Sonata in Orionis (Earth Song Book 2) Read online

  Earth Song – Sonata in Orionis

  Copyright © 2012 Mark Wandrey

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1467952079

  ISBN-13: 978-1467952071

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction and as such springs forth entirely from the mind of the author. Any resemblance between people living or dead is purely coincidental. The opinions and situation put forth here are also those of the author and do not reflect upon, or are necessarily shared by the publisher or any distributor of the book.

  DEDICATION

  For Robert A. Heinlein, the Grand Master of Science Fiction.

  And for my wife, always.

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  Earth Song – Sonata in Orionis

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This novel represents the culmination of many hours of dedicated, loving work by a team of editors. My heartfelt thanks to Tony Sullivan, Mary Chris Waller, and LN Burns, without who’s selfless dedication and sacrifices this would not have been possible.

  Also my thanks to those test readers who have previewed this novel, many years in the making. What began as a simple story has grown into an epic tale. Your input and advice made that possible!

  The author would also like to thank his friends in the scientific and technical community. You know who you are, and you will hear from me again!

  Cover art was provided by Digital Donna ([email protected])

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  Earth Song – Sonata in Orionis

  Prologue

  Bellatrix Archives

  Founders Section - Hard Copy

  Subject - Mindy Harper

  Number of Entries - 1

  I've never liked writing these sorts of things; it's not my style. Sure, I kept a journal, most of us 'Founders' did. Still, Billy kept after me to write a letter to the future. “The following generations deserve to know,” he used to say, like an ex-cop turned farmer would have a firm grasp on history. Well, that was before he died. I decided I owed it to him, at some point, to do as he said. Every good wife should follow her husband's advice, at least once in their lifetime. And since I'm not getting any younger, I guess it's about time.

  One hundred and forty-four of us came through the portal twenty years ago. Most made it through the first year and then came the kids. Good grief we had kids. Well, most of us did and by several men. We decided it was the only safe way to preserve the genetic integrity of our species. Naturally the men liked the idea. We looked and found a few other groups or tribes as we call ourselves now. Our best guess is fourteen portals, which meant two thousand sixteen tops. But in the intervening years, only six portals have been found. One of those is abandoned, no clue as to who, if anyone, came through.

  Most of us women are having as many kids as we can. I had five, four by Billy. We did the bare minimum through others to spread our genes, Billy once with a mutual friend's wife, me once with that same friend. We've been among those who had a harder time putting aside a monogamous relationship. Others didn't have as much trouble. Regardless, the average over these years has been seven kids per woman, by three men. Mayors are given this kind of statistics. The last census was four hundred-twelve, but that includes cross migration from our friends in New Jerusalem.

  I think we're going to make it here, on this new home. We are two hundred forty-five light years from the corpse of Earth. Even though twenty years lay between then and now I still remember the appearance of the portals from our unknown saviors, now known as the Avatars. There were even a couple sightings of the aliens themselves, if that is to be believed. I don't know, but the portals left behind after we were rescued are still here, silent and monolithic. Our few scientists, led by Leo Skinner, are sure the portals still work, but not for us. What are the Avatars waiting for? If they wait much longer, we're liable to be reduced to a subsistence existence. Maybe that's what they want.

  I was mayor for ten years before retiring. I imposed my own term limit, and strongly suggested my replacement do the same. Tam Worthington, the current mayor wasn't born on Bellatrix, but he'd been only fifteen when Earth died. He doesn't remember watching the planet being torn apart through the portal. I do. You never forget something like that. The meteor must have been more of a freak than we thought. We'd expected an extinction level event, but that nine mile wide rock cracked the mantle like a bullet through a melon. I saw the continental shelf splitting before the portal failed. Earth is probably nothing more than an asteroid field now. Billions of lives, gone in minutes. Who can even conceive of what those last moments were like as the planet was torn apart? A few poets and song writers have tried. I don’t like to think about it much.

  I spent a lot of nights in front of the telescope they gave me when Billy died. They even built a small observatory on my little island retreat. It was to have been our retirement villa, a place to grow old together. Instead I live by myself. And most of my children are gone, one after another. Yeah, we're averaging seven kids per couple, but three of them usually don't live. This is a harsh place, and we've almost run out of medical supplies. Frontier medicine and herbalism is taking over. They reuse needles and scalpels meant to be disposable.

  There wasn't a lot of extra time early on to observe the stars, my former profession, but I still managed to make a few hundred observations. Some nights I just stared at the distant spot of Earth's sun, Sol, wishing I could see what remained of our old home. Hard to believe that this light from Earth we're seeing now is from a star where Earth is still alive. America isn’t even a country yet. No one has yet flown an airplane, drove a car, or made a phone call.

  After retirement I took many more observations. All dutifully entered and cataloged, even the more curious anomalies that just don't make any sense. A constellation shifted a bit, a star, a degree off from where it should be. My observations can't be off, I'm the one that figured out this was Gamma Orionis. I've saved all the data and notes. Maybe some future astronomer will make sense of it. I hope there are future astronomers to try.

