Third Moon Rising Read online

  Later they sat with others resting in a large semicircle under shade trees and listened to a mixed choir sing about harvest days of old. They enjoyed cool refreshments and, after the singing, filled plates from large buffet tables. Overall, it was a fitting climax to Harvest Day.

  Both were tired and quiet as they walked back to the transit station. Carlos enjoyed Ceripe looping her arm through his and leaning on him for support. Truthfully, he was probably more tired than she was, but he was not about to say so.

  It was well after dark when he arrived at the embassy compound. Most of the team had already retired for the night, as had Gloria. He was disappointed and a little bothered that she had not waited up for him. He went directly to their private quarters. The lights were off, and she was already in bed.

  He tried not to disturb her as he quietly prepared for bed. He lay down and tentatively touched her shoulder, and to his surprise, she shrugged his hand off. Uh oh, she wasn’t asleep, and was miffed at him for spending the day with Ceripe. Her imagination must have worked overtime feeding her jealousy.

  He turned over on his back and perused the shadowy ceiling in the darkened room. How would she feel if she had observed his day with Ceripe firsthand? She would really be angry, and rightfully so.

  He should have asked to take Gloria with them. Why hadn’t he? Was it because he wanted to be alone with Ceripe? It was a ridiculous question with an obvious answer. Gloria must feel neglected and hurt. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was hurt her. So why had he given in to a day of flirting with Ceripe?

  It was a restless, agonizing night. By morning, Carlos was truly worried for the first time about the security of his relationship with this woman he loved so much. He eased from bed and sat on the floor, watching her sleep. She looked so peaceful and beautiful.

  He was still there when she opened her eyes, surprised and puzzled at seeing him looking at her. Then she must have thought about the previous day, for her eyes took on a hardened look, and her lips thinned into a straight line. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

  “I love you and never want to hurt you again.”

  He left her bedside and went to the bathroom without giving her any time to react. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see that reaction.

  He was just starting to shower when Gloria entered the stall with him. He turned toward her eagerly, and she brusquely pushed him against the wall. She held him there for a moment, her eyes dynamic pools of change, as if she were deciding what to do next.

  She pushed hard against him, still holding his arms back against the wall. Her nipples were extended and hard, but whether that was caused by excitement or anger, he couldn’t be sure. Then she moved her right knee up between his legs to press firmly against his tender crotch, her tense, beautiful face close to his.

  “You listen to me, Carlos Geraldo Sepeda! Don’t pay so much personal attention to another woman if you want to have a longlasting relationship with me!”

  She then dropped her right foot back to the floor and engaged him in a fierce, demanding kiss. It startled him, but he welcomed her with all his heart. She touched him in ways she had learned he found erotic, but more forcefully than ever before. He responded gladly to her demands, which drove him almost delirious by their intensity. They stood weak-kneed, embracing under the flowing water after satisfying their desire.

  Carlos met with Ceripe later in the day to talk about a round of meetings with select government officials. He could tell she noticed the slight change in his attitude with respect to her, but she waited until after the meeting to say anything.

  “Carlos, I think I understand what is going on with you and Gloria, and I am saddened. I hope we can continue to work together as friends in our professional relationship. I cannot promise to never slip up and let my personal feelings show, but then, good friends should be able to handle that.”

  He turned and hugged her. “Thank you, Ceripe.” That was all he could say before disengaging and leaving. Her observation revealed just how astute she was, and he appreciated her candor.

  He did his best to deal more professionally with Ceripe, but Gloria remained concerned about the evolving friendship. She could not hide her feelings from him, and he avoided doing anything else to feed her jealousy.

  Perhaps their strong conditioning sustained Gloria’s confidence in their relationship, for after several weeks she began to openly support his continued friendship with Ceripe. She was confident he would not develop strong feelings for any other woman like those he had for her, just as she felt incapable of developing such feelings for another man. She had her doubts occasionally when wondering how much of what she was feeling resulted from the Ferguson Relationship Bonding Process. However, she had less time to worry as the team became busier. But deep down, she was still jealous.

  Carlos had asked Karen Sarkofsky and Samuel Osborne to investigate the complex factors that came together to create so simple, rewarding, and lasting a lifestyle as that enjoyed by the Zilans. They struggled to identify the underlying factors because the lifestyle had persisted for so long that factors contributing to setting it up had been lost in antiquity. Attempts at setting up utopian-like societies on Earth had failed miserably. How could such a prosperous society have evolved and survived over several millennium on this planet?

  Karen and Samuel engaged other team members in frequent discussions as they attempted to understand the factors at play in Zilan society. Sharon Ling offered the practical advice that perhaps it was more important to understand what made the current society function well. Perhaps in figuring out the current social mores, beliefs, and aspirations, they could then deduce what must have taken place to guide this society’s evolution.

