Transcendental (20 page)

Meanwhile my father attempted to convince the Sirians that we needed to talk to their superiors—it was no use talking to the Xifora, whose suspicions would not let them consider us as anything but threats. After lengthy delays, my father finally was taken to Hell and allowed to meet the Dorian in charge. His name was Noldor, and he listened to my father’s explanation that humans were a technologically advanced, peace-loving species that deserved to be treated like all other civilized intelligent creatures.

Noldor listened patiently and said, “No.”

*   *   *

My father returned to our ship and continued his studies and his teaching and his efforts to communicate with our guards. He made friends with one of the Sirians—if the concept of friendship is applicable to Sirians—and persuaded him to take to Noldor a message he had recorded in Galactic Standard. The message contained music, poetry, art, and performances of dance and drama, all from our shipboard library, as well as my father’s commentary on human history, philosophy, and civilization.

He waited. Nothing happened for a cycle, while we children grew older, bigger, and wiser in the ways of the galactics. And then Noldor gave my father a second audience and said that humans would be allowed to petition the council.

That period we celebrated.

The next period we returned to our customary condition of despair when Noldor selected our human ambassador: my thirteen-year-old brother, Pip. Pip was taken away, casting imploring glances over his shoulder at me and the other children and my father, who was protesting in broken Galactic that Pip was only a child and not a proper ambassador. Nobody listened.

Many periods later Pip returned. He had not been harmed but was often sickened by
Adastra
food that had become contaminated by alien carelessness. He was always frightened. He had been questioned by aliens of many different kinds about Earth and humans and our history and literature and folk tales—particularly folk tales. He told them, he said, that he had been born aboard a generation ship and knew only what he had been told and that he did not speak or understand their language well, but they kept pestering him with the same questions. When his answers differed they would pounce, and ask him to explain. Some of the aliens seemed gentle and understanding; some of them, brusque and contemptuous. He learned to suspect the gentle and understanding ones.

“They don’t like us,” Pip said. “I did the best I could.”

We all assured him that he had done well, though my father told me privately that he was afraid the council was preparing a case against humanity. He renewed his request that he be allowed to represent our group—and, perhaps, all humanity—before the council. “It is a terrible responsibility to represent all humanity,” he said to me, “but someone must do it, and circumstances have chosen me. You’ll understand that someday.”

A cycle later his request was finally granted. He would be allowed to petition in person for an audience. He boarded the next alien supply ship headed back to the Galactic Council planet. We did not see him again for three full cycles. Meanwhile I grew into womanhood, and boys and a few grown men began to look at me differently. Ren continued our instruction but was increasingly involved in research of his own, which he kept concealed from our guards and even from his students. But he could not hide it from me.

Finally my father returned, looking older and tireder. The Galactic Council world, he told us, was a rabbit warren of officials whose sole function was to maintain their positions by making as few decisions as possible. His time there had been one bureaucratic frustration after another. He had been passed from office to office, repeating in virtually identical phrases his need to address the council, or, if that was impossible, someone in authority. Some of the bureaucrats pretended not to understand his attempts at Galactic. Others simply offered the equivalent of a shrug and sent him to another office. Each encounter left him further from his goal than before. He might, he thought, spend the rest of his life being shunted here and there.

His only comfort was the company of other aliens of many different species and origins who were in the same situation, petitioning for acceptance into the galactic community, and suffering the same indignities.

Then Ren came to my father and disclosed that he had been able to break into council computer files. “What does that mean?” my father asked.

“I have downloaded their navigation charts,” Ren said. “We can use their nexus points to open up the galaxy for humanity. Humans need no longer be primitive plodders. We can be the equal of any galactic.”

“Only if we can get the charts back home,” my father said, his face resuming the dejection that had become its constant expression. “And we are prisoners.”

Ren, too, looked dejected.

A cycle later my father was summoned before the council.

*   *   *

Our classes continued. Other instructors picked up my father’s classes, though none of us were in the mood for study. Ren continued his secretive research, looking more frantic and more haggard every period. When, finally, my father returned, they both seemed like old men, though my father was only middle-aged and Ren was ten years younger.

By this time I was mature—or thought I was—and I was allowed to overhear their conversation in the most secret of human locations, that is, in the midst of a babble of childish chatter. We did not think our captors had learned any human languages, but my father wanted to take no chances.

Ren was in love with me, and I thought I was in love with him, although it may have been only sympathy for his plight and admiration for his dedication, and the influence of his position as my teacher. He had taught me well, including skills as a navigator that I had no reason to believe I would ever be able to use.

“You’ve got to escape,” my father said.

“What happened?” Ren asked.

“The council is preparing for war with humanity. They’re using our own revelations against us.”

“Pip?” I asked.

“He was only a child,” my father said. “But I should have known better.”

“What did you tell them?” I asked.

“I told them nothing. It was the documentary I foolishly prepared for them, particularly our poetry, our art, our drama, even my own commentary on history and civilization—all based on conflicts resolved by conciliation or rationality or love or recognition of common humanity, but often by force. They picked out the violent parts and said humanity was not only unfit for galactic membership but a danger to galactic civilization.”

“We’ll have to prepare,” Ren said, looking even more haggard.

“No time,” my father said.

“The Xifora are beginning to act more paranoid,” I said. “I’ve heard them talk about the best way to kill a human. Most of them prefer knives, but a few talk of poison.”

Ren suddenly looked decisive. “We’ll do it just before the next sleep period, when the current guards are leaving and the new ones haven’t arrived. Asha,” he said to me, “you get the children together. You,” he said to my father, “organize the adults. I have developed a virus that will shut down their computers. The cells will open on Hell below. Everything will go dark. We will sneak away before they know we are gone.”

