The Only Constant

by Holly_Gonzalez

Theta Esperanza, Cycle II, Third-summer

T-E Day 907.2

Colony Pacifica-XIX

Bright blue Stalagmi seed-fluff drifted on the breeze. Nayali bounded after one and caught it in her small hands. "Daddy, Daddy, look!" Her voice piped over her enviro-suit's mic as she cradled the wisp in her gloves.

"Wow, a lucky catch." Ojan Kampala picked up his daughter and hugged her. "On Earth, we had a plant with seeds like these. They were called dandelions, not Stalagmi."

"Really?"

"Yep, and guess what? The old stories said that if you made a wish and blew the seed into the wind, your wish would come true."

"Can I wish on this?"

Ojan chuckled. "Go ahead."

"Oh. I can't blow it away with my helm on." A pout surely lurked behind her opaque face shield.

Overhead, the Stalagmi fronds swayed atop their conical, green-barked trunks. "The wind's picking up again," Ojan said. "Make your wish anyway, and we'll set it free."

She held the seed aloft. "I wish Mama was here."

Ojan's wife, Sonpreet, hadn't survived the colonization voyage from Earth. His throat tightened as he lifted Nayali onto his shoulders. "Close your eyes. When the wind's strong enough, let it go. Ready?"

"Yeah!"

Third-summer was the windiest of planetoid Theta-Esperanza's seasons. During this time, the Stalagmi blossomed, and children could play among their gnarled roots. Radiation surges and acidic rainfall drenched the landscape the rest of the long T-E year.

Today was all that mattered. Today, dappled light shimmered through the canopy and illuminated a little girl's futile dream.

Nayali released the seed. She giggled when it caught an upward current, and her wish soared and disappeared into the pollinated swarm of the Blooming. A speck of potential life among thousands of others. Though Sonpreet would never behold these forests, her memory now glided against a backdrop of violet clouds.

As they walked back to the airlock, Nayali hummed a repetitive tune. "The Stalagmi are singing," she said.

"What do they sound like, sweetheart?" Ojan paused and glanced back at the forest. Trunks over a hundred meters tall oozed dark, fertile sap. The Stalagmi grew over every hill and dune surrounding the colony, the most prolific life form on Theta-Esperanza.

"It's like a beeping noise. It buzzes inside my head and tickles my tummy." She pointed to a nearby trunk. "That big one is the loudest. I think it likes me!"

Ojan dismissed the inaudible song as childish fancy, but Nayali sang it all the way home.

"Why you can't hear them?" She tugged his arm. "Are you listening, Daddy?"

He thought he was listening. The silence was deceptive.

Cycle II, Third-summer

T-E Day 923.7

Office of Xenological Affairs

"Mr. Kampala, are you listening?" Xenologist Ila Rodreco twiddled a stylus between two fingers. Her dark eyes drilled into him.

Ojan muttered, "Of course I was. I mean, I am." He leaned over the desk, hands folded, his solemn expression reflected on the polished black surface.

"We'd like to show you the footage one more time. Afterward, if you'd tell us about this song your daughter heard, it would—"

He slammed a fist. "I've told you everything I remember. Do you have no respect for a parent's grief?"

Rodreco set her stylus down. "We understand how difficult this is for you."

"Then let me go home." His shoulders drooped.

"You may leave if you wish. We aren't holding you here." She nodded to the two uniformed enforcers guarding the door. "But we have a mystery on our hands. A potentially dangerous one, if the incident recurs. Your recollection may help us find the missing children."

"There's no hope." Ojan sighed. "I was there. I saw what happened."

"It may appear to be a lost cause," Rodreco said. "I'm well aware of my opposition. However, I believe the children aren't dead."

Ojan lifted his head. "Impossible."

"Watch again, Mr. Kampala." She sat on the edge of the desk and summoned the holo-vid display with a twirl of her fingers. The fateful image appeared mid-air over the desktop in a flickering silver glow. "This time, don't focus on your emotional response, but on the interesting way in which your daughter and her playmates entered the pods."

He straightened and diverted his attention to the holo-vid. Not again. Each time, it opened the wound anew. Sonpreet gone, and now Nayali.

Steeling himself, Ojan watched the vid. Five children played ball on a nondescript afternoon. Three boys, two girls including Nayali, all students from Ojan's junior science class. After several minutes, Nayali stopped and beckoned the others closer. The children joined hands and formed a circle, like a typical game of 'ring-around-the-rosie', nothing unusual.

Ojan appeared on camera, calling the children back from recess. They'd ignored him, engrossed in their odd game. Swaying, eyes closed, they'd recited Nayali's Stalagmi song like an invocation to the sky.

The feed cut ahead. The ground collapsed, and a sinkhole as wide as a freight transport gaped open. Rubble erupted around the children, but they stood oblivious. Their heads were flung back, eyes rolled white.