  It's not all bad news here. The crops have flourished, our livestock are doing better than expected, and the planet turned out to be more suitable for us than we’d hoped. Even the kloth are more controllable. My Billy died while building the walls to control the seasonal migration and direct them away from our most fertile farmlands. Prospectors managed to find a few iron deposits, our first millionaires someday. Bellatrix is larger than earth but with almost the same gravity. The core is probably copper, because we find a lot of that, or maybe just a small cold iron ball. The first railroad between Plateau and the Jewish settlement was finished this year. A steam engine huffs and puffs back and forth carrying goods and people. Small signs of progress, but even in the progress, there is failure. We were forced to use steam engines, no electric or diesel. Can't blame them for the latter though, there doesn't appear to be any petroleum buried on this world. And the engine is copper, not steel.

  Well, that's all I really have to say. I made some good decisions, and more than a few bad ones. I tried to be a good leader since they didn't give me a choice. None of us really have a choice. This is home now, forever. That humanity has a future at all is a miracle of sorts, and we're all grateful. As grateful as refugees can be, at least. I hoped to see our saviors and thank them before I leave, but that doesn't appear to be in the cards. History will judge me however it wants, I just hope it isn't in too bad of a light. After all, I'm only human.

  Maybe I'll go out and explore a little bit before I get too old to
camp on the ground. I'm only forty nine, and time waits for no woman.

  Historical Note by Dr. Eva Osgood, PhD, Quincentennial Founders Celebration Committee Chairman, Plateau.

  No further records of a personal nature were ever located for Founder Mindy Harper. In this letter she mentions both an astronomy record and a journal; neither has been located. It is possible they exist in some private collection. Since her death on March 22, 0022 AE, a considerable amount of research has been done on the Founders. Though she is the most famous of them and the one given the most credit for our tribe’s rescue from earth, she remains largely an enigma, even four hundred years later now that the Avatars have returned.

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  May 15, 514 AE

  Keepers Academy, Tranquility, Plateau Tribe

  Friday afternoon, the last day of school for the semester and it was glorious outside. Minu Alma glanced out the window to see the nearly cloudless sky glimmering. From the fourth floor of the Keepers Academy where she attended school since turning five, she tried to will the clock to hurry. It wasn't so much that she wanted to go have fun in the beautiful weather, there were just better things to do than sit through a lecture on history she'd heard a hundred times before.

  The dean, Edgar Portman, stepped up in front of the class and looked them over. A balding man in his sixties, he'd seen Minu in his office more than once. He caught her sparkling green eyes, his own eyes narrowing in annoyance, and she turned back to face him, casually flicking her long red hair. She thought for a second that he smiled at her, but then it was gone.

  “Another graduating class,” he said as his gray eyes took them in one after another. “In the thirty years I've run this school, I've seen hundreds of young people like you move through our halls, a tradition that dates back to the founding of Tranquility.

  “Not many in the early days saw the need for a school. As a people, we were more concerned with survival. Bellatrix wasn't the planet of our species’ birth, and to them it seemed a ferocious place to live, filled with dangers both visible and unperceived.

  “When the meteor destroyed Earth, and the Tog rescued us, the tribes were created from those who managed to adapt and survive. Twelve portals gave an escape to one hundred forty-four souls through each. Some never made it here, others perished within days or years. Of the one hundred forty-four who arrived here in Plateau, only one hundred thirty-two made it to the second year. But more were born every year and we grew, if not thrived.

  “Time worked its will on humanity; time and war. Only nine tribes made it through the first fifty years, what we now call the Colonial Era. Just long enough for the third generation to be born, grow up, and go to war. The Chaos Era followed, and in those years millions were born and millions died. Two hundred and fifty years slid by, and we lost much of that early history. It is mostly remembered as a time of fighting, death, and desperation. The descendants of the mighty nations of Earth were reduced to fighting with swords, and bows and arrows.

  “Finally, we climbed out of the Chaos Era over the bodies of our forefathers. No one knows how many died in those years, but two more tribes faded into history. With the final wars over, we began to get to our feet once more. Scholars and scientists, many trained in this very academy, moved out to plant the seeds of society. The Enlightenment Era was underway.

  “The hundred years of that era went by in a blur and saw the reintroduction of electricity, the abandonment of standing armies, rebirth of industry, and discovery of the Great Bore Mines, the only large scale sources of iron on Bellatrix, left by some long gone civilization. Medicine and literature returned, and humanity heaved a great collective sigh of relief. At last, we were coming back, we were humans again. Historians glancing at the records from Earth guessed we were roughly equal to that world in the 1920’s, about eighty years before the end. The first dirigibles flew. The Bellatrix Council was created. They were heady times.

