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Dreamtime

Written by Rob Shelsky

Illustrated by Lee Kuruganti

The silvered airship shimmered, mirage-like, on the horizon. It seemed an insubstantial yet ominous portent of the sultry air. The ocean surface below it looked flat, greasy. Waters shifted with near-lifeless motion. Even the oily waves that broke upon the shore were more ripples than combers. Of millemurro, the pelican, there was no sign. The day was too hot for anything to want to fly. Not even a pipipa, a single sandpiper, stalked the water’s lukewarm edge.

The two sat side-by-side in the sparse shade of a dusty grove of gum trees. They lurked there well back from the beach, beyond reach of the sun’s unrelenting rays. Their dark eyes, in twin anxious stares, tracked the craft’s deliberate approach.

“I thought they always traveled in groups for safety.” Pangalia’s tone was an uneasy one.

Akuna twitched shoulders, a cursory shrug. “They usually do. I’m as surprised as you to see a lone ship.” He squinted at the thing, as if intent on divining some sinister motivation from its progress.

“And the Golden Ones gave you no reason at all for this surprise visit?”

Akuna turned to face his son, his brown eyes already narrowed in the universal look of parental exasperation. “I’ve already told you, their signaling device just said to meet them here.”

“So summoned, we obey.” Pangalia’s voice echoed the acrid accusations of countless generations of rebellious youth.

“Haven’t we always? But they only come rarely now, and then mostly just to help.”

“What they see as help.” Pangalia’s dusky features contorted in a sneer, “Always acting so arrogant.”

Akuna sighed and then stood. He beat his hands against his loincloth, trying to remove excess dust. Without looking at his son, he said, “You project your personal feelings onto the world around you, as if that were reality. It isn’t, Pangalia.”

His son also stood. Already, he was almost as tall as his father was. He, too, slapped with a flat hand at the dirt covering his rear. It billowed in dry clouds around him, but then settled once more onto his chocolate skin, covering bare chest, arms, and legs in a fine layer of grey grit.

“You never change,” Pangalia said, after giving up the effort of trying to clean himself. “If I say anything against them, you won’t hear me.”

“Just as you aren’t hearing me now?”

“You’ve nothing to say I haven’t heard a thousand times before.” Pangalia strode toward the water, his movements as rigid with anger as his words had sounded. He left his father standing alone in the shade.

Akuna watched him go. His son’s naked feet left a trail of deep impressions in the baking sand behind him, looking like so many exclamation points punctuating the boy’s desire to flee. Was it always this way, Akuna wondered? Were sons always so intent upon usurping their fathers? Rivalry instead of cooperation seemed such a stupid biological necessity. He wondered if the Golden Ones had done away with it in themselves. Akuna knew they had the capability.

He sighed again. The sound of it escaped his lips like steam hissing from a billycan of boiling water. Then he followed, literally, in his son’s footsteps, heading toward the sea’s liquid border, toward an inevitable confrontation with which he’d become so familiar over the last years.

Pangalia stood where the tepid water lapped the beach. He was a lean study in male adolescence, a muscular, edgy challenge to his father’s time and dominion. With his right hand raised as a shield against the sun’s white brilliance, he gazed out at the airship. He watched it with a visible concern.

“I’m sorry.” Akuna tried to sound contrite. “It’s just that these constant arguments seem so unnecessary.”

Pangalia dropped his hand to his side and turned to face him. His youthful expression was now stony. “You see,” he said, “we don’t even agree on that. We . . .” he hesitated, as if searching for the right words. “We just don’t have the same viewpoint of the world.”

“Because I see things as they are?”

Pangalia shook his head, an impatient gesture. His dark nimbus of hair shivered. He jerked a thumb, indicated the gleaming craft. “Because you see us as just primitive aborigines and them as being superior.”

“Face it, Pangalia. They’ve been gengineered to be just that.”

“So we must live by their command?”

Akuna nodded. “And their sufferance,” he said. “We’ve no choice. Weaker peoples never do.”

“We count for nothing?” Pangalia’s brown eyes flared, fired with a suppressed resentment.

“We count. That’s why I came back. You know that.”

“I know you always take their side.”

It was Akuna’s turn to shake his head. “Not by choice, Pangalia, believe me.”

They fell silent, both seemingly incapable of resolving their longstanding differences, of bridging the chasm that divided their two generations. The airship was close now. The great blimp of polished metal, like some menacing torpedo, drifted into shore some distance up the beach from them. An ill-omened eclipse, a manifestation that seemed to portend dark things, it blotted out the sun, shading them in a pregnant relief. Akuna saw countless rows of windows interrupting its streamlining and the open-air observation gallery that ran around the middle of the thing. Yet, no friendly-waving figures leaned against the railings. No smiling faces peered from out of those windows.

A metal stairway unfolded and descended to the beach. It looked flimsy. Akuna knew better. They would never trust their valuable selves to anything that wasn’t solid, utterly predictable, and safe.

“There’s one of them.” Pangalia pointed.

