First to Dance (26 page)

Etana
prepared everything as quickly as she could. It was 11:30 now and she would be ready to depart in a few minutes. It seemed that Timothy had already done most of the work for her.
No,
she told herself,
no, he didn’t get the spaceship ready for
me
. He already had it ready in case he needed it himself.

She left, and for three months she was the loneliest she’d ever been.
She was all alone and did not even have herself to talk to. For most of her life, it was Etana’s habit to speak her thoughts to herself. She felt that she could process things better when she heard her thoughts being spoken. But now, even though she was alone, she knew she wasn’t the only one who would hear her thoughts. So she kept them inside. Occasionally she would sing a song or say something inconsequential, just to be sure that her voice still worked, but aside from that, she was silent and alone.

The closer she got to Earth the
more unsure she became.
What was I thinking? It’s against my nature to face a confrontation the way I’m planning to on Earth. I can’t talk to a group of strangers about all of this. What will I say? How will I convince them that this is important? I wouldn’t even speak up on Zozeis, so how can I expect now to do any differently once I arrive on Earth? What if I can’t do it? What if the words don’t come? I don’t even know what life is like on Earth anymore. A lot can happen in 60 years. I might not even recognize the place.
Earth might not even be there anymore.

But her fears were calmed by inner determination that this time she would do what
ever it took to succeed. There was too much at stake if she failed, and nothing to look forward to if she didn’t try. She would silence her fears and open her voice. No more would she hold all her thoughts inside. Timothy Azias was wrong about many things, but he was right about at least one: Etana was brilliant, and the solutions she came up with would be valuable if she voiced them.

The problem was that when she finally arrived on Earth, no one wanted to listen.
The media got people excited when she first arrived, but the public quickly lost interest in the topics of concern that she raised. She was telling them about problems taking place on planets they’d never heard of, involving people who would most likely be dead by the time she returned. The government officials she spoke with consistently told her it was out of their jurisdiction. They plainly stated that those planets were Dr. Azias’s domain; he discovered them and funded the project with his own money, which he now earned by bringing precious minerals and elements back from the planet Azias. They could cut off his funding by refusing to purchase from him, but they had no other source for the materials they needed from him, and even if they did cut off his funds he was self-sufficient now without that income. His buildings and spaceships were built, and nearly everything he had was solar-powered. Besides, he was providing jobs for people who had nothing and needed everything.  They flew with him to Azias on work contracts, and returned home about seventy years later with enough money in the bank that they could afford their own living expenses, and enough experience gained that they could find a decent job if they wanted to. It seemed that everyone was happy about this situation except for the people whose lives Dr. Azias was controlling.

Etana
stayed on Earth for six months and tried to make her point, but the most she was able to get were plentiful gifts from generous people. They filled up her spaceship as much as they could with clothes and books to give to those living on Zozeis and the other planets. Etana thanked everyone for their kindness and reluctantly set out for Zozeis again, but she wasn’t yet sure what she would do when she got there.

When
Etana landed on Zozeis at about 3 o’clock one morning, the door of the spaceship opened to reveal a smiling Timothy with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. Etana burst into tears when she saw him. She went to the bedroom with him to get it over with, but all he did was tuck her into bed and kiss her on the cheek.  He left the flowers for her on the night stand and went out of the room. When she woke up, he was gone. Etana went to the computer to catch up on everything that happened after she left.

The people had only gotten worse. Everyone she knew was dead, but their children were all following in their footsteps. Aaron was a grandfather now, and his two grandchildren were living with him and his wife. Their mother, Aaron’s daughter-in-law, had started telling them stories about a planet called Earth, and Aaron declared that no one would teach such lies and nonsense to his grandchildren. They were still allowed to see their father, but not their mother, who spent her days alone in the house because no one would associate with her anymore.
Etana sobbed as she read the story. She didn’t know how to help these people without turning back the clock.

It took a long time, but
Etana carried every package of clothing and books through the forest and left them in a pile among the trees about twenty feet from the park. When everything was there, she waited until nightfall, and then moved it all out into the town. She left one package by every house where children lived, not in front of the house where the adults would see it but on the side where playing children would be likely to find them. She also left packages scattered throughout the park and under the park benches. Then she returned to the space center and slept until morning.

Etana
watched the computer all the next day and read as the children discovered the hidden packages. Younger children excitedly told their parents about them, but several of the older children kept the packages a secret. They hid to read the books about Earth and then tried to hide the books. The adults were in a frenzy wondering how this could have happened and called a town meeting to discuss where the books and clothes might have come from. They agreed that it was okay to keep the clothes, but destroyed every book that they discovered. Only a few parents helped their children conceal the books and told them that they shared the belief.

Etana
smiled slightly and thought that maybe this was the answer. She could make trips to Earth and back and bring them books and other items from Earth. Maybe she could even leave handwritten letters for the people telling them more about their ancestry. She could bring a camera next time and take pictures to show the people on Earth how everyone was living on Zozeis. Perhaps photographs would produce more empathy for the humans living on other planets. Eventually, maybe, she could make an impact big enough to change the direction this society was headed.

The spaceship
Etana arrived in needed to charge, but the other one was fully charged, so Etana prepared it for Earth and left the next morning about 4am.  She’d been in the spaceship for less than twenty minutes when a small screen popped up on the computer, alerting her that her course had changed. The spaceship was now traveling to a planet called Adonia.

