Daughter of Orion

DAUGHTER OF ORION

Alfred D. Byrd

Daughter of Orion

Alfred D. Byrd

Copyright 2009 Alfred D. Byrd.

Smashwords Edition

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is my own take on the concept of super-powered aliens from a lost world learning to live among us earth-humans. I freely acknowledge that elements of this work were inspired by the television series Roswell and Smallville, and by the ultimate source of inspiration for tales of super-powered aliens from a lost world, the incomparable tales of the People by Zenna Henderson, most recently collected in Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson (Nesfa Press, 1995).

In the words of Mirabelle Gordon, born Mira Das-Es:

On a barren expanse of desert in northern Utah, under Thil-i An Om, 'The Stars of the Great Crystal-Shaper,' which the earth-humans call Orion, the eight of us sent to the earth from a dying world have met as a group for the first time. In the golden glow of a circle of bil-i lus, light-crystals, I look at seven faces turned towards me.

The faces have a sameness owing to their unearthly origin. Framed by hair of strawberry blond, they're round and as pale as moonlight, with full lips, short, tip-tilted noses, and wide-set eyes of aquamarine. The seven faces look for guidance to me, at nineteen years of the earth the oldest of the eight.

In a soft voice, Par-On, the youngest, my intended, speaks to me. We're here, Mira, to learn of our past and of our future together. Only you know the full story of those times. Tell us what we need to know.

I nod, but pause before I start the night's activities. Although it's I who'll tell the others what they need to know, it'll be Par who'll tell them and me what we must do. I look at a long object, wrapped in silk, by his feet. How far that object has come to be here tonight! It'll be my story's end.

To my surprise, Dala, the shy one, breaks in. Yes, Mira, tell us! You know that I've run all of the way from South Carolina to be here tonight.

To no surprise of mine, Kuma, a born fighter, sneers at Dala. Poor baby! Do your footsies hurt you? Maybe, you should lie down while the rest of us celebrate the festival.

Some of the others laugh. Dala is about to protest when I say, Hush! I feel relief when everyone else hushes and turns his or her eyes back to me. In a few days, I go on to say, "the Message will come. When it does, we must be ready to do the Work for which our people sent us here.

"As part of the Work, we must recall who we are. Tonight, we're here to reenact a festival that the Tan, our people, did on the Homeworld whenever these stars -- I point at Orion's Belt and Sword -- dominated the night sky. The Tan sang, danced, and retold the tale of its origin. Does each of you recall the words of the song that I taught you?"

Seven heads nod. As I start to sing of a crystal-ship that brought three lives to a world now lost, seven voices join my voice. Both Dala and Lona, the mystic, have the song's words down. Kuma and the four boys, though, stumble over the words, which they sing in an accent of the American English that's filled their mouths for the past nearly fourteen years. Still, the eight of us are singing together, as those who sent us here meant for us to sing. We'll get better, I promise myself.

The dance, I believe, will go better than the song went. I've shown everyone else the festival's bil kel-al, its memory-crystal, to fix in his or her mind the steps that as couples and as a community we eight must do. I regret our lack of musicians to play traditional bone-flutes, harps, and drums for the dance. The instruments must lie in Par's hidden chambers till a future beyond the Work. Tonight, we dancers must hear the crystal's music in our minds. Maybe, when we have children…

Rising, each of us girls exchanges bows with her intended: shy Dala with solid, trustworthy Van-Dor; mystical Lona with wise, artistic Sil-Tan; fierce Kuma with dour, brooding Un-Thor; I with Par, a mystery to me. Born to rule us all, he's a stranger to us all. We must learn who he is before the Message comes.

Each boy and girl spins around each other, and then parts from his or her partner. We spin faster than any earth-human can spin; we leap higher than any earth-human can leap. We come together as couples, and then join hands in a ring of eight.

The dance's message is clear to me. The Tan, the People, is born as individuals who come together as couples, and these come together as the community. The dance tells the Tan's story for seven thousand years on Ul, the Homeworld, till it ended, sending just eight lives to a world indescribably strange to them.

Dance over, the eight of us sit in a circle for the telling of the tale of origin. Again, seven faces look at mine. I'm the one who's viewed all of the memory-crystals and read all of the books that came to the earth in the crystal-ships. Also, as the oldest, I'm the one who best recalls Ul. I gather my thoughts --

Dour, brooding Un mutters, We're sweating now, but before Mira stops speaking we'll all be cold.

