amberfocus | A Sky Without Zeppelins: Chapter Forty

                                                                                                                          Banner by Mitashade

                                                                             Chapter Forty

The alien suddenly looks nervous, as if he has said too much and is now regretting it. One glance at Donna serves to show that this is something not even she knew about and if Jonathon has come to recognize anything, it’s that Donna doesn’t like it when she’s kept in the dark. Her arms are crossed and her eyes are narrowed but she’s holding her tongue. Being kept in the dark by Lumin when she clearly thought she knew all of his secrets is upsetting her. He’s just glad that that upset doesn’t currently seem to be pointed in his direction.

There is silence for a long moment as the three of them absorb what Mr. Lumin has just said. “An adult…of this?” Jonathon asks. He feels completely lost all of a sudden and he’s once again cradling the coral against his body.

The man weighs the information in his head and seems to come to a decision. All signs of doubt and uncertainty vanish. “Just a moment.” He takes a transparent blue orb out of his pocket and throws it up in the air. It explodes and encompasses the four of them in a large bubble. “Privacy shield,” he says as they direct strange looks at him. “It means no one can eavesdrop on this conversation.”

“Paranoid much?” Donna asks him.

“About some things, yes, I am. In answer to your question about my alien…yes. Well, I think so. It’s kind of hard to tell. The one at Illuminate is a behemoth compared to yours, but in his natural, resting state, he looks rather like your little one,” Lumin affirms. “We can take her back to Illuminate and see what his opinion is.”

“What do you mean by his natural, resting state?” Rose asks. “Is he a shape shifter like you?”

Lumin frowns. “He can…look like something other than what he is. It’s a bit like with the biological masking device that Dr. Smith made for me, only on a massive scale.” He turns back to Jonathon. “I think we should introduce the two of them. Why don’t you let me take her to Illuminate?” He reaches out his hand but Jonathon holds onto the coral firmly.

“She’s afraid.”

“What?”

“She’s afraid of you,” Jonathon says. “She wants to stay with me.”

“Is she talking to you?” Rose asks.

“Not…talking, but…she’s inside my head. Not words or pictures, but emotions. She knows me. She’s afraid of being taken from me,” he explains slowly.

“No one is going to take her away from you,” Lumin says soothingly. “Best you come with me anyway. Last time I touched her she made me revert. She’s too young to control herself. Caelum was like that when I first knew him when I was a small child, barely more than a wisp of pale green light and I could only hold corporeal form for an hour or two at a time. He had little control because he was so badly damaged.”

“Caelum?” Rose frowns.

“That’s Latin, isn’t it? For sky?” Jonathon asks.

“It’s his name,” explains Lumin. “Or at least what my father called him. Caelum et Astra.”

“Sky and stars?”

“Why’s he called that?” Rose wants to know.

Lumin shrugs. “My father never said. And Caelum doesn’t answer questions in the most direct fashion.”

“Why not?” asks Donna.

“I’m not sure he can. He’s very…alien.”

Donna snorts. “What? Compared to you?”

Lumin gives her a dark look that makes her shiver just a bit. “Yes.”

“How?” Jonathon asks stroking one finger along the edge of the coral, his thoughts concentrating on soothing the slight upset he found emanating from the baby’s mind. “What exactly is he? What’s she?”

“Exactly? I’m not sure we’ll ever know.”

“Well, tell us what you do know,” says Rose.

“It’s a long story.”

“We have time,” Jonathon replies and gestures to the couch and chairs. They seat themselves around the coffee table and all eyes turn expectantly to Lumin.

“I can tell you that the planet that they come from is near to where mine is. That the creatures that lived there could sort of…well, I guess you’d call it bending space.”

“Bending space?” Rose repeats. “How?”

“I’m not sure how it works. I just know that Caelum has the ability. Or he had it, before he was so badly hurt.” He swallows hard then looks at Donna. “It’s hard to talk about. What happened…it’s all of my childhood nightmares rolled into one. More than nightmares because it was all real. We lost…so much.”

