Stars Beneath My Feet

by D L Frizzell

  “He is,” Norio said when I did not react. “Alex is the Ambassador’s son.”

  “Alex?” Kate was silent for several long seconds. Then, her face ashen, asked “Is this true?” Her shock was as evident to me as my own.

  Mayford did a double-take. And then he did another. “Marshal Vonn is a…T’Neth?”

  “Technically, he’s half T’Neth,” Hathan-Fen said, her tone matter-of-fact.

  I slowly turned to look at Hathan-Fen, and then the others. A terrible weight pressed against my chest and squeezed the breath away. “It’s a lie,” I croaked.

  The memories of the canyon massacre rushed back to haunt me. Three T’Neth stood there, Xiv among them, expecting me to show some kind of solidarity with them in their brutality. No, I wasn’t T’Neth, or I would have approved of their actions. I am not a murderer like them. I am human.

  “No,” I growled. I walked to the ice wall that obscured the train and turned to Seku. “Let me out of here,” I demanded.

  Her eyes apologetic and sad, Seku first looked to the Ambassador for approval, and then did as I wished. The blue wisps deconstructed the thick wall of ice – if it wasn’t just some kind of illusion to begin with - and revealed the train, its doorway already open. As I entered, I turned back to Hathan-Fen, refusing to acknowledge the Ambassador again. “It’s time to go, Major.”

  Major Hathan-Fen didn’t demand that I get hold of myself, or apologize, or do anything. She ignored me. Instead she approached the Ambassador, the alien masquerading as my mother – this had to be another T’Neth thought manipulation – and held her hands out, palms upward.

  “I sincerely apologize for our lack of preparation, Ambassador,” Hathan-Fen said, bowing as she spoke.

  The Ambassador let me go, giving her full attention to Hathan-Fen as if the world-shattering news she just told me was of no consequence. In the back of my conflicted mind, it occurred to me that my real mother had treated me the same way.

  “I am here on behalf of Colonel Jim Seneca, my leader, who was a friend of your husband.” Hathan-Fen spoke as if from a memorized script. “I am also here with Norio, who has been a friend to Kate since her childhood. Our reasons for coming here are critically important, both to my people and, I believe, to yours. If you would grant me a brief audience, we could discuss making arrangements which would be mutually beneficial.”

  “I don’t believe this,” I seethed from the train’s doorway. “Seku, close the train!”

  The door sealed before me. I found myself alone inside the train, fuming. I paced back and forth, feeling the need to punch something. All this time, my instincts had worked against me yet again. Why did I join the team at Dogleg? I could have declined Hathan-Fen’s one-sided offer and gone my own way. Why did I save Kate in the Upright Meadowlands? Why did I agree to take her to safety when I could have just minded my own damn business and done the job I was being paid for? Why did I tramp across the south pole, see the world for what it was, and then find my mother afterward? I could have lived a happy life thinking she was dead, even happier to never know what she truly was. Screw Jarnum, I thought. Screw the T’Neth. Screw everybody. I’m leaving, and this time I’m not coming back.

  A thought echoed accusingly in my head. You are T’Neth, Alex.

  Was that a thought planted by one of them? I’d been able to hear T’Neth thoughts for days…even weeks if my suspicions were correct. How could that happen if I wasn’t T’Neth? A laundry list of my characteristic flashed in my mind. I’m taller than average. I’m physically strong and agile. I heal quickly when I’m injured. I’m anti-social. So what? I thought. I’m nothing special, and I’m nothing sinister. I’m just me. Even Mayford himself agreed that these characteristics weren’t unique to the T’Neth. Then I did pound my fist into the cabin wall.

  That old, mysterious riddle came back to mind as I recoiled in pain. Grabbing my aching wrist, a long-forgotten memory of my childhood resurfaced. My mother was sitting on the floor next to me. She spoke with her hood pulled down – just that one time - telling me stories about Arion and then, finally, asking me a question. Alex, what do you have when you see stars beneath your feet? My son, you have the world in your hands. That had been the night she abandoned my father and me. She left without a reason, or an apology, or a goodbye.

