CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

The Cylon Imperious Leader had learned long ago to overcome his distaste at the sight of a human being. In the rare times when he had needed in the uncomfortable course of duty to actually face a captured enemy, he had felt sick for a long time after the interrogation. They greatly disturbed his sense of unity. He was never sure why, but he absorbed small doses of their irrationality when forced to be physically near any of them. Now, self-discipline and the deliberate suppression of certain portions of the third-brain enabled him to encounter a human without undue reaction afterward. However, the human being standing before him at this time threatened severely to restore the old irrational responses. While trying to figure out why this particular human was so particularly unsavory, he carefully shut off those parts of his mind that could be significantly affected by the being’s mere physical presence.

The answer to his growing feelings of revulsion might be the simplest, the most obvious. The man, Count Baltar, was a traitor. Traitors deliberately disturb order for their own selfish gain. They were the vilest of a vile race. And Baltar was surely the greatest traitor of all, since his betrayal had made the human annihilation possible. While the leader would have liked to treat this traitor with proper contempt, the involved ceremonies of Cylon courtesy demanded that he at least be polite.

“Welcome, Baltar,” he said, controlling the vocal output of his helmet so that a human-sounding warmth underscored the words. “You have done well.”

Baltar, who had sustained an emotionless appearance since being led to the Leader’s pedestal, now suddenly spoke in anger, adding to his voice that strange inflection that humans termed sarcasm.

“I have done well, eh? What have you done? What of our bargain? My colony was to be spared.”

Another unexpected and unreasonable outburst of emotion from a human. Imperious Leader should have been prepared for it, he knew, but he did not always correctly judge the erratic use of emotions that made humans so annoyingly unpredictable.

“The bargain was altered,” the leader said, his third-brain instructing his voice box to put a humanlike sarcasm into the words. The sarcasm was a good approximation, and he felt quite satisfied with it.

“How can you change one side of a bargain?” Baltar said.

It was like a human to place what little logic he did have at his command into a framework of extreme selfishness. They could never see the scope of a larger plan unless they were directed toward it. Even then, their minds seemed unable to absorb such a plan’s completeness. They could, it seemed, see parts but never wholes. No wonder they were not fit to govern a single portion of the universe. As he replied to Baltar, he continued to give his voice a human sound, so as not to confuse the stupid, traitorous man.

“Count Baltar, there is no other side. You have missed the entire point of the war.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Baltar said. His voice suddenly subdued, he cringed.

“What I mean is that there could be no dominion over the species so long as man remained a power with the universe. There are no shades of meaning when it comes to this. Man or the Alliance, the answer is obvious. Compromise is not at all acceptable.”

A whining tone came into Baltar’s voice when he spoke next:

“But you have what you want. The threat is gone, it no longer exists. I delivered my end of the bargain. On my world, my reputation is firm—whatever Count Baltar says he’ll do, gets done by him and him only. I did what I was supposed to, damn it! My dominion was to be spared, you said it was to—”

“Dominion? There can be only one dominion, one power, one authority. There must be no exceptions.”

“What are you, you think you’re some kind of god?”

“Gods are one of the intellectual trivialities of your race.”

“All right, forget I said that. But, believe me, I have no ambitions against you.”

Imperious Leader blended a burst of laughter into the sarcasm of his voice-box mixture.

“You grow smaller as you stand there, Baltar. Could you think me so foolish as to trust a man who would see his own race destroyed?”

“Not destroyed—subjugated. Under me—”

“There can be no survivors. The Alliance is threatened even if one single human being remains alive on one of the colonies.”

“Surely—surely, well, of course you don’t mean me.”

Urgent messages were being transmitted to him from his aides all through the chamber. He had spent too much time already with this pitiful human representative. And he fancied himself a worthy survivor!

“We thank you for your help, Baltar. Your time is at an end.”

Two Cylon centurions materialized out of the shadows in which the leader had positioned them. Each took a fleshy arm and lifted Baltar off the floor.

“No!” Baltar shouted. “You can’t! You still need me!”

“Need you. That is unlikely.”

“I have—I have information. Please. My life for my information.”

Always willing to bargain, Imperious Leader thought, this human would never stop desperately offering trades.

“What is your information?”

Baltar pulled away from the centurions and approached the pedestal. There was a surprising arrogance in his walk.

“My life?” Baltar said.

“Your life,” the Leader said. An easy promise. Easy because he had no intention of keeping it.