“Maybe you should start at the beginning,” Donna says gently, placing her hand reassuringly on Lumin’s arm. Her anger is gone in the face of his pain. He smiles at her and relaxes as her hand slides down his arm and wraps around his fingers.

“There was a war,” Lumin begins. “A war with the Caligo. And they lost. Caelum’s planet and every creature on it. They lost the war.” His voice is very far away. “In the end everyone in our galaxy lost.” He trails off and his eyes become distant, before he recalls himself. “Caelum’s planet was destroyed. He was the only survivor. I think…I think his people blew it up, rather than let such darkness take it. My father said…he said that Caelum had been off world at the time, but I always had the impression that maybe he’d been responsible for throwing the switch.”

“Why would they all suicide like that?” Jonathon asks as an unfamiliar itching starts in the back of his brain.

“If Caelum’s people had become enslaved, the Caligo would have been able to move anywhere in the universe within a matter of hours. It was a last ditch effort at containment. They had thought the entire fleet had descended on the planet. But they hadn’t. They’d held back one war ship. And with the Caligo, all it takes is one. They reproduce by simple cell division,” explains Lumin.

“Caelum sought refuge with the Lumos. He lived with my people for nearly two hundred years. And during those two hundred years the Caligo hid in the shadows and reproduced and created more war ships. And they tracked Caelum to my home. We fought. We fought so hard. Light against the darkness. But there were so many of them, just…so many.”

“Go on,” Donna encourages softly when he halts in his story-telling.

“It was decided that the ruling family and enough of us to carry on, would try to seek refuge as far away from home as we could get. There was a betrayal at the highest level of government and the royals were destroyed. What was left of my family, my father, my grandparents, and a few others fled at the height of the war with the Caligo, it was Caelum that helped us to reach Earth, though he was wounded as we escaped. My kind can manipulate matter, change forms, transfer ourselves and more solid life forms across short distances in the space of a few seconds. What you call teleporting. Caelum can…” Lumin shrugs, at a loss for words.

“He can what?” Donna prompts.

“Bend space and move quickly through it. We were to travel in his wake and it would pull us along with him. He’s the reason we’re on Earth. He brought us here. All of us. Across the universe in a matter of hours.”

Jonathon frowns. “From what I understand about the theory of teleportation, you exist in a state of nothingness while moving through space. Wouldn’t you have permanently lost cohesion and dissipated after being exposed to that for so long?”

“Some of us did. When Caelum realized what was happening, he took us within him, even though it injured him further to do it during the transfer.”

“Within him? What do you mean?” asks Donna.

“He acted as a…ship. A space ship,” Lumin says. “He pulled us inside him and those that weren’t too badly damaged survived. For a time.” He sighs. “As a child, as the only child, I had been protected by the collective of light, kept to the inside and I was the first put inside. I am the only one who didn’t receive any kind of permanent injury.”

“You told me once that you are the only one of your kind on Earth,” Donna says slowly.

“The only one left now. But in the beginning there were other survivors. When they knew it was their time, they went to Caelum and used what was left of their energy, the pouring out of all they were, to help heal him. My father…he was the last to dissipate and his energy made Caelum almost well. But I fear he never will fully recover. Even when I go, and I’ve got a few centuries left in my lifespan, I’m not even sure my energy will be enough for him to ever be whole again.”

Donna shivers beside him. “You talk of your death so easily.”

“It is a natural cycle. We were not raised to fear death. All energy must change eventually. I’ve been alone, save Caelum, for a long time. If he can make use of mine when I die, it is a good thing. We are family in many ways. And his lifespan is measured in millennia. I will go on in some small part in him,” Lumin says pragmatically.

“What…?” Rose begins and then breaks off as if she feels her question will be too impertinent.

“Yes?” Lumin asks patiently.

“What happened to your planet?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I have no way of knowing. That star it circled still appears in the heavens at night, but at the speed light travels that means nothing. It could be gone. I don’t think I’ll ever know. If Caelum were well he’d be able to take me back there and I could find out. I have come to accept that it will never happen,” he answers with a shrug.