Enormous roots writhed out of the fissure like tentacles—an invasion from beneath, from the depths of Theta-Esperanza. The colonial defense systems weren't prepared.

A root swung toward Ojan on the vid and knocked him aside. He winced as if he still felt the pain of that strike. I wasn't strong enough. Couldn't protect my little girl. How I've failed.

Spidery tendrils sprouted from the roots, then broadened and unfurled. Each formed a leafy pod large enough to swallow a human body. The children stripped off their clothing and climbed inside the pods. Fibers twisted around them, slithered into their eyes and noses and mouths, encasing all into tight cocoons.

Ojan had lain there, injured and useless. The roots and pods retracted, gone as suddenly as they'd come, leaving only the incriminating pit behind.

Those pods bore the tell-tale blue of Stalagmi seeds and fronds. There was only one possible suspect. The Stalagmi had somehow pushed their roots far through the ground, breached the colony's foundations, and devoured the children.

When the holo-vid ended, Ojan shuddered. "I...didn't notice anything different."

"Look again." Rodreco reversed the vid and paused it where Nayali clambered into the pod. "Magnify."

The image zoomed in, and the tiny filaments inside the pods became clearer. They reached toward Nayali's lips like shivering fingers.

"The Stalagmi pods were responding to your daughter's song," Rodreco said. "Until now, we've never seen evidence of sentient behavior. This changes everything."

Ojan pushed out of his chair and headed for the door.

"Mr. Kampala, wait. I have more to show you." She grabbed her data tablet. "Your daughter's song is a frequency. I believe it somehow induced a somnambulistic trigger in the children's brains."

He interrupted her with a raised palm. "I suggest you forget all this and leave me and the other parents to mourn in peace." He left in a daze.

As third-summer ended, the Executive Council denounced Ila Rodreco's work and ruled an extermination of all Stalagmi within a hundred kilometer radius of Pacifica-XIX.

Ojan watched the broadcasts of the enforcers' fruitless attempts to bomb, poison, chop, and burn the trunks and roots. Nothing worked. The Stalagmi had evolved to withstand their volatile environment. Even micro-nukes were ineffective. As a last resort, the colonists reinforced their habitat and increased surveillance across the sub-levels. Any future intrusion would set every squadron on alert.

One evening, Ojan wandered into Nayali's bedroom. Her toys and books remained as she'd left them. Near the window, on her desk, lay the helm of her enviro-suit. He picked it up and pressed his lips to the face shield, a kiss as hollow as the void inside of him.

A framed photo of Sonpreet and himself hung on the wall, their smiles shining with optimism for a new start in the off-world colonies. Nayali had been born on the greatship. At the time, his life had been perfect.

What a steep price he'd paid for opportunity.

As he wiped a tear, he spotted a tiny, feathery object caught in the helm's grooved air filter. A shock of downy blue—a Stalagmi seed was trapped there. He pulled it free and examined it in the pale light.

For a moment, he considered throwing it into the refuse incinerator, but he couldn't. Wishes lived within this seed, even if they never came true. He placed it into a glass jar and kept it on his study shelf. Every time he looked at it, it reminded him of Nayali.

After several weeks, his sorrow hardened over. Only a dull resolve motivated him to continue working. The children of others still needed him, as he was one of the only Earth-born school teachers in the colony. For them, he mustered some iota of strength.

Whenever he sank into despair, he held the Stalagmi seed and remembered happier times. Sobs often wracked him, body and soul. He was just a man, and a man's weakness lurked in him as much as anyone.

His will crumbled on an otherwise tranquil afternoon. He walked to the edge of the industrial sector alone, hands thrust deep into his overcoat pockets, his hair uncombed and his eyes ringed with dark circles. He didn't care. When he reached the edge of the civilian platform, he looked over the railing. So far a drop, nearly half a kilometer to the lowest sub-level. How long would it take to hit the bottom? One spontaneous choice would give the answer. He grasped the rail, hands shivering, and climbed onto the pedestal.

Long-buried thoughts raced through his mind. Sonpreet's voice chided him from within. Though he knew it was his own guilt projected, it cut all the same. Don't you dare give up, Ojan. Are you listening to me? No matter what, you keep on fighting.

He thought of the seed, of Nayali, and her wish for Sonpreet to live again. Even a little girl had hoped, believed in some sense of magic, that perhaps death itself could be thwarted if someone wanted it badly enough.

Disgusted with himself and his cowardice, he slumped to the ground, buried his face in his hands, and rocked as if he'd gone mad. He hummed the same tune, over and over, without realizing at first what it was. Nayali's Stalagmi song. He remembered it somehow, though he'd tried so hard to forget.

