Space for Evolution

by Zurab Andguladze

  “Weapons? Looks like I missed that. Wow!” The old man shook his head.

  However, it didn’t take him much time to review his previous judgment. “We will let just the woman come to us,” he announced.

  He waved at them, but when the strangers moved together, the old man and his granddaughter jerked their weapons in warning. Patently bewildered, the aliens stopped immediately.

  Frowning, the old man thought for a while. Then he asked his granddaughter to take a few steps towards them while he himself remained in place. The first time the strangers didn’t get his idea, but after several iterations, they finally understood what he was demanding from them. The man sat on the grass while the woman walked towards them, slowly and alone.

  Once she’d approached, she stopped and allowed the farmers to examine her. She was a woman in her forties, slender, of medium height, and with thick, dark hair. She had a narrow face with brown eyes and high, lovely cheekbones. In addition to the blue T-shirt, she wore dingy gray pants and threadbare sneakers. At first, the old man wanted to search her, but the clear evidence of her exhaustion stopped him.

  “We’re operators from the nuclear power plant,” the woman said instead of a greeting. She had a low, slightly hoarse voice. “I’m Agneta, and my colleague is Hans.”

  The shepherds silently waited for her to continue, carefully looking around.

  “Was your farm ever cut off from electricity?” She asked unexpectedly.

  “Why?” the old man answered. “Are we in debt? Is that why you came?”

  The girl chuckled and a bashful smile sparkled on her oval, freckled face. To hide it, the teenager adjusted the lock on her forehead and her pony-tail.

  “When the famine began,” the woman continued, not paying attention to his tone and to the girl’s laugh, “most of our colleagues left the NPP in order to take care of their families. Only four people, three men and I, stayed there.”

  “What, you’ve lived there twenty years? Why didn’t you leave, too?” He wasn’t even trying to trust what the woman was saying.

  “Can I sit down? My side...” Agneta asked with an exhausted look.

  The senior shepherd, without taking his muzzle from the woman, once again examined his surroundings, and nodded. Agneta sank heavily onto the grass and continued to speak in her own style, sparing her words. “Our homes were too far away, and we had no way to get there on foot.”

  Pausing, she took a deep breath and continued, “When the riots had already started to rage, a large supply of canned goods and weapons were delivered to the station to help us hold out for some time on our own. The NPP is a well-protected object, almost inaccessible to outsiders.” She smiled bitterly. “People believed that the crisis would end quickly.”

  The woman asked for water, and after drinking a few sips from the old man’s flask, she continued her speech.

  “All this time, the station worked at minimum power. In addition to our own needs, we delivered electricity only to a line where, according to indications, there was one ordinary consumer. As far as I understand, it was your farm.”

  The woman became silent, and with a faint smile on her face, looked at the surprised teenager. The old man also remained speechless, although he wasn’t looking at the woman in amazement, like a child who had never seen an outsider in her life. The man was constantly examining his vicinity, and spoke to the girl so that she wouldn’t lose her vigilance: “Our cattle seem to like this place; they don’t even think about going somewhere else.”

  Hearing this, the girl, as if waking up, looked away not as if from a guest, but from a person with uncertain status, and carefully inspected the neighborhood.

  “Yes, they like it here, and it is calm around here too.” Mira reacted to her grandfather’s words, indicating that she had correctly understood his hint and was concentrating again.

  Turning to Agneta, the old man asked, “Have you had contact with anyone, or with any other institution? I mean, over the Internet or in any other way?”

  “No, we’ve tried, but to no avail.” Agneta spoke in low voice, “We had the phone numbers of all the European nuclear power plants, but we didn’t get any benefit from them. Of course, you know that the mobile service and the Internet disappeared almost simultaneously, but the station also had a satellite phone. Actually, we only had it for communication with our main department and rescuers; we’d never used it before, but when the time came, no one answered our calls on those lines. We later made countless efforts to contact other random numbers, but no one ever answered us.”

  This long speech finally exhausted the woman. Stopping again, she drank quite a lot of water. Her listeners waited.

  Agneta took a deep breath and continued, “The catastrophe happened unexpectedly. Yesterday, Hans and I, having been on business, returned to the station. Thomas and Casper, our colleagues, according to the rules, remained at home. It’s strange, the NPP really became our home a long time ago…” Here, Agneta sighed again and said with difficulty, “When we got to the station, we saw a terrible scene.”

  Her voice faltered, forcing her to pause. No one rushed her. Soon she proceeded: “I don’t know what happened. We have always been alert. Whatever we do, one of us had always been an observer; the cameras were constantly working. Maybe they were spying on us?”

  The woman was sunk in thought, apparently trying to understand the reasons behind the disaster, which she couldn’t think about before.

  Finally, she said in a hollow voice, “As Hans and I realized later, our salvation was pure chance. We did not approach the station from the road as we usually did, but from the opposite side. On the way back, we visited a ravine, where we sometimes stocked berries—for vitamins—and walking along this deepening cleft, we entered the vegetable garden, which we had placed near the station yard long ago.”