“What about…her?” Jonathon asks. “If she is indeed the same life form, could she take you back there?”

“I’d never ask it. She’s an infant. She might not be able to stand against the darkness of the Caligo. It’s not a risk I’d ever take with her. They want the sort of power one of her kind possesses, and it is too dangerous to put that power within their grasp,” he says.

“But the Caligo were here,” Rose says. “They nearly killed me.”

“And I don’t think they were wiped out. They won’t come after her, will they?” Jonathon asks indicating the baby.

“I doubt they know of her existence. They were tracking Caelum and me. They don’t know he was injured beyond use for their purposes.” He sighs. “We really should take her to him. He can confirm for us what she is and he might be able to give instructions on how to care for her,” Lumin says.

Jonathon turns to Rose. “This isn’t the way I wanted to spend your birthday, Rose,” he says.

“No, I think we need to do this,” she tells him firmly. “Do you have an Illuminate car in the parking garage right now?”

“Yes.”

“We can meet you there if you want to teleport back,” Rose says.

“Not bloody likely,” says Donna. “I’m going with you.”

“Donna, I can absorb more of the—,” Lumin begins but Donna puts up her hand.

“No. It’s not at all like,” her eyes move sideways to glance at Jonathon and Rose and she changes what she was about to say, “what you compared it to.” There are high spots of color on her face. “You go on back. Having me with them will move us all through security faster anyway.”

With a brief nod Lumin squeezes her hand and then stands up. His face fills with concentration and he dissolves into a green field of light energy and then abruptly disappears.

“Whoa,” says Rose. “That’s a bit disconcerting.”

Donna shrugs. “I’ve started getting used to it.”

“What’s it like, teleporting?” Jonathon asks her as he and Rose gather their things together and put on their shoes.

As they move out of the flat and down to the lift, Donna says, “It’s rather like being electrocuted and then being left with an all over feeling of severe sunburn and nausea. It might be faster and more convenient, but it’s not worth the way I still feel an hour later.”

The lift takes them quickly down to the parking garage and the three of them get into Jonathon’s car for the short drive to work. Donna’s pass gets them straight through to the express elevator that goes directly to the 13th floor where Mr. Lumin’s office is located. He’s waiting there for them, back in his human form and looking completely and utterly normal.

He welcomes them into his office and then opens a panel in the wall. Behind it is a secret lift, one that leads directly down to the vault that isn’t located on any set of blueprints filed with the city planning commission. It is the only lift in the building that goes to the vault, the only way in and out, and as with the vault it is completely protected with a perception filter that is more intricate than anything Jonathon has ever seen.

When the door opens directly into Caelum’s living quarters Jonathon has no idea what to expect. What he sees astonishes him. Mr. Lumin had called the creature a behemoth, and it’s true. He’s much larger than Yumi, the whale being studied in the centaur’s language experiments. His body does not quite appear to fill the entire floor, but not for lack of trying.

He is a dull salmon color, and his structure is much like the coral he carries in his pocket, but is more crystalline in nature. Perhaps it is something that comes with age. “He’s huge,” Donna murmurs.

“This isn’t all of him,” explains Lumin. “This is simply what emerges into our dimension. He’s actually quite a bit larger than this…and bigger on the inside.”

“Bigger on the inside? How can he possibly be bigger on the inside?” Donna asks dismissively.

“I don’t know how. But he is.”

Very slowly Jonathon pulls his own piece of coral out of his pocket and with shaking hands holds her up in front of the giant creature. There is a sudden flash of golden light and a feeling of indescribable joy and longing hits him with a force that drops him to his knees. Tears come into his eyes as the little baby girl begins to sing in a voice so powerful it pierces through every barrier he’s ever had between his emotions and the rest of the world.

A deep bass counterpoint fills the cavernous room and what had been a sickly looking color on Caelum a moment before now shoots into a sunrise of flaming oranges and pinks. The little baby, too, is shot through with vibrancy. The sound of their music rises higher and higher and becomes nearly unbearable in its joy and beauty. Lumin loses cohesion and reverts to his energy form. Donna faints and Rose barely manages to support her body to the floor where she is beginning to list sideways herself as the power of the song overwhelms her.

