The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (4 page)

Chapter
5:

The
Origin of Dude (or: All the flying elephants are gone)

Billy toyed nervously with a remote
control, the device which it controlled a complete mystery to him, as Emily and
Jane tinkered with the futuristic videophone in the Tower's command center.
They were trying to patch Titus and Kate in from the road, and for some reason
neither of them wanted to ask Neal to do it.

      Billy looked at Doc, who watched
the small argument between the two women with weary confusion.

      "Why don't they ask Neal to
patch them in?" Billy whispered to Doc.

      "I…" he said, before
making a vague, confused gesture with his hands.

      Working on the assumption it
actually controlled the television in Emily's room, Billy pointed the remote
control at the videophone anyway, pressed a few buttons, and suddenly Titus's
face lit up on the room's main monitor.

      "Oh, there you are,"
Titus said.

      "I told you I could figure it
out," Emily said.

      Billy and Doc exchanged looks,
then both shook their heads "no," but didn't correct her.

      "Where are you?" Jane
asked the giant Titus-face on the screen.

      "We're on the highway. Kate's
driving." The werewolf angled his phone so that everyone could see Kate in
the driver's seat. She looked through the camera from the corner of her eye and
then turned her attention back to the road.

      "Kate can drive?" Emily
asked.

      "One of us should know how,"
Titus said. "Do you?"

      "I don't drive, I float,"
Emily said.

      "So what's going on?"
Titus said.

      Jane gave him the thirty thousand
foot overview—alien crash landing on earth with the same powers as Straylight,
possible invasion imminent, Billy's plan to go scouting while the rest of them
prepared. The worry on Titus's face was comically apparent projected on a
screen so large, and even Kate, steadfastly trying to remain her usual stoic
self, kept looking over at the camera as if to verify Jane was telling the
truth.

      "So this is a nightmare,"
Titus said.

      "I wish," Emily said.

      "What do we know?" Kate
asked, eyes remaining on the road.

      "We believe this is an
invasion force that Straylight's species has faced before," Doc said.

      "Which is helpful,"
Titus said, his voice dripping in sarcasm, "given that we know almost
nothing about Straylight's species in the first place. So what's the deal,
Billy? Does Dude have some good intel for us?"

      "That's the other reason we've
patched you in," Doc said. "Billy is going to translate for us so
Dude can fill us in on the big picture."

      "I don't know if translate is
the right word," Billy said. "I'm mostly just going to repeat what he
says inside my head—does this sound as crazy to everyone else as it sounds to
me? It seems nuts to me."

      "Not gonna lie, Starbuck, it
is
pretty messed up," Emily said.

      What about you? Are you ready for
this? Billy thought.

     
Honestly, I should have told
you all of this a long time ago,
Dude said.

      Why didn't you? Billy thought.

     
Because at first I needed to
make sure you'd be a worthy partner. And then we were too busy saving the world
a few times,
Dude said.
I did have every intention to share this
information with you.

      Anything I'm about to translate
for the rest of these guys that's going to make me really uncomfortable? Billy
asked.

     
Truthfully? Probably all of it,
Dude said.

      Well that's reassuring, Billy
thought. Where are we going to start?

     
At the very beginning,
Dude
said.
You should know where you come from.

      Last time I had this conversation,
it was a very awkward afternoon with my dad, Billy said. Let's get this over
with.

      "Hey Billy, you've got that
slack-jawed look going on," Emily said. "You talking with Dude?"

      "Yeah," he said.

      "Whenever you're ready,
Billy," Doc said. "No rush."

      How do I begin? Billy thought.

     
Like you would any story,
Dude said.
You start, and I'll tell you what to say.

* * *

      And Straylight said:

     
Once upon a time.

      "A long time ago, in a galaxy
far, far away?" said Emily.

      "Quiet, Emily,"said
Jane. "Let him talk."

     
She's not wrong,
Straylight
said.
It was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. My people, the beings
you call the Luminae, had a home world. It was a planet made of light.

      "Humans call you the Luminae,"
Jane said. "But that's not your real name, right? What should we really
call you?"

      "Oh sure, you get to
interrupt him and I can't," said Emily.

      "Hush, Em," said Jane.

     
No, it's okay,
said Straylight.
My real name, our real name, is made up of light, a certain tone and glow.
It can't be translated for human language. Your people called us the Luminae,
and that is a fine name. A strong name. We accepted it gladly.

      "You said once upon a time
you had a home world," Titus said. "It's gone?"

     
We had a home world made of
light,
Straylight said.
It was the most beautiful thing you would ever
have seen. And we swam along its surface like fish, glittering in the daylight.
It was paradise.

      But it had a flaw. All worlds have
a flaw, you know. All worlds, great and small, have some crack, some
imperfection, and because of that imperfection every world is one bad day away
from becoming nothing. This is the way of the universe. Nothing is perfect, and
nothing is forever.

      "Does our world have a flaw?"
said Jane.

      Of course,
Straylight said.
More than one. As
did ours. And when our world died, we fled. We ran to the stars. We rode the
cosmic byways like dolphins along the prow of a ship. A school of shooting stars.

      "Is your world gone?"
Emily asked.

