Interspecies: Volume 1 (The Inlari Sagas) Page 2

  Kene glanced at Talib and then turned to Palor. “Why are we here?”

  “Expected the lavishness of a Lakarta palace? The halls of the Parliament?” Palor chuckled. “We’re here to create peace with the humans so that your family will remain safe. So that all of us can be secure.” Palor crouched down. “You’re here to study diplomacy, to learn the remaining human languages. And to remember.” He gave Kene’s shoulders a gentle shake. “I know how hard it is to leave your home and your family. I know because I was once like you.” Palor rose again.

  “We helped them build it, you know,” Palor continued. “Inlaris and humans constructed Naven together. There were many cities like it. Its birth represented a union of our two species. But after slavery was reinstituted on Lakarta and all the humans on these isles were rounded up as property, Naven’s free humans forcibly ejected us. Can’t blame them really. Now, it’s the ultimate symbol for human resistance. All humans look to Naven. That’s why peace must begin here.” Palor adjusted his robe. “The city survived the Great Earth War and has defended against our attacks ever since. It has self-sustained all this time. Much of the technology we lost in the war may still live on inside those walls. They have everything they need—for now.”

  “Do they have starships?”

  Palor laughed. “No. Those are all gone I’m afraid, along with the infrastructure to build them—to build much of the grandeur we once enjoyed. The war made sure of that.” Palor lifted the plastic canvas flap to his habitat.

  Before they entered, Kene gazed once more upon Naven. The encroaching night tarnished the sterling spires to a blackish gray.

  “Welcome to Anthro,” Palor’s voice intoned from behind him. “An embassy to the last free city humans have on these isles of New Zealand.”

  Kene awoke to footsteps outside and casual murmuring, preparations for the day. The small home held two beds, a desk, and a stool made from a tree trunk. Lavish rugs hid the dirt floor with their intricate violets and greens.

  “I have something special to show you today.” Palor stretched his legs.

  Kene hurried out of bed, excitement and nervousness squirming together inside him.

  He trailed Palor through the encampment, winding between the habitats until only the forest lay before them to the left and the grasslands to the right. They walked in silence, their footfalls crushing the tall, thin blades until Palor stopped and turned to Kene.

  “You’ll become a Memoriam like me. You’ll join an ancient order, one that flourished before our arrival on Earth. Now, for all but a few, we’re forgotten figures shrouded in myth and legend.” Palor smashed the grass down around them, creating a circle. “Memoriams imprint the memories of the old and dying, copying them to our own minds. We have the power to recall these memories at will. We learn from memories. They guide us and help us guide our leaders—and our species.”

  Palor sat on the flattened grass and gestured for Kene to join him. “It’s not mystical or a kind of magic, but a harnessing of the mind through an ancient technology. You and I have the ability to experience memory with our brains’ perceptual segments. So we smell, hear, feel, see, taste, and know. You don’t have to understand, yet.” He pulled the satchel around from his back. “We must start slowly, only a few memories at a time. It will be painful. Draining. After today, you’ll be exhausted. We always start with pain. But you’ll learn to cope with the memories and to process these lives. We will imprint every day. And before I die, you’ll have all my memories, the ones I created and those passed to me.”

  Palor took out a long, pearly metal rod, shaped oddly with a bulge in the middle, like a strange animal bone. “The kin. Take one end and press it to your scar. I focus on a memory, the kin records my impulses, then stimulates the same impulses in your brain, copying the memory."

  Kene guided the other end of the kin to his scar. He could feel Palor’s breath on his face as they leaned toward one another. The kin’s surface shifted like gray paint mixed with water, then colors flamed across it, shining outward in vibrant curves.

  “Close your eyes.”

  Kene obeyed. Needles pricked his skin, proceeded by the sensation of falling. He tried to open his eyes but couldn’t. Darkness reigned, but then lights flickered in the distance. Kene drifted, his limbs floating, weightless, as if he’d been released from gravity. The lights formed familiar specks, and then the void erupted with stars.

