Sacred Ground

Sacred Ground

Chris Towndrow

Valericain Press

Copyright © 2012 by Chris Towndrow

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Valericain Press

Richmond, UK

www.valericainpress.co.uk

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Sacred Ground / Chris Towndrow. -- 2023 ed.

Paperback : 978-1-7293305-4-8

eBook : 978-1-9168916-7-8

End Of A Life

‘I could get my sidearm and end it all now. It’s so close. The locker’s just behind me.’

Rakkel turned his head indolently until his gaze fell upon the three grey floor-standing cabinets. The rightmost door glared at him.

‘But you can see it. That’s the problem.’

He faced forwards again.

‘You can see it. I could… I could say goodbye and not let you see it. I could say goodbye and then do it.’

The silent face eyed him unchangingly.

‘If I could say goodbye. You’re days and days away, and I can’t say goodbye. I….’

His mind dried up.

Lazy eyes took in the dimly lit and expansive cabin. The two exquisite images on the beige wall, their haunting beauty enhanced by the subdued atmosphere. Sunrise Through Mist Over Keljan City took on a menacing air; the tower tips of the urban jungle were as needles sunk treacherously in a creamy deep-pile carpet. Tryn From Tryn Station was a smothering sphere, the planet’s intangible gaseous bulk reaching ever outwards to suppress the sun’s rays which foolishly sought to cascade past its askance northern polar rim.

The scenes were lessons in majesty, the photographs the epitome of perfection, the frames nothing more and nothing less than symbiotic partners for their contents and the environs.

Trappings of a Captaincy, individuality for an anonymous room.

The bed was cold and empty, the stark whiteness of the sheets not wanting to offer refuge from the truth. The bed was simple, large and perfectly sprung. There were mornings (or afternoons or evenings, depending on the shift pattern) when it acted like a gravity well, holding him fast, cocooned, comfortable. Duty was a necessary wrench away from almost foetal contentment and a mind that wandered across open plains and not down well-trodden roads and alleyways.

Through the half-open closet door, a poorly hangered Fleet tunic was a dark form with a glinting eye, the lapel insignia catching the light from the recessed ceiling emitter and arrowing it across to the far wall like a fine sepia laser.

His gaze followed the ray’s path to where it impinged on the thick square window pane, then continued beyond, unchallenged, into infinity.

He stood unsteadily and went to the aperture, naked feet feeling the cool mottled carpet.

He peered into endlessness.

Only light can survive out there.

Yet it had been home, more or less, for what seemed like forever. Not in a bad way. In a good way, he supposed.

The only way.

No more, apparently.

Those who’d never seen deep space conjured inadequate images of emptiness. First-timers had their notions of blackness evaporated; their concept of cold, bleak, nothing shattered. Yes, interplanetary space was alien, holo-images were amazing, a cold night on a deserted hilltop seemed quiet.

They were an inferior substitute. Laughable.

Sometimes he’d go to the Observation Deck and banish all light from the room, trying to make its warm safety an extension of the inhospitable universe without, trying to feel lost.

It, too, was laughable. More than once, he’d laughed at it. Actually laughed, unamused.

It was a blackness without surface, an all-encompassing and utterly intangible void. The fullness of three dimensions didn’t do it justice. It was everywhere and everything because it was everything.

And nothing.

Galaxies were specks. Planets within galaxies were specks inside specks. Colonies teeming with life were fractions of fractions of the specks inside specks.

Home was wherever his feet were, and he and his home were a nothingth of a speck.

He was entirely valuable and wholly insignificant.

The struggle was vital, daily, all-consuming and completely irrelevant.

He sighed.

The stars weren’t moving; the ship was stationary. Sometimes, when you were moving at a decent enough speed, there would be something amidst the nothing to catch your attention. Occasionally it was good enough for a gasp or a reflective moment.

That was when you felt least like a speck. Or at least lucky to be a speck, witnessing the beauty.

Not now.

His mind churned.

I love this job.

The locker eyed him ceaselessly. The vivid silver-grey door handle was calling.

The mute face across the room remained impassive.

