She pushed her charred fish onto the edge of her plate. Mama and Papa did the same, picking edible portions away from parts too black and crispy to digest. Here she'd criticized her mother and now she'd gone and done a worse job than anything Mama had ever botched! She hoped Mikhail wouldn't think the worse of her for it.
Picking up the fish with two hands, Mikhail bit into it. The fish crunched. Black pieces of ash spilled onto his lentils and vegetables. Ninsianna watched as he consumed the entire burnt, charred, blackened piece of fish.
“That was very good, Mama." Immanu turned to his wife with his habitual post-dinner gratitude.
“I was not the one who prepared it!" Mama had a ‘don't blame me’ expression on her face.
Ninsianna looked down onto her plate. As she glanced up, she was rewarded by one of Mikhail’s rare, beautiful smiles.
“That was very good, Ninsianna,” Mikhail's grin made her heart flutter. “Thank you.”
Chapter 64
Galactic Standard Date: 152,323.06
Neutral Zone: Diplomatic Carrier ‘Prince of Tyre’
Prime Minister Lucifer
Lucifer
“Lucifer, wake up!” Zepar exclaimed. “I have wonderful news!”
“Mmmffffff … what?" Lucifer rubbed his forehead to alleviate the brain-splitting migraine. He kept his eyes closed as he knew opening them would only make things worse. He felt next to him and discovered the bed was empty. “Where is she?”
“Who?” Zepar asked.
“My wife?” Lucifer said. “I distinctly remember getting married yesterday. Only … I can’t remember what happened afterwards.”
“That was four days ago, Sire." Zepar shook with excitement. “And it worked!!! The root-stock of your species is fertile. Doctor Halpas just ran the tests. Your seed took!!!”
“What do you mean it took?” Lucifer said. “I wanted to take my time and get to know this one. I don't even remember making love to her.”
He slid his eyes open just a slit and started letting them adjust to the light. Double. He was seeing double again.
“Ahm,” Zepar shifted from one foot to the other. “The root stock is not entirely sentient, Sire. Attractive, yes. But not sentient.”
“She spoke to me,” Lucifer said. “I remember….”
“What do you remember, Sire?” Zepar asked. “You were upset when you got back to the shuttle and realized she couldn't even obey a simple command. You got another one of your migraines.”
“But…" Lucifer recalled being enthralled with the attractive female, but also Zepar warning him the reason the Emperor had tinkered with their DNA was because they weren't very smart. Everything Hashem tinkered with ended up having a much higher IQ.
“Oh, no,” Zepar said. “You didn't have another one of your blackouts … did you?”
“No!” Lucifer said quickly. The last thing he wanted was to admit was he'd buggered an animal and thought she was sentient. Zepar had set up some pretty strange sexual encounters over the years, but Lucifer prided himself on remembering just who he'd fucked and how satisfied they had been afterwards. “Where is she?”
“I took the liberty of setting up a room to house her until it's time to deliver the child,” Zepar said. “Would you like to check on her? She may only be a pre-sentient creature, but she is carrying your heir.”
“Yes,” Lucifer said cautiously. “I would like to … see … the female I … um…" Lucifer couldn't quite bring himself to say the word ‘married.' He felt sick to his stomach, although that could have been from the migraine. Had he really buggered a non-sentient animal?
No! What Zepar said didn't fit his fuzzy recollection of the female Ba'al Zebub had ‘gifted’ to him. He dimly recalled her touching his forehead in concern when the migraine had started, then standing between him and Zepar and calling him ‘ibilisi.' Ibilisi? What was an ibilisi?
His head felt as though it were about to split in half. He dressed as quickly as he could and followed Zepar through the ship to a room that had once been general living quarters for 30 crewmen. With so few hybrids left alive in the universe, his diplomatic carrier, which had been built to house 600 crew along with luxurious quarters for 20 diplomatic families, now had a crew of only 35. They had many empty rooms such as this. Two crewmen guarded the door to the ships most precious cargo. The human female carrying the child he'd tried for 225 years to sire.
