Heirs of the New Earth (2 page)

I brought the human, who called himself John Mark Ellis, to my bosom. His sensuality breathed new life into me. These humans were proving more interesting than the appendages of old. The human's emotion caused me to think imaginatively. Perhaps it was just my own fading memory. Even so, I decided to give up my quest for the old appendages. Upon communing with this John Mark Ellis, I discovered that I wanted new appendages.

The gravity tide was strong and carried me away from the whirlpool galaxy. However, tides ebb and flow. I knew I would be back to learn more about these humans.

Upon my return home, I meditated. Ellis and others of his kind demonstrated much variation—like my three sisters and I experienced after our contact with the original appendages. As I knew they would, the gravitational tides allowed me to return to the whirlpool galaxy and somehow I found that John Mark Ellis and another human named Clyde McClintlock, who I had also communed with, had sought me out. They followed me back to my home in the globular cluster. The one called McClintlock had the audacity to attempt to initiate communion. We found that this McClintlock thought we were the creators of the universe. Upon correcting him, his fragile mind was destroyed. We sensed that a non-human named G'Liat, who was aboard the spaceship, put an end to McClintlock's suffering.

We liked the audacity of the human McClintock and were further surprised and delighted when the human Ellis initiated communion and entered our minds. Most of my appendages were female and it felt good to have this man inside me. He was primitive and brutal, but smart. He was better than the appendages of old. When Ellis and his ship returned to the whirlpool galaxy, we were once again diminished.

We have decided to adopt these humans. They will become one with us. We will benefit from them and they will benefit from us. Together we will build a legacy.

The humans would call it a “win-win” proposition.

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Thus with violence shall that great city of Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee.

Revelation 18: 21-22

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Two flies buzzed and spiraled in the semi-darkness and thick, torrid atmosphere of a one-room apartment in Southern Arizona. A mountain of dirty plates clogged the sink while uneaten remnants of food littered a small table. Unwashed socks and underwear were draped carelessly over the room's two chairs and an alcove, containing a rust-stained toilet, reeked of those odors generated in the deep, dark recesses of the human body. The flies were in paradise.

Attracted to the salty sweat of the room's lone human inhabitant, the two flies lit and cavorted about on his nose only to be sent flying away as his hand swept by. The man was lying on a small cot that creaked each time he swung his arm. A clock nearby counted its way inexorably toward the time its alarm would sound. Undaunted, the flies returned time and time again. If flies had emotions, they might have thought the challenge of taking moisture from the man's nose was fun.

"Goddamn flies,” grumbled the man as he swatted at the insects again. This time he sat up on his small cot and blinked at the zebra-stripe pattern on the floor made by sunlight streaming through partially closed blinds on the window. The man, Timothy Gibbs, reached out and grabbed the alarm clock and stared at the numbers for several seconds while his brain worked to interpret the numbers his eyes saw: five minutes before seven o'clock. Five minutes before the alarm was to go off. “Goddamn it,” grumbled Gibbs, as he returned the clock to the nightstand. He rubbed his rough hand across a stubble-covered chin, annoyed because he wanted to go back to sleep but there wasn't enough time before the alarm would sound.

Gibbs padded over to the kitchen counter. The computer unit recognized its owner and activated a finger-greased touch pad. Bleary-eyed, he examined the choices from the small inventory of frozen meals-in-one. With a sigh, he chose the omelet and coffee and stood, listening as out-dated motors carried the meal from the freezer to the internal cooking unit. For a moment, he thought he smelled acrid, electrical smoke. With a frown, he thought perhaps he should open the unit and take a look, but decided against it as he realized the smell was actually some left-over plastic still clinging to the pre-fabricated meal.

With a stretch and a yawn, Gibbs padded to the toilet alcove and swatted at the swirling flies that buzzed about his hair while he relieved himself. Stepping out of the alcove, he looked over at a hologram of his mother, sitting on the nightstand. He hadn't seen his mother since she lost her job at the paper cup factory nearly 20 years before. Unable to pay her weekly taxes and with Gibbs barely able to pay his own taxes, much less help her, she was taken away to a government housing complex. The government didn't bother to tell Gibbs where she was. Without a source of income, his mother couldn't afford a teleholo call to her son. Timothy Gibbs had no way of knowing whether his mother was alive or dead.

