The past is never dead. It's not even past. - William Faulkner

Frigid

Given the situation, I felt that there was no pressing need to get on with things, and so I waited as patiently as I could for this disturbance to pass. When Frost seemed to be himself again, after he'd dried his face and found his way back to his feet and asked my pardon, working ruefully to regain some of his accustomed aplomb, I asked, "How was it done?"

He was brittle still, and I'd been concerned that the question might cause him to break down again, but more than anything else it seemed to frustrate him. "I don't believe that even Lord Enma or his staff understand that perfectly," he said, slowly, feeling the thing out as he spoke. "They are certain that a Namekjin was involved somehow, and they aren't at all happy about that. It seems that the power structure here disapproves of any sort of mysticism that tampers with matters of fate. I understand that the amount of paper work involved in correcting for such occurrences is astonishing." Watching him, it seemed to me that I'd chosen correcting in setting him on his topic, because caught up as he was in unraveling the political minutiae of this place, he seemed better able to distance himself from the intensely personal nature of the betrayal.

When he paused, seeming to mull over some new, painful aspect of the thing, I tried to push the discussion further away from ourselves. "The Namekjin seem to have been at the root of any number of the universe's problems," I said.

He didn't argue against that, but he paused briefly in such a way that it seemed to me that he must have considered doing so. What he said was, "Well, but when Lord Enma mentioned the Namekjin, I felt certain that he must have been mistaken, because there weren't meant to be any Namekjin left alive. But later I began to think…" He started pacing, his tail sweeping crescent-shaped waves in the sand as he walked his short circuit in front of me. "I began to think, and then remembered something. Some two years ago, Aiken claimed to have seen a Namekjin in the market of one of the border planets. I should have investigated the matter further, but Uragiru assured me that Aiken had been mistaken, and that it had not been a Namekjin." He paused, turning his head to look at me, and I could see that he meant to claim the blame for this as his own as well. "My Lady -" he began, but I cut him off.

"Only a few days ago Aiken said the very same thing to me. And when Uragiru corrected her I dismissed Aiken's claim without a second thought." I had, I knew even then, been very harsh with Aiken when she'd argued the point, and now I felt as though I'd been in the wrong in that. But she'd join us here soon enough, I was sure. And she'd forget that I hadn't listened to her when I ought to have. She would have to; she did not have it in her to know how to blame me for anything.

"It was not long afterward that I began to feel ill," Frost said.

"But that still does not answer for how it was done," I said. "It could not have been dragon balls."

He paused for only an instant before asking, "You know of the dragon balls?"

I remembered then what Uragiru had said - how much of it had been lies, and how much the truth tooled to cut? - and how they'd both conspired together to keep the existence of the dragon balls from me for so long. And I wondered; if Frost had been able to find some way to bring down my family, back in the days when I was… different from what I am now, would I have been a target as well? "I know about any number of things." When he hesitated, I added, "We'd do best now if you could tell me the truth, and all of it."

Frost's voice was oddly unsteady when he answered. "Right. Of course, the dragon can't be made to harm anyone. But…"

"But?" I pressed.

"When I was on Nameksei - do you remember, back when Aiken was still small?" I nodded, and left unspoken; back when they still lived. "When I - I and Uragiru - were there, we noted several small clues that seemed to indicate that the Namekjin had once had access to some mysticism beyond the dragon balls. There had been so much destruction there. Large swathes of the planet had been scorched down to the bedrock; even places that had not been burned were in the grips of severe drought. The surviving Namekjin - there were very few of them, you understand - had been in the process of replanting their world, but much of the damage was still apparent.

"Additionally, it had been thought that the Namekjin had a fairly advanced technological culture - there were some records that seemed to indicate that they had mastered space flight at some point in the distant past - but when we got there all that had seemed to have inexplicability disappeared, as the Namekjin population we found was living very simply.

"Something catastrophic had obviously happened, but the people were extremely circumspect about the details. They would say, 'the weather changed' or 'it suddenly became very hot very quickly,' and would change the subject pointedly. They never trusted me entirely, truth be known, and it was obvious that they were hiding something."

"If you'd targeted their children, I imagine you'd have gotten your answers very quickly."

Sometimes, I believe that he willfully misunderstands me. "Uragiru did manage to speak privately to some of the smaller ones on several occasions. Of course, she was always very good at getting people to tell her things, at seeming as though she were a friend…" He paused then, but pushed it aside to go on. "The children weren't as tightlipped as the adults, but the events in question seemed to have occurred before they'd been hatched. Uragiru said that she had been told that someone had made a bad wish, and that it had hurt a lot of people, but that the type of people who made wishes like that were all gone now, so it couldn't happen again.

