Chapter 9
Silva
I slept like a baby. Even the prospect of spending the day with Alia didn’t keep me awake. I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since leaving Earth. I had been so overwhelmed and excited I spent most of my nights on X-1 looking out at the wonders of Tora and its moons, or trying to accept the reality of my situation. I knew I couldn’t stay this keyed up indefinitely without going mad. I had to relax and take one day at a time.
As much as I was attracted to Alia, I decided to be very careful and take it slow. I certainly didn’t want to do anything to upset my gracious host Lodi, or to hurt his daughter. I had no idea what was going to happen next, or where I would end up when this adventure ran its course. Also, like it or not I felt very much a part of the drama being played out on Tora, and I felt frustrated not being able to help Ian. Face it; this just wasn’t the right time for a romantic involvement.
Being treated like royalty was getting to be commonplace. After taking a shower I discovered that someone had filled the huge walk in closet in my suite with clothes my size. This all just seemed too good to be true. Suddenly I felt uneasy, as if this was the calm before the storm. Little did I know just how stormy it would soon get. For now though, the one day at a time idea seemed like a good one. I dressed and went upstairs to the pool area.
Alia was there watching the ‘holonews’. “Good morning Robert, sit down and listen to this.” Tora’s Director Reznik was speaking. “,and I can assure you Tora will not be dictated to by the Federation. Implying that Dr. Vaslow is a traitor and suggesting we consider imprisoning him, is outrageous. Also, President Gambez does not speak for the entire Council. There will be more meetings before this matter is resolved, and I will be attending them, as will Dr. Vaslow if his safety can be assured. There are many Council members, myself included, who would be interested in hearing a debate between Dr. Vaslow and President Gambez’s Chief Federation Historian Dr. Roolian. Also, after the abominable act of assassinating Dr. Smith yesterday, I’m not sure which Council members can be trusted. Although President Gambez swears there was only one member involved, I have requested a full investigation, and that I be appointed head of the investigating committee. The Council will vote on this later today.” This concluded the news conference.
Things were heating up. I was happy to hear that Ian was being supported by Reznik; although it was clear by now that Ian had become a local hero on Tora, so what choice did Reznik have. It was a good thing Gambez had no direct authority to discipline Ian. Alia turned off the news and suggested we spend the day relaxing and getting to know each other better. That sounded good to me. Things had been so hectic I hadn’t had the chance to get to know anyone very well since I was brought to X-1, not even Ian. After breakfast we went swimming.
The pool turned out to be fresh water. The fish however, looked similar to those found in Earth’s tropical oceans, only much larger and even more colorful. There were long nosed angel fish twice the size of a dinner plate, and puffer fish the size of a basket ball. The beds of grass grew almost to the surface and looked similar to California’s giant kelp, complete with air bladders. There were several dolphin like mammals which were Alia’s pets. They knew all kinds of tricks, and fetched toys like dogs. Alia showed me how to ride them. They were controlled with simple finger pressure commands and could start and stop on a dime. For extended dives we used devices the size of small harmonicas with snorkel like mouthpieces. Somehow they managed to not only separate oxygen from the water, but to provide a large enough quantity for quick deep breaths. I really wanted to know how they worked, but I decided to save all the technical questions for later, and just enjoy the day.
Later we sat by the pool talking and I found out that Alia was twenty four, unattached, a teacher, and a musician. She taught music and history at Earth’s equivalent of a high school. Her main musical passion was an instrument best described as a laser harp. She showed me hers, and it was similar in shape to a harp except it was very small and used multicolor beams of light instead of strings. When a beam was interrupted a tone sounded. I asked if she would play it for me, and she did. It was unlike anything I had ever heard. As with the system in my suite on X-1, the sound came from all directions. We were engulfed in a symphonic masterpiece being played by this amazing woman.
As her fingers flew through the strings of light, she explained how some of them controlled multifunctional channels of recording features. This allowed her to incorporate intricate passage overlays, and other effects, which resulted in her music sounding like a complete orchestra. In all of my many nights spent at the Hollywood Bowl, I had never heard such moving music. It was truly unearthly. When she finished the piece, Alia told me that is was her own composition. I couldn’t begin to find the proper words to express how deeply her music affected me.
We started to exchange cultural information. Alia had reviewed the basics of Earth’s history after my arrival on Tora caused such a stir in the Federation. She actually taught me some things about my own planet’s past. For example there had been many visitations from other worlds, which had influenced our ancient cultures. As some of our scholars suspected, the great pyramids of Gaza, the Nasca lines in Peru, petroglyphs and rock carvings on Easter Island, and temple ruins throughout the world had indicated the cultural impact of these visits. As it turned out Silva’s civilization was older than the Federation, and had monitored planets like Earth for many hundreds of thousands of years.
