Legacy Character: A Story in Two Parts
Part 1: Longer Now Than It Seems
"The Zentraedi ships re-entered the atmosphere at around 3:49 Tiresian Time. Zentraedi official Jenral Malta had this request to make."
Jenral, a female, became the primary image on screen, as the transmitter swung to her.
"The news that we have is of no concern to Tirol at large. Know only that my people have recently averted a monumental crisis, and we are only here to speak to Venerable Exedore Formo, on a matter of deeply personal importance to him."
The interviewer: "But you can't blame the rest of us for being intrigued. It's been a long time since your people were in this area."
"I can tell you no more yet, since we must return to Nuadull as soon as possible. But perhaps Venerable Exedore can share the information with you when our meeting is finished."
She stated where the Zentraedi delegation planned to land, and I waited before turning off the machine, since they would have to get permission from the local government to do so.
In my peripheral vision I saw Lantas standing in the room with her ink-stained hands, having emerged from her studio to watch the broadcast.
She stayed to watch. When an update came, there was no time to be wasted.
I levered myself slowly out of my chair, taking my walking stick in one hand. I tried to push my body into greater urgency, but as it sometimes did, it refused to listen, locking me into a hatefully slow pace.
Still, in most moods I counted myself as fortunate. The same engineering that had once allowed my people to be warriors all through their lives made it so that, while notably aged, I was hardly senile and helpless.
I wore a soft dark green garment, but my instinct for protocol lead me first to don what I took on for the rare ceremonial appearance: a long-sleeved black robe, over which went an open-fronted dark red one, whose back rose into an hard angled collar, similar in shape to the top of a Zentraedi emblem. Its sleeves where wide and trailing, and tipped in yellow and black.
Lantas changed out of her inside clothes as well, into a dark blue dress with a puffed, translucent green shirt underneath, secured at the wrists with golden cuffs which matched the one about her neck.
As we prepared to leave the house, she hooked her arm in mine and I walked close to her, but she was my consort and not my nurse, and I tried to never forget my independence, or hers.
Then she drove us to the site, still not speaking. The moment was too subtly intense for that.
----
Together we stood in the field. Once this had been a place reserved for the Zentraedi to come down from Fantoma for a while and recall what fresh air felt like, but after the Zentraedi had become confident enough in their numbers to settle on the world they had found, the great fence had been torn down and the land made use of, although there was still a considerable amount of open territory.
The sunlight beat down upon the collar of my robe. I leaned upon my walking stick, which was still largely decorative. It had been one of the many gifts left to me when the Zentraedi had abandoned Fantoma. From their perspective, it was an astonishingly delicate piece of work, even though it was undecorated and otherwise standard. I treasured it.
The ground shook slightly as three Zentraedi approached. Jenral Malta was a dark-skinned female with bobbed black hair, wearing a uniform with long pants and short sleeves, with the upper body covering ending in a kilt-like extension. A long cape was secured at her chest, forming a triangle there.
A fully armed and armoured female soldier was at her side. In her gauntleted hands she carried a circle of metal with small objects upon it; from my vantage I could not see it accurately.
The third person in the party was a male, and wore a smock-like covering vaguely reminiscent of the Macross-era Zentraedi uniforms. If fashions hadn't changed too much, he was likely a physician.
"Greetings, Venerable Exedore. I am Jenral Malta. These are Staldral Trem, soldier, and Ophicuron Oigul, physician."
All of the giants descended slowly to one knee, Staldral putting her platform aside to do so.
Jenral continued. "There is business that we need to conduct inside the ship. We will operate according to your needs, and answer any questions you might have."
"Very well. I am ready to go whenever you deem it fit."
"So am I," Lantas added, as if to make sure they did not forget her.
"If you would please get onto the platform."
There was no need for further formalities; that at least had not changed. Zentraedi tended not to see the need for floods of honorifics and greetings before getting to actual matters.
