Helium 3: Fight for the Future

by Brandon Q. Morris

  Kasfok had to admit that it was hard to counter Tolkut’s arguments. But everything in him balked at agreeing with his adversary.

  I’m ready to make peace with the Iks, he finally drummed. But on one condition. You resign from office and submit to me! I will let you live as promised, and the other Shipmasters may continue to command their ships. But you have to go! If you care about our species, and if the aliens want us to end the war, this is the only way. So, Tolkut, how much does our species really mean to you?

  To Kasfok’s surprise, Tolkut didn’t hesitate for a micropulse. I agree, Netmaster! To confirm his words, he danced the steps of submission and lowered his mandibles. You guarantee peace with the Iks and give them access to the gas giants, my allies keep their positions, and I renounce my position as Shipmaster. Is that what you are promising me?

  I swear on my ancestors that I will keep this agreement, Tolkut! As soon as we have come to an agreement with the blue sphere, one of my officers will be transferred to the Solstice Bud and assume command.

  Kasfok motioned for the radio operator to end the transmission. The uprising against his rule was over, and Kasfok was very pleased with himself.

  56th of Frien, 298

  Kimikizu had been following everything and was horrified. “You can’t do that, Tolkut! I have learned to trust you and can vouch for you with my species, but I do not trust this Kasfok farther than from here to the tip of my beak!”

  “Kimi is right,” Norok agreed. “Who can ensure that Kasfok will stick to the agreement once the blue sphere has disappeared?”

  “I have a feeling that whoever’s in charge there will keep a close eye on us,” came Tolkut’s words through the speaker. “They’ll make sure Kasfok doesn’t betray you.”

  “Then, Tolkut, I ask you to let us speak with the other Iks,” Norok pleaded. “We have to consult with the Supreme Leaders and report on what happened here. They need to know that it is possible to cooperate with the Mendraki, and that not all of them are like Kasfok.”

  Tolkut danced a few steps that Kimikizu interpreted as approval. She was surprised at how quickly she had learned to distinguish the Mendraki dance movements. The words that came through the speaker confirmed her interpretation. “Yes, speak to your leaders and tell them that not all Mendraki have ill intentions toward them. Report on the arrangement I made with Kasfok—and ask for forgiveness on my behalf!”

  “And maybe we can then return home together,” Kimikizu said hopefully, looking at Norok, who didn’t respond.

  “All fighting has stopped,” said one of the Navigators.

  There was an unusual silence at the central station, even though all the Supreme Leaders had gathered there. It seemed everyone was holding their breath and waiting for the other side to take its next steps. The communication links within the ship had recently started working again, and the sensors were also online.

  “Bad news,” said a protector, who was watching at the very edge of a screen. “The rope is gone.”

  “The rope?” asked the Supreme Mother. “That’s not a weapon!”

  “This means we’re stranded,” surmised the Supreme Conqueror.

  “We’re at the mercy of the enemy,” added the Supreme Provider.

  “The enemy seems just as surprised as we are,” the Supreme Protector said.

  “Whoever constructed this dazzling sphere must be millennia ahead of us technologically. All we can do is throw ourselves on our knees before them,” said the Supreme Guardian.

  The Supreme Mother looked at him in surprise. Perhaps she didn’t know him at all.

  “What exists physically can also be destroyed,” said the Supreme Conqueror. “Maybe it’s time to join forces with the enemy.”

  Anger rose in the Supreme Mother. Even now there were still Iks who had not grasped how serious their situation was! “Conqueror,” she said, “the sphere shut off all of our weapons systems and power at the snap of a finger. Fighting against them would be suicide, which I will not tolerate.”

  The Supreme Conqueror looked at her angrily but did not reply. He’d need to be replaced as soon as possible, because otherwise—sooner or later—he would seriously endanger the Iks.

  “Supreme Mother, one of the Mendraki ships is calling us.”

