Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 12 (Conclusion)

It’s deep into the night when I’m dropped off at the observatory.  Faneuil is waiting for me.  I reach in my bag and pull a clay statue of Modoc from it.  Faneuil observes it for a moment with his tongue, flicking it in and out in rapid succession, judging the fertility goddess’s merits for himself.

It’s been years since I really thought about the decisions that have led me to this life, examining the past, questioning history and attempting to rewrite the record.  Has it all been a giant mistake?  I’ve been accusing the Omoxians, the Tikanni, everyone else of being motivated by ego, but I suppose it’s just as true of me.  I’ve called myself a descendant of Trey the Conqueror just as if it’s some kind of accomplishment.  If no one else knows does it even matter?  Who cares if Trey was also Myrmidon?  Who wonders if Rejon made any bit of difference in the grand scheme?  It’s ancient history.  My own history is forever checkered.  I’ve been running from it my whole life.

I’ve been unfair.  I’ve disrespected my parents, my family, and I wonder why.  What was the point?  What was I trying to prove?  I’ve always looked for reasons, for causality, for things to make sense, and I used to believe I was a success at this game, but now I’m not so sure, and I wonder why I ever bothered.  In my heart I know that I was right all along, and that it doesn’t matter if no one else will ever know.  The Omoxians will bury Shibal again, and I don’t know why and I suddenly don’t care.  Sometimes it just doesn’t matter.  No one asked and no one will ever care about the answer.  I’m the first of my kind to know the truth.  I probably won’t be the last.  What I’ve really accomplished was following the same impulse as everyone else, and I just never realized it.  I kept telling myself that I was different, somehow exotic, because it made me feel better.  It just doesn’t matter.

I’ve been trying to sleep for hours and it won’t come.  I’ve gotten up and walked around and tried reading, watching a few programs, even a movie, but nothing works.  It’s the clarity of revelation.  I wonder if this is the way all saints feel.  I had no idea.  Would we really think so highly of them if we knew just how horribly human they really were?

My parents used to talk about saints all the time.  There was a saint for every situation, and a prayer to match.  I don’t know if I ever believed, if I went off on my wild tangents in search of that answer, or whether I ever found it.  Maybe that’s what I was looking for on Omox, a mystery wrapped around an enigma, surrounded by a thoroughly alien culture.  We humans used to think that the stars would either bring about good change or bad annihilation.  Turns out it was a little of both, and it’s just so hard to reconcile our hopes, because there are always new ones to replace the old. We never even consider that.  We always think there will be an ending, but there never is.  It’s just one big cycle.

Heh.  Maybe that’s the point of Modoc, Shibal, even Bondquan.  Maybe she got pregnant.  Maybe she knows this time it’ll stick.  She’ll finally have that offspring she always wanted, something to pass on the misery of the universe to.  In a way, I couldn’t offer her anything better than that, and she knew it, and it just took me a while to realize it.  Well, it’s only taken an exhausting trip home and absolutely no sleep to chase it for the clarity to finally reach me.  It figures.

Tomorrow will be different.  Well, it will probably be the same.  I guess I know that now.  I’ll find something new to obsess about.  Maybe I’ll make it my new mission to finally decode the Omoxian myths.  There may be something about Shibal, or even Modoc, waiting to be discovered.  Maybe Lord Phan will pop up, maybe Rejon, or even Myrmidon.  It would only figure.

I should visit with family first, make amends.  They won’t understand what it means, but I will, and that will make the difference.  I’ll tell them all about my experiences on Omox, but things will be different.  They won’t know it like I did, and I won’t attempt to clarify.  That’s probably how these things start.  The truth becomes too personal, too painful, too wonderful.  There’s great worth in legend.  I’ll tell them that Shibal exists, and it always did, and it always will.  Shibal is the true heart of the universe.

Well, something like that.

Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 11

Bondquan officially left the job this evening, and I feel betrayed.  In a way it was a long time coming, completely inevitable, but I’m still in shock.  What’s more, I’ve since been visited by government officials I recognize, people she interacted with during the excavation process, some she seemed overly affectionate with, as far as Omoxians go.  I never asked her about it, but it was hard to overlook, especially since I spent so much time ogling her.  Now I feel that much worse about it.

It’s entirely possible that I misread my whole relationship with her.  The fact is, I had never had any real dealings with an Omoxian before.  I didn’t have any context from which to compare my experiences with Bondquan.  I just kept telling myself exactly what I wanted to hear, and now everything I’ve worked toward has been thrown away.

I’m collecting the clay statues of that damned Vitell fertility goddess, Modoc.  Yes, I’ve resorted to blaming Modoc.  Whoever prayed to Modoc for divine intervention, anyway, for anything other than sex and babies?  What was I thinking?  I kept talking myself into believing nonsense, exactly what everyone was telling me for months.  Everyone already knew the truth about Shibal, and no one cared to confirm the truth about Trey or any of the other Alliance of Five.  I’ve completely wasted my time.  I’ve humiliated myself.

They’re being pushy about it, and all I can do is steal glimpses at the search beams continuing their work in my absence.  At first I thought they were a cheat.  Someone in my line of work prefers to do it with his own hands, and I’m no exception.  It figures that the Omoxians have different ideas about that, too.  Who knows what Bondquan was really thinking all that time?  That’s what I’m really thinking as I watch the flashes of light erupt from the earth, reminding me that the beam is still functioning.  There are reflections, curious ones that shouldn’t happen unless there are obstructions, and a part of me can’t help but hope for vindication, that the ruins of ancient Shibal do exist, that all this hasn’t been a waste and that my reputation can be salvaged.  Someone soon clicks the beam off, and my spirits are again crushed.  I can feel Bondquan somewhere in the distance, another pair of eyes mocking me.