The platform was a piece of metal crudely beaten into a circular shape. Welded onto it were a pair of Micronian-sized chairs with their long seats stacked with padding and blankets. I was able to move on my own without pain, but the chairs seemed welcoming, and I entered and settled into mine. Lantas only stayed upright beside my seat, holding on to it for balance in preparation for being lifted up.
Staldral gripped the platform and rose to her feet extremely slowly, before beginning to walk towards the shuttle at equal speed.
Apparently the fashion of Zentraedi space structures still favoured metallic, geometric contours over the twisted, pseudo-organoid façades of old. We were taken to a small meeting room, and the platform was set down upon its table.
The briefing was swift and clear. When I understood it all, my only outward reaction was a slight clenching of my hands on the blankets.
"Do you want to see him?" Jenral asked.
"I do. Please take me to him immediately."
The platform was picked up again and taken to another room. One half of it was bare but for a cable spool that our platform was placed on, leaving enough room for Staldral to put down what she explained was a portable audio amplifier.
In the other half of the room there sat their subject on a bench, cuffed hands limp between his legs, body bound to the wall by a belt, rope, and staple.
They told me he had been long-stripped of his imitation uniform and cowl and given this prison garb, which resembled like the blue jerkins once given to the Micronized, only the prison suit was dark green, with pants beneath the kilt and long sleeves, and came equipped with soft slipperlike shoes.
But right now, the outfit warranted less than a second of observation. What was more important were its contents.
His name was Anoris Formo. He had been synthesized from my cloning template. His hair was cut as mine had been in the ancient times, and though the right half of his face had a drooping, melted look, including a lopsided brow ridge which obscured the eye, it was still "my" face, before surgical modification and aging had reshaped it.
Seeing him for truly, I could not stop myself. My mouth hung open, and a thin, choking noise emerged from my open throat. Distantly, I heard Lantas make a much harsher sound of disgust.
These Zentraedi were not the ones who had done it. My cloning template had been stolen and given to the Survivalists, a group of Zentraedi who had wished to live out the ancient ways, sexually segregated and camped on a distant territory, making their own food and doing nothing but playing at war, because they felt it helped them live clearer, simpler lives.
But some had come under the thrall of a male called Temron Kravshera, and gradually turned themselves into an attack force, marching to the single city-state of Blen and intending to coerce the rest of the Zentraedi people into joining a new kind of army. Anoris had helped the Survivalists form their plan of attack, though he himself had remained sequestered at their base, to participate when the new machine began in earnest.
Temron's forces had been defeated after a lengthy battle on Nuadull, and when the Survivalist camp was being cannibalized in the aftermath, Anoris had been found.
"Do you know who I am?"
"You are my progenitor," the clone replied.
I was feeling unusually weak. "I know that you are a product of the Survivalists. Have you been told what these Zentraedi now want with you?"
"Yes. I am to become an archivist for the Bleninan Zentraedi."
"And what is your opinion on the matter?"
"As I understand it, I live only by their...mercy, I believe the term is. Therefore, I must do what my new superiors tell me."
"The world must be quite strange to you."
None had to tell me that Anoris had been brought here only for the purpose of informing me of his existence, and that I ought just to be saying good-bye and letting these Zentraedi go back to rebuilding their world. I was not expected to teach or interact with him in any way.
Yet still I felt somehow anchored to the area; it felt as thought this business could not be so easily concluded.
He took a while to speak again. "Temron gave me some understanding of your history; I am for instance aware of the Great Alteration."
The Great Alternation was what the Zentraedi had eventually begun calling our cultural transition, began during the First Robotech War, though such things were a never-ending process. "And how did you react to news of such an upheaval?"
"What relevance could it have had? I could not have been swayed from my duties by the mere promise of foreign trinkets."
"Then now what do you plan to do?" I shifted in my chair. "You will say that you are immune, that you will simply retreat back into your duties until the end of it. But the changes in your world shall touch you. You must be prepared for that."
"I assure you that I am."
"From you, I need no assurances." It was a pointless snub, but now I had revealed what I had not wished to. Not even with my age did complete control come.
"You dislike me." There was nothing plaintive or questioning about Anoris' tone.
