* * * * *
Our entire crew had been invited to enjoy the luxury of the leisure center in Inen for several tendays, a generous reward that spoke well of Orashean. I did not intend to go. That is, until the testing of the Dynarean Palie pond plants believed to be a possible cure for the Orian bacterial disease hydantia, was abruptly taken out of my hands; Beren insisted upon their immediate shipment to Orian. I hadn’t planned what else I was going to do apart from participating in the follow-up test studies of the Palie plants. That was how, after a chorus of protest from the others, Enessa Fulten and Dasan Mira managed to persuade me to stay with them.
Although Selesta’s suspension capsules provided the only environment in which I could truly rest, I didn’t even want to return to Selesta, knowing that I would have to explain my absence to the computer. It was only a computer, I reminded myself. What could it say to me? Nothing it hadn’t been programmed to, but that wouldn’t make its reproach any easier to bear. Because I knew I was wrong to leave Tiasenne for so long. I was wrong to leave Tiasenne and Orian unprotected; I was wrong to delay my journey to Kiel3. But I was the only one who knew of my guilt.
Or would Hinev, in the vastness of the stars, also somehow know, from heaven? I often wondered when I gazed up into the heavens at night. What would he have me do? How I missed the comfort of his counsel.
Sometimes I believe guilt is the most powerful force in the universe. It weighs us down until we can do nothing but make our amends.
Orashean and Beren made my decision easier. Even at the leisure center, it was clear that they were having me watched, but for what purpose wasn’t clear. Ironically, neither one had any knowledge that the other was doing the same thing, for despite Beren’s stay on Tiasenne and the cooperative mission, political relations between the twin worlds had changed very little in our absence.
It was a cool, cloudy day when the scientists left to resume their duties. We began to say our farewells in the morning; by the afternoon the last had departed to return to their homes in remote cities and observatories across Tiasenne and Orian. As I waved good-bye to the last transport, I resolved that it was also time for me to return to Selesta. I could not hide forever.
And I hadn’t slept in a very long time. The suspension capsule in Selesta could overcome my body’s energy systems and allow my mind the rest it needed; I knew I was growing dangerously tired. There was a point when my subconscious mind could take over my conscious will if I did not rest. I did not care to explore those depths of my mind. I needed some kind of real time to rest a little.
The ship lay only a few nariars from the spaceport, glinting in the sun on the grassy hill where I had left it so many years before, by now an almost permanent feature on the horizon. As I approached, the great cargo bay and docking bay doors slid open as if I had just left to catch a breath of fresh air.
The main hold was dark and still; when I entered, lights flickered on, and innumerable rows of gleaming Valerian space fighter jets sprang to life like ghosts in the shadows brought back to life to startle the fragile reality of the waking world. In perfect orderly rows they waited frozen in time, waiting, it could have been hours, years, millennia, or just minutes.
Beyond the cargo bay and docking bay, passages and intersecting corridors wound away, leading to rooms, storage holds, and chambers of every size and function as well as elevation devices that linked the ground level to all of the one hundred and ninety-four floors of the massive spaceship, now a darkened and silent maze. I heard no sound in the still air as I headed to my chamber, located near the front center of the ship with the rest of the crews’ quarters.
“I’m glad you’ve finally returned, Alessia,” the computer ventured as soon as I entered my chamber, almost as if it really were glad to see me back, even though it was only a machine. There was no criticism in those words, I realized. A weight came away from my shoulders. Without making any mention of the mission I had abandoned, the genuine-sounding, friendly, and familiar voice had been good to hear again.
So I spent the next several hours giving the computer an account of the past nine/ nineteen years, though not because I thought it was actually interested or because I anticipated that anyone else would be able to examine my report in the future. Some traditions are binding; we—Hinev’s explorers—had always recorded our activities in a report to the computer.
After finishing my report, I released a mechanism on the control panel, and a flat plane slid out from a smooth section in the wall. From above, a clear dome lowered at a forty-five degree angle so that I could lie back on the rectangular plane. The dome then closed, and the last thing I remembered hearing was the percolating sound of warm liquids and gases filling the chamber.
In that state, I remembered no dreams, only a blissful calm. I had succeeded in dreaming before once or twice, lying here, but now more than anything I wanted only peace. A time that felt like years to my exhausted body and only a few moments to my unconscious mind passed, when an unwanted outside force jolted my conscious thoughts to life. Horrifying signals of pain bombarded me from some unknown source, not yet fully reaching my mind, yet warning me of the danger that had struck someone close to me; the pleasant dream haziness dissipated as I opened the dome.
