by Hugh Howey
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.
24
Cole woke to the sound of the hyperdrive spinning up and almost rushed out of his room without getting dressed first. He emerged from his quarters hopping on one leg, tugging at his pants and cinching them off.
“Molly?” he hollered.
“Sshe iss in the Captain chair,” Walter said, popping his head out of the engine room. It nearly scared Cole to death.
“What in the world is she doing?”
“We’ve been topping off the hyperdrive coil, Navigator.” Walter spit the last word out with a sneer, obviously thinking he outranked Cole with plenty of room for several crew members between.
“What? How long have I been asleep?” Cole reached into his room for his only shirt and pulled it over his stiff back.
“Long time. I have sstored much while you do nothing.”
Cole shot him a look and hurried to the cockpit where he found Molly going through the pre-flight routine. He leaned over the control console so she would notice him before he spoke. He didn’t want to startle her. “Feeling better?” he asked.
She looked at him. “A little. Not much. And good morning.”
“Is it morning?”
“For you it is. Walter hasn’t slept a wink. I’ve no clue what keeps him going. Well, the loot, I suppose.” She finished booting the nav computer and swiveled in her seat to face him. “Sit down,” she said.
“I’d rather go talk to our hosts, figure out what in hyperspace is going on around here.”
“It might be better to hear it from me.” She gestured toward the nav chair again.
Cole sat and studied her closely. “What? You talked to them?”
Molly nodded. She told him what she’d learned from Campton, who he was, why he had fought to extinguish his own race. Cole listened, his own anger turning to confusion, then disgust. He controlled the urge to interrupt until Edison’s name came up.
“He’s Edison’s grandfather?”
“Yeah. And it gets weirder, turns out he’s descended from the Leefs as well. We can diagram it later if you like, but can we please work on getting out of here and talk about this between jumps? I can feel that place burning from here, like it’s on my skin. I’d jump into space if that’d make the feeling go away.” Cole saw her lips purse into the slimmest of smiles. “I’d even be willing to endure a few of your horrid jokes, see if that’d help.”
Cole relaxed. “My jokes are nebular,” he said.
Molly rolled her eyes at him. “Well… go tell them to Walter. The drive is warming up and showing eighty-five percent. Stand by the coupling and I’ll let you know when you can release it.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” He gave her a salute.
She made a rude gesture.
••••
The fusion feed snaked across the hallway in the rear of the ship, leading through the airlock and into a mechanical hatch. Walter fussed with some crates, trying to shove them into one of the cargo pods.
“How’d you make out, there, pal?”
Walter flinched and Cole felt some revenge for the scare earlier.
“Lotss of goodiess. The Navy can keep their reward!”
After another shove on the crate he turned back to Cole and said, “Forget you heard that. Very little ssleep for the Cargo Officser.”
Cole slapped him on the back and ducked into the mechanical room. He couldn’t believe most of this ship’s parts had been scattered in the dirt a few days ago. It looked even cleaner than before. Parsona was probably more reliable having passed though Glemot hands.
The Glemots.
He forgot about the fusion feed and rushed down the corridor to the observation glass. The planet was half-lit up by the planet’s sun, the terminator between night and day splitting the planet in two. But you couldn’t tell. Both sides were lit up. They were just slightly different shades of orange and red. However long he’d been asleep, it wasn’t longer than it took a planet to burn.
There was no sign of the two Glemots. Cole considered going off in search of them, Edison at least, but the branching hallways going off in all directions left him not knowing where to start. Peering up through the glass, he could see entire wings of the Orbital Station jutting out into space. There was a lot of potential for scavenging here, but the empty expansiveness of it all just left him feeling overwhelmed and lonely. He trusted that Walter had stocked up on enough valuables, stuff they could trade later for actual necessities.
Feeling far removed from the Parsona—and Molly—Cole left the planet behind and jogged back toward the ship. He could hear her yelling “One hundred percent!” just as he ducked through the inner airlock door.
“Gotcha!” he hollered back, trying not to sound out-of-breath.
He unplugged the fusion cord and stowed it back in its locker. The only thing tethering them to the station now was the airlock. He stepped through it to return the Station’s section of the fusion feed and opened the filling hatch, releasing the putrid odor of dried fusion fuel—the smell of something rotting or dying. He averted his head from the familiar scent, an odor that permeated ship hangars and OS fueling stations, and coiled the cord into the hatch.
Securing the locker, Cole looked around a final time to make sure everything was in its place. The usual procedure of cleaning up for the next ship jarred him into a realization: there was nothing keeping people away from this Station or the planet anymore. The Navy would be very interested in hearing about what had happened on Glemot and sending a recovery team to secure their property. He considered this as Edison and his grandfather strolled into view. Cole corrected himself, recalling the way their ship had been commandeered. It would never be safe here.
The two Glemots conferred, their low grumbling rolling down the hallway, indecipherable. Cole fought the urge to go and talk to Edison, to wish him farewell. There weren’t any ships on the station, but he could imagine the two beasts eventually whipping one up and going down to survey the damage below. When the larger alien wrapped Edison in an embrace, Cole realized the pup had different plans. Edison turned away from his grandfather and started lumbering down the corridor toward the Parsona. He had a bundle over his shoulder.
Cole’s heart ached with conflicting emotions.
Deep down, he felt connected to Edison on a primal level. Their all-night adventure
to rescue Walter and engineer Parsona’s escape, no matter what horrors it had led to, had sealed their fates to one another. They had also risked their lives for each other under the forest floor, saving one another from certain death. There was something in their male makeup that would never let them forget this. If Edison came and asked to join their crew, Cole would not hesitate. But then—he had Molly to consider. He couldn’t imagine her wanting a constant reminder of this tragedy around. He wondered if she could ever again see his coat without remembering the matted blood and the stench of death on it. And no matter what he felt for Edison, Molly came first. Her feelings came first. Especially now.
He steeled himself to turn Edison away—when Molly brushed past. She walked down the corridor to greet him, throwing her good arm around the large youth and leaning into his fur.
Edison dropped his bundle and returned the embrace. Molly’s face was buried in his robe, but Cole could still hear her muffled sobs. He respected the moment and ducked back through the airlock hatch.
Behind him, down the corridor that pointed out to Glemot, another orphan officially joined their unlikely crew.
••••
They never saw the fires on Glemot again. Molly pulled the airlock door closed while Walter secured the last of his loot. Everyone changed into their flightsuits. For two hours they did a full pre-flight check, going over all of the ship’s systems; it was the first chance they’d had to observe proper ship procedures since acquiring Parsona. There was no doubt they were running away from something once more, but they could do it at their own pace this time.
While Cole went over the engine room and checked the thrusters in the lazarette, Edison made some changes to the crew seating. In less time than it took to prep the ship, he was able to modify the two jump seats on the starboard side to better accommodate his bulk. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a flightsuit that would fit him, but he assured Molly and Cole he’d be fine, just as long as they didn’t lose cabin pressure.
Walter stuck his head in the laz. “Edisson keepss moving toolss!” he complained.
