Aurona, page 31
Duron didn’t miss a beat and continued smoothly. “We have found that small, extremely diluted amounts of this highly toxic substance helps our thoughts to be clearer and more focused in order to create and invent more intuitively.”
Adam acknowledged his immediate response. “Wow! That’s pretty darn good, Duron! And the ‘thinking clearer’ part IS true. You didn’t have to make up a thing!”
He turned to the crew, deftly finishing Duron’s cover-up. “So I think we’ve got it. A simple food chain: Motherlode to Rasheen to Bandor to Razah to Spyrin, right?”
“Correct, Adam. And I would further recommend that none of you go near the source of all this trouble, the Rasheen. It has taken us centuries to unravel the amazing, complex mysteries within its genome. As far as we know, Spyrins are the only known predators of the Razah. They sometimes even kill them for sport. They are social insects and live underground in large colonies, filling the abandoned caves of our ancestors.”
Elena shuddered. “In hives? Ugh!”
Duron looked at her pointedly. “Yes, yes, Elena! We share your feelings completely! We never venture out of our cities at night anymore, at least not us older Bandors! Our youths are far more daring. No, we decided long ago to devote as much of the planet’s surface area as we could to the direct production of electricity through photosynthesis. That meant moving totally underground.”
She put it together quickly. “Oh, that’s it! And the larger your cities grew, the more power you needed to hold up your ceilings, right?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “Our billion-ton antigrav machines were soon replaced by trillion-ton models, and so on. It is still growing. We older Bandors occasionally miss the outdoors, but our underground parks….”
“Duron,” Tola interrupted, “I’m sorry, but why don’t you just live outdoors and corral the pests with a Force Field?”
“What you call ‘pests’ are the apex of Aurona’s food chain. Without them, the planet would soon be overrun with lesser creatures, including the numerous species that devour our vital plant life. By eliminating them, we’d upset the natural balance.”
Adam nodded. “Elena has a bit of experience on this subject,” he smiled warmly. “She was the head engineer at Biozyne, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate that always seemed to make international headlines! I’m still baffled why she left to join us.”
As the startled crew studied her with new respect, she attempted to explain, red-faced. “I-I was just part of a team, guys! Back on Earth in the mid-twenty-first century, we had to resort to some pretty drastic measures. We were abandoning international treaties left and right and the last of our breeding zoos were dwindling down to mere handfuls of endangered species. The genetic engineers in my team finally perfected how to reproduce healthy offspring using artificial wombs, and repopulated our small wildlife preserves to capacity! Unfortunately,” she shrugged, “the real problem remained: their original habitats were almost gone. Rainforests were turning into dead, windblown Sahara….”
Adam chimed in. “Hey, on the other hand, New Guinea’s back on track! They’ve restored all their rainforests into pristine condition! Right after I was born, my grandfather sold them exclusive rights to an invention he called CloneBank….”
“Huh?” Startled, Elena spun to him. “Not the CloneBank? You’re kidding! My company invested heavily into it and it’s become the gold standard!”
He looked surprised. “Wow, that means New Guinea finally released their patent rights! Good for them!”
“Yes, that is very encouraging,” Duron interjected. “Your grandfather did mention something about his CloneBank years ago and was wondering if it helped. He was pleased to learn that we had also developed a technology to reclaim vast stretches of useless desert back into verdant, productive rainforest. Our reflectant cloud canopies of gold are an integral part. You may find this hard to believe, people, but our planet Aurona was once dry, cold and arid, almost entirely desert!” He beamed proudly, slit-smiling back at everyone’s incredulous stares. “Millenniums passed and our technology flourished, but eventually the deserts stopped shrinking. Aurona had shifted slightly into a more regular orbit around our sun and slowed its axial wobble. The planet became warmer.”
Adam scooted to the edge of his chair. “You stopped having seasons?”