That’s what I always do, and that’s why my life is a study of failure.  I know I’m right but I can never prove it.  Definition of insanity, I know, but I swear it’s different in my case.  If I’d simply tried harder, been less of a coward, she would have known exactly how I felt, and maybe everything would be different.  I always believe one key variable’s difference and everything would turn out in my favor.  Sometimes I believe I fail because I sabotage myself.  Sometimes I blame every one and every thing else.  Sometimes it’s a combination of both.

I know I’ll never see Bondquan again, but I’ll never stop thinking about her.  The planet’s receding, and all I see is the outline of the Shibal I was looking for, and her.  They’re intermingled.  I always mix my passions together.  It’s supposed to make everything easier, but I only ever end up with interminable complications.  Why do I never learn?

I keep believing that the breakthrough is just over the next horizon, that I shouldn’t feel frustrated because when it finally happens I’ll finally be happy.  There’s a part of me that understands that I’ve been miserable all my life, and that this probably won’t change even with success.  It’s simply what I’m used to, what I’m comfortable with, whether I admit it or not.

The space is growing between me and Omox, and I can no longer see Shibal at all.  Its foundations are lost.  My wrist device beeps and I receive the news that the search beam completed its job to typical Omoxian efficiency.  Ruins were indeed found, but I will probably never hear about it again until it makes the news cycle.  Bondquan sent the transmission.  She says nothing personal in it.  I can choose to interpret both of these facts any way I choose.  It’s the same as it’s always been.

Soon I’ll be reunited with Faneuil.  I’m told that it’s odd to have a snake for a pet, but it’s increasingly common, or at least more common than it used to be.  I don’t care what anyone thinks.

Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 10

I don’t know how I’ve gone on this long without mentioning it, but I have a peculiar pet.  His name is Faneuil and he is a snake.  He is a reminder to me of my favorite sister’s snake.  She served in the Space Corps, as has most of my family, in one form or another.

One thing I know about Bondquan is that she never served in the Corps, just like me.  It’s not so surprising, given that very few Omoxians have, and this is very likely to never change.  Most Omoxians never leave the home world, though, although if they want to address the planet’s increasing instability they will have to change that policy.  Unlike Ureic, the decision to place the capital of the budding Alliance at Shibal was very much a selfish one.

I mention Faneuil now because I’ve been thinking about him, how he can sometimes prove useful in my work, find the crevices I might otherwise overlook.  Even I’m starting to be concerned at this point.  Bondquan has been telling me for the last few days that she’s run out of permits and the extensions are going to expire soon, too.  I will have to leave, and I don’t think she’ll follow.  If Faneuil were here, I’m certain that he would slither into the discovery that has eluded me.  I never expected that Omoxians would cover their own history so thoroughly, but I’ve been studying past archaeological efforts and the story is always the same.  That’s just what they do, which means their impatience has less to do with my efforts and everything with the fact that I’m human.  Bondquan has stopped socializing with me, and I really want to believe that it’s from external pressure, but then I’ve never been able to convince myself that what I was perceiving was real, that I wasn’t only fooling myself.  I think she just got caught up in the same frenzy that I experienced when I found the clay statues of Modoc.  Maybe part of her thought that the fertility goddess could help her, that I was somehow serving as a conduit to a future where pregnancy and childbirth were no longer barred.

I feel a little of what historians must have thought about Shibal all along, chasing a ghost of something that may never have existed.  It wouldn’t be the first time Omoxians blatantly lied about something.  Who’s to say how much of the foundation story is true?  Who’s to say there was ever even a Trey the Conqueror at all?  Doesn’t it seem outlandish for such a xenophobic race to even consider inspiring something it so clearly despises now?  Perhaps it was a lie to further embarrass the Tikanni, who will never offer a defense, a counterargument.  If you listen to the Vitell, Alliance history begins at Clustus, with Ureic.  Perhaps after all, that is the truth.

There have always been eyes watching me during my time here.  Someone has been curious, perhaps a number of them.  It’s not simply that I’m an anomaly.  Omoxians are good at looking at the world around them with filters.  There are those who wonder the same things I do.  They want to know if Shibal exists.

That’s why I started asking if there were any creatures like snakes on the planet.  If I couldn’t have Faneuil I would accept the next best thing.  I had to repeat my request several times.  I wasn’t sure if Bondquan was just being difficult or that she truly didn’t understand me.  She explained that there are no animals on Omox.  They all died away long ago.  It must be strange to be a solitary species.  I then asked if there might be some alternative, perhaps a technology that might provide a similar function.  It had never even occurred to me to make such an inquiry before.  Usually when one excavates something, it’s in a remote location, yet there’s no such thing on Omox.

They had a search beam, and that’s what I’ve been using today, and there are new signs of promise, but progress is still slow, maddening, and Bondquan is no longer the woman I knew.  I wish I knew what changed.  I’m lonely for the first time.  It’s unusual for me, but then I normally have Faneuil with me, and in the absence of affection, real or imagined from Bondquan, I  find myself increasingly incapable of overlooking my pet, whom I hate leaving behind on trips.  One thing my family has always been good about, and something I have helped maintain, is a fondness for pets.

When I finally leave Omox I think I’ll ask my sister how her snake’s doing.  I haven’t seen either of them in too long.  The truth is I don’t know if my sister is even in the Corps anymore.  Seems odd.

Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 9

Part of what motivates me is that the whole universe is afraid that Omox won’t be around much longer.  The only people who don’t seem to believe this are the Omoxians themselves.  Always victims of their pride, and they won’t even admit that much.

What’s the point, then, of proving the existence of a city on a planet that may not even exist in a few centuries?  Believe me, I had to answer that question from more than a few colleagues before I left.  It’s the key to everything, I want to shout!  The key to Omoxian history, Alliance history, galactic history, to the mystery of the founders, to everything!

