Chapter 12

There was dead silence in the room as Elizabeth tried to process what David had just said. What Olunnhar had just said. Jesus Christ was an Engineer? A Mala'kak?

Almost without thinking, she closed her hand over her father's necklace. Yet what she felt wasn't grief. No, she had never been one to take the Bible literally. No one who had championed her theory for the creation of mankind could possibly believe every word of it was true. To her, her father's cross had always represented a general belief in a higher power rather than a belief in the specific tenets of Christianity. No, what she felt was closer to amazement.

The Engineers had been involved with humanity as recently as the time of Christ. Neither she nor Charlie had ever dreamed they had remained in contact with humans for that long. Now, to find out that, not only were they the influence behind much of mankind's early, creation mythology, but had influenced more recent religious traditions as well? She felt an almost uncontrollable urge to bury herself in all her books and look for Engineer fingerprints all over every major world religion. It would be fascinating to try and see the influences they had had on-

"Elizabeth?" David's voice cut through her scholarly excitement like a dull knife.

She shook herself. "Yes, David," she forced herself to say as she tried to put her inner archeologist on the back burner.

"He wishes to inform you that he regrets what happened in the cockpit of his ship."

Elizabeth glanced at Olunnhar. He was looking at her less with regret and more with apprehension, as if he wasn't sure what her reaction to all this would be. Elizabeth looked down at her necklace, then back up at him, and he immediately began speaking again, quickly, as though trying to explain.

"He says that after the failure of the Final Emissary, your people were marked as both a failure and extremely dangerous, should your evolution continue unchecked," David translated. "It terrified him to awake from his long slumber to find that you'd not only advanced far enough to travel to his people, but were also now producing your own creations." The android seemed to…wince a bit at this last bit. Or maybe it was just the fried circuits in his eye acting up. Elizabeth didn't care.

"And he thought we were just as selfish and cruel as we were when they decided to exterminate us?" she asked, thinking of Weyland and his arrogant demands toward Olunnhar and his savagery toward her while she was injured.

"Correct," David told her, after he had translated for Olunnhar and the Mala'kak had spoken once more. "He says he was surprised when you turned out to be…softer than the others. I'm afraid what he's saying doesn't quite translate. Perhaps less…harsh would be a better way of describing it. He says he was confused as to why you saved him when he had been trying to kill you. His death would have meant your survival and yet you put yourself at risk by preventing his death. It went against everything he believed about you people and he wanted to know why."

So that was why he saved me when I collapsed. Curiosity. He had questions for me, and if I died, he'd never get his answers. Not too far off from why I saved him. It almost made her laugh, but she held it back, not wanting to derail the conversation.

"He was surprised at how friendly you were to him," David continued to translate. "You treated him, not as a danger, or even as a provider, but as one of your own. It fascinated him. Eventually, it even charmed him. He was grateful for the companionship you provided him."

Elizabeth thought back on the moments when he had comforted her or been affectionate with her. "I was thankful for his companionship too," she said honestly.

She heard Olunnhar speak in that same, rushed, frantic tone after David translated that for him. Then David was speaking again.

"He says he didn't understand why you would carry a symbol of the Final Emissary's death with you. It is the symbol of your people's cruelty, your downfall, your refusal to change. Why would you bring such a symbol with you when you came to find his people? He couldn't see it as anything other than gloating. And that angered him because he thought you were different."

Elizabeth nodded, things beginning to come clear to her. Olunnhar had come to view her as his only comfort, especially after he'd found out his people had abandoned him for two millennia and might be extinct. To find out that his only friend left in the world, the one human who he thought was different, was apparently as nasty as all the others must have pushed his already fragile sanity past the breaking point. While it didn't excuse what he'd done to her, at least she finally understood the reason behind his uncontrollable fury.

