Dark Firmament

by Ezra Manes

  Joaquin, please awaken—I need you, our people need you!

  Her focused, emotional plea penetrated deeply and sharply, and Joqi stirred for the first time in several weeks.

  Given hope, Dawn clasped the kernel of waking thoughts tightly and guided them toward that private meditation state where he locked out all awareness of being immersed in the smart plasma. But it was indeed the plasma that shielded him while he was in that most private of all places.

  • • •

  Joqi sat on the grassy bank of the Avili overlooking the deep pool below some rapids, his favorite place to meditate. He focused on the pleasant rippling sounds coming from the rapids just upstream. It was a very serene place, but it wasn’t relieving his internal tension as it always had in the past.

  He heard leaves rustling just down the bank. He tried to shut that sound out and focus on the relaxing sounds of the river flowing over rocks in the shallow rapids. But it was no use. The rustling sound grew closer and he knew someone was coming.

  With a sigh, he rose from his grassy seat and looked downstream. His agitation at the interruption dissipated when he saw his grandpapa approaching. The prophet’s gait was strong and he looked years younger than Joqi remembered. He was smiling as he approached, and Joqi felt infused with strength and love as the two hugged.

  His grandpapa sat down in a meditative posture and Joqi followed suit. But his grandpapa had something else in mind rather than meditation.

  “My Joqi, what are you doing here?”

  Joqi frowned. What was he doing here? He felt a deep tension like none he had felt before, and he was here trying to relieve that tension.

  “I am trying to figure that out, Grandpapa.”

  “The mind can play tricks on you,” his grandpapa said. “To protect itself, it can deflect all sensory input about things external.”

  His grandpapa reached over and touched Joqi on the arm, the customary touch of respect and taking of peace gesture of the Zilans.

  Joqi felt severe pain suddenly coursing throughout his body. He fell over on his side and curled into a fetal position.

  “Sometimes the mind does not know when to stop protecting itself,” his grandpapa said. “It keeps reviving painful memories to keep the mind introverted and protected.”

  Joqi felt his grandpapa’s warm hands cupping his face. The severe pain eased and in a few minutes was gone. He sat up, the aftershock of the pain making him shake. That too subsided, and he heard again the rippling waters of the rapids. He turned to thank his grandpapa, but he was gone.

  Joqi felt the presence of another. Dawn?

  Yes Joaquin, I am here.

  There was tenseness, a note of concern in Dawn’s communication that he had never sensed before. The Avili centered environment dissipated in a swirl of fog. Joqi felt the forceful cushioning of the smart plasma, which was protecting him from what he surmised was high acceleration of the Horizon Quest.

  Is everything okay?

  I should be asking you that, Dawn replied tactfully.

  Memory of his ordeal on the szswns’ planet came rushing back in. He felt Dawn’s thoughts embrace him like never before, concerned and protective, lifting him the rest of the way out of his virtual meditative state.

  I’m okay, he conveyed, and he sensed her retreat slightly. I remember what happened on the planet, and bits and pieces of being transported somewhere after that. Perhaps you should fill me in on what happened.

  I will share my memories of events with you, she replied.

  He was immediately aware of what had transpired.

  • • •

  The leader and its guards in the meeting chamber were only stunned by the deflected ion beam from the guard’s weapon. Once the leader revived, he ordered Joqi’s sacrifice to the ocean creatures, as was the szswn custom for their dead. The leader ordered this done quietly and quickly so as not to alert Joqi’s ship, giving szswn forces time to prepare to overcome the ship by force.

  Dawn became aware that something was amiss when she tried unsuccessfully to contact Joqi via his communicator and by direct mind link. When the communicator went offline suddenly, she organized several robots for a search and rescue mission to the surface. She knew Joqi walked out of the meeting chamber, but from there his location was a mystery. She used high resolution imagery and monitored communications channels, attempting to find where Joqi was being held. She surmised correctly that he was a prisoner of the szswns.

