THE GREAT MIND SHIP
It was a beautiful ship, a magnificent invention, the first of its kind. A Mind Ship, cerebrally contoured for the humans. Up until this time, only the Fathers of the Confederation, the hugely-brained Cerebosian architects of the universal order, had flown such ships which integrated their minds into the overwhelmingly powerful systems of the spacecraft that plied the vast stretches of emptiness between solar systems and galaxies. The ships were massive structures centered around powerful engines of controlled catastrophe, with straight-flying/open space capacity as well as hyperspace rams and inter-dimensional burrowing capabilities. Complex systems of sensors were used to maintain constant vaporizer fields to eliminate space debris, to regulate life support systems aboard the craft and to protect structural integrity from the incredible forces at work in the movement of the ship, which could easily crash in the middle of the emptiness and be destroyed by nothing. Incredible arrays of self-monitoring and self-repairing computers guided the ship according to the parameters set by the flight commanders, but in the case of the Mind Ships, an extra dose of control was injected into the system by the BIUs, or brainwave integration units. These custom-designed sensors allowed the captain and a few choice officers to "hook" into the ship, and essentially, turn it into an extension of their own wills. When the link was established, they could feel every part of the ship in themselves, they somehow perceived its flight as their own flight through space, and without the need to touch buttons or switches, they could guide it with their feelings and mind. A greater will could stretch the capabilities of the machinery, bend the laws of physics acting upon it to open up "mystic space" for its progression, amplify its already gigantic power with the vision and determination of its pilot, make the "dumb machinery" come to life and motivate it with an "understanding" of its raison d’être.
When the first human mind ship was constructed, it was done without expectations by the Cerebosians, and, in fact, in the midst of considerable controversy. It was a huge, resource-gobbling project to undertake as merely a political concession to the easily wounded pride of the Emotional species of the Universe, which were always in search of some new sign of respect to overcome their sense of inferiority. "What a vast waste," one Cerebosian coordinator complained; "they are sure to wreck the ship on its very first flight."
But another told him, "Let them try. If we say no, they will feel stifled, and there is nothing more unruly to the peace than an Emotional who feels repressed. They must find out everything for themselves, it is their great strength and weakness."
A Cerebosian who knew something of the earthlings’ ancient mythology said, "Araxes is right. They must recreate anew the legend of Phaethon, rediscover wisdom they knew long ago but forgot. According to that myth, Helios, the Sun God, could not deny his son’s spirit, so he let the proud and confident boy drive the sun chariot through the sky for a day. But the boy could not control the wild horses. The chariot flew far away from the earth, and many lands below him froze and turned to ice, denied its warmth. Then, hurtling back towards the world, he could not keep the sun on its rightful path and this time approached the earth too closely, burning up many once fertile lands and turning them into deserts. At last, Zeus himself, the supreme God figure of that day, was forced to intervene in order to save the world, striking down Phaethon with a lightning bolt and returning the chariot to his father, who was the only one who could safely fly it. Strange stories these earthlings made, but in them, there was some self-perception. Too bad they have such a poor memory for their blunders."
"We must let an earthling try to fly the mind ship," agreed Araxes. "We will send him on a voyage through clear space where the hazard to others is minimal. He is sure to lose control somewhere along the way, and to go up in flames. The Emotionals will understand that we are benevolent and inclusive, at the same time that they regain a sense of their limitations."
"That should be worth a few centuries of humility, if we are fortunate."
Araxes and his friend leaned close to each other and bumped foreheads.
Of course, the earthling chosen for the mission was Taragus, the brilliant young pilot trained by Bek Payne. Bek was a famous experiment, the human who had had a miniaturized Cerebosian brain placed inside his head. It hadn’t led to a very happy life, but Bek was an extraordinary teacher who had recognized the talent of Taragus from the very first moment he saw him. He had started the young cadet off on medium-range disks (or flying saucers as the earthlings had once called these vehicles before they had become advanced enough to fly them themselves); he had also trained Taragus on the boomerangs, so famous in the Hudson Valley sightings of the 20th Century, and facsimile infiltration craft of various types – fake helicopters, jets, and dirigibles with ET high-performance cores - as well as mother-ship shuttlecraft, preparing his ingenious pupil for the typical flight duties of an Emotional pilot, who was sure to be involved in the support of planetary surveillance operations. When Taragus outflew a crew of little grays, the premier exploration species of the Confederation, in a disk-to-disk challenge in his last year at the academy, his reputation as a pilot was assured. It was now inevitable that he receive the first offer to fly the new Mind Ship.
