“Yes, you did.”
Syrup covered the plate, and he presented it to her with a flourish. “My queen.”
She stifled a laugh. “You know this doesn’t qualify as cooking.”
He waved the comment away and sat next to her. “I’ll make real food for dinner. Would you like me to cut it up into little pieces and feed you?”
She snatched the fork out of his hand. “Don’t go overboard.” She dug into her meal and took a bite. Her chewing slowed, and she furrowed her eyes. “Did you already have this conversation with me?”
Horrified by the accusation, he stumbled out, “No! No. No, no, no. I swear. I promise, no more Mirre with you.”
Her teeth clamped down on her lower lip. “If I find out you’re lying.” Glowering at him, she let the threat hang in the air.
“I know I said it already, but I am sorry. Please understand how I was raised.”
She continued cutting her waffle and swirling it into the syrup. “No butter?”
“Sorry, no butter.” He grimaced at not being able to produce her slightest wish. “From my earliest training with the Mirre, Dad beat it into my head that anytime something was uncertain, I should go in first and find out.” He paused, searching for the right words. “I go into the Mirre the way other people breathe. It’s part of who I am.”
Her fork clinked against the plate. “But I suspect you know it’s a little…” Her hand waved around. “…creepy for the rest of us. You’re doing things with people without their knowledge.”
“Yea. But it’s not much different than a dream.”
She shook her head. “You know that isn’t true. You do weird things in your head to people. For all I know, you’ve already done something to me. Found some way to talk me out of my pants.”
Was there a perfect set of words to unlock a woman? His mind went back to his hands wandering up… His face flushed, and he gulped. “It doesn’t work that way. It’s not mind control. I can only apologize so many times. I promise not to do it again.” He quickly added, “To you. I can’t stop using it altogether.”
A piece of the nutritionally rich manufactured fauxbacon went into her mouth, and she chewed slowly while staring daggers at him. He dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “Oh, stop that.” She brushed him away. “I guess if you used your magic on me again, you’d know I hate this shitty fake bacon.”
“You forgive me?”
“Maybe.” She smirked. “Cook every meal during this trip, and I’ll forgive you.”
“How long is this trip?” He instantly put up his hands. “I’ll cook. Just curious.”
“Our first stop is in nine days. Two tegan jumps in between. We have youth treatments for Nephele and then some farming equipment and seeds for a little planet called Hager.”
“Can I fly the ship?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t push your luck.”
“You let Tina pilot.”
“She’s certified for non-tegan maneuvers. You’re qualified to play a game.”
“Okay.” His shoulders dropped. “There’s something else you should know.”
Her last piece of waffle went down. “What’s that?”
“Something wasn’t right with the way I saw Uncle Martin dead.”
She leaned back, cupping the coffee mug between her hands. “Explain.”
“I entered the Mirre specifically to talk to Martin. So if he was dead, how did I link to him?”
“How did you know he was dead?”
“Well. I didn’t take a pulse or anything, but his head was caved in.” However, she brought up an interesting point. Had Martin still been alive under that gory mess? Did Jason cowardly run out of the palace when there’d still been a chance to save him? It didn’t seem likely but that didn’t make him feel any better about it.
“Couldn’t you just try to…” She waggled a hand. “Magic him up now?”
“No. We left the system. He’s too far away.”
Her hand ran along her collar, thinking about the question. “Maybe you should explain how all of this works.”
Jason winced at the idea. People had died over the years to protect his family's secret and more people died trying to get it. “Dad will kill me if he finds out I gave you all the details.”
“Your choice.” She shrugged. “You can trust me or not.”
“It’s not you I don’t trust. At this point, I’m wondering if it was even my father and Martin I saw in the Mirre.” Was it possible someone found a way to interfere with his visions? She sipped her coffee, patiently waiting for him to decide. “Okay. I’ll tell you, but I need you to keep one thing in mind, and you can’t tell anyone else.” She nodded and sipped again. “Until I figure all of this out, this is our one and only conversation on the topic. If I ever start talking about the details of the Mirre with you again, consider that you may be inside the Mirre with someone who only looks like me.”
“Wow. That’s paranoia for you.” She tipped the last of her coffee into her mouth and held the empty mug out to him. “Hit me again, deckhand.”
He took it and stood to get her a refill. “Maybe, but this is really screwing with everything I’ve been told.”
Chapter Nine
“So.” He blew out a breath. “Let’s start with my great-grandfather, Peter Shabin.” Tina had woken from her sleep cycle and joined them in the galley, but since Jason wouldn’t discuss it in front of her, they ended back in Sparrow’s cabin. He tried to convince her to join him in the bed, but she sat stolidly in a chair as he lay.
“With you sitting there and me all the way over here telling you family secrets, I feel like I’m in a session with a psychbender.” ‘All the way over’ consisted of about half a meter.
“Give it up. I’m not climbing in next to you.”