Part of the reason Omoxians are ambivalent about the whole affair, other than the fact that they’re Omoxians, is that like the Tikanni they’re still upset that another species stole their thunder, that Ureic was the first acknowledged leader of the Galactic Alliance.  In the early years, when Trey the Conqueror was still alive, it was simply the four species learning to cooperate, figuring out what it meant to try and be equals in a cosmic community.  It wasn’t easy.  The Tikanni had their egos, the Omoxians definitely had their egos, and even the Vitell and Vanadi had a certain amount of ego involved.  After all, they were the ones who had coexisted for centuries.  If any of the four knew what it took to make the fledgling Alliance succeed, it would have been the Vitell and Vanadi, and it was no wonder that a Vitell would assume the position, because the Vanadi were the ones who caused the first major instability, not some outside presence, not even the sects of Hesslans at the doorstep of the Alliance, or any other hostile race, and there are always plenty of those.  It ended up seeming like a pretty good idea, logical to anyone who approached it dispassionately, for a Vitell to receive the honor, and the only one anyone could agree on was the one who had been a member of the Alliance of Five.  It just made sense.  Ureic was by that time, just after the Battle of Shibal, an old man by Vitell standards.  Vitell have considerably shorter lifespans than Omoxians or Tikanni.  Perhaps it was a strategic move as well.  He was the last of the founders standing with any kind of reputation worth placing in such an exulted office, and soon enough he would be dead.

I never really understood why anyone would think that would be a good idea, to have a leader who wouldn’t be leader long in a position where a little stability would be a good thing.  Yet somehow Ureic was exactly the answer everyone needed, and served as enough of a stabilizing block to make the budding Galactic Alliance stick.  Moreso than any of my research into Vitell fertility goddesses, I guess that’s what made me start to respect that race.  He didn’t hesitate a moment in establishing the Great Hall in the Vitell city of Clustus.  If it had been anyone else, certainly in the aftermath of Shibal, there would have been too much doubt in such a decision.  Clustus would have been seen immediately as a target, especially being that much closer to Vanagar.  Ureic clearly still had the necessary faith and resolve.  The Vitell were never ones to be overly dramatic about anything, and I doubt they ever will.

I caught Bondquan staring at one of the Modoc totems, and clearly embarrassed she told me that she had been having trouble conceiving.  There were always complications.  Even when successful she could never carry to term.  Not knowing too much about Omoxian customs I assumed she had to be in some form of committed relationship, and that bothered me, put me in a funk for a few days, and I was distant to her, this after she told me such intimate details about her life.  I feel ashamed about it now.  Anyway, as it turns out she wasn’t married in any sense, actually laughed when I finally brought it up.  That’s not the way it is on Omox.  Probably too primitive.  And yet that was the first time she kissed me.  When I found the nerve to ask her about that, and terrified that she would say something like exploring her primitive side, Bondquan said that I was awakening emotions within her that she had never known existed.  It wasn’t her becoming primitive at all, but learning something about herself that had always existed and had simply never had a chance to flourish before.  The question was, did any of that mean what I thought it did?  In answer, she kissed me again.

Needless to say, my work has been affected recently.  I’m finding it difficult to concentrate.  Is Bondquan a distraction?  Only in a good way.  To her own amusement I’m suddenly learning Omoxian a whole lot better, and of course it’s so she doesn’t find a reason to consider me an idiot, at least not in any way she’ll recognize.

Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 8

In a lot of ways, the Alliance of Five could never have endured forever.  In order for the Galactic Alliance itself to have come about, the end of the beginning had to happen.  Now, whether or not that means Hayed was the assassin of Trey or merely played a part in it, I don’t know that I’m qualified to say.  I’ve been stuck on Omox for too long to believe in simple answers.  I’ve still yet to find anything besides the clay statues of Modoc.   I spend more time trying to help Bondquan achieve something even more impossible, teach me to speak Omoxian.

The truth is, Trey died at the Battle of Shibal, and what killed him was a spaceship.  I mean that he was literally crushed by a spaceship.  That may sound like complete overkill, or something that was obviously invented well after the fact, the only means capable of murdering a legend, but it’s too absurd not to take at face value.  A spaceship crash-landed on top of Trey the Conqueror.

Unlike the Alliance of Five tales themselves, which recount the early adventures of Trey and the four other founding members of the Galactic Alliance, there are more sources available for the Battle of Shibal.  Though Shibal itself has passed into legend and has been interpreted in many ways, the battle itself is known to have occurred, because each of the four races involved have versions of it on record in some way.  The Tikanni share little with the outside world these days, but they still speak of it, as if to justify leaving the Alliance behind.  Lord Phan is not a part of the battle, but his surrogate, the Hesslan called Kaz Felrek, is, although not as a combatant.  For a mercenary, Felrek rarely seems to act in any of the stories about him.  The Vitell use the battle as a platform for Ureic’s ascension to power within the Alliance, naturally enough.  The Vanadi use it as further evidence against the Cynocs, discrediting their justifications for a rebellion that has gone on for as long as anyone can remember.  They stop short of calling Hayed a member of the faction, but there seems to be little other way to explain his guilt in Trey’s death.  It’s the Omoxians who claim that.  Their relations with the Vanadi, as with everyone else, have never been smooth, and it has the added benefit of trivializing yet another member of the Alliance of Five.  There’s a reason why the Andiron Ewer, since lost to history along with everything else from that time, is called the Chest of Trey and not the Alliance Chest or something similar.  It’s the most lasting element of the Omoxian whitewash job.

