Читать книгу The Record She Left Behind - Patrice Sharpe-Sutton - Страница 11

Karen woke in the night in her cave in Mount Lemmon and saw a pearly white face with large whitish eyes and baby-sized nose floating above her. Another lousy, baldheaded alien. Female. A quirky smile exuded ineffable sweetness. “Liar.” Karen hurled a cup of water at the vision.

Backwash splattered her pile of sleeping bags and disturbed the tarantula, whispering across rocks in its corner under the fake palm leaf. Aliens upset everybody. Karen had been dreaming of ETs since the flash floods in the valley—since she’d returned to the cave.

The face mouthed a name, Zerera.

Karen yelled. “Get out. It’s my home, you're not landing on my mountain. Don't come back.” If they were returning to Earth, why contact her? She hated aliens. They'd killed her father after they used him, luring him with their hi-tech and materials.

A scientist engineer, he’d carved this home from connecting caves in this beloved Arizona mountain, supplying it for bad times ahead. Karen switched on one of his inventions, a tubelight, grabbed the stun gun, and shot at the deceitful face till it broke up and dissipated in the light beam.

“Don’t come back.” If they did, she’d find the ship, blow it up.

Cursing sleeplessness, she tromped downstairs, hit a lever, and rattled down on a squeaky, jerky platform, and stepped onto a ledge a meter above the cavern floor. In the humidity, bat dung odor lingered in the chimney’s cracked, broken opening. There, till her neck ached and aliens were forgotten, she chiseled out rock to widen it for conduits to connect to her small energy station—a construction she’d finished during a fit of rage over ETs.

* * *

Zerera, Zer for short, who'd never thought of herself as an alien, was flying on a starship to the Milky Way. The vision of a cave woman delighted her. It dispelled misgivings about meeting barbaric Earthlings. This one welcomed her with water, the artful splash rousing Zer’s curiosity about the custom. She wanted to meet this woman. A tree biolinguist, Zer anticipated great rapport with an Earthling who lived underground with hairy spiders and plants—who would doubtless love her gift.

Suddenly, the woman levitated and smacked into a rock wall. At the same moment, the starship abruptly slowed and jerked Zer from vision. She memorized the woman’s face and ignored the levitation; the starship was crossing the outer edge of Andromeda, heading to the Milky Way; everyone knew galactic edges distorted perception.

It was mathematical. The weight of a materialized starship, plus an edge zone and velocity change added up to a dent in space fabric, plus a warped view of reality.

“Do many Earthlings live in caves?” Zer swiveled her chair toward Vatta who'd traveled a lot and visited Earth. They sat at paired consoles in the circular work hall’s south quadrant.

Vatta turned her big, bald head and smiled, the peach and blue flecks in her opalescent eyes sparkling. “Not usually. The breach will clarify it.”

“What?”

“Your vision.”

“Thanks.” Sometimes nothing beat an intuitive friend, Zer thought. She settled back in the chair, waiting for her first breach experience. Zer lived among Zenobians who revered the dark stretch between the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies. They said the breach between the Ways promoted lucid thinking.

Zer thought it a shame, considering the underground woman and her dying plant, that Earth was the last stop on the journey. The woman needed plants now, and Zer had just the gift to establish a perfect relationship: three bags of seed. Not just any seed. Exotica trees cleaned air and clarified minds and refreshed people’s spirits. Thank the stars she’d tripled her allotment for gift giving. She’d locked the two extra bags in a biolab drawer, so the pilot wouldn’t throw them out. How could he after she told him the vision? The seed promised fertile relations with aliens.

“Don’t count on it,” Vatta said, forgetting her mind-reading manners.

“What better way to prep for bi-galactic adventure?” Zer shrugged at her friend’s amused look. Vatta believed in the ancient prophecy of cultural sharing or even co-evolving with Milky Wayans, which Zer’s age group called a myth.

“What if space data prove otherwise? Will you stay?” Vatta asked, “help prepare more than a few willing Earthlings for the future?”

