I, Spaceman Read online

  After a time I realised that they just might not be coming to welcome me, and as I'd spied a cave on my way up the hill, I decided to scoot back down and hide.

  Had I known that this was a sacred hill and the cave a sacred cave, I suppose I'd have done differently. But, hey, I was just a thick tramp freighterman.

  As I hid in the cave I suddenly heard voices, and I realised I wasn't the only human inside. Crawling along a narrow tunnel, I spied a cavern, slightly lit by laser lights. There were three humans inside, and they were bending down, looking for things. In the light, I saw one of the faces clearly. He was obviously the leader, and I later found out his name was Brody.

  Casting my mind back to what I'd read about Angeria, I guessed what they were doing. They were after Angerian Artifacts, those strange ball-like contraptions from antiquity. In front of me, I think I saw one. I reached out and picked it up. It fitted in my hand, and it felt unusually warm and a power seemed to emanate from it. Putting it to my ear, I heard the hum, and when I stared at it intently, it became almost translucent and I could see the cogs and wheels and levers, together with the flashing electronics inside it.

  Many scientists had tried to recreate these tiny mechanisms, but all had failed. What they were, and where they came from, no one knew. All people knew was that the Angerians classed them as sacred, and would kill anyone who touched them.

  Who knows, maybe the Angerians had once been a techno-species, but had devolved.

  My musings disappeared when I heard an Angerian war cry outside. The three men were immediately alert, and they raced out of the cave, sonic guns blasting.

  By the time I got to the entrance, I was just in time to see five dead Angerians and two dead humans. Brody was still alive, and I watched him walk round the dead Angerians, blasting each one in the head, before taking all the bags and scooting off on a sonic scooter. I decided I wanted to meet this man again. And it would be ugly.

  Two days later, I found a town. I booked into a hotel and immediately began asking the locals about the man I'd seen. That's when I found out his name was Brody. He had come to the town some months ago, killed the Decider, and took over. And everyone was in fear of him.

  I was deciding what to do when, the next day, I stopped in the middle of the street. Brody was in front of me, stood there, defiantly. 'I understand you're asking about me,’ he said.

  I straightened up, my sonic gun at my side. 'That's right,' I said, 'I saw what you did up on the hill. Saw you in the cave. Don't you realise you're going to cause a war with the Angerians?'

  He laughed. Then he got serious. And I knew he was going to go for his gun ...

  I got to mine first. Just. But it was quick enough to blow him away. He was the first man I ever killed, and I enjoyed it in his case.

  So I'd arrived in the Sector and made my impression. And later that day, the leaders of the town came to me with a badge. I wasn't sure at first. But in accepting the job of Decider, I began the path that propelled me to today.

  THE DAWN OF SENTIENCE

  Being a Decider can be a decidedly thankless job. At once a policeman, a community leader, even a kind of scientist, the Deciders tried to bring order to the frontiers of human colonisation of space. Often those frontiers could be a dangerous place - and at others, an infinitely fascinating one. And nothing was more fascinating, in my early days, than my dealings with the Slothy.

  Perhaps, if these large, slow, hairy beasts had remained as they were, they would never have had so much tragedy. But then again, as the staple diet of the Angerians, what kind of a life was it to be herded, killed and eaten? But when did the Slothy first show their differentness?

  I don't know. I can only speak for myself. Folk tales existed among the Angerians of Slothy occasionally leading lost Angerians out of the wilderness. The central tales spoke of the then savages purposely faking being lost so as to allow a Slothy to help them back to their village. But it was a ruse, the Slothy being trapped and ending up in the cooking pot.

  As for myself, I first realised there was more to the Slothy the day I was trying to cement relations with a local Angerian clan. They were rounding up a small herd. It was a kind of test of friendship whether I would help. 'Sure,' I said, and so it was that I raced here and there on my sonic scooter, trying to keep them together. But it was only seeing them in terms of an outsider that I saw the Slothy themselves seemed to have scouts - smaller Slothy who shadowed the herd, giving gutteral signals which seemed to provide responses in the main herd.

  'It has been happening for some time,' said an Angerian in the camp that night. 'Our skill is declining since humans arrived. We’re no longer able to round them up like we used to.'

  But I couldn't help thinking it was the Slothy who were getting clever. The Angerians just couldn't see it.

