Satellites - 2. 2 : Encounters

“:: Balder: a god of Nordic origin, known for his unnatural beauty and invulnerability. A mythic character, the main myth describing him tells mostly of his death by the machinations of his half-brother Loki. He was made invulnerable to all harm save mistletoe. By some magical contrivance, Loki made a spear of mistletoe and tricked Balder’s other brother, Hoør, who was blind, to launch the javelin into Balder’s heart thus killing the unkillable. ::” HAMLS recited.

“A Norse god? Now that’s just bizarre! What would an alien be doing with the name of a Norse god from Earth? One who’s been drifting through space for who knows how long?” Mark wondered aloud.

~ This actually is starting to make sense now that we have an explanation for this first clue, Balder’s name! It would be logical to assume that this humanoid being may very well be someone worshipped on your world, Mark. The Unity would not be the only spacefaring civilization to visit Earth. We have evidence that other races have visited your world. If they were, indeed, humanoid in appearance yet stronger and more advanced than the primitive Terrans found on your world at the time then it is quite possible the Terrans worshiped these beings as gods. It is a common enough occurrence throughout populated space that primitive species first encountering beings from other stars would worship them as ascendant beings. In many ways, such beings are very much ‘ascendant’ as compared to the primitives they find, since they have knowledge and wisdom far exceeding that of the native sentiences on these worlds. ~ First Friend conjectured.

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been a big fan of ancient myths. There are too many real things out here to marvel at besides imaginary things.” Mark muttered derisively.

~ Do not discount myth, my young friend. Your ancestors had a wisdom of a kind too! They knew when they saw something beyond themselves and accepted it as best as they could per their limited understanding. Your species, as it advances, does have a tendency to discount its own past knowledge and so misses many things their ancestors experienced. You spend much time trying to relearn much that you have convinced yourselves to unlearn. The Unity discontinued this practice millennia ago. We value and treasure our past perhaps more than our present because the past informs our present. You must open your mind to every possibility, Mark! To be a true explorer is to have a completely open mind to all knowledge…not just what is acceptable. ~ First Friend conveyed sagely.

“ :: I tend to concur with the alien. We must analyse all the facts if we are to discover the answer to this mystery. Even the most far fetched. ::”

“Yeah…I should know better, I suppose. It’s just very hard for me to accept that myths have any real foundation in reality. So many myths and religious doctrines just fall short of reason. It’s hard to accept any of it as being real.” Mark persisted.

First Friend seemed to smile with his thin mouth. ~ Hence, why you must keep and OPEN mind, Mark! Do not hold yourself back from any knowledge that comes to you. That behavior is one of the things that held humanity back for centuries…the inability to consider everything as possible! ~

Just then, First Friend quickly turned his head as if to look behind himself expecting someone. He turned back and Mark swore he could see a crease of worry in the alien’s otherwise expressionless face.

“What’s up?” Mark asked.

~ What is ‘up’ is our subject…he has awakened! ~ First Friend informed.

“Whoa! Now we’re getting somewhere! Ham, continue your research on this Balder guy and keep the engines hot. I have a feeling I know where all of this is going…” Mark said mysteriously.

“ :: Where might that be, Sir? ::” HAMLS asked as he was not privy to ‘feelings’ like Mark was.

“I have a feeling we’re about to have a passenger…” Mark clarified and HAMLS noted this in its memory bank.

++

Mark stood dumbfounded as he saw the seven foot tall ‘Balder’ standing there in front of his chrysalis staring back at Mark with the same befuddlement. Mark had to physically will his gapping mouth to shut as he gazed at the amazing being he saw standing before him.

As stated, he was very tall! Seven feet at maximum. His broad muscular shoulders were padded with golden pauldrons that connected to an intricately jointed breastplate that conformed to his chest. Golden armbands wrapped his biceps and he had golden bracers around his wrists and ankles. Over his groin and hips was a golden armored fauld, tassets, and a codpiece, all articulated for ease of movement. Completing the armor were golden armored boots. Under all was a pure white body glove that form-fitted his statuesque physique.

