Chapter Thirteen
It was against Ornenkai's will to attend the execution of the Eretaen princehps, but all of the Imperial Advisory Council had been required to be present. The princehps Nelur, or prince Nelur in modern Seynorynaelian, was led from the Imperial Detainment Building to the open amphitheatre sprawling under the turquoise skies of the Arialsynai dome, not far from the Imperial Palace. A spectator crowd milled by the thousands among the amphitheatre, comprised of humanoids and all kinds of aliens from hundreds of off-worlds as well as Seynorynaelians.
Prince Nelur was held paralyzed in a suspension field as soon as he had reached the appropriate spot, immobile until the field dissipated for the firing squad that surrounded him to the front and side. He was given a gun to defend himself, and as a highly skilled and elite warrior, managed to avoid the laser beams directed against him for a few moments as he dropped and rolled between the charges.
The crowds cheered as he took down several guards before he fell at last. The guards circled round him where he lay and released a hundred shots of searing laser beams into his flesh.
At least death came quickly, Ornenkai thought, turning from the sight, disgusted by the cheers of the crowd.
This was the third royal execution in the last century. Most of the aristocracy and leading officials from conquered territories had been brought back to live in Arialsynai as political prisoners, but the more noteworthy and passive ones were treated hospitably. Marankeil had sent loyal, mortal Seynorynaelian governors to rule in their stead. Only Marankeil's mechanized unit and clone and the Vice-Emperor Ornenkai had been permitted to leave Seynorynael—Marankeil had taken all measures to prevent one of the immortal Elders creating another, rival Empire nearby.
The other Elders seemed to have watched the execution with satisfaction. Of course, thy knew that if any of the revolutionaries succeeded in destroying the Main Terminus and the Elder clones, then they would die. Marankeil had ensured that the other Elders could not be resurrected—none of their memories had been stored on another world.
But as Ornenkai watched the prince in his last few moments of life, he could not help but admire the resolve of the unbroken man, who had chosen death to surrender and subjugation.
You won, my friend, he found himself thinking. Marankeil was never able to break you.
Ornenkai found himself thinking of Hinev. Hinev had appeared again in Arialsynai shortly before the Eretaen prince and had been suspected of participating in anti-Empire political intrigues, though no charges could be formed against him; Hinev was careful to erase his tracks. Hinev had tried once again to drum up support for his ancient First Race Theory, as though accepting such a scientific principle might change the course of Empire politics and society. Admittedly, he had made the alarming suggestion that his own theory might not explain the origins of the races across the galaxies, that there was more to the Enorian myths than he had once believed, myths that seemed to be describing the most ancient form of gene alteration on record.
Hinev’s radical notions might have caused more general alarm among the Imperial scientists, except that there was no longer any record of the Enorian creation myths to be found anywhere throughout the Empire. Ornenkai knew that Hinev’s ideas would never be given the consideration they deserved.
The people called him the “Hinev Pretender”; Ornenkai found it amusing that the population had never known that Hinev and his explorers weren’t already dead for more reasons than simple time dilation. Of course, the population thought Hinev was dead; no one gave much thought to his explorers, except that they were the established method of gaining new territory, part of the natural order of things, like the rain that always fell even in years when the runaway greenhouse effect began teetering towards drought, even in the years when runaway glaciation brought only snow, until Marankeil’s scientists found a way to restore the climate to the average mean.
Ornenkai hadn’t seen Hinev recently, not since Hinev presided over the last clone transfer and shortly afterward, gave his half-strange speech on Enorian genetic manipulation altering the first race, a speech that the Imperial Scientific Council still ridiculed to its supreme amusement. For more than six thousand years since the Empire's foundation, the appearances of Hinev which the population called the Hinev pretenders, thinking each one was a different man, had protested against the death of the ancient Federation, and each time, his ludicrously solemn antics only seemed more amusing to everyone in the elite.
Ornenkai often wondered if they called him the Hinev Pretender as an insult.
Ornenkai kept silent about it, as did Marankeil and the other Elders who knew that the pretenders really were Hinev.
Hinev was a stubborn bastard, though! Ornenkai thought. No matter how difficult his situation became, Hinev kept on fighting against Marankeil whenever he could muster the strength to do so.
At the moment, the planet Seynorynael was divided between those who still privately objected to Seynorynaelian rule and others who enjoyed their supreme status, but fear of the Empire Council and Marankeil himself kept the dissatisfied population from acting or speaking against the Emperor. Marankeil's rule became more firmly entrenched with each passing year. It was nearly impossible to conceive of deposing him. The few traitors were punished by exile if they were lucky, and by death if they led a conspiracy against him.
In the moments after Nelur’s execution, Ornenkai discovered that he was no longer angry at Hinev. In truth, he had mourned the genius scientist's disappearance. It had been many years since the man calling himself Fynals Hinev had suddenly given up his anti-Empire campaign and left Arialsynai. Ornenkai wondered why, howeve, Hinev had disappeared.
The unknown reason was that Arialsynai had become to Hinev a place of misery and turmoil; and Hinev had known he could escape the circus Arialsynai had become.
Ornenkai wondered if he himself might ever do the same.
A thousand years after the latest Ephor uprising, the first to occur since the planet had first been conquered, the last of the third cycle of Ephor Wars were finally over.
