Star stuff, p.14
Star Stuff, page 14
"It was not your fault!" Zoe rose to her feet. "You tried to stop the violence! You were an explorer."
He looked up at her, eyes rimmed with red. "When explorers and warriors meet, empires rise. I did not mean for this to happen. But I opened the hidden gates to the Garden of Eden. I tasted from the Tree of Knowledge. Fifty thousand boys and girls from Earth have died on Bahay so far, fighting in the rainforests and on the beaches. And with them died millions of Bahayans, and we don't even know their names. All because we thought the wonders of the universe belonged to us in all their splendorous colors."
Zoe held her notebook tight to her chest. She had filled every page. And it was time to go.
She took a step toward the door, then turned back toward the old man. She looked at him. A man who had loved a woman. Who had fought a battle. He had lost so much. A life withering away in this dusty little house by the highway. A grand explorer to some. A genocidal monster to others.
"Columbus sailed out to build an empire," Zoe said. "And millions died. But millions also found new life in a new world. I don't know if Columbus was a monster or a hero. And I don't know where history would have flowed without him. Our history still unfolds. And so does the tale of Bahay and her two beautiful moons. I think what I'm trying to say is …" She held the old man's hand. "Go easy on yourself. I think history will too."
She turned to leave again, then paused at the doorway. She looked at the old man one more time.
"I really did bring cookies, by the way." She pulled a crumpled bundle from her purse. "Do you … no?" He was just staring at her. "I'll just … I'll leave them here. They're mint flavored. Goodbye!"
She left the house, wobbling a little on her left heel. Of course she had to ruin a perfect last note.
Outside the house, she stood on the patio, took a deep breath, and smoothed her skirt. She nodded.
Good job, Zoe. Galactic Times here we come!
She paused for a moment. Wondering if she really did want to move to New York City. Really did want to work in that skyscraper. Maybe true happiness lay right here—in this little town, with her little gazette.
Then she shuddered, shook her head, and gave a nervous laugh. Her heels clacked down the street.
* * * * *
Back in his home, the old man sat on the couch.
He had not told this tale in many years. He had not been ready to reopen these wounds.
He sat for a while, listening to the baseball on the radio, staring at the wall. He used to like going to the games.
The sun fell, and Tom Emery rose from his couch. Legs sore, he limped into his backyard. The last daylight faded, and the stars spread above. From down here in the city, he could only see a handful of stars. But in his mind, he saw the splendor of the galaxy. He sat on his lawn chair, leaned back, and admired the view.
After a while, he reached into his pocket. He pulled out a round crystal. It was about the size of a peach and multifaceted. It was a problem stone. The crystal Amor de la Luna had given him all those years ago.
He handled it gently, gazing through this facet and that. A problem stone was not only used for examining problems from different angles. It also remembered the past. Indeed, many of the ancients also called it a memory stone. If you owned a memory stone, the legends said, you became a part of it. After you died, your memory stone forever contained a piece of your soul.
The stone remembered.
And inside this stone, Tom saw her. Amor de la Luna, the love of the moon.
Through some facets, she appeared young and carefree, a little girl running along a beach. Viewed from other angles, she shattered into a million pieces—a glance here, a strand of hair there, a hand reaching out from endless fractals. But sometimes, when the night was the right color, and when Tom held the stone just so, he could see her inside as he remembered her. Not just the woman from the painting but the real Amor de la Luna, her soul echoing from beyond the afterlife, shining at him. And in this briefest of memories, appearing in the crystal only once a year, he was there with her. He held her hand and walked with her along the beach.
Then it was gone. The memory faded. She fled in a flash of color and light, gone from him like some playful butterfly off to find a more colorful flower. Tom did not know if she would ever return.
The old man put the crystal in his pocket, and he gazed up at the stars, and he tried to count the thousand colors of the night.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The tale of Bahay and her war is long and tragic, yet also filled with nobility and courage. This novella only told how the war began. There is a longer tale to tell: of heroes and villains on both sides, of bloodshed and cruelty, and of honor and sacrifice.
The full tale of Bahay requires more than a novella. I've written a series of novels chronicling the Bahay War. The first novel begins where Tom Emery's story ended. It follows a young recruit, drafted on Earth, trained to kill, and plunged into the jungles of Bahay. There everything he thought he knew about the war shatters.
The novel is titled The Earthling. When you're ready, you can read it at: DanielArenson.com/TheEarthling
But for now, let's keep going. There are more stories in this book. Flip the page to read the next tale.
* * *
What if you were the last human in the galaxy... and another human suddenly showed up? How would you react? "The Girl in the Fire" first appeared in the anthology Tales from the Starship Discovery.
* * *
THE GIRL IN THE FIRE
Rowan had been hiding for a decade, trapped in darkness, when she first saw the girl in the fire.
At twelve years old, she barely remembered a time before the shadows. She barely remembered other people. But the girl in the fire came to her, a guardian angel of flame. And Rowan felt a little less alone.
The day had begun like any other. Rowan woke up inside the steel duct and stretched. There wasn't much room to stretch inside an HVAC duct, but Rowan was small, and she made the most of it. Lying on her back, she stretched her limbs as far as they'd go.