Taragus remembered Bek telling him, "Don’t do it, T. You’re a great pilot, it’s not fair to lose you to a pipe dream. There’s simply too much going on in these ships. Your human brain doesn’t have the intellectual ability to manage everything at once. Don’t forget - the Cerebosian brain weighs three times as much as yours, it is massively convoluted, it is two times denser in neural paths, four times richer in energy sources, and it has ‘akashic cells’ which yours doesn’t. It’s a whole different ball game going on inside their head."
"But this ship has been conformed to the human brain," Taragus protested.
"That’s true, but it’s still a ship, and it’s got to do the same things, undergo the same strains and survive the same huge forces that the Cerebosian-controlled ships have to. Their brains are up to it, and yours isn’t. It’s overmatched, T. Which isn’t to put you down. You’re a genius, but you’re also a human. A brilliant paramecium isn’t the equal of a dumb monkey. And don’t think I’m being conceited, T., just because I’ve got a Cerebosian brain. It’s a pint-sized imitation really, and all it’s done is turn me into a freak of nature, like a spider with a human head, who repels the Cerebosians and enrages the humans. In fact, I’m some kind of cross between a leper and a traitor, and the only thing that makes my life worthwhile is teaching kids like you to fly ships. Now they want to take you from me, and to sacrifice you to reinforce their status. Through you, humans will once more remember their rightful place in the universe."
"It’s an honor," Taragus protested.
"It was also an honor to be sacrificed by the Aztecs ," Bek warned him. "The guy who got his heart cut out kept the sun in the sky. This time around, it is the Cerebosian sun."
"I can’t say no," Taragus insisted.
Bek looked at him. "Of course not. You are young, proud and ambitious. It’s in your genes to throw your life away." Then, looking down, Bek said, "I wish I could cry. Damn this Cerebosian brain!" And he squeezed his two hands against his head, like that awful phantom in the picture "The Scream", and said, "Tears, tears, where are you? I’m a hideous freak!"
"No," Taragus said sweetly, putting his arm around him, "you are my beloved teacher. If any human can fly this ship, it is me. And if I am able to succeed, it will be because of you." And gently, Taragus gave his teacher a tissue. "Just hold it by your eyes." And for a moment, Bek embraced his cheek with the tissue, holding it there like a baby, loving the human being he wished he was, but couldn’t be. With the subtle linguistics of his body, merely by holding the tissue, he said good-bye to his precious student.
Now, Taragus was in deep space, flying the ship they said he couldn’t fly. It was strange and new, exhilarating and a bit frightening. There were no wires, no connections, just the brainwave pick-ups: cone-shaped devices, their wide-open mouths facing him from the control panel, like huge carnivorous plants. He sat down in his captain’s chair, closing his eyes, letting his breathing slow, his features melt into a graceful trance: flickering eyelids, like a butterfly’s wings vibrating as it rests upon a flower, a look of peace, then sudden fear, like the fear of falling, then determination, then helpless disappearance into an altered state. The first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk was only a matter of seconds, and at first, Taragus coasted his ship tentatively during brief interruptions of computer control, following the lead of its inertia; during those moments of cutting loose he felt the absolute thrill and terror of being the whole ship, like some kind of enormous black dolphin swimming through the cosmos, feeling the emptiness, sensing the stars and the worlds beyond, some of them caressing him lightly with the soft, almost feminine hands of gravity, as tiny streams of debris fizzed away, like drops of water falling on a hot stove as he swept through them, a huge rumbling, meanwhile, threatening him from the inside, which he somehow stabilized, like a model walking carefully across a room with a book balanced on her head. It was strange, like dying, like being a God. Here, in this new incarnation, humility was fatal, but might could not degenerate into arrogance, that would turn the road to ice, and there were curves everywhere, the universe was a winding mountain path above distant sharp valleys, this journey was only for the great