The sudden end of a long-standing obstacle to the consolidation of Marankeil's rule as Emperor had been quelled at last. But amid the festivities and celebrations that swept the city of Arialsynai, Ornenkai felt an odd bereavement.
For a long time Vice-Emperor Ornenkai had known that Hinev had gone to the cold, peaceful lands of the Celestian provinces across the Great Sea, taking with him a few Seynorynaelians who wanted no part of the new Imperial ways and the Feiari refugees, whose own planet had long ago been destroyed by an asteroid collision.
These Feiari refugees were some of the last handful of their people, and had faced persecution alone and separated in Arialsynai until Hinev's words convinced them to withdraw from the world rather than follow the Eretaens and other off-worlders on the self-destructive course of revolution. Only Hinev could have convinced the proud and angry Feiari that they owed it to the memory of their once numerous people to survive, in any way that they could.
Ornenkai had heard odd rumors about the new Celestian colony from the Martial Force representatives of small cities in the remote Celestian province. Hinev's Celestian colony had been built on the shore of the Great Sea far to the north of the other Celestian cities and the neighboring Kilkoran provinces, outside the weather safe-ring.
The Celestian colony kept to themselves, and it was said that while they had become entirely self-sufficient, the colony possessed no transports, shuttles, and only rudimentary forms of radio communication. Ornenkai had to admire their dedication—they had managed to revert to simplicity and isolate themselves on the most politically active and technologically advanced planet in the seven galaxy groups of the Seynorynaelian Empire.
Ornenkai knew that Marankeil would not interfere—Hinev's retreat was in fact more than Marankeil could have wished for. Not only could he do no further harm to the Empire, but Marankeil knew
exactly where Hinev was and how to persuade him to cooperate, if he ever needed the scientist again.
The iridescent bow of the imperial aquashuttle had just reached the shore of the vast Kilkoran Sea outside the Celestian colony, and the clone Vice-Emperor Ornenkai disembarked upon the sandy shore by Hinev's dwelling, blinking in the bright light under the turquoise skies, where no dome protected him from the light of their star Valeria. There was no sound of transports in the air, no sound of the neighboring construction that never seemed to end in Arialsynai outside the Imperial Forum, only the tranquil rhythm of the sonorous waves and the occasional cry of a ceiras bird wheeling above.
"Well, well. Ornenkai!” Hinev cried in amusement, shaking his head. “Tell me, is this merely a visit or do you intend to join our little settlement?" Hinev stood on the wooden deck overlooking the sea, where he had been conducting a lesson before several pupils. Hinev was surrounded by a half-dozen Feiari, part-Feiari, and Seynorynaelian children, all of whom had come to listen and learn from the great founder, a man that their colony Elders said had lived more than a thousand years.
Ornenkai laughed as he regarded the face of the half-race scientist draw into a challenging smile. Hinev seemed in a much better mental state than Ornenkai had seen him in since the long gone days of The Firien Project. Had the peace and quiet restored Hinev’s tortured soul? he wondered.
"I thought perhaps I might join you, but I must admit I came on an impulse." Ornenkai answered, stepping from the last step of the shuttle gangway onto the low platform outside Hinev’s dwelling that overlooked the sea. "Things have been very difficult in Arialsynai lately—for me." He admitted, uncertain why he felt the impulse to be honest.
Hinev noted the Vice-Emperor Ornenkai's slow response in the ancient language, but said nothing about it. He turned aside and offered Ornenkai a seat on the deck, which Ornenkai accepted. One of the pure Feiari descendants, a young, kind boy, stared at the Vice-Emperor in confusion at the odd language; the boy marveled that Hinev had understood the strange man. Ornenkai, in turn, took no offense to the fact that these children had no idea who he was, that he was the Vice-Emperor of their planet and the entire seven galactic groups ruled by Seynorynael, and yet no one knew who he was here.
"No, Ornenkai," Hinev said, and shook his head wistfully, even as he motioned for the children to continue with their lessons, "even if you gave me your word that you wanted to join us, I would know better than to expect you to stay here. But I have had enough of arguments.”
“Arguments? No more talk of ethics and morals?” Ornenkai said, in jest.
“Perhaps a little,” Hinev admitted. “But I now prefer the sound of silence to talk, if you must know.”
Ornenkai laughed.
“However,” Hinev continued. “I will welcome you here, my friend, for as long as you are willing to remain—it is our policy here in Celestian to turn none away and to force none to stay."
Friend? Ornenkai processed the word. Thereafter, he couldn’t seem to strike the sound of it from his thoughts.
"I thank you for your hospitality." Ornenkai nodded, trying not to show how much the gesture had meant to him. It is good to see you again, Hinev—my friend, he thought after a moment, as Hinev retreated to send a message to the humanroids within his dwelling to arrange a welcoming feast.
Hinev turned around. "As it is to see you," he said.
"The sea air must do me good," Ornenkai commented a few days later, early one morning. Ornenkai lounged on the deck of Hinev’s verandah; it was several hours before Hinev's students were to arrive for a foray into the wild lands beyond the colony.
“The sea air has a magic quality, to be sure.” Hinev agreed.