  Joqi’s rescue by Cssyza surprised everyone. No effort was made by the szswns to thwart the rescue; Cssyza was the only szswn to enter the regen process in a very long time on the planet. The leader directed that all forces take a wait and see posture because Cssyza was approaching the final regen phase.

  Dawn stopped short of launching the search and rescue mission when she intercepted communications regarding Cssyza’s ongoing rescue efforts. Cssyza commandeered a space shuttle and communicated to Dawn that it was bringing Joqi to the Horizon Quest. Cssyza informed Dawn of Joqi’s dire, possibly fatal, condition. Dawn had robots configure a temporary docking structure for the alien shuttlecraft.

  Two robots boarded the shuttle once it docked with the Quest, and transported Joqi directly to the smart plasma command pod for immediate immersion. Dawn expressed deep appreciation to Cssyza for its rescue efforts and invited it to come aboard. Cssyza was quite content to do so, and brought along several containers of supplies it would need to survive. The shuttlecraft was then set adrift.

  Dawn tried to link with Joqi, but could not. She decided the best approach was to let the smart plasma tend to his needs. She made sure Cssyza was safely settled in a small storeroom that was cleared and modified as the szswn brought Joqi from the surface. In a short dialog with Cssyza, Dawn learned it could safely withstand a lot more acceleration force than a human could.

  That was all Dawn needed to know in the short term. She accelerated the Horizon Quest quickly away from the nearby szswn ships, setting a course that would intercept the nearby dying star. The ships stopped chasing after the Quest in three days; they were unable keep up.

  Dawn chose the trajectory toward the local star because it offered several options they could consider for the next leg of their journey. The option she favored was to enter a partial orbit of the star, and then exit that orbit in a trajectory pointing out to the region of the brown dwarf. They had enough fuel to get there reasonably fast, but very little more. She hoped Joqi would awaken long before reaching the star and provide guidance on where they should go next.

  Dawn had turned her full attention to Joqi, agonizing over his condition and her inability to protect him while he was on the planet. She reached out to him, but his deep coma prevented any contact.

  • • •

  Six weeks after leaving the vicinity of the szswns’ planet, Joqi felt strong enough mentally to engage Cssyza in conversation. He discovered a video projector was already in place in the szswn’s compartment. Dawn told him Cssyza had made the journey so far in a semi-dormant state, but was now fully alert.

  “Greetings, Cssyza,” Joqi said. Only audio was projected into the compartment, although Joqi could see into the room. “May we converse?”

  “Yes,” Cssyza replied. “I have much to share with you.”

  Cssyza was shuffling its feet and nervously snapping its mandibles together. Joqi projected his simulacrum image into the compartment in the hope it would calm Cssyza. The szswn backed away from Joqi’s 3-D image, and assumed its normal communications stance, rear end lowered to the floor and front end held higher by extended front legs.

  “I apologize for the dire circumstances imposed on you by my kind,” Cssyza said, in as sincere an expression as Joqi had seen from any szswn.

  “You were not responsible,” Joqi replied. “You saved me, and I thank you!”

  “Where do we start,” it asked. “You must have many questions and I have much I need to share with you.”

  “What I would like first,” Joqi said, �
�is to understand why your leaders let you rescue me. They could have stopped you at any time before you boarded this ship.”

  “Because I am undergoing the regen process of my species,” Cssyza replied. “No szswn has done this in over 200 years on our planet.”

  Cssyza paused, clearly struggling with what to say next, and Joqi waited patiently.

  “You affected me from the moment you first shed your spacesuit aboard my damaged ship.”

  “You affected me also,” Joqi replied. What he didn’t say was how being close to Cssyza had surfaced raw fear first felt in his dreams before leaving the Zilan solar system.

  “Not in the same way you affected me,” Cssyza said. “Your closeness caused my regen cycle to start.”

