Duet

I.

The book lay open at pages 34-35. Janesin read the line again…

     There cannot be two suns in the heavens.

            Genghis Khan

A quiet giggle escaped his mouth.

Of the one thousand aphorisms in the well-worn book, now splayed cover-down on his chest, he found this the most ironically profound of all. Why had it taken so long to realize this? 

He’d read the book, including this particular quote, many times in the past few years and over many parsecs of late; but only at this odd moment had he been ready for such a revelation. As amusing as he found it, the seriousness of the discovery quickly sobered him.

Only one.

He wondered if anyone else here on the ship or on Earth or on Tral had stumbled upon the same ridiculous irony: That a louse-ridden Asiatic had discovered, centuries before space travel, a cosmic reference point for their own present-day atrocities, though, in fact, it was not two suns—the Mongol had not been accurate on that point, as regards his metaphors—but, instead, two planets which ultimately found crowded the vastness of space.

No, not enough for two. Not nearly enough.

Janesin’s head moved slightly side-to-side, a firm answer to his own question. Nobody else realized this—not anywhere, Earth or Tral. This he knew, not because of arrogance; hubris wasn’t why he believed that he alone had uncovered this golden nugget of profundity. It was instead awareness that a single confluence of space, time, and fate which leads someone to an insight of great depth such as this, and that he was the fortunate (unfortunate?) one to find himself at this juncture, just as the Great Khan had likewise found himself, many centuries ago.   

Despite the free exchange of information—that is before the war—the book, though available via PLANETLINK, was not particularly well-known on either world. Generations of easy living, which coincidentally occurred at the same time on both planets, made the topic of war mostly an interesting curiosity, the stuff moldy old professors discussed in nearly empty classrooms.

Why should this not be the case? Peace had been the norm for two centuries prior to the discovery of each other. After learning of each other’s existence, peace lasted an additional hundred years—until—well, until they no longer lacked of war. And the present interest regarding warfare restricted almost entirely to practical things: the speed and battle-worthiness of ships, the training of their crews, and the destructive power of the weaponry. The good stuff.

Philosophy? Foolish rot every bit of it. The mundane machinery of war mattered; the soul of war could be ignored.

Did they do so at their own folly? Janesin asked himself, sincerely wanting an answer.

There certainly existed a compelling need to focus on imperative things. Time became too important a resource to waste; for time is a nonrenewable resource; once used it’s gone forever. There’s no way to cache it, recycle it, husband it for use at a later place. Time is here to use now, the instant it makes itself available, then gone to wherever it is that Time goes when dead, leaving behind cold, gray ashes that are called history. History put down by the victors, as another of the quotes said.   

Quickly. So much to do. “Quickly!” the drill instructor screamed with every order during intake camp. “They’re coming to flame our planet and everyone on it, you useless pukes. You get right quick about it, or your family dies, we all die, because you slugs were too slow and stupid to take this shit seriously. Now, give me twenty push-ups, I don’t mean girl ones, then we run the course again before mess, assuming you vermin are worth a meal at the government tit.”  

Time was too precious to use for dwelling on the musings of long-dead warriors. Particularly, louse-ridden Asiatic ones.

Perhaps the drill instructor instinctively knew their ship must be first to reach the enemy’s home planet, and then do what they must do—or there would be no more need for time.

The journey allowed Janesin to realize the error of their narrow training focus, not that he’d been allowed any other perspective. Here in this book were beautiful answers explaining it all. A computer, no matter how swift or powerful, could ever hope to understand what he’d found. Both worlds had long ago given up on the fantasy of artificial intelligence when they realized a computer could never understand or create a pun. 

It was living creatures who’d do the dirty work, not machines. This was a good thing because living emotions were needed for the task before them. A machine possessed no morality or immorality. A sentient being possessed both in one measure or another, capable of discarding morality when necessary for war. A machine might make a foolish calculation and decide against a course of action that hatred coolly made clear and logical and unquestionably necessary. Machines are sterile, emotionless things, wholly unsuited when there’s dirty work to be done.      

Yet there was not quite perfection in the book, though he once was certain there should be and he’d thought he’d found it in a beautiful quote that seemed philosophically and mathematically perfect: An army that wins every battle is doomed. 

What if it’s only one battle and no need of another?

He wondered if the recent misgivings he struggled mightily with each Standard Day were more the result of what he’d found in the other book.  

Janesin appreciated the remarkable prescience of the Khan and sensed the ancient conqueror somehow reached out to the warriors of today with…with what? A warning? An encouraging spur to victory? A mocking condemnation on the futility of peace? A dare to conquer without need for justification or mercy or remorse? 

A reminder that theirs must be the only sun in the sky?

No one heard Janesin’s next giggle; he was alone in his cabin, supine on the bunk, staring wide-eyed at the gray ceiling. His interlaced fingers rested behind his head, a fleshy cushion between him and the pillow propped up against the bulkhead that served, by default, as a headboard. The hands ached, cramped from prolonged pressure, but he chose not to unclasp them just yet. 

An occasional shifting of arms or legs brought naked flesh in contact with the hull of the ship. The hyperalloy remained cool to the touch, drawing away warmth like the wake streaming behind a terrestrial sailing vessel. Through the metal he could feel the vibration of the ship’s engines. They rumbled strong, powerful, a distant, incessant earthquake; and especially at night, when the room enveloped him in dark and quiet, touch was the one sense not affected by the darkness, accentuated by blindness to many times its daylight prowess, and he imagined the engines a living beast caged deep inside the ship and the vibration its throaty growl, which allowed him not only to feel, but to become one with the engines through the metallic hull a mere inches thick between him and the eternal iciness of black void.

Sometimes he’d rest his head against the hull and the gentle hum of the metallic cocoon became the delicate throb of his own thoughts. 

The current position he’d assumed in the bunk was his favorite for thinking, allowing him to focus on many ideas and considerations, all swirling inside his brain, a maelstrom of silent ponderment.

Lately, he found himself lost in thought more and more frequently, and it took considerable effort to maintain the concentration required to perform his routine duties. Fortunately, his rank was junior enough, and his skills good enough, that even with the increasing distraction of these thoughts, he performed these tasks to the satisfaction of his superiors.

