CHAPTER 16: A Walk in the Park

Alexander peered down the dark undulating tunnel. The comparison to being inside someone’s intestine couldn’t be more uncomfortable, or more appropriate.

A short way ahead the passage widened somewhat, but in the midst of that larger space the warm sour air sparkled with flashes of light—like blinking Christmas lights. They didn’t cast any illumination on the passage, and he knew that he didn’t want to touch them. He approached them carefully, meaning to slide to the side of the passage and pass them by. There was plenty of room to get through them, but as he approached the lights Alexander heard a multitude of chimes. The sparkling lights moved toward him.

He froze.

The lights stopped, but one stopped so close that he could feel it’s brilliance on his skin. It was still inches away, but it roasted him as if the light were a small inferno.

Alexander stepped slowly, carefully back.

“You’re sure this is how I get my memories back?” Alexander asked Nazeera. She stood behind him at a safe distance.

“You should be cognizant of the concept of association, Alexander.”

“Yes, like I associate Nazeera with peril,” he growled. He stooped low, being careful to make no sudden movement. He took a round rock and rolled it along the rough floor ahead of him. The sparkles flurried around it, emitting a plethora of pops and zaps. When the rock stopped they took up their positions in the middle of the passage again.

Alexander took another rock and eased towards the sparkles. When he was within a meter of the dangerous cloud he tossed the rock back whence he came—toward Nazeera. The sparkles took off after the rock, and Alexander moved forward, taking care not to walk faster than the rock rolled. After moving beyond the spot guarded by the sparkles Alexander stopped and glanced back.

The rock stopped at Nazeera’s feet, but she stood there unconcerned as the sparkles attacked it. When they were finished they began to float back to their station. Nazeera stepped smoothly up to them.

Alexander grinned as the sparkles moved toward her.

Nazeera simply smiled and raised her hands. She moved them outward and then back in as if weaving on an unseen loom. Half the sparkles followed one hand and half the other. They went out and rushed back in, out then in. Each time they rushed in the sparkles crossed paths and some collided. When they ran into each other the emitted a flurry of angry sparks and went out. After doing it a half dozen times only a single sparkle remained. Nazeera drew her hands apart and it split in two. When it crashed back together it snuffed itself out with a plaintiff sizzle.

“That was a much more elegant solution than mine, I’ll admit, but how does it get my memory back?”

Nazeera touched her sleeve.

Alexander was in the cockpit of his purple fabric covered Fokker Triplane. Ahead of him was a Bristol Fighter—a two seat Tommy scout with a dangerous rear facing gun. Without thinking Alexander jinked to the left, but stopped the plane before it traveled more than a few meters.

The rear gunner tried to lead his target and shot a burst wide.

Alexander jinked to the right and down.

The gunner missed again.

Alexander jinked up and to the right, then down and to the left.

The gunner shot a steady stream around the sky in his frustration. His gun jammed.

Alexander was in range. As the gunner pounded on the breech of his gun, Alexander sent two short bursts into the Bristol’s engine. Smoke poured out of the Brit plane. Alexander smelled the unmistakable odor of burning oil—and the sickly terrifying stench of gasoline.

He was back in the tunnel, and a profusion of Prussian memories flooded his mind. He shook his head, and muttered, “So this is what passes for therapy on Chem.”

The rest of the morning was similar. For Alexander, it was like an Indiana Jones obstacle course with short breaks for movies. It was hard work, and more dangerous than he’d have liked. It wouldn’t look good if he got himself killed before they sent him to Pantrixnia.

At last they exited the tunnel onto a path which led through a dense jungle. Nazeera had to tell him the session was over, and this was Chem proper.

“So Alexander, what do you think of my world?”

“It reminds me of the tropics of the Spanish Main,” he said, as a thousand bits of memory and experience whirled around in his head. Four hundred years past he attacked ships and towns on the steaming coast of South America, and the Chem woods carried the same heaviness in the moist air, the same all pervading heat, and the same buzz of insects in his ears. Alexander found a multitude of memories awakening at every turn. They demanded his attention. He was finding the reality of his past lives wasn’t as advantageous as he anticipated.

“Are you finding the memory recall protocol helpful in identifying your past lives?”

“It’s hard to say, at the moment,” he answered truthfully, stooping to dip his hand in the cool water of a small stream that cut across their path. The jungle brought a score of episodes too interesting for his twentieth-century mind to ignore. At the moment they were not experiences he could draw on, but experiences which intruded upon him nonetheless. The act of conversation became a management struggle, and he had to push the intriguing memories aside so as to dwell on the present. Maybe Nazeera knew this, if past life memories were so accessible in her world, and maybe that was why she didn’t balk at giving Alexander such access.

He didn’t regret his strategy, but like many things that look good on the surface he had to have patience with his newfound awareness. The old adage of taking one step back for every two steps forward applied perfectly here, but at the time he could ill afford going back at all.

“I see you spent much of your adult life in this same climate when you were a pirate,” Nazeera mused, reviewing an electronic notepad built into the sleeve of her coat—she wore it regardless of the heat because, as she told Alexander, it was an environmental garment that kept her warm or cool at need.

