The House of Esha (RewindTheClassics22)

Part 1: Eventide

I arrived during eventide, the prelude to a year of night on the slowly spinning planet of Rodesha. The unsettled land outside the dome created a desolate image only surpassed by the rampant decay within it. Humans, try as they might, had failed on this world, attempting to cultivate organic life where it had never been welcome.

The stain of their trials lay everywhere: crumbling dwellings the same ash grey of the barren soil they'd been built from, skeletal remains of wilted fruit trees, boarded up doors leading to once prosperous and now abandoned tilanthum mines.

After exchanging a ship for a sturdy rover at the dome's entry port, I journeyed within the planet's largest and oldest enclosure, a growing sense of unease creeping in as my destination neared. I had never expected to set foot on Rodesha, a world that had already boomed and busted and now spun its way into obscurity. It was no tourist destination, appealing only to researchers with a penchant for studying its brand of peculiarity.

I'd come, not for academic or scientific pursuits, but for my friend, Roderica Esha, or Roddie as I'd affectionately called her back in our college days. Decades and galaxies stretched between us, with barely more than intermittent communication. Recently, I'd received a transmission from her detailing a malady of the mind and a desire to see me, hoping that through the rekindling of an old friendship, her sickness might ease. My old schoolmate's desperate tone raised enough alarm that I bought passage on the next available interstellar transit. I planned a lengthy visit with her at her family's estate, called amongst Rodesha's few remaining inhabitants, the House of Esha.

My body jostled as I drove the rover over uneven terrain; this had at one time been a smart road with solar inserts that recharged vehicles as they were driven. Now it lay in a state of disrepair, having turned nearly to rubble by a series of violent earthquakes. I'd secured extra batteries from the rover's leasing agent, who had shaken her head when I'd disclosed my destination.

"No charging stations there," she said. "Remember not to park too close to the lake."

The lake, in this case, was a crescent-shaped, murky body, and tucked into its inner curve rose the House of Esha. A dark shoreline appeared to me as I drove through the unending twilight, a formidable blot upon an already festering landscape. As I drew closer to its outer rim, a hissing sound overtook the grind of the wheels, it's surface bubbling and popping as it released methane into the air. These angry lakes dotting the planet had been one, but certainly not the biggest cause of Rodesha's decline.

Tilanthum, the wonder mineral of the AI golden age, remained the main reason for both Rodesha's grand rise and its calamitous decline. No other spinning orb known to humans contained it in any useful quantity. And no other family had greater stakes in the mining operations than the Esha family. Now that mining had been forced to end, most of the population relocating to other worlds, the Eshas remained. The first, the last, and greatest of Rodesha's founding families.

I'd heard the rumors. Whispers on the transport ship, disquieting jeers from civil servants at the port entry: The Esha lineage was interconnected with Rodesha in ways that went far beyond economics. As for myself, I withheld judgement on my friend and her family, but not upon the environment she lived within.

What a state, this crumbling world. Yet it could hardly be called dead. Organic life might struggle, but inorganic life, tilanthum, sourced deep within the planet, ran like blood in veins to its surface.

Rodesha was not passive.

The planet—the lake, the gritty earth, the mesas, and finally the House of Esha itself as it came into view, watched me, recorded me, tracked my movements. I shivered from the violation, and it seemed to me it observed this reaction as well. Rodesha was alive, but soulless. I had no proof but feared it held me in ill regard.

I couldn't afford to indulge this paranoia for long. I had a mission here, a friend in need. Yet, the House of Esha, rising from the shores of the methane lake like the egg of a robotic beast, threatened my resolve. Maybe it was the knowledge of all that had transpired here that made the structure foreboding. I couldn't bring myself to fully envision it in its glory, but glorious it must have been, with nine tilanthum petal-shaped panels, four stories high, set to open during day periods, revealing a glass lined interior, and then fold up as a flower does at night. It protected the house during Rodesha's year long nighttides and gave the residents reprieve from its year-long days, shrouding the house in darkness for an eight Earth-hour period of sleep.

Roddie had informed me that the petals had ceased working three planetary days ago, or what translated to my Earth mind as roughly three years. It had been the house's decision; she'd claimed in her most recent message. The house, not a technical issue or the fact that the entire dome was on the verge of collapse, was the reason Roddie had been left in near darkness, day or night. The interior lights, she said, worked at random, flickering at intervals like candleflames.

On a rickety bridge, I crossed an inlet of frothy water, and, heeding the leasing agent's advice, pulled the rover up near the house's front entrance, as far as I could get it from the lake.

Filled with existential dread, it wouldn't have surprised me to be met by a ghost at the towering front door. But it was a sour-faced human attendant who greeted me and wove us through an internal maze. I wanted to ask him how he could live in this place but was afraid of his response.

At the first staircase, we met another human.

"Doctor," the attendant said with the tilt of a head.

"Doctor?" I placed my hand on his arm. He bristled under it but stopped moving. "How is Roddie. I'm her friend. We went to school together."

He exchanged a look with the attendant and if they wanted me to feel like an outsider, the wordless message that passed between them accomplished their aim.

"Your friend." A jagged scar extended along his neck from his right ear to his clavicle. "Is that what she is?"

"Yes, as I said..."

"She's waiting for you." Grasping his med kit, he hurried down the remaining stairs and out the front door.

We continued on, the attendant and I, until we reached a dimly lit chamber with bookshelves from floor to ceiling and an array of musical instruments strewn about. The room felt like a place out of time, with volumes of printed words on paper, and instruments made of brass and wood, as though all these things were perfectly normal. Roddie had told me about her collection, namely the paper and vellum books, knowing their rarity would appeal to me as a writer and lover of ancient artifacts. I plucked at a nearby violin, a dull, out-of-tune twang kicking up dust into the air. A space filled with such treasures should uplift my spirits, but it had the opposite affect instead; its objective to harken back to a gentler time felt oppressive and contrived.

I let out a few quick coughs.

"I'll have Jerome bring you water," someone behind me spoke. Older, more monotone than I remembered it, but with the same raspy quality that had made Roddie's voice so recognizable.

"Roddie!" I turned to my friend and coughed again, this time to cover up the gasp that wanted to claw its way out of my throat.

____

The remaining two parts are available now, so please read on, and thank you so much for checking out my contest entry!