And All The Stars A Grave.

by Greg Curtis

Funeral! It was an epiphany in a single word.

  That single word told him everything about the Calderonians that he, and no doubt all of the others, had never guessed. It was like the opening of a door as he suddenly saw the Calderonian’s entire journey for what it was. Why they had undertaken it, and why they had brought their church with them. Such a simple word and yet it explained so much. So many unanswered questions. And not just the box.

  With his only working body part below his head on his left side - his thumb - he started pressing and then pressing again the buzzer the nurse had given him. One that signalled the meeting’s chair that he had something to say. Of course it would be another half hour at least before Daryl had a chance to speak. There were a lot of other people in the queue ahead of them. But then that just gave him more time to put everything together in his head. To explain everything they’d found in terms of a single theory, or rather a story. An epic tale of desperation and survival.

  Finally it was his turn, and impatiently he rushed in forgetting even the normal introductions to the chair and the audience. He was simply too excited as he wanted to share his new understanding. In any case they all knew him. And they all hated him with a vengeance. Only the Chair he guessed, kept them from shouting him down, but he didn’t care. He needed to explain what he had discovered, as much for himself as for them.

  “People, I’m sorry to say we’ve all got it wrong, and I don’t mean just about the music box. I mean the whole damn thing. About the Calderonian’s journey, and their reasons for making it. And it’s my mistake as much as anybody else’s. I’m supposed to be an archaeologist, not a romantically demented adolescent.” He was angry about it too, though the translator probably took that out of his words.

  “The first rule of archaeology is surely to put yourself in the shoes of the people you’re studying. But none of us have done that.” Through the monitor he could see heads turning around one by one towards each other, and realised that he wasn’t really making much headway with them. While they might well agree with him calling himself names, might even enjoy it, it wasn’t going to help his case, especially when he included them among the insulted. Besides, many of them couldn’t have worn shoes. He hurried on.

  “Instead we’ve all been caught up in this romantic dream that the Calderonians were leaving a trail of bread crumbs for us to follow. Just as they were apparently left one by the Ancients. It’s not so. Neither of those things.” That at least seemed to catch their attention even if they didn’t understand the metaphor, and those heads suddenly turned back to him as if on strings. He was questioning fundamental findings and that was serious.

  “All this time we should have been trying to understand them, not trying to understand what we thought they were telling us. They were telling us nothing. We are nobody to the Calderonians. Neither a successor nor a follower. Any messages they left weren’t for us. They were for their own people.” He saw a ring of faces make impossible movements at that, and guessed that Li’s followers were about to object, if they could. But the Chair wouldn’t let them interrupt until he had finished. He might not even then, but that was their problem.

  “I doubt that they ever seriously considered the possibility of us following them, let alone thought about leaving us a message. If they had those cities would probably have been much better guarded still. Because those guards were put there specifically to keep people like us out.” Despite the Chair’s control he would still have expected some sort of outburst as he made his assertions. Demands for proof at the least. But there was only silence. For whatever reason, they were listening.

  “To start at the beginning, the box is just what it looks like, a music box. Though there may be heuristic keys in it to activate particular devices, it’s basically a music maker. It was put there in the chapel for one reason, and only one reason. To help celebrate the life and the passing of a Calderonian. It’s not a lesson for us to learn. Not a key for us to unravel. And not a message, or at least not one for us.”

  “The amphitheatre is a funeral parlour. A chapel or a cathedral. Exactly as those seen on thousands of worlds. A place of worship where the living can say goodbye to those who have departed. A place where the Calderonians could say goodbye to those who had fallen on the journey.” For the first time he heard some mumbling coming over the link, and knew their patience with the human savage was finally wearing thin, chairman or no chairman.

  “How do I know this? I know because I finally understand why the Calderonians undertook their great journey and why they needed a music box and a funeral parlour. Especially one so large and ornate.” That drew a response from the audience, and he watched hundreds of fingers and other appendages reaching hastily for their buzzers. But they couldn’t stop him thanks to the good will of the Chair, and he hurried on.

  “Desperation. They were dying.”

  “Theirs was a journey that even with their advanced technology, was long and difficult. Filled with risk and sorrow. But one that they knew they had to make. One that they also knew many of them wouldn’t see through to the end. Many of their people and their ships would fall along the way. But they went because they had to. They had no choice. It was either make the most difficult journey of their lives which would kill many of them, or certain death for all.”

  “Think about it. The city is a fallen ship. One that had reached its end on the journey. Just as people die so do ships. That’s why it’s essentially built with space ship construction. It’s not “like a ship.” It is a ship. A ship full of dead and dying Calderonians. That’s why there’s no evidence of mining on the world. They didn’t need to mine for metal to build their city. They brought it with them. They flew in it. And I suspect that even when they were building their great fleet for the journey, they designed them so they could be quickly and easily converted into cities. It would have been only logical for them given their predicament.”