Yet I said nothing.
"It is quite strange that they would bring me out here solely for the purpose of informing you that I have occurred. They claim that you helped to found their civilization. Is this true?"
I drew in a breath slowly. "In a fashion." And Anoris was, also in a fashion, the price of this fame. "Though there were others then and now."
Jenral spoke from behind me: "We will be employing some of the younger archivists, historians, and teachers in informing Anoris in greater detail, and using a lot of your historical records. They were very detailed."
"Yes, thank you," I mumbled it perfunctorily, at the moment not caring what Jenral thought of me.
When the Zentraedi had truly started to make their civilization, it had been my job to fill their databanks and speak to their children on all the topics I could think of, as they were trying to develop and sustain an intellectual-cultural thread on rugged Fantoma. It had been my fixed occupation for hundreds of years, while their numbers slowly climbed high enough to make them consider searching for a new world.
I clambered out of my chair and turned to them, looking up. "And what are your reasons for incorporating Anoris in this way?"
I felt that I knew, and was not disappointed.
"He has all the abilities you were conditioned for. If there is a potential resource, you must use it instead of throwing it away." Jenral stroked her chin. "It was always our intention to keep our word. And we have: we have not cloned you. But I am sorry, Venerable Exedore. We cannot be wasteful, especially with so many of us suddenly dead."
I understood it from that perspective. Zentraedi were giants in a universe not scaled for them and they had had to learn to value thrift and opportunism if they wished to make a complex civilization.
And they also tended towards the brusque.
It was again Jenral who spoke. "But don't worry, Venerable Exedore. Your place in history is assured. No one will literally think of you and Anoris as the same, and whatever he does or has done, your deeds can't be erased.
"Think of this a compassionate choice. You're separate beings, but there are few who won't experience his face and voice and associate it with you; that shadow would make it difficult to be taken seriously as himself, to be honestly employed without making others nervous.
"And this is also true for his status as a willing participant in the Survivalist rebellion, even if he was given no other choices in that matter. To protect Anoris from assassination and assault, he must be kept close to us."
"But why have you bothered to come all this way? Do not mistake it for ingratitude, but my reaction hardly has any relevance to your intentions."
"This was my initiative," Jenral said. "Blen has undergone enough reconstruction, the dead have been enough mourned for, the conditions which lead to the uprisings have been enough discussed, that I felt you ought to know. And furthermore, there are several surviving scientists and psychologists who are interested in studying the reactions and reflexes of a direct clone."
"And of his genetic source, I would suppose," Lantas added in a low voice.
"I don't deny it," Jenral said. "But without that justification, not even I would not have been able to pay for this journey and my accompaniment." She gestured to the other two Zentraedi. "As it was, it took a fair amount of influence to arrange this."
"I suppose, then, it's better than not knowing." Lantas crossed her arms.
"Tell me," I added. "Has his lifespan been enhanced?"
"No; Temron's group lacked the resources and capacity. We will see if he wants it, and then decide if we are going to give it."
"Then I am very thankful that you have come all this way, but there is more information that I require. Who allowed my cloning template to be utilized? Your predecessors assured me that it would remain untouched."
Silence in the room.
"You heard him!" Lantas called out, voice loud in the chamber. "Who allowed such an abomination to be created?"
I placed a hand on her back, stroking it carefully. Her body was taut underneath my palm, subtly trembling with a repressed rage, which was justified.
She snarled, "Well?"
Jenral seemed to ignore her, asking me instead, "Are you certain you don't want to rest first?"
I saw Lantas looking at me, obviously still fighting her concern and anger.
"No, I am fine. Tell me and I shall rest afterwards."
----
They took us back to the meeting room and used some video stills to further educate us.
The one who had stolen my cloning template was Murta Hilo, a young female. She had claimed that it was done partially just to see what would happen, out of curiosity. They were debating her fate still, but it would likely be imprisonment/hard labour, since she did not directly participate in the Survivalists' rebellion.
The Survivalists who had refused to follow Temron had been found confined, and were to be set free, but a system like theirs was never going to be allowed to rise again.
