The Father Unbound

by Frank Kennedy

  Two women who carried themselves with the haughty stature of Matriarchs approached on either side of a tall, thin and somewhat frail male elder. At first, Hadeed did not recognize any of the three. Then he studied the elder’s eyes and saw a familiarity, something that rattled him.

  “Trayem Hadeed,” the elder said in a hollow, fragile voice, a voice amp installed over his mouth. “You stand before your people not as the hero and warrior you could have become, but as a scourge. Your fanatical dreams, your endless desire for vengeance and arbitrary slaughter, nearly destroyed us all.”

  Hadeed’s knees buckled. He remembered the last time he saw this man, and the pain he felt as he ran away at fourteen, determined to prove everyone wrong about the Chancellors.

  “I wish …” The elder coughed. “I wish I could have done better by you. I wish we all could have.” Trayem Tariq, whose lectures introduced little Hadeed to Hiebim tradition and who later took a vow of silence when in Hadeed’s presence, waved off the Matriarch who offered her hand of support. “We will never truly understand why you chose to scorch our world with your hatred. We will not understand why two million Hiebim have gone to dust because of your venom. No, Hadeed. We will not waste the future by wallowing in the past. Rather, we will forget you. We will take upon ourselves the simple task of erasing you from our minds and our hearts. Unlike you, we will do so as a compassionate and evolved people.

  “Today is the eighth day of our Global Reconciliation. We have laid down our arms and joined hands across clans to be brothers and sisters of Hiebimini. Our Chancellor friends have committed to rebuilding the infrastructure you devastated with your war. In the coming years, we will attain new heights. We will work with those very same Chancellors you claimed to be evil in fulfilling the promise of economic and political prosperity for all Hiebim.”

  Tariq paused and glanced to the gallery. “Your death will bring closure to the greatest darkness we have ever known. We will not kill you out of vengeance, for we have risen above you. We will kill you in order to cleanse you from our nightmares. It is my hope that as you prepare to go to dust, you will look into the darkness of your heart and search for redemption. Perhaps you will find the measure of innocence you once had.”

  Tariq closed his eyes for an instant and grimaced in obvious pain.

  “I will be dead soon,” Tariq said. “In truth, I died long ago. I truly believed you would grow into an honorable man.” He glanced at the gallery once more. “There are only nine of us, now. Trayem. Our clan. Nine, Hadeed. Your murderers tried to protect us on the day you unleashed terror across the world, but we died anyway. Some fighting for you, but most slaughtered because of our name. Nine. When we are gone, who will remember us?”

  Tariq turned his back and left the hall with help from the Matriarchs. No one said a word.

  Hadeed, who entered the Hall of Sun buoyed by truth and determined to face his people with dignity, reeled from Tariq’s words. He did not drop his shoulders or cower before the two thousand Hiebim in the gallery, but he struggled to recover his fortitude even as a new wave of murmurs and gasps raced through the hall. He heard a single word echoed on their many voices, a word he learned to revile when he was a seven-year-old boy, and he knew what was happening.

  An eight-foot-tall Chancellor with golden hair and orange/brown robes joined Hadeed at the center, where Tariq stood earlier. Hadeed looked to the twelve portals of sunlight and allowed their warmth to keep him strong. Ilya Hollander introduced himself as Ignatius Horne to the gallery and to the millions of Hiebim watching this tribunal on the stream.

  “I am here today as the voice of no one and everyone,” Ilya said, his voice booming. “I have no allegiance to any caste, to any political or military agenda. I was born to a Chancellor of great influence, but that is of no consequence. This man,” he pointed to Hadeed, “was born to a humble clan in a small town on the border of a desert, and yet he changed the course of history, altered the face of his world. Birth is of no consequence.

  “I am here today not to justify the life of this man. Indeed, he is a murderer on a massive scale. His reckoning is unavoidable. No, I am here for the sake of truth, the most complicated of all concepts. I will show you how we have come to this place, and the long, dark road we must travel. Only there can we find redemption as human beings and renew our civilization.”

