When Kel explained the whole story behind my remark, Uncle only smiled and nodded, in that smug way he had when he thought he saw something nobody else had caught onto yet.
“It would help to keep the two of you out of trouble."
“I don't know.” Kel winked at me. “Look what happened on our first date. Imagine what married life would be like."
* * * *
I should have predicted that when we spread the word that Kel Brent was Hoven, the first reaction from the old guard, especially the extremists on Gadara continent, was outrage.
Or, more accurately, terror.
They had feared that I would betray the heritage, destiny and duty of my ancestors and marry a Human, simply because Kel was Meruk and Meruk was my creation, and half the unmarried women on the planet seemed to be in love with Meruk or Kel or both.
Now, the traditionalists and all those who had been trying to trick me into an arranged marriage were even more terrified. Their main point of attack was the fact that Kel wasn't a pureblood Hoven. His paternal grandmother and his mother were full Humans, which explained how he could keep his reflexes slower and his extra weight, and his background check coming back so clean. His Hoveni relatives were murdered and he was raised by Humans.
Humans, I might add, who were fully aware of his and his father's and grandfather's heritage and who cherished it as a treasure, taught him to be proud of what he was, and to fear the Set'ri. They should have taught Kel to fear the Hoveni.
Those who worked closely with Uncle, Chiara and me all welcomed Kel without any reservations. Because of that first reaction, it shocked Uncle to get such a negative reaction when he sent the happy news to our allies and the various leaders on the other continents. Basically, they blamed Kel for the fact that his blood wasn't pure. From where I was sitting, it just proved how strong the Hovenu genetics were, that he could have so much Human blood in him and still be able to shift shape without any trouble. And considering that everything he knew about being Hoven, he had learned from Humans, it just proved his superior intellect and his strong talent.
The old guard didn't see it that way. Half-bloods were as dangerous to our cause as the Set'ri and Gen'gineers. As if Kel chose to be born a half-blood.
All my research indicated there were few Hoveni on the whole planet, since the day our ancestors went into hiding, who didn't have a little mixed blood. So why did it matter? If I checked my family tree far enough back, I would find a few Humans hiding among the leaves. So what? I knew quite a few people on our planet who thought of themselves as ‘normal’ Humans, who had Hoveni ancestors and didn't know it. Such things just didn't matter all that much, against the larger struggle of trying to stay alive, both culturally and as a nation.
Garan had the best reaction of everyone, when we told him what had happened. After he got over being angry that his Scouts hadn't been called in to help rescue me and Kel, he laughed at how oblivious we all had been. Kel was, in essence, Meruk, right under our noses, and we never realized it. And, being Meruk, he never saw all the clues that were waiting for him, written right into the script, to bring him to us.
Then Garan bundled up the two Set'ri who had survived the battle and used his Scout clearances and his Leaper connections to get them off-planet as quickly and as quietly as possible. The Commonwealth Council would not be pleased to have this undeniable proof that the Set'ri still existed, active and nasty and dogmatic as ever. However, it was better to have some of them in custody rather than running around the Commonwealth stirring up trouble and killing off innocent, people just because their genetics didn't match some arbitrarily chosen standard.
We took a risk with what we did next, but it was necessary. We had to integrate our two groups, and the best way was to do it in person. Uncle decided to send Kel and me out on a public relations tour, visiting all the places where Hoven Quest had done location shooting in the last two years, and all the places where we had done research for future stories. The plan was for me to introduce Kel to our people, and for Kel to introduce our people in each area to all the contacts he had made. Contacts made, I might add, despite all our precautions to funnel the genuine Hoveni to the crew members and away from Kel, so he got only the lunatics. We laughed about that as he related several incidents during our planning and strategy meetings.
We had a very small window of time to put the tour together and then get out on the road. We ran into several delays that frustrated us all to no end.
Someone among that group of students who ran into us that night at Megavissy Carnival had a connection to the gossip sheets, because only two days after the battle in the Warren, the news began to spread throughout Romblu: Kel Brent had eloped with the head writer for Hoven Quest. From there, the other sheets picked up the news and it only took a quarter for the entire planet to know.
I didn't even want to contemplate how quickly the news would spread off-planet. Someone had the intelligence to search through the legal records and find out exactly when and where we had married. Thanks to the constant rivalry among the gossip sheets, they were happy to report that the gossip sheet that raced to spread the unhappy news that Kel Brent was no longer the most eligible bachelor on the planet had been wrong.
By the third day after the lie went across the planet, the representatives from six old guard families converged on our house and cornered Uncle and Chiara during a business dinner.
At least, Uncle said it was a business dinner. I was hoping for something more personal, but that was just my wishful thinking, right?
Uncle was able to calm them down by laughing outright when they started making their accusations. His laughter always had the ability to spread to others, even when everyone surrounding him started out in anger. He laughed at the stories and told them what had happened. Yes, Kel had told a handful of students that we were engaged, but it had happened before Kel's identity as a Hoven was revealed, and it had been done as a joke, to chase away the hormone-driven girls.