"But he saw the reverence with which you treated the symbol," David told her. "After he was injured, he saw you take comfort in it, even draw strength from it. He says he understands that, whatever the symbol means to you, he knows there is no gloating or malice behind it. He tells me he even had a brief moment of hope that perhaps the Final Emissary's teachings did get through to you, and that was why you were different from the others. However, he knows this is impossible. He knows your kind has very short lifespans and you must have been born long after the Final Emissary's death. There is no way you could have heard his teachings."

"He may have died a long time ago, but that doesn't mean we forgot him," Elizabeth told Olunnhar. "An entire religion developed around him and his teachings. It had a huge influence on much of the world for centuries. People learned it, did their best to follow it, and taught it to their children. People did learn, Olunnhar."

If she hoped that would make Olunnhar happy, she was mistaken. He seemed shaken, as if some terrible fear of his had been confirmed. When she pressed for an explanation, he remained silent. It took David repeating her question four times before Olunnhar finally replied.

"He tells me that he had begun to suspect this when he saw how you respected the symbol of the Final Emissary's death," David told her. "It worried him."

"Why would it worry him?" Elizabeth asked. "Isn't that what his people wanted?"

It took more prodding to get Olunnhar to reply. His deep, rumbly voice seemed unnaturally high when he did speak, as though he were fighting his emotions and just barely holding on.

"He says that that wasn't what horrified him," David translated. "It was how he treated you. You and your species."

"He was going to kill us all," Elizabeth supplied, unnecessarily. "Now he knows it was wrong?"

It seemed at first that Olunnhar wasn't going to reply. He was slumped over the counter as if he were having trouble supporting himself without it, and his head was turned completely away from her. It was like he was ignoring her. Or, perhaps shutting her out. Shutting everything out. So she was surprised to hear him speak a single, hesitant sentence.

"He says he was told that your people failed your test," David supplied.

Was told? Did that mean he had never even seen a human before? That he'd never even witnessed their supposed atrocities firsthand? That he had been going to commit genocide based upon someone else's word alone? Someone else's statement that he had never even bothered to confirm?

She supposed it wasn't surprising. Members of death squads weren't the ones who made the decisions, after all. No, they were often the kind of people who followed horrific orders blindly. That was how it had been for most of human history, anyway. Why should Mala'kak be any different?

"Who told him?" Elizabeth finally asked, despite knowing the answer was meaningless. What did it matter who had told him to slaughter an entire planet full of innocent people? It was wrong regardless of who had given the command. Still, she longed for at least some sort of explanation for why Olunnhar would be willing to blindly do such a vile thing.

When Olunnhar spoke again, it was in a rush of desperate, grief-choked words. He still didn't look at Elizabeth, but his eyes, locked on David's, were almost pleading as he tried to explain.

"The Elders of his people give the commands," David translated. "He asks that you understand that he is young, by his people's standards, and has been taught to trust the word of the Elders completely and without exception, since he himself has not yet gained the wisdom to be able to make the decisions they can. At this stage in his life, he is only allowed to carry out their will. And their will was that failed creations could not be allowed to live. For that reason, his missions were considered righteous."

"Missions?" Elizabeth asked, with dawning horror. "He's…he's done this before?"

Olunnhar's reply was a despairing little mumble given during an intense study of the countertop.

"The extermination of your species would have been his third mission," David told her.

Elizabeth lurched to her feet so frantically that it seemed to startle David. If the bodiless android could have jumped, she was sure he would have. Olunnhar, on the other hand, didn't even look up at her. For which she was glad. She wasn't sure she even wanted to look into his eyes right now. Not after learning this.

Two missions. Two planets full of people. Full of men, women and children. Families. Communities. Civilizations. Cultures. And everything they thought, believed, learned, created. All that they had been, were and could be. Exterminated. All because some dusty "Elders" sitting on some council somewhere decided it should be so.

"Olunnhar…" she whispered, staring at him in horror.

He spoke, the soft, toneless mutter of an empty man, but did not raise his head to look at her.

"He has been forced to consider the idea that those he exterminated during earlier missions may not have deserved such a fate either," David told her.

