Clavia helps Echo learn how to use his parents’ guns. They’re energy
weapons, which means they’ll be able to fire indefinitely as long as he
doesn’t fire too much, and they have a source of charge, like the sun.
Something called radio waves would charge it too, but there aren’t any of
those around here. He doesn’t become an expert marksman in only a few short
hours, but at least he has the basics down. Point and shoot, that much was
immediately apparent, but the safety and handling was a little less
intuitive.
According to the sensors on board the shuttle, as fed into Echo’s new suit,
a ship appeared out of nowhere, and began to orbit the planet. It scanned
the surface in some way, but hasn’t done anything else since. Clavia taught
him how to set up an alarm to wake him when anything changes, so he can go
to bed, and get some rest. The next morning, he checks the sensors to find
that the alarm hasn’t failed. The orbiting ship up there still isn’t doing
anything. They’ve not fired any weapons at the tree, or come down in a
shuttle of their own, or anything. What are they waiting for?
“My mind is clouded,” Clavia explains. “I cannot see detail. I can sense
that people are walking around inside the vessel, but I can’t tell what
they’re doing. Unfortunately, I need to focus my strength on other
pursuits.”
“I understand.” He doesn’t, but she should do whatever she needs to. “Do you
think they know that we’re here?”
“It depends on how sophisticated their sensors are, and on the nature of the
planet we’re on. This appears to be a lush garden centered on a desert. If
the rest of the world is just as barren, this will stick out like a sore
thumb. But it may be one of many oases, in which case they would need to
pick up on you as an individual. I also don’t know whether your suit and
shuttle are sufficiently shielded, or what.”
Echo nods, and decides to go back to practicing. The great thing about guns
like these is that he can shoot blanks as much as he wants while barely
dipping into the power reserves. Indeed, while the sun is shining, solar
power will keep it running even if he never stops squeezing the trigger for
the duration of daylight hours. He’s not doing any damage, as he’s just
sending beams of light towards the rocks and the flowers, but it gives him a
good idea of what it will be like if he ever has to do it for real.
Either as a coincidence, or because the visitors detected his weapons fire,
they finally send a landing party in a shuttle. They don’t land too close to
the garden, which is respectful of them, or maybe it’s also a coincidence.
Echo doesn’t walk over to greet them halfway. He just stands under the
Clavia tree, holding one of the guns at what Clavia called high ready. The
second one is leaning against the trunk. He has extra cartridges attached to
his hips too, but it doesn’t look like he’ll be needing them. One of these
things would be able to take out the entire crew of the shuttle. It appears
to only be four people, though obviously there are more still up on the
ship. Clavia doesn’t know what kind of weaponry they have, up there, or down
here. The four who are walking towards them now don’t appear to be armed at
all.
“Can they hear you, or is your voice in my head?” he mutters out of the
corner of his mouth.
“They can hear me if I want them too, and not if I don’t.”
“Let me do the talking. They may not know that you can talk, and I would
like to keep that as an advantage until we have no choice.”
“Agreed,” Clavia says.
“Hello, kind soldier,” the leader guy says once they’re within earshot of
each other. He’s keeping a safe distance, showing a healthy fear of Echo’s
gun. The other three strangers are scattered next to and behind him. “My
name is Klavis Zakan Scrivenor. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to
today?”
“Klavis?” Echo echoes.
“No relation,” Clavia replies simply.
“It’s my rank?” Zakan answers like it’s a question. “I command a single
flotilla of ships...four to be exact.”
“What is your business here?” Echo asks.
Zakan is confused. “Um, do you have a name too?”
“Oh.” Echo feels like he’s just lost the upperhand, especially since he just
said oh. He should have just been steadfast, and refused to answer.
But now it’s too late, he has to just go ahead and respond appropriately.
“Echo Cloudbearer.”
“Do you own this world, Echo Cloudbearer?”
“I do.” I mean, he might as well. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else to
claim the title, and if making such a claim grants him the legal powers to
protect this tree, then he’s comfortable making it.
“What is it called?”
This is where it gets tricky. His parents could never agree on a name for
it. They kept coming up with new ideas before Echo was even born, but
eventually narrowed it down to Supercloud or Echo. About half the time, they
would joke that their son was named after the planet, and the other half,
that the planet was named after their son. He never knew which was true, or
if Supercloud was the superior choice anyway. “Echo”.
“Hm,” Zakan says. “I like it. We are representatives of the Temporal Energy
Management Project of Relative Associated Logistics. Basically, we’re in
charge of making sure that there’s enough temporal energy to go around, and
that no one is abusing the power that they have, or exploiting the
substructure of the universe to their own gain, or to the destruction of
reality.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” Echo admits.
“Well, we’re relative, because the power is not evenly distributed,
which some people believe sounds unfair—though, it isn’t—and it’s
associated, because every time someone is allotted power, it has an
impact on everyone else. That’s why it needs to be managed. It’s—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, defining it isn’t going to help me understand it.
It sounds like you just really wanted your acronym to spell out
TEMPORAL.”
Zakan just clears his throat.
