Chapter 1: A World With No Name
Where are we now? Talyn demands.
It's one of his favorite questions, along with the altricial "why?" and the precocial "what next?" Being linked with a juvenile Leviathan is like rearing a child that is simultaneously a toddler and an adolescent. I should have purchased more raslak at the last commerce station.
I pull myself out of bed and feel a wave of heat-induced nausea as I stand. My jacket, which I slept in to avoid hypothermia, is soaked through with sweat, and I fumble with the closure, eager to rid myself of the heavy garment. Even the light fabric of my shirt feels cloying, and I toss it on the bed alongside my jacket. I stagger to the sink, filled with fantasies of drenching my head in cool water, but what comes from the faucet is warm enough to make soup. I splash my face anyway, and drink several double-handfuls.
Talyn's congealation coils are failing again, and until I can find a replacement, his internal temperature will continue to fluctuate between frigid and sweltering. The former is a mere annoyance, the latter a true terror. In the event that I do succumb to Sebacean heat delirium, I have drilled Talyn many times on the proper course of action: setting a collision course for the nearest asteroid or uninhabited moon. Without me to guide him, he would be too vulnerable, and the probability of him falling into the wrong hands would escalate. He says he understands the necessity of avoiding Peacekeeper control at all costs, and I believe he would indeed have the courage to do what is required. Our lives, like our minds, are linked, which means that each time the temperature rises, I fear for him.
I stumble to the console and bring up the local star chart. "We are near my former home. Here." I reach through the projected stars to touch one unassuming sun, knowing the soil my father tilled is on the fourth planet from it.
But where are we?
"I have told you." I remember telling him microts ago and am almost certain I spoke aloud, not that it should matter with Talyn. After a moment of confusion, it dawns on me that he wants a designation. "Neither the planet nor the star has a name. It's an agrarian colony thousands of cycles old."
My head throbs, and the stars in front of me begin to shimmer like sequins on a dancer's dress. No longer trusting my legs to hold me, I sink into a chair near the console.
No name for the planet or the star? Didn't that get confusing?
"Why would it? There was simply 'the sun' and 'the world'. Everything else was 'beyond'. A bit melodramatic in retrospect, but those were all the names we needed."
Talyn is silent for a moment, digesting the idea of a world with no name. When he realizes the implications of that fact, horror shudders through his circuitry. That means you were trapped there! The Peacekeepers left you there on that planet with no way to leave?
"No legitimate way, save selection, which is why most thought it such an honor, a chance to see what's beyond. Only the best of us were taken. Or so we were told." I laugh as I recall my eagerness to become a Peacekeeper. My mind is now melting like an ice cube, and the part that remains cohesive tells me there is nothing funny about a child being wrested from his home, or about a man having his expectations shattered. Still, I chuckle, feeling nothing but schadenfreude for my former self.
"Of course there were occasional visits from illicit traders," I continue. "Some managed to leave the planet in a smuggler's hold. Most didn't want to leave. They were too busy thinking about the next harvest, our survival. It was enough for them. Never for me."
Regret-- I tell myself it is a luxury in which I never indulge, but in reality it is a beast I keep caged, and in the heat it has managed to escape. Humor flees to a far-off corner of my mind, chased by loathing and rage, or perhaps washed away by the streaming sweat that flows across my face, burning like acid. Like a weak man under torture, I confess without being asked a question, flaunting the old scars I usually manage to hide even from Talyn.
"I was glad to be chosen. Glad! And not just because my father said it was such a great honor. Because I wanted to see beyond, wanted it so badly I would give up anything. Even my soul, Talyn."
I don't understand.
"A soul! It's a thing... that isn't something. But it's very important. Peacekeepers don't have them."
No, I know what a soul is. I just don't know how you can give one up.
"We had priests on the world, men whose job it was to rant about gods." I run my hand across my brow, brushing away wet wisps of hair as I try to recall my point. "These priests seem to think a soul is some kind of score card, and the gods use it to mark our acts of evil. If Peacekeepers had souls the gods would run out of ink. So, clearly, we do not!"
I think you need to drink more water. I cut power to the water heating coils for two macrots. It should be better now.
"I hardly need to be told when to drink!" He tries to mother me, as if I were anywhere close to heat delirium. This is merely a moment of discomfort. Still, the thought of cool water is too tempting to resist.
I stand, but when I release the back of the chair, I stumble to my knees and fall forward, catching myself on my hands. "Can't you maintain a level course?"
Not expecting an answer, I crawl on hands and knees to the sink, just in case Talyn decides to yaw without warning again. Once there, I pull myself to my feet, douse my head, and then drink deeply. The chilled water is like a healing drought from some childhood tale of magic. I splash it over my body, not caring that my pants are now soaked through. My balance restored, I make my way back to the table and sit.
Do you ever want to go back?
I try to imagine that my current discomfort is the result of too many arns in the sun instead of an out-of-spec congealation coil, that the weight on my shoulders is the literal mass of a sack of grain and not the burden of responsibility. "You can never revisit your origins, Talyn."
But you said that's where we are.
"It's an expression. It means that even if you do return, things will be changed, or you will be, and so everything will seem different." Expecting him to extrapolate may be too much, so I add, "No, I do not wish to return."
How could I face my mother and father after breaking my vow to protect Tauvo? Worse yet, after letting over a cycle pass without returning to inform them of the loss. What would be accomplished by such actions? Better to let them tip back their earthenware mugs of grain-ail and toast their sons, Peacekeepers proudly wearing the family name along with their medals and stripes. The stories they no doubt tell themselves are far more glorious than the truth. Tauvo and I were never storybook heroes; he was a soldier following orders no matter how heinous those orders were, and I-- I gave some of the worst orders myself. We created chaos and suffering, and the only peace we ever kept was the peace of the dead left in our wake.
The hybrid project.
Talyn's thought startles me. I often forget he reads my mind, even when I don't intend him to. At first I think he is arguing with me, making a case for my redemption; after all, in a corner of his mind that he tries to hide, he thinks of me as his father. But the sentiment that accompanies his words is not one of disagreement. Talyn has his own set of hazmots, specters of loss and remorse that haunt his data spools. The hybrid project is my most spectacular failure and at the same time, the only remnant of my Peacekeeper service that gives me any measure of pride.
So many contradictions. Were I a machine, I would probably suffer a few crossed wires myself. Like the coil failure that even now is eroding my brain.
"Talyn, how long will it take to get here?" I point to a spot on the star chart, zooming in until I can pinpoint a specific moon. The commerce station there is notorious for providing "anything anyone needs," which hopefully includes replacement parts for Leviathans.
Three arns travel, at most.
"Three arns. Even if the temperature rises more, the damage should be reversible."
Frell, I'm sorry. I'm doing the best I can.
I wave a hand dismissively at his apology. "Hardly your fault. And remember that type of language is an admission of lacking control. It's beneath you."
I never should have let that coarse merchant's daughter get a hold of his transponder. Not that Aeryn Sun and Rygel did anything to elevate Talyn's vocabulary, but he was never casually crude until recently. That tiny regret is like a pebble in the shoe of a man whose head is about to blown off, and I find it suddenly funny. I feel Talyn's confusion but am unable to formulate a response that would explain why I laugh.
I really should have bought more raslak at the last commerce station. I could have poured it over my head in the hopes that the cooling evaporation would forestall insanity.