  Incandescent lines zipped by as the stars shifted, folding into streams. Soon, the only brightness left was a small yellow star.

  Kene entered the star’s system, shooting by gas and ice giants. Inlar—the thought dropped into his mind unprompted. Tiny Inlar, last of our known stars. A small planet flew into view—Inlarah—wrapped in blackness, the surface fractured with molten cracks. Leaving the atmosphere, starships in the thousands blasted into space with a glitter of pulsing engines like diamond dust ejected against an inky backdrop.

  The vision of the fleet escaping Inlarah faded, transitioning to a different memory. Now from inside a ship—the Essariah—Kene looked back at Inlarah as the globe dimmed, reds and blues vanishing, the surface consumed by the darkness.

  The Essariah’s halls lay before him like bleached bones, hollowed out and tunnel-shaped, the ceiling, walls, and floor forming an oval. Elliptical light fixtures corrugated the passageways, their luminosity subduing all in blue. When Kene peered at the storage bay from one of the many balconies encircling the room, he saw a netted latticework of suspended beds occupying every cubic meter of space. Immense, with gradually curving walls, the bay was the largest part of the ship. The refugees hung in silent packs among the netting, a mélange of dangling bodies, hundreds caught in the elaborate municipality like insects in a layered web.

  This is where they would live and sleep. This is where they would die.

  Generations would call this home.

  And with that realization glimmering in him, the bay faded, and the field blurred back into Kene’s vision, grass blowing all around him from a light wind. He blinked, barely able to keep his eyes open. The imprint had ended, but his arms and legs refused to awaken.

  He had no strength to walk, so Palor carried him back.

  “Two million years have passed since we left that planet,” Palor whispered. “Yet the memories of the evacuation are still recalled, still re-lived, by you and me. Inlaris should never forget. And the Memoriam remembers for all. We remember for a species.”

  Kene, exhausted from the imprint, spent the rest of the day in bed. The Essariah’s suspended bodies appeared to him unbidden, capturing his senses, forcing him to see, to experience. He traversed between the living world and the memory realm in spontaneous flashes, as if these memories controlled his mind and body—the dead lashing out at him, uninvited, their feelings, thoughts, tragedies, hopes, and failures bubbling up in his mind like lethal gases on a noxious ocean.

  He’d not seen his family in a year, and now, more than ever, his mind consumed by the dead’s memories, he yearned for home.

  The following day, Kene lay still, ignoring Palor’s waking movements.

  “Rise. I have more to give you.”

  He found the idea of accepting more memories intolerable, worse than the year of testing he’d undergone. Worse than even the needle, because these memories would never leave him alone.

  “Get up.”

  “No!” Kene curled into a tight ball.

  “I was worried about this.” Palor stood over him. “You’re too old. Too undisciplined.”

  He glared at Palor, his anger driven by fear rather than conviction.

  Palor sighed and sat on his bed. A long silence ensued, as if he needed to collect his thoughts. “Memoriams live our lives mindful that our memories will be passed on. Each Memoriam, before his or her life ends, attempts to accomplish at least one task that no other ever has, adding some new experience to the remembrance for future generations of our order. We call this our remari. My remari is peace with Naven. I left
the leadership council, left the Parliament to come here. It’s been five years in this valley, and Naven is finally speaking, finally extending graciousness to us. No one else could do this. No one else was willing. Even leaders like Alteiri deny the necessity for peace. They favor slavery and the old ways, as if the exodus has taught us nothing. But I persist. As you will persist.” Palor stood. “Peace—you think I’d risk that because you’re tired? Because you can’t manage after one imprint? Do we give up two million years of memories because you won’t rise from bed? Those memories won’t die with me. I can promise you that.”

  Kene hugged himself tighter.

  “Discipline is the Memoriam’s foundation.”

  “I don’t want to see any more.” Kene pushed out the words.

  Palor grabbed a large, smooth walking stick that leaned against the canvas wall. Kene heard the slap before the impact rippled through his body.

  Palor raised the staff again.

  “No!” Kene cried. He braced for another strike, and it came with more force, leaving him breathless. He struggled to inhale as his tears dampened the rugs.

