Green Comet

Concluding the serial release of The Plainsrunner under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.

This is the final chapter. People are going home. Tomorrow, I will be uploading more readings to the YouTube channel, Okanagan Reader.

If you’ve enjoyed this, the rest of the trilogy is available at the usual places at a shockingly low price. Tallgrass will be spending time on the Prime and on Sunward. Please share this with your friends so they can have a chance to enjoy it, too.

rjb

Chapter Fifty-Four – Going Home

“Emissary and the Prime, this is Hooves of the Prophet, over.”

“Hooves of the Prophet, go ahead,” said Supervisor Steel.

“Supervisor Steel, this is Pilgrim One. We’re clear of the landing bay and preparing for acceleration, over.”

“Understood,” said Steel. “We’re closing the bay door now. Commence at your discretion, over.”

“Will do, thank you.” Pilgrim One unkeyed his microphone, but they could tell that he had more to say. He opened it again and said, “Supervisor Steel, it has been an honor to meet you. I have had my eyes opened, to say the least. I will do everything in my power to ensure good relations between our peoples.”

“Thank you, Pilgrim One. I will do the same. I’m glad that I met you and your crew, and my crew feels the same way. Good voyage and good luck.”

“Understood,” said Pilgrim One. “Please tell Archie and his people that we appreciate their help, in all its forms.”

“Certainly,” said Steel, “but he’s right here, so you just told him.”

“Of course. Thank you. Hooves of the Prophet out.”

Steel lowered his microphone and said, “Quite a change since they first arrived.”

Archie said, “He’s had an interesting couple of weeks. He just needed to adjust to it.”

They watched on the silent monitor as the fragile-looking cubical spacecraft made a few final minor adjustments to its attitude. Then the disposable rockets installed by Archie’s people lit up and Hooves of the Prophet dwindled rapidly and disappeared.

The chatter swelled as the crowd turned away from the window and drifted away from the wall. Archie led Tallgrass and Steel and the crew across the Square toward the little café they favored. Having just seen the Sunwardians off, it was time to start thinking about tomorrow and the departure of the Emissary.

At their favorite table, Archie sitting on a stool and the Grasswindians standing, both held in place by setae, Tallgrass asked, “What do you call this drink again?”

“Coffee,” said Archie, “although it’s not real coffee. We found a way to more efficiently replicate it with algae.”

“And these muffins. You said they’re made with iceberries? Do you actually grow berries on ice?”

“Yes and no,” said Archie. “We grow them on ice, but they’re really the fruiting bodies of a kind of fungus. They have all the necessary ingredients to support our metabolism, and most of what you need.”

“Delicious,” said Tallgrass. “I’m going to miss them when I’m gone.”

“Well,” said Archie, “they’ll still be here when you return.”

“If I return,” said Tallgrass. “I hope they let me.”

“I suspect that will be up to you,” said Archie.

Suddenly Tallgrass was filled with questions again, and overcome with a sense of haste and disappearing time. He started and stopped several times, then got a grip and said, “I guess we had better retrieve Mom’s glider before we go.”

“We can do that for you,” said Archie. “We’ll send a robot out. Maybe Scarface himself.”

“Scarface,” said Tallgrass. “He’s almost like a person, isn’t he? Not like the other ones. Maybe it’s because he has a name.”

“Could be,” said Archie. “He also went through a lot with us, so he’s special that way.”

“Then there’s the way he looks,” said Tallgrass, “with that dent and that scar. That makes him stand out.” They nodded agreeably for a while, then he said, “Speaking of the glider, I guess it’s a good thing we brought it, since it was the key we needed to get in.”

Archie chuckled. “Not really,” he said. “We would have let you in anyway. It was just another puzzle to make things interesting for you.”

Tallgrass laughed. “So, they’re not keys. they’re not messengers from the heavens, and you didn’t even know about the harmonics. I guess we’ve been making a lot more out of them than is really there, haven’t we?”

“Again, yes and no,” said Archie. “They really were messengers. We were hoping they would stimulate curiosity, and they did. It might have gone in directions we weren’t expecting, but they ultimately served their purpose.”

“Yes,” said Tallgrass. He shook his head. “You did all that,” he said. “You brought the Prime all the way here, and then you waited for centuries for us to notice. I don’t know if we would have done that if we were in your position. You lost so much. You could have just kept it all.”

His crewmates, munching muffins and sipping coffee, nodded solemnly.

“It’s because we lost so much,” said Archie. “We know what it means, so it makes sense to do this.”