The Survivalist forces had been augmented by a number of clones made from crudely-done facilities run with stolen equipment and amateur construction, facilities that had also birthed Anoris. These clones would be treated like Anoris, but educated less and freed sooner, and had been designated by numbers rather than surnames. Anoris had apparently been given an original name because he had been intended to be...special.
Oh, yes, special. A symbol of the clarity the Survivalists had wanted to reclaim, and a sign that even the great Zentraedi of the past approved of what they were doing.
Utter foolishness.
And yet they could have done it. If only a few things had happened differently, perhaps Anoris would have been standing at Temron's side now, and all the Zentraedi civilization would have been crumbled and suppressed.
The thought was sickening.
Jenral asked, "Why don't you tell us, Venerable Exedore, what your objections to Anoris are? It might help circumstances."
Of course my feelings had been visible to her, even at our differing scales. "I look to Anoris and see an intrusion onto my previous territory, almost a parody of myself. Yet I must face the fact that he exists, and I propose that you let me tell him some things on my own. I will not keep you from your world any longer than you wish to be."
They agreed, and Anoris was brought into the main room. He sat down, and Staldral stood at his shoulder.
I asked Anoris, "What is it that you think of me?"
He took his time in answering. "There are the...obvious physical differences, but you seem to have an odd softness to you that I do not recognize in myself. But I have no reason to be angry with your alterations."
"Are you certain of this? Or does it in fact startle you?"
Anoris took his time answering. "I...It actually is unsettling. You are a tiny, withered husk, and I...ah." He looked away slightly, grimacing with what might have been distaste.
I knew what I must look like to him. My wizened, vaguely avian face gave me the look of an old scavenging bird (although some of my friends claimed that I looked very wise). My hair was present, white and thin and receded scarcely past my forehead. My pate and hands were spotted with a colour similar to my original skin tone, but my flesh was still the grey-brown that it had been recoloured to, long ago. I was also much more robe than body.
I studied my clone again. Despite the distance between us, Anoris still seemed to loom in a fashion. He also looked somehow clumsy to me, brutish, crude, because my time as a Zentraedi Domillan had been one of inferiority, of stunted ability. To think that they had wanted to recall the best of me by going backwards. Madness. But madness was, of course, not unexpected in the world.
The look on Anoris' face was still neutral, despite his vulnerable admission. I made sure to meet that one-eyed gaze as well as I could, and to restrain my own mixed emotions.
He stated, "I believe your inquiry has another purpose: You wish to know if I feel disoriented, without direction."
"Do you?"
Anoris paused.
"Not enough to renege upon my duty."
"No," I said, more to myself. Then I refocused on Anoris. "In time you shall undergo your own rites of passage. Myself or another sitting there and retelling history at you shall not bring on that change alone."
"Yet I must know it if I am to serve."
"Of course. And what of the Zentraedi legions involved with the Great Alteration? Do you wish to know their fates?"
"I know the basics of what happened to them. But I do not have any more of a...personal investment in such."
Anoris abruptly frowned. "But I am unsure as to why my progenitor would involve himself with a female. The conflicts that arise would be upsetting to his equilibrium and his objectivity."
Lantas' voice was calm when she spoke. "You should be used to upsets. And there are many more things which can interfere with your...objectivity. It's no surprise that Temron Kravshera failed, just like the Robotech Masters did before him. All of them were fighting against the inevitable: despite attempts to cage them, our complex natures will always assert themselves."
Anoris leaned forward slightly, his good eye fixed upon us. Staldral gripped his shoulder more tightly, so much that he winced.
"Yes," I said, "All creatures possess emotions, which cannot be separated from the so-called 'logical' processes. And there are prices for everything; few things are an absolute good or an absolute disaster. The Zentraedi lost many things in their transition, but we made gains as well. And it is far easier to idealize what you have never experienced."
"So you do not regret what you have become."
"My only regret is that I had not grasped certain truths sooner. But often change cannot be anticipated, merely reacted to. At a certain time, you simply realize that you are different, and are unable to trace exactly how that has occurred."
