I waited more than twenty hours, but she wouldn’t respond. I sent another message with a bit more information than the first, but again, nothing. About a day after sending the second message, George told me he knew what I was trying to do.
“What? Do what?”
He sighed. “Trying to contact my family.”
“Oh, that. How did you know?”
“Pearl contacted me about your messages. Have you tried contacting anyone else, Odet?”
“Um, no, just her. Wait, so your family can contact you?”
“You chose Pearl wisely. She’s one of the few I trust to contact me in the event of a family emergency. She also keeps me up to date every so often.”
“And do you keep her up to date about us? How much have you told her about me?”
“Tidbits, but Pearl understands my stance on our family and will not try and interfere with my position.” He sat down on our big red couch and motioned for me to do the same. He wrapped his heavy arm around me and said, “I know family is important to you, but as you discovered, I’ve taken precautions against us involving ourselves with a segment of people that could only harm the happiness we’ve worked so hard to build. I’ve seen firsthand what my own brothers would do for some quick credits, or how my oldest aunt will see our prosperity with a jealous eye and use my father to get me to waste every free credit I have on them. No, not all of my family is a degenerate, but they are still too closely attached for my liking. Please, Odet, I need you to understand that your time together has been a paradise, and no small part of that is because I’ve worked to keep one of our families at bay.”
“Oh George, I don’t want to risk what we have. I was just trying to add a little bit more.”
He laughed quietly. “Trust me, asking for more than what we already have cultivated together is gluttonous at this point. I know you mean well, but any more attempts at communication with my family will disappoint me, Odet. A bit more happiness from people I’ve long left behind is not worth the risk. You know I don’t ask you to promise me much, but this you must.”
“Okay, George, I promise I won’t try to contact your family again, at least not without your permission.”
I expected him to smile at my little elbowing at the last words, but he only offered me a serious little frown in return. Still, he said nothing to rebuke me.
We kissed, or more like pecked, and he said, “Thank you, my dove.”
With my efforts at adding to our family stymied in this front, my galvanized mind started wandering to others. All this thinking about contacting his family made me think of mine. Not the ones I knew, but the ones I never had the chance of meeting. Really, I had always been interested in my past. The only thing I knew was that a priest had dropped me off at a minor colony’s welfare facility before I was taken to a planet with foster care resources. According to the account my parents were able to dig up, the priest had apparently received me from a woman who had basically left me on his temple’s doorstep, but who knows what was really true? I had imagined so many things from this scant amount of information about my origin. Was this priest really my father trying to cover up an illegitimate child? Or was he at least helping some politician do the same?
In order to find possible caretakers, the government had ran my genes through the net to find the closest match on file, but their endeavor only produced some distant relatives who didn’t even live near the same star system where my life made its first official mark. They had still sent out some messages to these relations, but none were interested in taking on a baby. Luckily, the people I would consider my parents did not take long to adopt me. Still, for years I was only left to ruminate over my cryptic roots. Now, with my mind engaged with out-of-the-way family members, I needed to gratify my inquisitiveness.
I waited a few days before I talked to George about my next project. Though this didn’t concern his delinquent family, I half-expected he would have grown weary about all my family talk. My needless worry went unfounded. He was supportive of my venture, even saying that he had always been highly curious about the origin of his lovely dove himself. All the same, I didn’t know exactly where to start. My parents had done the basics and found nothing, so I was sure only a more thorough investigation of the parties involved could reveal anything more. Namely, this meant trying to find that unidentified priest and go from there.
This priest had dropped me off at a welfare facility in Orban, a brown planet with only a handful of sleepy mining settlements at the time of my birth. More than thirty years later and searching its current status revealed the settlements had not grown by much, seemingly content in its dormant state. In any event, a world with just ten thousand people would still have upwards of a dozen full-time priest and priestesses, not to mention those they had in training. I messaged the central Sacred temple there, asking the priestess in charge if she would ask around about my story. She was kind enough to respond in a timely manner, but she said those she spoke with had never heard of a priest in their area doing such a thing as leaving an infant in the welfare office. She even checked the welfare office for me and learned that my story was more famous there, implying that there was someone who at least touted himself as a priest, but it was not one of her own men. There were a couple of vicars who worked at Orban that had moved on to other posts since that time, so she gave me their names for me to try them.
I was able to make contact with both priests, but one claimed to never have heard the story while the other said he had heard something of it, but did not know who this priest could be. I hadn’t moved up a square, but I did now start to believe that the mystery holy man may not have been a real holy man at all, or at least had wanted to remain incognito so badly that he had traveled to another star system to drop me off. As the gene test already proposed, I was neither born on Orban nor was my original family from there, which meant I was purposely brought there. But why? Why would a man, whether priest or not, go through the trouble of going to an out-of-the-way planet to leave a baby?