"I can’t tell you how much I missed the simple luxury of sleep while I lived as a mechanized unit.” Ornenkai said abruptly. “But I imagine you of all people understand that." He added, looking at Hinev as he picked up a piece of sherin fruit that lay on the table.
"Not much for the morning meal, eh Hinev?!” Ornenkai commented, laughing at the lack of provisions in Hinev's dwelling. The fruits leftover from Ornenkai’s welcoming feast were now nearly gone, but for the sherin fruit, and the rest of Hinev’s offerings were but gruel, urbin roots, and taigh rolls for the children who studied under his tutelage.
Hinev smiled. “I confess I’m not used to the role of playing host. Provisions in the Celestian colony aren’t as abundant as they might be, so I don’t partake of them—”
“Yes, Hinev, unlike the rest of us, you don’t need to worry about the minor matter of eating from day to day.” Ornenkai said, in an amused way. “I do remember what that is like.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Tell me then, would your colonists object to a shipment of Imperial provisions?” Ornenkai wondered, with an air of intended magnanimity.
“They prefer to cultivate their own food resources,” Hinev explained, gazing in distraction across the mirror-like waters of the Kilkoran Sea.
“Then I shall have a supply delivered for myself so that I don’t wear away at their stock.” Ornenkai declared. “And for the children, I think it can do no harm to have some frisciri sweets included among the rest—”
Hinev interrupted with laughter.
“Surely your colonists wouldn’t object to a gift of generosity by one who has imposed upon their benevolent—” Ornenkai began.
“No, no,” Hinev said, waving a hand. “I merely laughed because I never really guessed you planned to stay long enough to require additional provisions.”
“You extended a welcome—”
“Yes, I did. And now that you’ve mentioned it, I should tell you that I’ve already spoken to one of our engineers about building a dwelling for you over on the northern shore—over there.” Ornenkai followed Hinev’s eyes to the clearing beyond the nearest peninsula, where a small holding had once stood in ancient days, before the original Celestian province was devastated by arctic storms.
Now, Ornenkai laughed, but it was not derisive or artificial laughter; he found himself genuinely pleased by the news.
“I took the liberty of arranging it when you mentioned that you had no immediate plans to return to the Empire Council.” Hinev continued. “Tell me, what does draw a Vice-Emperor from his seat of power?" Hinev asked curiously.
"I don't know,” Ornenkai admitted and shook his head. “Perhaps—perhaps—no, I guess I really don’t know.” He laughed.
“I think I know why.” Hinev shrugged.
“Oh?”
“You and I—we’ve stretched ourselves too thin over the years.” Hinev said in a contemplative way. “Eventually, a man tires of endless ambition, especially when he realizes it has become the purpose driving him, rather than his means to achieving what he really wants.”
“You think I don’t know what I want?”
“No, I think that what you want is here.” Hinev replied calmly. “You think you want to be like me, and that I will be able to grant you what you want. Perhaps when I’ve recuperated long enough, you think—I’ll become the man I was, enough to help you. And yes, perhaps that will happen.
“In fact, you’ve already helped me. It is so very refreshing to speak to a man whose thoughts one can’t read telepathically, as I’m sure you’ll agree. But you’ve also come here because—I think you can’t have what you want. What you truly want is beyond your reach, but the peace of this land is a soothing remedy for a man in search of a purpose, and a man who has grown impatient with waiting for what he has long desired.”
“You speak for both of us.” Ornenkai observed quietly. “Tell me, Hinev, will this land give me back the power to dream?”
Hinev looked up.
"Was that the price of your immortality as well?” he laughed. “No, Ornenkai, the answer is no. At least—I have found it so.”
"No word yet on the return of Selesta
," Ornenkai announced over the threshold of Hinev’s balcony; Hinev seemed not at all surprised by Ornenkai’s sudden re-appearance. Ornenkai had been called away for a brief satellite council meeting in Kilkor and had only just returned, when he found Hinev overlooking the Kilkoran Sea. Ornenkai knew he could always find Hinev here in the early hours of the morning.
"The most beautiful sunrise of any of the Federation worlds," Hinev commented, distracted.
Ornenkai winced at the words, at Hinev’s insistence upon defying the power of the Empire, but he knew that Hinev had not regressed into his multi-personality disorder or into his own past. He knew that Hinev refused to speak of the Empire in the Celestian colony.
"Where did you disappear to, all of those years ago—among the Federation planets?" Ornenkai asked, trying to be congenial.
Hinev ignored the question. "I think you will leave Seynorynael someday, Ornenkai. Long before the supernova. And not for a delegation. You will leave Seynorynael for good.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s in your eyes." Hinev said.
Ornenkai looked away. "Perhaps I do think about a change of scenery from time to time," he conceded.
"So, the Selesta hasn’t returned," Hinev sighed. "Then I’ve made my decision."
"You’re going to remove Calendra from suspended animation then?" Ornenkai asked. He knew the answer; he had received Hinev's call to him in Kilkor and left the meetings early. Hinev needed the help of a man with equal knowledge of biological systems to try to restore Calendra's life.
"There’s nothing else for it," Hinev said, swallowing a lump in his throat.
“But you hate to break the promise you made to Kiel.”
“Yes.”
