102. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
R ynn
Taking a deep breath, I center myself. Despite that this joining occurred all wrong, breaking every rule, I don’t believe the Council will nullify it. Something like this hasn’t occurred in over a thousand annums . Certainly the circumstances speak for themselves. I can’t be held accountable for joining with someone not of the Boklorn species, someone who was not properly trained or prepared to be my host.
I’ve taken my ceremonial bath here for the 57 th time. Never have I performed it in a body covered with fur or with a burred tongue I have to use with special care in order to avoid my sharp canines.
I look into the mirrors that surround me. Before the ceremony, it is meant to remind an Arclite of the body he is leaving. After the ceremony, it is to allow us to get acquainted with the more intimate aspects of our new host.
I briefly consider asking the Council for permission to discard this strange body before its natural expiration, but shake my head. That would be wasteful. And disrespectful.
A picture of Zar’s mate from last night flashes into my mind. She offered herself to me. It was shocking. Offensive. The sheer audacity of it kept me awake long after my bedtime.
Now, I believe I understand. I paged through some of Zar’s memories, the intimate ones he shared with her. Truth be known, I enjoyed those memories, although I will never admit that to another living soul.
The Boklorns who become hosts are kept cloistered and encouraged to avoid strong emotions, including lust. Especially lust. It allows their symbiote to live tranquilly inside them so we can go about our duties of reading everything ever written in all the languages known to us, thus accumulating and warehousing vast stores of knowledge.
Arclites have photographic memories. We can recall every word we’ve read and every story or conversation we’ve heard, making us the perfect species for this vast undertaking. We’re the receptacles of all knowledge—Recepticons.
There was a point in my evolution when I wondered if my existence was superfluous. With the advent of computers, why would a physical body be required to perform the task? Weren’t disks and drives sufficient now that technology rose to such an advanced level?
But technology can be destroyed with war or natural disasters. As long as Arclites are safe, we can keep the storehouse of all the information ever documented.
I’ve never known sex. None of my hosts have experienced it. I’ll admit to having a prurient interest in Zar’s memories, the times he shared with his mate. I don’t know what fascinated me more, the physical couplings, or the tenderness he felt for her. The emotion, though foreign, was seductive.
His mate’s brash offer to lie with me was shocking. It brought out compassion in me, which is frowned upon by the Council. In my head, I have the specifics of billions of deaths, of famine, war, cruelty beyond the ability to fathom. It does no one any good for the symbiote to have emotions about those things.
I catch my visage out of the corner of my eye. I don’t see myself in the mirror, not Zar-Rynn. Just Zar. And that causes me to imagine the pictures he carried in his mind like they were the most sacred pages of a bible. Pictures of lying with his beloved. I can’t imagine what it was like to love someone that passionately.
I hear the gong strike three times in the adjoining meeting room. After pulling on the white robes of a newly melded symbiont-host pair, I join them.
For 56 times, this meeting has been a mere formality. Today, I’m being grilled. Each member of the Council repeatedly enquires about the moment I entered my new host. After an hoara of this, they ask about his memories.
I made a decision shortly after I received Zar’s memories that I would not make the Council privy to most of his thoughts. This isn’t like a recitation of history that I share after bonding with a Boklorn. Zar was not a sheltered monk.
Although I only parse out the smallest details of his life, I still have to relate how he was abducted as an infant, and that he was raised a gladiator-slave. All they would have to do is ask to see the body and they would know this male has not lived an easy life. His back is crisscrossed with scars bearing the tale of his abused history.
The Council is made of five symbiont-host pairs. They are the final arbiters of all problems or questions that occur with meldings. I did a stint on this council about one hundred annums ago.
Although I knew this review would be more than the usual formality, I did not expect their dour looks, and certainly didn’t anticipate their request that I sequester myself in the anteroom while they sorted things out.
“Do you wish to speak with the physician who attended me after the melding?” I ask. “The mate who observed the actual transfer?”
Five heads snap to me as if the movement were orchestrated.
“Mate?” Krin-Fulan asks.
I resist the urge to stroke my chin with my palm. It’s a new habit I’ve developed since I awoke in a furred body with a softly bearded chin. I had deftly told Zar’s history without mentioning this fact because I anticipated this cold reception.
“Yes. The poor unfortunate was mated,” I admit, as if I’d had every intention of sharing this bit of information, but it had slipped my mind.
They again ask me to wait in the anteroom, but when they call me back in only a few minimas , I know my fate before they inform me of it.
“To the entity known as Zar-Rynn,” the chairman intones. “We appreciate your predicament. We find that you melded with a host who did not have the ability to give consent. We do not censure you for this, although it is unfortunate. What appeared to be a willing host arrived at a propitious moment, and you entered it, as is your biological imperative.”
My knees sag with relief. I thought for a moment they were going to censure me.
“However,” he continues, “you are unfit to hold the title of Recepticon. As you know, you must be dispassionate, an open vessel, in order not to taint the information you are shepherding. Being in a vessel with this history of trauma disqualifies you from the ability to fulfill your duties.”
