Six scooted back. "Pietas, are you coming on to me?"
"Does coming on mean showing sexual interest?"
He narrowed his eyes. "Yeah."
"Why? Do you find me repulsive?"
"No! It's just--" The ghost swigged some of the water and wiped his mouth. "Men aren't...you know, they're not really my thing."
"I see. So I am not unattractive?"
"No."
"Good. I'm pleased you find me attractive."
"No, I don't. No, what I mean is-- You're okay and all, but I-- I just, um--"
Pietas laughed aloud. "Relax! I was teasing you."
The ghost's face turned a bright red. He swore in Spanish. "Not funny, Ultra."
Pietas laughed even harder.
Six glared.
"I am sorry." He sat up. "Forgive me, ghost. You are dear to me and I hope my teasing didn't offend you."
"Well... no." Six shrugged. "Truth is, I couldn't have a lover even if I wanted to. When I became a ghost, I gave that up. My body-- There's no response. Not anymore."
"You have no sex drive?"
Casting down his gaze, Six shook his head.
"Six." Pietas touched his arm.
He looked up.
"I am deeply sorry. I had no idea. Is it because of the chip?"
Six nodded. "Yeah."
"Is it any wonder I hate humans? That they would do such a thing to you...to someone who served them well and faithfully..." Pietas grimaced. "I am sorry. Even more so that they did such a horrendous thing to you."
"It's okay."
"It is not. Plus, I thoughtlessly offended you. I am sorry."
"No, I wasn't offended. Embarrassed. I don't like letting you down, Pietas. The truth is, anyone would be honored to be with you. I can't. Not in that way, but I will always be your friend."
With a smile, Pietas pressed the back of his fingers against the ghost's cheek. "And I yours." He lowered his hand.
The ghost squinted at him. "What does that mean?"
"The touch? It's a hand-kiss."
"A what?" The ghost's scandalized expression made Pietas chuckle.
"A hand-kiss. It's a quick way to show tenderness between Ultras. We reserve it for lovers and family. Or the very closest friends." He touched Six's cheek again.
"Oh." Six's expression softened. "If I did it back, would you be offended?"
"Offended? Why would I be offended?"
"I know you don't like being touched. You pull away when I try to help you."
"I like being touched, ghost. I do not like needing help. I appreciate your assistance. If I've seemed to resent it, I apologize. That was never my intention."
"Oh. Okay. I'm glad to know that." In a tentative, shy way, Six hand-kissed him back. "Did I do it right?"
The gentle touch evoked far more affection than Pietas expected. He swallowed against the tightness in his throat and offered a smile. "It was perfect."
"Good." Six grinned.
Pietas stretched out on the grass and tucked his hands back behind his head. "Oh, look!" He pointed. "I see a dragon. With a long tail and wings."
"Where?" Six settled onto the ground beside him. "Show me."
Chapter Twenty-two
The next morning, Six repacked the satchel they carried. They headed south with the river.
Over the next few months, they skirted waterfalls, hiked hills, passed through rich forests. The planet beckoned to them, each bend of the river bringing fresh reasons to stay. The water ran along a plateau and a few times they climbed hills high enough to see out over a vast plain. Some nights as the sun sank behind the horizon in a fiery blaze of glorious reds and golds, they stood side by side in awed silence.
They caught glimpses of the black cats, never more than one at a time, but none came near.
Pietas regained much of his strength. More lean than ever, he carried the pack, and though barefoot, traveled every bit as far as Six.
The days grew shorter.
Late one afternoon, they stopped for the night and made camp. Six warmed his hands by the fire. "It's getting colder."
"I noticed."
"We need to think about settling. I don't want to be traipsing through snow looking for campsites."
Pietas stuck up one bare foot. "You think I do?"
"We're both in rags. We need to hunt animals we can skin. That means more meat, which needs storage. Maybe a smokehouse. We need to set up near a stream where we can get water and fish."
