The Lost Daughter

Selucreh clutched the hands of Suetemorp as they tensed and limp, then rigid again, cooling save for the part which he held, his claws retracted to hold the even paler skin of his gene-gifter. It felt like a part of him was vanishing, as the ancient man finally left this realm. He stayed in the dimly lit chamber until the last warmth had fled the dead body save for the spot warmed by his hand. He watched, silently, not knowing the time that passed by, until at last Sulecreh stirred, standing, stiff from the long... minutes? hours? that he had passed with the dying man.

He passed out of the chamber door. An aide stood next to it, and without looking at him he ordered "Dispose of the body."

"Yes sir."

The door opened and closed once more with a quiet whir as the aide went through it, and Selucreh walked onward to the external bridge. Slowly his thoughts began to reassert themselves in his mind, clawing themselves back from the black pit of - it was hard to quantify the emotion. It wasn't despair, nor hopelessness, nor anger, nor rage, nor even sadness. There was nothing, just a pit of emptiness... There were still some of the older generation, without their genes changed for living on the planet, who existed, trapped here in orbit - but Suetemorp was one of the last of the old guard of leadership, the man who had brought them here, who had led them for decades - and now he was gone. And Selucreh was the one to replace him.

The corridors of the ship were empty. It was never silent, with the whir of fans, the distant sounds of doors opening and closing, the quiet hum of computers and life support - but the ship felt like a tomb. Or maybe it was dead itself, and simply didn't know it yet.

His second in command, Dilkara, gazed at him as he entered the bridge. They had abandoned most of the old military styles years ago, and the atmosphere was more relaxed, more casual, these days. Now another of the old regime died, and it was just them who were left.

"Dead," he said, in response to the unspoken question.

"He will live forever in song," replied Dilkara. "We could have named the world after him."

"Dialli is the name which he would have preferred. He the last thing that he held on his own before he died was the copy of the Epic that he had with him."

A quiet pause filled the room, and then Dilkara continued. "To think he never actually saw it...'

"He saw it from here."

"You know what I mean."

Selucreh gazed out the vast sheet windows, at the distant planet. The exploration ship had been parked in the Lagrange point between Dialli and its rather small moon - maybe that would be what they would name after Suetemorp, thought Selucreh, they never had chosen what its name would be other than simply calling it the moon -and had been there now, for well, ever since they had arrived here so many decades ago. He could see Dialli still, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, with its mixture of blue and green, flecked with white from clouds and tinged with gold from the sun. Its scattered chains of continents and islands swam in its sea of blue, their shapes traced in his memory from long hours of staring at the world, until it imprinted itself so deeply inside him as to be inseparable.

"There are a lot of us who will never see Dialli."

"I never will. Nor will most of us out here in space. Sometimes I think that we've already been forgotten about, even if here and on the moon, or in the asteroid colonies, there might still be more of us than down there on the planet - do you know if they went past us yet?"

"Last year I think."

"Drat," muttered Dilkara.

Another pause, then Selucreh, his gaze still turned towards the distant world, spoke. "I am going to go to Dialli."

"What?"

"I am tired of living here, to be now the commander of this aging floating junkyard, to watch as history is made and destiny forged below us and I can never be part of it."

"You have never been on the planet, the gravity will be too much for you."

"I come from the generation which has grown up under the work of the gene splicers, and I have been to the moon. It will be hard, but I would prefer to choose a quick death on the planet than a long death here."

Dilkara's eyes dilated in surprise. "You have never spoken of this before - and why? There are plenty of other duties to be done in space, mining, the lunar colony, so much that we can't replicate on the planet that is only here - the gene splicers for one."

"All of that is nothing more than trash and baubles. What use do we have of gene splicers when we stand upright upon Dialli? Lunar acclimation - why when we have acclimated? Mining - there is plenty of that on the planet, and the shuttles to bring the resources down to the planet will only last so long, and how many centuries or millennia will it be until we can replace them? History is being written there, and I do not intend to be the spectator."

"How long have you been thinking about this?"

"Forever. I stayed to do my duty for the captain. He is dead, and duty shall not like poison course through my body anymore: if you wish to bear its deadly curse, then feel free to. You can be captain of this death-ship if you wish."

Dilkara sighed. "The dead hand of the past is always upon us. You and your ilk are always rushing towards the ground, like a meteor which is fated to burn up in the atmosphere. You have been given the stars and the heavens, and you choose instead the mud and dirt. You may reject these ringlets of iron, but I shall wear them and rule upon this ship, while you descend to your fate."

It was the turn of Selucreh to wince. " Woe be to you, whose ancestors has cursed him to live out their dreams."

There was no response to his observation. "When will you leave?"

"Tomorrow. I will promote you to captain when I go."

"I suppose I should say think you for the promotion."

"For me, it is a ship without an atmosphere, as useful as the vacuum of space. I hope that it means more to you."

"And I hope that you descent to Dialli is something more than to wallow in the mud."

Their conversation drifted to more innocent subjects, about what exactly mud might feel like, about life, about how things would be different down there, until at last they fell silent, watching the planet once more. Nobody disturbed them, for they were upon the ship of the dead, where even the living had departed from life.

Selucreh left the last day, on one of the last working flights of the shuttle, which was irredeemably broken soon after. The soil is the soil and the stars are the stars, and never the twain shall meet. Selucreh was the last colonist to Dialli, and the son - if such a term could be applied to Suesdyian biology - of the man who was in spirit the first.