The Needs of the Many

by Christina McMullen

  “You had no choice,” Ellie said with sinking dread. “You had time to do only what you thought best with what you had.”

  “I knew I would be condemning an entire lineage to an early death. I had no choice. His is a role none with humanity could ever have taken on. My only hope was that someone, someday, would realize what I could not spell out.”

  “Except you didn’t take his humanity,” Ellie said, quietly at first, tears blurring her eyes, but when she again spoke, it was with more strength. “You may have sacrificed his Abstractive Root, but he’s as much a person as I, capable of feeling and acting on his feelings. He knows compassion, he knows emotion. He… he knows love.”

  Rhymallian gazed on her with a sad smile and for a moment, tears made glassy his eyes, obscuring their depth.

  “No, El’iadrylline, you know these things.”

  “No, I refuse to believe that Julian’s humanity is nothing more than a projection of my emotions onto a machine. You just said he was your son. What does it matter if he has a root or not?”

  “You misunderstand me,” Rhymallian corrected. “El’iadrylline, I am not saying Julian has no feelings. I am saying that he has them because you have awakened in him that which should not be there. You carry within you Julian’s humanity and you have allowed what none before you had ever considered.”

  “I… you mean, the Kyroibi?” Ellie asked, suddenly not just aware of the presence that had been interwoven into her being before she was born, but aware of what it was she felt inside of her. “My god… Rhymallian, please, don’t tell me… the Kyroibi… it’s…”

  “Manifested from the sacrifice of Julian’s Abstractive Root,” he confirmed with a single nod of his head. “The Kyroibi reads the heart of those it inhabits.”

  “But that has been our downfall, hasn’t it?” Ellie asked. “The problem is that nearly all who carried the burden did not understand what they would be unleashing if they allowed the Kyroibi to awaken the battalion. This was done deliberately, wasn’t it? So that no one got it in their mind to use the power to take over. Unfortunately, that meant that a whole bunch of former masters were ready to destroy life as we know it and found their own head on the chopping block instead.”

  “I am sorry, El’iadrylline,” Rhymallian said. Ellie shuddered in revulsion. “I saw only the most logical solution, not the best.”

  “But what of Master Yellenoae? What of the others who discovered something amiss.”

  Sadness washed over Rhymallian’s face as he pulled a beam of light towards him. With a touch of his finger, it burst slowly outward, revealing a long row of Eidyssic that passed by in quick succession.

  “In making my decision, I selected one of my former pupils as the first true master of the Kyroibi. Fi’yorae was dutiful and unquestioning. With his permission, I strengthened this genetic trait. The idea was that the Kyroibi would always pass down his line. All would be obedient and none would be the wiser.”

  The scrolling faces stopped on one Ellie found familiar.

  “Master Yellenoae,” she noted with a raised eyebrow. Rhymallian gave a slight nod.

  “The first to understand the anger in his heart awoke the battalion. He in turn went to Julian and asked how to stop it. Julian was blunt, but Master Yellenoae thought he was the end. He made the assumption that there would not be another awakening until something truly awful had happened. But in doing so, he altered from my original course, laying the groundwork for what would happen later.”

  Another line of Eidyssic appeared out of the archive’s light, this one much shorter and ending with many familiar faces.

  “Master Yellenoae had no heir at the time of his discovery. As such, he, like me, turned to a trusted apprentice whose blood flows in your veins, El’iadrylline. For a time, while the history of the honor of being named true master remained in recent memory, all was well. But as centuries passed, things began to change. Perception changed. Rumors of a powerful army began to circulate. I feared all I had worked to prevent was coming to an end. And then one day, it did, but not in the way I expected.”

  The face of Ellie’s great grandfather came into being.

  “In his curiosity and experimentation, Master Androyo actually managed to stop the battalion from awakening because neither of his daughters could formulate enough of a passion to awaken the Kyroibi. In passing to El’iadryov during a time where war was already inevitable, his optimism about the outcome and his interaction with Julian actually stopped him from awakening the battalion. I and all former masters began to have hope that this alteration of knowledge would be the key to ending our brutal legacy once and for all.”

