Offspring

by Steven Harper

  “My heart is bleeding like your head,” Kendi said.

  “Do you know who Padric Sufur is?” Ben said. “He’s the guy who touched off the Despair.”

  “He owns me,” the man repeated quietly. “I have to do as he says.”

  “What’s he planning?” Kendi persisted. “What’s he want that Salman could stop?”

  “Do you honestly think he’d tell me?” the man replied. “A slave?”

  “Where’s your body?” Ben asked abruptly.

  “Back on S” Station. Look, I can barely breathe.”

  Kendi stepped off the man’s body. “Get out. Go home.” The man closed his eyes and vanished. The office went with him, leaving behind the flat, gray plain.

  “Why did you do that?” Ben said. “The bastard tried to kill you. He tried to kill Ara and Evan, for god’s sake.”

  “And what should we have done, Ben?” Kendi asked tiredly. “He’s thousands of light-years away. Did you want to kill him like you smashed his finger?”

  “He tried to kill us, Ken. He turned your brother into a puppet.”

  Kendi rubbed his forepaws together. “Since when did you become an advocate of torture?”

  “Since someone tried to kill my son,” Ben spat. “God, Kendi—it isn’t like I really hurt him. The psychosomatic carryover will probably give him a sprained finger. Why is this such a problem with you?”

  “The problem is that this isn’t like you,” Kendi said. “I’d expect this kind of thing of Harenn or Gretchen. Maybe even Tan. But not you.”

  “You don’t think I’m strong enough to torture someone?”

  “I didn’t think you were weak enough to have to,” Kendi said simply.

  Ben spun around. He was still holding the sledgehammer, and his fingers were white around the handle. After a long moment, he let go. It vanished before it hit the ground. Kendi let out a long, heavy breath.

  “What do we do now?” Ben asked without turning around.

  “We take care of Keith,” Kendi said, and let go of the Dream.

  “So what happened?” Tan demanded when Kendi and Ben sat up. Keith sat on a chair, his hands still fastened behind him. His head drooped and his eyes were shut.

  “We saw a man about a plan,” Kendi said, and gave a short explanation. Keith didn’t react to any of it. “We should take Keith to the medical center,” Kendi finished. “He needs a lot of help. And we should call—”

  “The Guardians?” Tan said. “They’re on their way.”

  “Then we should get Keith out of here before they can ask awkward questions about him,” Kendi said. “He needs a therapist, not a jail cell.”

  They took the unresisting Keith up to the flitcar, explained to Lars what was going on, and went back down to the apartment. Two human Guardians were just arriving. Kendi, Ben, and Tan answered their questions about Gretchen, carefully leaving out any mention of Keith’s presence in the apartment. Kendi, however, couldn’t keep his mind off his brother, and it was hard to concentrate. Ben seemed restless as well.

  After the Guardians were finished, Kendi boarded the flitcar with Ben and Tan. Keith, on the seat beside him, seemed nearly catatonic. Ben stared grimly out the window. Tan conversed with Lars in a low voice. Kendi squeezed Keith’s hand, but his brother didn’t respond. Kendi’s mind ran in a hundred different directions. He didn’t know what to worry about most—Keith’s condition, Gretchen’s disappearance, or Padric Sufur’s plan. That the latter two were connected, Kendi didn’t doubt. But why would anyone kidnap Silenced people? And why was Sufur going to such lengths to ensure that Salman lost the election?

  It struck him that Foxglove had mentioned a “generous private donor” whose funds had allowed him to hire the private forensics team and finger Petrie. That donor must have been Sufur. Kendi clenched a fist. Salman needed to know what he and Ben had learned. But would it do any good? The election was already in progress, and they had to get Keith to the medical center.

  This actually turned out to be easier than Kendi anticipated. The staff took one look at Kendi and Ben—the famous Father and the blessed Offspring—and whisked Keith into a private room. A psychologist named Dr. Lev Mayfield arrived shortly thereafter, and Kendi was able to explain what had happened to Keith, who was now almost completely unresponsive.

  “We won’t be pressing charges,” Kendi said. “And I’m hoping to keep things confidential.”

