Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop

by Patrick Stephens

  Hundreds of darts poured out like gnats bursting from its exoskeleton. None of them started towards the ground as the strafing darts had. Instead, they patrolled around the ship.

  When it disappeared behind the trees – the engines still roaring and thumping – we all looked at each other, then to Davion. He nodded, knelt and looked down. None of us knew how to react. Melanie bowed her head and closed her eyes, breathing deep. I wondered if that was still her attempt at keeping in his good graces. Annalise and I bowed as well, but looked at each other from the corners of our eyes. The two kids held close together.

  “A Belovore. The exoskeleton is clear enough. They darken with age. That one must have been three, possibly four hundred years old,” Davion began. He was too calm for this to be a surprise.

  “They have ships?” Melanie asked.

  “No. They have ours,” Davion sighed. “The Irene was the colony ship which landed here. Admiral Perry retrofitted it for them back when they first initiated the will for space travel. I would be willing to place a great deal of faith that the ship we just saw is her. The Belovores are a slow species, methodical and precise. They must have never seen the need to expand or create more than what they’d already had. What we’d given them.”

  “How could they do this?”

  “Think, Melanie. You’ve lived your entire life on this settlement and never heard of a Belovore before today,” Davion rasped. “How many generations have passed since Sondranos was colonized?”

  “You knew the moment you saw the darts,” Annalise said.

  “Yes. Who would have the want to destroy Sondranos, and who would be using such outdated technology? I had been praying things would have been different.”

  “I guess your God doesn’t answer all prayers,” Annalise said.

  “I don’t understand,” Melanie interrupted.

  I added my own thought: “What do the Belovores have against Sondranos?”

  “History, young man,” Davion chided me. “We are always victims of our past. When the attacks begin, simply look to the eldest of your enemies.”

  “You seem to be awfully informative all of a sudden. Did you expect this?” I asked. My jealous anger towards him had returned. Behind it was a curtain reminding me that I hadn’t been brave enough – good enough – to be the leader of our little group.

  “Young man,” Davion started, looking at me cock-eyed.

  “I mean, I don’t want to insult you, but it’s rather convenient that you’ve come to this conclusion so quickly, and just so happen to know…”

  “Answer him,” said Annalise, interrupting me before I could say something I wouldn’t be able to take back. “Did you?”

  “Davion,” Melanie inched forward. “What’s going on?”

  “Do you think I’m not terrified?” Davion broke. I hadn’t realized how hard we’d been pushing. The will to force him into something lesser than myself had been uncontrolled and unnoticed until Davion spat these words back at me, as if I was the only one pushing him for answers. “Do you think I haven’t been repeating every prayer I know since this happened? What kind of man do you think I am – what kind of man are you to say that my silence, my will to get us to a safe place implied complicity with what has happened? Damn you, sir – for you shall be damned! I am a student of the past. I have lived in Sondranos and on the outside; I have made choices to study the world that we have come from. How dare you accuse my life choices of being anything less than my attempts at bettering myself!”

  “I don’t think he meant it like that,” Annalise stepped between us. “Like he said, it’s just – it is a bit convenient that you had ideas of who attacked before any of us.”

  “If you had never read the Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde, would you accuse me of murder for knowing that Hyde is the manifestation of Jekyll’s evil?”

  I held my tongue. Davion breathed hard. His ire had been raised, that much was certain. One point had become clear – he might have had answers to a small portion of the puzzle, but our combined fear had elevated those pieces into something larger than all of us. I decided to drop the subject, offering my surrender by backing up a few steps and apologising. My knees throbbed under each placement.

  After a moment, Davion continued. “Come, let us move to towards the commune, I will tell you of the first years of the Irene. Perhaps you will understand as I do.”

  “About that,” Annalise stopped Davion, putting a hand on his shoulder before he could walk past. “This neighbourhood beyond the woods – it’s where I was headed before this happened. We can hide out there.”

  “No!” Davion turned on her, still sensitive. “I will not allow more to die.”

  “I’m not saying we not go to the commune. I have something in my garage that can get us out of here quicker.”

  Melanie said, quickly, “I’m all for that.”

  I agreed, nodding and looking at Davion for approval. He took a moment. He scuffed at the ground with his shoes and looked at the Belovore with its head crushed in. He sighed and then said, “If the Lord wills it.”

  “I’m Lancaster, and this is Kayt,” the young man appeared from behind us, poking his head out of the trees. We all looked around, embarrassed. In the argument, we’d completely forgotten about them both. He escorted Kayt out from the trees, took her hand, and she startled at the gesture. She pulled away from the hold and scratched her neck. Lancaster’s voice trembled, on the edge of tears. “Do any of you mind if we join you? We kind of don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “The flock can always be expanded,” Davion said. He pointed this to Annalise as if to turn her suggestion into his own; whoever we found in the neighbourhood would be saved on his terms, his tone said. The boy sighed, and the girl nicked him in the side with her elbow, pulling the side of her lips upwards in an ‘I told you so’ look.