At least she was back to smiling. “Right. Peter Shabin was an exomicrobiologist. He tinkered with animals found on various planets to make them suitable for human use. One of his business partners had his hands in a variety of companies. One of those companies ran the exploration mission which discovered planet Herodotus.”
“Oh.” She interrupted. “I’ve always wanted to visit that place.”
“Yea, me too.” He shifted to look at her. “Perhaps I can take you there someday. Most of the archaeological sites are still off-limits to the public, but I could probably use some family influence to get us into a few.”
“Keep going.” She rolled her hand, gesturing him to continue.
“Anyway, his partner got him a sample of the alien DNA for him to mess with.”
“Wait.”
“Are you going to let me get through this?”
“Just a quick question.”
He waved her on. “Go ahead, my queen.”
“I’ll settle for you calling me ‘captain’.” She tossed a flickerball at him, and it bounced off his head. Her aim was far too good. “This is your great-grandfather?”
“Yea.”
“Wasn’t Herodotus found about five-hundred-years ago?”
He played with one of the tassels on the bedspread. “Not quite that long but close. How do you think Shabin Industries got its start? Peter wasn’t tinkering around with alien DNA looking for magical psychic abilities. The Herodians were extremely long-lived. Life extension was his goal, and he succeeded with a lot of that research.”
She shook her head. “So that’s what got everything started? Always wondered about that.”
While many of the company’s life extension products were available to the public, most were far too expensive for the average person, and a few were for special clients only and kept secret. His father was already well into his second century. “Can I continue?”
“Go on.”
“Okay. Peter replicated the DNA, and the company still keeps a supply for testing. He also bought eggs from a few hundred women for experimentation.”
“Eww.”
“Well, maybe. He did all sorts of manipulation and eventually create
d a few children using those eggs, sperm from himself, and added material from the aliens.”
“Double eww.”
“Shh.” He glanced at her, and she put a finger to her lips. “The children producing part of the project didn’t last long because of government interference.”
“Gee. I wonder why.”
Jason ignored her and went on. “Enter my grandfather, Marcus Shabin. Now Marcus was a bit of an ass, but I’m not sure I can blame him. Peter raised him more akin to a lab rat rather than a son.”
“Shitty behavior seems to run in your family.”
He scowled at her, but since she was biting her lip again and choking back a laugh, he let it go.
Sparrow popped her eyes and brought a finger to her lips again. “Shh. I’ll be quiet.”
He really wanted to go back to kissing those lips. “Right. Anyway, as my grandfather—”
“That’s Marcus?”
“Yes. Now shut up. As Marcus grew up undergoing all manner of physiological testing, he discovered the Mirre.” Jason waited for another interruption. When it didn’t come, he went on. “And Marcus kept that little secret to himself.” Still nothing from the peanut gallery. “Keeping that secret from his father was a big mistake because Peter died never knowing. As a matter of fact, toward the end, they weren’t speaking. So when he died, Marcus found most of the records of the original experiment missing.”
“Peter destroyed all the data?”
“Not his life’s work with life extension but most of the data concerning the birth of Marcus and the rest of the experimental kids.”
“That was a dick move. Your family is awful.”
“Well, to be fair to Peter, it seemed more like the data was just lost over the years due to normal recordkeeping problems. But if he’d known how important the information was, he would’ve had a reason to take care of it.”
“So what happened next?”
“Marcus used his ability to turn a fairly profitable medical treatment company into one of the largest businesses in the known universe. It was easy for him to manipulate people.” Jason considered his own foray into manipulation and didn’t like the way it tasted. Sparrow seemed ready to call him on it, but for once she held her tongue. “Marcus also spent insane amounts of resources recreating Peter’s research. They still had the alien DNA, and he bought fresh eggs.”
“Still eww.”
“I know. I know.” Jason waved a hand. “He also bought Rhime to do all of this research since he didn’t want interference from ethics groups.”
“How nice of him.”
Jason ignored her. “That group of scientists ended up creating about a hundred kids, including Dad.”
“Did they all live?”
“Hmm. Let me rephrase. They created ninety-six healthy kids. There were a lot more that didn’t go as well.” Sparrow let out a groan of disgust. “They weren’t all weird gene-spliced freaks. More than half were a control group between the frozen eggs and sperm from various men.”
“Control group?”
Jason shrugged. “People without the extra alien bits which they used to compare with their siblings. Nobody’s ever sat me down and explained all the genetics behind this stuff. I’m telling you what I’ve learned in pieces over the years.”
“Okay. Continue.”
“Oh. Point for Marcus on this one. Since he grew up feeling like a lab rat, he made sure all of those kids had good homes, money, education, and jobs when the time came. He also made certain that when they needed to submit to any testing, they were treated like people. My uncle was part of a control batch, and Dad was the single success recreating someone who could use the Mirre. Although, they were born about a century apart from one another.” A lump formed in his throat at the mention of his one and only friend.
“So, Martin wasn’t really your uncle?”