The crew found Janesin increasingly odd; but due to the nearness of their destination, and the all-encompassing weight of the mission, many behaved out of the ordinary. Some brooded. Some laughed in public more than was proper. Some rubbed a face or hand raw with anxiety. Others appeared at sick call more often than was wise for their career.

So they left him alone. 

His mind grew lean and strong from the solitude. The ponderment.

As always when alone, he did his best to discern an order and pattern in the remarkable chaotic dances choreographed by his mind. Here and there a shape, a shadowy outline at first, slowly sharpened itself into a fleeting crystalline vision, its cold siren’s fingers reaching out as to beckon him…to come join it. He could not tell if it was a great truth or many lesser ones; too briefly did these images make themselves seen, present for a fraction of a mind’s second, and who knows how long such a moment really is. But to his disappointment…or relief…these things, which he viscerally knew to be important, quickly disappeared back into the fog of the undiscerned; back into dark recesses and caves better left undisturbed—and unexplored.

“No!” he screamed. The ship this time vibrated slightly with his addition to its power. He did not want to leave them unbothered any longer. Why should they remain beyond the light, what purpose does the shroud of ignorance serve, save to make the eagerly sought lies into truth and the truth battered into heresy.

I must find the light, spelunk deeply if necessary, I must find out what exists in these grottoes, submerged in madness perhaps, but maybe here, bathed in limpid waters of well-lit lucidity, were even greater answers… 

Or more terrifyingly, greater questions. He moved a hand across his brow. It came away heavy with sweat despite the coolness of his quarters.

He found himself at the lavatory mirror, bathing his face with tepid water. Damn heater must be broken again.

But, either way, how would I know? Maybe I want this even more than the success of the mission, he admitted this for the first time. “Mustn’t say such things, or even think them,” he muttered. Fresh sweat broke out as a thousand diamonds on his forehead.

A strange face stared back. A warrior’s face. Hard set and merciless.

Both Earth and Tral sought…truth about all manner of subjects.

Some searched for scientific truths. A greater understanding of the laws governing observable phenomena, be they chemical, electrical, subatomic, cosmic.

What is it that truly constituted the gravitational attraction between objects tens of billions of light years apart? How did matter hold all other matter, however tenuously, in the endless reel of movement? How small is the smallest component of matter? And what is it that is smaller still? Why does the electron remember for all eternity its negativity and that it must attract itself to the equally knowledgeable and unforgetting proton? Or does it remember always? Is it immortal?

Others pursued the truth of the spirit, seeking the divine answers associated with God or gods. They pondered the fate of thinking beings like themselves, not from the scientific perspective of whether the universe would expand forever and wink out someday, cold and pathetic, or eventually contract into an infinitely hot and dense nothingness, but wanting to know the fate of an afterlife, be it Heaven or Hell. The scientists might look for answers as to how we got here, but those seeking the holy grail of spiritual knowledge sought the most elusive answer of all: Why are we here?

Inhabitants on both planets vainly struggled over the millennia of their recorded histories to find any semblance of truth associated with two remarkable things which were common to each world’s cultures—maybe in fact central to each since the beginning: Love and its inseparable partner, War.

Love.

War. 

War had been forgotten. But war had not forgotten them. That sounded familiar.

What was that too clever expression from centuries ago? Make love, not war.

Why not both?   

Funny it had come to this, and if anyone else on the ship had his skull resting against the hyperalloy skin of this part of the ship, they might’ve sensed the faint vibrations of uncontrolled laughter. But the nearby cabins were empty.

So no one came to check on their shipmate’s sanity.

For a long time he’d thought only of war. He was well-trained for it, so it was natural he’d give it tremendous contemplation. Only recently had he pondered love.

He knew, but could not explain how, these two were linked together as surely as the planets, stars, gasses, dust, comets—all matter in fact—were eternally joined by the invisible, inexplicable threads of gravitational ether.

How could the mind, the heart, not be shackled likewise?

A few of them were wise enough to realize the futility of the search. They quietly gave up, distracting their thoughts with mundane events of everyday living. Others, realizing the hopelessness, could not accept it and went mad. Others, arrogant enough—or already mad enough—believed they’d actually achieved the answers they sought. Many, too ignorant to know better, believed there was no such thing as truth, yet they did not understand why this was so.

Was there a myriad of truths, or as some believed was it one great single truth reigning supreme over all the cosmos, a solitary, blinding, all-powerful?

A grand unified theory of truth.

Oh my.

So many things to think about in the book on his chest—and in the other book, the one he’d obtained just before shipping out on this horribly profound mission.

He’d gone into a small shop on Ben-bif, off a dusty side street two blocks from the Grand Moxque. Standing behind the counter was the proprietor—expectantly, as if waiting for a hapless soldier, perhaps specifically him. The man was impossibly old, wrinkled like a Ba’akian wharf teg’al. The trader eyed the soldier like a—well, like a hungry wharf teg’al.

Janesin browsed the usual tourist trinkets and souvenirs; a placating sword might look nice hung in his cabin, he thought. A voice came from close to his ear, a cold, cackley whisper, and only his training kept him from jumping.

“A fine warrior you must be, son.”

Janesin spun around, his face flushed in embarrassment by being startled. The shopkeeper still stood behind the counter, smiling. “Uh…yes, why thank you.” The soldier’s composure swelled back up, swiftly. “I’m with the Twenty-Fourth.” The glint in the owner’s eyes gave his stomach a swift punch. Fool! Telling a complete stranger your unit! Are you mad! Court martial is what you deserve! Then fed to the waste furnace.

“Ah, the Twenty-Fourth,” replied the wrinkled face. “A well-respected unit I’m certain. You did well, my son; I noticed the officer’s stripes. Hopefully, someday it’ll be stars.”

Janesin couldn’t tell if the comment was sincere or ingratiating or sarcastic; he wanted nothing more than to leave this place. There was an unctuous dustiness about it, a malevolent ether. “Thank you, I must be going.” He turned, took a few steps toward the door, but was struck dumb again by the voice.

“For your trip, my son.”

Even before he turned around Janesin knew something valuable was being offered, something eternally important.