  Ellie’s own face, similar, yet completely different from all that came before her, appeared last in the new line of true masters.

  “I was to die as well,” she said in a quiet yet trembling voice.

  “On the contrary,” Rhymallian replied with empathy. “Your father, in hiding the Kyroibi by weaving it into your being, changed the course of our people forever, but in doing so, perhaps made forever a much shorter span than we expected.”

  “What do you mean?” Ellie asked, suddenly alarmed.

  “The Kyroibi is one with your being, El’iadrylline. You are the last true master. There can be no more passing of the knowledge from here.”

  For a moment, her emotions ran the spectrum before a glimmer of hope bubbled to the surface.

  “Then Julian might have been right. He said he could stop the battalion. I’ve heard nothing, but I don’t know how long it will take. I assume he knows that everything has changed and he’s—”

  “Julian as well is a victim of your circumstances,” Rhymallian said, cutting off Ellie’s rambling thoughts. “The Kyroibi tried to war for dominance over your own Abstractive Root, but your natural compassion and the circumstances of your upbringing allowed Julian a measure of freedom that should never have been given.”

  Ellie wanted to question what any of that meant, but one look at the expression on Rhymallian’s face and she understood. In the awakening of the battalion, a sacrifice needs to be made, but her Abstractive Root was of no use to the battalion. Not just because the Kyroibi had already pushed most of it out, but because Julian would not be able to do what was needed. Instead, he had to make a choice.

  Suddenly, it made sense. Julian did not go to shut down the battalion. He meant to die with them.

  Chapter 19

  Bethany watched as Mikk’s tiny ship flashed away, giving a small salute before turning to Re’geya and giving him a nervous smile.

  “Well, this is it.”

  “We’ll be at the arrival platform in a little under an hour,” Reg confirmed as he set their course. “You’re not nervous, are you?”

  “Would you think less of me if I was?”

  “Of course not, but you’ve been looking for an excuse to get to T’al Eidyn ever since we met. What’s changed?”

  “Oh, nothing’s changed,” Bethany said breezily. “It’s just that my very human brain has suddenly decided to worry about complications and failures. I don’t want to get there and suddenly die of asphyxiation because whatever voodoo your doctor performed on me decided to up and malfunction one day.”

  Reg laughed.

  “I was just going to tell you don’t you dare laugh at me,” Bethany threatened.

  Reg sobered, but graced her with a sympathetic smile.

  “Of course I’m not laughing at you,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. “That is, I am laughing at you, but because of your wit and not your concerns. Coming from a planet that still cuts people open to perform the simplest of procedures, your worry is understandable. But I assure you, love, what the team at the conversion clinic did was no barbaric insertion of artificial apparatus. Just like with your reassignment, your genetics have been altered to accept the changes. Not only that, but our doctors do not take risks. There are redundancies throughout your body. More than I dare count. Though I don’t mind trying,” he added with a flirta
tious flash of diodes.

  “At ease, lover boy. We don’t have that much time until we land.”

  “No, we really don’t, so I’d better schedule a welcoming committee.”

  Bethany’s eyebrows furrowed.

  “I thought we needed to go to the temple.”

  “We do, but since you’ve never been to a planet like T’al Eidyn, you’ll need to be acclimated. All that means is that you’ll have to enter into the gravitational field at a slower than airship speed. But don’t worry, I’m requesting that Ag’iazza leave her low pulse platform at home.”

  “And I’ll just be over here smiling and nodding and pretending any of that made sense,” Bethany replied, pushing her seat back as if to take a nap, but in reality, she brought out her info device and began looking up information on the T’al Eidyn atmosphere. There wasn’t much about the unknown that scared her, but neither was it in her nature to accept blindly that things simply would work out because someone else says so.

