Life Sentence (Forlani Saga Book 1)

by John M. R. Gaines

  “I hate you, Klein… Yes, I use that word because we here in the Circle must speak the truth. I hate you because of what you did to my husband. You made him a killer, too, more than once. You took him away from me when I most wanted him, all because he felt the need to atone at the Research Center.” She turned toward Peebo. “I’ve never before revealed all this to you, but I say now you had no right to let this man’s contamination creep into your soul. And now, by assuming that burden all this time, I’ve poisoned myself, too. But that’s not the worst. Now I look at our own children and wonder if they have been ruined. Melanchthon yearns for something far away that he can’t even express and I worry that he will become a mankiller. I wonder if Odile’s children will carry the infection. I live in terror.” She hung her head with that admission.

  “And you speak from pain,” pronounced Stewart. “Felicia, I know you have forgotten only for an instant that your family has strong soul. Don’t we hold as the roof beam of our faith that the dharma power overcomes the pull of even the most deeply rooted sin? I’ve heard you yourself testify brilliantly to this fact.” With that, Felicia was able to raise her face again to the assembly.

  “Yet, as for you, Klein,” Stewart went on, “We have no proof that you can let in the light. Only hope. How do you feel about your past actions and those to come?”

  “Klein, are you ready to join us?” chimed in Luis. “Together we can help you get over all those demons. I know, man. I have felt it myself. Give yourself a chance.”

  “If I were a better man, maybe I could take that step,” answered Klein. “But not now. I don’t know exactly why, but I sense there are too many loose ends in me. Even if I give up the desire for revenge I nourished when I was on Song Pa, even if I can somehow reconnect with the ones I want to be close to, I can’t be sure that I have the strength to control myself the way you want me to. There are times when it’s as if I hear a horn blowing and I have to rise up and walk toward death, against all logic and reason. I have no excuse.”

  “We have no intention of forcing you to lie,” Stewart assured him. “In my own mind, I can see you in danger once again. Not all the dragons in Eden have perished. Understand, though, friend Klein, that we are here to help you.” In conclusion, he began to scatter the ashes with his boot, and Peebo walked Klein back to his home.

  Farm work on Peebo’s spread was helping Klein to recover his physical form, even though he seemed to make little progress in improving his image in Felicia’s eyes.

  A few weeks later, he was plowing a field destined for sunflowers with a mechanical tractor that some Dissenters had rigged up for the use of those who hadn’t managed the art of field preparation with livestock. He suddenly saw a blur of purple far down the road. As it approached, he realized his first impressions were correct, that it was a Forlani girl out running. By her distinctive short cape, it must be someone of authority in the Local house. He stopped to watch because he had never seen a Forlani on Domremy move with the speed he had seen them use so effortlessly on their own world. He was surprised that she came straight for him and stopped at the edge of the field. When he joined her, she nodded and said, “Greetings, Teacher Klein, I have a message for you.”

  Her hand was trembling a bit and Klein knew it was not from the exertion of running. The little auburn hairs on her forearm told him it was from nervousness. After all, she knew who he was and this was obviously a big moment for her. She handed him a letter in an envelope and Klein looked up to thank her, but she went on quickly, “I’ve done my best to translate and transcribe it. I hope it’s all right. It was passed from planets and transfers by word of mouth, of course, memorized. No one will forget, I can promise you that. Oh, it is a most beautiful song in our language and I would be glad to sing it for you some time if you wish.”

  “I hardly know how to thank you.”

  “Teacher Klein, it is my privilege. I realize you probably don’t recognize me because I was only in one of your study groups at the mahäme for a couple of days. My name is Iquitzli. It’s been a long time and I’ve already been on this planet for two years. I am now senior at the local house. Forgive me for coming unannounced, but your friend Luis confirmed it was you who arrived recently. I make sure he is very well cared for when he drops in and your own instructions on the psychology of clients have proven extremely helpful, of course.”

