The Sword of Retribution

Haldorn - Part 4

     For nearly a full minute, Thomas was speechless, unable to believe his luck. He opened his mouth to speak, but then realised that he couldn't actually think of a question. After all the agonising, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He racked his brain frantically, and while he was doing so his eye fell on the red sun again. “I couldn’t help but notice your fascination with the red sun, which we call Derro. If it’s not too private or personal a thing, I’d like to know what it means to you, why you were staring at it so intently. Please tell me if the question offends you, and I’ll withdraw it and never ask again.”

     “It is no great thing,” the slaver replied. “The red sun triggers an ancestral memory of our own sun, Cthillisol, which warms our ancient homeworld, Cthill, many thousands of light-years from here. Your red sun appears much smaller than Cthillisol, which is over ten times larger in our sky, but is almost exactly the same shade of red and reminds us of the time when we walked freely on the surface, basking in its rays. Unlike your race, who have no memories from your ancestors and are born with a completely blank, empty mind, we contain a great many ancestral memories, going all the way back to the very dawn of our race, and under the right conditions they rise to the surface, so that we relive a portion of one of our ancestor’s lives. It happens frequently, and is unimportant to our daily lives, of no interest except to historians and cthillologists, or so it was until we became stranded on this world where we are barred from the surface by the hellstar, what you call the yellow sun. Now these ancestral memories evoke what in your race would be called homesickness, if we allowed ourselves to experience such a pathetic emotion.”

     “Stranded?” asked Thomas softly. You mean you can’t ever go home?”

     “That is correct. The device we used to travel here was destroyed during a conflict with a race native to this world. We are waiting for others of our kind to come, to restore contact between us and the rest of our civilisation.”

     “Will you all go home then?” asked Thomas.

     “Some will,” replied the cthillian. “For most of us, though, this world is our home and we have no desire to leave. Even so, though, the sight of a red sun in the sky can still stir profound feelings.”

     “Have you explored many worlds?”

     “Many beyond number, and we have settled colonies on some of them, those that can support herds of food animals compatible with our biochemistry. We farm them and breed them, to increase the size of their livers and hearts. Also to lower their intelligence, making them more docile and compliant.”

     Thomas swallowed nervously. Herds of food animals? Was that how they saw mankind? Would they be breeding and feeding on us if the yellow sun didn’t keep them off the surface? He decided to change the subject. “What’s your homeworld like? Is it very beautiful?”

     “I doubt that you would think so, and beauty is not a concept that has much meaning to us, although we have come to understand it from contact with you. The surface would be too dark for your eyes in any case. Most of the sun’s light is blocked before reaching the surface by the sky plankton, which covers the whole of the day side, not just the habitable crescent. If you ascended into the sky, to the altitudes where the winds even out the temperatures between day and night, you would see that the sun hangs above the horizon, moving only in a small circle around a fixed point in the sky during the course of the year that lasts about ten Tharian weeks. The ground vegetation, which grows mostly in dense forests, is many shades of ashleen, a shade of infra-red beyond the range of your vision and which would appear almost black to you. The gravity is low enough that we can levitate continuously, without tiring after a time and being forced to return to the ground as we are here. That’s in the habitable crescent, of course. Nearer the centre of the day side it is too hot for my species to survive, although other forms of life thrive there. The night side is almost lifeless, although rivers and air currents carry enough organic matter to support a very limited biosphere.