Chapter Ten
The Ephor War had been over for less than a century when war broke out again within the Federation between the Jankari and their neighbors, the people of Palgirnon. Despite the efforts of a peace-keeping force sent by the Seynorynaelian post on nearby Sekika, the war dragged out for more than four generations, and by that time, the contagion of war swept over the entire Federation. Small battles and rebellions against the Federation and between territories broke out and would not be quelled, despite the controlling efforts of legions deployed by the Martial Scientific Force from a thousand different worlds.
As the Federation grew larger, the wars became more frequent; more than once, entire planets were obliterated by neighboring Federation enemies by the time MSF troops arrived in the warring star systems.
Though the Federation Pact determined that punitive action against the offenders was to be swift and definite, the fire of war still kept igniting among territories holding ancient grudges; one reason was that the MSF found itself torn on hundreds of fronts, which kept the rebellious territories safe for a time, until the offenders had already passed on and their children could not be punished as severely for a crime of insurrection that had not been their own; thus it came to pass that in fewer than three hundred years after the first Ephor War, the MSF could no longer keep order effectively, and for the first time, there was widespread talk of the Federation weakening, of Federation power weakening.
When the rumors at last swept to Seynorynael, Elder Marankeil retaliated in full force.
The Seynorynaelian Council soon issued a decree with the single intent of strengthening the Federation, a decree which conscripted millions of youths from across the more stable territories and brought them to Seynorynael and Kayria and later to the allied planet Goeur for training into the MSF, a decree that introduced a more military and less scientific element to the MSF ranks.
The MSF swelled with warriors trained only for battle, instilled with ideas of glory and honor, and with notions of securing peace and prosperity, warriors who had been promised a significant reward in the restored Federation, a Federation now more concerned with its own survival than with progress. The Valerian fighter soon became a symbol of Federation power, stealth, honor, and glory, and the first wave of Federation retaliation.
No doubt Marankeil’s decree would have re-established order in the Federation quickly, had not Hinev’s explorers kept adding new territories to worry about from across the Great Cluster. For more than a thousand years after the restrengthening of the Federation forces, the MSF fought to keep the Federation together; then, as the centipede gates continued to bring new territories closer to the Federation, a war broke out between the Federation and several independent civilizations on the far side of the Great Red Nebula.
Federation forces retaliated, even those territories where insurrection had been imminent, as the threat of being conquered by an outside territory loomed over the Seynorynaelian Federation. A two-hundred year war was waged until the Federation defeated its enemy, the Alavians; however, after expending more resources than it could afford to maintain its own stability, the Seynorynaelian Federation withdrew from the Alavians’ territory.
Within a hundred years, the Alavians’ enemies, the lai-nen, invaded and spread their empire to the very borders of the Federation itself, within the Great Cluster.
Alavian refugees granted political asylum on Seynorynael brought word of the lai-nen for the first time. Little was known about the lai-nen throughout the Federation, but one thing alone was reason enough to cause alarm: the lai-nen Empire was even larger than the Seynorynaelian Federation, and they had also discovered the secret of anti-matter weaponry.
From the window of the Tarkhan transport, Hinev watched the exotic ships of Ariyalsynai’s astroport grow larger with each passing second. Already almost two thousand civilizations that Selesta’s crew had invited to join the Federation had been firmly established within the Federation of worlds, and peace had been reestablished among the warring territories of the Federation in light of the potential lai-nen threat.
Selesta—where was she? Hinev still wondered. Selesta took years to travel to new star systems and galaxies, but once the ship’s string engine had created a stable centipede gate channel linking the newer territories to the constituents secured by Kudenka's explorers, passage through the network of centipede star gates brought the new emissaries to Seynorynael in fewer than six or seven tendays.
Revolutionizing the more primitive new territories occupied most of the time of Federation scientists; the strangest truth about exploration and discovery was that it had the indirect affect of stagnating the progressive development of the home territories; their civilization was so preoccupied with teaching the new territories and controlling them that few people had time to pioneer new scientific innovations, especially with all of the efforts Marankeil had made to stifle genius, in case that genius were to ever be used against him.
Was it any wonder that Marankeil feared the unknown powers of the lai-nen?
Since the explorers' departure, Marankeil and his council had created a fleet of MSF ships using copies of the tachiyon engine of Selesta; in time, merchant fleets even more imperfect than the battleships appeared throughout the Federation. As peace returned, trade flourished among the territories.
