The Father Unbound

by Frank Kennedy

  Tariq looked away, took a gentle breath, and lowered his head. He held the pose for almost a minute as Hadeed waited for a response, reveling in the release of anger that had been consuming him for years. He no longer feared the elders and did not consider the possibility of retribution for his lack of respect. Consequently, Tariq’s lightning-fast backhand upside Hadeed’s head was startling, especially when Hadeed found himself on the floor staring up at the elder, the right side of his head stinging.

  “Make note, Hadeed. This is the only time we shall speak of these matters. You are misguided. Who led you to these conclusions, I do not know, but I will not hold myself to blame. The Chancellors are, as they always have been, our partners. Each of us has been assigned our place in this universe. We fulfill our obligations to the enclave and to the Collectorate until we turn to dust. One day, you will come to understand the beautiful simplicity of our existence. Until then, I will forgive you for your anger, but I will choose not to speak to you.”

  Tariq pointed to the exit. Hadeed hesitated to leave, but he resisted the urge to fight on. Once an elder closed his lips to a boy, there was no reopening them until manhood. The elders were very consistent with the tradition.

  In the middle of the night, as clan Trayem slept, Hadeed stole a liter of water from the emergency rations, filled a small satchel with protein chews and layered his clothing until he was sufficiently prepared for the deep desert. He did not look in on his mother, paid no silent homage to the Matriarch, or wished he could apologize to Tariq. Instead, Hadeed slipped away into the darkness with the thought he might never return.

  He knew his love for Trayem would never break, but he could not live another day in the comfort of those who believed the Chancellors’ lies. He decided the Hiebim were neither as naïve nor as patently stupid as Tariq had proven. There were others who saw the truth. Had to be. Ashkinar was a big continent. If he couldn’t find allies here, there were three others just like it.

  “I’m a warrior,” he told himself as he passed Asra’s clay fields and haepong pack. He found himself drawn to the Gorsham Desert to the south, where the nearest enclave was three days on foot, assuming he kept his bearings. “Warriors fight.”

  Hadeed vowed to walk until he couldn’t anymore.

  EIGHT

  PASSAGE OF SUMMIT

  THE YELLOW-PAINTED MESA rose a thousand feet above the open, fertile wash of the Kundun Plains, its jagged scarp a reminder of history predating humans by millions of years. A vital enclave clustered in domes at the base of the mesa and rose along the scarp with mechanized lifts and habitats carved into the yellow rock. At ground level, the enclave reached toward the plains with tentacles surrounding gardens of herbs and vegetables, water reclamation tanks, a community park with the only tree for fifty kilometers, a pair of haepong packs, its very own uplift station, and checkpoints guarding the two major roads feeding outward across Kundun – one to the nearest town ten kilometers distant and the other to the largest brontinium refinery east of the great capital, Messalina. It was, by accounts, the most beautiful and prosperous enclave in the northern hemisphere, and its clan the oldest and one of the largest among Hiebim.

  The summit of the great mesa offered a spectacular view of the plains and beyond, and those who camped upon it remarked how they felt they could reach up and touch the thirty-nine other worlds of the Collectorate. For Trayem Hadeed, however, the summit represented so much more. And if he survived to reach it on this scorching summer day and finished the task set before him, he would be cleansed of the confusion carrying him to sleep each night and waiting beside his bed until he awoke. Becoming a man was of less significance than the truth he was prepared to follow.

  Reaching the summit, however, was far from certain. He cut a tiny figure against the rock face, naked but for his shomba and a protective wrap around his groin. He scaled the steep, jagged face of the mesa in slow, purposeful movement, the yellow stain of the rock coating much of his body as it might an unskilled painter. He paid no attention to the cuts on his bare hands and feet and was unaware of the bloody footprints marking his route. He did not care about ruining the fingers that gripped a haepong stick better than any fourteen-year-old on the planet or the feet that undercut his opponents and swept him over and around pressing gladiators in his singular pursuit of the goal. He knew the doctors would repair his body if he survived this climb, just as his team’s trainers did every time Hadeed was injured to the cusp of death. The true struggle was with the agony – of open wounds tearing wider and becoming infected, of firm and lean muscles throbbing as they were asked to do too much. As he climbed, he bit down harder upon the hilt of the spelling blade between his teeth and made the agony almost bearable.

