The Father Unbound

by Frank Kennedy

  “There will never be another day like this,” he had told his driver, Polemicus Fynn, moments before they entered the enclave. Fynn, who had earned ground leave from his duties aboard the Ark Carrier Nephesian to attend the title game, concurred.

  “Miriam says each of us are entitled to one day when we are bigger than ourselves. The rest of our lives are about the journey toward that day and the reflections afterward. You are going to have many years to reflect, Hadeed.”

  Hadeed laughed as they approached the gate. “Only if you believe Miriam is right.”

  “You doubt her?”

  “I love her, Fynn. How could I? But haepong is just a game. You and I know what else is out there. What can be taken.”

  The cab of the Tumbler fell silent. Hadeed knew he was not supposed to discuss global ambitions anywhere other than the temple or Miriam’s quarters. Yet he could not resist. As the crowds became visible on the other side of the gate, Hadeed imagined a distant future where he might ride atop a Tumbler and lead a convoy of assault vehicles into Messalina to be greeted by thousands of cheering Hiebim standing on the city’s southern ramparts. The city would be cleared of every last Chancellor but one – a desperate, tortured soul who once opened Hadeed’s eyes to what lay behind the veil.

  “She’s always believed in you,” Fynn mumbled. “Thought you were sent to Polemicus to fulfill a purpose. The day after you finished Summit – after what you did on the mesa, what we all saw – she told me how much she loved you. Didn’t care how young you were or what Trayem might think. She believed all of us were entering a new chapter. I’ve rarely seen her so excited.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Hadeed said, her perfumes seeming to waft through the cabin.

  Fynn kept his eyes straight ahead. “She does not give her love easily.”

  Hadeed resisted the urge to reply. Although neither Fynn nor Miriam ever discussed it, Hadeed knew they were close at one time. He saw it in their eyes whenever Fynn visited during ground leave. A momentary glance, a remnant. Hadeed did not mind; he had long since come to terms with Miriam’s parade of lovers. What he knew now was that she had found the one who mattered most, and he had no intention of ever allowing her to move on to another man.

  When the homecoming festivities ended deep inside the enclave, and Fynn retreated to Miriam’s annex, Hadeed made his way to Miriam’s bedroom. Two glowing candles lit the room, and a soft recording of a sitar melody intensified the mood. Miriam stood naked. At once, Hadeed threw off his shomba and disrobed. Without a word between them, Hadeed and Miriam intertwined their bodies, and Hadeed thrust all of himself into her. The tenderness of his wounds or the exhaustion in his bones did not matter. He poured his life into the woman who had shone him the hope of a better future, who opened his heart and his mind to the truths of Hiebim history and the unofficial slavery imposed by the Chancellory. She was his mother, his sister, his lover, his reason to anticipate the next sunrise.

  Even in violence, Hadeed could not resist her love. Miriam bit hard into his chest, leaving marks in his massive pectorals that would join the scars of others she had inflicted over the past three years. The pain intensified his need for her, and Hadeed responded in kind. He pulled out of her and pushed Miriam to the hard floor. Her head cracked in the fall, and she moaned, but Miriam also smiled. She reached out for him, and Hadeed fell on top of her. He wrapped himself around her again and continued to thrust even as she cried out in pain.

  The darkness that soon fell did not unmask itself until nearly midday, when Hadeed awoke, naked and contorted atop the bed linens. His mouth felt like cotton. The beauty of what they did at the foot of the bed occupied all his thoughts until finally he threw on his robe and allowed the echoes of praise and worship from the past two days to become a glorious jumble of sights and sounds. He craved a cup from Miriam’s private stash of café.

  Yet Hadeed did not know realize how long he slept. Just as he walked into her office quarters, Hadeed heard despondent but recognizable voices.

  “We will make this work,” Miriam said. “I promise. He’ll have to concede on this.”

  “I don’t see how he can,” Fynn replied as Hadeed entered. “You know what they are. This is the hand they play every time.”