Chiara later confided to me that two of the most hide-bound of the delegates nearly demanded that I be given an examination to prove I was still a good three years away from maturity. She laughed at that, too, and assured them that I was an idealistic child who intended to hold out for fixation and nothing less. That assured some of the traditionalists, but didn't do much to encourage the ones who still wanted to force a political marriage on me.
Then someone thought to ask where I was.
All Uncle's hard work calming them went out the window when he said that I was spending the evening with Kel, preparing for our publicity tour. According to Chiara, they were ready to race out the door and converge on us at Kel's house. Fortunately for us, we spent the evening at headquarters with Garan and a dozen other staff members. Plenty of witnesses, and no chance for Kel to try anything immoral or sneaky. Like tricking me into a marriage I didn't want.
Maybe the members of the old guard were so worried about Kel trying something like that because they wanted to do the same thing.
When I got the call from Uncle, warning me not to come home in case someone was waiting in ambush, the meeting was nearly over. Garan, Regina, Dellon and a few others remained, making last-minute notes for what to take care of the next day. Uncle was laughing, and that irritated me.
“I think we need to do something to teach him what it's like,” Kel said slowly, after I broke the connection.
I looked around the room and the others nodded agreement, with varying expressions of amusement and mischief on their faces. Even Garan. That encouraged me. Maybe I wasn't overreacting to all of this trouble.
“If we could just push him and Chiara closer together...” I shook my head. Uncle knew Chiara was interested in him because I had told him. Then I stopped in mid-shake, realizing something. Uncle had said he and Chiara were having dinner together. Alone together. But he hadn't said what they were discussing and what they were working on for the show. Why?
“Sounds to me like they don't want to admit
something's there,” Garan offered, when I voiced my suspicion.
“We have to do something before they take away all our fun of matchmaking,” Kel added. That earned laughter from Regina and a rapid-fire succession of suggestions and scenarios. Everything from stranding them together on a deserted island to publicly embarrassing them with a romantic dinner surrounded by gossip sheet writers.
“That would help us,” I said, nodding. “Give those muckrakers someone else to focus on, take the lens off us and make people forget that stupid rumor that we're engaged.” I glared at Kel, but couldn't hold it for long. He stuck his tongue out at me and we laughed together.
Funny, but in only a few days of working with Kel, it felt as comfortable as if we had been good friends for years. And another benefit of constant exposure, like inoculation, was that I didn't get giddy or lose my train of thought every time our gazes met. He was just Kel, my friend, my co-conspirator in bringing together our scattered race. He was helping bring my dreams to reality with every show recorded, every contact made.
That idea stayed with me through our laughing plotting session. It grabbed hold of my thoughts when everyone else was packing up to leave for the night, so I didn't really pay attention to who had left and who remained. I wandered to my office and put away my datapad and made notes for the different chores that needed to be done in the morning. We had an engagement to maneuver two very stubborn people into, as well as a publicity tour to plan, after all. And dreams to bring to reality.
“What are you thinking?” Kel asked.
I looked up to find him lounging against the doorframe of my office. From the lack of lights in the hall and the meeting room across the way, we were the only ones left. I grinned as I realized that didn't bother me like it would have a few lunars ago.
“Dreams do come true."
“You're telling me.” His grin got wider and he gestured, taking in the whole Network building. “Who would have thought, going on three years ago when Amaxus and you stopped me at Megavissy, that we would be here? Who would have thought I'd have a great job and—” He laughed. “Who would have thought I'd be paid to help find other Hoveni?"
“More than that.” I sank down on the front edge of my desk. “Meruk came from my dreams. Daydreams. Hopes for a best friend.” Something caught in my chest when Kel nodded and stepped into the office, to settle on the arm of the nearest chair and listen. I didn't feel strange revealing this to him. “It's kind of scary, you know?"
“In what way?"
“You know about the Fyx family line, our heritage?"
“The seeress, Melafyxia. I know a little about her. Garan and his father told me about your great-grandmother meeting Commander Kern. Your family has always been our leaders, since the Set'ri first landed."
“More than that. Do you have any idea the pressure that comes with an ancient heritage? For so long, I've kept Meruk as just a daydream, but there have been so many similarities ... some of the people who have come to us said they never would have thought of making contact, but Meruk's story was their story, exactly, down to the words people spoke and the injuries Meruk's friends got.” I shuddered. Whenever those reports came in, I avoided talking or even thinking about it. “I'm scared that I really have inherited the mystic talent of the Fyx line."
“That's a heavy burden. I wouldn't want it."
“It's not a choice we have, is it? You take the duties and gifts Fi'in gives you, and you do what needs doing, because the future depends on you.” I wrapped my arms tight around myself and tried to smile.
I wasn't ashamed to admit I wished Kel would put his arms around me and hold me. Not for flirting or any silly romantic feelings, but just as a friend.
“So Meruk is a composite. Your dreams gave you images, impressions, visions of things that happened to Hoveni all over the planet, and you have the gift of weaving them all together into a message of hope for our people."
“You have a silver tongue, Master Brent.” My shivers faded away and we just sat there, smiling and tired, good friends. I was glad he was my friend.