A bony hand, covered with skin like he’d seen on mummies in a museum, held out a slim volume.

Janesin didn’t remember how he’d ended up back on the street, its powdery surface cratered with a recent drizzle of rain, and him staring back at the darkened shop in which a “Closed” sign swayed in the front window.

This other book he’d kept hidden in his cabin. There was no official prohibition against its possession. He kept it secreted because he was embarrassed to have it in his possession. The others would tease him mercilessly if they knew he had it. Probably think him a bung runner. Me who’s fenuncled many a whore!

Unlacing his fingers, he picked up the book from his chest. The title stated in crisp, black government script on its cover: Thought Provoking Quotes for the Military Professional. The olive-colored cover designated no author, no editor; just the title at the top and an officious nine-digit sterile document number printed in smaller script on the lower right-hand corner. The book was dog-eared; it had been used as a textbook during his days at the Academy. Each course had been assigned at least one text. His senior level propulsion engineering class had four texts to torture the students.

The rest of his textbooks he’d given away, misplaced, or sold, but this one he’d kept, the one text required for an elective course he’d taken that senior year.

“The Philosophy of War” had been taught by a teary-eyed alcoholic, long retired from a branch of the military Janesin couldn’t recall. 

Oddly, this class, which haunted him now, after all these years, was treated as a lark by the young cadets. Their study of the material was only sufficient enough to pass the course and nothing more. The professor knew this but pretended he didn’t care. He’d been among the first members of the reconstituted military and had worked hard for three decades toward the same goal they all worked at. As a young soldier he’d dreamed about being part of the first wave that would sweep over the enemy’s colonies and outposts, and attack their home planet, but time passed, and he grew to reluctantly accept that it would be younger men who’d stand on the bridge of mighty vessels, cogs in the great fleets made possible because of men such as himself who’d laid the foundation for victory by relearning forgotten military science, updating it, and passing it down to younger men, recent of boyhood, who’d either do likewise or finally apply it in terrible ways.

On the last day of class, the instructor said something, a simple final statement, a desperate farewell to young warriors going off to war, which focused Janesin’s attention ever after; and though he did not know why, and did not realize it at the time, it changed him.

Did he lay here on this bunk because of something said five years ago? 

It is amazing the things which end up epiphanies in our lives. A little boy glances up at the night sky on a particular summer eve and suddenly wants to become an astronaut. A person inadvertently listens to a distant holoviz playing a symphony and because of this, dedicates her life to music. The glance between a man and woman becomes a life together.

The instructor was dead now—Janesin had seen the obituary in a recent service journal. His parting words that day, included a quote from a man named Steinbeck: Up ahead they’s a thousan’ lives we might live, but when it comes, it’ll on’y be one.

Again. Only one. That holiest of numbers.

Janesin thumbed back twenty pages. Are there many possible paths or but a single one we all share? Janesin wondered if he was alone on his path or if the entire world followed along behind him.

He grinned. Arrogant, yes—but what if it were true?

It had been the first day of summer and the cadets fidgeted. This was the final class of the last term for many of them. There is little difference between restless children ready to dash home to a summer of treehouses, frogs, and lemonade stands, and the glee felt by adults ready to assume positions of great responsibility that might include leading soldiers to their deaths. The first day of summer is the same for all of them; the games of little boys are but a prelude to the deadlier games of men.

The instructor stood before several dozen cadets and held up the book with a feeble, shaking, hand. “Over the years I have thought much about the events which have brought you here; events which began not with the discovery of the other civilization, but on battlefields, both near and far-off, both recent and long-ago.” He raised the book higher and glanced at it as he said, “And it’s all in here.”

The cadets froze, conversations ceased; they looked at the trembling liver-spotted hands gripping the book. He turned his gray eyes back toward them and continued. “In here is what you’ll need; all that will ever matter. If you take the time to read this, really read it, great insight shall be yours. And perhaps that will give meaning to those things you will be ordered to do. Horrible things, vile and destructive acts, atrocities, things for which you will not be able to find a reason for doing; but do them you must, and they will haunt your dreams. Some of you will seek moral justification for the missions that await you and that would be a greatest mistake…”

At that moment the dismissal buzzer sounded, startling not a few of them, and chased away the tenuous filaments of attentiveness. The instructor saw this and lowered the book and his shoulders.

One thread remained.

One. A single road ahead.

As they rapidly filed out, the old teacher stared mournfully at the young cadets.

Janesin gave a last glance at the instructor; their eyes met, and in that instant before they both looked away, each knew. History can only be changed by one person; one person, and one person only, makes the crucial difference at the critical, defining moment, and alter destiny for an entire world, ever after. The younger one would take up and finish what the older one had begun. There was fear within Janesin, a terror of being chained at that instant to fate, and, at the same moment, the old soldier felt relief, and gratitude that the years were not wasted.

The others quickly forgot, but not Janesin. That night he declined the opportunity to celebrate with the others. Instead, he remained behind in the dormitory. After the others left, the book was opened, and he read, seemingly as if for the first time. 

How clear it all became that night. He reread the book in its entirety, finishing as the last of his mates returned bleary-eyed from their night of drinking—and fenuncling—just as dawn broke over the Academy’s hedgerows and cast long shadows greedily reaching at the ephemeral morning dew which clung like scintillating barnacles to the parade ground grass.

He felt no fatigue that morning; his muscles surged with steeled blood, riding a high he’d never felt before. The morning calisthenics and run, though agonizing torture for the rest of the mostly hungover company, were to him a pleasant dream; he could run forever if they asked him to.

And he thought it a weakness in them that he wasn’t asked.

A sense of purpose. Others had their reasons for being here: patriotism, a sense of duty and honor, want for adventure; all these were certainly a part of it, but these were all transcended by something greater.

The text became his bible. Had he known his ancient history better, he would have found amusing the similarity between his travels with this book and Alexander the Great’s inseparable travels with Homer’s Iliad. Like Alexander’s copy of the Iliad, the text went with him on all his campaigns. After the Academy the two of them went to Advanced Flight Engineering School, then to Tactics School; afterwards, they jointly ventured to the last school of all, Advanced Combat School. Once the training was complete, he’d done several tours with the Combat Service, and the book went along, reverentially packed with his gear, pulled out during the rare off hours for further study, to savor, to open far away doors within his soul—not all the way open, not yet, but enough for a disturbing, exhilarating peak within.