  They turned toward Hadeed. Fynn, who had tears in his eyes, strode quickly from the office, nodding as he passed Hadeed. Fynn’s cheeks were red, flush with anger, as he grabbed his shomba on the way out. Miriam swallowed hard and forced a smile for Hadeed.

  “There’s our champion,” she said. “A warrior nonpareil … in so many ways.” She immediately turned to her new young aide, Polemicus Damon, who was running account figures through a CV field. “Damon, I need a favor. Please speak with the Trinity of Elders and reschedule my conference with them for tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Matriarch,” said Damon, who at fifteen was precisely the age Miriam was long known to favor … both in staff and in bed. This young man, however, posed no threat to Hadeed’s position, and all present knew it – not after what Hadeed had done to misguided Ronan atop the mesa. “They will expect a reason,” Damon added.

  “An unscheduled trade conference at the Peoples Union,” she said. “I am in the midst of delicate negotiations to … oh, increase our leverage revenue at the Fortner Mine. Do you think that will satiate them?”

  “Yes, Matriarch. I will be more than happy to provide them with hypothetical leverage tallies, with your permission.”

  “Good. Do it. Oh, and Damon – please stop calling me Matriarch. I have a name.”

  “I know. But I believe in due deference to your esteem. I hope you’re not offended.”

  Damon had come into Miriam’s service two weeks before Hadeed left for the continental tournament, and she quickly extolled his prowess as an accountant.

  She turned to Hadeed and kissed him. “Isn’t Damon wonderful?”

  Once the young aide left, Hadeed poured a cup of café. He had intended to spend what was left of the day at her side, but as he joined her on the sofa and rubbed the back of her neck, he knew something was off. Miriam was slow to speak.

  Hadeed became adept at reading her moods over the past three years, and the dozens of times he spent in her bed sharing crimson liquor, smuggled poltash weed, and brute-force lovemaking allowed him to see every line, every curve, every inflection. He knew her at times better than himself, cared only for her needs and how he could be of service. In this case, he knew she was fighting a cauldron within.

  “Tell me,” he said, reaching out a supportive hand.

  She turned away. “What could possibly rattle me this way, Hadeed?”

  “Chancellors, naturally. What has happened?”

  “In the grand scheme, perhaps nothing. I allow myself to succumb to this anger because I believe it will motivate me for the next … game.” She swung about quickly, kissed him on the cheek, leaped from the sofa and paced. “That’s what negotiations are to them. A spirited exchange of stratagems designed to keep them interested and confound the rest of us. They’re masters, Hadeed. Calculating, fully aware of their objectives. Even though I’ve had many victories – more than most Matriarchs – each setback peels away a layer of my patience.”

  “But not your resolve?”

  “No,” she forced a smile. “Never. In truth, it’s my contact in Messalina. He has been more intractable than usual. Sometime back, I brokered an arrangement for Fynn. A promotion in the scientific corps. He has done amazing work for them. Too amazing, apparently. A clay-digger challenging the Chancellor intellect.” She sighed and waved off Hadeed. “Keeping him aboard the Carrier is essential. I’ve worked too hard to place our people in strategic positions.”

  “You can stop this from happening, Miriam. You’re a visionary.”

  “My ancestors carried Chancellor DNA in their blood,” she said, staring at the mural of the exodus. “Yet I live beneath their boot-soles, just like everyone else.”

  Hadeed finished his café, came from behind and wrapped himse
lf around her, laying his head upon her shoulder, hoping to steal away her anxiety. “I love you, Miriam.”

  She brought him close to her chest, enveloping him between her breasts and kissing him upon the glistening head he shaved for her one month after the Passage of Summit. When she spoke, his heart filled with the knowledge that he was one step closer to his purpose.

  “This war,” she whispered, “will be slow in coming. It will seem like no more than a drop of rain for a very long time, and the thunder will always lie beyond the horizon. But we will get there, Hadeed. I may need you soon. I may need much more than your love.”

  Hadeed refused to ask the obvious question, but he could not resist the rising adrenalin that insisted his patience would soon be rewarded, that the “new chapter” Fynn had spoken of was close to being written.

