A. Warren Merkey

by Far Freedom

  Mai was packing to leave when Aylis entered her quarters. She expected this. “Quitting on me, Mai?”

  “I agreed to help you until the ship departed, Aylis, but I can’t stay here any longer!”

  “Don’t let what happened to me influence your decision.”

  “How can I not?”

  Aylis’s copy had fond memories of Sugai Mai, even if she never had the chance to become close to her. She trusted those memories and they made her feel that her friendship was possible and desirable. But was it ethical to draw Mai further into the danger? She and Zakiya had discussed Mai’s situation. It was not clear she would be in greater danger staying on the Freedom or leaving it. All Aylis knew for certain was that she liked Mai very much and selfishly felt she needed her.

  “You’re right. It can’t be ignored. But I’m not as injured as you think.” That was a lie! She was shredded, and added to it were all the other revelations and relationships exploding from her hidden memory. Not the least of which was Jamie!

  “It was a sickening brutality, what was done to you!” Mai declared. “I can’t believe how well you appear to be! Must you take on the armor of your Navy rank so soon? I just detest you wearing that… that fascist uniform!”

  “I’m hardly well.” Aylis was surprised at Mai’s appraisal of her appearance. “There are things I can’t explain to you. I can’t even explain them to myself. I can’t allow myself to fall apart. I’ll change the uniform and wear only hospital garb. I just want you to stay as long as you can. I need you.”

  “Why would you need me?” Mai paused in her packing.

  “You know Zakiya - Admiral Demba - is my best friend. I need her also, but I can’t - “

  “Can’t what?”

  Aylis couldn’t explain it to Mai. She was tormented by what she had done and by what had been done to her. It was one thing to be a victim of rape. It was even worse to know she deserved it. “I can’t be with Zakiya. I can’t - “

  “What is wrong?” Mai asked, looking at Aylis with concern.

  “It hurts to be near her. I love her so much, but I’ve done something she will never forgive, and I can’t tell her what it is.”

  “Is it the Marine lieutenant? I wondered why you reacted to her the way you did.”

  “She’s Zakiya’s daughter and she doesn’t know it. But no, it isn’t Jamie. Zakiya remembers that I took her away from her. She understands why. I need a friend, someone I haven’t hurt too badly. Yet.”

  “You’re asking me to go on the mission with you.”

  Mai had reached the desired conclusion and Aylis willed herself to hold together long enough to accomplish her task. “Yes.” Aylis spoke as plaintively as possible.

  “You asked me to run the Earth Clinic!” Mai threw a neatly folded blouse carelessly into her bag. “It was a dangerous and shocking job! I thought it would kill me! This is a similar thing.”

  “Do you regret your years on Earth?”

  “Well… no. But this is the Galactic Hub Mission!”

  “This is a mission to find my once-upon-a-time husband. Who knows, maybe you’ll find some nice man to love on this ship.”

  “You refer to Jon Horss.”

  “He’s not the only fish in the ocean.” She suspected Mai’s willingness to visit her on the Freedom was helped more by her feelings for Jon Horss than for Aylis Mnro.

  “I’m more than twice his age.”

  “Is Jon such a child?”

  “He’s filled his quota.”

  “Are you in such a hurry to have a baby?”

  “Not anymore.” Mai fished the crumpled blouse out of her bag and tossed it aside.

  Section 005 Iggy Remembered

  Admiral Khalanov felt old, perhaps nearing the time when he would need full rejuvenation to continue a vigorous life. He sat with his eyes closed and his fingers steepled and touching his chin, but a certain tension negated the contemplative posture. He had problems to solve. This meeting was a thief of his valuable time.

  Admiral Demba stared at him with a distant and thoughtful look, but soon in the long silence of waiting, troubling thoughts caused ripples of concern on the smooth brown surface of her face. Khalanov opened his eyes to catch a glimpse of her expression and he knew something was different. “Bad news?” He offered a humorless smile.

  “It’s complicated.” Demba’s eyes still lingered on him. He never saw the like of her expression, as though it was she who was changed in some way.

