One of the others complained, “Phen-he has always been strange, a loner. It would be better to bud without Phen-he, leave the strange one in solitude.”
“That is not our way,” said the leader, sternly. “We must have unity before we can bud.”
“I see Phen-he!” cried their youngest, flying some distance ahead of the others. It extruded an arm from its malleable body, pointing.
And there was Phen-he, a thin filmy reed standing with wings folded about its body on an outcropping of rock, roots wormed into the thin layer of nourishing soil, swaying gently in the tidal breeze, head turned toward the darkest part of the sky.
The others fluttered about Phen-he and, one by one, landed around it. Their roots found precious little nutrition in the meager soil that coated the underlying rock.
“What are you doing here, Phen-he?” demanded the eldest. “Don’t you realize you are required for the budding?”
Phen-he turned toward the eldest, its heat-sensitive eyeplates so enlarged they covered most of its upper body. Extruding an arm, it pointed into the dark sky.
“Look,” it said.
The others stared into the darkness. As their eyeplates adapted and grew, they saw that the inky sky was peppered with specks of light.
“What are they?” asked one of the brood.
“I don’t know,” said Phen-he. “I first saw them many cycles ago, when I was blown to the dark side by a storm.”
“Lights in the sky?” wondered another. “What does it mean?”
“They exist only on the dark side of Home,” said Phen-he. Then it added, “Or perhaps they are too faint to be seen where the sun fills the sky.”
“They are meaningless,” decided the eldest. “Come, Phen-he, you are needed for the budding.”
“But they are so beautiful—”
“You are needed. You must come.”
Reluctantly, Phen-he bowed and stretched its wings wide. The entire brood disengaged from the soil and took flight.
Phen-he turned its head for one final look at the flecks of light. Its breath caught in its throat.
The sky was becoming brighter. The darkness was changing into light. Hard, fierce light, so brilliant it hurt its eyeplates. Phen-he turned away from the growing light but it was no use. The entire sky was ablaze. It saw the eldest’s wings crumple and it plunged to the ground, smoking and shrieking. All the others screamed and died, falling like burning leaves. Phen-he felt itself burning, roasting as the sky blazed furiously and even the soil below and the rocks themselves began to smolder.
Everyone died. The People were no more. The planet they called Home was reduced to a smoking ruin of rubble-strewn bare rock.
Surging past at the speed of light, the gamma burst enveloped everything and then sped onward, outward, spreading death wherever it touched.
CRUSADERS
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Base Camp
“I’m proud of you, Bran,” said Jordan. “You’ve become a leader.”
Brandon smiled shyly. “With your help, Jordy. With your help.”
The two brothers were walking alone through the white mounds of their camp’s bubble tents, beneath a darkening sky. The first few stars were appearing in the gathering twilight. Jordan knew that Earth’s Sun would be visible once the night became fully dark. It would appear as a faint yellowish star, undistinguished and terribly far away.
“I wish there were some way we could convince Harmon that Adri’s people mean us no harm,” Jordan said.
Brandon huffed. “Meek’s a lost cause. He’s scared out of his wits. He’ll never be able to adapt to this situation.”
They walked along slowly, out toward the periphery of their camp. The forest trees sighed in the soft night breeze. Jordan thought of Aditi, back in the city, waiting for him, waiting for the people from Earth to make up their minds.
Turning toward his brother, Jordan said, “Bran, we’ve got to present a united front back home. We can’t have a divided team, we can’t have Harmon giving them a dissenting minority report.”
Brandon nodded. “That’d give the naysayers a reason to deny everything we have to tell them.”
Jordan thought of other times, earlier crises that had been worsened by inaction. World War II. The American Civil War. We might have avoided the greenhouse floods if we’d acted early enough, strongly enough, he said to himself.
Strangely, Brandon began to chuckle softly.
“Something funny?”
“I was just thinking about the Neanderthals.”
“What in the—”
“I was picturing a council of Neanderthals sitting in their cave around a fire, debating what they should do about global warming.”
“You have a weird sense of humor, Bran.”
“No, Jordy. Imagine it. Here they are, beautifully adapted to the Ice Age. But the climate’s warming up. The glaciers are melting away. And they’re squatting around their fire, wondering what to do.”
“There wasn’t much they could do,” said Jordan.
“They could have adapted. They could have changed their ways and adapted to the warmer climate.”
“Could they?” Jordan wondered. “As you say, they were physically adapted for the Ice Age climate.”
“They were intelligent, Jordy. As intelligent as we are. They had larger brains than we do, actually.”
“But—”
“Some of them lived in the Middle East, you know. They could have adapted to a warmer climate.”
Jordan pointed out, “Some of them interbred with our ancestors, actually. We carry a few Neanderthal genes in our DNA.”
“We absorbed them.”
“Which is what Harmon fears that Adri’s people want to do to us.”
Brandon snorted a bitter laugh. “Yeah, their few thousand are going to absorb our twenty billion.”
“He’s still afraid of the possibility.”
With a dismissive shake of his head, Brandon continued, “Most of the Neanderthals didn’t get absorbed. They didn’t adapt. They must’ve had a guy like Meek telling them that the warming is all a fake, a temporary anomaly, nothing to worry about.”
Jordan got the point. “So they didn’t change.”
“And they went extinct.”
“Just as we will.”
“If we don’t change our ways, Jordy. If we don’t change our ways.”
“Can we?” Jordan asked. “Will we?”
“There’ll be plenty of people back on Earth who won’t want to believe what we have to tell them. People who’ll deny it all, claim we’ve been hoodwinked by scheming aliens.”
“Just like Harmon.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do about him, Bran?”
In the lengthening shadows, Jordan couldn’t make out the expression on his brother’s face. But he heard the undertone of anger in Brandon’s voice. “Personally, I’d like to stuff him back in a cryosleep capsule and keep him there permanently.”
“Not an altogether bad idea,” Jordan said lightly, “but it’s rather impractical, don’t you think?”
“I just don’t understand him, Jordy. He’s supposed to be a scientist, but he’s not thinking logically at all. He hasn’t done a lick of work since we arrived here.”
“He’s frightened.”
They had reached the edge of the camp. Brandon stood in silence for several long moments, fists on his hips, head turned skyward.
“You’re right, Jordy,” he said at last. “If we can’t convince Meek that Adri’s people are being honest with us, we won’t have a chance in hell of convincing the powers-that-be back on Earth.”