“To keep you safe?” suggested George when I told him what I uncovered so far. “Perhaps this man was trying to hide you from some threat?”
“Who would want to harm a child?”
“Possibly not intentionally, mind you, but maybe your real parents did not treat their children well and someone wanted to ‘rescue’ you from them or some other awful situation… Not a good answer for you?” he asked, noticing my developing frown.
“No, it makes some sort of sense. I’m just wondering why this person would not take care of me themselves if they were worried about my upbringing, or leave me with people he trusted. I could have been adopted by worse people for all he knew.”
“There will be holes in whatever theory we develop, dove. If it were so easy to deduce your past, we would have already surmised a good explanation by now.”
“I know, but I’m looking for the least amount of holes. Your theory still makes me wonder why this mystery priest hasn’t come forward to me yet. Why not send me a message at some point?”
“It could be that he was the one in danger. Someone on the run from some bad people? Perhaps he couldn’t send you a message until he thought himself safe.”
“Meaning these bad people found him.”
“Or is still being hunted. Whatever the case, it sounds like your search has only made the entire galaxy the scene of the crime.”
I further slumped into the plushness of our couch. “I thought I could at least find the priest, but it turns out he’s the answer to everything. I’d be happy just knowing who he was, or is.”
“You mean happier.”
I smiled up at him. “That’s what I meant.”
I tried thinking of another angle to find the priest or former family, but unless I wanted to pay a private detective (or become one) to search aimlessly, I decided to drop my search. George was right; I was already happy.
My happiness only swelled three years later. The search for a job was more successf
ul than the search for my kin, though that expanded as well. Or I did, at any rate. I was six months plump with our son and we had just finished moving to Anat. This was an older colony world, the start of its colonization beginning almost as soon as it was discovered over four hundred years ago. It wasn’t too many jumps away from Earth or my parents, which just added to its serendipity. I couldn’t find an opening in the music business, but I didn’t mind doing the zoology thing another few decades if I had to. The home we picked was a spacious apartment located on the sixth story of a three hundred story living complex. I was never one for heights, so I insisted on a lower floor. Our particular complex was within a large patch of greenery and separated from the main cluster of high-rises a mile away.
One afternoon, as I was rearranging my unborn son’s section of my bedroom, someone buzzed my room. I checked the camera at the entrance by having its feed link with part of my vision. Standing by the door in the wide hall was a hooded man clad in heavy clothing, despite the weather being temperate. As the camera was face level, his hood did not hide his face from me. He was bald and cleanly shaven except for a black patch under his bottom lip. He was a stocky fellow, as though he had exchanged height for muscle at some point. His expression was relaxed, but gray eyes were a bit twitchy.
Mentally connecting to the intercom outside the door, I asked, “Who is it?”
Connecting to the intercom allowed him to speak and be heard. So without moving a muscle, he answered, “Is Georgy boy here?”
Georgy boy? “No, but he should coming home from work soon, assuming you are talking of George Paterson. How do you know him?”
He grinned. It was not a grin I liked. “Oh, we go way back. I heard he was in town so I decided to drop by and see how the doc was doing.”
“What’s your name?”
“Zach Pillar. So, may I come in and wait for him?”
“Hold on a second.”
Moving toward the door, I tried connecting with George’s thought-comm. He was quick to reply.
In my head, he said, “I’m already on my way, dove. What is it?”
“There’s someone asking to see you, a Zach Pillar. Should I let him in?” There was a long silence. “George?”
“Look, let him in, but you don’t have to show him your best side. I’ll be right there.”
With my trepidation rising, I allowed the door to slide open to let in a man George clearly had reservations about, but was still obliged to accommodate for some reason. Zach sauntered in my home, smiling like it was his, or perhaps smiling like I was his.
“Nice place,” he said.
“Thanks. Would you like some water?”
“Sure, why not?”
He fell back into my couch, placing his extended arms on the headrest.
After giving him the warm glass of water I grabbed from the kitchen, I asked, “How did you meet George?”
He took the time to drink up every last drop of water, keeping his steady gray eyes on me in the meantime, before replying, “Georgy boy is the one who met me. He needed a big favor that only a man with my connections could give.”
“What sort of favor?”
“Nothing his lovely wife need worry about. The favor was granted and now I need a teeny weeny one in return.”
“What do you need?”
“Something only a doctor can provide.”
“And what do you do for a living?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
A minute later and George entered his home. Like our guest, most of his face conveyed something different than his eyes. His mien was calm and stoic, but his organs of sight were on the verge of sheer panic. I went to be next to George, but he kept his entire focus on Zach.
Zach didn’t move to greet my husband. He simply grinned at him and said, “It’s been awhile, Georgy boy.”
“It was supposed to be longer than that, if I recall correctly.”