"Why? Is he afraid they also passed their tests and no one bothered to give him the message?" she said, almost sulkily, looking at the miserable Mala'kak not with anger or even contempt, but with disappointment.

"That appears to be correct," David told her, apparently surmising this from Olunnhar's previous responses, since the Engineer did not speak further.

"Doesn't he realize it would have been wrong regardless?" she snapped. "His people may have created us, but they don't own us. A parent isn't allowed to kill their own child just because they were the one who birthed it. My people know this, and we're supposedly the evil monsters who don't deserve to live! What does that make his people?"

And, by extension, what did that make him?

Olunnhar finally looked up at her once David had finished translating for him, and there was desperation in his dark eyes. His words were even more frantic before, as he tried desperately to defend himself.

"He says culling failed creations was considered humane, since they would have ended up inflicting great suffering upon one another," said David.

"It's not up to him or his people to decide whether anyone else's life is worth living!" she said, still feeling that horrified, almost baffled disappointment. How could Olunnhar not know these things? How?

"He also says that failed creations could become a danger to his people or others once they became advanced enough to travel to other star systems."

"You can't kill someone just because they might be a threat someday!" Elizabeth protested. "What if we had done that, when we arrived here? What if we had killed him while he was in Hypersleep, just because there was the possibility he could hurt us? He'd be dead right now!"

Olunnhar's despairing expression seemed to suggest that this might not have been such a bad idea for any of them.

She felt a reluctant stirring of pity, both unexpected and unwanted, and she tried to force it away. She had just found out he had exterminated two planets full of people, and she was not going to let herself feel sorry for him just because he made a sad face. The sympathy should be reserved for his billions of victims, not him.

She turned away from the workbench suddenly, wanting to put that horrified, lost expression (and the unexpected feelings it brought with it) out of her sight. "I need some air," she told David, halfheartedly. Then she had to force herself to stop, realizing almost instantly that that euphemism would not translate and would only make Olunnhar wonder if she was suffocating somehow. If he could even rouse his attention away from his own horrified realization, that was. She stole a glance back at him and was immediately sorry for it. He stared unseeingly down at the counter, looking like he had been frozen in time, the last thing he'd seen too awful to comprehend.

She turned away again. "Tell him I would like to be alone for a while," she told David. "Tell him I'll be in the living area and he shouldn't disturb me right now." Without waiting for a reply from David, she headed toward the door.

"Leezabet!" came a deep voice, his voice, from behind her.

She stopped, but didn't turn around. There was a paused from Olunnhar and then she heard him speaking in that same, rushed, frantic way, as if he were groping for one more, desperate straw.

"He was following his orders," David translated. "He has been trained his entire career to obey orders, to respect the wishes of his superiors. To put his trust in the wisdom of the Elders above all else. He thought he was doing the proper thing. He asks that you understand-"

"No, Olunnhar," she replied, now feeling nothing but a deep heavy sadness. "A soldier should know when his orders are wrong. He should know when they go against the very thing he is fighting for. My people know that. We don't let our soldiers get away with excuses like that. If your people are so much better than us, why haven't you learned that yet?"

And with that, she hurriedto the door, wanting to put those eyes and that voice and all the conflicting feelings they brought with them, out of her sight and out of her mind.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Elizabeth huddled on the floor in the bathroom, hugging her knees to herself and probably looking, she thought, like the very picture of misery. She'd hidden herself away in this tiny, windowless room because sitting in the living area felt too vulnerable. Too open. She wanted the safety of this tiny enclosed space where no one could see her. Although Olunnhar probably would respect her wishes and stay away right now, she still didn't want to even chance seeing him. Or him seeing her. Not until she'd figured out what exactly she was feeling…and why.

