by Mike Luoma
“See that ship over there?” The tech points to a flasher.
“Yeah?”
“That’s yours,” the tech says.
“It is?” BC asks, surprised. “Already?”
“Ms. C’s got it all set for you,” the tech tells him.
Ms. C? Oh. Anita. Great.
BC drags his suitcase over to the flasher to look for the pilot.
“Can we get out of here?” BC asks a woman standing next to the ship the tech pointed out.
“Sir?” she asks.
Huh, she looked like the pilot…
“Hi, sorry, I’m BC, Bernard Campion?” he explains, “You know, the Pope?”
The woman smiles. “You’re my passenger! Back to Earth space, right? Climb aboard!”
“With pleasure!” BC says, looking around the landing area. There’s no one else nearby. He climbs into the flasher, ready to head back to Earth. He rides on the bridge with the captain. It’s quiet. She’s busy guiding the ship out of the asteroids. BC watches rocks flash by and contemplates the starry carpet of space as they fly.
Well, that went well. I always know just what to say to the ladies!
“What was that, sir?” the pilot asks BC.
“Did I say that out loud?” he asks.
She doesn’t say anything, at first.
“I… I think you did,” she says.
“Sarcasm,” BC explains. “I don’t really know. What to say, I mean. To, um, you, uh, ladies, I meant.”
The pilot laughs.
“I can see that,” she says, smiling. She glances back at her instrument display.
“Transpace time!” she tells BC. “Excuse me, won’t you?”
“No worries,” BC says. The pilot fires up the Transpace Drive and soon the Earth is shining in the distance. It’s a smooth ride, and BC is soon back on Earth.
He instructs the pilot to set him down outside the Vatican, and calls ahead to let them know he’s on his way.
“In public like that, sir? Are you sure?” the pilot asks him to confirm his choice of landing area, a parking lot in Rome outside the gates of the Vatican.
“I’m sure. Set her down.”
A small reception committee greets BC as he disembarks. His secretary, provided by the Curia, is up in arms from the moment BC gets off the flasher on the outskirts of Vatican City.
“Your holiness? Pope Peter? Sir?”
The priest follows BC back from the landing area, trying to get BC’s attention as he walks from the ship towards his offices.
“I’m tired. It was a long trip. What do you want?” BC says curtly.
“You’re hardly ever here, sir! You were supposed to be on the Moon, but then you weren’t even there, sir, for over a week, now! There’s a great deal of paperwork that needs your signature!
There are audiences scheduled that you’ve missed! There is much work to being the Bishop of Rome, and I dare say you aren’t doing much of it, Sir!”
BC stops in his tracks.
Not like I need to explain interstellar politics to this toady.
“You dare to tell me how to be Pope?” BC says in his most menacing tone. The secretary backs off.
“No, sir, I mean, well, sorry, sir, I was sort of saying, but, no… never mind. I misspoke, your Holiness.”
BC continues his walk.
“Thought that might be the case. I have many responsibilities, Father. Some of them keep me on the road. But, I’ll tell you what. Get anything that needs my signature ready for me for tomorrow morning. I’ll sign until my arm drops off then. For now, though, I need some rest after my long trip.”
“If I may, sir?”
“Yes?”
“Mr. Wentworth of the UTZ has been quite insistently calling for the last week. He says that it’s important.”
“Of course it is,” BC says, mostly to himself.
“One final note, your Holiness?” the secretary asks.
“What?”
“You are due for a fitting of new vestments, also scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
BC is nearly at his office door.
“Great,” BC says to the man, “I’ll sign papers while they fit me.” BC opens his office door. He starts to step through it while his secretary still continues.
“I’m not sure that will be physically possib…”
BC shuts the door on the man. He hits the speaker switch so the secretary will hear him outside.
“Good. Night,” BC says.
