“It is said the Iniri’ki Hegirith will free us when he reclaims im shalal,” Oromgol interjected.
“Yoren-dal couldn’t use shalal hiliz to reach the Consciousness either,” Aiben continued without commenting on what Oromgol had said. “When he arrived at the rendezvous point on Besti, Jerekiel wasn’t there as had been planned. He waited on Besti for a long time, and when Nograth didn’t ever return, he gathered the mind-linkers the Tulani’aak had created with their nanomechs and formed the beginnings of the Cybermancer Guild. Because he didn’t know what happened to Jerekiel, he sent out expeditions to search for her. The Guild carried out those expeditions for centuries until im shalal was finally found here on Mora Bentia.”
“Wait, if this device is meant to destroy Haman mind-linkers, how does that help us exactly?” Ballis’s mind was already searching out the strategic angles. “Unless you’re telling me Magron Orcris is a member of some long-dead race that doesn’t need nanomechs like other cybermancers?”
“That’s what I’m saying, Ballis. Magron is in fact Nograth. He’s returned to finish what he started.”
Ballis took a deep breath and prepared for the debate. “Even if you could prove to me that some thousand-year old Haman dictator has been brought back from the dead, you said only Tulan could work the weapon to defeat him. How are you going to make that work then? You’re not going to tell me that Tulan has come back as well, are you?”
“That’s the part I haven’t told you or Lev about yet. The part I’m going to tell you now.” Aiben turned his arm over and began to trace the burgundy design on it with his finger. “Tulan figured out he wasn’t going to survive the battle so he made sure his genetic imprint would.”
“Oand-ib had possession of Tulan’s gene mappings along with the instructions on how to make use of them,” Lev-9 spoke for the first time since Aiben had returned. “With what the Haman called the hazarat shal, he was planning to bring Tulan back to life.”
“How did you know that, Lev?” Aiben’s eyes were wide with surprise.
“I did know Oand-ib for some time.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”
“I couldn’t take the risk of steering you from your course. I’ve found that overt anxiety in humans often clouds their judgment.”
“One of you better explain to me real soon what we’re talking about here,” Ballis growled, his patience starting to wane.
“Yoren-dal survived through the centuries by using the hazarat shal.” Aiben interlocked his fingers and pressed them so hard together they were turning white. “You could say he made copies of himself until he became Oand-ib.”
“You mean he cloned himself?” Ballis asked.
“More than that,” Aiben said. “The hazarat shal isn’t just cloning, but imprinting of memories and knowledge as well.”
“So once you have your weapon you’re going to recreate Tulan somehow like Oand-ib did with himself?”
“No, Ballis, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It has already been done. I am Tulan.”
CHAPTER 21
“There’s more to my mission than just finding im shalal for the Cybermancer Guild. I’m also the one who has to kill Magron with it.”
Aiben steadied himself for Ballis’s reaction. Would he engage him in one of their passionate debates, or would he dovetail into melancholy spawned from that inner pain he hid from the world? Would the zeal for adventure lift his spirits or would they darken them with resentment at having to live through past experiences again? Aiben searched his friend’s eyes, wanting to look through those blue windows and read the man’s soul. Fervor boiled behind them sure enough, but to Aiben’s surprise, Ballis remained quiet, pensive, reigning himself in.
“Which clan has im shalal at the moment?” Lev-9 spoke instead. A cluster of sensors illuminated his head, but the low light in the cavern dulled the finer details of his black metal skin. “We need to acquire it so Aiben can complete his mission.”
You mean so Tulan can complete his mission, Aiben said to himself. That thought sent blood rushing to his head with a hot flash and it brought on the sudden feeling of the world collapsing in on him. An unexpected inner strength rose to calm him before his nanomechs could regulate his somatic responses on their own. You can’t act like Aiben right now. You have to use Tulan’s strength. However, a recollection from the morning of the attack on Besti rose in his mind to taunt him: Can you ever really accept who you are?
