Hoven Quest

by Michelle Levigne

  He sat next to me from the moment he arrived at the house, on the heels of Uncle and the inner circle. A friend of his had alerted him to the story when it first hit the planetary broadcast at four that morning, before the print editions hit the street. Kel had been worried that something had happened to me when he couldn't reach me at my private calling code in my room. Then he couldn't get through to Uncle right away, because Uncle was getting dozens of alarm calls from different members of our organization. Kel finally took the chance that Chiara would know where I was, and struck gold when he arrived at the house.

  “They're trying to arouse the general population to support Hoveni reunification?” I said, thinking out loud as I followed up on Chiara's theory.

  “It's clever,” Uncle said, nodding. “Get the people upset enough, the general emotional atmosphere might be right for revelation. Or maybe even revolution. Punish the descendants of those who stole our planet from us. But such an action shows they aren't aware of actual Set'ri activity, the spying, the attacks, the sabotage of equipment and attempts to get into personal computer systems and bank accounts."

  “Which brings me to my fourth possibility.” Chiara raised her head and laid her hands flat on the table on either side of her datapad. “It's a ruse by the Set'ri to flush us out of hiding."

  Silence rang through the room. I actually felt a little dizzy as my mind spun through the implications, all the things she hadn't said.

  “That implies the Set'ri think we're fools and not nearly as organized as we are,” Regina said. “They're manipulating public feeling, to lure us into a false sense of security, thinking we have the support of the planet. Then, according to their plan, we emerge from centuries of hiding. We make a grand announcement, and, if we're complete idiots, we show up en masse to prove that we're still a viable race."

  “And they move, either capturing us for experimentation or genocide,” Uncle said. “Don't forget that the Gen'gineers are the philosophical heirs of the Set'ri. We don't qualify as Humans, but we still have something to offer to their goal of the ultimate Human genome."

  “How about this?” Garan got up from his seat in the doorway. It hadn't escaped me that he took that seat where he could see the windows at the front and the back of Chiara's house and watch the door leading outside. While we talked, he had sat silent, a Scout on guard duty. “I understand that you only take on the form of animals. Can you take on the shape of other people? For instance, could Kel change himself to be Kendle's twin?"

  Silence again. We looked around the room, looking for clues from each other on how to answer him. It was a valid question. And it wasn't as if we hadn't considered the idea before. All Hoveni tried to mimic the people around them when they were children. It was usually the first sign that a child had physically matured enough to start shifting shape.

  “He could,” Uncle finally said. He sounded tired. I felt sorry for him. Too much had fallen on him at once.

  Then I caught the hurting look Chiara wore when she looked at him. Hurting for him. Empathy. The same kind of look my mother wore when my father faced some horrific difficulty in his research, and she couldn't help him solve it. Chiara wasn't just interested in Uncle, she loved him.

  “We don't actually teach our children to limit themselves to animals,” he continued. “It's just a subtext, I suppose you could say, in our beliefs and our culture. To take on another's shape and appearance is to touch their essence. We teach our children not to spend too long a time in animal shape, because they will lose touch with their souls, their intellects. We don't take the shapes of other people because it would be impinging on their consciousness, their souls, what makes them unique."

  “Trespassing?” Garan offered. He nodded slowly and paced around the table. He got halfway around before he spoke again. “Is it possible there's some sort of telepathic connection between the minds of the original and the copy?"

  “Possible,” Chiara said. “At the most, we use our gift to alter individual details of our appearances. Eye color, hair color, the shape of our hands and noses, for instance. Never a complete change and never copying someone who already exists."

  “But it could be done. How about by someone who wasn't raised to believe as you do?” He cracked a mirthless grin when several of us reacted to the ideas that seemed to whip around the table and invade our minds all at the same time. “Think what sort of spy system you could have, if you could steal the very identities and lives of the leaders of your enemies. One of the first things my father and uncle taught me was that the Gen'gineers are terrorists. Their dogma justifies the wholesale destruction of what they consider inferior genetic stock. By any means possible. If the Set'ri get hold of Hoveni, especially untrained children, and breed their own shapeshifters, raising them to follow their warped ideals ... well, we just can't allow it to happen, can we?"

  “So how do we know who leaked the story?” Kel said. “We can't react the same way to each possibility."

  “Oh, yes we can,” Uncle said. “We make a visible search for the culprit, we wash it off as another ridiculous product of warped imaginations, and we go on with our plans as if it didn't happen.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “But we triple our security and we pay attention to the smallest anomaly around us. My friends, I had hoped the breaking point wouldn't come in my lifetime, when we'll need to decide if it is time to reveal our existence to the universe. I hoped it wouldn't happen until Kendle's children were in charge of our effort. I'm afraid it is being forced on us. May Fi'in help us choose wisely."

  “You could run away,” Garan offered. “The Scout Corps will help you find everyone. My Spacer relatives will ferry you away from Gemar to safety. My Leaper relatives will take you to another universe, if that's what it takes to be safe."

