Marea-Siris Interlandi spent the first day of subject 237's dormant state in Research, above ground, in a building teeming with archivists and historians. Her new assignment. Research was where retired habitat supervisors were pensioned, even thirty-five-year-old supervisors with two advanced degrees and three years field experience on the most classified project in the country.
She'd won the habitat supervisor position because Dr. Mozun handpicked her. But she was young and knew it. No one lasted forever in the habitat.
At least, Research wanted her. This wasn't always the case. The head of Research, an ancient archivist named Wayne Vadas, after all these years still turned cartwheels at the chance to crack 237's memories. Siris Interlandi had what he wanted.
When Antoni Kinder dug up Hephaestion, Dr. Vadas was a young anthropologist. The subject said it remembered only a fraction of its life, and no one, not even Vadas, believed a word of it.
Research hadn't changed much in seven decades.
Well, it had changed a little. Seventeen days ago, when 237 telepathically dumped its memories on Siris, Research had gone into gleeful overdrive.
Siris had work to do. There was a team of archivists literally tapping its collective foot, waiting for her to return to her work station and get to it.
Sleep? Who needs sleep? A common Kinder saying. Siris was living the saying, but okay, from an early age she knew what a position in the compound was going to be like. Nothing new here, not when one's father, a Kinder Group facilities manager, had wooed and won one's historian mother in a dining hall of the complex. Siris' parents had lived and worked in the complex all their lives.
When she was a girl, Siris' mother, the late Dr. Interlandi, used to speak in hushed tones about the thing that lived in the habitat.
Siris' father criticized her mother's fear. "If it wants to leave, it'll leave," her father would say with a wave of his arm. Her father, who had infrequent contact with Kinder administrators, liked to have a laugh at the administrators' expense whenever he worked on habitat systems. "They're all on egg shells down there, like little mice circling a lion. Why waste effort being afraid of it? It can kill us all with a thought."
"Papa!" Siris had thought he was joking until she spied her mother's white face.
"What?" her father had protested. "Secrets, secrets, Marea," her father had gone on to add. "I'm telling secrets again. Daughter, these things can't be spoken of."
Siris never spoke of them. But she listened. Of course she did. Her parents told stories of an exotic life form, a beast. Her parents' stories were better than anything she saw in a book.
"It sleeps half a year," her father told her. "It wakes and does a job"-- what kind of job? Siris would wonder --"that takes two or three days. It goes to meetings to listen to the faces talk, talk, talk. Then it goes back to sleep."
"Have you ever seen it?" Siris asked once, when she was too little to know better. She supposed the monster lived in the domed building in the middle of the complex, and she was right.
"It's a horrible thing," her father had confessed. "Skin like sand, eyes like coal, hair like seaweed. It has an odor, too!"
In terror, Siris the child clapped a hand to her mouth.
Her mother's tinkle of laughter slowed her racing heart, and after that her father smiled somewhat.
"We call it an it so that we don't forget what it can do. But it's a man, my sea shell. It looks and acts and talks like a man."
"A very frightening man," her mother insisted.
"Yes, all those hours watching it sleep is quite disturbing." Her father, who went to his office every day like an official, in a suit but with no tie, made a face. He was a designer, mainly. An engineer. He drew plans, told others what to do. He was the one who built the scanner that could see the creature's consciousness-- her mother called the disembodied thing that could be scanned a soul --while it moved here and there about the complex. Her mother said the monster's soul was so old and so strong that it-- the soul --could be traced like a sea wave moving against the shore.
"If it has a big soul, then that means it knows right from wrong," Siris supposed.
"Some souls, big or small, do not, my dear," was her mother's answer.
"It doesn't really do anything here," her father added. "We keep it like a car or a horse. When it's to do something frightening, we send it out. That's why we say it's an it. So we can stay in a proper frame of mind, and be always aware that it's ours, and not the other way around."