  Hadeed never looked upward toward the summit, never took his eyes off the next crevice or outcrop where he needed to extend his limbs. He knew that looking too far ahead would be a fatal error. He would think of what awaited him at the summit, at the very distinct possibility that should he not fall from the scarp, death might find him anyway. That another man’s spelling blade might pierce his heart and silence his pain.

  Four months earlier, when he began walking across the Gorsham Desert, Hadeed could not have imagined his journey in search of truth would end this way. The first people he encountered were barely affiliated with clans, and their enclaves were little more than disorganized hovels of clay. Their poverty made Trayem and most other clans seem awash in riches, and Hadeed would have thought their anger toward the Chancellors would be great. He was wrong. In truth, they couldn’t have cared one way or the other.

  He saw emptiness in their eyes and their hearts as they managed the most meager existence in the deep desert, nomads with no political or economic aims other than to survive. Hadeed spoke to them of his anger and the inequities of the caste system created by the Chancellory. He told them how the mandate of ethnic sovereignty was supposed to allow the indigenous population to control their fate and command the resources of their home world. He told them how the Chancellors were raping the planet of its greatest resource and depriving Hiebim of wealth, technology, and comfort. The nomads did not care and suggested Hadeed should not challenge the order of the universe. We have been given our fate, they said. If we were meant for more, we would have taken possession by now.

  Their only courtesy was to show Hadeed the way to the next enclaves. Although he encountered better conditions on the fringes of the desert, Hadeed found similar resistance among clans. He spoke to boys, to elders, to men who worked the mines. None of them was rude but all looked him over as if his pilgrimage was a remarkable waste of a young, promising athlete. He heard the words ‘Chancellors’ and ‘partners’ in the same sentence all too often.

  Only when he began to wonder whether he was the most insane Hiebim in the world did Hadeed find a miracle. He was ten weeks into his journey, at the southern edge of the Kundun Plains, and near the end of his patience. The sun was low, his feet were throbbing, and he was prepared to leave the road and make camp amid the low, green brush. That’s when the orange and lavender rays of the sun shimmered against a yellow mesa at least ten kilometers north, the reflected light providing a strong beacon. Hadeed turned toward the mesa, shaded his eyes and for an instant was sure he saw manmade structures. An enclave. This would be the final stop on his journey, no matter the result. If they were like all the others, he would simply ask for directions to the nearest uplift and pay what was left of his haebims for a Scram back home.

  As he pressed onward, Hadeed lost track of how far he had walked this summer day and how little water he bothered to drink. When darkness fell, he focused on the lights of the enclave and did not pay attention to how much like rubber his legs had become. He ignored the road and cut across the plains in what he perceived to be a shorter route. As he passed the vegetable fields and neared a checkpoint, Hadeed was distracted by the sound of young boys and the familiar cheers of a haepong crowd. He turned toward the illuminated pack and set aside the shame of h
is failure for a place he felt at peace.

  The players were newbs, barely half his age, and some played as if they had just been handed a stick for the first time. They could neither pass effectively nor tackle, but they entertained Hadeed as he watched from the perimeter of the lighted pack. He vaguely remembered what life was like when he was their age, before the raid on the ministry. Hadeed wished he could be transported back to those times and locked forever in a moment of blissful innocence. As if in answer to his prayer, Hadeed’s head began to swim, and the pack became a blur. His feet crumbled and midnight fell.

  When we awoke, his lips were wet and he could taste cold water. He was propped up against a wall; sounds of the haepong pack reverberated not far away. Hadeed rubbed his eyes and shook off the lightheadedness then looked around. Several feet away, a tall woman in a long, azure gown handed a water cask to a boy in haepong uniform then shooed him away. She turned toward Hadeed and smiled. Hadeed hesitated, uncertain whether she was a dream.