  “They knew before they started their journey that not all of their people would finish it. In fact they knew that many thousands at least, maybe many millions, maybe even all of them would die. But not of old age.”

  “Because of that and because they knew that those who fell along the way needed proper care and a decent sending off, they designed their ships from the outset to become cities for the dead and dying. Hospices. Go down below the city and you’ll find that its power plant isn’t an unusual gravetic power plant, it’s a modified antigrav drive, exactly as our sensor readings have told us. Reconstruct the city into a ship, and I suspect you’ll find that chapel was at its very heart.”

  “The Calderonians were dying long before they got on the ships. Their whole race was dying. That was the reason for their making their pilgrimage. Their final pilgrimage. It was hope for them. Their only chance at survival.”

  “Still, not all of them went on it. Some were probably too ill even to begin the journey. Others probably thought it didn’t have any chance of success. Maybe a few tried other journeys of their own. Or other cures. We may never know how many left and how many stayed or took other journeys. But we can be sure that some stayed behind.”

  “How do we know that? Because it was for them that they left the message behind in the computer records back on Calderon Six. QA 40 wasn’t a planned stop over on their journey as they recharged their supplies, though it may also have become one. That idea makes no sense. Their ships were advanced enough that they could have kept going for as long as they needed to. QA 40 is a final resting place for those who had died on the first leg of the journey, and a hospice for those who were too ill to continue. Exactly what they’d known they would need.”

  “The Calderonians arrived at each stop with more dead and dying, and they brought down with them enough ships at each world, to make the dying comfortable and say their goodbyes to the dead. And they could bring the ships down because enough people had fallen on the way that they were no longer needed. They didn’t need to bring spare ships. The ships became spare as the passengers and cr
ew died.”

  “And wherever they set down, they wanted the rest of their people to always know of their stop, so that the survivors if there were any after the journey’s end, might one day return and pay their respects. And so that any who had remained behind but then changed their mind, could follow them. The record on Calderon Six wasn’t a typical computer facility, and it wasn’t left behind accidentally. It wasn’t an oversight of time. That computer was sitting in a room that in some ways echoed the chapel we saw on QA 40. A single computer, sitting in the middle of a large open space, on a raised platform, in the most secure part of the city. If that doesn’t say – ‘I’m important, read me’ what does?”

  “It was important. Vitally so. It was always meant to be found, but not by us. Not by aliens. By their own people. So that those who remained behind could follow one day, if they were able. Or so that those who survived to the end of the journey could one day return and learn of their ancestor’s great migration.” He heard some more disquieting rumbles and watched more appendages pressing buzzers urgently.

  “Yes, some were left behind, but perhaps not forever, and later it was hoped, they could follow. Emphasis on they. Not us. They left behind the proof of that.”

  “Take the computer records as a whole. They didn’t just include with it their destination, QA 40. They included all the stuff with it that their people might need to follow them. Plans for building their spacecraft and running them. The details of why they believed the Ancients had travelled this way, the names of those who had fallen on the first leg of the journey and those who continued, and their next way point, all the new evidence that they found in their hunt for the Ancients, even the laws by which their machines operated. In time any member of their race, with the computer and the resources of the city behind them could follow them. That’s another function of the city. It’s a supply depot and shipyard.”

  “They were also leaving behind a record of where their people were to be buried, or cremated. So that future generations could come back and pay their respects. Or, if those they left behind, either decided to change their minds and followed them, or actually found their own Holy Grail, so that they could bring them the answer. They wanted their kin to know of their great journey and how it had gone, no matter how long it took for them to be able to travel the stars again.”

  “But -” A lone scientist began to interject even over the Chair but Daryl hurried on cutting him off with the support of the Chair. Raising his hand was about as far as Daryl was willing to let him go.

  “The Calderonians didn’t leave Calderon Six and all their other worlds because a single sun was becoming hotter. As a theory that one never made much sense. They had the technology to handle it in any of a number of ways. They could have shifted their planet’s orbit, altered the atmosphere to reflect more heat, or just found other worlds to settle. And they already had other colonies. Sensitive to slight atmospheric changes as they might have been, it wasn’t a true barrier to them.”

  “Moreover they didn’t do any of those things because they didn’t need to. It simply wasn’t urgent enough for them to take action. In any case it wasn’t even a true problem. Think about it. They had thousands of years to act if they decided to try and save their world. It was only that they didn’t have those thousands of years left to them, that caused them to leave.”