A notion her mother had scoffed at. It's not ours, it's not anybody's, her mother always said. Something like it. Her mother's job was to collect fragments of world history, and to dedicate endless hours looking for 237's fingerprints in ancient and not so ancient events. Small wonder her mother was unashamedly and deeply afraid of Hephaestion. She'd indexed three periods from Old Continent works wherein a man matching Hephaestion's description and wielding sorcery had impacted multiple kingdoms. 237's age was uncertain, so her mother had gone back to the beginning of recorded history. The items, her mother said, were neither heroic nor particularly legal. Murders were involved. In one case, raids, battles, massacres.
Her father said it was the times, and dismissed her mother's fear with this: it is what it is. Why waste breath being afraid of it, when fear of it is irrelevant?
Siris took on her father's mindset, but never properly set aside her mom's.
When she chose to work for Kinder, she told her parents what she wanted. "It's dangerous," her mother said. Her father hadn't said anything at all, not at first. And when he did speak, it was days after Siris' first meeting with the subject.
"I understand now why everyone is afraid," Siris told him. "It's because the subject isn't frightening at all. Nor is it charming. It's a blank slate, but wonderful to look at and be around. Without the Stoic Mind, you would want to write upon it all your hopes and dreams--"
Her father interrupted: "And your fears, those too."
"Yes, those, too."
"So be careful," he warned.
Siris had. She was careful. Three years of work, and two research papers. She brought with her to work her father's fearlessness, her mother's caution. And one day she was discussing with Hephaestion an adjustment in its drug therapy. A normal day. She spoke to it often when it was awake. That day was no different than another, except the subject had reached out its hand, touching her. She felt curious, but she was not shaken, not at all. Then it said, "Siris," a first. It never spoke her familiar name. Her technician observed with wide eyes. The subject asked, "Siris, how old am I?"
At the time, Kinder's best guess was seven or eight hundred years old. Ah, but no.
Siris said, "I think I know the answer, but I'm confused."
"Can you recall the name of my sister?"
"Tisiphone."
237 sighed, and its mouth, slightly tensed, went soft. "If you can recall her, then you've got it all. I'll miss you."
Siris, her heart chugging along, stared in alarm. I'll miss you. Of course 237 was aware of the reason Kinder rotated staff through the habitat. But why did it give her its memories? Why had it chosen now to come clean? Why did it choose her?
* * *
The second day of 237's dormant state, Siris sat with Vadas mapping 237's earliest encounter with Constantine Parnasus, the first Amarite high priest to hold court in Amorium. Vadas tired easily, so Siris was able to grab a little sleep.
She was achy and groggy when Charles woke her through the flex. "Go to the habitat."
Three days had passed since Hephaestion went terminal. The usual amount of time, as long as the mechanism of death didn't involve perforations and the like.
Bypassing critical care, Siris reported to the residence. Experience told her 237 was awake. There was a sizzle in the air, tension among the staffers, and an incautious number of security personnel in the control center.
Zinn, again. Too much fear, like Siris' mother. Zinn wasn't going to last.
Siris found Zinn standing rigidly near the two-way mirror that overlooked the residence. She joined Zinn there, saw Hephaestion in its blue pajamas pacing that brief tract of carpet alongside its cot.
"Don't tell me you've magnetically sealed it in," Siris snapped. She was pissed.
"Well, yes," Zinn blurted. "It woke after hours of nightmares. I ordered an evaluation, which I've explained to it--"
Siris said, tightly, "You are an idiot."
Zinn, taking only mild offense, seized her brow and moaned. "Well, then, you tell me what I should do."
Siris turned sharply to the gawking staffers and security people. "First, unseal that damned door. Now, listen to me, all of you. The lock function was never intended to keep 237 in. It wakes up in a vulnerable state, but be aware its vulnerability lasts three, four hours tops. In four hours, he comes through the door, sealed or not sealed, so we in habitat management like to keep what we call perspective. The lock is to keep intruders out, not to keep 237 in. Oh, and second, the subject spent most of the first two decades of its life in a condition known as institutionalized slavery. It has a proportioned response to captivity, that, at the end of the day, I don't think we'll like very much. Has every one got it?"