On most occasions he’d declined offers to accompany his fellow officers to the nearby bars, nightclubs, or Mobile Entertainment Centers. After enough declined offers he was perceived as an oddball, possibly queer, and there were no more offers of shared company.

He accepted this and relished the uninterrupted time alone.

For both Earth and Tral, once the decades of training and rearming were completed, the next few years of The War were spent attacking outposts and colonies—their own ironically, since they couldn’t as yet get at each other. Treason during time of war is, after all, serious business and must be dealt with accordingly, which is to say with even more ruthlessness than one might inflict on a foe. A pacifist is a traitor if a great cause is afoot, timidity a malignant cancer which mustn’t be allowed to metastasize.    

Both worlds soon realized the logistics involved in defending far away outposts and colonies, and pulled their survivors back to the home planets. At which point, the criterion for victory was clear: total destruction of the enemy’s planet. Therein, the strategy came down to two choices, an armada of sufficient size to overwhelm the enemy’s defenses or a single vessel equipped with a superweapon and stealth technology. There was also the overarching problem: how to get to the enemy’s homeworld. This challenge wasn’t anything like getting to the colonies, a journey of days, weeks, or months. Earth and Tral were one billion light years apart.       

Janesin found himself reviewing both books over and over, each time uncovering things he’d overlooked. He memorized them in their entirety, but just as a great work of physical art cannot truly be remembered absent the source material, for him actually looking at the words was necessary to evoke the deepest reflections. 

Why he did this was a question he asked himself many times. Perhaps he was probing for some deeper hidden meaning contained within the short quotes and poems. The poems from Earth’s First World War were particularly poignant, to the point of tears.

Maybe the truths were too painful to accept, and he searched in vain for a flaw which would at last reveal the fallacy of the arguments, a defect that would finally liberate him from the experiences of long-dead men who had followed similar paths as he now traveled—but there was a critical difference between his time and theirs: their battlefields were not here out among the stars, nor were their loves.

No matter what truths those long-dead warriors may have found in steaming jungles under a bludgeoning sun; pinned down by relentless enemy fire upon jagged coral beaches; in blistering sand-blown deserts staring grimly into oven-heated winds; underneath salty waves surrounded by icy darkness awaiting the lonely horrific moment of death; or on frozen plains never harboring an ounce of warmth, screamed at by wind and fear, praying to a god’s deaf ears to survive just a little while longer or a trade of death for an instant’s worth of warmth; they could not have comprehended a battlefield such as his, one far beyond their concept of the heavens.

There were common threads which linked them, but more than mere tendrils; these were solid links forged with the hatred associated with war, the past continuous with the far-removed present, his reality merged with theirs, his understanding fertilized by the succinct wisdom of the book.

All these together now as one chain, contained inside a remarkably strong hyperalloy shell.

“Guaranteed to take two knocks,” the drill instructor bellowed at Flight School, tapping on an actual fragment of hyperalloy. “Better not let the enemy make it three.”

Plates 32 and 67 on the ship already had their two knocks, thanks to the treasonous bastards on Tau 13. The fear that the enemy might be ahead in the science race made them gamble and use a ship that had already seen service, albeit one still in far better shape than any of the other candidates. Other than the aforementioned damage, which the admirals hoped the newly installed stealthiness would make irrelevant, the ship was in fighting shape and its crew well-trained.   

Centuries of technological advance changed soldiers little. They killed one another, yet feared death; they feared it, but when compelled by reasons they could not articulate, they were willing to sacrifice themselves for causes not necessarily honorable, but always compelling. If they paused to think of such things, deeply consider them, the reasons were nebulous at best. That is why unquestionably following orders is so crucial: An individual soldier can’t know all the facts, the cold reasons, the geopolitical considerations, the galactic imperatives from which orders spring and are deemed absolutely essential to save a people. The again famous “A Message to Garcia” is no less relevant for a technologically advanced army than it was during the Spanish-American War on Earth.  

And it was sacrifice that Janesin thought about. He even silently mouthed the word. He picked up the book again. Turning to page 117 he read:

The universe is so vast and ageless that the life of one can only be justified by the measure of his sacrifice.

            V.A. Rosewane

He returned his gaze to the gray ceiling. The color soothing, salve-like. He wasn’t even aware if he blinked or not.

Was there sacrifice in his being here? On a vessel rushing him and several hundred others to an uncertain or manifest destiny. The years spent training, planning, organizing, and now journeying to the enemy’s homeland had used a significant fraction of his youth. The training bitterly hard. The local campaigns harder. He winced when he remembered some particularly horrible moment.

Fourteen left dead on Daraal.

A piece of shrapnel bloodied his forehead on Dorian 5. His fingers instinctively traced the scar.

Trevor 5 kept fifty of his mates in her bosom.

He’d broken a leg in a Tro’olian swamp.

The village they’d torched on Du-2. And not all the huts empty.

They might die on this mission, which was fine so long as they got the egg off. Their commanders had been very honest about the possibility of death, but there were many more volunteers than there were billets on the ship. Those not selected were devastated at being forced to remain in the relative safety of their home planet. A few soldiers committed suicide, so great was their disappointment and disgrace. They had been denied the one chance at glory they would ever have and they knew this—and Janesin knew it and felt so sorry for them. Not because they had killed themselves, but because they had lost that rarest of chances, the one which comes too infrequently: of being part of something greater than life itself.

Sometimes a person’s death transcends the death of the Universe.

            C.O. Termat

He’d spent time searching historical archives for further information, background facts and direct data, and to an extent he’d been successful; but still he wished there was more. Additional details were brief—the authors of some of the poems in the book had been killed shortly after writing them. Janesin wondered if somehow they’d known their deaths drew near.

He more than suspected they did. 

How many great war poems remained forever unwritten. Or if written, placed in a uniform pocket and blown to bits and buried in the abyss mud of an ancient battlefield, forever unread?

