From high above it was only a splash of tan, as sand spilled in a grassy field.  But as the sprite descended the view pulled into focus: the sandy blur resolved into vast, dusty savannas, hills and valleys, fissures and cliffs, stands of sparse trees and fields of parched grass baked beneath a roiling sun.  As they drew closer, he could see this was not just a bare splotch on a globe. This place was alive.  It breathed and moved and teemed with life.  Herds of antelope bounded across the plains, wildebeest sipped from watering holes.  Lions lay strewn across the landscape, huddled close to the rest of their prides, sleeping away the heat of the day.  Birds took wing, darting around the splayed branches of acacia trees, their twisted trunks leading up to dense umbrellas of green leaves thirsty for the sun.

Joseph was not the young man he was.  Once, he had been the leader of a world.  It was a broken place, but for ten wonderful years he’d cradled it in his calloused hands, guided it as a loving father would.  Many called him a legend; they’d built a marble pedestal and set his likeness upon it, a towering Joseph Kwambai hewn of bronze, his long arms outstretched, literally holding his beloved home in his hands as he looked out across manicured lawns and carefully-tended stands of trees.  From the drafty halls of Schaumburg Haus for a time he’d made the decisions that sculpted mankind into what it was now. They wanted to make him a colossus, but in his mind he was still merely a man, one who’d done the only thing he could.

Now, his dark skin was creased from the passage of time.  His head was shaved as it always has been, yet his black beard was streaked now with silver.  He wore a crisp jodhpuri in light tan, the jacket removed and folded in his lap, mandarin shirt unbuttoned at the top mostly out of habit.  In the cockpit of the tiny sprite, he was cool and comfortable in spite of the garish sunlight streaming through the canopy. Though his face showed his age, his eyes remained youthful and wide, and now, gazing out across a pristine savanna, he felt younger still.  

It all looked so familiar: the plumes of dust kicked up by the antelope, the languid wave of the tall grasses, the way the breeze rustled the leaves of the acacias, luring the hungry tongues of the giraffes.  The geoengineers had done impeccable work: though the scene played out beneath an alien sun, blue and massive and angry, he didn’t feel like a stranger in this place. Here, he felt young again. He felt at peace.  He felt like he was home.

“Over there,” his pilot said.  The young man in a tight sky blue uniform was pointing off to the right.  Joseph followed his outstretched finger to a distant lake. Far below, a flock of terns sat huddled loosely on the shoreline.  No doubt they’d found a comfortable body of water to rest their weary wings, before taking flight to continue their journey to the distant seaboard.

“Can you get closer?” he asked, hopefully.  “Not too close…”

The pilot merely nodded, returning his hands to the controls, and a moment later the sprite banked gracefully to the right, swooping downward toward the lake.  Perhaps their approach had disturbed the air currents, or perhaps the high-pitched whine was audible to the birds though not to them. But as they approached the flock rose in unison, like a sheet being lifted from a bed.  All at once they took to the air, their wings a sea of silver and white. His pilot was talented: he drew the sprite so close as to nearly fly in formation with the flock, taking care to avoid striking any of the elegant creatures.

Joseph craned his head to take in the scene: all around them the birds flapped and glided, soaring so effortlessly.  One pulled in close, so close that where it not for the canopy he might have reached out and stroked its feathers. It was a beautiful creature: white gull-like wings outstretched, grey and white save the black across its head, worn like an aviator’s cap, melding with its black beak, long and sharp and aerodynamic.  He was tempted to wrap on the glass, draw its attention, yet he saw no need. The tern, for its part, scarcely seemed to notice them: its gaze remained forward, eyes ever fixed on its distant goal.

A tear slipped from his eye, shed for a distant homeland he might never see again.  A paradise where herds of elephants reclaimed the land man no longer wanted, where lion and zebra ran free.  Nairobi was a lifetime behind him, its glittering spires fading from memory, passed into gossamer by the march of time.  He’d spent the last decade of his life in space, traveling from star system to star system. So many planets, each terraformed to resemble Earth, yet each was different.  Temperate rainforests, scorched deserts, entire continents covered in thick tundra where polar bears roamed by the thousands.