  She was taller than any Hiebim woman he had ever seen. She was like a sculpture of perfect form and function, and she captivated him with pearlescent eyes and a bald, alabaster head that seemed to glow as if bathed in moonlight. As he started to push himself on his feet, she laid a gentle hand against his cheek and caressed him, suggesting he rest for a while.

  “Welcome to Polemicus,” she said. “My name is Miriam, and you are Trayem Hadeed.” Before he could ask how she knew his name, Polemicus Miriam added, “I am a huge advocate of the game. I follow all the leagues. You are quite the rising star.” Miriam chuckled and reached into a tiny pocket in her gown, removing a portable CV unit. “And oh, yes. You’ve been on the vidstream since you disappeared from your enclave.”

  The unit revealed a holographic facial profile of Hadeed in a bulletin sent out to various clan leaders more than a month earlier. He was surprised: Clans traditionally kept such matters to themselves, preferring to settle internal disruptions without the possibility of public scorn. Hadeed wasn’t sure whether to be honored Trayem would go to such an extreme to find him.

  “I suppose you’ll contact them?” Hadeed asked.

  “If you prefer,” Miriam said. “But given the state in which we found you, and ample evidence you have been traveling the desert on foot, I would not think home is your destination.”

  “It’s not.”

  He melted as she continued to caress him and pierce his defenses with eyes telling him to shed all the burdens of the day and give in to whatever she had in store. And only for an instant, when he heard a single surprising word, did Hadeed tense.

  “Matriarch,” a boy of about sixteen said as he rounded a corner. “You called?”

  Hadeed mouthed the word, trying to reconcile that title with the gentle spirit who had just brought him back from oblivion.

  “Yes, Ronan,” Miriam answered. “We have an honored guest who has come a long way to visit. Prepare a place for him in my annex. He’ll be staying with me.”

  “Very good, Matriarch,” the boy said, readjusting his shomba. “Any bags?”

  She smiled past Ronan and pointed to Hadeed’s single satchel, lying nearby. When Ronan departed, she turned to Hadeed, whose jaw was agape. Miriam, who he could now tell was much older than his own mother, tapped him on the shoulder and sighed.

  “My apologies, Hadeed. I should have revealed myself at once. In truth, I usually dispense with titles, and I expect you to call me by name. Ronan is the best aide I’ve ever had, and we’ve become … close. But he’s quite the young traditionalist. Still believes everyone has their place and should never presume. I, on the other hand, enjoy the art of presumption. And I presume you have a very interesting story to tell.”

  “Maybe,” he whispered. “I hope you don’t mind having a traitor in your midst.”

  She laughed. “A traitor? Now I’m very interested, Hadeed.” She kissed him on the cheek, led him to her annex and told him to get a full night’s sleep. “In the morning, you can tell me all your ugly deeds over breakfast.”

  When Hadeed fell into his bed, he had only one thought before drifting to sleep: This is where I’m supposed to be.

  Those thoughts continued more than two months later as Hadeed climbed the mesa, his body on the verge of surrender but his mind washed of all burdens and focused on the vision of what his life would become after completing the Passage of Summit. He heard her gentle whispers of encouragement, could feel her lips against his own, could smell the sweet, milky essence of her scent. They carried him upward, even as perspiration not caught by his shomba fell over his eyes and temporarily blinded him. They refocused him whenever his foot slipped or a rock gave way beneath his grip.

  “If you make even one mistake,” she had warned him, “you’ll die.”

  “I know,” he said, no hesitation. “But you won’t let me.”

  “No,” she said. “I rather think I won’t.”

  Hadeed had no sense of how long he had been climbing, only that the searing pain of the high sun on his back had long since numbed, and the gusty winds accompanying his start had fortuitously died away. Nature accommodated him, but even it had no control over what fate awaited the boy when he reached the summit.

  The morning after he had arrived in the Polemicus enclave, Hadeed could not finish breakfast before unleashing his story upon her. He told Miriam every detail of his torture at the hands of an anonymous Chancellor with blue glasses. He told her about the murder of his gene-father and the objective of his pilgrimage.

  “I know what they really are,” he finished. “Our people can’t go on this way.”

  He waited for the inevitable rejection; but Miriam, robed in white, did not flinch. Rather, she offered the same comforting smile.

