Notes from An Alien (17 page)

    “Dear Mura, this is a joyous decision but you would need to select your replacement.”

    “I have no idea who should replace me.”

    “Would you consider a recommendation from me?”

    “Certainly, Anglana.”

    “Alunur Cessin.”

    “He's a known Independent sympathizer!”

    “This is true. What is also true is that he has a mind that is always searching and that has led him to becoming immune to blindly accepting another's opinion.”

    “Then, how could he sympathize with the Independents?”

    “He's still relative young, twenty and four years, and he has spent those years acquiring a vast reservoir of Worlds' knowledge. His involvement with the Independents began last year and he is already a thorn in their side. His parents were rich enough to have left him a sizable fortune and he still feels a sense of entitlement—a longing to maintain his independence without paying any dues to the culture that surrounds him. He will, eventually, leave the Independents. He will tire of their ways.”

    “Isn't there someone else, with no connection to the Independents?”

    “Yes, but Akla has given me a plan.”

    “Please, do tell me what use Akla would have for an Independent.”

    “It is not primarily as a sympathizer of the Independents that he is valuable, though his being a Council Member and a known sympathizer do have their benefits. One is that it will embolden the Independents to take more severe action. This will do two things. One is to hasten their downfall. Another is to give Alunur a harsh lesson in the Oneness of all Angians.”

    “I can accept whatever Akla wants but I need more information to help me understand.”

    “If Alunur can withstand the lessons of being a Worlds' Council member while sympathizing with the Independents, and he does have the potential to do that, he can become a worthy mate for your daughter.”

    “What?! She's only twelve!”

    “It should only take, at most, four years for Alunur to learn his lessons and help to throw a glaring light on the ultimate intentions of the Independents. He will then be twenty and seven years and Verta will be sixteen.”

    “Certainly, Akla doesn't demand this marriage?”

    “Mura, your mothering emotions are clouding your knowledge of Akla's Writings. The man and woman must first make their own free-will choice of mate. That is then dependent on the living parents' consent.”

    “Yes... But how will they ever meet if Verta and I are always traveling and Alunur is bound by his Council duties?”

    “Alunur will seek her out.”

15 ~ Questions

    It took Mura many months to get used to the reception she had to face as she traveled to various cities and villages. Even though the details of her daughter's birth were known to only herself, Verta, Morna, and Rednaxela, the fact that she was Delva's daughter and had no known husband had given birth to a sense of worship in the people she met. Her approach to this was to accept the devoted attention she received, avoid answering questions about her daughter's "father", and launch every meeting with a lively discussion of the people's immediate problems.

    If Mura's lineage and the rumors of her birth process gave her an advantage in gaining the trust and interest of those she met, Verta's presence and speech gave her a living example of what it meant to be a spiritual youth.

    It was easy enough for Mura to preach the tenets of Akla's Faith to people and, whether they embraced that Faith or just incorporated the spirit of the teachings in their lives, she was happy to find that most people were decent and open-minded.

    It was a different situation for Verta. She deeply loved and respected her mother. She knew the importance of never discussing her "father". She knew her mother was completely devoted to Akla's Cause yet she was still a growing youth with more years to test her own burgeoning character against the whole rest of the Worlds. She was more than intelligent enough to understand the social teachings of Akla, prime among them the Oneness of all Angians, yet her soul was still wrestling with her ego and she loved a rousingly spirited discussion, about anything. If she wasn't aware of the precise details of a subject, she would ever so honestly and sweetly demand to be instructed. Then, she would sally forth into the arena and test her mental skills.

    She had a way, even if she knew nothing about a particular topic, of strengthening the other person's understanding, even if they were a supposed expert.

    The concerns of adults when discussing the interrelationship of faith and science became for her a reason to demonstrate faith in action—show them that faith in a concept was useless unless thrust into the experimental laboratory of living action. She was very lucky indeed to have the help of Morna and Rednaxela during some of these discussions. An example:

    Mura and Verta were in the village of Certiv, near the city of Selurn, in the Territory of Kernuma, on Anga-Param. There were a group of adults discussing Akla's Faith with Mura while Verta sat and listened. Six youth of the village appeared during the course of the discussion and the one named Zalen began to interject his comments into the adults' flow of conversation. Verta began to respond to each of Zalen's remarks. He in turn began to direct his speech straight at Verta.

    When he finally knew he was in over his head and the adults were starting to get restless, Verta surprised them all by saying:

    "If you believe you're stronger than anyone you know, do you think that makes it right for you to demand that people do whatever you say?"

    Zalen was stung by the challenge and grasped at his sense of importance by saying:

    "Absolutely, but I have to prove it to some people by pounding on them a bit."

    "You haven't proven it to me, Zalen. Will you now pound on me?"

    "Sounds like you want me to."

    "That is completely your own decision."

    The adults of the village were edging toward being frightened. Zalen was known for his temper and willingness to prop up his esteem with physical bullying. Mura was calm in her understanding of her daughter's abilities and the added protection afforded by the presence of Morna and Rednaxela. Verta thought the experiment needed more heat.

    "Your own decision, Zalen, to prove to me that I should respect whatever you say just because you have a strong body."

    "You do want a pounding."

    "You decide. But beating me up will only prove you have physical strength, not that I should respect whatever you say."

    "You don't respect me?"

    Verta remained silent. Zalen felt this small girl was making him look ridiculous. She just sat there and smiled at him.

    "Get ready for a beating!"

    As Zalen rushed at Verta, the villagers sprang into action to stop him.

    There was a flash of light and he suddenly fell, flat on his face, not moving.

    Verta looked at Morna and said: "You've ruined my experiment!"

    "I saved your skin."

