Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [18]
Doubtless there are histories on Romulus, at least, which record that part, but they are not accessible to the average citizen. And if the Vulcans knew, they were not sharing. “Lost when the ships were lost,” is the official story even today.
Whereas the history of life on Romulus seems to have begun, and almost ended, with the Gnawing.
There are plenty of brave little children’s stories about the early settlers in their hand-me-down clothing who stood on a rise overlooking a valley burgeoning with green and growing things beneath the light of a gentler sun, the stars of a different sky. The artwork accompanying these stories is often quite evocative.
The stories tell of the brave pioneers using the hulls of their ships as shelters from the too-frequent rains on their strange new world as they learned to forage the native materials to build rudimentary housing and supplement their dwindling food supply. Some of the teaching materials deemed acceptable for adolescent readers are a little darker, featuring epic struggles with native predators, unforeseeably indigestible plants, lightning and floods and deadly windstorms, through all of which, of course, the Indomitable Spirit of the Romulan People inevitably triumphed, leading naturally to the Dawn of the People’s Empire. But if one reads carefully, one notices a considerable gap of years between those early days and the ascendancy of that almighty Empire.
That gap is not spoken of. It holds too many horrors. Too many things went wrong.
There was the climate, for starters. Why did they choose to settle here, when it was so different from the world they’d known? Did they choose, or was it chosen for them? Had they run out of fuel or gone off course, had their instruments told them this was the only habitable world in their path and they had best make do? Was there damage from the Jeltorai asteroid belt that meant they had to make landfall, and soon?
There is some suggestion that they didn’t even know at first that there were twin worlds. Perhaps they landed here and thought it was all there was. Was there debate or even revolt, one group who said “We will land here,” who simply shouted louder than the ones who said “But what about the weather”? If it was recorded anywhere, no one knew where to find it.
Where Vulcan was hot and dry and rain was such a rarity that, even in their logic, Vulcans would stop what they were doing whenever it fell to go outdoors and marvel at it (apparently, as more than one human wag had put it, not having sense enough to come in out of the rain), it rained overmuch on most of this new world for the well-being of those whose origins were desert.
There were doubtless some among the early settlers who rejoiced in pointing out the benefits-a longer growing season, no need for irrigation, no food shortages regardless of how their population increased. It had not occurred to them that lungs evolved over millions of years for the desert might find breathing difficult in a place where the weather alternated between hot and humid and cold and damp. It was difficult to grow food and build cities or even walk about when you were battling fungal infections, skin rashes, and airborne allergens, and felt most of the time as if you were drowning. Trudging about under an alien sun or, more often, finding it obscured by ominous cloud cover, wiping runny noses and scratching dermatoses, few noticed the symptoms of the Gnawing, until it was too late.
First came the headache and shortness of breath, followed by an annoying dry cough and loss of appetite. Light and sound became painful, clothing chafed the skin. There was dizziness, sometimes double vision, always chills and fever. Even the strongest were unable to work or think or even stay on their feet; they took to their beds and tried what cures they knew, but nothing worked.
The cough