Star Fall

by David Bischoff

“Christ on a pogo stick,” murmured Amber. “I’ve never tried to defuse a bomb like this. It’s impossible. A wrong move, the thing goes bang on its own. It’s its own booby trap. Cog.”

  —Three minutes, thirty seconds, Amber, said Cog, a mind-whisper as he directed Amber’s hands to pluck out a small box in the satchel of tools. —There’s no time to complain.

  “Sorry.” The box popped open and Cog busied Amber’s hands with small mecho-tools, inserted, connected, and imbedded into the machinery.

  —It’s a surprisingly simple method of producing a bomb of this size, Cog commented as Amber’s hands floated and dived deftly over the device’s circuitry. —Incredible that such a complicated detonator should be used.

  Some of the pain from the leg and side burns Amber had collected managed to seep through the defense that Cog had structured. He groaned and gritted his teeth, but managed to stay calm and still, letting Cog work with his hands.

  “What are the chances now?” he asked, fighting the pain.

  —Hang on, said Cog. —Hang on.

  The renewed pain brought back the searing memories of the pain and death that he had inflicted—restoring his will to continue. Even the quick work of his hands and arms was producing stiff aches of his arm muscles, but he endured.

  —Oh, shit, said Cog as a molecularly sharp plastoid tool, misdirected, punctured a length of cryogenic tubing.

  Super-cooled liquid sprayed out Whipping Amber around the throat and face, coating the D.S. in a thick rind of freeze and water vapor. The pressure shoved Amber away from the housing a full two meters. Half-conscious, he was aware only that he sprawled now on his back. Tools lay about, like metallic pieces of shattered hopes. Agony held him fast, a lab specimen pinned down by an icicle. His entire lower body was numb as death. His face was half frozen and raging with pain.

  “Cog,” he thought, dazed. “Cog. Help.”

  But there was no answer.

  The Disbelief Suspender had been frozen by the blast. In almost unendurable pain, Amber managed to lift his head. The cryogenic blast had sealed itself. He could go back to work. If he could get up.

  He strained. He willed his frozen limbs to move. Sweat broke out near his scalp and brow, melting the frost on his eyebrows, stitching his face with lightning and searing suffering. With every part of his will, he strove to rise and continue. He knew he was a dead man—before long he would black out entirely. God knew what kept him conscious.

  If he could but push himself up with the strength of will—his passion that others should survive.

  Briefly, he lost his senses, temporary surrender to the cold that covered him ...

  And, suddenly, he was awake again.

  There were people about, staring into the detonation device.

  Looming over him stood a Morapn.

  Inexplicable fright filled him. The creature settled its ambulatory member onto his shoulder in a brief gesture that oddly imbued Amber with a sense of peace that obliterated the fear.

  Then the Morapn strode to the mechanism, squatted down beside it, reached out with its version of arms ...

  And began to change.

  I’m sorry, he thought. I’m so sorry.

  And then the darkness came to Philip Amber, the darkness he had so long thought he served, unbelievably warm and comfortable, with the promise of light beyond the curtain in black.

  * * *

  The seconds sped away never to be recalled. They lay on the floor, shrouded in defeat.

  Todd watched the seconds disappear as Ort Eath stood, feet apart, arms crossed over chest in an almost military, most human stance.

  The moon had bulged white but Earth could still be seen, just short of eclipse.

  Twenty seconds short of detonation, Angharad’s face changed and she tried to pull away from Todd.

  Screaming.

  “No! No you can’t. You won’t! I won’t allow ... I’ll kill you, like you killed my parents!”

  Todd reached out and pulled her down, whispering harshly, “He might succeed in this, but we have to stay alive to see that he fails in the long run,” He spoke in a monotone that somehow was terse with conviction. “We’ve done everything, Angharad. Angharad?” But she wasn’t listening. She wrenched away so hard, the flimsy arm of the jumpsuit tore off, letting her hurl herself at Ort Eath.