Timothy was waiting for her when she arrived, and she was mad at him.

“Why did you bring me here?” she asked. “I was going to Earth. You told me I could go wherever I wanted to go, whenever I wanted to.”

“You didn’t fulfill your end of the deal when we were on
Zozeis.”

“You didn’t ask me to. You passed it up; now let me go to Earth.”

He stepped forward and touched her cheek. “You looked tired,” he said. “But I can see that you’re more rested now.” He leaned forward to kiss her, but she pushed him away.

“No,” she said, “I won’t. I didn’t come here intentionally, so this doesn’t count. The agreement was that I would do it when we crossed paths, but this isn’t crossing paths—this is coercion.”

In that moment he set his heart on conquering her--bringing her to worship him as he worshipped himself.  He smiled at her and shrugged his shoulders. “Very well,” he said. “I should be back here in about six months. Let me know then if you’ve changed your mind.” He went to the bedroom to sleep, and Etana walked laps around the spaceships angrily. When he came out of the bedroom he winked at her, and then he prepared a half-charged spaceship for launch. As soon as he left, Etana went to the bedroom and tried to sleep, but it felt like there were bugs crawling on her to be lying in the same bed that Timothy had. There were no bugs of course, but her mind kept telling her that this bed was dirty and she shouldn’t sleep here. Instead, she curled up in a space on the floor, where she was able to fall asleep instantly.

When she woke the next morning, it dawned on her that it wasn’t realistic to spend the next six months here in the space center.
She had food and running water, but she needed human contact, too. She would have to go into the town and talk to people if she wanted to stay sane. The three month journey to Earth was maddening enough. Six months without human contact would be much worse. But then she shook her head at herself. It would be more than six months. She wasn’t letting Timothy touch her again. She might be here for the rest of her life. She wondered what the people would be like here. She wondered what to expect. But when she sat down at the computer, she found that she could not access anything. Her access was completely denied. She couldn’t read the history of the people here before meeting them. She had no idea what kind of people were on this planet.

When she s
tepped outside the space center she saw that to her left there was a forest and to the right a very long stretch of flat land. It was just like on Zozeis except the hill seemed smaller here. Etana started walking up the hill and through the trees, hoping that this was the right direction to go in so she could find the people. She wasn’t sure what she would say when she found them, but hopefully the people here still knew about Earth, and maybe they wouldn’t find it
too
shocking to think that someone was visiting from another planet.

What she found was that the people here were exactly the opposite of the people on
Zozeis. They were very welcoming, very friendly, and they seemed to be living together in peace, though they weren’t without their problems. They were not particularly deep thinkers for the most part, and they also were not very goal-oriented or responsible. They had ambitions but quickly became distracted away from them, and so things did not get done here the way they did on Zozeis. The people came up with great ideas, but they didn’t stick with them long enough to make anything happen. The houses were not being maintained very well, and while they managed to grow and gather food, they neglected the more tedious chore of growing, picking, spinning and weaving cotton to produce more clothes and blankets for their growing population. For this reason, several of the couches inside the homes had actually been torn apart and the upholstery used to make clothing.

Once they noticed
Etana, they treated her as a sort of novelty and found it exciting that she would come to visit. She did not tell them the details of how she came to be here, or where the space center was, but she did tell them about her trip to Earth once she discovered that they were not at all shy about the topic. None of the original immigrants to Adonia were still alive, but their grand-children and great-grandchildren all seemed to know the story of how they came to be here. It was a culture shock after having spent so much time on Zozeis with people of the opposite mindset.

Etana
moved into a one bedroom house that no one was using, and it wasn’t long before she started to feel at home on this planet. Everyone was everyone’s friend, here, and she felt like she was a part of a large family. But the irresponsibility bothered her greatly, and she wondered how long the society could go on like this. She tried to do her part by planting cotton and encouraging others to help with the task of producing more clothing. She couldn’t believe they would neglect this, but even when they did grow and pick the cotton, they wouldn’t do the work to spin it into yarn and knit it into clothes.  It took too long and they found it quite boring. They didn’t seem to think ahead enough to realize that, boring or not, this wasn’t something they could keep putting off.

So
Etana lived for six months on Adonia. She involved herself in the community, made friends, and indulged in watching babies for new mothers, which helped ease the sadness of having lost her own son. She also took on far more than her share of the responsibility in the town, and frequently found herself washing clothes that weren’t hers or weeding the gardens because no one else would.

The houses were all the same here as they were on
Zozeis, including the fact that none of them had locks on the doors. On Zozeis people always knocked before entering, but here people seemed to come and go as they pleased. At first it was stressful for Etana, but over time she became used to it, so when her door opened one night and someone entered her house, it didn’t seem too unusual to her. The only thing strange about it was the time of night that they were entering.  Because of the time, she worried that something was wrong, that someone was hurt and needed help. She jumped out of bed and went into her living room, where she found Timothy.

His face brightened when he saw her, and he held out a neatly wrapped gift in his hand.
“I brought you a present,” he said.

She didn’t know what to say to him. She’d tried to forget about him and didn’t really expect to see him again. She was making her life here and not planning to leave. Didn’t he know she was through with their agreement?

She silently took the package from him and opened the box to find a digital camera. She knew she’d thought about wanting one, but she didn’t remember speaking about it. Did she say something about this to one of the people while she was here? It was unnerving that he could know so much about her without spending any time with her.