by P H Campbell
"These people cannot handle colonization on their own," Treah argued.
"We have room," Seren told them. "There's a lot of uninhabited space on the surface. As long as they don't go swimming or near the beaches, they should be safe enough. And we can gradually introduce them to more advanced technologies."
"Your world can not long sustain the numbers it has," Treah reminded her.
"True," Seren agreed. "But we're working out how to deal with that by being here, yes?"
"Will you do your part when the time comes to help the entity do what it needs to do?" Treah asked Seren.
"She'll be busy," Miralenda asserted, jumping into that conversation. "She has a planet to run. But I'm the one who came up with how to send the entity we had back where it belonged. So it's really me you need."
"Which is why you asked to be conjured," Seren realized. "Yeah, I should've seen that coming. You're the essential part of this."
Miralenda grinned and shrugged sheepishly, saying, "I told you before I rode the time streams. You never got how I did that."
"This planet reached out to The World?" Seren realized.
"It being only two light years away from The World wasn't much of a handicap for time riding," Miralenda confirmed. "Now I understand why our entity was in this general galactic neighborhood. Three dimensions are tricky when you're used to moving around a lot more than that. The entity that hit our world expected to give energy to the entity in this world, so that this world, and our entity, could escape back to its own dimension. That was why it lingered above The World and irradiated it before entering the ground and remaining there."
"But this world's magic is so much stronger," Seren pointed out.
"Yes, but the energy type needed to get between the dimensions isn't what radiates the magic," Miralenda explained.
"Now I'm really confused," Looie sighed.
"Shoud'a handed out scorecards first," Ash agreed.
"This world doesn't have a variable star for a sun," Treah stated. "Radiation on the order necessary to nearly sterilize a world would be the result of an unstable star. The World's star is unstable, and has episodes of extreme radioactivity. Since radiation is cumulative, it was only a matter of time before the entity on The World absorbed enough solar radiation to be able to return itself to its own dimension.
"This world has a less active star, and the density of energies around it means almost no ionizing radiation reaches the surface. Instead, it stores up as much of the radiation that has accumulated in the encrustations it accumulated by gravitation, and attempted to transition to its own dimension about every ten millennia. But finding its way back takes more power than it can accumulate naturally, and it needs a direction in which to go."
"Which, knowing the direction our entity went, regarding this dimension, I can help this entity get home," Miralenda concluded.
"You knew we would come here," Seren realized, looking at Treah.
"I did," Treah agreed.
"And she's not going to say anything more about that any more than I did for you, Sis," Miralenda asserted. "In this dimension, things happen in their time. Knowing what those things are supposed to be, let alone when, isn't something humans should be able to do."
Treah remained standing in mute acknowledgment of what Miralenda has said. Seren didn't point out that the "what" had already been determined; sending the entity back where it belonged. Yet the way Miralenda said that made her wonder if that "what" was still to be decided.
She didn't ponder that for long, though.
"Not to ruin the moment, but we still have to decide which side to pick," Seren reminded them all. "I don't mind helping people in pursuit of that ideal, but this isn't my planet, nor my problem. So, Treah, does this mean we'll be getting someone new from the UGW to finish that task, now that you've pushed the UGW into realizing its mistake here?"
"I will have to consult with the UGW and the Shade Alliance before I could be replaced," Treah stated. "As a UGW representative in the Shade Alliance would likely be considerably less than welcome in a less controlled environment than the prison, I shall remain here until that is resolved. If I am to be replaced, it will be at the final UGW planet already scheduled to be visited."
"I'll let you know when to come pick me up," Miralenda winked. "Now that I'm alive again, I think I'll see what the galaxy is all about, after we take care of business here."
"I'm going to miss you," Seren admitted.
"You've been walking on your own for a long time, Sis," Miralenda told her. "I've just been the cricket on your shoulder, and you don't need me anymore. But this isn't forever. I will be back. After all, it wasn't much, but The World was my planet, too, and it's still suffering from what I did to it. I have to set that right."
Seren didn't point out that the plan to "make things right" which climaxed with the Day of the Southern Sun had been Miralenda's idea all along and had already undone most of the damage to the people of the planet. It didn't occur to Seren until much, much later that the Sundering wasn't what Miralenda was talking about.
There was little left to do but return to the Twin's mining ship and get on course to UGC 1182-C. It took a lot of explaining to G'tham and Torian, who didn't know all of Seren's back-story, to bring them up to speed on what had happened, and why, but the rest of the group understood, at least superficially, what was going on. Neither of them had known that Treah was originally an entirely 'magical' creation.
"That was the woman who cast the Sundering?" Gliff asked.
"Yeah, that's her," Seren agreed. "Or, in looking at it another way, that's me, too. We're more alike than any twins, because she lived in my head all these years, and I know what she knew. The difference is that I had an independent existence until I hit puberty, so my personality is more shaped by my early years than by hers."
"She said she wants to make up for what she did," Ronik added.
"She feels immense guilt for what happened," Seren told them. "If the cavern hadn't fallen in on her, she'd probably have killed herself. But either way, the entity needed her, and didn't have the power to create another one of her for a long, long time. So it preserved her, if not in body then in consciousness and awareness. And together they worked out how to get the entity back where it belonged."
