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—”
“They were NUCLEAR BOMBS!” Molly slapped the floor in protest.
“That is what they were to you. When you built them on your planet they were designed for this.” Campton swept a paw above her and toward the planet below. “A side-effect of your device is a pulse that wipes out electronics. It’s a by-product. But they are the same thing, Molly. Camptons built them for the pulse, and our by-product is what you saw yesterday.”
“Why build something like that? Are you all insane?!”
“Are you?” he asked. “The EMPs are what drove the Navy away. Incapacitated their ships, scrambled their communications, and made this station a lifeless hulk for some time. The balls of fire they created in space were as meaningless to us as the pulse was to your Japan and your Israel. While my tribe grew in power in order to restore the balance decreed by the Council, Leefs was trying to explain the great threat our race posed. Of course, none of us would listen, even when they kidnapped me and tried to.?.?.”
Campton fell silent. Molly turned to him, but the large creature looked away.
“It wasn’t until Leefs died by my own hands that I understood. That is when I felt the truth of his last words in my own claws. Like a fool, I went to the Council. I wasn’t calculating anything. I should have just taken one of the orbital EMPs and activated it without a word to anyone. Instead, the council found me insane, which is un-useful. I was designated for termination, as they would say. But the doctor couldn’t do it. Watt couldn’t kill his own father—”
“You’re Watt’s father?!” Molly asked.
“Yes, and Edison’s grandfather.” He gestured toward Molly’s splint. “And I recognize his work. I am glad you met him.”
“Are you glad I KILLED HIM?!” she demanded.
“No. Not glad. Satisfied, maybe. Resigned. But so was he. I imagine he was there when they activated the device.”
The thought made Molly feel sick. She remembered the familiar form overseeing the repairs and a knot crept up into her throat. Again, thinking on the one who died was about to make her cry, where the billions just left her numb.
“He would be happy you mourn him.”
“SHUT UP! JUST—SHUT UP!” She smacked the floor again and bent over, her forehead nearly touching the metal plating. Tears dripped down from the pull of artificial gravity and broke up on impact.
Campton remained still, looking out into space. After a few minutes, he spoke softly, “I am sorry for using you like this. I really am. I am sorry the one had to be someone like you, someone who really cares. It would have been better if those UN ships—”
“Why was Watt helping you if he was a Campton?” She wasn’t sure why she wanted to know, but she did. She couldn’t fathom why Edison would help do this.
“Leefs was Edison’s other grandfather. Watt’s marriage was a forbidden one. Whitney did not just bring her father’s blood into that union, she brought his ideas. Watt understood better than I what needed to be done. If he could have gotten his paws on the device, or convinced Orville to join us—”
“I’ve heard enough,” Molly said. She tried to get her legs beneath her, but Campton sank to the floor, a gentle paw resting on her shoulder.
“I do not think I have said what you really need to hear. It is very important.”
She looked away, but settled back to the ground.
“Things change, Molly. And we must let them.”
“Let them? Or force them?” she asked.
“It is hard to explain this to someone who lives such a short life, so let me try to give you some tools you can take with you, some thoughts you can explore as time closes your wounds. Please, just hear me out.”
“Talk.”
“Let me ask you a question.” He turned to the side and nodded at the burning ball beyond the glass. “Why was Glemot beautiful?”
The past tense choked her up again, but she wanted him to know. This was getting to her own questions. “Because I felt it. We all did. There doesn’t need to be a why, it just was. It made me feel better than I ever had in my whole life, if just for a moment!”
“Ah, so the beauty was in you and not out there?”
“You’re getting ready to start sounding like my?.?.?.?like my navigator. And I hate those talks.”
“I understand, but tell me, would Glemot be beautiful if no brain ever beheld it? If it was the only thing in space?”
“I would know it was beautiful.”
“And there you are again. Creating a ‘you’ in order to create the beauty. Do you not see? The beauty is in us, our senses, our experience of Glemot. Glemot is just a ball of rock covered with mold.”
Molly shot him a look.
“Which universe would contain more beauty, a space with Glemot and no one to ever know it, not even us making up the example, or a universe of billions of people, like you and me, who were shown a mere photograph of Glemot? Which one would contain more beauty?”
Molly weighed the two and didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
“The sad truth is this: the way to create more beauty in the world is to create more organs that can sense it. The wrong solution is to selfishly limit those organs so the few, already alive, can hog the beauty for themselves.”
“How can you talk about creating when you just helped me commit genocide?!”
“Because neither extreme is correct. My old tribe was right to worship balance, but wrong to think they could control it. Glemots would have destroyed the universe, or filled it to capacity before warring with one another on a scale beyond even my ability to calculate. Nothing would have remained, not even a picture.
“Leefs was right when he came to me and explained the threat we posed. Balance has been restored, and our planet will come back, as beautiful as ever. If I choose, I can sit here and watch it happen. For me it will not take much time at all.”
“It will never be the same.”
“You are correct. And it shouldn’t be.”
They both fell silent for a moment. Molly digested this.
Then Campton continued, “When I was a pup, our species lived huddled near the equator. Ice covered most of Glemot as our sun went into its usual period of hibernation. Only a thin band of green ringed the planet. When the ice retreated, our desire for balance and stasis sent us into a fury. At the same time, the expanding zones of lushness created a rush to reproduce and gather resources. It was a bounty and we cursed it for being foreign.
“Glemot, of course, did not care. It had been doing this long before we were around. It will do it long after we are gone. Only our star will finish the cycle when it expands and consumes the four planets nearest it.”
They both sat in silence again, thinking.
“I wish you could live a long life, Molly. That you could come back here thousands of years from now. You might pick me up in your spaceship and take me down to the planet. The ash will be good for the soil. And all of Glemot’s water percolates up through the unbroken plate, feeding the entire surface from beneath. We could explore the new planet together, meeting creatures and eating fruits that do not yet exist anywhere in the universe. And that is the thrill of change. The diversity of beauty that occurs when we do not cling too hard to what we love. Maybe none of this will ever make sense to you. Perhaps your span of living is much too short. But I have come to know these things. My friend and I made a very tough decision based on this knowledge, one that hurts me more than you will ever know.”
Wiping tears from her eyes, Molly looked at him. Campton’s chest heaved as he pulled in a breath and let it out slowly.
“I will sit here and cry for longer than you will live,” he said. “I will question myself and balance cold calculation with the surety of my heart, and I will never know why one is stronger while the other is right.”
Molly stood up. Her brain was full and she’d heard enough. She turned back to the ship, her bare feet sticking to cold steel. She could hear Campton’s deep voice following her down the corridor. “I will never forget you, Molly Fyde,” he whispered, “For the rest of my years, I will remember and think of you.?.?.”
But the rest never reached her. Like Campton’s thoughts, they would live with him in orbit. Alone and forever.