  “The era came to an end as scientists tried the first hesitant attempts at an artificial satellite to orbit our world. Though we'd called this planet home for four centuries, no one knew what it looked like from space. That must have been the trigger to tell them we were ready because that very week the Tog returned. We'd almost forgotten them, there was so little about them in the aging computers of our saviors. They welcomed us into their family, and we discovered that our rescue came at a cost, a small cost really. They believed us ready to begin repaying that debt. From among us, the best, brightest, and strongest were Chosen by the Tog to represent humanity. The few differences between the tribes that were left paled under the birth of the Chosen Era, where we are today.”

  Portman paused to look them over. Minu glanced around and found another young girl daydreaming the way Minu had been. He cleared his throat, and her head jerked around. Dean Portman was not put off by this in the least and continued on. “Fifteen is too young to make your ways in the world, but long ago we decided in our Plateau Tribe that fifteen would be an adult, in most ways at least. So, finished with your primary education you might be, finished as adults you are not. Many of you will doubtlessly go on to a pre-university, others to specialized trade training, and maybe a few others will try to don those incredible black jumpsuits.”

  Minu unconsciously sat up straighter. He'd been looking right at her as he'd said that last and her pulse raced. “Are there any among you with the mettle to be Chosen? Of course everyone knows that this is a Year of the Choosing. You might also know that no other educational institution on this world has produced more future Chosen as this one. Hopefully, some of you will continue that tradition.” He skewered her with his piercing eyes. “I have confidence you will always endeavor to do us proud whatever you do as Alumni of the Keepers Academy.”

  They broke into polite applause. Whether Dean Portman had actually been finished or not was irrelevant because the applause put a close to the speech. An assistant came up with a box full of diplomas and the graduation was under way.

  Minu stood with a few of her friends as pictures were taken. Parents with clunky chemical emulsification cameras stood proudly side by side with those wielding expensive Concordia-made digital jobs. Caste or status was not observed today. For Minu's part, she always did her best not to notice such things; not always easy considering her own station.

  As if in reminder of her origins, a hush fell over the crowd for a moment then a commotion began to approach the knot of graduates. All forty of her classmates looked at the stir and then glanced at her. Some seemed amused, a few excited, and many more rolled their eyes. Minu counted herself with the latter as her father broke through the crowd.

  “First Among the Chosen!” Dean Portman said and came over to bow. Chriso Alma returned the bow and then shook the man's hand.

  “At ease, Dean,” Chriso laughed, his chiseled features breaking into a smile that could only be called uncomfortable. He seldom smiled and Minu wondered if he really knew how. “I still remember being bent over your desk and my bottom flailed more than once.”

  “I doubt it was more than once,” the Dean chuckled, looking obviously uncomfortable. You simply didn't talk about the First Among the Chosen being spanked. “Your daughter learns just as quickly as you did,” he said congenially, “I have high hopes she will pursue the sciences.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Chriso said, the smile increasing and adding some genuine twinkle about the eyes.

  Dream on, Minu thought, as she stepped toward her father.

  “Congratulations, daughter,” he said as she came close.

  “Thank you, dad.” He handed her a small, ornate wooden box in the style of the Peninsula Tribe. She opened it and her breath caught in her throat. Inside was a small golden necklace holding a single half carat sapphire. The necklace was a family heirloom he'd 'given' to her as a child but she hadn't been allowed to keep. It was far too valuable for that. Legend had it, the necklace belonged to none other than Mindy Harper, the most famous of the Founders an
d her direct ancestor. The sapphire had been mined from Bellatrix in the early Colonial Era, a very rare find.

  “I know you'll take good care of that,” he said simply. Minu stared at it for a second. The meaning was obvious; he considered her an adult now. Handing her this was more significant than anything else he could have given her, regardless of the cost.

  “You need not fear, father,” she said formally, closing the box and slipping it into her pocket.

  “I don't; it's in capable hands.”

  She smiled as he brushed his lips against her upturned forehead. He was as tall as she was short (Minu only coming up to mid-chest on him) with black hair and bright blue eyes, so unlike the red hair and green eyes she'd inherited from Mindy Harper. His broad shoulders and muscled arms spoke of his physical condition and the scar on his cheek of the dangers he lived with. She remembered when he'd come home with that scar and how he'd refused to talk about it, not even to her scared and concerned mother. Chosen died on that mission; everyone knew when a Chosen died.

  “Do you want a snack?” she asked and gestured to the nearby table laden with all manner of foods. He nodded and they worked through the crowd. They made way for Chriso and his daughter as if they were a marauding band of kloth pursuing a fat tuck.

  Several hours later, they were sitting on a bench in the academy's spacious central courtyard sipping punch among the rhododendrons as Chriso told the story of why he'd been beaten by Dean Portman.

  “-and there I was, with a fifth of the Dean's best mead in one hand, and a folder full of test answers in the other when the light came on.” Minu almost spit her mead out as she choked and laughed.