Even after more than a thousand years, nothing, no space battleship in the universe, even those detailed in reports brought from the lai-nen frontier, could match Selesta. For at the heart of Selesta was a development no civilization had been able to achieve: the containment of a cosmic string. A cosmic string that had been found in the ruins by Lake Firien, possibly a remnant from the Enorians.
Skeptics on Seynorynael had once said Selesta had been too large a ship to ever break free of surface gravity; because no other ship had the interior engine core of that great ship, Hinev knew that there would never be as large a space-going vessel in all the universe capable of terrestrial landings, capable of traveling through and creating centipede gates. The technology to isolate a cosmic string or singularity was even unknown upon Seynorynael and its Federation planets.
Even the MSF flagship, the Excavion, couldn’t outclass Selesta, though it was nearly the same size; the Excavion was the closest attempt at a copy of Selesta, but it couldn’t land on terrestrial surfaces at all, which even Selesta would seldom risk. If the Excavion ever landed on a planet, she would be unable to break the surface gravity and stranded there for all time.
Moreover, the cost of reproducing the hull of a ship like Selesta had become so great in recent years, with the supplies of superalloys in such demand, that there was simply no way to build a ship cost-effectively. Even using a fleet of expensive humanroid technicians, it would have taken years to reproduce the hull of Selesta, a hull that had been realized through the efforts of thousands of highly skilled MSF specialists who dedicated long hours to The Firien Project, along with thousands of humanroids. The Federation resources had been stretched thin in some areas, though Ariyalsynai was now swimming in luxury goods and trading vessels from across the Federation.
Not only was the development of large spaceships simply too time-consuming, costly, and inefficient, it was unnecessary now that travel between the nearest Federation worlds was so busy that it often took only days to reach a passenger’s final destination on board the smaller space ships. In fact, most of the transport vessels were small, allowing passengers to dock in the space stations near the multi-centipede gates to take a connecting transport, even smaller ships designed for easy and frequent terrestrial landings. Only cargo ships were large, and they were shuttled to moon bases and space stations, where the goods were transmitted down to planetary surfaces on smaller trading ships.
In only a little more than five hundred years since the explorers' departure, the Seynorynael they had known had been swallowed by an explosion of new ideas and cultures from the newly discovered territories.
Even in remote Eneveh, Hinev had noticed the changes on their planet in art, architecture, fashion, food, beliefs, species of animals kept as pets, even legends.
Hinev spared a moment to wonder about the cosmic gates, the centipede star gates.
Did Marankeil ever wonder if Selesta could return to the past?
Because of course, the centipede gates were not only links to other sections of the galaxy, but time-portals. Once they had been created, a ship could return through them to any time since the gate had been created, even though most vessels could not pass through Marankeil's ingenious time-check monitors, one of the last great scientific achievements of the demagogue and leader of the Elders.
The longer Marankeil lived, the more he discovered privately and the more formidable an enemy he made himself.
Hinev knew this now that he had lived an aeon how much a thousand years could do to a man.
Had Kiel and Alessia lived as many years already? Selesta could journey until the end of Valeria and beyond and return only relatively few years after their departure through the gate time tunnels that linked space and time. Even if their journey took millions of years, they might easily be home tomorrow. Yet their mission guideline had been short, like the mission of Kudenka’s explorers. They wouldn’t even have needed to use their string engine to travel across the Great Cluster; even though a thousand years had passed on Seynorynael, Hinev’s explorers might have only lived a hundred years, but because of the effects of time dilation, time had slowed down only on Selesta. Time slowed down near the speed of light, and the Selesta was traveling near light-speed.
Hinev had always expected that the explorers would have to break the council's law forbidding time travel. They could not return to the past before Marankeil had become a machine—the laws of the universe forbid time travelers from returning to a past where they had not existsed—though Hinev knew Marankeil's greatest fear was that someone might attempt to erase his existence before he had secured his own mechanized immortality. Kudenka's explorers had not yet created a centipede gate until after Marankeil had joined the council. So, according to the laws of physics which governed the universe, there was nothing for Marankeil to worry about.
It was scientifically impossible for the explorers to destroy the mechanized Elder.
But Hinev often worried that Marankeil might send a force into the past through the centipede gates to eliminate him before he had finished the serum. He reminded himself that he probably worried needlessly; Marankeil would not want to eliminate the explorers—he would be sacrificing his control over the thousands of rich planets that the explorers had discovered.
