A. Warren Merkey

by Far Freedom

  “I’ve been asleep for a long time, Zakiya. This is me.”

  The sound of the name - Zakiya, her real name - struck a great chord in the symphony of her existence. Zakiya! She realized she had heard it before in her visions but it had refused to stick with her. The chord died quickly in her heart, leaving her real name meaning less to her. It belonged to another person. She might take it up again but it was just a name. It was not as important a name as Jamie. “It hurts, Aylis. Losing Jamie. It still hurts!”

  “I know! I’m sorry! My God, Zakiya! We’re here, we’re alive, we can remember! You have to let me hold you.”

  She held her arms open and stood before Fidelity with an imploring look on her face. Fidelity could see through her own blurry eyes that Aylis was young again and her face was wrecked by powerful feelings. The anger flowed out of her with her tears. She remembered an old familiar feeling, a feeling of belonging with Aylis, a feeling of sisterhood and of deepest friendship. She resented it and resisted it for a moment, but it grew in strength and she became helpless to deny it. It was a feeling that belonged with the name Zakiya, and she reluctantly gave way to the odd feeling of losing her old identity. Fidelity was the name of a woman Alex had married after everyone departed the crew of the Frontier. She never knew her well and had always envied her, yet had for some reason adopted her name years after she disappeared on the Titanic . Aylis Mnro only knew Fidelity as Zakiya, and that made it certain she would take her real name back. The chasm of centuries and the ache of motherhood-denied melted away. She arose and took two steps forward. Aylis closed the gap, gathered her within her arms, and hugged. Zakiya returned the pressure. They held each other fiercely.

  “Do you understand what is happening to us and to Pan?” Aylis asked.

  “I’m beginning to see a pattern,” Fidelity-who-was-Zakiya said.

  “Then you are one step ahead of me, Zakiya. I was doing crazy things and didn’t know why! I was scared!”

  Aylis paused and took something out of a pocket. “Do you have one of these? I seem to remember there were two.” Aylis opened her palm to show a small object. When she lowered her hand slightly, the ovoid object floated in the air. Mai gasped.

  “Holy cow!” Horss exclaimed. “She’s got another one!”

  It was a cryptikon. Zakiya-Fidelity produced hers from the silver bag.

  “I thought there was only one,” Mai said, reaching for the floating artifact, trembling to grasp it.

  “I know of five,” Zakiya said, “and I believe there is at least one other. The Lady in the Mirror was quite upset at seeing it in my hand.”

  “Who?” Aylis asked.

  “Didn’t you tell them about the Lady in the Mirror, Jon?”

  “They wouldn’t have believed me! I didn’t believe Freddy when he told me! I didn’t even believe it when she was trying to kill us!”

  “Where have you been?” Aylis asked.

  “Hasn’t Jon or Freddy told you about Oz, or the Big Ball?”

  “That’s what they call it? I didn’t believe it either!”

  “A place of great beauty and great terror,” Zakiya said. “I had friends there, and enemies, including one who can appear anywhere and destroy almost anything. The Lady in the Mirror. I was separated from Samson and Rafael when Freddy and Daidaunkh rescued me. Daidaunkh stayed behind with the Gatekeeper to try to find them.” Zakiya described The Lady in the Mirror, with Horss adding a few more adjectives.

  “We can’t continue?” Aylis asked. “What will we do?”

  “Keep moving,” Zakiya said. “Pretend we still have a chance. The cryptikons provide some amount of protection.”

  “Who is Zakiya?” Mai asked, giving the cryptikon back to Aylis.

  “My oldest friend,” Aylis said. “Also known as Fidelity Demba.”

  “Commodore Keshona,” Horss said. “Ruby Reed.”

  “Yes, I now remember Ruby Reed,” Aylis said. “Zakiya Muenda is her real name. We served together, back before the Navy existed. We were explorers.”

  “But that was…” Mai started to say.

  “Too long ago?” Aylis said.

  “Deep Space Fleet,” Horss said. “I believe you! You are Aylis Mnro, aren’t you?”

  “Would you then believe Zakiya and I served aboard the Frontier?”

  “It was a real ship?” Horss asked.

  “It was,” Aylis said, smiling.

  “And the captain?” he queried.

  “A real person,” Aylis said. “Her husband.”

  “But…” Horss said.

  She only half listened to them speak. Zakiya tried to fit herself to the name her mother gave her three centuries in the past. She didn’t fit it, not yet. She was a person with no name at all. All she knew at this moment was that she could sing. And that she had lost Samson.

  Still wearing the yellow dress made by Rafael, Zakiya stood in the wings of the stage listening to the performers sing to the live audience and to billions more by telecast. Aylis used needle and thread to repair some of the damage to the yellow dress.

  “Does he know I’m here?” Zakiya asked.

  “I didn’t tell him! I wanted to surprise him, Zak. The only sewing I know is emergency medicine stitching. I last did it about two hundred fifty years ago.”

  “You needn’t bother. The dress is fine the way it is.”

  “I know. I just like to make things perfect. I wanted to say something before Pan finishes and comes and monopolizes your time.”