  This was no false memory that she might have planted in my head. Her face was the only thing I thought of after she left, wondering what I had done to drive her away. But then, a month later, I got news that my father had been killed in battle. From that point on, I forgot her face and missed his. I punched a door in my anguish that first night as an orphan, breaking three fingers as I raged through the grief and loneliness.

  I cradled my hand and slumped to the floor of the train. My parents – one T’Neth, one human – created a child who should have never existed. I was the result of a malicious pairing, a cruel fling between two alien species. I’d have been better off stillborn, but for some reason I survived. All this time, people knew the truth and kept it hidden. Norio had apparently known about me all along. I had no idea how Major Hathan-Fen found out, but she did. Redland hadn’t known – thank God – or doubtless he would have exploited that knowledge somehow. My father knew…

  My father knew.

  Richard Vonn, Governor of the Plainsman Territory in the final years of his life, and a military man before that, had taken me to stay with his friends the Biedriks numerous times when I was little. I don’t remember my mother joining us on those trips to Sunlo, but now I wonder if she were there all along. My father would go on expeditions, as he called them, to meet with our allies. I’d always assumed he went to Den Gora, but now I thought it was more likely he came to Dolina. He came here, I realized with breath-halting astonishment. He came to the Sanctum.

  I held out my good hand out and lightly touched the wall. Had he ridden this train, too? Did he look through the ice at the south pole? The thought gave me a glimpse of his face, when he tousled my hair on the last day I saw him. He said that everything he did, he did to protect me. I believed him at the time. For a long time afterward, I didn’t believe him, but now I believed him again. My father didn’t just marry a T’Neth, he built an alliance with those who lived at the Sanctum. He was always intent on building a better future – he’d told me so on many occasions – and apparently saw opportunities with the T’Neth in Dolina. But how had my mother fit in? As a leader, was my father lured into a relationship with her as part of some intrigue? No, I thought, he met her when he was only a junior officer in the militia, someone of no remarkable achievement at that time. But he had advanced through the ranks quickly after I was born. Was that due to the T’Neth’s help? I felt myself spinning out of control with the notion of conspiracies and subterfuge filling my thoughts. Could my father have been just another ambitious prick like Redland, taking advantage of circumstances that would further his own career?

  No, my father was not selfish. He sacrificed himself at the Crumbles in a final, desperate attempt to save the Plainsman Territory from a Jovian invasion. Yet, even during that trying time, he made friends with a Jovian spy, the man he would ultimately entrust with my education. Norio learned who I was from my father.

  What was it about my father that he could see potential allies among his enemies? His enemies didn’t seek him out, not with the intent of befriending him anyway. He found them. He inspired them with his vision. That’s what so many had said at his funeral. That’s what I saw in him, even if it took me until the age of twenty to appreciate it. My father had steered his friends in my direction, trusting them to help me along my way because he knew I would be alone in the world. My father was the example I’d been trying to live up to since I first put on my badge, when my best friend was kidnapped and tortured for information he didn’t have. My father was the man who crawled beneath the spherical boulders piled against the Plutonic Ridge and set off the explosives that decimated an invading army. His real tombstone, the one I saw as a fresh deputy, was
a black scorch mark on the side of a mountain. After what he did, there was no body to bury.

  I couldn’t think of my father anymore. It was too painful. Feeling the weight against my chest growing more burdensome by the second, I cupped my face in my hands and closed my eyes.

  When I awoke, maybe ten minutes later, the weight on my chest was almost gone. I wondered for a moment if I’d burned out the parts of my brain that could care. But no, I still cared. Acceptance in itself is a remedy, as Norio would say. Had I really accepted that T’Neth blood ran through my veins? I didn’t think there was any way to deny it. If it was true, it was one helluva connecting fact.

  In retrospect, it made sense why I did so well in physical and mental pursuits. I had the blood of titans running through my veins. I had outrun, outclimbed, outmaneuvered, and outthought so many people who had challenged me. Just like a T’Neth. I’d been given an advantage and capitalized on it my entire life, even though I never knew how it came about.

