Keshona Far Freedom Part 1

respond for several moments. Finally he spoke. "I presume you didn't mean you intentionally killed your mother."

  "It feels the same."

  "You are a good person," Etrhnk said. "I believe there are very many good people in the universe. I also believe there are many more evil people, people too selfish to be ethical. Perhaps most of us are simply mongrels of ethical breeding, sometimes doing good or more often doing bad. I'll do what logic dictates I must, hoping that good ultimately results from logic."

  When the Marines removed him from Etrhnk's presence, Pan realized he didn't inquire of Etrhnk's "experiment." He knew it must include Demba as its main subject.

  = = =

  Etrhnk remained in front of the frozen image of impending tragedy. Only two of the figures were of interest to him. He thought he could identify the boy, if he dared ask the golden alien named Constant. Fidelity Demba was a mystery beyond his ability to tolerate. Before she caused his death, he had to know who she really was. Unfortunately, Pan was his best possible source for that knowledge, and to wrest it from his mind would kill him. Should a doomed man be concerned with ethics?

  1-22 Dreams of Funerals

  She couldn't turn to face him - some unknown force prevented it - but she could feel him. She held his arm and felt the tremors of emotion within him, the grief finally surfacing after so many months of denying the loss of his wife and daughter. He leaned against her and she put an arm around his waist, telling herself it was purely a sympathetic action, having nothing to do with her deeper feelings for him. She sensed the presence of the others but their names and faces were prevented from her knowing of them. Even so, she knew she had known them all for decades. Their lives had defined each other, and they shared the grief of the man, the so-important man she now touched and held. Finally, this man - her man now? - took a deep breath and let it slowly out. He cleared his throat. He spoke.

  "At great risk, Zakiya brought us her recording of the death of the Titanic. I'm terrified to imagine how close she may have been to sharing the fate of Fidelity and Susan. My wife and daughter sailed on a ship much like an ancient, unescorted, Spanish treasure galleon. This was a gift to these pirates. We're at war with a distant enemy whose faces we've yet to see, and with a closer enemy whose faces are all too familiar."

  The sound of his voice! She had forgot the sound of his voice, and now she wept at rediscovering it. Another of her friends spoke and she thrilled at the familiarity of that voice; and so it went with each of their group, until she fairly burst with the joy of near-remembrance. Then she was ashamed to feel joy at such a sad moment in their history.

  She found herself standing before them, eulogizing the lost, saying names she couldn't hear, and looking at dear faces obscured by a veil of tears.

  She spoke to them, saying: "Some of us will seek out the enemy, find his lair, and discover his weaknesses. The rest of us will stay and do what we can to prepare for the day when we are together again and we can do something about this menace to civilization."

  The brilliant and tantalizing dream evaporated, sucked back into some secret container.

  She had heard her name again - Fidelity - and the name Susan. She also heard an unfamiliar name - Zakiya - and her perspective in the internal narrative seemed to assign it to herself. That name was already fading. It was gone. There was also a man, an obscured man, and the tactile impressions of him were monumentally important to her mental avatar. She ached to plunge back into that deep well of emotional images and sensations and words, but the wind was blowing the fragments away, along with the tears on her cheeks.

  The white banners fluttered in the wind at the edge of the island. The sunlight on white clothing, white trimmings, and white banners washed out the details of faces in the eye-burning glare. She could feel him next to her, touching her, bowing his head with her. The funeral urn passed by them: another wife lost to the enemy. She looked up at a passing figure and saw the face of a young Japanese woman and recognized her in an instant of illogical joy. She remembered the daughter who had just lost her mother. She remembered Nori.

  They began walking, taking their places in the funeral procession behind father and daughter. The man next to her took her hand and spoke to her quietly. It was his voice, the man who meant so much to her! His presence both exalted her and terrified her. He shouldn't have come to this funeral! They sought to kill him! She turned to squint at his face, hoping to remember his features. She saw his face. She didn't know him! He was in disguise.