He sighed. ‘So what now if not this? If you were here, you’d tell me. But we’d fight. I never see you, and we’d fight. You’d say I was drunk and not worth bothering with—all talk and not myself. Then I’d say I was myself and go to the locker to prove it.’

He took two steps to where the laser pistol lay concealed.

‘See? And tell me why not. Peace is death. Peace is nothing for me. What else? What else do I do? What else can I do? I’m Rakkel, shining star of the Fleet! Got a tough job? Get Rakkel—he’s the one. He’s dedicated. He knows where his place is. A quiet life? Never. Betray a colleague and get thrown out? Speak up and tell the truth? Not Rakkel. Now peace? Live and breathe the Fleet, then take it all away? Go home, be nobody, do nothing, see nothing, experience nothing. How?’

He ran a few skewed steps forwards and asked her face, his hands wide, pleading. ‘How?!’

There was no answer. He sat down hard on the chair and winced. The half-empty glass on the desk reached for his hand, and then moved away.

A single red word

RECORDING

beamed from the terminal screen.

‘How to be nothing?’

He ran a hand through his short blonde hair, pressed his palm briefly against his skull. The jarring had given impetus to the brewing headache. He rested his elbow on the desk, closed his eyes, shook his head gently.

‘If only you were here to tell me. But we didn’t choose that. Perhaps… perhaps….’

A tinny bleep issued into the room.

Door.

He closed his eyes. Not now.

He looked down at what state he was in.

Acceptable.

‘Yes.’

The last thing he needed was a female form—a very appealing female form—but when the door slid back, that’s what he got. It would be one of those evenings.

It had already been one of those evenings.

He took a breath to try and clear his head, muster the best sobriety he could. ‘Piya.’

She noted the glass on the desk. ‘We are standing down from Alert. The whole fleet.’

‘As a show of… solitude, I suppose.’

‘Just thought I’d let you know.’

‘You could have called.’

‘I was passing. I’ll leave you to….’ She thought better of insinuation. ‘Night.’

‘Yes.’ Yet his thoughts were elsewhere.

The door slid open to receive her.

He stood. ‘Piya?’

She stopped mid-stride. ‘Yes?’

‘If this really is peace, what will you do?’

‘Celebrate.’

‘I mean, after.’

‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

After an awkward pause, she half-shrugged and smiled. ‘Night.’

‘Hmm. Night.’

The door closed, and Rakkel was enveloped in silence again.

He heaved a half-drunk self-piteous sigh that was too familiar of late. Only to himself. Couldn’t let this get out amongst the crew.

He pursed his lips.

If this is peace. If. And if not?

His head hurt. Still, a tiny voice of reason was there in the murk. It pulled his stubborn frame into action as if sleepwalking.

He went to the desk and hit a key on the terminal.

OUTGOING MESSAGE DELETED.

The pretty face vanished to a point and was gone.

Captain Rakkel Irr stretched his weary back and went to the window. He had a momentary desire to step outside, breathe deeply of the crisp air in the clear infinity and lighten his dull senses. To walk without stinting as if in a vast garden, to bound unconfined through the stars, to drink in… what was it?

Freedom.

But not freedom from travails. Not freedom from aggression. Freedom from himself.

He glanced at the now-blank terminal.

‘I’m not nothing yet,’ he said to the room, returning his attention to the transparent portal. ‘But you may wish you’d been here.’

End Of A Voyage

The unimaginable silence was wounded.

Occasionally it was pricked, teased, but the hurt was short and quickly repaired to perfection. The mind-less, feeling-less creation would return to complete peace.

Then the rain would come again. Somewhere. It never knew where or when (it never knew anything). The silence would gently break as drips became drops, became pattering, became drumming on the hard earth, the scattered rock, the ocean.

Or it was rent asunder, billowing grey-black pounded the air like cannon, and water lashed down as if to beat the land into submission for even its very existence. The thunder would echo, squeezing the silence within inches of its life. Daggers might pierce the curtains of water, whip-cracking when the booming drew breath. Later they might duel, squabble over the silence’s survival, and, spent, retreat into non-existence. Until the next time, silence would hold sway again here.

