Sargon was interested in seeing every part of the ship, from the smallest botanical gardens to the specimens housed on the lowest levels, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about having him here.
Perhaps I felt numb, compliant. The longer I lived, the more it seemed things spiralled beyond my control, and I no longer desired to be in control of others. It was sometimes a struggle to hold on to any sense of urgency.
“Tell me all about this place, everything.” Sargon said as we left the lower levels for the central engine room.
As we threaded our way to the central engine room, located in the heart of the ship, I shook my head with a sheepish laugh. “There’s more to tell than I could possibly relate to you in one afternoon, Sargon. I can try some time. Not today.”
I felt content to re-explore the ship through Sargon’s eyes, especially as we toured the command center and surrounding crew’s quarters. Many of the rooms there were larger and more elaborate than mine. Most had never been occupied, since our small crew had been but a fraction of the grand number initially anticipated in the engineering plans.
It didn’t matter. Sargon was interested in exploring them all, almost more interested than he had been to see the engine and defense weapon rooms. It was clear that he was fascinated by everything that he saw.
Our steps echoed unpleasantly in the deserted chambers of former occupants; unconcerned, Sargon glanced at journals and books of still images full of smiling people, Derstan’s collections, Kellar’s stills from the days of explorer training back in Ariyalsynai before I had known him or the other explorers. To me the atmosphere felt chilled, haunted, as if any minute the shadows of former occupants would appear and object to our invasion.
“You must have shared some great times, you and your friends you told me about.” He said with a smile. “They look like the Orian people,” he noticed.
“Very much.” I admitted.
“You look like an Orian girl,” he said with an embarrassed smile.
“I suppose!” I laughed, equally embarrassed by this statement for no reason.
As I watched Sargon wander through the rooms, I saw it in his eyes, the search for some secret in their faces that would explain to him what life was all about, but he would not find the answers there. Yet as he wandered and searched, it seemed he recognized with more than a little regret something that the universe as a collective whole had lost when our civilization ended.
“You know I think the world of all this!” he said again. “I can’t tell you how often I have thought about you in the last twenty years, and dreamed of this place.”
If he felt anything disturbing about the atmosphere, he said nothing about it. It was harder for me to keep my composure. In every room, the objects and personal effects had been placed with such care that it was like observing a slice of time that had been frozen forever, and the lingering presence of the dead was still perceptible because only a moment ago they had put aside that journal. Journals such as Lierva’s.
Lierva—Lierva had been composing an entry on that day when the anti-serum spread like a plague down the corridors; her words ended abruptly on the printvolume, her thoughts unfinished. I could only imagine how she had heard the message from Kiel, gotten up to investigate—
And then she had laid down and died quietly in the corridor, alone amidst the vapors, succumbing to a dreadful paralysis, her thoughts still searching for Celekar and for the rest of us.
I hadn’t returned to this section of the ship since that day.
Now, at last I was facing the ghosts that haunted me.
But Sargon was really happy to be here.
By the time we reached the forward observation deck Undina above the command center, the sun had long since set. I was relieved to leave the crew quarters behind, to leave those memories behind, and all the pain that went with them. The observation deck gave us a chance to admire the twinkling stars in the night sky above and before us, though all around metal led away like a flat, calm lake.
The night was tranquil silence, but Sargon broke it with questions.
“Alessia, how many star systems have you really seen?” He asked. “What are other planetary systems like out there?”
“Well, there are too many to describe, and all different.”
“How did you survive so many long journeys?” he wondered all of a sudden.
He guessed that my people must have achieved some means of suspended animation and life span extension for me to have survived the trip to Tiasenne and Orian and to appear unaged after an eight year voyage to Dynarean and its neighboring systems.
“Were you somehow able to extend human life artificially, your people?” He asked.
“Yes, in a way.” I replied.
Though I had already given him a reasonable explanation of our method of surviving the long voyages by describing our ship’s tachiyon engine and the cosmic hole-creating string engine which we had harnessed to tear centipede passages in space-time, he had still guessed at more of the truth. Space travelers on board Selesta could return only a few brief years after their departure, relatively unaged, through the cosmic holes. However, our explorers had been biochemically altered to survive long space voyages.