  I stared at my hand. A smear of blood covered my knuckles where I’d punched the wall. It hurt, but I knew it would heal quickly – that’s what T’Neth wounds do. I’d killed people, a few times with my bare hands – T’Neth kill people with their bare hands. That had always been part of the job, though. I didn’t enjoy killing, but I did see the point in it. How then should I be judged in light of my newfound lineage?

  Norio’s words concerning truth echoed in my head. Judgment needs a foundation in truth, but truth in itself is not judgment. And again…The truth is nothing more than the collection of all facts. I’d certainly discovered enough facts for one day. I paused to think back through my life in every detail, weighing whether the revelation of my heritage changed anything. My life passed before my eyes, much as Kate’s memories had paraded before me when I learned to read her mind. There were good memories and bad. Successes and failures. Friends and enemies. But what set me apart from people? I asked myself. Nothing. What set me apart from the T’Neth? Nothing. I was both and neither.

  I am different, I finally concluded. The funny thing was, I’d made my peace with that fact long ago. I had attributed my differences to the wrong things perhaps, whether I thought it was because I was an orphan, or because I was jaded by assholes like Redland. I still accepted who I was in any case. Maybe this is no different, I told myself. From now on, being a T’Neth would be just another influence, but not an excuse. I am who I want to be.

  I felt better. The matter wasn’t settled, of course. The truth would never change, but circumstances had changed. What should my response to this discovery be? Living in two worlds, could I choose one? Could I choose both? Whichever way it went, I would be the one to make the choice. Me.

  I knocked on the wall where the door had been earlier. “Seku, can you hear me?”

  As before, the door liquefied and molded into a stairway. Outside the train, everybody came together from different parts of the station to see how I was doing. The ambassador made her way to the front and waited for me to say something.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “My son,” the Ambassador said. “How do you feel?”

  I heard her. In my ears, in my head. I heard her thoughts. Jomsu Loro Gra’h Formidi, formerly known as Laura Vonn, opened her mind to me.

  “As well as can be expected under the circumstances,” I said, and walked down the stairs to join the group. “Do you hear me?” I opened my mind as wide as I knew how to.

  “No,” The ambassador frowned. “Even as a child, I could not hear your thoughts. You are now an adult, but that has not changed.”

  Norio and Hathan-Fen watched me in quiet anticipation.

  Kate welled up in joyful tears.

  Redland stood in slack-jawed amazement. That was my favorite reaction.

  “I know who I am now,” I said. “I don’t know why you can’t hear my thoughts, and I don’t know if that will ever change. For now, it’s enough that I can hear you.”

  “I have missed you son,” the ambassador said. Her face remained as stoic as I remembered it being, though now I could detect an undercurrent of emotion in her statement. There was love, but also disappointment.

  For my mother to say that she missed me, while at the same time thinking that I let her down somehow, made no sense to me. I had been told that T’Neth were honest creatures, but it looked like they picked up the human foible of lying somewhere along the way. At any rate, her statement demanded an answer, for the sake of the others if nothing else. “Of course, you have,” I said. I had intended to sound diplomatic, but it came out sounding bitter.

  My mother had spent enough time with humans that she could pick up on verbal cues pretty well. Getting the cold shoulder pained her, but she saw that she pained me as well. You do not trust me, Alex, she thought, keeping her mouth closed. I will understand…and approve…if you wish to keep a distance between us.

  There was a new quality to the thought patterns around us, like we were isolated. None of Kate’s rambling thoughts reached me, and there was a lack of noise that I normally heard. It was as if my mother created a mental barrier around us that other thoughts could not pass through. Much as Seku could create physical barriers, my mother could create mental ones. She still could not hear my thoughts – as best I could tell, anyway - in the tiny cocoon that we shared.

  “I think that would be best,” I said, feeling a bit relieved that she had not tried to overplay her position on our first meeting.

  She held the mental barrier up for a moment longer, just enough to offer a suggestion. For the time being, it might be best if I were not your mother and you were not my son, she thought. Do you agree?