“Hinev, as you said, there’s nothing else for it. Calendra will die soon in that suspension chamber, without ever having lived a full life. Remember, I spoke with Kiel before the serum experiments. Kiel knew that the chambers have always had design flaws—they weren’t meant to last more than ten thousand years.”
“I expected the explorers to return sooner than this,” Hinev said.
Ornenkai suppressed a wave of guilt. It wasn’t his doing that Selesta had been gone for so long, even though he had been a part of the Empire Council’s decision! he told himself. The thought was of little comfort.
"Seven thousand years is a long time, Hinev. They’ve been gone so long—we have to face the possibility that they may never return. There hasn’t been word of Selesta in some time. And moving Calendra to another suspension capsule won’t reverse the age effects on her body—just as you said. Only one of the ancient suspension chambers described by the Firien record-keepers would have preserved her life—”
“Yes,” Hinev agreed. “And they had all disappeared by the time I returned with Kudenka's explorers."
Ornenkai coughed, paling against his will. He knew what had happened to the rest of those chambers. Did Hinev suspect Marankeil’s involvement in the chambers’ disappearance? Of course, Ornenkai thought. Hinev had probably always known, ever since the days of The Firien Project.
"Kiel will understand, my friend.” Ornenkai said quietly, with a rare note of sincerity. “You’ve done all you could to save Calendra."
“But I never gave her the serum, did I?” Hinev said, turning to him. “And now, now it would be too late.”
"What are you looking at, Calendra?" Hinev asked, startling the lovely young woman standing on the balcony. She jumped and turned, her eyes flaring in surprise; Hinev suppressed a twinge of guilt, thinking how her long-lashed, soft eyes, round as moons, always managed to seem vulnerable and sad, even when she seemed perfectly happy.
Hinev often remembered back across the years to the time when he had first seen Calendra; she had been lively and innocent back then, during the years of The Firien Project, and though she retained her integrity, he often sensed now that the sadness was gaining ground over Calendra; she was not long for the world.
Calendra had disappeared after the evening meal; but somehow Hinev knew that he would find her on the balcony.
"The stars are beautiful at night here.” She said, motioning above.
“Yes, they are indeed.”
“And their reflection on the water reminds me of the view at my home in Firien," she said, shivering a little in the cold wind that blew over the sea coast. “You came from Firien, too, didn’t you?” she asked innocently.
Hinev nodded.
Firien...
At the word, a sense memory assaulted him, the scent of the ferny, mossy undergrowth in the lyra groves, the smell of the coming winter when he and his mother Undina had gathered the bare sedwi logs for fuel to keep warm...
“Yes, I was raised in the Firien province,” Hinev admitted abruptly, managing to sound light-hearted.
“I wonder, I wonder why Kiel grew to love it so,” Calendra said, with a light little laugh that held an undercurrent of grief. “He used to say he was going to buy one of the empty Firien dwellings someday when he got his compensation for The Firien Project. He used to say that there was a beautiful place far to the north he had found that would be just perfect for us to live there together, if no one else wanted it—” she stopped.
“Calendra?” Hinev asked gently when she kept staring at the ground.
“Hinev, do you think he’ll be back soon?” she asked, in a small voice.
Hinev looked at her, wishing he knew what to do, what to say to her.
“I don’t know.”
“So, I’ll already be dead.” She said clinically, nodding once. “Yes. I’ll be dead when he comes back—”
She bit her lip but did not cry.
“Calendra—” Hinev said, and his voice suddenly cracked.
“Where is Ornenkai?" Calendra asked suddenly. "Is he still trying to put together a holo-room out of old parts?" she laughed.
Hinev shook his head, marveling at her. Had he been wrong so long ago, when he refused to see her strength? No, her strength wasn’t physical, but her heart was stronger than he had ever guessed in the days of The Firien Project. Only now, so many years later, was he able to judge her accurately, not with the complacent hubris that had blinded him, that had made him believe that those who had no education and average reasoning abilities could hardly be valuable to the explorer mission.
Calendra’s courage, Hinev saw at last, far exceeded his own.
Then he laughed. Hinev admitted to himself that he found it strange that Calendra had accepted the Elder Ornenkai so warmly over the past half-year; more than that, he found it strange that neither he nor Ornenkai had been obliged to tell her who Ornenkai was before she figured out his identity, even though the Elder Ornenkai she had known as one of Kiel's colleagues at Firien had been a mechanized unit, not a human clone!
"I guess I don't know what I'm missing.” She laughed. “They didn’t have a holo-room when I grew up, and I don't know what advances the Federation has made since the explorers left.” That thought seemed to quiet her for a moment.
“Ornenkai knows he doesn’t have to follow our taboos against unnecessary forms of technology here, but he refuses to just have a holo-room brought in from the outside. Now I call that stubborn, don’t you?” Hinev said in amusement, at the same time very careful as usual not to mention the Empire or Ornenkai’s present title to her, by their mutual consent. What would the present mean to Calendra, who had been born in another aeon, ages past? What would be the point of disillusioning her now?
“Hinev, you do believe that Kiel is still alive, don’t you?" Calendra asked.
"I don’t doubt it," Hinev reassured her.
