And by God, it tired her out.
In contrast, simple telekinesis, drawing objects to herself, had been second nature to use. This power seemed to stem from her gut feelings and subconscious, except of course that all forms of telekinesis, including the power of control communicative energy, tended to fail under duress and then had to be directed by force of will; yet simple telekinesis often responded to stimuli almost involuntarily, while other powers, like the more complicated forms of telepathy and telekinesis, replied upon the focus and faculties of her conscious thoughts.
However, telekinetic power proved itself dangerous when she didn't mean to use it; once when she wanted a glass of sherin juice, it came floating over to her before she realized she had been responsible for bringing it. In shock, the glass had dropped and shattered, sending up fragments into her leg. Three pieces stung at her for a moment, but the blood didn’t flow as she expected. Instead, the blood welled curiously under the ripped skin. Before she had a chance to inspect the wounds, however, the skin grew together before her eyes, healing in seconds as though the injuries had never existed.
From this, she was sure forever that something very strange had happened to her body. Hinev wouldn’t tell her directly, but she was beginning to wonder if he had made her indestructible.
She knew it, knew it deep down. But how had it all happened? How was it even possible?
After Alessia had mastered the simplest powers, Hinev finally explained the “cloak” to her. This was something she would have to learn, and learn about fast. In essence, she had become a shapeshifter, and her power that allowed this was the “cloak”.
When Alessia used her strange new abilities, there were effects that other people would notice: the faint blue aura of light that was a hallmark of the serum, a particle wind produced by energy extraction and a sign that the aging process and most other natural body processes had been unnaturally interrupted. Using the cloak was the only way to hide herself among ordinary people; from the simple “veil” that made her appear ordinary, which could be maintained indefinitely to the more complicated “cloak” that could give her any aspect she chose, the power of the “cloak” used genetic restructuring to accomplish.
She could literally alter her own genetic structure at will, in minor ways. To use this power well she would have to learn how to manipulate her smallest cell structures at will, if she hoped to return her outward appearance to a semblance of her former self.
One day many months later, when Hinev was sure that Alessia had mastered the cloak, and had learned to “shapeshift” as it were her own body into multiple faces and forms, he Hinev decided she was ready for a mindlink.
Alessia agreed, but in her private thoughts she had now found her own purpose. She remembered the events that had brought her here, her powerlessness as her father lay dying and the cruelty of Bilka as he tore her from her mother.
Hinev had hidden the truth from her all these years, the truth about what he had intended for her, she couldn’t help but realize. And now there was no returning to the girl she had been. One thought alone provided small comfort. At least now, she vowed to herself, she would never be a pawn again!
Hinev had made her immortal—she would never be powerless again!
* * * * *
His surface thoughts were easy to find. It was the hidden that was hardest to reach. And beneath the hidden lay the subconscious mind, memories, and so many things she had never been able to see–
Hinev had helped her somehow into his thoughts, but now she was floating free, unable to find anything at all. Hinev’s surface thoughts and mind were nowhere to be found, and so was everything else. Where was she? A part of her still remained in her own mind, connected to her own mind, yet part of her was trapped now in Hinev’s mind, searching. And was she going to have to summon every part of her thought and disconnect herself from her own physical form to reach ahead and into the well of Hinev’s memory?
She saw an image ahead, a picture of a dark-headed woman beloved to him, a figure that represented a deep and eternal love, but with that love came a sense of despair, fear, and horrible, lingering melancholy.
Back in the laboratory, Hinev met her sympathetic, plaintive stare, but his eyes didn't really see her.
Mother, Undina–and my darling Reneja–
She saw him retreating into the memories already, and he was trying to bring her with him. She could sense his pain and fought to keep her conscious from drowning in the waves of emotion that his anguished mind was projecting.
I am Alessia, she said. Not Hinev.
Hinev seemed immobilized by his unlocking memory; he seemed to lose contact with present reality. He was literally living now in his own past.
What could she do? She had to help him. After a moment, her strong, calm wave of reassurance assaulted his will, and he was once again able to view his memories with detachment. Alessia’s body had taken his hand and gripped it fiercely. Strength flowed into Hinev at her touch, and he blinked, staring into her young, bright face with recognition and admiration.
In a moment, all thought would be revealed.
Alessia could hear all of her questions, past and present, echoing in her mind. The second stretched as though it contained infinity.
The second passed.
Now she had passed beyond those questions.
Out of the darkness of Hinev's mind, the part no human ever touched except in dreams, a swirling cloud of oscillating nightmare faces grew larger as they approached her from a point of light ahead; whether they were phantoms of the past or visions of the future, she did not know. As they neared they leered at her, some exploding suddenly like bursting soap bubbles, others imploding like the universe at the point of collapse–only to reform into still more grotesque caricatures. What did these horrific faces know about her Fate that she did not? she wondered. And what were they?
Behind them came a shining light grid with a background of colored stars that drove the cloud of faces away. No, she thought, she had been the one moving towards them. The faces and the light had not moved at all.
