Chronicle of a Tale Untold

The tale below started – and stopped – around the year 2005.

I began with grand intentions. I would pen a space adventure! Yet I fell victim to my own stated truth, which in the text below I have highlighted in red.

I found the future to be a pool too deep and endless. I made it to the end of the diving board and then got lost in the vast blue of the vision below. I lacked the nerve to hold my breath and leap.

Yet read the brief prologue and untitled chapter one – and tell me this:

Was I wise to stop? Or should I have allowed the story to work its will? Should I have shut my wary eyes and stepped forward into space?

Continue to read the chronicle of a tale untold.

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Prologue

There are no metaphors in space.

Photo courtesy of Leo Suik

 A comet is not a matchstick hissing through the night and a galaxy is not a scoop of sugar tossed against the sky.

A comet is a comet. And a galaxy is a galaxy. They are what they are. And only that.

The cold infinity of space holds no room for that other expanse of boundless dimension – imagination. Which is guided by, formed from and enslaved under its one and only master…

Language.

In the void of space, there exists no language. So there can be no metaphors.

And if – on distant planets in the far corners of space – language does exist, the question becomes, what kind? Facile tongues mannered after those on Earth? With nuanced vocabularies and hoary banks of idioms? Or something more formulaic, based on mathematics, chemistry or sound?

Or some hybrid? A space pidgin between man and machines or whatever other form the marvel of life might possibly take.

And if men on earth must communicate through lines raveled by language and culture, how much more mess might exist in the intercourse of creatures from the star-flung hamlets of the universe? Who may share spirit but not form. And certainly not similar means of articulation.

Take Dr. Akbar from Star Wars, in that galaxy far, far away, where George Lucas never even tried to handle the first hot potato of alien contact – communication. Dr. Akbar is a large, orange fish. He lacks the teeth, palate and lips necessary to make English sounds. Yet, somehow he managed.

Lucas instead held his adventure to an easier path, that of finding a happy ending. As if our cosmos could ever end.

Diction and lexicon – mere words and their alignments – have sway over right and wrong. For ethics take focus through the eyepiece of language. In all interactions of intelligent life, what is, what was, and what will be are chiseled out linguistically. The roads of endeavor, the chains of injustice, and the fireworks of victory and each interpretation thereof all come to shape through words.

Other than language, perhaps only one other factor has a more decisive influence over right and wrong: Power.

The universe doesn’t understand language. But it understands power.

Power is in all times and all places the ultimate lingua franca.

The expression “lingua franca” speaks to the very problem of describing a particular time and place far removed from the lonely orbit of our humble blue planet.

For if language is an eyepiece, it can see best in looking back. The view of the present is always distracted by current events and those forces behind them. And the view of the future is woefully limited. To describe the future with the language of the present is to build tomorrow with the tools of today. Such an undertaking works out both rough and fanciful.

So, forgive me my tools. Forgive me my idioms. Forgive me my metaphors.

For they only exist between you and I, in the shared realms of our imaginations.

Yet, in the space romance to come, let us pretend they are everywhere.

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Untitled Chapter One

The image flashed on his eye lens – a red dot pulsing in the lower right corner, meaning but one thing.

“We have an incoming ship.”

His eight-year-old son, Dax, stood alongside. The boy wore a wrap the same color as the heavens at those moments when the setting sun framed the mountains with fire and perverted the never-ending black of space into a hint of metallic blue.

A moment like now.

The heavy shade made contrast with the boy’s white face, his wings of freckles and the soft sand of his hair. He had been dead now for six years.

Viton told Dax: “I see it.”

He sat down his basket. They were in the garden, picking vegetables for the third meal. They had just begun. The basket held but one pomet, yellow-gold and ripe. He held one more in his hand. He bent and dropped it beside the other.

“One-man vessel,” said Dax. “S-class.”

Space was a vast system of ruled highways – orbits, trajectories, vectors, meridians – all interconnected through physical law and obeyed by each spinning planet, each roaring comet, and each writhing galaxy of suns. Even the rogues, the belts of fireballs, the exploding stars and the ravenous holes of gravity, offered proof of chaos being overwhelmed by order, principles defined by exceptions.

And these highways rolled on and on in light-year distances of such millennia that they stretched beyond the calculations of even the most advanced computers. All cradled within that even deeper and more impenetrable frontier – time. In this eternal ocean of sky and instance, sentient life would not measure even as a gulp of water

Distance – time – trajectory: The thought that a ship might arrive here by accident was preposterous.