Calendra sighed. "Yes, Ornenkai is stubborn,” she agreed at last. “He seems to have given up the luxuries I remember he used to bring in from all over Seynorynael, yet he still can’t get it out of his head to install a holo-room for the children! Try
to reason with him, Hinev.”
“I’ve tried,” Hinev sighed. “It’s no use, you know that by now.”
“Yes, I guess I do.”
“Ornenkai feels that the Celestian children can learn better about the other provinces and the ancient history with projections of real holo-footage.”
“But they have imaginations!” Calendra laughed. “Why do they need to see everything?”
“Seeing is believing, I’ve always said. And Ornenkai says that to deprive the youth of an intimate knowledge of the rest of the world will make them forget their virtues. He says the younger Celestian people will forget why the Celestian colony chose to maintain its independence if they don’t know what the world is like. He says they should know what goes on in the world, so they don’t repeat the same mistakes as everyone else."
"You agree?" Calendra asked.
"Perhaps, and perhaps not, but I am willing to see where this leads, or else he wouldn’t be working in my home!" Hinev laughed, then grew serious. "But we’ve discussed the files already. I only have simple footage, from the days of my youth, and around the time of The Firien Project, and as you know, that was long ago. Anyway, one holo-room won’t change—I should say corrupt life here very much.”
"Has the Celestian colony grown so very much since its founding?" Calendra asked for the first time.
"Yes.” Hinev nodded. “Initially there were fewer than five hundred colonists, and more than three quarters of that number were from Feiar. Early on, we received a few hundred refugees from Helliar, and more still from Feiar living across the galaxy Cluster. In almost three thousand years, the number has increased to over four hundred thousand."
"Hinev—I know that this colony has lost contact with the outer world.” Calendra said, pausing. “I don’t pretend to ignore the changes that must have occurred to make such isolation necessary—you see, it’s clear that few of the others understand me, my ancient dialect, even those of mostly Seynorynaelian descent, and I confess I find it difficult to understand them and their speech.”
“Yes,” Hinev said, when she stopped, contemplating her words.
“But—anyway, I’d just like to thank both you and Ornenkai for your company and for the hospitality you’ve shown me.” She said. ”I won’t ask about your motives for releasing me from suspension, but I would like to know, you see I have this feeling that—Kiel won’t be returning to me, and I would like to know—it wouldn’t have been possible for me to survive long enough to see him again, would it?"
"I think not," Hinev said, but Calendra refused to cry or be comforted.
"I appreciate your honesty, Hinev," she said. “If only I could tell Kiel how sorry I am that I won’t be able to see him again. He thinks I’m strong enough to survive, but—I won’t be there when he returns—”
“You are far too good, Calendra. Too good for any of us.”
She looked at him, uncertain what he meant.
“But you shouldn’t thank us. You shouldn’t thank me.” He said, his voice hard. “We did you a disservice, even Kiel, myself most of all. I hurt you, Calendra. I stole the best years of your life. You should hate me, rather than thanking me. You should not love me and call me friend.”
She mistook his meaning. Before he could correct her, she nodded sadly, thinking he had meant to reprimand her for her silly behavior, or for her display of weakness, for being so foolish as to forgive rather than despise the people around her.
“I love to care for others, though it may be silly of me, and foolish to trust,” said Calendra. “But love gives me strength, and happiness.” Hinev stared at her, as she fought tears, feeling as though she had torn his heart right down the middle.
“I’m sorry to be weak and soft. I just can’t hate you, Hinev. You gave Kiel what he wanted most—a chance to do so much for all the world. How could I stand between him and his greater destiny? And how can I hate you for giving him the opportunity to put his talents to better use than trying to survive in the poor north of Firien?”
Tears slipped down her cheeks, but her eyes had a light of resolution in them as she spoke.
“You see, Hinev,” she explained softly. “I always knew I was nothing. I had no greater destiny, I knew that. That’s why I wouldn’t hold him back.”
Hinev stared at Calendra; with a sense of the miraculous, he saw that she really didn’t harbor any grudges against him, or against Kiel.
“You’re wrong, Calendra.” Hinev said. Her eyes narrowed expectantly. “You’re not nothing. I think perhaps—as I said, you are indeed far better than the rest of us.”
And he found he meant every word.
The warm season had come, and for the residents of Celestian, the waters of the Kilkoran Sea had warmed considerably, inviting the residents to the sandy shore in the afternoons. Life in the Celestian colony was filled with hard work, but the crops had been planted early that year, and construction had drawn to an end for the day. Hinev had watched families pass by from his balcony, carrying supplies for a picnic by the shore.
Tempted by the prospect of enjoying the cool water, Hinev headed down for a swim.
A few minutes later, he heard Calendra's feet slapping on the deck and her concerned shout from above the waves. Raising his head above the water again, he was greeted by her anxious face.
"I thought—I'm sorry, Hinev, but I forgot.” She explained apologetically, all at once realizing her error. “You were down there so long, I thought perhaps you had drowned. I didn't remember that you couldn’t—"
"That's quite all right, Calendra." Hinev laughed, genuinely touched by her concern. Pulling himself from the water, he closed his eyes to remove the water particles and stepped onto the first step, completely dry. "I thought you were still away visiting the Senasus family." He remarked, thinking that perhaps Calendra had been of more good to him than he to her. Her presence alone seemed to have had a remarkable healing effect on him, as well as upon Ornenkai.