Zer looked out the viewscreen at darkness. She heeded the danger part of the myth. She just resisted a galactic dream kindled and tumbled down for ages after an ancient visit to Earth; Earthlings weren’t ready then to welcome Zenobians because most couldn’t imagine changing dimensions or turning invisible at whim. Those who could were outcast, burned at stakes, or hid the knowledge. Some went insane.

Still insane or barbaric. Earth was a far-flung outpost of wild people. There nineteen Earth years ago, her parents died—for sharing unknown bioconcepts.

Zer was an infant at the time, so in lieu of parents she’d never known, Exotica trees nurtured her. By five, she was changing dimensions habitually. She had to mentally detach from emotion and bodily sensations so that her body could dematerialize, changing frequencies and molecular bonds. As an invisible vibration, she’d vapor-travel and slip under a tree’s green skin. The symbiosis had brought her back to her senses more than once. “They offer sanity.”

“Please. They’re taboo. Earth people aren’t like us,” Vatta said.

“They think, don’t they? Exotica reflect people’s thoughts. What’s so terrible?”

“Those trees stir up some people’s darkest hidden thoughts. They’ll cause hallucinations,” Vatta said.

“The way we look won’t?” Zer gazed at her friend’s long, pearly fingers. When on Earth, Andromedans mostly contained their life force in third- or fourth-dimension bodies. In third-di bodies, they resembled Earthlings, except they were less muscular and short haired or hairless with slightly bigger heads and large, expressive luminous eyes. Mixed bloods often had multicolored eyes, though Zer’s were white, flecked with white.

“They’ll think you’re blind. Have you talked to your brother?”

“He’s too busy navigating.” Thankfully, Zer thought, because her foster brother mind read even better than Vatta. A pilot, he worked at the hub of their pyrid craft, one of three hundred currently interlocked with the mothership; Zer worked on the pyrid’s outer ring with the C-ring section between them, though with his gift, it didn't matter. Leon surely knew about the extra seed. So the elders had obviously lifted any taboo on establishing Exotica on Earth.

“Those trees will cause trouble. They're a threat to Earthling sensibilities,” Vatta said. Zer didn’t believe it. In the last nine years, Zer had trained some hundred saplings and never saw anyone hallucinate in their presence.

The tricky juvie stage annoyed Zenobians like Leon. A pureblood, her foster brother preferred calm and detachment, so he could study arcane cosmology. He called her a wild cultivar. Exotica trees half raised her. She came from Lilio, the island continent, whose people had bred and exported Exotica to neighboring continents for millennia. Lilios were a merry people.

Zer missed her kind. She was ten when the Lilio volcano exploded. Leon rescued her from the island and took her to his mother in Zenobia. Later, he brought her saplings to train and breed though he didn’t love and understand them as she did. For many Zenobians, the trees mainly cleansed and stabilized high radiation environments; since abundant stock and trees existed on Zenobia, few people experienced a sense of loss. With Lilios, Exotica shared humor, insight, and adventure. They did not harm others.

Vatta broke into her thoughts. “How do you expect Earthlings to cope with sentient, walking trees?”

“They don’t walk or talk. They glide, gracefully.”

“They make their thoughts known,” Vatta said.

“Happily, and clarify their companions’ thoughts.” A lunar-bright smile lit Zer’s face. The cave woman. That's why her foster brother had wanted her to come on this journey—special agent to properly introduce Exotica. “Don’t worry, Leon approves. He’s playing a trick on me.” He'd practically insisted she take this trip, calling her a clinging symbiot, dependent on Exotica. Broaden your horizons, become a bi-galactic citizen, he’d said.

Zer sighed at the dreary prospect of having to be careful. Among those high-strung Earthling people, she’d probably change dimensions constantly and end up teaching biologics from an invisible realm. Unless. If she introduced Exotica—trained so they didn’t suggest even a speck of hallucination—the trees would expand Earthlings’ perceptions by natural means. Let the people enjoy an infusion of tree thoughts. Courier of the fifth dimension, on my way. She laughed.