“I find it strangely coincidental that your career as a pirate catapulted you into the echelons of nobility; it’s rather like your advancement from gladiator to warlord.”

“You have an active imagination, Nazeera.”

She made a note with the tip of her finger.

“So what did you think of our session this morning?”

Alexander rubbed his shoulder, which was still sore. “I didn’t think memory recall would be so—so painful. Do all the Chem go through such trials?”

“No, trials such as those are reserved for a select few.”

“You’ve been through them then.”

“I have.”

Alexander nodded, “I thought so, but I still think you did a masterful job. I was thoroughly impressed.”

“May I remind you that you’re the one being evaluated,” Nazeera told him.

“You just keep thinking that,” Alexander smiled.

Nazeera allowed Alexander to eat in a clearing with tables. His lunch waited for him. She did not share his meal.

“You’re going to waste away if you don’t eat something,” Alexander complained. Nothing he could say changed her mind.

After lunch they continued to walk down the path. Here and there the forest thinned and Alexander saw Chem buildings soaring out of the jungle like enormous metallic trees. Canopy-like platforms sprouted from branch-like arms, arches and trunks. The buildings were purple, jade, rust, and crimsons—all the colors of the vibrant Chem landscape.

“It’s amazing and beautiful—much like you.”

Nazeera glanced away, and then she laughed, and said, “That’s an ancient interrogation technique, Alexander, but thank you for the compliment anyway. Do you have the same opinion of Terran cities; do they reflect their inhabitants?”

“Too much so, I’m afraid,” he said, telling her of the sprawling, teeming, concrete canyons. He followed her up a rope ladder and into the lower branches of a tree. A narrow, swaying, seemingly flimsy bridge of rope and branches swung from the tree into space. Nazeera started onto the span. Alexander swallowed hard and struck out after her, trying to appear calm. He stole a look down. The green carpet of the forest was at least thirty meters down.

“You were saying?” Nazeera prompted him.

“What?”

“You were describing Terran cities, Alexander. What’s the matter is your memory that short or are you agitated over something?”

“What in the world would I have to be agitated over?” Alexander growled to himself. A hundred meters in front of them was a sheer gorge wall. A hundred meters below a boiling brown river flowed through the jungle. Alexander clenched his jaws. He hated heights.

“Are you alright, Alexander?”

“Of course, I’m invigorated is all. I’ve been cooped up in cells and ships for who knows how long!” he lied. Then before she could prompt him again, he forced himself to talk about the mundane. “Terra as a whole views cities as a triumph over nature, not a complement. We build them as our monument to progress, in a way, but it’s a haphazard exercise. There’s no true order to the founding or creation of such a thing. It rises, lives, and falls as an entity within itself.”

“Do Terrans pride themselves on competition with nature?”

“I would say Terrans pride themselves not in competition, but in mastery of nature. It is altogether a fleeting and false pride.”

“That’s surprising, especially considering Terra has no weather control, no geophysical stabilization system and no planetary protection screens. You are subject to the whims of nature, yet you build monuments to false beliefs. They are monuments destined to perish.”

“Perhaps we simply want the comfort of the moment. Terra is a dynamic world, and thousands upon thousands come to grief because of it every year. We fear nature, and with good reason: we can’t control it. That in itself isn’t new. We’ve invented a host of Gods and Goddesses to explain the mysteries of nature, but in the end we fear it because of our own physical inadequacy. Of all the creatures of Terra, we are least physically able to cope. Without our minds we would not exist.” They were halfway across and Alexander began searching for the stairs at the other end. There didn’t appear to be any. Surely she didn’t expect him to climb that sheer face?

“You can’t understand the irony of your statement, Alexander,” Nazeera smiled. “Among sentient beings none are more physically evolved than Terrans. You are stronger, faster and hardier than any other sentient. You are also the most barbaric. That piques our curiosity, but it’s the brilliance with which you make technology serve your destructive nature that shakes us to our very cores.”

Alexander sighed, and said, “You’re not alone. We fear ourselves more than any other danger, even a hypothetical alien invasion. We’ve lived with the very real possibility of self destruction for almost fifty years. I thought we’d won over it, but I suppose in the end it will be our fault after all,” Alexander said. “We are not completely hopeless, though. We learn and grow in maturity, and as we do our benevolent side becomes more dominant. I can’t compare Terrans to other cultures, but I know of no other creature which can be so self sacrificing. There is nobility in us that I think must carry on. I would hope, after all is said and done between us that Terra has nothing to fear of Chem. Yet if I fail, and if Terra falls it will be our own undoing. It has long been said amongst us that we are our own worst enemies.”

“What a tragic philosophy.”

“Not nearly as tragic as this ending when I fall from that cliff!” Alexander mused, and so engrossed was he in the possibility of climbing that cliff he didn’t mind where he set his foot. His boot slipped on the side of the rope bridge where the spray from the river made it slick. His left foot plunged into space and he straddled the narrow catwalk. A sharp stinging blow hit his groin. His hands slipped on the rope. Alexander fell.