.As Taragus slowly moved through the galaxy, along the flight map given him, worlds of Emotionals that belonged to the Confederation rejoiced. He picked up many of their communications and congratulations along the way, at the same time that he sensed the amazement and the concern of some of the senior Rational species, especially the Cerebosians. Would his successes give the Emotionals new airs? Would the sense of inferiority that kept them from sabotaging the universal order with their own poor judgments, be overcome, leading them to seek new levels of participation, and to mar a perfect social construction with their childish need to be important? For Taragus, the controversy was peripheral to the unfolding joy of flying for longer and longer stretches as the ship. He now would sometimes sit in his chair for so long, that for those rare moments he turned the ship back to the control of the computers, he could not rise or walk without first having his body massaged and stimulated by electric currents. For two days straight, he could not feel a thing, he was no longer used to his body. The ship was his body. Was it worth it, the exhilaration of flying? During a brief break at Altima, a woman hostess came to make love to him, and he could not respond. As this beautiful naked form lay on top of him, and seemed to touch and grope him, and to push her lips into his lips, he did not feel a thing, it was as though he was watching something of which he was not a part, as though a ghostly woman without substance was fluttering above him unable to land on his body, or a desperate soldier was trying to dig a trench into frozen ground. "What’s wrong, don’t you like me?" she asked him.
"You’re beautiful," he said. "Like a painting in a museum."
"This is a painting you can spray-paint and draw graffiti on," she said.
But he just stood back behind the barrier and looked.
Finally, she drew out the local nerve stimulator, a little device they used with old men, and shoved it into his groin. She squeezed the trigger, and his member went up like a balloon filling with air. Then she climbed on top, like a jockey vying for first place in a big race, never taking her hand off the trigger. As she finally felt the warm splash inside of her, she looked into his eyes and saw them utterly distant, like the eyes of a dead man. "What are you looking at?" she asked him, sure that it wasn’t her.
"Infinity," he said. "I have been having sex with infinity. I think she’s jealous."
After completing ¾ of the intended flight path, Taragus was beginning to wonder if driving this incredible intergalactic ship was destroying him. He was beginning to feel distant from the rest of the crew, strange, like he had a dark secret to hide from them, some kind of perversion that would make them despise him
, or history of insanity in his family, or else a terrible fragility that could not survive contact with them, a glass hand that would break if they reached out to shake it, a glass ear that would shatter if they spoke even a word to him, a glass heart that would disintegrate if they came closer to him than being strangers. "What is wrong with me? What is wrong with this?" he wondered. "It is as though my mind were being altered as I flew, changed forever. I am losing myself. I am becoming desolate inside like the vastness I am flying through, the planets that emerge from the night make me weep like a woman in menopause, I am falling in love with worlds that have nothing on them, and with worlds that are doomed. Everything is remote, so far from everything else, everything is alone, there is only this daunting immensity washing everything with sorrow. My sorrow, or the Universe’s? They say, the Cerebosian pilots, that they feel the unity of all things as they fly, that for them the ship is a path to enlightenment. For me, it is homesickness, over and over again, the heartbreak of passing by worlds I will never know or be a part of. I am learning how small I am. And our human mind is not meant for this. That is why we spent thousands of years of our history living and dying for mirages, turning ourselves into Gods and worshipping ourselves at their feet, inventing causes that filled the meaninglessness with ecstasies. Though Copernicus put the sun back at the center of the solar system, that was only astronomical; psychologically, the earth was never usurped, the universe never ceased to revolve around it. Now, in this ship, I am finally coming to grips with what it means to be infinitesimal. This ship which has exalted me among men, has turned me into nothing in my own eyes."Taragus was certain as he neared the end of his journey, proving that it was possible for a human to fly a Mind Ship after all, that he wanted no more of it. But that is when the terrible crisis on the planet Mendoza became known
