Whispers on the Wind

by Judy Griffith Gill

“My...mother?”

  “Your Aazoni mother.”

  Lenore squinched her eyes tight as a shudder of horror rattled her body, but Jon’s strong arms held her close, his gentle persuasion touched her mind with comforting care, calming her fears. Or, almost. Some were too deep-seated, too strongly ingrained.

  “Did you know?” she asked. “I mean, before you came into my mind just now?”

  “No, but I suspected. From the beginning, I’ve known your talents were superior to those of most non-Aazoni. As they grew, though, each time we translated together, I began to wonder. And now I know.” He smiled and touched her face tenderly. “Now we both know.”

  She, for one, did not want to know! It was too much!

  “Does my father know I am...am not—” She bit her lip, unable to go on, and around her neck the warmth of the Kahinya somehow soothed her. “Not human?” Was that the reason for his lifetime of coldness toward her?

  “You are human, Lenore. As human as you are Aazoni. It is the human side of you that has such deep fear of your father.”

  “What?” She stared at him, shivered again, not wanting to open that door. “He is an emotionally repressed man. I am not fond of him. But I’m not afraid of him, for heaven’s sake.” Sudden anger welled up in her, overflowed. She jerked free of Jon, scrambled away, halfway across the room.

  “He wasn’t the one who abandoned a helpless infant. That was my mother. My Aazoni mother, as you would have me believe. At least he stuck around to see to it I was raised with some semblance of stability.”

  “In boarding schools you hated.” Jon’s statement was an indictment of her father, one she felt obliged to defend against.

  “I needed to be properly educated so I could take my place in this world as a self-sufficient adult, which is all he ever expected of me. He wasn’t in a position to provide a home for me, but he did the next best thing.”

  “So, you’re telling me you care for your father. That you believe he did right by you?”

  She tilted her chin up and flicked her hair back. The way he’d phrased the question told her not to bother trying to lie. “Do I care for him? No, I do not. No, I don’t think he did really ‘right’ by me—except by his own lights. I realize many other men in the same position would have responded differently. But fear him?”

  She snorted disparagingly. “Not likely! A self-sufficient adult has no reason to fear her only parent. He may not have been loving, but he never, ever, hurt me.”

  Except, she failed to add, by his very coldness. That had never ceased to hurt, especially when compared to the warm memories Caroline had shared of her family life with her parents. True, Caroline had attended the same school as Lenore, but as a day student. At night, she went home to love and caring and nurturing...

  “You do feel fear of him, letise.” Jon’s unequivocal statement broke into her thoughts. “Whether it’s justified or not, you feel the same kind of fear as your mother experienced when he learned what she was—and what you are.”

  “What?” Lenore strode across the room and back again before whirling to demand, “Are you telling me she married him, had a child with him, and didn’t even bother to tell him the truth about herself until...afterwards?”

  She planted her hands on her hips, facing him, fury driving her, sustaining her. Fury, not unmixed with fear of the unknown, or maybe fear of the known she did not want to acknowledge. “Didn’t you tell me Aazonis valued truth above all, that without it, there is no honor? Where was her so-called Aazoni ‘honor’ when she did that?”

  “She told him, Lenore. Your memories of your early time contain the words they spoke when he finally did come to believe what he had previously preferred not to believe. When he no longer had any choice but to see the truth of what she said, he was very afraid, and very angry. He said many things in your hearing. He tore you from her breast. Literally and physically. You remember that. You recall the fear, his, hers and yours. When he cast her out, and refused to allow her to take you, you shared her pain.”

  She covered her ears with her hands as if that could block out what she preferred not to know. “I have no such memories!”

  Jon merely looked at her for a long moment. “You do, letise.” Then, “May I show you?”

  Sudden, intense dread infiltrated her every cell and she backed away until she was tight against a wall. There was nowhere else to go, but still she refused. “No!”