  “I agree,” I said, and felt the mental barrier dissolve.

  “Agree with what?” Hathan-Fen asked.

  I swore everybody at the station to secrecy about my heritage, even Redland. Hathan-Fen told me how she had learned the truth from Colonel Seneca a month earlier, and that he had already sworn her to secrecy before she and Kate left Celestial City. Norio had apparently known since he became acquainted with my father sixteen years earlier, so I was pretty sure he could keep the secret forever if necessary. “There may be a day when I decide to let the truth be known,” I concluded with a glance at my mother. Whether that depended upon my relationship with her, or the outcome of our crisis with the whole T’Neth population on Arion, I couldn’t say. The others probably wondered the same thing, but I wasn’t going to offer any false hope. “Don’t hold your breath,” I said.

  The Ambassador nodded. Turning to address everybody, she spoke authoritatively. “We are all now acquainted. This is no small thing for T’Neth and humans. From this moment, you shall address me as Ambassador Loro, or just Loro if you prefer. This applies to you as well, Alex.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Do we get to see this Sanctum of yours, now?” Redland asked.

  “No,” Loro replied. “For now, return to Dolina and rest. Please give me a few moments of solitude with Kate so that we may glean from one another.”

  “Glean?” Hathan-Fen asked.

  “She means they need to learn from each other,” Mayford explained. “It won’t take long. It’s not like they’re going to share their whole lives. Just what is relevant to Kate’s current situation.”

  “Makes sense,” Hathan-Fen told him.

  “And since we know so little of each other’s cultures,” Mayford added, “perhaps you and I may also glean from each other?”

  Hathan-Fen leered at Mayford.

  “That didn’t come out well, did it?” he asked, embarrassed.

  “I understand what you meant,” she said. “We might be here for a while, so let’s talk.” She directed him to a quiet spot by the train and began a conversation.

  Redland grabbed Norio by the arm and ushered him away to another corner for a little more heated discussion. I was sure Norio could handle that on his own.

  Since there seemed little else to do at the moment, I took the occasion to look
closer at the other display cases lined up on the boardwalk. When I reached the first crate where Kate had been so enthralled, I waved my hand in front of it. No blue wisps appeared, but I did get a sense of an image contained within. The crisscrossed wires inside did not form any type of physical image that I could see, but they did give me the distinct impression of one.

  This was the one Kate had liked, and now I knew why. The image I perceived was an animal, one I had never seen before, but an obviously gentle and timid creature with stripes of raised fur swirling around its body and a single plume of fur atop its head. I felt compelled to draw an image of it. Kate had already made some wavy lines in the tiny sandbox, but her version was crude. I smoothed out the sand and began crafting what I saw in my head. It took a few minutes, but I finally satisfied myself that the drawing was as close to correct as I could make it.

  My mother…Loro…and Kate were standing close together, apparently shielded by a mental barrier that my senses could not penetrate. Kate looked up at me once while I waited, but soon looked down to her hands as she apparently listened to what Loro had to think.

  I moved to the next display case. I assumed the mental projection from this case would be similar, but it wasn’t. Music emanated from the silvery strands. Reminiscent of my mother’s thoughts, it was a complicated but elegant piece, with instruments that sounded like a piano, a trio of stringed instruments, and a horn. I wasn’t sure how to draw a picture of music in the sand, but the musical notes somehow explained what I was to do. One of the instruments was out of tune with the others. As I listened to the chorus, it seemed to be one of the stringed instruments. I focused on that alone, listening intently, and forming an idea how to remove it. I pressed one of the threads inside the case. The sound dampened, but not completely. It also decreased in tempo. As I listened to the change I’d made, I decided that I could do one of two things. I could press certain wires in a specific way and silence the offending instrument…or…I could adjust other wires to increase the tempo and tune the note. Tuning the note seemed like the proper course of action. Now, I’ve never been the musical type, but that didn’t appear to matter. After experimenting with several wires, I managed to get it synchronized with the others. As soon as that happened, I got the impression of another image. This one was two trees whose trunks bent inward to meet in the middle, with a vine that encircled both.