A chime sounded alerting Gibbs that his breakfast was done. He padded over, opened the unit's door and retrieved the plate of steaming food. He sipped rancid coffee while mindlessly picking a piece of blackened plastic out of the eggs. He wondered about his father—a man he never knew. Poking at the over-cooked omelet, Gibbs wondered if he, himself, was anyone's father. Like most men in the thirtieth century, including his own father, he periodically left sperm at the local Depository. Women who liked his genetic make-up and wanted children could go to the Depository for impregnation. The upside for Gibbs was that he didn't have to risk the diseases and emotional upheaval that came from a sexual relationship. The downside was that he didn't know whether he was the father of a hundred children or none at all.

Not bothering to do anything with the plate and coffee cup after breakfast, Gibbs stripped out of sweaty underclothes and stepped into the sanitizer. Even with ice mining in the asteroid belt, water was a precious commodity in Southern Arizona. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the hypersonic waves tingling against his skin, removing dirt and sweat, leaving a kind of slime in the bottom of the sanitizer that the flies would enjoy. Stepping out, and wiping his feet on the mat, Gibbs dressed in his work uniform and went out the door pausing long enough to hear the door lock automatically behind him.

Not able to afford his own hover-car, Timothy Gibbs walked the mile and a half to his job at Tanque Verde Teleholo. He was a repair technician, earning a small stipend and a commission on each of the expensive communication units he refurbished. In the thirtieth century, teleholos were considered virtually essential. With them, people communicated with one another, entertainment holograms were transmitted, games were played and finances were transacted. There was almost nothing in the way of entertainment or communication that couldn't be done with a teleholo.

Poor as he was, there were many less fortunate than Timothy Gibbs. On his way to work, he stepped over an old man, sleeping on the sidewalk. Even the old man—too poor to afford a place to sleep with a roof over his head—clutched a portable teleholo to his chest.

Stepping through the door of Tanque Verde Teleholo, Gibbs forced himself to smile and wave at one of the sales associates, Louise Sinclair. Sinclair gestured wildly for Gibbs to come see what was playing on one of the teleholos.

"More news about the Cluster?” asked Gibbs with a weary sigh. Hovering above the teleholo dais was a familiar image—a large conglomeration of iridescent spheres. The Confederation of Homeworlds, of which Earth was a part, was fighting a one-sided war with the Cluster. Whenever the Cluster appeared, the ship it encountered was destroyed. No one knew of a single Cluster ship lost to a Homeworlds’ ship. “When are they going to stop bugging us with that?” he grumbled. “It's all so far away from Earth anyway."

"This is different,” she said, tersely. “A mapping ship followed the Cluster home. They finally have some idea what it is.” Louise Sinclair had been following the Cluster story since day one and insisted on conveying everything she learned to her co-workers.

"Whatever,” said Gibbs. He reached out as if to turn off the teleholo unit, but she batted his hand away.

"Aren't you the least bit interested in the Cluster?” She cocked her head, examining the technician. “They've been destroying ships left and right. They even threatened a colony for God's sake."

Gibbs shook his head. “Sufiro's on the other side of the galaxy. I can't waste my time worrying about things in space. I've got enough problems right here on Earth.” He shrugged mock apology then made his way to the employee lounge.

Sinclair followed on his heels. “I can't believe what I'm hearing,” she said, incredulous. “In the thousand years humans have been in space, the Cluster is the first intelligent life we've ever discovered that's actually bent on destroying humans. How can you ignore that?"

"It's not just humans,” he said as he poured coffee into a paper cup. “We're not in this alone. The Titans will figure out something. They always have before."

"They haven't yet,” she retorted. “The only thing the Cluster hasn't destroyed is that colony—Sufiro. They survived their encounter with the Cluster."

"Okay, so, now someone's figured out where the Cluster's from, is that it?” he asked, resigned to the fact that she wasn't going to leave him alone until after she'd given him her daily update.

"They think it's from outside our galaxy. It's from a globular cluster.” She beamed proudly.

