building material on this planet was rock. The population was way too primitive yet to have factories that could produce the metal or plastics she was accustomed to.

  Drawing a defence grid around the globe, she plotted where she would need to locate the lasers and how high they would need to be in order to criss-cross space efficiently with a network of weaponed lines.

  It was obvious she was going to need a great many pyramids of rock, and for that, a great many people who could work for her.

  Taking one of the smaller, pod-like silver spacecraft, she packed food and set off for a tour of the major populated centres of the globe.

  Those who met her that day would record her coming, the coming of the Moon Goddess; Gaea, Tiamet, Juno, Hathor – in all languages, in all cultures, the goddess who formed the world.

  3

  Amun circled the planet in Ship 2 and assured his fellow travellers they would find a way in.

  He had awoken earlier than the others and pondered the information the ship had provided; this planet was protected by a lattice-work of lasers. A slow smile spread across his face as he sneered at the red lines the ship’s photosensitive detectors displayed.

  “Only Mother could do something like this,” he laughed, “I have found you, bitch. I have found you and the scarabs.”

  His laughter boomed out across the flight deck and raised the hair on the back of Naunet’s neck.

  She and her partner Nu had accompanied Amun on this search for the scarabs, along with Amun’s wife Amaunet and two other couples; Heh and Haunet and Kek and Kauket. They were some of the last remaining pure-blood Gods. Those left behind were the new rulers of 12 conquered planets.

  Amun had the blessings of his father, Malachi, to search the universe for the scarabs and to bring them back. He was also to continue to seek compatible plasm for breeding purposes – something that so far eluded the Gods.

  On board with Amun had been thousands of Gods who wished to leave their home planet and join him. But he no longer had any but seven others on board now - seven who had joined him without Malachi’s consent.

  The remaining Gods had been left, group by group on 12 other worlds, settled, again secretly, by Amun during the long years of his quest for the scarabs. Stargates on board the ship could be programmed to link to all 12 gates on the other worlds. But Malachi was unaware of these planets. He believed only that Amun and his people searched for the scarabs.

  An
d search he did. Amun and his seven co-conspirators had journeyed for aeons, visited planets from one side of the universe to the other. Finally, out of desperation, Amun had asked the ship to take them to the furthest reaches of space that could support their lives.

  Now it seemed they were not the only ones who had that idea.

  Naunet stood behind Amun and studied the lattice of lasers.

  “Perhaps another sentient race as advanced as ours already inhabits this planet,” she murmured.

  “Perhaps,” Amun said, “or perhaps it is Mother.”

  Nu approached and put his arms around Naunet’s shoulders, also studying the planet’s defences.

  “What do the scans say about life on this rock?”

  “There are clearly sentient beings,” Amun mused, “Mother could not have established such a network by herself. The weapons are housed in giant pyramids to direct their aim and reach.”

  “Indeed,” Nu agreed, “and if it is your mother, we need to find a way to get to her and get the scarabs, preferably without destroying her or the planet’s inhabitants – they might be what we seek for plasm.”

  “I care not about the plasm,” Amun said through clenched teeth. “With the scarabs, we can reverse time and find where our kind went wrong in our reproductive journey.”

  “No,” Kek said, from where he had been leaning against the bulwarks, listening to the conversation. “That was not what Malachi wanted, and you know that Amun. He has never advocated turning back time for our own species – it is fraught with danger. He wants the scarabs to better manage the universe; the answers will come through our domination of all time and space.”

  “And he wants to study their properties,” Kauket, Kek’s partner, chimed in, “he said if we could find out how they affect reproduction, we may find the key to life.”

  “I know what he said,” Amun snarled, “I also know that he changes his tune depending on what people want to hear. During the revolution when my mother escaped, he said he would use the scarabs to turn back our history, now suddenly he just wants them for other purposes – I believe him as much as I believe my mother.”

  He turned from the screen and addressed the ship.

  “Ship 2, melt the ice caps on this forsaken planet, flood the world, I want those pyramids under water within the next two days.”

  Haunet and Heh, only just coming to the flight deck, caught the last order and gasped.

  “You would destroy all life on this planet? Without first investigating its plasm? You would directly defy Malachi?”

  “I would,” Amun said, striding away from the deck, ignoring the shouts of dissent from his fellow travellers.

  Gaea put her hand to her forehead as she stared at the screen and cried.

  For thousands of years she had protected earth. Groomed the humans to advance more quickly, helped boost their intelligence and health. And now she watched as millions upon millions of her people drowned. She knew only one person who would be so brutal, so disdainful of lower species of life, of any life – it had to be her son Amun.

  She walked out of her control room and shook her head sadly as small creatures darted up to her and birds flew around her head. Her ship’s biosphere had been expanded over the centuries. Inside it contained examples of all life on earth, every species living in the giant, self-contained dome, that was her ship. An island of natural tranquillity and peace. She sighed. Apart from a few floating vessels that she had managed to direct from each country in the world, there would be no survivors from this planet-wide flood. She knew this.

