Aurona, page 60
There was a faint ping, and a soft light turned on inside the darkened thermoglass. A technician turned to him, his faint slit-smile affirming the readings had snapped out of sleep mode. Taking a breath, he quickly bent back to reprogram the complicated opening sequence: there had to be plenty of time for his grandfather’s aged body to adjust, as the old man would be quite fragile when he emerged.
Down the hall, an anxious group was waiting for the momentous event. Duron was on an eloquent roll: bright, lively and informative, he was demonstrating an extensive knowledge base with a solid grasp of facts, mixing everything liberally with prophecy and legend. The crew sat enraptured. Suddenly, there was a commotion in the hallway. As they turned toward the door, Elena gasped in disbelief.
“Roson!” She jumped up, her arms wide. “You made it!” The ancient crone swept proudly into the room on her antigrav chair, dressed in her finest ceremonial robes. Squealing in excitement, Elena rushed to her side with a warm, welcoming embrace.
Adam heard all the ruckus and sprinted down the hallway. As he poked his head into the doorway, a broad smile lit up his face. “Whaddaya know! Roson! Welcome to my grandfather’s, ah, rebirth! I knew you wouldn’t miss it for the world!” Taking note of her starched, pristine white robe with its heavily embossed gold borders, he raised a brow, nodding in approval. “By the way, nice threads, girl!”
Roson spun toward him in high spirits, cackling good-naturedly. “Oh, this old thing! Haven’t worn it for thousands of years!” Her dark eyes gazed up into his. “Yes, you’re quite right, my dear; I wouldn’t miss the event for this or any other world! When your grandfather opens his eyes I want to be next in line, right behind you!”
Adam cautioned her. “They say there’s still a bit of a wait. Did you, um…?”
“Yes,” she interrupted, slit-smiling. “I brought plenty of antidote. And in case we’re here for a spell, this thing I’m sitting on folds down flat into a bed! Your grandfather helped me … invent it….” Her words trailed off, her eyes rimmed with tears.
Elena gave her a reassuring hug. “It’s okay, hon. He’ll be back with us soon.”
A technician suddenly appeared in the doorway. “The pod is starting to open!”
“What?” Roson jerked her head up with a start, grabbing Elena’s hand. “Oh my goodness, this is way too soon! I-I barely made it in time!”
The technician reassured her. “Do not worry, sleep pods are programmed to respond only to the occupant’s overall health and condition. If he were in poor health, it might have opened late tonight or even tomorrow, for that matter.”
She pressed him. “That means he’s in better condition than you thought?”
“Yes….” Noting the large crowd of humans, he slit-smiled and stepped into the room a bit further. “Ah, I need to tell you people that you have a hilarious leader,” he chuckled. “Your Adam just called us specialists the ‘Pod Squad’!”
Red-faced, Adam grimaced while the assembly hooted in laughter. The technician turned back to Roson. “Yes, we were quite surprised. Our best estimates had placed the opening sometime this evening, but the aged human is six hours early, indicating an extremely resilient recovery rate! You will still have to wait; the opening sequence involves nearly an hour of resuscitation before he starts to breathe on his own. But do not worry, he is being very closely monitored.”
She slumped back. “Okay, false alarm…. Hey, I almost wigged out there!”
The crew shot each other surprised looks: where’d this ancient Bandor crone learn those Earthly idioms? They were quite dated, though, more than four generations before their own. In a moment, the association became crystal-clear.
Roson was sharp. “Hmm, do I detect puzzled looks, here?” She sat up ramrod straight in her chair, squaring her shoulders. Well, it’s high time that I, ah, confess something, especially since I’m about to be reunited with my best friend ever, the love of my life. This is to be a day of truth; no more hiding…. We, ah, lived together on my Island for almost eighty years.”
There it was, their nascent suspicions were confirmed. The crew nudged each other, winking and rolling their eyes.
And…!” She held up a scrawny, cautionary finger. “Before you young bucks and does get any ideas, we slept in our own rooms!” She paused, reconsidering. “No, that’s not true: mostly, he slept on top of his papers and inventions. Awake three hours, sleep three hours, ‘round the clock. He-he was possessed!”
Adam let out a snort. “You got him pegged! I couldn’t keep up with him!”