"Not yet. We're close to finding my people. I can feel them. They've been here."
"How long ago?"
"I-- I don't know. It's as if one or two of them has been here, but not all of them. I'm chasing the wind. The sense of them keeps moving, so slight I can't grasp it. It's as if there were no more than a few, when there should be thousands."
"We'll keep looking."
"We've looked for a long time." The fire crackled and popped, and he stretched out his hands to it for warmth. "This is a big planet and I think we've walked across half of it without finding a single trace except what I feel in here." He tapped his chest.
"We'll find them, mi amigo." He squeezed Pietas's shoulder. "We'll find them."
The sounds of the forest enveloped them, birdsong and crickets breaking the quiet.
After a time, Six's unease came to Pietas like an itch on his skin. The ghost had something he wanted to say, or a question to ask, but he wasn't ready. Knowing him as he did, Pietas waited.
Poking at the fire, casting surreptitious glances toward Pietas, Six said nothing. He changed position, broke a few more sticks and added them to the flames. "When, uh... When I signed up for Ghost Division, one of the requirements was to say good-bye to my life. My family and friends."
"In what way?"
"We weren't allowed to tell anyone that if we died, we'd become ghosts. Plus, we had to give up everything we owned. Leave family, friends. Being dead starts a whole new life for a ghost. I didn't get why we had to keep it secret at first, but I did later. If others knew people could be reborn, they'd want that for their loved ones who died. It's not real life, being a ghost. There's a lot you don't have any more."
Pietas moved back from the fire and drew up his knees. "Such as?"
"I couldn't go home or contact anyone who knew me. They had a funeral for me. The military paid my pension to my family. I was promised if I signed up, they'd get a bonus. They called it a death-in-service fee because my body was missing."
"Missing?"
Six glanced up at him. "That's what they told my family. Supposedly, I was vaporized in space. They got compensation."
"Ultras would call that blood money."
The ghost held his gaze. "So would humans."
"You lost everything."
"Yeah." Six wiped both hands across his face.
"Having to 'play dead' so your family wouldn't know hurt you deeply." When Six squinted at him, Pietas continued, "You evince it even now."
"Yeah." Six broke another stick in half and dragged it through the dirt. "I could never talk to them again. Couldn't let them know I was alive. I had to stay far away from everyone."
A few birds called to each other, but otherwise the silence was broken only by the crackle of the fire. Like distant footsteps, it brought a sense of foreboding.
"So..." Pietas wrapped his arms around his knees. "You became a ghost to your family as well."
"I suppose I did."
"Was it worth it?"
Six met his gaze straight on. "In one sense, no. But for me personally, being here, getting to know you... I think this is what I was meant to do. Where I was meant to be."
"Fate?"
"I dunno. Maybe. But I expected to have better control than I did. They promised us that because we were dead and because we had those anti-emo chips, we wouldn't be as easy for you Ultras to manipulate as you do humans."
Pietas let out a harsh laugh. "Nothing about humans is easy."
Six smiled at that. Silence fell a
gain, heavy and dark as the oncoming night. "Pietas?" He fiddled with a dry stick. "Can I ask you a personal question?"
"Of course." He gestured to him, inviting the words.
Six stretched his legs out in front of him. "What else are you capable of other than what I've seen so far?"
"I've hidden nothing from you."
"They warned me you could use illusion. I haven't seen you use that."
"It's not a trick for entertainment. It's defensive." He stood and walked around the fire and then took a few steps up and over the fire and came back to Six.
"How..." Six's eyes went wide. "How did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Walk over the --" His brow furrowed. "You used that illusion thing."
"You're right. I haven't moved."
Six backhanded him again. "That was awesome!" He frowned. "You didn't use that in the chamber when we met." It was a statement, not a question.
"No. I knew there were cameras. Someone would have told you whatever you saw was illusion. It takes energy to convey and I had no air left. I had to conserve my strength."