  Later that day, Miriam took a Scram to Messalina. She never confided the result of the meeting with her contact. Hadeed immersed himself in holodemics of ancient philosophies, sociological constructs (all founded upon Chancellory propaganda), a study of the thirty-eight other non-resistant colonies, and the central tenets behind so-called ethnic sovereignty. When he and the rest of Miriam’s “army” gathered in the convocation temple, he took an anonymous place among the shaven heads and drank Miriam’s vision of an independent Hiebimini.

  Six weeks after his triumph in Messalina, Hadeed found himself in the usual position – his naked body wrapped around Miriam’s. This time, however, they were also bathed in a cloud of poltash smoke, and their senses tingled – the product of two bottles of crimson liquor. Moreover, they lay together on linens stretched out atop the yellow mesa. They had flown here after sunset, and now the universe lay before them with acute clarity.

  She pointed to the stars. “Are they beautiful?” She asked.

  “Maybe. But I don’t see beauty after you.”

  “Hadeed. Before you, I always found a man who could satisfy me. But there was never love. Not in the strictest sense. Not until you.”

  Her response struck him as somehow mournful, and a nerve twitched.

  “I knew we were meant for something greater that first night in your bed. Miriam, I’ve wanted to say this for months, but I didn’t know how. We … we should consolidate our power. Be together officially. I know it would go against every tradition, and most of the elders would fight it, but this is the clan that will change all traditions anyway when the revolution comes.”

  She sat up. “Marriage?”

  “Yes. I know about the rules. But your grasp on the Matriarchy is secure, and I am the most popular and respected member of Polemicus. I …”

  “But … you’re not, Hadeed. You are Trayem by birth. Listen to me. The concept of marriage is a beautiful one, but it would likely undermine everything I’ve built. I have spent years holding off women entitled to Matriarchal Approachment; if I married someone forty years younger, the elders would consider that a severe compromise of my position. Any new Matriarchs not sympathetic to my ambitions could sweep away any notion of an army. No, my beloved. Marriage is not possible, but maybe there is another way. Another path for both of us.”

  “Anything, Miriam. What do I need to do?”

  She pointed toward the western horizon. “There,” she said. “Just below the constellation Assyrius. There are three stars almost in direct vertical alignment. See them?”

  Hadeed took a moment; he had never given a thorough study to the night sky.

  “Yes. What about them?”

  “The middle star. Solis. Earth’s sun. Almost three hundred light-years away. Even by Fulcrum, the trip would take weeks.”

  “Earth,” Hadeed spat. “Cud! That’s what I think of Earth.”

  “No living Hiebim I know of has ever been there, and there probably aren’t a thousand of us who could afford passage, even if the Chancellory somehow allowed it. And yet we’re tied to it, Hadeed. A thousand years after the exodus, and we can’t escape its grip.”

  “We will. One day. When the war comes …”

  She slipped a finger over his lips. “The war. Yes. The war. Hadeed, I was having a private tutoring session with a young one – Polemicus Eaermer. He’s ten.”

  “Yes. Very promising on the pack. I’ve coached him.”

  “Eaermer and I were discussing the concept of giving truth to ethnic sovereignty through revolution, and I could sense I was losing him. Then he asked the single question I have been avoiding my whole life. It’s the one just beneath the skin, just behind the tongue. It’s the one I dare not think about because it could crush my resolve.”

  “A question?”

  “Yes, Hadeed. Eaermer asked, ‘What then?’” She stared into Hadeed’s eyes. “He wanted to know what we would do if we ever did cleanse the planet of Chancellors. ‘What then?’”

  “Obvious. We establish a formal sovereign government and create trade routes through independent contractors on the other colonies.”

  “That’s the official line, Hadeed. But the reality bothered Eaermer. He said we could never hope to fight the Chancellors in space, and all they would have to do is enforce an embargo of Hiebimini. They could starve us until we capitulated. We would give them the brontinium mines again – probably at far worse terms than the current leverage – and no one would come to our aid, because what contractor, what ethnicity, what colony, would dare challenge a Carrier? Let alone a fleet.”