Anoris lifted one hand, and Staldral yanked him back against the seat. But once he had recovered, Anoris only rubbed pensively at his chin, closing his eye in thought.
"It's true, then, that I find your presence and your tale disquieting. I can only have confidence that my life will not turn out like yours."
I reached up to the small golden band that I wore around my neck. It was so incongruous an adornment on me that few noticed it, but I now clicked it open and knelt down, spreading it on the table's surface. From his angle, Anoris likely could not see what I was doing.
I removed a small data crystal from inside the choker, and connected it to one of its ends.
A holo-monitor sprang to life, and I made it as large as I could, though it was still too small for Anoris.
"Anoris, would you like to know what happened to Breetai?"
Anoris repeated the name. "Bree...tai?"
"You know that you remember him. Just as you feel your name should be 'Exedore'. Do you also feel that you should have been standing at his side, rather than that of Temron Kravshera?"
"You are correct in guessing that I carry your name internally. But I served Dolza, and in any event the Domillan belongs to whomever has him. In what capacity could I have favoured one master over another?"
"Yes, you only remember Dolza. But in truth I worked with Breetai before that. I knew Breetai in the days when I was still responsible for ore tallies, for the Zentraedi miners working on Fantoma. That was before we were converted into warriors to satisfy imperial ambitions."
"That has no bearing whatsoever upon the situation." Anoris' voice was sharper now, perhaps concealing shock at the Zentraedi's true origins.
"And I betrayed Dolza."
Anoris' jaw dropped.
I converted the blankets into a makeshift cushion and settled myself into it, tucking my walking stuck underneath one arm. I went through the images stored on my data crystal, and slowly told Anoris of the First Robotech War and what happened afterwards: the Malcontent Uprisings, the Sentinels campaign, the death of Breetai.
When Drannin was mentioned, Anoris suddenly asked, "And have you produced offspring?"
"No." It came from Lantas and I almost simultaneously.
"And what do you consider me?"
I glared at him. "A creature made without my consent." I paused, pondered, and then added: "Though you have quickly made use of ideas that you have just learned."
Perhaps Anoris was also toying with me as I was with him; exploring, probing, and enjoying seeing the other feel unsettled. I had not been above such actions, not even in the very old days.
Perhaps we should give then another present and then see what they do.
I continued, telling him of the resettling of Fantoma, and the eventual departure from the rock planet. Ophicuron thoughtfully came in and offered me a small thing full of water, which to us was a bucket that Lantas had to help me lift to drink from.
Of course these were all terse and inferior explanations, and the finer details would come in time, from the younger Zentraedi as Jenral had promised. I did not envy those youths who would come face to face with living history.
"And why do you tell me these things when you are so obviously resentful of me?" Anoris inquired.
"It is true that I am not comfortable with you. But I also wish to make a small gesture towards beginning to shape you."
Anoris replied, "I must admit that it also seems to satisfy something inexplicable in me."
"Agreed. But do not mistake this for unreserved acceptance."
"I would expect nothing less. After this meeting, it is likely that we shall not meet again; I will attempt to make sure of it."
"No. That is not enough. I shall wait seven years, and then come to see how you have progressed."
***
I fought the urge to sleep; I wasn't that infirm!
Lantas and I were back in our sitting room where we had first heard the broadcasts, sitting beside each other on the couch. I had changed out of my formal robes.
Through a combination of novelty-seeking and a simple need to outrace decay, Lantas and I had lived in many different places. Several had been large, serving as museums to our long lives, and sometimes we had had two parts of a house belonging each to ourselves. Our current dwelling still had much on display, but it was rather small, and we shared it closely. We were rarely apart now, day or night.
The walls of every room were adorned with large metallic patches, from which holograms sprang to life when the right systems were online. These were images from lifetimes over long ago: the worlds we had travelled and the friends we had outlived. These images were paired with solid objects, art and decorations, which also evoked certain memories.