  “Iquitzli, I know he is quite happy with you and your friends. Can you tell me when this was sent?”

  “It has taken several months because it was passed on through six couriers. I know you will want to examine it in private, so I will be going. Please come visit if you can.”

  “Thank you again, Iquitzli. Your matriline will be proud of you.”

  She sped away and Klein looked at the envelope for a few seconds before opening it, trying to imagine what the message might be and how he should react to it. He finally gave up and opened it to begin to read.

  My dear friend,

  Word has come that you are now on your way safely back to Domremy. How overjoyed I was to learn of it! I have thought about you every day – I promise it is true. Already I break my promise, it was mostly in the night. How often I have watched the dark skies, often with my daughters at my side in the garden, and wondered what had become of you. I pictured us together, happy in the past. Often I dreamt of you and would wake up and be shocked that we were not really together, that it was time to let my mind’s images dissipate like a morning fog and start tending to the children or seeing to some other task that couldn’t wait. In a better universe, I pictured us falling off to sleep together with no regrets for the day.

  Do you know that in those first days on Domremy, I would often wake up and look at you at night and think to myself, “I’ve made this strange human happy and driven away all his torments. My little body magic has done more than just earn a few credits for the matriline, it has transformed him and restored him so that he can face the sunlight where he will have to kill his own and never show a reaction because he must be ready instantly to kill again. If he has to face death itself, maybe my embraces will let him do it without suffering.” I was so smug in a way and so delighted not to feel the least bit guilty about it. I could skip through the day while you were away and try to imagine I was in your skin, that I was brave enough to face terrifying creatures, and helpless to change it, and witness lives vanishing before me. Now that I’ve had to show a little courage myself, I truly know what I was missing.

  But what about you? I hope you are not still suffering from the awful ordeal you experienced on Song Pa. Trevor and Ragatti, mainly Ragatti, have told me about the condition they found you in. I can’t imagine the pain you must have endured – even mating must not be so bad. To lose part of your leg. Is your new one serving you well? Ragatti seemed to think you were doing fine, and I have to admit your new nose is very beautiful indeed – she has a right to brag about it so much. Of course, she told me, and most of the mahäme as well, about the goodbye gift she gave you and I have to say I heartily approve. I know humans tend to get jealous in those situations, but we usually do not, and I am happy that you took pleasure from one who so enjoys giving it and who knows completely how to appeal to males. I spoke to her about returning to you, but she claims she is too fickle and adventure-loving to stay long with one companion. That was the same response she gave when I offered to try to arrange an advantageous marriage for her, though I must admit, she would have more willingly gone back to you than to take a place in a Forlani marriage bed. I don’t know if she’s more fearful of the pain of mating or vain about her youthful body. Anyway, she is remarkable and I am content that she shared herself with you.

  For my part, I now have felt the joy of birth more than fifty times and even my second and third daughters are now married and pregnant. I assisted at their post-matings. My eldest daughter, Ayan’we, whom you met and who is quite fascinated by you, has no intention of marrying in the near future. In fact, she has been off-planet since shortly after
your friend Fatty send word of your location. You won’t find her in any of the houses, though she was judged quite qualified, for she is extremely intellectual and has grown even more so since finishing all the recommended studies. She has gone far beyond that and pursued knowledge on several worlds, moving around so quickly that I confess it is difficult to keep up with her. She told me not long ago that she wants to contact you herself through a safe channel for a face to face talk, so don’t be too surprised if you hear from her.

