The Cocoon Trilogy

by David Saperstein

  The Antarean processing that had prepared his body for deep-space travel had, as with all the members of the Geriatric Brigade, expanded brain function. But he had not yet mastered telepathic mind reading, so he dared not attempt to probe Bright’s thoughts. To do such a thing to an Antarean official would be considered extremely rude, if not criminal.

  “I was hoping they might want to go home so that...” His words were interrupted as the Library/Museum’s entrance portal cleared with a hiss.

  “Ahhh... Here we are,” Bright announced, taking advantage of the distraction to end Mersky’s probing about the children. “We haven’t much time. We can continue this conversation later.”

  “Of course,” Mersky answered as he followed his host through the portal. But he sensed they wouldn’t.

  The Great Hall of Kinnear was, in a word, dazzling. A ceiling of Chorlian stone, similar in color and texture to a milky, phosphorescent Carrara marble, arched 100 yards above them. Its highly polished, opaque surface absorbed, reflected and magnified the golden light from several Antarean heat-crystal chandeliers that were placed strategically along the rough-hewn, coal-black, Carbonite walls.

  The floor, constructed of forged magma, was translucent beneath their sandaled feet. A seemingly endless display of universal wonders, each meticulously presented in its natural setting, spread out before the two visitors. As they moved through the hall, a group of Antarean workers ceased their activities and moved aside, allowing the visitors to pass.

  “Dear God,” Mersky whispered. “This is overwhelming.”

  “We’ve been traveling in space for more than ten of your millennia,” Amos Bright replied. “We have made contact with over 900 humanoid life-forms. More than 3,000 additional planets have been scanned, visited and explored. Our discoveries include tens of thousands of species. And now, with our Parman Guides affording us inter-galactic capability, I expect that number will increase geometrically. Our universe is teeming with life, bearing witness to the marvel of our Master’s work.”

  If only they knew on Earth, Mersky thought, as he pondered the impact such knowledge would have on the humans. What would those narrow-minded religious fanatics, whose myopic belief that they alone hold a unique position with God, think about thousands upon thousands of life sustaining planets that were home to untold numbers of civilizations, cultures and religions? How many of those beings, Mersky wondered as he viewed the scope of the hall, were like the Antareans – a civilization steeped in technology that explained many of the mysteries still shrouded in myth and religious dogma on Earth. And yet, he mused, the Antareans seem to possess a deep sense of faith in ‘The Master,’ who he assumed was their God.

  His thoughts were interrupted as a small, bright red, feathered reptile in a nearby display spread its delicately veined white wings and let out a screech that hurt Mersky’s ear drums. He jumped back, startled.

  “What the hell?” he shouted. Amos Bright, who was walking ahead, looked back to see what had caught his guest’s attention. He saw it was the fauna display from Cherriz Adsjar, a planet in the Castor star system.

  “Oh yes, Gideon. I know this little fellow personally.” Amos smiled. “It is called Pylus.” The animal hissed and screeched again. “On Earth it would be described as one of the evolutionary stages between your dinosaurs and birds. This, of course, is a hologram. We do not capture or display live species on Antares. We find the very concept of a zoo intolerable. To remove a species from its habitat and imprison it is an archaic and destructive practice.”

  As Mersky stepped closer and examined the animal, he could see that it was a three dimensional projection, but as detailed and animated as if it were alive.

  “One drop of saliva from a living Pylus and, oh, what’s that wonderful Earth expression? Ah, yes, - you’re toast!” Amos said with a smile. After two recent trips to Earth, and fifteen years of traveling with members of the Geriatric Brigade, Amos Bright’s English was excellent, if a little mid-20th in idioms. His teachers were Brigade members whose ages were sixty and beyond, when they had first met. Bright took Mersky by the elbow. “I’m sorry, but we’ll have to move along quickly.”

