Sunbuilders
Far away, at the edge of space and the end of time is the world of Rhial, one of the last vestiges of terrestrial life anywhere in the dark, star-less universe. It is a cold, harsh world, where person’s worth is measured in heat. While the world’s leaders know full well they live on borrowed time as the universe spins down, and are determined to eek out what living they can until then, many of traders and explorers who wander the ice insist the stars will return.
Sunbuilders was first published in March 2015.
Sunbuilders
“Mush!” Mulo cracked his whip against Roon’s thick, shaggy grey coat, urging the lumbering quadruped to surge faster and kicking up clouds of snow in their trail. Crates containing that season’s harvest rattled against each other with every bump as the sled was slung side to side behind the three horned uris. “Fast enough for you?”
In her compartment seat near the back of the sled, Chula was wrapped up tight in her heavy furs and skins and nodded. “It’s fast enough dear,” she said. “I just don’t want to get caught in the storm.”
Mulo almost asked what storm, but the last sixteen cycles had taught him better. His wife had a knack at predicting weather that had saved him countless times in his trips across the ice. On the open plains, Rhial’s storms would kick up shards of ice and throw them like daggers. You needed a thick coat and tough skin like an uris to avoid being ripped to shreds by ice on the wind, and sometimes even that wouldn’t be enough.
“At this pace, we should make it to Maraket ahead of schedule,” said Chula. “I do hope Sera is still-”
Her words were cut off by the wind’s howling from behind him, pelting his back and sending shivers down his spine even wrapped up as he was in three layers of skins and furs. “Damn it,” shouted Mulo. “I thought you said we were ahead of it.”
Chula twisted around in her seat to look at him. “We should be,” she said.
“Hroo!” something boomed in the black above them, and a bright flash temporarily blinded them. Roon bellowed in echo to the noise, and took off.
“Woah!” Mulo pulled hard on the reins, but did nothing to slow the uris down.
“Stop him!” shouted Chula.
“I’m trying!”
Looking up he could see two blue-white lights in the black ahead of them. The lights began to sink, disappearing beyond the horizon. In spite of his best efforts, Mulo could do nothing to stop the beast’s charge.
Their uris stopped on its own, just short of the edge of a wide rift in the ice but the sled slung right past the shaggy hulk and dragged it over the edge.
“Mulo!” Chula screamed.
From her place on the sled Chula would be safe, but Mulo had nothing securing him to the sled but leather straps over his boots, so he clung on for dear life.
They slid down into the rift kicking up dirt and ice, smashing into the far wall. Roon let out a winded grunt and the ice above them let out a deafening crack.
“Chula? Wife? Are you alright?” Mulo bent to undo his straps, and winced with pain as blood soaked the lining of his right glove. I can’t let her see this.
“I’m okay,” she said. “More than I can say for our sled.”
The uris goaned as it rocked back to its gnarled feet. It was no worse for wear, but that’s what urises did. They were bred specifically for life on the dark, cold little world, and would probably outlast the people on it.
She was right. The impact with the ice wall had broken the right ski and knocked their cargo loose. Mulo wouldn’t be any help repacking the sled with his hand broken, and even then they weren’t going anywhere.
The look she gave him through her goggles said it all. We’ve already died out here. Even if they made it to Maraket, they had nothing to trade except maybe Roon. Without the cargo they’d been carrying, he and Chula wouldn’t be worth half a day’s heat, and heat was everything on Rhial. And that wasn’t even thinking about everyone back home, soon to be claimed by the ice.
But there was no use in dwelling on that now.
“What were those lights?” he asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “Out of the black? Do you think it’s Colonists?”
“Colonists?” They were only a legend from long ago, when the ice first set in and the lights faded from the black. Men had built artificial worlds, colonies in which to live while the stars and planets died.
“Yeah, do you think they’ve finally come back for us?” asked Chula as she undid the beast’s harness.
“After this many cycles?” Mulo shook his head. How many was it supposed to be, five hundred? A thousand? He doubted any of those colonists were still out there, or that they would ever bother with their little iceball if they were. “I don’t think so.”
He heard a high pitched whine, and looked at the uris, but its ears were pricked up and it had hunkered low in the snow.
“It’s coming from over there,” said Chula, chasing after the squealing that echoed off the icy walls.
“Chula, wait!”
She slowed enough for him to catch up just as they turned the bend. “What the…”
Floating there, just a few meters above the rift’s floor was a sleek, large, black, thing… Mulo didn’t have words to describe what it was. He’d never seen anything that wasn’t stuck to the ground. It glowed with a blue-white light that reflected off the icy walls and back onto it’s own blackness. All Mulo knew was that it terrified him.
He grabbed his wife and pulled her back around the bend, out of sight of the floating thing.
“What was that?”
Chula peeked back around the corner. “It’s beautiful.”
He shook his head. That was it, they were going to die out here. “It’s terrifying.”
Suddenly the squealing stopped and everything went silent. Mulo held his breath, and moments later there was a pop and a hiss and the sound of something hitting the ice.
“Husband,” said Chula. “Come look.”
Three figures stood on the ice below the floating thing heading towards a rocky outcrop. One motioned to the other two, and the screeching began again after something flashed a bright green.
“What are they doing?” asked Milo.
The ice shook beneath their feet as the uris lumbered over to them. “Hroon.”