  “Gemar is our home,” Chiara said. “It was our home before First Civ's colonists came. It was still our home when the Set'ri declared we weren't allowed to exist. It has been our home through the Downfall and the rebirth of civilization, through the alliance with the Conclave and when we joined the Commonwealth. I want my children to be born on Gemar, and I want my grandchildren born on Gemar."

  “I think what she's saying is, thank you for your offer,” Uncle said, his gaze locked on Chiara's, “but we're not going anywhere."

  Stupid of me, but seeing the way they looked at each other right that moment, I knew something important had happened last night and Chiara had told me nothing about it. I wanted to jump out of my seat and turn somersaults and cheer. Instead, I fought my grin and hoped the meeting would be over soon so I could tell Kel what I had seen.

  * * *

  Chapter Nine

  Kel didn't believe me, when I insisted that Chiara and Uncle Max had finally taken a big step in their relationship. And for the next quarter, as we continued meeting for hours every day to prepare for the publicity tour, I saw nothing to support my theory. Then, three days before we were supposed to leave on the tour, Kel brought me home early from a meeting, and we caught Uncle and Chiara kissing.

  Not just a nice good-night kiss. I'm talking arms tight around each other, and Chiara sitting on Uncle's lap. I'm talking scented candles all over the living room and the cold remains of a fancy dinner, which had hardly been touched. I'm talking soft music in the background. And neither of them heard the front door open or our footsteps as we followed our noses into the living room.

  For five long heartbeats, I just stood there and stared. I got a funny feeling in my stomach, partly glee and partly envy. When would I find someone I would want to kiss like that? And look as happy as they did? Would I ever have the chance to find that person who meshed perfectly with my soul and mind, and I meshed perfectly with him?

  “So,” Kel said, pitching his voice so it seemed to bounce off the ceiling, “when's the wedding?"

  To my thorough disgust, Uncle and Chiara didn't break apart and stammer excuses and defense. They laughed, and she stayed on his lap. The most embarrassment they showed was to bl
ush. Chiara actually cuddled up against him even more, if that was possible.

  “I suppose we do have to get married, don't we?” Uncle said. He tipped his head back and caught hold of Chiara's hand. “What do you say? Want to get married?"

  “You're already engaged,” I guessed, when she just laughed instead of getting angry or flustered.

  It was no guess at all. Uncle would never treat something like a marriage proposal so casually. And Chiara would never let him get away with such an informal proposal. They both had waited too long for this to happen.

  They hadn't set a date, but it was a given they wouldn't hurry and have a civil ceremony before Kel and I left on the publicity tour. Someone might get the wrong idea, after all, and there would be stories about the two of them being secret, long-time lovers or a baby on the way or one of them dying of some horrid disease, so they had to marry quickly and spend as much time together as possible. We left on the tour with orders to contribute ideas for planning the wedding, which would be during the hiatus between seasons.

  As if that was any consolation for not being able to gloat and spend long hours giggling and plotting with Chiara.

  Come to think of it, what were the chances I would have any private time with Chiara from now on? Uncle had laid claim to her private life. I was glad for them. But I was jealous, too. Chiara was my friend, as close to a mother as I had known in a long time.

  It was some consolation, however, that she would soon be my aunt.

  We were two lunar-quarters into the publicity tour, and doing quite well, when I thought of something horrid.

  “Where am I going to live, after they get married?” I asked Kel over breakfast.

  By some miracle, it was just the two of us at breakfast. Usually there were at least six of us in my suite, talking about plans for the day or going over everything that happened the day before. Today, however, everyone was taking advantage of our flight schedule to sleep in. We had no publicity work scheduled and our shuttle wasn't leaving until that afternoon.

  “The house is big enough,” Kel started to say.

  Then he slid into that sympathetic frown that made me want to cry sometimes because it reinforced what a good friend he had become. It was like he could actually feel what I did. I didn't have to spend lots of time explaining when something bothered me or I had a brilliant insight that I couldn't quite put into words. Kel always seemed to understand.

  “It's not a matter of size or space between you, is it? The emotional thing. The whole newlywed thing.” He shook his head. “You know, I had this weird dream last night, about you trying to get into your house and the doors kept melting into the walls and there was this party going on inside and nobody heard—” He jumped up from his chair when I dropped my mug of tea so it hit the edge of the table and spattered hot tea all over both of us. “Kendle? You okay?"

  I didn't feel the hot tea soaking into my clothes. I could hardly breathe. I sat there staring at Kel and praying this would turn into another dream.

  I had that dream the night before, exactly as he described it.

  Kel sank down slowly into his chair again when I told him that.

  “Maybe we saw something on the Tri-V before we went to sleep and it got into our dreams,” he offered.

  “I didn't watch the Tri-V.” I liked his idea, though. “Maybe ... we were talking about throwing a surprise party for Uncle and Chiara when we got back. Maybe that gave me the dream."

  “But why would we both dream about you being locked out?” Kel leaned back and shook his head.

  “What?” I didn't like the look on his face, as if he had just thought of something horrid.

  “The other day, when we were playing four-way Strategems, I could have sworn—” He laughed, and it was a strained sound. “There were a couple times, it felt like you were trying to set things up for me to smash through Trae's defenses."

  “I was,” I whispered.