His head and hair were free of any armor or other covering and his eyes flashed with the most exquisite blue Mark had ever seen for eye color. His face was smooth and chiseled, but pale like firelight tinted snow. His hair was silver and glinted in the omnidirectional lighting in the observation room.

Mark felt a catch in his throat as he looked at Balder, this man from another star.

The subject’s blue eyes fixed on Mark’s and Mark’s green eyes did likewise to the subject’s. They seemed to have a staring match that First Friend found intensely interesting.

~ He is bewildered and confused, but I cannot sense his thoughts. They are guarded by a very effective telepathic shield. You, Mark, seem to be a fixation for him. Something familiar. Someone he can relate to. ~ First Friend offered as an insight into this extraordinary being.

In a deeply crisp and almost musical voice, the subject, possibly named ‘Balder’, uttered something in a language of fluid drawls and sharp inflection. It was a language Mark had never heard and couldn’t, even with his considerable knowledge of pan-galactic languages, decipher. He wished this meeting could have occurred on The Sojourn as HAMLS might have been able to put the language through Linguistics and come up with a pattern for what this Balder was saying.

~ His language is too foreign for me, Mark, and with my lack of being able to read him, I cannot tell what he is trying to tell us. I would suspect that he want’s to know where he is and and who we are…but all I can do to communicate is to try to send feelings of reassurance. I do not know if that will be enough to satisfy this ‘Balder’. ~ First Friend told Mark telepathically.

“Maybe, there’s another way of communicating.” Mark said as he stepped toward this giant of a man. It took Mark’s considerable courage to make this movement as he had no idea how ‘Balder’ might react to so forward a gesture.

With a little trepidation, Mark extended his hand to the radiant being. A gesture hopefully understood as a friendly one among humanoids.

Balder looked at Mark’s hand and then his face, but rather than extending his own hand to shake, Balder reached for Mark’s head instead!

In a movement swift and sure, Balder gently clasped his large hand around the side of Mark’s head! Balder then closed his eyes as if to concentrate.

Before he knew it, Mark’s entire history, knowledge, and actual being flashed in his mind as Balder sorted through the Starfarer’s thoughts! The experience wasn’t painful, but it was most disconcerting! Balder was taking what he wanted from Mark’s mind without consent and without mercy!

Exhausted, Mark found himself sinking to the floor feeling bizarrely drained!

But, it was then that Balder spoke in perfect English, “I’m so sorry, but I had to know what you know, Mark. Please forgive me?”

++

“:: Indeed, he is 188 Kilos with a musculature five times as dense as yours, Sir. That is all that I can gather at the moment. All my other scans are deflected back by some force that protects this Balder. ::” HAMLS reported dutifully into Mark’s earpiece. Mark wanted to keep his attempts at analysis hidden from this Balder character figuring the big guy might take some kind offense to it.

However, “Oh, your AI system can’t penetrate my armor. It’s enchanted against probes and scans of any kind. The Unity already tried that, but they couldn’t get through either. Sorry about that. It’s part of my protection.” Balder’s mid-toned voice spoke to Mark’s slight shock.

“Excuse us for prying, er, Balder. We don’t mean any offense. It’s just standard procedure for us to try and figure out what we’re dealing with when we don’t know what it is, generally speaking.” Mark answered Balder with a bit of derision in his voice.

Balder actually chuckled not seeming to take any offense at all but finding a touch of humor in Mark’s futile attempts at cracking Balder’s secrets.

“Hehehe, you are excused, Mark. I’d be trying to do the same thing if I was in your shoes. In a manner of speaking, I did just that when I mind-scanned you. It’s been a long while since I’ve visited with Midgardians. I needed to refresh my memory a bit and learn the newer language you speak. Speaking of ‘newer’, I’m amazed at the progress you’ve made!” Balder said rather absently as he brushed his long fingers over the various surfaces of the ship’s bulkheads and control surfaces.

