Keshona Far Freedom Part 1

opened his eyes and saw her as a blur. He blinked his eyes and tears rolled down his dark face. Before he could clearly see her, she walked up to him and put her arms around him. Her hat fell off. A man picked it off the floor and held it, and Pan saw him clearer as the tears abated in his eyes. The man was R K! Pan looked down on the pale bald head of the woman holding tightly to his body. "Who are you?" he wondered aloud.

  She leaned away from him without releasing him and smiled up at him. She raised a hand and touched his face, touched the dampness, brought her hand to her mouth, tasted the wetness on her fingertips. She released him, took a step backward, stumbled and sat down hard on the floor. She sat there for several moments, eyes closed, bald head bowed, and breathing hard.

  Pan looked over at Ramadhal, questioningly. "Pan, this lady is Aylis Mnro," Ramadhal responded. "At least, I think she is! I don't understand what she does."

  Pan knelt down in front of the pale woman and waited for her to talk to him. He would be astonished to meet the famous woman at this moment of his life, if greater internal events did not prevent astonishment. He could not even form the ideas that should make him ask questions. He could only wait for the answers to make themselves apparent.

  "She says she's the first wife of your father," Ramadhal offered.

  "My father?"

  "Setek-Ren!" The name exploded from Aylis Mnro. She smiled at Pan, her face flushed pink. "Setek-Ren! Your father was Setek-Ren! My husband was Setek-Ren!"

  = = =

  "They're not coming back," Mai said to Horss. "Let's go. It's been too long and I'm hungry."

  "You go," he said. "Send me some food."

  She was still with him. He didn't know why she stayed with him but it pleased him. It was not something his ego required; he simply enjoyed her presence, even if she did try to treat him as a youth. It was hard to believe she was almost a century older than he was.

  "Why would they come back here?" she asked.

  "Just a hunch. It's damned hard to compute transmat addresses and this other device must be at least as difficult."

  "Earth does move through space," Mai said. "The address will always change."

  "I figure the change is easier to compute than a completely new address," Horss said.

  "Fine! Stay! I've got work to do! The sun is up on the morning of the Mother Earth Opera and tonight the place will be a riot! Thank God, it's the last one of these I ever put myself through!"

  Mai jumped back, pushed by the arrival warning field of a transmat. Pan appeared in the living room of Daidaunkh's dark apartment.

  "Doctor Mnro was successful," Pan announced somberly.

  "Welcome back, sir," Horss greeted.

  "Captain. Mai. Have you camped here for long?" Pan seemed less than happy to be away from Etrhnk.

  "Long enough for Mai," Horss answered. "Do you know anything about the admiral?"

  "All I know is that she's beyond Etrhnk's reach."

  "Dead?" Horss was unhappy at the possibility. "And Samson?"

  "You can stop waiting for them here. Why don't both of you come back with me?"

  "Let me show you something in the floor here," Horss said.

  "I've seen it," Pan said.

  "You know what it means?"

  "I don't know the status of security in Daidaunkh's apartment. We shouldn't say more. Let's go."

  "I'm staying," Horss said.

  = = =

  The woman who wore a straw hat stood up as Mai and Pan entered the main room of Pan's apartment. That she left Jon Horss alone in Daidaunkh's apartment bothered Mai, worried her, and even aggravated her! She was thus preoccupied in thought when she needed to understand who the woman was who now approached her with such a warm smile. Mai accepted the woman's hands into hers, feeling she had no choice in the matter. She then realized who the woman was, even though she looked too young.

  "Doctor Mnro?" Mai queried.

  "Sugai Mai! Please call me Aylis! What's this about you taking a maternity leave? In this part of the Union you need a husband for that, or else the math doesn't fit the law."

  "I'll be looking for a husband," she reluctantly offered, blushing.

  "So, it isn't maternity leave. It's a hunting trip. What about the Navy captain? Did he escape?"

  "You're embarrassing me!" Mai wouldn't have tolerated such treatment from anyone else, but Aylis Mnro always treated her like a... a daughter? Mai shook her head, as if that would throw Jon Horss out of her mind and clear her mental machinery to defend herself against Aylis Mnro.

  Mnro seemed to sense her disquiet and she restrained herself. "I'm sorry, Mai! I've just made a visit to Admiral Etrhnk. Then I'm reunited with Pan. My adopted son, so to speak. Then I remembered my husband's name. Oh, and did I mention I've been asleep for two centuries and have just awakened, only to be inducted into the Navy? I'm on special leave until my personal affairs are put in order."