Sargon had really enjoyed examining the blueprints and numerous schematics stored in the computer’s memory while we were in the engine room.
He was young and ambitious, I began to see, and I was wondering what would happen if he knew about my mission and that I would someday have to leave to fulfill it. I never mentioned anything about my mission that night. But I did tell him several stories about the star systems and galaxies we had charted.
“Wow, I think it would be amazing to be able to go anywhere I wanted in the universe.” Sargon said. He seemed entranced by power.
“Hmmm.” I sighed, realizing that I had been feeding his idealistic view of the exploration of the universe, a view that ignored the hardship and the pain that all explorers encounter when they sacrifice personal comforts to be a part of discovery.
“It would be wonderful to explore the galaxies and go somewhere where it is always beautiful,” he said. “I’d give anything to leave our worlds and all of their petty problems behind and find a better world to live on.”
But would he want to go to Kiel3 with me? I wondered. That journey would not be a leisurely stroll exploring the universe. It was a race against time, and I had already wasted enough of that. Yet what was a decade, a century even, to an empire that had already lasted more than fifty thousand years?
“As great as our need to explore the unknown is, to dream about what lies beyond our reach in the wide universe and to strive to discover these unknowns, in the end, we were left with a longing and regret for home.”
Hinev’s words still haunt me, I thought, remembering his hollow voice as he spoke to me from the Celestian settlement just days before we received radio communications from him in his escape from Seynorynael. A man who had been like a father to me and certainly a mentor. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t seem to forget that last time I had seen him.
I had ceased talking exclusively to Sargon, but he had no way of knowing it. All those years ago, Hinev had been right.
“I’m sorry,” I said, softly.
“For what?”
“I am being so negative all of a sudden.”
In any case, Sargon didn’t seem bothered by my comments. With his knees pulled to his chest and his head resting on his folded arms, he sat deep in thought for a while, his eyes and face distant.
“Would you like a place to rest? There are plenty of spare rooms in the crews’ quarters.” I enquired after some time had passed. Sargon unfurled his long legs and stood up, leaning against the wall as his gaze wandered around. Finally, he turned back to me.
“No, actually, I’m not the least bit tired.” There was an odd note in the way he phrased it.
“But it’s getting late.”
He shrugged, sporting a mischievous smile. “Nah, I’ve had too much energy since
I was released from the hospital to sleep.” He paused a moment, considering, and stroked his chin. At once I noticed something different about him. And I knew it could not be my imagination. The outline of his form had begun to glow, faint and ghostlike in the dark.
“And did you know that all of my scars have disappeared since the accident?”
“They have?” I said, knowing why all the while.
“Yes. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Creator above, I was so afraid that I was going to die that day. I felt my mind drifting, drifting somewhere I didn’t recognize. I was floating, the world was like a pit beneath me, and I was up somewhere, airy—observing. But all the time I was watching everything in horror!”
“Horror?”
“Because I wasn’t sure what was happening, what was about to happen when you stopped it.”
“When you got the last blood transfusion—from me.”
“Yes.” He agreed enthusiastically. “You know, I sometimes used to wonder if death is the end of everything. That there’s just nothing, nothing beyond it, and no feeling, no thought. Then I used to convince myself otherwise that God has a paradise waiting for us, until the doubts would resurface later, stronger... but now I find I’ve stopped worrying about it at all. Not as though I got a temporary reprieve. I mean I’ve stopped worrying altogether. Oh, I can’t even describe the feeling. It’s strange, free, intoxicating. Don’t just sit there,” he laughed, with an unusual electricity in his voice. Suddenly, he reached out and took my hand, pulling me roughly to my feet.
The velvet, star-studded sky surrounded us both from above and below, where the light reflected in the surface of Selesta.
“Just look at that! How can the people of Inen give this up?” He wondered in a forceful tone, meaning the view, undimmed by the haze of city lights.
“They have to work in the city?” I offered.
“I worked in Destria, but you can still see the stars at night there.”
