“Put the girl in the transport for Ariyalsynai, and take the mother into Firien City,” Bilka ordered, his eyes flashing, intoxicated with power.
Alessia dug at the ground with her heels, but to no avail. The strong arms holding her fast slowly dragged her away. She tried to struggle, to scratch the guards, wild with fury, but her captors only tightened their grip until she cried out in pain.
“Give up, girl,” Bilka said, gloating over her, drinking in the sight of his struggling captive. “You’re not strong enough to stop us.”
“Never,” Alessia said, her eyes narrowing on Bilka in defiance. “I will fight you.”
“You know you cannot win.”
“Yes.”
He smiled at her. “I could break you, child.” He warned, eyeing her as though it would give him pleasure to do it. “But I’m afraid that would be overstepping my authority.”
“Only a weak man attacks those whom he knows for a certainty he will defeat.” Nerena said quietly, speaking as though lost in a dream, her eyes a vacant stare. “My daughter is stronger than you, because she is not afraid of you.”
Bilka whirled on her in fury.
“But you should be, Nerena Zadúmchov,” he said, with dark intent.
“Mother!” Alessia screamed, her eyes never leaving her mother as she was forced out of the room. “Mother!”
Nerena never answered.
* * * * *
Alessia bent her head to the eyepiece when the door to the laboratory opened. She expected Hinev to return from his private laboratory to help her with her experiment, since he had been gone a few hours longer than usual; she hadn’t seen much of the famous scientist since she became his assistant several tendays ago, and most of the time she did see him, he just gave her more mathematical equations to derive or memorize and another mindless experiment to do, like a score of others she had conducted back in training in Firien City.
“I’m almost done, Hinev,” she called, looking up. But the intruder wasn't Hinev.
A mechanized humanoid, dressed in a long vermilion robe, entered the room with inhuman speed and silence, surprising her. They were powerful beings, the mechanized units that were a form of super android, and they could crush a human to death with one blow.
Alessia shrank back in her seat, regarding the dark, metallic super-android with suspicion. She had never seen the creature before. However, she recognized an Elder's robes when she saw one. And she had seen other Elders at an interview she had been compelled to attend several tendays before, which had taken place on the morning after she was brought to Ariyalsynai.
The creature’s machine-face imitated her surprise as much as a machine could. This machine, though, had a man’s soul and former memories programmed into its computerized “brain”. Why was it surprised to see her? she couldn’t help but wonder.
"I must speak with Hinev, and see what he is doing here," the mechanized unit spoke in a steady, resonant artificial voice. The tone implied a question as to where the scientist might be found, but Alessia hesitated to answer.
She was too surprised to answer.
The unexpected intrusion of the scientist himself reprieved her.
"Elder Ornenkai, forgive me for not receiving you, but I received word through my intra-cranial communicator that you were not to arrive until tomorrow." The machine man had moved aside to allow Hinev to enter the laboratory, but the scientist made a welcoming gesture and followed the Elder to the large specimen table in the center of the room. Alessia, still standing a distance away, followed the scientist and halted a few paces behind him.
Hinev was obviously a half-Kayrian man, a half-alien like herself, only different in his other half-alien nature.
Hinev’s hair was black and shone with a bright silvery glint in the light. His deep blue, slightly almond-shaped eyes were nearly violet, almost the very color of Seynorynaelian blood, and his skin was more a translucent white color that made his dark eyes stand out even more.
"Marankeil wishes me to observe your progress first-hand. As you know, it is the only way to make certain that any information is not monitored in cyberspace on this top-secret project of yours.” The mechanized unit explained, almost apologetically. “So I have extended my visit to two tendays. Then I'm afraid I must get back to the project at Lake Firien.”
"Elder Ornenkai, let me introduce my assistant–" Hinev began, half-turning aside.
"Alessia. I know who she is." The machine's unwavering artificial eyes regarded her so intently that she moved a step further behind Hinev to hide from the glare of it.
"You have met her before–when the Council met at the summer’s-end?" Hinev asked, a line creasing in between his dark eyebrows.
"No.” Ornenkai replied, his voice unreadable. “I have heard of her, of course, but this is the first time I've seen her. Now I see that the reports were true."
What reports? Alessia wondered. She still didn't understand why she had been brought to Ariyalsynai, why so many prominent leaders and scientists concerned themselves with her, an insignificant child of the rural territory beyond the weather-safe ring and worse–the daughter of an unknown alien. Why was it that everyone seemed to know about her? What was this Firien Project, and why was it so important? Who cared if the fragments she deciphered read “Selesta”? Apparently, though, someone had cared. That someone cared a great deal more than she had ever anticipated, or else she never would have told them that she could read the inscription. Why had her father taught her to read the language and symbols of the ancients? She wondered.
"But I don’t wish to interfere with your pupil's education.” Ornenkai continued, possibly intending to be polite, although it was hard to discern any emotion in his artificial voice. “I shall call upon you later this evening, Hinev. Be prepared to enlighten me as to your plans for this year, as we discussed. Until then, I’ll take my leave of you both," The mechanized android dismissed itself and left the laboratory.
