Wish You Were Here (Instead of Me), page 34
“Then explain the axes,” Tempest said. “They’re identical to the one she carried in the recording.”
“There’s a story painted on the wall,” Awat said. “There are lots of planets, and next to each are figures fighting. Sometimes fighting each other. Sometimes they’re fighting animals. Here, there’s a figure fighting something with tentacles.”
“It’s definitely no whale,” Harold said.
“This is her story,” Awat said, “but do you see how she’s never at the centre? The centre of each picture is this figure from whom light is radiating.”
“The Holy Nowan,” Tempest said.
“Maybe,” Serene said.
Tempest began trembling.
“Maybe we should step outside,” Serene said.
“We should seal this chamber, and this ship, and not disturb anything more,” Tempest said.
“She left the door open. She expected to be discovered,” Awat said. “She must have pumped the air from the ship first.”
“That would have killed her,” Harold said.
“Perhaps she was dying,” Awat said. “Or perhaps she set the air to be removed after her death. But she made sure that everything inside would be preserved.”
“Exactly. It would be sacrilege to disturb it,” Tempest said.
“The forest is the same elevation as the plain, near enough,” Harold said. “They wouldn’t construct a building in a canyon.”
“I’m ninety-nine percent positive this is a ship,” Serene said.
“I’m just thinking aloud. The only alternative was a building. But if this was a ship, it must have crashed, creating a crater. Over time, it filled in, and those plants grew up over it.”
“Probably. Why do you think it matters?” Awat asked.
“She expected to be found. It’s the second door, not counting the elevator.” Harold walked back up the corridor to the door they hadn’t been able to open. “This would be the first door, the room closest to the entrance. That was a tomb, not a bedroom, yes?”
“Probably,” Awat said. “There were no furnishings apart from the death bed, and the closet only contained weapons.”
“The mural would have taken some time to create,” Harold said. “She chose that room, but not this one. Why?” He thumped the door panel.
“Don’t do that!” Tempest said.
“We were brought here for a reason,” Harold said, hitting the panel again. This time, it shuddered downward into the frame before sticking halfway. “You should open it, Tempi.”
Tempest shook their head.
“What do you think’s inside?” Awat asked.
“Open it, Tempest,” Harold said.
Their hand trembling, Tempest pushed the handle upwards. With a hiss of inrushing air, the door slid open.
“Go on,” Harold said, gently pushing Tempest inside before following.
This cabin had also been turned into a tomb, and had a deathbed in the centre, occupied by a single skeleton. Here, the walls had been covered with words.
Tempest turned a slow circle before the light from their helmet settled on the words above the bed. They fell to their knees. “Do you see what it says?” they whispered. “This is Nowan who led us to freedom.”
“What does the rest of the writing say?” Harold asked. “Is it the story of what happened next?”
“No, it’s the prophecy, and it’s in a different hand to the annotation naming the Holy Prophet. Jallin must have added that posthumously. That section is the first of the prophecies, predicting the people would win their freedom. But it’s odd. The first line, and every alternate line after it, are in machine code. It’s archaic, and some of the letters are different, but it’s readable. The line beneath, I don’t know what that says. I don’t recognise the language.”
“I do,” Awat said. “It’s the same language as the inscription in the tunnel on the ice-world and in Iraq. This is our primer. This is how we translate those carvings.”
Tempest slowly stood up, pointing their hand at the wall as they silently read the scripture. “This part lists the prophecies concerning how they will make new homes on many worlds and meet many new peoples. It’s often seen to be predicting the rise of the empire. These final paragraphs speak of new prophets and a last prophet who will bring in an era of peace. But this section on the wall with the door, this I don’t know.”
“It’s more prophecies?” Harold asked.
“I think so. The first matches something Clee once said. Members of the last prophet’s clan will determine whether all shall live in peace, or that all shall die, after they discover this tomb.”
“Is that us?” Serene asked.
“It is,” Tempest whispered in utter wonderment.
Epilogue - Chance, Destiny, or a Meticulously Orchestrated Plan
After ensuring they had made a recording of the walls of both tombs, they sealed Nowan’s burial chamber and returned to the ship. While Tempest went to their cabin to pray, Awat and Serene went to the control room, and Harold went to the galley. He sat next to the stretcher, trying to collect his thoughts, but each time he thought he had a grip on them, they scattered and split, birthing more questions and doubts.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, though he was growing hungry when Serene broadcast a ship-wide announcement. “Everyone to the control room, please.”
Harold met Tempest just outside the door.
