by Guy Antibes
“It’s no mystery about the darkness. If all of these explosions occurred at once, there was probably so much debris thrown into the atmosphere that the sun probably did go dark for a while. I’ll bet the real centers of population were totally destroyed like the first site that King Obsomil and I visited. There is a lot of flat land out there. The only things growing are some highly radiation-resistant plants.”
The group walked though a set of double doors leading out of the room. These doors barely let the group through. Jan carried a six-foot metal rod, he had brought from Diltrant. He had to use it to pry the opening big enough for them to squeeze through. A few holes in the ceiling dimly lit the scene. The room was as large as the lobby. Desks in various states of decomposition were still in ordered rows. The dust heaps of human remains were everywhere.
Jan was amazed at how much was intact. Some alloys of Grethian metal seemingly did not decompose. It was apparent that readers of some sort were at every desk together with communication devices. They may change a little here and there, but computing and communication are always required by workers throughout human civilization. Jan opened what seemed to be a plastic box, which was so brittle it cracked in his hands. He pulled out archaic data tabs. He noticed similar boxes at some of the desks.
“Let’s get some tabs from those offices. It’s likely they will still work, if the tabs in the hall are any indication. We might find some reference works in the offices. I am very doubtful that any network survived, so we may be disappointed,” Jan said. Grethian technology still lagged far behind from what he was used to back on Impollon.
“How do you know this?” said Fosan.
“I worked for a trading company back home. I would analyze planetary economic output and make recommendations for maximizing that world’s or that group’s return to civilization. There are many worlds that, like Grethia, were lost touch with humankind. Those that retained their technology base, rejoined. Those that didn’t were lost. We had a Galactic war thirty five hundred years ago. Many worlds were destroyed, just like Grethia. There are plenty of worlds that are just like this continent. The trading companies are actively trying to find those hidden worlds in order to exploit what was left behind and increase the size of their trading revenues.”.
“The merchant class must run things.” Fosan said. That was a sharp observation from the professor.
“Once you get to be a certain size, whoever controls trade has a large measure of control over the government. Governments are heavily influenced by those who have the economic power. That’s not all bad, because successful companies in the long run, rely on keeping their labor base, the people who work for them, productive. A smooth-running government can be good for the companies and good for the people. The problem comes when the government has control of everything. Few governments will make the right decisions for trade or for the people when their principle goal is to stay in power.
“The tabs from the hall made clear that there were factions here on the main continent. The tabs spoke of a political breakdown.” Jan said as he got a door open to an office. He went in and gathered up some more tabs.
Fosan and Merinnia went off through another door. Suddenly, a cry rang out through the headphones of the suit. Jan went to the scene and found Merinnia clutching the flooring, hanging by her arms above a dark hole. He got down and pulled her up. She was crying, “Fosan just walked through here, and then the floor gave away.”
Jan peered into the gloom. His headlight played on the inert form of Fosan twenty feet below. Jan examined the edges of the hole. The opening might have been an access door to the area below. “We need to get down there, he’s not moving,” Jan said.
The two got up and carefully trod through the room and tried a few more doors. The doors were all difficult to move on their ancient hinges.
They finally opened a door leading to a dark stairway. The structure appeared sound. Jan took his crowbar and carefully tested the metal stair treads and the railings as they descended. The railings broke away from the walls, but the stairs seemed to hold weight.
“Switch on your light, Merinnia.” Jan said as he switched on his own helmet light. A yellow glow lit up the darkness beneath them. The two light beams exposed detail through the murk. The pair descended step by step. The tread ended in a small landing lined with four doors. Jan tried the door that seemed to lead to where Fosan must be. The door moved. Jan’s light penetrated a totally dark room. No Fosan. There wasn’t any other door leading from the room. But Jan did notice a number of readers, a counter and racks of data tabs.
Merinnia tried the next door and found the shaft of dim light outlining the dim figure of Fosan. She called Jan and they examined his inert form. Jan checked for signs of life. Then there was a jerk in his body and the man moaned, obviously coming out of unconsciousness. Fosan sat up on his own accord, stretched his neck, and then slumped down moaning.
“What, what happened?” he said as his eyes began to clear then cloud with pain.
“You’ve fallen about twenty feet, Fosan. You were unconscious for about five minutes. How do you feel?”
“My neck is killing me, but I don’t feel it’s broken.” Fosan said. “I can move my fingers and toes.” Merinnia helped Fosan to his feet. Fosan had more aches that he thought, but to everyone’s surprise, he was battered, but ambulatory.
Jan looked about the room. “You were saved by this collapsed table.” Jan pointed out the broken table under Fosan. “More than that, this is a transport room. These controls are for transfers. It looks just like the controls in the Hall in Diltrant.” Jan sought an activation switch. A whining started as he pressed it. Lights began to glow. All at once they snapped into brightness. The light revealed a portal outline about ten feet in diameter in the center of the room. The table was in the center of it. “I’m amazed that they had a local generator and that it still works. They might have used the access door above to get larger items down here.”