  Agneta caught her breath again; her eyes were wet, and her chin fluttered. She was trying her best not to cry. Nevertheless, the old man stared at her gloomily. This situation was clearly confusing for Mira, and she didn’t know how to behave. Sometimes she threw sympathetic glances at the woman, and sometimes, after shooting glances at her grandfather, her face grew impassive again.

  “I don’t know,” Agneta continued. “I think the bandits first killed the observer; I wish I knew if it were Casper or Thomas. So… when we went through the garden and entered the yard, we couldn’t believe our eyes!”

  The woman said these words aloud, almost screaming. Seeing this, the man looked around worriedly, as if checking for someone who might be overhearing their conversation.

  Agneta instantly restrained herself and returned to her colorless voice: “The bloodstained corpses of our dead friends lay side by side… the killers had hidden them behind the command module. The next moment, we noticed three of the armed scum. Two of them were watching the road, and one was busy with his machine-gun.”

  Here, Agneta paused again, but not because she wanted to restrain her tears; on the contrary, she shook her head several times in disappointment. She said sadly, “When we saw Thomas and Casper dead, it shocked us. We even lost the ability to reason. We didn’t estimate the situation properly, didn’t understand it… we just looked at each other and then, sneaking around with quick steps, we went toward the villains. We neared them easily because they were looking the other way. Then, in the blink of an eye, we stuffed them full of bullets.”

  Agneta shook her head again and took a deep breath, “We finished the three bandits in their place, and seemingly that was our mistake. We didn’t foresee that maybe there were more than just three of them. We should have acted more carefully, more wisely…In sum, as soon as we had killed these three, others opened fire on us from the third floor of the command module. Fortunately, this time we operated correctly. We didn’t run away; instead, we turned to the enemy and returned fire.”

  “Did you kill them too?” Mira couldn’t bear it and involuntarily asked her.

  “I don’t know,” muttered Agn
eta. “At first, we found shelter behind the reactor module, and then, continuing to shoot so that they couldn’t stand in the windows, we left the yard. By that time I already had a wound. Maybe the bullet broke my rib, or maybe it just scratched it. In any case, I have two holes on my right side, and it is painful for me to breathe, although I haven’t been coughing up blood. There was no point in continuing the battle. By that time, we had almost no rounds left.” After these softly spoken words, the woman lowered her head, which probably meant that she had finished her story.

  The people who had survived the planetary crisis weren’t too impressed by the death of a person, but this time, the old man and the teenager felt genuine grief. Perhaps because until now they had repelled the attacks of looters, whereas now they were witnessing the disaster of decent, innocent people.

  It soon turned out that Agneta had something else to say: “Hans and I remembered an object that constantly consumed energy, and we hoped that these were indeed people, and not just electronics. It was a hard road for me, especially toward the end…”

  Chapter 14

  “It is pity that such a misfortune happened to you, but I can’t imagine how to help you,” the old man spoke immediately, as if he had been looking forward to the end of her story.

  But the woman answered him immediately, “I understand that we live in times too difficult for trust, but my friend and I want to reclaim the station, not only to avoid hunger and not become vagabonds; it is very important for you that we do so, not less than for us.”

  These words instantly changed the old man’s attitude to Agneta. Insensibly to her, he winked at Miriam, to remind her of caution. Then he turned to the woman and said coldly, “Why is it so important to us? Will they cut off our electricity? And will we have to sacrifice ourselves, fighting them because of it? I don’t think that the electricity is worth it.”

  Agneta nodded several times, then uttered, “You can easily bear the lack of current, but the lack of control over the NPP is another matter.”

  Hearing this, the old man at first looked perplexed, then his face changed, and with each subsequent moment it became gloomier. Mira looked at her grandfather expectantly.

  After a couple of minutes, the completely disillusioned man asked, “Ordinary, ignorant marauders now have control of a nuclear plant. Is that what you are talking about?”

  “Exactly,” Agneta confirmed. “The station contains plutonium reserves, enough for one hundred years of operation. You may have heard that, almost three centuries ago, a station less powerful than ours turned a vast territory into a desert zone around Chernobyl City in Ukraine.”

  After a pause intended for her listeners to comprehend this information, she proceeded to convince them: “The twenty kilometers that separate your farm from the NPP mean nothing.”

  This information dramatically changed the shepherds’ mood. Even the teenager had realized that this complication couldn’t be overcome in the usual way—with bullets. They’d have to do something different.

  Meanwhile, Agneta had bowed her head again. She didn’t look at the old man and the girl. She also didn’t hurry them or try to persuade them further. She knew for sure that these evidently good people would come to an easily predictable conclusion, no matter how long they thought about the problem.

  They didn’t want to participate in the battle for the station, but they had to. Otherwise, they too would become homeless, hungry wanderers. Or, more correctly, finding an abandoned house wasn’t a problem, but the problem was that they should move away from the plant as far as possible. And who would allow them to travel freely when no one felt completely safe, even locked in their manor-fortresses?

  It turned out that the thoughts of Agneta and the farmers really were flowing in the same direction. After much thought and with some hesitation, the old man spoke: “What you were saying? Where were you and Hans returning from? From the hunt? Or were you looking for something?”