  I am usually overwhelmed with work, besides caring for the children, even though Tays’she passed away. You may not believe it, but it was not so difficult supervising his care because somehow I forgave him completely. Ayan’we always said I must be insane, because she could barely stand his presence, even though his mind was gone and there was no more evil will there. But I suppose for me the fact that his personality was totally gone relieved me of any impulse to hate him. Despite the fact that he sought the death of me and my daughters. This time it was your courage in confronting him that washed me clean of any desire to feel hateful. That’s the same reason I never tried to hide him or to dissociate him from me. After all, he had a fine creative mind that ruined itself through needless greed and perversity. I was proud to be his First Wife again, as if he had been a better husband. Of course, it was not all pristine kindness. Perhaps I was just determined to be the First Wife I deserved to be. You see, this is what you gained for me. Not to speak of my daughters, who have all been privileged as a result of your sacrifice, or my three male children, who would probably all have been gelded and reduced to dumb servitude if things had gone differently. By the way, I stay in touch with them as closely as I can, given the barriers of the Brotherhood, and am on good terms with all three. The eldest seems to have inherited much of Tays’she’s artistic talent without the nasty qualities.

  All these family considerations don’t leave a great deal of time for other activities, but I am constantly being asked by the matriline and the state to take on more responsibilities, even though I went into semi-retirement from the Passport Office, only doing consulting work with them from time to time. The Eyes of Alertness has turned me into a sort of diplomat because I work well with various other matrilines, especially Long Tails, Hands for Fruit, and Barkscratchers. There is a big ecological project called Common Groves that requires so many meetings! I’ve managed to dodge service on several councils by coming up with lame excuses, but every time I turn around the mahäme is absolutely requiring my participation in some ceremony or conference. Whenever I can, I try to disappear with some of the children to a place where I’m hard to reach. Do you know one of my hideaways? It’s the camp that you had the assassins bomb by mistake when they were after us.

  If you have gotten this far, you are probably experiencing deadly boredom. I will finish by asking you to please, please send a letter through the Dissenters letting me know how you are. Whatever you may believe, I would like to come to you if I were free, but my youngest need me and they’re far from being flight-worthy. It’s all I can do to stop myself from establishing a visual comlink, but Hyperion and the Brotherhood both still have death rewards out for you. I’ll let my talented daughter try to find a way to get this to you without putting them on your scent. Let them go on thinking you’re probably dead, if that helps you go on living. That’s all I want for you. I hope you can find more happiness. Even if it may mean forgetting me, I’ll understand. But do speak to me somehow, so that one of those stars will light a special light for me when I look at the night sky.

  Yours with deepest feeling, E.

  Klein stood at the edge of the field for more than an hour looking down at the papers. His wound had reopened and he was stunned. There was no way to react and he could not imagine what to do. Part of him wanted to rush into Stafford Station, to the com office or to the Forlani house and say something, anything, in response, but he knew his voice would fail him. Part of him wanted to be able to hate Entara, but that voice abolished itself in a nanosecond, like some subatomic particle that must spring into existence but must also vanish just as soon. Part of him wanted to find a weapon and kill himself then and there, but what was still left of himself to kill? This must be a little bit what it felt to be the Frankenstein monster. Patched together by the will of others. Torn away from whatever attachments there originally were. Longing for a counterpart that will only be present in my imagination. Wandering around exciting terror when I want acceptance, and awe when I want nothing but to be alone. Kept alive by revenge and deprived of any kind of meaningful death. Now I’m going back to start that tractor and I’m going to till this rectangle of soil. Then I’ll start looking for another one. If there is a God, he will find me something to do.

  Maybe Klein could ask Luis about God. The next day he went to his new farm to have a talk. Luis introduced him proudly to Betsy and her children, bragging that another was on the way. When they stepped away to the barns to talk privately, Klein congratulated him. Luis’s answer surprised him.

  “I know, you’re thinking, but do you know it’s your own? Well, I’ll tell you I don’t give a damn. They’re all mine now and it doesn’t matter whose little wiggler first got them going. I think all that stuff about heredity is crap, anyway. You got to choose who you’ll be. I choose this. It’s better than anything I ever had or would have had. We all do what we do to get this thing called pleasure and then most of us can’t live with the consequences. I tell you, I love this family, no matter where it came from. It’s a gift to me. Am I going to throw away the first gift I ever got from my rotten life over some stupid matter of pride?”