  Besides, it was unlikely the knowledge of how the society had evolved could ever be practically applied anywhere else. The artificial selection process guiding such an experiment would surely be biased by other factors. This would result in something different in the end than that produced by the natural selection process that had worked so well on Zilia.

  This practical advice did little to appease Karen or Samuel, or anyone else on the team for that matter, but it was the best advice they had as they tried to understand the society. They found a strong level of honesty and commitment in relationships among Zilans that would be envied elsewhere. Moreover, almost every Zilan encountered was doing his or her best at whatever position he or she was filling, as if honest effort was a direct measure of stature in this society, which indeed appeared true.

  Contrary to what they knew about such experiments with utopian societies on Earth, this one stimulated creativity and individuality. Creative, artistic efforts were evident in almost every facet of life. Each park, each building, every structure visible throughout the city had some unique characteristic, and practically every structure was built to last for generations. And though the Zilans dressed simply, each one took pride in creating some little something that was unique about his or her own appearance, be it a ribbon in the hair, a thin mustache, or a unique needlework pattern on a shirt or blouse.

  Besides the strong religious bent, perhaps the most distinctive Zilan society characteristic was what it was not—a consumer driven society. If something worked well in performing the desired function, there was no rush to build a better or more attractive item to increase market share. Zilans built things to improve quality of life while protecting the natural environment, not for personal gain or to create new thrills.

  The society worked simply because that was the way it had evolved to work within the religious, political, and physical environmental factors. However, this had inhibited technological advancement in many areas considered important to those of Earth origin. For example, consumer electronics and space exploration technology were neglected sectors. Neither one contributed to factors important to the Zilan society.

  On the other hand, highly efficient electrical power generation and distribution systems, advanced mining and farming techniques, g
lobal communications networks, and data collection and processing equipment had all received considerable attention, with great advances apparent in each. The Zilans were reluctant to share information in these areas until an exchange agreement was in place.

  Another major area of interest and concern was in the field of medical practices. Caron Cenenteh invited the two doctors, Alex and Laura, to tour the major Zilerip University hospital. On this tour and during follow-up activities, it became clear that the Zilans concentrated more on preventive medicine than on curative medicine. They verified that this holistic approach resulted in life spans on Zilia being comparable to or longer than those Earth and its colonies enjoyed.

  The two team doctors could only imagine what the life spans would be if they could apply their advanced techniques on Zilia. However, major obstacles existed because of Zilan religious beliefs and the negative way they viewed any invasive technique.

  Another area of strong interest was the field of mathematics, particularly so after an inadvertent disclosure occurred showing just how advanced the Zilans were. It happened at an important social event Carlos and Gloria attended with Ceripe, where graduate students described their thesis projects in artistic presentations.

  They found the presentation hall practically full of people already seated for the event. They were handed agenda pamphlets at the door, and since there was no reserved seating, Ceripe led them to seats in the back central area of the hall. Carlos sat between the two women and perused the agenda subjects. He noted no sensitive technology topics were included.

  Ceripe had done her homework but apparently not thoroughly enough. The third speaker was a substitute, and her topic was advances in the theory of controlling light. He looked questioningly at Ceripe, who was clearly in turmoil about what to do.

  “We should leave,” he whispered to her.

  After a moment she relaxed and whispered back, “No, but you must not convey this information to Earth until we consummate an exchange agreement.”

  He nodded affirmation and became engrossed in the presentation. He had a strong mathematics background but had difficulty following much of the theory presented. The presenter’s use of multidimensional math was confusing, though it had an elegant form.

  Gloria appeared to be following the presentation better than he was. However, it was clear even to Carlos that Zilan technology existed to routinely control the speed of photons within advanced processor applications, and to instantaneously couple programmable applications running in several processors located remotely from one another. This thesis addressed establishing entanglement of photons while they were separated by great distances, not entangling photons and then separating them. Talk about a secure wireless, wideband network!

  In the middle of the presentation, Gloria leaned close and confirmed his observation. “The coupling effect she is discussing is what we call ‘entanglement’ in our physics, an effect that is not bounded by the speed of light. As she indicates, it appears to occur instantaneously.”

  Carlos nodded, acknowledging more that he heard her than that he fully understood.

  A moment later, Gloria let out a soft chuckle and leaned close again. “George is going to kill us. He would have done anything to be here tonight.”

  Ceripe apologized as they were leaving the hall. “I am sorry I placed you in an awkward position tonight.”

  “We understand the position this puts you in,” Carlos said, “and we will share this information only within our team.”

  Then Gloria asked, “Does everyone in the audience understand the technical details of what was presented?”

  Ceripe laughed. “No, probably very few understand the detailed theory. Mathematics is an advanced language, an art form to us, and has a flow pleasing to view as the logic flow unfolds. It is much the same as viewing a very complex painting in which you have no real understanding of the artist’s true intent, but you are stimulated nonetheless to have imaginative thoughts about what the meaning might be.”

  Carlos had some difficulty making the leap from his own frame of reference to viewing mathematics as an art form, but from the look on Gloria’s face, she was comfortable with this.