“Kill him,” said Dax. “Blow him to bits.”

“Viton?” The voice of Easter, his mate. The sound flowed from the very air around them, like the sweet scent of the pomet blossoms in the garden.

“I know.”

“I know you know.”

The voice – from the kitchen? the nursery? the gym? – did not come again. It was a signal of alert.

“He is within range now.” The boy turned his face to the high multi-glass ceiling of the dome, as if his dead eyes could see what living ones could not.

“We will be within his in a little over two minutes.”

The boy could calculate. He could weigh data. But he could not make decisions.

An S-class vessel might have been launched from a parent ship beyond their scanners. Why? To draw fire?

A ship with the size to launch would have no need for diversions.

If the S-class had launched from deeper space, it might have been traveling for weeks – or longer. A survivor of some tragedy? With only one reasonable hope? This very base, named with that very name: “Hope.”

If launched from a star base? Nine months if Sub 2B14. Fourteen months if Sub 88X4. With S-class, it couldn’t be farther.

Fourteen months meant two years here. Such a traveler would have targeted this destination before Easter birthed Soralee. When Dax was but six years old and still programmed to take naps.

“Two minutes even.”

The S-class would be unable to sense their shield structure. Not until it approached closer. And it would have to approach closer still, within visual contact, before it could fire. Then, if the pilot read their grid correctly – and he didn’t miss – Viton, Easter and Soralee would die. Hope would disappear.

Not a single being in the universe would miss it. Some might wonder. Some might guess when greetings sent went unreturned. But the stories that propelled human life would continue. In some places and in some times, Viton would be alive forever.

There is no sound in space. Nor now in their garden, wide enough for Viton to fling a disk from one glass wall and have it slice through air for half a minute before floating down to settle amid the thorny bushes that graced the opposing side.

He half-cupped one ear. As if that might help. An instinctive action of humanoids, no matter their origins.

“Nothing he says will matter,” said Dax. “He is unannounced and therefore dangerous. Killing him is better. Killing him is best.”

The Unicode message arrived when the S-class reached a distance of precisely one minute and thirty seconds.

“Abel-4. Request land. Viton Hope.”

“Viton Hope” would be the purpose of the visit. They sometimes sought him out. Though less and less. And almost never – in fact only once before – did they come without introduction.

“Are you going to kill him or not?”

He instructed computer control to highlight Landing Port Five. That would require Abel-4 to maneuver.

“If the ship deviates, hesitates or makes any increase in velocity, treat it as Intruder 1.”

Words delivered gently, as if passed to a friend surveying the bounty of their garden.

“That won’t do any good. If he’s fast, he’ll still get one shot. And one shot is all he needs.”

The boy looked up with eyes so blue they made you believe. The eyes blinked.

“And can I go with you, again? Huh? Please?”

Viton would have mussed the boy’s hair. If he could.

The pilot would dock his craft. He would sit there for an hour as the Port engulfed the ship and traded atmosphere for vacuum. Once the pilot left his pod – and if he had been in there for months this would take time – he would pass through two sanitation locks.

And then he would enter the arrival chamber where he would meet Viton and Dax. Viton selected space gear – ivory ribbed wraps and steel-cleated boots, with the shine scruffy and dull as if to portray usage. They would each wear orange orbit gloves and carry their helmets in one hand.

The pilot would expect such projections. Yet, he would not know how authentic. Or the projection distance and direction.

Abel-4 requested atmospheric content compatible with their own. That didn’t mean he was human.

The port of embarkation was presented as Sub 2B14. The pilot gave his name as “Flyn.” All in Unicode.

During the detox process, the Port scanned the alien vessel. The computers whizzed, as if lasers cutting steel. Numbers and alphabet spun past in legions.

There was no ship’s log and no registration plate. Offenses that could draw prison terms – given the extreme chance of Abel-4 ever meeting an authority. The ship’s age and history were impossible to verify.

But there were – Viton knew – 112 varieties of S-class. Visual observation alone eliminated half that number. The scan would soon eliminate more. They would eventually narrow it down to one. Central recording would then provide data as to where such ships had been produced and which ships over the last – 100? No, make it 200 years – had somehow gone missing. Maybe they'd met with an asteroid. Maybe they were pirated. Central recording would list any known data. In the end, the list would include only a few dozen vessels. The first tools of any detective – even in unchartered space – were paperwork and perseverance.

Through scans, the figure inside listed as a living organism, as opposed to automated.