Surely, no one, no faction of rebellious subjects, would use the gates to return to the past?
And Ornenkai would surely have warned Hinev if Marankeil had ever planned any such venture to alter history, wouldn’t he?
Ornenkai wanted Hinev to figure out a way to make the serum take affect upon his original body, after all.
And, Marankeil—could it be that Marankeil also knew of the potential catastrophic consequences of altering fate? Had he taken precautions somehow to ensure his own survival? Hinev wondered.
Hinev disembarked from the transport and headed through the Ariyalsynai astroport, heedlessly traversing between sections. The Mulili aliens regarded him in mute surprise as he entered their lounge without a pressure suit to protect him from the heavy simulated air pressure of Mulil, 2.3 times that of Seynorynael, air pressure which had been created for the Mulili aliens' comfort while they waited for their vessel to be resupplied.
Hinev turned to them and stared at them a moment; they stared back.
“Where is this transport going?” he asked them in the chief Mulili language.
“Kardia. Then Vusdia.” One of the Mulili answered, peering closely at the half-race man, though to be honest, he could hardly tell that the stranger was half-race. The Mulili held nothing against half-race Seynorynaelians, who seemed almost the same as a Seynorynaelian to the small, squat race of Mulili.
Half-Kayrian, the Mulili was thinking. But that was merely a terse observation. He and the other Mulili were racking their brains for any idea as to how this half-Kayrian, half-Seynorynaelian man hadn’t been crushed by the air pressure without a pressure suit! How was he able to breathe their atmosphere?!!
“How indeed,” Hinev said after a moment; the Mulili stared at him even harder, if that were possible.
“Who are you?” the one with the presence of mind enough to speak asked the stranger.
“A man in search of a purpose?” Hinev replied with a slight question. “I take it your people are suffering from a blight this year and can’t meet Federation standards for aid unless you can come up with something to prove your planet a worthy investment to the Federation?”
The Mulili man nodded.
“Then I can help you.” Hinev said.
“Why?” The Mulili asked. “Who are you?”
“As you insist on using names, you can call me Hinev. Fynals Hinev.”
“Fynals Hinev?” One of the other Mulili stepped forward to protest. “But that name belongs to an ancient man. One of the explorers who found Mulil, long ago—”
“Kudenka’s explorers.” Hinev said.
“Yes,” the Mulili man agreed. “Why do you choose that name?”
The others waited, listening intently for a reply.
“Because that name belongs to me.”
“You wish to help our people, Fynals Hinev?” the first Mulil asked again, looking closely at him. The longer he looked, the more he began to believe that he had seen the man’s face before somewhere.
“Yes, I do.” Hinev said.
“You are Hinev!” The second Mulili blurted abruptly. “I’ve seen your face in the ancient recordings.”
The other Mulili turned to him, then back to Hinev.
Hinev nodded.
“Very well, we accept your offer of faith, Fynals Hinev, on behalf of the oath Kudenka swore to our people.” The first Mulili said. “But tell me, Fynals Hinev, how does a dead man walk among the living?”
“By taking one small step at a time.” Hinev replied.
Ornenkai sometimes stared at himself in wonder as he passed the reflective panel of his new private quarters near the Arboretum Museum, a suite of wide colonnades and multiple chambers, lavishly decorated with only the best furnishings to be found across the Federation.
More than a thousand years had passed since the first successful transfer of Elder Marankeil into his new clone form and a score more had passed since Ornenkai returned to a human body, but a human body that was hardier and stronger than Ornenkai had been as a human, a clone reinforced by artificial muscle fibres and organs, an unbreakable skeletal system, tougher skin tissues and chemically enhanced artificial muscles.
The clone Ornenkai had short hair, without the curls he had known in his youth; his eyes were not quite so brilliant, perhaps, but they were human eyes, wonderfully human eyes. Ornenkai strode past the reflective panel on his way to the even more opulent center of the forum in the Elders’ Building and saw himself, mid-stride. He marveled a moment at his own, long human limbs and human gait.
Ornenkai remembered how infinitely vulnerable he had felt in those first moments when he reawakened in a human body, how delicate even this super-strong human shell had seemed to him after years living as a mechanized unit.
However, Ornenkai had since grown used to his new body and all of the comforts and pleasures that being human allowed him once more.