  The alien turned just in time to catch her flying form with an outstretched arm. A blurring of movement; Angharad was tossed back to the floor brusquely. Ort Eath made no motion to counterattack.

  The simple movement had stricken what fight remained in Angharad. She lay limp and almost lifeless, beside Todd.

  Ort Eath’s odd-shaped eyes grew wide. “You cannot throw yourself against Destiny. I am far more than you know; far more than you can comprehend. I am the ultimate in both human and Morapn evolution. I am the god that has been dreamed of for millennia, ages.” Fascinated with the sound and effect of his own simulated voice, Ort Eath closed his eyes blissfully.

  The final seconds slid away.

  Zero showed itself on the face of the orgabox.

  Ort Eath took a deep breath, a deep satisfied lungful of victory that somehow was full of a despairing sound—and then relaxed. “It’s done.”

  Collectively their attention turned wide-eyed to the vu-screen. Nothing had changed.

  On Eath spoke again, indicating the screen with his finger. “It will take a few moments for the light to reach. By the time the harmful radiation waves arrive, we will be shielded by the moon.”

  Todd wriggled over to the dazed Angharad and held her closely, breathing in her comforting, familiar scent. He thought to close his eyes, to shut out the awful sight that would flare across the vu-screen. To have come so far on what had been a life-giving, stunning trip, far transcending anything he could have possibly imagined ... only to witness the blazing beginning to the end of human dreams. Millions of years of development; one instant of end.

  He tried to close his eyes, but found he could not. His eyes were pried open, gazing relentlessly at the screen,

  The screen shifted, to compensate for the interference of the moon, showing more of the Earth.

  It started as a spark.

  A spark in the hazy blue-black ridging the Earth, where the comparatively small Star Fall had been. A splotch of amber-red light beside Earth that, unlike a spark, did not fade, but grew. With a thick wand of lightning-forked destruction it hammered down into the atmosphere—

  This lit like a raging torch, spreading, spreading, consuming, destroying ... a fiery contagion, a blast of hell, a piece of sun swallowing the green, the blue, and the white.

  A new nova. That which had been a planet, giving birth to life, now emanating only immolation and light.

  “The fires will rage until it is a cinder,” said Ort Eath in his true, cracked voice—somehow very sad, mourning at the same time it exulted. “Perhaps it shall explode… antimatter is an unknown quality.” The last was spoken without emotion, matter-of-factly.

  Todd felt as though he had just watched a bit of 2-D TV. He was strangely unmoved.

  He realized that Angharad was now sitting up, no trace of her previous defeat and agony showing. She seemed deep in thought.

  Ort Eath turned his attention back to them, evidently in full control of himself once more. “And so,” he spoke through the orgabox, “you are here to observe my victory. This is a moment that I never thought to when we were once united as a family, Tracy. To have you here to see it with me ... I loved you. At least as much as my human part is able. And now I am not sure what to do with you. In a few moments we are about to make our escape from this system. I daresay that the humans surviving on the moon and outer planets are going to launch an impressive search for us. In the meantime I must settle the question of your life. It’s up to you. What would you have me do?”

  Calm and
controlled, Angharad rose, somehow more beautiful than ever in her defiance, despite her mass of flaring, scraggly red hair; her tattered and bloodied jumpsuit through which bruised skin showed; her bloodied nose.

  “Up yours, Isaac.”

  Ort Eath shook his head, almost sadly. “You do not understand.”

  “You really believe that, don’t you?” said Todd.

  “With all my force and being, I do. I am not insane. Not mad. I am the sanest being in the universe, because I am the first of a new, saner race. I am the prototype of a new human and Morapn destiny and children will sing of me in praising hymns across the newfound galaxies.”

  “You are a monomaniacal fool,” spat Angharad, her face suddenly full of smile, her eyes bright and piercing. She pointed with her finger to the side of the vu-screen. “You’ve been watching this image so closely, you’ve neglected to see what it really is, Ort Eath.”

