In the Shadow of the Stars
by J. F. Sebastian
|
Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
Looking at the gaunt shape securely fastened to the operating table of the Thanaku’s medical room, its body now attached to various tubes and probes, Rhea tried to dismiss the stories she had heard as a child and used her Memory-Link to retrieve some basic facts about humans.
Terrestrial bipeds, humans were closely related to a species of apes from their native planet but had enlarged brains and reduced hair coverage on most parts of their bodies. Even though this adult specimen was smaller than Rhea herself, she also learned that, more than any known sentient species, humans showed strong variations in body size, proportions and pigmentation. More importantly, humans were supposed to be extinct, having been eradicated because of some complex viral mutation that had turned them feral, although she had heard other stories.
“Is it alive?” Abaktas asked Iruyj through his breathing apparatus.
Intensely focused on the ship’s outdated equipment, the Thanaku’s cook (and occasional medic) didn’t bother to respond.
Rhea looked at the creature and its long hair cascading in a tangle around the operating table. Its eyes were closed but Rhea couldn’t tell if it was dead, unconscious or asleep. She felt her skin crawl with anxiety, but also with awe for she couldn’t ignore how closely that human resembled her. She had, of course, seen pictures and films, but they were not a match for the real thing.
Hello, human... What were you doing out there, locked in that box? Did someone put you there against your will? Rhea thought, resisting the temptation to touch the creature.
It seemed frail, weak and somehow ancient like the Elders on Vör, probably because of the intricate, script-like tattoos that covered its face and body.
Some 200 years alone in that crate... I hope you slept that whole time. I can’t imagine what you must’ve been through.
“As far as we can tell, it seems to be in some sort of dormant state,” Katu, the ship’s AI, suddenly said through Iruyj’s mouthpiece. “We’re giving it calorie-rich liquid intravenously and managing its temperature.”
“And why the hell are we doing that? We should destroy it. Now!” Jer said, his various arms crossed and his body, now free of the suit, visibly tense.
“Why?” Abaktas replied. “No one has seen a human for at least two hundred years, Jer. I’m sure we could get a good price for it.” He walked around the table, looking at his prize with a grin almost too big for his breathing mask.
“Cap’, seriously. Even dead it would still fetch a fair price,” Jer said.
Vikta suddenly appeared in the room, chewing on some little insect-like creature with long legs.
“Jer’s right, Captain. , and’t think we should revive it. There is a reason those things had to be eradicated,” the deckhand said, picking something twitchy from between teeth.
Abaktas rolled his eyes and took a step back, leaning against a counter. “I think you’re both mixing facts and myths. Humans were nothing to be afraid of. If anything, eradicating them was an act of mercy. Look how broken this one seems to be. What do you think it can do to us?”
“Don’t you remember the stories?” Jer said, raising an eyebrow, “What they did to each other and other species? To others like us? Have you forgotten what some of them were capable of?”
Abaktas shrugged. “Oh come on, Jer! They’re just stories. Everyone needs another species to blame for whatever is wrong with their side of the galaxy. You, of all people, should know that.”
“Well, whatever this one can do — or not — , and’t want to find out. It simply shouldn’t be revived,” Jer said.
Abaktas walked towards the engineer and put his slick hands on Jer’s wide, boulder-like shoulders. “Think about it, Jer: that thing may be one of the last humans in the universe. The only thing it can do is make us rich!”
“Really? Who would want such an ugly thing” Iruyj suddenly said to no one in particular, its fingers still fiddling with the medical apparatus.
Rhea remained silent. Looking at the human lying there, exposed and fragile, she tried to imagine what it would feel like to be the last of her kind, but had to push the sudden burst of pain and sadness away, for it reminded her too much of her life at the orphanage. She tried to imagine what the human would think if it were to wake up among such diverse forms, and thought about the day Jer had found her hiding on the ship. She remembered vividly how he had brought her in front of the crew and how lost she had felt, how confused and shocked by their alienness. She also remembered feeling their doubts and disgust at the shape of her, a shape quite similar to the one they were now arguing about.
How irrational our fear of what is different. And yet, looking at you, it is not fear that I feel.
As her own feeling of unease grew, she pushed it away to focus on the Thanaku’s crew, slightly opening her receptors to try to anticipate what might happen next, just as she had been taught to do. Vikta, focusing on their own sucker-like fingertips, was as much of a blur as Iruyj was a blank, but she could already feel the dissension between Jer and the captain.
Fear and repulsion, hope and temptation she felt, keeping her prying to a minimum.
“Well, even if it is, indeed, the last one in the universe,” Katu’s voice suddenly said, to no one in particular, “one might wonder why it was out here, and why it was locked in that crate.”
“Weren’t you listening?” Jer said, his voice now booming louder than Rhea had ever heard him speak. “Because it is dangerous, and because nobody would come looking for it in such a godforsaken place, ”
She took a step forward, fighting off her nervousness and, again, the temptation to touch the human. “Or maybe it was smuggled out of where it came from,” she said. “Maybe somebody was trying to save it.”
“And what? It survived dormant in a locked crate for two hundred years? I checked, Rhea: normal humans couldn’t do that,” Jer said, his eyes fixed on the creature.
