Crystal Helix IV Final Chapter: Blood From a Stone

IV.

      Nyarly searched the log to find the planet's destination, but it was still in E-space.  He kept one hand on the sapphire, feeling the energy return to it, his own mental and psychic energy rising as hers did.  Had Gang felt this energy, this power?

      "Launch Kinetic beacon," he ordered.  The missile tracked to the last known position of the planet and established orbit.

      "Retrieve planet."  Nyarly  spoke to Ihrig Llah, "Now we wait for the powerup sequence.  In the meantime, I propose to allow Ultra Marine to access our data banks, to share our knowledge as a means of compensation."

      "This is acceptable.  We shall help them raise their Knowledge Constant to make use of the information," the Drakken replied.

      "How do I help you?" Nyarly asked Ultra.

      "I can interface from here," she replied.  "Just continue to focus the light on the console."

      He backed away, watching the now glittering stones begin to arrange themselves again to cover each input pad while Ultra covered the readout. 

      Nyarly went to sickbay.

      The egg was in stasis, but the embryo was obviously dead, too mangled to be incubated.  Nyarly's digits clenched and his tail twitched as he suppressed his emotions; he had never lost a child. 

Its killer, Nyarly's friend and first officer, lay in the next space, barely alive, curled into a tight fetal position, much the same as the embryo.  His face still showed the shock--his eyes were wide open but fully dilated, unseeing, his arms clung to his lower legs, and his tail was tucked between his legs and under his head.

    Nyarly had seen Gang fight during space encounters with the strangest kinds of aliens, had gone brainwired with him into neurotransmitter adventures, and had seen him imbibing with females of many species with no remorse or intention other than pleasure for pleasure.  How could he try to annihilate an entire race, especially one with so much profit potential?

      The medical officer joined Nyarly.  "Sensory overload," he said.  "I've seen a few wireheads like this on some of the pleasure planets, but he hasn't got a mark on him, except his brain.  The activity is low, but stable.  What hit him?"

      "The mother of the egg," Nyarly said. 

      "She's probably the only one that can shed any light on his prognosis.  But they don't know much about us, either." 

      "They will now.  Could I move him, maybe take him down to the planet?"

      On the fourth watch, the Crystal Helix planet reappeared in its orbit.  There was no response to the messages sent by the Slithy Brethren or by the Drakken; it was as if the entire race was either unconscious or waiting in ambush.

      Ultra Marine answered the transponder codes to disarm the ECM.  She, Nyarly, the egg, and Gang Green's inert body landed near the meeting site under the watchful eye of the Drakken force in orbit over the Helix while the newly recruited commander returned the task force to duty in other sectors. 

      Nyarly set up an environmental shelter in the landing area with an airlock to provide Ultra with direct contact with her people.  While she attempted to make contact, he began the mourning ritual. 

      Days passed.  Nyarly tended Gang, slept, ate and meditated with Ultra Marine, who did not spend energy to maintain the hologram.  He began to know the depth of understanding possible with a planet of interfaced neural nets, each with googol gigabytes of storage, and the depth of horror in being truly alone and in the dark for the first time in eons.  He shared with Ultra the fears that children have of separation, of the dark, of powerlessness in the face of adults.

      "I'm not a philosopher," he said.  "That's what we need now.  I only know my own experience."

      "We share all our experiences, so the perspective of one viewpoint is most alien.  But I begin to understand how your perception and Officer Green's can differ so markedly.  We did not know that we were so vulnerable."

      "Nor I."

      "We have three lifetimes stored in our memories: yours, his and a third person who we inadvertently killed several years ago.  No real conclusions can be inferred from such a small sample, but we begin to see patterns.  Your literature and recreational activities are more comprehensible than your lives."

      "Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to be believable."

      "We have only poets, those who arrange the collective experience into pleasing form.  The notion of untrue experience is also alien, but will probably catch on as an artform as well."

      "How is it going?  Is the Helix still unbroken?"

      "How odd your phrasing is.  The Helix is broken still, but the individual members have returned to consciousness.  They explore individuality--a circle has become a lunatic fringe with no center focus.  Scarlett Virago had put the stones you gave us in a growing pattern to reintegrate their structure just before the E-space shift.  They are recording the confusion and debate as they grow into one crystal.  They are being inscribed with the debate, the poetry, the information from your databanks, yourself and your friend."

      "So your whole society has come apart?"

      "Yes, but we are not dead.  There is a strong faction to revive your officer, to give him his life as it was recorded."

      "But his brain..."

      "We think we can manipulate the tissues--they are just hydrocarbon crystals, different molecules than silicoid, but still molecules.  But others think his present state not punishment enough.  Having once experienced near death, they want revenge."

      "So you think..."

      "I think it is time to share the full death of the egg."

      "Can you repair it?"