  It was a while after that that a homesteader came to see me. 'Someone is stealing my stores on a night,' he said, 'and I want you to do some thing about it.'

  That night, I camped out close to his homestead, waiting.

  In the middle of the night I heard the slight rustle of an intruder, and through my night vision lenses a saw a Slothy raise itself on two legs and manipulate a barn door, gaining entry.

  It seemed to pick just what it wanted. And when it had gone, I followed it. It went to a cave, and inside, it had created a proper family group, including a hierarchy. This was not, I decided, some dumb beast.

  I started studying the Slothy then - their life in the wild, reports of them from the past; I even did a study of a dead Slothy. And what became clear was that certain physiological things were happening, changing them from the past. Their brains seemed to be getting larger, their pelvic bone more universal, permitting them to walk on two legs, and their claw was changing to allow more manipulation; even an opposing thumb was beginning to evolve.

  I sent my first report to Earth then, demanding closer investigation. This species was becoming sentient. And I had nightmares of the agony they must be going through, realising they were about to be butchered.

  My next real contact with the Slothy came one day when I was scooting after raiders. I'd chased them into the wilderness, and I was just about to catch them up when a lucky blast hit me.

  I was lying there close to death for I don't know how long.

  When I came round, I was in a cave, and this big hairy face was looking at me. I thought I could see concern on its face. Looking to my wound, it was covered in a concoction of leaves, and to my surprise, it was healing. The Slothy stayed with me for two days, and then just departed. This departure coincided with the time I was fit enough to get back to civilisation.

  I contacted Earth regularly after that, telling them this species was sentient. But I could get no one on Angeria to agree with me. Which was obvious. Both Angerian and human hunted or farmed Slothy. Everyone ate Slothy. A big part of the local economy was Slothy based. And their representations to Earth even stopped a scientific team coming to test them.

  I cried for the Slothy. But then something happened that saddened and heartened me at the same time.

  It was a homesteader who first came across the construction.

  It was large, and it was rudimentary, made from loosely fashioned branches and a mixture of mud. But there was no doubt at all that a Slothy family had built themselves a home.

  I guessed there'd be trouble, so I camped out near to them. And sure enough, an angry mob from the town arrived, demanding the structure be destroyed. I refused to allow it, and the mob set on me - beat me up. When I came round the building was destroyed and the mob and Slothy were gone.

  I raced back to town just in time to see the head Slothy hanged. Close by was the rest of the family, soon to be herded out. And as I approached them, I noticed something quite remarkable.

  It was hard to find emotion in their faces, but if you looked hard enough, you could find it. And I found it.

  These Slothy had just seen their leader killed, but there was a sense of happiness about
them.

  I couldn't understand it - at first. Then it hit me. Their leader had been hanged – killed as a person, not an animal.

  THE UPRISING

  The problem with colonisation and - dare I say it - empire is that it is always fuelled by trade. That, or greed. But the point is authority and order always comes lagging behind the entrepreneur. And no one is better at stirring up trouble than men whose only interest is money.

  That was, basically, the situation on Angeria when I became a Decider. We were the only authority and order there was. And we were few. Hence, when the Angerians had had enough of their artifacts being stolen, they decided to put a stop to it themselves. And their answer was bloody in the extreme.

  'So what are you going to do about it?' the settlers demanded during the following town meeting. But what COULD I do? Me? Alone?

  'Then we'll think of an answer ourselves.'

  Which wasn't exactly true.

  Their answer came in the arrival of a twenty man strong company of Pridian mercenaries. And with their arrival, I shuddered. The most technologically advanced of the Sector's races, this was a warrior race, and with their blue hued bodies and bald, conical heads, their mythologies spoke of their greatness and, it has to be said, bloodthirstiness. Indeed, as a Decider, I was well aware that the Sector could only be ordered with an eventual pact with this most fearsome of races. But as they came to bring disorder to my patch, I wondered how this could be possible.

  'Easy,' said Ret Suc, their commander. 'You let us get on with our job.'

  As if I could do anything else - alone.

  He soon proved equal to the myths. It was a raiding party of maybe fifteen Angerians who came across Ret Suc's five man patrol. The Angerians attacked, as Ret Suc knew they would. But the Pridians held their ground, releasing murderous fire and wiping out the Angerians.