  I shivered, feeling cold and a little dizzy, reliving those utterly strange moments during the game. We weren't playing teams, but every-man-for-himself in the multi-dimensional game board. Three times, I had seen where there were weaknesses in my opponents’ defensive maneuvers, but I couldn't take advantage of any of them. I had done my best to set my playing pieces so someone else would break through, taking the brunt of the attack—and the penalty, if the maneuver failed—and each time, Kel had done exactly what I envisioned and wished for with all my energy.

  The success of my strategy had felt a little odd, but I hadn't thought anything of it, except maybe to be grateful that Kel went at the game with the same out-psyche-your-opponent attitude that Uncle had taught me. He took drastic chances and made unpredictable moves. I had been slightly shaken when he followed the images in my head, but in the rapid pace of the game and the fun we were having, I hadn't thought of it.

  Until now, when we had shared a dream. Maybe it was more than sharing a dream?

  “If you picked up images from other people's lives, from their dreams,” Kel began. He stopped and shook his head again.

  “If I picked up images from other people's dreams, all over the planet, to write my Meruk stories, maybe I'm broadcasting now?” I finished for him. “That's something I never really discussed with Uncle, and I certainly can't now."

  For security's sake, we had agreed that we wouldn't even try for coded communications with Uncle and the inner circle. Our communications during the publicity tour would be nothing that couldn't be intercepted by the gossip sheets. Innocuous, dealing with the everyday details, routines and reports on audience reactions and feedback. Things that would drive our enemies to boredom, if they actually intercepted messages and video-screen communications.

  “I guess that's the part of your education he was saving for later,” Kel offered. He reached over and took both my hands in his.

  Nothing in the world could describe the warmth and the sense of security that flooded through me at his touch. I had felt alone and cold until that moment. Kel was there in the room, I could see him and hear his voice and even smell the spicy scent of his shower soap. That didn't break through the cocoon trying to coalesce around me, until he touched my hands.

  Kel, I realized, was the friend I had been longing for all my life. He understood better than anyone the peculiar situation I was in. Because he played Meruk, the focal point of our efforts, the symbol to rally our scattered people together, he was as important to our cause as I was, as the heir of Melafyxia.

  “We'll figure this out together,” Kel said. “My mother couldn't tell me much, because my father didn't tell her much before he died, but ... heck, I didn't even think Melafyxia was anything more than a legend until a little while ago. We'll figure it out."

  I nodded, unable to speak for a few seconds. It startled me that he mentioned Melafyxia when I had thought of her only a few seconds before. What was going on?

  We agreed on a strategy to test what was happening between us, just before Regina and several others stumbled in to get breakfast. First, we would write down everything we could remember of our dreams, to determine if we were sharing images on a regular basis. Then, during the day, we would try to send each other mental images, concentrating hard on something we wanted the other to do. After all, it could all be one-way, me broadcasting to Kel. He laughed, teasing me about developing mind-control talents, and I managed to laugh with him.

  It was silly, but I wanted this link between us to be two-way. And I wanted it to be something that we both wanted, and could turn off if necessary. What kind of friendship would we have if we had no privacy from each other, and involuntarily shared every strong image or emotion that passed through our minds?

  * * * *

  When Garan rejoined us, nine days later, we had shared five more dreams, plus backtracked to three other dreams that were too similar to be mere coincidences. Twice at meals, we had passed each other salt or a bottle of sauce without the other vocally asking for it. Once at a Henyaksi restaurant, I almost ordere
d a dish that I loathed, but which I learned later that Kel adored. When we got together the next morning to compare our dreams, he explained that he hadn't been able to find that particular menu item since he left home. His grandmother had been a cook at the spaceport and learned many outlandish dishes to cater to the tastes of the many visitors to Gemar.

  “So you were excited to find it and you couldn't wait to taste it again?” I asked.

  “I wasn't even thinking of making you do anything.” He looked so abashed I wanted to laugh. I couldn't do that, though, because I was sharing the suite with Regina and Soolyn and didn't want to wake them until we finished comparing notes.

  “You didn't. That's the thing. I felt your excitement and eagerness. That's all. I nearly forgot I hated it because the excitement was so clear. Emotions come through better than concentrating on what we want, over and over again.” I wrote down my observations. This was going to lead to a very interesting conversation with Uncle, when we finally got home.

  “Why do you hate it?” Kel wanted to know. He fussed with the teapot, now that the herbs had finished steeping long enough to make a good, strong, deep purple brew. “It's not like there are many chances for you to eat it."

  “I ate it when I was a child. My parents had a research station in the Quevilac Islands.” I braced myself, but my last and strongest memory of our home still slapped hard over me.

  The rubble. The blackened patches where fires had burned hard and hot and fiercely, melting everything they touched. The blood. The dust in the air. The stink of melted polymers and burned flesh. The sound of my father gurgling his life out, crushed by the support pillars that had fallen on him. If he had only been a few steps faster, he would have escaped the building with my mother and me. As it was, Mother was injured so badly that she had killed herself when she shifted shape to go back in to rescue him.

  “Kendle,” Kel whispered, and wrapped his arms tight around me. “I can see it. Feel it. I'm sorry."