“You travel in space now! When last I was on Midgard, mortals had just invented those big sailing ships to cross the oceans.” Balder recollected wistfully.

Mark was completely shocked by that last remark!

Those big sailing ships were first put into intercontinental use over a thousand years ago and yet this Balder ‘remembered’ them! ‘How old is this guy’ Mark thought.

“You keep calling Earth ‘Midgard’. Ham tells me that’s something the old Norsemen used to call our world. Did you know these Norsemen?” If Mark couldn’t scan Balder to get his exact age, maybe a little detective work would do the trick.

“ ‘Norsemen’. Yes, I believe that is what they were known as. To us, they were simply mortals, one of a vast variety of mortals on Midgard. These ‘Norsemen’, however, were a warlike variety. I’m afraid they took a liking to us and started worshiping us as war gods, for some reason. True, the Æsir have had their skirmishes, particularly with more aggressive species, but we were never particularly warlike.” Balder said rather sadly as he looked out the viewport into the vast interior of the Unity City Ship.

Mark could infer from Balder’s explanation that he was indeed old enough to remember the Norsemen and that they knew of his people, these Æsir, and worshiped them. That would make Balder at least two thousand years old!

All the while that they talked, Mark was starting to feel something very strange happening with his feelings towards Balder. The man’s beauty was astonishing! His every movement was filled with grace and perfectly restrained strength. His personality, from what Mark could gather from their brief time together, tended toward gentility. A grace of character that was not in any way haughty or overbearing. It was filled with a gentle humor and a…kindness. A kindness that seemed to be for Mark in particular.

For his own part, Mark was becoming more and more enchanted by this god-like man by the second! Strangely, in all his many lonely years as a Starfarer, Mark had never felt this way about anybody before. He’d never ‘liked’ someone like he was beginning to ‘like’ Balder!

What is more, at least as far as Mark could sense, Balder was returning that ‘like’ for him too!

As if picking up Mark’s thoughts, Balder said: “I am really impressed, Mark, with how far your people have come with this extraordinary ship, and…” Balder looked over and captured Mark’s eyes with his own.

“…with you!” Balder smiled and Mark felt his legs get weak and his stomach suddenly get butterflies as a powerful wave of ‘like’ spread warmly from his very center.

“Th-thanks! Uh, that’s nice of, uh…you to say.” Mark stuttered, feeling his mouth go dry as he suddenly couldn’t think of anything even remotely intelligent to say.

“ ‘Nice’? Yes…I suppose it’s a nice thing to say, but it is better when it means the truth! Few mortals show that kind of love for new things and adventure like you do. You are so OPEN to all that you can learn! You are the ultimate expression of the Midgardian spirit, Mark! I…love that about you.” Balder said with a strange quiver in his voice. He made a heavy footfall in Mark’s direction in, what looked like, an involuntary need to be closer to Mark somehow.

Mark stepped back the opposite way with an instinct of his own. Fear. Not fear of Balder harming Mark, per say, but a strange fear of this sudden need for intimacy between the two of them. Mark was confused by his feelings for this…alien! How could Mark suddenly develop such strong feelings for someone so new and so strange to him?

For all of Balder’s praise, Mark was unsure. What did Balder want from Mark? What purpose could these feelings have? How did they come on so suddenly and were these Mark’s own feelings or…something Balder was controlling somehow.

Mark had felt first-hand the power of Balder’s mind through the mind-scan! Could he have implanted something in Mark? A desire to…worship this person? If he was, indeed, the Balder of mythology and these beings, these Æsir, were once worshiped as gods, could Balder be seeking that from Mark? Compelling it?

Mark was not disposed to worship anyone! Most people of his time were not disposed to worshipping gods or forces outside of human knowledge. They had learned to study such phenomena rather than worship them. Science was the ‘religion’ of his people now. To know all that can be known! That actually was the motto of the Department of Space Exploration! The organization that sent him on his decades long mission to learn all that was learnable and find ways to learn what was not yet learnable!

Mark was a scientist first and foremost and he was more given to analyzing these feelings he was suddenly having for Balder rather than to give in to them.

