Martyn Vaughan - The Cave of Shadows

At that thought, Jon looked up into the darkening purple sky. There he saw, as he had known he would, a small point of light moving slowly against the real stars.

The Fatal Scimitar still faithfully circling their new home, still following the same endless path after all these years. They could have renamed it of course, from the name Korok had given it but what would have been the point? – it would never travel between the stars again.

They stood there as the sky gradually darkened and the purple began to shade slowly into black. No more would they see monochrome crimson or viridian skies – for their new home had many features similar to distant Earth and its skies were full of endless variety: swelling cumulus clouds; wispy cirrus; towering cumulonimbus, rain, hail, lightning but also many days of gentle blue skies and kindly warm breezes.

No more would they wield sharp swords in strong hands and bring evil creatures their just rewards.

Shana glanced at Jon. He had aged but only in the slow, forgiving way that transhumans did. His muscles had lost some of their tone and his centre of gravity had moved slightly downward. But he was still Jon.

Jon glanced at Shana. Thin vertical lines had started to form on her upper lip and her mass of amber-gold hair held one pure white hair. But her bosom was still reasonably horizontal – no mean feat given that their new home’s gravity was almost twice that of Earth’s. The children had adapted well and showed no conditions which could be traced to this world’s heavier pull.

Many of the sleepers in the stasis pods had not survived the close passage of the star but enough had so that they were a population large enough to form a viable society and, finally purged of Korok’s conditioning, those survivors had disembarked from the circling starship. And had begun the Herculean task of moulding an alien world to be a fit home for their kind.

But Jon still found that once in a while his thoughts turned from those great endeavours to a question much closer to his immediate concerns.

Jon was reasonably sure which of the two Shanas stood by his side, her hand in his.

He had never asked the questions which would have put the matter beyond doubt and Shana had never offered to answer them.

‘If you love me then you would never ask,’ she had said once.

And so he never had.

But he still went on an annual pilgrimage up into the higher hills to stand before a small cairn. The largest stone in the front of the cairn bore the single word: SHANA.

There was much to do; this world was not Earth and was still hostile in many ways. The Protectorate’s hopes had been unfulfilled: the planet had not borne an alien civilisation ripe for conquest and enslavement. Indeed it had been completely lifeless until the settlers had descended from the starship.

So much to do, so much to do. The ground had to be seeded with such things as nitrogen-fixing bacteria; soil producing invertebrates had to be introduced. It would be many centuries before the world would become a garden.

And there were other problems: This planetary system was younger than Sol’s and was still full of planetoidal debris that could destroy any nascent civilisation. They would have to be dealt with soon.

But once again Jon had other things on his mind.

‘We cannot allow the Protectorate to expand into the galaxy,’ he finally said, almost to himself.

‘You mean we must set up a quarantine around the Solar system,’ Shana said, slightly hopefully.

‘No,’ was Jon’s grim reply, ‘we can’t englobe the entire Solar system. The volume is too great for any resources we are likely to have for many centuries. Something would slip through. We will have to go all the way to Earth itself.’

Shana looked alarmed. ‘But why Jon? There can’t be anything left of the Degenerates after all this time. There’s no-one to rescue!’

Jon shook his head. ‘No Shana. Any tyranny needs an underclass to despise and terrorise. There’ll be something of them remaining, even if they have forgotten who they once were, what they once had and how they lost it when they beat the last of their swords into a ploughshare. Soon we will be able to cross the distance to Earth in a tenth of the time we took to get here. One day the Protectorate, or their slave scientists, will discover the same process. With that power, true imperialism can begin. So we have to make the Protectorate discover that they too can be conquered.’

Shana touched his arm so he turned and looked her full in the face.

( Who are you? he thought.)

‘What then Jon? We hold down a conquered population of billions forever?’

‘No,’ said Jon and his words were like iron, ‘Homo sapiens has had its chance. It had many periods of lucidity, of greatness but it always relapsed. The human nervous system ultimately proved incapable of holding the necessary qualities of true civilisation for long enough for them to become irreversible. Ages of light always collapsed into darkness.’

Shana held his arm tighter. Her face was tense in the deepening twilight.

‘But Jon, think of Classical Greece, the Compassionate Buddha, Leonardo da Vinci. All that they achieved as they struggled up from savagery.’

Jon shook his head. ‘No – those times never lasted; the species couldn’t maintain the level of integration required to sustain those societies. Humanity was trapped in a cave of shadows by its limitations; most humans could see that a better civilisation was possible; they could strive towards that goal and occasionally reach it for a few precious moments but always it would slip from their grasp. They have shown over and over that they cannot manage their own affairs; neither can an outside force save them. There will always be another Korok.’

Shana recoiled. ‘You mean genocide!’

Jon shook his head again; his face becoming infinitely sad. Soon it would be too dark to discern his features.

‘No, it will be a peaceful, managed decline. But one that cannot be reversed. Some will know that it is happening but they will accept that nothing in the universe is built for eternity. We will ensure that they are as happy as possible as the end of their story approaches. Finally they will be happy, I promise.’

He turned from Shana and looked up at the stars, now appearing in their multitudes in a black sky. He selected one undistinguished point of light from among the host upon which to rest his gaze.

‘And peace?’ said Shana in the darkness.

‘Yes,’ Jon replied, with a deep sadness in his voice, ‘Peace. After so much suffering we will give them that.’

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Copyright © Martyn Rhys Vaughan 2019.

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Print ISBN 978-1-9161619-9-3

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