The starchild compact, p.29
The Starchild Compact, page 29
"Da, Tovarishch! It works for me. I'll go check it out with my team, okay?"
"Do it!" Jon paused. "Chen, stay here. I need you to do some research."
After Demitri left, Jon addressed his team. "We have four main thrusts right now, as I see it. Foremost is the Hebrew connection. Second, we really need to discover what happened to the star folk after they settled Earth. Then we need to get a handle on the comings and goings of the Founders, and finally, we need to learn what we can about their advanced technology."
He looked at Michele. "Michele, I want you to investigate the fate of the settlers. Make the best possible use of the system, and come up with some answers." He turned to Elke. "Your job, Elke, is to find out what happened to the Founders. We know they were going to visit Ectaris, but that's it so far. We really don't know anything else. Go with the flow." He grinned at her. "You know what I mean. Find out what you can."
"Ari, find the Hebrew connection. Work with both Michele and Elke. Use your better knowledge of Founder-Speak and anything you can drudge up from your Hebrew beginnings that might help."
Jon turned to Chen. "See what you can learn about their engineering – power generation, propulsion, robotics. When you get a lead, follow it. I'll be on your six. Between us, perhaps we can discover something.
Then to no one in particular, Jon added, "The World will be clamoring for more information – about the Hebrew connection, and about what happened. People are dying back home because we don't have answers…" His voice trailed off.
"Not so!" Ari immediately countered. "People are dying because fanatics rule the streets and cowards run our governments."
"I stand corrected, Ari. You're right, it's not our fault." Then Jon added thoughtfully, "But we can supply answers that may lower the level of fear."
#
The floater slowed to a stop in front of the Stack, and Demitri's team exited, stepping lightly to the ground. The Stack towered above them, far more massive that it had appeared in the holoview.
"Suits on, helmets at carry," Demitri had instructed.
It made investigation more awkward, but Demitri was not yet willing to abandon the safety supplied by their suits.
"We'll stay in pairs," Demitri said, "Noel and Carmen, and Ginger and myself." They set off, Noel and Carmen to the left, and Ginger and Demitri walked toward the unit directly before them. The front appeared to be glass, although it probably was some form of polycarbonate. As they approached the front, to Demitri's astonishment, a section slid back, revealing a bare room like that of any empty house. Toward the back was a kitchen, but lacking any appliances. There appeared to be running water, but their first attempt produced nothing. On a whim, Demitri called up the system and requested that water for this unit be activated. Within seconds, a rush of air came from the faucet, followed by a stream of water. There were two knobs – one controlled volume, the other temperature.
A back entrance led into a dark passageway, but when Ginger stepped into the passageway, it brightened, with the light seeming to emanate directly from the walls. She turned back, and they passed through the kitchen into the front room, and mounted a stairway to the upper floor. There they found what appeared to be sleeping chambers and sanitary facilities. Basically, it was a bungalow suitable for about three or four people.
"Can you supply furniture?" Demitri queried the system.
The response was a chart of furniture pieces from which he could choose, and he presumed that were he to do so, a floater would deliver his choices.
He checked on the availability of food items, and again received a chart to choose from.
Demitri checked with the Carmen and Noel, and found that they had discovered similar conditions. He called them back, and they all climbed an external stairway to the next level. The dwellings on this level had additional rooms above the level or below the level, and some had rooms both above and below.
"Let's check out the interior," Demitri said. "Split back up and explore for an hour."
They found an open core, and shafts randomly placed to simulate daylight. Much of the interior was taken up by what appeared to be storefronts, entertainment facilities, and the other accoutrements of civilized people living in close proximity to each other. The team's intercommunication was complete and flawless, so that they were able to interact with Jon and the others despite their separation.
"I see no reason," Demitri said to Jon, "not to move everything here, order the furniture we want, the food we want, and to set up shop and go to work solving the mysteries."
"I can't come up with a good counter argument," Jon answered. "Anyone else have an objection? Do any of you see something Demitri and I are missing?"
"I think we should stay suited up and carry our helmets," Ari said.
Demitri gave that some thought. On one hand, they had been perfectly safe ever since entering the interior. On the other, they were completely at the mercy of whatever was manipulating everything, and that won the argument for him. "I agree with Ari," he said. "We remain in a ready state for the time being."
"I agree," Jon answered definitively. "We want to retain control of that which ultimately keeps us alive. We'll come over and bring everything with us. Pick a good vista, and let's turn to and find the answer to all this."
Second Interlude
Merkavah flashed out of hyper-V high above the ecliptic of the system they had left a thousand years earlier by local time measurement.
"The Arc or Earth?" Eber asked the thirteen clan members crowded around the display.
"I thought we already settled that, Dear," Azurad commented to several nods.
"Well, it's your last chance to change your minds," Eber said as he instructed the Resident to scan the frequency spectrum for any signals. "What are your thoughts?" Eber asked Asshur several moments later when the Resident found the spectrum empty. He felt completely at a loss to explain the empty spectrum.
"I don't know…new communications technology…." His voice trailed off.
"Nothing at all?" Shem asked. "How can that be? We left a thriving global civilization."
