This tale was inspired by the writings of Zecharia Sitchen, who wrote The Earth Chronicles, his reconstructed history of The 12th Planet and its interactions with our Earth. Tanu is my imagined story of the origin of that mysterious world.

1.

Lord Ishnu, Hereditary Astronomer, stood in his observatory looking out over the cold surface of his planet, still faintly visible in the fading auroral glow. He felt old, older even than the aging planet beneath his feet. His shriveling body protested his every movement, and the cold was seeping into his bones. He looked up at the stars, especially at Apsu, the nearby one. In cycles past even this far from that sun there would have been enough streaming energy to brighten the auroral glow until it washed away shadows and made the stars fade. He looked at the other stars, and at the nearer giant planets he could discern. Those planets should not have been so near, the sun should have been positioned differently amongst the other stars, before the auroras faded and the stars became so bright.

Every cycle it was thus. Every cycle the cold and the dark came sooner. Every cycle the alive time grew shorter and the dream time grew longer. Lord Ishnu leaned tiredly against the cold stone of the observatory wall and gazed again at the stars. He thought of leaving this body behind and roaming among those stars during the long and lonely dream time. Perhaps this cycle he would not return. Perhaps this cycle he would find another body, another life upon some other world, a world constantly warmed by a nearer star, a brighter sun. Others had done it, he knew. Others of his race, at the end of the endless day, when the change began and the cold nights came and grew longer and longer, or sometime during the long cycles since, had died and not returned to resume life here.

After a last look out at the play of the fading auroral glow over the vast snow and ice barrens that covered the proud city of Eridu and extended to every horizon, Ishnu sighed and turned to Sula, his nephew and chief assistant. "Bring the instruments below, Sula," he said, gesturing toward the bronze astrolabe and other devices mounted on their stone pedestals. "We will not be using them again this cycle. The cold has come too soon." Sula, whose own withered body looked no younger than that of his uncle, nodded silently and turned to obey.

Ishnu left the observatory and began climbing down the long dim shaft toward the council chamber deep beneath the surface. As he descended he continued his musings. He recalled how some said that those who did not return to life here ceased to exist altogether. Others said they moved on to another plane of existence in another universe, and could never return to this one. Lord Ishnu had come to believe, from the dim waking memories of his own dream times, that the lost ones had found lost brothers elsewhere, somewhere down the ancient star trail, and had taken up a new life among them.

This thought comforted Ishnu, and he longed sometimes to join them if he could. There were those among the lost who had been dear to him, dearer than any who remained on this dying world. But the ties to this world were strong. As long as the cycle in its vast swing carried the planet inward toward the glowing heart of this system, life here would be renewed, and he would be renewed with it. He knew from watching the course of his planet among the stars that the dream time was now twelve times longer than the alive time. Even should it become twenty-four times or thirty-six times as long, even if the alive time should shorten to less than one cycle of the giant planet Anshar whose orbit they were now passing, still he knew he would be drawn back. But sometimes he wished it were not so. Sometimes he simply wished it were not so. Lord Ishnu's mood was melancholy as he walked along.