Up, down, sideways—those were all out of the question. In this labyrinth of narrow ducts, you were a creature of one dimension. You could move left or right, and that was that. It was a simple life, Rowan supposed.
After a good, solid stretch, she flipped onto her belly, and she began to crawl. Wriggling through the ductwork, she imagined herself a rodent burrowing underground, exploring a sprawling hive in the darkness, hidden from predators and the cruel sunlight.
I'm safe here, moving through ductworks like a mouse through burrows, Rowan thought. Safe from the aliens like the mouse from the hawk.
But hers was not an underground kingdom, for she lived in the sky. Paradise Lost was her realm, a space station thousands of light-years from Earth. The station perhaps hovered in space, but here was an ecosystem as Darwinian as any back home. A place of predators. Of prey. And of one little mouse in the shadows.
As Rowan crawled through the ducts that morning, she passed by a few vents, and she could peer into the chambers of Paradise Lost, these hives of sin.
One vent revealed a casino where a hundred aliens sat at tables, tossing painted skulls into bowls, howling or shrieking or gurgling with every bet. An alien octopus watched his skulls land facedown, costing his fortune. With his many tentacles, he flipped over the table, scattering dozens of painted skulls. To complete his tantrum, he sprayed ink in rage. Droplets of ink splattered a furry, fanged alien. The stained gambler growled, stepped toward the enraged octopus, and bit off one tentacle. Other gamblers cheered and laughed.
Rowan crawled over another vent, revealing a different area of the casino. Boneless, translucent aliens wrapped around slot machines, expelling some gemstones from their quivering bodies, sucking up others. A towering arachnid was dealing cards with eight clawed feet, while floating orbs of light placed their bets. A creaky sexbot in a fishnet stockings tried to seduce one scaly gambler. When the reptile shoved her, the sexbot hit the floor, her arms fell off, and sparks sprayed.
Aliens from so many worlds. Aliens furry, scaly, slimy, feathery. Aliens big and small, solid and liquid, some aliens of metal, others of flesh, all wonderfully bizarre. All gathering here in Paradise Lost to gamble and grog.
All aliens who would kill Rowan in a heartbeat.
Because she was not like those thousand species.
She was different. She was a pest. A menace. A creature to be shot on sight.
She was human.
For a moment, she paused in the ducts. She wiped tears from her eyes. Yes, she was only a pest. But she was good at sneaking. She was safe here in the HVAC ducts. The aliens might have killed every other human in the galaxy, but they would not kill her.
Rowan crawled onward. She passed over so many vents, so many chambers of sin here in Paradise Lost. She wriggled over a brothel, and peering through a vent, she saw an enormous alien like a snail crawl out of his shell, then sling milky darts at a female slug. In another brothel, two magnetic balls of crackling electricity circled each other in a buzzing mating dance. One vent revealed a washroom, each stall designed for another species. A dozen aliens were reading magazines on toilets, litterboxes, patches of grass, and—in the case of one feathered alien—a branch over a flowing stream. Rowan crawled quickly over these vents.
She passed over a drug den where aliens lay on pillows, smoking bubbling hintan from hookahs. Purple smoke filled the air. One alien with a dozen eyestalks took a deep puff. His many eyes rolled back, and he collapsed onto a divan, sighing contentedly. Rowan crawled quickly over this vent too. The purple fumes made her dizzy, made her remember bad things.
Things like a world ten years ago.
A cave full of crystals.
A family.
A mother. A father. A sister. A family who loved her.
Things like aliens landing. Huge alien scorpions. And their stingers lashing into people. And their claws cutting. And Rowan, only two years old, crying for her parents. Screaming. And her father loading her into a starship, and roaring up through smoke, and stars around her, and—
Rowan took a shuddering breath, then coughed out purple smoke.
She hurried through the ducts, banging her elbows against the metal walls, until she was far from the drug den. It was no good breathing those fumes. It was no good remembering. Those days were long gone. She had been hiding in these ducts for a decade now, and this was where she would remain. It was safe here. No scorpions could reach her. No aliens could harm her.
The ducts began to slope downward. Soon Rowan was sliding. Finally she reached vertical shafts, and she descended like Santa down the chimney. She plunged deeper and deeper into the space station, leaving the glittering casinos and drug dens and brothels and bars. She dived into the pits of Paradise Lost. The metaphorical little mouse was burrowing to the center of the earth.
Finally she reached her destination.
The engine room.
She crawled out from the ductwork, landed on a dusty deck, and brushed ash from her hair. Finally she could move up and down, forward and back! She expanded from a creature of two dimension to all three, and she did a few lunges—a nice good proper stretch.
She looked around her. The engine room was dark, hot, and cluttered. Enormous gears, taller than her, turned along the walls. Steam flowed through rattling pipes. Pistons moved up and down. Furnaces grumbled. Here was the ancient machinery that powered the space station. If Paradise Lost was a world, here was its molten core.
Rowan did not come here often. Survival meant spending most of her time in the upper decks, crawling through the ductwork, popping out of vents like a gopher from holes. She needed to sneak into bars and steal scraps of food. She needed to scurry into empty bathroom stalls every few hours. She sometimes pilfered blankets, electronics, and forgotten alien gadgets, precious little treasures to horde.
