In the Shadow of Mountains: The Lost Girls Read online

Chapter Six

  A Lifetime Commitment

  Rolf took time to recover. What Soo-Kai had told him had been so powerful and dark, that his emotions overcame him, and he wept. When he had finally calmed down, he went to pour water from the bucket into the large bowl and began washing his face. Soo-Kai waited patiently, watching him while he washed and dried his face. Rolf then went to the fire and poured more coffee from the pot. He offered her some, but she shook her head, asking for water instead. Rolf took another cup and poured water into it from the bucket. He handed her the cup of water and sat down next to her on the mattress again. He drank coffee, while she drank water. They sat in silence for a while, both staring into the fire. Rolf was the first to speak.

  “Your history made me cry,” he said.

  “I am sorry,” she replied. “I did not mean to upset you. But it was necessary that you knew the truth so that we could both enter the bond with our eyes open. There must be no deceit, on either side. Both must be truthful and willing. I could not let you enter the bond in ignorance, it would not be fair, and it would not be a true bond.”

  Rolf looked at her. “I thought you were just a woman.”

  “Now you know the truth. You and I are alien races, genetically similar, but different. Whereas you are the results of natural evolution, I am the result of specific design. I am a lie, a false woman.”

  “You aren’t false,” Rolf protested. “You live and breathe, and you feel pain. You are real. I have held you in the night; I have felt the warmth of your body as you slept. You are not false.”

  “But I am not whole, not complete. When I tell you that I am false, it is because I lack the depth and emotions of a female from your race. I have only the abilities required to carry out my task. I do not invent, sow, dance, or sing. I neither laugh, nor cry. What is it that makes a true woman? I know not, this is why I am false.”

  Rolf had no answer to her reasoning. He stared at the fire again. There was a brief silence, and then Rolf said rather sadly, “I cried for you. I cried for your people, and I cried for all those others who perished for no reason. I don’t think of myself as a Navak, but I cried for them, also.”

  “You are not alone in your tears,” she replied. “Many have cried before. It does not change anything.”

  “Why can you not cry?”

  “We were not given the instincts for remorse. And without remorse, one cannot cry.”

  Rolf turned to her and spoke emotionally. “But you must feel some sadness at what happened! I could sense it in your voice as you told me your story. You told it with such passion, with such feeling!”

  She shook her head. “The only emotions I feel are the negative ones. I feel hatred, bitterness and anger, but not love or remorse. Because of this, I have little understanding of what these other emotions feel like. But I do understand the reasoning behind them. We had a vast empire, and we were vast in number, and now we are all nearly gone. I understand this loss, this disaster, but I am unsure of its effect on me. Maybe what I feel is similar to what you call despair, but I am unsure. When our ships destroyed one another at the Black Cross Nebula, I remember feeling confused, and somehow angry. But I was as overcome with hatred for the Outsiders as were my sisters, so it is difficult to say if I felt sad. All I can say is that I have never cried. Not for them, nor for the Tun-Sho-Lok.”

  “Why are you all women?” he asked.

  She answered his question without hesitation. “It is necessary to control the manipulation of the genes for reproduction. A male would have no control or influence apart from what he gave. We analyse the chromosomes we receive and cut and re-splice our DNA many times, keeping what is good, and discarding what is bad. Only when the result is acceptable is an ovum fertilised and allowed to divide and grow.”

  “Where did the sword go?”

  Again she answered without hesitation. “The sword contains the most active parts of the micro-biotic elements of my body. It is part of my spinal column and cerebral cortex. By altering its molecular structure, I can detach it and replace it as you saw.”

  As she spoke, Soo-Kai reached up to her neck, tilted her head, and drew the sword effortlessly and silently from her back. Rolf stared in wonder as she held the sword out to him.

  “You may hold it if you wish,” she said.

  Rolf put down his cup of coffee and took the sword in nervous hands. He had held it once before, but then he had hardly glanced at it. It felt quite heavy, and it glinted in the firelight like silver. Even the handle, which felt soft, looked like metal. He touched the blade and was instantly surprised by its feel.

  “Its edge is blunt!” he exclaimed.

  She took the sword from him. “I told you I would not harm you. The sword is part of me, so it will not cut you. Only to you is the edge blunt, but to everything else, it is sharp.”

  She demonstrated her words by chopping the edge of the sword down over some wood stacked by the fire. The wood was sliced through.

  Rolf quickly recovered one of the pieces, examining the neat edge to the cut. “It is indeed sharp. But how can this be, when a moment ago it was blunt?”

  “I can alter the edge to be either blunt, or sharp by simple thought. The sword responds as would any muscle or limb in my body. If the Navak weapon did not still function, I could change the sword into many different weapons of great power. But now it is fixed only as a sword.”

  She replaced the sword in her back, Rolf watching as the metal flowed like liquid, and the handle moulded itself to the back of her neck. In an instant it became flesh coloured and disappeared.

  “What is this Navak weapon you speak of?” Rolf asked as he tossed the wood on to the fire.

  “It is a satellite that circles this planet and bathes it in a dampening field, a field that suppresses the forming of any complex molecular structures in our bodies. Because of this, only simple shapes and structures can be made, like a sword, or a knife, or an axe.”

  “Are these weapons not enough?”

  “Not when you are facing laser cannons and disrupters.”

