Ian nodded and smiled encouragingly. He was half afraid that Elijah was tottering on the edge of a complete break down, and when that came, his message would be lost forever.
"As I was saying, I was working on the backup reactor when they came."
"Who?"
"Ah, yes. From Delta Sagit, the followers of the Fa ther."
"The Father?"
"Ah, yes, forgive me. You don't know. My world… I believe you call them colonies, had at last made Sun Fall. I was, let's see, sixteen that year, and already proven on the reactors and bio support."
Ian looked at him in amazement. Sun Fall he called it. A journey of a thousand years and at last they make Sun Fall. What it must have been like, arriving in a new realm.
"I can remember it. Our world was indeed desperate when we arrived. Across the millennium of the voyage some systems had failed, others had gradually been de pleted, and we needed what our science people called a gas giant with hard-surfaced satellites, so that necessary resources could be mined. Coming in on Delta Sagit also gave us a new energy source, which we had already been exploiting through the use of parabolic mirrors.
"There are five gas giants around Delta Sagit and we went into, how do you say-" He waved his hands vaguely in a circular motion.
"Orbit?" Ian prompted.
"Yes, orbit, that's the word, around the second farthest from the sun. Even as we arrived, they were waiting for us."
"Who? Was the Father's name Franklin Smith?" Ian ventured.
Elijah looked at him with incredulous eyes. "How did you know?"
"We've been following his path since the beginning."
"They said he was a great prophet," Elijah said, "who spoke of the Satan that had driven them into the Hegira.
"Our beacon was on as we approached. For five years before orbit we had intercepted some of their broadcasts, and they were aware of us, as well."
"Who are they?" Ian asked.
"They are followers of the Father," Elijah repeated in a vague singsong manner.
"You say they met you?"
"Remember, Ian Lacklin, I was not even of one score years. We of my age and station had no word of our leader's decisions, you see, our society was ruled by a philosophos."
"I don't recognize that…"
"From Plato, at least that's what I remember. I only saw the Father's delegation once, when they first docked with us. They were tall men and women, proud in their bearing, with dark faces and eyes that bespoke some inner vision. At least, that is how I remember, but you know the tricks that memory plays with an old man."
Ian nodded, trying to envision the encounter between two alien cultures separated by a thousand years from the common cradle of their birth.
"Our philosophos then told us that we were leaving. He said that they desired of us what we would not give and told us to do what we would refuse. Therefore, we would leave. We had but one month to stock up enough raw material for the replicator machines, and then we left."
"You had replicator machines?" Ian asked.
"Yes, a replicator. We always had them, don't you?"
Ian shook his head. "According to Beaulieu, they were only legend, machines that could be programmed to make whatever was desired, as long as enough raw material was fed in from the other end. Before the Holocaust some ninth-generation devices were used to mass-produce elements for the colonial development, but true replicators, capable of producing just about anything, including models of themselves, were only in the developmental stage when the war came. At least, so Beaulieu thought."
"Ah, so I see," Elijah said pityingly.
"What was it they wanted?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"Have you ever been sixteen and in love? Her name was Rachel…"
Ian nodded and understood. In the reality of sixteen-year-olds, there were some things even more important than the destiny of worlds.
"So we left. For six months we accelerated up and away, using the hydrogen mined from the gas giants along with matter/antimatter drives. And then there came the day."
His voice broke and he looked out the window at the ship.
"You know, she's over there still," Elijah said softly.
"Who?"
"My beloved Rachel. You realize I couldn't send her out with the rest. I found her a year or so after the dark day." He stopped for a minute, as if trying to control himself, and then pushed on. "I found her floating in the wreckage and brought her back. A room in my area had been ripped open to space. I tied my love in there with a cable, so she wouldn't float away. You know, I went to visit her every day and looked through the window at her. I said good-bye to her before coming. I asked her if she wanted to come with me but she said no, she wanted to stay with our world, forever sixteen. I said good-bye to her and she said good-bye to me and said she would miss me…
"My love she sleeps,
And may her sleep,
As it is lasting so be deep,
Soft may the worms about her creep."
His voice started to rise and crackle like old parchment being mishandled.
"It's all right, old boy." Ian turned with a start, and there was Richard smiling at the two of them, drink in hand. Ian sighed with relief.
"She understands, my good man, she understands," Richard said soothingly. "Here, have a little bracer." And he offered a chilled drink container.
Elijah snatched the container and took a long, deep pull.
"You were talking about the day," Ian asked softly. Richard gave him a look of reproach, but he decided to push ahead anyhow.
"I was working on the reactor, changing a fuel rod. Routine sort of thing. Suddenly it was as if my world had slammed into a solid rock. I thought we had taken a- what's the word?"
"Meteor… asteroid?"
"Yes, asteroid hit. I had heard of such things. We had a collision drill once a year. In fact, it was such a ritual that it was a festival day, The last one was the first time Rachel and I…" Elijah suddenly looked at them with cold clear eyes. "But that is gone forever."
His voice now took on a clipped urgency, as if he were making some official report that had waited half a century to be given.
"The first salvo hit the torus in sections one through twenty. I went to the primary observation port and saw entire sections going up, exploding outward in flashes of light, tumbling debris, and shattered bodies. I saw it, I saw it! My God, that was my family, my mother and father! Damn you, damn you bastards forever!"
Richard placed a hand on his shoulder and Elijah looked at him with a haunted expression.
"Maybe you shouldn't," Richard said.
Elijah gave him a weak smile. "You know, I never saw them-I mean, who it was that did it. I saw the flash of the beams, but nothing else. I knew at once that somehow the followers of the Father had caught up with us. The beam weapons slashed out, again and again, with such neat surgical precision, slicing out section after section. The imbalance of the cylinder now started its own actions, ripping it apart from the central core that I was in.
"We screamed in impotent rage as the beam finally caught us out and slashed the core wide open.
"The section that I was in separated, cut from the main. ' Subreactor one and agro research and development sec tion one, reporting in. Is there anyone there, is there anyone there?'"
He looked again at the hulk then turned back to them.
"Ten of us with air. We had thrown enough emergency locks to seal the section off. Six of them were badly in jured, mostly from a radiation spill in the containment area.
"We fought for weeks. Patching leaks, stabilizing the research lab, and creating an environmental support sys tem. We alone had survived. We found a couple of suits and rigged up an airlock, and thus started my scavenging operations. I would crawl through the corridors, pushing past the bodies. You know, a body can make excellent fertilizer. Oh, you'll do it if there's need enough. You know, you can do something else, as well. They're frozen dry, all you have to do is add a little water and the meat's almost as tasty as fresh," Elijah whispered.