7. Idi the Astronaut
The animals wouldn’t say where their precious Mindy was. Simmo had to search for the other person who saw Mindy as a lifelong hero: Hera.
His group ran with him, though the older man protested. “We need to take the fuel and get out of here! Don’t be so stupid!”
“We won’t take anything more from these creatures.”
He grabbed Simmo’s long sleeves and forced him to listen. “We stood behind you because you had the purest desire to flee. Apparently you’ve lied to us.”
“Believe me, I want to get away very badly.”
Yet still he felt the man was right: he’d never disrupt life here just to run away. Apparently there was something he valued over running off.
The camp was unrecognizable. Though it was midnight, the rocket’s lights were out. The only visible parts were wrecked, collapsed, or burnt. A group of people sat trembling and silent around a fire. The others paced around the rocket, tools and wires in hand.
In the distance, he heard Hera and Casjara arguing ferociously. His legs already turned around to run.
No, he told himself firmly. Running away is easy—it’s the option you always have. But what’s easy isn’t always what you want most.
“You’re going there,” he now muttered aloud. “And you’ll find Mindy with her.”
As if his feet were filled with lead, as if giant hands hovered above him controlling him like a puppet, he awkwardly approached Hera’s cottage.
“You only want death and destruction!” she yelled.
“They started this,” Casjara responded. “We need the space. Where else can we go? Another fifty years in a cramped rocket until we find the next planet, already inhabited? Or made of gas and lava on which we can’t stand?”
Casjara dragged a sharp sword and ripped off a bandage, dark red with blood. Hera leapt up from her armchair.
“They didn’t start anything. They were hungry and we arrogant humans walked right into their teeth. We forget they’re animals. Just like us. We can communicate with them—that’s how we solve this.”
“You read too many books. The real world isn’t like your fantasyland. The real world needs strong leaders and armies to protect our people.”
Casjara didn’t even try to hide her many weapons. It made Simmo nervous. Hera even more so, judging by her desperate attempt to yank the weapon off Casjara’s back.
She cried. Now Simmo was really nervous. He stood a few meters from the conversation, and though Hera had seen him long ago, she had not shooed him away.
Hera made sure Casjara could hear her clearly: “It’s over.”
“This fight?”
“This relationship.”
Casjara grabbed her weapon: a long black rifle she swung around as if it weighed nothing. She threw it at Hera’s feet.
“Protect yourself then.”
Hera kicked the weapon away. Casjara stormed from the camp, shaking her head.
Simmo watched as Hera collapsed back into her chair, exhausted. She looked like a wounded animal. So he treated her as one. He went to his knees to meet her eyes, kept his distance, and spoke gently.
“Hera, I don’t want to raise false hopes, but I think Mindy’s alive and she’s here. Do you have any idea where she could be?”
She sniffled. “Nice try. Like Wilplin said: If you want someone to do something, tell them exactly what they want to hear. Why would you think that?”
“Have the animals mentioned someone named Idi to you? She’s sort of their Wise Owl? And they can’t pronounce—”
Hera’s eyes went wide. It clicked immediately.
Finding Mindy was easy. That’s what happens on a flat, barren planet with no obstacles, and you know exactly what your target looks like. Though, of course, Simmo and Hera didn’t know certain divine beings had now heard of this conflict and lent a hand.
Yes, dear reader, I really am trying my best to aid life here. But my powers are limited too. There are infinitely many places where beings make a mess of things. So for now, this is the best I can do.
As Simmo and Hera ran toward the hut on the horizon, Mindy herself emerged. The thatched roof had caught fire.
Her blonde curls were even longer and more unruly, though mostly grey now. She still wore an oversized lab coat, out of which huge bites were taken. When she heard human footsteps and turned, all five pens tumbled from her pocket.
“Mindy! Mindy! It’s really you!”
Hera cried, as if they were old best friends who hadn’t spoken in ages.
“Lies! Leave me be!”
She scurried behind her home. There was a massive garden back there with contraptions, sprouting plants and trees, and even a pond. The sight alone made Hera’s mouth water.
By the time they reached the cottage, a splash of water doused over the roof, and then over Simmo’s head. Mindy rubbed her hands as if she’d just finished a clever bit of handiwork.
“Let me guess: you want my help.”
“I … I … I can’t believe you’re alive, standing here, talking to me—you’re my hero and I—”
Mindy shuffled toward her. That’s not how people walk, Hera thought, confused. More like hopping.
She held up her front paws like a rabbit and sniffed Simmo and Hera. Only when Simmo coughed did she straighten her back and brush the hair from her eyes.
“Sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve seen humans.”
“We understand we have to leave,” said Simmo. “And we want to. But our rocket’s destroyed and we’ve no fuel.”
“Is that so? That you want to leave?” Mindy wandered inside her stone cottage. The others followed hesitantly. “Then why do you need me? Think I’ve got a stash of rockets hidden away? That Jacintah the Spacefolder will teleport you off?”
“Every berry on a stick—legendary Jacintah is real too? You know her?”
The inside looked like she’d plucked it up in Somnia and plunked it down here. It was filled with antique furniture, wooden chairs and cabinets, books and loose papers. The first shred of home Hera had seen in ages, and she cried.
“How do you think all those animals arrived?” Mindy continued more gently. “Certainly not thanks to humans. No, our attempt to traverse the stars has been quite the disaster thus far.”
“How so? We’re standing here, aren’t we?” Simmo gingerly took a seat in a soft chair. “Each spaceship is faster, better, stronger than the last. I’ve helped build some of them!”
“I’ve tried to stay in touch with the other colonies. At least half didn’t make it. Their rocket exploded. Or they landed on an uninhabitable planet. Infighting broke out, the technology failed, an asteroid lodged in their engine, you name it.”
Mindy pointed to a map on the wall, dotted and crossed out in one corner but empty beyond that. “The universe is infinitely vast. If Somnia were my front door … humans have barely stepped onto the welcome mat.”
Mindy tossed her wild grey locks aside. “I was like you once. I wanted to explore space, travel further, discover more. As a result I’ve spent sixty years as the lone human roaming this planet.”
“Sorry if this is too forward, but why not let us stay then? We’d provide company.”
“Because you don’t want to stay. You want to colonize the planet, use it, devour it, then move onward. As long as humans only focus on expanding, not caring for their own planet, this pattern will continue.”
Hera’s hopes sunk into her shoes. Mindy noticed. She leaned forward, seeming to bump her nose on Hera’s cheek for a moment before quickly grasping her knee in a motherly gesture.
“Let me ask one more time. Not what the others want. Not what you think you want. What do you two want?”
Hera’s cheeks flushed and her eyes became glassy. “I just want to live, in a beautiful spot, with someone I love.” She looked up. “Until I’m as grey and wise as you.”
Simmo shook his head. “I thought I wanted to be an astronaut. But being able to build an amazing rocket doesn’t mean I want to. That I want to contribute to what humans are doing. I want nature around me, not metal walls. I want to fight for the animals, if I must.”
Mindy smiled. “Then you may stay.”
A panda rolled through the doorway like a football someone had kicked the wrong way.
“Code red! Te uas ave attaced us—tey ave gus, pistols ad ore weapos!”