“Some people find the stars disturbing.” I said. “Contemplating infinity makes them feel small.”
He laughed, delighted. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“I have been accused of that before.”
“Really? Then answer me this: why did you save my life?” His eyes narrowed patiently.
“Why?”
“Something tells me that your sacrifice is more costly for you than you let me believe.”
As he waited, I had the disturbing sensation that he was hoping for a particular answer.
I was immediately conscious of his every movement, and I heard his slow, steady breathing as a loud noise that filled the still silence. He was exceptionally masculine, and undeniably attractive, radiating an intense sexuality I no longer thought I had any natural response to.
“I couldn’t turn my back on an old friend, now could I?” I said, but in a stilted way. In my own ears my explanation sounded uncertain. I didn’t know what I was doing! I wanted to say. Why had I risked the metamorphosis, the metamorphosis so dangerous that only thirty-three explorer candidates had ever survived with their memories intact?
Because he would have died without it. And I loved him so much I didn’t want him to die.
Yet was that the only reason?
But I didn’t love him as a man, did I? As I looked at him, I kept seeing Kiel’s face watching me from the surface of Selesta. The way that shadowy image of Kiel was looking at me sent a shudder of horror through me.
Sargon put his hand on my arm. It was as bright as my own, and I recoiled. He read the shock in my eyes but didn’t know that I had been anticipating this, or some other sign of cellular transformation.
“I meant to ask you about this,” he stated calmly, lifting his radiant hand and bringing it before his face with a quick wave of fingers. “Something unusual has happened to me since the accident, and you can’t deny it. And it’s obvious what, I should say who caused it.” His confident expression said that he had guessed the truth, or some of it.
And I knew I could no longer hide the truth from him, the way Hinev had tried to hide it from me.
“You’re right, of course.” I admitted. “And I should never have treated the matter lightly.” I shrugged. “I had hoped that such a small exposure of my blood in your system wouldn’t be enough to instigate a complete physical metamorphosis, that it might only heal your wounds and strengthen you.”
“A metamorphosis?” He echoed in keen interest. “What do you mean, ‘a metamorphosis’?”
I nodded soberly. “The weakness you were experiencing in the post transfusion hours happened to us all after Hinev gave us the serum.” I shuddered involuntarily with the recollection. “The cells in my blood were altered by that serum, and in turn transformed your body’s cells. But the physical pain you felt was the last you will ever experience that lasts beyond a brief moment, unless you allow yourself to sense the pain of others around you.”
“How?” He managed, hardly daring to believe me.
“Our blood cells replenish themselves and the cells in the body in a process of preservation and perfect replication.” I explained. “Bodily damage, like pain, is only temporary.”
“So this serum heals you?” He asked.
“Not exactly. The serum-altered cells induce chemicals that stimulate physical abilities unknown to your world.”
“Like perfect cell replication.”
“Yes.”
“Imperfect cell replication is what causes aging.” He said, now coldly logical.
“Mostly.”
“What about the other things?” He wondered, thinking further. “The telekinesis, the telepathy?”
I hadn’t told him about the telepathy, but of course he knew. He may not have made a mind-link yet, but he’d been in the invisible traffic jam of human thoughts back at Destria, enough to pick up on a random few without even trying. He was trying to read my mind now, I supposed, but couldn’t.
He laughed suddenly. “Yes, I was trying to read your mind!”
My mouth opened in surprise.
“Tell me more, Alessia. Tell me what is happening to me!” He cried in delight.
“Well,” I said seriously, “Hinev’s serum opens the untapped regions in the brain and in the individual cells and DNA sequences, dormant regions in the brain and in the cells of ordinary humans. These dormant regions in the brain and in cell organelles specialize on things like the control of matter and the ability to electromagnetically shield our bodies against the invasion of hostile alien chemical particles as well as biologically active viruses. The awakening of these dormant organelles makes it possible for us to absorb atomic and subatomic particles. You see, the serum awakens the dormant lyrachloroplasts in our Seynorynaelian blood, allowing us to extract energy from light and atomic particles themselves.” I paused.
“This is what I wanted to know.” He said, smiling. “So, my people are like yours, and now I am like you.” He was so excited.