"What else can you do?"
"I'm not as good at this as I'd like. Watch." Pietas stood, walked at his usual pace to one of the trees on the edge of the light and returned. "There. What did you see?"
Six blinked. "How'd you do that?"
"Do what?"
"You flashed over to that tree and back so fast you were a blur. You did that when we first met. I only hit you because I figured out where you'd go next and waited for you to run into my fist."
"Ah, so that's how you did it." Pietas tapped a fist over his heart. "I salute you. That was wise. The gift is called Zip. Pseudo-speed. I'm not moving any faster than normal, but I can slow your perception so it seems like I'm blazing fast."
"And you're not good at that?"
"No. There are others so fast you can't see them coming. I'm not immune to it. They can fool me."
Six bobbed his head. "Sure seemed fast to me. How do these abilities work?"
"That's like trying to tell someone how you breathe. You don't know how you do it. You can stop and you can start, but can you explain the motion of your lungs or how they fill with air? Not in the technical sense that a doctor could, but to...say...an alien who didn't need air? How would you convey it?"
"I guess there's not a way."
"It is the same with our gifts. We're born with them. We learn to use them. Some of us better than others."
Six hung his head, dragging one fingertip through the dirt. Disappointment ebbed from him.
How had it come down to him explaining Ultras to a human? Yet he had the desire to make himself known to this man.
Pietas turned toward him. "There are three classes of Ultra gifts: physical, metaphysical and bridge."
Six settled in, listening. "Okay."
"The last is a combination of the first two. Telepathy is a bridge gift. Not because it creates a bridge between two people, but because it's a metaphysical gift triggered by a physical action, such as proximity. If my people were within a few miles, I might sense them if my telepathy were stronger."
"You use it fine when you're afraid."
He drew back. "I beg your pardon? I am never afraid."
"When the pod was falling, you were. And after it landed."
Pietas had screamed like a child having night terrors. Mentally. But he had screamed. "You...could hear me?"
Six chose a small branch, broke off two stubs and aimed them toward the fire. "I was parachuting in, and was still in the air. I saw the pod falling. They pushed it out the cargo bay doors from about thirty Terran feet. It hit and then bounced and rolled. I thought for sure you'd be smashed to pieces. I wanted to rip a hole in that chute so I could get down there faster and find you." He broke the branch in half and tossed part of it into the flames. "When I landed, I released the chute and ran toward the area, but I couldn't see the pod. Then I heard you screaming 'get me out.' I followed the sound. It wasn't until later that I realized you weren't screaming at all. You were thinking it. Or sending it, or whatever you say when it's telepathy."
"Send is accurate. I'm still disappointed in myself for being so childish, but if it helped you find me, I suppose it's acceptable."
"Childish? I see. So after being locked in a glorified coffin for fifteen months without food or water and then dumped onto a planet and left for dead, it was bad to yell 'get me out!' Oh, yeah, yelling for help under those circumstances was real childish."
His cheeks burned. "I detest any form of weakness in myself. I was taught to exploit it in others, not display it."
"I wouldn't call yelling for help a weakness. That's just being human."
Pietas lifted one eyebrow. "There's no need to be insulting."
"Pardon me, your Ultraness." He made bowing motions. "You expect far too much of yourself. Growing up must've been a treat."
"In what way?"
"Judging by the way you try to be perfect, seems to me your family expected an awful lot."
"My sister and I were reared to exacting standards. It's common knowledge now we were conceived naturally, but at the time, we were hidden. There were two trusted guards who watched over our family and protected us from outsiders. They had no interaction with Dessy or me."
"Why?"
"There had never been Ultra children and have been none since. My people are conceived artificially and born as adults. If humans had known my parents were able to reproduce, they'd have tried to use them to make an army." Pietas omitted the fact that before he was captured, he had been in the act of creating an army himself, of a different kind.
"So your folks hid you."