What the light grid was or what it meant she didn’t know. She had formed no expectations of what she would find here in this realm of non-space, and she accepted all she saw as part of the reality of a dream.
In one square cell of the grid a surreal image appeared, that of a young boy sitting under a tree. Her free conscious, presently unburdened by memories, stared at the movement of him, the colors of him, and myriad diversity of the bizarre reality it observed.
She had forgotten her own memories. Free and unattached, she could now only recall this place between worlds, this light her sightless eyes had once perceived before the constrainment. For now, there was no universal thought or action unknown–the universe was no mystery to her. The only mystery was this world that faced her, and with it, the puzzle of the physical burden, the only journey she had not yet made, the journey of physical life.
In her present state, the stark scene before her aroused a terrifying, nagging recognition in her as she approached it. It reeked of the physical world, all of its confining sights and smells. It made her doubt that she was still a light being. The images disturbed her, mostly because they were familiar. Mostly because she knew she was deceiving herself, that she didn’t belong here in the light, not any more.
Haven't you left the light already? the images ahead seemed to ask her.
Left the light? For the constrainment that was physical life, life trapped in a physical vessel that knew only itself and its own confining space? No, she hadn’t left the light! The unaware part of her conscious rebelled in fear at the sight of the physical world. Why was it familiar? Had she been there? Did she want to go back to that? No, and yet she was being drawn to it nonetheless. She felt herself dragged closer to the image as the soundless voices she recognized in this, the edge of the tapestry of l
ight, retreated.
The unwilling part of her soul that felt home here in the light finally succumbed to the inevitable journey of life.
At once the window descended rapidly, climaxing in a shattering collision of consciousness as her thought merged with that of the young boy, and she could see the world around clearly and wholly real through his eyes, feel his emotions, remember his memories, hear his thoughts.
It was a maddening shock.
I am Alessia! she repeated, now unsure how she even knew her own name. I can’t forget who I am here, or my soul will truly be lost. As she entered the child's mind, her own identity began to come back. She remembered her own childhood, the face of her father and her mother Nerena.
At the same time, a distant part of her mind, almost independent, faded in her memory. Why had she never sensed its regret before? Yet she felt she had, long ago, back when she was a child. A curious child, a child that knew nothing of life yet. She had gradually forgotten, and with that, lost her sense of delight in this new world, lost it to the mundane.
She had forgotten this part of her that had existed in the tapestry of light, but it had never forgotten that dimension.
It was her soul.
Now, aware that as she had once been free, she knew she would never again be reunited with it. It had fled back into the void, the tapestry of light and the darkness, a world of solace and blissful oblivion.
It had abandoned her for the light when the serum took her body...
–Where was she?!! Alessia returned to the present scene, forgetting what had been such recent cause of fear and regret. She had come here for a reason, and now she remembered what that was. This was the mindlink. Of course. For a while, she would be Hinev, the Hinev of the past, Alessia thought. The chirping of birds grew louder in his and her ears. As long as she could remember herself, she would tolerate the separate reality.
For the moment, she would become Fynals Hinev.
And hope that it didn’t ruin her mind for good.
Chapter Four
...the young Fynals Hinev was sitting beneath the tree, drawing in the soft, dark dirt with a sharpened stick when his father Jerekkil returned from outer space. Hinev called to his mother about the strange man striding up the path. But his mother wasn’t afraid. Undina ran from the dwelling, her eyes brimming with tears young Fynals Hinev didn't understand...
Hinev finally realized that the stranger was his father. Undina had a still of him sitting on a table in the living area of their home; Hinev had memorized every line of his father’s face, but he only knew it within the confines of the still. Hinev didn’t recognize the moving man, this strange person he should have known better than any other.
Fynals Hinev had never known his father. The explorer Jerekkil Hinev had left long ago on a mission to Gildbatur to ease the tension between the two worlds. With him had come a colony from the city of Urartu on Gildbatur numbering two thousand and a representative to take Gildbatur's place on the new Federation Council, formed by the treaty of the five worlds, signed only days before according to Jerekkil's ship log.
The proposal had been made more than a century ago, but travel among the worlds was slow, and time passed more quickly on Seynorynael than it did near light-speed. People called this “time dilation”. To Fynals, it only meant that Time had cheated him out of a father. Jerekkil had been gone only a few days, but several years had passed on Seynorynael by the time he returned from the stars. During which time, his Kayrian wife Undina, Hinev’s mother, had lived alone, shortly after giving him a son he had never seen.
Hinev's father seemed not much older than he, perhaps twice his age, more like an older brother than a father. But Hinev soon learned much about their world listening to Jerekkil, hanging on his father’s every word, basking in the glow of mystery and adventure that surrounded the space man. Before Fynals Hinev knew it, the same wanderlust had seized him. His child’s mind vowed that he, too, would visit the Federation planets one day. He would follow his father's journey to the stars, no matter what...