Hinev regarded her critically, and she had that strange sense that he was looking into her thoughts again. He was obviously a true telepath or a proto-telepath. How did she know he was there in her mind, able to read her mind? She felt him combing through her thoughts and remembered the feeling from before. The first time he had looked into her thoughts had been the day she met him, moments after she arrived at the Federation Science Building, when she had first been brought before Hinev for his approval.
He had approved of her, very much. She was glad of this, for she had instintinctively liked him as well.
Then, as the guard had departed, leaving her to his care, she had felt a presence in her mind, sifting through her memories, absorbing her very essence back across the years until it stopped, intrigued by the memories of her father. Alessia had sensed his interest in those memories while his departing thoughts still lingered in her mind–the recommendation had been fortuitous, he concluded. Yes, this girl was exactly what he had been searching for.
Her father had obviously been an Enorian. As many were descended from the Enorians at Firien, and many were also proto-telepaths.
In the present, Hinev smiled at her. "Yes, you were exactly what I hoped for, but you still don't understand why," he said, slightly amused by her confusion.
“No,” she admitted.
"I was given permission by the state to take you as an assistant, Alessia, because I needed the abilities of a proto-telepath to test my experiment.”
“I knew that.” She protested. “But I thought I was supposed to join the Martial Scientific Force, like my grandfather.”
“That may still happen, but that is not why you are indispensable to me. Your memories, your very existence proves an idea of mine.”
“An idea?” she asked. “What idea?”
“First, dear child, let me explain who I am.”
“I know who you ar
e. Everyone already told me. You’re Fynals Hinev, one of Kudenka’s explorers, sent from Seynorynael more than three thousand years ago to gather knowledge for the glory and survival of our people.”
“That’s what they told you?” Hinev laughed.
“Yes.”
“I should have known they’d keep the nature of my project from you,” Hinev said, angered for some unknown reason. “Well, it’s true that I was born more than three thousand years ago here on Seynorynael. You’d be surprised how much catching up I have to do. By our reckoning, we had been gone no longer than twenty years, but time dilation occurred on board our spacecraft. Three thousand years passed on Seynorynael before we could return to her.”
Alessia laughed. “The world has changed a lot since you left, if everything we learned in history is true.”
“Yes, I suppose it has.”
“You talk just like that Elder–Ornenkai,” Alessia observed.
“I do?”
“Yes, in the language of the ancients, but I can still understand you–well, most of the time. You know, people say those of us from the Firien province are a bit backward. Everyone in Ariyalsynai talks so fast, and they use different words. New words. I think the Federation Enlightenment must have missed us in Firien. Everyone here in Ariyalsynai is so sophisticated.”
“I’m glad you’ve noticed that, too.” Hinev agreed, pleased. “I thought I was the only one around here having difficulties fitting in.” He confided in her.
“No, sir.”
“No more of that ‘sir’ nonsense. Hinev is my name, and I have no pretensions to any kind of official title in this center anymore.”
“But everyone here seems to treat you like a hero.” Alessia objected.
“A hero perhaps, but an anachronism nonetheless. I am a relic of a mission long since outdated. Yet Marankeil approved of my project–”
“The head of the Council? He was the one who had me brought here.”
“Yes,” Hinev admitted grudgingly.
“What does he want from you?” Alessia wondered.
Hinev sighed. “The only thing worth having, of course. Power. Knowledge, too, as long as it can be made to serve his pursuits.”
“I still don’t understand what you need from me.”
Hinev laughed. “Ah yes. Well, I needed you to test a hypothesis of mine. Marankeil and his council appreciated what knowledge we explorers brought to the Federation, but they won’t believe any of our conclusions because they do not mesh with the current political agenda. That, my dear, is where you fit in.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, Alessia, your confusion warms my heart. Do you not feel the truth? Can you not already sense that all the humanoid races you have seen here in the capital are connected? Is your very existence not proof enough? How else could you or I be here, we who have alien blood?"
“I still don’t understand.”
“I don’t expect you to–yet.”
* * * * *
Alessia woke in the middle of the night to a crashing sound in the adjoining laboratory, as though several crystalloid apparatuses had suddenly fallen all at once. What was Hinev doing now? She wondered. After a moment, however, she heard nothing. The door to Hinev’s secret laboratory stayed shut. She decided to go back to sleep.
Whatever it was, she was too tired to investigate the noise.
After spending the entire summer season and half of the fall in Ariyalsynai, Alessia still slept on a pile of blankets that served as a sleeping spot in a small cubicle in a corner of the main laboratory, so that she could be near enough to Hinev’s experiments to take data at intervals, even during the night, as though time mattered in her new environment. Of course he hadn’t needed her for this, but it was merely something she could do to learn about him and what was going on. All of this was part of her more serious education that was to begin under Hinev’s tutelage.