Strangely, trying to come to terms with what he'd done was awful, but it was also alarmingly easy. She had her suspicions right from the beginning, after all. He'd been stationed aboard a ship full of deadly biological weapons, and, judging by what he'd been planning to do to her own planet, he knew how to use them. It wasn't much of a stretch to consider the idea that he'd used them before. She had hoped that is wasn't true, of course, had hoped that there was another explanation-he was new to his job and hadn't gone on any missions yet, or Earth was the first planet his people had ever tried to destroy-but she'd nonetheless been forced to consider the possibility, even if it had only been in some cobwebby corner of her mind.

No, what was hardest for her to understand was why she couldn't make herself hate him for it.

He deserved it. There was probably no living person in the entire galaxy who deserved it more. And yet, she couldn't. All she could feel was pity.

Her thoughts kept returning to the day she had found him alone in the storage room, weeping for the loss of his people. For the loss of his family, friends, world, culture. His everything. It had broken him almost beyond repair. And now she kept wondering if he was starting to consider it an apt, perhaps even too lenient punishment for someone like him.

The thought brought tears to her eyes. Just imagining what he was going through right now was almost too awful to contemplate. And he deserved it, deserved to feel nothing but unending horror and self-loathing for the rest of his days, but she…

She didn't want him to be that way. She wanted to make it better. And she not only couldn't, she shouldn't.

"What's wrong with me?" she whispered to herself.

She tried to remind herself how easy it was for her to hate David. He'd murdered the man she loved, sure, but that was still only one person. The most important person in the world to her, yes, but still only a single life. If David's now unattached hands were stained with blood, then Olunnhar was drowning in it.

And yet, logic still seemed to be having trouble gaining a foothold in this conversation with herself. She could go over it all as rationally as she liked, and yet, in the end, she still hated David and felt sorry for Olunnhar. The deaths of billions of anonymous nobodies paled beside the death of the love of her life, as wrong as that was. It reminded her of the old saying "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." Who had said that? Stalin? She'd heard it attributed to Stalin, at least, although she had no idea if-

She lost her train of thought, wishing she hadn't thought about Stalin. She didn't want to think of murderous dictators right now, because the thought of them drove the point home even more than the thought of David had. Because compared to Olunnhar, not only was David the lesser of two evils, but so was Stalin.

Her stomach lurched and she scrambled to her knees and huddled over the toilet. She stifled a groan and waited wondering if her breakfast was going to come back up, but it did not and after a few moments, the nausea passed.

Elizabeth slumped back to the floor, suddenly feeling exhausted. And disgusted with herself, because even now, the feelings for Olunnhar remained. And she still didn't understand why. The why remained just out of reach. She didn't want to feel sympathy for him…or perhaps she did want to but knew she shouldn't. And why?

Why?

She didn't need him anymore, after all. It wasn't like back in the ship, when the fear of being alone made her desperate to keep him by her side. No, she wasn't alone anymore. She had David, much as she hated him, and she suspected the two of them could figure out their own way off this empty moon, if they put their minds to it. Even the promise she'd made to Olunnhar, the one about not leaving him, seemed empty and meaningless now that she knew the truth. He wasn't worth the promise, and besides, he had no idea she'd even made it, since he hadn't been able to understand her at the time. It didn't tie her to him. Nothing did, anymore. She had no more reasons, no more excuses, to remain with a genocidal alien.

So why?

WHY?

Why couldn't she just hate him? Why couldn't she loathe him and turn her back on him and leave him here alone to stew in his own misery? It would be so much easier…it would be a relief even.

But she couldn't.

Because you can't force yourself to hate someone you…

No.

Oh no.

There it was. The elusive why she'd been searching for, now hovering within her reach, waiting for her to reach out and claim it.

But she couldn't…

It…it wasn't right. She couldn't.

She SHOULDN'T…

But…

But she did.

She did.

Olunnhar…

She…she…Olunnhar…she…

She loved him.

And with that the rest of her energy finally left her and she lowered her face into her hands, too exhausted to cry or to be angry, or to argue with herself, or do anything but wonder in a hopeless way what she was going to do.