Cold and Dark

by Marc Neuffer

After a month, the negotiations ended successfully. Most of that time, I stayed away, working on foundation projects and future plans. The Bears had done a masterful job, including achieving satisfactory reparations for Northia.

  There had been a clamor from many corners demanding, then cajoling, then pleading to share the Bears with the rest of the galaxy. I let the talking heads believe that it was the Bears who had inter-galactic capable ships and that ours had simply been used as convenient hosting platforms.

  Having missed the kids, during our two-week excursion to Earth, Sandy was going to Shangri La with us. There was plenty of room at the house. It seems I have a family. Was I becoming normal? I don’t think I’d ever been that before. I mulled over what it meant to be a family man; I wasn’t sure what that meant.

  Sandy’s ship, Snake, rested in Avalon’s flight bay. Her ship would undergo a refit and receive full upgrades in the Shangri La shipyards. I was still not going to release the phase-shift tech to any ship I didn’t directly control.

  Sarah and Noah had actively participated and contributed to the negotiations, providing the Bears with clarification on some of the convolutions and nuances of human language. They had gained a large appreciation for the Bears.

  I had a bit of difficulty, explaining Amanda’s change in appearance. I told them it was a side effect of Bear medical and healing technology. Her group had demanded a DNA comparison. With that, and a series of questions, they finally accepted she was Amanda Wright, Chief Union Negotiator. We’d given her the opportunity and funds to go anywhere she wanted, but she said Northia was her home, that’s where she belonged. Amanda would find that she had a very long and healthy life ahead of her.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Horses were settled in their new home, acclimating to the barn, open fields and riding tracks. They became quite an attraction for the Bears, especially when we rode them. I had to explain that the horses didn’t mind, they’d been bred for that purpose. Of course, I hadn’t asked the horses their opinion. Maybe, someday, we would be able to do that.

  Noah spent most of his days in the Bear organic labs, testing and processing the samples he’d harvested on Earth. Sarah pursued her passion with the engineers, dragging Sandy along at least every other day. I spent my days doing my work by the pool and taking long rides in the hills. I’d traded isolation and a hectic pace for a slower, more personally rewarding one. I’d learned from Amanda.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  I now took time to engage in broader, personally interesting things that had nothing to do with the foundation or the library. I realized I could start loosening my grip on the reins. The world, the universe, would still move along under its own inertia. Held for so long, unclenching is not an easy thing. I’d taken up reading thoughts of the ancients, from Old Earth. Many were wiser than we had come to believe about those backward primitives. As a species, we had not advanced, only convinced ourselves we had.

  No man is an island entire of itself; every man

  is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

  any man's death diminishes me,

  because I am involved in mankind.

  And therefore, never send to know for whom

  the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

  John Donne

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  It came as a loud, thunder clap of a thought, a realization. Sandy was my wife. That’s how I thought of her, not realizing, on the surface, what it was. We’d been around each other for only four months since my return to the human galaxy. A twenty-five-year break. We hadn’t gotten married. We hadn’t ever come close to talking about that kind of relationship, not even around the edges. We hadn’t conceived children in the natural sense; never joined physically. But, I realized, we were joined in more meaningful, deeper ways.

  I’d never stopped wishing for the past, simpler times, when we had been crewmates, sharing close quarters, risking our lives together, laughing, sharing, an honest and daily connection. It had been a comfortable knowing. When we were apart, whatever happened separately, we would invariably be drawn back by each other’s gravity; equal stars, rotating around a common center. A return to our psychologically shared nest. She had been the only person, male or female I’d ever allowed in, and she returned that. A gift I carried and occasionally unwrapped, then put away, gently, for safekeeping.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  I asked Sandy to join me for a ride into the hills. Walking to the stables, I was as nervous as a schoolboy attending his first dance. Sandy noticed.

  “Hornblower, you’re acting weird. What’s up?”

  “Nothing … everything.” Facing possible rejection, I had to find the words; unexplored, unmapped territory. Reaching out, I took her hand in mine, we continued walking. My palms were damp.

  In the stable, she pulled me along to a bench, sat me down with a slight push, straddled next to me. “Look at me Gene.” She used my given, first name. I flashed back to the first time she’d heard it.

  Turning, I took her face in both hands, I kissed her. A gentle kiss, then more passionate, she responded. Releasing, I said, “Sandy, I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time. I’d thought there was no room for us. I was wrong.”

  “Took you long enough.”

  She leaned in; head tucked in my shoulder. The world, the universe could have stopped right then, the pinnacle of its purpose achieved. I stroked her hair; holding each other, feeling each other breathe.

  I whispered, “Sandy, marry me, please.”

  She tilted her head up to mine, “Yes ... I think I will.”

  Back in the before, I’d had a ring made from a bit of metal from the alien ship we’d found. Three days ago, I’d had it reshaped, smaller now, thinner. I pulled it from my pocket, slipping it on her finger, left ring finger. She helped me slide it on. It was the correct size, but her hands were a bit moist too.

  We didn’t talk about weddings or future plans, we simply stayed there, comfortably connected, concealed, sheltered, for hours. Q-coms off.