Tallgrass took a sip. “I think I get it,” he said. He took another sip, then asked, “Do you think they’ll be all right? The Pilgrims, I mean.”

“They should be,” said Archie, “barring anything unforeseen. We repaired their engine and replaced any suspect parts with new ones. Better, too. We reinforced the structure and the hull.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe they sent people out in that thing. I’m surprised they made it as far as they did.”

“They had to,” said Tallgrass. “They wanted to get here first. You know, we left before we planned to, too, for the same reason.”

Archie nodded and took a sip. “Okay,” he said, “you had your reasons.” He didn’t sound as if he thought they were very good reasons, but he didn’t argue. “So anyway,” he said, “yes, I do think they will be all right. Their vessel will get them home. Whether they will be all right after they get home is another matter, I think.”

“What do you mean?” asked Tallgrass.

“I think I know what he means,” said Supervisor Steel.

“Do you?” asked Archie.

“Yes,” said Steel. “You think they might be punished for failing, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Archie. “That’s part of it. Anyone who would send them out here in a prototype obviously doesn’t value their lives. But I think there is a far more potent reason in their beliefs.”

“Ah,” said Steel, while his crew looked puzzled.

“That’s right,” said Archie. “They, that is the Sunwardians, believe that the gliders are ‘Heavenly Messengers,’ and that the Prime’s presence has some cosmic significance. They won’t want to hear anything different and I’m afraid the Pilgrims might pay the price for that.”

Quietly, Tallgrass said, “You mean they might do something to the Pilgrims to protect their beliefs, even when they know that those beliefs are mistaken?”

“I hope not,” said Archie. “I hope they have the wisdom to incorporate the new data into their belief system. To update it to fit with new knowledge. But I don’t have much hope. I have seen the lengths people are willing to go to to keep their beliefs unchanged.”

Tallgrass was shaking his head. “I don’t believe it,” he said. Their laughter surprised him, then he got it. “Okay, that’s funny, but I don’t. How can anyone deny hard facts? How can they go on … how can they hurt people when they know they can’t justify it?”

“In my experience,” said Archie, “they can always find a way to justify it.” He held up a hand and said, “But that’s all speculation, and I hope I’m wrong. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay,” said Tallgrass, “how about our return to Grasswind? I don’t suppose you’d consider giving a few upgrades to Emissary? A few improvements?”

“We could,” said Archie, “but they aren’t necessary like they were for Hooves of the Prophet. Your vessel is in fine shape and it should get you home safely.”

“Yes, but …”

“We think,” said Archie, “and Supervisor Steel and others agree, that it will be for the best if you complete the mission on your own. Replenishing your consumables notwithstanding.”

“I get that,” said Tallgrass, “but the technology. There’s so much you can show us. So much we can learn.”

“I know,” said Archie, “but there will be time for all that. You will be coming out here to retrieve resources for a long time to come, and we will be staying to help you during the transition. We have an inventory of everything to help you fairly divide it between your two worlds. That will give us plenty of time to teach you what we know.”

Blunt, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since his injury, said, “I think it should be first come, first served.”

They all scoffed at him. That had already been settled. Steel and Pilgrim One had recommended it to their people back home, and a provisional agreement was in place. Representatives of both worlds would be brought out to live on the Prime and oversee the distribution and removal of resources. Archie suggested taking into account the availability of different materials on each planet when allocating them, and both planets agreed. It looked as if everyone was in favor of fairly sharing, so they dismissed Blunt’s suggestion. He dropped it. At least, he didn’t bring it up with them again.

Tallgrass carried on with Archie. “Are you really saying that you’re going to teach us everything you know?”

“Yes,” said Archie. “As you can assimilate it, of course. We won’t just dump it all on you at once. We’ll lead you through the science that led us to the things we know.”

“The instant communication? The nanotools? The hibernation?”

“Yes. It might take a while to adapt the hibernation to your physiology, but we’ll get there.”

“Then we’ll be able to fly between the stars like you.”

“Yes, which is why we didn’t teach any of this to the Makers. The ones who made this possible.” Archie indicated the Prime.

“Because they were too violent, right?” said Tallgrass.

“Yes. And unstable and erratic. We didn’t want them showing up at the comets. You wouldn’t want them showing up here.”

“So you isolated them on their own world.”

“More like we didn’t help them leave it. And they did the rest themselves. Their best feature, as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned, might be their propensity for self-destruction.”

Tallgrass and the rest chuckled appreciatively, and he said, “But you’re not worried about us.”

“No,” said Archie. “We might regret it. Who knows? I am a little concerned about the current state of Sunward’s politics, of course, but I’m hopeful that looking outward and working with you will sort that out. We think it’s worth the risk, anyway.”

