Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

“How can you talk about creating when you just helped me commit genocide?!”

“Because neither extreme is correct. My old tribe was right to worship balance, but wrong to think they could control it. Glemots would have destroyed the universe, or filled it to capacity before warring with one another on a scale beyond even my ability to calculate. Nothing would have remained, not even a picture.

“Leefs was right when he came to me and explained the threat we posed. Balance has been restored, and our planet will come back, as beautiful as ever. If I choose, I can sit here and watch it happen. For me it will not take much time at all.”

“It will never be the same.”

“You are correct. And it shouldn’t be.”

They both fell silent for a moment. Molly digested this.

Then Campton continued, “When I was a pup, our species lived huddled near the equator. Ice covered most of Glemot as our sun went into its usual period of hibernation. Only a thin band of green ringed the planet. When the ice retreated, our desire for balance and stasis sent us into a fury. At the same time, the expanding zones of lushness created a rush to reproduce and gather resources. It was a bounty and we cursed it for being foreign.

“Glemot, of course, did not care. It had been doing this long before we were around. It will do it long after we are gone. Only our star will finish the cycle when it expands and consumes the four planets nearest it.”

They both sat in silence again, thinking.

“I wish you could live a long life, Molly. That you could come back here thousands of years from now. You might pick me up in your spaceship and take me down to the planet. The ash will be good for the soil. And all of Glemot’s water percolates up through the unbroken plate, feeding the entire surface from beneath. We could explore the new planet together, meeting creatures and eating fruits that do not yet exist anywhere in the universe. And that is the thrill of change. The diversity of beauty that occurs when we do not cling too hard to what we love. Maybe none of this will ever make sense to you. Perhaps your span of living is much too short. But I have come to know these things. My friend and I made a very tough decision based on this knowledge, one that hurts me more than you will ever know.”

Wiping tears from her eyes, Molly looked at him. Campton’s chest heaved as he pulled in a breath and let it out slowly.

“I will sit here and cry for longer than you will live,” he said. “I will question myself and balance cold calculation with the surety of my heart, and I will never know why one is stronger while the other is right.”

Molly stood up. Her brain was full and she’d heard enough. She turned back to the ship, her bare feet sticking to cold steel. She could hear Campton’s deep voice following her down the corridor. “I will never forget you, Molly Fyde,” he whispered, “For the rest of my years, I will remember and think of you…”

But the rest never reached her. Like Campton’s thoughts, they would live with him in orbit. Alone and forever.

24

Cole woke to the sound of the hyperdrive spinning up and almost rushed out of his room without getting dressed first. He emerged from his quarters hopping on one leg, tugging at his pants and cinching them off.

“Molly?” he hollered.

“Sshe iss in the Captain chair,” Walter said, popping his head out of the engine room. It nearly scared Cole to death.

“What in the world is she doing?”

“We’ve been topping off the hyperdrive coil, Navigator.” Walter spit the last word out with a sneer, obviously thinking he outranked Cole with plenty of room for several crew members between.

“What? How long have I been asleep?” Cole reached into his room for his only shirt and pulled it over his stiff back.

“Long time. I have sstored much while you do nothing.”

Cole shot him a look and hurried to the cockpit where he found Molly going through the pre-flight routine. He leaned over the control console so she would notice him before he spoke. He didn’t want to startle her. “Feeling better?” he asked.

She looked at him. “A little. Not much. And good morning.”

“Is it morning?”

“For you it is. Walter hasn’t slept a wink. I’ve no clue what keeps him going. Well, the loot, I suppose.” She finished booting the nav computer and swiveled in her seat to face him. “Sit down,” she said.

“I’d rather go talk to our hosts, figure out what in hyperspace is going on around here.”

“It might be better to hear it from me.” She gestured toward the nav chair again.

Cole sat and studied her closely. “What? You talked to them?”

Molly nodded. She told him what she’d learned from Campton, who he was, why he had fought to extinguish his own race. Cole listened, his own anger turning to confusion, then disgust. He controlled the urge to interrupt until Edison’s name came up.

“He’s Edison’s grandfather?”

“Yeah. And it gets weirder, turns out he’s descended from the Leefs as well. We can diagram it later if you like, but can we please work on getting out of here and talk about this between jumps? I can feel that place burning from here, like it’s on my skin. I’d jump into space if that’d make the feeling go away.” Cole saw her lips purse into the slimmest of smiles. “I’d even be willing to endure a few of your horrid jokes, see if that’d help.”

Cole relaxed. “My jokes are nebular,” he said.

Molly rolled her eyes at him. “Well… go tell them to Walter. The drive is warming up and showing eighty-five percent. Stand by the coupling and I’ll let you know when you can release it.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” He gave her a salute.

She made a rude gesture.

••••

The fusion feed snaked across the hallway in the rear of the ship, leading through the airlock and into a mechanical hatch. Walter fussed with some crates, trying to shove them into one of the cargo pods.

“How’d you make out, there, pal?”

Walter flinched and Cole felt some revenge for the scare earlier.

“Lotss of goodiess. The Navy can keep their reward!”

After another shove on the crate he turned back to Cole and said, “Forget you heard that. Very little ssleep for the Cargo Officser.”

Cole slapped him on the back and ducked into the mechanical room. He couldn’t believe most of this ship’s parts had been scattered in the dirt a few days ago. It looked even cleaner than before. Parsona was probably more reliable having passed though Glemot hands.

The Glemots.

He forgot about the fusion feed and rushed down the corridor to the observation glass. The planet was half- lit up by the planet’s sun, the terminator between night and day splitting the planet in two. But you couldn’t tell. Both sides were lit up. They were just slightly different shades of orange and red. However long he’d been asleep, it wasn’t longer than it took a planet to burn.

There was no sign of the two Glemots. Cole considered going off in search of them, Edison at least, but the branching hallways going off in all directions left him not knowing where to start. Peering up through the glass, he could see entire wings of the Orbital Station jutting out into space. There was a lot of potential for scavenging here, but the empty expansiveness of it all just left him feeling overwhelmed and lonely. He trusted that Walter had stocked up on enough valuables, stuff they could trade later for actual necessities.

Feeling far removed from the Parsona—and Molly—Cole left the planet behind and jogged back toward the ship. He could hear her yelling “One hundred percent!” just as he ducked through the inner airlock door.

“Gotcha!” he hollered back, trying not to sound out-of-breath.