“I’m staying,” my father said.

“You won’t have a chance when they find us gone,” we said. “And even if they allow you to live, you won’t have any food.”

“There are the gardens on the
Vanguard,
” he said.

We could not argue him out of his belief that a human had to remain behind to confront the council and to exhaust every possibility of making peace. He had a misplaced confidence in the power of rational persuasion. We knew the aliens better, but we also knew that our chances of a successful escape were nearly zero. Whether we stayed or went probably didn’t matter.

But we succeeded. The galactics, as always, had underestimated human intelligence, ingenuity, and determination. As soon as the guards left and before the new shift arrived, Ren released his virus. Everything galactic stopped. We got the
Adastra
’s engines going again and drifted away before our departure was noticed, Hell awoke, our escape was discovered, and the race began.

Ren was masterful. He downloaded his stolen navigation charts into the computer, guided the ship to the nearest nexus, and initiated a Jump as skillfully as if he had been doing it forever.

We knew we would be pursued, and by our third Jump we saw a fleet of alien vessels emerge behind us. Ren packed half the crew and all of the children except me—I no longer considered myself a child and refused to go—into an escape vessel, programmed it to return to Earth by the quickest route, gave the senior officer a copy of the galactic navigation charts, and at the next Jump let it precede us by a fraction while we led our pursuers farther out onto the spiral arm. It wasn’t until many cycles later that I learned about the war and then, much later, that the vessel had reached Earth with its precious cargo and its vital message. We kept only a single Jump ahead of the galactic fleet that was as intent on recovering the charts as it was on recovering us. The council had discovered Ren’s theft.

It was then Ren made his fateful decision. We had reached the final nexus when he pointed us into the Great Gulf.

“Where are you going?” I asked. By this time I was checking Ren’s calculations and performing the navigation when he was not on duty.

“Where they’ll never follow us,” he said.

“But that’s no better than suicide,” I said.

“I’ve found an ancient chart,” he said.

“How do you know it’s any good?”

“Why would it be hidden away like that—inside another chart that’s older than the galactics’ recorded history? It’s like a treasure map.” Ren’s eyes were glowing, and I was suddenly afraid of him.

And we headed into the unknown.

*   *   *

You know how it went. You’ve experienced the same thing, including the nexus points that were off by a fraction. Ren said that the charts were so old that the white hole had drifted away from its coordinates. Those were not intentional inaccuracies. But the
Adastra
made it through as the
Geoffrey
will, and reached the other spiral arm.

We were almost out of fuel, and headed for a nearby solar system. We scooped up hydrogen from a gas giant. Ren led a landing party to an Earth-like planet to check our location and make contact with possible aliens. We found only ruins of what had once been an advanced technological civilization, probably older than that of any of the galactics and perhaps far older. But walls were still standing after hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of cycles. Our scientists said they were made of virtually indestructible materials that they had never seen before, even among the galactics, but the ruins were overgrown with vegetation and overrun with curious alien insects and pests never seen in our spiral arm. Many of them, like the creepy depictions on some standing walls, were vaguely arachnoid.

And then, while we were studying the ruins of what seemed like the planet’s largest city, we were attacked by larger spiderlike creatures. We lost half a dozen of our crew before the rest of us made it back to the lander and to the safety of the
Adastra.

Most of the crew wanted to head back to our own spiral arm, but Ren said the galactics would be waiting for us. And, he said, he had found on the wall of what he took to be an official structure depictions of adjoining star systems, and one that seemed bigger and brighter than the others. That must be, he thought, the center of government of the local systems, and maybe of the entire spiral arm.

“Who knows what discoveries we might find there,” he said, his eyes alive again and his figure once more upright and vigorous. “Intact civilizations. Technology. Maybe even allies against the galactics.”

“And maybe dangers we can’t even imagine,” Syl said. “Maybe the arachnoids of this system, only larger and deadlier.”

Ren prevailed, as he usually did, particularly when he announced that the nexus points we had followed to this point included coordinates for the next stage. Ren was right: the planet we reached was at least a regional center. But Syl was right, too. The arachnoids were larger and deadlier. I don’t know what happened to the crew left on the
Adastra,
but the rest of our party was wiped out in savage battle. Only Ren and I fought our way into what seemed to be the major city still standing in relative splendor, pursued by creatures even bigger than those that had attacked shortly after our landing, and determined to kill us. We fought them until, finally, we reached an intact building that looked as if it might be a refuge. Ren held them off at the door while I escaped and found at the far end something like a shrine. I thought I could hide there until Ren joined me. But I must have activated something because I awoke in a remote room on a remote planet of our own spiral arm.

Everything that brought us to this time and place has happened as a consequence. I found myself as you find me now: healthier than I have ever been, stronger, smarter, more capable—it’s as if all of my potential as a person has been released from bondage. I made my way to civilization. I picked up the alien language very quickly, but I was a bit slower about understanding the implications of my own experiences. I revealed more than I realized, and the stories about my appearance and my unguarded accounts of my experience before I learned better got garbled into the religious mythology called transcendentalism and rumors about a Transcendental Machine and a Prophet.

I’m the Prophet. The Transcendental Machine is real, as you will soon discover.

Trials and tribulations await us.

I told you on the climber that I could take care of myself. I can. But I can’t take care of everybody else, and I can’t get us to where we want to go without help.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Asha stirred in Riley’s arms.

“What happened to Ren?” Riley asked.

“I don’t know—probably dead.”

“What happened to your father?”