by S. V. Brown
Sharith. Nope, he hadn’t heard of them before; not in any of the TV shows he’d grown up with or watched while bored on some evenings inside the Earth installation.
In front of Al a great wave, like a tsunami, rose and came towards him with surprising silence. He stared as it stopped, twice as tall as he, and spanned to his left and right as far as he could see. Inside the water, words formed, rising out like some kind of liquid typeset. He read and touched the text, sweeping it down to move the words along. His finger was wet when he examined it. “What is this?”
“Whenever you need to contact us, use the wave. You and your descendants will be able to call upon the Elysian Library.”
Wow. He hadn’t seen this type of technology either. “It’s liquidology.” He passed out, collapsing inside the pod he hadn’t actually left.
New Instinct
Al, having recovered from his uncomfortable position after crumpling inside the pod, nodded slowly, seeing he had little choice. When he had gingerly lifted his head out, hoping to see more humanoid figures, it was toward the Elysians still floating over the green ocean. He sipped a ration of water. He finally had to admit he was really on an alien planet talking to whales. “We might be able to help. I’ll talk to my comrades.”
“We will call a Gathering at the Oriri, and I, Nysintheor, brother to the oldest Elysian Pyrintheor, will contact you. Only you. Only Reos.”
“My offer still stands as well, Nysintheor. I will help in any way, in honor of Charles and my people who died and those you have saved.”
“Reos?”
“Yes.”
“We accept. Prepared to change, Reos?”
“Change?” Al wondered what he’d gotten himself into, but he knew he must, just as a small boy he knew he had to help animals he felt the same connection now. He’d never regretted dedicating his life to animals. “I will do what I must.”
“We will return you to the Tunuen, altered genetically, improved, stronger, intelligent, neither you nor your descendants must breed with pure Diminuen; if you do you cannot help us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We know, Reos, but must trust us. Your people desire instinct, and this will be our gift to you. However, for your line only human breeding, no girl child will be born. Only boys will be born, only Reos males can help. Of the others eventually all pure human strain will die out and then no more.”
“Do you agree?” Another orca had floated over to ask him, moving just as a whale would, in water.
Al had a nagging thought after Jar’s comments. “Did they, those beings, help us while we were still on Earth?”
Silence filled the region until one said, “We have detected their technology on your ship. So, yes. But fear not, as we have made our terms clear to them.”
The tone held hints of threat if disobeyed and he was mindful orcas were killer whales. “I’ll help.” Al nodded to strengthen his own resolve more than anything. In due time they may come to trust him. How they were going to change him he had no idea.
During an indefinable amount of time he saw flashes of light, labs, and soft voices comforting him. These were no whales changing him. Perhaps the whales were some kind of projections. Some kind of vessels. He drifted in and out but gradually woke to a new world. At least, that’s what it felt like. Professor Al Reos, already a brilliant zoologist and chronologist, was returned, enhanced, to the Tunuen. He could see and hear better. His sense of smell and touch improved. But it was his instinctive senses that he noticed the most. He sought out the survivors, shocked by the carnage as he strode through the ship. The humans would have no choice but to breed with the sullen and resentful Diminuen. Whatever the Elysians said to them, worked. After Al directed the new order of things, neither species liked their options, but they had no choice, for none could return to Earth. Within the week, when an uneasy alliance had been made with the Diminuen, Nysintheor, brother to the oldest Elysian Pyrintheor, returned and contacted Al Reos.
“You may come, Reos, with your ship. Come.”
The Elysians guided humans, and the now subdued and resentful Diminuen, to a cluster of many bright galaxies and then to a beautiful planet that they named Renuen.
Many years after landing, Al Reos had numerous children with Gabriella, who had lost her husband. She had been Special Forces and their boys grew up scientists or Special Forces. But he fathered many other children from other human women, to increase the Reos male population to create what the Elysians called the Living Gate, its purpose unclear. All others eventually agreed to interbreed, with a new attite infused, instinct driven, human Diminuen hybrid resulting in an unusual end product. They simply called themselves Joirans, as they adapted to the new worlds.
***
Hundreds of years later it was time for Professor Al Reos to join the Elysians. Nysintheor came for him. There were no goodbyes. In space, within the Oriri, within a cocoon so that he could breathe, the Elysians showed Al what they had been building. It was a skeletal structure at this stage, but looked like millions of large dewdrops joined by an enormous spider’s web. A Reos male would fill each gap.
Nysintheor had explained to Al that they would cocoon the bodies at various stations and the minds stretched over the sections of web. There would be no pain, no knowledge of passing time.
“We will wake you every five hundred years, Reos. At one thousand five hundred there will be enough descendants to complete the gate and for some to be free. Do not fear. Reos descendants only join us when ready.”
“I do not fear. Tell me everything when I waken.”
In five hundred years Nysintheor awakened and showed Al the sparklingly gate; a third of it was finished. During one awakening Al saw a strange disturbance in space. Nysintheor floated close to his cocoon. “The Sharith are breaking through. But they cannot bring their beasts if we succeed.”