  “We’re friends forever, Aylis, no matter what happens.”

  “I know that! It’s the only thing I’m sure of! You’re Zakiya at the root of your being. Always kind and forgiving. I just wanted to say I believe Alex is still alive out there somewhere.”

  “Please, don’t make me hope! I remember other times when we all but pronounced them dead. They’ve been gone too long!”

  “Hear me out, Zakiya. I’ve had a few more explosions from my lost memories. How old were you when you married Alex? Seventy? And because of the medical advances of the time, you were still biologically young enough to give birth a few years later to Jamie. Life extension treatments were already centuries old. All I did was improve the treatments to make continuity of life practical and affordable for everyone. What remained was the problem of implementing it without causing tremendous social upheaval. That was half the reason I went to sleep and let my inexhaustible mechanical double take on the task.”

  “Are you saying that Alex and the others had the benefit of your research?”

  “I made sure they had everything I could give them to keep them strong and healthy. They wouldn’t let me come with them, but these are four of the most brilliant minds God gave to men. They had to be able to figure it out. Patrick promised me he would make it work.”

  “They never believed they would return soon! They were planning on decades of cautious searching. But it’s still been too long, Aylis. They might have had the technology to maintain their youth but there are too many ways to die out there.”

  ” Still, there’s a chance, Zakiya. You’re data-enhanced by the Navy, but you’re also data-enhanced by me. Our poor brains can only hold so much. But there are other ways to store memories. Maybe we’re unable to retrieve our old memories with the mere will to remember, but it’s all there. Therefore, you’ll eventually remember how intelligent and strong and resourceful these men were. They’re still out there, and they need our help.”

  “There may be a small chance, but - “

  “No ‘buts.’ They’re out there and we will find them!”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “Now, go on and surprise Pan. I want to see the look on his face!”

  Zakiya stepped closer to the stage and listened to the last singer. He finished to great applause, showing that his place at the end of the Mother Earth Opera was well-earned. When the singer exited to her side of the stage, she was still applauding as he passed by her. Pan accompanied the singer on a traditional piano, where
he still sat. He turned to the audience and started to rise, then he must have glimpsed her and turned back to her. Pan stood and gestured for her to come onto the stage. She pointed to herself as a question and he nodded and waved vigorously for her to join him. Zakiya turned to Aylis who simply shoved her into the light. Zakiya walked uncertainly toward Pan, wondering at his motive. He couldn’t dare to ask her to sing!

  Pan waited for her to close the distance between them. “Hello, Ruby!”

  “Hello, Harry.”

  “It’s been a long time. Too long. Want to sing?”

  “You didn’t say that! I don’t want to embarrass you.”

  “Not a chance. Just one song. My old favorite.”

  Pan returned to the piano. As Zakiya turned to go with him, she glimpsed Admiral Etrhnk in the first row of seats. Their eyes met, and even from that distance she couldn’t see what she expected to see. She didn’t understand him.

  Pan was already playing the intro for the song she sang for Rafael as she came to stand behind him with her hands on his moving shoulders. It was an easy song because it was so beautiful and sad. She only needed to be true to it. She wasn’t a performer, not an actress. She was a singer. She sang.

  When she finished, the applause was polite. She was gratified to receive any applause at all. “Not too bad,” she said softly to Pan.

  “It was perfect!” Pan replied. “They don’t understand. Do you want to try something more challenging?”

  “No!”

  He ignored her response and played a few notes of a song she recognized. She was transfixed by a memory in which the song appeared in a set of five songs, all of them difficult because they weren’t so beautiful and were technically complex. Five different songs, five different languages, lengthy melodic phrases, wide tonal ranges. She remembered trying to sing them and make them beautiful, but failing, lacking the will and stamina to conquer their cruelty to her sense of aural and emotional aesthetics. Pan was there in the memory, urging her to reach beyond her old limits. It was near the end of their life together, perhaps part of its reason for ending. Now it was his challenge to her, and his hope for her. She knew it was impossible. Like the challenge to find Alex. Impossible!

  “You have the lyrics in your data augment.”

  “Yes.”

  ” You rehearsed them often enough.”

  A century ago! “Harry, this will be the end of us!”

  “Or the beginning of something better. Try it! I heard you sing the old Rhyan song. That was just as difficult.”

  He was still playing the simple notes of the group of songs, mixing them in a way that reminded her of their resistance and their potential. Some of these songs were probably already sung by others during the Mother Earth Opera, but no one would have put them together the way Pan once arranged them for her. She wanted to slap old Harry on the back of the head and walk off the stage! Yet, she had a feeling she could probably make it through at least the first song. It was as if her voice and her lungs and the rest of her body also remembered the skills and demands of singing. It was as if she was better and stronger than Ruby Reed ever was. It was as if Keshona ordered her to attack. “I’ll kill you when we’re done!”

  “I’ll die happy!” Pan declared, and launched the accompaniment.

  She sang. She closed her eyes and sang. She sang!

