Chapter 12 Truth
Truth
Khoth stared at Jace’s now naked figure floating beneath the blue surface of the liquid in the tank. His clothes had broken apart and the remnants of them had been efficiently vacuumed away leaving the liquid a pure, electric blue once more.
When he’d first seen Jace’s body unclothed it had been quite thin with little musculature and very little fat on it.
He looked frail and, also, like he had suffered for years.
Khoth was amazed at how much strength of will had been in that fragile package.
Though as he watched Jace’s form now, it appeared that it was changing.
Is he gaining muscle? Yes, it appears so.
Tubes were attached all along Jace’s spine, at his wrists, into biceps, two in his stomach, and also four in the thighs and calves.
The liquid being pumped into Jace appeared to be a mixture of many colors and he could not identify what it was.
The veins and arteries under Jace’s skin showed a dark blue perhaps in response.
Would that color remain or would it disappear after this process was complete?
I hope it does not change his eyes. He has such beautiful eyes.
Khoth shifted from foot to foot as he continued to study Jace’s changing form.
Those beautiful eyes were closed and there were no signs of distress on his face.
If there had been, Khoth might have been inclined to step into the tank and take Jace out of it.
But all appeared to be going to plan at the moment. Though whose plan was now less clear.
Jace’s arms were stretched out to his sides. His fingers twitched occasionally and Khoth wondered if he were dreaming or if it was just an autonomic response.
I hope your Xi and Xa are in alignment, Jace, and you experience only peace.
He could almost imagine Thammah making a scoffing noise at him and that expressive lifting of one of her eyebrows at this. He had nearly let Jace die for the greater good, had he not? How could he now act as if he were Jace’s protector? She would have had a point.
He wondered where she was. He almost missed her acerbic wit.
She was too smart to be caught by the humans.
He guessed that she was hiding out in some part of the now-active Osiris.
If Jace survived this connection to Gehenna the humans would likely forgive their trespasses.
His mind flashed back to Colonel Diane Parker’s face just before the doors to the Core had shut.
She will never forgive, I think. Nor forget.
He had taken her child. A mother was fierce in the protection of her young. And there was something about Jace that made people want to protect him, even as he was strong-willed.
Has my admiration for Jace caused me to break the Rule of Duuskukeh again? Thammah would say yes, but then she would add that it was a good thing.
Khoth’s lips flattened. He should be upset with himself that he had likely lost this technology to humanity forever.
But he couldn’t be. Truth was the most important thing to embrace about oneself.
And his truth was that he didn’t regret what he’d done.
He was completely pleased that Jace was going to live.
Maybe I deserve to be exiled. Maybe that is the safest thing for the Alliance.
Yet his mind voice was mild and he imagined Daesah saying in response, “There is no shame in caring for the individual, Khoth. After all, what is the whole, but made of ones? Your empathy is your strength. Not a weakness.”
He reached inside of his exo-suit and felt the spine of her last journal under his fingertips. He had stuffed it into the interior pocket before going to Jace’s hospital room. He had a moment to read it now before Jace woke up. He should do so.
He will wake up. He will be repaired and… improved in some ways. Narrowing his eyes, Khoth again confirmed that the young man’s body was changing. He will still be lithe but much smaller than me, yet a powerful package.
His eyes drifted to Jace’s genitals. It was natural to be interested in another species’ reproductive organs. It was not something he felt particular embarrassment about. But he had to admit that there was something easier about quenching this interest when Jace was unaware of it.
Human anatomy was similar to Thaf’ell in some ways.
The long pinkish shaft was like his thicker, longer blue one.
He had no nest of curls like Jace did around the base of that cock.
He considered whether Jace’s cock would change, as his did, when aroused.
He tilted his head to the side as he noted the furry balls that were nestled up against Jace’s body.
He wondered what they would feel like, what the whole of it would feel like. Soft? Scaly? Turgid?
Khoth shifted again as surprising heat bloomed in him.
Blood coursed to his cheeks and he looked down at the journal instead of at Jace’s naked body.
It was one thing to take an interest in another species.
It was something else entirely to be aroused by them.
He spun around so that his back was to the pool and that tempting body.
He blindly paged through his sister’s journal, noting the familiar, neat handwriting in violet ink. His heart ached just seeing it and knowing that she would never write another word again. His sadness erased the arousal quickly.
He ran his fingers over the pages and leaned down to sniff them, trying to find yet another trace of her there.
The Thaf’ell believed that to write was to pull a piece of one’s Xi out of oneself forever so that others could experience it.
He had never really believed that. But he was in the minority.
Thaf’ell artists were not held to the same social strictures as everyone else in order for them to freely share their Xi without regard to Xa.
They were thought to be special. He just thought them strange.
But, in that moment, he knew that though his sister’s words would not be lyrical like one of their poets or writers, these words were part of her.
They were words he had never read before and, once he read them for this first time, they would not be new any longer.
There would forever be less of her to know even as his understanding of her would grow.
His throat tightened and his heart grew heavy in his chest.
His eyes were still simply scanning the lines, not reading the words when he suddenly caught the name “Osiris”.
He slowed down his paging and started to focus.
What had his sister known about this ship?
What was her reason for wanting to come to the Osiris?
What secrets could he discover for her here?
What questions of hers could he answer? He needed to know. He began to read.
… heard from Dr. Lafrei about her work on Thausia…
Khoth frowned. He had heard of Dr. Kantor Lafrei and his impression was not good.
She was a Neenda, a mostly aquatic species that claimed to be able to read the memories of the person who created an object through simply touching that object.
While the Neenda had been able to prove that their reading ability worked on objects created by many of the species in the Alliance, their readings of Precursors had been less satisfactory.
The Neenda produced countless papers supposedly about Precursor thought and history after touching their technology but they were so vague as to be useless.
There were theories as to why. Such as that the Neenda were simply too distant a Seed Species from the Altaeth to be able to understand their thoughts.
The Thaf’ell believed that the Neenda were simply too empathetic to understand the cold logic of the Precursors and, therefore, shied away from it.
Some had even accused the Neenda of lying about their readings to hide Precursor beliefs that varied from their own.
Dr. Lafrei was the most prolific of these readers and, not inconsequentially, the most distrusted.
Yet because of that--and so as not to offend the Neenda as their work in reading Khul objects had been invaluable--she had been allowed to continue this practice on Thausia, an abandoned Precursor world that had few, if unusual, artifacts.
… most of Thausia’s laboratories and manufacturing centers were obliterated seemingly by the Precursors themselves. Yet, despite the destruction, Dr. Lafrei has been able to read many of the structures--
Khoth was frowning again. Dr. Lafrei contended that the Precursors had destroyed some of their own buildings and technology?
Why think of them instead of the Khul? All Precursor worlds had been found to be mostly intact with full defenses online that kept the Khul at bay.
The Precursors had taken an almost fanatic care to ensure that, at least the remnants of their civilization would not be lost to the sands of time.
It was theorized that they had understood that their weaponry and technology were the only thing stopping the Khul from destroying the Seeded Species, including the Thaf’ell.
Yet here was his sister and Dr. Lafrei contending that the Precursors had attempted to obliterate this part of themselves.
She believes that there is a connection between the Osiris and Thausia, namely that the Osiris was built there, along with other technology the likes of which we have not seen on any of the other Precursor worlds. And there is a reason for that...
Khoth’s eyebrows lifted. These were not the vague almost poetic ramblings that the Neenda usually gave regarding the Precursors. There was normally a reverential tone to those honest gibberings. But Dr. Lafrei’s understanding here was full of definiteness.