“Well, Ornenkai, I have news for you,” Marankeil said as Ornenkai entered the private atrium of the Elders, with its baths, fountains, and gardens, some time later. Marankeil was lying face-down on a panel beside an open pool in the middle of the atrium. He was wrapped only in a half-robe, resting as a young woman worked over his muscles; Elder Baladahn, in clone form as well, was lying
on another panel in the same position now far away, by the main baths.
“Oh?” Ornenkai threw back. “Milea!” He called loudly and collapsed on the lounging panels in the center of the room. A lovely young woman adorned in a brightly-colored garment appeared a moment later and brought him a dark red, spiced drink; he took the drink and pulled her beside him. She sat down on the cushioned divan. Ornenkai began playing with the long strands of her hair.
“You don’t care about what I have to say?” Marankeil said mockingly, turning aside and sitting up.
“What news?” Ornenkai asked, distracted, following Marankeil’s lead in the ancient, slower, more musical dialect of Seynorynael. Milea made eyes at him, listening in enchantment, even though he doubted she caught the entire meaning of what either of the Elders said.
“Hinev is missing,” Marankeil replied, in a voice dark and low.
Now, he had Ornenkai’s attention.
“Hinev is missing?” Ornenkai echoed, turning away from Milea.
“I thought perhaps you knew.” Marankeil added in a serious tone.
“No. I haven’t seen Hinev—since he left Firien, ages ago.” Ornenkai said, wondering why he felt so suddenly uneasy. For more than a thousand years, during the long wars for order within the Federation, Ornenkai had immersed himself in politics once more and returned to the Council Building, to the affairs of the other Elders; Ornenkai had convinced himself that the only thing which mattered was preserving the Federation and had even made a few trips to Federation planets as part of peace delegations. Ornenkai had tried to forget about Hinev’s explorers and about Fynals Hinev as much as possible, except when he and the other Elders had required another clone transfer a few hundred years before.
In the years since The Firien Project, Ornenkai had even fought as a commander in the Excavion in a battle against the Alavians, though quite by accident; Ornenkai was the one being that Marankeil trusted with the most highly classified technological dispatches concerning centipede gate and anti-matter technology. But there had been no need for Ornenkai to leave Seynorynael at all in recent years; in any event, Marankeil preferred having Ornenkai close at hand.
Ornenkai knew well enough to understand what Marankeil had said long ago, that no achievement ever meant anything to the human animal unless there was someone else around to share it with and appreciate it. Ornenkai himself had begun to understand the same; for all he did, the only man or woman alive who understood its full significance was Marankeil.
In a strange sense, without each other nearby, each of them was entirely alone. Not even Maerodach and Baladahn could be trusted or depended upon; for both had been enemies to Marankeil and Ornenkai long ago, before they became mechanized Elders.
Hinev—Ornenkai thought back to those days of the Firien Project; Ornenkai had not thought about them in a long, long time. Hinev had been young in biological years when he created his serum, even though he had been born in a bygone age; what had a thousand years done to Hinev? Ornenkai now wondered. He had only seen Hinev once in all that time, and Marankeil had been present, as had the other Elders; so Ornenkai hadn’t got the opportunity to speak privately with Hinev, to see if perhaps, as Ornenkai had once suspected, Hinev was anything like Ornenkai at heart.
No, Ornenkai thought. I am not that Ornenkai anymore, he told himself. In the days at Firien, Ornenkai had experienced a brief period of regret and constant attacks of conscience, as though there were anything to regret! Wasn’t power what he wanted and had achieved? Now that he had a human body again, and one that could endure for a thousand years, was there anything he couldn’t have if he wanted it? Hadn’t he helped Marankeil to maintain the greatest Federation in all the universe?
“So where is Hinev?” Ornenkai asked, his heartbeat increasing slightly in pace.
Marankeil chuckled, narrowing his bright, cobalt eyes on the young woman beside him.
Ornenkai turned to look at her. He often wondered why Marankeil had his serving girls genetically grown with much the same face, a face that was lovely, unusual, but not the most beautiful one that Ornenkai had ever seen.
Why that particular face?
Ornenkai didn’t like to look at the women who wore that face, because there was something unusual about the shape of the women’s eyes—something familiar about it. Something that unsettled Ornenkai.
