Though the explorers would betray him and warn new territories of his empire–of this he was sure, no matter what Kiel swore–it no longer mattered. Sending them far away again was the only way to be sure that they could not ally themselves with another nearby empire world or surrender the Selesta to an opposing faction that could be of any immediate threat to Seynorynael.
The Selesta alone threatened all he had achieved, but if it should be destroyed?! Marankeil somehow knew that his empire would fade. He believed this firmly, or else he would have had the ship destroyed by any means necessary, long ago. At the same time, he absolutely detested the hold the ship and its explorers had over his own destiny. So, for ten thousand years he had planned his crushing blow–he had devised a final mission for them, to banish them from Seynorynael—
forever.
Alessia shuddered. Then, after a moment, she came to a bittersweet conclusion.
She no longer cared.
Why should they be reluctant to leave? Was there anything left of the Seynorynael they had once known? They were tired of coarseness, of vulgarity, of cruelty, which seemed to strike at every opportunity to set the human races back into ignorance, yes, and tired of seeing that coarseness and ignorance would always prevail over truth and beauty.
And at least in spaceon board the Selesta, a part of the past lived on, even if that past was now only an illusion.
* * * * *
"They all say he's crazy," Derstan shook his head, standing on the stationary ledge in the wide, bronze-colored corridor outside the explorers' rooms, where the traffic of armored guards, planetary delegates, and other officials was highest; asynchronous shuffling steps marked the passage of hundreds of feet passing swiftly in the moving corridor beyond. "I can hardly believe that. ‘Kilmachi hiurthd-ei ma?’" Derstan asked another passing guard, a man with black hair and amethyst eyes wearing the bronze and imperial purple of a sentry. The question had been in ancient Kayrian. Derstan checked himself and repeated its more modern equivalent.
The guard stopped on the wide, half-moon ledge, his amethyst eyes widening; the second question erased the crease of confusion that had formed between his brows. This Seynorynaelian man spoke fluent Kayrian!? The guard couldn’t seem to understand that fact at first, even though Derstan’s accent and execution were flawless. Finally, he answered. The two spoke for a brief moment.
"They've heard from a man who claims to be Hinev, but he thinks he must be Hinev's descendant." Derstan said a moment later, directing his speech into the room in their older Seynorynaelian dialect. "Everyone in the Palace knows that the Hinev pretender has tried to contact Hinev's explorers–but the guards all think he's crazy. He refuses to give up his claim that he is Hinev himself. Only a few of the guards even knew who the Hinev pretender was, but some of them have heard that there was once such a man."
Everyone stopped to listen to the Kayrian man. The explorers used their telepathy to understand him, even as Derstan translated for them.
Of course, the conversations were all monitored, here in the Imperial Palace; there were few secrets in this, the highway of information. Moreover, there was nothing much for the explorers to do, and interacting with one of the guards actively was a great deal more interesting and satisfying than taking thoughts from him without his knowledge. Whatever the reason, or perhaps for many reasons unknown to themselves, the explorers sat at their own business, allowing Derstan to conduct this investigation for them.
As for the Kayrian guard–he probably also spoke Seynorynaelian, but hearing perfect Kayrian from an off-worlder seemed to have enticed him to speak more openly with those so interested in his culture! His face was aglow with a sense of this compliment that came from a Seynorynaelian ‘brother’, and an explorer no less, he realized from the nameplate Derstan wore!
"The messages are actually coming from the Celestian colony." Derstan said in surprise, then listened.
"This guard saw the Hinev pretender's last transmission in the communication center." Derstan continued. "The supposed pretender said he was Hinev. A moment later, he was asking who Hinev was. His voice had changed, and he called himself Jerado of the planet Tulor, then asked them why they had contacted him. He seemed about to terminate the signal but then suddenly shouted at the screen, as though he had remembered himself, asking what trick they had played to make him want to give up so easily.
"The other guards told this guard that the Hinev pretender had been like this in each of his transmissions. They say he's playing Hinev well–legend has it Hinev suffered from a multi-personality disorder before his retreat to Celestian. But they haven't let the man through. Marankeil's orders are that no one outside the Palace is to contact the explorers."
Derstan thanked the guard and came into the room, allowing the door panel to swish closed behind him.
"Who would have thought that Hinev would have suffered from the serum like those others–the ones who failed–" Broah's voice trailed off.
“We had our suspicions,” Onracey reminded her.
“Still, I never imagined it, when we left last time, did any of you?” She asked.
"He didn't have anyone like us around him–to keep him normal and to ease his lonliness. No private thoughts unrevealed. Scary to think that it may have happened to any of us if we had not been so many." Vala added. Alessia's eyes flickered almost imperceptibly, but Kiel noted them.
Kiel’s heart doubted she had ever opened up completely with any one. What did she continue to hide, and why? One thing he knew–Hinev's condition had bothered her more than she let on at first, more than he had thought it would. He had been thinking of his own sentiments and his own memories until that moment–that his great mentor, his dear friend had come to such an end.
Kiel looked at Alessia, and for once, pitied her. Alessia saw his feelings, since he never cared to conceal them, but she paid no attention. Her mind was on Hinev, her one-time mentor, her teacher, her surrogate father.