No more. The silence was wounded, yet it could not know this was a fatal mark.

It was a calm, clear day, thin high cloud smearing the blue-green sky when the machine arrived.

Arcing out of the intense light of the binary suns, a silhouette sharpening out of black pinprick, it bore down, an arm drawing back for the sucker punch into defenceless silence. The descent steepened, the arc tightening until it vanished into nothing, the machine bearing down vertically on the surface.

Then the punch, the retro thrusters bursting into life, blue flame piercing the air with a roar as she came down. The silence shrunk back, knowing nothing like this.

Dust and fine grains whipped away first. Then pebbles trembled, moved, were kicked away by the blast.

Anything resisting it was warmed, heated, made red hot as the module slowed on its billowing columns of fire, stubby legs reaching for the ground.

Slower and slower it came, as if fearing to close the final gap, wincing from touching this strange surface, then the fire billowed the dust storm in on itself, searing the hard rock beneath as the distance evaporated and the machine met solidity.

The fire subsided, and silence took an apprehensive breath. Dust settled, rock cooled.

The landing module had made fall on a rocky vista in the planet’s northern hemisphere at about thirty degrees longitude. The plain lay on the western edge of the largest of the nine island continents, in the shadow of the imposing ridged mountains and bordering the green-blue ocean. Occupying a tenth of the plain’s area was a great lake, almost an impossibly perfect circle, over which summer breezes rushed and cooled. Winter rarely let ice take any grip, but storms whipped the waves into a fervour. High summer sucked at the moisture, drawing down the level before the storms lashed it back with interest repaid.

Silence was breathing easier, head above the covers, hands away from its ears. Sunshine rippled on the lake’s undulating waters, careered off the sharp slants and verticals of the craft, warmed the mid-day plain into the slightest heat haze. All that moved was dust and the leaves of the exiguous brownish shrubs that were one of the few florae this empty planet mustered.

Land covered only ten percent of the surface, irregular stains floating on an endless liquid canvas, the island shores losing—slowly, interminably slowly—a battle against the waves.

Third of the binary system’s seven planets, it spun almost vertically on its axis. No moons kept it company on its endless journey through the unwalled blackness. No visitors came here to the edge of the spiral rim. No otherworldly sound stumbled in on the ancient war between nature and silence.

Until now.

A door in the module’s side slid back. Alien air escaped onto the plain, mixing invisibly in the mass, contaminating. Now a humming and the module grew a protrusion, a narrow ramp stabbing out from the aperture, reaching for the earth, touching it, compressing it, stopping.

Nothing for a little while (silence held its breath), then a figure appeared in the doorway, paused, then swung a leg onto the ramp.

It walked down the short metal strip into the suns’ glare and—no fear, no excitement, no ceremony—took its first steps on the virgin soil.

It came to a stand, briefly surveyed the land, then crunched away in a circle to the left, scanning around, keeping the module at its shoulder until it halted again at the foot of the ramp.

All good.

Invisibly, inaudibly, something left the figure, bound for the otherwhere.

~ Continue.

the otherwhere replied.

The figure ascended the ramp and disappeared inside the stark shape on the stretching landscape. When it returned, it had company, a wheeled vehicle following obediently, a puppy behind its master. On reaching the dust and stones, they stopped briefly.

An invisible, inaudible burst of something pricked the quiet air and the wheels set in motion again, trundling away from the figure, bobbing on the rocky scars and humps.

The figure seemed to watch it go.

Go West, young man.

~ Go West, young man?

I was talking to The EnviroProbe.

~ Go West, young man?

I picked it up from the Archive.

~ Oh, the Archive again.

There are worse ways to pass the time. There is a lot of time.

~ I know there has been a lot of time. You were not alone. The EnviroProbe will not understand anyway. It is just a machine.

I did not imply it understood.

~ Do you have anything useful to say?

It is pleasant here. The lake is interesting.

~ Interesting?

Ninety-seven percent a perfect circle.

~ So many impact craters, the average probability is—

I know. But it is the darn tootin’-est thing.

