—Timothy Zhin-Po, Night Thoughts
Alex had also noticed the winged statue in the director’s office. He was hoping they might be induced to offer it to us. So he decided to provide the opportunity when he next saw Viscenda, which was outside on the deck. We were sitting out with a couple of the herdsmen and a teen worker, enjoying an unseasonably warm afternoon, when she came in from a tour of the greenhouses. He commented on how beautiful it was. And that the figure appeared to be a goddess. “I’ve noticed that most of the rooms have a sketch of her.”
Viscenda glanced at the teen, inviting him to answer. “She is Allyra,” he said. “Not a goddess.”
“At least,” added Turam, who’d just come out behind us, “not in the usual sense.”
“Who is she, then?”
Turam explained that she represented free thought. Free inquiry.
“In her presence,” said Viscenda, “no dogma is safe. In her time, she stood almost alone against those who claimed to know how we should behave, how we should live, and who should be running things. She is the relentless enemy of certainty.”
“She’s a mythical figure, of course,” said Turam. “But she represents what the community stands for.”
Nobody suggested that we could keep her, but when we were alone, Alex commented that he thought the seed had been planted.
It wasn’t easy to sleep on Echo III. The planet turned too slowly, so the nights and days were too long, and we never really made the adjustment. I was falling asleep after dinner, and wide-awake before the sun came up. The following day I was asleep by midafternoon, and awake a couple of hours after midnight. The community had a system for keeping time, and they had windup clocks, but I was never sure what time it was.
We were both asleep in the middle of the afternoon when Belle called. “I didn’t want to take a chance on waking Alex,” she told me, “because I know he’s still in some pain.”
“Thanks, Belle. What do you have?”
“The crater Alex asked about?”
“Yes. You found it?”
“It’s almost halfway around the world from your present location. It is at thirty-five degrees north latitude, in a jungle area. It looks recent. Probably made within the last half century.”
“How big?”
“Its diameter is approximately five and a half kilometers. And it’s deep. Impact must have been severe. The surrounding jungle shows the effects for hundreds of kilometers.”
“Okay. Thanks, Belle.”
“You think Rachel was responsible?”
“One way or another.”
“Do you wish me to resume my prior orbit?”
“Yes. Please.”
I told Alex when he woke. He made no effort to sit up but simply lay there, staring at the ceiling. “Poor woman,” he said.
I never really became accustomed to the food. I couldn’t forget that the staples had once been part of a living animal. One night they served something akin to a pork-and-beef mix with a choice of vegetables and fruit. And some bread, which, mixed with their jam, was excellent. So I filled up on bread and desserts, which consisted of a variety of baked goods, with flavors I couldn’t identify. I think I put on three pounds the first full day we were there. Which, on top of the other seventeen, was just what I needed.
We’d seen some suspicion among the community members when we first arrived, as if we were dangerous in some unspecified way, and I don’t think the talking jewelry helped negate that. But by the end of the fourth day, most of them seemed to have decided we could be trusted. If we spoke a language nobody knew, we were nonetheless obviously human. And if we rode a ship that floated on air, it was at least no longer in the skies. In fact, it had crashed. And that, too, maybe, helped get us accepted. We were vulnerable. The young ones no longer hid behind their mothers. The adults said hello and even occasionally stopped to talk.
“How long,” we asked Turam, “have you been on this world?”
He seemed confused by the question. So we tried again. “When did humans first arrive here?”
“Here?” He looked around. “You mean in Kamarasco?”
“What’s Kamarasco?”
“It’s this area. Where we are now.”
“No, no. When did you first arrive on this world?”
He smiled, as if we were playing a joke. “Is that a religious question?”
“I’m serious.”
“Alex, we’ve always been on this world. What are we talking about?”
Alex looked delighted. They’d been here so long they’d lost track of who they really were. “I wonder if there’s a possibility,” I asked Alex, “that they really are aliens?”
“What do you mean?”
“That they did originate here. Is there any reason there couldn’t be a second human race? Independent of us?”
“Probably not.” And he lit up at the suggestion. “What a discovery that would be.”
Alex asked how far back their history went.
“Several thousand years,” Turam said.
“What kind of world do the earliest records describe?”
“It’s hard to be certain. To separate myth from history. The ancient accounts talk about a golden age. People living for centuries. Living in palaces. Food was plentiful. Some of it seems to be true. There are still ruins nobody can explain.”
“So what happened?”
“There really is no reliable historical account. The world fell apart. Some of the religious groups will tell you that we offended God. People got away from Him and He simply shut us down. See then how well you survive without Me.”
“Is that a quote?”
“From the Vanova.” He saw that we had no idea what the Vanova was. “The sacred scriptures. And I can see the doubt in your eyes. A lot of people think we had a higher level of technology in ancient times. Who knows what the truth was? But, however that might have been, whatever the level of technology we might have possessed in earlier eras, we had a good life until recently. I don’t think we appreciated how well off we were until the Dark Times came. Now—” Turam sighed. “Today we are only an echo of what we were.”
Alex told me that Seepah came by the room while I was out. “He wanted to take my temperature again.”
“Why?”
“He says I was running a fever when they brought me in. And that my pulse was too high.”
“Okay.”
“He checked everything again. Says I’m still warm. And my pulse is still out of whack.”
“How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. The equipment here’s a bit primitive.”
Later, in the dining hall, with seven or eight sitting at the table or standing by watching, Alex broke the news: “This will come as something of a shock,” we told them through Belle’s translations, “but you should know anyhow. You’re not native to this world.”
“That’s crazy,” one of them said. An attractive young mother with two kids. “Are you one of those crazy Horgans?”
“Of course not,” Alex said. “But where do you think you came from?”