Alpha Rising (26 page)

“
She’s from Jenesis,
right?” Clay asked.

“
Yes.”

“
She’ll find her way.
Jenesis people have more brain power than other people.”

Bach made another trip to the closest giant
stalk and inspected the new pods again. “I can’t believe this.”

Clay tossed piles of produce onto the cart.
“You might as well come along, Bach. She’ll find the Commons before
she finds you.”

Bach filled his cheeks with air and blasted
it out with a fluttering sound. “This is awful.”

“
We have to hurry now,”
Calla said. “You come with us. She’ll be all right.”

“
We can’t be separated for
long,” he stated.

As the withered pair began to pull the cart,
Bach suddenly registered the cart’s mass relative to theirs—twenty
times their size. “Here, let me take it.” He stepped alongside
Clay, and helped him and Calla aboard.

While pulling the cart along the flagstone
trail, Bach’s worries over Star’s whereabouts multiplied, and he
huffed out breath after breath of frustration.

Calla broke his train of thought by calling
ahead to him. “We’re not as old as we look, Bach. It happened when
the Rooks experimented with rapid growth.”

Saddened and angered by what he heard, Bach
barely found words to reply. “I’m distressed by what they’ve
done.”

With the marketplace in sight, Clay shook
his head as if irritated. “Don’t be surprised when you get to the
Commons. Exactly ten seasons ago it housed our bounty, but famines
and lack of use have left it too long without care. Only through
co-op exchanges have we stayed alive. Now, at last, we have a
successful harvest. I hope people stay peaceful.”

*****

In the Commons, hundreds of small,
prematurely old people deposited crops into holding bins for the
massive food exchange. Bach helped Calla and Clay unload, then set
out in a rush to see if Star might have made it there on her own as
Clay had said.

“
Bach! Over here,” came the
sound of Star’s voice. She stood deep in the crowd, arms
crisscrossing over her head.

Bach elbowed his way through wagons and
piles of produce and arrived breathless at her side. “You’re here!
I almost panicked. I didn’t know if you’d find your way.”

She smiled with wide eyes. “Me? I was
worried about you. After I noticed that the pods grew right back I
was afraid you’d be lost for hours.”

“
You noticed that? Why
didn’t you yell at me?”

“
I tried, but the crops
soundproofed my voice.”

“
How did you find your way
here before I did?”

She shrugged as if it had been no big deal.
“Followed a yellow flagstone road. They’re throughout the fields in
a grid pattern—every ten rows.”

Bach huffed. “Then how’d you know you were
going in the right direction?”

“
The stones are triangles.
They point to the Commons like arrows. How’d you get
here?”

He looked away to hide his fib. “Just
figured it out.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Well, this time
I mean it. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

“
Okay, this time I’ll
agree. And, I can’t lie, I ran into a couple and they gave me a
lift.”

“
Ohhh,” she said, “the easy
way.”

He looked into her amazing blue eyes. “It
wasn’t easy. My blood was pumpin’ with concern.”

Nearby, a withered-looking boy unloaded the
last few purple fruits from his cart. “Did you bring something for
the exchange?” he asked.

Bach shook his head. “Not this time, but
we’re not here to take anything from you either.”

A small female shuffled vegetables from her
cart to a bin, but spoke with her head down. “When the Rooks come,
they take things so they can help us.”

“
They’re untruthful.” Bach
stifled frustration. “They’ve ruined your planet and shortened your
life span with scientific tinkering.”

She looked up. “Can you change it back?”

He grimaced. “This has evolved over years,
decades, generations. There may be a way to change it back, but it
won’t happen soon.”

Her tiny voice held sorrow. “I wish it could
happen now.”

The Alphamates continued to search the
Commons for those with a symbol. Star made eye contact with a male
nearby who smiled and selected two huge red fruits from his bin,
then broke into a run to greet her. He jumped up and dropped the
fruits into her hands as if depositing basketballs into a hoop,
then ran off. She shouted, “Thank you,” and he acknowledged it with
a wave of his hand over his head.