  * * *

  As Trayem Tariq finished his speech and left the Hall of Sun, Gen. Aldo Cabrise found the spectacle disturbing, especially since so many officers in the Hephaestus C-in-C had accessed a CVid of the proceedings, picked up through the fleet stream. He had a good mind to ban the transmission. However, Maj. Olivia Hand reported with a CVid of greater interest.

  “Admiral, we cross-referenced Ephraim Hollander’s gene stamp with customs’ inventory,” she said. “We found something rather amazing. A man boarded the Maria Doria recently with the genetic markers of Hollander’s direct descendant.”

  Cabrise tensed. “Direct? I thought Hollander’s only son was listed KIC almost nine years ago. How could this be?”

  “Yes. Ilya. KIC. This man calls himself Ignatius Horne. Full colonial profile. No irregularities, although it’s his first time in our system. I ran other checks. Officially, Hollander had no other children. I referenced the UG database. This man is a 99.8 percent genetic match to Ilya Hollander, and he is precisely the same age Ilya would have been. Now, this would imply he is a twin, but how could Hollander have kept him off the register? Or why?”

  “Bastard child or not, he’s here, he’s connected to Hollander, and I am not amused.”

  “It gets better, sir. He arrived in the company of an Asiatic, Cho Suu-Kwan. Indo Prime. The cruiser Renaldo. Passed through customs four hours after the armistice was declared. Three days ago, they took an uplift to Messalina. She returned to the Doria last night. Departed for Indo Prime six hours ago.” The Major hesitated, an obvious clog in her throat.

  “Out with it, Major,” the Admiral insisted.

  “Sir, we know why he stayed behind. Shortly before this tribunal began,” she pointed to the streaming CVid at his station, “we received their formal agenda.” She double-tapped her CVid and revealed the document. She pointed to a now-familiar name. “He’s there, sir. He is Trayem Hadeed’s public voice.” They turned to the streaming CVid and saw Ignatius Horne taking center stage. Cabrise felt a hole form in his gut.

  “What? A Chancellor defending that indigo monster?”

  “Sir, I believe he is actually Ilya Hollander. I realize the genetic match is not one hundred percent, a factor I can’t explain; but we have compared his customs image against his peacekeeper facial matrix, accounted for age, and determined he is certainly the same man.”

  Cabrise struggled to listen while scrambling his brain around another unsettling puzzle.

  “I knew there was something wrong, even then. When that politician conveniently arrived hours after the attacks, he said he was following leads about his son. I did not trust him, Major. I did not trust him. Why? Why, Major? What are they trying to accomplish?”

  “Unknown, sir. But at least we know where he is. He can’t slip away from us.”

  Cabrise twiddled his fingers against the arm of his chair. “No, Major. No escape. Contact Col. Haggis. He is stationed along the Bengalese, working cleanup. Tell him to take a squadron into the city and secure the Hall of Sun. I want that bastard detained at once.”

  “Yes, sir. Although, we may encounter resistance if we try to enter the hall during the tribunal. We agreed to allow the Hiebim to pursue all war prosecutions without Chancellor intervention. We will …”

  “Seems as if Mr. Horne, or Mr. Hollander, has changed that equation. Do it. And raise the fleet’s alert status to level two. Something is wrong, Major. Something is very wrong.”

  * * *

  Ilya knew he had to work quickly to win over the audience, to take them where they needed to go, so he spoke to them from deep inside his spirit. He could feel his energy and
charisma expand as the influence of The Father took over.

  “There are those who say truth is a liberator,” he told them. “They say truth offers a freedom from guilt, regret, complacency, sadness. Unfortunately, those people do not understand the nature of truth or its consequences. They cannot tell the difference between perception and reality. They do not understand that at the core of the human heart is a struggle to vanquish truth and its unrelenting pain. Perception is easier, for in this we are not required to face ourselves. If we do not look behind the veil, we will be content. Or so we tell ourselves.