“Let’s go into the other room I looked in. I’d like to see if the lights are on there yet.” Jan said. They helped Fosan into the next room and had him sit in a rickety ancient chair. Jan looked at the readers. “These use the same generator as the other room. I want to see what’s on these tabs. I can puzzle out most of the words. There are thousands of tabs here.”
“Yes, Jan,” Fosan said, “The one you showed me is only a few minutes long. Your right! This data may mean a great deal.”
“We’ll only find out by looking at them,” Merinnia said, holding a data tab out to Jan. She looked into his eyes. The excitement made her breathing fast and shallow, electricity sparked through her eager eyes. She was jubilant and her anticipation was infectious. Jan looked at her and was smitten by her enthusiasm.
Jan took the tab from her and looked it over. He inserted the tab in the reader. Static flowed across the screen. Finally the circuits made corrections and an image resolved on the flat screen. “I can understand this writing even better than the speech.” Jan said. His excitement decreased, however when he realized what he was reading. “These are service billings. Evidently this is a bank or utility company or something. These thousands of data tabs are archived bills. We’ve found the billing department for Grethians using power millennia ago” Jan made a wry look to the others who obviously didn’t understand what he said.
Jan took more tabs and looked them over. From faded writing on the tab covers, Jan could see that these weren’t primary storage. Would central servers still be in existence? “We can learn a lot from an archeological viewpoint from these tabs. We should take some of the detail tabs and some of the report tabs along with some of the readers. We can examine them at our convenience later.” Jan said.
Fosan was starting to feel more pain from his injuries. The two helped Fosan up the stairs and to the ship. They checked him out. He had jammed his spine and had some bruises. He had evidently struck his head inside the helmet. A bump had risen on his forehead. “Let’s put you in the Autod
oc” Jan said. “It will diagnose your injuries and repair what it can. I don’t know if you breached your suit. The autodoc will detect any radiation poisoning and will administer some anti-radiation drugs if your suit developed a leak. The drugs only treat the symptoms. Radiation is like a sunburn. Once you’ve been exposed, you can’t undo the burn.”
They helped Fosan into the chamber and closed it. The autodoc cycled through and the information screen displayed Fosan’s physical condition.
Merinnia and Jan helped Fosan out of the apparatus some time later. “See this screen,” pointed out Jan, “you are pretty banged up, but your general health seems to be okay. The best news is that there is no sign of radiation.”
Fosan looked at Jan then at the machine with amazement. “This is magic. I cannot comprehend machinery that will do these things. We must seem a very backward culture to you.”
“Culture is culture. It becomes different as people change. But it doesn’t get better or worse, it just changes. I know of “advanced” cultures that are more barbaric in their own way as “backward” cultures. If you take the technology aspect away from the culture, I think you will find every culture has something significant to offer. What we have found here is a great heritage of technology. That technology will affect the culture of all Grethia.”
“I see,” said Fosan. “People make what they will of their own lives. It’s a pity, a vast pity.”
“To everyone’s sorrow,” Jan said. “Just think what your lives would be like if the war hadn’t happened?”
“Perhaps, we’d be living better, but the lives of Diltrantians aren’t necessarily bad because we haven’t been able to use this technology,” Merinnia said.
“That is great perspective,” Jan said. “Not necessarily better, but different. However, technology frees people up to enrich their lives, like eliminating the drudgery that women typically get left with.”
“I can’t dispute that,” Merinnia said.
Jan went back to reviewing Fosan’s condition. “The autodoc says you will need to rest for four weeks. They arrived during the night. We have plenty of food supplies and you already know how to use the viewers. You can stay here and rest while Merinnia and I do more exploring. You should be able to contact us over the radio. I am setting it to the suits’ frequency. Just hold down this button when you want to talk.” Jan pointed out on the control panel. “We should be gone no longer than four hours.”
Jan and Merinnia went back to the building and the room with the racks of tabs and, bringing sacks, gathered a number of them to take back to the ship. They returned and, after Jan decontaminated them, set up a viewer and began to examine the retrieved information.
“I wish I knew that language like you do.” Fosan lamented. “I wonder how you can read it and we cannot. My mind tells me that our language should be descended from the language on the tabs. You know both. Why are they different, Jan?”
“Your language is not that different from what you hear. There have been two spoken and written languages in use universally for millennia. The dialects differ from planet to planet, but the language you speak is very close to Galactic Basic. I had no trouble picking up on the inflections and filling in for some of the localized slang. Galactic Basic is the language spoken by the vast majority of people. There is another language called Galactic Commercial. This language is used in legal, commercial and political specialties. I know both through my education and because I used Galactic Commercial in my job back home.” Jan punched an instruction to the computer.
“I also had dialect training in preparation for the Space Quest. The dialect training was what enabled me to know your language and the Grethian version of Commercial so quickly.” He sighed and went on. “Your ancestors, the Grethians seem to have used Galactic Commercial in all of these tabs. The people who made it through the cataclysm here must have spoken only Basic. Maybe the ancient ones did it to ensure those who would be able to use the Grethian artifacts were from off world.” Jan shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t explain it. There is so much information that will never be known.”