The Vanadi in fact still champion the name of Hayed.  Their reputation suffered the most from the Battle of Shibal, because it was essentially an internal conflict that ended up affecting all their friends, and shattered the fabled city of the Omoxians, which was said to be the last destination of the Five, where the Chest of Trey was placed, and thus not only was Trey himself lost but the very symbol of the Alliance.  Since no contradictory fate for the Chest has ever been produced, the Omoxians are glad to support the assertion, though few others do.  The Chest is simply described as lost, subject of the universe’s greatest treasure hunt and quite possibly the real motivation for the Danab’s rampage through space.  It’s also said to be, if anyone’s, the legacy of Lord Phan, and what he has spent his long life seeking ever since.  Personally, I would find that a little sad.  There must be other quests worth that devotion.  Well, so little is known one way or another.

I simply don’t believe that Hayed had anything to do with that rogue ship.  It’s preposterous to even suggest that, let alone believe it.  It would be far more likely that it was Kaz Felrek.

All I can do is continue my work, no matter how thankless and luckless it seems to be at the moment.  Is Bondquan growing bored?  Is that why she’s spent so much time apparently doting on me, hoping that I’ll give up this mad quest of my own?  This is work that will take time.  I’m sure if anyone can appreciate that it would be an Omoxian.  Is Shibal real?  Is it even real to the Omoxians?  I spent years studying it before I ever proposed the excavation.  The consensus is that it is.  There was simply never a good enough opportunity to prove it.  Omoxians don’t respect humans.  That’s the only reason why I’m here.  I don’t think Bondquan is laughing at me behind my back, but she’s not going out of her way to be helpful, either.

Maybe I’m just overthinking it.  I don’t want to believe what’s happening between us is real because it’s surreal, just as unlikely as Shibal sending an emissary from the past with an announcement all of Omox would hear, saying that I’m right, that I’m not a fool.  It would be nice, though.

Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 7

If it’s hard enough to know the true facts in the existence of two members within the Alliance of Five itself, imagine trying to disentangle the identity of Myrmidon, the figure who represents the initial opposition to the birth of the Galactic Alliance.

It’s a little like what I find myself doing now.  For weeks now I’ve been attempting to prove that Shibal isn’t just a myth.  For humans, that’s all we have.  For Omoxians, it’s taken as fact, the traditional capital of their home planet, yet it’s been nothing but a name for as long as the Alliance has been around.  For humans that’s a little like ancient Troy, which was the subject of Homer’s Iliad, until Schliemann uncovered layer upon layer of ruins that prove it was real.  I won’t lie.  That’s exactly what I’m trying to do now.  I want the name Henri Latour to resonate the same way Heinrich Schliemann does, even if it’s just humans who will remember it.  I don’t know that I have any confidence that any of our cosmic friends will care too much.  I don’t know if humans will endure, continue to amuse the rest of the universe.  It’s a proven fact that even in the Space Corps we’re hard to take seriously.  Plenty of us have tried.  Maybe I never considered a career in the Corps because it just seems so futile, so pointless.  Or maybe it’s because my idea of discipline lies in a different direction, crawling in the dirt on an alien world far from home.  I’ve never been too comfortable or at home elsewhere, much less on Earth.  As I’ve said, I’m an outsider by trade.  I still believe, even if I can’t convince myself, that I’m just like anyone else.  The closest I’ve come to any real vindication is Bondquan, and I can’t be sure what she thinks of me.  I could just be a passing curiosity.  The moment I leave Omox she’ll forget me forever.  They live on average a hundred years, some of them quite a bit longer.  They see a lot.  The Tikanni live longer, but if you ask an Omoxian it’s because they’re comparatively primitive, don’t know when to call it quits.  Lord Phan, naturally, is another matter entirely.  If you catch an Omoxian talk about him at all, he’s very much a matter of fiction.

I never did learn who they replaced him with in the Alliance of Five stories.  Probably just another Omoxian, much the way they made Rejon fairly anonymous, for other reasons entirely.  Bondquan isn’t interested in such things, at least not quite to the level I am, or maybe she’s just shy.  I would never have thought of an Omoxian as shy until her.  I try to think of other things, such as what the Alliance stories really look like on other worlds.  To humans they’re just stories.  If we had it our way the Alliance story wouldn’t begin until the Danab War, and even then we wouldn’t have too much to say about it.  I wonder what the Vitell think of it, if Ureic is elevated above Trey, if Trey is even known as the Conqueror among them.  I figure I’ll have to look that up.  The Vanadi probably prefer to think of other stories.  Theirs was the first rebellion, and they’ve never managed to shake the Cynocs.  Who knows how that story will end?  It does a disservice to Hayed, is all I can figure, and that’s someone who could use all the help he can get.  It’s not just anyone who’s accused of being Trey’s assassin, let alone from within the Alliance itself.

Myrmidon, then, should be simple.  He’s the villain of the piece.  What could possibly complicate that?  Those who claim that he and Trey were in fact one and the same would have you believe Trey was that much less deserving of the role history has assigned him than simply shattering a legend would make possible.  Anyone from two thousand years ago could not possibly be known with perfect accuracy, the way you know someone personally, the way I’m starting to know Bondquan.  Humans love their records, but no record can capture every nuance.  Sometimes you’ll hear stories of the hero also acting the part of the villain, simply because no real villain could perform the necessary acts to achieve the hero’s desired results, and in this instance actually forming the bonds to create a lasting cosmic community, not just bridging the gap between countries or oceans but vast stretches of space.  It’s easy to believe that the Omoxians and Tikanni, who got the whole ball rolling, could still be dysfunctional after cooperating long enough to start it, and perhaps that much easier to believe that Trey, who after all ended up being called Conqueror, was not always the purest of individuals.  He would have had to be a politician, and like any politician he would be forced into the reality of compromise.  Even if he weren’t Myrmidon himself, he would have had to work with him to some extent.  Without overcoming that obstacle, none of what we take for granted today could have been possible.