"I was, but I came back early. Ornenkai said that he would be returning this afternoon."
"Yes," Hinev said thoughtfully, another pause that Calendra didn't understand. She sensed that there was a strange unspoken bond between Hinev and Ornenkai, and though the two often acted like friends, their emotions could change to animosity at a moment's notice when the conversation moved towards the activities that had begun to tear Ornenkai away from the Celestian province. To Calendra, it seemed there was an unspoken grudge between the two of them, something Ornenkai had done which Hinev could not entirely forgive.
Calendra couldn’t imagine what it was. But Hinev and Ornenkai were invaluably dear to her—because they had known Kiel, because they had become a family to her, the only one she would ever have again. She had recognized Ornenkai's identity years before when she awoke—no one spoke the ancient language but she, Hinev, and Ornenkai, and at times he had let reminiscences slip before he checked himself, before he openly admitted she was correct in guessing who he was.
She never did learn how Ornenkai had returned to humanoid form, but she had long ago forgiven the Elder whose Council had sponsored the serum injections, and the scientist who had administered them—Hinev. They hadn’t done anything to her out of spite; and yes, she knew, she knew how very hard the two omnipotent figures were both trying to save her insignificant life.
But were they so omnipotent? she began to wonder, for now she knew them, and understood for the first time that they were only as imperfectly human as she was.
Twelve years after Calendra's awakening, her body at last began to show the signs of the degenerative fatigue of the suspension sleep that Hinev had predicted. Her legs began to weaken to the point that she could not stand, and for a time Hinev used his telekinetic ability to help her walk and move.
Then several tendays after she lost mobility of her arms, Calendra found she could not stand or move on her own power wi
thout the stumbling of crippled legs, yet she didn’t want to be animated by another. Every moment, her body ached with the pain of her bones and joints that decayed and shriveled from within. Once she had been confined to her sleeping panel, Hinev could not bear her suffering and kept the pain from her with a telepathic block on her spine.
The children came to visit her as she worsened day by day, but in time she asked that no one apart from Ornenkai come to visit her at Hinev’s dwelling, where Hinev continued to care for her. She began to see a conspiracy among the living and was jealous of them and their activity, watching the families with their picnics, then listening to the children playing on the beach when her body grew too weak to turn her head for a glance outside. Even the song of the kiri birds gave her a resentful feeling.
And then, one afternoon, she decided that she had had enough of the pain. She did not care to prolong the feeling that was robbing her of herself—the pain that was taking away who she was by turning her into a resentful, embittered creature struggling against death.
She wanted to be herself again, and feel no bitterness. That meant that she wanted to let death win at last, for she knew she would die soon.
“Hinev, Ornenkai, there is too much to say...” Calendra said weakly, her throat parched and cracked, her once exquisite eyes now sad and bleary, her face gaunt and pale.
Hinev looked down at the rumpled figure lying on a primitive cot in his dwelling, in the sunlit room beside the balcony, and tried not to let her see the grief that had seized him in these last moments; he knew she was dying. He had seen enough of death to know that she would be gone within the hour.
Calendra watched him as he smiled at her, the man who had taken care of her since her awakening into the unfamiliar realm that the future was to her.
Hinev swallowed a lump in his throat. Calendra—how much he had come to care for her. She alone of all the people in the Celestian colony knew the horror of the multi-personality disorder that he suffered from. She had been there, in the moments when Hinev had forgotten himself, and her presence had often pulled him from the depths of his artificial memories and back into the present, back into himself.
Only now that she was dying did he realize how much she had done for him, how instrumental she had been in returning him to himself, how much more he enjoyed her innocent heart and the wonder of her eyes than the bitter depths of human experience he had known so intimately.
Hinev looked aside at Ornenkai, measuring the Vice-Emperor’s expression.
Ornenkai held Calendra’s hand tenderly.
“Shall I bring you to the holo-room?” Ornenkai asked.
“No,” Calendra managed weakly. “I don’t need to see an image of Kiel. I picture him well enough in my mind, you see?" She coughed, dissembling the spell her light, sweet voice cast on her listeners.
Calendra closed her eyes as if to rest them for the moment, then took a horrible, rasping breath.
As Hinev watched her, to his surprise her thoughts reached out to him, inviting him into her mind, into her memories. But he hesitated to cross the barrier between their identities. He could not risk another mindlink. His own identity might begin again to drown in the pool of alien memories he already held.
Then she looked at him with her sad eyes, hollow and swollen now, watery and without luster, and his heart wrenched.
Please, dear Hinev, I know the sacrifice you will be making—but I want my thoughts to be with Kiel someday, and then some part of us will never be separated. If you can, please do this one last thing for me?
After a moment, Hinev abruptly nodded.
Calendra gave him her beautiful memories, the memories of a woman who had been poor and kind, never lost her integrity, who had loved a man so desperately she had sacrificed her life to grant his greatest wish—
When Hinev looked again, Calendra wore a sad little smile, a smile of gratitude, and he saw that she was content in that moment to know that a part of her love lived on. Calendra had never held any malice towards Kiel for leaving her; she had nothing to forgive, and what she regretted, she had now let go. In her heart, she wished Kiel only happiness—
And in that moment, she died.
