Eric Brown - Starship Summer

“No, it’s fine.” He gestured at the seats by the table. “Sit down and I’ll fetch a couple of beers.”

Two minutes later we were sitting in the sun, sipping ice-cold beers. Matt said, “I’d been on Charybdis almost a Terran year when I met Marrissa. She was an artist, working with local fabrics, weaving scenes of Charybdian life from a seaweed equivalent, would you believe. But her visions were beautiful. They spoke to me. It was a long courtship before we eventually began living together. And intense! David, I’d never experienced anything like it. I put it down to her being alien, exerting some strange influence on me…” He stopped there and looked at me.

I smiled in encouragement.

“Well… a year or two passed. I was mindlessly happy. I was in love with an amazing woman and turning out some of my best work.” He paused, staring into his glass, and continued in a softer tone, “Then one day I attended a religious ceremony with Marrissa and her tribe. It took place on a pontoon afloat on the ocean, and was conducted by a high priest who gave thanks to the god of the seas for the plentiful harvest of fish that season. As providence would have it, a storm blew up, whipped the ocean and wrecked the section of the pontoon we were standing on.”

He paused again, and I wondered where his narrative was leading. “What happened?” I asked.

“The High Priest and Marrissa were pitched into the ocean. Before they were swept away, I dived in and managed to drag her back to the wreckage of the raft. I went in again but the priest was lost, his body never discovered…

“I was shunned by the natives, for saving Marrissa instead of the priest. They banished me from the island. I had allowed a servant of one of their gods to die in preference to a mere peasant—a crime almost as heinous as killing him intentionally—and in my absence a trial was held. But what hurt more than my banishment was the fact that Marrissa hated me for saving her life, and would gladly have died in place of the holy man. Like I said, she was alien…”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He shrugged. “The Terran officials on Charybdis feared for my safety and managed to smuggle me off the planet. That was around twelve years ago.”

“And now Marrissa’s found you,” I said. “Perhaps, I don’t know… perhaps she can find it in her heart to forgive you.”

He smiled. “I’ll find that out tomorrow, David, won’t I?”

Not long after that I left Matt sitting on the veranda, staring out across the bay, and made my way home.

I considered a beer at the Jackeral, but I was tired after the long drive to MacIntyre and back, and decided to take a nap. In the event I was glad that I did so.

That afternoon, in the darkened room I used as my bedroom, I had the dream that changed my life, that explained nothing at the time but set in motion the chain of events that in due course explained everything.

I fell asleep instantly and was soon visited by the alien again. As on the last occasion, I was convinced I was awake: the clarity of the vision was not at all dream-like.

The alien hovered over me, peering down. I stared up at its thin, axe-blade face, curious but not in the least apprehensive. The being—or whatever it was—emanated a sense of calm and goodwill.

It told me, again not verbally, but by some kind of telepathic process, that I had been chosen by the Yall. What they wanted me to do would change things for ever, the alien claimed, and in the process transform my life. I would need the help of my friends—Matt and Maddie and Hawk—and together we would bring about a new Golden Age for humankind.

And then it told me what I had to do.

It filled my head with information and I absorbed it all in wonder. It told me everything but the reason for what it had asked me to do.

That, it said, would become evident in time.

“But the Yall,” I recall saying, “why can’t they…?”

The Yall no longer inhabited this galaxy, I was told. They had done their work here, left behind them their gift to other emerging sentient races, and left for the next galaxy.

“Their gift?” I echoed. “You mean, the Golden Column?” My alien visitor assented.

“But… what is it? What does it mean?”

“That is a secret only a race advanced enough can find out.”

“And we—humans—have reached that stage?”

Affirmation filled my head.

I wanted to ask more—determine precisely what would happen when my friends and I carried out the alien’s bidding—but the apparition faded, and I slipped further into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I came awake suddenly, disoriented. I recalled the dream—the vision that had all the fidelity of a waking encounter—and what the alien had requested.

I stumbled from bed. I had fallen asleep in the afternoon, but it was dark now. How long had I slept?

The bedside clock told me that it was seven in the morning. I had slept through the evening and the night. I stood up, realising that I felt refreshed, invigorated.

I showered quickly and ate an even quicker breakfast, my head full of what I should do next.

At eight—a suitable time, I judged, to rouse my friends—I called first Matt, then Hawk and Maddie.

Matt answered instantly. He stared from the com screen, peering at me. “David? What’s wrong?”

“I need to see you. I was visited last night. By the alien. And I know now what it wants.”

“David?”

“How soon can you get over here?”

“I’m on my way.”

I cut the connection and got though to Hawk and Maddie, with the same results.

I sat before the viewscreen, staring out at the sweep of the bay. The curving red sands and the beach-side chalets were quiet now, not a soul in sight. Storm clouds piled on the horizon over the sea, and a wind was blowing up. Soon the bay would be whipped into a frenzy, and winds would lash the foreshore for an hour or two. I hoped my friends would make it before the storm set in.

I sat and thought about what the alien had told me…

Matt arrived first, riding his wave-hopper around the far headland and along the beach rather than risk crossing the choppy waters. Seconds later a battered roadster drew up beneath the nose of the starship, and Hawk climbed out and limped up the ramp and into the ship after Matt.

“In the lounge,” I called out, just as Maddie came into sight along the beach, a small doll-like figure, her home-made cape pestered by the rising wind.

Minutes later all three were sitting in the lounge, pouring coffee and looking at me expectantly.

“Well?” Matt said.

I stared at my friends and wondered where to begin.

“I had another dream,” I said, “only it wasn’t a dream. It happened. The alien came to me and explained what it wanted.” Matt sipped his coffee. The others watched me expectantly. I looked at Hawk.

“Do you think you can pilot the Mantis?” I asked.

He stared at me, puzzlement lending his experienced, battered face a sudden look of innocence. “Pilot the ship?” “Get it running, get it up and flying?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know… In principle, yes.”

“I know the codes,” I said. “I know the override commands that will start the engines. They were given to me by the creature.”

“Then… in that case it can be done. But not by me.”

I stared at him. “Hawk?” Disappointment flooded the word.

He looked pained. “David, I haven’t flown for thirty years. For that long I’ve tried to forget what happened…” He shook his head. “I couldn’t bring myself to even think about flying again.”

“Not even one last time?”

Hawk stared at me, wrestling with demons.

Matt leaned forward and said,“Why?” watching me closely.