  Hadeed could not understand what he was hearing. “Miriam, why are you saying these things? Just because a boy had the audacity to question your courage?”

  “No. Because a boy who is not yet old enough to understand the ways of the world already sees certain undeniable truths, the prime being that the future is whatever the Chancellory dictates it to be.”

  “Are you suggesting we can never wage war simply because they are more powerful?”

  “No, Hadeed. The war will come. That much is inevitable. But Eaermer is the voice of the Hiebim conscience. The same voice that has kept us in servitude for a thousand years. It is the voice that says, ‘What then? What would it all be for? Must we sacrifice our blood for a victory that will never be ours?’ Hadeed, remember the path you took before you found us? How your journey turned up no one else who saw behind the veil? Perhaps all of them do see, but they dare not risk what meager attributes life has given them. When the war comes, our own people will be as much the enemy as the Chancellors. Even in Polemicus, there is dissent.”

  Hadeed felt a fire sweep through him. He stood and cursed at Earth.

  “I do not care,” he shouted. “Rebels must always stand up to their own people. History has shown this. We will fight for the principles of sovereignty and dignity. We will shed our blood to show the Chancellors and all the colonists in the Collectorate that there is another way. The Chancellors have controlled the human race for too long. They are too comfortable. I refuse to believe they have the stomach to deny us what is rightfully ours.”

  Miriam smiled as she rose and came to his side. “Then you firmly believe in revolution as the essential path for all Hiebim to follow?”

  “I believe in it as much as I believe in my love for you. The war, as you have said many times, will begin like raindrops, but the storm will grow. We can change more than Hiebimini. We can change history. All we need, my love, is to make that first raindrop fall. The rest …”

  “… will come.” They kissed with ferocity. “The path …”

  “Yes,” he interrupted. “You said there was another way … another path for us.”

  Then she whispered words that traveled through Hadeed like a thousand shards of glass.

  “I know who he is,” she said. “Would you like to kill him?”

  Before Hadeed could say a word, she grabbed his hand, led him into the personal Scram and to her CV unit, voiced her password, and watched as a hologram of an elegantly dressed man appeared. He wore blue glasses and a red cape. Hadeed stiffened, forming instinctive fists.

  “His name is Sir Ephraim Hollander,”
Miriam said. “He is the Prime Regent for Planetary Peacekeeper Operations. Powerful. Well-shielded.”

  Hadeed trembled, his rage consuming him. “Prime Regent. This man? I … how did I not know this sooner?”

  “He is not a public figure. Head of the bureaucracy, little more. Shies away from the vids and the global stream. He’s nothing like those self-promoting Carrier commanders.”

  “When did you …?”

  “A few weeks ago. I was in the People’s Union, attending to the matter of Fynn’s demotion aboard Nephesian. My contact, a detestable man named Gripphen, introduced me to Hollander. He was very … distinctive. I remembered your description of him. I knew within the first minute. But Hadeed …”

  “Yes?”

  “About this man …” She kissed Hadeed on the ear then whispered. “In five days, he is going to retire to Earth.”

  His shoulders sagged and his heart sank. Then she whispered more into his ear. Suddenly, he changed his outlook on life. “This can be the first raindrop,” he told her.

  “Are you sure? The risk is …”

  “The first raindrop has to come sometime. I love you, Miriam.”

  His heart insisted that his life had been leading to this moment. Hadeed wrapped himself around Miriam, kissed with random zeal, and thanked her. He knew she’d been guiding him toward this day, just as he had been reshaping himself in her image.

  ELEVEN

  FIRST STRIKE

  The Ark Carrier Nephesian

  Ten years after he was tortured for no apparent reason, Trayem Hadeed stared into the face of a wonder that few average Hiebim – perhaps no others of his own clan – might ever experience. He planted his nose against a tiny portal inside his uplift transport and fixated on the colossus that had orbited his home world since before his gene-father’s time. The Ark Carrier Nephesian, a masterpiece of the Chancellors’ technological brilliance and flagship of the planetary peacekeeping force, dominated Hadeed’s view and, for the moment, crushed his spirit.