“How are you holding up?” Harold asked. Tempest merely shook their head.
“There you are,” Serene said as they entered. She sat in the pilot’s chair. Awat was at her usual workstation, where she’d brought up an image of the prophecy written on the walls of Nowan’s tomb, and the carvings from the ice-world’s tunnel, complete with the red-robe’s annotation.
“I have so many questions,” Harold said.
“I bet I have more,” Serene said. “Like what happened to the rest of the ship’s crew, and why didn’t Nowan go with them? Was this the first planet they came to after Towan I, or were there others? And if this is one of the five ships, and if they were commanded by tentacled aliens, why is there a ladder? Why are the corridors the right height for humanoids?”
“Why didn’t Mum ever tell us?” Tempest said.
The group grew silent.
“She knew about it long before we came onto the scene,” Harold said. “She could have told Johann after he brought your dad back to Earth.”
“Exactly,” Tempest said.
“No, I mean that he wasn’t the right person, and that wasn’t the right time. You said one of the new prophecies is about the ship, and tomb, being discovered by members of the last prophet’s clan. It doesn’t say the last prophet discovered it. So until you two came along, that was only Gunther and Greta.”
“And Dad,” Serene said. “And now it includes you, Harry, though I suppose you’ve always been part of the clan even before we knew it. And it now includes Awat, and by extension, Alan and Yūnus.”
“Why?” Awat asked, briefly turning away from her screens.
“Well, you can’t go through what we’ve been through and not form a bond,” Serene said. “But mostly because the prophecy said the prophet’s clan would discover the ship. You helped discover the ship, so you must be part of the clan.”
“Or the prophecy is invalid,” Tempest said.
“Why?” Serene asked.
“Because the drones brought us here. We didn’t discover the ship; Mum did. She knew what the prophecy was and so engineered that it would be fulfilled.”
“No, the sisters brought us to the system,” Serene said, “but Harold picked the landing site, and blew a hole in the ground.”
“But if he hadn’t, maybe the sisters would have brought us here eventually,” Tempest said.
“That’s irrelevant because Harold did pick a spot he thought was best, and look what we found,” Serene said. “How is that not the guiding hand of destiny?”
Harold found himself looking at his hands with newfound suspicion. “Nemain brought us here,” he said. “The other two were reluctant to take us down into the hole. I don’t think they were unanimous in their decision that we should come here. Remember how they were reluctant to bring Alan and Awat with us back on the ice-world? I think it was supposed to be just us three.”
“Well, we’re all here now,” Serene said.
“But why did Mum keep this a secret?” Tempest asked.
“For the same reason she didn’t tell the towani emperors where Earth was,” Harold said. “By which I mean she’s got a reason, but until she explains it to us, there’s not much point guessing.”
“I think I have something,” Awat said. “We don’t know the date of the carvings, and we don’t know precisely who wrote the words on the tunnel on the ice-world. But if you look at the words used to describe the ancestral towani’s abduction, you can see the similarities with the beginning of the tunnel’s inscription. If we say it was by the librarian, and the first few lines are a preamble, it says he chose exile after failing to stop other enslavements. If I’m right, this next section speaks of battles and fighting. Then this line doesn’t talk about how his brother chose to die, but how he chose to live.”
“What does that mean?” Harold asked.
“I think it means that a chronicler went with the Neanderthals when they were abducted from Earth. Why wouldn’t they? It’s what they do, observing other species. Thousands of years later, she returned to Earth, taking the form of a jajan and then the Neanderthal we saw in the footage.”
“And the librarian chose exile on the ice-world, until Mum sent him to Earth as a sort of replacement,” Serene said.
“Perhaps going to Earth was seen as exile,” Awat said. “Each answer creates more questions, and it will take time before we can answer even a fraction, but I think we can be certain that the red-robe’s translation is inaccurate.”
“Of course it is,” Harold said. “Celeste isn’t going to leave instructions on how to kill her, or something as explosive as a confession to being behind the abduction, lying around. They’re observers, Tempi. They watch but don’t interfere.”
“The librarian tried to prevent more abductions, and Mum sent us here. How is that not interfering?”
“That’s a theological question best answered by decoding the rest of the inscription,” Awat said. She leaned back in her chair. “This is astonishing. It’s the greatest archaeological find in fifty thousand years and across all the planets in the galaxy.”
“It can’t be a find because it wasn’t lost,” Tempest said. “Not really. Not if Mum knew where it was.”
