Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena

“What? She took her own life?” Grom Alt was dumbfounded, remembering the wound in Lua’s throat and shaking with fear at the thought that he had displeased the Dictator.

Yes, he certainly had displeased the Dictator. Yar Jupi was not at all disposed to ascertain why only two had been killed when at any moment hundreds of millions of Faetians could perish. The more so that this could hold up the space expedition that was meant to save Mada’s life.

“However, this stripling from the Blood Guard will hardly keep his mouth shut,” thought Yar Jupi.

The Dictator gently raised the terror-stricken officer off his knees.

“My good sentinel Grom Alt! You have every justification for replacing your suicide brother. Thank fate that true Faetians are the slaves of their feelings. If you should ever fall in love with a beautiful Faetess and she does not reciprocate your feelings, behave as did your elder brother. But allow me, as one who is proud of a daughter capable of inspiring such powerful emotions, to thank you for your faithful service and for bringing me news that has made my heart rejoice. I shall show you the treasure of my flower collection, which is unrivalled on Faena. These blooms are as beautiful as the Faetesses of our dreams. Savour their aroma.”

Grom Alt obediently went to the niche where he could see the incredibly beautiful blossoms, dark-blue as the sky before evening and glittering with the gold spangles of new-lit stars.

“How do you like that perfume, my trusty sentinel?” asked Yar Jupi, turning away.

“I have never breathed anything more enchanting. I feel an uncommon lightness all over my body. I feel like flying.”

“Perhaps you will indeed fly one day, as the incomparable Mada is flying at this moment. If she discovers a life-supporting planet, then many longfaces will fly there to turn new continents into lands of the Superiors.”

“Those words must be engraved on eternal stone. Each thought in here is like a disintegration explosion; it flashes and it casts down.”

“The scent of the flowers is undoubtedly calling forth your eloquence. Order yourself the tunic of a Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard.”

A blissful Grom Alt, who had never expected such a turn of events, flew out of the Dictator’s office as if on wings.

If the secretary box had somehow been able to fathom the feelings of living Faetians, it would have noticed Grom Alt’s unusual state of mind. But the box was only a machine and merely noted how much time the visitor had spent with the Dictator. Very little…

And it took very little time for Grom Alt to feel ill. He collapsed in the Blood Guard barracks and died in dreadful agony.

In the meantime, the automatic secretary began compiling a report on the state of the armed forces after the preparations announced by the Dictator for a disintegration war. But Yar Jupi switched off the power supply to the pestilential box in a fury. He had been watching on the screen the last moments of the expedition’s lift-off for Terr, mentally seeing off his daughter. With his whole being he suffered the parting with her and squeezed his temples between the palms of his hands until it hurt.

He had seen Mada, with a strange look on her face, run her eyes round the cosmodrome before she entered the lift-cage, her gaze resting on the ocean with its white bands of foam on the crests of the waves. She was followed by a Faetian, evidently one from the other continent.

For a moment, Yar Jupi was troubled at seeing a curly-haired half-breed so close to his daughter, but then he remembered that she would at least stay alive. He sighed heavily. He had a feeling that he had stepped on a steep and slippery surface. He could not keep his footing. And below him yawned an abyss.

Ave Mar and Mada were looking through the barred lift-cage. The ocean was expanding and the horizon seemed to be lifting up the clouds. Ave turned round and saw on the opposite side another ocean, a living one of massed Faetian heads with their faces upturned to the rocket. As if to symbolise Faena’s overpopulation, they were jammed incredibly close together. A sudden spasm of yearning clutched at Ave’s throat. Would he ever come back again? But he looked at Mada. They had chosen this course themselves, and let it not be only the course of their own happiness. Ave still had little understanding of the true forces driving Faena into war. He only wished with all his heart that the mysterious planet Terr would prove suitable for settlement by Faetians and that the danger of a disintegration war would be over and done with forever. Ave again remembered Kutsi Merc, who had brought him here, brought him and Mada together and had, in fact, given his life for their happiness. May his bones rest in peace…

Kutsi Merc’s bullet-riddled hump had not been taken to its goal, but the delayed-action fuse, decaying under the action of the air, was measuring out the last moments of peace on the planet Faena.

There was uproar on Space Station Deimo.

Station engineer Tycho Veg, handsome, prematurely grey-haired, slow and pensive, was looking in disapproval at the bustle that had just begun. But it was not in conformity with his mild nature to interfere in anything: he gave way in all things to his wife, Ala Veg, and she was the one who had thought of holding a banquet in honour of the arriving spaceship Quest.

The still unfaded beauty Ala Veg had become bored at home on Faena with teaching astronomy to blockheaded Superiors. She insisted on leaving with her husband for the space station, which only took married couples with the required special qualifications. They would be able to return to their three children left on Faena after earning enough to last them for the rest of their lives, and Tycho Veg would finally become a workshop proprietor.

Ala Veg, with the pedigree face of a Superior, a fine, straight nose, a short upper lip and a sensual mouth, went about with a permanently haughty frown; she considered herself and her husband the two most important Faetians on the base.

However, the wife of the station chief, Nega Luton, who had illegally taken over the post of Sister of Health without being a qualified doctor, was of a different opinion. Encouraged by her husband, Mrak Luton, a corpulent donkey, she passed herself off as the first lady of space and never missed an opportunity to sting Ala Veg with a reference to the children she had abandoned. Ala would parry these blows, sparing neither Nega’s barrenness nor her unattractive appearance.

Lada, the young but well-upholstered cook and gardener, a good-natured woman with an affectionate smile on her broad, snub-nosed face, did everything quickly and efficiently, trying to please everybody. She adored her husband, proud that he, Brat Lua, was the only one of the roundheads, thanks to his mother’s position in the Dictator’s family, who had been able to obtain an education on Danjab, the continent of the Culturals. He was sent to Deimo both as jack-of-all-trades and as a representative of the roundheads who were to move to the uncomfortable planet of Mar. Lada Lua willingly followed him to serve all the inhabitants of Deimo.

A signal from her communications bracelet found Lada Lua in the greenhouse, a transparent cylindrical corridor thousands of paces long. Apart from Lada, no one used that corridor because it was on the axis of the space station and there was no artificial gravity created by centrifugal force as in the other quarters on the station. The nurserywoman did not feel her weight as she floated in and out among the air-roots of the plants. The function of soil was performed by a nutritive mist of the saps that the roots needed. The harvest in space was much bigger than on Faena.