Again, as if picking up on Mark’s mental rumination, Balder said, “We never wanted worship, only mutual understanding and the chance to help Midgard rise to become one of the great realms! Well…most of us. There were some…that really started to love that worship. They… ‘lost the plot’ as your people might say.” Balder relented in his advancement toward Mark sensing the obvious tension.

Mark, on the other hand, relented in his defensive feelings toward Balder. He used his rationalist discipline of mind to get control of the strange swellings of emotion he was having in Balder’s regard, and did just what Balder admired Mark for…Mark opened himself to new knowledge and experience!

“Who were these…others?” Mark asked, now wanting Balder to tell him everything ‘knowable’ about himself.

“They are the Loki…the ones that fell away from the Æsir’s rules of engagement with less developed races and civilizations. The Æsir only wished to guide development, not control it. We wanted to pave a way toward advancement, but not determine how a race might follow that way. All sentiences deserve the right to evolve as they would, without manhandling by a technologically superior race. To do such a thing robs those peoples of their free will and self-determination.” Balder explained.

“The Loki disagreed with this mandate. They felt it was by right of their superiority that they should be the ones to rule and control the development of ‘lesser’ races. For their own good, these races needed to be dominated and ruled, according to the Loki. Naturally, the Æsir vehemently disagreed and that’s when conflict emerged between the two factions.” Balder continued.

“So, you went to war?” Mark asked.

“Yes. Something the Æsir had not done for countless generations! The Loki were more prepared. They had been preparing for just such an eventuality and they attacked first. They had adopted another philosophy abhorrent to the Æsir: control through military conquest. The Loki insisted that we submit to their rule or die! As a result, they…murdered most of we Æsir since we wouldn’t submit ourselves to their vicious rule!”

“I was seriously injured trying to battle the Prime Loki, Surtur. My elder brother, Thor, rescued me and put me in that healing chrysalis in which you found me. He must have launched me into space to save me! I can’t remember because I was not conscience, I suppose! I fear my brother sacrificed himself to save me…” Balder looked away and I could see the sheen of tears forming over his bright blue eyes.

“I also fear that my whole family was destroyed. I fear more that the Æsir have largely been exterminated and I may be one of the last of our kind! But, what I fear most is what the victorious Loki are doing now that they have none to stand in their way. How many worlds have they subjugated? How many other sentient lives have they taken into that subjugation?” Balder said, dipping his head in sadness.

~ On that account, the Unity may have intelligence, Balder. There have been reports of a growing star empire stretching out across systems in what Mark’s astrogation would consider the constellation Aquarius. The center of this empire seems to be a system of nine worlds that has yet to be entirely charted by our analysts due to a strange interference surrounding that star system. Due to this interference, the Unity have not yet sent an exploratory envoy to that system to discover what might exist there. We are assured of its habitation since all nine worlds lie within the habitable zone of that star system. ~ First Friend informed.

Balder looked over at First Friend with astonishment.

“What you are describing is my home system! Asgard is my world and it is set among the Nine Worlds of Yggdrasil…our name for our sun! You have been observing our civilization then?” Balder wondered.

~ No. As I have mentioned, there has always been a field of interference blocking most of our attempts to probe your system. We have yet to account for this interference as it does not conform to any kind of stellar radiation we know of in the universe. ~ First Friend conveyed telepathically.

“How do you know that this ‘star empire’ has stretched beyond this central system. This ‘Ygg-something’?” Mark, ever the incisive type, asked.

~ The scope of that same interference has grown beyond that central system. There are whole sectors of space that we can no longer ‘see’. It is as if a cloak of darkness has descended on those sectors. We can only conjecture that this interference is intentional and artificial and that whatever is generating it has grown beyond the initial system where we first detected this interference. ~ First Friend answered.

“By Odin’s Good Eye! That must mean that the Loki have gone unchecked for all this time! But, how much time would that be? How…long have I been drifting in the chrysalis?” Balder turned to First Friend for a possible answer.