"Seems a bit redundant, doesn't it?"

"What's redundant?"

"That the Cluster's from a cluster.” Gibbs smirked, impressed by his own clever remark. “What is a globular cluster, anyway?"

"They're like balls of stars that orbit the Milky Way Galaxy,” she explained, thinking back to the images that had been displayed on the news. “Kind of like little mini-galaxies, except the stars are older."

Gibbs nodded, then sipped his coffee. He held the cup out at arm's length and realized it had been manufactured at the factory where his mother had worked. He sighed and took another sip, then poured out the remaining coffee and crushed the cup. He looked up into Louise Sinclair's soft brown eyes. Briefly, he imagined himself asking her out to dinner, but quickly threw the notion aside, knowing he didn't have the money for such an extravagance. “So tell me,” he began, his tone softening, “who made this discovery?"

He was pleased to see her smile. “It was a mapping ship called the
Nicholas Sanson.
They interviewed the ship's senior officers: a woman named Smart and the captain—a man named Ellis. They followed the Cluster to its home.” Sinclair wrung her hands and turned away. Gibbs swallowed, realizing he had been staring at her. “I guess the
Sanson
barely got back to the galaxy in one piece. It was quite a space opera,” she finished quietly.

"Hey Gibbs,” called a voice from the door of the break room. Looking up, Gibbs saw his supervisor, Jerry Lawrence, a tall man with a rumpled uniform shirt. “We've got thirteen teleholos lined up in the back. We need to get them out by five,” he said, looking at his watch.

"Sorry, Mr. Lawrence, I'll be right there,” he said. Lawrence turned on his heel and left. Gibbs looked up at Sinclair and smiled sheepishly. “I guess I need to get to work."

"Me too,” she said, quietly. “Sorry I kept you. I didn't mean to get you into trouble."

He resisted the urge to reach out and touch her shoulder. “No problem,” he said.

"I need to get back on the floor. Customers, you know.” With that, she led the way out of the break room. She resumed her narrative, though it seemed that the enthusiasm had gone from her voice. “It turns out the cook aboard the
Sanson
was that McClintlock guy who had that wacky Cluster religion up in the New England Sector."

They stopped at the workshop door. He tried to think of something witty or charming to say. Instead, looking up, he saw two people browsing the displays. “I think you've got some customers.” He shuffled his feet. “I need to get to work."

"I know,” she said, turning away.

Pursing his lips, Gibbs entered the workshop, feeling a little relieved that he would be spending the day with computer chips and electronic components that only spoke when he hit the on switch and if he didn't like what they said, he could always change the channel.

As the star cruiser
Nicholas Sanson
limped toward the colony world of Alpha Coma Bereneces, the captain, John Mark Ellis, went to his quarters to wash up after the news interview. Sensors tracking the mapping vessel had seen it wink out of existence, then come back a few days later. People were amazed to learn that the
Sanson
had, in fact, followed one of the enigmatic Cluster ships to its home in a distant globular cluster. Not only had the crew of the
Nicholas Sanson
learned where the Cluster had come from, they had accomplished the first interstellar jump outside the Milky Way galaxy.

Washed, Ellis put on clean clothes and sat down at the table in his quarters. Activating the computer interface, he dictated a short message to his mother, Suki Firebrandt Ellis. He told her what he thought he knew about the Cluster and its connection to the leaders of the Confederation of Homeworlds—the Titans—and asked if she had learned anything. A few months before, Ellis had asked his mother to research any connections between the Cluster and the Titans. Now, Ellis strongly suspected that the Cluster and Titans were symbiotic life forms. However, the Titans had broken the symbiosis and were in hiding. Ellis finished the message with a word about his romantic feelings for the ship's corporate officer, Kirsten Smart.

The letter home done, Ellis rapped his fingers on the tabletop and looked out the window over his bunk. Finally, with some resolve, he decided to visit the ship's prisoner, a warrior from the planet Rd'dyggia. The warrior, G'Liat, was nearly eight feet tall with a hairless head and orange skin. A cluster of prehensile, purple appendages wriggled in front of the warrior's mouth, like a grotesque, living mustache.