"I had to stay there," Lantas told me. "I had to learn to deal with his existence, too, or after you are gone, the thought of him would haunt me. Though what he did is a different matter from what he is; for the first, he is deserving of all the scrutiny he receives."
"Yes." I agreed with her. There was, even now, a loathing stirring inside me at the thought of Anoris. His helping the Survivalists form their battle strategies could not entirely be forgotten.
The ancient Zentraedi-Human alliance had begun with the unspoken truth the humans could not pass judgement on what the Zentraedi had done in the name of empire-building, for the Zentraedi were not subject to human law. But Anoris and his captors were both Zentraedi, and he was now open to their justice. Anoris had to accept the fate they had chosen for him, and it seemed as though he would.
"There's no shame in feeling that Anoris spoils something; I'd feel the same. To have someone following my work, who looked exactly like me, sounded....It's disgusting." She smoothed back her long hair. "Though I also have my own selfish reasons for objecting to this."
"And there is no shame in those, either."
"Hah. Self-flatterer." Her smile was ambivalent.
I returned a smile of equal conflict, though the ambivalence had nothing to do with her.
Lantas.
It had surprised many, including ourselves, the strength, length, and depth of our bonding. It had seemed so...fanciful for anyone, of any gender or temperament, to keep the same mate for centuries, especially when we had been each other's first.
And there had of course been problems, and also a time when we had seen others, both with each others' consent, but nothing had ever been enough for us to feel that we were truly parted. I believed, despite the recurring inquiries to the contrary, that it had to do with more than our being one of the few things that did not eventually disappear from each others' lives.
So of course Lantas would not have stood being shielded from the sight of Anoris, or being taken home once it had been made clear what the Zentraedi had come for.
"You know why they kept Anoris, don't you? It wasn't just to 'use a resource'. They still want to keep you alive, with them in some fashion. Or at least, a few of them did."
"Yes, I surmised that. Though it might not be that true, anymore. Likely many have outgrown me."
"But you wish to believe that some still remember you, and I think it would be true. Though for that to be their motivation to keep Anoris alive...is completely ludicrous." She shifted position, put one sharp elbow on the armrest to make a thinker's pose. "Insulting."
"It is all those things."
"You are you," Lantas said. "None can take your place. Poetically, literally...none."
I was aware of all this, but somehow it felt good to hear it from her on this matter. And to know that I was not alone in this confused indignation. "Nor you."
But then her face crinkled slightly. She licked her lips and swallowed once. "And why do you want to see him again?"
"I merely want to make certain that all my predictions are true. It does not mean that I will forgive him, or wish to make him into something that he is not...."
"I know that." Her voice snapped, losing the last of the drowsy relief that had come. "But you've discharged your obligation to him; there's no reason for you to go back."
"There is something that needs to be settled."
"What could possibly need to be settled, if you want to offer no forgiveness or no kinship?"
"I simply need to know where he ends up."
"Why?" she asked again. Then Lantas drew back into her chair. "I know...I want to cope with Anoris. But this isn't the way to do it. It's better to just forget. Let him live alone. Free...of us."
"It won't be for long. Then we will all return to where we ought to be."
"You don't need to go. You owe him nothing."
"But I wish to, just to make certain of things, and only once. Attribute it to unwanted paternal instincts if you must but---"
"Paternal! He's only a clone."
I suddenly realized all the things that my choice of words could mean. "Oh, Lantas, I did not mean that consciously. I don't want him to be my child; he is not that. But I want to see where he has gone, and if he has adjusted."
"I know...you're making that clear. And I know you don't want to forget everything he did. But it makes no sense."
"I am confident that I am not blind. Perhaps it is my fate to be always concerned with any Zentraedi who has not yet benefited from culture."
Her expression softened only slightly. "And it will give you an excuse to visit Blen, won't it?"
We simply looked at each other for a few moments.
"I can't stop you. But I am going to come with you." She reached in and clasped my face in her hands, and a kiss followed. New warmth flowed into me, soothing my own rattled nerves.
But I had seen her eyes watering, and wondered again how much of her feelings towards Anoris I truly knew. "You do not have to come. I would not hold it against you."