“Not now Roon,” said Mulo, but the furry beast didn’t seem to hear. It was rubbing its horned head against Mulo, the usual trick when begging for food.
“Hroo?”
“Mulo, they heard us,” said Chula, snapping back behind the corner. “One’s coming this way.”
He could hear the footsteps echoing off the ice, and tried to still the hulk. Closer and closer the figure came, casting a shadow in the faint glow. Mulo and Chula held their breath.
The figure poked its too-round head around the corner.
Chula swung a small rock she had picked up and hit the thing squarely.
It staggered back, and Mulo could see it clearly in the light. It looked like a naked man, only all white and its head and face were smoothed over in something like bone and didn’t crack when struck by stone.
It held up its palm to them, five fingers spread wide and it’s other arm covering it’s head. Chula lowered her rock.
“Careful,” said Mulo. “It still might be dangerous.”
It shook its head.
“You can understand us?” asked Chula.
This time it nodded.
Mulo took the rock from his wife’s hands. “What are you? Where did you come from?”
It turned to look back to its companions, and Mulo raised the rock when he saw them approaching. It turned back, closed its hand and pointed a single finger at Mulo, then up, into the black.
“You’re me?” asked Mulo. “From the black?”
*It shook its head, but then stopped, and shrugged its shoulders. Then it pointed behind them, to their broken sled, and pointed at itself. *
Like it’s asking a question, Mulo thought.
Its two companions had joined them, and the three of them seemed to be silently conversing among themselves.
“Lower the rock, they’re men Mulo!” whispered Chula. “From the black! Men! Nobody will ever believe it.”
Nobody will ever hear it. Mulo lowered the rock, keeping his eyes fixed on the strangers. “Just because they’re men doesn’t make me trust them. We still don’t know why they’re here, what all that noise is. We don’t even know who they are, really.”
One of the strangers, the tallest motioned to them, then back to the floating thing, and his subordinate ran back to it. There was a tense moment as they waited for the runner to return from the ship. It handed something back to the tallest, who fiddled with it before offering it up to Mulo.
It was a small, dark pebble, smooth and shiny, and it seemed to buzz in Mulo’s hand. He felt a shock, and almost dropped the stone as his eyelids fell shut.
“Do not be alarmed,” said a voice. It was calm, friendly, and not quite male or female. “I am here to answer your questions. Simply relax, and everything will be made clear.”
Visions began to flash before his eyes. Flames erupted from the bottom of a cylinder, raising it into the air. Men and women milled about a lab, performing experiments on light and matter. He saw a ball of fire suspended inside an empty tank. Three men put on the white environmental suits, and descended down to the icy surface to retrieve the probe. There was a material they needed in the rock, something important they had come a long, long way for.
“Mulo?” Chula shook his arm, snapping him back to reality.
“They-” He stared at the strangers with a fresh understanding. They mean to put the lights back in the black!
The first one spoke to the tallest, and motioned towards the sled. The tallest nodded, and all three of them brushed past Mulo and his wife.
“What are you-” said Chula.
Mulo stopped her. “Let them go, it’s okay.”
Together, they watched the three outworlders inspect the damage to the sled, while Roon in turn inspected the outworlders. Carefully, two of them lifted the sled onto its good ski, while the third used some black goo to repair the damaged one. As they worked, their screeching machine finished its task, and the tallest looked up.
Mulo’s palm buzzed again, and he realized he was still holding the stranger’s stone. “There is a storm coming,” said the genderless voice. He saw a vision of them riding, and the stranger’s blue white light following them. “You must go. We will follow you and protect you as best we can from the winds.”
“Woah,” said Chula. “Do you hear that?”
He nodded.
When they looked up, Roon had already been hitched and their sled repacked with most of their cargo. “Thank you,” said Mulo as he handed back the stone.
They nodded, and went back to their floating- sled. Mulo went to his usual spot at the back of the sled when Chula stopped him.
“Mulo,” she said. “Your arm is bleeding.”
“I hoped you wouldn’t notice.”
“How could I not notice? Your glove is turning red.”
“I didn’t want you to worry, love.”
She took his left glove in hers. It was the most intimate gesture possible out on the ice, where almost any exposure of the skin meant severe frostbite, if not death.
“Don’t give up on me,” she said.
“I was going to say the same to you,” he laughed.
“Now, you get in the compartment. We’ve got to go!”
The storm struck hard just as they arrived at Maraket. As he was shutting the heavy steel door behind them, the foreman called down “You just barely beat the storm. You’d better have a good story!”
“There’s going to be new lights in the sky,” said Chula.
“Lights in the sky?” the foreman gave her a skeptical look as she tugged off her facemask. “What are you on about girl, how can you know a thing like that?”
“You’re never going to believe me.”
Nobody would.
Author’s Notes
In the summer of 2010 my friend and I, inspired by LOST, wanted to write an epic pseudo-religious character drama set at the end of space and time. We were fascinated with the inherent conflict in the setting, mankind obstinately clinging to existence in a black, cold, and empty Void that simply wishes to end.
That project, going to be a webcomic, was bigger than we were ready to take on, did not survive the demands of our lives at that time and was abandoned by 2012. The idea has always stuck with me though, and some years later I put together this short story as a way to explore the setting and to serve as something of a epilogue to the project. I hope one day to revisit this story, but for now I hope you enjoy this little glimpse into the Void.