  Gideon Mersky’s eyes could not find a place to rest. Display after display begged for his attention. Much of what he observed in the life forms and species displayed in the Great Hall of Kinnear were, to his human eyes and experience, definitely alien. And yet, though exotic and foreign, in many he found a familiarity that was puzzling. It was as though he had known them from another plane of consciousness, or perhaps in dreams. It might, he mused, be a genetic imprint older than conscious memory. Or perhaps, he thought with a smile, just a side effect of the processing he had undergone for deep-space travel.

  “The curators are impatient,” Amos Bright said, indicating as he saw, they had interrupted a group of Antareans who, respecting Amos Bright’s high rank, impatiently waited to get back to their chores. “They must complete some renovations for the celebration. The Ministries said they are a tad behind schedule. It took all the clout I have to get you in here, but I wanted you to get a sense of the Universe we, and now the Earth-human Geriatric Brigade, know and travel.”

  “I appreciate that, Amos,” Mersky remarked as he stopped and again gazed up at the luminescent ceiling, set seamlessly into the warm, inner-planet stone. “This hall is magnificent. Absolutely awesome.”

  Bright’s thin, silvery lips smiled proudly. Most visitors were initially overwhelmed by the Great Hall of Kinnear. In his own vast travels, he had seen nothing to match its scope and authenticity. He pointed to a new display that was still in the process of being assembled. “This is the area I was keen on your viewing. It’s devoted to Earth, and the work of the Brigade.” Amos gently took Mersky by the elbow. “You’ll get a chance to spend as much time as you wish here later, Gideon. But please do have a look. I’d really like your reaction to it.”

  Entering Earth’s display area, Mersky was impressed with the accuracy of holographic murals picturing the various geographies, topographies, climates, seasons, flora and fauna of his own world. Each contained pertinent sounds, relevant temperatures and specific odors. Realistic presentations of Earth’s great cities, and smaller towns and villages, as well as nomadic and solitary lifestyles, were stunningly accurate. A tingle of excitement and anticipation rushed down Mersky’s spine as he contemplated bringing some of the perfect presentations of the Antareans’ known Universe back to Earth.

  The display contained life-like Turlian sculptures of human males, females and children of all races. The Turlians, warm-blooded, carbon-based amphibians, inhabit Cherriz Adsjar, along with Pylus, the creature that had unnerved Mersky, and more than 700 other species. The main Turlian export is their sculpture art done by incredibly talented artisans whose technique is to create sculptures from the inside out; shaping every organ, skeleton, muscle and circulatory vessel of their subject with uncanny accuracy, adding layer upon layer until the final outer covering, or skin, completes the work. Like many species in the Universe, Turlians chose not to be space travelers. They rely on beings like the Antareans to market their talents and wares.

  In another section of the display, all of Earth’s languages were integrated into a universal translation programmer – a critical device for space travelers. It contained 1,616 languages, 8,273 dialects, and more than 1,000 electromagnetic synapse conversion programs. Using it, the history and folklore of Earth’s civilizations were available to most intra-galactic visitors who might come through the hall. Soon it might be expanded to include information about other galaxies, should their exploration be successful.

  The next area contained graphic data on the Earth’s natural history. Adjoining it was a hologram explaining Earth-humanoid evolution based on natural selection — a universal process as far as Antarean experience was concerned. The display covered mankind’s development from early mammals, through the time of small, hunter-gatherer clans and tribes, up to the current ethnic nation-state structure.
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  “Is this science of evolution in conflict with the uh, your Master’s Grand Plan?” Mersky asked.

  “Conflict?” Bright replied, surprised. “What could possibly conflict? The Master forged our universe as it is, as it changes, as it will become. He gave us the task of spreading the word of His grand plan to others. There is no conflict in evolution. All evolves as the Universe unfolds.”

  “There are many on Earth who believe that God put man on Earth as he is now, that man did not evolve.”

  “You will excuse me,” Amos Bright said politely, “but on Earth you are unaware of the Universe and the myriad life it contains. We once believed as you do. There were priests who used interpretations of the unexplained for power; what you call religion. But as we traveled out into our galaxy, you call it Milky Way, much of the unknown and mysterious was explained, and the priest’s dogma was discredited.”

