I began to regain consciousness while aboard the hybrid ship.

Great was my relief to find I'd been placed in a chair and hadn't been mistaken for one of the dead. I could tell little else at that time, as my comprehension was still somewhat impaired.

My head rested lazily against a bubbled glass window, through which I observed a tall plateau that stood above a clear plain, white capped mountains towering above the landscape behind it. Atop the plateau, completely covering the top surface, lay a kind of city. It wasn't the splendorous jewel that was the city I'd recently made my home, but it was fascinating. Multiple towers, spires, and crystal domes piled on it, with winding roadways running through it and hanging gardens on the stone walls that hung above the sheer edge.

When I awoke I knew I was in the city and that I'd been taking it easy. I awoke in a bed in a circular chamber, a chamber with one warped piece of glass forming a window almost entirely around the circumference. Some flowering plants unfamiliar to me dangled from a hanging pot. Extravagant looking furnishings filled the room and to complete the idyllic scene, the mountains and the wild landscape below stretched in the view outside.

I pulled myself into a sitting position, strangely free of body pains or headache. My uniform lay folded on a chair near the bed. I admit I blushed a little at the thought of someone undressing me.

Two men entered, wearing only skin-fitting silver pants and that also covered the feet, much like the lower part of my Selenium uniform, only without the loincloth. Each man had long hair, ears somewhat pointed and their skins were slightly dark and bluish. Each had something branded on his chest on the left side, but the design meant nothing to me.

“You are well, Cylas Renford?” one asked.

“I feel fine... say, how'd you know my name?”

“It's on your uniform. Do you remember how you came to be here?”

“A rocket landed and some men in red took me. How long ago was that?”

“Three days, why do you ask?”

“I'm... prone to long sleeps.”

When I was dressed, these men led me through the halls of an impressive building full of treasures and plush furnishings. We passed several people in the halls, most of whom looked like variations on the two men I was with, a few wore the red leather uniforms I'd seen the rocket men wearing.

We descended a stair into a very tall room where a man with long white hair, covered head to foot in elegant velvet, sat playing an instrument that looked like a cross between a violin and a flute. It might have been just that because he blew into the metal neck and worked a string across the body, producing a sound that was both strange and weirdly soothing to me.

Only when the man stopped did my host announce me “Cylas Renford of Selenium, master.”

The men disappeared and the host bade me to sit across from him.

“I'm Count Rodul Hassium. You have arrived in one of the last outposts of the royal lineage of Lord Radon.”

“I'm very honored, and I'm glad to be here. I have to admit, though, I don't know a lot about Lord Radon or much else from recent history.” I said.

“You don't much resemble a modern man, it's true. You haven't even points on your ears, have you?”

I shook my head “I'm afraid I'm homo sapien, no offense.”

“Well, if you're very old fashioned, you might be interested to know that the place where you are now was once a land called Montana. I'm fairly sure the Seleniumites and the Satellite Lords both have a number sector for it in place of a name. Modern man has so much efficiency and numbers and very little in the way of a sense of beauty.”

My host led me to a dining room, also with high ceilings and a huge polished table, but no windows. There were fireplaces on each end, a long bookshelf against one long side, and on the other was huge red frieze which must have been a hundred feet square. The gigantic red thing depicted a male figure that looked something like the devil, horns, tail, hooves, who stood over a figure that looked elfin, one hoof crushing its throat.

There was a huge surplus of food, many selections of main courses and side dishes and a parade of deserts, but I most stuck to foods I recognized, or thought I did.

We talked about how I'd come to be where I was when his men found me, and he talked at length about the responsibility of running a city that was the last of its kind.

“We are going extinct here,” Count Hassium said, “we once numbered over a billion, now we've under two million devoted subjects. I could call myself king if I wanted to, but it would be something of a joke. Even my own son would never take me for a king.”

“So you live apart from the war? Apart from the empires?”

“Neither one recognizes our sovereignty. We were born in infamy, in evil. 6,000 years ago the line was founded in the galaxy of the Satellite Lords by Lord Radon, the man depicted on the wall there. He was a red skinned Koggo from the core of the galaxy and he advanced very quickly in the empire of the Satellite Lords, despite the fact that he was not of their species. Lord Radon believed very strongly in pleasure and placing ones self first, and he had a kind of magnetism that made people listen to him. At that time the Earth was in the grasp of that empire, so he had no trouble obtaining a home here. He attracted subjects from Selenium too, and soon he had his own country carved out of that of the empire. The Satellite Lords swore to destroy him, but he laughed in their faces. He'd amassed great wealth and a large population of followers who bred a larger race devoted to him. Radon extended his life to many times the natural 500 year span given to the Koggos, he fathered many children and led his kingdom in military victories against both empires. Sadly, we have been in decline in the millenniums following his death. Like most of the other leaders since, I have been but a pale shadow of him.”

I paused in eating my dessert to absorb what he told me “But, if you live to serve yourself and your subjects do the same, what did your rocket rescue me for?”

“Let me show you.”

We took a moving sidewalk to an elevator which took us to a kind of special hospital in the bowels of the city. Electrically lighted rooms were packed with many beds where men trembled in restraints, stricken with some kind of palsy. The patients looked more like my hosts, but the doctors attending them looked like full blooded elves, like my friends.

“We keep them here as the people don't like to see unpleasant things,” Hassium told me, “it is something to do with gemmules. Although we were a mighty race, bred from the best stock of a dozen species, the blood lines have worn thin. We have had no new blood in at least 2,000 years, and selective breeding programs were introduced too late to slow the decline.”

“It's an inherited disease?”

“Yes, they lose control over their muscles, making life very difficult. We treated it fairly successfully at first, but we didn't know the cause then. The only small mercy is that the most severely effected victims are sterile.”

I watched two doctors, a red one and blue-gray one trying to restrain one of the trembling hybrids. “That's really sad... but, you have pure bred doctors here from outside?”

“You don't know much about the cosmic races. They can't be made to breed against their will. Their fertility is tied up in their deeper emotions, and even tricking them into it is next to impossible. To these races, the spark of life can only start when love is true.”

To me, that sounded like a beautiful thing, a race too pure of heart to be tainted.

To Hassium, the beauty was tinged with sadness. But, he explained, it was a thing from which I was excluded.

When it dawned on me what he really meant in all of this, I think I blushed to purple. I'd never fathered a child and I don't expect I will unless it's with the right person. In fact, I grew a little annoyed and tried to explain to him the difference between a man and an animal.