  “You’re right, amigo. You were a damn fine man when I met you, but you’re twice the man now. I envy you. It’s too bad Rodriguez couldn’t have followed your lead. Will you tell me now what happened to him?”

  “Now I’ve done my preaching, I will tell you the truth, just to show you honestly, I am still a sinner and a coward. Rodriguez was killed by Alek. Hunted down in the street of what he calls Xanderburg like a mangy dog. I did nothing about it. I ran away as fast as I could. Sure I want to kill him now. I want to go after him and know I could do it. I could watch for him from cover after I’d sighted in my gun and wait for a head shot. Pumpkin on the fence post, just like they say in weapons training. That’s not a skull with a brain in it, it’s just a pumpkin full of seeds and you’re going to pop it and scatter those seeds for the little birds. This isn’t a rifle sight, it’s just a fence post out in the country on a fine day. If you hear things that sound like shots and people dying, that’s just acorns falling off the tree and blackbirds squawking in the air. You just concentrate on the pumpkin and when it’s nice and round and sitting on the fence post, you breathe out and breathe in nice and slow and squeeze the trigger nice and steady like it’s half a lime you’re squeezing over your moclajete. Poof, your problems are solved.” Luis smiled at Klein, who was shaking his head, remembering his own training. “Only I’m not going to trade this for that. I don’t need to play no pumpkin on the post. I got responsibilities that I like and I aim to keep them. So I’m not going after Alek.”

  “But I am.”

  “I know that, Klein. That’s why I didn’t tell you earlier. You weren’t ready. Now you’re as ready as you can be. Physically. Maybe mentally too?”

  “More than you can know!” sighed Klein, thinking about the pages of the letter.

  On another evening, Klein watched the grass softly sway in the light wind as he waited for a storm cloud to open. All day it had seemed that the entire plain had been silently waiting in anticipation of the coming downpour. Klein had been staying with Peebo for the past months, keeping far away from the dangers of Xanderburg while his broken body continued to heal. He had come to regard his prosthetic leg as feeling almost as good as his lost natural limb, and the pain and suffering from his time on Song Pa was almost gone from his body, if not his mind. Peebo was sitting on his chair on the porch, rocking back and forth gently.

 
; “I can’t stay here forever,” Klein said. “Alek murdered Rodriguez in cold blood while I was off-world. I can’t let him get away with that—not for my reputation, mind you, God knows that’s been driven into the ground—but because I can’t stand to think of myself as the kind of man who’d let someone get away with murdering a friend. Remember last night when I woke up screaming? That was a nightmare—the last thing I saw in it was the corpse of Rodriguez, drenched in blood. If I let Alek live, I swear I’ll lose my mind.”

  “You know we Dissenters won’t get involved in your blood feud. Please don’t go down the same road Rodriguez did. Even if you live through your confrontation with Alek, you won’t be the same at the end of it,” Peebo said. “We’ve all seen so much tragedy come out of Xanderburg already.”

  “I’m not worried about ending up a different man. Hell, I can barely recognize the photos of myself before I went to Song Pa! I’m a mankiller, and when you’ve been a mankiller long enough, I think it becomes as much a part of you as your blood and bones. We can’t just ‘switch it off’ and be normal—I don’t think Rodriguez could ever quite manage it, and I know I can’t. If anyone was born to take on the burden of killing Alek, it’s me.”

  “And after you kill Alek, what then? Do you think Xanderburg will just collapse into the dust the moment he dies? He’s got a whole regime working for him in Site 89, and they’ll still be there after he’s gone to carry on his work. The people of Xanderburg don’t follow him because they’re brainwashed—they follow him because they want to! Even if you get rid of him, that rat’s nest he’s created will still be here to plague Domremy.”

  “I know it’ll take some effort, but maybe things will get better there after that bastard dies. Alek values loyalty in his stooges, not independent thought. If I take him out, I don’t think they’ll be around forever. I’ve been dead set on doing this ever since I learned how Rodriguez died, and I’m not about to turn back now.”