Hinev and Ornenkai each held on to one frail hand for a time, as the sound of the waves behind them continued unending and meaningless.
Then Ornenkai left the Celestian colony without a word and did not return.
As the obsidian Imperial shuttle descended through the shuttle window of the Arialsynai dome and into the city, Ornenkai cast a weary eye on the technological sea of hard plastics and metallic and crystalloid alloys that now composed the buildings of the city.
He hardly recognized Arialsynai. But then, he hadn’t been back to the city since he had gone to live in Celestian, more than a thousand years ago.
The few meetings Ornenkai had been called to attend had been representative council meetings in Kilkor, and a few times he had attended Empire Council meetings via satellite from there, communicating through the transmissions to his mechanized unit in the Main Terminus.
And after leaving the Celestian colony, Ornenkai had slowly journeyed across the planet, observing the changes wrought by the Empire in his long absence. There were still places the ancient Vice-Emperor had never visited, but as he traveled, he had begun to discover that few of the planet's sights remained true to the recollections of his youth.
Now the glimmering tall white buildings of Ariyalsynai that Ornenkai remembered, built from expensive but exquisite Cordan carefully fashioned into lovely colonnades, aqueducts, ornate columns and fountains, were no more. He could see no pedestrian traffic and would not have been surprised to learn that it had been forbidden, and the trees and parks he had created between the city streets and buildings had been uprooted. There were no clear skyway passages above the city. Instead the shuttle navigated through the spokes of horizontal corridors built into the structures of the new buildings to connect the city transport internally.
Ornenkai was inordinately relieved that the Arboretum remained as it always had been, adjacent to the Imperial Advisory Council Building.
"Welcome back to Aryalsynai, Vice-Emperor Ornenkai," the pilot of the shuttle said as they made their descent into a small astroport on top of a city building.
Ornenkai hardly understood him at all.
Selerael knew that Ornenkai had returned to the city. He had avoided the Imperial Palace and returned to the Arboretum, but the relative peace he had found there in the old days was no more. She wondered how he reacted to the changes he observed, but she had no intention of letting him see her again.
During Ornenkai's absence, the number of scientists and Martial Force regulators had increased in the inner dome of the city where the Advisory Council and Imperial Palace were located, and Ornenkai's old laboratory and chambers had been completely dismantled. Even Selerael found it increasingly difficult to gain passage into the inner dome buildings without being noticed at some point by the many guards on patrol. Of course, she knew that she could protect herself, but she nevertheless feared that the more she dared to use her abilities, the more likely Marankeil would discover her, figure out who she was, and flee to some unknown star system.
She wondered if Ornenkai would leave Aryalsynai after having grown so used to the tranquillity of the Celestian colony, but in time, she saw that Ornenkai had returned to his old way of life.
He became again a planetary emissary, a delegate, a conciliator, and went on occasion across the planet Seynorynael, where he was hosted in turn by the provincial governors and elite society; he spent his days in Aryalsynai among the Elders, at Marankeil’s side once more, who professed loudly to have missed his friend and asked the Vice-Emperor quite often where he had been for so many long years.
Ornenkai also spent a deal of time on his own, within his private suite of the Imperial Palace, where, by all accounts, he was known to have spent an en
tire century without so much as taking a single step outside his inner atrium.
Ornenkai searched and searched for something worthwhile to occupy his time and passed the time in whatever pursuit was drawn to his attention, yet nothing satisfied him.
And then one day, more than six thousand years since he had left Hinev and the Celestian colony, news swept the city of Aryalsynai that several thousand Kayrian descendants and a few thousand Tulorian Seynorynaelians had departed for a shuttle to the Celestian colony.
Ornenkai waited nervously for news that the Emperor would retaliate against the deserters, but in the end, and as days turned into tendays, Marankeil did nothing to prevent their withdrawal.
The Emperor wasn’t worried about Hinev, or about the supremely backward Celestian colony.
After a while, the Celestian colony was scarcely brought up in conversation, and when the people thought of it, it was with the accompanying feeling that the colony might be dissolved on the Emperor's whim without provocation or warning. The name of Celestian was spoken as though the colony were doomed and was shortly to meet its end.
A thousand years passed. Nothing happened to the Celestian colony.
The notable elite of Aryalsynai seemed to have forgotten Celestian’s very existence, until suddenly, more than half of the residents of Firien City and a large number of residents from northern Aryalsynai inexplicably headed to the remote province of Celestian and did not return.
The gift from Hinev arrived unexpectedly. Ornenkai had been away visiting the cities of the Derran plains to speak with the city governors when the package was delivered to the Arboretum, where Ornenkai was at that moment.
"You were almost successful, Ornenkai. If you had stayed a little longer, then you would have had your dream," Hinev's cryptic message read. The ancient letters meant nothing to the praetorian guards who delivered them, but Ornenkai read it with a strange sense of curiosity and nostalgia.
Ornenkai tapped the message receiver and listened to the ancient device that Hinev had used to record his voice, a device so primitive that the praetorian guard hadn’t known what to do with it.
