Brought Forth from Gaia's Cradle
Aftermath: Brought Forth from Gaia's Cradle
By the time the group followed him into his quarters--after ordering the marines not to speak about what had happened in the brig--Bill was bursting with questions. Glancing at Laura as he led her to the couch, he could see the same questions shining in her eyes.
As Lee shut the hatch behind Cottle and spun the lock, Bill wasted no time confronting Saul … Paul--whatever the frak his best friend’s name was. “How?” he demanded. “Why? Why this elaborate hoax?”
The five Earthers (Earthers!) looked at each other. Finally, Saul took a deep breath and walked over to the decanter on the side table to pour a couple glasses of ambrosia. He handed the fist to Bill. “You’d better sit down, Bill--you too, Laura,” he said gently, pouring a glass of water and handing it to her. Laura accepted it with a grateful smile as she sat down.
Something in Saul’s voice must have attracted Kara’s attention and she looked quizzically from him to Bill as he sat down nursing his drink, and then finally to Laura.
“What’s going on?” she asked quietly.
It was Lee who answered her. “The president’s cancer is back,” he said hoarsely.
Shock flared in Kara’s dark eyes and then sympathy. “Aw frak!” she said with an angry shake of her head. “I'm so sorry. When did you find out?”
“Last week,” Laura replied quietly. "Doctor Cottle has me on diloxin treatments this time."
Suddenly, a wide smile lit up Kara's face. "But that's no problem now," she said excitedly and Bill regarded her in shock at her uncharacteristically cavalier attitude towards such a grave prognosis. The others stared in confusion. "Guys, we're still thinking like Colonials," she said laughing as comprehension dawned.
"By the Gods!" Saul exclaimed, as he reached for Laura's hand. "Earth! Laura, the Terran Confederacy has had the cure for all manner of cancer for millennia--no one dies of cancer anymore. No one!"
Kara nodded vigorously in agreement. "And the ships they're sending are top of the line cruisers--the largest warships the ancient tunnels could handle," she reported. "They have fully equipped medical bays and within a week, we'll have at least three more warships, and a hospital ship, the Nightingale, is set to arrive once the area is secure."
Bill could see the hope in Laura's eyes, but it was banked by fear ... the fear that all this was too good to be true. Bill squeezed her hand gently and was rewarded with a faint smile.
"Perhaps--" Laura's voice was a whispered croak of so many emotions. Gripping Bill's hand tighter, she cleared her throat and tried again. "Perhaps we can discuss that later, but right now, we need to know what's going on. You haven't answered Bill's question, Saul; why such an elaborate scheme to hide who and what you are?"
Saul contemplated his ambrosia for a moment before setting the glass down in the centre of the table, untouched. "Because, Madam President," he said meeting her gaze before shifting his to hold Bill's blue stare. "Almost forty-five years ago when we arrived, I realised that Colonial society wasn't ready for what we represented; no more than you were twenty-five years ago, when I was forced by our ship's failing systems to remove the children from stasis. You're not ready now, but we have no choice anymore."
"What do you mean by 'what you represented'?" Bill asked.
"Earth's version of history is very different from the Colonies' version, sir," Kara said. "And even after going all the way to Earth, seeing irrefutable proof of it ... even after having what memories a three-year-old could have, unblocked, so that I could remember my family and friends, it's still very hard to accept."
"What is hard to accept?" Laura asked.
The silence stretched almost to the breaking point before Saul replied, "That humanity originated on Earth about a hundred thousand years ago, not Kobol."
"What?"
Bill felt the trembling shudder roar through Laura's slender frame as the single word tore from her throat.
"Humanity first ventured from Earth into space nearly six thousand years ago," Saul replied and Bill's breath caught in his throat. "Before that, we flourished for over ten thousand years on our world--from the rise of the earliest civilisations to the time we boosted ourselves via chemical rockets into orbit, and then to our moon, the neighbouring worlds in our solar system and finally to one of the nearest star systems. It was in that system, Alpha Centauri, we found our first natural hyper tunnel, learned to understand what it was, and learned not only how to exploit it, but how to build our own tunnels to go where we wanted.