  The quavering tone appalled her. Where was her personal dignity? What had happened to her hard-earned self-control? She drew in several tumultuous breaths, still facing Jon with outward defiance she had to struggle to maintain within herself. She did not want to believe him. But how could she not? That small bead of light was there. She felt its warmth, longed to touch it, to reenter the world it encompassed, but dared not because along with that deep sense of connection to something wonderful had been the horror of having it stripped away.

  When she thought she could trust her voice, she asked, “Why would my mother have left me?”

  “She had no choice.”

  Lenore wasn’t buying that for one minute. “Garbage! There’s always a choice. If she was Aazoni, with all the attendant powers you Aazoni seem to enjoy, how could she be said to have had no choice? Surely she had greater mental capacities than my father. Couldn’t she have simply dematerialized and dematerialized me along with her?”

  “No, she could not. She could not risk your safety, so she had to leave you with your father.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “I looked at the memory she left in your Aleea. I could do nothing but, if I were to reclaim it for you.”

  Lenore tried to steady her mouth, which was inclined to tremble. “Thanks for nothing.”

  Jon arose from the bed and came to her, wrapping her securely in his arms, holding her tightly against his strength. She realized how much she needed it, and resented the need. After a moment, she pulled free. He, who could have forced her to stay simply by utilizing his size, his physical power, let her go.

  She stared at him for a long moment, arrested by a massive internal conflict, trying to make sense of everything she felt.

  It was too much, too vast, too endlessly filled with questions to accept all at once. She wanted to be alone, wanted to let the sensations, the memories, if that’s what they were, come at her in tiny increments, short, unthreatening scenes she could adapt to one by one. The phrase, “tore you from her breast,” was far too melodramatic to believe.

  Except...when she had been there, when Jon had taken her deep into the pit of her own memories and she’d emerged from them with a scream of terror, clutching a single bead of light...what she had fled could easily have been described as exactly that. The emptiness, the unresolved grief she had always sensed within herself, made more sense when seen in that context.

  But no. Her father prided himself on being truthful, as much as any Aazoni supposedly did. He, like she, admired the consistency of numbers, the right-or-wrong of them, the truth in the answers they could give. Had he actually taught her that, or was her craving for their integrity something she had inherited from him?

  But...had she also inherited her long-neglected artistic bent from her mother? Were those buried memories the reason she had been able to accept—far too easily, she now knew—Jon, as who and what he was?

  But why would her father have lied? Because he thought she wouldn’t believe him? That made a lot of sense. If he had told her as a child, she’d have considered it a fairy-tale. If he’d told her when she was an adult, she’d have thought he’d gone nuts. Nevertheless, she couldn’t accept that he had known this about her and failed to find some way to tell her.

  “I think what happened,” she told Jon, “is she never did tell him what she was.”

  He stood there, impassive, but slowly shaking his head, as if waiting for her to finish drawing her own conclusions before he snatched more of her foundations out from under her.

  “I think
she got tired of slumming on poor, primitive Earth, and returned to Aazonia. That would certainly account for my father’s belief that she joined a commune and they all committed suicide. Translating away from here could certainly be misconstrued as ‘reaching a different plane of existence.’” A vast wash of sorrow threatened to engulf her. She steeled herself against it, thrust it away by sheer force of will.

  “You think, then, that your mother may be alive—on the home-world?”

  Lenore didn’t know what she thought. “Can you...Can any Aazoni come and go? Do they ever? I mean, other than criminals and law-enforcement officers. Is Earth a...an Aazoni tourist destination?”

  “I know that over the centuries since we first began to visit Earth, some Aazoni who have come, perhaps as part of a study-group, have been trapped on Earth if a member of their Octad met with accidental death. Some, while awaiting rescue, made lives for themselves. Your mother might have been among them.”

  He reached out and stroked her hair back. For an instant, she let herself lean into his cupped palm, then jerked away from him.

  “When your father sent her away, she might well have found enough other Aazoni to form an Octad and go home again. Yet, however much she would have wanted to take you with her, no infant can tolerate the rigors of translation.”

