Smoke and Mirrors

Sheltered in the shadows of the forest, we peered past the agro spears and blue fronds of stillbing to watch the magicians. They stood out in the badlands in front of a large object that made me think of the plated armor of the battlebeetles. They wore clothing from head to toe and face masks of some material, clear as air, but shiny. Sometimes, the Villagers found sharp pieces of that same air-that-is-hard substance in the dirt around the Council Ring. 

The tall one moved awkwardly over the rocky ground, as if he was a mere tad learning to walk. Before him, he held a metal stick which chittered like forest cricklets rubbing their wings to their shells during mating season.

‘What does he hold?’ Bucksaw signed to us. I looked to the Teach, who schooled the children and could even read which gave her deep knowing. She and the twins had come from the Village that morning to fetch my grandfather and me where we ran the gumworks in the forest. But she looked to Grandfather for guidance. My Grandfather owns great age which makes him wise, yet he too was frowning in unknowing.

To my surprise, Blossom whispered a thought, her voice barely riding on the air, as is proper when speaking in the forest. “P’raps it is a wand? In the childer’s tales, the wizards wave a stick about while saying words from old tongues.”

The Teach nodded, accepting the wisdom of this suggestion. We watched in silence for a span as the wizard pointed his wand. 

‘It doesn’t seem to do anything,’ Blossom’s twin, Bucksaw, signed.

Grandfather held out a hand and drew his other slowly across it. ‘Magic takes time.’

I turned my attention to the shorter magician. I thought she may be a female as she gave life to a small creature. She had come out of an opening in the gleaming battlebeetle dome, carrying a small box she touched with hand signals. Immediately, it unfolded and grew into a metal beast. I hissed in amazement. The creature skittered about on thin legs over the rocky ground, its arms waving as if tasting the bitter tang in the air. 

The First Ones had passed down stories of magicians who could make anything they wanted by talking to such creatures. They could ask for a new plate, and it would be made! They could ask for food, hot and tasty, and it would be given! I remember those stories well. Nothing could be more wonderous to an always hungry tad than food that appeared just by wishing. But we put our wishes away when we are childer no longer. This is the way of things. Wishing is not wise in a world as hard as Ithaca, where every moment of time need be spent for survival.

Instead, we must all work. Bucksaw’s crew keeps the pinborers and the dark drifts of spores from harming our pigs and goats. Blossom and her friends coax crops from the thin earth. The elders ceaselessly weave grasses for our clothing and carrybags. The young and strong break new ground, planting the earthworms and manure to make the soil ready for future crops. The very strongest mine for the valuable shards of ignarock we all wear about our necks for fire and protection.

My grandfather and I are the only ones who live in the forest, where we make the agro gum. That’s what I was doing when the Teach and the twins had come to our gumworks that morning. I was scraping down the agro spears, forcing the pungent goo down into the vat to boil down into the sticky gum which later I would twist into the braided gumsticks we all carry. I kept a sharp eye on the canopy where the air danced with spores filtering the sunlight slicing down through the trees. Lizzerees flitted through the dark mist, painting a swirling black pattern in the light with their many wings. It could be pretty to look at but would foul my gum and was deadly to breathe.

In fact, I heard the Villagers coughing as they approached and signaled to my grandfather who was syphoning water from its underground home. He nodded, flicking the sweat from his forehead. When the Villagers stumbled into the clearing, I could see that it was Bucksaw coughing. Grandfather hurriedly tapped his own gumstick to the ignarock pendant on his chest. When it struck the shiny pendant, it burst into a bright flame that sent out thick purple smoke to ease Buzzsaw’s breathing. The Teach had told us that, like enemies who meet and fight, agrogum and ignarock would meet and make fire. Agro was the only native plant on all of Ithaca that was a friend to the people, though strangely, an enemy to Ithacan lifeforms.

I offered water to the guests, as was good manners, and waited while they drank. Only then would we conduct the business that had brought the Villagers into the forest.

‘You are well?’ the Teach signed courteously.

Grandfather nodded, gesturing to include me in his answer. ‘Yourselves?’

The group nodded its wellness. But then the Teach broke the lengthy protocol of greetings and spoke her purpose aloud. “There has been a Starfall.”

A Starfall! For generations we had been told to watch for a sign falling from the sky, but since the time of the First Ones, the sky had been silent, withholding its offerings. A Starfall! This was news indeed.

‘We sighted it fall in the badlands,’ she signed.

The Village sits in a bowl of cleared land that was carved out of the forest by some apocalypse in the time of the First Ones. The badlands are on the far side of the forest. That the Starfall should happen there was a bad omen.

