Creative Commons – The Plainsrunner – Chapter Thirty-Five

Continuing the serial release of The Plainsrunner under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license – (CC-BY-SA).

They get a message from Sunward. Tallgrass might lose Seagrass.

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Chapter Thirty-Five – The Message

“Did you hear about the radio message from Sunward?”

Tallgrass looked up from his book to see an excited Seagrass standing in his doorway. His mind was still full of celestial mechanics and he had to blink away the images in his mind’s eye to focus properly on his friend. “Message?” he said.

“Yes,” said Seagrass. “From Sunward. It just came in this morning.” He was grinning. Almost dancing.

“From Sunward?” said Tallgrass. “That means …”

“Yes.” Seagrass came partway into the room. “It means there are people there.”

“And that means …” began Tallgrass, putting down his book.

“That means the legends are true,” said Seagrass. “It means we did go into space before. It means we went in to the planet Sunward, and we settled on it.”

“And if that legend is true, then maybe the other one is too.”

“Yes,” said Seagrass. “Maybe someone did pour destruction on us from the sky thousands of years ago.”

Tallgrass’s eyes sharpened. “You don’t think it was them, do you? You don’t think there might have been a war between us, or something.”

Seagrass shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “The message didn’t say.”

“So, what did it say?”

Seagrass closed his predator eyes to think. “It was pretty short,” he said. “Like maybe they were just trying to establish contact.”

“Okay. That makes sense.”

“Yes. No point in a long message before they know whether or not we’re going to reply.” Seagrass nodded and continued. “Okay. It said, ‘People of Grasswind. Greetings from the people of Sunward. Thanks be to the Orbs and Stars that you yet survive. Blessings be upon you.’“

Tallgrass raised an eyebrow at his friend. “Blessings be upon you?” he said. “Did it really say that?”

“Or words to that effect. Their language is really different, but it has some recognizable parts, still. The message only came in a few hours ago, and that’s the linguists’ best guess so far.”

Tallgrass thought about it and said, “Yes. It’s probably pretty close, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” said Seagrass. “Not my area.”

“I know,” said Tallgrass. “Not mine either. But it’s a short message with simple parts. I’d be surprised if it’s very far off.”

Seagrass thought about it, then said, “That makes sense. It’s not as if it’s a great long obscure text or something.”

“That’s right,” said Tallgrass. He looked at his book, then headed for the door. “Come on,” he said. “I can study any time. Let’s find out what’s going on.”

Deputy Director Trueway stood at a lectern on stage in the Space Academy’s main auditorium. All the pads were occupied by several hundred interested and important people, and the area directly below the stage was filled by a jostling crowd of journalists. They had all come to hear the official announcement on the message. The hall was filled with the roar of excited chatter.

Trueway tapped his microphone, and the roar subsided. He looked into the faces of his audience and saw nearly uniform attention. In the pit below the stage he saw the avid concentration of the journalists, with their pads and microphones and cameras. And a glimpse of one with none of those things, just his hands in the pockets of his blanket. He looked again, but saw nothing.

He raised his eyes and found one of the security personnel. He made eye contact and indicated with a look where he had seen, or thought he had seen, the man who didn’t fit in. When the security man moved toward the pit, Trueway raised his eyes to the audience and said, “Welcome. Thank you for coming.” He gestured offstage to his right. “Please let me present the Director of the Unified Grasswind Space Program, Director Allbright, who has an important announcement of interest to the whole world.”

He stepped back as Director Allbright strode onto the stage and stepped up to the lectern. “Thank you, Deputy Director Trueway,” she said. Then she smiled at the audience and said, “Welcome. I’m sure that by now most of you have heard of the message.” She paused for their appreciative chuckle, then said, “It’s hard to imagine that anyone hasn’t. This is the biggest news to come along in … well, it’s the biggest news I’ve ever heard, anyway.”

Trueway was nodding and smiling and chuckling in all the right places, but he was scanning the audience, and especially the pit below the stage, for signs of trouble. He spotted Tallgrass and Seagrass and the rest of the crews-in-training on their haunches in the front row, with the most important dignitaries right behind them. He shared a nod with the young men, but it was Seagrass who caught the worry in his face.

The Director was saying, “We received the message yesterday morning, on the radio frequency that we use for general communications in the space program. We can only assume that they have heard our transmissions and chose that frequency accordingly. This tells us that the legends are true. We did go into space in the past, and we did go in and colonize Sunward. It also tells us that our brothers and sisters there survived, and that they, like us, have recovered to the point where they are using radio.” She paused to look at her audience and allow them to absorb what she said. Then, “I’m sure this is significant to you in your own personal way. We all have our own way of seeing things. To me, this is a sign that the space program is more important than ever. Now that we know they are out there, surely we must go and meet them.”

Trueway caught a movement in the pit, but he didn’t see the man, only the ripple he caused. Looking up, he saw that there were now three security personnel closing on the pit. He used his eyes to point, and they moved in that direction. When he glanced at the front row, he saw that Seagrass was looking that way, too.

“And now,” said Director Allbright, “let’s get to the message itself. It’s brief, and it was transmitted only once. It contains twenty-three words, and we think they were chosen in part to be easily translated, given that our languages would obviously have diverged during our isolation.” She lifted a piece of paper. “I’ll read it for you now.”

The audience was rapt, even though it was quite likely that they had heard the message before. After all, this was official. So they were all leaning forward as she began to speak, and the man took advantage of that to draw his weapon. Trueway saw it, and had time to see the security staff moving before he threw himself on the Director, shouting, “Get down!”

He heard a flurry of gunshots, and his skin crawled as he covered the Director with his body, but he didn’t feel the impact of any bullets. The shooting stopped, and there was only the shouting and screaming. He lifted his head and saw that security had the man immobilized, so he got up and helped the Director to her feet. The tension eased out of him, though his heart was still racing. He took a deep breath and shared a look with his boss. Maybe they’d got lucky. Maybe they got him in time.

Then he saw. The man hadn’t been after the Director. His target was the young men and women in the front row. He saw blood. He saw inert bodies. He saw Tallgrass on the floor, with Seagrass on top of him. He saw terrible wounds, and so much blood.

Tallgrass was unharmed, at least physically, but he was deeply wounded in other ways. Eight of his comrades had been shot before security could subdue the man, and four of them died. Of the other four, three were expected to recover enough to continue their training. The fourth was Seagrass. They didn’t know if he would live, and if he did, they were sure he wouldn’t recover in time for the mission to L1.