“We can, and will, be debating that for years,” Serene said. “What do we do now?”
“Tempi, would it be sacrilege if we were to search Nowan’s ship for something we can use to carry water?” Harold asked.
“What?”
“As important as this discovery is, we’re still facing the same problem as last night,” Harold said. “We need more water, and then we need to get back in contact with the rest of the galaxy.”
“Could that ship have a navigation database?” Awat asked.
“I… no,” Tempest said, shaking their head. “The Holy Nowan didn’t know where Earth was. If there is a map, it definitely won’t show our home. Any systems they have will be so antiquated, they won’t be compatible with ours, assuming they haven’t been corrupted by time.”
“We should look,” Serene said. “Respectfully, of course.”
“I suppose so,” Tempest said.
“And could we borrow a barrel?” Harold asked.
“If we can find one, and as long as we return it,” Tempest said. “If it’s in aid of bringing this new truth to the faithful, despite what that might do to the faith, then I think it would be allowed.”
“Great,” Harold said. “We should get something to eat and then return to the prophet’s ship. Tonight, we can discuss what we do next.”
“I’ll stay here and work on the translation,” Awat said.
“I’ll see you in the galley in a few minutes,” Harold said. “I want to get the soil out of my boots.”
He left the control room and headed back to his cabin. In truth, he wanted a few minutes to think.
Had it been chance that he’d selected this plain as their landing site? If the sisters could operate the jump engine, surely they could manipulate the map the ship’s cameras had generated so the plain was centred on his screen when it came time to pick a spot to land. Could they have lured the three feathered-hogs to that part of the forest? And could they have moved the weapons in the armoury around so it was inevitable that he take a gun loaded with explosive rounds? The answer to all had to be yes, it was possible. But had they done it?
He had an idea why Celeste wanted the ship to be found by the three of them. Nowan had never returned to Earth, and so there was no way that the people of Terra were descended from that lost tribe. Thus, having the missing ship discovered by sapiens would ensure Earth retained a central role in the faith, strengthening the bond with the towani. That was good for sapiens, but why was it good for Celeste? To that, he had no answer.
Celeste had told Sean that departing Earth with Johann would change the galaxy forever. She hadn’t said it would bring peace, though Harold’s reading of Earth’s history told him that whenever peace arrived, it never stayed for long. Maybe this discovery would bring peace between the Voytay and the Valley, true peace, at least for a time. First, they had to spread the news. And the first step to achieving that was to follow the prophet’s words and to keep going forward.
To be continued…
I’d like to thank H.G. Wells for access to his time machine so I could experience 1895 first-hand.
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Other novels:
Surviving The Evacuation / Here We Stand / Life Goes On
The outbreak began in New York. Within days, it had spread throughout the world. Nowhere is safe from the living dead. Books 1-3 are the journals of Bill Wright, a political operative trapped in London after the city is evacuated. Books 4-7 follow Nilda, a mother searching the wasteland for her son, and Chester, a criminal in search of repentance. Books 8 onward recount how humanity’s last survivors build a new society from the ashes of the old world.
Here We Stand is the story of Tom Clemens, Jonas Jeffries, Martha Greene, and the other North American survivors, and the collapse of the United States. The struggles of the survivors in the Pacific are told in Life Goes On, beginning with Outback Outbreak.
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Strike a Match - A Post-Apocalyptic Detective Series
In 2019, the AIs went to war. Millions died before a nuclear holocaust ended their brief reign of terror. Billions more succumbed to radiation poisoning, disease, and the chaotic violence of that apocalypse. Some survived. They rebuilt.
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1: Serious Crimes, 2: Counterfeit Conspiracy, 3: Endangered Nation, 4: Over by Christmas, 5: Thin Ice
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Sixty years after The Great War, the last survivors of humanity have taken shelter in giant towers. The colony ships that will allow them to leave the diseased Earth are nearing completion when two murders are discovered. For our species to survive, the criminals must be caught, and the launch must go ahead.
Brawl of the Worlds 1: First Contact, 2: Wish You Were Here (Instead of Me)
If first contact was today, how would the world react?
Unofficial first contact was in 1888. Since then, the existence of extra-terrestrial life has been kept secret from those on Earth. Nothing remains secret forever. By 2022, preparations for official first contact are well underway, but hostile forces want to make our star system the next proxy battleground in an intergalactic cold war. As booksellers rise, and empires fall, the hidden history of the galaxy will be revealed…
Until next time, thanks for reading.
Frank Tayell, Wish You Were Here (Instead of Me)
