Nefir says nothing for several long moments, then nods slowly. “To die singing, with hope, might be one of the best ways to go. I will see what can be done. Although, it might be far too late for anything.”
“I understand,” I say softly. “Thank you for trying.”
Fifteen minutes until asteroid impact.
Nefir calls me directly from the Resonance Chamber.
“The last of the nano-cams are being seeded, My Sovereign Lady, and Earth has been notified—with some confusion and much immediate argument, but they are willing, because they are desperate. Approximately thirty global locations with the best singers have been connected into our network. They are studying the sequence notes.”
“Thank you!” I say with feeling. “We are ready here on our end.”
“Then you should probably begin. The asteroid will be here in minutes, and this sequence may have to be repeated. . . .”
And I begin to sing.
I sing for Earth, with all my focus and all my being.
At first, my voice rises alone, in the thick silence of my helmet, with lousy acoustics and little breathable air. I sound breathy and weak, and it takes me several notes to be on tune.
Then, Manala’s high voice sounds on the linkup.
She joins me in her crystalline clarity, and now we sing in tandem, across billions of miles. Then, George, Xelio, Hasmik, Erita, Consul Denu, the Command Pilot of War-6 and all the living crew, carefully join us, lending their voices with practiced precision, even though they are not Logos, simply human.
And then I hear others in the Resonance Chamber.
Voices of others singing on the surface. Female, male, young, old.
Earth is singing with me.
The Resonance Chamber swells with sound.
I cannot describe it because I am in the process of making it, and I am overwhelmed with the ocean of acoustic glory around me, in which I am but a tiny single note.
I am nothing.
In my mind, I imagine Earth, its lapis lazuli oceans and golden landmass, its cities shining with energy grids of illumination as they once had been before the raging fires and the wars. . . . I imagine rushing rivers and forests, country fields full of crops and the frozen tundra, deserts of sand and frozen fiords, cathedrals and mosques and temples of every faith. . . . I imagine animals running free in the brush, along the prairie and plain, birds soaring through the blue skies, waters full of fish and sea life.
I sing and sing and there is no end. . . .
Until something in my heart tells me, it is done.
One minute until asteroid impact.
The Resonance Chamber is now silent. Nefir changes the screen for me, so that now I see the view of the asteroid on approach, the live feed coming from AS-1999 as it hangs at its orbit coordinates, watching the arrival.
Thirty seconds until impact.
The asteroid is a white monster, hurtling at us head-on, illuminated by Earth’s yellow sun.
The asteroid enters the layers of atmosphere.
And yet, there is no heating on entry, no reaction, no wind, no stirring of clouds along the way.
The asteroid is a ghost.
Earth is a ghost.
No connection, no contact between them.
The moment of impact happens, and the asteroid keeps going. . . .
Through the coordinates of Ancient Atlantis it moves, where the dimensional rift was/is/might still be. Through layers of earth’s crust, mantle, core, deeper, deeper.
Minutes later it emerges on the other side.
A lonely voyager, it will continue now, a perfect ghostly stranger, outward into eternity.
Silence.
There is no cheering. No other voices are heard from Earth, because Earth is now incorporeal, in another time-place. But it cannot stay there; it needs the sun’s warmth and the heliosphere’s mantle for life to continue to thrive, and it needs to be a part of the fabric of our space-time.
I must bring it back.
There will be no vocal assistance from the surface this time, since they are locked in another reality, another dimension, isolated by our joint efforts. What must the people, the animals, the living flora on the surface be experiencing now, imprisoned in a strange other reality?
What’s it like? I wonder. Oh, to be them for a minute, to see and feel it . . . a sudden cosmic cold maybe? A neutral balance of all things suspended, energies contained—particles fixed and frozen in their quantum states? Even light itself, suspended with no outlet? Or is light photon energy slowly seeping out, passing between the trans-dimensional membrane of here and there?
Maybe one day I will get the chance to ask someone who lived through it.
But now—now, everything must be brought back.
And this time, it is up to us alone, who are on the opposite side of the universe.
I begin to sing again, a reverse sequence that may or may not work. Manala joins me, followed by my brother George, Hasmik, the others.
The Resonance Chamber fills again with the greatest flood of acoustic harmony—fewer voices this time, but no less intense.
We are done, and now comes the moment of truth. Nefir and the AS-1999 crew check their sensor readings to verify if they are once again orbiting a gravity-producing object. Shuttles are sent down to the surface and immediately they encounter atmospheric resistance and winds at re-entry.
Earth is back. . . .
Nefir smiles at me tentatively, with mixed emotions—full of possibilities and repercussions and all that he must now face when dealing with an Earth that lives on—and I can now take a breath and let it go, a shallow breath. In many ways I don’t envy him and the political morass he will need to navigate. I merely ask him to let Aeson know that Earth is no longer in immediate danger.
Earth has survived—at least for the time being.
Now it’s my turn.
