Chapter Twenty-two

AULD AERTH, STARDATE 57071.0

Frane shivered under a fog-obscured late-afternoon sun that supplied distressingly little heat. He looked out across the blue-green bay toward a series of large rocks, upon which several large, wet, black creatures made an apparently vain effort to sun themselves; some of them made strange barking noises as they turned their broad bellies toward the waning rays. Above them, white-winged birds circled lazily in the sky, screeching and chattering.

The sight was unlike any he had ever seen before, and yet somehow exactly as he had imagined it would be. He felt the cool soil—so different in texture from the gritty, volcanic sands of Oghen or any of the other old M’jallanish worlds—beneath the toes of his bare feet. The vegetation was green here, rather than bluish, though he had seen some flowering plants that looked almost exactly like the sweet-smelling portangeas of home.

“So what do you think of this place?”

Frane turned, reminded by the voice that he was not alone, and that this was not merely some dream of Auld Aerth. He saw the large, gray-haired man walking toward him through the manicured grass, his shoulder-length locks set into gentle motion by the light breeze. Now that he had taken the time to get to know Admiral Leonard James Akaar, he didn’t find him nearly so intimidating as he had initially.

“It’s…cold,” Frane said, shivering again. He drew his simple penitent’s robe even more tightly about himself, though it did little to keep out the chill.

Akaar laughed, a deep, rhythmic sound that wouldn’t have been out of place in an Neyel space vessel’s Efti’el compartment. “You might be surprised how common that complaint is. According to local legend, an ancient human writer once said that the coldest winter he ever experienced occurred here during summertime. Welcome to San Francisco.”

Frane recalled what he had been told all his life about the progression of Auld Aerth’s seasons; it was currently the dead of the ancestral homeworld’s northern winter, a month and several days past the solstice.

“Regardless of the weather, Admiral, this world is truly beyond my imaginings,” Frane said to Akaar. He pointed out to the sea.

“I hope you and your people will get to know it well,” Akaar said. “After all, it is more your birthright than mine.”

Frane nodded, though this was a difficult concept for him to get his mind around. Being Neyel, Frane was genetically human, though his people resembled no terrestrial racial group owing to their many genengineered traits. Akaar, however, hailed from an entirely different world and heritage, despite his almost completely standard human appearance.

Frane’s eyes were drawn back across the bay, to the strange, intermittently barking animals. “What are those noisy black things?” he said, pointing toward the rocks with the spade-shaped tip of his tail.

Akaar peered across the water and smiled. “Seals. They like to sun themselves out there.”

Frane didn’t understand. “But I saw them go below the water. They breathe both water and air?”

“They are marine mammals. I sometimes regard them as a kind of compromise between people and fish. In fact, according to some very old Earth legends, there used to be creatures known as mermaids that were half-woman and half-fish. When sailors observed the seals at a distance, they sometimes mistook them for mermaids.”

Frane pulled his loose-fitting sleeve up and looked at the bracelet that had been handed down through nine Neyel generations, all the way down from the sainted Aidan Burgess to him through his multigreat grandmatron Vil’ja. He finally located one particular small metal charm.

He held it up so that the admiral could see it. “Is this a mermaid?”

Akaar peered closer. “That is indeed a mermaid.”

“It was one of the original stories,” Frane said. “Burgess brought it with her to Oghen.” Lost, beloved, dead Oghen,he thought, briefly wondering whether the extinguished Neyel Coreworld would one day become the stuff of Neyel legend the way Auld Aerth had.

Akaar placed one of his large hands on the Neyel’s shoulder. “Come with me. There is something here that I must show you before you return to your people.”

As they walked, Frane stepped over and around the stone slabs that lay nestled in the ground, or rose from it. Each of them bore witness to someone from Auld Aerth, people who had been here once, but were no more.

After spending several minutes quietly looking at the stones and their inscrutable markings, Frane spoke. “I think we Neyel are like the seals.”

“How so?” Akaar asked.

“We are half human and half something else. We are what we were made to become. Our Oh-Neyel fathers and mothers made us into something else.”

“From what I know of your history, they had to alter the genetics of the people of the Vanguard colony in order to survive,” Akaar said.

“They never expected that we would return,” Frane said solemnly. He wrapped one of his hands around the bracelet, holding it in place on his arm as they walked slowly through the somber forest of inscribed stones.

Eventually, they reached a meter-high stone column, near a tree whose branches were laden with brown leaves, in bold defiance of the austere winter. Frane noticed other short columns as well, arrayed in concentric rings around the tree.

Akaar gestured toward some writing on the side of the nearest column. Frane could see the familiar chevron that the Titancrew wore on their chests, but he could not decipher any of the text.

“What does it say?”

Akaar crouched and pointed. “It says ‘Aidan Burgess, Ambassador and Peacemaker.’ ”

Frane was confused again. “Why is this here?Burgess was assassinated on the Coreworld.”

“This is an area where the Federation places markers commemorating those who have fallen in its service but are never recovered. Since Burgess’s body was never brought back, they eventually placed this marker here in her stead.”

Frane nodded solemnly. “She has a much bigger cenotaph on Oghen.” He realized his slip, and quickly added, “Had.”

Akaar gave a curious grin. “Well, she may have been more highly regarded by your people than by ours. She did not make a lot of friends toward the end of her career.”

The notion astonished Frane, but he kept his thoughts to himself. He touched the cool stone, then wriggled the story bracelet off of his wrist.

“I have brought the stories back to Auld Aerth,” he said to the column. “Where the oldest of them originated, with Burgess and her ancestors.”

Akaar sat beside the column, his long legs folded beneath him. “Tell me about the bracelet,” he said.

And Frane did. He spoke of Burgess’s childhood, of her adventures exploring the world of her birth, and later, of the multiplicity of worlds that had surrounded her. He told of her coming to Oghen, of the life she had lived there, of the incremental yet necessary changes she had helped bring to Neyel society, and of the legacy she had left behind. With each story, he held up a tiny charm, until the skies had darkened to deep purples and his voice had grown tired and hoarse.

He stood and placed the bracelet atop the column, then slowly backed away. Akaar stood as well, a confused look in his eyes.

“You are leaving it here?”

Frane nodded. “I have returned it, full of memories. It belongs with Burgess.”