Nobody spoke for a while, and Rhea’s mind wandered back to the wreck and to the container.
“Or maybe somebody was trying to cast it into the black hole,” she whispered. But why would anyone want to do such a terrible thing?
“Why? Humans are fragile. They don’t have your thick skull, Rhea, a blow to the head would have been enough. I can show you if you want,” Jer said, taking a blunt object from a nearby counter. Rhea took a step back, shocked by the engineer’s irrational attitude and chaotic emotions.
“You will do no such thing,” Abaktas said, his voice suddenly commanding despite the mask covering his face. “We have to talk to the rest of the crew first. Then we’ll have to figure out where it came from.”
“Cap’, I don’t think—” Jer started.
Rhea didn’t hear the rest. An intense jet of blue cold fear passed through her as she saw the human’s face twitch.
“Captain?” she said, but no one listened to her.
I must be going crazy. Rhea widened the range of her empathic receptors, probing for nearby emotions and feelings. What she first detected was a faint and almost ghostly pulsation of alien emotions coming from the human. Opening herself more, she started to recognize some of them as they emerged and took form within the creature’s consciousness: confusion, longing, loneliness and something like the shape of a delicate blue and gold flower opening slowly after a long period of cold.
In spite of herself, Rhea’s mind responded with crisp images enhanced by strong sensual memories, just like the ones she would have shared with those of her kind:
Icy, moonless evening,
Pale LED light,
Smell of paperbark and mildew,
Scurrying frost-beetles in the dark corners
Of the orphanage’s library.
The face twitched again slightly, and Rhea almost yelped. She knew she had to tell the others about it, yet she was instinctively worried about what might happen to the human if she did.
Don’t wake up... Keep your eyes closed... she thought, feeling her body tense up.
The face twitched again, and the eyes seemed to roll under the eyelids.
The moment she looked up from it she knew it was too late, for Abaktas was looking down at the table, his slick face expressing something akin to a frown. “Jer, don’t move a muscle. It’s a direct order,” he said.
“What? Oh no. No way,” the engineer said, grabbing the blunt object again.
Rhea felt distant bursts of fear coming from her captain, Jer and even Vikta. She tried to close her mind against the sudden onslaught of violent emotions, but her feet got tangled in something and she lost her balance, hitting the operating table.
The human suddenly opened its eyes wide, tried to scream and started to wiggle feebly against the restraints. To her horror, Rhea noticed that it didn’t have any teeth, and that its tongue appeared to have been cut. She yelped and fell to the floor as her empathic receptors were suddenly flooded by feelings of physical torture, loss and oppression. Unable to sever an empathic connection for which she had not been prepared, Rhea struggled to breathe and started to see waves of darkness dancing at the edges of her vision.
“Rhea? What’s happening?” Abaktas said, alarmed.
“It’s her receptors! That... thing is doing this to her!” Jer yelled.
As the world around her turned to a muffled blur, Rhea suddenly felt something akin to a new twinge of emotion coming from the human. A twinge that strangely felt like a longing. A need to connect with someone or something.
For some reason unknown to her, and despite warnings wriggling at the back of her consciousness, Rhea trusted this feeling of longing, trusted the human creature because, somehow, it just felt... right.
She tried to stay conscious as she felt hands trying to pull her away from the foot of the operating table. “N-No, please...” she managed to mutter, trying to grab on. She didn’t want to let go of the table for she was now terrified of what the crew would do to the human if she did.
But as she heard more sounds of struggle and whimpers of pain coming from the operating table, the human’s longing suddenly turned into fear, and Rhea felt her connection with it suddenly weaken. No, please don’t...
She felt someone kneel next to her, shaking her and calling her name. She then heard more panicked voices, impossibly distant. She tried to get up but, pummelled by the chaos of emotions of feelings coming from the sentient beings around her, Rhea realized that she couldn’t even ask the crew to leave the human alone.
Then, for maybe a second, Rhea thought she heard words echoing in her mind, although she didn’t need to understand them to know what they meant. Someone needed help. Her help. It was followed by a sudden, but brief, burst of sadness, like a powerful sob.
Then came the flash of something she could recognize: a bolt of anger she immediately associated with Jer.
Then there was nothing.
Where Rhea had felt a connection, there was now darkness and loneliness until, out of that darkness, came Jer’s voice, glazed in the warm glow of pride and relief.
“See? I was right after all: a blow to the head is all it takes... It’s okay Rhea, you’re safe now.”
But Rhea didn’t answer.
“Rhea? Come on, wake up,” the engineer said, his voice suddenly flushed with worry.
Minutes passed. Her friends called her name and encouraged her to open her eyes, but Rhea wouldn’t respond for she didn’t want to see what they had just done to the last human alive. All she wanted to do was to be left alone so that she could curl up and cry, before she could sleep and forget about the universe, its indifferent stars and murderous sentient beings.
She then felt Jer’s huge hands pick her up from the floor, and she was filled by his worry and his affection for her but, this time, it didn’t make her feel better.
“It’s okay, kid, I got you...”
Unable to fathom the depths that had just seemed to open within, Rhea let herself be taken back to her room, in a little alcove of the ship where she could be alone again. Alone as she always had been and, she now feared, as she always would be.
Copyright © 2021 by J. F. Sebastian