Baltar looked to each side as if he suspected he could be overheard. By whom?

“At the spacedrome on Caprica… when your centurions were collecting and exterminating survivors, one of them gave me information.”

“Oh? On what grounds?”

“That I save the man’s life.”

“Did you?”

“Of course not. I beheaded him myself.”

“Oh. Interesting. Go on. What did he tell you?”

“Many humans escaped, he said.”

“But how could that be?”

“They escaped in ships, anything they could find. A handful of survivors. And you haven’t located them.”

“Perhaps you are right. But they would have neither fuel nor food for a prolonged voyage.”

“He told me they were heading for a rendezvous with a surviving battlestar.”

“A battlestar!”

“Yes. He said it was the Galactica.”

“That can’t be! I will not allow it.”

“I don’t know what you can do about it.”

“Make it my business to destroy those ships. And their previous Galactica. As I will destroy you now.”

“But my information… you promised… you said—”

“Dispose of him.”

The centurions seized Baltar and began to drag him out of the chamber.

“You can’t do this to me!” Baltar shouted.

“I would remind you that this is exactly what you did to your informant.”

As he awaited his centurion’s return with the announcement that Baltar’s head had been separated from his body, Imperious Leader contemplated the man’s loathsomeness. By human standards, the trader was evil. To humans, evil was a relatively simple concept. A measure of premeditated malice, a dose or two of harmful action, some negative thoughts that did not conform to a standard that would change eventually anyway. The kind of trivial feelings that guided Baltar, traits like weakness and selfishness, were equated too easily with the idea of evil in human minds. To them, Imperious Leader would be evil, which certainly measured the absurdity of their view.

The centurion returned, and announced that the human traitor had-been beheaded and his body had been disposed of—out of a chute through which normally flowed Cylon garbage.

Imperious Leader ordered his network to root out and destroy the surviving humans, with special attention to the complete disintegration of the battlestar Galactica. As his centurions began sending out the message, the leader allowed himself a momentary surge of gratification. He was close to his goal now. With the annihilation of the humans, order could be returned to the universe, and he was the founder of that new universal order. Although he would not have admitted his feelings to be akin to Baltar’s repulsively human selfishness, he could not help but acknowledge to himself that his place in Cylon history had been strengthened considerably by the imminent removal of the human pest.

 

Adama prayed that his rising hopes were not unreasonable as he oversaw the assembling of his ragtag fleet at the chosen coordinate points in space. Many of the survivor ships were decrepit, scarred vehicles, to be sure, but more of them had slipped through Cylon lines than he had expected. Reports showed that almost twenty-two thousand ships, representing every colony, color, and creed of the twelve worlds, had been dredged up as the result of the communications and physical searches initiated by his people. They might not exactly be suited for combat, but at least they were ships. They gave the human race, now reduced to a miniscule fraction of the population that had flourished in the twelve words, another chance. A chance to survive, a chance to—someday—defeat the Alliance.

As he watched reports come in on various screens, he was mildly amused by the signs on the battered sides of some of the rescued craft. Trans-Stellar Space Service. Gemini Freight. Tauron Bus Lines. The new fleet consisted of ships of every assortment, size, and shape. It might not look like much, but it was all he had.

“You look like the catlet that swallowed the underbird,” Athena said, referring to a famous Caprican children’s story. She smiled slyly. How long had she been standing there observing him?

“And you’re rude for a subordinate whose sole claim to rudeness is that she’s the commander’s daughter.”

She turned toward the starfield, and swept a hand across their immediate view of several of the odd-looking ships.

“That’s quite an array of squadrons,” she said. “Or are you even going to divide them into squadrons? You could put all the transportation vehicles into one, all the moving-van ships into another, all the sanitation—”

“That’ll be enough, young lady.”

“It’s all just a roundabout way of asking you what you’re planning.”

Troubled by the question, he turned away from Athena. The move did him no good. Starbuck hovered nearby, slightly in front of a puzzled Colonel Tigh. In the shadows the newswoman, Serina, sat beside Apollo, their backs to the communications panel.

“All right,” he said, “you all want some kind of an explanation from me. All right. I’ve got this idea.”

“Idea?” Athena said, a bit too hopefully for her father’s pleasure.

“It’s just this. Long ago, I’ve no time concept of how long, and it’s not important, there was an earlier civilization, a race from which we’re descended. It’s all in the secret history books, but I doubt if any of you have been privileged to inspect them.”