“They should be influenced by your example, too,” said Tallgrass. “Your generosity in coming here. Your openness in sharing your knowledge, when you could easily keep it from us.” He sighed. “I know I find it greatly inspirational. I am looking forward so much to working with you. And with the Sunwardians. I’m lucky to be alive now. I want to make the most of it.”

Blunt guided Emissary out of the airlock and into the vacuum. There, straight ahead of them, shining brightly in the sunlight, was Grasswind. Home. A million kilometers away. A distance that seemed so far a few short weeks ago, but that now was almost within arm’s reach. Their minds had been stretched to encompass much greater distances.

Tallgrass stared at the bright disk, letting his mind wander. It chewed on his recent experiences, the way his ancestors had chewed their food while lying in the grass. His historical flight out here. Meeting aliens. Meeting their long-lost cousins from Sunward. Seeing the Prime, that impossibly huge spacecraft. He realized he was grinning. He was looking forward to getting home. He wanted to see his mother and tell her everything. And he couldn’t wait to share everything he’d learned with Seagrass. Home sounded good, but he knew he would be coming back out here.

Tallgrass was still grinning as Supervisor Steel gave the command, “Take us home, Specialist Blunt.”

Afterword

Writing The Plainsrunner was quite a departure for me after writing the Green Comet trilogy. Those three books are quite big, averaging over a hundred-twenty thousand words each. When I began this one I decided to try to write a shorter book, aiming for eighty thousand words. It came in at a little over ninety thousand, so pretty close. It was a good exercise, forcing me to try to tell the whole story while using far fewer words. I enjoyed it so much that the next book will be aiming for sixty thousand words, half as many as the books in the trilogy.

You can download the books in the Green Comet trilogy – Green Comet, Parasite Puppeteers and The Francesians – at the Green Comet website. They are all licensed Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA) so they are free to download and read and share. You will also find links to the audiobooks there, also free.

I hope you enjoyed The Plainsrunner. I know I’ve enjoyed the time I spent with Sage and Tallgrass. If you want to learn more or drop a comment or ask a question, please do so, or drop me a line at arjaybe@greencomet.org.

Jim Bowering – November 2018

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

This is the penultimate chapter. Here we learn about Archie’s people and what happened when the Visitor came and attacked Grasswind and Sunward. After this story finishes tomorrow, I will be uploading more readings to the YouTube channel, Okanagan Reader.

Please join in the conversation. If you like this, let someone know so they can enjoy it, too.

rjb

Chapter Fifty-Three – The Story

Archie looked at his friends on the other side of the window, then at his new friends on this side. The mood was somber and did not fit with his idea of how this moment should be. Here they had two distant cousins, the Grasswindians and the Sunwardians, separated for millennia and finally reunited. And they had two alien species meeting for the first time. And a great historical wrong was soon going to be made at least partially right. This should be an occasion for celebration, not for gloom and politics. He was going to have to change that. It was time to tell the story.

He began with the comets, and how they began by visiting them and worked their way up to living on them. How they would ride long period comets far out in their solar system and back in again. He focused on the spectrum comets, the really large, really long period ones named after the colors of the spectrum. Red and Orange, the first two. The tragedy of Yellow Comet, and its rebirth as Green Comet.

Then the Visitor came, and Red Comet was destroyed re-entering the system. Excitement and welcome turned into horror as the Visitor swept through, killing everyone it could find. Orange and Green were able to change their trajectories, making their orbits hyperbolic and leaving their home forever. Now those two comets have set themselves between the stars and built themselves up into constructs housing many people.

Tallgrass listened patiently, squelching the questions that kept popping up, until he could do it no more. “The Visitor,” he said, stopping when everyone looked at him. But he continued. “The Visitor that destroyed your world. Is it the same thing that destroyed ours?”

“Yes,” said Archie.

“But this isn’t it. The Visitor and the Prime are different.”

“That’s right. The Prime is a hundred kilometers long. The Visitor was only twenty. But it had a lot more scouts and modules, and many more weapons. It was the killer. The Prime just came along after it and harvested resources.”

“Then how …” Tallgrass stopped himself. “Sorry,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“No problem,” said Archie. “I’ll let Fran tell the next part because it more directly affects her comet, Green. I’m from Orange Comet.”

So Fran told how the two comets, occupied by the only surviving members of their species, set themselves between their old star and the two stars they thought the Visitor was most likely to visit next. After a long time it came in Green’s direction, and they attacked it, severely damaging it and putting it out of commission.