Besides that, Ornenkai couldn’t understand why Marankeil was obsessed with reproducing that face. Marankeil could have any woman in the Great Cluster that he wanted, and he chose to surround himself with bio-genetically engineered women of modest beauty, and he chose to adorn them only in lilac, and in public showed no outward sign of affection towards them except now and again, when he seemed to forget himself—
“Who knows where Hinev is now?” Marankeil said. “I sent some officers to look for him among the Gildbaturan population of the Azyr province when he disappeared from Eneveh. I’m afraid that Hinev is gone.”
Ornenkai wasn’t entirely certain why this news disturbed him so much. Was he only concerned about the clone transfers? Given long enough, Ornenkai felt that he would be able to operate the machinery himself to create more clones, if necessary, even if he couldn’t fashion a clone body of such superior quality as Hinev’s. Why else was he so upset by the news that Hinev had left?
“Hinev’s nothing but a fool. If he wanted to do something to occupy his time, I would have sent him to the lai-nen frontier to be a negotiator.” Marankeil threw out, a note of irritation in his voice.
“If he wanted to put his telepathic power to good use, we could have used him in the lai-nen talks, that’s true.” Ornenkai observed. “But I think, perhaps, that Hinev is under an illusion that he owes a debt to the Federation peoples for destroying the lives of the failed serum candidates. And for creating Hinev’s explorers.”
“Yes,” Marankeil said, thinking back, as though upon something he hadn’t thought about in a long, long time. “But philanthropy is a fruitless aim.”
“I doubt Hinev agrees with that. But at least his sense of guilt kept him under control for a while. He felt sorry for the failed candidates, for what he did to them. That’s why he let himself be sent to Eneveh. And he couldn’t face his own explorers—in case they judged and condemned him for what he had done.”
“Hinev is flawed with a conscience.” Marankeil said in a mocking tone, suddenly glaring at the serving girl beside him with a peculiar dark smile Ornenkai hadn’t seen in many long years, not since—he couldn’t remember when he’d seen it.
“I suppose empathy is at the source of all morality and just action.” Ornenkai observed. “That’s why Hinev feels so guilty when he should just resign himself to being alive and try to enjoy his life.”
Marankeil laughed perversely. “Empathy is still a selfish judgment applied to a selfless observation. Trying to impose his values upon others, and controlling them and their destinies as much as I do. But never mind. I don’t want to hear anymore about Hinev’s philanthropic purpose. Why should it matter that he makes amends or suffers guilt for what he has done. Tell me something, girl,” he said to the serving girl.
“Yes?” She turned, fearful.
“What’s your name?”
“Laila.”
“Laila, why is it that men delude themselves about their own motives?”
“I don’t know. Oh yes, maybe it’s bad, I see your point, sir. Maybe we should try to be forthright—”
“You misunderstand.” Marankeil interrupted, with an air of superior patience.
“Huh?” Laila echoed, confused.
“I wasn’t being critical.” Marankeil replied, in a serious tone. “I wanted to know the answer. Because we do it regardless. I myself have done the same thing, and yet I don’t know why.”
“Oh.” Laila said, nodding, still confused.
“Come here,” Marankeil said quietly to
her; she nodded and came over, allowed him to pull her beside him on the cushioned panel. He touched her hair, her face lovingly, then stopped, distracted, peering into her eyes. Ornenkai watched, as though watching something bizarre and completely unexpected.
Marankeil stared hard at her.
“Give me your hand.” He said. Laila presented it to him without a thought; he didn’t look at it, though. He was still measuring the expression in her eyes. After a moment, he released her hand.
He leaned forward as though to kiss her and stopped just short of her lips. She made no effort to move away. He pulled himself upright again.
“You would keep no secrets from me, Laila, would you?” he asked quietly.
“No.” She said quickly, easily.
He didn’t move. “I thought not.” He said after a moment. “That’s all Laila, you may go.” He added, watching her leave, watching every step she took away from him.
“I don’t understand you,” Ornenkai said.
Marankeil turned to him.
“Why did you dismiss her?” Ornenkai asked. “The way you were looking at her, I thought perhaps she resembled Elera more than the others.”
“She does.” Marankeil agreed, his eyes widening appreciatively at Ornenkai’s perception, even as it irritated him to hear that name spoken aloud. He shifted in discomfort.
“Then why?” Ornenkai’s brows drew together.
“There was nothing in her eyes that I wanted.” Marankeil replied.
Ornenkai refused to admit that he understood what Marankeil meant by that.