As one, we looked to Grandfather. He was the last of our kind to have known the First Ones when they lived. ‘You seek Council.’ He was long silent before gathering his thoughts. ‘They told us the Starfallen would bring gifts from the stars themselves. Great magic to make our lives better.’

We nodded our knowing of this. Those stories described vessels large enough for people to live inside that would fly through the stars as the lizzeree flew through the forest. They claimed that this is how the First Ones came to Ithaca, that once the Council Ring itself had flown between the stars! But those are childer stories, wishes one must put aside.

Now, as we stood at the edge of the badlands, those were stories no more. The two magicians had brought the promised magic to our home. But for good or ill?

The Teach seemed to have the same thought. ‘What did the First Ones tell you to do when there was a Starfall?’ she signed to Grandfather.

‘They said to welcome the new guests as travelers who would need food and shelter.’ His doubt about the wisdom of welcoming such powerful magicians into our homes was clear in the creases deep between his brows. Finally, Grandfather straightened and spoke aloud. “The First Ones said the Starfall would bring more magic, and it has. I will do as I was bid when I was a child.” He looked terrified but stepped out of the forest. I followed him, though I knew he would not want me to.

The magicians spotted us and began making calling sounds, muffled by their masks. The woman finally lifted hers and shouted, “Greetings! We finally made it! Why didn’t you respond to our transmissions?”

Grandfather and I exchanged glances. The woman’s bad manners were shocking. No offer of water was one thing, but shouting so near the forest was beyond my understanding.

She drew closer and stared directly into our faces. I wanted to stare back, to drink in the features of a face I had never seen before, a new human in my world, but it is discourtesy to do so. I studied her peculiar clothing instead, woven of some soft fine threads. 

“Who are you?” she asked. Her rudeness stole my breath.

Grandfather pinched his lips long before answering, “I was once named Jamesmith.”

I gasped. Never had grandfather said this First Name aloud. His generation was the last to have been given First Names. Since then, we had given ourselves real names.

“Smith?” the magician asked, chopping Grandfather’s First Name into a fragment. She squinted down into his face as though to learn secrets from its shape. “Smith? Are you related to Robert Smith?”

Grandfather stepped back, quickly blowing on his fingers to drive death away. It is ill luck to name the dead. “He was my First Father. As I was his grandson, this one,” he gripped my shoulder with pride, “is my granddaughter.”

The magician fell back and let out a piercing cry. She sounded like a lost childer. “God in heaven! What year is it?”

The Teach stepped softly from behind us. “Our year is 232.”

The woman turned to the man who had stood silent this whole time. He studied the stick in his hand, which I could now see looked a more like a small plank. “Given the orbital period of Ithaca, that’s 156 years earth standard.”

“How is that possible?” The woman shook her head as if a miskit had gotten into her ear.

When the other did not answer, she turned back to us. “Don’t you know who we are? We’re from the other ship!” She pointed to figures on her chest clothing.

The Teach sounded out the letters slowly. “O..dys..eus.”

“Yes! Your parents…grandparents were on the Penelope.”

The Teach cleared her throat. “That word is written on the Council Ring.”

“So it landed!” She was very loud, this magician, and it was making me nervous, but she didn’t seem to be able to stop making sounds. “We were not far behind.” Her hands were opening and closing as if to grasp a thing that wasn’t there.

‘Stop making noise,’ the Teach flagged with her hands, but then had to speak aloud because the magicians could not understand handspeech.

The woman ignored the Teach, a breach of protocol. “How could so much time have gone by? Generations! And you…you…this…this is this what became of the colony?” I could hear her feelings inside her words, they were the smells of turning the manure pit made into sound. “How is that possible?” It was almost a scream.

Grandfather signaled urgently that so much noise close to the forest was dangerous. Indeed, Bucksaw came running out of the woods, frantically signing an alert, Blossom right on his tail. 

Most animals on Ithaca are small, almost insect-like, and uninterested in humans. Yet, there is a larger animal, the only predator on Ithaca. It is drawn to sound. I could now hear its approach, a deep pulsing in the air of wings larger than the Council Ring. 

The magicians heard it moments later and the man ran for the dome. The woman spoke to the metal creature she had made, and it skittered after the man. Just as she was turning to follow, the man stumbled back out, this time with a larger stick he pointed in the direction of the sound of the Dundun coming over the forest. As if by command, it lifted into view, trailing black spores in its wake, rising into the sky to blot the sun. 

The stick made a tremendous noise and a great pain in my ears. Bucksaw snatched it from the man and swung it away in a hard arc. They shouted in anger before racing back to the dome, sealing the entrance behind them. I stared at the shiny dome in wonder. The Dundun are drawn to noise and shiny things. The foolish magicians had just baited themselves in a trap.