  Ort Eath’s eyes darted to the indicator signs; as did Todd’s.

  In bright, glorious red lights was the most beautiful word Todd had ever experienced:

  SIMULATION.

  “No,” said Ort Eath, through his natural mouth, a frightened squeak. “No, it doesn’t mean a thing. How could it possibly? It must be a mistake ...” He dashed so quickly to the control panel of the screen the orgabox was pulled off its legs and dragged along behind him. Ort Eath punched a button.

  Immediately the picture reassembled itself.

  Earth shed its fire instantaneously, became its cool green self as before, floating in the void as it had for millions of years.

  Todd was unable to contain a wild whoop of glee.

  Stunned, Ort Eath stepped back. “I—I don’t understand ... How ... How.” He suddenly seemed to shrink in size; Todd realized that the former straight, poised stand had become a buzzard stoop.

  “It’s simple, Isaac. You’ve been beaten. Don’t ask me how ... but Amber has defused your bomb. The Star Fall is still in one piece. You’ve lost, Isaac. That was your destiny all along.”

  “No.” Feebly, he paced to the huge screen and scratched at the emerald image of Earth. “It’s lying. Lying!”

  “Don’t you trust your devices of fantasy anymore, Ort Eath?” said Angharad. “Look in any vu-screen you like ... ” She squirmed in her brace, trying to squeeze out, failing. Ort Eath ran to another 2-D screen, the orgabox, having recovered its stance, barely able to maintain its balance as it scrabbled after. Ort Eath punched up the screen clumsily.

  It winked into clarity.

  It held the same image.

  Earth. Alive. Glorious. Green.

  Ort Eath fell over with head buried in his arms, still as a statue.

  “Cog must have realized what was happening at the last moment,” Angharad mused, “Since the simulator screen was hooked to the real-fic computer, he was able to fix it so that it would give the vision of Earth’s destruction at the exact time it was intended.” She scrunched around, rolling. “God, can’t get this off. You know we’re still in trouble.”

  “No kidding. It’s hard to believe Amber really did it!”

  “Let’s face it, Todd,” said Angharad. “For all of his faults, he’s really the only one of us that could.”

  A hiss. Of the door, opening.

  Todd twisted his neck.

  Into the room stepped three Morapns.

  THE FIRST thing that Russell Dennison was aware of was that he needed a cigarette.

  Bad.

  There had been a jolt, and he knew instinctively that something was wrong.

  He reached out with what he thought were his hands into what he thought was his hangover-dark cabin, to grope for his table.

  And he touched a mind. The mind was full of fury, and of despair and of grief.

  He remembered.

  He remembered it all, and he knew the being whose mind he touched, and in the same instant was aware of others chained with him.

  His plight was immediately made clear to him. His powerlessness was apparent. He had no weapons or hands to hold them.

  Russell Dennison plotted.

  * * *

  Defeat left Ort Eath stunned and shaken.

  But it was only for a moment. Just as suddenly, he recalled the back-up system, the radio jab into the heart of the antimatter should it fail to detonate properly. The necessary energy to boost such would drain much of his starship’s power; the ship would have to limp out of the system. Perhaps it would even mean capture by the remnants of Earth’s forces.

  Even so, it was his last hope. Unless he cared to wait years more for another chance.

  He did not.

  He raised himself to dart to the controls. The orgabox immediately matched strides. Buttons and dials, chrome levers and paraphernalia loomed like a garden of metal, plastic, and glass before his vision. He searched for the proper switches, and automatically remembered the code sequence. Reached his hands out to trigger it.

  Touched the first toggle ...

  As it swept through him gale-force, his senses separated. And he saw, felt, experienced the universe as others saw it ...

  Multifaceted. Endless possibilities. Full of mistakes and flukes and mean-hearted fate and…

  Compassion

  The mirror of Dennison’s imagination was turned on him. For the first time he was shorn of self-delusion and fanatical illusion.