Aiben had been struggling with that question ever since his training at the Citadel began. It had been especially difficult after Nairom’s departure. He never had to answer it before, but now the circumstances would force a decision upon him. Could he accept who he was? Could he accomplish what the Hegirith’hi Shez expected of him and not kill himself in the process? Aiben looked at the pattern tattooed on his arm. He expected there to be a sharp pain at his thoughts, but none came.
Which one am I? Aiben or Tulan? Halath or Hegirith?
He still felt like Aiben, but without a doubt, Tulan was there inside him. It was like having to build a new life after getting amnesia, and then one day, suddenly remembering everything he had forgotten, being left to deal with the memories of a dual life. The role he had played as the Hegirith of the Tulani’aak in that great Haman meshing of minds called the Consciousness was still indelible in his memory. He could remember Yoren-dal and the original Jerekiel as if they had left him just the day before. He missed Jerekiel so much.
At the same time, thoughts surfaced from his life as a halath. There was the memory of being scared and unprepared, not wanting to leave Oand-ib’s side to face the world. There were happy childhood memories with Nairom, learning to become cybermancers together, but desiring to be mechanics. There were also the memories of falling in love with Achanei. They were all just as vivid as any other recollection from Tulan’s past.
Blood pounded once more in Aiben’s ears at yet another set of juxtaposing, yet more perplexing feelings. The acute pain of plotting his own brother’s murder harrowed him up, while at the same time, he felt the need to avenge his anab’s death and to make Nograth pay for destroying his world and tearing him away from the woman he had fallen in love with. He wasn’t sure how he was going answer the question of who he was until he could reconcile these two identities.
Aiben looked at Ballis, the only mentor left to him now. The man’s dark brows had knitted into a tight frown of deep thought, but his cobalt eyes still danced with fire beneath them. Until the Shelezar had helped him don the shroud of Tulan’s memories, it hadn’t really occurred to Aiben what he had gotten himself into.
He could understand Ballis hadn’t been prepared to hear about Tulan. The soldier in him appeared to be contemplating whether he wanted to fight someone else’s war, one from which, in all likelihood, he wouldn’t return. They both had that fear in common at least.
“I’m afraid it’s not as easy as just asking for im shalal,” Jerekiel was saying. She was on her knees, sitting back on her heels, her arms wrapped around herself. It made her look vulnerable in a strange way, even though Aiben knew the opposite to be true. Jerekiel was like Achanei in that way, deceiving in appearances. That’s what he had liked about Achanei, and he found himself attracted to the hidden strength of this woman in the same way. “Almost fifty years ago, one of the ilud’hi, the Golani’aak, took possession of im shalal. There was some dispute over their right to guard it. A conflict between the ilud’hi broke out. The struggle was long and bitter. In the end, their leaders, fearing for their lives, fled with im shalal in secret. For decades, we didn’t hear anything from them, except for the occasional rumor of their whereabouts, but we were never able to locate them in the vastness of Rahan. It wasn’t until the Zenzani occupied our world that they resurfaced from their self-imposed exile as supporters of the great Zenzani Protectorate.”
It saddened Aiben to hear that their own smaller conflicts had torn the descendants of the original Jerekiel and
her people even further asunder. All of this because of the horror he had created to kill his own brother. Aiben wondered if it wouldn’t have been better if these people had destroyed im shalal during their exile, even if it meant robbing him of his mission. As always, though, the thought of Nograth retaining his evil dominion tipped the scales of his conscience.
“Then this ilud still has the weapon?” Ballis asked, slicing through Aiben’s bleak thoughts.
“Yes,” Jerekiel whispered.
No one else in the room would notice it in the faint light, but Aiben’s enhanced vision caught Jerekiel’s eyes watering at the edges. She willed back the tears, opening her eyes just wide enough to keep them from slipping out. Obviously, im shalal had become an icon of freedom among her people. It actually made Aiben angry that they would take something he found so repulsive, something he had created and wished he hadn’t, and turn it into such a symbol. He didn’t let his discontent bleed out just yet, though.