What man had taken from nature on Earth he’d given back ten thousand fold.  The great beasts of the Earth had been brought along for the journey, and with man had conquered the heavens.  No doubt the terns and the wildebeest and the napping lions below his sprite had no idea that Africa lay fifty light years distant.  No doubt they did not care. Planted here on this world, set in familiar grassland pockmarked by familiar lakes, they’d simply picked up where they left off, wild and carefree.  In their blissful oblivion, if nothing else, he truly envied them.

Joseph was keenly aware of how far he had come.  His winding path lay unfurled as though a long rug stretched both behind and before him, and now, as his hair faded and his face creased and cracked, he felt himself approaching the frayed end.  The journey of man would continue for a very, very long time. He was sure of that now. Their path would branch and snake out like the branches of the acacia, whose leaves hungered for the light.  But while mankind would continue on, possibly forever, Joseph’s existence was finite. It was fleeting, and it only fled faster with each new day that passed.

The sprite lurched, swooping low to the ground as a herd of wildebeest galloped into view.  They flew in from behind them, swinging down to fly in time with the herd. Joseph watched through the ventral canopy between his legs as scores of large, powerful animals rushed across the savanna, their rippling limbs kicking up plumes of dust as their manes blew in the faint breeze.  He watched for a few moments, then turned to the pilot. “Take us down.”

Seeing everything from above, from a sealed cockpit, was not enough.  It wasn’t real.  He needed the sun on his face, the wind in his beard and the dust on his skin.  And so, as the sprite’s engines spun down, he stepped blinking into the harsh light.  High in the sky, Rasalhague beamed down angrily, its harsh blue light soaked up greedily by the grasses and the trees alike.  Joseph managed only a few steps before drawing a handkerchief to mop his brow. The heat was oppressive, the sun fell upon him like a weight.  But nearby, a pair of giraffes stood nibbling on a stand of acacia, their slender tongues carefully navigating the thorns in hopes of nourishing mouthfuls of leaves.  In an instant, he was home again.

“They say most of the planet is like this,” his pilot offered, raising a hand to shield his eyes.  “You ask me, it could stand to be a little wetter. And cooler,” he added, glumly.

Joseph merely shook his head.  It wasn’t his fault. He felt no pull from this place.  No kinship with the lions, no community with the trees. This was not his home, on this world or any other.  But to Joseph, this was the final touch. All his life he’d lived moving ever forward, and as it turned out he’d gone in a circle, traveling so far from Earth just to find himself home again.  This was home as he’d remembered it, before progress had built skyscrapers and maglev tracks. This was wild and primal. This wasn’t a planet that merely felt wild, it was wild.  It was new and free.  Earth had been home, but no longer.  He’d been away for over a decade. To return home would be to find everything he’d known changed, everyone he loved dead and gone; a planet more alien to him than the foreign world he now stood on.

He was an old man, too old to start anew.  The time had come to go home, and while the sun might be strange to him, this place, these creatures, this life was not.  And as his wanderings came to an end at last, his creased face bent into a wide smile, one warmer than the sun that baked the savanna.

“Peponi…” he whispered, followed by a long, restful sigh.

His pilot stared at him, clearly unfamiliar with Swahili.  Sensing the confusion, Joseph turned back to him. “It means paradise,” he explained, “and send to the Discovery for my things, lieutenant,” he finished, turning his back to the pilot once again to gaze across the horizon.  “This will do.”

As the sprite sped off into the distance, the pilot waving, Joseph found his attention drawn not to the departing aircraft but the city.  It was small, for now: there were still prefabricated structures, the first large housing units were still being constructed. It mattered little; he would not live there.  He’d construct a compound out away from Nairobi Mpya, and be one with the savanna for all the days that remained. It seemed a fitting end to a life lived in sacrifice, and after all he’d done he felt he’d earned a decade or two of selfishness.

Here, on Wenbani, he felt young again, younger than he had in years.  The sights and sounds and smells of home reinvigorated him, and while he’d felt exhausted at first, now he saw many, many years stretched out before him, a rug that unfurled and rolled past the horizon.  For the first time in years, as he peered down the path he found he could not see the end. He’d come out into space expecting to find a place to die, yet he’d instead found a place to live.

And he would live, to the fullest each day, and cherish all he had with the time remaining.  Here, in his paradise, at last he was complete.

END

 

The preceding story is a tie-in with my current work-in-progress, The Pioneer, which follows the exploits of a group of colonists founding a new settlement nearly 100 light-years from Earth, in 2122.

Within this continuity, the events of Paradise take place on August 1, 2122.