~ Darn tootinest. Oh, dear. We should get back to the business at hand.

Yes. I will go for a walk.

~ You do that.

The robot returned its attention to the distant EnviroProbe. It was taking a surface sample with a tiny sucking, scraping mechanism rooted in its underbelly.

At least you don’t answer back.

~ I heard that.

Ignored.

The robot walked towards the lake’s edge. It initiated its mercury clock timer (because it felt like doing so).

Behind it, the non-sentient wanderer completed its first task, emitted a low hum, rose a short distance into the air, and accelerated towards the mountains. It was barely visible in the distance—a grey blob against the grey foothills—when it stopped, lowered gracefully to the earth and sought more answers from the alien rock.

Ad-Sar felt the onshore breeze brush the tiny synthetic hairs on his face as he strode, calmly but purposefully, across the plain. His immense mind was harnessed, analysing every scrap of data that visual, aural and tactile sensors imbibed.

Nitrogen fifty-eight percent. Oxygen nineteen percent. Hydrogen seven percent. Carbon dioxide four percent. Helium two percent. Sulphur dioxide one percent…

Ad-Sar already knew this. This was redundant confirmation. But pleasant redundant confirmation. And necessary, given the Dictate.

He—they—knew most things, even answers The EnviroProbe sought. Most was old data, but they didn’t have the heart to tell it (not that it would understand—it was just The EnviroProbe).

(Sometimes he thought about calling it EP, so they could talk about it behind its back using a term it wouldn’t understand, then he realised The EnviroProbe wouldn’t care—because it couldn’t—so he didn’t bother. Even so, there were times when he’d considered having it as a private joke. It had been a long voyage…).

The temperature of the breeze had dropped by 0.84 degrees. It was calm near the water, where barely a wave rubbed the sloping shore. Looking along the curving shoreline, he focussed on sporadic plant life, simple water weeds which carved out their lives over the millennia of the planet’s existence.

On the shale of the shoreline, he paused. The EnviroProbe had disappeared from sight. He magnified up—it was in the foothills, doing its bidding.

74,687,098,228,100,827 mercury atom oscillations between here and the module.

Call it 75,000,000,000,000—that makes it easy. Nobody will know.

~ I will know.

We need a basis of time. Do you not have better things to do than eavesdrop?

~ Why does that make it easy? And no, I do not.

Divisible by three. Three minutes from there to here, twenty-five seconds a minute. We have to start somewhere.

~ And the planetary rotation period?

70,040,541,669,231,754 oscillations.

~ Lucky you. Twenty-eight hours of a hundred minutes. Nobody will know about the rounding.

For a while.

~ But priorities. The lake.

Darn right.

~ Oh dear.

Micromotors whirred apertures closed, and Ad-Sar moved off, ten paces down the sloping shore before a foot splashed water. Then both feet, legs, torso, head, then gone. The green blueness closed over him, and the surface fell clear.

He stopped at a depth of five metres, feet barely sunken into the firm lake bed. Overhead, countless shades of water danced as light tried to force its way into the depths. Down, the dark shroud flushed and swirled with the storm kicked up by a stranger’s inroads into equilibrium, then slowly settled around its torturer.

An aperture in his torso opened and closed quickly over a small water sample. He bent down and drew in a little of the lake bed through a hollow finger. He straightened and looked around, magnified up, ten metres, a hundred metres, a thousand metres in the heavy colour.

Not too much to see.

Very soon, he was standing on the shoreline again, water evaporating quickly from the skin membrane, feeling the heat return.

The miniature laboratory within him yielded secrets, and the hundreds of autonomous subroutines went about their work.

We were wrong.

~ We are not the first?

Three distinct single-celled organisms here alone.But it does not change things.

~ No.

I feel like a walk to the ocean. I estimate about six hours to return. EP should be finished by then.

~ EP?

Forget it.

Beginning Of An End

‘Galla fth hqir.’

Izah winced beneath the smile, head bowed almost diagonally to the shoulder. The gesture was simple enough to master; the language, by contrast, was a minefield all too easy to stumble in.

Hqir? Was that correct? Hqirr? Hqir.