     
Gone like a dream the moment
you wake. A haunting memory in the corner of your mind, something you can't
quite recall, a thing you love but can never touch. There was nothing like it
in the universe. We know this for sure, because in our search, we looked for a
new home, a place like ours, with seas of light and mountains made of
moonbeams.

      "Well this is off to quite a
depressing start," Billy said, deviating from the script. He felt Dude
admonish him silently. "Sorry. I was editorializing. I'll continue."

     
 As I was saying. We went to
the stars, in search of a new home. And we found one, on a large planet not
unlike your own. Temperate, filled with life. Its dominant species welcomed us,
but we couldn't survive there. We needed to live as they lived, to breathe as
they breathed. We needed their ability to survive in order to survive
ourselves.

      This was how we learned to share
bodies with hosts. One of the eldest among us, and the bravest, tried first,
bonding her energies with one of these beings. And in bonding, she gained the
being's abilities, and the being gained hers. The two, together, were more than
the whole.

      "So, if Billy had powers, you
would have absorbed them?" Jane said. "If you and I bonded would you
have my powers?"

     
Not necessarily,
Straylight
said.
We absorb survival instincts and genetic necessities. We absorb the
ability to survive as the host does. I suppose it might happen, that one of us
could mimic the powers of someone such as yourself, but I've never seen it. Our
ability is to grant strength to those who need it, not to steal from those who
have it. The opposite, in fact, of our enemy, but I'll talk about that later.
We are symbiotic in nature. The sum of the parts is better than the pieces.

     
We stayed on this host world
for centuries. We became part of their culture. We grew to love each other, as
brothers in peace. It was the second time we found a home. It did not replace
in our hearts our luminous birthplace, but here, among these kind and noble
beings, we found a sense of belonging.

      "Were they like us?"
Emily asked.

     
No one is like you,
Straylight
said.

      "No, I mean were they like us
physically. Two arms, two legs…?"

     
The closest Earth species I am
aware of that these beings resembled
, said Straylight,
is your
elephants.

      "Wait," Billy
interrupted again. "Your first host species were… flying elephants?"

     
Please just tell the story and
stop interjecting with your own comments Billy Case,
Straylight said.
And
no, they weren't elephants. I just said that the closest physical approximation
to them here on earth were elephants. May I continue?

      "Please," Jane said.

     
We stayed so long that this new
world became our home. Entire generations came and went. Our host bodies became
heroes and leaders. We began to travel the stars together. We learned of other
civilizations just beyond our reach and dreamed of ways to communicate with
them. To build a bigger universe. To touch the hands of gods.

      And then the Nemesis came to our
doorstep, and nothing was ever the same.

      "The Nemesis?" Kate
said. "What is this?"

     
I have called my species
symbiotic many times. We share with our hosts. We give them benefits they
cannot achieve on their own. They give us a home. A way to survive. The Nemesis
is a species much like ourselves. They require hosts. They require bodies. But
they do not do what we do.

      The Nemesis are parasites. The
words symbiotic and parasitic are not so dissimilar, in some ways, but know
this: one leeches off the host, takes and takes and takes until there is
nothing left. And the Nemesis is truly a parasite. They seek out worlds, and
they devour them. They take just enough to continue their never ending search
to quench their hunger, stealing bodies, stealing technology, but they leave
each world they touch a dead husk, a graveyard of dust and ruin.

      "They destroyed your second
home," Jane said.

     
We would later learn that
others had encountered them as well. Many species know of them, and each have
their own name for these creatures. The Devourers. The Locusts. One of your
writers here on Earth learned of them and called them Outer Gods. But to us,
they were the Nemesis, our dark shadow, a vulgar and brutal reversal of the
shared life we tried to create.

     
We were not ready. Their armada
struck hard and fast, terraforming the beautiful world of our hosts. Friends
and allies died fighting them. Some might call it a war, but it was not. It was
a slaughtering field. It was genocide.

      But our noble hosts, these great
and brave beings, knew they could not save their own world. They knew they
couldn't protect it. They knew they couldn't escape. But they knew we could.

      "The Luminae," Titus
said.

     
They told us to flee. To run
back to the stars from whence we came. Our surviving hosts came with us, brave souls,
rising into the darkness of space as their world crumbled to dirt and ash
behind them. But this time, we did not swim as school of shooting stars. We
fled in pairs or in trios, or sometimes alone. We flew in every direction. We
aimed ourselves at every star. We went looking for life.

     
We knew the Nemesis would not
stop at the world of our hosts. We knew they would wipe the blood from their
lips and hunt again, looking for another meal, for another world to rend limb
from limb. For the Nemesis is always hungry. They never stop moving. They never
stop eating.

     
We went to the stars to find
worlds bountiful enough, beautiful enough, alive enough to attract the
monstrous attention of our Nemesis. We found these worlds, and we waited. We
became the watchers on the wall. We found new homes and turned our eyes forever
skyward. Waiting for the day the monsters found us.

      "What about the hosts you
left with?" Titus asked.

     
Many didn't make it. We were
young then, and unsure of how to survive in space. For many, the host worlds we
found were uninhabitable. Still others died at the hands of natives, afraid of
outlanders invading their pre-spaceflight worlds.