“In a manner, I suppose so, but there are innumerable other effects. And you won’t notice them until an extreme necessity arises. Your body will find different ways to extract and metabolize energy, so you’d better keep your mind, I should say your will alert, or you might not like some of your body’s ideas about how to survive.”
He ignored the warning. “How does the telekinesis work?” Apparently, he hadn’t mastered it yet.
“The awakening links your entire body telepathically under your control, down to the smallest atomic particle, down to the sub-atomic strings you are made of.” I explained. “Everything, each particle, has its own awareness, but in living systems these are intractably bound together. Like protons and neutrons, they almost have a will to remain together, and through them you can influence—control if you will—any external atom or molecule by charging them with temporary cooperative semi-sentient waves.”
“That’s how you saved my uncle’s life.” He guessed.
“Yes.”
“So, you’re saying that a
fter you got this serum, it woke up every cell and particle in your body, and they decided it wasn’t bad to stick together?”
“I guess so.” I admitted, but it sounded incredible the way he put it.
“So, if I were to try to get rid of something—I don’t know, like an arm—”
“You couldn’t.” I shook my head, dismissing the grisly image. “Your cells are even aware of their formation, the position they naturally occupy within you. They will remain intact or coalesce and reform identically if destroyed or separated, unless instructed otherwise by your will.” I continued, remembering what had happened to Lierva, one of my explorer companions, who had been shot down in her space fighter and returned from “dead”. “Even then, your will doesn’t last long.”
“I don’t know. You’re putting a whole lot of faith in these cells’ sentience.” He said.
“Not faith.” I said evenly. “I’ve seen it. Besides, it isn’t inconceivable. Even in ordinary humanoids, cells somehow “know” to maintain themselves and perform their function in the body. They grow in an organized fashion when extracted, showing limited self-control. Even though they’re controlled in the body by an involuntary part of the brain.”
“But that part isn’t part of consciousness.” He objected. “You’re acting as though involuntary brain cells can have identities.”
“The brain is where feelings, thoughts, and the memories that characterize us originate.” I retorted.
“All right,” he conceded. “You were talking about using will against them. That sounded interesting.”
“I only meant that you can regulate their activities as well as force them to break habit and reform. Disguise yourself atomically, so to speak, though only for as long as your will is strong. You can do this precisely because you can communicate with these cells.”
Sargon’s eyes flickered with doubt, but I continued. “Can’t you feel it? It’s there, if you reach for it, that complete awareness you can sense at all times, though it does become unnoticeable after a while.”
“Yes, and part of you is inside me now, too.” He said.
I blushed.
“So, I could make myself look like someone—or something—else.” He changed the subject.
“It isn’t as easy as it sounds, but yes.”
“How?”
“By altering the frequency of the string vibrations. Moving muscles, tissues, also, telekinetically.”
“That’s impossible.” He blustered, catching his breath.
“Strange, yes, but not impossible.” I assured him. “Still, with most modifications you feel the desire to return to your normal structure right away. At other times, your body modifies for you, an instantaneous reaction that the system performs in order to regulate proper functioning or for protection.”
“You mean if, say, you were to be attacked, it might try to confuse your assailant. Like camouflage.”
“I suppose it might. But more often, I mean it protects you against environmental changes. Different planetary pressures and temperatures, things like that.”
“The perfect survival machine.” He concluded.
I flinched, remembering another machine that had survived across the ages. Marankeil… I was supposed to destroy you. What can I do now, to stop your evil reign?
“So why is my arm glowing?” Sargon demanded, with an almost perverse laugh.
“Well, the process of aging halts as a result of the automatic repair system and the chemical balance that it affects.” I began.
“Explain that more.”
“Our bodies still have to store energy, and in its most efficient atomic and subatomic forms. When we use the energy to serve our will or when the energy is evoked to preserve our organism, light and a particle wind are produced, increasing universal entropy. But we can restrict this light to the infrared range, invisible to human eyes, if we limit activity to a minimum.”
“Is that why saving my uncle ruined your disguise?”