  “We keep all our patients confidential,” Mayfield said reassuringly. “I’ll see to his care personally, Father.”

  “I’ll come and visit as soon as I can, Keith,” Kendi said, squeezing his brother’s hand again. Still no response. Kendi choked down a surge of anger and he kept control with difficulty as he and Ben left.

  Back in the flitcar, Ben said, “Do we tell Grandma about this?”

  “What would be the point?” Kendi checked his fingernail for the time. “The election ends in less than an hour. Even if we had proof of what we know, and even if we went public with the information, it wouldn’t help.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “All life, what a day. I don’t even know how the returns are going.”

  “It’s close,” Tan reported from the front seat. Text scrolled by on her data pad’s holographic display. “Exit polls are showing Foxglove in first place with thirty-six percent of the votes. Ched-Pirasku and Senator Reza are tied for second place with thirty-two percent each. It’s going to be really close.”

  A small image beside the text showed long lines of humans, Ched-Balaar, and a sprinkling of other races at various electoral polls. Then it switched to a montage of the candidates. Foxglove opening a new mine. Salman speaking to the military. Ched-Pirasku giving rides to human children on his back.

  “So where do we go now?” Ben asked. “Lars is just circling Treetown.”

  Kendi set his mouth. “We need to go see Padric Sufur.”

  The day was drawing to a close as they approached Sufur’s little house. The talltrees exuded long shadows and a chill suffused the air. A dinosaur roared far below, and the noise was answered in the distance. Mating season. Kendi thanked all life that the dinosaur rodeo club closed down at this time of year. Even the most hardened rider stayed out of the way of male dinosaurs in full rut. Tan trailed Kendi and Ben, looking nervous. She had tried to talk Kendi out of this course of action, but Kendi had turned a deaf ear, as had Ben. The windows of the other little houses around Sufur’s glowed with yellow light. Sufur’s house, however, was dark.

  They were climbing the stairs to his front door when a voice spoke in Kendi’s earpiece. “Kendi? What the hell are you doing?”

  Sejal. Kendi had forgotten that the Vajhur family was keeping remote watch on Sufur’s home. He tapped his earpiece.

  “It’s okay, Sejal,” Kendi said as they reached the top of the steps. “Just keep watching.”

  The door opened before either of the two men could knock. Padric Sufur stood in the doorway. Ben was white-lipped, and his body radiated tension. Kendi felt the same way. Tan appeared impassive until Kendi noticed she was rubbing her thumb and forefinger together fast enough to start a fire from the friction.

  “I was wondering when you’d show up,” Sufur said. “You may as well come in.” He turned and went back inside without bothering to see if they were following. Kendi strode in after the old man with Ben and Tan in tow.

  The inside of Sufur’s house smelled stale, as if the windows hadn’t been opened in months. Everything was perfectly tidy, however. A small part of Kendi noticed that although there were several holograms and pictures of non-humans scattered about the simply-decorated living room, there were no mirrors. A desk with a computer terminal occupied one corner.

  Sufur, clad in a long white robe that made him resemble the ghost of a scarecrow, took a seat in an easy chair near the window. He didn’t look like a man who had engineered the deaths of millions. “Sit. I won’t be offering refreshment, so don’t ask.”

  “I don’t take food from filth,” Ben spat, an
d remained standing.

  Sufur nodded, as if Ben were commenting on the weather. “The Offspring. I’ve been watching the reports about you with some interest, young man. Which will win out, do you think—the supposed nobility of Irfan Qasad or the psychotic treachery of Daniel Vik? I’m betting on the treachery.”

  “Fuck you,” Ben said.

  “How nicely you prove my point.” Sufur crossed his legs. “How much do you know? You can speak freely—these walls are insulated against listening devices, and any recording devices you may be carrying were disabled when you crossed my threshold.”

  “You’ve been financing both Ched-Pirasku’s and Mitchell Foxglove’s campaigns,” Kendi growled. “You tried to have me—and then Ben—killed because our support helped Salman overcome all the scandals you engineered for her. Did you have your pet Silent whisper to Petrie, too? Is that why she killed the Days like Keith tried to kill me?”

