Traveler_Losing Legong
Page 40
"Good morning Mr. Tugot."
"Bonjour Mademoiselle Fipler."
Fipler disappeared down the stairs and Myles closed his door.
Ain't no lizard out there. Well, other than the one you're dangling.
Myles went back to the kitchen and disposed of the homemade carrion. Before he became aware enough to fall into a gray funk, the phone rang.
"Myles?" Gwirionedd's voice improved his mood rapidly. "You've been asking to talk to ToEv and Gabrile?" His mood dropped again. "They'd like to see you. Today, if possible."
Myles dressed, and took a bubble-chair to the lake. The trip went quickly, the bubble-chair setting Myles on the sand next to the lanai. Nafasi welcomed him and announced him to Gabrile and ToEv. The lovers sat in the familiar clutch of chairs, fussing over a bassinet set on the low table. Gabrile looked up at Myles with a smile. Myles looked down at the infant. It was a tiny, wrinkled thing, looking more like Nafasi than either of its parents.
"Congratulations." Myles said.
ToEv stood and picked up the bassinet. "I'm going to leave you with Gabrile. I only have one thing to say. Listen. Think. Consider as many variables as you're capable of before making a decision."
"That's three things." Myles answered back.
For a long time Gabrile and Myles sat, each waiting for the other to speak. Gabrile broke the ice. "So you're thinking of becoming a cook?"
"Mm. Where's Sach?" asked Myles.
"She's off-world."
Myles could see Nafasi in the garden. "How's he doing?" he asked.
Gabrile twisted around to see who Myles was talking about. "I'm sorry we couldn't help your friends. They were too-"
"They were not my friends."
Again, a long silence.
"Legong was caught in its own Rip." Gabrile defended herself. "We tried to close it, but your people destroyed three waves of sputties. It was not until the Rip had caused its damage that your ships stopped firing."
She's right.
Yeah. I know.
"Councilor Six was right." Myles said. "You were spying, it was about controlling our technology."
"Would Legong have done different?" Gabrile asked. "There are many colonies out there Myles, some with good reason to dislike Earth, old Earth. You know that the First Diaspora was of the Power Elite, the rats leaving the sinking ship. Your colony was a product of the Second Diaspora, a more egalitarian venture, assisted, however, by my ancestors. We expected a more friendly reception. What you could not know was that there was a Third Diaspora, many years after the Second. My ancestors, after several generations in the orbiting shipyards, the moon, and mars, decided that they felt Earth worth saving. I say Earth, not Earth's people." Gabrile paused to be certain the distinction set in." So they returned, as your people wished to. I won't drag you through all the details, if you wish to know more you'll find your access to this period of history no longer restricted. Suffice it to say the Third Diaspora was less of a voluntary affair than the previous two."
"You 'transported' them," Myles said, "like Krykowfert." He thought back to the day he met Krykowfert in the Rim Bar. Krykowfert had played him from the start, and now Gabrile was doing the same.
"Yes, and no." Gabrile paused again to find the words. "The result of all this is that there are, I don't know, dozens, hundreds, thousands maybe, of colonies like Legong out there. As you've seen, Earth itself is in little danger, but the truth is that we, as modern Earthers, have unleashed upon the galaxy hordes of backward, often violent, and pathetically unevolved human colonies. Even if they don't pose a threat to us they may soon pose threats to each other, themselves, or perhaps more importantly, as-yet undiscovered civilizations of non-humans."
At first naive and gullible, Myles had since learned to read through the words, to uncover the hidden motivations of those around him. "You want me to go out there, to be your point man." He guessed.
"In a word, yes." Gabrile said, only slightly surprising him. "You see how ToEv was greeted on Legong. As you observed yourself, we've changed too much, we can't anticipate, or in many cases even understand, the motivations for Colonial behavior."
"You seem to like Krykowfert. Why not ask him?"
"He said his place was with his own people."
Ouch. Second choice.