      Nyarly brought the egg, still in its stasis field generator, a  localized piece of E-space, to Ultra Marine.  He shut off the field to let the small formless mass lie in its gore on her sparkling face. 

      "Touch my side and you will share this exchange."

      He sat on the floor and rested his digits against the blue stone, now warm and vibrating delicately.  He cleared his mind and let the images come in.  He trusted Ultra not to overload his senses, and he hoped that the lunatic fringe could not override her.

      The vibrations began to travel through his limbs to his brain, like insect buzzing at first, but slowly separating into distinct patterns and finally individual voices.  Some called for instant annihilation of the water creatures, others protested the death of the society, and still others were too deep in their own separation experiences to care.

      Ultra Marine projected the imagery of the broken form throughout the network, saying, "This is what death is.  Unlike ourselves, each of the water creatures faces death."

      "But yet there is life!" Scarlett Virago's deep, gravelly voice described the bacterial action that continued once the stasis field was lifted.  Nyarly wondered if her voice was his imagination or if they heard themselves as he did.

      "Yes, they die, but Life goes on," Ultra said.  "And we can make that decision." 

      The debate hushed as the imagery and its implications settled into the consciousness of the Helix.  Nyarly could feel the energy flows through his own brain, could feel thoughts spinning through patterns as each crystal considered different facets and options. 

     A consensus began to form calling for the restructuring of the egg.  Energy began focusing on Ultra Marine, energy to force broken molecules together, to nudge the  living bacteria to create rather than destroy.  Slowly the embryo began to reshape itself and its crystalline egg solidified.  The process, infinitesimally slow, continued while Nyarly slept.  Only when he fell away from the sapphire onto the floor, did she remember that he could not feed on electromagnetic energy. 

      He awoke, hungry and disoriented.  He fed himself and weakly attended to Gang, who hung on to life as if by a spider's web.  He could see that the egg had reformed, and gingerly  made contact with Ultra to learn what they could do.

      The strident voices were subdued.  The egg had been reformed, it was structurally perfect, yet it did not live.

For the first time as a species, the Crystal Helix understood what death was. 

They grasped fear, loss, horror, pain and silence in a way that was completely unknown to them.  They learned of grief.  And they learned of time, which to them had never come to an end.  They mourned.  And they decided.  They would not allow Gang to die if he could be saved.

      They poured energy into Nyarly to help him bring Gang's body close to Ultra Marine.  He set up IV's to drip nourishment into them both, and he made contact again with Ultra and the Helix to share in the regeneration. 

Unlike the egg, Gang's body was intact though withering from the deep coma.  Using Nyarly's brain as a pattern and the patterns recorded by Ultra Marine when she was attacked, Gang's neurons were reconnected.  Nyarly shared Gang's memories, his feelings, much of his lifetime, until Nyarly too began to lose consciousness.  Nyarly laid his head against the blue stone to maintain contact and faded into darkness.

                                  . . .

      Someone was shaking Nyarly, while his body ached from stiffness and his stomach growled.  There were kinks in every one of his 58 vertebrae, but no feeling in any extremity.  Someone kept calling him, urging him to get up.  The voice was familiar, but not one he could place.

      "Commander, are you all right?  Wake up."

      Someone laid him out on the floor and massaged him from numbness to needle-stinging life.  His stomach complained again, more of a roar than a growl.  He found his voice before he could get his eyes to open.

      "Can a brother get some chow around here?"

      Several pairs of hands lifted him to a chair and propped his head up.  A cup of warm flower tea, like his mother had made for him as a child, appeared at his mouth and he drank.  It was sweet, and good, but it made him truly hungry.  His eyes opened and focused on the cup, held by a female crewmember.  He took the cup from her, drained it, and handed it back. 

      "Thanks.  Now bring me about 5000 calories of whatever you have to eat." 

He looked around to find Gang still lying on the pallet he had made by the large sapphire.  

      Gang smiled weakly."I'm back," he said.  "I'm sorry."

      While they fed him, the team leader explained that the Helix had sent a message to the Drakken commander who relayed it to the Nexus.  The Task Force had been recalled to rescue them.

      "We thought you were gone," the leader said.  "We didn't expect to see you again."

      "You never know what to expect in this business."    He reached out to contact Ultra Marine, but she was across the room.  Her attendants had been arranged around her in the double helix design, but she was darkly opaque again.

      A hologram of a Brethren with strange crystalline markings approached Nyarly.  "Sir," it said, "Ultra Marine is recovering, much as you are, but I am here to serve as her replacement and as your link to the Helix.  My name is Blood Stone."

      Nyarly spoke to the team leader, "Talk  to the liaison here about setting up a Trade Center.  We'll be doing a lot of business here when we all recover."

                                  ----The End----

<a href="http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977126081">Crystal Helix Chapter I</a> 

<a href="http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977128280">Crystal Helix Chapter II</a>

<a href="http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977132064">Crystal Helix Chapter III</a>