"No, I'll...come with you. I have obligations, too."
"I can accept an obligation. But what do you feel towards Anoris now?"
"I still despise him. I hope that piece of offal rots. And it's because I'm childish. The idea of someone replacing you; I still see it as that. And that others might expect me to be like a mother to that creature...." She buried her face in her hands, then looked back at me, continuing on.
"Sometimes, when we were...young, I would suddenly start worrying about you turning back...into what you were before. It seemed too good to be possible, that you could become someone who seemed so gentle and kind. It wasn't just being a giant again, but...everything else, as well.
"And he...he is may live beyond you. When you're dead, he will still exist, and that disgusts me, and it angers me. It would almost be...like an imitation of the idea that you could still be....
"Maybe that's the reason I need to come with you; not only to help you physically, and because of what we have, but because...perhaps then I can finally see that Anoris is only Anoris. That he is no threat, he is no shock, and what truly makes you Exedore is not found in your genes, but rather what time has done to their vessel.
"I know that there is no shame in feeling this way. I just need to overcome it myself."
"You shall, just as you have overcome all your struggles."
"I know. Let's make the arrangements before we lose the nerve."
I could rest now. But soon it would be time to venture into the outside world again, to share the news of what had occurred on that ship.
----
"The Survivalists are going to be disbanded. If any similar movement ever attempts to arise, they shall not be allowed to assemble, and encouraged to join the military instead. If they would still persist, immediate action would be taken to stop them."
Lantas and I stood before an assemblage of native Tirolians natural-born and clone, as well as beings who might have first passed for them.
They were Micronized Zentraedi.
The foundations for Micronization had been re-laid by Meror Sadore, one of the Shaped Children who had experienced newspace and returned with subtle insight and intelligence, and weak preternatural abilities which still manifested randomly among those of the Zentraedi population who were descended from them.
Unfortunately, the data had not come from him complete, and had taken a long time to process and develop. Currently Micronization via non-Protoculture engineering was easy and harmless, but also irreversible.
Still, a small group, and then a larger one, had desired to be Micronized, citing access to resources as the primary motivation. They built up a store of capital and then went to work trying to make the process possible. With no collective name, they could now be found on Earth, Tirol, and even a few females on New Praxis, and there had been some interbreeding with these other races, but not total assimilation.
Lido Ran, a younger female Zentraedi, now remarked, "They never should have let a group like that form in the first place. Now they've paid for it."
"It didn't have to end in civil war," replied Nantrus. She was a half-Zentraedi, half-Tirolian, although such things could now be measured in smaller fractions. "It was just a way for them to live."
"Oh," Lido scoffed. "And what a way. That place must have been a pressure bomb. They should have stopped the Survivalists then, any way they could've."
"What's happened can't be changed," added Kertellus, one of Lantas' fellows from those old times. "We have to concentrate on the future now."
Almalta, another Micronian clone, spoke up. "And there's going to be no future for you if you waste time fearing war coming from anywhere. The Survivalist campaign is over, it's not reached Tirolian soil, so let's not act as if they are coming tomorrow."
Lido snarled, "Tell that to us! My people have lost their lives!"
I let their bickering wash over me for a while. I closed my eyes, and opened them again. "Now is the other information that I have come to deliver."
Though I had spoken quietly, most of them instantly silenced and looked at me. I was no longer surprised by such reactions, but hopefully I had not let them make me immodest.
Carefully, I told them of Anoris. When I finished, there was no movement in the auditorium for several moments.
Another young Zentraedi said, "So they just replace you. How's that for hundreds of years of service?"
"I was grateful for every year that they gave me. Recall that your presence here and Micronization is a recent development; for a while I was the only Micronized Zentraedi, and before that I had thought my time with them was over. But they gave me an opportunity to remain with them, and to retain their respect. To throw a tantrum now would be to disregard all of that. Everything moves on; that is as true now as it was when they abandoned Fantoma."