  Agneta listened to these questions with her head bowed, as before, and didn’t even show that she had heard them at all. At last, she raised her head with a mysterious smile on her lips, attentively looked at her listeners, and said, “Your questions have helped me understand that perhaps we have another reason to ask for your help.”

  Chapter 15

  “That’s good,” the old man answered. “The more reasons for help, the better.”

  “Well,” Agneta apparently perked up, although in fact the pain of her last memories didn’t disappear from her eyes. “Some time ago, we decided that it was’ pointless to just hide forever and protect our food. What would be the meaning of such a life?” She said, looking inquiringly at her audience.

  In response, Mira only blinked several times, while the man shrugged and calmly stated, “You know, we are doing just that, and it doesn’t seem senseless to us.”

  “Oh! Of course you make sense, when you have such a beautiful future.” Agneta smiled softly at the teenager. “We tried, too, but it didn’t work.” She glanced at the girl again. “It is probably because of me. How can I suspect the reactor? So many sensors are checking the background radiation…”

  Agneta sunk in silence again but in a slightly different way, with the despair of an individual who had lost hope. Then she said, in a still voice, "In a word, we decided to do something to make our own, even very small, contribution to the revival of civilization.”

  “The revival of civilization?” Mira echoed loudly. “Is it really possible?”

  “Maybe. No, not maybe, but for sure,” Agneta smiled at the child. “We made an attempt to renew contact with the expeditions previously owned by the SQP project, if you know what that is?”

  “Have you decided to turn on the Antenna?” Now the old man couldn’t manage to restrain his amazement. “But why?”

  “Do you call it the Antenna? Ok, so be it. As for your question, there is no other high-tech facility nearby. Only destroyed farms all around.”

  “You did it?” Mira asked, too loudly again.

  “Does it matter to you?” Agneta was surprised. “Although, yes, in our time, any news about civilization should rouse interest in any decent person.”

  “Apart from civilization, we have our own reasons to be interested in this matter, but we can talk about that a bit later. Please continue,” the senior shepherd suggested.

  The woman glanced briefly at him and complied: “Maybe you know that the antenna is ten kilometers from the nuclear power plant. Once we arrived there, we began our efforts. Although we are experienced engineers, we aren’t experts in astrophysics. For a long time, we studied the instructions and tried to understand the workings of devices unfamiliar to us.”

  She spread her arms, as if apologizing for her ignorance. “Then, six months later, our efforts reaped results. We fixed some devices, unlocked passwords, and managed to turn the antenna on in receiving mode. It can be said that from that day on, humanity resumed observation of its scouts. At least, in our time zone.”

  Then she added, “We also learned that, very soon, in just a few months, the check-in message of the sixth expedition should come.”

  “A message?” Mira asked hopefully.

  “Yes, one of those that the expeditions are sending to Earth every fifty years during a flight,” Agneta explained.

  “I know that, I know everything about the Project,” the girl said hastily. “I mean this signal, did it come?”

  “No,” Agneta said, instantly dispelling her hope, and added, not giving the girl time for sadness, “In addition, we learned that the first expedition will reach its new sun in only twenty-five years!”

  “It will reach a new sun!” Mira echoed once again.

  Listening to their conversation the old man was lost in thought. He remembered the days when his grandfather, Victor, during their time fishing together, had often told him about the ships flying in the galaxy and how he had worked for the ‘family’ expedition.

  Now the old man wanted to remember the date w
hen the first expedition was sent to its planet. He tried to calculate it through the work of his grandfather, but soon became confused with the numbers. Finally he asked, “How many years have passed since the start of the flights to those planets?”

  “The first ship left in 2105,” said Mira, who knew the contents of the computer library almost by heart. “And, as the year is 2279 now…” the girl fell silent for a few seconds, counting in her mind, “… since then one hundred and seventy-four years have passed by."

  “Yes, almost two centuries… and do you think that it could be revived?” These figures which he had never thought about before clearly impressed him.

  Seeing this, instead of answering, Agneta reminded him, “You mentioned that in addition to civilization, you have your own reason to be interested in this project. What did you mean? It’s a pity I don’t know your names.”

  The girl looked at her grandfather. The old man nodded. Having received permission, the teenager immediately began to speak in her high-pitch voice: “I’m Miriam, but they call me Mira. This is my grandfather, Anthony. I meant that on the fifth ship, for the past one hundred and thirty-four years, the genotype of our ancestor has been flying to the constellation of the Corona Borealis.”

  “Really? That’s awesome”! Agneta exclaimed, “Then, I think I know the name of this man: Iason Azgo.”

  “That’s right,” the teenager happily confirmed.

  Of course, when Anthony heard this, these last words strengthened his confidence that he had made the right decision. The marauders wouldn’t have made trips to any antenna, much less obtained information absolutely useless to them.

  “What must we do to get the station back? Kill the raiders? Are there many of them?”

  “I’m sure we killed three of them. I don’t know how many of them are in the building, but they fired from two machine guns,” Agneta answered.

  “We can do it, can’t we? My father is a military man; he will find a way!” the girl exclaimed.