. The planet, isolated by fearsome cosmological forces which three centuries before ruptured its hyperspace highway, was now hard-hit by a terrible plague: Zeta 616, it seemed. The nearest biomed station was two years full-speed-cruiser time away, and by then, the planet was sure to be ravaged beyond recognition. Several billion people would perish, and these were Confederation full members, belonging to a proven emotional species, not one of the myriad unproven species who could be studied but not rescued, according to the laws of non-interference which governed the Confederation’s relations with primitives. The message recorded by Queen Tocantina, which had just been received, must already be several years old. Taragus saw the message at the way station on Planet Harsh, in an orbital interfacer.The Queen was a child, about ten, and probably only a figurehead. She was a type 3 humanoid, very similar to an earthling, and therefore potentially moving to Taragus. "My planet is being destroyed," she said. " It is the plague. Zeta 6 - " She looked off-camera. "Zeta 616. Please help our planet. Everybody is dying. They get a fever. They start to bleed everywhere, from their nose, their eyes, it comes out of their skin, too. They become violent and try to grab people and spit on them because they want everybody to die with them. It’s like rabies and ebola and a double Y chromosome all in one. The econo – the economy is breaking down, because the workers are dying and nobody wants to leave their home. We need help. You can’t just let us die. Bring medicine right away. Please help us." Somehow, the kid wasn’t very moving, she seemed cold like a fish and stopped and started as she said her lines. In fact, she seemed almost bored to be trying to save her world. But Alatar, the Cerebosian overseer of the way station, recrafted the video, using computer-enhanced prediction graphics to age-sculpt Tocantina to the age of sixteen. Now, instead of an unsure and awkward child, intimidated by the cuteness that the adult world was attempting to force on her for its own salvation, and which she somehow could not absorb, she was a graceful and beautiful young woman, radiant, intelligent, earnest, and physically lustrous. Taragus turned to Alatar. "Why have you enhanced her?" he asked.
"Considering the time the message took to reach us, and the time it will take rescuers to reach her, this is about how she will look when the relief expedition arrives – if she’s still alive."
Taragus turned back to look at the video on the screen, now nothing more than the conjectures of a computer, but still, absolutely riveting and believable.
"Of course, it’s probably already too late," said Alatar. "Zeta 616 doesn’t play around." Carefully, the Cerebosian watched Taragus for a reaction.
"The biomed center is only a month out of here," said Taragus.
"That’s right. But then, there’s the long detour around the Quasar Tombs. To safely bypass the gravitational chaos of the galactic cave-in, you’d need to add twenty months to the journey. "
Taragus went in to the computer map system, and looked at the big-screen possibilities, Alatar observing him over his shoulder. At last, Taragus said, "Number 2 and 3 galactic parts being drawn towards the collapse could provide some countervailing gravity at the edge of the cave-in. It might be possible to use that compensating force to make a near approach to the Tombs without getting sucked in, then full-power out of the gravitational overlap."
At that moment, Alatar should have told him that the proposed maneuver was nearly impossible: a risk not to be taken. Instead, he said, "It is a bold plan, young Taragus. It would be most amazing if you could do it."
"I will," Taragus said after only a moment of hesitation, his eyes following the imaginary Tocantina’s every move. He must not let that beautiful young woman die! She was exquisite, and now endowed with the supreme characteristic of beauty in Taragus’ eyes, which was vulnerability – the charm of great need, which awakened his heroism, and made him wish to cover her with the powerful shield of his tenderness. "I won’t let you die, Tocantina," he whispered to himself. "I won’t let your lose your world. Without it, you wouldn’t be a queen!"
After Taragus had left, Alatar called in to the local Cerebosian mission: "These Emotionals really will do anything for a woman! But that’s just an observation I can’t help sharing. What really matters, is that the lesson will be learned, after all. No more uppity Emotionals, not in this generation. Phaethon is in love, and he is about to crash!"
After filling his craft up with medicines, and before plunging into the gravitational vortex by the Quasar Tombs on the short route to Mendoza, Taragus gave his crew one final chance to leave ship. "As you know, I’m still a novice with this ship, I’m not fully certain what it’s capable of, nor am I absolutely certain how drastic the forces are that we’ll be encountering. There is definite unpredictability here. Therefore, I offer you the opportunity to leave. In fact, I even urge you to leave. I have enough to worry about without the additional burden of threatening your existence. My heart wants to save Mendoza so badly that my mind has ceased to think. I may be committing a terrible folly. There is no reason to drag you along behind my lack of clarity."