I’m shocked. I did not expect this. My mind is reeling.
“We believe from now forward you will be unable to look at your stores of information objectively. You will have emotions about factual information. You might begin to store things differently, or remember them with bias. This event has contaminated your mind.”
As I try to absorb this information, my self-preservation instincts come to the fore. I’ve always lodged in monasteries. I have no credits, no living family. I’m utterly alone and without resources.
“Because your presence on Boklorn is bound to be disturbing to other potential hosts as well as Recepticons, we request you to leave the planet within one week. We will give you the sum of 10,000 credits to help you on your way.”
10,000 credits? I’m not certain that will get me to another planet, much less pay for food and accommodations.
“Wh-where will I go? Wh-what will I do?”
“We can’t help you.”
I stumble out of the temple and sit on the steps leading to the street. I chose to be a Recepticon when I was young. I’ve been groomed for this calling since that moment. I’ve known nothing of the real world other than the information stored in my filaments.
I’ve never fed or housed or clothed myself. The monastery provided everything since I melded with my first Boklorn. Before that, I had been a free spirit, a sparkle of light. When I became a symbiont, I knew there was no going back. I must stay in a physical body for the rest of my days.
I recognize the emotion I’m experiencing from Zar’s memories. I think it’s despair.
“Rynn?” The question comes over the wrist-comm the ship equipped me with. “It’s Shadow. Just checking. You asked us to stay in atmo in case you needed any of us to bear witness. Did your Council have any questions or objections?”
Is this providence? An avenue of help from an unexpected source? I don’t believe I have another choice.
“I wonder, Captain, if I could partake of more of your hospitality? Might I catch a ride with you to your next port of call?”
Anya
Seeing Zar’s body walk off the Fool’s Errand was the saddest moment of my life. It signaled the end. The terminal moment of all hope Zar would emerge from wherever Thing imprisoned him. The end of my dreams that I’d get my mate back.
Perhaps if my mom were here, she would have counseled me, held my hand, told me it was the end of an era or the end of a chapter in my life, and that time would heal me. But my mom’s not here and I have no one to hold my hand. It feels like the end of my life in so many ways. That male was everything to me. What we had was just so big and wonderful. It was all-consuming.
I cry for days. Well, it seems like days. According to my clock, it’s only been three hours. I’m afraid to look in the mirror because I’m sure my face is blotchy and my eyes are red-rimmed. I should hydrate because I feel like I cried a river.
Suddenly, it hits me. The awareness is so big, so significant, it feels like my world has tilted off its axis.
I’ve been wallowing in memories these last few days. Many of them have been about our first few days of captivity, the insurrection, falling in love with Zar.
Usually, I minimize my own role in the slave revolt. Mom always told me not to have a big head. But, dammit, I masterminded the whole thing.
The ship had been full of gladiator-slaves who’d been so beaten down, so used to wearing pain/kill collars, all thought of rebellion had vanished long ago. The other females, all newly abducted like me, were too terrorized to do anything but survive.
No. It was me, Anya fucking Nash, who plotted the whole damn thing. From getting Dr. Drayke’s buy-in, to convincing Tyree to use his psychic powers to help us, to encouraging everyone to climb out of their own self-absorbed wells of terror and agree to work together. And we did it. We won. And here we are.
I am not going to let some—how did he describe himself?—gaseous filament, to steal my love from me.
Zar. Is. In. There. And I’m going to get him out.
I risk a trip to the bathroom, and it’s just as bad as I thought. I splash water on my face and finger-comb my curls, pull on my pants and shoes, and hustle to the bridge.
I force myself not to feel like an interloper. I belong here. I used to hang out all the time, just to be with my honey. I snag a seat and look out at the planet below. I’m going to ask Shadow if he’ll give me a day to find a place to live down there and if he’ll come retrieve me, if at some point I want to return to the Fool’s Errand .
Then I’m going to go down to Boklorn and hound Thing to the ends of his planet, trying to coax Zar out.
I plop into the empty comms chair just in time to hear Shadow asking Thing if he needs our help. I jump, my body’s visceral reaction to hearing Zar’s voice, when he says, “I wonder, Captain, if I could partake of more of your hospitality? Might I catch a ride with you to your next port of call?”
“One moment,” is Shadow’s response. He looks at me, his face filled with compassion. “Can you bear it, Anya? Having that… thing back onboard?”
He calls him Thing, too? Heartwarming.
My mind flies, zipping from possibility to possibility, brimming with ideas and permutations on how to handle this.
“Does he have credits?” I ask, knowing the answer. He told me he’s completely cared for by the Council.
Shadow enquires. Thing’s answer is, “They gave me a meager severance, but I can pay.”
“Tell him we don’t want to dip into his small supply of credits. Tell him we’d be happy to transport him and will find other ways for him to provide payment.”
Bam! Just like that, I’m optimistic. His payment? It will be a hell of a lot more than tolerating a few dinners. Zar is in there, and I’m going to coax him out.