Strands (Maura's Gate Book 4)

by Rawsontile, Fiona

  Table of Contents

  Strands

  Chapter 1 The Admission

  Chapter 2 The Visitors

  Chapter 3 The Other World

  Chapter 4 The Nestnut

  Chapter 5 The Plate

  Chapter 1 of The Starlight Fortress

  Books by Fiona Rawsontile

  Strands

  Maura’s Gate, Book 4

  By

  Fiona Rawsontile

  Copyright © 2015 by Fiona Rawsontile

  All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  Chapter 1 The Admission

  “May I say congratulations?”

  Korina took over the letter from her sister and unfolded it, a letter from “gods”. Congratulations! That was indeed the first line. So gods existed, and they understood English, apparently. Why didn’t they simply show up and talk to us?

  Having no interest to read the rest, she gave the letter back to her sister, who ran upstairs to spread the good news. Starting from the previous year, the best high-school senior in the community would be admitted to colleges located in gods’ world, a place said to be safer and grander even than where she was born. It was a lot of work, gods had said, to provide accommodations for each human being, but they made the offer since no higher education was available on Planet Oasis.

  Liars! Korina cursed as she sat in a sofa and waited for lunchtime, occasionally putting up with a vehement hug from one of her siblings. Those were not gods, Grandpa had told her. They were aliens. Last year they took Philip away, and since then his mother had been counting the days toward his summer vacation. Poor woman. She would never see her son again after they had forced him through those cruel experiments as the first human subject.

  And Korina would be the second.

  * * *

  Lunch was improvised for a celebration by adding canned beef and clam chowder to their regular garden vegetable. Restaurant-Style Beef Stew. Normally it appeared on their table only during Christmas, although she felt miserable every time she saw the label. If her family hadn’t decided to move here, she could be eating in a real restaurant on a not-so-desolate planet. Fine, let them take her! Life was suffer either way.

  “I’m going to Grandpa’s place,” she said to her mother when they carried the empty dishes to the kitchen, trying not to draw attention from her sisters who had switched their subject to the routine after-meal debate on fashion, which was mostly groundless speculation of what was popular in New York this year.

  “Now?” Her mother turned to look at her, alerted. “Korina, is everything all right?”

  “I’ll be back before dinner.” Pretending not to have heard the question, she grabbed her backpack and rushed out of the house.

  Albeit being hot, early afternoons were the best time to travel on Planet Oasis, since the air was almost still. Otherwise, one needed to wear a mask and goggles. Due to its light weight and remarkably fine grains, the sand drifted everywhere, swiftly passing through clumps of brown and purple plants, claiming the boundless land as its territory with layers of pearly veins, flooding and receding, not a moment staying put.

  She headed toward a small hill for a while and, once again, had the feeling that she was being followed by something invisible and weightless. She paused, turned around, and sneered. “Why not go ahead and kill me? Think I’m scared?” As usual, after she had said the words and resumed walking, the creepiness seemed to be left behind. Soon she was drenched in sweat and couldn’t wait to get to the cool side of the hill. Grandpa said air temperature on Earth didn’t differ much between light and shadow, day and night, because of the thicker air. She was six when they left, and didn’t quite remember how it felt. But 78% nitrogen, and only 24 hours a day? Imagine that!

  She stopped on top of the hill and surveyed the sky. Connecting the frontal horizon with the back, the planet’s rings were a bluish white consisting of numerous thin lines in parallel, so many that the center appeared to be one solid structure. She used to picture herself running and sliding on the “bridge”. Even now she could hardly associate something so pretty with a cluster of irregular stones.

  She shook her head and looked at the valley ahead. As usual, the sight of the white cottage surrounded by purple gardens lessened the fatigue. Her siblings called her “Grandpa’s girl”, not only because she had inherited his straight brown hair and bony cheeks—the rest of the family were on the curly and chubby side—but also due to the fact that she and the old man never ran out of topics together, while, in separation, they were generally taciturn.

  Grandpa wouldn’t let them take her away. She was certain on that. She fetched out her water bottle, took a sip, and sped up toward his house.

  * * *

  “How’s going?”

  Hearing the question, Devin threw a glance at the entrance. Having woken up in the midst of a night, Matt appeared a little pale and feeble. But unlike Devin, who was tired inside out, the young man was a volcano in hibernation, heat and energy stirring beneath. Devin first met him on their comet mission, and had since then enjoyed the friendship—or worship, he might say, judging by the fact that Matt recently cut his neck-length hair short, to “imitate his role model”. What a good young lad! The thought somehow tormented Devin as he remembered other young people in the world, who had been working hard for a future that no longer existed.

  He checked a monitor on the navigation panel. Their ship, named Bigleaf, was represented as a moving dot, beside which a vertical line ran across the screen. STR-OX102. That was the “strand” they had been tracing all the way here. A structure that presumably extended over thousands of light years. Invisible, but real.