Ornenkai shifted his weight to another foot, waiting in the Elders Building to meet yet another political delegation. Would it ever end? he wondered impatiently.
When they finally arrived, the ambassadors from a planet called Kae-míyah brought with them an inhabitant from a nearby planet near the Gerdor Nebula. Apparently, the Sakaran had been injured and left an outcast on his own world, and the explorer team had brought him with them to nearby Kae-míyah. The Sakaran had been asked to join the emissary shuttle to Seynorynael as a representative of his race, though his own people had been left to live without Federation interference.
The bipedal, four-limbed Sakaran was a strange creature, Ornenkai thought. He towered over everyone by at least two heads, had thick but short tan "fur" and a broad, flat nose, a wide-set pair of blue-green stereoscopic eyes, ears with three small holes, two on the sides and one in the back of his head. His two ball and socket joints attached around a hinged joint in his arms allowing a range of movement that Ornenkai couldn’t stop noticing with alarm. And his eight digit hands were surprisingly dexterous, but the vestigial toes had fused together to form a very odd foot.
Ornenkai tried very hard to be hospitable and pretended not to notice any difference between the Sakaran and himself.
The Sakaran turned out to be intelligent but found it difficult to speak Seynorynaelian, yet his understanding of their language was apparent and remarkable—too remarkable to be natural. After thousands of encounters with emissaries, Ornenkai was no longer surprised to learn that the explorers had used their telepathic abilities to imprint a rudimentary knowledge of the Seynorynaelian language and customs on the aliens they encountered. Without the explorers, the process of assimilating the new territories into the established Federation would have taken many years longer.
Unlike their Sakaran neighbors, the Kae-míyah emissaries were true humanoids with a dark reddish-brown complexion, large, fiery mahogany eyes and wonderfully thick, straight black hair. Ornenkai had been present in clone form at the public Federation approval hearing scheduled for their planet, and had voted in favor of acceptance, partly on a whim, because he found the Kae-míyahn sense of style intriguing. Afterwards, one of the Kae-míyahn ambassadors had approached him to express his thanks that Ornenkai, a man whom he understood to be one of the famed Council Elders, had spoken in favor of their planet's approval. Ornenkai never minded being accoladed.
The Kae-míyahn mentioned that he had heard good things about him from the Hanar. Ornenkai hadn't understood at first, but clearly the man was referring to Hinev's explorers who had landed on Kae-míyah. The ambassador invited him to a local relaxation lounge for a drink, where to his delight he found his homeland's native drink already included in the Federation drink facilitator guide. The ambassador was pleased to share a toast in favor of the "Lid-une", his word for the Federation, and the prosperity that it would bring his people.
The Kae-míyahn ambassador had asked many questions about Seynorynaelian technology and industry, the abundance of food and goods, the principles behind the black hole energy mine of Kai-rek that provided unlimited energy to the planet and the many other innovations that had raised the Seynorynaelian quality of life. In particular, he hoped to receive a shipment of hovercraft transports like the ones he had seen flying over Lake Malei shortly before the shuttle arrived in Ariyalsynai. Then the two of them had gotten drunk together, and Ornenkai had agreed to a lot more of the Kae-míyahn requests than he intended before long.
Similar (but sober) requests made to the Federation Council had been growing every year—and the energy input into educating and instructing the territories had begun to decelerate the growth of Seynorynaelian technological advancement. But Ornenkai kept out of most of the political debates and meetings that took place. He personally gave only one top priority rating in answer to the appeal made by the planet Goeur to help protect their cities from windstorms and build strong new cities that would provide permanent, secure shelter.
The Goeur people were very much like Kayrians and Seynorynaelians, after all. More so than some of the other races. Ornenkai again suspected that the Enorians had somehow made it there.
There was also the fact that, when Ornenkai had gone to see the Goeur emissary shortly after his arrival, he had been informed of the many promises made to the Goeur by Kiel's team of explorers. Marankeil overlooked the request in the thousands of others, but honoring the explorers' unauthorized promises meant little to him.
So, Ornenkai persuaded Marankeil to see the potential of the Goeur planet as a future MSF training base and to consider its abundant resources. After that, the project to develop the environmentally unstable surface of Goeur was scheduled to depart in only a year.
Ornenkai shrugged off recollections when the Sakaran asked for a tour of the Council Building; Ornenkai agreed to take the Sakaran and the Kae-míyahn ambassadors around personally.