Would he soon put pen to paper and if what he wrote was profound enough, should he warn the others, that they were powerless—because of him, his destiny?

The lack of details might be a good thing. Too much information and the words might lose their ability to provoke thought. It would be the same as providing next to each painting in a museum or book in a library a label delineating the chemical composition of the paint used in each masterpiece or the identity of the tree from which the paper was made. The information would be not only unnecessary, but would detract from the magic of the creation; the power of the pigment and the force of the printed word would be equally weakened by too much secondary information.

Still, he wished to know if Rosewane only suspected the universe was vast and ageless. The intervening centuries since these words were written afforded tremendous opportunities to explore and probe the known cosmos. Would it surprise Rosewane to learn that amongst the multitudes of stars there were but two planets containing life?

Two.

And that each contained a single intelligent life form.

Now at war with one another.

Janesin again smiled.

Rosewane would not be surprised in the least.

Reaching under his pillow, he took out the book given him by the old shopkeeper. No title belied its contents. Older, but in better condition than the military book, it was rapidly becoming dog-eared.

Thumbing through the pages he stopped on page 21 to read a passage which had a handwritten “X” in the margin next to it:

I wandered all these years among a world of women, seeking you.

            Jack London

Strange that brief passages in both the books said so much, and evoked overwhelming emotions. For minds open to the meaning contained therein, these snippets of wisdom said more than entire volumes of less profound material. His feelings when reading this other book were in many aspects like those evoked by the military textbook. 

There was a connection, there had to be, some ironclad link between the two; and if he could somehow determine what it was, he knew he’d have uncovered a great blinding truth, maybe the ultimate one in all of the universe. His physics professor had told them the grand unifying theory, if ever discovered, would be absurdly simple. “And might not be mathematical.”

Why not here, in these books?

Two worlds on which to search for one’s soulmate, two small insignificant points in all of space to find true love; one planet to physically search, the other never to peaceably visit, nor communicate with anymore—the war had shut down the holoromancelinks.

This mission was the first time anyone would travel to the other’s world.

But it wasn’t to look for love.

“Oh, but what might’ve been,” Janesin whispered.

He’d seen her picture, sitting on the greenest grass he’d ever seen. She wore a pale-yellow sundress, which made the bright yellow flowers in her hand burn like tiny suns. It was her smile which made him contact her. There was nothing flirtatious about it, nothing false or unseemly. Her smile warmth and goodness, of that he was certain. 

He joked that someday he’d bring her flowers in person. She told him she imagined the two of them visiting the very field in which she’d posed for the picture, in which she said each spring the sweetest grass and an army of wildflowers grew. She’d used the word army, naïve to the irony. The private moments granted them via the dating link were no less precious than two lovers left in solitude on a porch, caressed by heavy summer air and hope for a life together.    

The first stirrings of distrust between their planets became known to them. Across the lightyears they lamented together the fear that the links would be shut down if things worsened.

“No matter what,” he told her, “I won’t let any of this stop my loving you.”

She swore the same promise.

A week later, the links went dark. Permanently. They hadn’t communicated in ten years. He loved her no less for the lost decade of time.      

The last passage on the last page of the book seemed to mock not just him, but the beings on both planets:      

What is hate but another form of love.

            Aldous Huxley

Janesin put the book down, and referred again to the textbook. He read back and forth between them.

Sharing the page with Rosewane’s observation was another by a person who lived in what was once called Prussia; back in a time when there were geographical units called countries. While not stated in the book, Janesin knew from other readings that this German had been a profound thinker, so profound in fact, that the vast secrets he’d uncovered eventually caused him to go insane. Janesin shivered as he considered this.

Ye shall love peace as a means to new war and the short peace more than the long. You I advise not to work but to fight. You I advise not to peace but to victory. Ye say it is the cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause. War and courage have done more great things than charity.

            Frederick Nietzsche

Janesin’s eyes misted over. He’d considered the morality of war as a private citizen and as a soldier. It was a long arduous debate which always came to the same conclusion, though not in the purest essence that Nietzsche had uncovered. 

Whenever possible, he’d debated this excerpt with fellow officers or with the patrons in the bars he’d frequented during his more sociable moments. Always, they were unable to fully grasp its significance; sometimes they became bored with the depth of his debate, other times disconcerted by the fervor of his passion regarding the subject. In either case, he knew no one who appreciated it like he had. Because of this he so often felt alone, like the sighted person in a universe of the blind.

If this is how Nietzsche felt, no wonder he went mad.

The merits of the war?

The answer, so simple, so irrefutable, was here; it had already been found out years before by this philosopher. But they could not see it. Instead, there was a convincing of themselves, a reducing the justification to one thing, rightly or wrongly, but maybe in the end irrelevant: That the other conspired to destroy them and must therefore be first destroyed.

He read for an hour longer. Yawning, he found he could no longer concentrate. Contemplating these quotes fatigued him as no physical labor ever did. He flipped through several pages and read one last quote:

…that secret land which I loved as much as I hated it; which satisfied me as no other country did and yet let me hunger as none had done before…in whose hot deserts I had thirsted and in whose icy tundras I had wept because of the cold…that [land] which robbed me of five years of my young life but which repaid me tenfold with a wealth of experiences…

            Erich Dwinger

A young soldier who fought in a vast war long ago wrote this. Squinting east (he’d have used the word osten), toward glory, and saw it in the form of flame, smoke, brewing tanks, the unearthly screams of wounded men, death, lonely birchwood crosses later plowed under by an unforgiving enemy that wanted no memorials to beckon an invader’s return. 

A cry from long ago reached depths inside Janesin, helping soothe the pain—as it always did. The long-dead man told him that all his sacrifices, during the training, and before, was ultimately going to be worth the cost. It had to be, because there was no greater cost to pay, and in being so, that received for the price had to be commensurately of still greater value.

“If only I wasn’t so impatient,” Janesin told himself.

Flipping off the light he soon fell into a troubled sleep.

He didn’t dream about her this time. If we could, somehow during our sleep disassociate ourselves from the unconscious, we would give great thanks for this fact.