"My parents knew nothing about childrearing. They'd never been in families themselves. Everything they knew they learned by reading books, watching holovids and keeping charts. Dessy and I were expected to excel at everything. Human standards were the low baseline. There was no such thing as 'good enough.' We had to be better than perfect. If we seemed lacking, my father would alter us. Make us better. Non-learned abilities are tied to genetics and he is a master geneticist. He made us perfect. The best of the best."
Six let out an oath, shaking his head. "I'm thinking when you say 'I'm perfect' it's not so much being a narcissist as it is keeping yourself safe."
Pietas regarded him more closely. "An accurate statement. No one has ever picked up on that before. They're content to assume I'm vain and I let them believe it. Keeps people from getting close."
"I get that. So if you were that guarded, you grew up without friends."
"True. There was no one but us. No one knew Dessy and I existed until we were sixteen."
"Okay, you don't have telepathy. So what? You can do almost anything else."
"That wasn't good enough for my father. He tried to develop it in us, but it never worked. How it frustrated him! I can hear him ranting. His favorite--" Pietas broke off. "Hmm."
"What?"
"I hadn't thought of that in so long, I'd forgotten."
"Thought of what?"
"He'd be so angry when I couldn't pick up on what he was sending. He said it under his breath, but he would call me useless. I say that about myself."
"How can you think of yourself as useless? You're the most powerful Ultra ever created. Everybody knows that."
With a twitch of his fingers, he dismissed the praise. "It is not how I feel, Six. If I were telepathic, I could have found my people by now. If I were telepathic, I wouldn't have gotten us marooned on an alien world. No, my father was right. When it comes to telepathy, I am useless."
"Wow." Six tossed a small branch onto the fire, sending sparks spiraling upward. "Biggest pity party I've ever been to."
Pietas leaned on one hand to face Six. "What is a pity party?"
"When you feel sorry for yourself and expect others to do the same thing 'Poor me. Look how I'm suffering.' That's a pity party."
"Excuse me for sharing how I felt."
"You were doing fine, until you said you were useless. I don't care who told you that. It's a pure out-and-out lie and you know it. To let anybody else's opinion of you keep you from being your best..." Six threw down the stick. "Look, Ultra. That's not you, okay? Listen to me. I sat with you while you were nothing but two big blue eyes and blackened skin stretched over bones. You couldn't lift your head, you were so weak. You tried not to show how much pain you were in, but I could see it. I could hear it in the way you panted, trying to breathe. The way you hobbled about as if all your bones were broken. But you fought like a caged animal to get your strength back. I will never accept any lie about you being useless. You're one of-- No, you are the strongest person I've ever known."
The pride at those words from so dear a friend--a human friend--brought tears to his eyes. "Six." Pietas turned his head and blinked them away. "Your friendship humbles me."
"Just tellin' you the truth. Don't accept that lie. You are not useless. Never will be. Now finish that story, okay?"
Chapter Twenty-three
Pietas hardly knew how to finish it. Would the truth of what happened alienate the human?
"How's this?" Six nudged his shoulder. "Tell me about your sister."
Alarm flushed adrenaline through his system. "Why would you ask about Dessy?"
"Just wondering if she was telepathic."
"Ah." He'd worried for a moment the truth showed on his face. Pietas took a deep, cleansing breath. "No. Neither of us have much of the gift. Dessy and I have a bond that's similar to telepathy. It's more than that, but less too. I can't explain it. It's nothing I have a word for, but we can know what the other needs before we think it. My father accused us of hiding our abilities from him. Six, we wouldn't have told him if we did. Not to speak ill of my father, but he was harsh."
"You think?" Six leaned on an elbow. "Go on."
"He never gave us a minute to ourselves. So we decided to take time." Pietas bit the inside of his lip. He'd never shared details of his family life. Never told anyone else these things. "We got into trouble."
Bringer of Chaos- The Origin of Pietas Page 13