I was amazed, and asked how she accessed this history. “I’ll show you”, and she immediately called up Earth’s history from Silva’s central library database, and we viewed it on the holoscreen by the pool. She pulled up video summaries of these visitations, and other prehistoric events. These were real time high resolution 3D recordings, by observers from Sylva.
I walked in dumbfounded silence as we went downstairs to my suite so Alia could show me how to access the library from there. The holoscreen device in my quarters was portable and about the size of a cell phone. The projected image could be adjusted to any desired size, viewing angle, or room location. I learned how to find most topics of interest from the library data base as well as newscasts and other programming from many other worlds including Earth.
I had been curious about the details of my disappearance, as reported on Earth. I asked if there was a way to find out. Alia showed me how to view Earth’s broadcasts and news articles by date. Not only was this level of detail on record in Silva’s library, Alia was able to hack into any of Earth’s mainframes to retrieve current information on any subject she desired. She said the only time this information was ever used for direct intervention of any kind, was in the case of a threat to the entire planet or planets other than the one being observed. I asked how all of this was possible.
Alia said she didn’t know the technical details, but she understood there were satellites and remote controlled cameras stationed on and above the planets which were observed. These were located in the ‘between dimensions’ space so they would be invisible. They were controlled from Silva by the Planet Observation Guild, which was a department reporting to her father Lodi. The satellite transmissions were used for access to newscasts and database retrieval. Apparently Earth’s top secret encrypted codes, firewalls, and other security measures were child’s play to the Silvans.
I couldn’t take any more of this right now. There was way too much information to process. My relaxing day was suddenly very stressful. These people had been studying Earth since the dawn of man, and had the capability to change its history if it suited them. What if all of this attention wasn’t so innocuous or benevolent? After the incident outside the meeting hall on Tora, I wasn’t sure who to trust, although both my gut and heart told me if I could trust anyone it was Alia. In spite of my resolve to go slow, I was afraid I was falling for her. I hoped this wasn’t some kind of Stockholm syndrome resulting from being taken away to strange planets by people I didn’t know. I definitely did need an anchor, I felt like a ship lost at sea, in spite of the royal treatment I had received so far.
Alia suggested we have a relaxing day and go for a ride. Minutes later we were airborne, in her little ‘Mini-Cooper’ car, space ship, what ever. Cruising at about three thousand feet we were at a perfect altitude to see a lot of detail. The planet was as beautiful as Tora, but not nearly as densely populated. There were huge undisturbed old growth forests with widely scattered homes, such as Lodi’s. Even the towns and cities looked more like a college campuses than one big megalopolis like those on Tora. Most of the travel seemed to be by air, so the landscape wasn’t littered with freeways. The air lanes were grouped according to speed, with the slowest being closest to the ground. Periodically we flew into much higher, faster lanes in order to get to distant points of interest quickly.
One of the most spectacular of these was Mt. Calous. At twice the height of Mt. Everest it was an unbelievably imposing sight. Snowcapped wasn’t the right word for it. At fifty thousand feet high practically eighty percent of the mountain was covered in snow. We first flew over it just above the summit, and then landed in an open meadow at the base. Nothing I had ever seen, on Earth or Tora had the impact of this vista. At almost ten miles high, this mountain looked like another world tilted up in front of us almost vertically. We had a picnic there. Alia had packed a wonderful feast. We sat on a blanket at the foot of this monolith and she acted as if it were just another day in the park. It was a comfortable seventy degrees and we were completely alone. The meadow was full of wildflowers. Under different circumstances this could have been a great outing, but I was too stressed out to appreciate it.
Alia had thought this wonderful place would be relaxing, but to me it was just one more reminder of how my entire life had been turned upside down. I felt as if I were a character on a Star Wars movie set, except the incredible special effects were real, and in the evening I couldn’t go home. I was really loosing it. I explained this to Alia, and she was very understanding. She admitted trying to impress me with things I had never seen or imagined, and hadn’t considered their disorienting affect on me. We flew back to her home, and she took me to a special place of hers, close to the waterfall. As we sat and talked, a feeling of peace washed over me. I felt so at home there. The afternoon slipped by quickly in the tranquility of this beautiful spot.
When Lodi and Shelay came home, we had dinner on one of the decks overlooking the forest. The food was delicious, and vegetarian as the other meals had been. Shelay explained to me that both for health and humanitarian reasons, meat eating had not been practiced on Silva for many millennia. After dinner Alia and I filled them in on our day. I then expressed my amazement at the amount of information available on Earth’s history in Silva’s library database. A look of concern passed over Lodi’s face and he got up from the table and said, “Ladies, Robert and I will be going to Uralis tomorrow and I need to brief him on some aspects of this visit. Would you excuse us please?