Leon knew she couldn’t imagine a world without Exotica. “Leon didn’t drop a single hint he wanted me to act as Exotica’s agent.” She wouldn’t let on, ruin his fun.

“You can’t possibly believe—” Vatta shot her a startled look.

Just then the ship reversed drive, swayed, and slowed, approaching the pure, wild center between the Ways. Leon and the elder were about to bless the crossing and the tree seed-cave omen.

Here at the midpoint between galaxies, voyagers stopped to perform the ancient ritual and honor a future with Milky Wayans. Supposedly, when intergalactic matter reached a density that significantly touched in the breach, Zenobians and Earthlings would explore the future together. “What do you think bi-galactic citizens will be like?”

“Curious, and messengers telling the latest on every dock,” Vatta said.

“And messenger birds in every Exotica tree.”

“You’re hopeless.”

“Let’s go see wonder woman,” Zer said.

Near the large screen on the north wall of their pyrid, they joined crewmates to watch Kalila, the only elder on the journey, perform the ritual. It was a rare privilege to have the elder of elders aboard. Elders usually stayed home and dealt with the forces and rhythms of space and celestial radiations impacting their star system. Shipshape, they called it. It helped keep everyone bathed in healthy radiations.

“She’s beautiful, for a couple hundred years old,” Zer said.

Vatta poked her. “One seventy-six. Shush.”

“Welcome.” The elder’s lilting, gentle voice resonated through the sound system.

Zer suddenly felt homesick again though she had plenty of company from home. She lived with nine crewmates in Pyrid Six, one of three hundred pyrids interlocked around the core mothership, which altogether held three thousand-and-three people. The starship resembled a giant, silvery flower. Her people loved flowers.

Zer pressed closer to the screen where she could see the ship hovering over the pure spot. There was no going back. Zer felt the flush of love and pain that went with separation and huddled with her crewmates.

Elder Kalila retrieved a thin probe, previously sent through a tiny opening in the ship’s airlock chamber into space to test for intergalactic dust. She looked amused by the results. “Not a grain. Perhaps we should seed star dust.”

Ha! It would take ages before enough collected for space travel Earthling style, Zer thought.

Voices buzzed around Zer, voyagers wondering if the elder meant it. Keepers of Harmony talked long before changing reality. The pureblooded, golden-eyed Zenobians studied the occult and metaphysics from childhood. Kalila was greatest of all. By age six, she had controlled her slightest thoughts or impulses with such exquisite sensitivity that she need not fear accidentally setting off a cosmic event. With one trill, some said, she could skip one dust mote across a continent.

The elder finished the ritual, invoking ancestral memory. “Eons ago, elders first crossing the breach heard light beings sing . . .”

Everyone knew about otherworldly Ephemerals. Their original blessing had knocked the elders senseless. They’d come-to knowing how to cast brittle iridium, the waste product of the universe, into chimes and metronomes. Sailing beyond the breach and back, they’d made, aligned, and standardized the quality of the instruments with the pure tones and rhythms of star song. In the casting process, they’d learned nuances of light. Ever since, elders had bent reality as music bent light-space.

But it was the chimes that were known, for the harmony they produced in mind and body. Chimes were traded near and far. To this end, Zenobians mined iridium, and elders kept ongoing records of heat-color vibrations of stars, planets, and other bodies in the two galaxies. They used space music to harmonize with the ceaseless motion in space and study cosmic changes.

Zer wished she'd hear the Ephemerals' song. An echo, some said, lingered in the breach.

“We thank you,” Kalila said, “for joining this mission. Your gifts will be needed during cosmic events, which will mark the end of this fifty thousand-year era.”

Zer blew a kiss. That was all the affirmation she needed for her gift of Exotica.

“We await the closing of the Ways, what many consider myth.”

Zer didn’t see how, if Earthlings used old-fashioned space travel.

“We see far ahead, for we are the Keepers of Harmony throughout Andromeda.” Elder Kalila bowed and reset the prime metronome.