I allowed myself to pause and soften. "Anoris is not going to be a replacement; he is merely an archivist, as I essentially was in the beginning. Were it up to me, I would rather have my legacy ended, and had no concerns about perpetuating it. Yet it is not my decision to make."
A legacy. Yes. But I would let more than my time on Fantoma define me. Without Zentraedi on that world, I had become a native Tirolian historian instead, others paying me for my extensive and lucid memories, and so I did not remain idle. The Tirolian-based Zentraedi and their children had often been among my customers, though I had also formed more individualized friendships with some of their number.
"Are you just going to let them force him to do what they want? What about all the freedom you've talked about? That you helped us attain?"
I sighed inwardly. "There are always other things to be considered. By the laws of society, Anoris must make penance for his role. The other artificially-made Survivalists will undergo the same probation."
"You still don't understand." It was Dalthan, a female Tirolian whom I had done some work with. "He was made from your form, your template. He's practically your son. Don't you care about him at all?"
Many were now watching me closely, to see how I would react.
And I scowled.
"He is no such thing." That came from Lantas instead, a low tone with cold emphasis. "He is a duplicate. Anoris will be given his due, you must trust them on that. Exedore and I have done all we can, and he must learn to make his own way, on Nuadull."
"So did you leave him with anything at all?" asked Dalthan. She was sneering now.
I told them how our meeting had gone, and that I planned to visit him again. That seemed to mollify a few, though I had no doubt that some thought me cold for what likely in their minds constituted something other than what I thought it did.
But Anoris was not the same as a child. Instead, he was a distorted image of my old form, and it would be better for him to develop largely outside my shadow, so to speak.
The last thing that he had said to me before being escorted back into the ship was, "I thank you for your time. As payment, I shall attempt to have your cloning template destroyed at the end of my term, and declare myself in exile from your world."
"Thank you," Lantas had said in response, before I could speak.
Thus it was over. The Zentraedi had returned home, where Anoris would be cloistered and further educated. Though it had been good to see the Zentraedi majority again, I knew that their place was on their other world, as well.
----
"You know that I...caught myself wishing that all the archaic human traditions were true."
"Mm. Children inevitably following the paths of their parents, perpetuating those exact conditions and providing a form of immortality? But that's not really true, and we've known that for a long time." Lantas spoke gently.
"Yes." We had seen several generations of families pass, and found no member who could have served as a replacement for another, due to the strange alchemy of genetics. "And even in this case, too much has happened to my mind and body for Anoris and I to ever be considered exact reflections of each other."
I changed position to be closer to her. She also reacted, putting her hand on my upper arm. "It's your mortality you're thinking about, isn't it?"
"...Ah. Slightly."
I thought it likely that I did not have long left to live, and none of the other life-prolonging methods were safe enough for me to chance them, especially with my lifespan already expanded to this degree.
I still wished that I could live longer. There were always new things to discover and new work to conduct. I could have seen the Zentraedi grow from a single transplanted city-population to a world of nations, or perhaps even a nation of worlds. And she still had that longer life to live, one I would not share in.
Yet however much this felt like symbiosis, it was not. Lantas and I had retained our independence, which was what we had wanted all along. She was quite strong, and would be able to move on afterwards.
"...Everything ends," Lantas replied. "As you said. And you've done a fine job at everything you wanted to do; remember that."
I had visited Nuadull and its first city of Blen several times, watched the buildings under construction and visited the temporary shelters, listening to their plans for the future, but there were times when my interest was wanting. Some instinct was driving me to stay closer to home.
Lantas said, "I...felt something towards him too, something besides anger. Though I still agree." She then added, quietly, "He was damnably cold in comparison to you."
I squeezed her hand, twining her limp fingers with my own, despite the minor ache it brought to my hand.
There was silence for a while, before I heard her ask, "Do you ever regret that we never had children?"
"No more than you do, I am certain."
She chuckled, reassured.
The instincts had surfaced at times, but it had always been no great battle to defeat them. It was not in our characters to be parents.
Most of the time I was content. Unexpected developments such as Anoris could not sour me; I would certainly make the most of it.