  How do I know this? Because I shadowed Ret Suc, and tried to second guess what he was about to do. And as he followed the trail the Angerians had left back to the clan's settlement, I knew I couldn't just sit there and do nothing.

  Some would have called me foolish as I stood in the pass in the middle of the wilderness. Behind me, unaware of what was going on, was the Angerian settlement. And to my front, Ret Suc drew his sonic scooters to a stop inches from my feet. Behind him, almost the whole company sat impassively, but I knew this was a typical Pridian reaction before the fight.

  'Decider Nulyn,' said Ret Suc. 'This is not a good day for a leisurely stroll in the countryside.'

  I held my head up and replied: 'I won't allow a massacre. If you kill today, the first person you must kill is me.'

  Ret Suc stayed motionless for many seconds. Then, eventually, he seemed to come to a decision, turned round his sonic scooter and the company departed.

  Soon, I was alone in the pass. But then, suddenly, I was not. It was a young Angerian who stood before me. I later discovered his name was Heomape, and he was to go on to great things in the Angerian world. At first I thought he was a warrior, but soon it dawned on me that he was a mystic.

  Heomape thanked me for turning back the Pridians, and bid me follow him. I did so, and soon I found myself in the Angerian settlement. Many of the warriors knew who I was and wanted to kill me there and then. But Heomape seemed to have a great spiritual hold on the people, despite his young age. And I soon discovered why that was.

  Angerian religion had always been nature based, steeped in the relationship between the person and his environment. In this sense, their religion went in great cycles, where nothing really changed to upset the balance. But Heomape had brought something new to their beliefs. In the rituals that followed, I noticed an ending was understood, as if an apocalypse, and a great natural force was descending to wipe out the humans and Pridians, leaving the Angerians alone to their world once more.

  Heomape showed me so much of this new religion for a good reason. He knew, as well as I, that it was the central element of a frame of mind that fought to the death. Angerians were not just fighting for their way of life, but for their very existence. And now their religion reflected this, and Heomape wanted me to know.

  I didn't bother telling Ret Suc of this information when I got back to the town. I knew it would be pointless. Rather, I said: 'You've got to go. Take your men away. Leave this problem to me to sort out sensibly.'

  Ret Suc lowered his Pridian brandy: 'You don't reason with savages. You kill them.'

  'I'm reasoning with you.'

  It was an insult he found hard to take. Pridians may be warriors but they thought themselves noble and civilised. To call them savages was the worst you could say.

  Whether it was my insult that spurred him on, or the possibility that he realised things were coming to a head, I do not know. But the next day, Ret Suc left again with his entire company. And when he didn't return in over a week, I eventually organised a force of settlers to go and find out what had happened.

  We found them. Or what was left of them. Ret Suc was obviously the last to die, and he was surrounded by dozens of dead Angerians. The Pridians, to a man, had been butchered.

  We buried them. And when we had finished, we were about to go when, on the rise, we saw over a hundred Angerians, just stood there. The settlers immediately prepared for the fight. As for me, I walked out in front of them and sat cross-legged and waited.

  There would be many more fights to come, and in the end the Angerians did lose most of their culture. But when I looked up, Heomape was stood in front of me. He smiled and he, too, sat cross-legged. And we talked.

  It was the first step towards the Confederation that would eventually bring us all together.

  About the Author

  1955 (Yorkshire, England) – I am born (Damn! Already been done). ‘Twas the best of times … (Oh well).

  I was actually born to a family of newsagents. At 18 I did a Dick Whittington and went off to London, only to return to pretend to be Charlie and work in a chocolate factory.

  When I was ten I was asked what I wanted to be. I said soldier, writer and Dad. I never thought of it for years – having too much fun, such as a time as lead guitarist in a local rock band – but I served nine years in the RAF, got married and had seven kids. I realized my words had been precognitive when, at age 27, I came down with M.E. – a condition I’ve suffered ever since – and turned my attention to writing.

  My essays are based on Patternology, or P-ology, a thought process I devised to work as a bedfellow to specialisation. Holistic, it seeks out patterns the specialist may have missed. The subject is not about truth, but ideas, and covers everything from politics to the paranormal.

  I also specialise in Flash Fiction in all genres, most under 600 words, but also Mini Novels - 1500 word tales so full they think they're bigger.

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