"And for a thousand years, we did go where we wanted," Saul said with a bitter laugh. "We were giants, walking among the stars, bringing civilisation to barren worlds. We spread ourselves far and wide. Our sphere of claimed space was about two thousand light years in radius, with Earth at the centre. But in some areas, we'd explored out to twelve, fifteen thousand light years from Earth. And in all that time, we found no trace of extra-terrestrial intelligence in any corner of the galaxy we'd explored. So like fools, we thought ourselves gods, believed we could keep expanding forever."
"But that wasn't the case," Bill said in comprehension, suddenly aware that he had no trouble believing Saul's assertion that Earth was the first world. "You found another intelligent species out there."
"The R'sachi," Saul replied. "Another species who not only thought they were the only intelligence in the galaxy, but believed they were the only species that had the right to exist--a divine right bestowed on them by their God. And if the R'sachi were the divinely chosen Children of God--"
"Then humanity was the damned spawn of demons," Laura said with a harsh laugh.
"Exactly, Ma'am," Tyrol said with a strange faraway look in his eyes. "Apparently we were even more of a shock to them than they were to us. They'd been exploring space for nearly three thousand years by then and hadn't run into any other species with the intelligence above that of a housecat."
"And suddenly they were faced with a species that was not only indisputably intelligent, but one that had its own space ships and was actively exploring the galaxy using the hyperspace tunnels and building their own tunnels," Saul continued. "Well, as you can imagine, they went berserk--tried to wipe us out. We did the only thing we could do ... we fought back. The war lasted over a thousand years."
Bill gaped at Tigh in patent disbelief; a thousand years?
"A thousand years," Tigh repeated. "In that time they destroyed countless colonies and nearly found Earth twice. After the second incursion came as close as Epsilon Indi, less than twelve light years from Earth, we used the Omega Option."
"The Omega Option?" Lee said hoarsely.
"Xenocide," Saul whispered. "We wiped another sentient species from existence."
Silence sucked the air from the room … from their very lungs.
"We had no choice," he continued. "We smashed fifteen hundred living, inhabited worlds to rubble, but we didn't come out of it unscathed either. We lost almost as many colonies over the course of the war … trillions of people--most of them innocent civilians caught in the middle. The war would ebb and flow ... like the tides; they would smash and we would rebuild--we would smash and they would rebuild. But the worse things were the colonies where the hypertunnels were destroyed, cut off for centuries from the Confederacy; few were in any shape to participate in our galactic community for a long time after we found them again. Even after more than three millennia, there are worlds where travel to different continents is seen as impossible--much less travel to the stars. So much history, art, science lost …"
Again, the silence was oppressive, deadening, as the enormity of it sank in for each of the Colonials.
"Anyway, in the four hundred and thirty-eighth year of the war, when the R'sachi made their first incursion into Near-Earth space in the Sigma Draconis system, about twenty light years from our home Sol system, it was decided that we couldn't afford to keep all our eggs in one basket. We needed to make sure humanity would survive even if Earth and the Confederacy fell to the enemy. So over the next two hundred years, Earth sent out six great arks."
"Arks?" Laura asked.
"From a story of a prehistoric flood told in a number of different ancient religions and cultures on Earth," Tyrol replied. "In its most basic form, it's about a God, being displeased with the first race of man he created, decides to destroy it in a great flood. He directs one man to build a great ship to preserve life and repopulate the Earth after the calamity. On his God's word, this man takes onto the ark, his family and every species of animal and plant in the world--in some stories, God leads them into a cave where they are kept safe. Then the heavens open up … a river or the seas swell and the Great Deluge wipes everything from the face of the Earth. Then the waters recede and the world starts anew, repopulated by this man and his family, and by the organisms he saved."