He finds a place for his suitcase, and then finds a bed to lie down on. Sleep comes quickly, but BC’s head starts throbbing, too. Then the headache gallops in, treading on his skull, horses with hooves of pain, thousands of voices talking at him, shouting at him, through him, all at once. He can’t be sure if he is awake or asleep.
Suddenly, everything shrinks down to a pinpoint. BC feels still, calm. His world begins to open up and expand. The walls fall away.
BC sails across an infinite ocean, a still, calm sea. He listens for the other voice. It echoes in from nowhere and everywhere, not heard by ears but heard, all the same, but the voice is different this time, BC can feel the difference, rather than hear it.
WILL YOU AWAKEN?! SEE AS I SEE?
The voice is jarring, dissonant, like a clanging of bells in his head. Who are you?
I AM THE LAST… I AM THE FIRST! I AM REBORN!
You sound different?
WHAT IS THIS ENERGY?
BC senses a reaching into his mind, an invasive feeling, a filthy feeling. He tries to throw his hands up to defend himself, but he has no hands. He tries to throw something up to block the invasion, tries to will his arms to move in the dream.
Get out get out getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetout GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
BC feels it like a snap. His mind slingshots across the still calm sea inside, racing, racing, free of the reaching in, the invader gone. He sees a red fire in the distance. Suddenly he’s next to it, a bright red glowing ball of fire like a tiny sun he could hold in his hands – he reaches out to touch it, to hold it.
And he is angry.
The dream changes, shifts. He is still asleep. Or is he? He lies static, arms and legs stiff, confined, as if trapped in a small sleeping bunk.
ANGER!
He is angry. He has a right to be angry!
I am awake! I again have a body! No longer just a spirit, no longer just alive in the mind! I feel!
Feeling again, tingling in my toes, fingertips, I remember it all now! Where am I now, though, where do they keep me? So much time has passed. We are gone! No minds to sense, no sense of bond, nothing save the new energy I’ve sensed as thought, consciousness… so close… so, so close…
I sleep somewhere they no doubt thought “safe”. But it is all changed. Reaching out for… nothing… I sense no thing. Non-sense.
Some sense. Weak little lights, some brighter than others, are, they are out there, distant, distant, save the close bright one come to awaken us… come… if they are weak, they will be malleable…
impressionable… easily led.
They are not The People!
The People are lost… these sparkles are mere remnants of what once was, but perhaps ripe for real leadership…
Who is left to punish me, now!?
My frozen punishment, my lesson, my time now served… and what of The Servants?
Could they let The People die?
Do they yet remain?
My arms! I do feel my arms!? I do! It is my body! Why now? Who else is in here in my mind this mind like mine…
WHO ARE YOU?
BC feels the snap again, and again he sails across the still calm seas, this time catapulted away from the fiery orb.
He feels the anger fade as the bright red ball disappears; feels the walls of his office come back up around him; feels his headache and the confusion of the dream fade away with the anger, and then it’s all gone and he shrinks down into the small still point… and drifts off into sound sleep. Beep
Beep beep
Beep beep beep
The com is flashing and beeping for his attention.
Great. My secretary.
“What is it? I didn’t ask for a wakeup call!” BC says, answering the com.
“Look, sir I know that, and I wouldn’t ordinarily disturb you, sir, but the thing is, they’ve been trying to reach you and I don’t know what to do, not really…”
“Who? Is it Wentworth? Look, tell him I’ll talk…”
“ No, sir! It’s… well, we have a communication for you from… from these aliens , sir. Your holiness. They seem to know you, sir.”
Aliens? Which ones? Most people don’t even know they’re out there, any of them, yet!
“Alright,” BC tells the priest, “put them through. And father?”
“Yes, your holiness?”
“Not a word to anyone about my callers, eh?”
“Yes, your holiness!”
The com screen flickers to life. The eldest of the Eldred looks out at Campion.
“Bernard Campion?” the Eldred asks.