Of course, isolation among the population, whose thoughts he could read so easily, had caused the multi-personality disorder. After thousands of years of loneliness among mortal Seynorynaelians, he had been unable at last to disconnect himself and his own entity and experiences from other people's lives, the lives he had "read". Immortality had been lonely for him, and he had paid the price for it–he could no longer control his own mind.
* * * * *
Alessia decided that if Hinev couldn’t reach her, she would have to find a way to contact him. He had been trying to contact her. She knew that, though she didn’t know how she knew. She felt him, felt him trying to reach her. She felt his presence as close to her now as he had always been, no matter where in the universe they went, or how much time separated them; neither could affect the bond between them, a bond that had grown as strong as a root buried deeply in the ages of the past.
When the others returned to conversations about what to do now that they had returned and where to live once they were given permission to leave the Palace, she thought of what she would say to Hinev, to let him know that she understood his guilt and forgave him, that he should forgive himself.
At the same time she was disturbed by the scraps of conversation going on around her–she had not told the others what she suspected–that Marankeil had no intention of allowing them to stay on Seynornyael.
"Alessia–you're going to love Lake Firien. Don’t you think she will, Kiel?" Kellar said, trying to draw Alessia out of her depression. He knew better than to believe she felt nothing at that moment, as her face suggested.
"I already love Lake Firien. I grew up there." Alessia said frankly.
The others stopped their conversations, regarding her with shock. There was a hollow noise as something fell to the floor.
As long as they had known her, they had assumed she came from Aryalsynai.
"I grew up north of Firien City, bu
t that was before Hinev brought me here to be his assistant," she added, in an attempt to mollify their surprise. But Kiel saw her comment as a sign that concern for Hinev engrossed her at that moment. He eyed her with a new appreciation and wondered briefly why none of this had appeared in the bio that the Martial Scientific Force had sent him long ago.
So, Alessia had grown up by Lake Firien–like Calendra, he let the knowledge sink in. None of the others had come from Firien–they had all come to Selesta from across the planet. Kiel began to wonder what had brought her to Hinev's attention and why he had taken her so far from her home to be his assistant. It couldn’t only have been that she was half-race like him. That was too simple, so that couldn’t be it. And there’d been other half-race children in Aryalsynai in those days, even half-Kayrians, any one of which would have been easier to find and to train.
When had she been taken from her family? She had been young when she arrived, and the serum bore immortal testimony of the last natural year she had reached. Yes, Hinev would have let her grow to maturity before he gave her the serum, but barely, as though he’d been impatient to try it on her. Had she been taken from her home as a child, then? Taken from her family to a far off city, to live alone without others of her age?
He suddenly understood her initial seclusion and recklessness, two halves of the all-or-nothing coin that had been her nature in the early days.
And afterward? It hadn’t been haughtiness because she was a Zadúmchov, stubbornness, or indifference that kept her quiet, secretive. She had been secluded from other human contact during her developmental years; naturally, it had taken time to recover from that seclusion, to learn to trust other people. At the same time, Hinev had been her only family, and now he was no longer even able to recall his own identity.
Kiel came to several conclusions.
Hinev hadn’t chosen her because she was half-race, but still she was, and of course she’d been hiding that fact when they met her. She had to have been aware her whole life that she was lucky to appear entirely Seynorynaelian, at a time in history when half-race children were scorned. Had she ever trusted anyone, allowed a friend too near, a supposed friend who turned on her later? Perhaps Hinev had understood her, being half-race himself. Perhaps that was why she feared the explorers wouldn’t.
Kiel pictured Hinev's sharp but steady eyes. His heart wrenched again for Hinev, their mentor. How could they have left him alone, knowing about the consequences of unchecked mindlinks? How could they, who alone of all the world had received the gift of his serum, have left him alone to face the power of the eternal machine Marankeil?
Kiel tried not to let himself be overpowered by immobilizing guilt; that would be unproductive now, here, where he was needed to be a strong leader.
Then something gnawed on his thoughts–something about Hinev's eyes stirred a strange realization. What other race formed Alessia’s racial component? Of all the races he had seen in the universe, it suddenly occurred to him that he couldn’t imagine which it could be. He tried to recall the others he knew, other half-race children. One of the guards outside was a mixture of Tulorian and Seynorynaelian. He didn’t look at all alien, except that his thoughts betrayed his family heritage, his Tulorian grandmother. However, Kiel could tell a half-race child. Half-Tulorians didn’t always have amber eyes–some were blue–but the shape of their ears–much larger than the small Seynorynaelian oval-shaped ones, ended in a sharper point visible even in the half-race children.
Half-Felnians had dark eyes and heavier features, like their Feln brothers. And many more half-race children could now be seen, guards on duty at the Imperial Palace–he could name the race by a distinctive feature in all of them.
But Alessia? For a long time they had dismissed the rumor that she had been half-race, and then, only her own confirmation had convinced him to deny what his eyes saw.