  17 Homeostasis

  Homeostasis: the state of steady internal physical and chemical conditions maintained by living systems, the condition of optimal functioning for the organism. Variables are controlled by one or more mechanisms, which together maintain life

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Sarah wanted us to be officially married at the ranch, on Satchel. Big doings, festivities, fireworks. Sandy tempered her enthusiasms, telling Sarah she could have all that for her wedding.

  We had a simple ceremony, in the hills, overlooking the library campus. Sarah, Noah, Martin and Dr. Font. Dr. Forest presiding. Ranger was hovering a nearby. He too was part of our family.

  Neither Sandy nor I felt we needed a ceremony; we said we were married, and since we owned this world, we made the rules. Sarah was adamant that we do at least something official. She didn’t want her parents to just shack-up.

  Ah, what you do for your children.

  Four days ago, I had proposed. Four days and nights spent together, ‘shacking-up’, no work, no issues pressed in on us. Dr. Fount said she was happy to see we had finally come to our collective senses.

  We stood before Dr. Forest. He read from their marriage ritual, a piece that their species used for joining. Translated, it was quite touching and unlike any human vows, commandments or strictures I’d ever heard about. I’m sure the translation didn’t, and couldn’t, convey the exact contents of their meaning, as it examined shared existence, an intertwining of soul, spirit, mind and body; a forever fusion.

  As we boarded Ranger, huge firework displays bloomed over the city. Noah looked at Sarah as she stood, arms crossed, wearing a huge grin of satisfaction, facing us.

  “What? The Bears insisted. You’re very important to them and they wanted to participate.”

  I’d never seen or heard of the Bears using fireworks or engage in any other ostentatious exhibitions, but it looked like most of the library staff had gathered outside, down below, to see us off. We lifted off, headin
g to dig in the dirt. Sarah and Noah would join us in three days. Snake was in dock, getting a phase-shift upgrade.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The ground here is very dense, hardpacked. A thick, non-permeable, clay layer lined the cap of the kilometer’s wide concavity. Standing just outside our shelter dome, we looked over the edge of the excavation site’s rim. This was only one of dozens of archeological sites the Bears were investigating on many planets, but a recent find had pushed this one to the top of the ‘most important’ list. It wasn’t just a confirmation of the past synchronized die-offs of advanced species, it was a Mintic site.

  In their day, the Surrons had mined other Mintic sites, uncovering technology they had melded with their own. The Surron Libraries had details of thousands of active civilizations they’d encountered. But, like the Surrons, none of them still existed. They’d all been wiped out by, as what Riley described, a cyclic quantum-wave, created by the Zees, from their dimensional home. We had a list of probable surviving remnant location from a list the Surrons had compiled two billion years ago. This was one they had not exhumed.

  We shortened the list through geologic filtering. Any worlds, with active plate tectonics and subduction zones, probably had little surviving evidence. This world had been geologically stable for five-billion years.

  We were in a galaxy we had designated as a protected zone. It had a race that was just entering their space flight era, having sent un-occupied spacecraft to their system’s other planets and one ‘manned’ craft to their world’s closest neighbor. We were nearly on the other side of the galaxy. There was no chance of our being discovered.

  No other species could get here without us providing transportation. We were doing that quite a bit, now that we were actively pursuing a pilot project for a universal congress, as well as sponsoring cooperative explorations and astrological studies. About a third of the small ships, now coming off our assembly line, were larger than Ranger, designed for dual environments; one for Bears and Humans the other for species that had incompatible environmental requirements for gravity, atmospherics and food synthesis.

  Specially designed archeological excavation and sorting bots had been scraping layer after thin layer of the surface cap. Scans revealed several, mostly intact structures underneath.

  This unnamed planet had photosynthetic life along with all the necessary micro-organisms and small worm-like soil dwelling animals, insects, aquatic species and reptiles of a healthy bio-sphere. No large, carnivorous beasts with eat-you, toothy smiles; lots of carrion eaters, just to keep the place tidied up.

  Noah had tried to educate me on the structure of life forms and their relationships such as genus, phylum, species and such. I absorbed some of it, relying on my Q-insert to retrieve the deeper information if the need ever arose.

  Without the Surron medical and bio-tech, neither we nor the Bears would be able to survive the bacteria and viruses that called this world home. Most planets, with life, had incompatible DNA-like origins, but we still took great caution to not transport micro-bugs from place to place. A full planetary bio-assay had been conducted to ensure that none of our mini-critters would survive to adversely affect this world.

  Today we expected to uncover the top-most structures. Sarah was interested in the engineering aspects, while Noah hoped something remained to provide biological details of the Mintic. The Surron libraries had only a brief and basic description of their outward appearance.

  The Mintics had been unique, in that they had both a hardened exoskeleton and a boney inner one. A triangular head contained sensory organs for sight, sound and smell, including, not only three eyes for trinocular vision, but also a series of smaller ones embedded around the periphery of their heads. Prehensile projections served as hands and fingers. Noah proposed that they had been subject to natural predation in their past and needed the extra-eye sets to warn them of predatory motion.