  “Hello Lancaster. Call me Lise. This is Melanie and Davion,” Annalise extended her hand, but looked at me as Lancaster entered the group to take it. “I don’t know this man’s name, but I’m sure he’ll jump headfirst into introducing himself.”

  I was taken aback.

  Had I really not introduced myself?

  I watched Annalise and tried to gauge her response. Her expression hadn’t changed. She was serious. I stammered, unable to speak.

  ‘This is what you do,’ imaginary Daniel said.

  The rain falls and keeps coming until the roads are slick enough with engine grease and synthetic fuel that the number six bus careens off the road and into the entranceway to Turner House, just off Princes Street. The bedroom Leon rents when coming to visit Daniel is on the top floor. When the sandstone and concrete foundation cracks and lets the building come crashing down, nothing Leon owns in that room comes out salvageable.

  When he tells Daniel about technically losing his job, fury comes to the forefront. It’s been four months since Casey Hayes; three since Leon’s flat was destroyed. Leon has previously told Daniel none of this out of fear of change. Anger, confusion, all of these things are based on how long it took Leon to say something. Yet the justification remains: when he thinks of it, he remembers all the ones who’d come before who’d fly away based on the smallest of changes. Leon doesn’t want this, he truly loves Daniel. He can’t risk it.

  However, tonight, Leon has explained everything. It would have become too hard to hide. Daniel’s eyes shrink into a what-is-wrong-with-you glare; his lips tighten as he keeps his thoughts at bay. Leon knows that Daniel is angry with him and not the news of his job or his destroyed flat.

  “Did you not fight back?” Daniel paces around the room. His questions begin to sound like blame. Leon knows something else – something unspoken – fuels the conversation. This is the unspoken thing that has destroyed all the previous relationships; the monster behind all the arguments and dissatisfactions.

  Leon answers, “What was there to fight back against?”

  Daniel stops when Manny, the first terrier of two, rushes up to him waggin
g his tail back and forth like windshield wipers trying to calm a storm. Coto sits beside Leon, offering what little comfort he can by cradling his head on Leon’s leg. Every now and then he remembers to scratch the terrier behind the ears, but it’s hard enough trying to make sense of the thoughts rushing through his brain to keep the motion steady. The dog crooks his head to the side whenever the rubbing abates.

  For the moment, Leon can still see his classroom and Casey. In the moment, he can’t remember anything about that day but her. The girl with the phoenix wrist, the lecture about A.A.M. Gen Literature - nothing remains but her. Leon remembers a quote his grandfather once said about blinking, and how, no matter how fast life can move, the worst moments of life imprint on the back of your eyelids, and blinking is God’s way of grounding us in reality. ‘That really happened,’ it says.

  Leon blinks his frustration with himself off. Daniel takes a deep breath and looks away, towards the television bolted to the wall.

  “Why haven’t you told me any of this until now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s been more than long enough for you to say something – how much of the last few months have you been faking?”

  “None. I just didn’t know what to tell you. I had money saved up. I thought I could rebuild it all, or find a better place.”

  “You didn’t deserve it anyway,” Daniel says, stopping by the television long enough to catch his reflection – he turns away from the sight. Leon’s heart thumps loud enough to sound like bass coming from the flat upstairs.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean, you aren’t good enough at what you do to keep that kind of position. You would have lost it eventually.” His eyes bore through Leon.

  “Is that what you really think?”

  “What do you think?” Daniel asks.

  Leon pauses.

  “Damn it, Leon. If you really take pause at that, then I don’t know what to tell you anymore.”

  He looks away from Daniel and steels his nerves.

  “I know you more than you know yourself, Leon,” Daniel says. “Listen to me. You don’t deserve a comfortable job, you don’t deserve a happy relationship, you don’t deserve any of that.”

  Leon says nothing. He can sense the nerves in Daniel’s voice fraying. “Damn it, Leon. I’m trying to get a rise out of you. Wake up!”

  “I don’t understand,” Leon says. He does understand, he just doesn’t want to.

  “I know you care about that job… sometimes you care more about those stories than me, and that’s fine – I knew what I was getting into. But did it ever occur to you that you’re allowed to stand up for yourself once and awhile? If you love me, why are you letting me say these things? You’d defend me in a heartbeat, so why not something you love more than me?”

  Leon lets more silence answer. Daniel scoops Manny from his spot near his feet and falls into the chair next to him. He pulls his weight to the left so that he doesn’t end up lying against Leon in the process. Coto wakes up and licks at Leon’s fingers, silently saying ‘don’t stop scratching’.

  “I love you, Leon. You know that. But you’re going on about these things like they’re the end of the world. That wouldn’t be a problem except, I mean lately, you fall behind and let things continue to happen. Professor Arthur Leontes Bishop doesn’t just let his life fall apart, does he? Is he really that passive?”

  The only response Leon can muster is: “I’m not the same Professor.”

  Daniel slumps in the seat an arm’s length away. Manny crawls over Daniel’s lap, joins Coto, and watches Leon. “Well, it’s just a big old pity party, isn’t it?”