  Bright’s words made Mersky uncomfortable. Beliefs that he held on Earth, anchored in the Born-Again Christian religion, explained cosmic mysteries as God’s work, not to be questioned. It defined who would go to heaven and who would not, and why. It gave those who believed a comfortable sense of security in their eternal future and superiority over non-believers. Mersky now looked around him and struggled to grasp the reality of what surrounded him. All that he had been taught to believe was parochial and inconsequential when measured against the display of abundant life and civilizations represented in the Great Hall of Kinnear.

  “As you travel with us and the Brigade, you will come to understand that everything evolves. In doing so it has its place in The Master’s Grand Plan.” Had Bright read his mind, Mersky wondered. “Earth is but a miniscule portion of it,” Bright said with a patronizing tone.

  Next in the Earth exhibit was a gallery of the famous and infamous Earth-humans and their deeds. The information was remarkably complete and detailed.

  “We found you have had your share of tyrants, as most developing civilizations do,” Bright told his guest. “Some of yours have been exceptionally brutal.

  “Yes,” Mersky said softly.

  “Our experience is that such beings can delay a civilization’s advance for centuries.” Bright sensed a feeling of shame in his guest. “Of course you have also had your geniuses to counteract part of that unfortunate waste,” he was quick to add.

  The Earth display was richer in detail than most of the others in the great hall because the Antareans, who brought the Geriatric Brigade out into deep-space, had once built a huge base on one of Earth’s continents - Antares Quad-Three. Millennia after its destruction by the asteroid’s impact, humans began to investigate the myths about the existence of the continent they called Atlantis. Although there were many speculations about a lost civilization on Atlantis, no serious scholar ever dreamed it had been a base for off-planet beings. Those few authors and scientists who speculated about this possibility were dismissed as crackpots.

  A model of Antares Quad-Three and its diplomatic activities was in the Earth display. Mersky lingered for a moment.

  “Atlantis,” he muttered.

  “Yes. You called it by that name.”

  “The architecture looks like a mixture of ancient Greek and Egyptian,” Mersky remarked as he studied the model of one large city. Many structures featured Ionic and Doric columns with bas-relief facades. Wide stone thoroughfares connected mini-cities scattered along the southern shore of the continent. The largest city on the continent, the one Mersky studied, was situated on a central plateau. A huge pyramid dominated the city’s center. Adjacent to the pyramid was a spaceport. Several types of inter-planetary craft were represented, including two Antarean Motherships — the craft that Mersky was familiar with from Amos Bright’s last mission to Earth, fifteen years ago. Bright, who was anxious to keep moving, noticed Mersky’s interest in the city.

  “That city, Ruda, was where travelers from Quad-Three, and deep-space travelers and traders from other quadrants, gathered to exchange goods and information. They negotiated many treaties and alliances there. The Earth’s climate and beauty provided an atmosphere where differences were settled peacefully. And there were ancestors of your Greeks on the continent,” Bright continued. “They were tribal. Primitive. They kept their distance from us, and,” he smiled, “of course we did not disturb their lives either. When we confirmed the asteroid’s approach, and point of impact, we moved them to the shores along your Mediterranean Sea. Their memory of our architecture must have remained a strong element in their culture.” Mersky gazed at the central city and pyramid.

  “Ruda was a beautiful city, Amos.”

  “Yes, Gideon. It was a difficult loss. But we have learned to acknowledge that there are some universal forces, events and plans that we can neither control nor alter.”

  “Couldn’t you alter the asteroid’s course, or blow it up?” Mersky asked, as he studied the model of Ruda, imagining its destruction.

  “Blow it up?” Amos Bright was amused. “A popular Earth-human solution to problems.” Mersky noted the sarcasm in Bright’s voice. “No, Secretary Mersky, we could not, and would not, blow it up. What if there was life on it? Such cosmic events are part of The Master’s Grand Plan too.”

  The next section of the display contained a graphic, time-lapse laser projection of human reproduction — sexual intercourse, fertilization, gestation and birth.

