Hortus Deorum
A Story about the Future
Mel and Lin felt their spines tingle as soon as the stars returned and the blackness resolved into discernable objects. Through viewscreens that translated the light outside into clear images, they could see gaseous planets, with thin rings and small moons. They did not need to hear the pilot say, “We have now entered System Sanctus,” to know that they were here at last. They looked at one another and smiled in relief.
As clear as if he had been sitting next to them, they heard the pilot say, “Estimated time to Hortus Deorum, 30 minutes. We will enter into orbit and begin our descent to the edge of the atmosphere. Our landing craft will take you down from there. In all, it should be 1 hour to touchdown if all goes well.”
Mel and Lin could not speak. They had waited for this their entire lives. Only after their children had reached adulthood could they afford the pilgrimage. Most of their friends had already taken the pilgrimage, and had returned changed. It seemed so far to go for so short a time on the planet, but not a human in the galaxy wanted to miss their chance. No man, woman, or child wanted to die without setting foot on the surface of Hortus Deorum to breath its atmosphere.
The time seemed to fly by as they watched the other planets in the system spin by their viewscreens. Eagerly anticipating their first sight of the planet, they paced up and down in the room they shared aboard the starship. As the ship passed a cluster of asteroids, they squatted down to peer through the viewscreen on the floor. Soon, they saw it. Purest blue and deepest green, a natural paradise created by humanity. Transfixed, they watched it grow larger to fill their viewscreens. The sight stirred something deep in their souls and they felt a powerful feeling of transcendent peace. Both of them believed in God and worshipped weekly, but neither of them felt particularly moved by faith. They were perhaps a little too world-weary and a little too cynical, or perhaps a touch too rational and analytic. During their journey here, they had discussed the ability of humans to fool themselves into experiencing transcendental emotions. They knew that spiritual experiences often had more to do with hormones and neurochemicals than any true awakening. Human beings could easily convince themselves they were feeling profoundly moved. Mel and Lin both wondered whether their friends had truly had life-changing experiences on their pilgrimages, or whether some combination of placebo effect and exaggerated boasted colored their stories.
The first sight of Hortus Deorum dispelled those thoughts entirely. Despite their skepticism, they also knew that human beings could sometimes experience profound transcendence. Rare. But possible. As they stared at the most-beautiful planet in the Milky Way, their lives altered.
Despite the distance involved, their journey had been relatively short. Only a matter of days to make the transit to the galactic core, and then another day to Juyipel, the staging ground for all the pilgrimages. Their home planet lay in a different arm of the Milky Way. Light from Hortus Deorum’s star took nearly 80000 years to reach their skies. But the starliners they flew on bent spacetime. By compressing the fabric of spacetime before the ship and expanding it behind, starliners allowed humans to travel through the galaxy in days and hours instead of millennia. Once inside a star system, the starliners switched over from their foldspace drives to traditional fusion rockets. Most littoral ships (an anachronistic misnomer used for starships incapable of folding space), operated with fusion rockets. Littoral ships were the preferred method of in-system travel, as they could navigate more easily between planets and moons and spacestations.
Lin and Mel had had two layovers before they reached Juyipel, one of them on Core (one of the starliner hubs and the closest habitable planet to Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole around which the rest of the galaxy orbited). From Juyipel, a smaller craft took the pilgrims on a single jump to System Sanctus. The ships reserved for the pilgrimages all bore the names of ships from human history and legend, such as Argo, Mayflower, and Ark. The one Mel and Lin took to System Sanctus was named Apollo.
System Sanctus lay far from the main spacelanes of human commerce. Despite its remoteness, it had a carefully managed flow of pilgrims coming in and out, limited to a hard 2 billion each Standard Year. Various governments had agreed to this number. Even during times of conflict, they stuck to this. System Sanctus was perhaps the single area of agreement between every major and minor government recognized by the Galactic Council of Planetary Nation States and Alliances. Almost every human in the galaxy would travel to Hortus Deorum someday. Even for the Xing Coalition, Hortus Deorum held an unquestionably sacred role. Only fringe groups, rebels and terrorists, pirates, anarchists and the anarcho-syndicalists who inhabited the furthest and most inhospitable systems, as well as the roving band of Gangly Rapscallions in their ragged fleet, did not respect System Sanctus.