But dream he did. Sounds this time…voices…the boys as they chased him down the corridor of the megaplex building his family lived in. Their cruel shouts rang echoing among the halls, piercing even the rough gasps of his terrified breathing. It seemed he ran forever, but no matter how long he ran, they always caught him…

II.

There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. The Earth’s galaxy, the Milky Way, is but an average sized one; yet, it contains several hundred billion suns. Around many of the suns comprising the galaxies are planets; the total number of planets exceeds two hundred and fifty billion in the Milky Way alone. 

To travel among this endless sea of stars had been a dream of Earthman and Tralian since shortly after the earliest of their species rose on two legs, straightened himself up, then stared wondering at the night sky. The first of these dreamers approached this fantasy with mysticism or its close relative, religion. Limited by a lack of knowledge and technology, they assumed only the gods could dwell among the shining points of fire affixed to the ebony that was the night. They sometimes envisioned themselves transported by the gods in ways they could understand: on fiery chariots, by the talons of divine winged creatures, or directly by the hands of the gods themselves.

Later, each species fashioned engines of locomotion and came to believe with certainty that the realization of the dream of space travel was inevitable. Scientific knowledge advanced at an exponential rate. The stars themselves would be reached based on current progress if one assumed technological advancement continued apace.

More encouragement was afforded by the early flights to moons, nearby planets, and other astronomical bodies within their solar systems. These were considered the first tentative steps in ultimately conquering space. Surely, each civilization thought, it is only a matter of time before we became advanced enough to journey throughout the cosmos.

Oh, what wondrous excitement!

Such optimism was reflected by the earliest science fiction writers on Earth, and later by movies, television shows, and other media. Unlimited potential was accepted as fact; it was taken for granted that any obstacles to space flight would eventually be overcome. If not in their lifetimes, surely in someone else’s.

But this was seemingly not to be.

Sadly, even before the first manned space flights, a great Earth scientist proved the impossibility of traveling faster than the speed of light. The smarter among them realized this was a coffin lid slammed shut on mankind’s destiny.

But within each heart, scientist and nonscientist alike, a lingering hopeful doubt dwelt. So, despite the great scientist’s decree, decades of investment in space programs continued, his proof of their doomed captivity ignored, even by learned men who knew his brilliant equations to be true.

Why did they join the less educated dreamers in denial of this fact, believing with undaunted hope that space exploration was possible?

They had to believe because to accept the immutable limitation of travel at less than light-speed would mean the stars were forever inaccessible. Any who accepted such a fact would find themselves forever trapped within a temperate blue prison, orbiting a lonely sun in a nondescript arm of an average galaxy. Awaiting the death of its sun.

 And those who dared consider the possibility of this asked: “If we are cursed to remain here, what purpose is there for our existence?”

What purpose, indeed.

Thusly, did scientific philosophers debate. For on the shores of an island universe they were seemingly marooned, surrounded by an uncrossable sea.

The limiting condition of lightspeed was a puzzling barrier, re-proven inviolate at every conceivable angle of attack. Should they turn away from the sky and instead look inward?

No, no, a thousand times no. In spite of the genius of the man who built them their cosmic cage, many would not, could not, accept this fate.

They continued the search. Unknown to the Earthmen, a similar quest occurred on Tral as well. They looked and studied and did not relent in the hope for greater-than-light speed travel. If they failed, mankind and Tralian would live no longer than their suns lived, and though it was a limit billions of years long, this was, to those who fully understood its implications, a thought beyond terror. A few of the more intelligent among them actually went mad because of the hopelessness of it all.

Centuries passed. Researchers were born, lived their lives, advanced the boundaries of science in every manner of things, and died.  

At last, on Earth, a great discovery was made. The great scientist’s equations weren’t wrong, but they were incomplete in the sense that there were other, equally true equations, which were at last found: Communication at greater than lightspeed was possible. Excitedly, this technology was developed and improved. Surely, the scientists thought, this is the first step in solving the riddle of intergalactic travel—and in this they were correct. But they would find it necessary to invest many more years of intellect toward the endeavor before that goal was at last realized.

Scientists continued research on space flight, while others expanded upon the new communication discovery. It was christened interpodal communication, and it utilized a dimension not limited by light’s speed. Within this dimension were odd, still unexplainable areas they named interpodes that operated like the relay towers of twentieth-century Earth communications. Using these it was theoretically possible to communicate almost instantly with any place in the universe.

The colonies in their own solar system benefited first from this breakthrough. Communication that once took many agonizing hours each way at the speed of light, were now as quick as a shout within one’s own home from one room to another.     

Early on it was suggested the interpodes would be useful for searching out other intelligent life. Previous efforts, relying on receiving signals traveling at the speed of light, had detected nothing; there was no evidence of signals from another intelligent race arriving from any part of the sky. 

Interpodal communication channels were utilized to broadcast terrestrial communications in all directions into the vastness of space. These contained carefully composed mathematical messages, designed to be decipherable by thinking beings. These messages were based on prime numbers. Anthropic perhaps, but nothing else made as much sense as this tactic. 

Included in the message were instructions on how to respond back via the same means.

And the senders waited for a response.

But there was a degree of pessimism inherent to the search. The Drake Equation quantified the difficulty of finding other civilizations; there were so many stars and planets, making long odds instead seem an overwhelming certainty, the gambler’s fallacy writ large, very large. Many people expected the existence of numerous planets harboring life and that advanced civilizations would be found—and plentiful in number. 

Parameters were established for defining life. Trying to overcome the chauvinism toward water and carbon-based life was difficult, but still a very narrow range of conditions were defined as suitable for life. Protocols were also fashioned on how to greet our intelligent extraterrestrial neighbors, once these were found.

And of the billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, with many of the stars orbited by planets, a single answer came back.

From a planet a billion light years away. 

Mankind had found Tral.

Tral had likewise discovered Earth.

Man and Tralian knew he was not alone among the infinite heavens. 

The mutual discovery of one another was heralded as the most significant event that had ever happened on either planet. It was widely believed to be a singular achievement ushering in a great new era for both creatures. The media on both worlds worked themselves into a frenzy, feasting and fed by the reactions of the populace who clamored around their viewscreens.