"We were never able to uncover much beyond that. Our tentative conclusion was that there had been Namekjin who could create dragon balls - or something like dragon balls - that possessed a greater destructive force than those that were currently in use, but that their creator or creators had lost control of that power, and had been wiped out in the ensuing chaos."

"I see," I said. "But if an individual with such powers had gotten off-world before all that occurred, he might be alive somewhere still today."

"It's possible," he agreed. "But there's so many factors I can't account for, so many missing pieces. I don't understand… why it came to this. Or how."

He was being hopelessly naïve, but there was no benefit in telling him so. It's always been his folly, imagining that he could have friends. He'd always believed that, if he could disassociate himself from his race, mitigate enough of the damage that had been done, then the universe would cease to hold him accountable. I nurtured no such illusions, and I knew that for that reason things had always been easier for me.

For some reason, it was then that I remembered Son Goku. "The Saiyajin!" I said, thinking back to the dinner from a few nights before, how Son had seemed to take ill, and - I realized now - so suddenly after he'd inadvertently given Uragiru cause to hate him. How horrified I'd been, believing that it had been my fault, that I'd become a disease vector, the tool of some power that was beyond my control, even as it was in the old days.

I didn't have it in myself to like such an irresponsible creature, but I've no desire to leave Uragiru to destroy him as she did Frost and myself. Whatever errors that the Saiyajin might have made, the fact remains that he was the only reason that I ever had a chance at being anything more than a less impressive reflection of my brother, anything other than a complete monster. I know that I nothing approaching good. But I know also that I would have been so very much worse, if the Saiyajin had not intervened when he did.

"The Saiyajin…?" Frost repeated, doubtfully.

"I'll get you your answers," I promised him. "Tell me - who's in charge here? I'll need to meet with someone in authority."

"The Oni manage things here, I suppose, as much as they are managed."

"The Oni?"

"Perhaps you saw them, in coming here? The smallish blue fellows, with the suits and glasses?"

"And the absurd horns, yes. Where can I find one? I must make arrangements to speak with one of the living." I would, I decided quickly, bypass speaking to the Saiyajin, who could not be trusted to follow through with what needed done to put an end to this. I'd go to his more dependable little friend instead; that Kuririn was strong enough to be up to the task, and dedicated enough to Son that he would, I was sure, move to protect him. I would see that, by this time tomorrow - if there was any such thing as tomorrow here - Uragiru would be here with us.

"I don't think that's permitted…" Frost said.

"They will make an exception for me." Frost only looked dubious, so I added, "For the Saiyajin, then. I understand that he's considered to be an important person in this realm." And I asked Frost again, "Where can I find an Oni?"

"They only seem to pass through on occasion. I've spotted handful from the sky over the last few days," he said. Then he added quickly, "But what Saiyajin do you mean?" but I was in a hurry now, and already airborne, scanning the endless expanse of black dunes and onyx mountains for a powdery-blue face.

I was in luck, quickly spotting one of the officious little creatures in the cannon between two rocky, mountainous rises. "There's one," I said to Frost when he caught up with me, pointing down into the canon.

I flew lower, hailing the Oni as I went. He looked up from his clipboard sharply, but only spared me an short glance before turning narrowed eyes on Frost.

"You," the Oni said to Frost, "are not where you are meant to be!" and he glared down at his clipboard, flipping through the pages furiously, as though looking for some way to prove this claim. I suppose that it was because he was so focused on those pages that he didn't notice the hulking form as it slipped from the shadows of a rocky crevice until it was entirely too late.

The struggle was brief and violent, and for all that it only last as long as it did because the Saiyajin, who had obviously been enjoying himself, stretched the thing out a bit. When it was over with, the Oni's body laid in the sand, head turned around the wrong way, extremities still twitching. The Saiyajin straightened, and it was only then that he seemed to notice Frost or myself. He smirked with one side of his mouth when I landed in the sand across from him.

He was a big thing, this Saiyajin, at least equal in size to my Aiken. More brutish-looking than was even to be expected from a Saiyajin, his long, wild hair ran all the way down to his ankles. He seemed vaguely familiar, in some half-remembered, unimportant way, but I could not place him exactly. But when he sneered down at me, I knew that I had been recognized.

"Was that entirely necessary?" I demanded, motioning down at the dead Oni. "I was attempting to have a conversation with -"

And then a second Saiyajin emerged from the shadows, and I found myself suddenly speechless. He started toward me on stiff legs, his steps coming very slowly. There was something between a smirk and a sneer spread across his countenance, and I noticed suddenly that he'd somehow acquired a scar over his right cheek since I'd seen him last.

