Walter had no clue about the nightmare below. The amount of destruction unfolding, the number of creatures dying, he probably didn’t understand the danger his own life had been in, or what Molly and Cole had gone through to get them all off the planet. To Walter, his time on Glemot had been just another dandy adventure, and now he was off to loot a Naval complex.
Cole’s anger faded into irritation, and then envy. He could imagine how nice it would be to not understand. To see one’s microcosm as the macrocosm. To focus a meter beyond one’s own nose. Who was Walter harming by remaining ignorant? Cole wondered. Who was Molly harming by regressing? Curling up in a ball and having something else keep you warm—it was an ugly, yet seductive, coping strategy. Cole went to his room and stripped down to his bare skin before sliding between sheets that smelled of forest floor, of moss and bark.
He shut his eyes and dreamed of not knowing or caring. The hideous and alluring thoughts danced in front of him, beckoning and repelling at once.
Part IV – Betrayals
“The mind rejects the very things worth knowing.”
23
Molly had no idea how long she’d slept. The urge was to stay there forever. To waste away between the sheets, carried off by invisible critters one dead cell at a time. But her brain hummed with questions, urging her up and out. Part of her needed to see the damage she had wrought, to see if the ring of destruction had fizzled out or finished its task.
She rolled over and extended her numb legs out of the covers. Her jumpsuit was on; she couldn’t remember getting into bed. Lowering her bare feet to the cool steel decking, she wiggled her toes. Her mind still felt hazy—disconnected from the rest of her body.
Her sling lay folded on the dresser. She donned her flightsuit first, then secured her arm with the woven Glemot grasses. Perhaps this was all that remained of their planet. Molly fingered the reeds, brown and dry—she couldn’t help but think how readily they would burn.
Soft sounds from far away trickled into her ship, warning her that a door was open—an outer world attached. She followed the sounds of distant pumps and circulating fans through the airlock. Down the long corridor and out the carboglass observation window she could see Glemot, like a beacon of cruelty. There was no one by the window—or so she thought. As she got closer, she recognized the black silhouette. Against the pitch-black of space, his ebony fur made him almost invisible. Molly could only distinguish the fringe of the massive beast, so dark it verged on purple, as it sheened in the light of distant stars.
“Good morning, Molly,” he said without turning.
Molly met his reflected gaze high in the glass. “Is it morning?”
“Up here, it’s morning when you get up. It’s evening when you become tired.” He turned to look at her. “Maybe, for me, it will be evening forever.”
“Who are you? And do you know what happened down there?”
“My real name would sound funny to you,” he interrupted, his voice a sonorous bass. “Call me by my Earth-language name.”
“Which is?”
“Campton.”
So many of Molly’s recent memories were still bubbling to the surface, it took her a moment. “Like the tribe?” she asked.
“Just like the tribe. And yes, I know what happened down there. I caused it, not you.”
Molly stared at him, her teeth clenched. She envisioned climbing up his back, her fists full of fur and fighting to the death, but his imposing bulk, his calm stillness, the sadness in his eyes—they confused and paralyzed her.
“I know you have many questions, I see the obvious ones on your face, but first I would like to give you some answers you don’t even know to ask for. Will you listen?”
Molly turned away and squinted at the fiery orb. She touched the glass hesitantly, as if the planet could burn her, but the thick pane was cold from the vacuum of space. Outside, a fiery new star existed where a green planet had once been.
“I’ll listen,” she said, “but I can’t promise you I’ll understand, or my anger will lessen. I’m pretty kinetic right now, but you probably don’t know what that—”
“I know what it means. You’re upset. Angry. I understand that. If I don’t sound like my brethren, it’s because I’ve lived up here with Earth’s archives for so many of your years. And I’m old. My wisdom has grown far beyond the juvenile stage that most Glemots… Well, imagine a human that learned so much about language, it could babble back and forth with a child. That should help you grasp—”
“So now I’m a baby to you? I said my anger wouldn’t lessen, I never promised it would remain where it was.” She turned around and sank to the decking, her back against the glass. Not wanting to look out the window, or at Campton, anymore, she stared down the hall into the small mouth of her ship.
“No, Molly. You are not a baby to me. I have come to respect you greatly. Edison is quite taken with you and your friends. I just… don’t think my kind can empathize enough to talk for another’s ears. They talk for their own.” His voice trailed off. Molly wrapped her arms around her knees.
“I use the present tense, but if the fire has met itself on the far side, Edison and I may be the only two Glemots left in this universe.”
Molly had been thinking it. Spoken, the horror became real. “Why?” she whispered.
“Other answers come first. You need to know something about our kind. I do not think you’ll be able to carry this with you otherwise.”
Campton paused, as if considering where to begin. “Glemots do not die from natural causes. Barring accidents, properly nourished, we live forever. It’s a poor design, even though most other species yearn for it.” He paused for a moment.
“I don’t understand the point.”
“Sorry. The problem is that we continue having children. Our population grows. Our solution is warfare and murder. Almost all Glemots die at the hands of another. If we did not, there would never be room for new Glemots. This is why our species thirsts for a balance.”
Molly swung her arm to the side, slamming the glass beside her. The sharp slap echoed down the corridor. “What kind of balance is THAT!?” she yelled, not willing to face it.
“The ultimate kind,” Campton said. “You need to understand, the Glemots were a threat to the universe. I did not see this until a friend explained it to me: that once we realized the surface of our planet was not the limit of our niche, we would begin an expansion outward. We would fill every crevasse, every nook, and all else would perish. Eventually, we would run out of even that much space and begin to kill one another anew. We would be right here, right where we started, but there would be nothing besides us.
“When we discovered technology, most of us were eager to begin this expansion. Some cautioned against it. A Council decision was made that we hold off on development while we worked out the balance calculations, which were more complex than any we had attempted before. But a small group, led by a good friend of mine with the Earth name of Leefs, built a starship and went off to learn more. They had defied Council decree and were to be executed.”
“They went to see the gods,” Molly said.
“Ah, you know the legends. But probably not the facts that spawned them. Leefs returned a changed Glemot. He had learned about the universe beyond. Hunted by the Council, his band of rebels tried to get the message to the rest of us. Meanwhile, we were waging a new war on imbalance with our technology. We flushed the Navy out of our system with EMPs—”