Par shakes his head. None of us needs ever be cold. Each of you should be carrying a heat-crystal. You know what to do with it.

As each of my seven companions takes a crystal from his pocket or from her purse, I take one out, too. Each of us calls up the strongest, strangest of our gifts, the crystal-shaping gift, and focuses it on his or her crystal. In our hands, eight crystals grow red hot.

Par, setting his crystal onto the ground before him, gives Un an unreadable smile. You should stay warm now, don't you think? As dour Un nods, Par turns his gaze to me. We're ready, Mira. Tell us our story.

Thinking of Ul, I start to speak.

When you opened your eyes at birth on the Homeworld, you first saw sand. To the left and to the right, ahead and behind, bas, as we Tani call sand, lay in all directions from the rocky outcrops where we huddled for shelter. Whenever I read Shelley's line, The lone and level sands stretch far away, I think of vanished Ul.

Our name for where we lived was ka-bas, 'all-sand,' the Desert. In the Desert, the sand lay not only around us, but also above us. Even at the best of times, Ul's sky had a mustard-colored tinge from fine sand borne on high. At the worst of times, a wind rose, howling around the rocky outcrops and blasting them with sand that brought even noon the night's darkness. We called the wind wis bas, 'wind of sand,' the Sandstorm.

Survival on Ul required some of us -- brave, unlucky souls -- to enter the Desert to seek crystals, metal, and water. Not all who entered the Desert came home. Those of you learning to read the genealogies may've noticed over and over in them the lines wa-tak-il na-ka-bas, 'he died in the Desert,' and wa-tak-il na-wis bas, 'he died in the Sandstorm.' The Homeworld was no place for the weak.

I've said that the Desert lay in all directions from the People's homes, but the Desert was far from being the universe as we Tani saw it. The Desert, in fact, just formed a ring around one face of Ul. Inwards from the ring, the land rose till the air grew too thin to be breathed. Just at the limit of breathability lay a ring of frost that doughty souls called frost-gatherers collected and brought home.

Outwards from the ring of Desert in every direction, the land sank till it reached a zone of dense air where violent winds ever swirled. We called this zone nel wis-i, The Wall of Winds. In it lay mists, marshes, and strange, poisonous life that slew unwary travelers. The zone, though it held water and life, held no hope of a home for the Tan. Brave souls, though, went to the Wall of Winds for treasures to be brought to the People. As you've read in the genealogies the words wa-tak-il na-nel wis-i, you know that not all of the brave souls made it home.

What lay beyond the Wall of Winds, none of the Tan knew till Ul's last years.

The light-crystals' glow shows me puzzled looks. Par-On speaks, I think, for the rest of my listeners as he says, I gather from the memory-crystals and the books that the Homeworld was strange, but I don't see how a world like the one that you just described can exist.

I smile at him. I can tell you how, if you don't mind a brief astronomy lesson. I sweep my gaze over the others. It's late, but I know that you can handle this.