  His soul shattered like crystal…

  “Uh, oh,” said Todd. “Reinforcements.”

  Angharad blinked. “I’m not so sure, Todd.”

  The aliens stood in triangular arrangement. Their attention seemed focused on the prone human locked in braces.

  All this time Todd had operated on the assumption that Ort Eath was representative—and key—to communication with the Morapns. And yet, even now the aliens were truly enigmas.

  Especially now. In their strange, shifting walk they drifted slowly toward the captives, the foremost holding out a limb.

  Todd quelled a momentary lurch of fear. He was about to open his mouth but Angharad shushed him. “No, let them go to it.”

  They halted. The front Morapn reached down with both arms. One he rested upon Todd’s head; the other on Angharad’s shoulder.

  Transmitted feeling waved through them, a word, an emotion communicated itself!

  PEACE

  No. That wasn’t what the creatures wanted to say ... they shuttled on, sparking images and associations, emotional metaphors.

  Finally, an emotive image swelled in Todd. His father grabbing his child hand. His father, tall and strong, walking him across the street full of traffic.

  TRUST

  Yes, thought Todd. Yes. They were asking him to trust them and the manner of their request showed shifting shades of alien, yet oddly familiar, emotions. Todd knew, instinctively, that he could reach into them with his own emotions, and twist and hurt, or communicate.

  That was what the creatures were offering, a language of raw emotion. No words and metaphors and misunderstood meanings to hide behind. In this communication, all was open, all was honest.

  Todd did not know the rules of this communication. Surely, there must be ways to selectively display nuances of feeling ... associations, images culled during life ... and thus present a complex, richly textured, resonant vocabulary.

  But all he had now were raw, unfocused emotions ... the stuff he had lived with all his life, repressed—and flowering forth in these past months with his experiences ... his love for Angharad, his friendship for Amber; the foundation of security for his forays into the real-fics and the arrays of emotions he had lived out there, expressing all the things he had kept bottled up all of his adolescent and adult life.

  Eagerly, he let his defenses drop—and showed them all—left himself wide open ... trying to focus everything on the emotion ... POSITIVE ... hoping that woul
d pass for “Yes.”

  With quick subtle expressiveness, an emotional message was soon communicated in its entirety. Morapns had been so absorbed in themselves, they had no idea of what Ort Eath wished to accomplish. Theirs was a culture that had turned inward in self-contemplation ... and thus, they were manipulated by a person as cunning as Ort Eath, in whom they could only read the desire to become a full Morapn ... thus they had been deceived.

  But there is no time to waste, they said. Your enemy must be stopped, now. It is your right as living beings to own the honor of neutralizing the threat that he still poses to both our cultures. The Azinatins are no threat; we have stilled them. It is between you, now, and Ort Eath.

  Suddenly the empathic contact was broken and Todd found himself crouched on the floor, holding a gun. Beside him Angharad rose to her feet. The Morapns backed away into a corner, maintaining their triangular formation.

  “They must be the most powerful of the Morapns,” Angharad said, “forming a three-way bond to step up their mental powers. But come on, quickly. I just saw Ort Eath duck into that alcove over there. That must be the control station.”

  Still wary of the standing, seemingly alert Azinatins, they slipped through their ranks and strode to the opening of the compact control room. Ort Eath hovered over the controls, a finger poised just above a switch—as though in some sort of fugue. Pausing in the midst of something.

  “My god, he might still be able to signal the device.” Even as she spoke, she raised her weapon and fired.

  The thrust threw Ort Eath back a few paces. But he still stood, holding a smoking arm, blinking his eyes, mouth wide in a rictus of pain.

  “I ... I ...” he spoke in his true, squealing voice.

  “Don’t move,” said Angharad.

  Todd stepped in front of her, knowing his body served as a better shield should the creature attempt something.

  But Eath did not.

  Instead his body stiffened as though a metal rod had been jammed straight up his torso. His mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping in air.