Akuna looked. Sure enough, someone had emerged from the interior of the vast ship, stepping through a just-opened hatchway above the stairs. He wore a gilded, one-piece suit with matching boots. The two watched him descend the steps. At least, Akuna assumed it was a he. Since both sexes had no hair anywhere on their bodies and wore the same unisex clothing, it was often hard to tell, especially at any distance.

“Come.” He touched Pangalia lightly on one elbow. “Let’s meet him.”

They walked the shoreline toward the newcomer. Pangalia remained quiet, whether out of resentment, fear at the encounter to come, or just in awe of the sheer size of the vessel, Akuna didn’t know. What he did know was that the boy had never seen so large a craft before. Then, neither had he. Akuna didn’t even know what kept it floating, except that it wasn’t helium, hydrogen, or hot air. They wouldn’t place their trust in such archaic technologies.

Palm held up before him in greeting, the Golden One strode toward them. He made for a tall and commanding figure. “Akuna,” he called in a deep voice. It was melodic, but masculine. As they came together, he added, “Your journey wasn’t a long one, I hope?” Impassive gold eyes regarded them.

Akuna nodded a hello. “No,” he said, “We came from our adlinga, our place of hunting. It’s near here. But the trip was hot. You picked a bad time of the year for this.”

The Golden One chuckled before saying, “I’m sure that when it comes to meeting with us your people feel there’s no good time. No,” he added, raising a hand to forestall Akuna from voicing any polite denial, “we know how you feel. We sympathize. Who is this with you?” His large eyes, so like enormous gold coins, now focused on the boy.

“Pangalia.”

“I’m Severin.” He smiled, but made no move to take Pangalia’s, or even Akuna’s hand.

Too much risk of contamination, Akuna thought. Then a new notion struck him. “Are you by any chance the same Severin that I met many years ago during my medical courses in Florence?”

Severin nodded. “The same; you didn’t recognize me?”

Akuna shook his head. “No, sorry, but it’s been so long.”

“And we all look so much alike to you, right?” Severin smiled again, revealing perfect, porcelain-white teeth. “But Pangalia’s name,” he added, “it means eldest son in your ancestral language. Is he yours then?”

Akuna nodded.

Severin frowned. It was an odd-looking expression without eyebrows. “That . . . complicates things,” he finished.

Like the raucous cries of the bullai bullai, the green parrot, alarms screeched in Akuna’s mind. He shifted position, moving closer to his son. He placed a protective hand on Pangalia’s shoulder in a quiet caveat of caution. Akuna felt his son’s muscles stiffen beneath his touch.

“Unfortunate? How?” Akuna strove for a mild tone.

Severin looked uncomfortable as he said, “My people are leaving Earth. There’s just too much danger here from natural occurrences like earthquakes, tsunamis, and such. We’ll do better in free space.”

“How will you live?” Akuna maintained a level voice, even though this news enthralled him. He sensed a similar reaction from his son, an eagerness that Pangalia seemed to telegraph through the very air. The Golden Ones were leaving, finally! Rumors of this possibility had circulated for lengthy years among the peoples. Still, nobody had taken them too seriously.

Severin waved one hand, a blithe gesture. “We intend to live inside asteroids, hollow them out as habitats with nanotech. We’ll mine the Oort Cloud for resources. Our numbers are not great, so neither are our needs.”

That confirmed another rumor. Their population was small. So, giving up Australia and the Americas hadn’t been just out of altruism for the indigenous peoples remaining there. The Golden Ones didn’t need the space.

Pangalia broke his long silence by saying, “If you’re just here to say goodbye, then I say good riddance to you all!” He practically spat the words.

“Pangalia!” Akuna exclaimed.

“It’s all right.” Severin blinked hooded lids over those strange eyes. “I understand his feelings. But you must understand we wish you no harm.”

“Then just why are you here?” Akuna asked, trying to force the issue out into the open.

Severin’s forehead wrinkled, denoting another frown. “This isn’t pleasant for me,” he said. “But since you’re the chosen speaker for your people, I must inform you that all of your young must come with us. Our government feels it would be unfair to leave them behind.”

“What?” Akuna’s expression portrayed stunned amazement. “You’re taking our children?”

“No!” It was more an expletive than exclamation. Pangalia shrugged off his father’s hand. He knotted his fists, as if readying for attack. “I won’t go. None of us will. You can’t make us!”

Akuna again put a restraining hand on Pangalia’s shoulder. “Be quiet,” he ordered him. “You,” he demanded of Severin, “What’s the meaning of this?”

The other man raised his shoulders in an apologetic shrug. “It’s my government’s will. They’ve decided we can’t deny your children our civilization. Of course, anyone is free to come with them.”

“Will they ever come back?” Akuna’s look, as his tone, was a pleading one.

Severin gave a gentle shake of his head. “I don’t think so, not for some time anyway, because we won’t be coming back.”

“This is kidnapping!” Pangalia shouted.

Akuna knew his