Al thought he understood the issue. The Elysians had sworn to protect all animals. And if the Sharith brought their beasts—he wasn’t sure what the beasts were—laws would be broken as the Elysians sought to protect their region of space. The foresight amazed him. And he, and his sons, were a part of what he hoped was a truly noble act.
Old Betrayals
“…and when the Elysians command, Animalia shall strike with all its might to render the Enemy a deadly blow…”
Excerpt from the Joiran Cluster Archives, the Third Hostility.
{[Joiran Cluster] [Anamoth] [Saxe to Kreid]
[914857/2577/22/space]}
Serafina was travelling with her parents on a Goliath class ACES, the Anamoth. The cruise ship, built at Behemoth, was en route from Saxe to Kreid in the GA15 system. Only a handful of people knew her true identity, Serafina Alessandra Reos, and she knew herself only as Serafina Rushton, daughter to Robin and William, as did most of those on board. She had lessons to attend while her parents worked during the day. There were fifteen other children in her class today, and there were at least four other classes with different age groups.
She hated some of her subjects. Math and Unuslingua lessons were boring. During the math lessons, she’d sit and stare at the figures unblinkingly, trying to amuse herself with ocular extortions. The numbers meant nothing to her, just symbols that were supposed to mean something when you combined them. She received average scores and would “listen” to her parents tell her how important it was that she asserted herself more. With her Unuslingua classes, she grew weary and wished she could learn Animalia and not the common language. After having to rewrite the alphabet over and over again and growing bored with that, she drew little animals on each letter. The teacher contacted her parents and arranged to meet with them in their family quarters.
“I mean, it was very clever of her, really. She came up with a different animal for each letter, unusual animals as well. I don’t even know where she got the information. She will always differentiate between the sexes of the animals. I’ve had a report from Dobson who, as you may be aware, sees Serafina down in
the animals’ pens frequently. He says that she always knows the sex of animals, and there is a subtle difference in how she treats them. Her signals are slightly more deferential toward the male of each species but definitely more accommodating toward the female. We don’t understand this, considering the Equality Protocol set by our founders. She can spend hours down there taking care of them. However, I wouldn’t be too concerned about this issue.” She lowered her voice. “These unusual attributes may very well be part of her … genetic inheritance.”
She looked intently at the two with a “now to the real problem” expression. “I cannot fault her on her attention to the creatures, but outside the pens, her concentration level is very short. We are trying to make things interesting, but we can’t keep specializing for her in a large class. You did still want to enforce the stipulation of her attending a normal class size?”
Her parents nodded.
Serafina was sitting in her bedroom, with its cream paneled walls and soft pink furnishings. She was on the bed, in view of the three adults sitting on the lounge and its matching chairs, swinging her legs back and forth. Her long brown hair was up in a ponytail and she was wearing her favorite blue dress. She heard every word. She looked at Mr. Pollocks, a sloth bear, sitting next to her on the Elysian print bedspread and winked at him as she’d seen her dad wink at her mum. “It’ll be okay,” she reassured him. The voices started again after a pause.
“Just keep trying; maybe she’s taking in more than we realize. Her IQ should be high but we won’t know until she reaches twelve, maybe ten for her.” The teacher continued and smiled. “She really is very charming, very protective towards the animals down in the cargo and pet section, and toward those smaller or weaker than her.”
Her parents smiled at the blonde woman encouragingly. Serafina could see, though, that they were worried. She didn’t understand why math was so important when animals were so much more interesting and vital to the Joiran Cluster. Couldn’t they see that?
She stopped swinging her legs as her gentle teacher waved goodbye. Her parents beckoned her into the lounge room. She groaned. Not another talk. She hated the dreary, dragged-out talks. Some friends told her they got smacks. She wished she got a smack instead of having to “listen.” All she ever wanted to do while they talked was to drift off to sleep. Every time the talk started, she could feel herself getting lethargic. Sometimes she would suddenly find herself looking at their expectant faces, and they would be patiently waiting for her response. That’s when she realized that they had asked her something and she’d missed it.
She quietly shuffled on the grey carpet to them.
“Pick up your feet, Feena.”
She sidled into her dad’s waiting arms. To her surprise they didn’t speak; they just hugged her and gave their secret “let’s go and talk about her” look over her head. She cheered up. She grabbed Mr. Pollocks and they went to play high tea.
The next day she went to class and found they were actually studying something interesting. They had a project to do. They had to pick an animal and write about it. They could even draw pictures or, if the animal was on board, they could use it for demonstrations.
After lessons and changing into exploring clothes, which usually consisted of long pants and long-sleeved top, she had some time to investigate the ship on the fifth level. She grabbed Mr. Pollocks. All of her friends had gone off to do their chores first. Feena had decided to do her project on the goat and wanted to see it. Dobson stopped her at the blue metal, oval portal to the ship’s animal pen.
The burly, fair-skinned man smiled down at her. “What would you like to do, young Serafina?”
“To see the goat.”
“You’re in luck then, lass. She has been pregnant and just at this moment is having babies. Would you like to watch?”
Her face struggled not to show the horror she felt, but she still couldn’t stop herself. “You mean she was gestating and is now giving birth to kids?”
