Kingdoms Away 1: Jorian Cluster Archives (4 page)

***

Hundreds of years later it was time for
Professor Al Reos to join the Elysians. Nysintheor came for him.
There were no goodbyes. In space, within the Oriri, within a cocoon
so that he could breathe, the Elysians showed Al what they had been
building. It was a skeletal structure at this stage, but looked
like millions of large dewdrops joined by an enormous spider’s web.
A Reos male would fill each gap.

Nysintheor had explained to Al that they
would cocoon the bodies at various stations and the minds stretched
over the sections of web. There would be no pain, no knowledge of
passing time.

“We will wake you every five hundred years,
Reos. At one thousand five hundred there will be enough descendants
to complete the gate and for some to be free. Do not fear. Reos
descendants only join us when ready.”

“I do not fear. Tell me everything when I
waken.”

In five hundred years Nysintheor awakened and
showed Al the sparklingly gate; a third of it was finished. During
one awakening Al saw a strange disturbance in space. Nysintheor
floated close to his cocoon. “The Sharith are breaking through. But
they cannot bring their beasts if we succeed.”

Al thought he understood the issue. The
Elysians had sworn to protect all animals. And if the Sharith
brought their beasts—he wasn’t sure what the beasts were—laws would
be broken as the Elysians sought to protect their region of space.
The foresight amazed him. And he, and his sons, were a part of what
he hoped was a truly noble act.

“…
and when the Elysians command,
Animalia shall strike with all its might to render the Enemy a
deadly blow…”

Excerpt from the Joiran Cluster Archives, the Third
Hostility.

{[Joiran Cluster] [Anamoth] [Saxe to Kreid]

[914857/2577/22/space]}

Serafina was travelling with her parents on a
Goliath class ACES, the Anamoth. The cruise ship, built at
Behemoth, was en route from Saxe to Kreid in the GA15 system. Only
a handful of people knew her true identity, Serafina Alessandra
Reos, and she knew herself only as Serafina Rushton, daughter to
Robin and William, as did most of those on board. She had lessons
to attend while her parents worked during the day. There were
fifteen other children in her class today, and there were at least
four other classes with different age groups.

She hated some of her subjects. Math and
Unuslingua lessons were boring. During the math lessons, she’d sit
and stare at the figures unblinkingly, trying to amuse herself with
ocular extortions. The numbers meant nothing to her, just symbols
that were supposed to mean something when you combined them. She
received average scores and would “listen” to her parents tell her
how important it was that she asserted herself more. With her
Unuslingua classes, she grew weary and wished she could learn
Animalia and not the common language. After having to rewrite the
alphabet over and over again and growing bored with that, she drew
little animals on each letter. The teacher contacted her parents
and arranged to meet with them in their family quarters.

“I mean, it was very clever of her, really.
She came up with a different animal for each letter, unusual
animals as well. I don’t even know where she got the information.
She will always differentiate between the sexes of the animals.
I’ve had a report from Dobson who, as you may be aware, sees
Serafina down in the animals’ pens frequently. He says that she
always knows the sex of animals, and there is a subtle difference
in how she treats them. Her signals are slightly more deferential
toward the male of each species but definitely more accommodating
toward the female. We don’t understand this, considering the
Equality Protocol set by our founders. She can spend hours down
there taking care of them. However, I wouldn’t be too concerned
about this issue.” She lowered her voice. “These unusual attributes
may very well be part of her … genetic inheritance.”

She looked intently at the two with a “now to
the real problem” expression. “I cannot fault her on her attention
to the creatures, but outside the pens, her concentration level is
very short. We are trying to make things interesting, but we can’t
keep specializing for her in a large class. You did still want to
enforce the stipulation of her attending a normal class size?”

Her parents nodded.