"The arks were named after the men in those myths; Ziusudra, Noah, Manu, Deucalion, Manqo Qhapaq and Paikea," Tigh said taking up the story. "They were then sent out along hypertunnel passages in different directions--natural and artificial tunnels that were such closely guarded secrets, eventually even official knowledge of them was lost. It took a long time to reconstruct what happened. In the last four millennia, we’ve accounted for most of our lost colonies. During the varying periods of isolation, different cultures inevitably developed, so we brought those that wished to do so back into the fold as allies, left as independents the ones that asked to be left alone, and established protectorates over those that couldn’t fend for themselves against unscrupulous neighbours.
“But over time, as the threat from the R’sachi faded, finding the lost arks--and the civilisations that arose from them--became a cultural obsession, especially for people from Earth and the First Colonies, the places from which the bulk of the colonists were drawn from. Until one hundred years ago, we’d found four; two were intact--but rather backward--civilisations, while a third civilisation had flourished for about fifteen hundred years before they destroyed themselves just as they were moving back out into space.”
“And the fourth?” Laura asked hoarsely.
“Our evidence suggests that it never even got close to its intended target system,” Saul replied. “It was destroyed. Approximately fifteen years after its launch, a short, desperate communication was received by the Confederacy. It was a Code Zulu, the only signal the arks were allowed to send back. It meant the Mission Commander had set the self-destruct rather than allow imminent capture by the R’sachi.”
“Why?” Cottle asked, startling Bill with his gravel-crusher voice; he’d forgotten the old doctor’s presence.
“Because R’sachi like their meat fresh.”
Bill felt the earthquake shudder that tore through Laura at Saul’s grim pronouncement. Her hand flew to her mouth and she stumbled clumsily away from the table, knocking over her glass of water as she fled to the head.
Saul shrugged at Bill’s glare. “Sorry,” he said quietly as retching sounds permeated the room. Lee grabbed a towel from the linen cupboard to sop up the spilled water.
Bill hurried into his closet-sized bathroom. Laura was doubled over, dry-heaving into the toilet bowl. From the looks of it, she hadn’t brought much up beyond mucous and bile--probably because there wasn’t anything in her stomach to begin with.
As the heaving abated, her sobs grew louder. Bill pulled her to him and stroked her hair until she was quiet. Wordlessly, she pulled away from his embrace and turned to the sink. Meeting his eyes in the mirror, she whispered, “Thanks.”
Bill nodded, leaned in and dropped a kiss on her right temple before leaving.
As he entered the room, he stopped, floored by the sight of Saul tenderly cupping Kara’s cheek and chuckling softly in genuine wonder. After so many years of animosity between his best friend and his adopted daughter, it was a truly stunning sight for Bill to behold.
#
“I can understand about the kids, but I still don’t understand why you did this to yourself, Colonel,” Cottle was saying as Laura left the bathroom. “Or how?”
Bill turned solicitously and helped her back to her seat. Lee was at the hatch receiving a tray from a young crewman, who turned and left quickly, shutting the hatch behind him.
Lee set the tray down on the table in front of Laura. “Tory ordered you some consommé and a pot of hot ginger root tea,” he said gently.
“Thanks,” she replied gratefully. He nodded and moved away as Laura turned her attention to keeping her hand steady as she poured herself a cup of tea.
As she sat back, sipping the tea … the warmth spread from the epicentre of her belly, overtaking the nausea and fatigue, Tigh answered Cottle.
“Grief,” he said hoarsely, looking down at his hands. “You see, I was never meant to forget permanently. When our ship came out of the tunnel near the Colonies with almost everyone dead, I cloaked it and landed it on a moon in rings of the gas giant you named after the Titan, Iapetus. Imagine my shock at finding an entirely independent human civilisation out on the rim of the galaxy, locked in pitched battle with genocidal robots of their own creating. I carefully scouted the surrounding system and on a trip to Leonis, made the acquaintance of a young veteran named Solomon Tigh, who’d been a gunner’s mate on the Brenik. He was only too happy to tell his story to someone who would listen.”
