The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire

by Anne Spackman

  * * * * *

  The march of time pushed them forward, and still there was no news. Nearly a year had passed since Eiron and Kesney arrived. Eiron and Alessia had planned a picnic in the Seynorynaelian forest with Kesney and Klimyata, something they hadn’t done in ages, but the other couple had yet to appear. For several months now, they had all been working on a design to thwart the displacement of Tiasenne in the event of a climactic disaster, but Kesney had called for a break in the event of Klimyata’s upcoming birthday.

  “Time,” Eiron called out to the computer and waited. A moment passed before the synthesized voice responded, “third hour sleep period two”.

  “They’re late,” Eiron said, wondering why the computer never answered him as promptly as it did everyone else. If he didn’t know any better, he would have sworn that the damned thing didn’t like him. He began to regret having asked. The computer’s presence disrupted the illusion of their isolation. “You’d think after all this time, he wouldn’t keep getting lost.” He shook his head.

  Eiron sat down again on the ground and began to spread a blanket around when he noticed a vexed expression on Alessia’s face; he wondered if the computer’s interruption had anything to do with it. Alessia was looking above the line of trees to the false horizon, where the artificial sunlight was fading.

  “There was a forest near my childhood home,” she said suddenly. “Just like this one. I knew my way everywhere around it, and sometimes I used to collect the wild sherin fruit that grew in the river-valley. My mother was always so mad that I kept getting dirty. ‘Lake Firien water isn’t good enough for little girls to bathe in’ she always said, but eventually she gave up trying to keep me clean.”

  “Would you like me to get you some of that stuff?” Eiron asked, wondering how to look sherin up in the food guide. He was getting fairly good at reading Seynorynaelian, which he and Kesney practiced every day using the copious computer educational files. It was the only way to figure out anything on the ship. The computer couldn’t, or more likely wouldn’t, translate very well, and he felt embarrassed about always asking one of the others.

  “You’d have to go a long way for it,” she said, laughing now. “To Seynorynael—in the past. The wild sherin trees died out while we explorers were on our second mission. A blight destroyed them all, all except a few, but now they’re extinct.”

  “It was just a thought.” He shrugged affectionately.

  “Which I appreciate.” She said, picking up her electronic printvolume again.

  “I thought we came here to get away from it all,” he said and pulled it away from her. “Don’t tell me you’re still working on analyzing those seismic anomalies.” He laughed, looking down at the text. “‘Allariya Kaleena’?” He read slowly. “Friend of youth?”

  “Friend of the morning makes a more poetic translation.” She said. “And it’s also the literal meaning. Youth is ‘kalyna’. But there is a double entendre.”

  “Anyway, what are you doing with one of the children’s books?” He teased.

  “My father used to read this to me.” Alessia said, blushing. “You’d be surprised how old some of the stories in the computer are, though. Eiron turned back to the forest path.

  “Where do you suppose they are?” Eiron wondered again a minute later, but she didn’t answer. He heard a soft thud and turned around. The printvolume had fallen onto the grass.

  Alessia lay curled up on the blanket, sound asleep.