* * * * *
...Jerekkil had been home only a few years when word reached Seynorynael that a pro-independence group had instigated a small insurrection on Gildbatur. Jerekkil Hinev had been ordered to return there to quell the protesters and persuade them to visit Seynorynael to see all that might be gained in an alliance. Hinev tried not to remember the day his father left...
Hinev gazed up at the star-filled sky the evening the transmission arrived from the capital Ariyal-synai and wondered what it was about the stars that lured men to their deaths out in the void. At the same time, Fynals glared at them, wanting to hate them, desperate to defy them, wishing they would have been more merciful, hoping they had taken enough from him now so that they might one day be kinder to him. After all, hadn’t all physical matter, even the living matter that made human beings, been formed in the stars?
Humans were the stars’ earthbound children, but they envied their children, for humans could move from one end of the universe to another. And they envied the humans, who, like all living creatures, had a soul. Like the lyra forest around him. The forest had a life and soul of its own, even though the trees, once rooted, couldn’t move; trees were like the stars in that regard. Except that a tree’s seeds could spread on the wind.
Hinev wondered where in the vast starfield above him he could find the lost soul of his father. Could his father see him now? he wondered, as the stars melted into each other through a wash of bitter tears.
Jerekkil Hinev's ship the Ishkur had exploded in Seynorynaelian airspace due to unknown causes. All aboard the space cruiser had been lost…
* * * * *
...Hinev found himself remembering his father the morning of Sesylendae’s departure. After so many long years of training, Kudenka’s explorers finally prepared to leave their home world. The council had mapped a journey of unprecedented length for them, calculated to last sixteen Seynorynaelian years on board. Kudenka’s crew would attempt to create the very first centipede space tunnels. Yet meanwhile the Sesylendae had been outfitted with a tachiyon and fusion engine capable of an even greater relativistic rate than her predecessors; time outside the ship would pass more swiftly, turning their minutes into years.
The only thing Hinev regretted was leaving his mother.
Undina lay upon the verge of death, stricken by an illness with no known cure. He remembered how she had suffered; he had watched her suffer, watched her waste away, watched her pain, unable to do anything to save her. He remembered the hollow looks, the lost expression in her eyes. Watching death take her slowly. Finally, the time came when there was nothing to do but let her die or halt the disease with suspended animation. Hinev chose to keep her alive at any cost. So Undina’s body had been placed in a stasis capsule to preserve her existence until the cure might be found, but the process of suspended animation had not yet been perfected, and the chances of survival across the years diminished.
Hinev had only abandoned her in hopes of bringing back a cure unknown to Seynorynaelian science, a miracle substance possibly already in existence on some planet in the galaxy.
...Hinev couldn’t seem to find Reneja. His intended wife, the bio-scientist Reneja, had been included among the crew, and Hinev looked forward to the peace of space travel. Without her, he doubted he could last the oppression of such confinement, the claustrophobic fears, the sense of his own fragility in the void, enveloped by death beyond the ship.
Though a biochemist with a sub-specialization in genetic engineering, Hinev had been given the rank of an officer, third in command of the Sesylendae. All of the small crew had been trained with multiple proficiencies. Hinev had been selected to remain in the ship's laboratory during take-off, where he could prepare the livestock specimens for space travel.
A few hours later, he’d returned to the Observation Window to search for Reneja
; they had promised to meet one another after the crew had set Sesylendae's course. Hinev wandered around the Observation Area, searching the crowd that lounged on the deck, enjoying their first glimpse of the nearby Sumar cluster.
Reneja never arrived.
Navigator Niflan found him long after the others had returned to their quarters. As he approached, his eyes avoiding Hinev's gaze, Hinev knew something had happened.
"Reneja and Cernik—" Niflan swallowed hard. "They couldn't handle take-off. They were restrained, but—"
Hinev's eyes glazed over. "They had to be sent back." He said evenly, breaking the news to himself before Niflan could.
"Yes. We put them into one of the shuttles to rendezvous with the Nanshe moon outpost. They will await transferal back to Seynorynael there. I'm sorry, Hinev," Niflan added solemnly. "I know how much you loved her." The ship navigator turned and left him to his grief.
To Hinev, the news would have been no better if he had learned that Reneja had died. For Hinev would never see her alive again...
* * * * *
Away from their own system, Hinev made, rechecked, and confirmed the discovery that those of Seynorynaelian blood aged more slowly in space. Was it the lethal rays of Valeria, Seynorynael’s star, that caused them to age on Seynorynael? So that away from Seynorynael, they lived longer? For even he and Fernidon, the two half-race men, showed signs of decreased cellular degeneration out in space, while their Tulorian representatives on board matured at a normal rate.
The problem was that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Hinev’s hypothesis.
The march of time pushed them forward, and Kudenka’s explorers visited a string of worlds beyond the known territories. Another discovery soon distracted Hinev from any other observations.
The Sesylendae was encountering humanoid races. Lots of humanoid races. Far too many humanoid races to rule out convergence or independent evolution. Far too many humanoid races to be written off as a coincidence in the development of life in their own galactic cluster.