  “When we go there we see a dead world and we tend to think that they were running away from whatever did that. We mentally collapse ten thousand years into only a few and turn a slow moving problem into an imminent disaster. Imagine if Unity’s sun suddenly started going through the same cycle. Would we suddenly start packing up it and however many hundreds of colony worlds there are and setting out on an immense journey after an ancient race? Of course not. Especially if Unity’s sun had at least a couple of thousand years to go before it even started making Unity uncomfortable.”

  “When the Calderonians left Calderon Six was far from dead. In fact it was probably still fairly close to the paradise they had always known it to be. Maybe a degree or two warmer. And it would have remained much the same for at least another few thousand years. Exactly as the stellar physicists told us.”

  “What did matter to them was that they were dying. A dying race. They wouldn’t have lasted another thousand years let alone ten. They probably wouldn’t have survived another generation. And no I don’t know why they were dying. But they did. They knew what was killing them, and they knew that they couldn’t stop it. That information too was on the computer in Calderon Six. The genetic codes that we assumed were left there as some sort memento of who they were. A snap shot of their genetic life form. I doubt it.”

  “Those codes are probably the basis of what was killing them. Possibly a disease, a genetic riddle perhaps, an evolutionary dead end or a genetic virus. They may also include some theoretical genetic or medical therapies. Things that to us would be useless, but to them, priceless. For their own people, they left behind the best knowledge they had of their coming doom and all they had learned to avoid it. Surely in the hope that some of them could find a cure if they didn’t survive. And they were not sure that they would succeed. Just desperate.”

  “Maybe one day, if someone can unscramble them, we’ll know what was killing the Calderonians, and the knowledge that they thought the Ancients possessed.”

  “They knew from the outset that it was a faint hope that they could save themselves. They didn’t have the technology or the knowledge. And they didn’t have the time to develop it. But somewhere in their explorations they learned that there was one race that might have the answer. The Ancients.”

  “Ten thousand years ago the Calderonians set out on a journey to find them. But not so they could talk with them or discuss philosophy over tea. To save themselves. To save their entire race. No doubt they’d spent years and years researching the Ancients. Trying to find out what they knew. What they could do. Trying to find where they had gone, exactly like us. Probably even before their end came upon them.”

  “And that knowledge too they also left on the computer on Calderon Six. For their people, not us. That city, it too was guarded, and the computer was the most heavily guarded piece of the whole city. But the gradual destruction of the world itself, undid many of their defences, and destroyed much of their city. All that had survived was that which they had protected the best. The stuff which absolutely had to survive for posterity. That computer in that room.”

  “I also very much doubt they were contacted by the Ancients. The Ancients were the best part of a hundred thousand years gone even then. Besides, if they had been contacted, surely the knowledge of a cure could have been given directly, without the need for the journey. The Calderonians studied hard like us, until finally they found an answer, their only answer, their only chance to save their people. And by the time they had enough knowledge to work with, I suspect they were very far gone. Maybe even too far.”

  “So they built their fleet. Enough ships to take everyone who wanted to go. All who were able. Another telling argument. If they’d only wanted to meet the Ancients they could have sent an ambassador and a few scientists. But they took everyone they could. A fair indication that they didn’t think they would have time to go there, negotiate and return with a cure. They didn’t have that time. Manufacturing a fleet was quick and easy for them; negotiation might take as many years as would the journey.”

  “Along the way, they knew more and more of their people would perish. They expected it. And they designed their ships with chapels from the beginning. But they hoped some would survive to the end. Survive, to one day come back and pay their respects to their fallen ancestors.”

  “Along the way they selected worlds that they thought were close enough to their own that those who were dying, could enjoy their final days in places that reminded them of home, or heaven. They then converted one or two of their ships at a time into cities. Cities that had massive apartments, all with magnificent views, and fine recreation
al facilities. Places where people could be happy at the end. Hospices.”

  “When they died, I imagine their bodies were brought into that amphitheatre, one by one, and their friends and family said goodbye to them while the music box played. That’s why it seems like a religious device. It was. That box and the entire amphitheatre were sacred to them. So sacred that they spent countless hours crafting them by hand. Death was a big thing for these people. And it had to be handled with great dignity and respect.”

  “Then after the funeral, their bodies were either buried or cremated or whatever, and the remains left or scattered somewhere in the city. They may even be entombed in the walls. The entire city was sacred to them. So sacred in fact, that they had to protect it for eternity. From us.”

  “They also painted the images of those who had fallen into the ceilings of their chapel, and I suspect carved their names into walls and floor. Not angels or saints, but their fallen friends and family. That’s why there are so many children among the paintings. This killer of theirs was no respecter of youth.”

  “Finally on QA 40, a day came, as they’d known it would come, when there were no more left and the city was empty. An empty monument to those who had only been able to take the first step on their last great journey, a reminder for those who were still going to finish it of their journey, and a marker for those they hoped might one day follow, if they survived.”