by Pearl Tate
“Have you met her?” I realize my mother has no idea where I’ve been or what I’ve been up to.
Ignoring her question, I realize what this means. “If your ‘Initiative Two’ was to purge the ships and you’re using the Marel’s drugs to control your people and make this happen… so… you’re aware of the Marel orbiting here around the planet? You knew about them taking the males you gave them and eating them?”
For the first time, my mother looks as if I’ve slapped her. She flinches slightly at my question before leaning forward to quiz me. “That’s what you heard? The Marel are taking our males and eating them? That’s absurd.” Even though I know she’s lying, I watch in fascination as she chuckles. “Bren and Hannah were claiming that they had proof of the Marel’s nefarious plan of some sort, but that was where I was heading when I came back to my office for my personal device. I certainly didn’t think I’d run into you—”
“They do have proof. What did you think the Marel were doing with the males you sent them? And when did you set this up? How long has it been going on?”
Sitting back in her chair, my mother steeples her fingers, looking up at the ceiling above me, “Hm. Maybe a few annual rotations before your birth. Some time ago now. They approached us for workers—not slave labor, mind you. They do a lot of excavating on their planet, like ours. There are many living spaces under the crust, and they’re always looking to have more help.”
“Then why don’t any of them come back?” My voice is incredulous as I wonder about her gullibility. I know that she doesn’t even believe what she’s saying, but she’s clearly hoping. Hoping doesn’t make it right, though.
“Who told you that? I’m sure we have some here.” Reaching forward, she pats my knee, and it takes everything in me not to recoil. “I’ll set you up to sit down with some of them. It’ll be good for you to meet them and find out more about the different species that we barter with.”
“Why?” I just don’t understand why she wants me to stay and be at her side. There must be something she has to gain.
“Why what?” She looks baffled as I ask.
“Why do you want me to meet them? You must realize I don’t trust you. And how can I? You’ve lied to me my entire life.”
“You’re my son. My only son. Of course, I want you here with me.” For the first time, I see her facade start to crack as a lone tear slides down her cheek. “There are those that feel we had too many males. The less than perfect ones were sent to the Sanctuary to be raised, and by extension, then available to be sent off planet for their labor at other places. I didn’t want that for you. You wouldn’t have survived.”
I’m disgusted at the pity that I feel as I watch her begin to not only tell the truth, but also show real remorse. “So, you hid me away as you encouraged others to ‘donate’ their extras. That’s so terrible.”
“It was the only way. At the time, there’d been an outcry about the number of homeless on the streets. The orphans who’d steal food from the hard working business owners. We gave them shelter and food and a future—”
“And what did you get? Because I can pretty much guarantee that whatever payment you received, whether it’s credits or… I don’t even know… it’s not enough for all the killing you’ve allowed. Letting males believe that they’re going to travel and see a new place, and then shipping them off to be turned into catatonic meat for an alien species’ future dinner!”
I’m standing, unraveling hair obstructing my view as the sheer disgust escapes me. The air around us is swirling, and the ground beneath my feet begins to quake. I don’t notice though as I start to lose focus on everything around me. The pure revulsion of this entire situation finally overwhelms me.
Coughing slightly, my mother comes back into focus in front of me. She’s holding a large canister that she’s spraying at me, and as I look closer, I realize she has an apparatus across her nose and mouth. What is this?
Doubling over, I gasp out, “What’re you doing?” Is she trying to kill me after all?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
- Nitara
If I wasn’t so fucking pissed at Mihile, I’d be a lot more worried. I’m sitting in the audience of a circular room that kind of reminds me of court rooms I’ve seen on television. Kind of.
It’s clear that the vacant seats draped in cloth across the circular table are for the Council members. There’s one white covering and a couple of blue, green, and purple too. They’re all light, feminine colors, and some of the purple covered chairs already have women settling in. No one I recognize, of course.
Thankfully, I’m not sitting on the opposite side of the table. There are additional chairs behind it with stadium seating. Most of the mated couples are at the table, though. Bren and Hannah, Matthias and Susan, as well as Selas and Karen have taken up most of the seats on that side.
It’s quiet as all the women continue to trickle in. Despite the silence, the room is thick with an uncomfortable air. My mind drifts back to Mihile and what he could have been thinking when he took off without me. It’s been a good twenty minutes since I woke up feeling his fear, but I haven’t really had time to completely wake up and figure out what I want to do. My gut reaction is to go find him.
But Hannah and April’s advice to stay with them for the moment, makes the most sense. They’ve assured me that if he hasn’t shown up by the time this meeting is over, they’ll put a team together to go with me and locate him. Since I’ve no desire to strike out on my own—especially since finding him will entail going down into the creepy tunnels—I’ll wait.
Watching April and Chevepak next to me just makes me all the more aggravated. They’re cuddling and all kinds of lovey-dovey until a very tall, imposing woman in a sky blue robe enters from the door behind the table. You can tell she’s one of the leaders by the confident and condescending way she looks at everyone around her, including us.