  “Trayem Hadeed, like you, was raised to believe in this concept, to accept the hierarchy of humankind as a natural state. Those who surrounded Hadeed, including the elder who spoke so eloquently, loved their boy and wished only for his best. They surrounded him with the illusion of truth precisely as their own ancestors did. This was their gift, and they believed with whole heart in their generosity. He would have been content, and the illusion would not have been broken. Yet this was not to be Hadeed’s fate.”

  The Father spoke from within, pushing Ilya onward. Do not relent, even for a second, he whispered. They will hear me as they hear you. Ilya thanked The Father and continued.

  “The boy had the misfortune of seeing behind the veil before he was old enough to be blinded for life,” he said, pointing to Hadeed. “He realized truth was a sleight of hand, a parlor trick orchestrated by humans with greater intellect, military might, and a firm commitment to their own genetic supremacy. He saw the truth of his masters and how they had subjugated his people. He was a boy, and he understood what no one else saw. His heart embraced the new reality, and in this way, Hadeed entered a prison. For this is the nature of truth. All who discover it are trapped by it. They can no longer comfort themselves in the loving embrace of perception. Instead, they must look inward and speak to this truth, for only in this way might they find escape from their prison. Hadeed looked inward, and he found rage, an easy tool of the young and unwise. He believed this rage would help him to escape. Yet he did not anticipate the ferocious opposition of his jailers.

  “I speak of you.” Ilya twisted about until he pointed to everyone. “Each man and woman who sits in judgment today stood guard against the likes of him, against the force of truth itself, long before the war that shattered this world. As did your ancestors. You turned away from him because you could not face the consequences of the alternative. Today, you share hope of a brighter future working alongside your ‘partners.’ Yet, it is because of those ‘partners’ that we are here today. Not because they ended the war, but because they made war possible.

  “Listen. Listen. Hear me. Hear him. Genysen. Know this word. Know the truth of it, for this truth will bring shame and dishonor and revulsion and rage. Today, each of you will join Hadeed in his prison. Even he could not have known the secret, but now he understands why you stood guard against him during his journey. And he forgives you.”

  Ilya heard his second voice, like a whisper echoing across the hall and beyond, a voice as loud as his own and yet not heard by human ears at all. This second voice, deeper and older, searched for their hearts and their minds. And it repeated one word over and over until they could see the picture at last. Genysen. Genysen. Genysen.

  * * *

  Ephraim Hollander sat quietly on the flight deck, but his mind was elsewhere when the Leggett’s computer made an important announcement.

  “Target coordinates reached. Primary engine array disengaged. Braking thrusters engaged. Awaiting further instructions.”

  Ephraim heard the words but struggled to process them. The events of the past several hours had taken him to a place he once thought he could never return. He buried the place so deep in his heart, it had threatened to emerge only on the day he introduced Ilya to the blue glasses. Even then, however, Ephraim took measures to safeguard against the emotional swell.

  The image, whenever he allowed it to play back, had always tortured him. Ephraim was fourteen, a young man of wealth and privilege resigned to service in the UG but far more interested in the everlasting decadence awaiting someone of his stature. His father, Wilfred Hollander, gave Ephraim the blue glasses and told him to be alone inside a “special link” with his ancestors. The experience was overwhelming, the forecast of a bleak future devastating. Ephraim raged then cried himself to sleep on the balcony of their home. He did not understand what happened next, or how he could have done it. Yet the instant his father tapped him on the shoulder, Ephraim launched his body, full of adrenalin and the rage of a wild animal.

  He remembered the fists, his father begging for forgiveness, and then Wilfred Hollander stumbling backward over the balcony’s edge. Again and again, the terror in his father’s eyes as he lost his grip. Again and again. Ephraim did not even realize what he had done until hours after police determined the fall to be a suicide. They asked him many questions, and he answered truthfully: His father had been nervous, secretive, and aloof in the previous days. Then they left him to grieve, and he remembered.