  “Get up.”

  Kene struggled to his feet, the fear of a third strike motivating him, and, reluctantly, he followed Palor out of the encampment.

  Every day, Palor led Kene to the field, and a new set of memories filled his mind. The kin pressed into his scar, he closed his eyes and witnessed the valley before Naven’s construction, green with blowing wild grasses, then full of his people and humans. Starships drifted overhead, lowering beams and supply crates on thick, metal lines. Excavation pits gaped, brown and perfectly circular, as drills plumbed their depths for bedrock. White discs half a mile across hovered above the site, lifting beams into place—the origin of Naven’s towers. As the sun reached its apex, the discs cast spherical shadows over the naked columns, innards bare to the world.

  Then the memory faded into another—a refugee—pulled from her home in Naven by human soldiers, marched out of the city walls with weapons aimed at her back. She was one among thousands of his people, those who helped build the city, expelled forever.

  Kene died forty times as he tried to breach the city’s walls. At night, sounds like thunder boomed across the valley as lights strobed overhead. Naven bloomed with arcing flares and flying sparks, with missiles streaming into the surrounding forests and fields like some giant night flower spreading its deadly pollen and barbs.

  Orange flames speckled the fields and forests around the city as explosions hissed and popped overhead. Before Naven’s wall, an army of berserkers fell, their heads exploding into bloody mists, their tusks splintering into shrapnel. Volley after volley from the small gun turrets in the wall lay waste to all around him until he, too, lay dying on the scorched land, the grass now gone, his last memory a Memoriam hovering over him.

  He watched from the rear as a long procession of soldiers marched through wooded hills toward the sea. The young Theede Fendo—somewhere at the head of his army, leading the retreat from Naven’s valley—had failed to retake the human city that audaciously persisted on the land he commanded.

  Failed just like his father before him.

  When Kene refused to rise from his bed, refused to witness another starship explode into the eternal night—refused to be another child maimed by the boleerons, another soldier gunned down in front of Naven’s walls, a slaver capturing humans when his people usurped New Zealand, a young female after Inlarah’s destruction, placed in a cryotube by her mother, never to see her family again—all visited prior to death, their last vision a Memoriam placing a kin between their horns.

  When he refused to take any more, refused to follow Palor into that dreadful field, Palor would say, “You’re seeing, experiencing things no child should ever witness, just as I did. Your knowledge is adult knowledge. But we must continue. In time, you’ll learn how to manage all this. To order it. And it will change you. But first, we always begin with pain.”

  “No.”

  And Palor would raise his staff again, and Kene would wince, preparing himself for yet another strike. I’m failing, Kene would think. This is too much.

  In the afternoons, a human named Marcus would sometimes arrive from Naven, bringing Palor an electronic slate on which he could read and respond to messages. Marcus looked upon Kene with a dull expression. Kene thought he saw pity in Marcus’s gaze, but he couldn’t be sure. Marcus had a daughter, Alta, who occasionally accompanied him. One time, Alta took his hand and opening it, placed a token there. The humans had etched the city’s towers into the token’s metal. Unable to understand each other, they ran together in the nearby forest, playing a game of sorts, until Marcus grabbed Alta’s arm and dragged her, flailing and squealing, back to a hovercraft. After many of these play sessions, Alta stopped accompanying Marcus. Kene never discovered why.

  The full impact of his isolation dragged Kene down, his loneliness coexisting with memories he longed to forget. At night, before sleep took him, he would finger the token in his pocket, remembering his brief friend’s smile.

  I can’t do this anymore.

  Leaving Kene in Deliz or Talib’s care, Palor would accompany Marcus to peace negotiations just outside Naven’s walls. He would return late at night, exhausted from the talks, falling asleep quickly. On a night that Palor returned late, Kene had to wait only a few minutes until his mentor’s rhythmic breathing punctuated the quiet tent. Kene crept quietly from his bed and confiscated water flutes and food packs from a box outside the tent’s entrance. He removed the kin and other Memoriam tools from Palor’s satchel and placed the food and water inside, leaving the tools behind.