Star pressed the smooth-skinned fruits to
her nose and inhaled their sweet aroma with delight. She handed one
to Bach.

He juggled the grapefruit-sized sphere hand
to hand. “Enough for a whole meal.” He took a bite, and his
wide-open chomp left but a peck in the ruby-red fruit. Rolling the
bitten piece around in his mouth like a child eating a too-big
piece of candy, he hummed with pleasure. “Mmmm, tastes like an
apple and peach together.”

After he’d eaten about a third of the crisp,
red fruit, to his surprise Bach noticed two small seeds in the
center—one circular, the other like a cross. Curious, he broke the
fruit open all the way. The four-sectioned core looked like the
symbol of hope. He showed it to Star. “Could this be it?”

“
Let’s look at mine.” She
struck hers against a rock and broke it open. The fruit’s circular
core had two crossed lines and the seeds looked like
x
’s and
o
’s.

“
C’mon, let’s go find the
little guy who gave them to you.”

She hesitated. “I don’t think it’s a symbol,
because everyone with these fruits would have it. How would we know
the two people we’re to take with us?”

He looked again. “We have to try. If this
isn’t it, maybe the little guy will lead us to it. I haven’t seen
anything else, and time’s passing fast.”

“
Do you remember what he
looked like? They look a lot alike, and he just seemed to disappear
back into the crowd.”

“
I don’t remember,” Bach
said. “Blue pants, I think.”

Their height gave them a good view, but in
the sea of people and carts in the Commons they didn’t find the man
in blue pants. Bach scanned the crowd and beyond and noticed a
couple on a side pathway struggling with a damaged cart. The man
braced his fragile body against a broken wheel over and over again,
trying to keep it on the spindle, while a small lady attempted to
pull the wagon. Each time the wagon moved forward a foot, the
little guy’s legs splayed in a desperate stance against the
overpowering load. He fell, got up, held the wheel, then fell
again.

Bach shouted ahead, “Hold on, we’re coming.”
He covered thirty yards in large bounds and stabilized the swaying
cart while Star helped the farmer up from the ground. The little
lady scurried around retrieving fallen flowers and vegetables.

“
How long have you been
pulling this broken cart?” Star asked. “You must be
exhausted.”

“
I am very tired,” the
fair-haired lady replied. “We’ve loaded, reloaded, and pulled for
half the morning. We have a good harvest to share, a bounty from
our Creator’s hand.”

“
See the problem,” the man
said, waving his arm. “Our wheel has given out, and now we’re late
for the Commons.”

Star examined the broken wheel while the man
looked on. Four spokes remaining within the circle formed the
symbol. Star nudged Bach and softly said, “The lady spoke of the
Creator.”

Bach knelt to eye level with the man. “Come
with us. We’re fulfilling the Creator’s plan.”

The man and woman stood back and whispered
to each other, then she spoke, “My name is Violet, and my spouse is
Noble. Where are you going?”

“
To Dura aboard a
spacecraft,” Bach answered. “We have passengers aboard from other
planets.”

“
Others?” Violet looked
apprehensive. “I’ve never met anyone from the other planets except
Dura’s co-op crews, and Rooks.” She hesitated. “Will you tell the
others that Noble and I are not old? We just look old. Even the
youngest on Maon look old, it’s the same for everyone.” She stepped
beside her mate. “Our ancestors didn’t suffer this degeneration. It
came from the Specter’s experimentation.”

Bach bent down and held Violet’s hands, then
looked into her eyes and said, “You’ll fit in just fine with the
rest of the group, and you’ll have your own quarters on the ship.
Please trust us.”

“
Will we be safe from the
Specter?”

“
I believe so.”

“
Someone’s taking all the
children,” Violet said.

“
Yes, we’ve heard that from
the others on board. I promise to investigate as soon as we get to
Dura.”

Star filled two crates from the wagon with a
variety of fruits and vegetables to take along. She looked at Bach.
“Without animals there’s nothing else to bring, right?”