No one answered, and no matter. Siris saw that they were looking past her and through the mirror. She turned to see what they saw.
237 had stopped pacing. The subject stared up at what was, from its side of the mirror, a darkened screen. Its metallic irises were fixed on Siris.
Siris realized she was not surprised. She opened the intercom. "Hello, Hephaestion. My apologies for the door. You're free to stretch your legs."
Hephaestion's voice: "Hello, Siris. I've brought someone back."
Siris nodded as though she understood when of course she did not. "What?"
"You should contact your superiors. There's a problem."
* * *
"What are we dealing with?" Anselm Gakhal, Brianovia's project liaison to Premiere Sekerak, leaned over his desk in the semi-darkness of his private office. He was a slim, meticulous administrator with a background in the BCI, Brianovia's intelligence community. His political career had followed a brief but intense stint in the special forces. His polished mannerisms came from an unexpected and appreciated internship with the chief of Premiere Sekerak's staff. Connections forged in the palace had led to an appointment to the Kinder Project, a function Gakhal approached with mixed feelings.
Gakhal blinked at the computer, its wafer-thin crystal display colored by an image that, frankly, scared him to the bone. The electronic file had been forwarded by Kinder's project director, Peter Weihing, from the Kinder complex in Dournay.
The arrogance of government, he was thinking. He thought it a lot. The first time was when he entered professional life within the Kinder sphere and Sekerak, a former Kinder administrator, told him about 237.
On a secure line in Dournay, Peter Weihing's dry voice poured out of a speaker. "You're looking at a computer-aided sketch. If you recall, our work in this area identified some discrepancies in 237's ability to define physical characteristics by the life force signature alone."
Gakhal heard noise. Gakhal had no tools with which to form a contingency for this. The Holland-Tchey aliens cared about technology. Their work with ITAN turned on the axis of technology, who had it, who did not, who got it and who didn't.
A metaphysical breach by the Holland-Tchey? The aliens had recently built intercontinental shuttlecraft relying solely on organic materials. The extraordinary vehicles were living machines, leaving ITAN scientists to wonder about the monstrous craft in high orbit. Could the Holland-Tchey accomplish astral projection? Why would they bother? And who should have thought it?
They'll say I should have, Gakhal thought.
He folded his hands nervously and stared at his monitor. "This is female."
Weihing, on the speaker, agreed.
Female, male, what did it matter? Any Holland-Tchey alien posted on the planet was capable of bringing worldwide pressure to bear on Kinder. If the aliens ever learned that Kinder existed, 237 was theirs. They'd take 237, and most likely impose sanctions against the governments that harbored it.
Maybe the alien wasn't on post. She could have been the family member of an ambassadorial official. The aliens never staffed their embassy year round and sometimes abandoned the planet for seasons. When an ambassador took up residence he or she tended to bring along staff and family.
Is this what had occurred? A family member on holiday experimenting with astral travel, playing around? The Holland-Tchey were telepathic, were they not?
"Your scans were negative?" Gakhal confirmed
"Negative for a metaphysical breach, not negative all in all."
Gakhal sucked his teeth. "I don't have time to do a word puzzle."
Weihing quickly explained, "The scan detected an energy pattern consistent with what we call discarnate activity in the habitat level. We're being told by 237 that this pattern is John Valten Manegold."
Gakhal possessed no vocabulary to challenge this. Premiere Sekerak would have enjoyed a briefing from Peter Weihing; references to ghosts and ghosts describing beautiful young aliens based on-- based on what? A few moments in the ether of some in-between hole that Gakhal did not believe in?