"Tell Scientists Daevás to send two units of robotic technicians with the project," Ornenkai said to the Martial Scientific Force officer, lieutenant Nikasu, who stood waiting in the long corridor in the delegate’s wing of the Elders Building. The launch of the developmental team to Kae-míyah had been scheduled for only hours away, and Ornenkai didn’t want the little addition to the order to be inadvertently forgotten.
Nikasu nodded and left; Ornenkai and the others headed the other way. Nikasu slowed to a march, the even sound of his boots clicking down the hallway, interrupted only for a moment.
The woman standing in one of the intersecting corridors surprised him. Nikasu hadn’t registered her presence until he passed her by and caught a glimpse of her in his peripheral vision. She stood very still, her head bowed and obscured in the shadows. Her lean frame rested against the wall, her arms crossed across her chest, the uniform she wore one he vaguely recognized, but he could not place it in time.
"What are you doing..." the question died on his lips. He felt the sudden urge to continue, and began walking again. He had already forgotten that he had stopped.
The woman passed by the room Nikasu had left and continued down several corridors, into an adjoining part of the Elder’s Building.
There was no sign of Ornenkai. Good.
She continued until she went past several women wearing faces she recognized.
Faces like her own.
/> She stood stock still in the corridor and almost succumbed to absurd laughter.
Then, as she turned a corner, she appeared again, this time wearing a thin lilac garment.
She waited for a long time in the wide vestibule that formed part of the corridor before the Elders’ atrium, until several of the other serving men and women appeared and hurried into the leisure atrium.
Marankeil was sitting by the baths; his clone form very nearly duplicated the man he had been long ago, before he turned himself into a machine.
For a moment, while the other attendants moved to circulate refreshments and masseurs moved in with scented oils, she just stared at him.
In that fleeting moment, she wondered if it were possible to kill him now—
Even as the thought formed, she felt the horrific grip of Space and Time around her limbs, constricting her, suffocating her—
“Didn’t you hear me?” she heard him calling her, in the same voice she remembered, a voice golden and clear, like pure honey. “I asked you to bring me a refreshment.”
She realized he had seen her, but she couldn’t move, not yet.
“I said, ‘come here’,” he said, repeating himself, even though she hadn’t heard. He waited a moment, but she still kept still. The other servants were looking at her with ashen expressions of horror.
Was she mad? No one refused to obey Elder Marankeil if they wished to live!
Why was she even here? she kept screaming at herself. What could she do? Space and Time still prevented her from destroying this man—
And destroying the Seynorynaelian Empire before it had formed. She wondered why she had felt compelled to try again to kill him. Or, could it be—could it be that she hadn’t intended to kill him at all?
The room was entirely silent. The other Elders had paused a moment to stare at her, then turned away, uninterested. What was she to them? Nothing, and her life was certain to be ended soon for this display of disobedience.
Marankeil was watching her now, his eyes narrowing to slits.
“Come here.” He said, slowly, deliberately.
This time, she found her feet moving towards him.
“Is that you, Laila?” he asked in a strange way as she approached; she stopped a few paces away from him and held out a vacuum sealed container of sherin juice; with a touch of her hand on the correct panel, the lid retracted.
He ignored the juice; he was looking at her face, at her eyes.
“Yes, I’m Laila.” She replied stonily, with hostility.
He stood abruptly and took several paces towards her, until he was staring directly at her. She didn’t flinch; she let him stare.
Yet there was a manner of defiance in the way she looked at him.
His eyes worked over her expression. The servants watching nearby waited, expecting him to strike her, to order her execution.
He stood facing her, measuring her, then ordered the others to leave the atrium so that he could deal with her. She stood, not retreating a step from him, as the other Elders moved to another leisure area, the servants following behind. Once Marankeil and the stranger were alone, he reached for her hand to pull her to a cushioned panel.
She flinched where his hand grasped the soft skin of her forearm.
He dropped it, with an expression of calculation in his eyes.
“You aren’t Laila. Which one of the serving-women are you?” he demanded, in a voice used to being obeyed.
She hesitated. “You can call me by whatever name you choose.”
“Then—I’ll call you Lacerna.” He said, eyeing the juice she put down on the table.
“The shadowed one?” she whispered; he seemed to be pleased by her understanding.
“You aren’t Laila.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I haven’t seen you here, I think.”
“We’ve met before, but it has been a while.”