  What Cssyza described next was beyond anything Joqi could have imagined. The szswns had maintained a symbiotic relationship with a sea mammal species, the oscyspods, as far back as any could remember. To initiate the szswn procreation cycle, a close bond was initiated with an individual of this sea mammal species. At some point this caused internal fertilization to occur, which started what they called a “regen”, or regeneration process.

  A multitude of embryos resulted inside the szswn adult, and when the embryos matured, a fight to the finish occurred among the newborn within the host adult. The final battles occurred around the nine “brain” modules of the parent. The nine strongest and smartest survived, and each turned to eat their hard won booty, one of the nine brain modules. Once they consumed the brains, absorbing most of the information content in the process, they ate through the host’s body shell and exited.

  The absorption of information by the newborns consuming and digesting the brain modules was almost unbelievable to Joqi. But he could believe it considering what he had observed in advanced studies when artificial intelligence driven machines gained knowledge by decomposing complex information storage structures.

  The freed newborns had insatiable appetites to support their rapid growth. The oscyspod species provided their infirm and dead as food for the rapidly growing newborns in exchange for the remainder of the host szswn’s body. The carcass was critical to the mammals; they needed the enzymes and other proteins, plus the concentrated calcium in the body, to sustain their own procreation cycle.

  The oscyspod species had two genders, roughly equivalent to male and female in most mammal species. When ingested, the szswn enzymes induced chemical changes in the female mammal’s reproductive organs, making her fertile and receptive to impregnation by the male of their species. The concentrated calcium in the carcass gave newborn oscyspods strong bone and cartilage structures. One carcass could support several female mammals through their birthing process.

  The problem was the deteriorating condition of the szswns’ planet, which led to decimation of the oscyspods as the ocean coastal regions turned more caustic. Volcanic activity had increased significantly in the past 2,000 years. And when they spewed volcanic ash into the atmosphere, acid rain fell for long periods, even after the volcanoes settled down waiting to spew forth again. This made standing water and rivers turn acidic, and it took longer and longer for the water to return to normal. The oceans fared better, except in coastal regions where the oscyspods normally ranged. The coastal regions ultimately received all the acidic land runoff waters which killed much of the aquatic life the oscyspods depended on for sustenance.

  To address this problem, the szswns prepared and maintained a large inland body of water, a huge lake, where the chemical balance was constantly adjusted to support the oscyspods’ needs. In time, this proved unsustainable, and the szswns next built several enclosed facilities containing the proper water environment for the mammals and supporting aquatic life.

  The oscyspods were in essence subjugated to szswn control, for the express purpose of supporting the szswn procreation cycle. This worked well for the szswns, or at least for the select few that were privileged to participate in the regen process. It didn’t work in favor of the oscyspods, which were reduced to breeding stock enslaved by the szswns.

  Things got decidedly worse when some in the szswn society demanded fair treatment in selecting who got to regen. Adjustments in the selection process were made, but didn’t satisfy the masses very long. The bottom line was that very few szswns at any level in society were going through the regen process. A revolt occurred, with many of the oscyspod holding facilities overrun by the rebels. This further decimated the mammal population and greatly diminished the szswns’ hopes for long term survival of their species.

  Once control was reestablished by a new ruling clique, the decision was made to launch select szswns and the remaining oscyspod breeding stock in generation ships to habitable planets in other solar systems.

  At this juncture in the interaction with Joqi, Cssyza became very quiet before proceeding hesitantly with the rest of the story. Of the possible habitable planets discovered, the ruling clique sent the generation ships to two planets situated close along the direct path to Earth. If the oscyspods didn’t survive the journey and reproduce as needed, and if no suitable replacement for the mammals were found on the planets, the generation ships were to proceed on to the vicinity of Earth. Humans were considered prime replacements for the oscyspods required to support szswn procreation!