Sitting on a bunk along one wall, rocking and uttering guttural sounds that were most definitely not a language, was the beautiful, ebony-skinned female Ba'al Zebub had forced him to marry. Zepar had changed her into more comfortable attire than the gaudy Sata’an bridal tunic, but it had torn where she kept grasping at the hem. Her eyes were vacant as she sat in a fetal position in the corner. She became agitated as they drew close. The eyes of a caged animal.
“Hey,” Lucifer held out his hand. “Do you remember me? We got married yesterday … um … four days ago.”
The female became noisy as he approached, but she didn't make eye contact. She uttered a string of guttural sounds. Lucifer listened for the hint of either language, or the subconscious longings his ‘gift’ allowed him to sense beneath the speech patterns of all sentient creatures, and found none. It was just noise.
“I never even found out your name,” Lucifer reached out to touch her cheek. He projected soothing images through his voice into her mind, something which usually worked even with lesser sentient species.
The female let out a blood-curdling screech and jumped off of the bed, scurrying to a different bunk in the opposite corner of the room. As soon as she got there, she sat back in the fetal position, rocking and making the guttural sounds she'd made earlier.
“This is what she's been like the entire time,” Zepar said. “We suspect Ba'al Zebub sedated her so that she wouldn't scratch your eyes out when you mated with her. Probably why he was so insistent you do it right away.”
“She is definitely pregnant?" Lucifer couldn't describe his feeling of … disappointment. For some reason he'd thought she was more intelligent, although he had no memory of mating with her. None at all.
“Yes, Sire." Zepar's hands shook with excitement. “It worked. The genetic tests confirm that your genes are dominant on all traits except for your wings. Your son will have at least a sentient-level IQ.”
“Except my wings?”
“The Emperor pulled one hell of a rabbit out of a hat to graft avian DNA onto a human,” Zepar said. “Your child won't have wings. But every other Angelic trait is a dominant gene. Just like the other species he tinkers with, sentience is a survival mechanism.”
“He?” Lucifer asked. “It's a boy? You know that already?”
“Yes, Sire,” Zepar said. “And he will be just as smart as you are. You can breed him back to an Angelic female and your grandchildren will have wings. Only without the fertility problems so much inbreeding to maintain them has created for our species. The gene is there. It's just recessive.”
“Hashem always hinted that he'd help creating the hybrid races,” Lucifer said. “Probably why he hasn't been able to fix us. It was not his work in the first place.”
“You've been trying for 225 years to sire a child, Sire,” Zepar placed a reassuring hand upon his shoulder. “Is it really so terrible if your son appears as the Eternal Emperor does? A human male without wings?”
A human male … without wings. Just like his father. He could think of no better homage to pay his adopted father than the solution to fixing his hybrid armies … and a grandchild who looked just like him.
“No,” Lucifer flashed Zepar a grin. “It's an acceptable tradeoff. Now I can stop fucking every female Angelic in the galaxy and start looking for something a little more meaningful.”
“Not yet, Sire,” Zepar cut off his train of thought. “One offspring won't solve our species' problem. You need to sire as many as possible!”
“How long until this female delivers my son?”
“We believe around nine
months,” Zepar said. “But I have even more good news. Shay’tan will release a small number of females for other males who've been experiencing your difficulties to marry.”
“Why would he do that?" Lucifer was skeptical of the old dragon's motivations. “It's in his best interests if we don't reproduce. It puts our armies on equal footing.”
“The Sata'an Empire is anxious to open up their worlds to trade,” Zepar said. “Including the human homeworld. But Hashem won't allow it. His precious seed world policies not only prevent us from harnessing resources on our own pre-sentient worlds, but Shay’tan’s as well. It goads the old dragon to have some of his most profitable trade goods boycotted.”
“It is so." Lucifer wracked his scrambled brains trying to remember what strings Ba'al Zebub had attached to receiving the human as a gift. He drew a blank. If there was anything worse than selling your soul to Shay’tan, it was selling your soul and not being able to remember the terms of the contract. The old dragon was absolutely inflexible about the sanctity of a contract. “Sorry … I think I had too much to drink last night. Refresh my memory?”