"Let me try," Aram said stepping to the console.
"You don't trust me?" Asshur stepped back and Ishtar gently squeezed his hand.
"Not the point!" Aram busied himself with the controls. The display remained empty.
"Check white noise activity," Arpachshad suggested. "Maybe they shifted to some form of CDMA communications."
"It's a thought," Asshur said as he tapped the console. The display remained as empty as before. Ishtar stroked his hair.
"Let's take her to Earth," Eber said, tapping instructions to the Resident.
Two jumps and some minor adjustments, and Merkavah achieved a nearly circular polar orbit at 200 kilometers altitude. The planet below was mostly blue with swirling white clouds obscuring about two-thirds of the surface. They were over the single largest landmass transiting south over the oval-shaped enclosed sea with the boot-shaped peninsula extending southward, virtually dividing the sea in half. As they transited further south over the triangular landmass that extended well into the southern ocean, the terminator approached. With the fall of night, planetside was engulfed in complete darkness.
"This just cannot be," Asshur said in a low voice. "There is not even one light…no sign of any kind of civilization. Nothing at all…" His voice trailed off in disbelief.
The clan members took turns looking for something, anything that would tell them that the thriving billions they had left behind were still there. The more they looked, the more discouraged they became. The planet that had become the new home for the Ectaris civilization was empty; at least it was empty of any kind of civilized culture.
"What if they discovered a problem and left?" Lud did not really sound convinced, but at his spoken thought, the others perked up a bit.
"Is the Arc still there?" Ishtar asked, gently massaging Asshur's shoulders from behind.
"We didn't set it up to signal," Eber said. "The general idea was for the Arc to remain in hibernation, while civilization developed planetside at its own rate." He fiddled with the console. "Does anyone want to check things out on the surface, or should we first go back to the Arc to see if it is even there?"
There were mixed feelings, but the consensus was for returning to the Arc. Eber made a final console entry, and the Resident took Merkavah out of orbit and up over the ecliptic in a large arching path, descending over Saturn about twenty minutes later, entering a polar orbit around the obviously still present Arc. The Arc had taken several obvious meteor hits, but generally looked none the worse for wear. Eber leaned back and scanned the faces around him.
"We have another choice," he said. "Do we go back to Earth, land, and investigate, or do we enter the Arc, stay here for a while, do some research?"
"I think we need to collect our thoughts and emotions before we traipse off planetside," Shakbah said quietly, her deep blue eyes filling with tears as she stood beside Lud.
Sarai nodded, rising on tippy-toe to her fullest height to emphasize her perspective. Other heads nodded, and sensing a consensus, Eber tapped instructions for the Resident to open the hatch from which they had departed a thousand years earlier. Merkavah underwent several short maneuvers that went unnoticed by her passengers, and ten minutes later she was resting on her five extended legs at the bottom of the shaft, waiting for the chamber to pressurize.
#
Eber opened the massive cylinder door and extended the ramp. As the others prepared to disembark, he issued instructions to the Arc to come out of hibernation and then announced, "Let's get cleaned up, grab forty winks, and meet at the Command Center in eight hours."
Nods all around.
The couples strolled out across the meadow to the nearby Stack they had made their homes for the final months prior to their departure.
"What do you think?" Eber asked Azurad.
"Insufficient data, but I'm damn sure going to find out."
#
"It's like this, folks," Eber said to the assembled group lounging comfortably in the Arc Command Center. "Right now we don't have a clue. We can speculate all we want, but until we review what records exist here, and see for ourselves what happened planetside, we are just shooting in the dark."
He went on to assign research tasks to the group members.
Shortly thereafter, Asshur, who was primarily responsible for communications, signaled the group's attention. "Listen!" he said. "I found this urgent priority message at the top of the stack."
"This message is being sent in the blind. The date is month ten of twelve, year one-one-seven on our new calendar. We know that Clan Noah returned to Ectaris over a hundred years ago. We do not know, and have no way of knowing, if they got there, if they came back, if they are alive, or anything about them. If they are still alive – if they are you – this status report will bring you up to date on the disaster that has befallen us.
"Following your departure, our people collectively decided to focus on building a civilization on Earth. We could not do this while looking outward – at least not at the beginning. So, we grounded our spacecraft and concentrated on building our world. We made great progress. By the second generation, some fifty years back, we seemed to be well on our way to making this new planet our permanent home.
"Then, mysteriously, about a year ago the live birth-rate around the world began to drop. Within just a few months, over half of all conceptions resulted in stillbirths. Simultaneously, people in the prime of their lives began to fall ill all over the planet and quickly die, no matter what we did to help them. Within months ten percent of all our people – one billion souls – were gone. Scientists the world over turned their minds and research to the problem. We discovered that the modified DNA we had inserted into the Earth's ecosystem had mutated. We do not understand the nature of the mutation, but it is deadly. From the onset of the illness to death is a matter of a few hours.
"My community is located on the southern half of the double continent, about thirty-three hundred kilocubits south of the Equator and eighty kilocubits inland. We are on a large rocky plateau at the base of a north-south mountain range. There are some isolated pockets of natural resistance here and there, but we do not know the nature of the resistance, and these small groups have isolated themselves from the rest of us. They kill anyone who approaches them, and we are loathe to take any kind of action against them, so we remain ignorant of their status.