System Sanctus was the most heavily fortified system in the Milky Way. Guarded by a network of space stations, orbital colonies, outposts on outlying moons and planets, and an entire fleet of warships, it could hold out against the entire Gangly Rapscallion fleet and all the pirates in the known universe. Most young servicemembers in the militaries of all the major members of the GCPNSA served a rotation protecting Hortus Deorum. Every nation, empire, or hegemony sent some part of its fleet to protect the planet. It had taken humanity a millennium to create Hortus Deorum, and they were not going to let a terrorist scar it. Other than the soldiers and sailors, the only regular inhabitants of the system were ecologists, planetologists, and conservationists.
Like the other pilgrims, Mel and Lin had been thoroughly screened and tested before they boarded the Apollo. A full day of psychological screening, physical testing, and intensive checking for every conceivable type of weapon or destructive device. Obviously, they were checked for nuclear devices, but also explosives, chemical and biological weapons, other radioactive materials, lasers, and even ballistic guns. If given the chance, some terrorist cells would gladly have attacked humanity’s sacred cow.
The pilgrims were tested to ensure they would not carry any foreign pathogens to the holy planet. Great pains were taken to guarantee that no pilgrim brought any conceivable type of bacteria, virus, fungus, or parasite to the surface. (At least the ones that did not occur naturally in Hortus Deorum’s biosphere.) No pilgrim was going to introduce a plague that might wipe out half the planet’s ecology. Despite its comfort, the Apollo was noticeably sterile.
Every ship that entered System Sanctus was first scrutinized by an armada of satellites and drones. If it passed, certain ships in the orbital fleet would challenge the newcomer to identify itself while remaining at a distance. Every ship that entered was known and expected. Either a resupply vessel for the troops and the ecologists, a warship rotating into the fleet and replacing an outgoing one, or one of the thousand known pilgrim ships. Each pilgrim ship was crewed by a life crew and captained by a well-known individual. Every pilgrimage crewmember would die before bringing a terrorist into System Sanctus. And they would let their passengers die as well. When challenged, the captain of each pilgrim ship had to identify himself or herself. If unknown individuals answered, the ship would likely be destroyed. If any ship did not pass this initial layer of screening (or any subsequent layer), it would have been lased in nanoseconds. Nuclear weapons were only to be used as a last resort in System Sanctus.
Throughout its time in-system, each pilgrim ship was carefully monitored by droneships, satellites, and the hundreds of human personnel who scrutinized every movement for any deviation from schedule. (Of course, every soldier, sailor, or marine deployed to System Sanctus was screened even more heavily than the pilgrims.)
Despite the rigorous screenings, every human involved in the process worked hard to make pilgrimages as seamless as possible. Despite being the hardest target in the known universe, Hortus Deorum maintained an innocence. The most advanced security apparatus in the galaxy worked hard to fade into the background. Mel and Lin could see a few drones and satellites, and the occasional frigate or corvette, but they experienced no disruption. Though each pilgrim ship paused for a moment in front of the orbital station above Hortus Deorum’s surface, no one boarded the ship and neither did the Apollo dock at the station.
The Apollo inserted into a capture orbit around Hortus Deorum. From there, the ship executed a Hohmann transfer to a geosynchronous orbit above one of the continents on the northern hemisphere of the planet. The captain announced boarding for the landing craft.
In excitement, Lin and Mel hurried to one of the landing craft. For the past several minutes, they had gazed in rapt attention as the blue oceans and large brown and green continents of Hortus Deorum had grown larger and eventually had filled their entire viewscreen. Now, they sat in a luxurious white landing craft, along with seven other passengers. They gazed out of the transparent fore end of the craft, which allowed for a full view of the planet’s surface. The egg-shaped craft closed its doors and undocked from the Apollo. It had soft seats and a white interior. Pilotless, it used electromagnetic thrusters to glide smoothly down into the atmosphere. A non-intelligent computer guided the craft (and the various other landing craft spread across the Hortean sky). These were the cleanest and most efficient craft humanity had ever invented. No emissions or radiation would sully the Hortean atmosphere, an atmosphere humans had spent a thousand years creating, the purest atmosphere in the galaxy. On some planets, men and women still used oxygen tanks, or lived in bubble-shaped bio-spheres, or put up with less-than-ideal atmospheres. Some humans had adapted their bodies to breathe more nitrogen-heavy atmospheres, or carbon-heavy, or even sulfurous ones. Some of the fringe anarchist groups living on the galactic edges had reportedly evolved the ability to breathe ammonia. On the surface of Hortus Deorum, every pilgrim would breathe the freest and cleanest air they ever had.