“Yes. As the icecaps melted, the oceans rose. There was eventually a short time of terrible flooding when we lost irreplaceable records of our earliest voyages to distant star systems. Many of our ancient coastal caves are inundated to this day.” He paused, his eyes focusing somewhere in the distance. “Our people will never visit them,” he whispered. “We consider those vaults to be sacred tombs.”
Adam shifted uneasily. “Ah, how long ago did all this happen, Duron?”
“Just before the discovery of what you call the ‘Motherlode Tree.’ Although our records were lost and our memories were insufficient, our oral tradition remained. We estimate that the two events coincided over two million Earth years ago.”
“Two mill…?” Adam caught himself, then toned down his voice a notch “Wow! Two million years? You had scientists and underground cities way back then?”
Duron continued, unhurried. “Why, yes! And it was only by purest chance—no, a miracle—that our scientists obtained that first tree. Up to then, they’d spent many frustrating years combining countless plant species through genetic engineering. One day, a large shipment of exotic plant and animal species arrived from a distant galaxy. As I have said, we lost all the records of that particular voyage during the coastal flooding. They noticed something unusual about one of the saplings: a tiny, rooted cutting, apparently taken from a colossal parent tree.”
“The Motherlode!” someone whispered.
He glanced up. “Yes, the Motherlode. It was a truly momentous discovery that day. They found that the cutting manufactured a strange enzyme in its sap that could dissolve gold, an abundant mineral, and pull the resulting liquid in through its root system. They planted it over a healthy surface vein. As the cutting matured into a small tree, its flowers began to send out small quantities of gold vapor into the atmosphere!”
Adam edged closer. “You mean that all your Motherlodes came from that one original cutting and it didn’t even come from Aurona?”
“Why yes,” Duron nodded. “But why is that so strange? The Motherlode is an alien species, as are nearly all of our flora and fauna. Remember, Aurona was once almost entirely desert!”
The skinny one shifted uncomfortably on his hard cafeteria-issue chair, gathering his long robe under his bony frame for padding. “So in our never-ending quest for greening, that one cutting quickly became many and matured at a phenomenal rate. Our people propagated millions of the vigorous cuttings, eventually blanketing vast acres of our desert planet. But something else began to happen, something totally unexpected. In only a few short centuries, the skies grew darker as the golden flakes blocked out Aurona’s sunlight.”
“Wow! Your planet must have been cooling down real fast!”
“Yes, Adam,” Duron said slit-smiling. “Then we remembered an old Bandor saying: ‘To learn, you must dig deeply.’ So our people dug, literally, and found two things. First, the abundant underground wiring you have seen had spread beyond imagining! The Motherlodes were forcibly inducing all the greenery to provide additional food for them! That is partially why they are so colossal. But second and more importantly, another strange thing was happening. Aurona’s weather patterns were changing. It was getting balmy for hundreds of miles around the trees!”
Elena was shaking her head in disbelief. “The Motherlodes were actually changing the weather to suit their needs? What kind of supertrees are they?”
The old one contemplated. “We still do not know their full potential, but back then it was a paradox. Although our ancestors saw that the global network of underground wiring was stabilizing the enormous static differential between planet and atmosphere, thus abating the most severe storms, the trees seemed destined to eventually destroy the planet as the skies continued to darken! To make matters worse, one day news came that a Razah had stalked and eaten our last truly knowledgeable elder-scientist as he worked outside. A great sense of foreboding fell that evening, crippling initiative and destroying hope. That very night, an unknown youth performed an unlikely experiment down in one of our underground dwellings.”
As the crew leaned forward expectantly, his slit-smile appeared to be almost mischievous. “It was Duron 229, my distant ancestor! A mere child of eighty-six years! He sent up a polarized charge of electricity through the tap root of a Motherlode!” His slender palms rose excitedly in the air. “Immediately, a great hole opened in the sky as a circle of flakes turned on their axes!”
As Elena nudged Adam pointedly, the crew smiled. Her fingers were discreetly forming an o in her lap. Duron continued his eloquent roll.