"Son Goku," I said, trying with very little success to govern myself. There was something in the Saiyajin's eyes, you see, something that hadn't been there before, and it scared me very badly.

I took a step back as he advanced, and then another. Off to my side, the bigger Saiyajin was roaring with laugher. "How… how is it that you're here?" I asked, trying to

cast my voice above the second Saiyajin's uproarious noise.

He brought up his hand and struck me open-palmed across the face. In truth, it was not so great a blow, but I had in no way expected it off him. Behind me, I heard a very small grunt of shock escape Frost, but he knew better than to interpose himself in such business of mine. Blinking rapidly as I looked down at the Saiyajin's green and black boots, I brought my hand up to my face, feeling the sting as though it were someone else's pain. I believe that I might have stood there for three entire seconds, trying to make sense of it, when I realized suddenly that this Saiyajin was not dressed as Son Goku had been, in brightly colored and loosely cut rags, but rather in armor. It was only then that I began to understand that this was a different man from the one I'd found on Earth.

"My boy's name is Kakarotto," he said, and the answer came to me; this was the Super Saiyajin's father. Then he told me, "My son killed your brother." It was a challenge - a taunt. The fool imagined that he could hurt me with such knowledge, but he knew nothing. As I cast about mentally to find someway to hurt him as he'd tried to hurt me, I wondered fleetingly (for there's no sense in dwelling on such wistful thoughts) what we might have had to say to each other if he'd approached me differently.

I thought of Son Goku, how abnormal he was, such a poor representative of his race's standard. Of how he'd taken a name suitable for a native of the planet he'd claimed as his own, a planet where he lived among natives that any normal Saiyajin would have despised, peacefully and without trying to dominate them, almost as though he imagined that they might be his equals. And then I thought - not for the first time since meeting him - that if Son Goku felt any outrage on behalf of his species, he could have killed me out of hand simply by dint of my associates, as I had so expected him to do only a few days ago.

Well, then it was easy to know how to cut this stranger, the father of a man I barely understood.

"He didn't do it for you," I said, and saw that I'd found the right track when his face twisted up in such a way that I knew that the Saiyajin knew that I had spoken true.

The taller Saiyajin grunted appreciatively, and when I turned to look at him I saw that he agreed.

Behind me, Frost said, "Son Goku didn't do it at all, truth be known. Better to ignore this one," he advised me. "He's little more than an old fraud."

I turned to look up at Frost, thunderstruck. Behind me, the Saiyajin barked, "Semantics! My boy defeated Furiza on Nameksei -"

"He undoubtedly did, and good on him, but that's not what you just claimed, is it? Of course, it is not."

"Son Goku didn't kill Furiza?" I asked Frost, too astounded right then to wondered how he could know any more of what happened than I, or even how it was that he knew who Son Goku was. "Or - or the others, either?"

"Prince Vegeta's boy killed Furiza and your father," Frost told me, without taking his eyes from the smaller Saiyajin. I don't think that I had ever seen him look at anyone with such open and frank distaste before, but then, he had never liked the Saiyajin; he blamed them for much of what had happened, perhaps even more than they deserved. "The matter of Koola was more complex, but it would be most accurate to say that Vegeta dealt the finishing blow in that."

"But -" I said, but then I did not know what else to say. This changes everything, I thought, but an instant later I was no longer so sure of that. I racked my brain, trying to remember if I had glimpsed any creature resembling the prince among Son Goku's crowd. "But I was there.. there on Earth… for days, and no one - not a single person - mentioned that!"

"You were on Earth?" the bigger Saiyajin asked me sharply. I'd almost forgotten that he was there, but I turned to look at him now.

"Your name," I remembered suddenly, "is Raditsu, is it not?"

I could see his ego swell at being recognized. "I am Raditsu," he said. "Yeah, that's me." And he asked again, "You were on Earth?"

"I was."

"I suppose that's why you're here now - did Kakarotto kill you, too, then?"

"No," I said, and wondering why I should wish to tell such a person such things even as I spoke, I added, "I wanted him to, but he would not."

Raditsu threw his arms up. "Typical," he growled morosely. "Seems like I'm the only person he ever met that he figured was worth killing."

It was that instant that the smaller Saiyajin chose to take another swing at me. But now that I knew what he was - or rather, who he wasn't - it was a simple thing to sidestep the blow as I approached Raditsu, knocking him off his feet with an idle flick of my tail as I passed by.

"Are you with him?" I asked Raditsu, glancing back at the smaller Saiyajin as he crawled to his feet, sputtering something outraged around a mouthful of sand.

