Аллен Стил - Arkwright

He’d been expecting a crude camp filled with starving peasants mourning their banishment from Providence, not a content village inhabited by happy, well-fed people. There was a Galian shrine, just as Benjam said, but it was small and neglected. The genesis plant that grew beside it appeared to be regularly tended, but it wasn’t cordoned off by a ring of stones. One look at it, and it was clear that the Disciples had little or no authority there.

What was more surprising was a row of pens near the community gardens. Inside the pens were flocks of what appeared to be large, flightless birds, fat and white, which incessantly clucked and pecked at the soil. Never having seen the like before, Sanjay and Kaile stopped to stare at them, causing the others to come to a halt.

“Chickens,” Benjam said as he walked up behind them. “And those are turkeys.” He pointed to another flock of larger and even fatter birds in another pen. “We raise them for food.”

“Food?” Kaile asked, and Benjam nodded. “Where did you find them? There’s nothing like that on Providence.”

“No, there isn’t. They’re not even indigenous to Eos. They came from Earth.”

“Erf?” Sanjay drew back from the pens.

“No … Earth .” Again, Benjam smiled. “Come. You’ve got a lot to learn.”

Sanjay glanced at Aara. His mother gave him a knowing nod but said nothing. Yet as they turned to follow Benjam again, Sanjay noticed that, while he and Kaile had been examining the … the chickens and turkeys … Nathan had disappeared. Looking around, he saw the stranger walking away, apparently heading for another part of the village. A few passersby gave him curious glances, but no one seemed to be startled by his appearance. It was obvious that he was known there.

Benjam brought them to a large, slope-sided building near the center of town. Opening its front door, he led them into what appeared to be a meeting hall. With its carefully arranged rows of mats facing a high rear wall whose stained glass windows formed an abstract pattern, it bore superficial resemblance to a shrine, yet there was no altar, no crèche containing a sleeping Teacher, only a low table. The room was cool but comfortable. The mayor gestured to the front row of mats, and once Sanjay, Kaile, and Aara were seated, he squatted before them in front of the table.

“Nathan will be back soon,” he began, speaking to Sanjay and Kaile, “but before he does, I’ll get started by telling you what Aara learned when she came here—namely, that much of what you grew up accepting as fact is … well, to put it bluntly … wrong.”

“Heresy.” Folding her hinds beneath her, Kaile crossed her fores and glared at him.

“No. Not heresy … history. History that has been lost to generations of people living on Providence.” Benjam paused. “You grew up in a proper Galian household, didn’t you?” he asked, and Kaile nodded. “You can’t be blamed for believing that anything contrary to the Word of Gal is blasphemous. But you’ll have to believe me when I tell you that the Word is a distorted version of what actually occurred many yarn ago and that the true events are more complex than anything you’ve been taught.”

Kaile scowled and started to rise from her mat, but Sanjay stopped her with his fore. “Let’s just listen to what he says. We’ve come all this way. Maybe it’ll explain what you and Aara saw.”

Kaile hesitated and then reluctantly sat down again.

Benjam let out his breath and patiently went on. “First … to begin, Erf is not what you’ve been led to believe it is, a netherworld filled with damned souls. It’s called Earth, and it’s a planet much like Eos, only about one-third smaller. It revolves around a single star called Sol, which is much larger and brighter than Calliope … it’s white, not orange, and Earth is much farther away from it than Eos is from Calliope.”

“Did Gal create sisters for it, as well?” Sanjay asked.

Benjam shook his head. “No, there’s only that one sun … and Gal didn’t create either Calliope or Sol—or even Earth or Eos, for that matter. They existed long, long before Gal … because Gal itself isn’t a deity but rather a vessel created by humans. Our own ancestors, in fact.”

Kaile hissed between her teeth. “Blasphemy!”

“Listen to him.” Aara glared at her. “He’s telling the truth. Go on, Benjam.”

“Gal is a vessel … what people like Nathan call a starship.” Benjam continued. “About 440 sixyarn ago—or years, the way his people reckon time—our ancestors built a ship called Galactique for the purpose of carrying the seed of men and women to this world, which they knew was capable of sustaining life.”

“Why?” Unlike Kaile, Sanjay wasn’t upset but intrigued by what he was hearing.

“The reasons are complicated.” Benjam frowned and shook his head. “I’m not sure I completely understand them myself. Nathan and his companions have told us that Galactique was built because the people of that time believed that life on Earth was in peril of being destroyed, and they wanted to assure the survival of the human race.” A crooked smile. “It’s still there, but it isn’t a terrible place filled with tortured souls. The Chosen Children, as we call them, were simply the seed of those who’d spent years building the ship. In fact, they resembled Nathan himself … those we call the Children were altered before birth so that they could live comfortably on Eos, which Galactique had changed to make suitable for human life.”

“Then Gal … I mean, Galactique ”—Sanjay stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables—“is our creator.”

“Just as the Word says,” Kaile quietly added.

“ Galactique created our people, yes, and also the world as we know it, but it is not a deity. Those of us here in First Town and the other mainland settlements—yes, there are other villages like this one, although not as large—knew this even before Nathan and his companions arrived a few weeks ago. People here have long been aware of the fact that we’re descended from the human seed—the sperm and eggs, as they call it—transported from Earth aboard Galactique and that Eos itself was a much different place before Galactique transformed it over the course of nearly 300 sixyarn into the world we know now.”

Benjam pointed beyond the open door of the meeting hall. “Those birds you saw, the chickens and turkeys … they were brought here, too, in just the same way. In fact, everything else on Eos—the forests, the insects, the fruit we eat, the fish in our seas—is descended from material carried from Earth by Galactique, which was then altered to make them suitable for life here.”

“Nathan calls this ‘genetic engineering,’” Aara said, slowly reciting words she herself had apparently learned only recently. “It’s really very complicated. I’m not certain I understand it myself.”

“It all was done aboard Galactique during the time it circled Eos.” Benjam nodded in agreement. “Nathan and his people have told us that, during this same time—hundreds of yarn, longer than our own history— Galactique also deposited across Eos dozens of tiny craft called ‘biopods,’ which in turn contained the genesis plants. Eos was a much different place back then. Its atmosphere was thin and unbreathable, and the only life here was insignificant—lichen and such. The genesis plants were scattered all over Eos, and as they took root and grew to maturity, they absorbed the atmosphere that was already here and replaced it with the air we breathe while also making it thick enough to retain the warmth of Calliope and her sisters. Once that was accomplished, the plants distributed the seeds of all the other plants we know, none of which existed on Eos before Galactique came. Other biopods followed them, bringing down the infant forms of fish, birds, insects, and animals that had been gestated aboard the ship. Once they were here—”