  “For whom do we wait?” Khalanov shook off the study of her eyes as too much imagination on his part.

  “Two people.”

  “Why do we meet in the flesh? We have so little time and so much to do.”

  “Patience.” She said it almost - tenderly?

  A door opened. A young woman entered. Khalanov quickly stood up and his mood brightened. When Captain Direk followed the woman into the conference room, Khalanov’s face fell into a puzzled frown. The nearly-bald blonde woman sat down without looking directly at Khalanov. Captain Direk chose to remain standing to one side. He nodded at Khalanov and that was enough to make Khalanov wonder. It was a personal kind of nod. Direk never gave him more than the required military courtesy.

  The young woman finally looked up at Khalanov and slowly smiled at him. It was such a painful smile! He smiled back gently, but perplexed. There was something familiar about the woman with very little hair. There was everything strange about why she should be here. Who was she? She wore a medical uniform with an inconspicuous diamond star of an admiral. She must be important. She must be much older than she appeared to be. He hoped he would make a good impression on her, regardless of who she was.

  “We have a decision to make,” Demba said.

  “Won’t you introduce us?” Khalanov asked.

  Demba and the woman turned to look at each other, and the look was a total mystery to Khalanov. It was sadness he saw. What were they planning to do to him? The young woman looked down at her hands in her lap.

  “This is Aylis Mnro.” Demba was apparently not appreciative of what a thunderclap of news this was to him. “You know Captain Direk. You don’t know he’s Aylis’s son.”

  Khalanov blinked several times and stared hard at the young woman. ” She is - ! He is - ! She is Aylis Mnro? Direk is her son?” Khalanov sat down with haste, before this incredible news could topple him like a drunken fool. He could feel his face flush. He looked from Mnro to Demba to Direk, again and again. They obviously knew each other. How could Demba never confide to him that she knew Aylis Mnro? Why did he believe it was true? “I’m terribly sorry, Doctor Mnro!” Why was Aylis Mnro bearing the rank of a Navy admiral?

  ” Sorry for what?” She looked up at him with caring blue eyes.

  He almost couldn’t respond. Her eyes were on him! He glanced at Demba and saw an identical look: caring? “I’ve known Direk for a long time,” he sputtered, “and haven’t often enjoyed his company. I’m sorry I haven’t responded better to him. Knowing he’s your son, I’ll try harder! I’m amazed you’re with us and I’m very pleased and honored to meet you. I’m Igor Khalanov. You don’t look like the images I’ve seen of you. I can’t imagine why you’ve joined this mission. Have you joined it? You have an admiral’s star.”

  When Mnro bowed her head again and didn’t reply to him, Khalanov suffered another disappointment and turned to Demba. “Aylis was assaulted. I hated to ask her, but she needs to be here.”

  “Assaulted!” He felt his hackles rise, as though he was a guard dog facing a lethal intruder. “I’m appalled! I’m outraged! The damned Navy! What happened?”

  “Not now,” Demba said softly.

  “My God! How can this happen to Doctor Mnro, of all people?”

  “Please, don’t talk about it to anyone.”

  Khalanov shook his head, very pained by the information. The ghastly news swirled in his mind as he tried to move on to another topic. “Why are we here?”

  “Do you want to go on this mission, Iggy
?”

  Khalanov’s heart fluttered. It was good that she called him “Iggy.” It was bad that she raised the question of his retention. Aylis Mnro! He couldn’t concentrate on any one thing. Direk was her son! “I labored decades building this ship, never expecting to sail it. Then you asked me to stay aboard. Now you’re ready to put me ashore? I don’t understand!”

  “I’ve remembered you.” Khalanov opened his mouth to ask The Question. She raised her hand to cut him off. “Before I explain what that means, answer my question. Do you want to go on this mission?”

  “I’ve been planning for all these years how to stow away on the ship! This ship is my life! What is left for me without it? Yes! I want to go!”

  “I wouldn’t have expected that,” Mnro said, breaking her silence, looking up from her hands, looking at Khalanov again.