  “These are weapons that I am unfamiliar with. But like many of the things you’ve told me, I understand your meaning. With only swords, your people fell to the greater power of others, who still wielded these weapons you speak of. Now all the knowledge of these weapons, of how to travel among the stars, and light the night skies, has been lost to us. Like you, we wield only swords and battle-axes. But we have forgotten what you remember. Our history is a patchwork of the truth, while yours is still intact. I think this is because we lost too many elements over the re-telling from one generation to the next. And each time the stories were told, they were embellished and romanticised. The details were lost, and the legends created. You have not had this problem. You were there, Soo-Kai, you lived through it. But how can this be? These things happened over many years and generations. How old are you?”

  “In your terms, I am two thousand, seven hundred and eighty-five years old.”

  Rolf’s eyes grew round. He had suspected that she must be old to have seen all the events she described, but not that old. “By all that’s holy,” he breathed. “I’m only just twenty-four…”

  “And when you are four times this age, I will look the same as I do today.”

  “You are immortal?”

  “No, just genetically engineered. We have complete control over the genetic material within our bodies. When we reproduce, it is a bioengineering task that few electronic computers can master. We do it in a few seconds. And when our own cells divide, they reproduce themselves exactly. There is no degradation, and no deviation. We do not age, and when we are injured we do not scar. Given time, we can even re-grow limbs that are lost in battle. The wounds in my side and my chest, the scratches and bruises on my face and my body, all these will disappear in a short time. We do not die, Rolf, but we are not immortal. We must be killed.”

  Her explanations were always detailed and precise, and almost
incomprehensible. But Rolf never doubted for one moment that any of what she told him was untrue. A dark thought suddenly occurred to him.

  “You were tired of life, you wanted me to kill you that night, and instead, I saved you. Are you angry with me for that?”

  She shook her head. “I knew instantly that you were initiating a bond. The bonding process lifts many controls from our minds, and replaces them with others. It is the one time in our lives when the purpose of bringing death is replaced with that of bringing life. If the bond is true, and your intent is good, then it can be a time of contentment and peace. If you pursue the bond with me, I will be content not to be dead. But I will not force your decision.”

  “Would you have let me kill you?”

  She nodded.

  “And if I refuse to bond with you, what will you do?”

  “Go on living until I am killed.”

  Rolf smiled. But it was a sad smile. “Despite your arguments against emotion, the weight of your memories hang heavy on you, don’t they?”

  “You are correct, but I will be spared these memories in time.”

  “You will forget?”

  “Yes, I will forget. I am old, Rolf, and I have limited memory capacity.”

  “But didn’t those that made you think of this?” Rolf asked in amazement. “They thought of everything else!”

  She seemed unperturbed. “They did, but I do not think they expected us to live so long. Being trapped here on this world in an environment that lacks intense warfare was not foreseen, nor was the effect a long memory would have upon us. The solution they provided was drastic, but functional.

  “The longer I live, the more memories I must store. To provide the additional capacity I require, my mind condenses what I have already stored. It keeps only the important tactical information, erasing the rest. Because of this, I will lose the memories of other things, like the visual impressions of burning ships, or of violet sunsets on distant worlds. The names of the ships will fade, as will the names of the worlds and the races that lived on them. I will forget the things I saw, the people I met, and the things I did. And with those memories will go the effects they had upon my mind.”

  Rolf was alarmed at the implications. “But without what you remember, you will not be who you are anymore! Your character, your personality, these have been shaped by your experiences! Without them, who will you be?”

  Slowly, thoughtfully, she nodded. “What you say is true, and because of it, I fear the future. I feel that I have already exceeded the peak of my memory capacity, that compression has already begun, and that I am on the decline. Soon only the tactical details of my past will remain with me. Like a battle computer, I will contain only the movements of war, the details of the mistakes made, or the moves that were successful. I will become a shell. Yes, I fear the future, and I fear that my time as a sentient being is limited.”

  “That’s why you were prepared to die,” Rolf said knowingly.

  She didn’t answer.

  Rolf stared at her. He looked very emotional and intense. She looked back at him, waiting and saying nothing. Suddenly, Rolf put his arm around her waist and slipped his other arm under her knees, his hand gripping her thigh. For a moment she thought he was going to lift her up, his grip was so tight. In fact, as he pulled her close and hugged her, he did lift her. She felt pain in her side from the wound, but she ignored it. They were now so close, that all she could see were his blue eyes, staring at her so intensely.

  “I want you,” Rolf said. “I want the bond with you. And I want it to be fixed between us. And if you are well enough, I want to do it now.”

  She nodded. “There will be some pain, but I am capable of this act. If this is what you truly wish, then we can copulate now.”

  “No, not copulate. I wish to make love to you. There is a great difference, and I want you to know that difference. My experience in the art of love is not great, but I will do my best, and I will always love you. I want to love you for as long as I can, for as long as you can remember, and for as long as I am able. I want you to know what it means to be loved by another. I want to share my life with you, and I want to teach you to laugh and to smile. I want you to live as my wife, Soo-Kai, before all others. Do you accept me?”

  For a moment she didn’t respond. Then she reached out and stroked his face, her fingers moving delicately over his skin. At last she spoke.

  “I can feel from your touch that your words are genuine, and that your body is already aroused. Yes. I accept the bond with you, Rolf, and from today onwards, we will live as one, and not part until one of us breathes no more.”