“Yes, exactly. Telekinesis is difficult enough, but the rod was extremely heavy, and I didn’t have time to check my energy output.” I admitted. “But it isn’t a disguise. You’ll find out. Hinev’s serum has its own pure form within you, but you are still a human being. It’s a strange phenomenon, actually.”
“But you always have an aura of light about you. Can’t you get rid of it?” He wondered.
I laughed. “You’d have one too, if you’d ever lived on Seynorynael. And no I can’t. I have it because gray humanoids can reflect deadly gamma and x-ray radiation. That’s why Seynorynaelians have developed their gray color—your people included.” I added.
“Rigell doesn’t produce that much gamma radiation.” He insisted, not seeing what I had implied. That this was exactly why his people had to have come from another world.
“Who developed this serum, again?” Sargon wondered.
“He was a biochemist like you, a man called Hinev.” I said.
“So, if he wasn’t worried about the radiation, then why—”
“Did he come up with the serum?” I asked. “He was, though. We may have thwarted nature with the organs in our skin, but no adaptation is perfect.”
“You mean your people were still dying from the radiation?” He guessed.
I nodded. “Yes, they were. But the serum finally protected our bodies, just a few of us, from decaying from radiation exposure. In the same way, it worked internally, protecting us from exposure to oxygen radicals. You see, radiation became our friend, not our enemy. We could use the radiation by collecting particles as an unlimited energy source.”
“Oxygen radicals. They also contribute to aging.” Sargon said.
“It’s true, oxygen corrodes the lungs and the cells that depend upon it, and breathing is essential to speech. So it’s a good thing the serum protected us from mutation, or else we would have to rely solely on telepathy.”
“Because you wouldn’t want to risk letting oxygen into the system.” He surmised.
“Exactly.”
“It’s a wonder your cells don’t decide to dissolve you into a sentient mass of energy,” he joked. “It would be much easier for them.”
I wasn’t laughing.
“You might wonder why yours don’t dissolve you, either.” I reminded him. That kept him quiet. “But there is something that prevents that.” I said. “Human beings need society as much as they need to breathe. And human physicality allows us to survive among humans. Besides, our will is who we are and, fortunately, keeps us from dissolving into amorphous energy.”
He agreed. “And you said the cells replicate perfectly. Meaning that they would preserve your body the way it was. That would keep it from dissolving into energy.”
“There is that, too.” I agreed. “The cells may have a will, but they aren’t original. They’re trying to maintain our bodies so that we will never change—or degenerate I should say, since we can incorporate new information and experiences.”
“But in essence, you’re saying that now I can’t die.” Sargon said, his eyebrows furrowing skeptically, though from his expression I guessed he had suspected this might be true for a while.
“Well, it may be possible, but—no, you survived the metamorphosis. You are immortal.” I said. “You can’t die unless you set about trying to make an end of yourself.” He didn’t notice how sadly I spoke the last few words. I was thinking of the suicide of Fynals Hinev, who had found a way to die no one knew about except the scientist himself.
Sargon’s face lit up in elation; his eyes were like two glowing orbs.
“You aren’t serious, are you?!” In a surge of rapt emotion, he lifted me up thoughtlessly and twirled me roughly around and around in a circle, then set me on my feet again abruptly in agitation. He moved with the grace of a wild animal suddenly aroused, and a civilized man’s sense of shame. I wanted to calm him down, but I sensed I would fail if I tried to.
“This is perfect! If neither of us can ever die, then we can always be toge
ther.” He said.
“Stop it!” I protested, lightly, abruptly, perhaps unwisely.
“Come on,” he said, with a hint of dark, knowing laughter. “You’ve got to know how much I love you. I’ve always loved you, and you had to have known it.”
“What?” I repeated.
“You’re the only one who understands me.” He said with a shake of his head. “Didn’t you see it?” He asked incredulously, hardly able to imagine that his feelings hadn’t been obvious. “I’ve always loved you, ever since the moment I saw you.”
“You were just a child.”
“I’m not a child now.” He returned firmly, unapologetically. “I am a man. Have been for a long time.”