Serafina was sitting in her bedroom, with its
cream paneled walls and soft pink furnishings. She was on the bed,
in view of the three adults sitting on the lounge and its matching
chairs, swinging her legs back and forth. Her long brown hair was
up in a ponytail and she was wearing her favorite blue dress. She
heard every word. She looked at Mr. Pollocks, a sloth bear, sitting
next to her on the Elysian print bedspread and winked at him as
she’d seen her dad wink at her mum. “It’ll be okay,” she reassured
him. The voices started again after a pause.

“Just keep trying; maybe she’s taking in more
than we realize. Her IQ should be high but we won’t know until she
reaches twelve, maybe ten for her.” The teacher continued and
smiled. “She really is very charming, very protective towards the
animals down in the cargo and pet section, and toward those smaller
or weaker than her.”

Her parents smiled at the blonde woman
encouragingly. Serafina could see, though, that they were worried.
She didn’t understand why math was so important when animals were
so much more interesting and vital to the Joiran Cluster. Couldn’t
they see that?

She stopped swinging her legs as her gentle
teacher waved goodbye. Her parents beckoned her into the lounge
room. She groaned. Not another talk. She hated the dreary,
dragged-out talks. Some friends told her they got smacks. She
wished she got a smack instead of having to “listen.” All she ever
wanted to do while they talked was to drift off to sleep. Every
time the talk started, she could feel herself getting lethargic.
Sometimes she would suddenly find herself looking at their
expectant faces, and they would be patiently waiting for her
response. That’s when she realized that they had asked her
something and she’d missed it.

She quietly shuffled on the grey carpet to
them.

“Pick up your feet, Feena.”

She sidled into her dad’s waiting arms. To
her surprise they didn’t speak; they just hugged her and gave their
secret “let’s go and talk about her” look over her head. She
cheered up. She grabbed Mr. Pollocks and they went to play high
tea.

The next day she went to class and found they
were actually studying something interesting. They had a project to
do. They had to pick an animal and write about it. They could even
draw pictures or, if the animal was on board, they could use it for
demonstrations.

After lessons and changing into exploring
clothes, which usually consisted of long pants and long-sleeved
top, she had some time to investigate the ship on the fifth level.
She grabbed Mr. Pollocks. All of her friends had gone off to do
their chores first. Feena had decided to do her project on the goat
and wanted to see it. Dobson stopped her at the blue metal, oval
portal to the ship’s animal pen.

The burly, fair-skinned man smiled down at
her. “What would you like to do, young Serafina?”

“To see the goat.”

“You’re in luck then, lass. She has been
pregnant and just at this moment is having babies. Would you like
to watch?”

Her face struggled not to show the horror she
felt, but she still couldn’t stop herself. “You mean she was
gestating and is now giving birth to kids?”

His square-shaped face turned a shade of
pink. “Err … yes. Do you want to go in?”

It was her turn to look flustered. “No
thanks.” She quietly walked away.

It was good the Markhor, the goat, was
breeding but she remembered all too well the day her parents had
taken her to see a friend of theirs giving birth. Her parents,
somewhat reluctantly, followed the advice of the genetic scientists
who wanted to expose Serafina to the beauty of childbirth so that
she would one day look forward to her own births. But Serafina had
felt sick. By the time her parents had realized the effect on their
daughter, the damage had already been done. No one had noticed the
stricken look on the little face right through the entire
procedure. She vomited and felt disgraced. Later, while in bed, she
heard her parents talk about it.

She had felt so humiliated it took her five
days to go back to visit the woman and her baby. Serafina still saw
the birth clearly in her mind. The baby, to her relief when she did
see it, was clean and somewhat cute, but she didn’t want to see
another birth ever again. There was no way she was going to have
babies. She fled the animal section, remembering she was supposed
to go directly to her family quarters, but she needed to try to
wipe that awful flashback from her mind. Normally, she would
recruit Jo and Benny to go exploring with her, but Jo was sick and
Benny’s parents had punished him for some misdeed. Silly thing; she
had told him to be careful. Jo was good at evading the adults, but
Benny was a bit slow. It was just her and Mr. Pollocks.

