The Star Whorl (The Totality Cycles Book 1) (25 page)

     So they fretted over their
exams before, and had minor celebrations after, but for Pa-Kreceno’Tiv it was a
brittle-false celebration. He tried not to look longingly at Pavtala
Ralili’Bax, or wish for more time to be her Geni’vhes. But she always seemed to
know when he was feeling that desolation at their impending parting, and her
chemi-scent became comforting.

     She completed all of her
exams before the rest of them, and she invited Pa-Kreceno’Tiv over to help her
celebrate. When he got there, she rushed to his arms, and held him tight,
seeming to need her own comforting. When she finally let him lift her face up,
she was weeping.

     “I leave – next turn,” she
said, turning her huge, tear-filled eyes to him. He took her into his arms, and
felt the sting of tears in his own eyes.

     “I could go to the same
Ministry as you, Rali,” he offered again, stroking her hair. “My parents will let
me...”

     “No!” she said, pulling away
and gesturing a violent negative. “No, Krece, you have things to do, important
things! The Ministry of Preservation – you would be wasted there! Don’t! Please!
You always wanted to go to Tertius, don’t throw that away!”

     “But that’s not as important
as you,” he said. “I want us to be together.”

     She looked up into his eyes.
“I promised I would be honest with you, Krece. We knew this could not last.
There are – reasons, important reasons that I can’t tell you about, now, that
you mustn’t join the Ministry of Preservation. Please, promise me you won’t!”

     He felt his vuu-brow lower.
“Rali, what...?”

     “Please!” She glanced
around, then lowered her voice. “It has to do with the OSI. You – you need to
find the answers another way, my sweet Krece, but if you follow me to the
Ministry, you never will. I’d stay with you, if I could, but it’s... it’s not
possible.”

     He felt stunned, as if he
had been hit in the plexus. What answers was she talking about? But if she was
being as honest as she could, and still could not talk about it... then he
would do as she asked. And he would get to the answers that she was implying
that he needed to find, and when he did, he would find her again.

     “All right,” he agreed. “All
right, Rali, I won’t.”

     “Krece,” she whispered,
leaning her forehead against his sternum. He clasped her shoulders, not willing
to let her go.

     “Yes?” he tried to make her
look up, but she would not.

     “You could – you could
reverse my Pavtalar-induction, if you – if you really wanted, couldn’t you?”
She finally did look up at him. He felt his vuu’brows draw down. What was she
asking?

     “I – yes, I could,” he
answered. Her hands stroked over his chest, making him shiver, and the deshik
came open beneath her touch. He felt a World-Tree of emotions, all tangled, all
raging, as she slid the quasi-living garment off his shoulders. He did not stop
her, though. Then she slid her arms up around his neck.

     “Would you still be mine?”
she whispered. “Just – for a little while?”

     The question hurt. He did not
want a temporary love, a once-mating, but... but he wanted her, however he
could have her, even if just for a little while.

     “Yes,” he said. Mating was
supposed to be for life. Only long separation from a woman could undo the
Geni’vhor in a man, and it was tortuous, or so the lectures on Genus had
taught. But he knew his own glyph, and was sure he could make the change back.

     When she pulled him down
toward her, he leaned down and gathered her up to him, covering her mouth with
his. Her fingers ran up through the hair on his nape, making him shiver and he
held her closer. She was sweet, as sweet as Anin’ma-blossom nectar, and her
elytra-pace fluttered and opened, her wing-nets buzzing, fanning her
chemi-scent to him. It had changed in some indefinable way, subtle, compelling,
and he felt a quantum shift in himself – his shoulders broadened, and his
elytra-pace got longer. He felt her colors flow over his frame, and they seemed
to cut into him, marking him, making him Pavtalar-Kreceno’Tiv’Bax, her
Geni’vhor, her perfect mate.