"And fixed the broken parts in the people on the way," Sasha added. Being Seren's lover, she knew the whole story anyhow, and had been visited before by Miralenda herself.
"Who do you think they will assign as the UGW representative?" Markov wondered.
"It won't be Lyle," Cinder asserted. "He's of the Shade, even if he's not. He has his own biases, so the UGW won't send him. It's a good thing we're heading to eleven eighty two charlie, since I'll have to talk to the council about this development. The Shade Alliance helping the UGW for what we want will be huge, if the UGW agrees to it."
Seren noticed that the Twin's expressions saddened when they heard they probably wouldn't be able to see their favorite former Scout.
"Do you think he's still negotiating for the Fusions?" Seren asked.
"Hard to say," Cinder shrugged. "If the UGW was being exceptionally stubborn, I know the Shade Alliance can get exceptionally nasty. Everyone knows about the Great Disgrace, and the Purging. But I'll bet not one in a million knows what happened to the Fusions after that other than they declined to live in the UGW because the Methonians are such close allies."
"The Twins mentioned some of what that was all about," Seren admitted. "I get that they were there, and that the Methonians held the Fusions prisoner for generations. But I'm hazy on the details. Especially about the why's."
"Can we, Mom?" Looie requested.
"It's more your story to tell than mine," Cinder agreed. "You were there."
"The Methonians look like me, but they can only speak grunts and growls out loud because their tongues and vocal chords are different than humans," Ashe explained. "But they were low-level espers – people who could communicate mind to mind over shor
t distances – so the need for verbal speech had never evolved. Then one day, five or so thousand years ago, a spaceship landed on Methonia and the Human Race made first contact with the only other known intelligent species in the galaxy at the time."
"But they couldn't talk to each other," Seren recalled part of this story. "You were the translator so they could."
"Yeah, but what we didn't really go into is that first contact went disastrously bad," Ash mentioned. "It turned out that after a long time in space, and with some nice-looking females and handsome males, Methonians and Humans found out the hard way that they could breed. Not only that, but viable breeding, so the offspring were fertile."
"Sounds like the beginning of a beautiful partnership," Seren noted. "So what went wrong?"
"For lack of a better term, racism," Looie took it up again. "The rulers of Methonia at the time insisted on racial purity. They prevented the Humans from leaving, and locked them, and all the Fusions up."
"I expect there were a lot of casualties," Seren remarked. "Humans don't take kindly to that kind of thing."
"A lot of casualties," Looie agreed.
"Our creator, who used her DNA and the DNA of the captain of the Earth vessel, stuffed us into a stasis chamber as the fighting broke out and that's all we knew that happened," Ash interjected.
"That's where I come in," Cinder interrupted in turn. "I found them when they were still in a single body…"
"That part I heard about, and there was a Fusion who helped you get the two fused brains into two different bodies," Seren recalled.
"Right, but after that, and around the time I decanted them, there was the whole get blown up thing that the owners of the colony ship we misappropriated were threatening us with," Cinder continued. "A single tiny ship who told the aggressors who they were saved us and the fighting stopped like someone pushed a button.
"Then we settled matters, but along the way, the Fusion got to talking to the Methonians in the Talon's crew. And that's what started the Purging."
"Okay, back up a bit," Seren requested. "What happened after Looie and Ash were, as you said, stuffed into stasis and your meeting with that Fusion who turned them into Looie and Ash as separate people?"
"I was getting to that," Cinder grinned. "The Humans eventually found Methonia again and of course found no traces of their previous visit. They didn't know that the Methoinians had mostly slaughtered the original ship's crew, that there were human/Methonian fusions in the galaxy, because the Methonians – certain clans of them – deliberately kept that a secret from everyone."
"How so?" Seren wondered. "Wouldn't that get around?"
"No," Ash stated firmly. "The Humans landed in a region belonging to a warrior clan. Very traditional-minded leadership. My creators made me mostly with Human technology, since Humans were much more advanced about tech that way. Our mother was the assistant to a research staff mostly of humans. They cooperated in making us AIDLOO's, then they could talk to each other."
"I got from Lyle that the Methonians who met the Humans the first time were the same ones who met them the second time," Cinder added. "Same clan. And that clan had humans imprisoned, along with Methonians and Fusions. As the level of technology went up, and the Methonians could begin building their own ships, they put the prisoners into one and began building the Botany Bay, putting it in a part of space no one ever went, and making sure the other Methonians and the Humans never found out about it.
Most Methonians didn't have a clue that humans had already met Methonians, but the highest ranking ones did, the War Clan. And when humans arrived the second time, the War Clan told them they were the first Humans to arrive. They could use mindspeech to speak to them and didn't have the misunderstandings the first group encountered.
"The long and short of it is that the most powerful Clan of Methonians lied about meeting Humans before, and lied to their people, and kept the Fusions a secret. The Methonians took that news badly."
"Okay, I can see how they'd be pissed about being lied to, but…" Seren started.