A while later, back in her room, she dropped
Mr. Pollocks on her bed. Her dad surprised her by coming in. His
dark brown hair was disheveled. He’d been exercising. He knelt down
next to her, leaning a sweaty arm on her bed. He smelt.

“Hello, Feena, Mr. Pollocks. What have you
been up to today?”

“We’ve been investigating. But Mr. Pollocks
said he was tired so I am putting him to bed.”

“Poor tired teddy bear.”

Feena looked at her father with big golden
eyes. “He’s not a teddy bear, dad. He’s a black sloth bear from the
tropical mountains of Agrafe.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Pollocks.” He looked
from the big white-nosed bear to his daughter. “I won’t be
late.”

Relieved that he was going, she decided to
check out the eighth deck. Not wanting to be on her own, she
grabbed up Mr. Pollocks. “That’s enough sleep for you.” She hugged
his long shaggy coat close to her body.

Much to her continued disappointment, many of
the doors and lifts required permission to access them. She didn’t
feel like crawling through the ducts today. She went back to her
family quarters disgusted. As Feena wandered back through the wide
passageways, people who recognized her greeted her and Mr.
Pollocks, knowing that to ignore the bear would be met with
disapproval.

Her shrewd mind scanned the passageway,
noting duct entrances, ready for her next day’s mission. Most of
the wiring and pipes were under, above or in the walls behind
panels for easy access. The floors in the corridors had a
short-haired, rough, carpeted surface of blue. Dim lighting came
from above to simulate nighttime. Benny wanted it to go really dark
so they could go around with torches but they compensated by going
down to the cargo area, which was often dark to save power.

As Feena reached the grey portal to her
family quarters her mum, Robin, picked her up from behind and gave
her a big kiss on the neck. Feena presented Mr. Pollocks and her
curly-haired mum kissed him too. Feena watched Robin place her hand
in the identification slot. The little rectangular light just above
the slot went from red to green and the door slid open.

Feena’s dad had come back from his errand and
after kissing him, now fresh smelling, she went to her room. She
sat at her pale grey desk and looked over the paper her teacher had
given for homework. It was about history and the Third Hostility.
There was a test the next day. She groaned. She hated tests.

During dinner, her dad asked her what she was
doing at school.

“Studying the Third Hostility.”

“That’s interesting; would you like some help
after dinner with your study?”

“Na, I mean, no thanks, ah, no thank you.”
She popped a large piece of potato in her mouth without cutting it
up.

“Do you have all the information you need?”
Robin glanced over at her with the potato bulging out from her pale
cheek.

“Yep.” Feena swallowed some of the chewed
potato. “Most of it’s on the excerpts anyway.” She looked to the
ceiling briefly and then back at her plate, pushing the squash away
with her fork. "…and when the Elysians command Animalia shall
strike with all its might to render the Enemy a deadly blow, and
the ARTHODPODA shall have its part in tearing down the Enemy: the
Insecta shall act as distraction, causing the Enemy to become
frustrated and down of heart, and the Arachnids shall smote down
the Enemy with their terrible poisons …" I know most of it by
heart.”

Her dad looked amused at her monotone
recital.

Feena didn’t mean for it to come out that
way. The potato was getting in the way.

They finished dinner and Feena did her chores
before relaxing with her parents playing a board game. She yawned
loudly and William directed her to her room. She crawled into bed
with Mr. Pollocks and brushed his black coat and the white V on his
chest with a comb. Her dad pulled out a storybook from her large
collection in the bookshelf recessed in the wall. A security panel
slid back across, making sure nothing would turn into a projectile
in the event of an emergency.

Feena listened to him read. She put a small
hand on his short dark hair and stroked it as she had seen her mum
do. She loved listening to his deep calm voice read the tale of the
“Three Foxes.” In spite of her valiant effort to remain awake, she
drifted off.

William gently disengaged himself from Feena
and tried to remove the bear, but she had the bear in a headlock
and grumbled sleepily. She turned slightly and all William could
see of the bear was the big nose and tufts of long comic head hair
that circled the face.