  Outside, some of the cooking fires still smoldered, their embers a fading glow. While Anthro slept, Kene weaved between the habitats, his feet bare, careful not to break twigs or trip. He made his way along the river trail, the rushing water concealing any noise. He reached the shore and then trailed the edge toward where the transport had originally dropped him off. The light of stars and moon filtered, the night paled by sea fog, no dark feature of land or water offered itself to his eyes. The crashing waves and fanning foam slushed somewhere off to the left, rinsing the sand in sound only. Could the water wash him too? Rinse away the memories wrapped around his mind? No. The memories could not be suppressed. Could not diminish with time. They only strengthened their fierce resolve to last, and last within him. But the ocean gave him hope.

  The sun emerged like a slow epiphany, haze evaporating as pink rays cut through the mist, linear tendrils revealing the ocean and wind-carved embankment ahead. Hope tingled along his skin as a watercraft drew near, similar to the one that had brought him here.

  Figures stood on the embankment, dark lines against the corroded sea hills. He ran toward them, afraid to miss the approaching carrier, which rode a wave to shore and hovered over the sand to a stop. People exited the craft through vertical doors, and Kene ran until one of the figures approaching the carrier spotted him.

  “Hey!” The figure waved at Kene.

  It was Deliz.

  The tall soldier skidded down the embankment. Kene just stood there, defeated by his fatigue and the universe’s betrayal.

  “Going on a trip?” Deliz laughed and took his hand. But Kene barely heard him, the tears cold against his face, now indiscernible from the seawater collecting on his bony cheeks. He had no fight left in him, no urge to run. Why escape now when Deliz would only overpower him?

  “I’ve been waiting for new arrivals. But I didn’t know I was waiting for you as well.” Two females slogged up behind Deliz. They introduced themselves as Elma, a medic, and Ro, another Parhata soldier.

  “It's an escaped Memoriam.” Deliz gestured to Kene, and the females chuckled.

  Kene, already feeling the crack of Palor’s staff on his back, soured with the mockery.

  They began the trek over the sand to the river’s mouth.

  “Is it so painful?” Ro smiled at him. “Is it so bad you have to run away?” Her ankl
es chimed with bracelets of tinkling metals, little bells pervading her every step with music. Long metal sheets in thin rectangles encircled her neck. Her horns were thick, their roots starting just above her cheeks and rising high over her head, and her face, although rigid, seemed young to Kene—a female of twenty-five Earth years or so.

  Kene nodded. How could she ever understand?

  But then, looking over her face, he discovered the puckered, wrinkled flesh that formed a fingerprint-sized circle between her horns, just like his.

  That night, Kene paced inside Palor’s habitat, waiting for him to return from Naven, waiting to receive his punishment.

  Waiting to confront Palor’s lies.

  “You must learn not to run away again.” Palor stepped through the plastic entry flaps. “I'm almost too weary to punish you.” He lifted his staff from the place by the desk.

  “You lied.”

  Palor hesitated, grasping the long, heavy stick as if struck by the words.

  Kene sensed the power of what he’d said. “Liar,” he repeated.

  Palor leaned the stick back against the plastic wall and sat on his bed, staring at Kene with confusion. “I've been nothing but honest with you.”

  “Then who is she?”

  “Who?”

  “You said you were the last. That we were special.”

  “I am. We are.”

  “What about the female with the scar?”

  Palor gazed down at Kene. “Ro is here?” Palor sighed heavily and slouched forward against one of the habitat's supports. “She’s not a Memoriam. She was my mentor’s last disciple. He took her in after I completed my training. She was too old, like you. But Loy was stubborn. He took her in; however, the memories he gave her vanished from his own mind. Loy tried to retrieve them from her, but he found that she had forgotten them too.”

  “You said that was impossible.”

  “For you and me. For real Memoriams, unless we imprint with a Fugue like Ro. That’s what she is. It’s not her fault. Her kind are rare. But they do materialize from time to time. We still don’t know how to test for them.”