    "Zalen didn't learn anything. Maybe if you'd let him bloody my nose then realize he still didn't have my respect, he could have learned something. Now, he might have to learn it under more desperate circumstances."

    "I am programmed to protect you."

    "Where is the part of your programming that let's me teach people a lesson."

    Morna became busy with cross-correlations.

    Mura offered: "Morna was right within her constraints. You were right within your constraints. Zalen was right within his. We all have constraints, limits to action and understanding. Even in the spiritual realm we need to learn how to overcome our constraints." She turned her attention toward the adults: "Verta wanted to free Zalen from a block in his social development. Morna wanted to fulfill her duty. Zalen wanted to prove his worth. All were constrained by their beliefs. Yet, the greatest freedom from constraints is love. Morna doesn't fully understand love, Zalen is blocking himself from it, and Verta is learning how to express it."

    "Gee, mom, all I wanted to do was give the boy a lesson in living. You always have to make it a spiritual journey."

    Mura was used to Verta's ways. The adults were shocked at Verta's directness. The other youth now had a new champion.

~~~

Mura and Verta continued their travels, talking to whoever would listen, filling their days with teaching—Mura in her spiritually intellectual way and Verta in her practical moral way.

    There were other incidents of near violence, some by people who felt no need of religion, mostly due to extremely poor examples of it in their past, and some by various Independents, Dissatisfieds, and members of the Independent Reformed Disciples of Faith. Some were blunted by wise action on Mura's part, some by inventive displays of courage by Verta, and some by the intervention of Morna or Rednaxela. To say they were making a name for themselves was the height of understatement. They were becoming living Myths.

~~~

The Council had at first balked at the idea of accepting Mura's choice for her replacement. Mura had given her appraisal of Alunur's qualification as far as his active intellect and wide-ranging knowledge and had side-stepped his known sympathy for Independents with the always powerful leverage of Anglana's desires. In the end, the Council had had to accept him because they had accepted Mura's appointment along with the provision that she, alone, could choose her replacement.

    Alunur's time with the Council had progressed from heady excitement to nearly insufferable tension. He had been careful, while in Council session, to push for a more lax approach to trade while not sounding like an Independent. In his private hours he had been spending time with select Independents.

    What Anglana had predicted was coming true. The Independents had been emboldened. Farms being destroyed had been replaced by destroying agricultural ships from the Created World. The number of deaths were significantly less and the cost of using one plasma bolt on a ship was far lower than what it took to destroy a farm. It was also much harder to bring Protective Forces to bear on space-borne attacks.

    Most of Alunur's fortune had been invested in the Created Worlds. Over time, the Independents began to consider attacks on not just cargo ships but directly on the Created Worlds themselves. The rapid growth of new plasma-related tools, spawned on one of the Created Worlds, were threatening the collapse of the plasma defenses of all the Created Worlds.

    Alunur began to sever his ties with the Independents. The Independents didn't like that.

    Alunur went into hiding.

    Anglana, through Mura, appointed a well-known Aklan as Alunur's replacement.

16 ~ Honor

  Alunur found a resting place on Anla-Purum in what had been called the Unholy Lands and was now Aklana. Being surrounded by Aklans wasn't as bad as he'd feared when his contact had told him where to hide next. This Territory remained in most minds as a place that was either unspeakably glorious or mind-numbingly dangerous. Either reputation sufficed for Alunur's purpose: avoid Independents.

    The daily life of the family he was staying with was so normal that he wondered why people so often attributed miraculous powers to these people. They did pray in the morning before beginning their daily routine but the routine was, well, routine. The father kissed his wife and headed out to the mining facility; the mother got her children ready for school then rushed off to the university for her classes in history; the children went to school, came home and did their homework, went out to play, and returned before dark to be loved by the mother and father. Yes, they did pray again before sending the kids off to bed. But the reputation of Aklans being some rare form of spiritual beings wasn't apparently true. They were merely good people. Good people who took him in and made him feel welcome. Good people who without trying made him feel protected.

    Alunur spent the first weeks just recuperating from the harrowing passages he'd navigated in the past two years. Staying one step ahead of dangerous Independents was easy with his financial resources. The uneasy and exhausting part had been acclimating to environments where his status as rich and educated mattered not a bit. He was humbled, confused, distraught, and witheringly tired.

    The Besul family was a healing force just by their acceptance of his need to quietly sit, eat, sleep, and sketch. One day, without premeditation, he'd asked for a pad and pencil. He was surprised he had artistic ability. He'd thought his talents were studying, writing, and negotiation.

    His passion about hiding his new creations was eventually penetrated by the youngest child's persistent unveiling of her own efforts in drawing. After each presentation of another of her self-proclaimed masterpieces, she would beg him to show her his sketches. He eventually did.

    Mother Besul was the first to rank his work as genius. The children couldn't grasp the reason for her excitement but they did like his work. Father Besul was calmer than his wife but insistent that he be able to contact an artist of his acquaintance who could help Alunur become recognized.

    “Mr. Besul, I can't become known for anything.”

    “Alunur, when will you finally call me Taliv? But no matter, we accepted you here because you're a child of God in distress. We hadn't expected the testimony of Anglana to your trustworthiness but I still don't understand how a man who appears out of nowhere, who has wealth but seems a natural recluse, can receive the blessings of Anglana.”

    “She recommended me for a job once. I had to escape attention because certain people didn't like a decision I'd made. Mr.—  I mean, Taliv, I'm hiding from the Independents.”

    “Whew...”

    “Yes, I was, well, in an influential position and the Independents were counting on me to make certain things possible for them. I realized that, if I did, my entire holdings would be wiped out. In fact, a large portion of the Worlds' wealth would have been obliterated. Before I left my job, I gave the authorities the names of key individuals, people since arrested and under constant supervision. Still, those people have many friends...”