The Final Sunset

by Trevor Herron

  We are only brigands if we merely help ourselves like common thieves but if we store up credit are we thieves or business men? If there comes a time when we want to redeem our credit we don’t become dishonest for carrying financial transactions.

  ###

  The things the Solarians had for trade or sale were mostly consumer items sought after by whoever was the home maker in each group. The local governments did not want the Solarians too close to their home planets but the citizens complained that they had too far to travel to buy Solarian goods and this was creating unnecessary expense because they had to stay overnight, maybe two because of distance.

  Solaria was doing well in sales and trade and now a comfortable tourist trade was developing. What had started as customers staying over a night or two now developed into a tourist trip which included a guided tour of selected parts of the ship.

  Tours were broken down into ecological, anthropological, historical, engineering and technological tours. Of all the tours, the ones involving animals like the Big Five of Africa, the unusual of Australia and Madagascar the bears black, brown and Polar and the big antlered animals of America and Canada were by far the most popular and now the status quo seemed the best solution.

  It looked as though no matter what world one came from if the surface of one was scratched the blood of another flowed. The best palliative to war was honest trade.

  ###

  “Master Zill we have a problem,” the messenger was out of breath and the hem of her gown was causing her trouble as she ran up the stairs to the rounded observation turret.

  “What now, my child? We seem to have so many of them lately.”

  “Farming and Fishing report that the grain products currently being harvested will not be suitable for consumption. Many tons of grain will have to be incinerated.”

  “Do they say what the problem is?”

  “They say its rust, but they must be wrong. We’re talking about grain and not iron. What kind of scientists are they that they can’t tell the difference between wheat and iron?”

  “They’re very good scientists, daughter. I’m afraid our grain has become rusty and the next crop that will fail will be the stone fruits.”

  “What causes it Master Zill?”

  “You’re looking at it, daughter.”

  She tilted her head to the left and then to the right, then up then down, “I see nothing Master Zill.”

  “You don’t see that it is midday yet we have twilight outside?”

  “Oh that! The old folks have been complaining about it for years. They say that it gets so cold their bones ache.”

  “How old are you child?

  “Sixteen time orbits Master Zill?”

  “Then you will not remember a time when the sun shone during the day and the world was a warm and wonderful place. A lovely wet balanced with a glorious dry and wheat grew where mildew now grows,” He shook his head sadly, “Gather Haronah and the council in the meeting room.”

  “At once Master Zill.”

  ###

  Far out in the Bar-na-dos 7 sun cluster the orbital patterns of the planetoid routes were complicated by the fact that there were nine small stars with disparate groupings. The Solarians had been studying the various groups and orbital patterns almost from the time they had arrived in this galaxy.

  The population of any one planet was under ten million with a surface area a little less that of Mars. Nevertheless, divisions of Polar, Temperate and Equatorial regions were clearly defined.

  If the Solarians could persuade the Platyrrhines, the dominant species in the Galaxy to let them move into that Solar system they would resettle them on Earth in the equatorial sections, probably Brazil and the Amazon Basin as being closest to what they were climatically used to.

  Because of the nine stars clustering only one planet out of two hundred and thirty-one planets and satellites supported life. To organize the orbits of uninhabited planets into elliptical concentric orbits around a grouping of approximately three stars to emit heat and light equivalent to earth would open at least another five or six planets for evolutionary life.

  With Solaria manipulating that evolution the Platyrrhines would be the leading power in all the Galaxies, an offer they could not refuse.

  “I will hear argument from both sides and react accordingly. Keep in mind that the Amandla/Perdue/ Harding Concordance will be central to my decision. Do not conclude that the Concordance is the be-all and end all guidance on how we act and react in our dealings with others. It will be imperative though that the onus of showing the redundancy or continuing acceptance of the concordance lies with the party presenting a particular body of evidence to support their case.”

  ###

  “Governor what our learned colleagues are proposing is that we submit meekly and even offer assistance for our own subjugation,” a typical military argument.

  “Of course not, we are merely advocating that we take a less obvious but none-the-less active role in running this Galaxy,” a typical diplomatic route to a solution.

  “One only has to look around to see the available land. So much wasted space.”

  “Why the need to utilise the planets and land and not the system? Do our military colleagues want to practise synthetic evolution of their own? It could be a much easier way to occupation but to what end?”

  “Exactly, Governor but with a little help from us we can redesign the layout in such a way as to allow us to recreate our Solar System exactly as it was prior to the Nova event starting. Does that look as though we are contributing to our own demise?”

  “How would the resultant changes affect the populations? Would it just be another way to commit genocide?”

  ###

  “By consulting and debating with the senior Judges I have reached the following decision; I personally support the A/P/H Concordance but the running of this Federation is not to my personal feelings at all.

