“I see you’re picking up the noticeable difference in our appearance. The truth is, he’s not my blood, Letho. He was orphaned in the transition from Fulcrum to Eursus. I took him under my wing, and after a while, I just started calling him son. It stuck.”

Letho noticed another errant tear at the corner of Zedock’s eyes, and the old man’s lower lip was trembling. Was he about to start crying? Was he having a stroke?

“Everything okay, Zedock?” Letho asked. He scooted closer and put a hand on the old man’s shoulder, and to his surprise, it, too, trembled. Letho almost leapt up out of his seat when the old man placed a weathered hand on top of his own, patted it, and then let it drop to his side.

“Letho, there’s something I need to tell you. I meant to tell you before, but you never came back…”

The hairs on Letho’s neck stood up, and chills ran up and down his spine like mallets on a bone marimba.

“You see, I haven’t been completely forthright with you with regard to our particular relationship,” Zedock said, then stopped, as though his batteries were depleted. He continued to stare vacantly at the middling distance until Letho tapped him on the shoulder.

“Zedock—just spit it out already,” Letho said.

“Well, hell. I’m no good at this stuff, Letho,” he said, and then paused again.

Letho, whose stomach was lurching and spinning, grew impatient. “Come on, just tell me already!”

Zedock rocketed straight up from his chair with incalculable spryness and clenched both fists at his side. “You’re my son, dammit!” he shouted.

SEVEN - Proud Papa

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a sec,” Letho said.

The room was spinning. His mind shook as walls inside began to tumble, taking with them preconceived notions about self and who he had believed himself to be.

“What do you mean, I’m your son? My parents died in a laboratory accident.” Letho felt his eyes go unfocused¸ felt the familiar slithery sting of a panic attack coming on, and fought back the urge to collapse on the floor before Zedock.

“Well, that’s part of the story.”

“How can this even be possible?” Letho shouted.

“Well, if you’d calm the hell down, I could explain it to you.”

Letho said nothing, just nodded, his breath fast and razor-edged in his heaving chest.

“Okay, it’s complicated, but I’ll do my best to explain it to you. Where to begin?” Zedock said.

“How about at the beginning?” Letho said.

“All right, already, smart-ass. Here we go.”

Zedock took a breath and launched into his story. “You see, I was once married to a woman named Marta. She’s the one that gave you those blue eyes of yours. She was beautiful, Letho. Way better than this old lug deserved. I can’t tell you how many times people told me that she was way out of my league, or that I’d knocked it out of the park when I landed her.”

Letho made a twirling gesture with his index finger, indicating that he wished for Zedock to get on with it.

“You probably didn’t get far enough in your life on Centennial Fulcrum to where you’d have encountered the rigamarole people had to go through to get certified to have children. We desperately wanted a child, but I just didn’t have the credits or the clout, even with my position as Head Inspector. It’s all very political, you understand?”

Letho nodded that he did indeed understand, and twirled his index finger again.

“Well, when we were denied for the fourteenth time, I had to get a little creative. You’ve heard the Tarsi say that Zedock Wartimer is a friend of the Tarsi. Well, that’s a whole ‘nother story all on its own. But I’ll try to hit the high points since you seem to be a mite impatient.

“You see, my family has been friendly with the Tarsi folk since the Fulcrum stations landed on Eursus way back when. Those Tarsi, they were inside those Fulcrum stations for a long time before they made it to Eursus, and over time they forgot a lot. Long story short, they lost a lot of their abilities and knowledge. From what Fintran told me, back in their heyday they would have been able to learn our language like a duck to water, or they would have invented a device to do the talking and translating for them. But when they got here they weren’t able to communicate with us. The powers that be wanted to take the Fulcrum stations and remove the Tarsi. My forefather convinced them to allow the Tarsi to stay on the Fulcrum stations as maintenance workers, as they were the only ones who knew how to fix things when they broke.”

“So the Tarsi were in the Fulcrum stations to begin with? Does that mean that the Tarsi created the Fulcrum stations?”

“Yes, Letho. All the stuff above—the town center, the domiciles—we built that inside the stations to make them fit us. The rest, the underneath, is all Tarsi, which you probably gathered in your time there. Most people went their entire life without setting foot down there. They don’t remember that the Fulcrum vessels were alien in design, as that information has slowly been phased out of the collective knowledge of the folks that live on the stations. From what I understand, they were beautiful inside, very organic and natural, before we filled ’em up with cookie-cutter apartments and office cubicles.

“Anyways, what I’m trying to tell you is that my relationship with the Tarsi is special. There was a time, Letho, when I was a younger man, when they thought that maybe I was the chosen one they had been searching for. I was fast and strong, and could understand what they were saying when they did their singin’ thing. But as we both know, that didn’t turn out to be the case.

“So like I was saying, Marta and I weren’t supposed to have a child, officially. But unofficially, well, we were determined. So I approached the Tarsi about concealing Marta with them in the underneath so we could get her off the anti-fertility drugs, and keep her out of sight during her pregnancy. It was a mutually beneficial situation, as you can imagine. We got to have a kid, and they got another shot at finding their chosen one. We had no choice, Letho, and we were hard-headed back then; we wanted a child so bad.

“So we faked Marta’s death and hid her in the depths with the Tarsi. It weren’t long before she was clear of the antidepressants and anti-fertility drugs, and we conceived a child. The plan was to smuggle the both of you back in as ‘refugees’ from a failed Fulcrum station, with a name change: last name Ferron. But bless her heart, my sweet Marta… she didn’t make it.”

Zedock bowed his head and placed a hand on his forehead to hide his eyes from Letho. His shoulders began to shake, followed by choked sobs.

“She died giving birth to you. We had to dispose of her body through one of the exhaust ports. It was shameful. But a good thing came out of all that. You, Letho.”

Letho’s head was spinning, his image of self dissolving. He had a mother who had given her life so that he could live? And a father who was alive?

“You were there the whole time,” Letho said, eyes wide, vacant, as if Zedock’s words had hypnotized him. “How come you never told me? Came to see me?”

Visions blasted through Letho’s mind like a flash flood washing out a gully. Living in the Fulcrum station’s home for parentless children, a time in his life barely remembered, as it was dirty and harsh. Going through his formal ed sequence with no one to congratulate him when his marks were high, or to offer advice on how to catch the eye of the girl he was sweet on. So many missed opportunities.

“I wanted to, so bad, Letho. You have no idea. But because I was Lead Inspector, a lot of eyes were on me all the time. It would have been… problematic for me to adopt a child, a single man. It would have raised questions about your origins, which would have been dangerous. For both of us. But I want to you to know that I was always there, watching. I am so proud of the man you have become, Letho. You had some strange detours from the path along the way, but those are what make you who you are. My only regret is that I didn’t tell you sooner.”