As they descended to the surface, Lin and Mel and their fellow passengers watched in silence as the continent below them grew larger. Hortus Deorum had a slight tilt and yearly seasons. It was springtime in the northern hemisphere. The weather was warming, and the whole continent was bursting with life. Before they had boarded the Apollo, the pilgrims had been told that they could wear light clothing for the trip, for the temperature on the surface of the planet would be quite comfortable. On many planets, humans lived in baking heat or near-fatal cold, but the pilgrim ships always made sure to take their passengers to those parts of Hortus Deorum with mild and comfortable weather. Based on the season, they would fly to the southern or northern hemisphere, and stay closer or further from the equator.
The pilgrim ships also made sure to avoid the dangerous parts of the planet. Hortus Deorum teemed with animal life, including many large predators. Every human wanted to make the pilgrimage before they died, but nobody wanted that to happen right away. Certain members of the crew accompanied the pilgrims to the planet’s surface, both to guard against wild animals or other mishaps, and to ensure the pilgrims reboarded the landing craft when it came time to leave.
As the seas changed from blue to green and then disappeared from view, the continent below them grew clearer. A large continent (at least at this latitude), it expanded to fill their entire viewscreen. Greens and browns became forests and deserts and plains. In the center of the continent, great grasslands and wild herds and long rivers. To east and west, high mountains and forests that stretched for a thousand miles. Elsewhere on the planet, vibrant jungles and pristine beaches and frozen tundras. The landing craft headed for a valley near the easternmost mountain chain. As they descended closer, the pilgrims could see the rolling blues and greens of the hills, and the occasional craggy cliff or sharp canyon. Then, they could see individual trees, some flowering in the vernal paradise, some bristling green needles and seed cones, some young and blooming, some old and bare. The pilgrims stayed silent the whole way down.
The ship landed in a green field neighboring a stream. Airlock doors opened and the pilgrims shuffled out, too awed to speak. Overhead, cerulean sky with a few cotton clouds. A yellow sun nearly at its zenith, and a sliver of moon near the horizon, still poking out in the late morning sky.
Lin breathed greedily the fresh air. He had never tasted air so pure. Pink and white blossoms on the nearby flowering trees gave off a strong and sweet scent that filled his nostrils. Mel looked at him and her eyes filled with wonder.
“Listen,” she said, “birds.”
They could hear a variety of chirping and calling coming from the trees. Sweet music to ears that had rarely ever heard the call of any birds. Avian life was nearly nonexistent on their home planet.
Some of the pilgrims lay face down on the ground, touching the grass, feeling the earth. One or two were crying silently. Mel squatted down and felt the grass. She touched the dirt and pushed her hand into it. She rubbed a small amount between her fingers and brought it to her face, spreading some on her forehead, placing some in her mouth, breathing deeply the rich scent of the soil. Standing upright, she followed Lin over to the stream, where they dipped their hands in. They knelt down and put their faces to the water and drank from it. Never before had they tasted anything like it. As they drank, Lin and Mel could see small fish and water insects darting about in the lazy current. They looked back across the fields. Now they noticed the insects flitting about the grass, landing in the small golden flowers. They could hear them buzzing through the air and chirping occasionally.
Torn between wanting to savor the moment, and not wanting to waste their hour, Lin and Mel now crossed over to the trees. They did not want to stray too far from the landing craft, but primal instinct urged them to explore. The ship would call when time came to leave. It was alright to stray a little. They laughed in the golden sunlight, throwing their heads back to bask in it with their eyes closed. They touched the trees and felt the bark and the leaves. Mel rubbed the needles of one tree and a few of them came off. She sniffed them, smiled, and then slipped them into a pocket in her robe. They were allowed to take a few small souvenirs back with them. Most people took a little dirt or some rocks. Mel leaned in close to the tree and breathed in deeply.
“Smell it,” she told Lin.
He leaned in and smelled the bark and one of the branches. Then he broke a few of the needles and inhaled deeply. His eyes closed. He smiled. Lin wondered if he had ever smelled anything so good.
Opening his eyes again, he looked at his wife.
“Hortus Deorum,” he said, as if he could not believe it.
“Terra,” she responded, using the planet’s older, and perhaps more beautiful, name. Then she repeated it in an ancient, but familiar, tongue.
“Earth.”