  He pressed a finger against her bead, sending a trickle of energy deep into Lenore’s soul.

  “She told you she intended to return when she was able.”

  “Did she say return from where?”

  “Not that I can detect. But if she did go back to the home-world, something must have prevented her coming back for you. I read her intention to do so clearly in here, Lenore. I wish...I wish you would see for yourself.”

  She shook her head and pushed his hand away from her Aleea.

  He continued. “As I have mentioned, safe windows for translation are infrequent. When this one closes, there won’t be another for ten years. Often they are as much as fifteen, even twenty years apart. True, our time is measured differently, but your mother, if she lives now, would know you to be an adult on Earth, and perhaps thinks you’d not be amenable to meeting with her.”

  Lenore wanted very much to resist—to deny—the possibility she might have a living mother on some distant planet—or in some “space and time, not here, not now.” Though the thought was too overwhelming, she had no option but to let the conviction that Jon was right grow in her heart.

  “Would she have been allowed to come back—simply because she wanted to? Or would she have had to have a better reason than merely having left behind a half-breed child?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “There are no laws on Aazonia against citizens doing what they choose, living where they wish, so long as their doing so causes no harm to others. Some who have first come as students of your cultures have returned to Aazonia with such fond memories of Earth they elect to make this their home. They opt for the simpler lifestyle Earth offers, the more...fundamental one. A place like Earth, or others worlds where mindlink is uncommon, is more comfortable to some Aazoni.”

  “More comfortable for them?” Lenore dragged on her robe, wrapping it tightly around her as she paced across the room and stood with her back to the window. “I don’t give a damn about their comfort! I feel...violated, Jon. On behalf of all humanity. To know that there are aliens—have long been aliens among us and we didn’t know it—to learn suddenly that there are people who pass as human yet can get into our minds without our knowledge, horrifies me. And to know I was born to one of them horrifies me even more.”

  “Aazoni do not take from unwilling minds,” he said. “Nor do they give to unwilling minds. But they have given much to humanity over the centuries, given willingly and generously of their knowledge, shared and contributed...many things.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  “Are you,” he asked silkily, “familiar with the name Leonardo DaVinci?”

  “DaVinci?”

  “And many others—Marconi, Houdini, Watt and Lister? Jenner? Banting?”

  Slowly, she lay back down on the bed, an arm over her eyes. “I suppose,” she said, “it was the Aazoni who built the Pyramids, who cut those long, straight lines in the jungles of South America? Who carved designs visible only from space?”

  “Why, no, as a matter of fact,” he said, lying beside her, but not touching her. She felt his side of the bed depress and steadied herself so she wouldn’t roll against him. “The Pyramids were built by a much older race than the Aazoni, and the ruins known now as Incan were left by explorers from a culture that arose in a different sector. A large party of them were lost, and hoped to lead rescuers to their location with those designs and lines they created.”

  She let her arm slide off her eyes, looking at him with ungovernable curiosity. “And were they rescued?”

  “Eventually.” He drew one fingertip along the sensitive skin of her lower lip. She had to rub away the sensation with the edges of her teeth. “It was the Aazoni who found them—long before my time, of course—and returned them to their own space and time. They were grateful.”

  She laughed, then choked on the laughter. “Jon...it’s the strangest thing, but I actually believe you. I mean, about DaVinci and the others. Everyone said he was before his time—a visionary. He drew working models of helicopters, for heaven’s sake, before there was even fixed-wing flight.”

  Then, rolling up on one elbow, she looked down at him. “Why would an Aazoni know about flight in aircraft when you can just translate yourselves from point A to point B? What would be the reason for that? And why would he try to tell humans about it long before their technology was ready to build what he drew?”

  “Aazoni do not require flight,” he said, “but many other peoples do. Perhaps he learned from one of those races. As to why he might have attempted to educate humans regarding this, I cannot say. Truly, he should not have. Perhaps he never meant his drawings to be seen by other eyes.”