I hear moans, but they sound playful to me.

~~~

At every solar system's heart lies a star. Ul's was a red dwarf that the earth's astronomers call Wolf 1061. We Tani called it Lus Im, Holy Light. It's about thirteen point eight light-years from the earth in the constellation Ophiucus.

Many red dwarfs are flare stars, shooting out vast clouds of ionized gas that'd fry any otherwise livable world. Luckily for the Tani who lived near it, Wolf 1061 is a stable red dwarf. It might've shone gentle, unvarying light onto Ul for trillions of years, if the Homeworld had survived.

Astronomers will tell you that any world near enough a red dwarf to bear life will be tidally locked, showing one face always to the red dwarf and the other face always to outer darkness. Ul, though, had a twenty-four hour day, almost the same as the earth's.

Impossible, you say? Not at all! Although Ul was part of Holy Light's solar system, the Homeworld didn't revolve around Holy Light. Instead, the Homeworld was a moon of a gas giant that the Tan didn't discover till about forty years before Ul ended. The gas giant was a red world that lay behind the Homeworld from the People's vantage. With us Tani's typical flair for nomenclature, we named the gas giant Nas-Ul, 'behind the Homeworld.' I saw Nas-Ul just once, briefly, as I was flying away from a world falling to pieces.

Ul was tidally locked to Nas-Ul, which it circled every twenty-four hours. On the Homeworld's outer face, where Nas-Ul never shone, Holy Light rose and set just like the earth's sun. On the Homeworld's inner face, where Nas-Ul always hung at zenith, Holy Light also rose and set, but was eclipsed by the gas giant several hours each day at midday. Because of the daily eclipse on the inner face, it was far colder than the outer face. Where cold air met hot in the Wall of Winds, winds always raged.

The gas giant's gravity, which tidally locked Ul's rotation, also stretched the Homeworld into a shape like a football's. The Homeworld had a high tidal bulge on its inner face and a high tidal bulge on its outer face. Between the bulges lay a ring of low land encompassing the world's north, east, south, and west poles. In this ring, under the dense air of the Wall of Winds, lay most of the world's water. Most of the rest of it had snowed out onto glaciers on the world's inner face. Hence, we poor Tani, on the world's dry outer face, gathered dew and scraped frost from rocks.

Couldn't we, with our crystal-ships, have moved water from the Wall of Winds and the inner face? We tried to move it, but I'm getting ahead of my story.

My mind goes, as it often goes, to one of my visits to Dr. Ventnor in his tiny, book-lined office above a shady quadrangle at the Ohio State University. The visit occurred when I was ten, having been on the earth four years. Sitting by Dr. Ventnor's window, I was watching students toss a Frisbee as he asked me what I recalled of the Homeworld and how I was adjusting to this world.

The Frisbee made me think of the Crossing from there to here. Abruptly, I said, Why did the Homeworld break up?

Dr. Ventnor raised a gull-winged brow over an ebon eye. I peered at his long, square-jawed face, with skin of the color of a Starbuck's vanilla frappucino, and with a gulf of baldness that went back and back till it left just a fringe of white hair around his skull's base. Not for the first time I wondered why he resembled the Colonel.

Dr. Ventnor gave me a crooked smile. The Colonel tells me, Belle -- Dr. Ventnor was using my earth-name, not my birth-name -- "that you read National Geographic cover to cover and watch the Learning Channel religiously. Do you know what a Roche Limit is?"

I shrugged. When a little world gets too near a big world, the big world's tidal pull tears the little world apart.

Dr. Ventnor grinned at me. "You'll go far, Belle. Ul, your homeworld, was actually inside Nas-Ul's Roche Limit. Till the Tan came along, though, Ul was safe there. It was a rocky moon of a gas giant. A dense enough rocky world is safe from tidal destruction.

When Dor-Sad learned how to make the great crystals, the forces that the Tan used to mine glaciers, raise the crystal-city, and send crystal-ships from star to star began to liquefy Ul. In time, what gravity began, gravity ended.

So Grandfather really was guilty, I thought. Dor-Sad, his world's Einstein, had said so to me, but I'd hoped that he was wrong. Now, I had to accept that a man who'd wanted to turn Ul into a paradise had turned it into a graveyard, a Saturn's ring of death. As Einstein's granddaughter, I'd inherited his guilt, as well as the Work that he and the rest of the Tan had sent me to the earth to do.

A tear splashed on a bare, pale knee as I watched the Frisbee soar. Find a better world this time, I thought, one that'll last forever.

The earth is safe, isn't it? I murmured.

Dr. Ventnor was silent a moment. When he spoke again, he asked me of school.

What we Tani had on Ul was little. We had three species of domestic animals: the gur-i, which filled the place of cattle; the har-i, which filled the place of sheep; and the lex-i, which filled the place of horses. Ul's horses were carnivores with faces like those of greyhounds, but were gentle, faithful creatures nonetheless.

We had twelve species of plants for food, clothing, timber, paper, and medicine. Some plants, we grew in pots; other plants, we raised in tiny plots of soil that we tended and watered by hand. We talked to the plants. As we watered each plant, we told it, Su ze bul kol-il ux-es, 'This is water to help you grow.' Tradition-bound, we never wondered whether the water would work just as well without the words. Ul's plants are gone, but I still talk to the earth's plants as I water them.

We had bu, a bluish gel that turned dead bodies and plant matter into soil. Dr. Ventnor told me that bu is a form of nanotechnology. Each Tan looked forward, at the end of a life of about a hundred and eighty of the earth's years, to being put into bu pits. Turned into soil, he or she would stay part of the community as a plant and then as that which ate the plant. We may not have known much, but we knew ecology.

What we had and knew, though, would've been too little for survival