  “Why are you doing this?” Ephram asked Frederic Ericsson hours earlier when Frederic directed him to a door at the end of the antechamber to the velvet hall. “He has avoided me all these years. Remained distant from the link.”

  “He has tried to face you many times, my friend,” Frederic said, puffing his cigar. “He forgave you long ago, but you were never the one who needed to be forgiven.”

  “I don’t need this now,” Ephraim said, even as he grabbed the door handle. “There’s far too much at stake. Yes?”

  “Those matters will resolve themselves. But this, you’ll not have another chance. Remember what I told you about the daughter I lost too soon? Remember how Henrik walked away from me without warning? Ephraim, you’ve been my closest companion for most of your life. You have isolated yourself from everyone. At least have this small gift to take with you.”

  Ephraim turned the handle and looked back. “I think I will miss you, Frederic.”

  “It has been fun, my friend.”

  Ephraim pushed open the door. “Go back to the orgy,” he told Frederic. “Get some while you still can. Yes?”

  Frederic tipped his bottle toward Ephraim and departed as Ephraim entered another room and closed the door behind him.

  He walked into darkness. Suddenly, twelve lights emitting from round portals flashed on, their beams hitting the central point where Ephraim stood. He heard footsteps and turned. A fit and dynamic Wilfred Hollander, looking as svelte as he did when he died at age thirty-seven, held his hands behind his back and swallowed hard.

  “I must explain,” Wilfred said. “Then I have a message for you. Yes?”

  Ephraim came back to his senses in the Leggett flight deck. He slowed his breathing and settled his nerves. He studied the CV instrument board and tapped in commands for the mass driver. He studied the remote visual of the weapon and almost thought it too magnificent a creation to let go in such a manner. Yet, he had no choice. The Jewels told him as much.

  “Load Eternal,” he said of the weapon. “Spool up mass driver and prepare to engage.”

  * * *

  Ilya could tell. They were riveted. They could hear both voices. The Father was getting through to them. Their focus was precisely where it needed to be. He continued his message.

  “For nine hundred years, every ethnic on every colony world has been injected with Genysen, a worthwhile drug to keep you healthy and robust against the natural forces of these worlds. But those who created Genysen wanted more. They wanted to know that you would always be theirs. You would never challenge the hierarchy, never dare to hope for more or better, and always bow before your ‘partners.’ They introduced a genetic manipulator into the drug, and you obliged. You accepted them as your unspoken masters. You accepted their illusion.

  “You have always known the hierarchy to be inherently unfair and against the natural state of humanity, but you allowed your hearts to cleanse you of this painful truth. Some of y
ou defied the influence of the Genysen, peeked behind the veil, and discovered the magic trick. Then you looked away and pretended all was well. You became loyal partners to the dominance of the Chancellor caste. For this, you are as much to blame for the horrors of the past nine years as Trayem Hadeed or those who look down from their perches in the sky, as ancient gods were thought to rule over Arabis tribes three thousand years ago.

  “As I have said, I was born into a family of considerable influence. Years ago, I used my access to the corridors of power to find proof of this great deception. I betrayed my father, my ancestral bloodline, my destiny in order to end the hierarchy. Yet I could not escape the pain of my own prison, just like Hadeed, and I wandered for years. However, those who embrace truth eventually come to understand its remarkable capacity to unveil solutions. Today is the first day of the solution. As I have been speaking to you, medical proof of the Genysen conspiracy is being transmitted on a sub-frequency across the stream, entering into every active CV across Hiebimini and on every Ark Carrier. Within one standard day, this proof will be transmitted by my allies on sixteen other colonies. Within days, it will span the breadth of the Collectorate.

  “The great deception is at an end.”

  * * *

  Admiral Cabrise was outraged. He connected directly with Col. Haggis’s link and insisted on knowing how close the peacekeeper squadron was to the Hall of Sun. When told ETA was three minutes, he insisted they run faster. Their battle Scram could not land close to the hall, and the city streets were more chaotic than usual, he was told.