She exhaled a short breath, her wrinkled cheeks puffing. “Nor could I!”
As the room rang with laughter, Adam bent low to her ear. “Roson, eighty years? Did he say much about me? Did he…?
She laid a bony hand across his arm. “Hush, my son. You will know soon enough. Ask him yourself when he awakens.”
Several doors further down the long hallway, an entirely different scene was playing out: unconscious and lying flat on his back, Dexor was strapped tightly to a gurney in a recovery room. He’d nearly lost his legs. For several hours, Fenet and Ranod had worked feverishly, giving him extensive bone grafts, many yards of quickly grown arteries and veins, and finally a whole series of mega-injections with Hyper Stemcell solution. His lower body had turned into an extension of the lab in the bottle, rapidly accelerating massive tissue regeneration as it restored his major leg muscles and nerves.
The Bandor doctors were getting used to this type of traumatic surgery. Inexperienced youths were occasionally falling from great heights in their unfamiliar Wingsuits, and Speed Tube workers were getting their limbs crushed as they constructed massive force fields thousands of miles beneath Aurona’s surface.
His head swimming with potent anesthesia, Dexor began to come out of his long, dark tunnel, his lower body throbbing powerfully as it knit back together. Behind him, wrapped tightly in casts and bandages, Trennic and Nastix kept glancing furtively over their shoulders.
“Are you sure?” Trennic whispered. “D’ya think he can hear us?”
“I dunno…. He sure ain’t movin.’”
They studied their boss intently, making sure their conversation wouldn’t be overheard. Shrugging, they leaned closer, their whispers barely audible. They began to marvel at how Adam and his crew had cared enough about them to rescue them, in spite of all they’d done to ruin their mission. Scowling, they vented in exasperation, contrasting the crazed, hooded Bitron’s selfish motives and brutal actions: to him they were just pawns to be used, abused, and then dumped.
“Was it worth it?” Nastix quavered. “All our plottin’ and plannin’ and spyin’? Even if we had all gotten away, what would we be gettin’ back to in another seven hundred years? The Earth was pretty messed up when we left!”
“Yeah,” Trennic agreed. “No more unity. All the countries wuz breakin’ away from each other an’ thinkin’ only about themselves, fightin’ and fightin’….”
“Hey,” Nastix scowled. “Would there even be an Earth left to spend our loot on?”
Overwhelmed, they sat back, quietly pondering the dire implications.
Finally out of anesthesia, Dexor had caught the tail end of their conversation. Struggling mightily, he rolled his head toward them and broke the silence. “Forget the Earth, guys,” he rasped. “That planet was messed up because of people like us. Don’t you get it yet? We were the problem!”
They spun toward him, their eyes suddenly wide and fearful.
“Ah, ah…. We didn’t mean nuttin,’ boss,” Trennic stumbled. “We wuz….”
“It’s okay,” he breathed weakly. “And I’m not your boss anymore. You’re free.”
“Huh?” Nastix started to shake in his gut.
Dexor collected his thoughts. “You know, come to think of it, I’m free, too! The Bandor doctors were talking real loud out in the hallway before they put me out. They said Adam dropped that Bitron maniac with a super mega-stun. He-he killed him!”
The words stopped coming. Shocked to their core, the two men sat riveted in their beds with their mouths hanging open. So it really was over! After a long, uncertain moment, they glanced at Dexor again. Somehow, he looked completely different; his whole countenance was relaxed, his perpetually affected grimace was simply … erased.
He caught their confused stares. “Yeah, you got it; I’m not me anymore. My mind feels weird, a lot clearer. I don’t know what was in that stuff they shot me up with, but I’ve got no more reasons to fight anymore.” He studied their faces. “And you shouldn’t either. Take a look at this amazing planet and people, and then compare it to the chaotic, miserable lives we made for ourselves back on the Earth.”
A great weight was lifting from Nastix’s shoulders and he sat up a bit straighter. “You really mean it? We’re….”
“Hey.” Dexor attempted a shrug. “Forgive me? I was a real jerk.”
Nastix agreed vehemently. “Yeah. Stinko. An arrogant bully. A real son of a….”