Gakhal pinched his nose, at a loss. This was like listening to his grandfather discuss a tremona, a shapeshifting ghoul, a soul-eater. The world had swung past such terrors. Humanity had entered an era of enlightenment. This was post-Purge, but the Purge had forgotten one last fiend, this 237. And now the fiend, as a member of an endangered species, was Gakhal's responsibility.
How could he, Gakhal, compose a report to Kinder's international board when he did not understand what had happened?
"Peter, you're saying that while 237 was in a near-vegetative state, the psyche of a dispossessed being tapped into its consciousness, and startled it."
"Startle isn't the right word, I'd--"
Gakhal went on as though Weihing hadn't spoken. "Investigating this anomaly, 237 found a new affarite, potentially subject 238, made contact with it, and wants us, now, to rescue it."
"Recover it."
"Rescue, recover, what is the difference?"
"The difference is if we can't rescue it, we must find and annihilate it. Otherwise, it's Volodya's subject once those imbeciles realize what they have, and, well, you've seen what our subject can do. The Volods are wild cards."
"What does this Manegold know about the alien?"
"Manegold has suffered psychological trauma and does not respond reliably when asked about her."
Gakhal could sympathize. "We are talking about a consciousness that has no physical form."
"Not exactly, sir."
No, Manegold's physical form was in a morgue in Volodya, frozen solid but reclaimable.
Gakhal reached across the monitor, not touching it, just to feel the charge of energy.
On the screen, in the image file sent by Weihing, the head and shoulders of a woman.
The woman possessed a slender, sculpted neck, which 237 had given a bronze cast. The remarkable shade lay evenly across a boldly cut jaw line, high cheeks, and a single-ridged nose. Some Holland-Tchey had a second layer of cartilage that caused a fluting sound when the aliens spoke. The female in 237's composite had no eyes. Black sockets, vacant and unknown. 237 had not been able to describe her eyes. The omission took the image somewhere between the surreal and macabre. In contrast, a swath of lovely raven hair lifted from the alien's brow and flowed backward, behind the shoulders.
All in all, a beautiful young woman.
The Holland-Tchey considered ebon skin a mark of post-adolescence, which their species took on in the second hundred years of life.
An immature Holland-Tchey was cream or beige.
The elderly were pewter gray.
Gakhal supposed he was looking at a female member of the ambassador's staff somewhere between a hundred and two hundred years old.
Probably a treaty enforcer or spy.
Something.
"Here is what I want to know. If we sanction the mission, and she is encountered on mission in Volodya, what do we do? Specifically, if she attempts to obstruct the mission."
Weihing said, "Kinder is built on the affirmation that 237 and presumably 238 should be controlled by an organization incapable of and immune to excess. Our very existence demands one of two responses to interference by the Holland-Tchey."
Quite unexpectedly Gakhal sensed a kindred spirit. "Go on."
"In the face of interference we will fold the Kinder Project completely and manage 237 and 238 so that they are unavailable as assets." Peter's voice rushed out of the speaker. "I must inform you Dr. Interlandi--"
"Was compromised, yes, I saw the message."
"It happened just before 237 was last placed in stasis. Typically, reckless interchange with 237 leads to the euphoric and distracted state Dr. Mozun called rapture."
"I'm familiar with Dr. Mozun's analyses."
Peter's voice continued crisply. "In habitat staff suffering prolonged exposure to 237 we see this post-contact disorder. Elevated dopamine levels, a false sense of well being, even hallucination. Dr. Interlandi is experiencing the symptoms, but she has exerted an acceptable level of self-control. Are you aware that the creature telepathically vested her with hundreds of years of its memories?"
"I appreciated being copied on that, thank you. I haven't read the file."