  As the first architecture was exposed, it revealed a peeked spiral cone, spreading wider as the dry clay around it was slowly removed. No openings were apparent yet, but the Bears stopped the excavation to drill a small hole through which they could retrieve environmental samples and pressure readings before proceeding. External sensors had not indicated any swelling as the encapsulated building was being exposed.

  A bot started drilling with a tiny, high pressure water jet. Nobody wanted sparking tools anywhere near the ten-foot cone. Combustible or explosive gases could destroy the interior. We wanted that intact.

  After drilling and capping with a sensor assembly, air samples revealed a mostly inert gas combinations with traces of methane. That got Noah very excited; methane meant organic decay. More and larger pass-through accesses were drilled, cameras on manipulator tentacles inserted. The lead Bear archeologist told me it would be days before any Bears would enter. Before that, exploratory drones would map out the entire structure.

  They speculated, that since the thick clay-like cap and underlayment was not the result of natural deposition, the site had been sealed up for preservation. We didn’t know if we’d found a necropolis, a storage facility or a technological treasure house.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Sandy and I took a few days to further explore the planet. We were still on our honeymoon. Now I understood the changes Mica had undergone just before he’d married Abby. We would find our own rhythm.

  The northern areas, near the poles were snow bound year-round. We had Ranger make skis and snowshoes for our winter playground. Before landing, he’s scanned for hidden cavities and depressions to ensure there would be no potential for fall-throughs.

  It’s been over twenty-five years since I been snow skiing on Satchel. Sandy had taken the kids twice a year starting at age six.

  She laughed, “Hey, till you get your legs back, stay on the bunny slopes.”

  There were no bunny slopes. The thing about skiing is that, once you learn, you never forget how to fall down. I took it easy making weaving cuts to keep my speed down. Sandy took off straight down the slope. Queen of the moguls, at least on this planet. I arrived at the bottom ten minutes after her. Ranger had flown ahead to pick us up; our mobile ski lift. Rinse and repeat until we were exhausted. I over-clocked my brain a few times and kicked in my fast-twitch for some of the more daring topography.

  We spent the evening outside, roasting corn and kabobs over a real wood fire. Our skin-suits kept us warm, but we wore ski jackets and knit caps just for the effect. Sandy’s legs, below her jacket, looked good in her stretched skin-suit. I’d take advantage of that later, if I could beat her to the punch. Three glorious days we spent out there.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  When we arrived back at the excavation site, preparations were being made to have a team enter for the first time. Drone scans had revealed a large, interconnected complex with glyphs and panoramic depictions on almost every wall surface. Panels of large bas-relief carvings showed what we thought might be historical events.

  The interior atmosphere had been purged to match the planet’s ambient conditions. Blower equipment maintained a continual refresh cycle to prevent buildup of off-gassing from interior surfaces. One small pile, of desiccated organic material, had been found.

  Glade, the project leader, asked Noah if he would like to be the first to enter. Noah told him that, as project director, he should have that privilege. Glade didn’t quite follow that logic, because to him it wasn’t. Bears don’t recognize gaining privilege from achievements. To Glade, and all the Bears, it didn’t matter who did what, only that it was done. Noah accepted the invitation, then asked me to accompany him.

  We geared up for the repel down from the top. Sandy stayed in our shelter, not caring to watch. A previous repelling excursion she’d been on had killed Mica; temporarily. Sarah stood with the access team, examining every connection of the support rig. She judged it to be safe.

  The opening was wide enough for us to sit comfortably, side by side, on the thick ledge. We pushed away, swung out, lowered by powered
winches. Portable light-bots had been flown in to illuminate the entire void. We descended a hundred feet to the bottom. We disconnected, then hooked our descent cables to a static weight.

  We’d seen the video surveys, but live and in person the building interior was magnificent. Except for the small amount of dust that had fallen from the access point, the floor was a clean expanse. Almost too clean to tread on.

  Taking a 360-degree visual sweep, we located our first target for a close-up inspection. It was a relief carving of several Mintic engaged in some sort of ritual. Noah took a series of sample swipes for later analysis. He was sure there would be some organic material remains in the cracks and crevices. Using a manual air bulb, he captured air samples close to the carvings. He was more patient than I ever was.

  Stepping back, he suggested, “The Mintics must have had had some sort of tunable auditory or natural radar in addition to their eyes. Notice the lack of color on these carved panels. Very few rounded edges. Those would have given very sharp return echoes. Careful the edges are very sharp.”

  The carvings and glyphs had been well surveyed by the drones and were being examined by experts on Shangri La. Carefully, I ran my hands over the wall in front of me, walls that had been untouched for over four-billion, or more, years. My fingertips felt the smoothness, an almost oiled glass texture, very little surface tension. Ranger monitored our portable scan devices and live videos as we continued on. Three of the lighting bots accompanied us, two in front and one behind. They lit up the passageway which headed towards the next chamber; this one was empty.

  Noah wanted samples of the only obvious organic remains. He’d asked the Bears not to disturb the pile with the drones, fearing they might be so fragile that any unqualified disturbance might cause the entire thing to crumble into dust. It was a thiry-meter walk to our next stop.

  The passage had more glyphs and relief carved panels. The Bears would have quite a project deciphering them.