“Do you know where im shalal is exactly?” Ballis rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. The excitement was back in the old soldier’s voice. He had made up his mind. Aiben couldn’t help but smile, even though he knew it meant involving people he cared about in a cause that could bring about more than just his own death. There was a familiar symmetry between the past and present, which Aiben feared he couldn’t avoid.
“We have our spies, and they have their ideas,” Oromgol answered Ballis. “But the Golani’aak have the advantage of Zenzani protection. They have access to their military bases and technology.”
“Then we will have to take away their advantage,” Aiben said.
Tulan had decided a thousand years ago to stop Nograth from spreading the rot that was the disease of tyranny. Ironically, as Tulan’s alter ego, Aiben had made the same decision about stopping Nograth’s doppelganger, Magron Orcris. Although he had suspected from that first moment engrossed in shalal hiliz with Oand-ib what he had to do, Aiben’s knees still felt a little weak at the thought of it all. It had just become much more personal now.
How he longed for the comfort of the Consciousness! He wanted to plunge his mind into the torrent of his people’s thoughts, struggle against their currents, and help them bend their course in support of righteous causes like he had done for centuries. It was in that moment of longing that Aiben realized what he must do!
He reached out to Jerekiel with his mind. At first, he found what felt like an overgrown patch of weeds, for the most part impenetrable, yet riddled with small holes that let bits of light from the other side peek through. He stretched out, plucking the weeds with his thoughts, widening the gaps until he could slip all the way through. Their thoughts collided, entwined, melded, and went beyond mere telepathy to form a true linking of minds.
He was enthralled at the feeling of Jerekiel’s conscious luminescence welcoming him. Together, they reached out to Oromgol. They drew him into shalal hiliz with them, and then did the same over and over again until every man and woman in the Neilemi’aak’s hidden cavern felt Aiben and communed with him. They would be his people once again.
CHAPTER 22
For the next fifteen revolutions of Mora Bentia, the Neilemi’aak moved from one hidden locale to the next. They never stayed for more than one day in the same spot and covered their tracks as best they could upon departure.
Jerekiel’s spies had brought word shortly after Aiben’s revelation that Mora Bentia’s military governor, at the urging of an unknown envoy from the Protectorate, sought Aiben’s capture, and if necessary, the death of his companions. Agents had also unearthed a scheme, whereby one of the governor’s men had hired the Golani’aak to lead them to the renegades the Neilemi’aak were harboring. Jerekiel had ordered their retreat that same day.
Aiben wondered at the identity of the Protectorate’s emissary. Who would want him specifically, a mere halath that had fled Besti? He consulted with Ballis and Lev-9 and they agreed that their flight from Besti alone was enough to put them on the Protectorate’s wanted list. The very fact that he was an escaped cybermancer just made him the more likely target. Nevertheless, this line of reasoning hadn’t satisfied him. He could feel there was much more to it than that. Someone knew why he had come to Mora Bentia.
No one else knew he was Tulan, except his immediate companions, and he hadn’t detected any disloyal actions within the thoughts of the Neilemi’aak. One other might know. Oand-ib hadn’t told him whether Nairom had known the full truth, but he didn’t want to believe Nairom would betray him any more than Ballis or Lev-9 would.
Aiben had the opportunity during their exodus to learn what had happened to Tulan’s people since the Protectorate’s occupation of Rahan. All of the ilud’hi, with the exception of the Golani’aak, were in open rebellion against the Zenzani.
Most of their tactics consisted of hit and run raids, guerilla warfare, and sabotage. In fact, the band of Neilemi’aak, with which fate had seen fit to deposit them, didn’t represent the entire ilud. They were the soldiers who fought to purge Rahan of her trespassers, while their husbands, wives, children, and parents remained secreted away in the deep mountains more than a hundred miles south of the garrison city of Abri Mor.
