Ashur

CHAPTER 1

Ashur and I met while I was on the fact-finding mission during the initial exploration of Sega IV for habitation.

The planet seemed quite deserted from space, and our probes reported no plant or animal life whatsoever, but Central Worlds didn’t take chances.  An exploration team was sent to clear the planet for colonisation.

I, as chief biologist, went out with the first scouts, to do some outside analysing of the soil components.  I wandered away from the group, searching for suitable test sites.

“It’s a shame there’s no other intelligent life in the galaxy,” I thought as I scooped a spoonful of soil into my spectro-analyser.  “Mankind could have learned so much.”

“Of course you could have learned from us …”

The extra thought sprang unbidden into my mind.  I straightened up, startled, and looked around.  The scouts had moved off and were standing next to the ship, about 500 metres away.

“The problem with you people is that you don’t believe what you cannot see.”

Once again, the thought came from … from where?

“Who are you?” I said aloud.

“You really don’t have to speak.  I can hear you quite clearly when you think.”

“But I don’t think to communicate.”

“Then why do you call yourself Homo Sapiens?  Doesn’t that mean that you are a thinking species?”

“Yes, but thinking as in reasoning, not communication.  Very few of us are truly telepathic.”

The absurdity of this conversation suddenly hit me.  I was standing on a deserted planet with no life, having a thought conversation that didn’t make any sense, with myself.

“There.  You see, you don’t believe it.”

“Don’t believe what?”

“That you are conversing with me.”

“Who are you?”

“I call myself Ashur.”

“What is Ashur?”

“Ashur is me.”

I wondered if the trip here, and the three months in cold sleep had made me crazy.

“Will you stop denying the facts!”

“What facts?  You haven’t given me any reason to believe I’m not just plain crazy!”

“I have.  I am here.  It is because you won’t accept anything you can’t see.”

“All right!  Then what do you want?”

“I have waited quite a long time – you would call it about a thousand years – on this empty planet.  It gets lonely sometimes.”

“Why didn’t you leave?”

“I can’t.  I have to have someone take me.”

“Then how did you get here?”

“I came across on a space virus.  It wasn’t much of a companion, but then it had to die hére.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’ll go with you, of course.”

“Why me?”

“You seemed the most understanding of the lot of clowns that landed here!”

I decided there and then to keep Ashur secret.  It wouldn’t do to let the crew know some extraterrestrial thought them to be clowns.

*  *  *

Ashur went with us when we returned to Earth.  I don’t know how he managed the cold sleep, and I still don’t know if Ashur is just a thought, or a very small biological entity with enormous intelligence.

We now communicate very well.  Ashur has agreed not to read any thoughts of mine that is not directed to him.  He admits that I need some privacy.

Ashur is very curious about the human way of life.  A whole species communicating entirely with speech is a concept he doesn’t really understand.

I haven’t been able to find out Ashur’s planet of origin, if he ever originated somewhere.  His age is too much for me to comprehend, because he has no known parameters for me to compare it with.

I guess I have a lifetime of studying Ashur before me.  He has agreed to help me in any way possible, if only to find the way back to his own species.  It will be a lonely job because I can’t let humanity catch on to the fact that I have an alien in my mind.  This doesn’t bother me too much.  After all, I have a lifelong friend now …

CHAPTER 2

My dream was dark and lonely. A cry echoed over dark, deserted plains: so primitive in its pain that I shuddered awake.  At first awareness was only sight: the small confines of my suite aboard the Stellar Explorer.  The memory of that cry was still vibrating through my every fibre.  It would stay with me the rest of my life.

Ashur was silent.  He too slept, I think, and he had synchronised his sleeping periods with mine.  That dream certainly wasn’t from my memories – somehow I had shared a dream with Ashur.

I can imagine the thousands of years spent in utter loneliness at the edge of space, waiting for a way to travel back to companionship and life.

“What is wrong?”

“Nothing. I had a dream, that’s all.”

I didn’t ask Ashur about the cry right then.  I think he too was shaken by it.

“It is almost time for us to contact Central Worlds.”

“You mean for you to contact them.”

“You know what I mean!”