  Mai studied Aylis Mnro, saw the wildness in her eyes, noted the strain in her voice, felt the slight tremor in the too-tight grip of her hands. What medical information she could detect with the probes built into her fingertips reinforced the overall impression of stress and agitation. It didn't help that Mai was feeling much the same. Mnro's last statement finally registered and left Mai dumbfounded.

  "I think that was too much to throw at you all at once." Mnro grimaced. "I probably should not be telling you anything. I want to tell you everything, but that would be dangerous for you. Yet, you already know too much to be safe. I wish I could be sure of not being overheard by Etrhnk."

  "This is Earth, where crazy people live," Mai was able to say. "Entertainment miners constantly spy on us. We have very effective privacy systems, those of us who want them. Pan is your adopted son? That's why you were so interested in him all these years!"

  "I never officially adopted him. He was a grown man by the time I first met him. The memories, the memories!" Mnro stopped talking and closed her eyes.

  "What's wrong?" Mai asked.

  "The person who managed the development of the Mnro Clinics wasn't me," Mnro said, breaking away with great effort from what drew her inward. "She looked like me, she had my memories, and she had my genes, but she wasn't me. I slept while she did the hardest work and made the hardest decisions. Now it's my turn again. All that the other Aylis Mnro did was but a prelude to what comes next. I will reap what she has sown, and that may be something very great, or it may be the end of me. I'm trying to take things one at a time. I have Pan back from Etrhnk. Now I wait to see if I get Demba back. If she doesn't come back, all is for nothing."

  = = =

  "This thing is ruining the floors," Daidaunkh complained, gesturing at the gatekeeper.

  "I identify with your concern," Fred said. "I have overseen years of floor maintenance. Why does it concern you?"

  "Same reason," Daidaunkh admitted. "The Mnro Clinic likes clean floors. I - a prince of Rhyandh! - used to keep them clean, by order of your master, as you must remember. But the evidence of its passing leaves a trail for others to follow. Does it have a name?" Daidaunkh felt uneasy in the presence of the gatekeeper, not because it was obviously dangerous, but because it was obviously intelligent and thus even more dangerous. Pan's old android butler also made him uneasy. He was sure Old Fred should not be able to act the way he was acting. It actually helped his nerves if they were not silent. It helped that they assured him they were trying to rescue the admiral and Rafael, and especially the boy. He would never forgive himself if he failed to help them.

  "What's your name, shorty?" Fred asked the amorphous alien.

  "You speak to me?" the gatekeeper asked.

  "You're the shortest one here."

  "I have only a number, not a name."

  "Okay, what's your number?"

  "Ten."

  "Does that mean there are at least ten of you?"

  "It may have been a serial number. There were many of us in the past. The Lady in the Mirror doesn't offer much information to mere gatekeepers. I'll answe
r to the name Shorty. Ten was never a likable number."

  "Who is the Lady in the Mirror?" Daidaunkh asked.

  "It is she who, if you say 'Lady in the Mirror,' and she hears of it, she'll kill you."

  "Why? What is she?"

  "She must kill so that everyone will fear her. She rules this place. No one knows what she is or what her reasons are."

  "Have you ever seen her?"

  "Yes. Most who see her die. I know she has killed other gatekeepers but I seem to be able to escape her wrath."

  "And who is Milly?"

  "I have only theories and suspicions."

  "But she isn't the Lady in the Mirror?"

  "I hope not!"

  Daidaunkh and Percival looked at each other. "I'd better take another of Fred's pistols," Daidaunkh said. "How about you take one, Percival?"

  = = =

  [What are you doing? Get out of here!]

  [I can say the same to you!]

  [Don't get her mad! She's a real stinker!]

  [What's she going to do, kill us?]

  [Don't let her slip past you!]

  [Damn, she's fast! What can we do now?]

  = = =

  Freddy/Fred and the others advanced along the wall of a corridor, trying to stay out of view through the open doorway ahead. "Our objective may be in that room," Freddy whispered to Daidaunkh. "I see the backs of men in black uniforms."

  They reached the doorway and hid on either side of it.

  "Yes, that is the Fleet," Daidaunkh said quietly. "Too many of them. Who are all those men dressed in gray fatigues?"

  On the other side of the doorway, Shorty extruded a part of him with an optical sensor on the end and bent it around the doorframe to look into the room. "Those are Broken Ones," Shorty said. "They