~~~
title: sinking and floating
author: rodlox
archive: GOK only!!
summary: nah, too short for one, I think
~~~
"Pak'ma'ra - chosen of God. May eat beasts that fly, walk,
crawl; but not fish of sea."
-a (quote/paraphrase of) Pak'ma'ra to Dr. Franklin; season 5.
~~~
Byron stepped out of the community hut and breathed the fresh ocean
air. Everything was lit by the orange star in the sky. Twenty
meters away from where he stood, Byron could see one of the
shorelines, bobbing in the gentle waves.
Tectonic instabilities had brought the continental plates sinking
down over a billion years ago, never to return. This globe was a true
waterworld, and the Pak'ma'ra hated it!
That rogue Lyta Alexander had managed to convince the Pak'ma'ra to
give one of their fringe worlds to the many telepaths made worldless
by the Shadow War. She'd pulled it off just a week before he'd
arrived on Babylon Five. How she'd managed such a feat without his
inherent charisma and charm, Byron had no idea - but it had made him
wonder why the Pak'ma'ra didn't want a perfectly good world like this.
The ground under his feet shook violently and with no fore-warning.
Byron backed up, and found that the ground here wasn't quaking. It
was only the octagonal piece which he'd been just on, only there was
the shaking.
The edges of the octagon rupturing, that piece of ground began to
sink, being covered by seawater from underneath.
The floorpiece sank rapidly out of sight, the thick brine covering it
up. Things with fierce spines began to swim into view. One thing
appeared, lacking spines, but it opened a large black *something*,
looking up at Byron with it. Byron quickly backed away.
~~~
BABYLON FIVE:
Even with hyperspace, ships could only travel so far so fast. It was
nearing the end of the forty-eighth hour by the time the White Star
arrived at Babylon Five. The transmission it sent to C&C requested
the presence of Entil'zha - naturally - as well as the Captain, and
one Lyta Alexander.
Therefore, both Delenn and Captain Lochley were present in the
nearly-empty boarding area as a Ranger and Byron came out of the
docking bay. /what are they doing here?/ Byron telepathically asked
Lyta. Lyta, unasked, had brought along a friend as well as her boss:
Zack Allan, and the Pak'ma'ra ambassador.
"Entil'zha," the Ranger said, bowing low, "the Pak'ma'ra world
appears to be sinking into the sea."
"Expected," the Pak'ma'ra ambassador's translator replied.
"You actually knew this was going to happen?" Captain Lochley asked
the ambassador.
"Local events - being periodic."
"What better way for them to get rid of us telepaths?" Byron asked
rhetorically.
/the Pak'ma'ra at least offered us access to their orbital colonies
around that world/ Lyta broadcast in Byron's general
direction. /nobody else did that/ "Are people being evacuating
anyone to the orbital habitats while you came all the way out here?"
Lyta asked. Byron didn't answer her.
A thought which she blocked from Byron was that she'd been enjoying
pizza and a movie with Zack when the White Star had called in.
"Did you - or anyone else," Delenn asked, "attempt to re-locate your
people up to the stations?"
Byron didn't answer her either.
"When went you," the translation machine said, converting the snaps
and chirps into the Human language, "to colony station - you then
under - PAK'MA'RA - jurisprudence." It was unquestionably not a
question.
Byron did his best not to glare at the ambassador. "You gave us a
world that's no good for long-term!" Byron yelled.
Calmly - or so it seemed in translation, "PAK'MA'RA - give stations
orbit - not planet."
"So much for that thought, Mr. Byron," Lochley said.
~~~~~LATER ON...
Midway through the trip back to Babylon Five, after dealing with the
crisis, Lyta lay awake on the angled Ranger beds in the communal
sleeping area of the White Star. Right now, she was staring at the
ceiling, but her thoughts were - figuratively - light-years away.
The Pak'ma'ra had known about the sinking 'land', Lyta knew. It had
been one of the things they'd told her about it, once she'd come to
work with them -- an intermediary between the Pak'ma'ra and the
worldless telepaths.
Once every set number of years, the orbital sensors on the Pak'ma'ra
stations in orbit around the waterworld would register a shapeless
form rising from the deepest depths, eject a small packet of what
were likely seeds, and return to the ocean bottoms. Over the next
months and years, the packet would expand across, growing as it fed
on plankton in the rich surface currents. The feeding subsections of
the packet would grow, as well as divide over and over again,
multiplying even further.
Once a critical point was reached, and the growing done with, the
packet would tear itself asunder. Bit by bit, the pieces would sink
down through the water.
"Sometimes I wonder," Lyta said.
"Hrmm?" Zack asked, opening his eyes, waking up on the bed next to
her.
"I'm sorry, Zack," she told him, "I didn't mean to wake you up."
"It's okay," he told her. "I was about to wake up anyway. At least
this time, I get a nice wake-up call." Lyta smiled, and blushed a
bit. "So, were you wondering anything I could help on?"
Lyta nodded, deciding to tell her friend; she suspected that that was
why he'd come along on the trip: "It's about Byron...I'm just not
sure what to think."
"He's just an idiot looking for an unruly mob to lead," Zack said.
Lyta smiled at that. "Yeah," she agreed. That was a fair assessment.
"Maybe I should have insisted that all the telepaths stay on the
orbital stations with the Pak'ma'ra," Lyta considered.
"Somebody would have gone down to the surface," Zack pointed
out. "And if it was stable at the time, more would have followed
them. Either way, there'd be people in danger." The Pak'ma'ra had
sent ships and shuttles down from orbit to help. But their disgust
of aquatic lifeforms kept them from ever setting footpad onto the
octagons.
If one considered it, it was that disgust that had made the Pak'ma'ra
put their stations in orbit rather than risk the temporary 'land'.
"You're right, Zack," she said, appreciative of him. "But I just -"
"You can't keep beating yourself up over this," Zack told her,
putting one hand on hers. "If you do that, then Byron wins, if
posthumously."
Lyta considered that. "We don't want that, right?" Zack asked. He
used 'we' instead of 'you'...Zack never alienated Lyta. Indeed, she
could still remember the day that he'd offered to trade her her new,
smaller quarters for his spacious ones...he'd claimed 'I’ll get lost
less often in the ones you've got.'
Lyta only now realized the accidental double entendre.
"You're right," she told him, giving him a full smile.
~~~~~
end.