Hoven Quest

by Michelle Levigne

  Uncle said we would concentrate on people who didn't catch those clues in the beta season, and gear things up even more intensely for the alpha season next year. That was encouraging, for about three seconds.

  Then from the grin on his face, I realized who was going to have to gear it up, make the writing more intense and figure out, somehow, what sort of things would catch the attention of Hoveni who had absolutely no idea of their heritage.

  How would I feel if one day, just like Meruk, I discovered in a moment of great stress that I could change my shape? Not just adjust my eyes and my musculature to respond to danger—Meruk had changed himself to lead a group of children out of a cavern during a cave-in, and realized that he had added five centimeters to his height, enlarged his ears to better cup sound, and made his eyes able to see in infra-red. That was a clever bit of writing, but not totally my idea. We had to think of ways that Meruk changed so he knew he had changed—the painful intensity of light and sound when he emerged above ground—but the people around him wouldn't scream in terror because he had turned into a visibly monstrosity.

  I didn't know if it was a triumph or a punishment when the Network confirmed my position as chief writer and gave me even more power of veto, more immunity against the arbitrary tweaks and changes and interference from the Network's staff of creative consultants. Or as Uncle put it, interfering, bitter old wannabes who couldn't make it as writers on their own merits, but who tried to put their own spin on every story so they could satisfy their stunted, starved creative urges.

  The beta season became a test of endurance and a relay race, in some ways. After all, we had to produce the scripts and have everything set up for the recording team, who followed us across the continent, to make our scripts visual reality. My team and I tried to use each geographical territory for as many as three stories, and each story had three episodes. There were two new episodes each lunar-quarter, running four days apart, half an hour each.

  We tried to have at least three story lines going at any one time—the overall story arc of Meruk's search, the current or front story that had brought him to that specific place and the specific people he interacted with, and something that he would learn about or something that would happen to him that would move him to the next location. We didn't want to make Meruk's story a chase drama, with one specific villain constantly on his heels, but neither did we want him meandering from town to town just for the sake of meandering. When we found an antagonist who seemed promising, we often had late-night brainstorming sessions where we planned out a fully detailed background for Meruk's adversary, so we could use him or her again in future stories, and even plotted how this person and the consequences of his or her actions might follow Meruk far into future episodes.

  This was fun. Someone whom Meruk embarrassed in one story might encounter him again five stories later, and give him trouble just to be nasty. And that trouble, a lie spoken about Meruk, might lead him into trouble with an authority figure. If it was someone Meruk needed to contact to find a new clue to Hoveni living in the area, all the better.

  “We're torturing the poor boy for fun and profit,” Regina wailed one night, after we had stayed up late talking and eating and plotting—and cackling like vicious old hags over some of the things Meruk would have to endure. Her eyes were bloodshot and gleaming with laughter as she said it.

  We all laughed, just before adjourning for bed. And the next day, after we had finalized a script that the production team would start recording in three lunar-quarters, we went right back to work constructing the story arc.

  We had no rest. And much as I longed sometimes to wake up in the same bed and see the same furniture more than ten days in a row, I enjoyed this semi-vagabond life. If we found a particularly enchanting spot where the actors and crew could hide for a day of relaxation, we passed on the information and then received communications from them later, thanking us and comparing experiences. We felt like trailblazers.

  The Traveler Network decided we were trailblazers. They followed us, off and on for lunars, as we explored Romblu and dug up interesting, obscure, sometimes bizarre, enchanting bits of Gemar history and culture. They declared Hoven Quest an educational series as well as an adventure, because we were teaching the children of Gemar about their world in a way that they might just remember long after their lessons in the required schooling levels ended.

  And besides, who actually remembered something they were forced to learn, as opposed to something they wanted to learn, to keep up with their favorite adventure hero?

  I learned things about Gemar culture that suddenly made sense in terms of the Hovenu history I had been taught.

  So I inserted all the things I had learned about Gemar, and had Meruk learn and rethink the things he knew or had learned from his foster parents and the documents his parents left for him. I had him learn the Hoveni viewpoint of history—true history, from our own documents, which had been a Fyx family trust since the days when Melafyxia led her people to safety from the Set'ri invasion. Meruk then compared what he had learned to what Humans knew or had guessed from clues left during the Downfall.

  The Travel Network loved it, and by the end of the beta season, they had packaged their ongoing documentary on the show for off-planet distribution.

  Pretty heady stuff for someone who was only a few years out of required schooling, and who, among the Hoveni, wasn't even a fully mature adult. Whenever someone from the inner circle came to meet me with information and requests from Uncle, that couldn't be contained in transmissions or document chips sent by FAN, they showed a growing respect and even admiration for me.

  That was frightening. The very people who had showed despair that I would ever grow up, who considered me Uncle Max's assistant and little more, suddenly looked at me with respect and put their hope for the future on me.

  The euphoria and wonder didn't last long. I had to think long and hard about the messages Uncle wanted inserted into scripts, sometimes at the last moment, while they were being recorded—and twice, I had to make changes to episodes that had been edited and were ready to be broadcast. It didn't take me long to figure out that they were messages warning people about dangerous situations.