  It would also only be a matter of time before her son landed in his ship and destroyed her. She wondered if Malachi was with him. The day she had cut her brother-husband’s head off and stolen his scarab, the final in the set, she knew she should destroy him forever – but she could not. Her love for her twin, her lover, her partner, was even then, too strong. Born of the same womb, inseparable for thousands of years, only time and Malachi’s new plans for universal destruction had eventually forced them apart. Still, even knowing his turn of mind, knowing his diabolical plans, she could not kill him forever. She had left his head behind, allowing his regeneration, and understanding in her heart of hearts, that he would come after her.

  Putting that thought aside she hurriedly exited the biosphere and made her way to one of her small pod ships. If she was fast, she could fly around the globe and hide the scarabs in locations they would never be discovered. She had already buried the heads of her former Councillors deep within the earth’s core where they would never be found. She knew there was no escape from this planet. She had been here too long; Ship 1 had already informed her it would not leave. The ship had formed an attachment to Earth now and, essentially, become part of the world. She would never fly again.

  And Gaea could not leave this planet in one of the small pods. While useful for planetary exploration, they could not withstand huge distances in space – and Earth was too far removed from any other habitable planet for her to attempt a flight in the little craft. But it would serve her purpose for the moment.

  Grabbing the scarabs, she raced to the flight deck, halting in her tracks when the intercom boomed into life. Turning, as though she was about to see the devil himself, she approached the screen.

  “Mother,” Amun said, smiling. “If you want to see all life extinguished on this planet, then try to hide the scarabs from me.”

  “You have already extinguished all life,” Gaea snorted, “do you think you can bargain with something you don’t have?”

  Amun smiled, a slow, grin. “Oh, come now, I see on the satellite images you have managed to save some of the local wildlife, sentient too I believe. And it is within my power, should you play nice, to reverse this cataclysm and save the planet.”

  Gaea narrowed her eyes. “The only way you could reverse this is if you turned back time. The only way you can do so is if you have 8 scarab bearers of the sacred bloodline. And you and I both know, darling son, that I killed my sisters before I departed.”

  “Your sisters yes,” Amun smirked, “but I have their children. You see my sister Amaunet and I have married, as have Nu and Naunet, Heh and Haunet and Kek and Kauket. We have had many thousands of years to grow fond of each other and form deep and abiding attachments. When we don the scarabs, I have every hope they will be as powerful as they ever were.”

  Gaea gasped. “Malachi would never have agreed to free all the Council children,” she said, “he needs them for his plans to work.”

  “Well, let’s just say Father may not yet be aware of my plans,” Amun grinned, “here, let me introduce my co-conspirators.

  He leaned back and allowed the six companions on the flight deck to peer into the camera.

  “Hello, President Gaea,” Naunet said politely.

  “She is no longer President,” Amun said roughly, pushing her away from the screen. “We are the Council now; we hold power, not her.”

  “Amun,” Gaea said, shaking her head. “Why? Why have you taken my sisters’ children? Do not think that I trust you have their best interests at heart.”

  “We want children also,” Amaunet interrupted, “you and the Council hoarded the power of the amulets, but you also kept to yourself the power to procreate. It was wrong of you not to pass the scarabs on to the next in line, to continue our species.”

  “Amaunet my daughter,” Gaea shook her head, “we debated this, many times, on the Council. But always we saw that some of your characters were too young, not yet fixed in the right direction, the direction that would serve the universe unselfishly. Of course, as it turned out, my sisters changed over time also and became poor guardians. But they would not listen to me when I suggested some of them hand over their scarabs to their children because I refused to hand mine over to my son – I think you all know why.”

  “Enough,” Amun shouted, making those around him jump. “If you try to run and hide the transmuters, I will completely destroy all life on this planet. If you hand
them over, we pledge to reverse the damage we have done. What do you say, Mother?”

  Gaea paused in indecision. On the one hand, the fate of one planet was small, compared to the damage her son and his followers could do to the universe with the scarabs. But on the other she had spent thousands of years on Earth, she loved the people, she loved the planet. And what if this was the only planet left? Who knew what her son had done in the vast expanse of time and space between here and their home planet. No, she would not see this planet destroyed; it would be her last good deed for the universe, to save this perfect small world.

  “I agree,” she sighed.

  4

  Naunet held hands firmly with the other seven scarab wearers and concentrated on what they wanted to happen. Golden light flooded around Amun as he directed the group’s energy and reversed the flood he had caused that had covered Earth.

  Naunet and Nu shared a look of relief when the reversal was complete. It had been difficult convincing Amun to follow up his promise to his, now permanently disabled, mother, and save the life on this planet.

  Kauket and Kek had sided with Amun, neither saw any reason to save the sentients or any other creature on this strange world. But Nu and Naunet’s arguments had won through in the end.

  Amun laughed as he stepped out of the golden glow, the reversal complete.

  “Well my fellow Councillors, shall we set to work fucking and see if we can’t produce some baby Gods.”

  Naunet blushed. Amun and Amaunet were brother and sister as well as husband and wife in the true sense. But while she and her brother Nu loved one another, and had married, as was the custom, she had never shared his bed. Her heart lay elsewhere, on the far distant planet, Avalona. Nevertheless, she nodded, as did the others in her group, agreeing with Amun to keep the peace. She cast a surreptitious glance at Haunet and Hey. Both wore grim expressions.