Zach shrugged and stood up. “Shit happens, you of all people should know that. I wasn’t planning on seeing you again either. Trust me, I would have preferred to use my usual gal, but I doubt I’d make it that far.”
“What do you want?”
“A new face. Pro bono, of course. I’ll be out of your hair once I get that. By the way, a hair transplant would be nice, too.”
“Now?”
“I’ve risked enough coming at this time as it was. We’ll go to your clinic when we see the third moon expose herself. You guys have any grub I could chow on?”
Finally acknowledging me, George said, “Odet, stay in your room until our guest leaves. We’ll talk later.”
His unyielding tone and firm manner made me feel like I was a child who had gotten into trouble. I meekly followed his order, but as soon as the bedroom door slid closed, I sensed my adult persona return to me. I searched the net for a Zach Pillar and found quite a few, some on Anat and others beyond the system, but none matched the face in my living room. Could he have changed faces before? Or was the name itself a pseudonym?
George must have convinced Zach to leave earlier than planned, as only the first moon was out when he told me they were leaving. I couldn’t sleep, of course, so I patiently waited the seven hours it took for George to come home. He looked as worn as I had ever seen him when he returned, and I could swear that he was trembling when he embraced me.
“Gods, George, who was that?”
“Someone we should never have to see again.”
I pulled away to look into his eyes. “Is he connected to your family?”
“No, but he was instrumental in resetting my life after I left them. In a way, he is the reason I’m so blessed now.”
“Why have you never told me more about that part of your life? Sacred, I’ve never seen you so rattled before. What exactly did this Zach do to reset your life?”
That familiar sigh came out of him. “Do you love me?”
“What a dumb question, George. Of course I do.”
He smiled for the first time in many hours. “I sometimes think you trust my judgment too much.” His smile faded. “But I did make mistakes in my younger days.” He sat down on the same spot Zach had been, probably hoping to replace the offensiveness that had been there. When I sat next to him, he continued with, “I used to think my family were among the worst individuals the galaxy had to offer. I thought they would not let me escape to form my own life without effort, so I sought out help from what I believed was a lesser evil. How wrong I was. Using some of my father’s contacts, I was able to get a hold of Zach.”
“Why him?”
“Because for all the fear and power criminal syndicates wield, even they couldn’t exceed the potential of a Depraved cult.” He paused and stared at the blue rug at his feet.
“Zach is a Depraved worshiper?”
“Yes. It turned out that he could help me start a new life, help me disappear long enough so that my family would simply move on and let me be. This for a steep cost, of course. I transferred not only everything I had to them, but a great deal of credits from my family’s account as well. It was at that point that I couldn’t look back. The next thing I knew and I was transported to a Depraved station, where I stayed for almost two years working off the rest of the cost.”
“You worked for them? Doing what?”
“If there’s one compliment you could give those damned cults it’s that they are rigorously organized. Since I wasn’t a worshiper, I never actually saw any of the atrocious experiments you here about in the news, but their scientists and researchers still had me look over tons of data and work on several animal samples that went through their ‘ascension’ program. They didn’t seem to mind that an outsider saw evidence of their wretched deeds. Gods, I would sometimes even see the victims they brought on board. More than that, I would sometimes hear them produce the wildest sounding shrieks from deep within the station.”
George ran his hands through his ruffled hair. I instinctively wanted to comfort him and draped my arm over hi
s shoulders.
Holding my hand tightly, he said, “Despite their horror, Zach assured me that we had a deal and I had nothing to fear from them. As he once put it, ‘We wouldn’t convert many people if our word were no better than a criminal’s.’ When my work was done, I was set free. They even gave me some compensation, if you can believe it. This is when my nomadic period began. Most of those stories you know. What I didn’t tell you was why I kept jumping from place to place every few months. You see, I believed Zach was going to help me change my identity, but he later said that step would turn out to be unnecessary. I never quite understood what he meant by that. He hinted that there was a sort of understanding now between me and my family. I could only assume it had something to do with the knowledge I had about my family’s crimes. As long as they kept away from me, then I would have no reason to disclose all I knew to the police. I didn’t think this was enough, so the main reason I traveled was to make sure my family couldn’t easily track me down. However, after years of this, I really started believing I was free to go about my life. It was not long after I believed this that I settled on Calista. You know the rest.”
I took some moments to absorb this aspect of his life. Pressing in tighter than before, I said, “And why not tell me this sooner?”
He chuckled. “Most hear the word ‘Depraved’ and run the other way. I know I can trust you now, but in our first few years together, I was truly terrified of your reaction on hearing that I worked for them. Then, even after I knew you would not shun me, it simply became a matter of leaving that part of my life to rot away forever. I suppose I was foolish for thinking my past would never return in some form. I feel awful for forcing you to let that man inside our home, but I could not risk him reopening a wound with my family if I refused him. Do you forgive me?”
Generations (The Nimbus Collection Book 3) Page 16
