She turned over and around, stunned by the views in every conceivable direction. “Is it the Milky Way?” she whispered.
“That is what you call it. And more. Far more.”
Her throat ached. It was astoundingly beautiful.
“Choose one and we will go there.”
“A star?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he revealed tantalizing promise in his mind.
A particularly bright star seemed to stand out to her.
“That is not one, but two stars—a binary system. Very intricate. Now take us there.”
“I—”
“Do not contemplate what I ask, what it means, or how it is accomplished. Do not think at all. Merely do. Through me, it is possible. You shall see.”
She mentally grabbed the star and tugged on it, in a way she somehow knew she could. She felt the change before she could see it. Her body shuddered with joy as she was stretched and pulled along. The nearest stars smudged and streaked, while those distant stuck like anchors, and together, she and Ei’Brai surged toward the twin stars. Space and time and breath parted and folded. They were sucked through a short straw and emerged in a haze of blinding dust. Jane wiped her eyes and coughed, laughing too, with delight.
The anchor stars receded. Her eye was drawn to the warmth, the light. Twin suns orbited each other, dancing and spinning and nearly kissing, their white light scorching hot. Their planets flirted with each other in long, lazy orbits, a mechanized waltz that had evolved over eons—over countless destructions and accretions until those that remained could each abide the presence of the others.
How could I know this?
“This system has no sentient life. It is unnamed. What will you call it?”
She couldn’t tear herself from it. “I get to name it?” She felt deeply honored and searched her mind for something appropriate, reverent, reflective of herself and humanity. “Castor and Pollux. They were explorers, like me.” How could she feel such pride in naming a thing that couldn’t possibly be real, but was so utterly lovely that she throbbed with repressed sobs?
He let her linger, for how long, she had no way of knowing, observing from multiple points of view, to take it all in. There were barren rocks of planets. Gaseous planets, their atmospheres thick, nearly liquid, and whirling. Molten planets, endlessly remaking themselves under the friction of immense gravitational forces. Even a frozen planet—white and blue, looking from a distance not unlike Earth, but composed of ice and frozen methane, too far from the suns to feel their warmth.
Finally she turned away from it, sighing. “I cannot express how it feels to see this, Ei’Brai—”
“You need not. I am aware.”
That disturbing reminder again. “Then you must also know that I’m aware that you’re distracting me, deflecting me from what I really need to know.”
The warmth on her back faded. She knew, without looking, that the twin stars were gone.
He was silent and she could sense little of him. He was guarding something.
“Why have you come here, Ei’Brai? What did the Sectilius want from Earth and what happened to them?”
His voice was pitched low, a guttural groan. He uttered four words, and fleetingly unleashed a tsunami of pain along with them, “I mourn them, still.”
Jane recoiled under the onslaught, retreating from him instinctively to the furthest reaches of his mind, just to the tenuous point of disconnection. Regret followed hard on the heels of his misery, trailed by disjointed, chaotic images. Inside and outside of many minds, many viewpoints, she saw what had happened to the Sectilius.
In one moment, everything changed from organized, content symbiosis to some kind of hellish nightmare—as every man, woman, and child within the ship-community was suddenly and irrevocably changed by an unknown agent. Only Ei’Brai had been unaffected. He watched helplessly as his shipmates degenerated over the course of days.
Some became combative, at least at first. Most were simply mindless, unresponsive, until they ceased to function in any normal way and wasted away from thirst and starvation. He frantically assisted the scientists and medics, attempting to animate them with the sheer force of his will. Those individuals managed to hold out the longest, striving valiantly to determine what had happened in order to reverse it, but the discovery of the agent in their final moments hadn’t been enough to save even a single life aboard the vessel.
Her heart wrenched painfully as she plumbed the depth of his agony. All of this had happened many years before. He’d drifted alone all this time, hoping for rescue, never knowing who had orchestrated the devastation. He replayed the events in his mind, looking for the point at which he had failed them, until he nearly went mad from it.
Empathy poured from her without hesitation. He gathered her thoughts and held them to himself like a child who’d just found a beloved lost doll. He seemed to be begging for forgiveness and she gave it freely, seeing no fault in his actions as they’d been displayed to her.
“But why did you stay?” she asked him softly. “Why didn’t you go home? You’re the pilot. Why stay here, alone?”
“It is not such a simple matter as that. I am not the pilot. I am the navigator. I, alone, cannot do what you suggest. The ship-community is a commonwealth. There are checks and balances, as there are in any democratic government. I do not have the authority to move this ship a single exiguumet without the presence of a Quasador Dux or a majority vote of documented citizens to give the order.”
Quasador Dux? Loosely translated, the title meant admiral or general, but there was a distinct emphasis on a scientific component. Possibly, it meant some sort of chief investigator/scientist. The Sectilius leader? Ei’Brai indicated affirmation. “But, they didn’t plan for every possible contingency?”
“There are measures. Elections, under normal conditions. A succession, if necessary, under martial law. Who could prepare for every Documented Citizen to be expunged in a single swipe? Who could foresee such a despicable act?”
“I don’t know, Ei’Brai. I’m so sorry.”
He sighed, an otherworldly, plaintive sound that conveyed his despair without words. “I fear for my brethren—that they may be stranded in isolated pockets of the universe, as I am. We shall all meet dusk before we may commune again, sharing the sight of the silhouette of Sectilia and Atielle against the radiance of their star.”
Jane hesitated, knowing the answers to her questions must be negative, but needing to ask them nonetheless. “Why haven’t they sent someone looking for this ship?”
“Either there is no one left to look, or they simply believe our mission took longer than anticipated.” He was starting to sound less despondent, more in control again, as if she offered him some degree of hope. But what could she offer him besides companionship—and even that, only briefly?
“And there’s no way to communicate?”
“The distance is vast. I will be long dead before any communication is received.”
“The asteroid…do you know…?”
“In less than three orbital revolutions, it will make contact, obliterating this ship. Yes. I, alone, cannot prevent it.”
The reality of that sank in. He was facing certain death, with little hope of reprieve.
She stayed quiet for some time, letting her presence offer comfort without demand, as she thought through all that he’d shared.
“You are not satisfied, Dr. Jane Holloway.”
“Ei’Brai, we need to know why the Sectilius came here.”
“The Sectilius are a pragmatic people. They value science, knowledge, truth, above all else. They have been searching for your world for a very long time. Many Sectilius have given their lives in the search for Terra.”