  She hardly thought about how she ought to sing such unforgiving songs. She was grateful to make it through the first one without any technical errors. She was pleased to remember how to segue into the second song and never hesitated. Then she stopped caring how perverse the melodies were, and made them play against themselves and sound better than they were. It became easier for her. She allowed her voice to soar, unafraid. She loved to sing.

  Toward the end of the last song another memory surprised her, almost making her lose concentration. There was another treatment of the five songs, something she had worked on unknown to Pan. She had been trying to basically destroy these ugly songs and make something new of them. The score came up in her ocular augment and she remembered how she wanted to sing it but was never able. Now it didn’t seem so challenging. But Pan would have a hard time accompanying her. Good!

  As Zakiya held the last lyric of the last song, she softened the note and leaned over the left side of Pan’s keyboard. She struck a new chord, startling him. She struck it loudly and in the rhythm she wanted. She pulled his left hand over and made him realize she wanted him to hit the chord. “See if you can keep up with me, Harry!”

  Zakiya jumped to the middle of one of the songs and hummed the dominant melody, the best part of the song. Then she used modern English words to sing the melody. Just as Pan found the right chords to follow her, she jumped to another of the songs and sang the best part of it in English. The flow of the words and sentiment made sense and made a new poem. She used parts of the other three songs to continue the construction of the new song. Even though the songs changed key, they were much more interesting and dynamic. When Pan seemed to find the pattern of his accompaniment, Zakiya changed tempo, expression, even the words. She was singing blues and jazz. It was hot and cool and hard and soft. She was enjoying herself. She was in a world of her own, free of all the pain and threat and worry. Pan found his mode of improvisation and crouched over the keyboard, hammering the keys with passion and a big smile. Then he stopped. Zakiya’s voice trailed off. Pan stood and pointed to the wing.

  Zakiya saw Fred/Freddy, and next to him, holding onto his hand, Samson! She ran to Samson and gathered him into her arms and squeezed him and kissed him and wept. Never again would she place him in harm’s way! Never again would she withhold the care and affection he needed and deserved!

  Applause began tentatively from the audience, then rose to painful amplitude. Pan gestured for Zakiya to return to the stage. She started to put Samson down.

  “No, take him with you!” Aylis shouted.

  She carried him into the lights, and the applause buffeted them, until the realization of Samson’s injury caused many to fall silent in concern for him. She walked to Pan, who put both hands on Samson and squeezed his shoulders. “Welcome back, Samson! Are you alright?”

  Samson nodded his answer. “It’s loud!” he said of the applause.

  “Will your throat do one more song?” Pan asked Zakiya. “Maybe that will quiet them.”

  For the moment, her throat felt good. “What do you want me to sing?”

  Samson patted her shoulder. He whispered in her ear. “A lot of them died, keeping me safe. Sing for Olivier and the Broken Ones.”

  Zakiya set Samson on the piano bench next to Pan and told Pan the name of the song.

  She sang Un Bel Di.

  One beautiful day her husband would return to her. She would find him.

  She would find him.

  She would find him!

  Section 028 Feathers and Stripes

  “You saw him.”

  He started. Normally the sound of that voice was too expected to bother him, but he was so deeply lost in thought that he forgot to anticipate her visit.

  “Constant.” Etrhnk turned to the Golden One.

  “Answer my question.”

  “I saw him.”

  “He seemed well?”

  “You saw the televised images and could probably judge better than I.”

  “You didn’t meet him after the telecast?” Etrhnk shook his head. He avoided her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  She unsealed the seam of her blouse. Loose as it was, he knew it irritated her body. “I don’t know.” He tried not to look at the gold beneath her blouse.

  “You attended in person, and I think just to hear her sing.”

  “Yes.”

  “You quite enjoyed her performance. I know. I saw you applauding. I was jealous.”

  “I’m sorry.” He was sorry.

  “You wanted to learn something. If I know nothing else about you it’s that you’re always curious. She’s a mystery. As is the boy. Do you wan
t to know about the boy?”

  He shook his head. She discarded her blouse. For the first time Etrhnk felt strangely excited by this most beautiful of creatures. For the first time he felt Constant was truly female, and all that implied. What was happening to him, that he could feel? He couldn’t afford to feel. But he did. Most troubling of all was how he felt about Admiral Demba. It was a mistake to listen to her sing. It changed him.

  “I always think you’re hiding delicious personal thoughts from me,” Constant said. “But never thoughts about me. Would it interest you to know that I was very worried the boy would be hurt or killed?”

  Etrhnk shook his head negatively and slowly.

  Constant touched him, found the seam of his uniform, tugged at it gently while trying to capture his eyes with hers. “It would interest me to know why you didn’t remove Demba from command of the Hub Mission.”

  “I’m sure it would.”

  She yanked at his uniform tunic, angry or impatient. He finally dared look at her and he shivered. The light loved her golden feathers and played upon her human-like surfaces as though alive with capriciousness. “You are delightful to behold.” He was uncomfortable with what he was able to say and amazed that he said it. Constant seemed to appreciate his words.

  She smiled at him and helped him remove the jacket of his uniform, then his undershirt. She looked at his torso before wrapping her arms around it. “You’re also delightful to behold,” she said. “I love your stripes.”