     She was beyond sweet. He
wanted to inhale her, wanted to devour her, wanted to join with her and never
let her go. He swung her around and down onto the rest-pad beside them, sliding
his mouth off of hers and down to her throat, her delectable neck, the
honey-dipped curve of her clavicle. Her deshik parted like blossom-petals
beneath his questing hands, Pavtalar-hands, that framed her body perfectly as
he raised her to his mouth. As Pavtalar, he knew every deci-length of her
perfectly, knew every sweet point to titillate, knew without thinking what
would bring her the most pleasure. Her kwalli-skirt went the same way, as did
his kwats, even as he roved down her body to taste her, to know her as only he
could. When she tugged at his shoulders, he obliged, moving up to fill her, his
vuu’erio tennae twining and tangling with hers. As he sank into her it was so
right, so perfect, as if they had been made as one being and then delicately,
precisely sliced into two, so that they always fit perfectly together. Her
cries of pleasure beneath him brought him pleasure. Her embracing body was
meant to hold him forever. And when she reached her peak, the glyph of it
wrapped around him, making him spiral up to his own climax that crushed all
rational thought within him.

     “Again,” she whispered
beneath him, and only that was needed for him to be able to oblige her. He made
love to her far into the dark-time, as often as she asked, for nothing else
mattered. And then they fell asleep in each other’s arms, their vuu’erio tennae
still entwined.

Whorl Seventy Eight

     Pavtalar-Kreceno’Tiv’Bax
woke in the dark, in an unfamiliar place. He reached automatically for his
Geni’vhor, but she was not there. All that was there was a glyph, ephemeral, a
message, that he did not need to Nil-ize to know what it said. She was gone.

     He lay looking up at the
ceiling. Pavtala Ralili’Bax was gone, gone for good, off to the Ministry of
Preservation to begin her apprenticeship. He would not see her again. He felt
as if he were being slowly, relentlessly ripped in two. Not being around her –
there was a stab of pain in his chest, and he sucked in a breath, moaning, for
the pain did not stop there, it ascended and descended, until the two halves of
his body wanted to fly apart to relieve it. The thought of her gone, of never
touching her again, brought a fountain of tears to his eyes, and they streamed
out, without end, but endless tears would not fill the space that she had left,
nor quenched the pain. There was only one thing to do, but... he did not want
to do it. He was perfect for her, as he was, perfect to fit her, perfect to
mate with her. But he would never mate with her again.

     I could join the same
Ministry,
he thought, on the tip of deciding to do just that. But that
meant giving up what he needed to do, felt compelled to do. And she had not
been given the option to go to Tertius. She had made him promise, promise, but
what was a promise to being with her? But – she was his mate, and she did not
want him to join the Ministry of Preservation.

    
I – I have to let her go.
The thought was like a blade through his gut, and his wing-nets buzzed in
agitation. He felt sick, at the thought. But to stay this way, and never be
near her, was unbearable. The two compunctions battled, but only one could win.

     He rolled off the rest-pad
to his hands and knees. His glyph was changed, irrevocably. No, not
irrevocably. Not permanently. With a silent scream he began to forcibly
disentangle the Pavtalar change from his glyph, from his
self
. His
wing-nets extruded and beat furiously, changing as the rest of him changed. It
felt as if he were ripping off his own skin, as if he were slicing away part of
his identity, as if he were –
unmaking
– himself.

     The green and black of her
Pavtalar-induction melted away. The red rings in his eyes faded back to grey.
His wing-nets, newly pointed and Pavtalar shaped, became the blunt bluish-grey
of his neutral state. Every part of him hurt, every limb, but nothing hurt more
than his soul, his innermost self.

     He collapsed, tears
shamefully leaking from his eyes, though he swallowed the sob that came with
them.

    
Never again,
he lied
to himself.

Whorl Seventy Nine

     When he arrived back at his
parents’ domicive, his mother was in the salon-entranceway, as though she had
been waiting for him as he tottered in. But her eyes actually widened when she
saw him, and then she rushed to him and took him in her arms. He had to lean
down to wrap his arms around her. He felt comforted, safe. And the pieces of
his glyph seemed... seemed to be held together by some outside agent.

     “Foolish boy, foolish boy,
what have you done?!” she cried, sounding distressed, but distressed for
him
.
Somehow being in her embrace, though he topped her by a deci-length and a half,
made him break down into the tears that he had managed to stem.