Who was Myrmidon?  In the end, a representation of what needed to be done, and if that means he could have been Trey himself, then I don’t find that so hard to believe.

Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 6

There’s an old tradition concerning the name Rejon, that yes it belonged to the other Omoxian within the Alliance of Five, but that it was also an incarnation of Modoc.  It’s hard to separate fact from fiction, when so much of human experience in the last hundred years or so seems to be made entirely of fiction.

After the Danab War, when humanity was being offered membership in the Galactic Alliance and it was up for debate in the Alliance Senate, representatives from the Omoxian Emirate visited Earth for the first time, and immediately our impression was that they were entirely too remote, indifferent to us, and so we were surprised when they offered a cultural exchange.  We gave them Shakespeare and Milton and Rushdie, and…we worked on whatever we received in return for years.  Our best critics spent entire careers attempting to interpret the material, with one contradictory and self-described definitive opinion after the next.  Out of all the races we attempted to assimilate into our newfound understanding of community, the Omoxians almost bested us, and there was the considerable belief that they very much preferred it that way, and had chosen the material carefully in that regard, perhaps hoping that we would simply leave them alone.

Humans, however, have a hard time doing that.  Even if something disappears from the culture for years, decades, centuries, it always resurfaces.  We are above all else a curious people, and never seem to know when to let go of something, even if we’re wrong about it for a very long time.  The Omoxians gave us their opinion of our culture in a single word, and that was also “curious,” which probably only a few of us understood.  In return we gave them an endless series of essays, and I wonder if a single one was ever read.  Our languages were deemed barbarous from the start, if simple to learn.  I’m told Omoxian children learn the bulk of them within a span of weeks in school, although why I don’t know, because there are always intermediaries.  I’m sorry to say that I can’t grasp Omoxi.  Bondquan translates everything.  She becomes increasingly patient with me, which is another reason why I think she’s grown affectionate.  It’s either that or I’m endearingly primitive, like a pet, who happens to spend his time digging in the dirt in her backyard.

Rejon appears as a name in Omoxian as well as Vitellian traditions.  It’s far more common among Omoxians, but my experience with the Vitell surfaces it in that culture as well.  The Vitell, it must be admitted, are endlessly fascinating, but in ways that don’t always translate to broad appeal.  Given my own peculiar predilections, it’s not surprising that they should interest me, though their neighbors the Vanadi tend to steal even my attention whenever I think of doing too much exploration in that regard.  That’s probably the reason why I ended up fixating on the fertility goddess, because it seems to be the one element that crosses cultural lines, on more than one account.  That it’s a link between the Vitell and Omoxians only makes it that much more appealing, because there is little overlap between them otherwise, besides the fact that Ureic managed to assume the role that would otherwise have logically fallen to an Omoxian, had Trey lived long enough.  The formal title of an Alliance leader used to be Genar, which is a Vitell term.

How Rejon specifically would be cause for such an unexpected confluence of cultural references is perplexing.  The name appears in Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, but from the start Rejon takes a subservient role to Trey, meaning either that the earliest rendering of the Alliance of Five’s origin was itself affected by later interpretations, or that Rejon always occupied that role, important enough to be included in the number of founders but little more than that.  As I said, he died well before the Galactic Alliance itself was formed.  As an incarnation of Modoc, it would be curious indeed to juxtapose the Alliance figure with a fertility goddess, much more difficult than Lord Phan.  The more I’ve thought about it, though, the more I have to give credit to the rumors that there was in fact more to Rejon than history generally records.  Just as the relationship between Trey and Myrmidon has fallen into question, the one between Trey and Rejon must too be reexamined.  Would I go so far as to throw in with the lot that says Trey murdered Rejon, and the latter’s subsequent diminishment is a way of erasing a shameful chapter from the Conqueror’s legacy?

Perhaps it means that Rejon was the driving force, and in essence the true founder of the Alliance, and that the only way for Trey to lay claim to such an honor would have been to eliminate his true rival, not Lord Phan but the only other Omoxian in the equation.  Having two out of five in the numbers would have done much to massage the ego of all Omoxians, but to manipulate the role each of them played.  Would that be why Modoc totems are now to be found in what may yet prove to be the ruins of Shibal?

Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 5

Lord Phan is only spoken of in hushed language.  Few believe that he ever actually existed, and the only other member of the Alliance that gets this kind of treatment is Rejon, who was after all constantly and by necessity overshadowed by his fellow Omoxian, the great Trey the Conqueror.  Even though I have a personal interest in the career of Trey, I still respect Rejon, and most certainly Trey’s rival Lord Phan.  Just as the Omoxians and Tikanni struggled for centuries to be recognized as the preeminent race of the Galactic Alliance, which in time led to the complete Tikanni withdrawal from cosmic affairs, it was always a popular aspect of the Alliance of Five story that Trey and Lord Phan sported egos that could hardly keep them in the same room.  Though the complete original text of Enigma of the Dawn, the tale that revived the older Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, has been lost to history in the same way as Shibal, what remains doesn’t always bear this out.  Enigma shows both Trey and Lord Phan to be very personable, if Phan to be remote and given to pursing his own interests, including a relationship with the Hesslan mercenary Kaz Felrek that has never been fully explained.  Alternate versions of Trey emerged in later stories, yet Phan remains consistent.