“Hello, eldest of the Eldred. I am surprised to hear from you so soon. I’m afraid I have not yet even heard from Al-Salid; although it seems too soon for him to even be back on Mars.
“I asked you for some time, and I’ve only just returned here to Earth.”
“Yes, we know,” the Eldred says after a short delay.
What kind of com system lets him get through to me here from Eldray? Be nice to get our hands on
THAT!
“We have had a… development,” the Eldred says, sounding almost afraid.
“A development?” BC asks
“Yes. Can you meet with us again? There is a sensitive subject we need to discuss with you, far too sensitive to speak of on an open com channel such as this.”
“Does it have to do with Al-Salid?”
“No, he has come and gone, just after you. I imagine he will be in touch with you soon. But by then it may be too late. We can say no more on an open channel.”
“Okay, I’ll meet with you. Where…”
“We can meet you on Earth,” the Eldred offers.
Yeah, sure and bring along a new virus, or trigger the next stage, right!
“How about The Project asteroid base?” BC suggests.
Better than here or the Moon…
“The asteroid base, then,” the Eldred agrees.
“I’ll meet you there in six days,” BC tells the alien. “I need some time to prepare and to get there.”
“The need is urgent,” the eldest of the Eldred says. “But if it must be six days from now, so be it. We can be there in three days. We will be waiting for you. Be aware: the situation is dire. We do not have much time to deal with the situation. Please, be aware.”
“I’m aware, okay?” BC assures the alien.
Hope I kept the sarcasm out of my voice, there. Aware? Aware of what? Aware of a whole lot of nothing, so far.
“See you at the base, then. Six days, or sooner if you can. Please,” the eldest of the Eldred says, signing off.
BC calls his secretary.
“Sorry, father, but I have to leave again. Here,” BC signs his name on the desktop tablet, sends it to his secretary. “Have a stamp made of this, and go nuts! Well, not too nuts. No checks or anything, got it?”
“Yes, your holiness, but this is no good. It says ‘Bernard Campion’.”
“What’s wrong? Oh.”
BC signs “Pope Peter IV” and sends it to the secretary.
“Thanks!” BC says.
“But sir, you’ve hardly been here!”
“Silence!” BC raises his voice. The man stops.
Huh, never tried that before!
Guess it works.
“Take care of it. Please,” BC says, and signs off.
I said ‘please’ to be nice. Nicer, anyway.
Now for Anita.
BC puts a call through to The Project’s asteroid base to talk to Anita.
“Anita!” BC greets her.
“BC?” she asks, answering coolly after a few seconds pause. “What can I do for you?”
“I love it when you talk dirty like that,” BC jokes.
BC watches as she listens to his response. Anita blushes.
“BC! You’re the Pope, for Christ’s sake!”
“For his sake and everyone else’s,” BC jokes. “Look, Anita, I’m just trying to lighten up the situation. ‘Cause we’ve got a bit of a situation on our hands.”
“A situation?” Anita asks.
“I just got a call from the eldest of the Eldred. He’s coming your way.”
“BC?” Anita asks, “Didn’t you know the Eldred are asexual, BC, neither male nor female?”
“What? No! You never told me that, but… look, never mind.” BC shakes his head. “They’re scared, and they want to meet with me, and they’re on the way to the asteroid base for that meeting. They’ll be there in three days. I need you to send a flasher to pick me up here at Vatican City to get me out there.”
“Again?” she asks. “They want to meet with you again this soon? That can’t be good, BC.”
“The eldest of the Eldred actually sounded scared,” BC tells Anita.
“ That makes me scared,” Anita says.
“ Yeah, they asked for the meeting, said there’s been an important development, that something had changed. But they wouldn’t say what.
“Mysterious as always,” she says. “I’ll get a ship out to you soon.”
“Sooner the better,” BC says.
“Yessir!” Anita says, saluting him. She slaps off the com.
Well, that went kinda well. Doesn’t being Pope, Head CEO on the UTZ Council, and an all around nice guy count for something?