Height? Only slightly taller than Viton himself. Weight? Three hundred units. But Flyn would be wearing a true suit and that would create a difference.

Limbs? Four. A quadruped. No tail.

With one heart. Beating at a rate of 20 times a minute. Very low even for space travel. Not truly human then. Biologically altered. Or designed.

Age? The scan read “25.” That would be in life count. Hard to believe, considering pilot training, apprenticeship and a stated journey length of at least nine months.

“So?” asked the boy, the boy who wasn’t there. “Robotoid? Human? Another Halfer?”

There other uninvited visitor had been a Halfer. Half-human, half-shoid from Venus Four. Most likely the Halfer had managed to dock with a larger ship, maybe M-class or higher, then ate the crew and somehow vectored Viton’s location from the ship’s files.

The Halfer wore a white suit sprayed gray with dust. When he popped off his helmet, he had scales on his face that pulled back like an arrow on a bow when he smiled. He had a red comb on his head, not unlike a rooster. Triple eyelids and wet egg-white eyes.

Away from the math-based Unicode of the computer, he could not communicate. From his mouth came an unregistered pidgin of which “food” was but the only comprehensible word. It seemed he wished to be fed.

But his two-inch teeth craved meat not fruit and vegetables. The Halfer bowed to them, with his green tongue running slowly along his lips, black like oil.

Once the Halfer knew the projection was off, he didn’t hesitate. He leapt for the boy first. Not that it would have mattered. Viton had dealt with his kind before.

“What if there’s a little girl somewhere? Eight years old and cute.”

“I do not need love,” said Dax. “I need stimulation. I am insatiably curious at this age.”

“We’ll hold her then for five years or so.”

“Are you afraid? After the Halfer? I never get afraid.”

“I know. And yes, I’m afraid. Don’t I look it?”

“You look like you always look.”

They went silent as the entrance panel on Abel-4 suddenly began to rise. This shouldn’t happen yet. The pilot should require longer detox. He should not yet be able to stand. His knees would give way, he could fall; his flesh, weakened and atrophied from travel, might even rip from his bones – which could shatter.

“That settles that. Not human.”

“Maybe he’s after air. His equipment might be failing. It happens.”

True enough, when the figure named Flyn appeared in the

hatchway – in a liver-ribbed suit – his first action was to claw up at the ruby helmet on his head. The monitor showed the hurried motions of his hands as their visitor punched at the helmet controls. The man wobbled on his feet. The monitor beep-beep-beeped.

And then the helmet peeled off.

“He looks human.”

He did. As human as anyone. With hair the calm color of the cornstalks that Easter sometimes dried for decorations. A blunt nose, thick but not fat. Slack cheeks, with no beard. A jaw and chin neither round nor sharp – rather instead indistinct. In fact, that word – indistinct – might serve to describe Flyn in total.

Except for his eyes. Which were beads of deep brown set well under his brows. That in itself not so unusual. But the eyes did not blink; they roved.

As if gunsights.

The indistinct man Flyn sucked air in gulps.

“Sit. You must sit. Sit and rest.” This, Viton announced in Unicode via speaker.

Flyn smiled – indistinctly. Straight teeth, mostly white. Far from two-inches long. The eyes softened. He raised his gloved hands as if being covered by a weapon.

“Sit down. Or you’ll regret it.”

The figure gripped the retracted door panel for balance. He spoke. Central Code, the primary code of the universe.

“Thank you. Thank you for letting me land.” The voice cracked part way.

“You’d better sit down because you are going to be sick.”

Instead, Flyn stepped from the doorway.

“And if you do that you will fall.”

But he took two steps, three.

“No,” said Dax. “Not human.”

And then Flyn collapsed. Not in one motion. He sank on a knee and then rolled to his right, extending his arm to break his fall on the alloyed platform.

An instructive movement. So thought Viton, the detective.

Flyn turned on his side. And vomited. Pasty fluid shot from his mouth. He vomited again and again. He vomited eleven times. Until the heaves turned dry and he clutched his sides as he wretched. The sound made Viton’s own stomach contract in compassion. Somewhere, before her monitor, Easter would be turning her head and that of Soralee.

Flyn lay his face in his own slime, puke still dripping in a slippery line from his lips and chin. His heaves stopped, but his whole body trembled.

“It feels,” Flyn said, “so very good to be here.”

Viton noted on the monitor that Flyn’s heartbeat had never exceeded 22.

Dax, the boy who was not a boy, looked at Viton.

“What are you waiting for? Kill him.”

©Thomas Noah Wood