  They thanked Ceripe for taking them to the event and made their way back to the embassy where they immediately sought out George. Of course, George was upset at their not inviting him to the event, and then it took longer to answer his questions than the presentation had taken.

  “I’ll be damned,” George finally said. “They’re integrating octonions and quarternions algebra to describe multiple dimensions!”

  That was enough for Carlos. He deferred to Gloria and went on to bed.

  At the weekly team meeting the next day, Licia Wells and Jorge Shivaro opened by discussing their observations of animals and birds. During the short time the team had been on the planet, Licia and Jorge’s findings had stimulated some of the most unsettling discussions the team had engaged in. Those on the New Horizon, including Eve, participated in the weekly meetings by remote link. Then Eve prepared a summary status message of the week’s events and discoveries for Carlos to review before sending it back to the Messier Colony.

  “You’re not going to believe the conclusion we’re coming to,” Licia stated. “Jorge and I have looked at several hundred animals and birds that survive in the wild, both by conducting field trips and obtaining information from the public library archives. So far we’ve found nothing extraordinarily different in comparison with wildlife that evolved on Earth.”

  “But isn’t that what you would expect considering the Zilans evolved to be very close copies of Earth humans?” Sharon Ling said.

  “No, I could accept one species or a small number of species evolving to be very similar to those of Earth,” Jorge replied. “Or that one species, say humans, was somehow transported to two worlds in the same region of space in the distant past by unknown benefactors. But to have a wide range of similar life evolve naturally in the same relative time period on Zilia and Earth is beyond any theory of evolution I can imagine.”

  “I’ve wondered how to approach this subject myself,” Amanda injected. “I have noticed very close similarities in much of the plant life here with what I’ve studied of the flora of Earth, and have begun doing more detailed research to verify my observations.”

  “Wait a minute,” Maxwell Williams injected. “Before we go down the evolutionary path too far, just how close a match are you finding?”

  “Among those animals and birds we’ve looked at so far,” replied Licia, “we’re talking perhaps sixty-five percent comparable life-forms here and on Earth, if you ignore minor superficial differences. And the number goes up over eighty percent if you ignore significant physical characteristics that could be caused by random gene mutations.”

  All discussion and questions stopped at this startling revelation. Carlos thought back to the first evening on Zilia and the surprise Licia had expressed at hearing the chuck-wall-willow birdcall that was so close to the chuck-will’s-widow nightjar of Earth. To believe that two worlds located relatively close in space could independently evolve myriad similar life forms, including sentient humans, was difficult to accept. In addition, it was unlikely they would find the true story of what had occurred on each planet hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years before. He couldn’t let this line of interest keep the team from performing its primary duty.

  Gloria was thinking similar thoughts, for she said, “So, we have uncovered a surprising parallel in types of flora and fauna here and on Earth. It’s certainly worth researching this aspect of life on Zilia, but we must be discreet in doing so and not let this activity balloon to become our focus. We must keep priority on establishing a diplomatic and technology exchange relationship with the Zilans.”

  “There is a real risk I see in openly pursuing this comparison research,” Karen said, interrupting. “Remember, the Zilans believed they were unique in the universe, and suddenly they were approached by other humanoids of a c
ivilization more advanced in many areas. It’s hard to say how they would react if suddenly faced with the prospect that their planet’s evolutionary history was not unique. They could take it in stride or become confused trying to sort out what it all means within their frame of reference. If the latter occurred, their reaction would be unpredictable.”

  Gloria rose from her chair beside Carlos and raised her voice to get attention over the hubbub of voices. “Please listen! As interesting as this is, I agree with Karen regarding the risky nature of exposing our observations here. Therefore, we must not discuss this anywhere or at any time that might reveal our observations to our hosts, and that includes the staff that supports us here at the embassy.”

  “I believe a right time will present itself to raise this subject with Ceripe and her staff,” Carlos added strongly as Gloria sat down. “But that time is not now. Until the time becomes right, we must collect information discreetly and conduct analysis or discussion at times and places where we can control access to the information. We’ll send our findings and data to Earth and the Messier Colony as appropriate, but not until we have more detailed results.”

  Those around the table quietly nodded their assent, and they turned to the other topics on the agenda for the weekly meeting. However, the apparent parallels in life on Earth and Zilia would certainly be central to their thoughts in the near term.

  As the meeting resumed, Carlos reached under the table and squeezed Gloria’s knee gently. She looked at him, eyebrows raised.

  “Thanks for defusing the issue,” he whispered. She smiled her appreciation and turned back to the meeting.

  After the meeting, Carlos sat in his office reflecting on the observations about similarities in flora and fauna on Earth and Zilia. It was remarkable enough that abundant life existed on three planets in solar systems that were relative neighbors in space. But to have life on two of the planets evolve independently to be very similar, including the hominid populations, was almost too much for even his progressive mind to believe.