  Khalanov was almost lost in the great woman’s caring gaze but managed to keep the thread of the dialog. “I don’t understand. How can you know what to expect of me? I beg your forgiveness if I speak from ignorance, but who am I to you?”

  “That was a long time ago,” Mnro said. “I’m in error. You’re not who you were, I’m sure.”

  “We need a decision now,” Demba said, cutting off the next question Khalanov could pose, “before we say anything more.”

  “Does Iggy have a vote?” Mnro asked.

  ” She called me ‘Iggy!’” Khalanov gasped. His heart was thudding and he was shocked again. Why would she choose to call him by his nickname? Even Demba rarely used it.

  “You’re in line for another star, Iggy,” Demba commented. “If you stay, you’ll have more ships to build.”

  “We lost everything in the war, you and I. We died, we lost continuity. I was young again but not a youth. I came to depend on you to keep me going. I still depend on you, you and the ship. I think I must have expressed my desire to go with you on several occasions.”

  “I’m sorry,” Demba said. “I didn’t take you seriously.”

  “Why didn’t you?” He felt resentful. Had she simply pretended all these years

  248 Far Freedom to be his friend? Why?

  “You don’t want another star, Iggy? You don’t want to build more ships for the Navy?”

  “Building ships is so damned tedious! Every day it’s a battle over logistics and design changes and assembly schedules. My desire was always to sail a ship and keep it running and see what’s out there. I’m not just an engineer, you know! Please, take me seriously now!”

  Demba almost smiled, hiding her mouth by staring down at the table. Then she raised her head and addressed Mnro and Direk. “We can take him with us. We can leave him behind. Which?”

  “We can’t leave him,” Mnro said quietly but adamantly. “He’s our friend. We love him.” Mnro’s statement threw Khalanov’s thoughts into a state of total consternation. Aylis Mnro was implying that she knew him, and he was certain he could never have met her!

  “We can’t take him with us,” Direk said. “He poses a security threat. I can link him directly to Etrhnk’s spy network.” What was Direk saying? He was a spy? It made no sense. He was not!

  “Can we successfully store him in stasis where Etrhnk can’t retrieve him?” Demba asked.

  “No,” Direk replied.

  “If we keep him, what is the cost?”

  “If you trust him, there is no cost,” Direk replied. “If they knew what he means to us, it would be worse to leave him behind.” What did he mean to them? Khalanov wondered. He was ready to grab Demba and shake it out of her!

  “We can’t leave him behind,” Mnro said. “It’s bad enough that we’re leaving Pan.”

  “How does Doctor Mnro know me?” Khalanov demanded, unable to contain his agitation. They ignored him!

  “I trust him,” Demba said. “We keep him, despite the risk. Unless you have proof Iggy was malicious in providing information to Etrhnk.”

  “I never expected to leave Uncle Iggy behind,” Direk said.

  ” Uncle Iggy?” Khalanov turned to Direk to present his shocked expression.

  Mnro reached across the short space between them and touched Khalanov’s hand. He almost jerked the hand away from her but stopped. She squeezed his hand. It gave him goose flesh. “Iggy, this was a small performance on our part to try to verify how we knew you would react. There was never any doubt that you belonged with us. But people change. Times change. We continue in these bodies but we also die by slow and subtle degrees.”

  “You were lying to me? You don’t really know me?”

  “We haven’t lied, Iggy. We once knew you. Now, we hardly even know who we are, and less who you are. We hope there remains the wonderful young man who was my crewmate on the Frontier .”

  “The Frontier?” He was too upset to understand why the name seemed familiar.

  “Iggy, you and I and Zakiya served together in Deep Space Fleet on a legendary ship.” Mnro watched him strangle on this piece of fantasy and her expressive face bore such a look of honesty and concern that he subdued his need to challenge the absurdity.

  “Zakiya?” he asked instead. “Who is Zakiya?”

  “I’m Zakiya,” Demba replied. “Zakiya Muenda. I was Third Officer on the

  Frontier. You were its engineer. Aylis and I remember. You don’t.”