Noble interjected, “We’re supposed to bring
something else?”

Star nodded. “We’re collecting all the
animal species, but you have no animals.”

“
No animals—only
insects.”

Insects?
Bach thought about it. “Yes, let’s bring insects.
They’re beneficial. But how can we capture them?”

“
Violet keeps them.” Noble
climbed onto the cart and lifted a hinged flap covering a storage
bin. Inside were numerous wood and screen boxes filled with
insects, two as small as a matchbox. He set the containers at the
edge of the cart, talking as he worked. “Most of the insects died
during the famines, but we rescued those we could and nurtured
them, then released them to pollinate this year’s harvest. It
wasn’t easy to recapture them and they don’t live long, so Violet
keeps the younger breeding pairs in her loving care. If not for
her, we would never have had a successful crop.”

“
I learned from worship
what was necessary,” she said. “I take no credit
myself.”

Noble added, “She loves all living things,
makes sure every insect has a mate. Even names them.”

Star’s eyes widened. “The insects have
names?”

He handed her a box. “Grace and her mate,
Honor.”

A bulge-eyed praying mantis and its partner,
hands drawn in prayer, stared at Star.

Bach looked over her shoulder and smiled.
“Grace and Honor … love it.”

The four carried two crates of fresh produce
and a dozen small boxes with ladybugs, bees, caterpillars,
dragonflies, and a plethora of propitious insects to the ship.

#

With Violet and Noble
secured in their environmental chamber, Bach released the insects
in the hydroponic garden’s screen room and pondered the discovery
of the same insects as found on his home planet.
It’s the same Creator,
he
rationalized,
the one who made Earth and
all the things on it. The one who brought me here.

*****

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Bach enlarged a viewscreen image showing
Baalbek’s open plains, rocky mounts, and jungle forests, then
zeroed in on a well-worn area leading through the underbrush of a
lush green area near the landing site. Several interconnecting
trails led from nearby villages to a circular arena where he
detected activity.

Having read that the planet was aligned
under intersecting paths of all three daystars, with temperatures
reaching extremes, he and Star disembarked wearing soft,
transparent head coverings and thin, white E-suits over their
jumpsuits. They followed a footpath deep into the surrounding
jungle, and trekked through trees and shrubs for two miles when
they heard and felt a rhythmic drumbeat. A few yards more and they
were at the perimeter of the spacious arena that Bach had seen on
the terrain scan. Staying under cover of jungle brush, they watched
dozens of dark-skinned natives in the distance brandishing spears
and chanting in ritual around a blazing fire.

A contest or celebration was in progress,
and one area of the arena had been set aside for a special event.
Two natives facing opposite directions stood guard over a large,
man-shaped target constructed of rocks. A padded, red-fabric heart
on the rock-man’s chest served as a bullseye.

The Alphamates observed for a while, trying
to get a feel for the event. But they quickly realized that their
arrival had not gone unnoticed. Two boys in loincloths with
warpainted faces ran toward them from a nearby trail, shouting and
chattering with raised spears. The youths skidded to a stop five
yards away. The smaller of the two, with purple stars outlining his
eyes, held a bunch of white flowers in one hand and a spear in the
other. The bigger boy, his face painted to look like a lion,
clutched a handful of orange berries to his chest and pointed his
spear at the visitors.

Star noticed the white flowers in the
smallest boy’s hand. She smiled from behind her headcover and
waved.

Neither boy moved.

Bach bent down to their level. “Hi, kids. My
name’s Bach; this is Star.”

The boy with the lion-painted face stepped
forward and shoved a handful of the orange berries toward Bach’s
face. After Bach took them, the youth motioned with his spear for
him to share them with Star. Bach handed a portion of the berries
to his partner.

With a look of expectation, the boy focused
on the Alphamates’ faces as he brought his cupped hand to his mouth
and ate the last of the berries. He chewed for a few seconds then
opened his mouth and dangled his orange-colored tongue.