This is either because there was a central truth to his character or that his existence is a cover for something else, which is why some connect him to a different figure entirely, such as the Modoc fertility goddess of the Vitell.  Others consider this to be an entirely unreasonable supposition, a flight of fancy with not even a modicum of truth to it, yet if there’s a chance of it bearing truth in reality, it’s because Lord Phan himself would be capable of making it so.  Here is the Tikanni who is said to have visited Earth, to have created the Danab, and various and untold other wonders, including an unnaturally extended life, so that even today, somewhere along the fringe of civilization, he still exists.  That would make him at least two thousand years old!  Just imagine such a life.  What else could make it possible except a deep connection to the divine matrix of existence itself, or in other words some link at least to Modoc?  Of all the gods ever conceived, would not the life-giving be the most relevant to the sentient imagination?  After all, random confluence of elemental building blocks could give birth to the universe, but for the complicated nature of self-awareness, would not a more personal touch be necessary?

What is attributed to Lord Phan except this instinct?  The arts of the Tikanni have by some cruel irony joined with the same obscurity as the secrets of the Omoxians.  In this instance it’s because the Tikanni perpetuated and then suffered from exile and persecution, become the very villains they have forever after been accused of creating, awaiting some convenient moment to strike against its former allies, those it helped bring into a community that expanded the knowledge of countless worlds.  Perhaps Lord Phan was or is not so unique.  Perhaps that was why the Tikanni first visited Omox, and were surprised to find beings who fancied themselves their superiors.

Bondquan becomes more interested in my work the longer it persists.  At first, I think, she was convinced that I would grow bored and quit, tired of the effort she was herself took part in presenting as an obstacle, constant resistance and skepticism for very little in return except a few clay statues of Modoc.  On closer examination, they aren’t even Vitell in origin, but Tikanni, and the circle closes that much more.  Does this means that the Tikanni visited the Vitell first, or that Modoc is as much Tikanni as possibly Lord Phan himself?  I sometimes feel myself slipping into madness, although the awareness of it should at least keep it at bay, until I can no longer reason with myself.  Bondquan…she’s the most beautiful of a race of physical specimens, and I know that she stands out because even surrounded by Omoxians I cannot concentrate on any others besides her.  I know this is wrong for someone who has dedicated himself to objectivity, and should be clearing himself of distractions rather than making new ones.  I’m trying to prove theories, not fall in love.  She keeps making me think that she takes me seriously.  How can I ignore that?  It’s so unlikely as to be endearing.  They say that love is the function of life that ignores every other sense of reasoning.

There are other times I look at her and see only the flaws, because humans tend to do that when they’re intimidated, don’t know how to move forward, and Omoxians have had that effect on us from the start.  They weren’t the first aliens to contact us, when we all thought the Danab were the first ones.  It was the Welborn, the vanguard of the Galactic Alliance.  And yet the Omoxians did come, didn’t they?

Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 4

Perhaps because of the ideas I’ve developed about my lineage, I took an interest in fertility goddesses.  Every culture has them, just as they have their own pantheons, and all of it links together somehow even the ones that flatly contradict each other.  It’s always a case of discovering the sliver of truth in the exaggerations that inevitably develop over time.  Do I believe in the divine?  Before the Omoxians there was a vast Consortium, since lost to history.  The Omoxians themselves never believe it existed, but the Vanadi do.  Their stories of the Hybrids force them to.  Before the Consortium, there were the Primordials, who crafted the Andiron Ewer, the very sacred vessel Trey the Conqueror sought to rediscover, the source of the ancient connection to what we call the Pasear Field, which I suppose is the last bit of magic in the universe, what allows us to traverse vast stretches of space in a small amount of time.  Science has taught countless cultures how to achieve the technology possible to accomplish this, but whenever they get together to discuss this breakthrough, they realize that at some point in their histories it was determined that it would never be done, and then someone did it.  The common explanation of the Pasear Field came about because of it, not because it exists in any tangible sense, but because that’s the variable in every equation, or the name we all use for it.  The Primordials were the first of us to find it, and what we now call the Chest of Trey is what was used as the first engine.

Something like that is what allows me to believe in fertility goddesses, what would make it possible for an Omoxian to mate with a human, regardless of whether it ever really happened.  Interspecies genetic combinations are by definition impossible without a little artificial support, and such work is too rare to consider on a wide scale, and yet by what might be considered a miracle it does happen on occasion, and for me that means divine intervention, as such a fertility goddess operating under the most extreme circumstances possible.  It requires a leap of faith.  Of all the cultures and all the pantheons, the only one I ever studied that could have produced such an act would of course come from the Vitell, the most saintly of all the Alliance.  (It’s said that their fall from grace is only a matter of time, so there are those who actively look forward to it, because the form it takes should be quite interesting indeed.)  The Vitell fertility goddess is known as Modoc, and it is a trickster.  Unlike other cultures, Modoc can be male as well as female.  I tend to believe that all theoretical gods are tricksters, and it’s no wonder that Lord Phan is all but considered a god at this point, because he was himself a trickster.  It’s said he still exists, or at least exists out of time, or perhaps a combination of both, the perfect Tikanni, and perhaps an incarnation of Modoc, but I will discuss that later.  He wouldn’t be the only member of the Alliance of Five I would consider a possible incarnation.

In my excavations on Omox, I’ve discovered quite a few totems of Modoc.  Omoxians long ago forsook organized religion.  They believe themselves to be divine, and they glow, so perhaps they’re right.  Such a physical characteristic would certainly have helped Trey convince Alfred the Great that he was an angel, at any rate.  The existence of clay statues on Omox would seem to either be a contradiction or a relic of the early days of the Alliance, before the Battle of Shibal.  Though lost to time, Shibal was said to be the traditional capital of the Omoxian Emirate, from the days before the initial visitations of the Tikanni, around the start of the modern human calendar.  Omoxians are loathe to share too much of themselves with outsiders, even fellow members of the Alliance, probably because of the Tikanni, so most of what we know has always been hearsay at best, legend, anything but concrete fact.  It was only because I had the blessing and assistance of an Omoxian from the Alliance Senate that I was able to begin my work on Omox.  Although I do tend to take Bondquan for granted, she has proven useful, but only to an extent.  She must make constant reports back to the Omoxian senator, and to the Omoxian government itself, which necessarily makes her reluctant to provide any additional assistance other than filing the endless series of permits that make this possible.

