Chapter 24 Syssi
SYSSI
Kian parked the stroller near a bench at the edge of the playground and unbuckled Allegra.
"Playground!" She hit the ground running and made a beeline for the climbing structure, where three Kra-ell children were playing.
The Kra-ell kids were a little older than Allegra and significantly more agile, their movements quick and precise in a way that reflected their physical gifts.
One of them was hanging upside down from a bar, and another was scaling the outside of the structure in a way that would have given a human parent a heart attack.
Undeterred by the athletic superiority of her playmates, Allegra grabbed the lowest rung of the ladder and began climbing.
Syssi sat on the bench, and Kian settled beside her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and stretching out his long legs.
"I haven't been able to stop thinking about Eluheed and the very likely possibility that he's my great-grandfather," Syssi said quietly enough that the Kra-ell mothers sitting on the other bench wouldn't hear her.
"I thought that all those years I felt different were because I was a dormant carrier of godly genes.
That was a nicely packaged explanation for why I never fit in and for my prophetic visions.
" She chuckled. "Turned out that I've always felt like an alien because I actually might be part extraterrestrial. "
Kian's mouth curved. "We are all part extraterrestrials, including the human residents of this planet.
We are all children of the gods, with some of us just carrying more of their genes than others.
Even if Eluheed is your great-grandfather, his DNA is close enough to human that the differences are minimal. We share the same genetic foundation."
"But he's different than other immortals. He has no fangs, no venom, and he can't induce anyone's transition. We don't even know how he became immortal. My precognition ability is unique among immortals and even gods, but it is similar enough to Eluheed's."
Kian still didn't look concerned or troubled by the possibility of her extraterrestrial origins.
In fact, he looked amused. "You know, all those times I thought about how lucky I was because I'd found a rare diamond unlike anyone else on Earth, I was apparently right.
Eluheed's genes might have given you the seer ability that led you to Amanda's lab, which led you to me, which means that I might owe the man a debt of gratitude.
I might have no choice but to finance his expedition to Mount Ararat and the excavation of his precious charges. "
She laughed. "Am I worth that much?"
"You are worth much more."
Syssi's smile faded as another thought surfaced. "If it's true that he's my forefather, then Allegra is part alien too."
They knew she was special in more ways than one, and now they knew why.
They both looked at the playground, where their daughter was attempting to swing the way the Kra-ell child was doing, with predictably less graceful results.
"The whole thing needs to be confirmed first," Kian said. "Your great-grandmother might have miscarried Eluheed's baby. Boris Dorjinsky could have been your grandmother's father. Or the second husband, after Boris died."
She sighed. "I need to call my mother."
Kian raised an eyebrow. "You can't tell her about Eluheed."
"I'm not going to. I will just ask her what she knows about her grandmother.
My mother might know whether Rosa had her mother right as she got to America or much later.
Perhaps she even knows about Rosa getting pregnant out of wedlock and marrying the first guy she could find to legitimize her baby. "
"It was a long time ago, and families bury their embarrassments."
"Someone always knows." Syssi watched Allegra negotiate a truce with the Kra-ell boy over whose turn it was on the slide.
"My mother was forty-two when she had me.
Her mother was also older when she had her.
There are big gaps between the generations, which makes the chain shorter and the memories longer.
If my grandmother ever talked about her own mother's past, my mom would remember. "
"Then call her," Kian said. "But be careful about how you frame the questions. You can't tell her about Eluheed without him giving you permission to do it. We both swore to him that his secret was safe with us."
"You don't have to remind me." She cast him an offended look.
"I'll never betray a secret I'm entrusted with.
I'll tell my mother that I'm doing genealogy research.
She'll love that. She's been talking about compiling a family tree, but she's never had time to actually do it.
When I told her about what Gilbert had uncovered regarding our shared ancestry, she said that we should do what he had done. "
"That's good. That way, she won't get suspicious about your sudden interest. Your mother is a smart lady, so tread carefully."
"I know. I should also call Bridget."
"About a DNA test?"
"Not yet. Eluheed isn't ready for that, and I don't want to push him.