  She let go of his hand. She knew they could tie him to her and could be watching her for that reason. She fell back a step but he also fell back and took her hand again. He squeezed it and pulled it against his stomach where he held it with both of his hands. She started to say his name, started to speak a warning to him, started to break the silence of the procession up to the temple, and realized she couldn't say his name because she couldn't remember it, WHICH WAS ABSURD! She choked back frustration. More than anything in her entire life, she wanted to remember him. She loved him: he had to know that, she had to tell him. She wept.

  The daughter turned to look at her as they mounted the steps to the temple. The daughter placed a hand on her arm and drew her... into the future... where she didn't want to go...

  Now Fidelity knew she had lost someone of ultimate importance to her. A man. She was devastated by the loss in these few seconds, before losing even the reason for her devastation. Only her heart remembered the pain, until that, too, eased from existence with the next breath of fresh salt air.

  Nori placed a hand on her forearm and waited for her to look at her. That other person she never wanted to see - that thief - stood next to her, looking sad and beautiful and affectionate. She hugged Nori and she hugged the thief and she loved them both dearly, but why should she love the thief?

  "I'm sorry I'm late," she told Nori and the thief.

  It took little time to remember. It took too long to survive remembering. And she didn't survive. She died. She was reborn a stranger. She wasn't supposed to be here now. She was in limbo. But she remembered. It was easy to remember Nori. It was difficult to remember this other woman, difficult as in painful. She was a thief. She stole her memories. She stole her daughter. She made her remember people she should not want to remember, because she loved them too much, and because they were dead or dying. The thief would soon push her into a future where there was no one left to give meaning to life. This was an interlude of pain, with only slight joy at remembering these two friends.

  Nori took her hand and led her through the doorway and into the world of mountains. She and the thief took places on either side of Nori behind the mule-drawn hearse. They walked behind the hearse along a narrow dirt road where quartz crystals sparkled in the sunlight. People stood along the side of the road with bowed heads, many of them weeping. They passed through a village where more people waited beside the way, all activity stopped for the passing of the funeral procession. They walked to another village with more people waiting for them. They ascended through sloping mountain meadows and green forests, across bridges over rushing streams. Birds sang in the air. Butterflies visited wildflowers beside the winding road. A breeze whispered up the slopes. More villages thronged with waiting crowds came and went. They ascended into the clouds and through a forest of giant trees dripping with moisture. Finally they walked beyond the clouds and into sunshine. Above them a snow-capped peak loomed. Far away in the purple haze of the zenith another mountaintop dangled through a layer of dark clouds on the other side of the sealed world. She looked back along the last long leg of their journey and saw thousands of people following, the line stretching back into the clouds below. They took a branch of the road which climbed steeply for a short distance into flowers.

  A wooden cottage with a high-pitched roof stood in a garden of flowers and ornamental shrubs. The cottage and garden nestled within a bowl on the side of the mountain. The river of people which flowed up the mountain filed into the bowl. Mourners took pl
aces on the slopes overlooking the cottage and garden. Hundreds, then thousands, silently filled every available position. Pallbearers brought the coffin out of the hearse and carried it to the grave site: a small mound in front of the cottage. She saw him for the first time through the transparent sides of the coffin, and the fact of his death struck her like a dagger to the heart. A surge of joy at remembering him mixed bitterly with the grief of her loss. Their friend had died. He would never see them again. They would never see him. And the others... gone... as good as dead. They would never know if they were dead or alive. It crushed her spirit, dropped her to her knees.

  Nori and the thief knelt beside her and held her. Bagpipes in the distance sang farewell with their haunting melancholy wail. "We're all alone!" she cried. "They've all left us!"

  "They'll be back," Nori said. "Our old friend is just resting. He was tired. Now he waits."

  "And now it's time for you to sing," the thief said, pulling her back to her feet.

  "Sing?"

  "Amazing Grace."

  "I can't! I don't know how."

  "You can and you do. You always loved to sing. Stick out your tongue."

  "What?"

  The woman, the thief, wiped a tear from her own cheek,