  Now he remembered where he knew of the Frontier. It was a fictional vessel! Khalanov wasn’t sure anymore that Deep Space Fleet had been a real organization. It would have existed hundreds of years ago, if it existed at all! He explicitly trusted Demba. She saved his skin on too many occasions. But, because she said it, did that make the impossible possible? He slowly pulled his hand away from Mnro’s hand. Mnro sighed and leaned back in her chair.

  “I have the Deep Space Fleet records to prove it,” Demba said.

  Khalanov looked at Demba with a war of emotions on his burning face. How could these people make such wild claims? He was embarrassed for them! “You’re a master archivist!” Khalanov was desperate to win any point in this assault on his sanity. “You must know better than anybody how hopeless is the guaranty of truth. How can you know your records are the truth?”

  “I have all of the records. They can be examined for coherence as a body of data. You’re in it. You fit in it. You’re woven into it, as we all are, in such a detailed and intricate way that it must reflect true history.”

  “How would you have records that were destroyed long ago? You’re saying that I - and you and Doctor Mnro - and Direk - are very old. Old! Too old! Fossils! That was before the Age of Immortality!”

  “It’s a complicated piece of history,” Mnro said, drawing his challenging stare away from Demba. “Trust me. You’re almost as old as I am. You have memories of that ancient time stored in nearly undetectable semi-biological memory devices.”

  “Why don’t I remember?”

  “Your memories are locked away from you. As were ours. We couldn’t risk having those memories where others might discover them. We couldn’t risk having ourselves discover them.”

  “I don’t understand!” He was helpless to ask anything specific.

  “We lost many friends and family members,” Mnro said. “It would have been too painful and too demoralizing to live with such memories for the long time that we needed to wait.”

  “I still don’t…”

  “You lost Ana,” Demba said. She watched him with too much concern. He frowned with the effort to concentrate and see the implications of this name, but he couldn’t. All he could do was look away from Demba, look away from all of them. They were attacking him with a most peculiar kindness. “We especially had to remove Ana’s memory from you.”

  “Ana.” Khalanov closed his eyes and tasted the word. “Who is Ana?”

  Mnro took in a deep, uneven breath, making Khalanov look at her. She wiped tears from her eyes. Khalanov lost his defiance of the barrage of shocking information as he watched Aylis Mnro react. His thought processes were jumbled but he could still feel empathy for Mn
ro. Why was she grief-stricken? Strong emotions rarely occurred to persons of such age. If they did occur, there was less need to show them.

  Demba said nothing. Direk said nothing. They waited for Mnro to speak. “Ana was someone who deserved to be remembered forever and to be loved forever, by all who knew her, and especially by her husband. I just remembered her. And it hurts!”

  Mnro looked directly at Khalanov with watery eyes. “I had a wife named Ana,” Khalanov said, inferring Mnro’s meaning. “Who was very special?”

  “Who was very special.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Ana was murdered,” Demba answered, when Mnro couldn’t.

  “Because she was special?”

  “Because she was your wife.”

  “Why?”

  “When Deep Space was disbanded and many of us joined the Union Navy, a number of ruthless people were in positions of authority in the Navy. We came into conflict with them. They apparently saw former Deep Space officers as a threat. We believed they thought we would discover their connection to an enemy outside Union space, an area perhaps familiar to Deep Space explorers. They murdered and kidnapped and drove us underground. You were younger than most of us and had other plans and ambitions. You tried to distance yourself from us, to find a safe middle ground for you and your wife. You didn’t understand how bad these people were. You made an error in judgment, and Ana paid for it with her life. You blamed yourself and you blamed us, and you went off to die.”

  “And we found you and didn’t let you die,” Mnro added.

  Khalanov wondered how he could feel compelled to believe this tale of a forgotten life. He looked at Direk and realized he trusted Direk, perhaps even more than Demba, even as Direk’s relentlessly logical personality drove him crazy and assaulted Khalanov’s feelings of self-worth. If Direk believed everything these women were telling him… “If all you tell me is true, I’ve lost so much! I’m not prepared for this! Can you tell me more about Ana?”

  “We think you can remember her,” Demba said. “We think you still have most of your important memories.”