“Whoa!” Trennic jabbed him in the ribs. “He’s tryin’ to apologize, I think.” He turned to Dexor uneasily. “Are you?”
The man’s ribs were heaving in silent spasms of laughter. “You guys’ll never change! Go ahead, pile it on, I deserve it,” he chuckled. “I was all that and more!” He lay there quietly, contemplating. “And when you’re done venting, I’d like us all to move on.”
The pod had finished its opening sequence. As the throat insert withdrew and Adam’s grandfather began to breathe fitfully on his own, several Bandor attendants lifted him out, removed the life-sustaining zippered suit from his limp body, and dried off the AmnioGel coating. Ever so carefully, they slipped a warm Bandor robe over his unconscious form and laid him in a contour bed. Checking their timepieces, they walked briskly down the hall toward the waiting room.
“Twenty minutes!” Fenet’s loud translator button startled the crowd. The two doctors walked toward Adam, peeling off their gloves. “Your grandfather is out of the pod and breathing on his own,” he smiled, “but he is still regaining consciousness.”
“Yes,” Ranod agreed. “And his vital signs are very good, even remarkable!”
Roson clutched her chest, tears welling up. “Whoa! This is far better news than I’d ever hoped for! I was starting to get really concerned about his deteriorating appearance during the months before he disappeared. He wouldn’t talk about it and kept to himself.” She threw up her bony hands in exasperation. “Typical male, a stuffer!”
Joelle threw knowing looks at her female friends: wow, this Roson chick was sharp, definitely on the same wavelength! Catching Elena’s eye, she gave her an emphatic two thumbs-up.
Twenty minutes came and went. Checking his wrist programmer, Adam paced back and forth, sidling up to the doorway and glancing down the hall toward the recovery room. Suddenly, there was a distant sound of laughter, and Fenet’s face appeared. Seeing Adam, he slit-smiled, beckoning.
“Yes!” Adam punched his fist in the air. Right on his heels, Roson and Elena bumped into him. As the three hurried down the hall and entered the room in a tight, nervous knot, none of them were prepared for the sight.
Someone resembling an extremely aged version of his grandfather’s clone was lying on the contour bed, his head swollen grotesquely, his skin tissue thin and wrinkled. Hearing them enter, he rolled a pair of large, dark eyes and weakly stretched out a hand.
“A-Adam? Is that really … you?”
The next morning, two very different-looking saucers emerged from the entrance of the long, bioluminescent tube and shot out into bright sunshine. They soared effortlessly, hovered a moment, and then banked toward the shore of the big lake in the distance. Prima was back, gleaming and restored to its original condition. The Bandor workers were proud of Adam’s avant gard structure and had put in a mighty effort to get it ready. As the crew watched, Kron and a seasoned Bandor pilot slowly rotated the new starship a few, precise degrees and squeezed it into place in the big empty courtyard.
Totally on the other hand, Adam and his grandfather were like kids with a new toy. The Phantom Cruiser swooped, circled, and barrel-rolled around Prima before finally landing with a spin and flourish a short distance from the fan-shaped pier. Cheering, the crew stuffed themselves into the elevators and ran in a mob up the great spiral staircase toward the new Observatory Room. Once more, the saucer’s main room had become their hub and was rapidly collecting an enthusiastic, mixed group of Bandors and humans. As Kron raised the stage, Tola directed some of the crew to bring up chairs from the cafeteria and set them into a semicircle.
Before they exited the Cruiser, Adam’s grandfather slipped into a long white Bandor robe and donned a large pair of dark glasses. Adam watched for a moment as he adjusted and readjusted the large, floppy hood over his domed head.
“Ah, why all the getup, man? You goin’ incognito on us?”
The old man shrugged. “Two reasons, my boy.” He tied the sash and smoothed it out against his side. “First, the bright lights really bother my eyes, and second, I don’t want to scare the crew. I think it’s best to wait awhile before they see how radically I’ve changed. Hey, your features are already altering, and you’ve only been here a few months! I’ve been here for centuries!”
Adam thought a moment, and then shrugged. “Gotcha. You look just fine, Grandpa, even kind of elegant in a mysterious, cool way. The crew will get over it real fast; they’ve, ah, witnessed many strange sights since we got here….”