To Taragus’ surprise, no one in his crew accepted his invitation to leave. As one fellow earthling told him, "Captain Junior, I am proud to be an Emotional, and I would be happy to die following the imperatives of a human heart." And Litmo, a Cerebosian lieutenant
, added: "I think it will be an extraordinary opportunity to observe human behavioral dynamics as well as quasar forces at close range. My intellect requires me to stay."Simultaneously grateful and disturbed, for now his desperate risk had acquired even more to lose, he slowly settled himself into the great captain’s chair on the ship’s bridge, turned on the giant cones of the BIUs, and let himself drift slowly back to that familiar feeling of fading away, which brought him into the ship, turning him from a man into a giant traveling star: a sleek graceful body, with apocalyptic energy, miracles siphoned out of an enormous chamber of self-destruction barely held in check.
Slowly, at last, Taragus felt himself coming into the gravitational field. He could feel its power, like huge dark hands reaching out to him through space. Should he go on, or back out? There were the incoming galaxy pieces, chunks made up of solar systems slowly drifting towards the gravitational drain, he tried to sink his claws into them, tried to get a good grip, to hook himself up to this alternative gravity source as the other one more and more aggressively began to drag him towards it, as vast flares erupted at its edges, explosions of captured matter drawn into the abyss, resisting with fury that died as light. Mendoza is on the other side of this, Taragus reminded himself, warding off the sheer terror of what he was up against. I have to continue, I can’t stop trying. Now the force of the gravity and his maneuver away from it began to pull at something that seemed like it could come apart. He began to feel pain and to hear his body creaking, groaning with the sound of something about to be torn. He was being drawn and quartered, the horses of the night were pulling his limbs in separate directions. He was becoming unstable, the resistance was fierce, he felt himself beginning to shake like a glass of water during an earthquake, and all of his life and the life of Mendoza was about to spill out of the glass.
"Captain Junior, instruments say we’re on the verge of breaking up, structural stress is 9.5!" a voice warned him.
Taragus gritted his teeth. "A world – a whole god-damned word is at stake!" he raged. "I can’t go down! I can’t! It’s not just me!" Now, his whole body was being dragged somewhere, the hands of darkness were amazingly powerful, irresistible! He had never felt anyone so strong! In his mind’s eye, he saw Tocantina wandering about in her mountain palace, waiting for someone to come and rescue her world. He fought on.
"9.8!" screamed his systems observer. "We’re going to break up! My God, we’re going to come apart!"
With horror, Taragus’ crew watched him in the Captain’s chair, pale, shaking, bruises suddenly appearing on his face, blood dribbling out of his mouth. They heard him shout and double over as his ribs cracked, they saw his eyes open with a primitive and terrifying fury in them, something the earth had run from to save itself, once nuclear weapons would no longer tolerate the survival of the caveman. But apparently, that primal savage was only buried in a shallow grave, they saw it walking once more in Taragus’ eyes: the bestial madness carrying the helpless and the innocent across the river. The Cerebosian gasped in amazement at this raw spectacle of savage altruism; this mission of mercy with a love interest imbedded in it, this deep compassion driven by the submerged mating drive. "What paradoxical, magnificent creatures!" he exclaimed, truly a compliment as he was certain that these words would be his last.
Suddenly, the crew cried out in amazement, as though they were watching a spectacular performance of meteors in the sky, or the passing of a comet. Taragus had hit the hyperspace ram, somehow he burrowed into a safe space without a wormhole anywhere in sight, then flew out again, as the ship trembled from a terrible jolt and crew members who were not strapped in went flying all about. What exactly he did, they could not be sure, but somehow, it seems, he wrapped up the gravity that was crushing him inside a fold he made in space, binding it for a moment, burying it in a version of Aeolus’ bag of winds, which was a pocket he had dug into another dimension However he did it, somehow Taragus weakened the effect of the Quasar Tombs on the ship, which was also him, at the very same moment that he finally gunned his engines on to full power, in a last desperate effort to clear the gravitational vortex once and for all. As he did so, the crew observed him, shaking wildly like a man in the throes of an epileptic fit. Streams of spit dribbled out of his mouth, they saw only the whites of his eyes. Then, suddenly, a torrent of blood spouted out of one nostril, he began to choke, and they all rushed towards him.