Zer felt the click, clicking like a holy touch tingling down her spine. Although she wasn't pure Zenobian, she valued their evolution and history. She grasped the lure and honor of the voyage, of serving. For a moment, she knew why people willingly set off to collect songs or to help on the other side for the old ones. Many had not returned. Her parents had not.

The click-click grew louder as one pilot after another set and aligned a metronome with the beat of the prime. The volume steadily progressed to fifty synchronized beats . . . one hundred, one fifty, two hundred. . . Three hundred-and-one instruments marking time. The sheer, loud power of rhythm pervaded every nook of the ship, vibrated every cell of Zer’s being. She imagined it shook the universes. The rhythmic power hinted at the elders’ ability to bend reality, or transform things.

All but the prime metronome stopped ticking. Pilots began to ring chimes with lower or higher pitches. The different octaves of hundreds of chimes pealing in harmonic intervals produced their magical effect. Crewmates leaped into dance; Zer whirled among them to keep from exploding or imploding. A tangle of tones and bodies swept round and round the work hall.

Leon brushed against Zer, his fingers sliding up her arm. Cupping her neck, he twirled her and whispered, “Happy new world, I’ll be stalking you, the trees are taboo,” and danced away.

Zer sank into the nearest chair, wishing she’d not come. She’d never worried about taboos in Zenobia. She listened to the chimes and bells wind down ringing softly. Through the bells, she heard the choir singing, and it wasn’t her crewmates. Silken voices wrapped around her, an airy, delicate web, easing her grief at leaving home, and when they had, their music teased her fear into the open: She might not return. Her parents had not. Travelers to Earth often died or lost the way back. Zer shivered.

A high-pitched chord in the sound web tickled her brain. The voices turned velvety and slightly gritty, the texture of seed stirring in soil matrix before erupting into light. When the soothing, leafy crown of an Exotica swept her forehead, Zer surrendered and laughed at the paradox. People got what they needed in the pure, wild breach.

Only it was more mysterious. She’d been honored to hear and feel an echo of the blessing the Ephemerals had sung to the ancient Zenobian voyagers. Zerera thanked the choir and hummed along until the starship emerged from the breach and sailed onto the diamond-shaped routes in alien space. Starlight replaced fading voices.

* * *

Keeping to routine in the energy station, which her father had started, Karen pedaled faster, working up a sweat on a stationary bike, the simplest of three, to stay fit and to recharge devices. At 12 kilometers, she stopped to drink water and wipe salty sweat from her face.

When her breathing slowed, she donned head gear and moved into the old bat chimney, a vertical, broken tunnel, its base on the ledge a meter above the cave floor. It was warm and close though the interior was partly exposed at this end.

Days ago, she’d cracked and broken the chimney rock farther up in this section, using a chemical expanding agent to make the job easier.

Falling into a rhythm, she drilled, rock picked, and chiseled into cracks up the tunnel, stopping when her arms tired and sweat dribbled down her temples. It was even hotter in the narrow confines when she quit. She had less than a meter to go to reach the widened upper opening that her father, working from the top down, had in recent years drilled and blasted and, thankfully, set in a tubular light fixture. Today put her closer to fitting electric conduit to the small, backup windmill and rigging that complex to a mobile platform with photovoltaic cell modules.

She believed in her father’s predictions of bad times coming and furthered his engineering plans with a few additions of her own. Seismic graphs kept her informed of any impending big quake, and older computer sims showed potential for meteoroids or asteroids—preparations for either made worse with aliens coming.

She needed booby traps for their kind. Fist-sized crystals to jail them when they changed to 4D ghostly and 5D invisible. If obsidian worked, a motherlode of Apache tears wasn’t far. Or maybe imprisoned in blown genie glass. She smiled and started cleaning up to visit friends near Tucson, the closest place for fun when she got too lonely. Or when she couldn’t sneak past certain Tuc colony guards to visit her mom. She would find a way to rescue her mom from the rotten mayor.