Before I could ask, the computer informed me that I had been asleep eighty-seven short Tiasennian days. But in that brief time my years-long fatigue had nearly vanished. Empathic sensations of physical pain, feelings which rarely touched me washed over me and began to do their damage. I cringed, racked by pain, almost unable to move, unable to breathe very well.
At that point, I knew that this mental assault came from a strong telepathic bond with someone.
I tried to sense the source and winced as I discovered the identity.
I braced myself against the pain, but it retreated as quickly as it had come. Then I rushed from Selesta to Inen, stopping at the security gate of the Headquarters building to identify myself to the guards, waiting impatiently as they relayed the information to Orashean. In a moment he came down and offered to escort me to the spaceport himself, calling ahead to make the necessary arrangements for a shuttle and for a message to be sent to Nayin’s spaceport.
Ten hours later the shuttle touched down at Nayin on the planet Orian. An open-air transport waited to take me to Destria, one hundred and five Orian nariars east of the capital. We arrived in only twenty minutes and took another minute to taxi over to the Aiolus Medical Center, a tall purple stone building with hundreds of flexible clear metal windows.
The critical ward was on the third floor. Pacing back and forth in the lobby was Ai-derian, surrounded by his officers and aides. His hair had patches of grey, and his clear blue eyes were bright but sunken and hollow from fatigue and grief. When he saw me arrive, a relieved smile broke over his face.
“Alessia,” he called, excited, surprised. “We didn’t know how to reach you. Orashean said you had left the leisure center without giving us a way to contact you.” He rushed forward and took my hand.
“What happened?” I began.
“There was an accident.”
“Where?”
“In his laboratory, they told me. My son was in the middle of an experiment. The chemicals he was using reacted and started a fire. There was an explosion, and the roof collapsed. It took the rescue team three hours to drag Terin out of the rubble.”
“He was in the explosion and survived?” I asked, remembering the pressure against my lungs. Ai-derian nodded weakly.
“Yes. He regained consciousness eleven hours ago, against all expectations. He was calling your name and asking me if you were coming.” My jaw opened in surprise; a flicker of a smile passed Ai-derian’s lips. “He’s a stubborn one.” The smile passed, and Ai-derian’s face crumpled in pain. Suddenly he looked like an old man, older than his years, and oddly helpless. “The doctors are still deciding what can be done to save him. I only hope they haven’t given up—they think there is no hope now.”
Ai-deri
an shook his head and tried to blink back the tears that involuntarily squeezed out from the corners of his watery eyes. “They keep telling me he hasn’t got much longer—some bones were crushed and several of his organs are damaged. They’ve given him two blood transfusions already, but there’s just too much internal hemorrhaging. They don’t think he’ll survive an organ repair operation or an artificial transplant.”
“How much blood has he lost?” I asked.
“Too much.” Ai-derian sighed. His arms hung limply, ineffectually, at his sides. “They did what they could to stop the internal hemorrhaging—he’s been drifting in and out of consciousness, and when he is awake, he’s delirious. But the doctors are amazed how long he’s held on. He woke up several hours after the last operation. They thought that would do it, but they came in a few minutes ago with bad news...” He faltered. “I have to go in to tell him soon that he isn’t expected to make it.”
“Where is he?” I asked. Ai-derian told me the room number and fixed plaintive eyes on me, content to observe my course of action. “It would make him happy to see you again—but you’d better hurry. He’s been expecting you to come by for months now, and then the accident happened. Please go in. Even if he can’t really hear you, I would appreciate it.”
I stood for a moment outside room 305. But as I entered the room, Terin’s eyes fluttered open. He recognized me; I hardly knew him at all. It took a great deal of force to block out his pain. Through it all and through a mass of equipment surrounding him, he smiled weakly at me.
But the surprise and effort to speak proved too much for him. Behind him, some machine monitors blared as his vital readings changed. The subject fell unconscious. His life signs were weak. I stood a moment longer staring down at his incognizant form, and when my hand found my cheek, I was amazed to discover a wet river of tears. And at the same time, I felt an unexpected wave of panic. Could I bear to lose him? I asked myself.
All along, I knew I could save him. I realized I had been unconsciously questioning whether or not I should ever since I left for Orian. I knew he was beyond mere telekinetic healing—with the extent of the internal damage he might not survive as I tried to arrest and reverse the bleeding. Only one way remained—perhaps the riskiest of all. But my reservations—Hinev’s ancient warnings against tampering with nature—didn’t seem so important now that I had seen Terin’s state. It wasn’t quite a split-second decision, not exactly. But that didn’t keep it from making a profound impact on my life, and upon the lives of others.