“Strange sights, huh?” he interrupted. “Strange sights?” Chuckling, the old man grabbed Adam’s arm. “C’mere you little whippersnapper!” He threw him into a headlock. They tousled a moment, Adam helpless with laughter.
Pausing to compose themselves outside the big bronze doors, they walked in, waving and smiling broadly ay the party atmosphere. As they climbed the stage and sat next to the Elders, the crew settled onto their new cushions, eyeing the mysterious stranger. Just as Adam had predicted, they quickly adapted and accepted him as he was.
Their two incredible stories began to entwine: As they kept up a lively, running narrative for the crew, Adam, his grandfather, and the assembled Elders shared their memories and mind-pictures, effortlessly linking their minds in telepathy. Adam revealed how Joelle had accidentally ‘discovered’ the Spyders and how they’d proven to play the pivotal role in entering the shields, and then his grandfather recalled his amazing eighty years of life, inventions and peace on the island with Roson. Sighing, the ancient Bandor woman pressed tightly against him, listening in an enraptured daze. A big arm stole around her thin shoulders and pulled her closer.
Joelle spotted the not-so-subtle interaction. At a miniscule pause in the conversation, she jumped up quickly. “Hi! I’m Joelle, sir, and I’ve been wondering: ah, since you’re Elena’s grandfather-in-law, I guess that would make this pretty lady her….”
“Joelle, is it?” The old man chuckled. “Wow, somehow I get the feeling that you’re slightly … curious?” As the room rang with laughter, he tucked Roson protectively under his arm. “This tiny, amazing lady has been waiting for me way too long, over six hundred years, in fact!” He held up a finger. “I think it’s high time we make it official!”
“What?” Roson’s eyes popped. “Yes-s-s!” Her bony fist jabbed the air.
As shouts, laughter, and congratulations flew through the air, the old man raised his hands to speak. “And so, our families are formed.” He turned to look pointedly at Elena. “Speaking of families, I’m sensing new life within you,” he mused. “In fact … two new lives? Could they be, ah, my great-grandchildren, perhaps?”
Elena reddened. “Yes,” she shrugged. “Gee, it seems like everyone on Aurona knows about my babies! According to prophecy, my twins have been expected for millions of years!” She reflected a moment. “That’s, ah, quite a long gestation!”
The old man roared with laughter. “No wonder Adam’s nuts about you, girl! You’re as sharp as a tack! C’mere!” He held out his white-robed arms and gave her a big bear hug. “And what’s all this prophecy stuff?” he prodded. “Where’d you find out?”
She deferred to Adam, her eyes questioning. “Um, a few places….”
Adam shrugged. “It’s okay hon, go ahead and tell him. He’d love to know.”
She took a breath and continued. “Adam and I discovered the original runes when we explored the oldest Bandor dwelling. They called it The Tomb.”
“What?” The old man blinked. “You found it? I’ve always wondered!”
Adam nudged his grandfather, sending him a strong blast of mind-pictures. In seconds, the old man had been informed of the entire, dangerous journey. He blinked behind his dark glasses, rubbing his broad forehead. “Holy cow! Duron’s been bragging about your abilities, but I would’ve never guessed this degree of telepathy was possible!
“Hey,” Adam shrugged. “I’m a superconductor! I could’a beamed the info much faster, but I didn’t know how quickly your mind could absorb it.”
“Wow, my poor pea brain is overwhelmed.” Grimacing, his grandfather made an attempt to return to the subject. “Can we get back to my great-grandchildren here?”
Encouraged, Elena brightened. “Adam and I decided to name our twins after your favorite moons! You know, Mazan and Eonia? Roson told me all about….”
“Hey,” Adam cut in, his eyes sparkling mischievously. “I’m glad we we’re not having triplets, because we’d have to name our third kid, ah….” he paused, thinking. Stumped, he turned to Duron. “Um, actually, what did you guys call that third moon? You never told us. I mean, you did give that nasty little orbit-wobbler a name, right?”
Suddenly on the spot, Duron caught the other elder’s eyes. “Y-yes, Adam,” he stumbled, “it did have a name. W-we called it Zeran. When our ancestors first landed on the planet, they found it had a thin atmosphere with mostly seas and aquatic life forms.”