His square-shaped face turned a shade of pink. “Err … yes. Do you want to go in?”
It was her turn to look flustered. “No thanks.” She quietly walked away.
It was good the Markhor, the goat, was breeding but she remembered all too well the day her parents had taken her to see a friend of theirs giving birth. Her parents, somewhat reluctantly, followed the advice of the genetic scientists who wanted to expose Serafina to the beauty of childbirth so that she would one day look forward to her own births. But Serafina had felt sick. By the time her parents had realized the effect on their daughter, the damage had already been done. No one had noticed the stricken look on the little face right through the entire procedure. She vomited and felt disgraced. Later, while in bed, she heard her parents talk about it.
She had felt so humiliated it took her five days to go back to visit the woman and her baby. Serafina still saw the birth clearly in her mind. The baby, to her relief when she did see it, was clean and somewhat cute, but she didn’t want to see another birth ever again. There was no way she was going to have babies. She fled the animal section, remembering she was supposed to go directly to her family quarters, but she needed to try to wipe that awful flashback from her mind. Normally, she would recruit Jo and Benny to go exploring with her, but Jo was sick and Benny’s parents had punished him for some misdeed. Silly thing; she had told him to be careful. Jo was good at evading the adults, but Benny was a bit slow. It was just her and Mr. Pollocks.
A while later, back in her room, she dropped Mr. Pollocks on her bed. Her dad surprised her by coming in. His dark brown hair was disheveled. He’d been exercising. He knelt down next to her, leaning a sweaty arm on her bed. He smelt.
“Hello, Feena, Mr. Pollocks. What have you been up to today?”
“We’ve been investigating. But Mr. Pollocks said he was tired so I am putting him to bed.”
“Poor tired teddy bear.”
Feena looked at her father with big golden eyes. “He’s not a teddy bear, dad. He’s a black sloth bear from the tropical mountains of Agrafe.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Pollocks.” He looked from the big white-nosed bear to his daughter. “I won’t be late.”
Relieved that he was going, she decided to check out the eighth deck. Not wanting to be on her own, she grabbed up Mr. Pollocks. “That’s enough sleep for you.” She hugged his long shaggy coat close to her body.
Much to her continued disappointment, many of the doors and lifts required permission to access them. She didn’t feel like crawling through the ducts today. She went back to her family quarters disgusted. As Feena wandered back through the wide passageways, people who recognized her greeted her and Mr. Pollocks, knowing that to ignore the bear would be met with disapproval.
Her shrewd mind scanned the passageway, noting duct entrances, ready for her next day’s mission. Most of the wiring and pipes were under, above or in the walls behind panels for easy access. The floors in the corridors had a short-haired, rough, carpeted surface of blue. Dim lighting came from above to simulate nighttime. Benny wanted it to go really dark so they could go around with torches but they compensated by going down to the cargo area, which was often dark to save power.
As Feena reached the grey portal to her family quarters her mum, Robin, picked her up from behind and gave her a big kiss on the neck. Feena presented Mr. Pollocks and her curly-haired mum kissed him too. Feena watched Robin place her hand in the identification slot. The little rectangular light just above the slot went from red to green and the door slid open.
Feena’s dad had come back from his errand and after kissing him, now fresh smelling, she went to her room. She sat at her pale grey desk and looked over the paper her teacher had given for homework. It was about history and the Third Hostility. There was a test the next day. She groaned. She hated tests.
During dinner, her dad asked her what she was doing at school.
“Studying the Third Hostility.”
“That’s interesting; would you like some
help after dinner with your study?”
“Na, I mean, no thanks, ah, no thank you.” She popped a large piece of potato in her mouth without cutting it up.
“Do you have all the information you need?” Robin glanced over at her with the potato bulging out from her pale cheek.
“Yep.” Feena swallowed some of the chewed potato. “Most of it’s on the excerpts anyway.” She looked to the ceiling briefly and then back at her plate, pushing the squash away with her fork. "…and when the Elysians command Animalia shall strike with all its might to render the Enemy a deadly blow, and the ARTHODPODA shall have its part in tearing down the Enemy: the Insecta shall act as distraction, causing the Enemy to become frustrated and down of heart, and the Arachnids shall smote down the Enemy with their terrible poisons …" I know most of it by heart.”
Her dad looked amused at her monotone recital.
Feena didn’t mean for it to come out that way. The potato was getting in the way.
They finished dinner and Feena did her chores before relaxing with her parents playing a board game. She yawned loudly and William directed her to her room. She crawled into bed with Mr. Pollocks and brushed his black coat and the white V on his chest with a comb. Her dad pulled out a storybook from her large collection in the bookshelf recessed in the wall. A security panel slid back across, making sure nothing would turn into a projectile in the event of an emergency.
Feena listened to him read. She put a small hand on his short dark hair and stroked it as she had seen her mum do. She loved listening to his deep calm voice read the tale of the “Three Foxes.” In spite of her valiant effort to remain awake, she drifted off.
William gently disengaged himself from Feena and tried to remove the bear, but she had the bear in a headlock and grumbled sleepily. She turned slightly and all William could see of the bear was the big nose and tufts of long comic head hair that circled the face.