This, more than anything, convinced him they were a people whose way of life no longer had room for the peace he had once preached to them. As Aiben, he could understand these people’s desire to shatter the links of bondage and throw off the chains of Protectorate dominion. As Tulan, he was grieved to see how far his people had fallen from their utopian ideals. They had once devoted their minds to peaceful and scientific advancements instead. War had been the tool of the Nograthi’aak, not the Tulani’aak.
War as a way of life was reinforced daily as they slipped through the vast woodlands that hugged the eastern outskirts of Abri Mor, keeping one step ahead of the governor’s man and his hired Golani’aak mercenaries. The Neilemi’aak had learned how to survive in the wilderness, on the run, strategizing ways out of dangerous circumstances, backed by the power of their energy weapons and the fleetness of their feet.
Still, in all of their ability, without the Consciousness, they had long forgotten how to use the strength of shalal hiliz. They relied more on their physical capacities and less on the potential power of their mental faculties. Instead of having developed their minds into a smaller Consciousness, the ancestors of the five ilud’hi had splintered and weakened to the point where shalal hiliz had become nothing more than a mere means of telepathic communication among them.
Aiben would have a long and difficult road ahead of him if he were to reunite the ilud’hi and reestablish the true nature of shalal hiliz among them. It would take generations to reach the level of the Consciousness once again.
The loss of the Consciousness had left them in a real bind. He needed Jerekiel’s people to increase their advantage quickly over the Golani’aak and their Zenzani allies. The new, immature link of all their minds together was not strong enough yet without the other ilud’hi to ensure victory alone.
After a mighty struggle with his conscience, Aiben decided on a course of action that he believed would tip the scales. He would give the Neilemi’aak the very thing Oand-ib had given him so many years ago to help make up for a portion of what was lost when the Consciousness was destroyed. He would give them the nanomechs.
Even though their abilities paled in comparison to the wonders of the Consciousness, the molecular robots would be an unarguable advantage over their enemies. They would enhance the senses, strength, and endurance of the ilud, and ultimately allow them to interface with the technology of their conquerors and use it to their advantage.
It was hard at first to think that he was so willing to give the Neilemi’aak the means to wage war against their own kind. Everything he had struggled to avoid as Tulan a thousand years ago, he was embracing as Aiben now. Tulan would never have been able to compel himself to give these people the ability to defend themselves with the nanomechs.
He was thank
ful for that part of him that was still Aiben, because that part understood more than peaceful idealism. Aiben, not Tulan, would save the Tulani’aak in the end. Aiben, not Tulan, would free the galaxy from Nograth’s lust for power.
The day after his decision, Aiben expelled a few hundred thousand nanoassemblers from his body into a pool of cold, clear water that had collected in a depression of mossy, silicate-rich rock near their camp. This particular flavor of nanomech initiated exponential assembly, a form of self-replication.
Aiben communicated with the hive of molecular robots through synaptic associations much like shalal hiliz, but instead of conversing with a living mind, a pure stream of electrical interfaces allowed him to program them with his thoughts. Ejecting nanoassemblers was a feat that only a Hegirith would know how to perform, and then only one of the Hegirith’hi Shez, a Guild Master, one of the most experienced Hegirith’hi that governed the affairs of the Cybermancer Guild. As a mere halath, Aiben shouldn’t have had the experience to accomplish this, but as Tulan, the memories on how to command the nanomechs resided in him for the taking.
Aiben instructed the nanoassemblers to push their way up through the pores dotting his palm, which on their scale, would have looked like the endless plane of a cratered moon. When they had surfaced, Aiben swished his hand in the chilly water to free the flock of swimming nanomechs, which began to scrub the aged stone hallow for construction material. The assemblers sprouted molecular-scale appendages, some tipped with chemical dissolving and bonding sites, others tipped with grippers.
The work of disassembling the rock and organic matter into individual atoms began. The raw materials were then snapped together to create perfect images of each assembler. The new nanomechs were networked together with their progenitors, repeating the cycle for several hours, until according to exponential laws, there were enough of them to start with. A sip of the infested water was all it took to set millions of new nanoassemblers to work in the bodies of the Neilemi’aak.