  Our population is divided into two camps; those who would effect a take- over through arms basing their arguments on the lack of strong government that is keeping this cluster from realising its full potential. Even if we don’t support the A/P/H Concord we have to ask ourselves in proceeding along this path we are ……”

  It took the Governor eight hours to read out his decision, “Both camps claim to be acting in the best interests of our Solar System and I have no reason to doubt either side. Therefore, it boils down to which camp I feel can implement their option with the least discomfort and hurt to the Platyrrhines and their subjects and I therefore rule in favour of the camp that favours an insidious incursion, the group led by minister Ashanti.”

  ###

  In all their travels the Solarians had never seen so many planets in one cluster with the ability to become blue planets. Blue planets were also an indication of abundant oxygen and H2O this Galaxy was blessed with both. The Solarians were an oxygen orientated species that knew just how difficult it was to find that commodity in this universe.

  A lot less bounty than what the Solarians were looking at had motivated conquerors and invaders in the past. This was the ultimate treasure, oxygen and water; the gift of life itself.

  Some planets orbited in a figure eight pattern to make use of moderate temperatures others used elongated orbits or narrow elliptical orbits. Yet again some even behaved like electrons in an atom. Those planets with the weaker valence bonds could change atoms almost as they pleased. Chaotic as it appeared the movements of the celestial bodies was an organised happening whose patterns the Solarians solved very quickly.

  The Valence planets timed their circumnavigation of their selected suns so that they always meet up and do the opposite exchanges at the same places and the same time in their orbital paths.

  Orbital and planetary patterns were complicated but they worked; planetoid clearances were maintained and in several bi
llion time orbits no problem had ever arisen but the insertion of a completely new and gargantuan solar system was an unknown factor. Solaria’s best mathematicians and astronomers sat down and tracked and plotted the course of each and every one of the planets.

  ###

  The leading Species in the cluster were Platyrrhine mammals whose ancestry was from one of the five types of Simian rather than great ape. Agile in body and agile in mind the Platyrrhine studied the Solarians just as the Solarians studied the systems of these worlds.

  They studied the Solarians not with the intent of making war but with the intent of making peace. Wars were the curse of nations. The Platyrrhines had recognized that long ago; they were one of the few nations that in living memory had never gone to war with an intent to kill, they never employed weapons of destruction and death. While they had been known to enter a conflict occasionally, they were never known to lose.

  No one remembered the weapons the Platyrrhines used or how they wielded them. When the Platyrrhine entered a struggle peace quickly broke out and lasted a very long time. They were a very devout people holding three prayer sessions over their sixteen-hour day, praying to the one they called the Divine Immortal.

  Without exception they favoured an indigo, monastery style robe, worn by both men and women. The ruling group consisted of twenty women - one of whom was deferred to more often than any of the others and one man called simply Master. Collectively they were known as the Holy Council of the Scientifically Consecrated. Their job was to see that research work was carried out ethically for the betterment of the populace as a whole.

  The solitary male in the group was also the leader called The Master and his word was final. The Master could do anything; nothing was impossible to him.”

  Part of the Master’s duties was to keep their economies growing. If he failed at any stage or even if an economic downturn was experienced, he was considered to have lost favour with the Universal Grand Master and replaced.

  The ruling Platyrrhines overcame the need for constant changes to leaders by monitoring the finances and by simply introducing an item of concentrated manufacture with consumer appeal to encourage spending or to decrease consumer spending they banned things like using the family transport for several weeks or months at a time.

  In this way the Master also controlled the general market, never overloading it but allowing optimum inflationary tendencies while avoiding the tendency of swamping the market with junk and undesirable goods. It was also a good way of protecting the environment. As close to a Utopian Society as it was possible to get.

  ###

  “You’re all agitating for war because you’ve heard these people go to war without weapons. For us it is so easy; we go in shooting everything in sight and destroying anything that gets in our way. They go to war without weapons yet have a phenomenal success rate. So before we go rushing off to war let us find out some more about these people. Truly they can teach us a lot.”

  “We already know enough about them. They don’t use weapons of any type when they go to war. That should make it easier on us.”

  “Yet they have never lost a war. How do you account for that?”

  “They’ve perfected a type of psychological warfare. We’re not one of their trusting serfs we will be able to crack the application of it; then we’ll see if they can still win wars without weapons.”

  “It’s not called psychological warfare for nothing but they have mostly been dealing with minds inclined to easy manipulation. They won’t find it so easy with us.”

  “Oh, because we’re mental giants?”

  “No sir, but because we have a resolve that the others have not needed.”

  “General I wish I had your confidence. Fine I want you to come back to me in six months’ time with a reasonably concise account of their history going back a hundred years. Any junior high student should have that ingrained into him by the sixth grade.”

  “Governor either we pass up the most oxygen-rich deposits that would secure our future almost in perpetuity or we spend an eternity circulating the Galaxies and have our numbers dwindle until we are an extinct species.