Could there be some chance, some small possibility, that Xenologist Rodreco was right? Might Nayali and the other children still live, held prisoner in suspended awareness somewhere deep inside the Stalagmi roots? The notion blazed within his darkened soul. It might be true. But you scoffed at Rodreco, doubted it all without listening to her. If she's right...for the love of every God named, let her be right!

Ojan returned to Xenologist Ila Rodreco a few days later and apologized for his prior dismissal of her work. He admired her persistence and volunteered to help her promote further study of the giant flora-fauna. If humanity was to survive on this planetoid, they needed to learn all they could. Since the colony's children were its real future, Ojan and Ila founded an independent science program to teach the youth about Theta-Esperanza's biosphere and the multi-faceted growth phases of the Stalagmi.

Ila's theories earned derision among many researchers, as she still hadn't proven them. She continued regardless. Ojan grew fond of her, and in time they found a deeper camaraderie. They married at the height of third-autumn.

Seasons, circles, memories—all danced to the heart's drum of transformation. The only constant amid the whirl of time and change was love.

Cycle III, Third-summer

T-E Day 914.2

Ojan jolted awake on a dim morning. Images flashed in his mind. A dream? Sonpreet lay covered in fine, red dust with a strange child nestled in her arms. Nayali's sweet face shifted among the sharp, pointed patterns of a Stalagmi trunk's bark. Ila, her waist-length hair unbound, strode into the forest barefoot while thousands of blue-tufted seeds swirled around her. All merged into a static drone.

Dawn's light shafted through the slats of the window blind and pierced his eyes. Between waking and slumber, a single voice cried out. "Daddy."

He scrambled to his feet, pulse thrumming in his veins.

Ila moaned and stirred amid the tangled blankets. "Hey, why are you up so early? Are you okay?"

"I don't know."

She kissed him. "Sit here, and tell me."

He joined her on the edge of the bed. "I heard Nayali's song in a dream."

"You heard it?"

As if in reply, the sound he'd woken to resonated again, audible to waking ears.

"I hear it, too." Ila's eyes widened. "By God, it's the very sequence I've been transmitting to the Stalagmi all this time. I can't believe this is happening!"

From the living room came the crackling shatter of glass. They hurried to investigate, but halted at the door.

Motes of glittering pollen hovered in the air. The jar containing the seed from Nayali's helm had broken into countless shards across the floor. Tufted blue tendrils waved free, the seed now the size of small dog. Its roots spread in a webbed lattice down the shelf.

Before Ojan could stop Ila, she gathered the seedling into her hands. "Incredible. Remember my earlier studies? Those seeds didn't survive, but they all responded to melodic sound." She whistled a shrill note.

The seedling quivered and bent toward her pursed lips, just like the pods which had taken Nayali.

"Stop!" Ojan tried to snatch it from her. "It might be dangerous."

"Don't you see?" Ila scowled. "It's trying to communicate."

The seed's prehensile stems opened into vibrant blossoms. From the center of the petals peered humanoid faces—knobby pistils shaped like eyes, noses, and mouths. The blunt features moved, and the mouths stretched into grins.

"We can't trust it. We should get rid of it."

"I wasn't suggesting we keep it. Let's deliver this young Stalagmi to its family. We'll show them humans are merciful in spite of the past."

Ojan's head bowed. "I doubt the Stalagmi can understand mercy. After all this time, our efforts to establish their sentience and perhaps find Nayali have dwindled. I'm beginning to think they're hostile, and they may have killed my daughter."

"If they were hostile, Pacifica-XIX would be a ruin. Have no doubt. Our scans show the Stalagmi roots twine through every square meter of T-E's bedrock. They could crush us like worms if they wanted to, but they haven't. And this little sprout may help us discover why." She laid a hand against Ojan's cheek. "Give me a chance. I've waited for this moment."

He couldn't argue. As long as he'd known Ila, communication with the Stalagmi had been her goal. Half a lifetime's worth of research came to fruition at last. Though he harbored some doubt, he relented.

Later that afternoon, they donned their enviro-suits, secured the seed into a sturdy metal box, and departed through the eastern airlock. Ila drove the transport toward a swell of dunes about a kilometer outside the colony.

The seedling's roots poked through the hinges of the box and flailed toward the latch. Another high-pitched tone rang from inside.

Ojan pushed the lid down. "It's trying to break free."

"Wouldn't you if you were almost home?" Ila parked the transport. She patted the top of the box. "Don't fret, little guy. We're here."

They climbed out of the transport and walked toward a thick cluster of Stalagmi trunks. Ojan opened the box. The seedling's roots and stems burst out, and the flowers squinted in the light.

He gently lifted the seedling out of the container and placed it on the ground. "Now you're back where you belong. Tell your brothers and sisters we wish to live in peace, but you mustn't take our children anymore. As a token of faith, we return your child to you."