“Shay’tan finds your proposal to quietly gift females to high-ranking officials to garner support to open the human homeworld and similar pre-sentient planets for trade to be intriguing,” Zepar said. “That way, everybody can have access to humans. And get rich as hell. Shay’tan would like nothing better than to tweak Hashem’s nose.”
“My … proposal?”
“The one you hammered out with Ba'al Zebub yesterday, Sire,” Zepar said. “Are you certain you're not waking up from another one of your blackouts? You seem awfully disoriented.”
“No, I'm fine!" The last thing he wanted was for word to get around that he was having blackouts again. This time, he wasn't just losing hours, but weeks of his life.
He'd watched videos of himself making great, rousing speeches before Parliament that he had no recollection of making. The blackout-Lucifer who played Parliament like a fiddle looked no different than any other speech he'd ever made. But he couldn't remember making them. Not for the first time, Lucifer wished the consequences wouldn't be so dire if he went to a real doctor instead of the shady, fly-by-night quacks Zepar dug up to give him a clean bill of health.
“Would you like me to sedate her so you can mate with her again?" Zepar pointed to the female who hissed at them like a feral cat.
“No!" Lucifer was filled with self-loathing. “She is already pregnant. I'll do whatever I have to do to produce offspring, but other than that, I would prefer to mate with someone who can at least … enjoy … my talents. Just … make her comfortable. And warn the guards that she is to be treated kindly. She is carrying my child.”
“Of course, Sire,” Zepar said.
They moved through the maze of corridors, back to his personal quarters. The Prince of Tyre was a luxurious ship, sleek and tasteful compared to the gaudy ostentatiousness of Shay'tan's diplomatic flagship … and largely empty of both diplomats and crew, yet another reminder of how far his species had fallen. One day, he hoped this ship would be filled with Angelic crewmen, all brought into existence because he'd found the solution to their problem.
“Now … remind me about this plan I concocted while happily imbibing a little too much Mantoid nectar,” Lucifer said. “From the hangover I'm nursing right now, I must have swallowed an entire bottle to drown my misgivings about fucking a pre-sentient animal!”
Zepar outlined the plan as they walked back to his quarters, making Lucifer chuckle. Zepar was a scheming little bastard, but only he could cook up a plan ballsy enough to not just solve the hybrid fertility problem, but also tweak the noses of both ascended deities who toyed with the mortal creatures of this galaxy as though they were chess pieces. Nothing too nefarious. But it would make him look like a hero while both emperors would look like fools.
“You're due back in Parliament tomorrow,” Zepar reminded him. “Shall I reschedule? It will take a week to get the ‘Prince of Tyre’ back to Haven-3.”
“No,” Lucifer said. “Leave the ship in the neutral zone with orders to scoot into the uncharted territories if that bitch, Jophiel, tries to board us. The last thing I want is my father catching wind I found the root race until I'm ready to act. I'll take a needle-ship back to Haven-3 and come back when needed. When did you say Ba'al Zebub would have that next shipment?”
“It will take several weeks,” Zepar said. “Something about Shay’tan insisting all human females go through their matrimonial training academies prior to marriage.”
“Figures,” Lucifer scoffed. “The old dragon is nothing if not consistent. Do whatever it takes to secure those females.”
“The others won't be any more pleased than you were to discover their new ‘wives’ are little more than farm animals,” Zepar said. “With your permission, I would like to see if there is something I can do to train her to act a little more … well … Angelic.”
“Yes, of course,” Lucifer said. “But don't hurt her. While you're at it, see if you can do something to make her less fearful." He glanced back down the hallways they'd just traveled towards the direction of the human female and absent-mindedly twirled one of the feathers on his wing. "I don't understand why she doesn't like me? All females like me.”
All except for that Bitch…
“I'll do that, Sire,” Zepar scurried off to the laboratory he kept on the ship.