  Which meant the Set'ri and Gen'gineers were coming out of hibernation, or someone who meant harm to Hoveni had begun to move. Was this a result of the show? Or had the show simply made their activities more visible and easier to detect?

  Uncle never answered me, and since I spent most of the year on the road and we had few opportunities to communicate privately, I couldn't argue with him until he gave me what I wanted.

  And since when, in my entire life, had I been able to argue him into surrender and doing or seeing things my way? I could count those occasions on one hand. If I didn't love the man and respect him so much, I would have been frustrated to the point of doing violence. Or even quitting the show.

  No, that was impossible. I couldn't leave. I was as addicted to discovering Meruk's adventures and chronicling them, as Meruk's fans were addicted to learning more with every new episode.

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  Chiara came out to bring me up to date on developments at the Network and within the inner circle, just before the beta season officially ended. We had already written three scripts for the second alpha season, with a lovely buffer of nearly three lunars of repeat/augmented material episodes to feed the public's rabid hunger for Meruk while we wrote and researched at a more leisurely pace. Chiara didn't have to come out to join me, because I was scheduled to head home in half a lunar.

  So I was understandably worried when she contacted us from the aero-station and asked someone to come out with a flitter to pick her up. Then worry became suspicion when she asked specifically for me to come get her.

  “We can stop and get lunch on the way back. How does that sound? We haven't talked in so long, and there's so much news from home I need to catch you up on,” she said, her voice just a little too bright and chirpy
as it came over the speaker grid.

  Chiara was many things, and could wear many faces when the situation required. Chirpy was not in her usual repertoire. So I agreed quickly, and even more quickly hurried to rent a flitter and drive out to meet her.

  “Two private dinners,” she announced, the moment I opened the side hatch. She tossed her bags into the back compartment and leaped into the passenger seat before I could even blink and try to understand what she meant. “Of course, we didn't talk about anything but the latest group of émigrés and the chances that those stories about shapeshifters your brother, Akton is chasing down at the Upper University are anything more than wish-tales, still...” She sighed and her smile held more pure joy than I had ever seen on her face.

  Usually, when Chiara smiled, it was to intimidate some idiot into doing his job right, or it had a smug undertone or some triumph that made her expression downright nasty. This joy made me wonder for a moment if someone had inserted a cleverly trained duplicate into her place.

  Then her words finally registered in my conscious mind.

  “You and Uncle Max?” I knew how stupid that sounded the moment the words left my mouth, but I needed verification.

  “Oh, dear, I'm sounding like a lovestruck idiot, aren't I?” Chiara laughed, and that was more like her usual self, with that self-deprecating, rich tone underlying it. “I don't know if it's love yet, and certainly there's no encouragement on his part—stubborn, oblivious man—but I haven't felt like this in ... honestly, I don't think I've ever relaxed enough to let myself feel that way about anyone."

  “Uh ... Chiara ... is that why you came out here to meet me?"

  “To gush about my possible infatuation with your uncle?” She snorted and gestured for me to get the flitter moving before someone fined me for interfering with the current of traffic around the station. “Partly,” she admitted. “But I had some free time, while we're settling into hiatus at the Network, and I thought you had a right to know why your Uncle is doing some of the things he's doing. Such as leaving you in the dark."

  “So I wasn't imagining it?” I concentrated on the road ahead of me, and the idiots who insisted on walking in the flitter channels instead of on the higher paths meant for foot traffic and non-mechanized vehicles.

  I almost wished then I had been wrong and just imagining that Uncle was using me to pass along cryptic messages dealing with life-and-death matters. I didn't like being left out of the loop. Or more accurately, I didn't like the feeling that I wasn't entirely trusted.

  “I told him you were too clever, and he would have to double your workload to keep you too busy to notice.” She sighed and settled more comfortably into the seat. “Yes, we're getting information about possible situations that could endanger people we aren't even sure exist in specific areas. Once your team leaves an area, the next team coming in manages to make contact or gather information leading to contact."

  “Nobody told me!” I was proud that I growled instead of wailing like a petulant child.

  “We need your innocence."

  “Ignorance,” I corrected.

  “We need you separated as far as possible from the actual messages we need to send to people in those possible danger zones. Three times already, when we've gathered information from our people on the recording crew and Amaxus asks you for a script change, someone watching the recording of the new scene has approached a team member as a result of what they saw.” She shook her head. “It's like a gift from Fi'in, how things work together. As if you wrote that script, too. A script that's entirely too coincidental to be accepted as anything but hack writing."

  “Like we're acting in a larger drama about people filming a drama to cover their attempts at communication?” I tried to laugh. Chiara smiled, but she looked tired and she didn't laugh at my attempt at humor. That just confirmed to me some element of the situation. “How do you handle it, there in the center of things? Sometimes I can forget that we're doing something more than telling a wonderful story. I think that's the only thing saving my sanity and nerves. How do you handle it?"