  “The Days embodied the worst of human greed,” Sufur said. “They had become a detriment to Foxglove’s campaign. A pity Petrie turned out to be thief as well as murderer when she stole that disk. I would never have revealed your secret, Ben, or exploited your heritage for personal gain. I don’t count myself as cruel.”

  “You must have a different dictionary from us poor folk,” Tan rasped from her position by the door.

  “What about the people you’re kidnapping?” Kendi demanded. “Where are they? What have you done with them?”

  “They’ll fulfill their destinies,” Sufur said. “Helping me end the pointless struggle that makes up humanity.”

  “If you hate humanity so much,” Ben said, “why don’t you just jump off a balcony and end it all? One less human in the world.”

  “Because I’m a philanthropist,” Sufur replied, voice mild. “You’re young, you don’t understand. To be human is to be miserable. We exist only to make war and rape and kill and prey on one another. Don’t you find it interesting, Father Kendi, that your brother was so easily whispered into killing you? Whispers can’t create thought or emotion. They only amplify what already exists. Your own brother resents the fact that you went free while he remained a slave, that you had your mother for a short time after he lost her. That a fellow human sodomized him and left you unmolested. Deep down, your own brother wants you dead, even though you rescued him from slavery. Human gratitude at work.”

  Kendi took a step forward, teeth clenched, but Tan put a hand on his shoulder from behind.

  “Do you know how many species have no concept of falsehood?” Padric continued as if Kendi hadn’t moved. “Seventy-nine. And how many have no concept of murder? Ninety-seven. Humans don’t number among them. “s such, we deserve extinction.”

  “You don’t have the right to judge anyone,” Kendi said through clenched teeth.

  “But I do. I spent my childhood in a concentration camp. I was rescued by some people—you would call them aliens—who became dear to me. They brought me to adulthood. They showed me how vile and violent humans are, how caring and compassionate other species are. I am a human who sees humans from an outsider’s point of view. It makes me uniquely qualified to judge.”

  “So you want to kill all humans?” Ben asked in disbelief.

  “I want to help them. I want to stop the warring and the fighting and everything associated with it.”

  “By destroying the Dream,” Kendi said.

  “Armies communicate through the Dream. Dictators give orders through the Dream. Without them, war ends. After the Despair, I wept from relief because I thought I had won, that war would end forever. Later I wept because I realized I had lost. The Dream still lived, even though I could no longer touch it. War will return. I have to stop it. For your sake and for the sake of all humans everywhere.”

  “Children are re-entering the Dream,” Kendi said. “More and more of them every day. You can’t possibly think you’ll stop them all.”

  “Of course not,” Sufur said. “There are too many. The Ched-Balaar alone will repopulate the Dream in less than a decade. But I came to realize that interplanetary warfare among humans is a human problem. If we remove humans from the Dream, the species will be better off.”

  “That’s what you’re trying to do?” Kendi said. “Remove all humans from the Dream? You’re insane.”

  “History may paint me that way,” Sufur agreed. “I wonder if the same thing happened to Daniel Vik.”

  “How can you possibly remove all human Silent from the Dream?” Kendi said before Ben could respond.

  “With the help of the Children of Irfan.” Sufur gazed out the window. By now the room was so dark, Kendi could barely see him. “Thanks to the Despair, the vast majority of all human Silent are now concentrated in two places—Silent Acquisitions Station and—”

  “Bellerophon,” Kendi breathed.

  “You yourself helped with that, Father Kendi,” Sufur told him. “How many Silent did you bring here after the Despair? Fifteen? Twenty? Including Sejal and his sister Katsu and that boy Bedj-ka. And your own children, of course.”

  Ben charged like a raging bull. He reached Sufur’s chair and energy cracked through the air. Ben fell gasping to the floor. Kendi and Tan were beside him in an instant.

  “Warning!” said a computer voice. “Persisted hostile activity will result in use of deadly force.”

  “You call yourself a philanthropist?” Kendi yelled.

  “I’m also a realist, Father Kendi,” Sufur said. “I’m just as violent as the next human being.”