She says she doesn’t recognize Modoc, either the name or the artifacts I’ve uncovered.  Still, they exist and there’s no getting around that.  It’s the first layer of confirmation, and it counts as progress, and a gratifying one at that.  If Modoc exists on Omox, the goddess could easily have been present in Trey’s visit to Earth, or at the very least confirm that what everyone knows about the Conqueror is not after all the whole story.  Should Shibal prove to be real, it would be another giant leap, but I can’t allow myself to become carried away.

Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 3

I’m a fool.  So people tell me.  I’m very much human, but I’ve learned that the universe doesn’t let the truth stop with anything so simple as that.  Take the Tikanni.  For many years they took to manipulating the DNA and destinies of countless species, to what purpose no one will ever know.  They created the Danab, and for that reason alone humans will never forgive them, and so perhaps I understand the trepidation surrounding the truth of the Alliance of Five better than I sometimes admit.  Yet I’ve never let something being difficult stand in my way.

You’ll think I’m crazy for saying so, but I firmly believe that I’m a descendant of Trey the Conqueror.  Long ago people could make such claims, and as long as they were rulers of some country no one questioned them, or at least not in any record that’s survived.  It was taken for granted that great men came from the lineage of great men.  I believe, as the rest of humanity has come to believe, that if there’s any truth in that, there’s truth enough for more subtle details.  Anything’s possible.  That was the constant refrain that finally allowed us to move beyond our petty instincts, even if some of our new friends don’t believe it.

There’s fully a chance that my gut belief is right.  I’ve come to believe that when you’re drawn to something, there’s a reason for that.  It’s the universe’s way of revealing something that would otherwise be shrouded in mystery, a link that would otherwise remain hidden.  I believe that if we allow ourselves, we can hear the pattern of creation as it resonates through the cosmos, that if we just stopped getting in our own way and followed our instincts, we’d find our way through the labyrinth of apparent chaos and find the order that’s always just below the surface of reality.  If you’ve ever grappled with the concept of free will, you may have an idea of what I’m saying.  If there’s a divine being who sees everything from throughout time, it means that regardless of our limited perceptions everything that ever has and ever will happen already exists, and that we’re simply navigating the course blind.  We make our own decisions, but they’ve already happened.  When we make the right ones, we experience clarity.  When we make the wrong ones, we’re stumbling blind in the dark.

Which is to say, I believe in the holistic approach to life, and what others may not consider fathomable, because they’re convinced that what they experience can only make sense based on their own conclusions, rather than conceptions they’d never considered.  They get in their own way and don’t even know it, and what’s more won’t even admit it.  They become angry if you suggest otherwise.  When I say I believe in my gut that I am related to Trey the Conqueror, then, it’s not wishful thinking or delusions of grandeur, but rather a statement of faith.

Don’t ask me how it would be possible.  I’d never ask an Omoxian about it.  They’d dismiss me out of hand.  It would be inconceivable that an Omoxian, let alone Trey the Conqueror, would have mixed his genes with a human.  For one thing, this would have been a long time ago, although not as long ago as you’d think, only in the year 800.  Waves of Viking invasions transformed Europe.  Men such as Alfred the Great and Charlemagne existed.  It was only a few centuries later that Lord Phan was said to have visited, and Trey would have had nearly four decades to make a similar journey, whatever his purpose.  If you believe the theory of the quagmire of identities, there would have been much motivation for him to take as many digressions from his responsibilities as he liked.

It’s possible, it really is, that Trey did in fact visit Earth.  As I said, the Viking invasions created a great deal of chaos, and as Lord Phan would prove later, it would be entirely easy for someone to visit, say, Alfred the Great and offer assistance.  He could have called himself an angel, and it would have been a perfect time for something like that.  He falls in love, briefly, and has a child.  In my dreams, this offspring’s name is Tor.  Sometimes the wildest thoughts are the closest to the truth.  I’ve always told myself that compared to everyone else I know I seem to be an alien.

Yet I’m not looking for proof on Earth.  Such evidence would have been lost ages ago.  Even when the flying saucers took up permanent residence in orbit, we didn’t start believing everything we’d been taught to ignore.  That’s just the way it is.

Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 2

There is no greater figure in the galactic annals than Trey the Conqueror.  You have to remember that in his own time he was simply Trey, just another ambitious Omoxian like any other Omoxian, the oldest race of our times.  Yet the Omoxians of his time were restless.  They had just discovered that they were not alone in the universe, and they were not pleased.  The manner in which they learned this was most inconvenient indeed, as the Tikanni arrived on their world, as the Tikanni would on many worlds in the centuries that would follow, and boldly introduced themselves, an empire at the doorstep as it were making a presumptive visit.

Omoxian pride, which had already developed many wonders and brought an entire world into the very heights of evolution, could not abide being told that there was more to be known than could be found in the native soil.  The Tikanni were wise in those days, far wiser than subsequent generations would suggest.  They were gentle, and allowed the Omoxians to consider themselves their equal.  They formed an immediate partnership.  Together they discovered the Vitell and the Vanadi as well, who shared the same corner of space, and all four considered doing something greater.