"It's fascinating. For years, the creature's resisted debriefing of its past, and now we have it all. For instance, we now know he was born in Misenos to a household with a mother and father. The father bore scars, the mother did not, so we're guessing the genetic anomaly was handed down by his mother. He was a twin. The family raised horses. The slave rebellion of ancient Misenos killed his parents and saw the burning of his estate. Ironically, the estate had no slaves. The children were assimilated into the slave army and forced to walk the spent battlefields of their time scavenging weapons and identifying enemy combatants playing dead. Nasty work. They were five or six years old, the pair of them. When Trunos Maltican defeated the slave army, the children were spared. Imagine a culture in which slavery was a natural condition. The laws said children under a certain age had to be sold at private auction, and so the siblings were separated.
"237 went to a merchant family, where he was groomed as a companion for the family children and a clerk. His twin, a female, was sold to a brothel. Within five years, 237 was a well adjusted scribe and his twin was a suicide. The Misenians burned their dead, so whether she was endowed or not is immaterial. She perished. 237's fortune ended when the merchant, accused of treason, lost all his goods, as well as his life, to the state. 237 was fifteen years. It was public auction for our subject, which, if you look at the era, and you look at 237, was tantamount to a sentence to nightly rape and degradation. 237 murdered its master within one year, suffered execution by hanging, and was to remain a public spectacle until its corpse rotted."
"Which," Gakhal opined, "it never did."
"A local sorcerer, seeing the signs, stole 237's body. Once the rope released its pressure on 237's neck, the body began doing what it does, and 237 reanimated. The being that woke, however, was not the congenial, well adjusted slave that had grown up in a merchant's household. Nor was it the thing we see now. I wonder, Anselm, do you recall the names, historically, Kral and Tithonus?"
"My middle-era Old Continent history is rusty."
"Look them up when you get the chance. Or read the file. It's not light reading, by the way. The only one of us who wasn't shaken was Dr. Interlandi, and she said it was because she'd always suspected our subject of historic atrocities."
Gakhal frowned. "That could be a bad thing. How do we know she is not being manipulated? In fact, are not our contamination protocols based on the likelihood that the euphoric state caused by prolonged exposure leads to increased dependence on contact with the creature? She's making excuses for it?"
"I wouldn't accuse her of excusing its past just yet. Constantine Parnasus, does that name ring a bell? Of course it does. If we are to credit Dr. Interlandi's account, our 237 defeated Parnasus in hand-to-hand combat for the right to bodyguard the Lady of the Blessed Waters. The Lady rejected 237 and sent it on a pilgrimage, a labor 237 apparently took to heart. That was seven hundred years ago. Less than three centuries later, 237 was beset by a group of vettoi in the Northern Kingdom, killed, and put in a tomb. The vettoi made sure the tomb was airtight, so after he healed of his wounds, he died again from asphyxiation. As you know, its body stayed in the tomb some four hundred years, until Antoni Kinder freed it. It is Dr. Interlandi's opinion that the execution and subsequent confinement meets 237's definition of rehabilitation and the being who ravaged the Old Continent and butchered Constantine Parnasus is, for all intent and purpose, dead."
"So, what are you saying?"
"Dr. Interlandi's dependency issues are not preeminent at this stage. The acquisition of 238 is the mission. The mission will be over in seven days. We only need seven days. Dr. Interlandi has had an unprecedented effect on 237."
"Oh, now -- I don't-- "
"I want to use this, sir, to ensure 237 does not interfere with the extraction of 238."
Gakhal was so still that he forgot to breathe. A moment passed in silence.
Weihing waited.
"There could be inappropriate contact," Gakhal said, presently. "I mean between the doctor-- She's attractive, you know. A bright woman. An inappropriate liaison could be the creature's purpose. Dr. Mozun suggested this in his work. We really must be on guard for this sort of thing. As far as we know, 237 has never procreated."
The Kinder Project had found no scientific reason 237 could not mate with humans and produce offspring.
"I'll manage it at my level."
And take responsibility for the consequences, Gakhal did not need to assert. "I wish the mission fair fortune, Peter."
-- Next Chapter
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