Fosan said, “I’m still perplexed. Why a two-tier language system? It seems a waste of time.”
“That’s right. It is a waste of time except to those who know Commercial. It’s like a barrier of entry into economic and political leadership. Since I went to a University, I easily got a job in a company that used Commercial as their internal language. I think it has been maintained to purposely restrain the amount of people who can seek after higher-level positions.”
Merinnia looked at Jan, “We need to get back to using the language, not talking about it, gentlemen,” she said with a smile. The exchange ended and Jan began to examine more of the tabs.
Jan worked through the night. The idioms of the language were now familiar to him. He could now write and speak the variant of Commercial that the Grethians recorded.
At breakfast onboard ship Merinnia asked Jan, “What have you learned, any leads?”
“Just what I thought. I can tell you this city was named Nameratu. The city was newly-built when the cataclysm hit. It served as a service center and a resort. It appears to have also been supported a mining industry. I would say they got hit pretty lightly compared with some of the cities on the flatter areas of this continent,” finished Jan.
“What I can’t get over is that these all of these people died. What a horrible scene. No wonder father abhorred the thought of returning with you.” Merinnia was nearly in tears at the thought.
“There was no one to witness the scene. Why the continent you live on was spared? I don’t know yet, but the explosions occurred on this continent and yours was so sparsely populated that there was no destruction. The northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere share only a little bit of their weather. Perhaps the Grethians knew that your little continent had a chance to survive.” Jan replied.
“This type of destruction has been played out on other worlds. What is unique about Grethia is that there is a legacy left, on purpose. There was a faction that must have provided for your protection. But as you can see, that sanity didn’t alter the fate of the ancients. Even now, the Murgrontians and Alchantians are warring against Diltrant. They have Actobal. Men have died. The only difference is the Murgrontians don’t have the means to destroy the planet like the ancients did. Mankind has a darker side. Remember Habamil. He caused the death of hundreds of Diltrantian subjects when he seized the capital. And your father was only gone a short time!” Jan said
“There must be some stable societies, Jan. You people have advanced manufacturing goods and trade. That means some societies work.” Fosan said as he stood and twisted his back, grimacing at the pain.
“Yes, societies work. But even those societies can be manipulated. Human nature makes all societies imperfect and they are imperfect, even in the best of cases. Sometimes a group can gain sufficient power to disrupt parts of society for their own financial gain or to get special concessions. I imagine it’s all part of human nature.” Jan said.
“So we sit in the midst of our past glories and past tragedies,” proclaimed Fosan. “And we are positioning ourselves to do it all over again. Murgrontia and Port Alchant are in the process of demonstrating the dark side of human nature that you were talking about.”
“If the dark side wins...?” Merinnia said. “How can Murgrontia and Port Alchant win? My father won’t permit that to happen. We have you and your ship. We have right and the light on our side!”
“Everybody thinks they have right on their side. It’s just that right doesn’t always know what side it’s on. The dark doesn’t last forever, neither does the light. That’s my point. Things always change. New cycles are constantly starting. Old cycles are constantly ending. It’s inevitable. We don’t give up. That’s just part of life anywhere at any time.” Jan finished.
“I don’t know. Life makes me go on. I have faith in my Father and how he feels.” Merinnia stated, with a trace of defiance in her to
ne.
Jan let his thoughts wander their discussion. He didn’t know if his companions understood anything he said, but he knew he had the power to leave Grethia. He could drop off Merinnia and Fosan and disappear from this backward planet forever. But what were his motivations? He was powerfully attracted to Merinnia. She had tremendous inner strength that was unaffected by the cynical sophistries of his own civilization. He had become attached to Obsomil. He thought of Obsomil as a respected mentor. Jan regretted that he had never had one when he grew up.
With his father and probably Artis’ family complicit in the sabotage of his ship, he had nothing out there. No, Jan could see that his course of action, whatever course it turned out to be, would best be the course of action that would benefit Grethia. That thought led to a kernel of an idea that could be very interesting.
“Your perspective is indeed correct, Jan.” Fosan said, interrupting Jan’s thoughts. “There are none among us who can see into these cycles like you can.” Stiffly, Fosan sat down. “I have always thought there was a cataclysm here on the far land. And what we need to do is produce the proper parameters to avert such a disaster.”
“I don’t think it’s that easy. People have different opinions and they don’t necessarily start out as black and white, but positions can harden and intolerance can set in and ruin anyone’s best intentions.”
“That’s it,” said Merinnia, “our purpose is to build in the knowledge to foster the importance of tolerance to stop another catastrophe. We need to let the cycles come and go, but by recognizing them, maybe we more tolerance can make them less damaging.”
“You can, but history shows levels of tolerance ebb and flow, too,” Jan said. “It’s time to get back to work. Fosan, I’ve instructed the computer to begin teaching you Galactic Commercial. The 202X can interactively help you read the tabs if you use this reader,” Jan held up one of the Grethian readers attached to a wireless transmitter. “I can’t think of a better use of your time while sitting back and enjoying the insides of my ship.”