~ We were not able to do much in the way of chronological scans of your vessel, Balder. It is heavily shielded with an energy matrix we do not yet quite understand. Beyond knowing that it has a power source and that you were alive within it, we were unable to determine much else. Your basic biological structure was all we were able to determine, actually. We would be most gratified if you would submit yourself to some tests now that you have awakened! ~ First Friend conveyed with a touch of hopefulness.

“Uh…just so you know, the Unity are pretty ‘thorough’ with their tests, my friend. Sometimes…embarrassingly so.” Mark warned Balder.

“Friend? You could consider me…friend?” Balder turned to Mark with that sun-bright smile of his. It was all Mark could do not to melt into a puddle on the floor given such a smile!

“Um…well, sure! We’re all friends here…right?” Mark babbled, unsure of how to address this sudden tension in the room.

“Oh…yes. Yes, I suppose…we are.” Balder seemed a touch disappointed by Mark’s reaction as he seemed to be seeking something more, perhaps.

~ Mark’s comments aside, we promise our tests will not be too ‘thorough’, Balder. We would simply like to get a full imprint of your biomolecular structure and, possibly, a chronological sampling to answer the question of your exact age and how long you might have been drifting in space before we found you. ~ First Friend attempted to reassure Balder.

“I think that would be ok, especially if your scans can answer some questions. As for my age, that I can tell you in a way Mark might understand. I existed before the Midgardians first worked iron. I know this, because it was me that taught a select number of mortals how to work iron into steel!” Balder’s bright smile fell on Mark with a kind of pride at his achievement.

Mark stood dumbfounded by what Balder had just revealed! What Balder was saying was that he existed before 1200 BCE! That would make Balder at least four thousand years old!

“That would make you…ancient!” Mark blurted.

“Yes, by Midgardian reckoning. But, then, the Æsir are, pretty much, immortal after all, although we can be…killed…as we discovered…thanks to the Loki.” Balder turned away to gaze out of the viewport, seemingly, to hide his sudden pang of grief from Mark.

There was silence, then, as Mark did not think it was appropriate for him to interrupt Balder’s continued sadness. Mark felt that sadness too. Something in his heart reached out to Balder and it hurt Mark to see the great man in such pain. Mark had a hard time imagining the grief Balder felt. To realize that everyone he’d ever known was possibly gone. Such a loss…how could anyone bear it?

~ Perhaps, this would be an appropriate time to begin our scans, Balder, if you consent to it. ~ First Friend mentioned, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

“Yes. That would be ok. Lead the way.” Balder said absently as he turned to follow First Friend. Mark followed in tow suddenly feeling somewhat protective of Balder for some reason.

++

“Five hundred years? He’s been floating out there in space for five hundred years?” Mark was flabbergasted!

~ That is what our initial chronological scans are reading. When Balder left his vessel it became readable to our analyzers. Whatever interference we were encountering only seemed to be in place while Balder was in the chrysalis. The chrysalis’ chronograph shows a quantum decay rate of at least five hundred Sol revolutions. ~ First Friend reported.

“What about Balder. Were you able to get any chronological data on him?” Mark asked, fascinated.

~ Not precisely. There is something about his physiology that seems to affect the quantum decay rate of his body. Even without his protective armor, it makes it impossible to place Balder chronographically using quantum decay. We were able to sample some molecular material from his armor that comes from his vessel. These molecules show the same decay rate as the chrysalis. Logic suggests that he was inside that chrysalis for the length of its quantum decay rate assuming the vessel was newly constructed upon Balder’s entering it. But, more tests may be necessary to clarify these findings. ~ First Friend conveyed, amplifying his findings.

“Was there anything else you were able to find out about Balder during your tests?” Mark wondered.

~ We already know of his injury before being placed into the chrysalis. What we did not know was that it was quite likely a fatal injury! ~ First Friend’s pronouncement shocked Mark to the core!

He was dead? Balder was actually…dead in that chrysalis?

Then, how in all the universe, was Balder alive now?