Ashur and I had decided to resign me from my post as biolife explorer for Central Worlds, and to buy a small space cruiser.  With this, we could go in search of Ashur’s lost race, and I could find and explore new planets along the way.  I am a qualified explorer, and any planet that I find, is automatically registered in my name.  Our journey could be extremely profitable for me.

Central Worlds wasn’t very impressed with my resignation.  They didn’t like private explorers roaming around the galaxy, since they tended to sell their planets to Central Worlds at very high prices (which I was of course planning to do…).

We docked at Regulus Base and I went to see the man who had a cruiser for sale.  He told me the little cruiser had belonged to a millionaire-turned-billionaire who had eventually bought a bigger toy to travel with.  According to the salesman, the ship had flown only a couple of parsecs and was in excellent condition. He named a price that made my hair rise.

“He’s lying!”

“How come?”

“That cruiser can hardly limp out of port.  Talk down that price!”

After an hour or so, I had the price down to a more affordable level, and had collected a score of promises to have the ship repaired.  I stressed that I wished to leave port in three days’ time.

We (I) checked into a hotel, and in the privacy of the room I probed this new talent of Ashur’s.

“Can you read other people’s minds, too?”

“Yes. Not in so much detail as yours, but when the body-language is so evident, the thoughts are not hard to discern.”

“What body-language?”

“The salesman’s. He fidgeted and sweated till I thought he would collapse from strain.  He was desperately trying to sell that ship.”

“Well, I hadn’t noticed anything”

We passed the three days watching old movies from Earth, and weird shows from the more exotic planets.

The cruiser was a beautiful little ship, sleek and glossy.  We had her registered as OMICRON, property of Lucky Starr, explorer.

I carried my things aboard, and after receiving clearance from Regulus Base, we set off to sector 236, near Andromeda.  It was as good a place as any to start our search.

CHAPTER 3

Before me on the view screen, a green panorama spread out.  I had the ship-scope magnification up to max, and was viewing the surface of the planet from a hight of fifteen kilometres.

We had been travelling for about a year, and I had already claimed three other uninhabited planets.  Ashur was good company, and the trip was a great adventure for someone who has always stood under orders before.  I could choose where I wanted to go in unexplored space, and no-one could stop me.

“Do you sense anything familiar here?”

I asked this every now and then.  Ashur, after all, was supposed to be searching for his lost species, and being a mind reader, could sense any strong presence on a planet.  One of his race would not pass unnoticed.  Once again, I got a negative answer.

Sometimes, doubts about my sanity still bothered me.  Ashur couldn’t give me any physical evidence that he was there, and I wondered about all the people who heard little “voices” in their heads.  Ashur surprised me with a quote:

“Cogito, ergo sum.”

“WHAT?!”

“Cogito, ergo sum.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think, therefore I exist.  It is a quotation from one or the other ancient Roman philosopher.”

“Where did you learn Latin quotations?”

“I didn’t learn it.  I found it in the ship’s memory banks.”

“How? You certainly didn’t type in the commands!”

“I got into the banks, as you say, by doing exactly that.  Since your elementary computers store information in bits of one or zero, I could decipher it easily.”

“That’s incredible!  You mean you can control the computer?”

“Yes”

“Then why didn’t you help me run this ship? I had enough sleepless nights truing to keep on course!”

“Well, I guess I’m just too modest to brag with my talents.”

“Too modest!  You’re beginning to sound human!”

At this point I decided to go explore the planet.

I stepped out of the lander, and stood there soaking up the view.  In the distance, blue peaks capped with glittering white snow, reached up to the azure sky.  Blindingly white clouds reflected onto the crystal clear lake beside which I stood.  Enormous trees lined the far side of the lake, and a thousand sounds assailed my ears, as a forest of birds each sang its own song.  This place was unbelievable.

The untamed beauty of the giant ferns and trees of the uninterrupted forest filled me with nostalgia.  Earth, too, had looked like this a million or so years ago.  It was only the development of man that could destroy such majesty.  It was almost a shame to report and claim this planet.

“You could keep it.” Ashur told me.

“I can’t. To run a planet takes more capital than I could earn in a lifetime.  Besides, what would I do with a planet?”

“Turn it into a nature reserve…keep it as it is now, and let tourists fund its keep.”