“Oh?” Marankeil raised a brow but didn’t smile; she noticed suddenly that he had all but lost the capacity to smile or laugh easily, freely. “I take it you do know who I am, then?”
“Yes. Elder Marankeil.”
“Then is there something wrong with your hearing, Lacerna?”
“No, I hear perfectly well.”
“But you risk your life in disobedience? You—a mere cloned servant?”
“Does anyone ever actually believe that someone else is superior to him—or her?” she returned. “Even a cloned servant is humanoid—as humanoid as you are.”
He bristled under that remark, turning a shade darker around his ears.
Then, he laughed; the sound seemed to have an odd effect on her. “True enough.” He admitted. “Why do you risk your life?”
“Because I don’t agree with what you’re doing.” She said at length.
“Oh, you don’t? What exactly don’t you agree with?”
“There are far too many particulars to go into, but in general, I disagree with your methods of maintaining civil order.”
“Civil order? Those are rather large words for a servant.”
“Perhaps, but I’m not the only one who thinks so. There are others who speak far less kindly of you.”
“Oh?” Now he was actively interested. “And what do they say?”
“Some people say you’re evil because you destroyed the Alavians for resisting the Federation, and would destroy the lai-nen if given a chance.” She replied. “Others say your punitive measures against insurrections are horrible crimes—”
“Are they? People think I’m evil, do they? But you aren’t making sense. I have no intention of running away from my crimes as you call them, and I don’t mind my own company—no, I don’t dwell upon my guilt if I am left alone—I did what was right—”
“Yet you don’t enjoy being alone, do you?”
He stared at her and thought of striking her, but couldn’t. Why? he wondered of himself. Was physical violence against one person any different from the necessity of political violence against many enemies? And did he care so much about the consequences of either any more?
Or was he so infuriated because she was right?
“Stay here, then. I won’t punish you,” he said.
“Is that a command or a request?”
“Do as you like.”
“Then I’ll stay for a while.”
“Good.” He allowed a half-smile onto his face, watching as she sat down a few paces away. “You’re wrong,” he added after a moment.
“About what?” She turned to look at him.
“You‘ve never had power or governed an entire population, so how would you know what methods of keeping order and peace are best?”
She was silent, pondering over her protest so long that she lost the desire to make it.
Meanwhile, he approached her and sat beside her in quiet triumph, then began lightly fingering the edge of her sleeve. She flinched slightly as his finger traced a line over the bare skin of her arm.
“I won’t hurt you.” He said quietly, enjoying just that moment.
Her expression was skeptical.
He smiled faintly at her, pleased by her expression and by all that she was and did. There was something about being near her that eased his bitter feeling of dissatisfaction with the world. He could not remember the last time he had felt so content, as he began playing with her hair, his fingers drawing through it gently.
She didn’t move; instead, it seemed she had gone rigid as a statue. Her behavior privately amused him, touched him, but her reserve also struck him as a kind of challenge.
He sat beside her long moments, still playing in her hair and with the fabric of her collar as the artificial breeze stirred between the tree branches of the wide atrium; parven birds chirped idly on the balcony outside that overlooked the main gardens of the Council Building. The tranquillity settl
ed in around them, and the time passed peacefully. The artificial sun in the dome beyond dimmed gradually to golden hues. Marankeil lazily leaned back on the panel, pulling her with him; she lay motionless across his chest, listening to the sound of his breath rise and fall, to the sonorous sound of his heartbeats.
He stared at the curling tresses arcing over his chest and at the soft waves at the back of her head, the arch of her neck; her face was turned away, but her hand, curled into a childishly soft fist, was pressing lightly against his shoulder.
After a long while, he reached forward on impulse to turn her face towards him; she resisted effectively, but he reached forward with the strength of his body to turn her around and succeeded; she struggled to stay still, but he forced her towards him.
He was no longer content to be kept at a distance.
When Marankeil woke several hours later on the sleeping panel, he looked around, but he was alone.
After a moment, he got up and searched the atrium; there was no one. The guards outside had seen no one leave or enter the atrium, but Lacerna had disappeared.
Or had she been just a figment of his imagination? he wondered, only briefly. He knew she hadn’t been a dream, for he hadn’t been able to dream in more than four thousand years.
Yet the servants had seen her when she arrived; at the same time, none of them knew who she was, not even the grown clones who shared the same face.
She was, he discovered from them, unknown to them.