  Leon ignores this. He can feel a familiar kind of anger growing beneath his chest, and he wants to find something to calm the acid bubbling in his stomach. He doesn’t want to be here. The worst part is that Leon doesn’t really care about the flat right now. It was almost there. The realization that would have kept Leon where he is. But the past is simply too strong. It holds a firm grasp on his fears, and holds his tongue.

  “I think you might need to take some time to yourself. Get some fresh air and learn to recognize what really matters to you,” Daniel says.

  Leon nods and smiles. “I better go,” he said. Daniel clicks his tongue and looks away. Coto shoots him an insulted glare. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  When Leon leaves, he’s still not sure what’s happened.

  He climbs into the cab of his Mini and jerks on the seatbelt, letting it slide around his waist and fasten. He wishes for the time when they were manual and weren’t connected to the engine’s wiring. He clicks the ignition. At first the engine doesn’t start, so he clicks it again and again until it growls to life. The electric system engages and power is restored to the cabin. His hands shake as he grips the wheel with one hand and plugs in his destination on the dash computer.

  He pulls out of Daniel’s driveway and starts towards the A8, towards Glasgow. His eyes are partly glossed over. A blinded hand turns on the radio, but Leon doesn’t hear any music. And when Leon wonders whether or not leaving would be a good idea, the voice speaks up. Fuelling the voice is everything that Leon has pushed back into his mind for the past few months: His fears that he would fail Daniel on a more cosmic level than he could handle; terror that he’s going to pass into obscurity and that all his students will forget he’s existed. On Sondranos, it will turn into a mimicry of Daniel’s voice. For now, it’s bland and toneless. It doesn’t take long for the voice to convince Leon that leaving as fast as possible is the best and only option.

  ‘You’ve never been good enough,” it says.

  Everyone was looking at me. I forced a smile and flattened down my hair before locking both hands behind my head. Annalise winked. Melanie watched me expectantly. Lancaster tried to hold Kayt’s hand again, but she moved before he could touch her. A couple tears fell from the corners of her eyes. I could see the effort in keeping the smile force its way through. My name. My mind jumped to how easy it was to lie to Melanie in the cellar.

  “Leon Bishop,” I waved at everyone.

  Chapter Six:

  Trifles and Time

  The first Belovore to establish contact with the human settlers was named Velric. This was what Davion told us as we made our way through the woods. The trees grew thinner the further we walked. A couple trunks here and there were wide and peeling with rotting bark and mould, but most took on the impression of having been planted to replace other trees in very recent history. Nobody voiced the fear that more Belovores might be in the woods.

  Velric, Davion continued explicating, was a child in Belovore years, only about fifty. Admiral Perry, as captain of the Irene, had no idea the Belovores even existed – nobody did. So when they were forced to land on Sondranos, what they found was a complete surprise.

  Admiral Perry sits in the command chair centred on the bridge. He adjusts his weight in his seat, stifling a tickle in the back of his throat.

  Ahead, the console still shows the surrounding image of the crater. They’d landed a few moments earlier, and while the systems began their shutdown, Perry views the external cameras in privacy. He doesn’t know what to tell his crew. Instead, he brings it up on the main screen. The image crystallizes and Perry can see the first pictures of the settlement. They look much like the images the probe sent, but clearer, undistorted. A camp is strewn about the interior of the crater, touching a great deal of the central mass. Buildings no more than three or four stories high – including raised ceilings, Perry oddly considers – pop out of the ground. They come in three colours: brown, grey, and a mixture of the two. The streets are wide, but Perry can see no vehicles of any sort. He’s sure the atmospheric break terrified the creatures living on the surface. He hopes they haven’t gone immediately on the defensive.

  He looks back down to his private console, where he’s frozen the image on a satellite snapshot of the creatures. Still slightly blurry, he can tell his crew won’t easily
be comfortable around them. The claws that wrapped around their waists send shivers down his spine. How they walk bi-pedal, yet interact as if they’d only recently learned to stand unnerves him. He knows they don’t speak English, so deeply rooted in his list is wondering how he’s going to communicate with them. The lives of five thousand colonists and a ship’s crew of hundreds depend on him. Settlement 257-C didn’t have the luxury of choosing where it landed anymore, not since they passed the rim of trade space. Not since they’d lost nearly all their resources when an electrical accident burned half their stores. The Irene, named after one of the first CEOs of International Aeronautics, would have to make do where she landed.

  “Let’s meet the neighbours,” he mumbles and stands. He flattens his uniform down to look presentable, and travels to the lift. After travelling down a dozen decks and skirting the engine room, Perry stops at the disembarkation area. It’s still on lockdown, a handful of guards with plasma rifles holding steady at the door. They all stand aside when they see him coming. A technician standing near the release console watches him carefully.

  A security window shows Perry that a dozen or more have swarmed around the ship. They don’t appear hostile, but curious. He stands before the hatch and takes a deep breath before waving to the technician. The tech shakes his head and switches a lever, which opens the door.