"Can't pick family," Raditsu said, and shrugged.

"No," I said. "Brother?"

"No. He's my father."

"I'd have taken you for the elder."

"He managed to get himself killed years before Kakarotto offed me."

"Furiza?"

"Of course."

"Typical," I said, and was repaid by an easy, overly enthusiastic laugh - this one thinks everything is funny. To my shock, more and more I was finding that I liked him. "You'll be Son Goku's brother, then?"

"Kakarotto's brother, yes," he corrected pointedly. "So what're you going to get up to now?"

"I've no idea," I said, and shrugged. "I've only just gotten here."

"I've been here a long time," he told me. "I couldn't even tell you how long it's been. There's too much quiet here, that's the problem. This place gets in your head, if you let it. Here's what you should do - this is good advice, okay? - just pretend that everything is the way it used to be when you were alive. Otherwise, you're apt to just melt away."

Frost took a step forward, ready to say something about that, but the smaller Saiyajin beat him to it. He strutted up to Raditsu, shoving him back away from me, and the bigger man staggered under the blow. "Collaborator!" he spat up at Raditsu, and shoved him again. Raditsu grunted and nearly lost his feet, taking a few more unsteady backwards steps, and I understood suddenly that, big as he was, this one was not very strong at all. "Even with all the shit you've pulled, I never thought I'd see the day when a son of mine would up and -"

"Weren't you listening?" Raditsu said, cutting him off. "I know you aren't a scientist or anything, but weren't you even listening? Kakarotto got along with her."

His father turned back to look at me, as though looking for some way to disprove what Raditsu had said - which, I might have agreed in a different situation, went too far - and I took the opportunity to twist the blade. "He was very hospitable," I said primly, and discovering that it was true even as I spoke, I continued, "In fact, I do not believe I'd ever been treated with such genuine kindness before."

"There, you see? There's your Kakarotto for you. You don't know what he's about. He isn't anything like -"

The other Saiyajin drew his fist back and slammed it in Raditsu's face. Raditsu staggered and dropped down to the sand like a sack of bricks. The smaller Saiyajin shot off into the sky in a blast of ki-flame, and a few seconds later he'd disappeared over the horizon.

Raditsu made his way back to feet slowly, rubbing at his nose as though to brush the blood away, though of course there was none. "This place works on you," he said again. "Unless you can pretend that everything is the way it used to be. Bardock's better at it than me, is the only thing. Me, some days I can't even remember who I'm supposed to hate."

"Are you well?" I heard myself say.

"No," he said. "No, I don't think I am." And he repeated, "This place just wears away you. I don't think I'm going to be me for much longer. I guess it doesn't matter. There's isn't anyone left here who'll miss me."

"I don't understand what you mean."

"I never did anything but what I was made to do, the way I was taught to do it. How am I supposed to feel bad for doing my job? How am I supposed to make up for being Saiyajin?

"I don't feel guilty for any of it - that's the truth. But sometimes, I feel like I should feel bad about it. Like, there's something wrong with me - some piece missing or broke - that I don't feel bad for killing all those critters, and that does make me feel bad. It makes me feel like I don't want to be who I am anymore. Do you get what I mean?"

"No," I lied quickly. "I think he must have hit you harder than you realize. You aren't being very coherent, I'm afraid."

"Stick to that line, if you want to stick around here." He nudged the dead Oni with the toe of his boot. "You start to doubt yourself, they'll take away everything that makes you who you are.

"Shit," he said abruptly. "You two want to come eat dinner with me?"

"I… dinner?"

He hefted the dead Oni up from the ground and draped it over his shoulders, and I suddenly understood. "Why the hell not? My folks aren't going to have anything to do with me anymore now, I know that much. They already hated me on Kakarotto's behalf, anyway. I'm done with them now, I guess."

"I can't imagine eating… anything… given the circumstances." Feeling a touch of panic, I looked back at Frost. "You aren't hungry, are you?"

"Not at all," Frost said, his face carefully neutral. "Are you really… do you really feel so hungry as that?"

Raditsu shrugged, and on his shoulder the Oni's head lolled bonelessly to the side. "I'm Saiyajin. I'm always hungry."

"I see," Frost said.

"Guess if I go and let myself get reborn, I won't be Saiyajin anymore then, will I?" He seemed to want an answer to that, but I did not even fully understand that question, and Frost remained silent. "Yeah, I guess the odds of being Saiyajin again would be pretty slim, everything considered," he answered himself, and then he turned his back on us.

"See you around," he said, as he started off in the opposite direction from where the other Saiyajin had gone. "If I'm still around here, anyway."