“The answer had been within our grasp all the time! Within a few years, Duron 229 discovered and refined the phenomenon of electricity manufactured through photosynthesis. With unlimited quantities of this new power at our disposal, we began to electrify the entire planetary network of Motherlodes!” His dark eyes were sparkling. “We controlled the weather! By turning flakes selectively, heating some landmasses with light and cooling others with darkness, we moved clouds and made rain! A few years after his death we began to reclaim the desert, fifty square Earth-miles at a time. But then….” A dark cloud of painful reminiscence suddenly passed over his face. He lifted his eyes upward. “The invasion,” he sighed.
There was a stunned silence. No one dared to ask the obvious. Adam took the bull by the horns and probed gently. “Ah, another civilization found out you had gold?”
Duron spun toward him. “Yes!” he sputtered. “C-can you imagine? Such an abundant mineral!” The gentle leader had caught everyone off-guard. They drew back, surprised; they hadn’t as yet seen such a display of emotion coming from him.
The old one stood up indignantly, smoothing out his cloak. “True, it has been calculated that a tremendous percentage of our planet is made up of this-this gold,” he sputtered, shaking his big head in disgust. “When they attacked us, we threw up all our electrical shields at once. Collectively, it-it vaporized them! We were more surprised than they could ever have been!”
Duron’s pointed gaze fell on Adam. “In the two million years hence, we’ve had to repeat this defensive action only two more times. As you may have guessed, the first was for the arrival of your grandfather and the second was for you. Frightening? Not so much when you put it into perspective. In comparison, the shields are just a puny, defensive weapon. There is another, a far greater offensive weapon at our disposal. We have tested it once and put it away, confident of its power.”
Cautiously, Adam stepped into the breach once again. “How did you test it?” He glanced around the room, shrugging. “I mean, what did you do?”
Duron turned to him. “Our astronomers warned of an impending collision with one of our three moons.”
“Three moons? B-but we’ve seen only two!”
As a true leader, Duron knew that diplomacy was useless without a powerful deterrent to back it up. The old one turned and directed his weighted words toward the back of the room. “We used the power of the Big Guns to blast the planet out of orbit!”
As shocked whispers hung thickly in the air, Dexor formed a quick huddle, muttering into his cronies’ ears.
“C’mon! C’mon, bean-brain! Tell Dexy where they are so we can all go home!”
Senn agreed, nodding vehemently. “Yah,” he echoed, “tell us where dey are!”
Dexor’s eyes glinted as he focused intently on the old Bandor. “So whaddaya waitin’ for, mushroom-head? A shakedown? A little blood?” he muttered, his teeth clenching. “Don’t tell usss it’sss a sssecret now!”
The old one talked softly to the group, like a father. “I’m sure you are wondering where they are kept, but I am afraid that is a matter of planetary security,” he concluded. “While the Big Guns were originally used as a defensive weapon, they are now considered offensive. You are our invited guests, our friends. Thank you for now,” he bowed.
Dexor elbowed Senn painfully in the ribs. “A secret!” he hissed. “I KNEW it! That mutant SCUM! We’re gonna hafta….” He drew his mouth into a tight line. With another hard elbow into the man’s beefy ribs, he nodded discreetly toward the doorway.
As Duron acknowledged the crew’s spontaneous applause, Adam leaned toward him. “Thanks. I must say that you’ve stretched our imagination to the limit this morning. All of us keep saying that anything’s possible on this planet, and you’ve just proven it. I’m sure there’s a lot more to come!”
It had been a hard, first night and an overwhelming second morning. The crew drifted off into small groups, chattering excitedly about the new information.
“Adam?” The old eyes looked tired. “Thank you for welcoming me. I never did get to tell your crew something important about the translator buttons.”
“I understand. They’ve been a breakthrough, but they’re very exhausting. When you want to revert back to your own language, how do you turn them off? D’ya just peel these little red suckers off your neck, or what?”
“That is the very feature I neglected to explain. It is easier than you think.” He slit-smiled, shrugged, and then tapped his button in a quick code: two short taps followed by a harder one. It clicked off. “Bzzz stylph zzor runnnch?” he asked in Bandorese. With a single tap, it sprang to life again. “Does that answer your question?”