  “We just came out of the twenty-fifth jump.” Devin rose from the chair and stretched himself. “Still no sight of the other one, but I wouldn’t make another jump until tomorrow evening.”

  He exited the bridge and proceeded downstairs. Almost 3:00 in the morning. He was yawning and tearing, but a part of him demanded a drink. He entered the kitchen, grabbed a can of beer from a cooler, and sat at the table. How was Kenton doing at home? The old supervisor was for sure in trouble, enduring all the shit that was meant for Devin and Matt, when he should have been getting ready for retirement. Now it had been ten years since Devin started teaming with him, and Devin’s opinion of this said-arrogant colleague was changing. Kenton wasn’t someone you’d call collegial or open-minded. He rarely considered others’ feelings. But at a critical moment like this, he proved to be a man of value and probity.

  “This is the last warning you will receive, Devin Lee and Matthew Pastore.” Devin still remembered the indignant voice when they flew past Jupiter’s orbit toward the interstellar space. “Your conduct has seriously violated NASA’s regulations and a professional’s integrity. Unless you turn around immediately, you will never be given another opportunity to participate in our space missions …”

  “As if there would be more missions,” he had said to Matt. In the past he rarely talked about the government in irony, but at that particular moment he couldn’t help it.

  Right after they had come back from Jupiter, a group of astronomers, physicists, and computer scientists gathered to recover information stored in the diamond. It turned out that the stability of space and time was maintained by galaxy filaments—the sponge-like super structures that connected galaxies and clusters. At the beginning of the century, humans had roughly mapped out their distributions using gravitational lenses. What we didn’t know was that each filament consisted of millions of “strands”, rather than diffused dark matter and hydrogen gases. A strand was a sturdy and elastic structure. W
hen stretched too much, though, it would fragment, resulting in space instability that could last years. At the moment, STR-OX102 was one that had reached its limit.

  No wonder the government decided to give up after Devin had presented the finding. What can we do with dark matter? They said. By the time Devin left with Bigleaf, seventy thousand mind-transferring machines had been constructed by U.S. military contractors and distributed worldwide. In fact, Devin and Matt’s current mission was to revisit Jupiter and discuss with Lionel about the next step, once millions or billions of humans had been compressed into computer memories with their physical bodies left behind. But Devin wasn’t ready to do that. They had survived the comet attack, acquired precious information from another civilization, and nailed the problem they needed to solve. God meant to let their species continue, even though he was as clueless as the government regarding a feasible plan. Anyway, with Kenton’s help, Devin and Matt snitched an energy unit for long-distance travel and installed it in their ship …

  “We found the other strand!” Matt said at the door, holding a few documents in his hands.

  “Does it have the right angle?”

  “They must be engaged.” Matt walked over and spread out a map on the table. The strand they had been tracing was plotted vertically on the paper. A small section of a second strand ran across the upper right corner with an angle of roughly 45 degree. As Matt had said, the two were likely to meet at some point ahead, which was exactly what they had been looking for. In general, strands within the same filament ran parallel to one another, but occasionally they got twisted here and there. If humans could come up with a way to untie 102 from its partner, the strand would be relaxed.

  “Oh, another thing I should let you know.” Matt pointed at a planetary system along the way. “We picked up radio signals from one of the planets.”

  Devin frowned and examined the plot. The second closest planet to the sun was residing in the so-called habitable zone, meaning its distance to the sun was just right so that it was not too hot or too cold. And according to the series of numbers next to the symbol, this was a territory planet with atmosphere.

  “What type of signals?”

  Matt showed him another page with several rows of waveforms. “It’s not periodic, and when I tried playing it out as a sound, it made no sense.”

  Devin studied the waveforms for a while and said, “I don’t think it’s noise. See, after every nine peaks, there is a long gap. The durations of the peaks appear to be random, but the heights correlate to the sizes of the nine solar planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth …”

  “You’re right! Let’s check it out then. We’ll be there Wednesday morning.”

  After Matt had left, Devin finished his beer and cleared the table. Before he dropped the can in the trash basket, the label caught his attention. Heineken, a rather common brand. At this very moment, how many empty cans were being tossed by drinkers on Earth? Only when they held one in outer space, two hundred light years away from where it was manufactured, would they realize the blessing and benevolence it took for a planet carrying soil and water to develop something like this. Maybe he should leave the can in space, as an evidence that mankind had once existed in this universe.

  But not anymore.

  * * *

  “I just want to be with you, Grandpa.” Korina sat in her favorite rocking chair, habitually rubbing the armrests which had long lost their paint. This was the chair in which she had relished stories about princesses, pyramids, elephants, ice-cream trucks … Schools here did teach humanities—a word that contained special meanings to Korina and other villagers—in a dreary manner as they contrived to cover a long list of topics and thousands of years in a few courses. She always felt she had gained a better understanding of her home planet through Grandpa’s stories.

  “I’m an old man, Korina.”

  It took her a moment to figure out what he was trying to say. “But you’re absolutely healthy! And you eat more than Joey, sometimes.”