"No!" Litmo cried, the only one left who could still reason. "Don’t touch him! If he comes out of his trance, the ship will shatter into a million pieces! You must not disturb him!"
"He’s dying!" screamed one concerned officer.
"He’s fighting!" retorted Litmo.
The ship tipped wildly, first one way, then the other, then finally it became straight as an arrow, and steady and strong, they could feel it struggling like a workhorse with tremendous legs pulling a huge weight behind it
.Taragus was now doubled over in the captain’s chair, in an almost fetal position, alive or dead no one could tell, but the chief systems observer was crying out with delight, "System stress is down to 5.0!" As another officer shouted, "We’re beating it! We’re beating it! We’re clearing the red zones on the gravitational meters!"
Litmo rushed to the computer analysis board, to see if the computers deemed themselves able to take over from here – earlier, they had refused to proceed along Taragus’ chosen route to Mendoza. "Computers can handle it now!" he cried out euphorically, switching the ship back to automatic systems so that the crew could drag Taragus out of the captain’s chair and tend to his battered body.
Sometime later, as Taragus revived on a cot in the medical room, his body badly swollen, discolored with bruises, and wracked by internal bleeding which the medical staff expertly and determinedly attended to, he told Litmo that he could not even remember what he had done. "It was pure instinct," he said. "I imagined the gravity as water, and cut holes into space to divert it, it flooded into other dimensions and not enough was left in ours to drown us in."
"Utterly mystical and incomprehensible," said Litmo.
"It was feelings," Taragus said. "It was like all my life, the only musical instrument I ever had to play with was a bottle. And I just made one sound, blowing air over the top. And then, suddenly, I was given a grand piano, and my fingers moved of their own accord, and played the most eloquent sonata of necessity. Now I am back, once again, in the world of the bottle. I can no longer explain the piano, because all I have to explain it with is the bottle, and its one sound."
Again, Litmo shook his head. "It was a feat of athletics," he finally concluded.
"Music," corrected Taragus.
Cerebosians who Litmo would later consult with told him that the piloting of the Mind Ship was, indeed, mystical; but they doubted that they could have brought the ship through to Mendoza, because it was the irrational power of love and the ferocity of creatures never fully free of their animal past which had driven the ship beyond its logical capabilities, driven it on like a man shot full of bullets who continues fighting even though his heart is perforated, because his wife will be raped and killed if he does not overcome the intruder who has fatally wounded him before he dies. "We do not have such a terrible will," Litmo’s friends told him. "He bent the laws of physics, like a giant bending an iron rod, with the power of love, and the power of the beast. These Emotionals are both more gifted and disconcerting than we had imagined!"
After the passage through the Quasar Tombs, the voyage to Mendoza took another couple of weeks, but these weeks were uneventful, and provided Taragus with a much-needed opportunity to rest. Thank God for accelerated healing technologies! In the past, Taragus would have been the most honored of Kamikaze pilots, buried in the flames of his will. His body would not have survived his courage.
As Mendoza drew closer, the recovering captain was able to open contact with its government through hypersignals. Some kind of court adviser appeared on the video screen, haggard and worn, telling him, "Better to save a few of us, than none at all. Our estimated population is now down to five hundred million. We need massive support. Are you the only rescue ship?"
"A fleet is on the way," Taragus assured him, "but they are taking the long way."
"What do you mean?" the adviser asked.
"We have just come through the Quasar Tombs. The others will not attempt it."
"No one could come through the Tombs," the adviser stated. "Why are you using our misfortune as an opportunity to glorify yourself? Do you have some sort of political designs on our world?"
This was Taragus’ first encounter with the political climate of Mendoza, a climate of intense suspicion and attachment to power. "We have the medicines you need," he replied. "Where is Tocantina?"
