The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire

by Anne Spackman

The door opened a crack with an annoying creak. Well, so much for surprising him, I thought. Terin was standing behind an experiment table mixing chemicals of blue and green liquids, but it seemed he hadn’t seen me. To shield his eyes he wore navy goggles that mismatched his maroon and grey uniform.

  I tiptoed in, but he had sensed my presence and looked directly towards the door. Smiling easily, he pulled off his goggles after carefully laying the chemicals on the table. I would not have recognized him, I thought, as he crossed the floor.

  “You tried to do that when I was a child.” He admonished, laughing, and swept me into a great bear hug.

  He was a head taller than me now, as handsome as his father with his bright, intelligent eyes, but I imagined there to be also something of his mother in him. I could smell his masculine scent in that embrace, and feel the warmth of his body.

  “Has it been almost twenty years since I used to beg you to tell me stories?” he reminisced, stepping back.

  “It’s only been ten years for me.”

  “Yes, that is true. Well, you don’t seem to have changed very much.” He observed pleasantly.

  “So what were you doing?”

  “Oh. Well, why don’t you come over and see my experiment for yourself,” he said, already ushering me to the lab table.

  “It’s interesting, Terin.” I said, looking up from the microscanner a moment later. “Actually, your father has told me a lot about your biological and chemical experiments. He’s quite proud of your work.”

  “Alessia, interesting? Glad to hear your opinion.” He said cheerfully. “But I should tell you—it’s been sweet so far to hear you call me ‘Terin’, but no one calls me by that nickname anymore.” He added. “I’ve been using my given name since I came to be trained years ago.”

  “Sargon, then?” I said in surprise. “The last time I saw you, you said you didn’t like your name.”

  “Well, I like it now.” He shrugged.

  “It’s certainly more distinguished.” I offered, then another thought distracted me. That name—where had it come from? I wondered. For I had heard it many times throughout our history, even on the planet Kiel3 when we lived there.

  “I guess a lot of things have changed since I left.” I said.

  He nodded judiciously.

  “Alessia, I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am to you for saving my life.” He said, suddenly serious. “So I’ll just say thank you and leave it at that. I’m afraid I have no gift for pleasantries, but I always sincerely mean what I say—”

  “Yes, I know, I know. Do you remember what happened to cause the accident?” I ventured, hoping to distract him from offering any more unnecessary gratitude.

  “Not really. I was mixing some routine but volatile chemicals in my laboratory. The next thing I remember was the roof falling down on top of me.” He tossed his head lightly. “Doctor Minden tells me I was lucky I had gone over to check one of the monitors, or else I wouldn’t have survived. I don’t recall much else, but I visited the lab this morning while the repairs were going on. I got to see some of the stills taken just after the accident.

  He stared hard at me. “You’d better be careful or someone out there is going to mistake you for a trainee. Wear a badge. Honestly, you don’t look your age!” He observed, seeming to surprise himself as he said it.

  “Speaking of which, you haven’t told me anything about your training.” I said, trying to change the topic of conversation.

  “That’s because you were never around.” He laughed.

  Over the next few hours he recounted the events of his life beginning on the day that he left for Orian. For the first time we spoke as equals, and I remembered what it was like to anticipate the ending of a story I could not absorb telepathically in seconds.

  Sargon explained how he had been forced to leave Tiasenne and how he had feared never seeing me again. He had never understood why he had to leave before I returned from Orian. Apparently, the first years of training had been tough, and his father had only been able to visit a few times a year.

  After a while, it had become easier to make friends, but most of them had withdrawn from training, which became more difficult with each passing year. The rest he no longer kept in touch with except for the occasional message; most of them had moved to different science stations across Orian after graduation.

  Sargon had finished his training with the highest evaluation of his year and had been offered a position on the staff of the prestigious OSRD building. A week ago, Ambassador Ai-derian had told me that his son had since become the Orians’ new star biochemical research scientist and that he’d been the honored guest at several conventions held each year in Nayin.

  “I heard about the return of Baidarka from my father a few weeks before we received the reports.” He told me, returning to the present. “But I was beginning to think you would never come to see me. You almost lost the chance, you know.”

  “I know.” I admitted. “I’m sorry.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He said, dismissing it. “Water under the bridge now, right? Besides, the anticipation was good for me, and you’ve more than made up for a little tardiness. Well, a lot, if you want to get technical.”

  “A lot of what—tardiness or compensation?”

  “Both,” he laughed, but not for long. “But I was talking about the promise you made the last time I saw you.”