"Seren, Methonians are pathological truth tellers," Ash explained. "Truth is their mantra. Truth is their life's breath. Truth is their honor. They may be tactful in revealing it, but they tell the truth. When humans came to Methonia the second time, the Methonians flat out lied to them about having met humans before. And they carried that lie in the living flesh of the Fusions born over the millennia, and who remained imprisoned for no fault other than being born a Fusion. They also lied to their own about what happened and kept the existence of the Fusions a secret for thousands of years."
Seren did not like the implications left hanging.
"So, what happened?" Seren asked.
"The Methonians went crazy," Cinder told them. "All of them. Their racial honor had been all but destroyed, and they went on a blood vengeance rampage. They found every single Methonian involved in perpetuating that lie and killed them. They did it ritually. And almost every single Methonian involved in that lie let themselves be killed for perpetuating it. It was literally over in days. And the UGW towed the Botany Bay carrying the Fusions to the Shade Alliance."
"I think I understand why they didn't align with the UGW, now," Seren nodded.
"We all have an honor debt to Katherine Reynolds and the crew of the Talon for finding them and freeing them," Looie quietly said.
"Who is this Katherine Reynolds?" Majel wondered. "I heard her name many times."
"Oh, if you believe in myths, she's a god," Ash asserted. "Her word stops wars. Her ship destroys worlds who do evil to other worlds. She destroyed the Fornyth down to the last brains. She brought peace and prosperity to the UGW, and even gave the Shade Alliance a running start."
"Have you met her?" Seren wondered.
"I've spoken with her," Cinder admitted. "She didn't exactly sound god-like, but if even half the stories I've heard about her are true, she's one hell of an impressive lady."
"Do you know how loyal she is to the UGW?" Seren wondered.
"If you want an opinion based on short conversations years ago, my impression is that she's more interested in fairness than in loyalty to an organization," Cinder decided.
Seren was silent for a moment, thinking.
"Does her word carry weight with the Council?" she finally asked.
"Like no one else's," Cinder replied. "I don't know a lot about the UGW these days, but back then, and since, from what's filtered across the border, she's probably able to move UGW mountains with a glance."
Then the implications of the questions she had just asked sunk in.
"Wait, you want to ask God to be the UGW's representative?"
"Treah had an agenda that included us, so she maneuvered her way to be in the position to fulfill that purpose," Seren pointed out. "I'd trust her to be fair, but she has another focus and that isn't us. Miralenda can do what needs to be done for the entity.
"Anyone else they send would be biased either toward the Shade side, or toward the UGW side. I know you're biased toward the Shade side…"
"Yes, I'll admit that, but I promise you that the last thing I want is for you guys to get screwed over by anyone, Shade or UGW," Cinder interrupted. "I'm not that happy with the way the Shade's been treating folks it promised to help, but it's a complicated situation that isn't necessarily deliberate. Even a tiny fraction of your system's resources would pretty much remove those complications."
Seren knew that to be the truth.
"That's very fair of you, thank you, Cinder," Seren told her.
"And you want fair on the other side, too," Cinder realized.
"Yes, I do," Seren nodded.
Cinder sat quietly, thinking it over. Finally, she spoke.
"Looie, Ash, fire up the QUESTOR, contact Lyle, see if he knows where Katy Reynolds is now," she told her daughters. "Let him know that Seren would like to speak with her."
"… wow…" Ash breathed and raced her sister to the communications center.
Turning back to
Seren, Cinder remarked, "If she agrees to this, you'll be meeting the biggest living legend in the UGW."
"I'm getting used to meeting legends, present company included," Seren grinned back.
Cinder contemplated that concept for a moment and laughed. "That would be neat, the three greatest legends of their own spheres meeting in the same room for a common goal."
"Well, not exactly common, but definitely much the same," Seren corrected.
At the moment the mining ship left the surface of UGC 0751-C on its way to UGC 1182-C, Lyle Dufour was in transit back to the UGW having finally secured a treaty which was specific enough to satisfy both sides when his ship received a QUESTOR call from UGW Central. He was a little more gray than he'd been eleven years earlier when he'd last been there, but the calm, contained man was still spry, and still unattached. His work was still number one in his life, even if it was a different job than he'd had all those years ago.
"Dufour," he responded.
"Lyle, it's Treah," Treah's voice came over the speaker.
Lyle activated the video, and the two were more or less face to face again.
"Treah, I've just finished the revised treaty between the Shade Alliance and the UGW," he told her, expecting that was the reason for her call. Then he noticed her expression. "Is there something wrong?"
"It's very complicated, but I need to speak with Katherine Reynolds," Treah told him. "It is regarding UGC zero seven five one charlie."
"Wait, that's your home world, right?" Lyle asked.
"It is," Treah nodded. "I will need to speak to Katherine Reynolds about that, and about other things as well."
"You look a bit off," Lyle observed. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, as long as I speak to Katherine Reynolds," Treah replied cryptically. "The UGW will not tell me where she is. I know you know."
"How do you know I know that?" Lyle wondered.
"You're of the Shade," Treah reminded him. "You'd know where your friends are."
"You know me a bit too well," Lyle chuckled. "How important is it?"
"The fate of the galaxy depends on it," Treah stated flatly.