  Normally, when one of them mentioned Joey’s appetite, the other would have a good laugh. Today, the lack of response from Grandpa unsettled her, and for the first time she realized he was indeed an old man. He was said to be the tallest in the family when he was young; now he was reduced to her height owing to the hunched back. The already tanned and sunburned skin grew darker with the progression of age spots. Surrounded by wrinkles and sagging eyelids, his eyes rarely seemed to fully open, but when they looked at you, you would find nowhere to hide your thoughts.

  A soft whistle blew in the kitchen. Grandpa put down his art work and went to turn off the stove. She looked around the room occupied with shelves of tools and crafts. He was a renowned scientist before he came here. An astrophysicist, did they say? His life shouldn’t be spent cutting wood.

  Grandpa came back with two cups. “You should go,” he said as he handed her the tea. “You need college education.”

  That was not the answer she had expected. “You told me they are aliens. We can’t even see them!”

  “What we can’t see isn’t necessarily stranger than what we can. The fact that they brought us here with all the supplies indicates they are a decent race.” He sat back in his chair and resumed carving the plate. “One day you’ll understand how lucky we have been.”

  After he said the words, Korina had the feeling that he was no longer dwelling on her problem, which made her feel worse.

  “Do me a favor, Korina.” Finally, he lowered the plate and looked up at her. “Next time you go to the community center, print out a map of the star field centering on the solar system.”

  “How large do you want it to be?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s start with a rectangle, five hundred by fifty light years. I want the longitudinal dimension to be aligned with the Pisces-Cetus Filament.”

  That would be a long map. “I’ll go there tomorrow morning. What do you need it for?”

  He looked in the direction of the window. “I’m trying to solve a puzzle. I hope the Earth people have already succeeded.”

  “But what can we do with the universe?”

  “We never know until we have tried. The problem is, people almost always give up too early.”

  Chapter 2 The Visitors

  “You were right!” Matt said with his fingers tapping on the screen to flip through the pictures. “This planet is not only an Earth-like candidate but also home of another intelligence. Look at the structure of the buildings: roofs, windows, driveways.” He took a deep breath. “We found aliens!”

  Devin examined the images, more bewildered than excited. Those houses were located around the source of the radio signal. Although lacking delicacy, they bore a close resemblance to dwellings on Earth. Specifically, European cottages in the late twentieth century. Why would aliens imitate human residence? And why did their signals encode the solar system?

  “Let’s go talk to them.” Devin’s hand reached for the screen. One of the pictures had caught his attention.

  “Talk …” Matt hesitated. “You think they’ll be able to understand our language?”

  Very likely, Devin thought. “How about this one?” He pointed at a small cottage with a surrounding garden.

  Matt studied it for a few seconds. “I don’t see anything unique about it.”

  “It’s isolated.”

  Even though Devin suspected whoever resided here had a connection with humans, it wouldn’t be wise to confront a large number of them at once. To date, no country had discovered a planet or moon that had the potential of replacing Earth, or at least nobody had admitted it. Why should human residence be expected here? So he chose one that was located away from the rest of the village.

  The ship made a sharp turn and began descending toward the valley. Meanwhile, Devin checked the air composition. The pressure was low, but half was oxygen and none of the rest was toxic, which meant spacesuits were not necessary. However, as soon as they alighted from the ship, Devin realized th
ey had made a mistake. Whenever the dusty wind blew, it made them gag and tear. So they went back to put on their helmets that had built-in respirators.

  The land was mostly bare rocks covered with fine sand. In between them, large and small purple plants seized every inch of the soil and competed for the sunshine. Under their shadows lay rotten fruits and empty peels. Dried droppings indicated the existence of animals, although Devin hadn’t spotted any.

  “Look. Isn’t it pretty?” Matt pointed at the sky.

  Devin agreed. He had often imagined observing Saturn’s rings from inside, which would be impractical given that Saturn was a gas giant. Now he was walking on a territorial planet that carried a similar ring system. Never thought it would feel so close, as if birds, if any, could easily perch on it and make a nest, although he knew it must be at least two thousand miles away.

  The garden outside the house was more luxuriant than it had appeared in the photo. Thorny vines climbed up the glass panels that encircled the courtyard. The panels were presumably built to ward off the sand. The address plaque imprinted with the number, 18, confirmed Devin’s earlier speculation that the host was acquainted with human civilization.

  * * *

  “Is this what you want?” Korina took a roll of paper out of her bag and handed it to Grandpa.

  He sat in a chair and unwound it. While he was studying the map, she remembered something.

  “I just saw another ship, but this one was different …”

  When she was descending the hill, a ship appeared from behind and quietly vanished into the distant sky. In the past few years she had seen a couple—dull, clumsy, and windowless. This one seemed to be made of a blue material in between glass and metal, half reflective and half translucent, large enough for a hundred passengers at least, she reckoned.

  Sinking behind the map, Grandpa made no comment. She wasn’t sure if he had heard her.