The seedling's roots twisted like serpents into the dry regolith. Its fronds spread wide, and the mouths within the blossoms moved as if trying to speak.

Ila took his hand. "Do you hear their song?"

He nodded.

"So this is how the Stalagmi talk to us. A kind of mental tone-language. It's uncommon for a species like this, but they're certainly not the first telepathic life forms humans have encountered in the cosmos. I've been on the right track all along."

They stood in silence for a good while and watched the canopy fronds sweep back and forth against the amber sky. The trunks were already wet with sap, a sign the Blooming was nigh.

Ojan closed his eyes. His sigh hissed through the helm's filters. Once he'd feared these tall, enigmatic beings, hated them for what he'd lost. He might never understand why they'd stolen his baby, but the bitter demons within him quieted at last.

A child's voice spoke in his mind. "Are you listening?"

"Yes," he whispered. "I forgive you."

The seedling's tonal cry pierced the air. The ground rumbled. Rocks vibrated and shook. Ila stumbled, but Ojan caught her before she fell.

A fissure split open among the knotted roots, and a snarled nest of vines and fibers untangled from below. Wrapped within were five large pods. Vague silhouettes were curled in fetal position inside the translucent shells.

Ojan's heart pounded.

The pods snapped open and spilled syrupy resin. Human arms and legs reached out, exposed, no enviro-suits to protect them. A young man emerged from one of the pods. His muscles flexed, naked body damp and lean.

Ojan and Ila ran to him. Ila helped the man to sit upright, while Ojan fumbled for the emergency respirator in his suit's emergency pack.

"No need," Ila said. "His breathing's normal."

The man's eyes fluttered open. His pupils were encircled with deep blue, the same color as Stalagmi fronds and seed-tufts, no irises or whites visible. A thick, bumpy texture coated his skin, resembling the indestructible bark. He pushed himself to hands and knees and tried to stand.

"Take it easy," Ila said. She brushed a gooey lock from the man's forehead, then she hailed Pacifica-XIX on her comm. "Central, we've got a miracle out here. One kilometer east, five citizens in need of a transport and medical attention."

The reply cracked in static. "Copy. We're on our way."

Four more young people slid out of the remaining pods. They blinked and stretched, unsteady as toddlers learning to walk. None seemed to have any trouble breathing the frail T-E atmosphere.

Two women, three men. Could it be? The children had been taken a full cycle ago, almost twenty Earth years past. Nayali would have been twenty-six if she'd survived. If—Ojan stepped closer.

One of the women turned and looked over her shoulder at Ojan. The straight nose, wide lips, and pointed chin of her profile were unmistakable. He could hardly breathe, let alone shout her name. He approached Nayali with arms outstretched.

She tottered on bare feet, her brows lowered. Gobs of blue resin and matted hair stuck to her skin.

He seized her in a hug so tight that she gasped.

Ila tended to the others. All of them, including Nayali, had the strange blue-rimmed eyes and bark skin. Alive and in his arms, but transformed. Was this the happy ending to a long, dire tale, or the beginning of a new tragedy?

Minutes later, the rescue team arrived and fitted all of the Stalagmi's freed captives with enviro-suits, though it seemed unnecessary given how well adjusted they were to the local biosphere. They traveled back to the habitat in a med-transport, with Ila and Ojan driving close behind.

Cycle III, Third-summer

T-E Day 934.9

Journalists and camera drones pushed toward the broadcast podium where the five former abductees stood. Amid the maelstrom of lens flashes and eager questions, Nayali threw her shoulders back and smiled. She wore a tailored indigo suit jacket and skirt, her hair pinned up in soft waves, her make-up in bronze tones which complemented her rough, dark green skin.

So grown up. Ojan beamed, overcome by how much Nayali looked like Sonpreet, even with the odd Stalagmi mutations.

Nayali leaned toward the mic. Her long, vine-like fingers branched around the podium stand. "I speak for my companions today," she said, her voice firm. "Many of you believe the Stalagmi have abused us, deformed us, and that they may attempt to alter more children in the future. I assure you, this is not true. The Stalagmi live for many millennia, and their awareness is not as...subjective as we humans. They took me and my friends because they wanted to learn more about our species, and they could only do so by melding with us physically. The five of us here are the only ones to be blessed with these genetic augmentations. Through us, and our descendants, Pacifica-XIX will inherit the physical qualities to survive and thrive on Theta-Esperanza. Call this a sacrifice if you so choose, but we consider it a gift." She paused and locked eyes with Ojan. "The Blooming has begun again. It's a new start. Let's put aside our fear, and celebrate with our neighbors. They offer us peace, now and forever."

After Nayali's speech, Ojan and Ila embraced her.

"I'm so proud of you," Ojan said.

Nayali kissed his cheek. "Not as proud as I am to be your daughter."