"I had intended to make this transmission a very detailed account, but I am now exhibiting symptoms of the disease. I cannot continue. This is Rabinossa wishing you well…"
There was a short pause in the recording, and then it continued. "WARNING! DANGER! DO NOT LAND! This is Rabinossa's son, Joachim. My father died before he could complete his account. I do not know if I will be able to carry on. I do not appear to be immune; none of us on this plateau seem to be. I think I have only a few hours or days before I, too, am gone.
"We are done as a people. If you receive this transmission, I beg you not to land. Go somewhere else. Perhaps you can survive as a new people – even with your limited gene pool, but if you come here, you will surely die."
Joachim went on to record several gene sequences, and to attach a summation of their efforts to find a solution. The recording went on for about an hour, giving details and medical specifics. It ended with, "This is Joachim, son of Rabinossa. My friends are dead, my family is dead, my colleagues are dead…and I am at death's doorstep.
#
Following an overflight of the ten most populous cities of the third planet as they had existed a thousand years earlier, Merkavah settled through the atmosphere coming to rest on the rocky plain between the ocean to the west and a high mountain chain to the east that Joachim had described. It was well isolated from any forestation and there were no obvious ruins. One of the original cites the starfolk had built lay about 500 kilometers to the north on the coast. When they flew over it before landing, the city was overrun by vegetation so that it was invisible, except to a trained eye that knew where to look. They saw no obvious signs of human life. The ten city sites they had examined during their overflight were simply not there, although Ishtar, with her historian's eye, thought she could detect the outline of some street patterns in a couple. When they swooped closer, however, the patterns disappeared.
Eber was taking no chances; until they had a better handle on what had happened, he didn't want contact with anything living – at least nothing animal. One thousand years – what lasts a thousand years? The thought would not leave him although he tried to put it out of his consciousness. He ordered a routine air sample. The Resident reported that the sample was pure and uncontaminated.
"Okay…we're here," he said to the assembled clan. "We can breathe the air. Now, do we disembark or not?"
"It's been a thousand years," Azurad muttered. "What has happened to the survivors?"
"I thought we would see something at the city site," Lud commented, "something indicating any kind of civilization…anything at all…" His voice trailed off.
"They could all be gone," Vesta said. Azurad and Shakbah nodded in agreement.
"Okay, now," Eber said. "You guys are confusing me. You wanted to come, right?" Everyone nodded. "Okay…we're here." He looked from person to person. "We're here…so what do we do now?"
"You know," Azurad said quietly, "Joachim clearly warned: I beg you not to land. Go somewhere else." She smiled faintly. "So, what are we doing here?"
"I take it that means we don't go outside." Eber's statement sounded like a question. "Is that what I'm hearing?"
Tentative nods.
"But we're here. Shouldn't we investigate…something?" Eber had become the de facto leader of the clan because he had made it a point in his life to know as much as he could about everything. Engineer by training, he was the clan's generalist. Traveling all the way from the Arc to Earth without accomplishing something – even with the ease of travel supplied by Merkavah – just didn't sit right with him. "At least, let's take some samples back with us."
"And get contaminated…" Azurad's voice trailed off.
"Wear a suit." Eber sounded matter-of-fact.
"How do you decontaminate the suit?" Azurad wanted to know.
Lud added thoughtfully, "I think we should not do anything that could enable something from here to contaminate the Arc." Shakbah slipped her hand into his and nodded, shyly.
"Let's send a couple of microbots out…" Eber stopped and turned to Aram. "We did bring some, right?"
Aram nodded, his dark eyes twinkling. "We got flyers that can snip off some little branches and bring 'em back. And…we have some vacuum-capable jars to hold the samples. We can keep the storage bay open to space on our way back. That should take care of anything on the bots and jar exteriors."
"Everyone okay with that?" Eber asked.
There were no objections.
"Okay…let's get some samples and then head back."
#
Aram sat at the mail control console directing several hummingbird bots into a nearby tree stand. One-by-one the little mechanical birds snipped off small branches with a couple of leaves and brought them back to the flyer. He shifted his gaze from screen to screen as he controlled each bird in turn. "Whoa!" he said as a dark shadow whipped across one screen and the image went tumbling. "Hey! You guys…look at this!"
As the image stabilized, a bearded, human-like face peered out at them. "That," Aram said, "has my bot in its hand." An eye filled the screen as the creature peered closely at the damaged microbot. A human-like finger approached the screen and moved about, causing the image to tumble.
"He's examining the strange bird," Sarai said, showing her excitement.
Aram manipulated his controls and a second screen shifted to show the scene from above and to one side, as one of his hummingbirds flew into place.
"That's a man!" Rasu'eja exclaimed with astonishment. "Lots of hair, full beard, no sense of size…" her voice trailed off. The first screen image tumbled as the man dropped the broken bot. On the second screen the man appeared to stoop. "Look, he picked up a pointed stick, a spear." He poked his spear at the flying bot. The bot's internal guidance avoided the jab. The man slapped with his hand, but missed.