  “A man seals his fate unless he follows the passion of his heart in the face of overwhelming opposition,” she said. “He cannot allow the collective will of the herd to force him from a chosen path. And you, Hadeed, have a path.”

  She reached across the small, round breakfast table and grabbed his hand. “I have never believed those who say life is random, devoid of patterns, ruled solely by the flesh,” she said. “If they were correct, I would not have tripped over you last night as I left the pack. Hadeed, I offer you permanent sanctuary within Polemicus. You came here for a purpose only we can provide.”

  Hadeed found himself lost in her eyes again, but he managed to sort through his delirium and reconnect to reality. He could not believe the softness of her grip, the generosity of her tone. This was nothing like the last time … with Matriarch Alessa.

  “You believe me? You believe everything?”

  “Yes, Hadeed. You see what some of us have known for generations. Follow me.”

  She escorted him into her primary work chambers, which were brighter, more open and airy than the dank, claustrophobic quarters of the Trayem Matriarch. In addition to the energetic pink, green and yellow murals depicting the exodus from Earth, natural light filtered into the chamber from wide oval windows and ceiling portals. The furniture, though sparse, color-coordinated with the murals, the paint carrying a distinctive sheen. The chamber smelled of an herb he remembered from a street bazaar, sweetly aggressive. The aroma came from thin, dried flowers on her desk next to her CV unit.

  “Lavender,” she said. “Expensive but worth the sacrifice.”

  “I don’t understand, Miriam. How can you just accept what I’ve said when nobody else believes me?”

  “Strange, isn’t it, the way Hiebim respond when you suggest something is wrong with our society? They see the inequity, and yet they seem to have no animosity.”

  “Yes. Exactly. They don’t mind being an underclass. Why?”

  “That, Hadeed, is one mystery I have never been able to solve. Fortunately, there are thousands of Hiebim such as us who see the truth, a great many right here in Polemicus.” Hadeed dropped his jaw. “Oh, yes,” she continued. “Perhaps half our clan – more than a thousand – are on our side. The rest … they know of o
ur discontent and don’t agree with the course we would like to pursue, but they are fiercely loyal to the clan and they will join when the time comes.”

  “Join what?”

  “What else? Revolution.”

  “Against the Chancellors? The Collectorate? You’re planning to …”

  She tapped a finger to his lips and silenced him. “Patience, Hadeed. Have a seat here and observe.” She pointed to the mural. “You’ve seen this tale played out in many rooms of your enclave, no doubt?”

  “Yes. The tribal exodus from Earth, the journey through the Fulcrum, early colonization.”

  “Indeed. What is not portrayed here, or widely discussed through the selective teaching of elders, is the ancestry of those who founded Hiebimini. The story is rather complicated, and some of the details are inconvenient to those who favor a traditionalist dogma. You know, of course, that all the tribes who came to Hiebimini were of Arabis foundations. It was the common genetic bond the Chancellory used in granting us this home world. However, our bloodlines are not as pure Arabis as elders would have you believe.

  “My ancestors were of a sub-culture called Egyptian. Shortly after the Chancellors and the Tunisian Alliance destroyed the Heretics, my Egyptian mothers and fathers began to interbreed with Europeans. Legend has it a few Chancellors even made their way into the genetic pool. My ancestors were the ones who successfully lobbied for this home world, and it was those Euro-Egyptians who arrived in the first colony ship. Most of those who followed were pure Arabis, but I’m afraid the damage had been done.

  “You see, my ancestors had very close contacts within the Chancellor Sanctums, and they were more than willing to make a number of compromises during the difficult early stages of colonization. They set up the system of equivocation between Chancellors and indigenous colonists. All those who arrived after the initial settlements were forced to accept the compromise. And then, of course, once the Collectorate saw the value of brontinium, and the Carriers arrived with battalions of peacekeepers, the compromise was perverted. And here we are, one thousand years later, powerless on the world we are supposed to own. Most of us accepted our fates centuries ago, but a few believe it is possible to change this dynamic and bring this world back to the vision for which it was originally intended.”