  “There have been several inquiries from under-populated planets regarding the fertility of Earth’s inhabitants,” Bright explained, as they passed through the display.” Noises behind them announced that the workers in the hall were busy again.

  “The Brigade is held in very high regard,” Bright continued. “Many who were without mates have found companions throughout the galaxy eager to be with them.” Mersky recalled his own sexual re-awakenings after being processed for his trip to Antares.

  At the time of the last Antarean-Earth mission, Gideon Mersky had been the Secretary of Defense. It was during the presidency of Malcolm Teller. Although at first he had resisted the president’s decision to keep the existence of the Antareans, the Brigade, and the children, a closely held, need-to-know secret, Mersky eventually relented to Teller’s opinion that it was best to keep it that way for the children’s protection. The president was convinced that the world was not ready to accept the concept of a universe containing thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilizations, many of them far more advanced than those on Earth.

  Before Bright and his crew, and those Brigade members who were the children’s parents, departed Earth, Bright had promised Mersky he might join the Brigade when he was old enough to be processed. Of course, Mersky was not told that the children, then only newborns, were secretly left behind.

  At the age of sixty-eight, Mersky retired from public life. True to his word, Amos Bright made contact with the people guarding and raising the children on Earth. They in turn contacted Mersky through Jack Fischer. Mersky was surprised that Bright had remembered. He was eager to go.

  Mersky traveled to Florida with Jack Fischer, the sport-fishing charter captain who had befriended the Antareans years ago. Fischer took Mersky to the island of Eleuthera, in the Bahamas. There, on a moonless, foggy night, they rendezvoused with a shuttle craft that carried Gideon Mersky to the moon’s far side, where a Shar-Bakart transport waited. The ship carried a Blanic diplomatic delegation, seven Brigade members who had been serving on Shar-Bakart, and a cargo of chigat bark. The chigat tree evolved uniquely on Shar-Bakart, a nitrogen-water planet in the Pleiades constellation. It had rapid protein repair properties, extremely valuable to the gas dwellers in the Crab Nebula. Now that the Antareans, with their Parman Guides, were beginning to plan inter-galactic trips, other gas-dwellers were sure to be discovered. And so the demand for chigat bark had blossomed. Shar-Bakart transports often made trips to Antares with the valuable cargo.

  Although the Brigade members on board were returning to Antares for the gathering, the prospering Shar-Bakart transport owners were
happy to make a small detour to Earth for the passenger.

  Once on board, Gideon Mersky was successfully processed for deep-space travel, and the transport departed. Although the effects of the processing were at first debilitating, and the journey to Antares arduous, Mersky adjusted and his strength returned. He had not lost interest in sexual activity, even after his wife had lost her battle with breast cancer four years earlier. On rare occasions he had sought female companionship. As the transport sped across the galaxy toward Antares, Mersky felt an adolescent tingling in his groin and a heightened awareness of the female scent. He became interested in one of the Brigade women on the ship. Her name was Annabella Costa, an eighty-three year old widow and former resident of Birmingham, Alabama. The effects of Annabella’s deep-space processing were in full bloom. She appeared to be no older than forty and exuded the attractive sexuality of a twenty year old. The prospect of his renewed potency excited Mersky.

  “To hell with sexual enhancement pills,” he told himself. “I feel like I can get it on au-natural!”

  It didn’t take much encouragement from Ms. Costa before the two connected. They passed the time enjoying each other with activities both had set aside decades ago, and some that neither had ever explored. Because of the regeneration of their fertility, they took precaution against pregnancy. No Brigade people wanted more babies until they knew the children back on Earth could adapt to deep-space travel.

  Annabella, along with all other Brigade members, had been sworn to secrecy about the children being on Earth and their location. Until Mersky officially joined the Brigade, he was considered an outsider, so she did not share the secret with him.

  In a separate Geriatric Brigade section of the Earth display, a virtual digital loop of its members, identified by name, rank and status, played continually on a holographic stage. It was devoted to the accomplishments of the Brigade now serving in the far-flung corners of the Milky Way Galaxy.