They were fully mesmerized by the news, analyses of the news, analyses of the analyses. Every new morsel of information eagerly eaten up, digested, and then regurgitated for further discussion.

Eventually, things would calm down, but they would never be quite the same.

Both civilizations, as it turned out, were at comparable development levels; though Tral had not yet developed interpodal communication, it was quickly able to adopt it and respond to Earth’s signals using this communication method. 

Like the Earthmen, the Tralians chose mathematics to comprise its first message. The common ground of numbers enabled the development of an understanding of each other’s language. Quickly, a workable translator was developed and placed on line. Now they could talk to one another in real terms.

Communication commenced. The people of both worlds gasped at the first images of each other. Both races were humanoid in appearance.  

The President of the United States and the Triad of Gobleck on Tral exchanged private greetings. Long a supporter of the space program, the President was full of smug excitement. To him, contact with Tral fulfilled a lifelong dream, and offered a political smackdown to his detractors, some of whom were members of his own party. 

Like so many others, he’d fantasized about other worlds, peopled by strange creatures and civilizations. His enthusiasm was that of a young boy, and it was only with great effort he maintained the degree of control required by diplomatic decorum.

Shortly afterwards, a public ceremonial greeting was played out for both worlds. The buzz among the populace of both planets was electric. Routines of everyday life no longer seemed to hold the same degree of importance. Everyone, from the lowest menial laborer to the most learned scholar watched, fully enthralled by these events.

The similarities between the planets were striking. Both were of approximately the same size, had comparable climates, and similar density afforded them almost identical gravities. There was slightly more water on Tral; Earth was on average one degree warmer. The Earthlings and Tralians were also of comparable appearance, so much so, that despite the huge distance between the two worlds, the inevitable speculation arose of common ancestry and was hotly debated. 

What were the odds that both species were erect bipedal humanoids with hair, five-fingered hands with opposable thumbs, bilateral symmetry, and gave birth to live young?

That the Earthlings were humanoid in appearance was noted with amazement by the Tralians. 

“Humans are surprisingly Tralian in appearance,” they said.

On average, the Tralians were shorter but stockier than their human counterparts. Both had surprisingly comparable standards associated with beauty. And yes, fantasies of intergalactic sex and romance were soon considered (privately) on both sides of the universe.

The first movies with this theme appeared within months.

Socially, both planets were divided into individual governmental entities, countries on Earth, gos on Tral. Each had its long history of wars, famine, pestilence, scientific discoveries, religions, social upheaval, and technological development. Both worlds had established colonies on other planets and moons.

There were those who felt these facts could not merely be a coincidence and must be the result of divine providence said the religious; or of some higher intelligence not yet known, said a few disputatious scholars on both planets. 

The priests on both planets agreed the similarities were too striking to be merely the result of chance.

God and gods were considered, as theologians on Earth and Tral hoped the existence of the other would somehow validate the nature of the divine beings worshiped by their kind. That spiritual things became a preoccupation was best explained by the fact they found themselves the only two groups of thinking beings in the universe. In being so rare, their own self-worth was correspondingly greater and more likely the result of the munificent hand of a creator. Many atheists, long assuming that life was of no special consequence, were forced to rethink their beliefs, and not a few were ultimately drawn toward a belief in divinity.

The following century saw the nation states on both planets quickly disappear as the Earthlings and Tralians were forced by their new found knowledge of the other’s existence to identify firstly with their respective planets; and only secondly—and weakly at that—with their individual countries or gos.

The ancient Arabic saying “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” instinctively played out on both worlds, and as later events would prove, was a good answer for the end of boundaries and animosity among each planet’s nation states, though at the time it was instead credited to the awareness of the other planet and its people, which made the concept of “nations” appear far less important. 

Like a slap across the face, both planets fully understood the importance of spreading life throughout the cosmos. Only a fool puts all his eggs in one basket, as the saying on Earth went. Two baskets ain’t much better. 

Work on interpodal travel continued with increased fervor, and this became a central goal of a unified Earth and a united Tral for the next hundred years.

In the intervening century, billions of inhabitants communicated with those on their sister planet. Psychologists would speculate that one of the primary reasons for this was the knowledge that they were the only two planets in the universe containing intelligent beings. Like two people alone in a vast empty subway station late at night, they were drawn to one another in a way that would have been impossible had the subway station—or heavens—been populated with crowds.

Readily available audio and visual communication between the planets was established for use by the general public. It was no more difficult to communicate with Tral than for an Earthling to talk to a friend across a kitchen table. Facilitation of this became an enormously profitable business on both planets. 

Services were set up to allow communication between individuals. Specialized services included matching people with those on the other planet sharing similar backgrounds and interests. Though they could not visit each other until a major breakthrough occurred in intergalactic travel research, many friendships developed between Earthlings and Tralians. More than a few romances developed, not unlike those arranged in the past on Earth between far separated hearts courting via the post. Who dared say their love was any less sincere or beautiful than that shared by a couple from the same planet?       

Other relationships were described as one between long-lost cousins, unable to visit, but able to phone each other from time-to-time. Another popular way of characterizing this was as intergalactic pen-palism. Trite, but perhaps an accurate description.

Regardless, things were extremely cordial both on an individual basis and between the governments.

For a long time, the relations remained this way.

But each planet was populated by humanoid creatures—the striking similarities already mentioned. There is an old saying on Tral: “Always be yourself, because eventually you’ll have to be, anyway.” Thus, it should have come as no surprise that eventually they must behave as, well, humanoids.

III.

Any ruler at the circumference of the empire is an enemy.

            Kautilya

From the beginning there had been quiet voices of caution on both sides of the “pond,” as the intervening parsecs came to be called.

“What do we really know about the other?”

“They seem so like us, but isn’t this, in and of itself, cause for alarm.”

“Who really are the Earthlings?” asked the Tralians. 

“Who really are the Tralians?” asked the Earthlings.

There were those on each planet who warned of the possibility that the other could be hostile and secretly malevolent harbor designs on themselves; for the first time in centuries, each race prepared an army.    