Survival meant living near the surface, as she called it. Not that a space station had an actual surface, of course, unless you counted the upper observation dome. But Rowan was part mouse, and she still thought like a mouse.
So no, she did not often descend into these dark depths.
But every once in a while, she came to study this machinery, hoping that it would help her fix her best friend.
She pulled him from her pocket.
"Fillister," she whispered, caressing him.
A pocket watch. A golden pocket watch on a chain. But there were no dials inside, no arms nor numbers, no flow of time. This was not a true pocket watch but a precious heirloom.
On the outside, the device was round and smooth. Rowan saw her reflection in the gleaming surface. A scrawny twelve-year-old girl. Olive-toned skin. Almond-shaped eyes. Short, messy brown hair. A bruise on her cheek, the gift of a cook who caught her stealing food last week. The last human in the galaxy.
She gently pried the locket open, and she admired the beauty she found inside. Folded wings, as gentle as gossamer. A tiny head covered with golden scales, each scale no larger than a pin's head. Eyes like gemstones. Brass gears and silver wires. A jeweled dragonfly, curled up inside a golden cocoon.
"Fillister, wake up," she whispered.
But the mechanical insect still slept.
Another memory flowed over Rowan.
Herself. Two years old. Screaming and fleeing the aliens. Her father placing the pocket watch in her hand, and Fillister waking up, guiding her into a starship, roaring into space. Calming her. Whispering to her. Joking with her. Teaching her.
Fillister, the smallest of robots, the dearest of friends. The only family she still had. He had been sleeping for a year now. A broken machine.
And so Rowan came here to the engine room for clues. She watched the great gears move across the walls, and she looked at the tiny, immobile gears inside Fillister. She watched the pistons move, trying to memorize their patterns, and massaged the tiny moving parts inside Fillister's delicate body. She looked at the pipes rattling across the engine room ceiling, and she gently stirred and rearranged the silvery cables inside Fillister, strands as fine as fingerprint ridges.
He never woke. But Rowan never lost hope. One day, if she studied the engine room long enough, she would understand. She would learn the mystery of machines, speak the language of ticking gears and hammering pistons. And she would know how to heal her friend. He would fly again and she would hear his voice, and she would no longer be alone.
Until that day there were the shadows. There were her memories. There was the darkness.
And then there was the girl in the fire.
Rowan was counting the ticking of the gears when the furnace suddenly blazed.
With a yelp, Rowan scurried back. Heat washed over her. Flame roared inside the furnace, leaping between iron bars like serpentine tongues between fangs. The furnace seemed almost a living beast, a dragon blowing fire, gazing at Rowan with hunger.
Scampering backward, Rowan stared at the beast of metal and flame. It was just a furnace, part of the machinery that powered Paradise Lost, but in Rowan's mind, it became a mighty reptile hungry for flesh.
And there, past the metal bars, there beyond the fire—a girl.
A girl raised her eyes and looked at Rowan.
And then the flames faded, and the furnace went dark, and only ash and smoke remained. The girl in the fire was gone.
* * * * *
"Come back here, pest!" The voice echoed through the ducts. "I'm going to skin you alive and grind your bones to dust!"
Rowan scampered down the duct, rattling the steel tunnel. She paused, looked over her shoulder, and saw the exterminator there. The alien was long and furry. He looked a like a severed mammoth trunk with eyes—and, unfortunately, lots of nasty teeth.
"You'll never catch me, you big fuzzy worm!" She blew him a raspberry. "No one's gonna catch this human."
The exterminator growled and slithered closer. A ring of teeth thrust out from his snout. The teeth reminded Rowan of the claw machines in the casinos, the kind alien kids kept feeding coins into. Rowan yelped and crawled onward, fleeing the furry predator.
Lately, more and more exterminators were hunting her. Every few days now, it seemed, a visitor to Paradise Lost complained about a human in the vents. Rowan would sneak into the kitchen at night, hoping to pilfer some food, only for a busboy to see her, to scream and toss pots and pans. She would hop down into a casino, just hoping to snatch a few napkins, only for a drunken gambler to rise from the floor and cry out, "Human, human! Help!"
Rowan had been getting sloppy. Or maybe she was just growing bigger. The ducts were a tighter squeeze every year. And at thirteen, it was harder to sneak around unseen.
A human infestation was bad for business. Paradise Lost relied on tourism, and nothing hurt tourism more than humans in the walls. Everyone hated humans, after all. Especially humans popping from a vent to steal your sandwich. What a way to ruin your vacation!
But what could Rowan do? Earth was gone. Destroyed. If it had ever existed at all, that was. Many said that Earth was just a legend. Rowan didn't know what to believe. If Earth was real, it lay across the galaxy. And she was here. The last refugee from an ancient war. The last scion of a fallen world. The last girl in the galaxy.
Humans were just vermin now. They had no planet. No starships. Not even a little moon to call their own. So they hid. In mining colonies. In hollowed-out asteroids. In sleazy space stations. They survived.
And they were hunted.
And they died by the millions.