“No.” He was going to really press her eww button with this next one. “Martin is…” It didn’t seem likely the man was anything anymore. “Was my half-brother. Or a one-third-brother if you include the alien junk in me. Same egg donor — different fathers.”
“Hold on,” she said. “What about your father and grandfather? Any of those with the same egg donor?”
“Well. It’s not like I’ve read the records, but I don’t think so.”
“Okay. So that’s the family history. How about explaining how this mystical shit works.”
Jason shook his head. “It’s nothing magic. That’s just company propaganda. The Herodians didn’t speak the way we do. They communicated with each other using a telepathic connection. The alterations made to my family’s line tapped into that ability but only part of the way. It’s a one-way version of the Herodian form of talking.”
“Have you tried linking with your father at the same time as he linked to you?”
“Endlessly.” Jason let out an exasperated breath. “Over and over again, trying to get it to work. When I link to a person, it’s as if I’m making a temporary copy of them for me to interact with. The other person has no concept anything happened to them.”
With distinct disapproval, she cleared her throat. “I know.”
He considered all of those people over the years he’d interacted with without their knowledge. It had always seemed normal to him then. How many people in the palace suspected what he’d done with them? A pang of guilt hit him in the stomach.
“You still with me?” she asked.
“Yea. Just a random thought.” His hand ran over his stomach as butterflies the size of gorks flipped inside.
“Are there still experiments going on? Like, is your father still making little lab rat cousins?”
“That’s another big question I’ve always had. Over the years, I’ve pushed him into giving me a definitive no, but, usually, when the question comes up, he finds a way to avoid the topic, so I have my doubts. A few years ago there was a cloning project, but they never had any success, as far as I know. Something with the alien DNA doesn’t mix well with the typical human cloning procedure.”
“And you’re thinking there’s someone else out there with a different version of the Mirre? One that can interfere with you.”
Jason scratched his head. “Yea. Maybe. There could also be a technological development to do the same thing. Or it could be something I’m not even thinking of right now. I’m just not sure how I could’ve linked to Martin in that condition.”
“What about your father’s presence in there with him? Did you bring him inside also?”
Jason shrugged. “Not intentionally. Dad and a few other people close to me are strange since they’re always in the back of my mind. If it’d been someone I didn’t know, I’d say that person was just a mindless extra coming from Martin’s knowledge of the person in the room with him. Any action an extra like that did would be coming from Martin’s expectations of the person.”
“Huh? Not sure I understand that.”
Jason struggled to come up with a simple explanation. “When you daydream about interacting with someone, the other person’s actions don’t come from them, they come from what you want them to do or say. If someone is inside the Mirre just because they happened to be in the same room at the time as the person I’m focused on, they’re just a mindless extra, not a true copy of the person.”
“But your dad is different?”
“Dad, Martin, and a few other people I’ve linked to thousands of times. It barely takes a stray thought from me to bring them along. I’ve had it happen a few times.”
“It’s still confusing. What about the name? Who came up with Mirre?”
“Marcus. I think he got it from when he was little and thought of the people inside his other world as reflections in a mirror.”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense. What about relatives? Maybe Marcus wasn’t the only one to hide the ability.”
“It’s possible. Although since Marcus and my father could use the Mirre, they would’ve questioned everyone in the experiments to dea
th about it. It’s pretty hard to lie to us if we have a reason to doubt you.”
“Could there be a competing company working on all of this? Even if people don’t know the Mirre came from the alien DNA, they know your family is different.”
“Oh, my father assures me there are. Plenty of people have worked on the project through the centuries. Although from what I understand, my grandfather’s exit interview was pretty intensive. Not sure about Dad’s. But he’s caught people trying to steal samples of our DNA lots of times over the years.”
She clicked her tongue a few times. “So there’s a pretty big pool of people that could be behind this.”
“Yea. It’s not all about money either. Think what would happen if some government made an army of people with the ability. I wish I knew what Martin wanted to tell me. I can’t imagine anyone hating him.” Jason fought the urge to cry again. “He was the only one…” His chest burned with anguish and the tears flowed. He choked back a full-blown case of hysterics.
She went over to the bed and knelt next to him. “I’m sorry about Martin.” Sparrow caressed his arm. “Is there anyone else back on Rhime you can go to for help?”
He covered his face with his hands and shrugged. “Not really. Most of my friends I only know through the Freesion War game. They don’t know who I am.”
“Where are all the women in this story? What about other people in the family?”
He shook his head not wanting to get into the extended family tree. Martin lost his wife long before Jason had been hatched and the people he considered cousins couldn’t help more than a place to stay for a night or two. Even that much could endanger them. Until Jason knew what was going on, he didn’t like the idea of stepping foot on Rhime again.
She held him in a hug for a few minutes. As comforting as it was, he couldn’t help wishing she would climb into bed with him.
Sparrow leaned in and placed tender lips to his forehead. “I have work to do. Catch some sleep.”
He wiped his eyes and sniffled. “Where are we going?”
“Nephele II station.”
Shabin- The Reluctant Prince of Rhime Page 8