But Bridget ran blood tests on me when I was pregnant with Allegra, and again when we realized that Gilbert might be my relative.
If there's anything unusual in my bloodwork that doesn't quite fit the normal immortal profile, she might have noticed it and just not mentioned it because it didn't seem significant to her at the time. She wasn't looking for alien markers."
"She would have mentioned it."
"Or not." Syssi leaned on him and rested her head on Kian's arm. "It doesn't hurt to ask."
"It might. Bridget is smart, and she'll wonder why you are asking those kinds of questions."
"I'll be discreet."
"I know you will." He leaned to press a kiss to the top of her head. “You’re always discreet. It's one of your many rare-diamond qualities."
"You're leaning hard into that metaphor."
"It's not a metaphor. It's a fact."
Syssi laughed, watching their daughter conquer the highest rung of the ladder with a triumphant squeal that sent one of the Kra-ell children tumbling off the bars in surprise.
"Speaking of family," she said. "You should tell your mother about the call."
"I told her last night at dinner."
"I mean about today's call."
"There was nothing in that call that she would be interested in. She's focused on Khiann, and everything else is secondary to her."
A shriek from the playground interrupted them. Allegra was standing on top of the climbing structure with her arms raised above her head in a victory pose.
"Look, Mommy!"
"I see you! Be careful up there!"
Kian was already on his feet, crossing the distance in several long strides and positioning himself below Allegra with his arms ready.
"That's high enough, Princess."
"Higher!"
"No. That's the top. You won."
Allegra looked down at him with the expression of a conqueror being told that there were no more lands to invade, and then she accepted the limitation with a philosophical shrug that was so much like Kian that Syssi had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing.
"Slide?" Allegra asked.
"Slide," Kian confirmed.
As Allegra launched herself down the slide with a shriek that was equal parts terror and joy, Syssi leaned back on the bench and thought about Rosa.
A wild spirit in a small village. A woman who spoke four languages and read everything she could find, fell in love with a man she couldn't keep.
If Eluheed was telling the truth, and Syssi's gut told her he was, then Rosa had been carrying his child when she married Boris Dorjinsky and sailed across an ocean to start a new life.
She would have never known what her lover truly was, only that he'd refused to marry her without explanation and broken her heart in the process.
Had she loved him? Eluheed's account suggested that she had, fiercely and without reservation, the way people loved before caution and experience taught them to hold back something of themselves.
Had her grandmother inherited anything from her alien father? Had she been a seer as well?
Syssi's mother didn't have any paranormal abilities, but then she had always been so focused on science and medicine that she might have suppressed any natural talents that seemed too out there for her.
It was easy to dismiss visions as hallucinations or dreams, and when they came true, as coincidence.
She really needed to have a heart-to-heart with her mother that she'd never had, not even after revealing that she had turned immortal and was married into a clan of immortals. Her parents had accepted the news better than she'd expected and then had returned to Africa to continue their work.
"I think my mom should finally retire and she and my dad come live in the village," Syssi said when Kian returned to the bench.
He sat down. "You've been saying that for years."
"She's getting older. She can't continue working like that."
"Your mother will retire when they pry the stethoscope from her cold, dead hands."
Syssi cringed at the reminder that her mother wasn't immortal and didn't wish to be.
She had been a pediatrician for forty-four years, and she viewed her profession as a calling, not a job.
Retirement was a concept she acknowledged the way people acknowledged the existence of the space station.
It was real, it was out there, and she had absolutely no intention of visiting.
"You are right. If she retires, she'll have nothing to keep her busy, and she'll wither away. Her work keeps her going."
"She could work at the clinic," Kian suggested. "We could always use another doctor. We don't have a pediatrician."
"We also don't have enough children who need medical care."
"We might have more soon," he said. "It depends on how many are extracted from the enclosure. It could be anywhere between zero and eight hundred."
She turned to look at him. "Do you intend to bring them to the village?"
"Of course. Where else would they go?"
"Including the enhanced soldiers?"
That gave him pause. "Maybe not them. They will have to stay at the keep until we can ascertain that they can be trusted. I won't bring a potential Trojan horse into our community."