  Assuring herself that passing from T’al Eidyn’s artificially calibrated landing platform to the planet itself would be safe, she finally relaxed and began to again look forward to finally seeing the exotic home world of the most alien race she’d yet met. But as Reg began the landing protocol and the ship’s walls faded to transparency, a flat brown landscape came into view, prompting Bethany to lift one eyebrow at her boyfriend.

  “You couldn’t jazz things up with a little color? Maybe a couple of plants?”

  “This little wasteland had kept our presence a secret from the rest of the system for ages before we were forced to show ourselves. It is practically a national monument.” He glanced at the communication that came in and gave a bellowing laugh. “Scholar Reyessan will be here in a moment to take us to the temple. Of course he would want to get to see you before anyone else. He’s a brilliant scholar, but a bit eccentric and obsessed with alien physiology. He’s um…” Reg trailed off, looking embarrassed. “He’s also my father.”

  “Okay then, nothing like getting the whole meet the parent thing out of the way first thing,” Bethany said with a chuckle, but added, “Just as long as I ain’t getting taken to some Eidyssic Area 51 to be chopped up and studied.”

  “Not even my overly enthusiastic father would go that far,” Reg assured her as they watched the distant horizon. The small speck that had appeared was getting bigger. A moment later, it had grown again and Reg groaned. “Great, Father borrowed the low pulse monstrosity from the keeper.”

  Bethany said nothing, but noted some of the color drained from Reg’s face as he climbed out of the ship to meet the scholar, who was now zooming towards them at speeds she didn’t think look particularly safe. Bethany grabbed the leaden container that had been sitting in the center console and followed, just as the moving platform came to a dead stop outside. Surprisingly, its occupant was not thrown from the vehicle, but instead, jumped down and gave Reg a polite nod before turning fascinated eyes her way.

  “Bethany Bomar of Earth. It is so good to finally meet you. I’ve heard much about your adaptation to the variables and differences between our worlds. Not from Re’geya, mind,” he added, sliding his son an admonishing look. “I understand you were agreeable to the alterations required for travel to our humble home world and had the procedure done at a facility on Cald?”

  “I did,” Bethany said, stifling a laugh. Apparently, no matter where in the galaxy, parents were neurotic about meeting their children’s love interests.

  “Ah, good. Good. Perhaps then, once we’ve met with the keeper, you would consider sitting for a quick scan? I dare admit, you are the first true Earthling we’ve hosted here on T’al Eidyn and we’d love to have the data in our archives about how your physiology adapts to our environment.”

  “Uh, you’re not talking about anything invasive are you?” Bethany asked, taking an involuntary step back from the man.

  “Why don’t we get to the temple and deliver the grounding stone to Keeper Ag’iazza before scaring Bethany off for good, shall we?” Reg cut in. Honestly, had he not admitted this was his father, Bethany would never have suspected as much. Reyessan’s outward appearance was one that reminded her of a nervous caricature. Reg, she assumed, must have gotten his calm, calculated demeanor from his mother.

  “Yes, of course,” Reyessan said, gesturing to the flat platform that stood at a distance. “Climb aboard and we’ll be there in no time.”

  Bethany did as she was told and Reg looked as if he was going to be ill. Reyessan gave his son an exasperated glare.

  “You may close your eyes to lessen the disorientation. You know this.”

  “And you know that as a pilot, keeping watch over my surroundings is second nature,” he shot back, but stepped aboard the platform as well. He’d barely taken hold of the rail when they shot forward, blurring the scenery.

  “Oh wow, this is trippy,” Bethany gasped, turning her head in all directions.

  “You’re not disoriented?” Reg asked in a voice that sounded like he was trying to hold back getting physically ill.

  “A little. It’s kind of like the gravitron ride at the sketchy carnivals that would pop up from time to time in strip mall parking lots over in New Jersey.”

  Reg shook his head. Rather, he mentally shook his head while keeping his eyes trained low on the horizon. The barrier was getting blessedly closer. As soon as they were through, they could resume proper pulse speeds to the temple.

  “Hold on,” Reyessan warned Bethany. “This is where we transition into our own atmosphere.”