  “You affected me,” Cssyza said, “from the first time I was exposed to you undressed during my rescue, and in later encounters. That started and sustained my regen cycle.”

  Cssyza slumped to the floor and stopped communicating after this statement.

  Now I know what the dark danger was that Grandpapa was so concerned about, Joqi conveyed to Dawn. I know the meaning of my dream about newborn szswns eating me alive.

  After a thoughtful moment, he added, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the leaders believed Cssyza wanted to rescue and store me to feed its young.

  You are not going to participate in completing Cssyza’s regen process, Dawn stated emphatically.

  No, I’m not, Joqi mused. But our real problem is figuring out how to stop the advance of szswns toward the human occupied region of space.

  CHAPTER 14

  It took a full two days before Cssyza showed a willingness to resume conversing. It was again by remote communication; the szswn showed great reluctance to have Joqi physically present in its compartment.

  “I have much to thank you for,” Cssyza said.

  “It is I who must thank you,” Joqi replied. “You saved me!”

  He didn’t add what was obvious; Cssyza had signed its death warrant and likely the same for its offspring, by rescuing him and boarding the Horizon Quest.

  “Do you have other questions,” the szswn asked. “My time is growing short.”

  “What can we do for you in this final regen phase?”

  “Record completion of my regen cycle and send the recording back to my fellow szswns.”

  Cssyza said nothing about caring for its offspring. It probably didn’t know what to say. Joqi had a kernel of an idea forming, but didn’t want to say anything until he thought it through and coordinated with Dawn. He elected to turn the conversation in another direction.

  “What were you looking for in your survey of the large planet orbiting the brown dwarf,” Joqi asked. He had asked about this when pushing Cssyza’s damaged ship away from the planet, but it had refused to answer then.

  “My mission was to determine if the planet is suitable for szswn colonization,” Cssyza replied.

  “The surface gravity of the planet is about twice that on your home planet,” Joqi replied, with astonishment. “The 100 percent increase in body weight at the surface would be intolerable, even for a szswn.”

  “My survey revealed the surface gravity is about 120 percent higher,” Cssyza said, correcting Joqi. “That is beyond what I could survive if I stayed on the surface very long.”

  Staying on the surface was the key phrase. Cssyza went on to summarize a plan borne from desperation by the szswns stranded on their home planet. In the near
term, the plan called for residing in generation ships orbiting the large planet, and using robotic equipment to mine the planet for materials to support the orbiting ships’ needs.

  In the long term, the szswns had two options for those orbiting the large planet to survive the expansion and collapse of their star. Being on the outer edge of their solar system, the generation ships could head toward the closer of the two solar systems they had already colonized. The second option was to excavate large chambers deep within the planet, seeking lower gravity and shielded protection from the expanding star. The planet and the nearby brown dwarf would likely be pushed out of the solar system. And if it survived, the planet would in effect become a spaceship for the szswns.

  It all sounded pretty far out to Joqi, but then, his home solar system was expected to remain stable for another two billion years.

  • • •

  Joqi reinstated his routine of meditating in a private virtual place designed to shut out all thoughts having anything to do with the smart plasma. He had yet to convey to Dawn the plan that was forming in his mind about where to point the Horizon Quest next. He still wanted to think about its implications, for he would have to leave the ship again. He would have to decide soon, for they were fast approaching the bright star.

  He started meditating, but ended up daydreaming about Cssyza’s regen cycle. Images formed and assimilated into a dream-like vision of numerous black insect-like creatures devouring an unrecognizable mammal’s body. He felt no fear from the black aliens this time, even when the hoard of small creatures flipped the body over to reveal his own face. Joqi smiled and withdrew from his private meditation; he had made his decisions about Cssyza and where to go next.

  Dawn’s thoughts were never very far away from his—she hovered close like a concerned caretaker. This was okay with Joqi; Dawn and dreaming about his grandpapa had pulled him out of his deep coma. The experience bonded him and Dawn closer than ever before.