They felt it might be safe to visit their old system now, to see how it was doing, and that’s when they discovered the Prime. At first they thought it must be the master of the Visitor, sending it out ahead and coming along behind, but then it left, heading back the way it came. They were curious, so they went after it, one ball from Green Comet and one from Orange.

“Like the the ball on the stern of the Prime,” said Tallgrass. “That’s how you travel.”

“That’s right,” said Fran. “That’s how we caught the Prime, and then we tied ourselves onto it. Eventually we figured out that the Prime wasn’t the master, but rather a docile servant, and we made ourselves more at home.”

They rode the Prime all the way back to its origin, where they met the Makers, who had sent out the Visitor in the first place. But then it was just a little thing. A von Neumann machine sent out to explore the stars. It didn’t grow into a world killer until later.

Pilgrim One interrupted. “You met the people who sent the Visitor? What did you do? Did you punish them?”

“No,” said Fran. “They were busy punishing themselves. By the time the Visitor reached its first star, the Makers had driven themselves into a deep dark age.”

“So they go unpunished?”

“We saw no point in punishing their descendants.”

Pilgrim One obviously disagreed, but these people had suffered worse than his people had, so he stifled his objection.

After waiting a moment to see if Pilgrim One had any more to add, Archie took over the narration. He said, “What Fran didn’t tell you is that she was so important in saving her comet from annihilation that some people formed a theology with her as its saint.” He shook his head. “That caused no end of trouble.” He nodded at Pilgrim One, who was staring at Frances, his face vacillating between awe and hostility.

Archie continued. “By the time we left the Maker world we had pretty well figured out what happened. The Makers sent out their von Neumann machine, then their civilization collapsed. The Visitor, still a tiny thing, must have had something go wrong with its programming that caused it to become fanatical in its objectives. It was meant to explore, locate resources and build the necessary machinery to do the job. It did that, but on a large scale, with no governance. It was now an unguided, minimally intelligent device whose only purpose was to go from star to star, building itself up and collecting resources. And it had a whole galaxy to work with.”

Tallgrass jumped in again. “And then it came here, right? But by then it was bigger.” He frowned. “But why did it attack us. Why didn’t it just do its job and move on?”

“We think it perceived you as a threat to its resources.” said Archie. “So it subdued you.”

“It sure did,” said Tallgrass, “but not as badly as it did you.”

“No,” said Archie. “We think it was evolving to do its job more efficiently and more thoroughly. And we think it was insane.”

“Did radio have something to do with it? Is that why we have this taboo about radio?”

“Yes. In our system it immediately attacked and destroyed any source of radio transmissions.” Archie stared off, over Fran’s shoulder into the vast space of Green Comet’s square. When he came back he had a hard smile. “But we don’t have to worry about that any more. The Visitor is dead and its cargo drone is not dangerous.”

“So we don’t have to worry about radio any more?” asked Tallgrass. “Actually we never did after the Visitor left, did we?”

“No,” said Archie. “It was never coming back, and the Prime, which remained here gathering resources, is not insane.”

Pilgrim One said, “You speak of resources. Does that mean that this Prime is full of resources?”

“Yes,” said Archie. “Well, no,” he amended. “It was full of resources, but we left a third at the Maker world, took a third back to ours, and brought the rest here.”

“You gave our resources to those murderers?” Pilgrim One was outraged.

“Well,” said Archie, “they weren’t the murderers, just their descendants. Part of the resources came from the first star visited, the uninhabited one, and it was their machine that gathered them. Also, we needed them to keep the laser going so we could get home.”

Pilgrim One was dissatisfied, but Tallgrass said, “You deserve to do whatever you want with the resources. You suffered the worst. You killed the Visitor. And you tamed the Prime. You were within your rights to keep it all for yourselves.”

“Yes, we could have.” Archie looked at Fran on the other side of the window, and they smiled at each other. “But no,” he said, looking at Tallgrass, “we couldn’t have. It wouldn’t have been right.”

Tallgrass’s eyes shone, but Pilgrim One looked disgusted. Tallgrass said, “So you brought our share back here, for us. What is your plan now?”

Archie was about to answer when he was distracted by the arrival of a person leading six robots. “Ah,” he said. “Thank you.” To his guests he said, “There’s one for each of you. We’re so used to being able to fly everywhere that we’ve spread out a lot. The distances are too great for you to comfortably walk them, so each of you can have one of these to help you get around.”

They looked at the eight-limbed robots, all identical to Scarface except for the scar and the dent. Tallgrass grinned and pushed off the wall, trying to decide which one to pick.