The overriding emotion that floods through Jonathon as the two life forms recognize each other as like species is the cry from Caelum that roughly translates to, “I am not alone.” As it burns through his synapses, he, too, loses consciousness and crumples to the floor.

Surprisingly it is Donna who is the first to recover from the onslaught of emotions. She untangles herself from Rose and checks the girl’s pulse, finding it steady and strong beneath her fingertips. She moves next to Jonathon who is just beginning to stir. When she is sure he is okay, too, she then searches the ceiling for the green fog that is Lumin. He is spread quite thin, thinner than she’s ever seen before, and all of him is out of reach. Still, he is the right shade of green so she figures he is okay, too.

She glances down at the baby cradled carefully against Jonathon and then over at the giant. They are both pulsing with a pale gold light. Their singing has stopped but they both appear to be radiating contentment. Jonathon groans and sits up, the infant slipping to his lap. He puts out a hand to catch her before she falls to the floor.

“What?” he croaks. He clears his throat and tries again. “What happened?”

“We all lost consciousness from the emotional blast, I’d say,” muses Donna.

“Rose!” Jonathon scrambles across the floor, careful not to let the coral slip from his grasp.

“She’s all right,” Donna hastens to reassure him. “She’s got a strong pulse and her breathing is fine. She’s just unconscious.”

He calms as his fingers seek out and find evidence that confirms Donna’s words. “Where’s Lumin?” he asks.

“On the ceiling. It was a bit much for him.” She looks up again and sees that the mass of green energy is beginning to draw itself back together.

Rose groans and opens her eyes. “I think I need a doctor. My head is killing me.”

“I think we could all do with a visit to Dr. Milligan,” Donna agrees.

Lumin’s energy lowers towards the floor and his mass becomes solid as he resumes his human form. “No doubting it now. They are definitely the same species. Caelum says,” he tilts his head, “that she is his hope for a future. He’s never been so clear to me before.” He gestures at the baby. “Does she say anything?”

“Not…not in words,” Jonathon says. “But she feels, I don’t know, right somehow in a way she didn’t before. Maybe she’s too young to communicate properly with me.”

“It’s possible. It’s also possible you’re not enough of a telepath,” Lumin replies. “Is everyone all right?”

“Is Dr. Milligan in today?” Donna asks. Mr. Lumin nods. “Then I think we should go and see her, just to be safe.”

“Can they be separated?” Jonathon asks.

Lumin pauses and then nods. “The link between them has been established. They will never be alone no matter how far apart they are. Caelum says it’s actually better for them not to get too close physically.” He leads the way back to the lift.

Jonathon pockets the coral as they return to Lumin’s office and he sends for Martha Milligan. She carefully checks them over and doses Rose and Donna with paracetamol for the residual headaches, otherwise pronouncing them all with a clean bill of health. When she leaves Lumin turns to Jonathon.

“Do you want to leave the baby here? She’s safe and protected on the grounds of Illuminate,” he says.

“I want her with me. She wants to be with me,” Jonathon insists stubbornly.

Lumin goes to the wall and pulls a painting forward, swinging it open on hinges and presses his thumb print to a small pad on a wall safe. He spins the combination open and then reaches inside. He removes the perception filter and the biological signature masking device that Jonathon had made for him.

“Install these in your flat, in whatever room you put her in. Keep her safe.” Jonathon takes the equipment from him. “Why don’t the two of you head back home? Enjoy the rest of Rose’s birthday and I’ll see you both back here tomorrow for work,” Lumin suggests.

They agree readily enough, Rose letting out a tremendous yawn, and they make their leave. When they arrive at his flat shortly after that, Rose goes straight to bed while Jonathon sets up the perception filter and biological masker in the spare room. He places the baby alien inside the middle of the range on the guest bed and then with a gentle stroke retreats back to his bedroom where he strips off his clothes and crawls beneath the covers, pulling Rose tightly to him and relaxing into sleep.

Ch. 41:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/236711.html