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The Chronicler

I arrived on Alnos in a coma after killing myself back on Earth. Grief and guilt pushed me to self-destruction. I’d have succeeded, too, but for my Alnese lover Leila’s interference. She had me put on inter-galactic ice to slow the damage and shipped me to her world.

Alnos.

Home of the former Space Gypsies.

My name is Raymond Díaz, or Raymond Díaz Ruiz, or Díaz Ruiz Raymond, depending on the local convention. Last name first is the Alnese version. Except on Alnos it’s not a last name, it’s a clan name, or it would be if I were Alnese. I’m not. I’m human. An Earthling. My hosts are not convinced that’s all there is to it. They suspect an earlier Alnese connection, an Alnese great-great-great-grandmother perhaps. I haven’t lived down to their expectations. But I am a visitor on Alnos, one more traveler hanging with the Space Gypsies for a while.

1676 years before my arrival, a group still known as the Space Gypsies decided to make a half-frozen world their new home, or their bigger, more roomy new star ship, as Lady Ciani likes to put it. Actually, Alnos is more than half-frozen. Everyone assures me the place has become downright cozy in the past hundred years, and I believe them, but I don’t have their basis for comparison. To me, the place is still a cross between Alaska and Siberia before Earth’s climate shift.

Alnese legends tell of an almost two-thousand year odyssey before their prophet Pallas saw their promised land. She had a vision about the eighth planet of the next star system on their itinerary. It had a breathable atmosphere and a narrow equatorial strip of livable ocean, islands, and land between vast expanses of northern and southern arctic ice. Eight is a perfect number for the Alnese—they have managed to hang on to some funny little superstitions through all their space travel and technological advances. The Space Gypsies followed their prophet to her eighth planet, and landed between the ice. And they stayed. That’s the part nobody else understands.

My arrival didn’t make the same splash.

Not that I remember it.

Going through some papers, though, I found a log of communications from the captain of our star ship to the doctor that took me on.

From Captain Druhv, Kobran Transport Q’ron to Tzalque Peg, Chief Physician of Pallas House:

I feel it incumbent upon me to inform you that Pallas Leila has requested we take on a second medical transport. Your first patient remains Pallas Socorro. We have stabilized her condition and are confident no further deterioration will occur. Your second patient is a human male, still relatively young, suffering from kidney and liver failure due to severe multi-agent poisoning, and already in a deep coma by the time we got to him. The only course of action left was to put him in stasis for the transport. Our physician recommends you maintain stasis to clean out his system and prepare replacement organs. He thinks it unlikely that the original organs can be saved, but was able to reverse some of the other damage. 

            Pallas Leila is sending along lab reports she obtained from Pallas Socorro’s stay in an Earth hospital. According to our physician, you will find some useful information despite the limitations of their equipment.

From Tzalque Peg, Zyss, Alnos, to Pallas Leila:

Regarding your lab reports, which snow dervishes helped you get these Earth materials? Have you invented a new subspace Earth-Kobran telemetry? Out with it, then, I can think of a million uses! Looks to me like your second patient really meant it. You have no doubt figured that out for yourself. I don’t know how it occurred to him to down that bottle of aspirin on top of his drug cocktail. Thank God for Kobran dialysis! Or is it just the experience? Do you realize that I don’t see this sort of thing unless I travel? I ought to thank you for a great training exercise! If you get him to me soon he might just make it, but no guarantees. Am expecting you then.

I awoke on Alnos, in their 1676th year, right at the onset of their summer. Three needles threaded into one arm. Saline solution, dialysis, feeding line. I didn’t feel any of them, though. I felt as if I were resting on a cloud. I stirred, and I could feel the cloud moving with me, adjusting. The lights brightened a little.

“I threw in extra, well, let’s call them vitamins, to rebuild what little brains you’ve got left, dear boy.”

The good Doctor Tzalque looked fascinated, and didn’t try to hide it. I could have sworn her skin had a bluish undertone, but in all other respects, she looked like my grandmother la India—cinnamon skin and black hair framing lively black eyes. I hadn’t expected that. I thought they would all look like my Alnese lover Leila.

Much to my surprise, I found that I still had a voice, though not a very substantial one, “Some people never gave me even that much credit.”

“Humans are often perceptive.” The English-Alnese translation was so well choreographed and the doctor’s translated reply so fast that I didn’t even realize it was a translation initially. A little unsure, she touched her hand against mine. “I’m Tzalque Peg. The Pallases have this bad habit of calling on me when they get sick.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh it’s all right. You break my routine.”

Over the next few days, as my waking and sleeping started to approximate a normal cycle, the good doctor got to indulge herself. She stuck another of her mysterious little probes into me every chance she got—blood, brain fluid, more blood—and returned beaming over her results.

“You can do whatever you want. You can rip all these out of your arms, go to the nearest cabinet and down another set of pills, I won’t stop you.”

She thought she had me psyched out.

Sounds distinguished my new medical experiences even more than the cloudy comfort of my not-exactly-hospital-bed. The time I odeed in Berlin, voices and moans mixed with shrill whistles and beeps. More than anything, the aural stew of misery had turned that experience into a nightmare. On Alnos, I was drying out mostly in silence, with occasional quiet blips breezing over my consciousness.

One more contrast lay in the leisurely pace kept by the good doctor. She even had time for conversations.

“Do you like our stuff?”

“What is it? Methadone?”

“I heard you used that. No, ours is just a different poppy. People grow it in their greenhouses. I think it’s originally from Kobra, but of course the climate there is totally different, so ours is a hybrid. A cross between an indigenous opiate, as incredible as that may seem, and the Kobran plant.”

“Kobra?”

“One of the twin jewels, Kobra and Ko. God’s cradle. Or so they say. I have yet to visit a planet where the residents don’t claim godly qualities, but Kobrans may have a point. Almost all of us visit Kobra. I stayed two years to learn from their physicians. It was lovely.”

“Have you gone to Earth?”

“No.”

“What do people call Earth? The sewer?”

She chuckled, “The survivor.”

“I have landed among optimists.”

She threw her head back for a full-throated laugh, then, she commented, “Actually, humans have a knack for survival. The odds have been against you for the longest time and you’re still around. Quite amazing. Well, how do you like our stuff?”

“I feel . . . good.”

She nodded, “I’m weaning you off, actually. Shouldn’t take much longer, unless you prefer to-,” She cut off, raised one eyebrow, then asked, “Do you want to be put on maintenance?”

“You need my consent for that?”

“Yes.”

“Doctor Peg, have some fun! Do what you want.”

“Don’t tempt me!”

She slapped my cheek lightly, then continued in a more earnest tone, “I wasn’t just joking when I said you could do it again. Do you still want to die?”

I smiled at her. I noticed once again that we had the same eyes, almost black, almond-shaped. “You would let me do what I want, but Leila wouldn’t. She hasn’t.”

“Is there a debt between you two?”

“You could put it that way.”

I had managed to damage myself so badly that it took several Alnese weeks for me to mend. Alnese weeks last eight days, one more than on Earth. Everything on Alnos comes in fours or eights, eight days in a week, eight months in a year, and strangely enough, four periods of six hours in a day, a close match to what I am used to. Doctor Peg kept me apprised of all the parts she was replacing, but I couldn’t keep track. Didn’t seem like much of the old me would be left.

Rather appropriate, really.

A new Ray for a new world.