"The Queen is resting in her quarters. I shall not wake her, even for a Confederation cruiser."
Taragus only nodded in agreement. "Sleep is a wonderful thing. It must be especially so when the world you have to wake up to is so painful."
Several days later, Taragus and a carefully prepared landing party of bioexperts was coming down in a disk onto a landing platform erected in the midst of Mendoza’s rugged mountain heights. Taragus, flying the craft, child’ play after what he had been through, was hugely impressed by the lofty crags, filled with character, by the snow and ice defenses of the highlands, which looked down on the rest of the world, protecting their mystery with aloofness, by the stillness of all this natural power waiting for the human spirit to catch up with it
.As the disk slowly hovered downwards towards the platform, Taragus could see the multitudes in colorful garments coming out to greet them. Long robes and dresses of orange and yellow, red and blue, and then, as they got closer, the strange, high black hats, some with tassels. ‘Touch-down!" said Taragus. He had brought the disk down with landing legs, and now lowered a stairwell for the first of the bioexpert officers to descend. Sometime afterwards, once the area had been bio-cleared, he and the rest of the crew followed.
"This is the royal complex," the chief bio-officer told him. "The plague has never gotten this far. The sick and diseased were shut out by the mountains, and the Mendozan army has been shooting refugees rather than let them enter into the sanctuary." Taragus nodded. Grim realities, the down side of trying to help others
.Of course, Taragus wanted to get the medicines into play at once, but the Mendozan aristocracy insisted on having a grand party for the rescuers first. At that first night’s dinner party, Taragus had his first chance to meet Tocantina, the Queen. Instantly, upon seeing her, he gasped. Time had indeed passed since that distracted child first sent out her message for help to the rest of the universe, and Tocantina was now a young woman, and every bit as beautiful as the computer enhancement had made her out to be. Dressed in a most extravagant and exotic manner, her interesting face with lively dark eyes regarded Taragus with curiosity. "So," she asked, as he listened to her through his miniaturized translating device, "you’re the one who went through the Quasar Tombs to reach us?"
Taragus nodded, speechless.
She laughed at the impact she had had on him. It meant nothing to her, because she was accustomed to it. "Well, thank you very much," she said. "The plague has created a great deal of unrest here, and turned our very pleasant planet into an unwanted reprise of the dark ages. We’ve all had our dark ages, haven’t we?"
"Yes," Taragus agreed.
"Well, now, hopefully, it will be over soon, and we can return to normalcy. Have you ever eaten fried dadar?"
As the night wore on, Taragus and his relief expedition grew steadily more uncomfortable. They learned that the government had dropped nuclear devices on several epidemic zones, killing millions of its own people to try to stop the spread of the disease; that huge amounts of land, decimated of their human populations by the plague, had been expropriated and sold to government insiders and friends of the royal family at bargain rates; that much of the planet had succumbed to feudal conditions, falling under the sway of local warlords who were in cases, supported by the government; and that vast amounts of food and supplies were being hoarded here, in the royal mountains, to the detriment of the utterly impoverished and broken regions down below.
In this context, Tocantina’s infatuation with jewelry and gifts began to repel Taragus. "You know, turquoise is wonderful for some eyes, but for my eyes, complexion, and hair color, rubies do much better. Could you imagine, in some places people have been trading gold and silver for loaves of bread? What poor economists! In another year, they’ll regret their blunder. But that’s how poor people think."