Hinev had chosen to speak in the tongue of the ancients, a language that no living Seynorynaelian would understand, except the ancient Elder Council itself. "After Calendra's death, I could not rest until I had solved the puzzle. Since then, I have been deciding whether or not to take you over the barrier, for I have little use for this. I hope my trust in you is not misguided, Ornenkai. Tell me, was there much to celebrate upon your return?"
Ornenkai took the hauler containing the large rectangular case into his new laboratory where not even Marankeil's prying eyes could reach, even if the Emperor were still interested in his ancient companion. As the years had passed, Marankeil had retreated into his own world; he and Ornenkai saw little of each other.
Even after he had returned from the Celestian colony, Ornenkai had shown no desire to fight against the Imperial Order that had been established in his absence in Celestian. The generations of ordinary people on Seynorynael knew no other way of life; disrupting their reality with stories of a free, egalitarian, and humanitarian past would not have shaken their faith in the structure and supremacy of the Empire.
Ornenkai had realized the futility of trying to change anything. There were times when he even imagined that he was already dead and in purgatory, and other times when he merely wished he were dead.
At the moment, Ornenkai stared at the contents of Hinev’s gift. Ornenkai stared at it for a long time, though at first he wasn’t sure what it was. Then he realized that the missing pieces of the puzzle of Hinev’s message were there, if he was willing to figure them out. Hinev had laid out a strange schematic for only one other being to unravel—the ancient scientist that Ornenkai had been would perceive how to read the instructions to make the connections; Ornenkai would know what to do with the millions of micro-unit sized pieces of machinery that Hinev had sent for Ornenkai to assemble.
Ornenkai doubted he could ever duplicate Hinev's device unaided, the device he now saw with a moment of insight from among the schematic prints—indeed Hinev seemed to have engineered it to be so elusively detailed, in order that only Ornenkai of all the Elders might benefit from the creation of the gift.
Hinev had given him the pieces of the first perfect suspension capsule ever designed.
It couldn’t be! Ornenkai’s heart raced. How? And now of all times?
Hinev had at last discovered how to duplicate the ancient suspension chambers of Enor! From that discovery, yes, Ornenkai knew—Hinev must have then figured out how to temporarily restore a body held in imperfect suspension—to give a spent life such as Calendra's back more than its ordinary life span!
What they had worked on so long to save Calendra—and it had taken far longer than either of them could have imagined to make it a reality!
Alone, Hinev had unlocked the secrets of the Enorian suspension capsules. Unlike the preservation capsule that had eventually robbed Calendra's life, the Enorian capsules had been able to preserve the Enorian refugees for billions of years.
Now, if the schematic could be believed, it seemed that Hinev had found the way to make the rejuvenating effects of suspension sleep linger in the body of the host for ten thousand years after awakening. According to the calculations Ornenkai now held in his clone hands, once his clone body began to wither, a short sleep in the suspension capsule would rejuvenate his body again for another ten thousand years.
Ornenkai’s eyes lingered over Hinev's notes; Hinev wrote that he had tested the chamber and discovered its calming effects for himself. While sleeping in the chamber, Hinev recorded that he had been able to dream for the first time in more than twenty thousand years.
When he knew he had succeeded, Hinev had carefully dismantled the machine and sent it to Ornenkai. Yes, dismantling it was the only way to keep it safe from anyone else, for not even Marankeil could have followed Hinev’s schematic. Marankeil might have understood the machinery, yes, but Hinev’s code was more than mere biomechanical engineering codes. Hinev’s schematic hinged on clues only Ornenkai understood, Ornenkai who had lived in Celestian for many long years.
Hinev’s gift was for Ornenkai, and Ornenkai alone.
But Hinev had to have known that the chamber alone would allow him the peace in which to dream like a true human being, Ornenkai protested. Nevertheless, Hinev had still given the chamber to Ornenkai, hoping that if the chamber could have such an effect upon a body that had undergone serum-induced metamorphosis such as his own, it could heal even Ornenkai's original body, hopelessly damaged after twenty thousand years in suspended animation.
Why did Hinev do this?
No matter why, in order for the process of restoration to work, Ornenkai would have to act soon—according to Hinev's calculations, Ornenkai's original body was approaching the upper bound of the limit when the rejuvenating effects of the process might work. He had but a narrow window of time to fulfill his greatest dream.
Hinev had known his greatest dream! Hinev had known that Ornenkai wanted to live again inside the body in which he had been born into the world.
Some time later, as he examined the pieces of the machinery, Ornenkai came across a note Hinev had written.
“You know she will never love you, Ornenkai. But I wish you luck.”
In a sudden rage, Ornenkai threw the metallic message grid across the room, but it weighed nothing and fell uselessly in the middle of the floor among the other pieces.
Ornenkai paused, breathing hard.
So Hinev had known all along that he loved Alessia. And Hinev thought Ornenkai would choose at once to restore himself.
Hinev also knew that if Ornenkai returned to his original body, he would never be able to win Alessia. No, Hinev’s explorers, Kiel, and especially Marankeil, would never allow the Vice-Emperor to join them on Selesta, not as long
as his identity was known to them.
Unfortunately, the human face of Ornenkai was the second most recognizable across the Seynorynaelian Empire.
On n'est jamais trahi que par ses siens. One is never betrayed except by one's own friends.