Unfailing Fall into Naught
What if it was all true, he found himself asking, the waves crashing against the rocks. It had started raining earlier, and the rest of the crew had taken their celebrations back inside, back to the hotel, to the bar, pouring each other drinks, toasting their success. All of them except Anne, who had quietly gone to her room, feigning a headache, her expression blank, full of exhaustion, as if she had nothing left to give, nothing left to say, the matter eating away at her until, at last, the only peace she could achieve was a numbed silence.
Standing on the shore, however, looking out over the dark ocean, the notable absence of the squat shape of the Sea Horse research base, its ruins now dwelling at the bottom of the ocean along with those responsible for its destruction, the being who had taken the name Moroboshi Dan did not feel like celebrating either.
He sighed, lifting his head to the rain, closing his eyes and letting it fall upon his face, the likeness he had assumed, the features he had borrowed from a man he barely knew. Often he had asked himself what was so important about this small world, this quiet backwater planet so far from his own home, three million light years away; now he was forced to consider that the people on this planet, the people he had strived to protect in his brief time in residence were not the only people he should have been protecting.
The use of the term 'Nonmarten' had spooked him. To hear something of his own language, of his own culture so far from home was unsettling, a reminder that his time in this form was finite, that the lives of the people around him were finite.
There had been life on Earth before humankind, he knew that much. From the M78 Nebula, his people had watched over all life in the cosmos as it had flourished, just as they had, at times, watched as it had withered. There had been an entire culture of reptiles in the mountains and amphibians in the sea before humankind had risen up, and there had been visitors in the arctic wastes with their ancient cities and their servile shoggoths, all of this he had seen with his own eyes, but had there really been another culture before even the Earth Reptiles, a species that had made contact with his own people, who had taken their word for outsiders and made it their own?
Sharply, suddenly, unwelcomely, he recalled the empty nightclub several weeks ago, the girl with the machine gun held in her trembling hands.
'The Earth is a good place, Maya,' he had said to her. 'You can live with us.'
He remembered coming back, remembered the facsimile of his human heart beating in his chest in very real anticipation—and he remembered standing there alone, the faint scent of that poison gas in the air, the dust that had been Maya before the silent jukebox, ill-will ambassador of Planet Magellan.
Human to the last, he thought, turning away from the falling rain. There was no difference between the Magellans and humankind, their makeup identical, evolutionary cousins of differing worlds separated only by the sea of stars.
The waves behind him stirred, the rain falling upon the surface, puncturing it, flowing into it. The ruins of the Nonmarten civilisation would begin to wash up on shores in the next few days, he thought solemnly, and he wondered what humanity would find as they sifted through the ruins of lives so abruptly ended. Would there be books written on the Nonmarten, would there be excavations of the world they had built around them in the crushing depths of the sea, driven to the most inhospitable climate on Earth, so they said, vy the invasive and expansive actions of humanity?
What was the meaning of such death, he thought bitterly; what was it that made humanity excusable and condemned the Nonmarten?
He remembered clearly when first he had arrived on Earth, when first he had found the sustenance he had placed between the mimicry of his human lips had once been an animal of sorts, and he remembered clearly the disgust he had had felt, the horror that such people could only see value in life that resembled their own. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe he shouldn't have come here, maybe he should have listened to his superior officer, maybe he should have stayed away from Earth.
The rain continued to fall.
It was too late now. He was just as guilty as were the people of this world, the rest of the crew pouring each other drinks, toasting their success.
'The Earth is a good place, Maya,' he had said to her. 'You can live with us.'
The rain continued to fall on the waves behind him, the dead of an entire race silent and unmoving below.