  Regardless of the A/P/H Concord we owe our own people the right to survival and the pursuit of happiness. Our first duty is to ourselves and our first duty must be executed so that it does not become our last duty.”

  “Very well general I cannot argue against that although I feel there must be a better way.” The light that beamed down onto the Governor slowly faded, an indication that he needed to be alone to think.

  ###

  Attackers usually found reasons why they were permitted to inflict themselves on others and the Solarians were not different. They felt that they had the right since they would be fighting people not of the same homogenous species as themselves.

  If the Solarians fought and lost a war how long would it be before they disappeared off the face of the Universe? The governor pondered this conundrum. The Solarians would be taking a chance in going to war with the Platyrrhines the stakes were high.

  War in the constellations was more ruthless than the old fashioned wars. The victor absolutely crushed the loser. Death and annihilation were easy and fast. Most wars in space were prosecuted with genocidal intention.

  When the Solarians had sent the Garino’s leadership to the sun they had let the Garinos off lightly.

  ###

  Star-ship Solaria needed a war. Financial recession had set in as the need for construction fell away after the launch of the star-ship. The meaning of the original tenets of Hola Amandla, Jean-Paul Perdue and Denise Harding were fading to nothing in the minds of the Solarians.

  A species, a tribe, or a nation without a home planet was annihilated as quickly as possible. They turned so easily into carrion seekers. Killers, murderers and buccaneers the only thing that had stopped Solaria from being attacked was their size and strength.

  The Platyrrhines’ constellations were on the verge of war and whole attitudes were in danger of being changed irrevocably.

  ###

  “I need to know more about the people of these planets. The species as a whole and sub species and divisions. Medically we need to know their biology, psychology and physiology and a lot more. We will need a specimen to work with.”

  ###

  The governor shook his head control was slipping from his hands. Since when had a living, breathing body of any persuasion become a specimen, nothing more than a laboratory rat to be taken off the street and dissected. The medicos and scientists were becoming a law unto themselves.

  ###

  “Right doctor what’s your finding?”

  “Well the specimen has a well-developed neo-cortex with an extra neo-neuro cortical development that I can see no reason for at this stage. They also have a greater number of nerves in the corpus callosum performing on more routes of communication between left and right hemispheres of the brain than we do.

  Their cerebellum, the part of the brain used for higher functions such as touch, vision, speech. I’m sure you get the picture is more developed than ours.

  On the other hand, their cerebrum that co-ordinates muscle movement, maintains posture and balance and connects ten out of twelve cranial nerves to the spinal cord is not as developed as ours.

  We are more inclined to use the left hemisphere of the brain which is responsible for, speech, comprehension, arithmetic and writing among other things.

  They are more inclined to use the right side although under certain stimuli they can bring both hemispheres to work in conjunction with each other although I cannot say what those stimuli need to be nor how they manifest themselves.

  Being right-siders, I would say they will be inclined to a well-developed creativity, artistic and musical skills and good spatial estimations. In our favour is the dominance of the left hemisphere in hand use, normally I would add languag
e to that but I cannot say with certainty just what their evolvements mean.”

  “Good then they’ll integrate well with the Humanoids?”

  “I wouldn’t suggest you try it, general without first lobotomising and robotising them and even then I cannot guarantee it will be a successful combination of operations since who can say with certainty what effect time expired evolution will have on them and consequently on us. Nor can we say how fast they will evolve because of relativity. The whole experiment could backfire horribly on us.

  The only thing I can say for sure is that they’re different to us but exactly what form those differences will take I don’t know.”

  ##

  The sheer enormity of the ship filled even the bravest and most advanced worlds with dread. Never had any civilization witnessed a Ship so big. It took five months at 0.9 warp to travel from nose to tail of the ship an almost unbelievable statistic.

  A ship that manufactured its own sunlight and climate, had natural satellites, a topography, a geography, of lands, oceans, rivers, lakes and mountains; a whole natural infrastructure married to a synthetic infrastructure that had no right to function but it did. The technology that went into the construction of this machine is awesome.

  ###

  The elders of Planet Giclas3 orbiting the star cluster Bar-na-dos up until now considered as the most advanced civilisation in the Five Galaxies studied the screens intensely. The Star-ship was way ahead of anything they could construct. But then again did they need to construct a Star-Ship; large or small. Was it needed?

  “Haronah,” the aged full bearded Elder whose features and build suggested forefathers from the baboon family or some simian species. She dressed in long indigo robes, as did everyone else, “You’re our senior scientist, give us a running description of what you see.” Even the voice was more of a bark than an ape-like chatter.

  “As you wish Master Zill…The core consists of two planets of average occupancy size and three satellites attached by valence to the two planets. Another compatible satellite purloined from a planet in their own system, I presume and filling the role of a quasi-planet. The whole system has three natural satellites and a number of manufactured satellites for communication and other needs.