  To Bethany, it felt as if the ground had dropped out from under her, followed by a sudden heaviness, as if coming out of a pool to rediscover gravity. But she barely paid the ill effects any mind as she looked out over the dimly lit world. It was a thing of beauty. A real life sci-fi world. Even more so than the other planets of the Ghowrn system she’d visited. As they came to a stop at the foot of the wide staircase that led to the temple entrance, she felt an awe unlike any other. She started to take a step from the platform, but Reyessan placed a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

  “I’m just recalibrating the platform. We’ll begin our ascent in a moment.”

  Bethany gave a nod, but noticed Re’geya’s color was even worse.

  “Um, maybe Reg and I should walk the rest of the way,” she suggested. “I mean, we’ve been sitting in a ship for a while. Might be good to keep the blood flowing and muscles limber.”

  Reyessan looked at his son and his uneasy expression softened.

  “Of course. Re’geya knows the way to Keeper Ag’iazza’s office.”

  They stepped off the platform and watched as it rocketed upwards toward the temple door.

  “Thanks,” Reg said with a sheepish smile as they began climbing the stairs. “You probably think less of me for my inability to acclimate to low pulse.”

  “Not at all. Ellie told me she nearly lost her lunch when she first got here, so I kinda had a heads up. Plus I’m just wired to enjoy near death experiences. Probably has something to do with growing up within spitting distance of a world famous roller coaster.”

  Inside the temple, Bethany tried and failed to keep from gawking. In her mind, she’d imagined scholars sitting on low pillows, a book in hand, reveling in the pursuit of knowledge. Instead, the activity that bustled around them could only be described as chaotic. Eidyssic of all ages seemed to hurry past, with no regard for the perils of the narrow and open walkways they strode across. Bright lights flashed from an open doorway on one side of them and something that sounded like a steam engine exploding issued from the hallway on the other side.

  But Reg seemed to pay them no mind as he led them down deeper into the corridors that ringed the open first floor atrium. When at last they arrived at their destination, Reyessan was already waiting, along with an elderly woman who had to be Ag’iazza. Her cloudy and cracked marble eyes trained on Bethany immediately.

  “Bethany Bomar, it is so nice to finally meet you,” she s
aid with a respectful bow. “Eidyn is now as much your home as ours, so do not feel ill at ease.”

  “Thank you, Keeper,” Bethany said with a slightly more awkward bow. There wasn’t much that could ruffle her, but the temple keeper had an aura of power about her, but also a warmth that reminded Bethany of her own recently departed grandmother back on Earth.

  “I guess you’ll be needing this?” she asked, holding out the small containment unit, which Ag’iazza took with surprisingly steady hands, given her frail appearance.

  “Thank you,” she said and made a gesture to Reyessan, who crossed to the door and pressed a code into a panel on the wall. There was a slight hissing sound, followed by a metallic clank and though she couldn’t be certain, Bethany thought she noticed the room darken. She wasn’t sure if she should be nervous or not, but Reyessan smiled reassuringly at her.

  “A precaution only,” he said. “If this is indeed the entity that has influenced powerful and adversarial emotions, we do not want to be set upon by anyone who is having a bad day.”

  Ag’iazza pulled a pair of goggles from a nearby drawer and handed them to Reyessan before turning to Bethany. “I understand you’ve not felt anything untoward while around the true master?”

  “No ma’am,” Bethany replied. “But I’ve never had the desire to rule the world either.”

  “Re’geya?”

  Reg shook his head. “I’m happy with where I am in life.” He snuck a glance at Bethany, who for the first time in as long as she could remember, blushed.

  “Well, if anything changes, for any of you, speak out,” Ag’iazza warned. “Scholar, are you ready?”

  “I am.”

  Reyessan moved to the table and set up a delicate and spindly pyramidal device, which glowed with a strange, greenish light that was impossible to look at directly. Bethany realized this must have been why he needed goggles. She considered asking for a pair of her own, but did not want to interrupt what looked like a complicated set up. Instead, turned her head away, keeping her eyes in the general vicinity of the device, just in case.