The solution to intergalactic travel now had strategic implications; and nothing is so sure as war to spur solving an intractable problem. Neither side was convinced that the other would readily share the solution to this problem once found, for to surmount the barrier of intergalactic travel would place the other at a most dire military disadvantage. And indeed, they stopped sharing research, a fact at first kept from their general populations.

The diplomats on both sides played a passive-aggressive game for as long as they could, before it become too obvious for even their unctuous skills to hide.

“Oh, yes, the results of that test. A computer virus crashed the data. We’ll retrieve and get it off as soon as possible.”

“Goodness, we couldn’t get it back, so we’re redoing the tests and calculations.”

“Turn the computer off and wait a minute before turning it back on? Ha, ha, that’s a good one, my Tralian friend.”

“A lab accident. Terrible. Many deaths and injuries. Set us back at least a month.”

“Didn’t pan out like we’d hoped. We’re working a new line of research, which we hope to share with you shortly.”

Janesin wondered: Did the planning for the possibility of conflict make the war inevitable or was it merely an irrelevancy to a war which had to be fought? 

Theirs was a new army, a new fleet. The lessons of the past were relearned. The historical archives were searched and man once again studied the Art of War. Janesin thought “art” was the apt term. Were they not artists? Blood the paint, battlefield the canvas.

They carefully studied the records of the past. Even those involving the most primitive of battles: cavalrymen versus cavalrymen, archer versus sword-wielding infantryman, tree branch wielding caveman versus one swinging a femur, all were studied. For even here among seeming technological primitiveness a critical lesson might be learned.

Too much was at stake for the task to be improperly done or some important detail overlooked. 

Janesin was born and grew to manhood at the most remarkable time of all. He would be of military age when the dream of intergalactic travel was at last realized.

They hoped the enemy did not discover it first.

“Janesin!” screamed the drill sergeant, “you have brought great dishonor to this unit.”

And for his punishment he had to write 1000 times the following:

Honor is heavier than the mountains and death lighter than a feather.

Its author was unknown. Only that he’d lived in old imperial Japan and his saying had been oft-repeated as encouragement to fanatical Japanese soldiers, sailors, and pilots during the Second World War on Earth.

He wrote it. Believing it as strongly the first time as the thousandth.

IV.

“In position, Admiral. Weapon armed and locked on target.”

“Recon. Any indication we’ve been detected?”

“None, sir.”

“We out of blowback range?”

“Barely.”

“We’ll take the chance.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Engage release countdown on my mark.”

Faces froze. Breaths were forgone. This was real. No longer a drill.

“Engage.”

“Engaged, sir.”

“Twenty and counting…”

“Fifteen and counting…”

“Ten and counting…”

“Five. Four. Three. Two. One—weapon away…hyperburn active.”

A minute passed.

“Confirm arrival at detonation point.”

“Exiting hyperburn now. Detonation point confirmed.”

“Confirm detonation point. Thank you.”

The admiral paused, doing exactly what he’d been trained not to do. A few brief seconds might allow detection of the egg and its preemptive destruction, hence, the destruction of their own entire species.

“Sir? It’s time.”

“Yes, I’m sorry…” The admiral’s voice faded off into nothingness.

“Sir? It’s time to start the detonation sequence.”

Janesin looked over at the admiral, nodded, then moved over to the weapons officer’s console. The sorrow on the admiral’s face followed Janesin like a mournful ghost. He made no effort to intervene.        

The weapon’s officer leaned to his left, which allowed Janesin access to the panel in front of him. Janesin pushed a button. “Start detonation sequence countdown,” Janesin’s said, in a calm voice.

The weapons officer’s voice, a machine really at this point, said: “Detonation sequence engaged. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

The viewscreens muffled the unimaginably blinding flash to a safe level, but hands instinctively rose to shield eyes.

A shrill beep called from another console.  

“Sir, there’s an alert just in from headquarters.”

And because there can only be one sun in the sky, because the kingdom at the edge of any empire is an enemy, and for reasons which can never be understood…there were two new stars, each burning brighter than any other star in the entire cosmos. Their fires were so great they consumed the very solar systems that contained them, including the less brilliant suns at their centers. But after a few minutes these brilliant artificial novae winked out. The final light radiated outward in all directions to travel for eternity, to be witnessed by no living thing—well, almost no living thing.

Nothing remained to provide evidence as anywhere in the universe having ever harbored thinking life.

Except for two warships.

The light muffler for the viewscreens disengaged itself. It was now laughably unnecessary. Only the darkness of night remained, a sea of stars, far off in the distance. Those of the crew that still watched their screens, stared aghast. Janesin’s face the only emotionless one among them. He looked around him and saw the other faces ashen with horror. Like the slate piles in the Pixak Valley, he said to himself.   

A faint voice spoke up for all of them. “Gone…their entire…solar system…gone. Sun and all.”

The egg had been thorough, as intended.

“So is ours,” the admiral said, only a faint tremble in his voice. He’s a good man, Janesin thought. I hope he’s able to convince himself that he didn’t just murder twenty billion people. 

There was no going home. They were alone amongst the vastness of space except for the other ship, which they knew had just destroyed their homeworld. The other ship, far from its base on Earth, and now a billion light years away, stood like their own ship, at the edge of an empty void which had only moments before held their beloved Tral and its solar system.

He thought of her…

Janesin at last uncovered the great truth sought so long. This was a melding of the two greatest sayings in the universe, which expressed the ultimate truth in exquisite simplicity; but now it was too late to share this knowledge with anyone. 

Those on the ships, the last two sepulchers of life, harbored beings that would no longer care to appreciate the profundity of his discovery. Others—well, there were no others, anymore.

And he began to whisper the sayings over and over, what he now knew to be the most beautiful, most precious words in the dying universe: I love you…Fix bayonets…I love you…Fix bayonets…

The room he returned to was comfortable and spring meadow warm. And for what he knew was the last time he opened up the text and read:

In bloom today, then scattered; Life is so like a delicate flower. How can one expect the fragrance to last forever?

            Admiral Onishi

Oddly, more than anything, Janesin regretted he’d never had the opportunity to see a flower held in her hands, him sitting next to her on the sweet green grass of her planet.

Grass grew on both Tral and Earth.            

Flowers only grew on Earth.