  “Besides making moves on Amaxus that confuse him half the time?” Chiara snickered.

  “He's going to feel like a total idiot when he realizes that you've been stalking him."

  “But will he be flattered or terrified?"

  “Flattered. The man's ego is larger than this planet.” I shared a grin with her.

  “Honestly, cheriya ... I think what saves all of us is the flood of successes. We've made contact with more lost Hoveni in the last eight lunars, through the show, than your uncle's multitude of schemes have done in the last five years. That's encouraging. And as far as Amaxus himself, I think he's relieved that you're distanced from all the pressure and the possible danger. So please, take a little pressure off him and stop demanding explanations?"

  “He hasn't been ignoring me, then.” I felt some small satisfaction in knowing that my subtle hints and queries hadn't been lost. Ignoring or totally missing what I was trying to communicate was far different from refusing to respond. “Who do you think it is, moving in and raising the alarms?"

  “Set'ri or Gen'gineers, does it really matter? Either way, we're just fodder to be used up and destroyed to satisfy their goal."

  We stopped for lunch on the way back to our hotel, but only to pick up food for the rest of the team. We spent the afternoon reporting to Chiara and getting updates on Network business. The news she had given me and the confirmation of my fears made me wonder if maybe, just maybe, I was too smart for my own good.

  * * * *

  Commander Gorgi Cole of the Scout Corps met our team at the embarkation station for the subterranean transport tube as we headed home. He was a broad-shouldered man with a tanned, scarred face, thick, white hair, and brown eyes that held a sad alertness. It seemed to me, when I saw him watching us approach through the security gate, that a boy embarking on an adventure hid inside him—and that boy had known some lingering pain.

  I thought I was just tired and melodramatic and imagining things. After all, we were finally heading home for hiatus, and I had created a dozen scenarios for disasters and arguments and literally wringing some truth from Uncle when I arrived home.

  The chief of the security detail from the Network hurried up to meet us as we approached the tube compartment reserved for our team. After all, this stranger in the dark, sleek uniform with the cutlass-and-compass emblem on shoulder and breast pocket didn't really belong here at our private entrance. There was all that security protocol we had just gone through, and if he didn't belong there, he shouldn't have been there.

  Which made me think he really did belong there and something serious had happened.

  Unofficial history said the Scout Corps was born on Gemar. Commander General Bain Kern had been working for years on assembling the newest military special needs unit before he came to Gemar, but it was the crisis that made a handful of Spacer youth step into their future roles that many considered the birth of the Corps. We on Gemar always had a special place in our hearts for the Corps. Especially since without their intervention and investigation, Leapers might have been lost to the Commonwealth, and all the other civilized planets might have blamed us. A Leaper captain had died on Gemar, caught in the ridiculous struggle to bring Gemar back into the Conclave.

  Who in their right minds would want to belong to the Conclave? Besides the fact that they didn't subscribe to FAN for off-planet distribution.

  “Mistress Fyx.” The Scout had no rank bars or pins or any other marking on his uniform, but something told me he was of high rank. He nodded respectfully to me, which was rather flattering and put me in a better mood. “I'm Commander Gorgi Cole, from Scout Central. If you could give me a few hours of your time, I'd appreciate it very much."

  “I'd like to help you, Commander,” I said, and could almost hear the groans and sighs and whiny questions from my very tired team, “but we're about to load onto the Tube. We have a long trip back home and several conne
ctions to make."

  “Yes, I know that.” He flashed me a grin that made him look about thirty years younger. “Would you mind if I traveled with you?” He glanced down the line of my teammates standing behind me. “What I have to say will concern all of you. I can't imagine any place around here more secure than your private compartment."

  What could I do or say except to agree? He needed to talk, maybe he needed information—maybe he wanted to ask me to write a script for a documentary/semi-drama about the Corps? I pushed that vain thought away as soon as I realized where my tired brain was leading me.

  We settled into our compartment and prepared for embarkation. Some people didn't like traveling by Tube, simply because they didn't like knowing they were hundreds of meters underground, traveling at speeds that could be dangerous if something caused an abrupt stop. I didn't let it bother me, mostly because I found the subterranean experience comforting. No one could get at us from the sky, no enemy could catch up with us or stop us.

  “How much do you know about Gen'gineers?” Commander Cole asked, as soon as we had cleared the launch bay and the rumble of getting up to cruising speed had died to a bass hum.

  “From the show's viewpoint?” Regina asked. She shared a crooked grin with me. We had been talking about Gen'gineers just last night, debating how soon we could add a lukewarm Gen'gineer to the storyline. We planned on scaring him with the reality of Hoveni—angry Hoveni who enjoyed spending a little too much time in animal form—so he rushed to rejoin the ranks of the faithful.

  “All right, from the show's viewpoint.” He nodded, and looked to me, obviously expecting me to do the majority of the talking. After all, he had asked to speak with me. The others were there just because the main compartment was the most comfortable. And I was pretty sure Commander Cole had suggested that everyone be involved to make me more comfortable.