After a while, Taragus realized that the words were no longer registering. He saw this beautiful woman across the table from him, he saw her mouth moving up and down; he needed subtitles and there were none. "My God," he thought to himself, "I came here for a world I didn’t know, for an abstract concept of doing good, and for a woman who I saw in a video and fell in love with. I imagined she would throw herself into my arms as soon as she saw me come to her rescue, that she would reward her world’s savior with gratitude, soon to be eroticized, that she would kiss me, hold my hands, and lead me into a dark room with a candle burning. She would ask me, ‘Have you ever beheld a naked Queen?’ After that, we would walk out upon the mountain peaks, looking at the map of everywhere we could go and everything we could do and everything we could be with each other. She would step bravely among her people with vials of medicine, and they would strew flowers in her path. A rainstorm of petals and cheers would engulf us, a flood of love. For her, for this woman, I hurled myself into the entrails of a mad gamble, I plunged into the cosmic whirlpool, I sacrificed my life for a kiss, I weathered pain such as I have never known, I was battered like a rowboat by a tidal wave, I drove death away a dozen times, saying not yet, not now, because of her! And here she is, this woman who was my inspiration, sitting right in front of me, close enough to touch, yet arousing in me no desire to touch her, instead repelling me with the way privilege has twisted her, repelling me with the utter ease of her self-centeredness, repelling me with the distance that lurks within her loquaciousness. She is alone, dancing for herself." It was a terrible disappointment, he almost felt like crying to realize he had been such a fool, spreading all his vitality and hope, his very life, underneath her like a carpet, only to find out that he was nothing to her even though he had saved her world, and that she was nothing to him, even though he had flown through hell to see her, to touch her.
Later that night, Taragus found time to be alone on a balcony, and to look out upon the shapes of the mighty mountains, deep with the snow that they alone understood, hard with tragedies of their own, yet somehow blessed by the light of Mendoza’s two small moons, which soothed the burden of their grandeur. At least the moons had found a match.
"Captain Taragus, are you well?" asked Litmo, moving slowly out from the dinner party to stand next to him, awkward, as were most Cerebosians when they walked, their heads far too huge for their bodies to bear gracefully
."Yes," Taragus said. "There will be a lot to do here, this is a world in disarray," he added, forcing himself to return to the things that mattered.
"The girl," Litmo said. "Yes," he told the surprised Taragus, "we do not understand it, but we are able to intellectually conceive it. You and the girl."
"What do you mean?" asked Taragus, unable to believe that his secret might be known to creatures who did not understand love.
"She has great power and a very little mind. She is a frivolous child, and Mendoza is her toy, and not her favorite one at that. Captain Junior."
"Yes?"
"I know your soul now. She is not worthy of it. But still, you owe her an eternal debt of gratitude."
Taragus looked at the Cerebosian out of the corners of his eyes, while the mountains gazed patiently upon them both.
"You Emotionals are such peculiar beings! You must splice love, consciously or unconsciously, into every noble act. It is the engine of every great thing you do. The woman you will impress. The woman who will love you. The woman who will bury you, like a Valkyrie, carrying your corpse with appreciation. Biologically, it is the need to reproduce. The street leading to the next generation is paved with the gold of ecstasy. But you have turned your genitals into a work of art, transferred raw eroticism to the mind, and invented romance. Lust and Worship, the twins that guide you through the world of valor. Strange creatures, you are!"
Taragus looked back out over the silent mountains.
"So you should go back in and thank Tocantina," continued Litmo. "She was not who you thought she was. But for a day and a night, she was your Muse. She inspired you to do great things you would never have done on your own. To take risks, and to endure hardships, that would have been impossible to bear without the person you turned her into, to protect. Now the real Tocantina has gotten in the way. The illusion is gone, but it has made you a man. You must thank her for leading you to a world that needs your help. Because of her, and what she meant to you for a few brief weeks, millions of people will be saved. That is a great legacy. Though she is innocent of her greatness, she is great!"
Looking over at Litmo with amazement and respect, Taragus suddenly seized him in his arms and drew him close, as a brother. "Forgive me, my ability to read emotional cues is very limited," Litmo said. "Is this some form of primitive aggression in the manner of your baboon ancestors, or is this a sign of affection?"
"Affection," laughed Taragus, holding onto him.
"And is sex involved?"
Taragus laughed so hard at this that it hurt his still recovering ribs, then kissing Litmo on the cheek, said, "That big brain of yours isn’t quite full yet." Then, giving Litmo one last hug, he said, "All right, then. Let’s go back inside. I’ll thank Tocantina, and retire to my quarters to prepare for tomorrow. We’ll fly out, and begin to distribute the medicine at dawn. People who were going to die will live. I won’t despise myself for the road that brought me here."
And in this way, Taragus became the foremost captain of the human race serving the Confederation, and assured himself the privilege of many adventures to come.