That caught Myles off guard, giving Gabrile an opening for more of her manipulations. "You are different from most Legongs. You've spent your life contented enough, but all the time knowing you were different, not understood, not really one of them. It's true, Myles, you're not. But neither are you one of us. You exist in a space between Earth and the diaspora colonies. You're a man of two worlds, perhaps not able to thrive, but able to get by in either, and you're a trained Envoy, not a cook."
In the time since Myles's implant had been removed he'd found his mind clearing, quite the opposite of what a Legong would normally expect. Instead of finding it more difficult to understand others he found it simpler, often gaining the impression that he knew what others were thinking before they themselves. It was not a new sensation, in fact it was no different from the games he played in the Rim Bar on Central Command, picking out individuals in the bar and fantasizing about what they thought, who they were, what their lives were like. It was something he'd done all his life, but without knowing how accurate he'd been. He couldn't do it with Bento, his feelings were too strong there. He couldn't do it with Krykowfert, but he could do it with Gabrile and he knew now where this was all leading. But he needed to hear her say it.
"There are others like you," Gabrile said, "often as much as ten percent of colonial populations present a neurology of your sort."
"I would be an Envoy from Earth, eh? Re-connecting the motherland with its wandering children?"
"Legong. You're an Envoy from Legong."
Myles froze, his brow wrinkled. This wasn't at all what he'd imagined. "Legong is gone." He said in a whisper. Gabrile didn't respond.
The conversation continued well into the evening, Gabrile laying out the pros and cons, how the mild subterfuge would protect Earth without actually being untrue. There was never any question in Myles's mind. He didn't care if he represented Legong, Earth or hell, there were others out there like him, not-quite-Earthers yet more-than-colonists. He was determined not to agree to Gabrile's offer as rashly as he'd jumped at Krykowfert's. He said goodnight and took the bubble-chair back to Paris.
Myles slept deeply, dreaming of home, spaceships and Earth-women. Despite his waking worries, when freed of his higher mind Myles felt not despair, but bittersweet longing. His family was fine. He knew, without knowing how, that Li, Nari and his nephews were safely on Eden, along with his parents, Harry, Bento, Feric and Asha.
Feric and Asha? Why do I care about Feric and Asha?
They're people too.
Not MY people.
Myles became aware that he was dreaming. Even so, the comfort he felt from the irrational knowledge of his family's safety and happiness was real, and persisted long after the dream-state ended. He lay asleep, continuing to question those feelings of Feric and Asha. The more he focused the more firm those feelings became, as if another consciousness was intruding, insisting on their truthfulness. A feeling of certainty, confidence and power accompanied the knowledge of Nia Feric and Asha, along with a pronounced pridefulness concerning almonds. None of it made sense to Myles, but then little did these days.
Myles finally let go of the dream-anomaly and fell back into deep slumber, comfortable in the knowledge that everyone, and everything, would be just fine. He was home, and this new home needed him.
56
The ship was nothing like ToEv's little sphere. An ellipse lying on its side, about two hundred meters long, a single band of blue stretching around its perimeter. Large enough to hold the entire lake compound, petanque court and his Paris apartment building. Within one end some unknown power source hummed and whistled. At the opposite end, a hole, and a gap where the ring of blue didn't quite meet up. S
ach took him through a panel in the ship's underside, where they paused to look back.
"There." Sach pointed. Myles had felt nothing, but the ship was already a hundred meters above the lake. Nafasi looked up at them, waving.
"He made this?" Myles asked.
"The ship? Yes. Not with his hands, with his mind. He created the garden before ToEv left for Legong."
The ship continued to lift, Nafasi became too small to see. Sach led Myles up into the main structure. A garden, open to the sky, filled most of the interior. Low buildings of ornately carved wood or stone made up port and starboard, the prow hidden by a low waterfall tumbling down an interestingly figured rock wall. A short stream, if one might call it that, drained the waterfall's pool into a pond a few meters away. Fish of orange and black swam lanquidly. The size of the space was carefully disguised, each path through the flowering plants leading to a new vista, nothing to suggest they were in a ship. Myles could see into the buildings along one edge of the garden, those structures opposite seemed to be merely a covered passageway. Sach let Myles explore.