Chapter 65
July – 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Ninsianna
Ninsianna ran her fingers through the bucket of kishk, her nose crinkled at the slightly sour scent as Mama added rennet from the stomach of a slaughtered sheep. Together they stirred in the salt and worked it through the kernals of unground grain until the mixture was finally absorbed. Whenever summer rolled around, the goat produced far more milk than they could use. Kishk … curdled, dried milk, was a way to preserve the highly perishable dairy product for times of year when the goat didn't produce enough. Although lately there had been a lot less excess!
Ninsianna laughed.
"What's so funny?"
"Oh, nothing," Ninsianna said. She laughed again. "I was just thinking how determined Mikhail looked this morning when he coaxed ‘Little Nemesis’ into the milking shed."
Mama stirred the half-full bucket.
"If he gets any more 'determined,' I fear we shall have no milk at all."
"Never have I seen a man so vexed by a goat!" Ninsianna laughed. "He had hoof prints … on his cheek … when when he came out with the milk! I swear, if he'd had his sword with him, we'd be eating Little Nemesis for dinner!"
"Now hold the cloth, child," Mama said as she hoisted up the bucket to strain the mixture through a length of linen. "Pull it tight so the frame doesn't collapse into the dirt."
Together they spread the saturated grains out onto the length of linen mounted onto a frame to dry the kishk in the sun. Once it was dry they would store it in a pottery urn and, whenever they wanted a porridge, they could simply add water and have their milk and grain in a single dish.
“Ninsianna!” Papa's voice trailed out of the open doorway to their house. “Come here, child!”
“Yes, Papa!" Ninsianna rinsed the curds off of her hands and went into the house, pausing when she saw Papa was set up to perform a shamanic ceremony. “Oh … should I leave?”
“No, Ninsianna,” Papa said. “It's time to teach you the right way to go into the dreamtime so you'll never get stuck there again.”
“Oh …” she said, her expression puzzled. “Isn’t that forbidden?”
“Times change," Papa said. "Which means we must change along with them or risk being left behind.”
A thrill of excitement tingled up her spine. This was what she'd always wanted, to be treated the equal of any shaman. But Papa didn't know she'd been stealing dregs from his journeys for many years and developed abilities she suspected even he didn't have. She voiced the appropriate trepidation. “Am I capable
of doing this?”
“You drank the sacred beverage which led you to Mikhail,” Papa said. “Those are upper level shamanic abilities. And now She-who-is speaks through you. All I can do is fill in any gaps in your knowledge so that you don't get stranded again due to some lack of basic knowledge. Come. Sit.”
Ninsianna sat and recited the names of each item he used. She knew all but one. “What is this one, Papa?”
“This,” he said, “is kratom. It's similar to blue water lily in that it aids the transition into the dream world. But it's more powerful. You must never blend it with any other herb or it could kill you. Nor should you use it if you suspect you may be with child.”
Ninsianna fondled the tiny, yellow flowers and dried, green leaves. Unlike a normal flower, it was spikey and grew in a little ball, while the leaves were thick like the leaves of a tree.
“Where does it grow?”
“We trade for it with the caravans from the lands east of Shush,” he said. “Kratom helps your mind leave your body to search for information.”
“What kind of information, Papa?”
“Nothing too frightening your first time out. We shall spy on your friends and then you can tell them about it later. But the ability to let your mind see where your body can't travel is good for spying on your enemies.”
“How does it work?"
“There are three levels of this ability,” Papa said. “The first ability is called empathetic feeling. Every living creature has an aura, an eggshell of energy which spreads out around them. When you pass close to someone, your eggshells touch and exchange information.”
“Would those be the colors that I see?” Ninsianna asked.
“Most people can't see the colors,” Papa said, “But most people have this ability to some degree. It's the sensation of knowing someone is sick because when you talk with them, you can feel their sickness inside your own body. The feeling is vague, but you can hone the ability so that you know the difference between your own feelings and those which belong to somebody else.”
Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 33