******

“How is this possible?” I stumbled through the air lock and thumbed on the external monitor to watch the little group of primitives outside. “What the hell is going on?” This was not the way it was supposed to be. The crew of The Penelope, should they survive the voyage, were supposed to be here to greet us. It should have been a celebration. 

“They attacked me!” Jaxson panted, shock stamped across his face. “That man took my gun like I was trying to hurt them!” He launched himself at the control panel to start calibrating, which is what Jaxson does best. The exobiologist geek whose greatest joy is playing with data.

The little people - I couldn’t get myself to think of them as the descendants of the talented scientists who had been aboard The Penelope – had moved away from the lander and were sketching a design on the ground, pacing off a shape like some ancient warlock ritual. Good God! Who could have anticipated this tiny welcoming committee of half-clad savages who barely spoke. Whose eyes were dark with mistrust and ignorance. Their brave and brilliant ancestors had set sail across interstellar space to build the first exoplanetary colony. It was the greatest leap of faith ever made by the human race.

And yet here were those descendants, ignorant, superstitious savages, barely able to communicate. “What could have happened? How could the colony have deteriorated into…into this in just a few generations?”

“You’re the sociologist,” Jaxson muttered unhelpfully.

My chest seemed to be caving in on itself. I felt tears forming for the first time in the century since our voyage began. Rubbing them away, I stared out at the sad remains of The Penelope’s crew sitting at the corners of the shape they’d drawn, a square, with the old man in the middle, while a monstrosity darkened the sky above us. It was huge, a long, slug-like creature, with rows of wings down its length all beating, whipping the air into a strange black froth. It screamed, a sound fluctuating through all the octaves at once, making everything vibrate. A water bottle jiggled off the counter and clattered to the floor with a ringing metallic ping. Instantly, the beast swung its head to face the lander. Great air bags under its front end worked like bellows as it shook its head, splattering saliva over the rocky ground where it steamed, pitting the surface.

I stifled a scream, realizing the noise was attracting it. Why had the little group not run away? Instead, they sat in their woven loin cloths, clutching their shiny amulets like prayer beads. It was pathetic. “Jaxson, how could so much time have gone by for this to happen? I don’t understand.”

He spoke without looking up from his console, demonstrating his extraordinary ability to block out the real world around him. “Short answer: We experienced a spacetime anomaly.”

“Not helpful.”

He sighed impatiently. “According to my review of the logs from our last cryosleep, there was a perfect trifecta: dust storm knocked out the sensors, gas giant, black hole. Best guess: we might have been briefly stuck in a superluminal infinite loop. That would account for the course correction Martin and Singh had to make.”

“And our time slowed by 156 years?” I squawked incredulously. “Jaxson, that’s theory. F.T.L. speed is not possible.”

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” he shot back.

The truth outside the lander, improbable though it may seem, was now thrashing its head and splatting saliva against the hull. “You need to notify the captain. Stat.”

He got on the com to Captain Gonzales on The Odysseus and began a staccato explanation of what was going on. I could barely hear him over the strange warbling scream of the beast. The hull above my head began crackling and sizzling, presumably from the saliva eating into the titanium.

I leaned over to hit the autopilot, which cycled up the engines so we could get the hell out of there. The beast immediately swung its grotesque head in our direction, but at that moment, the little group of primitives calmly pivoted their amulets to catch the sun, sending up daggers of light to flicker across its face. It launched itself towards them, darting about in the beams.

“What the hell are they doing? It’s like they are attracting it to them!”

The old man in the middle tapped his chest with a little stick which burst into flame and began gushing smoke in a dark purple column. The other four each had similar sticks in their free hands and did the same. Together, they swayed in a pattern, holding the sticks aloft so that the smoke coiled up the central pillar directly into the air bags of the agitated beast thrashing above them.

“Jesus! It’s like magic is their only defense! I half expect them to be chanting in Latin.”

Jaxson joined me at the monitor. We watched as the smoke enveloped the beast. Its wings beat the purple fume into a storm but then began to stutter before abruptly stopping. The huge body plunged down, slamming onto the ground in front of the lander. It screamed that ungodly warbling vibrato, the air bags puffing in rapid flutters before ceasing. The godawful noise cut out, leaving only the hissing on the hull.

“Looks like it worked,” Jaxson observed laconically into the quiet.

My heart was thundering; I realized I’d been holding my breath and let it out in a loud gust.

I waited a few more beats until the small group stood and approached the body. Tapping open the airlock, I stepped back out. An acrid stench billowed into my face. I gagged, but the group ignored me. They circled respectfully around the dead leviathan they had just defeated. 

How did you do that?” I called out. “It was just… just smoke and mirrors. Like magic.”

The old man studied me with a grave dignity. “Yes.” He stood taller. “Magic. It is our magic.”