Gabrile called for Myles to join them beside the pond. A structure not unlike the lanai, but more substantial with elaborately carved wooden pillars, occupied the center of the garden and inside ToEv and Sach sat with the infant. The sky above now showed only stars, and even though the air was warm Myles felt the chill of space. They sat silently and took tea. Anticipation and wonderment dilated time, and with a half cup of cold tea in his hands, Myles watched another ship come into view above them.
Also a truncated ellipse, this one had no garden, its underside pinched near the flat end into a gondola-like protrusion ringed with windows. As they approached, their garden-ship lifted above the other, and Sach took Myles back down into the ship's belly. This time an elevator took them directly from the one ship to the other. A wave of crew introductions was followed by a brief tour. Myles left his belongings in his assigned room and met Sach, waiting in the crew mess at the front of the ellipse. The entire blunt front end of the ship was clear, open, giving a panoramic view of Earth. Myles stood by the glass, or the magic space-field, or whatever it was that kept air and gravity in and the death of empty space out.
Sach held out a guitar. "Sgullen sent it, your petanque friends had it made for you."
"That was thoughtful." Myles looked at the guitar. "I don't really play you know. Never have."
"Would you mind if I-"
"Of course, Go ahead."
She left Myles to his vista and took a seat away from the windows. As She plinked and tuned Earth faded to a tiny disk. The ship turned and a circle of dark appeared before them, growing rapidly to reveal a new, strange set of stars within. The skies of a Colony, perhaps Legong-like, perhaps not. Passing into the foreign space Myles searched for the Milky Way, trying to establish bearings. Sach's testing of the strings evolved into a tune. Pig sat beside her.
"Nice. You know Myles, you really should learn how to play this thing..."
###
Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, won’t you please take a moment to leave me a review at your favorite retailer? You can also Favorite me at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Tadster
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About the Author
Since the turn of the century Tim Dennis has been a writer, actor, comedian and teacher, touring North America with improv shows and lecturing on a broad variety of subjects to a diverse collection of clients. He is a recovering engineer whose love of people drew him away from the computer and into his creative soul where he lives in a mosaic of real and imagined worlds populated by people and beasties. He loves to travel but always returns to the greatest neighborhood in the greatest city in the United States, Portland Oregon. You can connect with Tim via social media and his website, aptly named TimDennis.com.
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More from Tim Dennis
True Stories: The Center of the Earth; or, How My Wife Started World War II
This "Alternate History" opens in Antarctica in 1919, where a young journalist has attached himself to an aging scientist who, following the theories of an earlier time, thinks he can rejuvenate his career by discovering a route to the subterranean world beneath the Earth's crust. As Government funding dries up other, less scrupulous financiers insinuate themselves. The journalist, always a skeptic, chases two stories, his reports home straddling the line between fiction and nonfiction. Along for the ride are the scientist's seventeen year old daughter, her suffragette governess-cum-lady's companion, and two highly suspicious financiers' agents.
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Traveler: Let Them Eat Kate
For Myles's first mission as an agent of Earth he visits a First-diaspora colony. Stuck in a constricting economic system and lacking the freedoms even the most pathetic Legong enjoyed, the decadent, languishing society welcomes him as a God, but soon both he and his hosts discover each are not what they appear to be. Myles has his first taste of human flesh, falls in love, again, and becomes that which he hates the most as he tries to bring civility to this back-sliding colony.
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Krykowfert, stuck on Legong after the collapse of the Rip, wrestles with his personal goals as Legong struggles to survive in their new galactic sector. At first he's careful to keep his distance from Cokely and the remains of the Council. But when a non-human race comes visiting, Krykowfert realizes he can't make it home alone and so forms a surprising alliance to preserve his own comfort, and the sanctity of Eden. Meanwhile, Mallick, Nia Feric & Asha, Harry & Bento, and the Tugot clan get on with the task of making Eden the place Krykowfert wanted it to be.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to my first readers, Steve, Paul, Caroline, Deb; without whom the book might be unreadable,
Thanks to Tanya, without whom the book wouldn't have existed,
Thanks to Colin, Sylvia and Joe. Without whom the author wouldn't have existed.
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