If Alessia's mother was the daughter of Marshall Zadúmchov, who had her father been? And more importantly, what race had he come from? Even with a serum-induced, infinite memory bank, Kiel couldn’t find the answer. Something, something after so long yet remained a mystery to him! This came as a wonder to him. He knew of no race that resembled Seynorynaelians as closely as Alessia's father must have in order for Alessia to appear as one of them.
And now he had discovered that Alessia had come from Lake Firien. Could it be that perhaps her father was no alien at all, only one of the proto-telepaths that once lived there in isolation? Calendra had told him about that small group of people, long ago, a group so isolated that to many they did seem as though of another race. So, perhaps Alessia was not half-race at all, though she may have been given reason to believe it.
Perhaps Hinev had known her ancestors in his childhood at Firien, and remembered them from his own childhood there. Perhaps he had sought her out upon his return from space and needed a good reason to justify his bringing her as his assistant to the Elders–maybe he had told her she was half-race like him so that the Elders would read no lie in her thoughts as she told them what she believed to be true. Being half-race would then explain why Hinev had taken an interest in her in particular, why he had brought a girl so far from her family.
Kiel realized that he was in part allowing her to see his revelations and his present thoughts in the faint hope that he might draw the truth from her by attesting his faith in her and reaffirming his understanding of her situation; revelations of the last few minutes also caused him to examine his own blindness. What had Hinev seen in her that his own blindness had kept him from acknowledging? And what had Lierva discovered? What had Alessia permitted her to know?
What was this sudden desire to uncover something new, something hidden for so long? Something he knew he couldn’t have, not even if he willed it so.
Alessia kept her secrets from him, had done so all these years.
He looked at her. He felt as though he had never really seen her before.
Alessia tried to pretend she hadn’t heard him, in order to keep from complicating things any more; yet, she realized, none of the explorers had been able to intuit so much about her, about her strange father and her proto-telepathic ability. But there was much Kiel had mistaken–she was a half-race child, and Marankeil, not Hinev had found her, because she had foolishly led them all right to her.
Hinev. Her thoughts returned to Hinev. She decided to open the communication channel in the room and send a message across the Celesitan province–one he would know came from her. In it he might determine her personal frequency. As she got up to cross the room, none of the others stopped her, though they knew immediately what she had planned.
Kiel watched her head to the receiver, thinking only he, apart from Lierva, could understand how much she loved Hinev, and why. He looked away and felt ashamed that he had held Calendra's plight against her, all in the name of gaining the elixir of immortality that was as much a curse as it was a blessing. Hinev’s serum was a gift for those whom the scientist had chosen, and Hinev had known what he was doing, Kiel realized, even if Kiel himself did not.
Chapter Fourteen
After two tendays of silent isolation, a transmission arrived unexpectedly in the explorers’ Imperial quarters.
The bright blue sky had given way to long violet shadows in the pale light of late evening. Alessia had been seated by the window on the panel, watching the soundless wind driving a single leaf through the city, no doubt caught on a transport and released into the air as it sped along, to sink unaided to the depths of the city below. Only the wind had taken pity and broken its fall.
She looked away, the hair of her arms bristling with an unidentified excitement. A signal was heard. Kiel, Celekar, Lierva, and Kellar paused in their game of kessel ball; Wen-eil put down a lapis lazuli piece on the game board he and In-nekel had situated between them for their latest re-match; the others sat around the lounge panels, reading, then looked up at t
he sound. Onracey put down a half-eaten slice of Bilirian cream cake and rose from his chair.
Alessia recognized her frequency and leapt to the communications console across the room. Kiel and a few others followed her, while the others listened from the other side of the room.
Hinev's haggard face appeared in the screen. At least, Alessia thought, his expression gives the appearance of it–but he looks the same, she thought. Exactly as he did the day he gave me the serum.
Despite his appearance, Hinev was like a ghost of his former self. The deep, luminous violet orbs of his eyes spoke of a hardship of many years he alone had borne–the grief, guilt, and loneliness of a man half out of his mind, always misunderstood, and tired–tired of living.
After a moment, they saw that Hinev’s call had not been directed to them alone. Hinev had addressed another signal to the Council of Elders themselves. Alessia gasped as she recognized the adjoining frequency monitoring the call–it was that of Marankeil himself! What was Hinev doing?
The half-Kayrian man in the monitor’s eyes sought out Alessia’s face among the assembled explorers; it was to her that he addressed himself.
"Dear Alessia," Hinev said affectionately, with a sigh that tried to lighten the years, as though the sight of her face were enough to accomplish that for him. "It has been–too long," he smiled deep and wide, his teeth still hidden, but his violet eyes bright with a spark of memory.
"Hinev!” Alessia cried, letting natural feelings surface unchecked as the others clustered around the monitor, submitting to curiosity. “Oh–Hinev, you don’t know how much I’ve missed you all this time." She found herself laughing and crying at the same time. "I never knew that it would be so long."
"And I wouldn’t have continued my work had I known it would take you away from your home all that time,” he vowed, leaving little doubt in their minds that he meant what he said for all its sense of hyperbole. “Forgive me.” He said quietly. “I didn’t know." His words held nuances of meaning Broah didn't understand, and she looked to Alessia beside her, but she was certain from Alessia’s face that Alessia had understood the great scientist.