When the doctor burst into the room, I tried to explain my plan to him. His expression said it all. Set up the blood transfusion device, now? I had to be crazy. I insisted, anyway, that this is precisely what we would do. The doctor’s slow movements and shaking head refused to register anything but the futility of it. I insisted again, this time forcing him telekinetically to comply with what I said.
Grudgingly, the head doctor instructed me to lie down on a cot next to the patient. Instead I sat in a chair by the bed. Anyway, I knew that I needed to be awake to direct the process, the process of manipulating Hinev’s serum that ran through my veins. I was afraid the healing power of the serum might not take effect otherwise.
But did Hinev’s immortality serum which ran through my veins still have the power to heal after all this time? I asked myself. For Terin was to be the first serum test subject in more than fifty thousand years.
When the clear tube colored dark blue, I closed my eyes to concentrate hard on the atoms, molecules, organelles, cells, and the metabolic reactions in the patient’s skin, blood vessels, and bones. Standing above me, I sensed the doctor watched skeptically as my blood slowly dripped into Terin’s arm.
Then I felt a part of my collective sentience pass forever outside my body. The sensation was accompanied by rising panic within me. My body and mind were in agony at the possibility of the permanent loss of a part of my sentient self—as though a part of me were truly dying and all the while the rest of me was conscious of it happening.
But this feeling was an illusion, of course, or so I told myself, for Hinev’s immortality serum had immortalized my body and protected me.
Despite the horror of my recent experience, by will alone I was able to force the blood cells from my body to resist reabsorption into my system, to flow against the attractive forces compelling them to return to me and instead flow into the patient’s arm.
Forcefully detaching these cells from my entire entity, I felt part of my collective being and life energy diffuse into the ambassador’s son and begin to re-organize and restructure the damaged areas. The bones were soon rebonding, the arteries reforming, and the burned skin, torn muscles, ligaments, and tendons were healing and reattaching themselves to the bone and to each other.
The burst organs sucked in ejected matter and healed. Every hole and skin puncture filled in as if it had never existed. I had no doubt: the patient was going to live.
I pulled out the tube; immediately Terin’s skin closed in, rippling, then solidly smooth.
I heard the doctor step back in horror.
Meanwhile, I felt myself losing complete contact with a part of my body, the cells that I had surrendered recognized their isolation and began to fight their confinement, rushing to the bloodstream of their host only to find that they had been tricked into sealing themselves within him. In a minute they would cease to fight and establish themselves in the various tissues of their host, eager for the unexpected challenge of metamorphosing another being. But did it have to go that far? I wondered. Couldn’t the serum heal him without initiating a full metamorphosis?
I watched for a moment until Terin’s heartbeat stabilized. The doctor still stood staring, mute, mouth agape. During the next few minutes I waited for the inevitable convulsions when Terin’s immune system would fight the invading alien plasma.
A moment later, sweat formed along his forehead, and in his sleep he clenched his teeth. It would be better for him to sleep as long as possible. If he awoke the agony of the metamorphosis would be unbearable.
Terin remained in the hospital for a tenday, a longer period of time on Orian than a tenday on Tiasenne. When he woke two days later, he was still too weak to stand. Ai-derian and I decided to split the visiting hours. At the invitation of Ambassador Ai-derian, I stayed in the barracks normally reserved for military officers.
I had always respected Terin and his right to private thoughts. It seemed I still had a conscience, and it wouldn’t permit me to violate Terin’s mind. Yet on my visits to the hospital, I felt sure that I could discern a barrier that shut off his mind from me, so that I couldn’t probe him even if I wanted to try. The first three days, while unable to speak, he passed me several scribbled notes, insisting that I detail everything about the operation.
He listened intently while I described the transfusion, not at all nervous, only placidly fascinated. He was also very keen to hear about our recent expedition. The doctor had insisted that he wasn’t to speak while he was recuperating, but Terin whispered questions, anyway.
In the end, the hospital released its patient ten hours earlier than the doctors had originally planned. I received a message on the eighth day from Ai-derian not to go to the hospital but that his son wanted me to meet him in the Orian Science Research and Development building in three hours. When I arrived at the OSRD, I discovered that he was waiting for me in the biochemical department laboratory, so I let the guard lead me to the room where the young biochemists at Destria worked after completing their training.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
—Oscar Wilde
Chapter Eleven
The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire Page 24