He calls his secretary back.
“Contact The Project. Get me the ETA on my ship. Please,” BC asks.
“Your ship?
“Yes, sir, your holiness.”
What scares the Eldred?
Chapter Nineteen
An Eldred ships sits waiting in the landing bay as BC arrives at the asteroid base on the fourth day after his call from the eldest of the Eldred.
“They got here yesterday,” Anita tells BC over the com on the bridge of the transport ship. “They seem anxious. Different, all the base personnel are noticing. Weird.
“And they keep asking for word of your arrival. Quite insistently, from what I’ve heard. Not like them at all.”
A soft “thump” tells BC they’ve landed.
BC disembarks from the ship to face a waiting crowd of Eldred and base personnel. Anita leads the group of Eldred up to the ship. The human techs come forward to take care of the ship.
“We couldn’t keep them away,” one of the techs tells BC under his breath as he passes him.
“Yes!” says one of the Eldred, stepping up to BC. “We have been anxiously awaiting your arrival.” BC
recognizes the alien.
The eldest of the Eldred? Here? This has gotta be big!
Maybe they’re ready to give us the plague cure!
I worried about an assassination run, but if the eldest is here that’s a lot less likely. Pleasant thought.
“Hello again,” BC says to the Eldred.
“Is there somewhere we might speak privately?” the eldest of the Eldred asks him. Right to the point, I’ll give him that.
BC looks to Anita.
“We’ve got a meeting room nearby. Follow me,” she says. She leads the group of them out of the landing bay and into the base.
The five Eldred follow Anita and BC to a conference room a short distance inside the facility. The room reminds BC of the conference room back on the Moon.
Same furniture: gray chairs, translucent blue oval table, same room design. No stars here, though. Probably too far inside the rock.
BC walks over to one head of the table. The eldest of the Eldred almost automatically gravitates toward the other end.
Ani
ta closes the door behind her. As soon as the door closes, the eldest of the Eldred begins to speak.
“We have a major problem. When last we spoke, we could speak of the Ancient Enemy in the past tense. Stories of a million years ago.” The eldest pauses.
It almost looks like he’s in pain!
“This is no longer the case,” the eldest of the Eldred says with dread in his voice. “One of the Ancients has been awakened.” The Eldred looks down.
“The Ancient Enemy has returned.”
BC sits in silence, stunned. He looks over at Anita.
Wish I could think more security into the area!
They may be here to kill us after all!
BC sees Anita touch a small button on some kind of communicator at her side. She’s doing something… maybe some kind of silent alarm? Good girl!
Anita nods at him.
“Please explain,” BC says. “You told me you wiped them out a million years ago.”
“Not all of the members of the race we call the Ancient Enemy were destroyed,” the eldest of the Eldred says with a deep sigh. “Long ago, we discovered that one of their race had been kept in suspended animation, placed there by others of his kind, before their end, as a punishment for unknown crimes.”
A criminal among the cutthroats?
The worst of a bad bunch?
So bad even his own people put him away?
“His very existence was concealed from us for thousands of years by a race called The Snakt,” the eldest of the Eldred explains. “When we discovered that the Snakt were hiding one of the Ancient Enemy, we took control of the capsule he was sealed inside. The capsule’s technology was beyond us, self contained and apparently designed for permanent storage. We could not penetrate or affect the capsule. The capsule has remained undisturbed on Eldray for over six hundred thousand of your years.
“Until now.
“Now, this one has somehow, er, thawed out, and escaped.”
The eldest of the Eldred goes silent. What he’s just had to relay to BC has clearly drained him.
“What? One of ‘them’ is alive? You didn’t tell me about anything like this!” BC says, amazed.
“It was not a concern. The capsule had functioned and contained him for centuries,” the eldest of the Eldred says.
“So,” BC says, trying to contain his growing anger with the fuzzy blue alien, “what else are you hiding?”