  “Well, they sure as hell were, and they puzzled a lot of people for a lot of years.”

  Lenore dropped back down onto her pillow, staring at the ceiling, silent, thoughtful, wondering.

  Jon rolled toward her and lifted his upper body against the headboard, reclining on three pillows that had not been there before. “Letise, tell me what else it is you want to know. I sense a great question burdening you.”

  “How can the union of an Aazoni and a human create a baby? We aren’t the same race.” She firmed her chin when it threatened to wobble and met his steady gaze. “I don’t even know what you really look like. I mean, is this—the way you are now—nothing more than a form you adopt when you’re on Earth? Are you really green, with scales and a long tail?”

  He laughed. “Letise, this is my real form. The only one I have. Human and Aazoni are cousins, descending from a common ancestor. We did evolve in a slightly different manner, and on different worlds, but there are few physical differences in our bodies. Except,” he added, flicking undone the firm knot she had tied in her bathrobe sash, opening the front and touching her breasts, her belly, her thighs with a broad, firm palm, “the very important ones between male and female.”

  She shivered at his touch and, in defiance of her own needs, tugged her robe closed again, knotting it even more tightly.

  “And did the union of my mother and my father produce what we would call a mule? A sterile being—me—without the capacity to have children?”

  “No,” he assured her. “You are fully functional in every way.”

  She pulled in a long breath and let it out slowly, feeling as if a large weight had been lifted from her chest. “Good.”

  “You are finding it easier to believe me.”

  She nodded. “Strange as it may seem, but yes, I am. I’d be a fool to keep on denying things, wouldn’t I, with all the weird and wonderful evidence you’ve placed before me.”

  “But you will believe me more, and will know more about what’s possible from a uni
on between a human and an Aazoni, if you allow us the full bonding found only in baloka. Now I know your true heritage, I understand what my Kahinya has been telling me.”

  “What has it been telling you?”

  He was silent for a time, perhaps even morose. Then, so softly she could scarcely hear, he said, “That you could be my true bond-mate.”

  “I cannot be that to you any more than you can to me,” she said. “Your time here is too short, Jon. If we share this...this baloka, how will I survive when you leave?”

  “How will I?” he countered. “I only know I must leave. I have a duty, letise, one I cannot ignore. But I—we both—you and I, have a right, a need to know each other as deeply as we can. To store that knowledge in Aleeas for our Kahinyas to keep. Will you share that with me, Lenore?”

  She wanted to! Oh, lord but how she wanted to. As frightening as it might be, to say no was beyond her. She met his gaze.

  Yes, she told him without speaking, and saw joy leap into his eyes. It quivered through her, too, knowing she had reached out mentally to him and he had heard/sensed her response.

  She looked down at the robe she wore and wished it away. It stayed exactly where it was, sash tied as tightly as she had done it following his loosening of it.

  Her gaze flew to Jon’s amused one. “It won’t go away.”

  “You must crawl before you can walk, letise, and walk before you can fly. Allow me?”

  She could only nod helplessly. She would allow this man, this alien, anything, she thought.

  And did.

  He was right. Sometimes, for some couples, baloka was just...there, requiring no practice to achieve.

  What it meant for their future—their impossible future, Lenore didn’t know, and Jon didn’t say, but sometimes as the days passed, she found him gazing at her with deep longing and sadness in his eyes. At those times, he shielded his mind from her completely.

  Over the week, they translated and searched all the towns where fairs had been held, or were being held, but never with any sign of Zareth or others of Jon’s Octad.

  Time, which once had seemed to Lenore to be stalled, now passed much too swiftly. As the clock of the open window between Earth and Aazonia ticked down, she forced herself to control her growing hope that the Octad would never be reassembled. To take her own happiness at the expense of others’ would be too wrong. Once, when she let the yearning surface and beam forth, she knew she had projected it for Jon to see. He held her and told her without words that he shared her longing for them to remain together, that he, too, felt guilt for that secret wish.