What he said was true; I hadn’t even recognized him that day in the laboratory, once the bandages had been removed. But I couldn’t tell him that I would have kept him a child forever if I could have, a child I could innocently love—hadn’t that been exactly what I had been to Hinev? I couldn’t tell him that, though I knew he was very much a man now, he was still a child to me, and he always would be.
“Yes, you are a man, I know, but you still need someone your own age.” I shook my head. “Not someone like me. I’m not young anymore, like the girls you should be around. I’m so very old, much older than you even know—”
“If you think I care that you’re older than me, I don’t.” He insisted. “Besides, age doesn’t matter anymore, given the circumstances.”
“That isn’t the problem.”
“I’m not attractive to you, is that it? We don’t have good conversations? We don’t get along well enough?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then why did you save my life? Why else would you make me into a companion, and not a lover, one that can’t leave you?” He demanded, waiting with a hard, cold expression on his face.
“I can’t think of you in that way.”
“No?” He demanded, suddenly angry as he judged my resolve against him. “What do you mean? Why not? You’re just saying that.”
“It would be—wrong.” Even as I said it, I felt terrible.
“Wrong?” he echoed mockingly, but clearly offended by that remark. “Then why didn’t you just leave me in Destria? Why bring me here?”
“To make sure you were all right.”
“So you’re saying you never loved me? You don’t want me as a man.”
“I did love you when you were a child, and I could take care of you.”
“You can still take care of me. That doesn’t have to change,” he reminded me. “And I’ll take care of you.” He laughed, but the sound wasn’t pleasant.
I started to shake my head, in shock, and maybe I was wrong, I have often thought in times since that day.
“You don’t really love me,” I insisted. “You just think you do. And we’ll end up as enemies, without any other people that stay with us to vary our lives.”
“You’re wrong.” He insisted. “Yes, I admit that as a child I said I hated romance and never believed in love, but I’ve always loved you. We’re both alive in this moment. We’re both here now; we’re both living in this same moment in time out of billions of years in this spinning universe, so what is age? That’s what I’ve always thought, even when I was younger. I admit, I had a crush on you, back then. Perhaps it was a silly childish thing—my father told me to forget it. He explained that it was natural but pointless, my feeling for you. But while you were gone all those years on the explorer mission, I realized that ten more years would pass here. That gave me hope; hope that time would make us equal. And my feelings for you have only had time to grow in these last twenty years.
“I love you, Alessia. Please tell me that you love me, too. Don’t you think it’s fate that brought our lives together?”
To some, what he said might have swayed them to the same conclusion. But there wasn’t any room in my heart for anyone else, not with the haunting shadow of Fielikor Kiel lingering there. I didn’t want to love anyone else again—what use was love to me? What use were pointless emotions? The ones I still wanted were childish and innocent, all the more so as more years went by. But what could I say to Sargon? I didn’t want to turn his love for me into hatred.
And his sudden and unexpected mention of fate had sent a chill into my heart. I didn’t know what fate had in store for me, and often wondered about this.
I had long suspected interference from the Seynorynaelian Elders in my actions, after all those times I was called in to interviews with the emperor, interviews I could not remember. I felt sure they had found a way to influence me away from my true destiny, the destiny that might prevent the rebirth of their Empire. They did not want me to go to Kiel3. Maybe they had linked my thoughts of Kiel3 with suggestions that I find someone to share my life with and forget my mission...
I looked over at Sargon, and I was suddenly afraid of him, afraid of the power he had over my heart and through that, my actions. I had been swept along by the will of others before, and I refused to be controlled or governed by anyone. At that moment, I wanted to run away, to run away from him and from the impossible situation I had put myself into. I knew, somehow, that he was destined to become my enemy.
Why I couldn’t even understand, but there was a power in him that no longer recognized any government or law, or brooked any refusal.
“Give me time to think about this?” I asked, knowing all the while that I was stalling, but Sargon’s dark mood vanished. He offered me a cheerful grin that was somehow disconcerting.
“All right, but don’t take too long, my sweet.”
And how long was “too long”? I wondered.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton
Chapter Thirteen
The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire Page 30