I close my eyes and drift off to sleep—dreaming surreal nightmare images of Earth on fire, interspersed with calming images of Aeson—and Erita doesn’t bother me with chit-chat. I’ve earned it, after such an emotional overload.
The next time I come to, it’s because of frantic voices inside my helmet, coming over the linkup.
Apparently, the transport in which Manala and the other survivors are locked, is drifting inevitably on a crash course with a large wreck of a sebasaret or possibly several ankhurats, mangled together in an ugly deformed mass of twisted metal.
Metal that bristles with sharp edges.
If Manala’s depet collides with the wreck, its hull would likely be cut open as though with a can opener. All of this is clearly visible through Hasmik’s helmet camera perspective.
“Is there anything that can be done?” Erita muses, after she describes the disturbing visuals to Xelio.
“A couple of options,” he replies in a grim voice. “We pray the weakened plasma shield can act as enough of a buffer to weaken impact. Or we get cut open and will have to abandon ship.”
“Any interior chambers which you can pressurize separately and lock yourselves inside?”
“Not in this shebet depet.”
Erita snorts.
“Is there something I can do from the outside?” Hasmik asks.
“Yes! You can stay back as far as possible when the impact happens,” Xelio replies in frustration.
Hasmik makes a little annoyed sound. “Let me look at it,” she says in contrariness, and we see her start moving toward the wreck.
Moments later, she’s up close and personal with sharp, ugly metal parts. “I can tie some of these together, you know,” she says. “Draw lines between them, here and here, make a net. It may slow down the crash.”
“What?” Xelio exclaims. “No, stop before you get hurt!”
“Be careful, please!” I say.
And Hasmik gets to work. Good thing the ship is drifting slowly and she is moving fast.
In a nutshell, Hasmik creates a basic tick-tac-toe grid out of four extended cables, tyi
ng them to various protrusions and bits of rough metal among the wreckage. The idea is, the stretched lines of the simple net will act like a spiderweb put up between the drifting vessel and the wreckage. The cables alone are not strong enough to hold back the ship, but their tension will create enough resistance to slow down the ship on impact.
Once again, it’s a marvel to see Hasmik’s gloved hands move skillfully as she propels herself from one point to another.
“Enough! Get out of there, Hasmik!” Erita says.
She finishes just as the vessel is about a hundred meters away from the wreckage. It heads directly into the net. Hasmik propels her suit quickly out of the way, then turns around to look at her handiwork.
In the perfect silence of deep space, we watch the depet sail forward and slow down as it meets the net’s resistance.
The net cables start to buckle, and two of them snap and go sailing into the cosmic vacuum.
But the transport comes to an absolute crawl and now barely inches toward the sharp edges of the wreckage.
And then it stops, a meter away.
“Shebet, she did it!” Erita says. “Shamash, you are safely stalled in place.”
That’s when we hear cheers coming from Manala’s interstellar linkup.
“Hasmik Tigranian,” George says, with a laugh, clapping something on his end. “When this is over, we owe you dinners, drinks, and your favorite things!”
“Hard to believe this girl is a civilian,” Command Pilot Uru Onophris says in appreciation. “Very well done.”
Chapter 100
Time slows down to an undefined value as we all continue to endure the wait for rescue. The transport remains stalled in Hasmik’s net in the wreckage “shipyard” while Hasmik herself stays nearby, floating in the area of the hatch. Meanwhile Xelio tries to do micro-surgery on the airlock mechanism.
Erita and I float in the middle of nowhere, slowly drifting away from the column of the solar jet. We sleep, wake, sip water, periodically check the tablet and try the various comm icons just in case.
I check the chronometer, and Red Mar-Yan 17 is over, and it is sometime in the early hours of Red Mar-Yan 18, Poseidon Time.
Earth is still here with us, undamaged . . . it occurs to me in a wild, hopeful surge of joy, as I think back on the recent events.
But then I remember, there’s still an alien grid being built around Sol, and the dimensional rift may still be open. . . . I’m afraid to know whether the pegasei managed to close the rift or not, and what has happened to Romhutat.
Maybe I should sing the frequency and call Arion one last time.
I feel a painful twinge of emotion at the thought. It would only be another bittersweet goodbye.
This is now the start of our third day inside these space suits.
There is little that can be said about the time that follows, a slow, boring, grueling ordeal of taking each breath, sipping a little water, and being miserable for many hopeless hours.
We stop checking time because it makes it only that much more difficult, waiting and waiting.
Occasional debris float by, and a few bodies in suits.
I shut my eyes each time, and pray to something, anything, an unknown universal power of good.
I think of Aeson. . . .
And then, at some point, the “day” ends, and it is Red Mar-Yan 19, somewhere out there in Poseidon. Does it even matter?
Here it is only hours of eternal, unrelieved darkness, and among this homogeneity, time itself becomes a hazy memory.
At some point in what must be early morning, I am jolted out of my numb daze.
