Bab 13: Chapter 13: Righting a Great Wrong

"There you are. Have you been hiding?"

Raj had found Bilal in the glade behind his mother's home. Bilal liked being there despite grass and stones dotting the ground that were not friendly to his skin. He enjoyed the ways the sun filtered through the leaves of the trees and transformed everything. He huddled in the shadows and hoped to become so small that he would eventually disappear.

Bilal didn't answer, and Raj sat next to him. Bilal wanted to be alone, but if anyone was going to interrupt his poor mood, then he was happy it was Raj. Bilal cared deeply for Lawrence because he was funny and upbeat and liked adventure enough to be best friends with an alien and a forty-year-old man. But he disagreed with Lawrence's idea that if anything bothered you, you should "just get over it." Unfortunately, life did not always cooperate.

"What's wrong, Bilal? You've been acting weird every since you returned from your last Earth visit."

"I saw the Earthling again."

Raj frowned. "You said that you wouldn't bring her. It's why you didn't tell your parents or anyone else about her. Did you change your mind?"

"No. I just wanted to see her."

Raj pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. Bilal didn't understand smoking, but once a month he linked with his friend through his tentacles to make sure Raj's lungs stayed clear and healthy.

"We have a word for that. It's called stalking."

"No. I'm not stalking her. I wanted to see how she lives. How is that stalking her if I've only seen her twice?"

"Then why are you mooning over her?"

Bilal had not heard this expression. "Mooning? Like when humans show their asses?" He remembered Lawrence explaining what mooning was by dropping his pants and showing his pale butt cheeks.

"No, it means that you like her and can't stop thinking about her."

"Ah. Yes. I am mooning over this woman. But she hates me. She hates all Centaurians."

Raj nodded. "I see. Not every human wants to be friends with you, despite how cool you are, Bilal."

"I know that!"

Raj reached out and rubbed one of Bilal's rough patches until a tentacle formed.

Bilal allowed the tentacle to encase his friend's hand and wrist. "I'm sorry," he said. "I never saw anyone cry with so much pain. I can't stop thinking about it. I know that I am not directly responsible for the loss of human life, but she made me feel that way. Centaurians always talk about making things right, but no one has made things right for her. We aren't doing enough!"

Raj looked around and put out his cigarette. "Bilal, be careful. There are ears everywhere."

Bilal shuddered and turned a miserable black. "Yes."

Raj stood. "Come on. We'll listen to some old music and get high."

"Okay." Bilal got up and followed his friend.

He had the house to himself. His First Mother would be gone for a few weeks to take care of business on the mother ship where the Centaurians still presided over everything that mattered within the universe.

If he could singlehandedly right the wrongs of each human who resided on Earth 2, Bilal knew that he would.

But that was impossible.

He could, however, help one, but he needed the mother ship's direct link to do so.

He weaved as he moved to the mother ship and his pod. If they knew what he was intending to do, they would put a stop to it, but he visited the mother ship often enough with his plant samples not to raise suspicion.

The mother ship was a living organism. It consumed what Centaurians did not use. It adapted to what they needed it to be. It provided nourishment and housing. When needed, the ship also stored, analyzed, and manipulated the data fed into it. Without the Centaurians, the mother ship could not live, and it was because of the ship that the Centaurians had thrived. Now it processed the humans, who also kept the ship nourished.

Once aboard he determined the location of his parents and avoided those areas. The last thing he wanted was for his parents to see him while he was wasted. He knew that he should not have indulged so much, but he felt better even if he had consumed twice as many dandelions as he had ever previously consumed.

The yellow caps of the dandelion were a narcotic for Centaurians, and as far as Bilal knew, he was the only one who had ever figured it out. He was definitely the only Centaurian to be indulging in it. It wasn't as if Earth 2 had weeds.

Bilal unsuccessfully tried to move gracefully so he wouldn't draw attention, but he decided he was being paranoid. He had every right to be on the mother ship. He had several samples that he needed the ship to process, and no one knew it was for his own purposes.

Bilal went to a level where the ship's receptors were located. There were several other Centaurians connected to the ship for various reasons, and he ignored them. Bilal slipped his body into one of the niches and extended his tentacle until he was linked with the ship. The ship felt warm and comforting, the familiar humming undercurrent putting him at ease.

Bilal allowed his filaments to push from his tentacles and communicated his needs. He retrieved several samples he had stored within his body and passed them to the ship. One of them was some of the ovum he had collected from the human female. She was a bit older but still of childbearing age.

Bilal knew that he could not procreate with a human. Not directly …

He located Raj's sperm cells, fed them to the ship, and monitored every step as it performed the relatively simple task of impregnating the egg. Once the cells began to multiply, Bilal extracted samples of his DNA and spliced it into the developing egg. It aborted immediately, which is why he needed the ship. He programmed the ship to make his cells adapt.

That was the ship's purpose. It hadn't been the Centaurians that had created the end of mankind. It had been the mother ship. The Centaurians in their ignorance had no idea that it was happening until it was too late and someone had programmed the ship to stop adapting. By that time, however, most humans had been infected by the alien cells, which had been carried through the mother ship's connection to the earth—the signposts.

The alien cells lay dormant in humans, and they needed to be reprocessed annually to confirm that the cells did not come back to "life." If that happened, it would wipe out the remaining humans. It meant that the mother ship could never leave the humans. The Centaurian's nomad existence had come to an abrupt end in an attempt to pay their debt to mankind.

Bilal waited anxiously for the ship to adapt his cells to that of the humans. When the fertilized egg began to thrive, he marveled at the new life form. It multiplied rapidly as human eggs did, but because of his alien DNA, it happened at an even greater pace. He had known that his cells would dominate, but he didn't want that. He slowed the rate and manipulated them further until many of his traits remained dormant.

It only took a few days. When it was completed, Bilal retrieved the egg and stored it. He wasn't sure how long it would be viable outside of a mother's womb and wasn't exactly sure why he had done this in the first place. Now that he was no longer wasted, it seemed like an extreme and potentially dangerous thing to do. But each time he marveled at the life form that he had created, he knew that it was too late to undo it. He was incapable of turning off the life he had started.

But he would if she didn't want it.

He would destroy what was created if she wouldn't accept it.

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