  Ben sat up with Tan and Kendi’s help. “I’ll show you violence, Sufur,” he gasped. “I’ll rip your head off and listen to you blab about violence.”

  “You would be unwise to kill me,” Sufur said mildly. “I transmit a regular coded message to...certain people. If they fail to hear from me, they have orders to terminate certain other people.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Tan said. “We can’t do anything more.”

  “What are you planning, Sufur?” Kendi snapped.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sufur replied in that infuriatingly mild tone. A soft tone chimed. Sufur tapped the arm of his chair and checked the readout that appeared there. “Ah. I see the election returns are in. I imagine your next step will be to inform the press and the police about my presence. I feel I should warn you that the governor-elect owes me a great many favors, and since I’m only vaguely implicated in any crimes on this planet, I can assure you that I will spend no time in jail.”

  “Who won?” Kendi demanded.

  But Sufur stared out the window as if he hadn’t heard. Tan made a sharp gesture, and Kendi nodded. They helped Ben limp outside. Kendi shot Sufur a final poisonous glance before Tan shut the door. Once in the fresh night air, Ben seemed to regain his equilibrium and he shook off further help.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “But he’s going to die, Kendi. No one in the universe deserves death more than he does.”

  His icy tone made Kendi shiver. “Ben, you promised me you wouldn’t do anything stupid.”

  Ben stared wordlessly at him for a moment, then he ran down to the flitcar and jumped inside. Kendi and Tan followed. Once the door was shut and Lars was powering up the engines, Tan called up a news feed.

  “Well?” Kendi asked.

  “Final returns are in,” Tan reported flatly. “Our new governor is Ched-Pirasku.”

  Ben closed his eyes. Kendi slumped back in his seat. It felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. “ll that work and heartache for nothing.

  ~Father Kendi.~

  Kendi bolted upright. “Who the hell—?”

  ~Father Kendi, can you hear me?~ The mental voice felt familiar, but it took Kendi a moment to place it. It was the Silent slave who had whispered to Keith.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “Who are you talking to?” Ben asked.

  ~I need to speak to you, Father. In the Dream.~

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “I forget my successes every day and dr
eam of my failures every night.”

  —Irfan Qasad

  The feed hologram of Salman Reza showed an old woman with a sad but determined expression. She was still in the auditorium with her supporters and election workers. Kendi turned up the volume on the data pad while Ben rummaged around the guest bedroom, looking for his dermospray.

  “Almost a thousand years ago,” Salman said, “Irfan Qasad left her position as our planet’s first governor. On that day she said, ‘The people have clearly decided someone else is more fit for the job.’ I bow to her wisdom. I have spoken with Ched-Pirasku and congratulated him on becoming Bellerophon’s first governor in over two hundred years. I also offered to meet with him as soon as possible to heal the divisions of the campaign and the contest the three of us just finished.”

  Ben, who had found his dermospray, reached over and turned the volume back down with an angry tap. “She’s going to be upset that we weren’t there.”

  “Nothing for it,” Kendi said. “We have more important things to do. You find that dermospray?”

  “Yeah. Let’s just get this over with.”

  With quick, jerky movements, Ben lay down on the bed, injected the drug, and closed his eyes. Kendi watched him worriedly. Ben’s face was as cold and hard as ice, and there was murder in his every move. Kendi didn’t blame Ben. Kendi himself would have given a lot to watch Sufur writhe on a spit. But the thought of gentle, quiet Ben killing Sufur turned his blood to ice.

  Was there any other way to make Sufur pay for his crimes? The police and the Guardians wouldn’t touch him. But perhaps Sufur had been bluffing about that. Ched-Pirasku had been Silenced by the Despair, and it was a good bet that he hadn’t known Sufur was funding his campaign. On the other hand, the knowledge that Sufur had helped Ched-Pirasku win the governorship would create a scandal, perhaps even a recall. Kendi grew a little excited. Perhaps this would be a way to get Salman into the governor’s mansion after all. Revealing that Sufur had been involved in both Foxglove’s and Ched-Pirasku’s campaigns would destroy both of their political careers, leaving only Salman left to take the governorship.