“What’s your real name?” Bill asked gruffly. Laura heard the anger in his voice; so much he’d known about his friend wasn’t real.
“Paul,” Tigh replied. “Pilot Officer Paul Robert Davidson, junior pilot, late of the Terran Confederacy science ship Morning Star.”
“Was any of it real?”
“Oh yes, Bill,” his friend said earnestly. “Solomon died in a knife fight outside a bar on Leonis--after that, it was all me. He knew I was desperate for an identity … I’d tried to steal his ID so that I could copy it. He caught me … didn’t say anything … didn’t ask me about it … just kept on telling me all about himself. As he died in my arms, he pressed his wallet into my hand … said he didn’t need it anymore. He was about my apparent age, so it was easy to alter his ID photo to look more like me. I gave the authorities my name to put on the death certificate … told them he was a kid I picked up in a bar. He didn’t have any family, so I paid for him to be buried on Leonis--although he came from Caprica. And then I reported to the Bellerophon and fought the Cylons till the end of the war.
“During the war, I’d managed to buy or salvage some of the things the ship needed to continue functioning and stay hidden, but by the end of the war, it became obvious that I wouldn’t be able to repair it enough to get home. Parts, especially components for our computers, were increasingly difficult to acquire, and it was too much for one man to repair. So I was left with a dilemma--what to do with the children? I decided to keep them in stasis until I could save enough money to take care of them--figure out how I’d explain having nine children who weren’t mine. In the end, the breakdown of the ship’s systems decided it for me. I had to get them out of stasis before they died in their pods.”
Tigh rose and went over to the table with the decanter of ambrosia. He poured himself couple of fingers and tossed it back. He poured another shot and returned to his seat before continuing.
“By then I was working any freighter jobs I could find. There was no way to keep the kids … to provide for them, so I suppressed their memories and one by one, took each child to a different colony and arranged a private adoption. I didn’t trigger the memory loss right away--I wanted that to be a last resort in case I was captured and my cover blown. I worked it such that each time the freighter I’d signed on to put into port where I’d left one of the children, I’d check up on them--make sure they were safe.
“Then about a year after I’d given up the children, I went to visit a boy named Evan, who had been adopted by a family on Virgon, a sweet, sunny eight-year-old,” he whispered sorrowfully. “I couldn’t find a trace of him or the family. Instead, I found another family living in their house--they’d been living there for almost a year. It took me almost a week of frantic research to find out that Evan and his new parents had died in a transport crash only three weeks after he’d been adopted. They’d never even had a chance to get to know the neighbours.”
Laura watched Saul Tigh’s hands fidget with the tumbler of ambrosia as he continued his heartbreaking narrative. “I jumped ship and went to check up on the other kids; I used up all of my money to get as close as I could without spooking the families, but found them all safe. However, I started to follow a lot tighter schedule of visits. Eight months later, my best friend’s twelve-year-old daughter, Anya, was dead--killed senselessly with four other children in a shooting at a posh school on Canceron … all because some spoiled brat was bullying some spineless little slug, who decided to kill him and ended up killing everyone else in the room but him.”
“I remember that incident,” Laura said quietly. “It was just at the start of my teaching career--led to the zero tolerance policy on bullying in schools.”
Saul nodded without looking up at her. “Then three months later, Sheba disappeared from Libron … from the face of the Colonies altogether,” he said softly. “I went mad with grief … searched everywhere for her on every colony--in every database I could find … my sister’s baby girl and I’d lost her …”
The silence in the room was overwhelming as Kara drew her distraught uncle into her embrace.
“Three of them … just gone in less than two years … two innocents and my little Sheba--I tried to drink myself to oblivion,” he whispered hoarsely, “and when that didn’t work, I wiped my memory … forgot all about them and didn’t set the retrieval trigger.”