As she settles into the chair on the left side of the center white one, her eyes lock onto Bren and Hannah. I can totally tell she’s annoyed and just barely holding it together as she looks away, and her eyes begin roaming the room. They skip over me altogether, totally locking onto Chevepak and April. “Oh, my,” I hiss under my breath to April on my right. “If looks could kill…”
April straightens, her posture becoming more confident as her hand creeps up Chevepak’s thigh. The hateful woman’s eyes narrow before she lifts her chin, and her eyes shift to some of the others. No one exchanges words, only nodding slightly. All the chairs are full except for the white one in the center, and the longer we sit here, looking at each other uncomfortably, the more I wonder if that’s the Sacred Mother’s spot.
It must be, right? How can we be here, ready to sit down and have a conversation again with the totally off the wall, crazy bitch? What are we thinking? She tried to imprison us the last time we were in the same vicinity. How do they figure we aren’t going to end up in the same boat?
“Vina Likana, is there an estimated time of arrival for the Sacred Mother?” Hannah breaks the silence around us by asking the question we all want to know. So, that is Vina. I’ve heard about her. She’s Bren, Matthias, and Chevepak’s former “promised” or wife. She was screwing them all anyways.
It’s easy to tell she doesn’t like being addressed or questioned by Hannah. Wow! If this is uncomfortable for me to watch, imagine if I was one of them at the table.
I guess with Mihile, I have that to be thankful for. No baggage. Although, the reason he doesn’t have any makes me sad, because basically, no one wanted him. That’s how it works. They make agreements between the different family lines, but the females can back out at any point if they aren’t interested. It doesn’t sound like that’s a two-way street.
“No. Unfortunately, we haven’t heard from her since she went to get some information for this meeting. We’ve sent a group to check on her.” Vina Likana’s response has me panicking.
What if that’s where Mihile is? What if he ran into his m
other and she’s trapped him or something? I knew he shouldn’t have gone back there!
Scrambling up from my seat, I move slowly and as casually as possible to Hannah and Bren. When she sees me coming, Hannah stands, meeting me halfway across the distance between their chairs and ours. With my lips brushing her ear, I hiss out, “What if she’s not here because she ran into Mihile?”
Nodding, she pulls me back and we walk over to the end of the aisle I was seated in with April. “You’re right. I’m going to see what we can do to reschedule this, but don’t wait for us.” Taking April’s hand, she gives a tilt of her head at Chevepak to follow her, and she ushers us over to the double doors that are opened by a guy standing at attention in pants that are practically see through.
Carefully avoiding getting an eye full, I follow her out and just across the hall until we’re out of earshot of the men standing on the other side. “Chevepak, take some of the men with you and get Tara back to Mihile. Since the Sacred Mother hasn’t shown up, we’re thinking maybe they’re together.” Looking at me she asks, “Have you felt any movement from him since you woke up? You know, like a directional change or getting further away?”
“No.” I watch another female in violet robes go into the chamber while we’re talking. “I still think he’s gone back to his home in the hopes of getting some kind of information there in his mother’s private office.”
Hannah nods, already starting to move to the double doors behind her. “I have to get back, but if—no, when I get this postponed, we’ll be right behind you.”
Clasping my hands against my chest, I nod. We have to get going. I just know something isn’t right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
- Mihile
Dropping the spray apparatus quickly, my mother’s voice is nasally and muffled as she answers. “Getting you to focus! You’re going to bring this whole room down on our heads if you don’t get ahold of yourself. Focus and breathe, Mihile.”
“Tell me!” I gasp out, coughing as I back away from her. “Tell me!”
My voice bounces off the statue, and I can see the sounds that come out of my mouth, bouncing against her aura, scratching and fighting like my mind is doing. I know she’s right. I need to get control of my escalating anger, but how can I when now I know my mother has been responsible for a holocaust of our males. “How many, mother?”
The gas has settled around my feet, pooling in a haze of light blue at my feet just as the rumbling around us stops. My anger hasn’t ebbed,—if anything it’s worse. But outwardly, I’ve gained control.
“How many what?” With wide eyes, my mother stands her ground as I begin to walk closer to her, my head tilted curiously. Will she admit it?
“How many lives are you personally responsible for ending?” She’s begun to shake her head slowly, but as I get closer, she picks up speed, her long Presentation robe swaying with her.
“You’re assuming that this was something I could totally control. It isn’t. Like you, I was born into this position along with all the responsibilities, and yes, hard decisions often need to be made. We have to think about the people as a whole and weigh the consequences between the many and the few—”
“Lives! You’re talking about people! You can’t tell me that there wasn’t another way… a better way. All you’re worried about are the family lines that fund this establishment, whether that’s specific individuals like the Council members or businesses that align with your goals.” For the first time in my life, I’m standing up to my mother, and I can tell she’s just as surprised as I am.
No one speaks to the Sacred Mother the way I am. She’s a spokesperson of God. One of his last voices giving us guidance on the planet Quasar. But whose fault is that?