     “It hurts, Mother,” he heard
himself sob, and her hands stroked his back and elytra-pace soothingly.

     “I know, my heart, we’ll fix
that,” she crooned.

     “What is it?!” his father
demanded, and he felt his arms around him, too. “What has he done to himself?!”
The naked concern in his father’s voice, like the distress in his mother’s,
distracted some distant part of himself, which wondered at the depth of feeling
they were expressing.

     “He – he
unmated
himself from her!” Her voice was also full of concern, of pathos, as he had not
heard it in a long time, since he was little. Her chemi-scent, that he had not sensed
in a long time, became comforting, as when he had been young and had hurt
himself. “He mated with her, and then he tore up his glyph, unmating her!”

     “By the Ancient Hives! Well,
if he is capable of doing
that
...”

     “He
has
done it. He
loved her that much, to do this to himself. My foolish boy, you’re dying! Don’t
you know that there’s a reason that we mate for life?” Vespa Kareni’Tiv sounded
as if she were on the verge of tears. “Even Gotra Pelani’Dun did not go so far
as to consummate her proto-mating with Hytiro’Vel! That is the catalyst that
makes Geni’vhal into Geni’vhor, makes it irretrievable!”

     “There is only one thing to
do,” Vespar-Drelano’Sev’Tiv said, grimly. “He might as well go. We were
thinking of sending him, anyway. We’ll have to make him forget when we repair
his glyph. He cannot do what he needs to, like this, Geni’vhor bereft. He won’t
be able to do anything, but repine.”

     “Go, get things ready,”
Vespa Kareni’Tiv said, and the second pair of comforting arms left, but the
first held him, rocked him. None of their words made sense, or the words did,
but the meaning did not, not that he cared. He felt weak, and he was getting
weaker.

     “Come, my darling, loving
boy,” she said gently, maneuvering him, and her chemi-scent became commanding,
rather than comforting. He followed her directions, without having a
physiological response, as she was his mother. She led him to a comfortable
place to rest, and when she urged him to lie down, he did.

     “Go to sleep,” she said. His
eyes became heavy, and for a moment his vuu’erio connected to his secondary
retinas. He saw his own glyph... and it was shredding away, the vitality part
of it. He began to try to repair it, but felt a strong will and Nil’Gu’ua nudge
his awareness away.

     “Oh ha, it is good that you
are aware of the damage you’ve done, and I know you can repair it, but we will
do that. Just rest.”

     The last thing he remembered
was...

Whorl Eighty

     Kreceno’Tiv woke up in the
dark. He looked around, then Nil-ized on the lights, saw that he was in his own
suite, on his own rest-pad. The last thing he remembered was... saying farewell
to Pavtala Ralili’Bax, then coming home and trying not to shed tears. They had
briefly considered mating, but had decided against it – it would have been too
painful for both of them. He could not imagine mating and then parting, and
trying to divest himself of her Pavtala-induction.

    
And... she would not ask
me to do something so painful,
he thought, the thick, blue sadness suffusing
him again,
no matter how much we wanted to be together.
He sat up, and
realized that he was hungry, despite the numbing depression. Then he became
aware that some change had been effected within him, and when he connected his
vuu’erio tennae to his secondary retinas, he saw that his glyph had been –
changed, repaired.

    
What did I do?
he
wanted to scream, but held himself still, the pain of her loss shoved roughly
aside for a terror-filled moment.
Did I do something? Or did someone else do
something to me? Mother – should I go to Mother, and ask?
But he was home,
in his own suite. If something had been wrong, his parents would have known it
as soon as they saw him, and would have done something.

    
They
did
do
something. They fixed me.
He was sure of it, as sure as he could be of
anything. And the fact that they were not with him, now, to tell him what
happened...

    
They don’t want me to
ask. Maybe, I’m not even supposed to know. If it had been something that they
needed to talk to me about... they would have been here. So – I’m not supposed
to ask, or know, or... remember.

     But the last thing he
remembered was... saying good-bye to Pavtala Ralili’Bax. Holding her, shedding
tears with her, giving her a last kiss. Then watching her go away in her
transport. And then coming home and being so depressed, that he sought solace
in sleep. Nothing else.