Adam tapped the code. “Huh! It works!” he sampled quietly, in English.
“Of course! Your grandfather helped invent it!” Duron nodded. “His data disks provided all the English translations!”
As they shook hands warmly and Duron headed for the doorway, Elena slipped her small hand into Adam’s open palm. “D’ya think we could get in a little sightseeing today?” she whispered.
“I’d love to, hon, but first I promised to move our ship outta this big tree. We’re way too heavy for their, ah, roof!”
Duron popped his big head back into the cafeteria doorway. “Oh, I forgot one more detail, Adam. See you up in the control room in a few minutes,” he pointed.
“Yeah,” Elena shrugged wanly. “That’s true. You did promise.”
He squeezed her gently. “Maybe when we get down to the ground we could take out a three-man sled? Duron said he’d show us around.”
“You’re saying you, me, and ah … him?”
“Uh, huh.”
She drooped dejectedly. “I-I was hoping for just you and me.”
“That’s later,” he whispered. “After our wedding and after all the lights on this incredible planet are out.”
Chapter 17: PARADISE
The Motherlode’s great branches creaked loudly as Adam raised the starship. Their eyes glued to the proceedings, Duron and several of the crew had gathered around the big holographic display fanning down from the ceiling, watching it slip toward the open sky through a tall, narrow corridor of green. As Kron flipped on the external cameras, they glanced over their shoulders at the curved monitors. Sure enough, the animals were back in force, straining their utmost to touch the smooth, silent hull as it slid by. In moments, clear sky surrounded them. They were free.
“Yes!” Adam let out a whoop, punching the air. He settled the mighty craft on the shoreline, the gleaming knife-edge of the hull protruding fifty feet over the surface and crystal-clear water lapping against the gel feet.
The old Bandor was nodding with his whole body. “Very, very good, Adam! I watched the seismic readings,” he exclaimed, “No tremors!”
“Thanks,” Adam replied, grinning, yanking the glowing keys out of their slots. “So! D’ya think it’s safe to get out and take a stroll, or maybe do a little swimming? That water sure looks inviting!”
“Perhaps, but remember, you have predators to contend with, primarily Razahs.”
Adam pointed at the large, circular clearing around the Motherlode. “So what’s up with all that grass? Did you guys plant it?”
Duron shrugged. “No, the sap in the Motherlode’s root systems created it. That was a completely unforeseen phenomenon. The resulting circles are indeed quite large, about two Earth-miles in diameter. Fortunately, Razahs are creatures of stealth and rarely come out into them.” He thought a moment. “Unless there is a reason to.”
Grimacing, Adam glanced over his shoulder at the men. “Ah, I think we should go somewhere and talk about a few things in private. I’m bursting with questions, Duron.” He walked around to the far side of the big hologram, whispered his intentions in Kron’s ear and returned, smiling. “It’s all set. I told him that you and I needed to go ‘strategize.’ C’mon, I have an office right down the hall.”
Adam looked up and down the corridor and shut the door. “First things first,” he began. “Our Stiflers might have the range to handle the Razahs,” he exclaimed, “but-but of course that depends entirely on one detail: what’s the Razah’s range?
Duron thought a moment. “I would say one thousand Earth-feet on the average, but larger specimens occasionally throw stuns over twice that distance.”
Adam whistled. “No kidding! That’s incredible! Nearly half a mile? Sorry to say, but that’s the limit of our Stifler’s range, too! Ah, what would happen if one of us actually got stunned?”
The old one grimaced. “Temporary paralysis and neural spasm, for about two Earth-hours. I-I really don’t think he would bother a large group of people, though. He is way too smart for that.”
“Just paralysis? You mean you don’t die?”
“I did not say that. The closer the Razah is to his prey, the greater the neural spasm. If he is less than ten feet away, irreparable brain damage occurs. Total destruction. And do not forget, Adam, when he reaches you he begins to feed immediately.”