We sat facing each other in the Library, and Lodi said, “Robert, there is much information concerning your presence here on Silva that you do not understand. As a matter of fact there is much I do not understand. I realize that you have had very little time to assimilate all that has happened to you recently. I had hoped you would be able to adjust to your new surroundings, before the need to continue your education; however I was informed today that this is not possible. I will try to explain to you as best as I am able, the events that have led to us having this discussion. First Robert, may I ask you what, if any, your religious beliefs may be?”
I had no idea where this was going, but I didn’t want to waste time by asking questions just yet. I said I was not a member of any particular organized religion, however I believed in God. I had been raised Catholic, and believed in the teachings of Jesus according to the New Testament. I had no idea what God was, but at a gut level I thought of God as the ‘great engineer in the sky’. I realized that my belief was ‘blind faith’, and that there could never be any scientific proof of God’s existence.
Lodi resumed. “Well Robert, as far as I know you are right, there is no direct scientific proof for the existence of God. However, I will tell you there is a great deal of indirect proof. As Baylor explained to you, I am the Chief Spiritual Counselor on Silva. I do my best to advise the planet’s citizens on spiritual matters. I need to explain a few of our basic beliefs to you, in order that you may better understand your present situation.
Eons ago, long after we had eliminated wars and learned to live in peace, our planet was visited by a group of spiritual beings who represented themselves as being members of a vast organization responsible for creating and monitoring all life forms in the universe. We were told that these beings were created by God to help carry out his vision for the future of the universe. Silva had been selected as one of a very small percentage of all inhabited planets to help with this monitoring process. We were told that according to God’s plan it is better for humans to help other humans when possible, rather than direct intervention from these spiritual beings.
We have worked in concert with these beings for many thousands of years helping them monitor and mitigate dangerous situations on many worlds including your Earth. We were allowed to develop various technologies for the monitoring process. I had hoped to explain these things before you were shown any of our capabilities in this area. Alia is not used to holding back information on any subject. Here on Silva all citizens are equally trusted, and there is no such thing as secret information. To a certain degree everyone here takes part in our planet’s role as helpful observers. As I’m sure you may have already guessed; our technology could be devastating in the wrong hands. We have been assured that access to these capabilities is not possible by worlds which are not worthy of their use.
As Baylor mentioned to you, I obtain approval for all between dimension travel and intervention. This approval comes from the group of spiritual beings I just told you about. Sometimes they request our help and sometimes we request theirs. We were asked by them to monitor the events on Tora following your arrival. When we discovered the plot to kill you, we asked for, and were granted permission to intervene. What I didn’t know until today is that you meeting Ian back on Earth was no accident. The closest term you are familiar with to describe what has happened to you is predestination. The saying used on your planet ‘God works in mysterious ways’ is definitely true, and this drama is being orchestrated at a spiritual level.
Ian has no idea how you happened to notice his crossing. He takes extreme precautions to not be seen, yet you saw him. This and all of the other events leading you here to Silva have apparently been ‘arranged’. One thing I can tell you about spirit intervention is that it is usually much more subtle than human intervention. Let me ask you. Have you ever had the feeling that you avoided a possible fatal accident by noticing something you would normally not notice? For example a sudden impulse to check your rear view mirror only to see a car changing lanes in an unsafe manner which could have thrown you into oncoming traffic had you not seen it.”
“Yes, I have had many such occurrences in my life, and I attribute them to luck. You mean to tell me that there are spirits looking out for me, and that I have been guided here by them, and if so, why me?” “Yes you are being looked after. On your world you call them Guardian Angels. As far as the plan to bring you here, other than your perceived martyrdom by the Federation, I’m not certain. I have been requested to bring you to Uralis tomorrow where both our questions concerning this matter will be addressed. Uralis is the location of all contact with the beings we assist. Usually only the most enlightened of our spiritual leaders are allowed there. I assure you that this invitation is an honor and a privilege. Please do not be frightened by it.”
Easier said than done. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was all just a round about way of getting into Heaven in order to gradually cope with the adjustment to being dead. Maybe the mountain lion had really done me in, or even earlier, maybe I broke my neck falling down the mountain to meet Ian. I didn’t really have any other choice than to continue with the adventure. I trusted Lodi, even though I didn’t know him very well. Also if there was a plan involving me I really wanted to know what it was. Lodi asked if I had any questions, and I said I didn’t, at least not at the moment. I needed some time alone to let this soak in. It was getting late and Lodi retired for the evening. It was a beautiful night so I went up to the roof top garden to relax and ponder all I had learned that day. I had half expected to see Alia, but she was nowhere in sight. I sat in a comfortable lounge chair, and stared up at the stars. Uralis was full and hung low on the horizon. In a few minutes I was sound asleep.