  So now they could suddenly communicate after all? Had this sphere taught them? The Supreme Mother nodded. “Put the call through. I want everyone to listen.”

  “Affirmative, Supreme Mother.”

  For a moment there was a prolonged silence, and then mostly static in which the voice of an Iks could suddenly be heard. The Supreme Mother recognized it immediately. It belonged to Norok, the Supreme Explorer. Apparently, he had managed to get aboard an enemy ship. He had really brought honor to his caste.

  “Supreme Mother? We are aboard the Solstice Bud, a Mendraki ship under Shipmaster Tolkut.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’re alive, Norok. Were you able to save your crew as well?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I am only accompanied by Navigator Kimikizu. Everyone else died in the attack on the flying machine.”

  “The enemy will pay for it,” intervened the Supreme Conqueror.

  With a clear gesture of her wing, the Supreme Mother forbade him to speak.

  “The Mendraki want to make peace with us,” Norok said. “You must have noticed that not all of their ships attacked, because there were three factions. But now, after the intervention from the sphere, everything has changed. Netmaster Kasfok assures us of a peaceful coexistence. Tolkut, who took us aboard his ship and saved Kimikizu’s life, apologizes to us in the name of his species for the senseless loss of the victims.”

  Shouldn’t that be Kasfok’s job? thought the Supreme Mother. But she also knew how politics worked. To protect his position, Kasfok probably couldn’t afford to show weakness. Of course, that was itself a sign of weakness, but that wasn’t her problem. A weak alien commander could only be good for the Iks in the long run. She was realistic enough to see that a forced peace imposed by a third party, however powerful that party might be, could not last forever. The attention of the sphere’s architects would turn away from this system again. And then... Nobody knew what would happen next.

  She noticed that everyone was waiting for her reply. “The Iks are ready to sign a peace treaty. What do Tolkut or this Kasfok have in mind, in concrete terms?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Norok.” I suspect that the architects of the blue sphere have developed a proposal. The planet whose orbit you’re in right now seems to be particularly important to them.”

  “As you know, there aren’t many of us, Norok, so the Iks need to have an individual planet with much potential for future growth. And a dense atmosphere would be good.”

  “I can imagine which planet you have in mind, Supreme Mother,” said Norok. “I’m sure the architects of the sphere will contact us shortly.”

  “Good. Was that what you wanted to tell us?”

  “Yes. I would also like to ask you for a private conversation. Today.”

  “Of course, Norok. I will contact you now that I know where you are. Is it about Kimikizu?”

  “Affirmative, Supreme Mother.”

  Peace

  “You see, Shra, they just needed a little encouraging!” Mart had turned the part of the field energy ship where they were into a park. They were sitting on a lakefront bench, and Sol was shining above them, looking just as it must have millions of years before—a little smaller and a little colder than it was now. Swimming on the water were ducks that had long since ceased to exist, ducks that the ship had modeled from Mart’s memories. The entire lake was only a few hundred meters in diameter and was surrounded by a dense deciduous forest. The ship had settled on a lush green lawn.

  “Encouraging? You hardly gave them a choice!”

  “Oh, sometimes you need a little push toward your luck, even if it doesn’t look like luck at first glance, but rather like great misfortune. It wasn’t all that different for us!”r />
  “Are you talking about the Droxx?”

  “Of course, who else?”

  “Those were our worst enemies, Mart! They almost wiped out humanity.”

  “Because we’d gotten comfortable, Shra! Careless and smug. We considered ourselves gods after we’d populated the entire Milky Way, encountering almost no resistance. Incidentally, I see a parallel to the current situation. We were stagnating, and we would have simply died out like some highly developed civilizations before us, the traces of which we have found. Then the Droxx came from Andromeda and gave us the wake-up call that we had coming to us.”

  “They killed billions of people! Do you call that a wake-up call?”