  “I came back.” I insisted. “You weren’t there anymore.”

  “You’re impossible.” He shook his head.

  “I’m surprised you remember, though,” I observed.

  “The day you left us?” He shrugged. “I’ll never forget it. All of the officers and politicians were crowding around, and the festivities—I remember all those windbags were wasting your time and keeping you busy. Glad I’ll never be as helpless again as I was back then,” he added after a brief pause. “It’s awful to be powerless.”

  “Say, are you hungry?” I asked.

  He stopped, visibly considering his answer. It should not have been such a difficult question.

  “There won’t be many people around right now, and we can at least sit down and catch up,” I suggested, and he nodded.

  The olenfruit juice was too tart and the urbin stew was bland, but the afternoon passed quickly as we sat and talked in the dining hall for over half a sleep period. Sleep period times as used by the civilians were not so influential in the OSRD because people worked shifts at different hours night and day; there was always someone coming or going. After a while, Sargon decided to take me to the botanical gardens where he kept several of his experimental biological specimen hybrids.

  “I visited your agricultural dome several times as part of my training. It’s very impressive,” he said as I sat down on a chair beside one of the hanging vines.

  “Thanks.”

  “Not at all. It’s good work. We studied a lot of the principles and techniques you gave the OSRD to construct the dome, too. In fact, I used some of them to build these gardens,” he added, and for the first time I ran my eyes over the hanging plants, tall plant rows, and the medicinal flowers, all enclosed within a sealed translucent and curved outside wall covered intermittently by solar panels and reflectors.

  “I heard a rumor that you saved my uncle and the Tiasennian Ambassador’s life back then.” He stopped and came to sit down beside me. “You never told me you were telekinetic.”

  “You never asked.”

  “I’m asking now.”

  “You’re a scientist. You know it’s impossible.” I said evasively.

  “That’s your answer?”

  “No.” I don’t want to talk about it.

  “All right, so tell me later.” He said, as though reading my mind.

  “I’ll be heading back soon.”

  “To Selesta?” He asked quickly.

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, I’m still waiting for a tour. Or have you forgotten that promise, too?”

  “What?”
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  “Remember when you said you’d take me there? Don’t think I’ve given up on that.”

  “Of course not.” I laughed. “You don’t give up on anything, do you?”

  “Not if it’s something I really want.” He shrugged. “So what are the rest of your friends like, the ones you used to talk about—is that where you went after you returned? Did you go back to your ship? Are they still there? Why didn’t they ever leave?”

  I stood staring at him. The silence stretched.

  I knew I should be thankful that I at least had survived the anti-serum virus, but I could still hear the screams, the panic and despair of immortal creatures suddenly faced with a terrible death...

  When Hinev’s explorers died, the history of the universe, all that had been across a million civilizations, had died with them.

  Sargon put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?” He asked in ingenuous concern; I could swear I heard his heartbeat quickening.

  How had he caught on so quickly on what I was feeling? Yet of course I knew how. I had only hoped that such a small amount of blood in the transfusion wouldn’t be enough to change him. But Hinev’s serum ran through my veins.

  And now through his.

  “Don’t worry,” I shrugged his hand off. “It’s nothing. I wish I could say there was a celebration back on my ship, but I came alone on this mission.”

  “But... your friends, whoever they are or were—they meant a great deal to you.” He observed.

  “They did and always will.” I said. “But they and all of our dreams are gone now.”

  “But our dreams don’t have to die.” Sargon argued, with a note of irritation in his voice and a definite urgency to negate my negativity. “Dreams are what we live for, what we hold on to beyond hope, if we ever expect to rise above our surroundings.” He glanced out the observation window at the barren rock plain that led towards Nayin. A small civilian community had grown up around the military city of Destria, and their low dwellings filled the foreground.

  “You can’t forget them.” He advised. “Most people out there spend their time worrying over the most trivial things. I often wonder why. But that’s what happens when you let yourself forget where you’re going.” He coughed self-consciously as he realized he had taken a harder viewpoint than he intended. Then he extended a hand towards me.

  “Well, why don’t we go for another walk? The air in here is almost unbreathable with all the plants. And you’ve still got to see the rest of the building.” He laughed, trying to be light-hearted again, imitating one of the aides that gave the politicians tours of the OSRD building. “Modern wonders are on display for your eyes only, but do take care.” He said in a high-pitched way that mocked the center guides. “Lots of things are going on around here. You never know what might happen.”