They all shook their heads no.

“Well, our parent race left their home and set out to establish colonies throughout the universe. Many planets were settled but—because of dangers inherent in the individual planet or unpredictable disasters that wiped out colonies—only a few were successful. Finally, the twelve worlds were discovered, exploration showed them to be supremely habitable, and the remnants of all the other colonies were moved here. New colonies were established and, as you well know, they thrived. Now, those of us in this collection of motley ships are all that’s left. We represent every known surviving colony, except one—”

“Except one?” Athena asked. “I don’t understand what you mean. As far as I know, each of the twelve worlds had survivors and we’ve managed to rescue them.”

“I’m not talking about the twelve worlds. No, I refer to a sister colony far out in the universe, perhaps not a colony at all, perhaps the planet from which our race originated. Whatever, it’s only remembered through ancient writings. I’d show some to you but they, too, were destroyed by the Cylon assault.”

“Okay,” Athena said, “we all know something about this. It’s been a part of our mythology for years—about an origin place called Earth, sometimes Garden of Earth, although that’s never made much sense to me, it seems—”

“It may not be mythology, Athena.”

“But it may be.”

“Well, we’ll see.”

Adama was irked by his daughter’s proddings. He had been excusing her recent shows of temperament on the grounds that she had been through so much misery since the beginning of the Cylon doublecross, but now he wondered if it was time to combine parental with military discipline and speak to her harshly.

“It’s my intention,” he resumed, speaking more slowly to test his own patience word by word, “to seek out that last remaining colony—call it Earth if you must. Whatever you call it, it may be the last outpost of humanity in the universe, perhaps a civilization like our own, perhaps with people just like us. We can ask their help in rebuilding and, perhaps, warn them of the Alliance and their goal of eradicating mankind.”

“But, if the Alliance hasn’t discovered them yet, maybe they’re safe from attack. Maybe we shouldn’t even—”

“Athena! It’s the only solution we have. The Alliance is going to chase us across the universe. Lieutenant Starbuck, you have a question.”

“Yes, Sir. If we’re talking about this same colony, this mythological colony, well, I don’t think anybody knows where it is. Even if we did, we barely have enough fuel to—”

“A very good point, Lieutenant. We have to find a fuel source, then. A fuel source and extended provisions for a long journey.”

Colonel Tigh came forward.

“Commander, this is hardly a fleet of sturdy, well equipped soldiers, up to battling the universe. I mean, most of these people barely got away with their lives. They’re emotionally and physically unprepared for the kind of journey you are proposing….”

Apollo stood up and spoke.

“Sir, less than a third of these ships can make light-speed. It could take us generations to find Earth.”

“Ah, but you’re talking about it as if you believe in it, or at least in the possibility of it. It’s a sign that it’s worth seeking out. We’ll find it because we have no choice. No choice. If we mark time in this corner of the universe, the Alliance’ll find us. No, we’ll travel only as fast as our slowest ship, we’ll be only as strong as our weakest brother.”

“Your rhetoric is attractive but I think we should fight.”

Even Apollo was turning against him. Well, no matter. He had to persevere.

“We’re the only surviving battlestar and our pilots are up to the task of protecting the whole fleet. Let’s leave it at that. You may speak your mind at the next council.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Serina leaned forward and spoke in the style of her journalistic profession.

“I’m a bit vague on this business, star mythology was never my best subject.” Which meant, of course, that she knew a great deal about it and was pretending ignorance in order to draw him out. “You say that this thirteenth colony, or parent world, is named Earth, and it may be somewhere out there in the universe, still populated and still amenable to receiving returning colonial inhabitants.”

Adama turned back to the starfield, as if an easy answer to Serina’s question was spelled out there in rusty letters by the decrepit vehicles. He felt like an ordinary seaman searching the horizon for a glimpse of sail.

“I think there is a real world called Earth and that it is out there and will welcome us,” he said finally. “I believe it is there.”

“Belief is a word associated more strongly with hope than fact,” Serina said, adding a belated “Sir.”

“Belief, hope,” Adama said, “they’re all we have, all we’ve ever had.”

“Forgive my scepticism, Commander Adama, but you’re asking us to join you on a religious quest.”

“Perhaps.”

“You can’t go off on a religious quest when we—”

“I can,” Adama said, “and I will.” He made a long survey of their puzzled faces. “And you’ll go.”

When he saw that Serina was about to protest again, he said softly:

“There’s no other choice.”