“I sure hope you dreamed me, somewhere in all there,” he said, before the quiet started to grow uncomfortable.
“Maybe I saw us here, friends, partners, and I wanted that so badly...” I laughed and got up off the desk and gestured toward the door. It was late after all, and Chiara had offered to let me sleep at her house in case any of the old guard tried to ambush me on the way home.
“What?” Kel grinned, not at all uneasy. He let me lead the way down the hall.
“I remember that night at Megavissy. I saw right through your makeup. It scared me and gave me hope. I really believed, for the first time, that Uncle's idea would work. Maybe it was good that I grew up so lonely. I wouldn't have paid attention to my dreams, I wouldn't have been looking for my friend Meruk, otherwise."
“Weird, huh?” He waited until we had gone out the security door, the scanner logged us out of the building, and the security system locked up for the night. “I never thought that you'd be as lonely as I was. You didn't fit in any better than I did. Nobody knew what I was, but I still didn't fit. You belonged, the princess and heir of the royal family, but you were just as lonely."
“We're a pair of saps, you realize."
“Definitely.” He stepped back as I palmed the lock on my flitter, and waited until the door on the passenger side opened. His flitter was scrap metal, after all, and hadn't been replaced yet, so I had to drive him home. “Teach me, Kendle?"
“Teach you what?"
“Everything.” He shrugged and his grin looked lopsided. “I feel like I've been ... I don't know, walking past the window of the school, catching bits and pieces of all the things I need to learn. Teach me what it really means to be Hoven?"
“You mean, besides everything we've put in our scripts already?” I shook my head. The enormity of what he asked took my breath away. But I knew it had to be done. How many thousands Hoveni were in the same position, living on traditions and stories passed down by their ancestors, with no access to the ancient records?
On that short drive to Kel's apartment, that was when we got the idea for the theme for the upcoming season. Not just teaching about the Diaspora, but the traditions and culture of the Hoveni and the evil of the Set'ri and what it felt like to have to flee for our lives on the planet that had been ours for millennia.
* * * *
We had an unexpected boost the next day. We weren't certain if we should take it as a sign that it was time to prepare to reveal our existence as reality rather than legend. What worried me was that, despite all our connections at the news agencies and security departments across the planet, we still couldn't track down who leaked the story in our own city.
The furor of Kel's false engagement was already dying down, but someone made the connection between our presence at Megavissy Carnival that night and the destruction of Kel's flitter. Chiara and I were just sitting down for breakfast and a good long talk about all the work my team had done the night before, when Uncle and half the inner circle appeared at her front door. It turned into breakfast for twenty, while we searched the planetary communications services for follow-ups to the story.
The headline from one of the most respected newssheets on the planet summed it up best: Set'ri are alive and well and desperate for prey.
The pictures directly underneath it showed the smoking ruin of Kel's flitter, a very blurry image of two people running away, and images from the first beta season of Hoven Quest, where Set'ri first made their appearance. The story was short, stating facts about the Set'ri invasion of Gemar, the disappearance of the Hoveni as a race, and the incidents Kel and I and various members of the recording crew had suffered, where people who wanted to contact the Hoveni had accosted us and even threatened us for information.
What frightened all of us was how coherent and factual the whole report was. No hyperbole, no ridiculous conjecture, no accusations that the Set'ri were on the board of directors of compet
ing networks or running the spaceports or a dozen other idiotic stories that had tried to surface since Hoven Quest first hit the airwaves.
Even worse was knowing that someone had latched onto the truth: the Set'ri had been following Kel for lunars now, trying to get evidence that he was a Hoven, and had attacked us that night.
Fortunately, there was no information on how we had escaped, altered the records in the robot cab and hid in the Warren, or any mention of the battle inside the Warren.
“None of our people would do such a thing. They're too committed to the effort, too delighted with the progress we've made,” Uncle said, after we had worked and researched and talked through breakfast and into the lunch hour.
“Then we have only two options,” Chiara said. She stopped for a moment, frowning, and I could hear the circuits buzzing in her head. “No, four options. First, it's another publicity stunt to raise the ratings."
“I'll have the head of the moron who thought that up and didn't run it past me,” Uncle growled. It wasn't his teasing growl, either.
“Second,” she continued, and made notes on her datapad as she spoke, “someone in the outer fringes of the organization is disgruntled with the pace of the reunification and wants to force things out into the open."
“I'll get to work checking for malcontents,” Mynon said from his spot in the corner. There wasn't enough room around Chiara's dining room table, so several had taken chairs against the wall, where they could see everyone. He had been scribbling like a fury on his datapad the entire time, making notes and sending messages to people as we ran through possibilities and crossed off suspected culprits.
“Third.” She offered Kel a flat, weary smile. “It could have come from someone on the outside. Someone with a few contacts, who sees the series as a wonderful way of gathering our people together, but who hasn't caught on that it's already happening."
“Like me,” Kel muttered. He shrugged and leaned back in his chair when his comment brought a few smiles, some amused sighs, a general relaxing of the atmosphere.
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