  “What else? Without the Droxx, we would never have awakened from that torpor of our civilization. We would have gradually fizzled out like the flame of a slow-burning candle. Almost all of the inventions that keep us alive today—if you consider this as being alive—were made during the war. But without the Droxx, we would not have existed for much longer. And we did defeat them in the end. They were our purifying fire, you could say. Just as we may now be the purifying fire for the two species on our doorstep.”

  “Hopefully without having to wipe them out!”

  “If they behave properly.”

  “The responses have been positive.”

  “Hm... The Iks don’t worry me much. They’re chickens, although this Kimikizu has earned my respect. That little one is solid to the core!”

  “Are you worried about the Mendraki?”

  “Those guys are extremely aggressive by nature. Almost the way humans used to be.” Mart laughed, which took the edge off his words. “This Kasfok is bad business. But on my second visit I made it clear to him that he only stays alive if he can get his act together. In addition, the Mendraki are more than satisfied with Mars now that I’ve enriched the atmosphere somewhat. They say the sandy wasteland even reminds them of their long-lost home planet.

  “Since they’ve realized that they won’t be able to get much farther with their ramshackle ships, the vast majority of them are very enthusiastic about the idea of making Mars their new home. If Kasfok gets in the way, I’ll threaten to take their beautiful planet back from them if they can’t get him under control. Then they can battle out the Kasfok problem themselves.”

  “And everyone’s happy with the allocation of the gas planets?”

  “The Mendraki are satisfied because they’ve got three planets and the Iks have only one, and the Iks are satisfied because Jupiter alone has as much helium-3 in its atmosphere as the other three combined.”

  “You’re becoming a diplomat in your old age, Mart.”

  “Speaking of diplomat! This Tolkut, the thwarted rebel, will probably be employed as a Mendraki ambassador to the Iks. Then he’ll be out of Kasfok’s crosshairs, and he appears to be one of the few spiders who can think outside the box. One less trouble spot on Mars!”

  “Then everything seems to be taken care of, right?”

  “Looks like it, Shra. You can tell the others that they can lie back down and keep on sleeping. Or keep playing God in one of their dream worlds, thanks to me—good old Mart put the fire out for them.”

  “I’m going to perform full immersion, Mart!”

  He was silent for a few seconds and just stared at the water. “Then this is the end of a nice friendship,” he said finally.

  “Come with me, Mart! Join us! You’ve lived on Earth long enough as a hermit.”

  Mart shook his head sadly. “No, I’m not ready yet, if I will ever be ready. It’s not just that I consider living as a pure spirit in virtual worlds to be self-delusion, to be a flight from reality, I... I feel an obligation. You’re right, Shra, I’m the last inhabitant of the earth. Well, at least if I’m running around in one of my clone bodies.”

  He smiled at Shra, but the smile was forced. “If I go too... then... then... then it’s over for good. I am a fossil, a relic, but I am also a symbol of what used to be. If I go, then the last of all people will disappear after millions of years, and it would be as if humanity had never existed.”

  “Full immersion is the only way to stop the end of humanity,” Shra said almost tenderly. “We were getting fewer and fewer. We’d lost our will to live—”

  “—and there were no second Droxx that came along,” Mart said softly.

  “And there were no second Droxx that came along,” Shra said. “We went extinct! Only the subspace matrix produced by the string generator, fed by the energy of the Earth’s core that would still be available for at least two billion years, kept us alive. We’re no longer in our physical form, but we’re still human. It’s the spirit that counts!”

  “But everything there is just a product of your imaginations. It’s not real!” Mart shouted this last word.

  “We really are, my old friend! That is what counts!”

  “Give me some more time, Shra. Give me some time! A few thousand years just to see how the Sol system develops with its new inhabitants. To help them or to lead them back to the right path when they’re facing collapse. Maybe then! Maybe then I’ll be ready!”

  Shra gently stroked Mart’s hair. “Of course, dear friend. What’s a few thousand years?”

  57th of Frien, 298

  Kimikizu was horrified. The flying machine looked like a pile of junk. The big hole in the cockpit, especially, gave her that impression. But still she went about her job. She avoided thinking about the reason for it.