“How many males have you killed who may have been shaman like me? Maybe not blind, but certainly capable of helping bring new ideas to this establishment. New possibilities or ways to handle crises without killing your congregation.”
As I move closer to my mother, she’s backing toward the central hub of the statue, where all the branches come out of. Her hand shifts slightly, and it takes a moment before I realize that she’s holding a laser gun. “Just step back from me, Mihile. Back away.”
Laughing, I wonder how she missed seeing that laser guns don’t work on me. “Are you going to kill me now? I guess that wouldn’t be any different than anyone else.” Spreading my arms out, I take another step closer. “Go ahead.”
I don’t want to die, but I’m highly confident that this’ll barely sting. “I don’t want to kill you, Mihile. There’s so much that I want to share with you now that you’ve matured—”
“Matured or mated? Would we even be having this conversation if I hadn’t mated?” My mother’s face hardens, her lips becoming firm. I can see her patience—literally—running thinner as a haze of yellow shoots out and begins spreading through the nauseating gray that dominates the area around her.
I’m starting to pace, moving toward her and back, but on my second pass closer to her, she twitches slightly, firing without warning. The discharge from the small handheld laser bounces off my upper arm with an audible zing before crashing into one of the branches of the statue behind her. A high-pitched scream splits the air, and I watch as the damaged area smokes.
“Look what you made me do!” My mother’s backing away, her eyes glued to the damage as I walk over to it, wondering if there’s a way to stop the scream that continues to echo through the room around us. As I get closer to the branch just over my head, I sense a strange pull as I lift my arms and settle my palms against the damaged area. It pulses as if it’s alive.
Startled, I look up at my mother, wondering if she’s aware that it’s so strange. “What’s this exactly? I thought it was a statue, but it feels alive.”
Almost everything around me that I see has a faint aura, whether it’s alive or not. Now that this “statue” has been damaged, it’s aura has morphed into something very similar to the ones around a living object. Or did it just start doing that when I touched it?
My mother’s mouth opens and shuts as she shakes her head a bit before shrugging and lifting the laser higher. “You need to back away from it! Quit touching it right now!”
For the first time, I can see my mother starting to panic. Her voice is just starting to give away her panic, but she can’t hide what I can see in the coloring around her. As I watch, a bolt of green shoots down her arm right before the laser discharges, aiming at me again. Shifting to the left, I dodge her ineffective shot, circling around the large base of the statue and putting it between us.
She follows me around, and I watch fascinated as the telltale green shows her intention to shoot at me every time. It’s easy to dodge as we continue our circuit around the base. Clearly, she doesn’t want to hit this decoration again, but the low moaning that it continues to emanate assures me this is no normal statue like I was led to believe.
As I travel around it, keeping an eye on her, I start to run my fingers over the slightly textured surface. “Why, mother? Why’re you trying to shoot me still? Certainly you noticed that it isn’t very effective?”
She doesn’t answer as we continue our game. Based on her reactions, I realize that she didn’t pull out the laser until I started to get too close to her… and this… whatever this really is. As I run my hands over its surface, I look up and notice an opening in the structure just above my head.
Impulsively, I throw myself up, hoisting my body into the hole and dropping inside. As I do, two things happen at once. First, the structure seals itself behind me. I can’t even hear my mother any longer. One minute, she’s screaming my name, and the next, her voice is abruptly cut off.
Two, the entire perimeter around me starts to pulse with light. I can touch both sides with my fingertips as I gaze in wonder at the textured, crystal surface around me. It’s as if it’s embedded with hundreds of thousands of the crystals just like the Accord. Is that even possible?
There’s not
hing else in here. The base is completely flat but the entire circular circumference is covered in the stones. Or most of it.
Moving to one of the sides, I run my hand up and down, realizing that there are divots for the stones everywhere but not every facet is filled. All different shapes and sizes exist and with my vision, the easiest way to see which are filled and which are not is by noticing the colors around them. Taking my time, I let my breathing slow as I study my surroundings.
The ceiling is a hazy white, like a mist similar to the gas that my mother sprayed at me although it isn’t falling. Empty areas are blue, but where a stone sits is a deep violet. Although, as I notice this differentiation, I come across a stone that’s yellow. What could that mean? Why this difference?
Fingering the yellow stone just below my eye level, I think about my mother and wonder how long she’ll wait before she leaves. Who am I kidding? I’m never getting out of here. No matter how long I wait, I’m going to have to deal with a Contingent when I decide to leave.
After everything that she shared? I’m still reeling from the admission that she was a part of the Marel agreement and setup. She had to know about the males being taken off planet by the Marel species as food. What is wrong with her? She tried to claim she was born into it and just was maintaining the status quo. That’s not true!
I replay some of what she admitted, my stomach churning as I drop my forehead against the strange pulsing walls. As soon as I do, I hear my mother’s voice! Looking up, I watch fascinated as the earlier conversation I had with her plays out in front of me. Every single word perfectly, as if my mind has been duplicated.