Alessia was something of a wild child, who actually preferred a small pallet bed than the fancy sleep panel she had been given further away in the rooms she had been assigned. She preferred to sleep near the work that was more important, and more important to her young but serious mind. She was dedicated to Hinev and his purpose already. More importantly, however, she wanted to be near Hinev, rather than being alone in her own room!
So she had taken over the pallet Hinev had made in his own laboratory so that he could nap during the many long hours he couldn’t leave what he was doing or didn’t want to lest something significant happen. He stayed in the inner laboratory most evenings, working on something he wouldn’t disclose to anyone.
She could hardly tell that winter was fast approaching in the world outside the Federation Science Building. In all the time she had been in the city, Alessia had been allowed outside only the day before with an escort so that she could meet explorer Kudenka, who worked across the great courtyard in the adjacent towers.
The bite in the air had seeped through her footwear as she crunched across the blanket of snow nestled over the courtyard. Dampness soaked through the thin, black, flat-soled summer-season pair of shoes she had brought from her home; her feet were cold as ice and clammy, and she longed for the warmth of the laboratory, bare and sterile as it was. Her shoes had grown tight in the months she had been here, and now they seemed likely to mildew.
She would have to let go of her pride and ask for some new shoes when she got back.
“Come in, come in. Out of that bitter wind,” Kudenka, a round-faced man of a sharp wit and intelligence, bid her and the others welcome into his lab and had food and hot drinks brought for them.
“Here, take this, young girl.”
“Alessia,” said Alessia.
“Ah, I have heard of you,” said Kudenka. Kudenka was in the middle of a discussion with two black-clad visitors called Niflan and Mindier, so Alessia sat listening and tore into a Bilirian cream cake with great hunger. Kudenka and the others laughed, then turned to her and asked for news about Hinev. Alessia dropped the cream cake on a plate.
“Hinev’s like a machine, working so hard and such long hours.”
They didn’t seem pleased to hear that.
“What do you mean, child?” Niflan asked.
She explained that for all she had observed, Hinev didn’t seem to be sleeping or eating anymore. Most of the time he spent confined in his private laboratory with the doors barred shut, working well into the night, coming in and out of his lab into the adjoining one at odd times to retrieve one item or another.
They listened with great interest, and then a strange quiet settled over them. Alessia asked them if they knew anything about his First Race Theory.
“That again!” Niflan chuckled affectionately, yet so hard that tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes. “Yes, dear we have. He has been bothering the entire planet about his ideas… seems to think all humanoid races are descended from a single intergalactic forebear. Otherwise how could two different humanoid races have viable offspring? Some say it is only because Seynorynaelian DNA can gain or lose chromosomes in reproduction, when combining with alien DNA, but others say it is because the humanoid races are descended from a ‘first race’.”
“So then you know about the planetary systems beyond the Federation?” she asked.
“Yes, you could say that,” Niflan said, sharing a conspiratorial wink with Kudenka.
“You two are–returning explorers, too?” Alessia guessed.
“And to think that everyone in our time recognized us on sight.” Mindier sighed. Niflan laughed.
“Are you a navigator?” Alessia asked suddenly, looking to Niflan.
Niflan stared at her, his laughter abruptly cut short.
“How in blazes did you know that?” Kudenka asked.
Alessia shrugged. “Just a guess,” Alessia said, her eye straying to the var
ious objects in the room. There was several odd artifacts mounted in display cases, and picture stills from planetary surfaces on the walls. In one of the stills, several humanoids were clustered around a giant sea vessel that bobbed in a harbor, surrounded by magenta skies and thready pink clouds.
“Hinev must have told her about us,” whispered Niflan to Kudenka.
“I see what Hinev meant,” Alessia said, peering closer at the picture still.
“You do?” Kudenka asked.
Alessia nodded. “Yes, I can see why Hinev thinks there is a ‘first race’ that we all descend from.”
“Yes.” Mindier agreed. “Our findings seemed to indicate that, despite what the council wants to believe. The genetic sequences, the parallel structure of genes, the enzyme groupings all point to a single ancestor race. And one that tampered with evolution.”
“You’re a scientist, I suppose,” Alessia surmised, looking at Mindier now.
“Yes, I was.”
“Hinev said that the first race has been separated in evolution for maybe even a million years. Do you think it’s possible he’s right?”
“Well, maybe even longer than that. But, given millions of years of isolation and the varied climactic conditions of each planet–yes, I think it perhaps possible that original strain of humanoid could have adapted to the many forms we see now. The only thing we haven’t figured out is how the races all got dispersed, since very few of them are capable of space travel any more.”
“Enough of all this talk,” Kudenka waved a hand. “I want to know a bit more about you, dear. If Hinev ever decides he doesn’t need an assistant, I’ll have you transferred to my department. How about that?”
“I guess,” Alessia said, shrugging.
“Have another slice of cake, Alessia. Hinev’s been forgetting to feed you, I see.”
Alessia nodded and finished her first piece as the discussion returned to other topics she didn’t understand. The guards had taken her back to her laboratory about an hour later.
Alessia realized some time later that she didn’t want to leave Hinev.