  “This is where you were ejected,” Norok pointed out.

  “I don’t remember,” she replied.

  “Maybe it’s better that way.”

  She immediately understood what he meant. Other crew members had been sitting on either side of Norok. No one had survived except her. Kimikizu turned and opened the door that led to the central aisle of the flying machine. It looked neat and clean except for the big dark stain on the floor.

  “What have you done with them?”

  “They’re in the stock room. The Supreme Leaders want to send a flying machine to pick up their bodies. They’ll get their rightful send-off.”

  Kimikizu swallowed. It wasn’t the romantic couples’ getaway she’d been hoping for. On board the Mendraki’s cylinder ship, she always felt like she was being watched. There were undoubtedly cameras in the storage room she was living in. She’d need to talk to Tolkut about it.

  “Would the nanomachines have been an opportunity?” she asked.

  “No. You can fix the damage, but you can’t make life.”

  “I understand. And how do you feel about it? Are you immortal now?” She hadn’t wanted to talk about this subject, but there were a few questions she needed to get out in the open. So better now than never.

  Norok laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “Certainly not immortal. I suffocate without oxygen. But it’s assumed that the aging process is based on cell defects that the nanos will be repairing from now on.”

  “That means you don’t age anymore? Then it’s a good thing I’m much younger than you.”

  “It’s a theory. Thus far, the nanos have never been used deliberately in organisms.”

  “Then it’s also not known if they transfer to offspring?” she asked, her cheeks growing hot.

  “No. I spoke to the Knowledge Guardians, and they couldn’t say.”

  “Then they’ll be able to test all their ideas on your body. You must be quite popular with the Guardians.”

  “Quite the opposite. I broke a taboo. Because of the nanos I’ll never be allowed to enter the generation ship again. I wanted to talk to you about that.”

  “Can’t you get rid of them?”

  “There is a way, yes. They’re sensitive to electromagnetic discharges.”

  “We are, too. The magnetic sense.”

  “Exactly, Kimi. Nobody can assure me that I’ll still be the same after a treatment. The nanos replicate themselves, so it’s necessary to catch them all at once. A powerful discharge is needed.”

&nb
sp; Kimikizu remembered the mother of a friend who, when she was young, had gotten into a violent thunderstorm and been struck by lightning. Her magnetic sense hadn’t worked afterward, and she wasn’t able to fly anymore. For an Iks, it was a cruel fate to spend a lifetime on one’s feet.

  “I understand if you don’t want to run that risk,” she said.

  “And I understand if you want to return to the other Iks,” said Norok, his beak hanging down on his chest.

  “Did I say that?” she asked.

  “You thought it.”

  She became angry. She wouldn’t let anyone dictate her thoughts! “Don’t tell me what I thought.”

  “I’m sorry. But it’s what makes sense. You have a great career as a Navigator ahead of you. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but the Supreme Navigator would like to appoint you as her deputy because of your keen intellect. She says she’s learned a lot from you.”

  Kimikizu was moved. The Supreme Navigator hadn’t taken her seriously before all of this, but it sounded like she was ready to learn from her mistakes. As deputy, Kimi would assume real responsibility for the generation spaceship. There were some exciting tasks ahead. The ship had to be brought into orbit around one of the gas giants, flying machines had to explore the system, they had to start harvesting helium-3—but she couldn’t imagine doing all this without Norok.

  “Thanks, Norok,” she said, “but I can’t accept the offer. I won’t leave you alone.”

  “I’m going to be just fine. The Supreme Leaders offered to nominate me as an ambassador to the Mendraki if I refuse to be treated. I’ll hardly have the time to feel alone.”

  “I think you’re underestimating the situation. You’ll never be able to communicate with them directly. They’re aliens. Who would you tell your worries to? Do you want to figure out everything for yourself? You’ll become an old grump. A grouch as ambassador? The Iks don’t deserve that.”