“Why are you here? I keep to myself. I don’t have any power.”
Zakan gestures to Clavia. “That tree behind you would seem to contradict
your words.”
Echo decides to play dumb. “This is just a tree. It can’t contradict
anything. It can’t even walk.”
Zakan smiles and sighs. He looks around the vast empty flatlands surrounding
them. “We detected the energy spike that was prompted by some kind of
temporal event right at this location. I don’t know if it teleported here,
or if it was here all along, and suddenly absorbed a whole lot of power, but
my guess is that you were around to see whatever it was. After all, you’re
standing in front of it right now. You were up there when we showed up. You
must think it’s meaningful too. If you thought you needed to protect your
garden as a whole, you’d be standing right here.” He points to his feet
where the grass of the garden gives way to the dirt of the desert.
Okay, maybe he needs to switch tactics. “Does it matter? If it’s here, it’s
mine. And since this is all mine, so are you. So you four have two choices.
You can fly back up to your little ship, and tell your captain to leave, or
you can stay here and do my bidding. The atterberries are about ready to be
harvested.”
“What did you say?”
“The atterberries,” Echo repeated. “Those pink things over there. You could
pick them, or you could leave. You have no jurisdiction on this world,
though. My word is law. My word is the only law.”
“What’s—what’s this stuff here?” He slid the sole of his shoe along a rock.
“That’s amanda moss. It’s not edible. I use it for...other things.” Wiping.
“And that?”
“It’s, uh, vearden hay. I use it as a ground cover. Why all the sudden
interest in my garden? I thought you only cared about some tree.”
“Just curious.” Zakan steps forward. “What do you call this creature warming
itself on this boulder?”
Echo can’t see from this far away, but he knows what the man’s talking
about. “It’s probably a clemens newt.”
“One last thing, this one here?”
“A savi tree.”
Zakan exchanges a look with his people. “Which reality is your family from?”
“Um, this one?”
“No, I mean originally.”
“I have no clue where you’re going with this.”
“I don’t recognize that kind of gun. Do you?” he asks the woman standing at
his flank.
She shakes her head quietly.
“My guess is Parallel or Fifth Division,” Zakan goes on cryptically, “but
the main sequence had some nice stuff before they were copied here.”
“Can I help you?” Echo interrupts the internal conversation they’re having
down there. He’s done playing nice. He wants them gone. He doesn’t want to
have to hurt anyone to do it, but he will if they give him no choice.
“I’m afraid we can’t leave until we run our tests. We need to know what sort
of impact this tree is having on the rest of the galaxy. It’s for the safety
of everyone in the universe.”
Echo tenses up. “Get closer.”
Zakan himself doesn’t move, but his people reach their arms out to magically
materialize their own guns. “We don’t need to get very close.”
“That’s enough!” It’s Clavia’s voice, but there’s something a little
different about it. It sounds like it’s coming from a specific location,
instead of just around him in general. Someone appears from behind the tree.
It’s the dead woman who he buried here. She lives. It wasn’t just a magical
seed, but it had something to do with who was holding it.
“Who are you?” Zakan asks.
“Who you seek, in humanoid form.”
Zakan holds his hand up by his shoulder. The other three lower their guns in
response. Two of them make them disappear again, but his lieutenant keeps
hers. “You are the tree.”
“We are,” she replies. “You may call us Clavia.”
“We’ll have to confirm that,” Zakan insists.
“Do that, and only that,” Clavia replies. “Do more, and you’ll regret it.”
Now Zakan lifts his other hand, and shakes it twice towards the hill. The
now unarmed pair of visitors cross the boundary of the garden, and walk up
to Clavia. She holds her own hand towards to stop Echo from reacting further
when he tenses up again. The strangers begin to run their tests. They hover
little devices over Clavia’s human body, and over the tree. They look at the
little screens to interpret the readings, whatever they may be. Echo
wouldn’t know the first thing about what they’re looking for, but Clavia
seems calm, so he’s just gonna follow her lead.
One of the testers nods over at Zakan. “It’s her. She’s the tree.”
“Okay. Pack it up, kids. We’re leaving.”
“Wait,” Echo says. “Not that I’m complaining, but what just happened? What
did you do? What did you discover? Why is it making you leave?”
“The source of the temporal energy is sentient,” Zakan begins to explain.
“It’s natural and unregulated. As you said, we have no jurisdiction. It
would be like me telling you that you’re not allowed to use that moss to
wipe your ass. That’s someone else’s department.”
“Well...” Echo paused. “Thank you and goodbye.”
“You’ll be filing a report, though, won’t you?” Clavia guesses as most of
the team is walking back towards their shuttle.
“I have no choice,” Zakan says apologetically.
“So the right department might show up too,” Echo calculates.
“Undoubtedly,” Zakan confirms. “She’s an interesting find.”
The shuttle takes off. About fifteen minutes later, the ship breaks orbit,
and flies away into the black. Echo’s shuttle’s sensors stop picking any
signals, and the world falls silent once more.
“You’re a person,” he points out.
“It’s complicated.”
Echo smiles. “I don’t have anything else going on. Tell me your story.”