“Well, it’s time to turn on our suit emergency beacons,” Erita announces suddenly. “We’re getting closer and closer to the end of our life support resources, and that’s why I waited for so long. The interstellar long-range beacon uses a lot of energy. It would’ve drained us faster if we enabled it earlier. Let’s hope Kass gets here soon, today.”
Erita explains to Hasmik and me how to enable the beacons. The others, safely inside the pressurized depet, don’t need to worry about their suits yet. Besides the transport beacon is broadcasting for them.
“You might hold off also, Hasmik,” Erita says, after some thought. “You’re right next to the ship so they’ll find you easily at your location. Save your suit power.”
And then she adds, “You too, My Sovereign Lady Gwen. I have my beacon on and that’s enough for both of us—save your power.” And she turns off my beacon.
“We can take turns,” I offer. “That way, we only use up half our beacon power.”
“No.” Inside her suit, Erita shakes her head slowly. “I promised Kass I will take care of you.”
“But that’s awful!” I say. “You’ll run out of power early, and then what will I do without you?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Erita says with a smile.
“I do worry!”
A few hours later, the power level indicators on our suits start turning on. They glow red, displaying only ten percent life support power remaining. Erita, Hasmik and myself are the only ones affected, since the others, again, are indoors, pressurized. Hasmik, however, has scavenged a few additional life support packs from the dead bodies, so she is not under the same pressure we are—or so she tells us.
“Rawah bashtooh,” Erita whispers, staring at the power indicators.
I feel a stab of terror in my gut. “What does that mean? How much time is left?” I ask.
“Depends. Could be an hour or two, could be less.” Erita’s voice sounds grim.
Oh God, we’re about to die. . . .
After all this time, all these things achieved, we’re going to die here. . . . Suffocate, depressurize, freeze—whichever comes first, I don’t know; don’t want to know or ask.
“Let me see, let me look at your suit,” Erita says, noticing what must be my pathetic deer-in-the-headlights expression.
She turns me around and fumbles. I let her, helpless and stupid with sudden debilitating terror.
And then suddenly I see Erita rip out the cable connecting us together from the hookup at her waist. At the same time, I notice that her life support pack is now attached to me, plugged into another, secondary slot on my suit.
“Erita! No!” I cry—even as she pushes off from me, hard, and goes floating off into the darkness.
“Give Kass my love,” Erita’s voice comes resonant in my helmet speakers. “Tell him I Shielded you. Turning my comms off now. Live well! Saret-i-xerera!”
“Rawah bashtooh! Tefnut, no! Erita!” This time it’s Xelio’s voice, crying out desperately over the linkup.
But there is no answer.
I take a breath and start to bawl.
For several seconds I allow myself to sob and shudder, as my face fills with tears and snot. And then I stop—because Erita just gave her life for me and I have no right to compromise what little extra chances she has given me by using up my resources and incapacitating myself.
I take more controlled breaths to stifle the sobbing. And I think, desperately.
Then I make the decision I’ve been putting off and sing the frequency to call Arion, afraid he will never again answer.
But instantly I hear his familiar, warm voice inside my mind.
And then a burst of plasma filled with rainbow colors explodes in space before me.
Gwen Lark who is Kassiopei, Arion says. I am glad you called me at last.
“Arion! Oh, Arion!” I exclaim out loud. “Please, help her! Help Erita! I know you helped Aeson somehow, kept him alive, so you can help her the same way! She’s only been disconnected for a minute or so! Please, help!”
I will help her, the quantum being tells me softly. But you must understand that the rest is up to you. Aeson, your beloved, is on his way here, and he will arrive, but not fast enough. I and my kind can keep all of you alive in the interim. But it will not solve the true problem still before you.
“I don’t understand,” I say, “but please
, help Erita first!”
Look . . . out there. She is being helped already.
And as I focus my gaze, I see that in the distance another rainbow plasma cloud has burst into existence. It surrounds and has enveloped the pale speck that is the floating suit with Erita inside. . . .
“Is she alive?” I ask.
She lives.
“What happens now?” I whisper. “What happened at the rift, does it still remain open?”
The rift remains open as we wait for you.
“What?” I exclaim. “What are you waiting for? And—is Romhutat Kassiopei—are you keeping him safe also?”
We offered to keep him safe, but he made his choice. He will go with us, with she-who-wields-Starlight—as we pass into the rift.
Sacrifice.
A strange wave of bitter sorrow washes over me.
So, he’s gone for real.
Aeson’s father is gone. . . . I should be relieved, considering all the things he’s done. And yet, I feel strange, unexpected grief.
He rejected our offer to grant him a safe passage back, in order to spare us time, so that the rift might be closed earlier—precisely within your accounting of what you know as time.
“But why?” I ask.
Because the heart of the problem is still before you, and you cannot make it right until you learn to use Starlight.
I stare with confusion at the glowing colorful cloud of aurora borealis before me, a speck of a greater cosmic nebula.
I stare deeper afield.
The stars are everywhere.
What does it mean? What am I supposed to do?
Think . . . Arion says. But—use your heart, also.
And so, I think with all my heart.
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