It was Trey who proposed the Alliance.  He was called Conqueror because of his boldness, a title bestowed by his descendants who quickly began the effort to obscure the truth, later assumptions that because he was the name everyone knew that he had subjugated lesser beings to his will.  Not surprisingly, Omoxians were the first to call him that.  It was their way of reclaiming the birthright.  There were, as the title of his legendary band suggests, five of them.  Most of them are lost to history, and the facts of their lives become myths.  Trey is always credited with bringing his fellow countryman Rejon along for the journey.  Rejon is the most mysterious figure, the first of the Alliance to die.  In my own tongue his name sounds like the word “region,” and perhaps that is much as can be said about him with any conclusiveness, although many have attempted to apply more to it.  His significance rises and falls in relation to what people have to say about Trey himself.

The Tikanni contributed Lord Phan, a figure whose name became a whisper across time, master of the lost art of the psiglaive, friend of degenerates, a nobleman who walked away from the affair when it no longer suited his purposes, much like the rest of his people, whom the Omoxians at last convinced the rest of the Galactic Alliance to leave behind, the triumph millennia in the making.

From the Vitell came Ureic, which sounds like Yorick when a human speaks it, who would in time become the acknowledged first leader of the Alliance, after the founders had completed their adventures.  With him the Vanadi engineer Hayed, pronounced like Hades even though it lacks the “s,” who provided the very first ship and would forever be linked to the rebellions of his people, regardless of his own culpability.

The earliest tales, which are still told to children by their parents, are very romantic, heroic of the traditional order.  These five champions of peace combined to defeat Myrmidon, the villain who sought to sow perpetual chaos.  Who Myrmidon was and how he intended to achieve his goal will forever intrigue those interested in subtlety.  He’s the perpetual bogeyman in the greatest myth ever told.

As I said, it’s Trey who remains at the center of the story, the origin of everything we know, who died tragically years later, sacrificed at the Battle of Shibal so that the Alliance would survive.  There is no archeological proof that Shibal ever existed, but it remains at the heart of the whole story.  I’ll admit that my main goal is to prove the existence of Shibal, and thereby begin confirmation of the rest of it.  If it had been humans who had founded the Alliance, the record would be concrete.  We catalog everything.  We’re petrified that everything we’ve accomplished will be lost.  It’s happened before, and Armageddon has visited Earth on more than one occasion, sometimes at our own making.  That alone has given the rest of the universe reason enough to approach us with caution.  It’s said we can’t be trusted, even when we prove our intentions are innocent.

I’ve found that those who investigate the Alliance of Five, the founders of the Galactic Alliance, are never taken lightly, even when they aren’t human.  I don’t know why that it, but I won’t let it stop me.

Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, Part 1

When I was younger I never really understood my place in the universe.  My name is Henri Latour, and I think I’m getting better with that.

I guess I always thought I was an outsider.  My family was a little strange.  If we’d never moved, maybe this wouldn’t have been the case, or maybe it would have.  Both my parents were outsiders, too, only they never really considered themselves in that way.  They met years after they should have, rebelling against their own lives by becoming fiercely loyal to them.  If you have no idea what that means, I don’t know if I can help you.  Sometimes in order to prove you are who you say you are, when the rest of the world refuses to believe it, the only way to do it is to be a contradiction, embracing the model by rejecting it, being the best example of expectations while pretending that you don’t care about those expectations.  It’s about transcending the situation, removing yourself from your context because the context has already decided it doesn’t need you.  Yet for all intents and purposes, you’re still defined by your context.

At any rate, I was the offspring of this madness.  I wasn’t the only one.  I had a couple brothers and sisters, each of whom did their best to dismantle the remnants of our past, continuing the work of our parents, completing the rejection and shattering the context.  For some reason I couldn’t do the same.  I guess since most of my siblings were older than me, I had a chance to watch how they did it first, and what I saw disturbed me.  I clung to what they let go.  It was a difficult process, because like all families there was constant friction and it made me angry far sooner than was strictly necessary, resentful that most of what I knew was given to me without my asking, and so in order to accept it I had to reprocess it, and in essence reclaim the context that had slowly faded away.

Don’t get me wrong.  My parents had done a more thorough job than they’d anticipated.  They shook loose the old traditions.  It was their constant faith in the power of redemption that fascinated me the most.  I had no personal experience with their redemptive urges, but it was the faith itself that interested me.  The faith came with an entire world all its own, one that eclipsed anything I knew, which opened up for me a world of possibilities.  What it meant was that I had an opening, a glimpse of the original context, not the one that was created later but the one as it had originally existed.

The problem was that it was always denied me.  I came along a generation after the revelation, and it became a game of constant catch-up, and I was forever conscious of playing the part of the fool in my efforts to do so.  This started from an early age, well before I could comprehend what was happening, and yet my feeble efforts would serve as the building blocks from which I would continue to work for years to come, stumbling every step of the way.

How it was that I started from a remote world like Earth and made my way into the galaxy, repeating a relatively recent tradition but very much under a personal framework, can only be described for what it was, a deliberate series of accidents.  It is forever the lament of pioneers that they wish there had been a model to follow, but then they would not be pioneers.  People like me, and I don’t say this with pride so much as pity, follow precedents, discover kindred spirits, but singular individuals don’t have exact models to copy, and for good reason, because they’ve broken the mold, dared to be foolish enough to forge their own path.  There will always be allies along the way, but they can only sympathize so much before it becomes cloying.  You feel ungrateful to think of them in this way, but it’s the truth, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing what you are and they would be, let’s face it, more helpful.

My parents would never have gone this far.  They didn’t have the vision.  I don’t know where I found mine.  It was a combination of instincts developed along the way.  I was to be the first human to discover the truth of the Alliance of Five, the founders of everything we know now and depend on and take for granted.  No, I was never motivated to join the Space Corps, but what I accomplished was something every single officer who ever served with it could only dream of, or consider in their nightmares…

This is a record of my journey, and the strange and horrible discoveries along the way, including quite possibly a few truths.  I never said I was successful, but maybe in small ways.