“There aren’t THAT many tourists. Anyway, this one’s too far out.  People wouldn’t want to travel six months to see a green planet.  I guess there’s no other choice but to claim and sell it.  Maybe a corporation can do something with it.”

I tried not to think about its future as I wandered into the forest.  As I passed beneath the trees, the birds became silent, only to resume their singing with renewed vigour when I left them behind.

It was very hot, and after struggling through the undergrowth for half an hour, I was elated to find a shady clearing, through which ran the most beautiful stream.  In the middle of the clearing, the stream formed a quiet pool, ranked by ferns and little flowers.

The water looked so inviting that I stripped out of my shipsuit, and lowered myself carefully into its depths.  I swam slowly across, getting sleepier by the minute.  I reached the other bank, and stretched myself out between the flowers on the bank.

In a few moments I felt myself slip into the oblivion of sleep.

Chapter 4

I awoke several hours later. The light had grown dim, and the forest was quiet. I got up and dressed, noticing that some plants seemed to have grown over my clothes. I had no problem, though, to retrieve my shipsuit.

I had a moment of confusion, trying to remember which way the lander was. Then I saw a black rock on which I had sat to remove my shoes. The lander should be a little way beyond the rock.

Only it wasn’t. The lake wasn’t there either. As far as I could see there was only forest. At long last I found the place where the lander had stood. Only the depressions in the soil remained, and those were swiftly being covered by grass. Everything grew very fast here.

Something curious struck me. My lander was gone and the landscape had altered, but I felt only a detached curiosity about it. I would have expected to be panicking by now. Another curious thing was that Ashur was silent. For the first time in over a year I felt lonely, but I didn’t worry at all.

It got darker. I started looking for a place to sleep. Something warned me not to sleep on the ground, so I chose a hollow between two branches of an enormous tree, filled with decomposing leaves.  It was a nice, soft spot about four feet above the ground. From my place in the tree I could glimpse stars through the leaves.

One of the stars seemed brighter than the rest, and it moved to and fro in a systematic way. I vaguely wondered about it, and felt sleep again overtaking me.

I woke with a start. Something very loud was near me. It sounded like an earthquake or maybe a volcano erupting, but my tree stood quite still. Then, suddenly, a strange wailing sound began, died away, started again. I was puzzled. I had never in my life heard anything like that. No animal or bird made a sound like that.

I climbed out of my tree and made my way towards the sound. On the shore of the lake stood the strangest thing I had ever seen. It looked like the seed of a Koreba tree, only much bigger, and it shined in the sun. It stood on shiny legs and looked at me with huge, black eyes.

I was afraid of it, but also curious. I wanted to see it from closer up. I edged nearer till I could almost touch it, and the wailing sound stopped without warning. I fled back to the trees.

After a while I got my courage back and approached the thing again. This time it had opened a mouth or something, and its tongue extended down to the ground. On the tip of the tongue lay something that smelled delicious.

I touched it warily, but nothing happened. I licked my finger.  It tasted delicious and I was hungry. I ate the whole thing. Then I noticed there lay another one a bit higher up on the tongue…

I followed the delicious pieces right up to the mouth of the thing. I was afraid to go inside, even though I could see a whole lump of the stuff  just beyond my reach inside.

Hunger won. I stepped inside. Nothing happened. It was rather dark and all I could see was the food. I bent down to pick it up. A sudden thump made me whirl around. The thing had closed its mouth and I was trapped!

I screamed, beat on the place where I got in but the thing just rumbled and shook, and I was thrown to the floor and it felt as if someone sat on my chest for a long time.

I think I blacked out.

*  *  *

I woke on the cruiser. I couldn’t remember how I got there.

“You came in the lander.”

“But I couldn’t find the lander, it was gone…”

“I took the lander up to the ship after I lost contact with you.  Something on that planet had a very strange effect on your brain.  It made you forget who you were, and gave you memories to suggest you’d been there all your life. I had to search very deep before I could find you.”

“How did you get me back here?”

“I lured you into the lander with bits of food I had the service robot place on the ramp.”

“Oh. Where are we now?”

“We are on the way back to Regulus. You have your planets to declare and you need supplies.”

I drifted back to sleep. It seemed Ashur had saved my life, and was quite capable of running my ship without me. I was content to trust Ashur to get us back to Regulus.