The Father Unbound Read online

  Far below, on the southern realm of the Ashkinar Continent, where drought covered the semi-arid plains first settled by Arabis tribes a millennium ago, the mid-morning sun broke through a sickly green haze left by a dust storm. Brown sand from the equatorial deserts and green, corrosive particulates from the brontinium mines created a natural carpet over every surface of the town of Asra. The streets were largely empty save for the battery of robotic Sweepers, whose rhythmic hum had been heard more frequently since the drought began and whose capacity to remove the rust-colored filth had been diminished. Not until the seasonal spring rains returned would Asra feel clean again. Many Hiebim stayed comfortably inside their homes. They had everything they needed within the insulated clay-pack walls of the domed enclaves that dotted the starving land.

  In one such enclave, all three-hundred forty-four members of the clan Trayem gathered in a moist, shadowy central chamber used for one purpose: To bestow a name and the blessings of life upon their newest child. They joined in a tight arc around a shallow, bubbling spring, and all of them disrobed, except for the five women they called the Matriarch. These women stood front and center in white, satin tunics. The clan waited in reverential silence for the ceremony to commence, their heads bowed. Minutes passed, and neither the child nor her mother emerged. This was not uncommon, however, and the clan maintained its unified solemnity.

  For seven-year-old Trayem Hadeed, this ritual could not end quickly enough. He had far more pressing matters to attend, all of them involving a long stick with a netted pocket. He knew his teammates would not understand his absence. Why, they would ask, couldn’t he have slipped away from the enclave before the ceremonial lockdown? This would hardly be the clan’s final Assignment, and what possible significance would one absence – especially of a boy – have on the outcome? Besides, they would remind him, Hadeed was the southern realm’s best haepong prodigy in generations; his success on the clay pack was too important to the clan’s prestige. He would be forgiven for his negligence. His mother had insisted that practice wait. They had shared this very experience five years ago, she insisted, so he was obligated to be present when all new two-year-olds reached Assignment.

  Hadeed stood in the front row next to the other children as a girl emerged at last from her isolation chamber wearing the ceremonial robe, her mother walking directly behind. The girl stopped at the pool’s edge and allowed her mother to lay her on her back in the three-inch-deep water, which was fed from a hot spring. The clan recited a single line in well-rehearsed unison, concluding with the highlighted name listed in the Book of Assignment.

  “This clan Trayem sanctifies the morality and honor of our daughter Ezri.”

  Ezri’s gene-father, a bearded man at least twenty years older than her mother and whom Ezri was seeing for the first time, scooped the girl from the pool and removed her robes. She stood naked before her clan, their symbolic equal. The gene-father, per custom, pressed an air needle into Ezri’s neck. She did not react as the mandatory adaptation drug Genysen entered her bloodstream, making a long life possible on this or any of the other thirty-eight colony worlds.

  Hadeed, like the others of Trayem, followed the script and welcomed her with a large, warm smile. The girl responded as her mother had coached, using the line almost identical to what Hadeed said on his second birthday.

  “I am your daughter. Please teach me how I should live.”

  As trained, Ezri walked among them and allowed everyone – even the children barely older – the opportunity to touch her. Hadeed thought she could have been his sister; as she passed, he studied her tan skin, deep brown, eggshell eyes and close-cropped black hair, which he rubbed. He knew she bore no immediate relation, as the gene-father was not one of the men assigned by the Matriarch to his own mother. In fact, Ezri’s gene-father – whose thick black beard fell as a waterfall beneath his chin – was twice as old as Trayem Azir, a man who had followed custom and spent perhaps two days with Hadeed since Assignment.

  Gentle laughter fell from the men when the boys shared awkward glances as Ezri touched their lips and smiled upon admiring the male features that, for her, were at eye level. Hadeed had taken part in four receptions since his own Assignment, but this was the first time he had experienced such interaction with a girl. He knew girls would remain a distant oddity for many years to come, being led down a segregated path and guided by their own coterie of elders. Already, he could sense the change Ezri would undoubtedly face. Unlike the men, who welcomed Ezri with smiles and warm greetings, the women did not make eye contact when they touched her. The Matriarch ignored her outright. Finally, the shortest and most squat of the Matriarch turned to Ezri’s mother and nodded, announcing an end to the ceremony.

  “Allow her to explore,” the Matriarch said. The clan immediately gathered up the robes at their feet and dispersed down the warm, glowing corridors of the enclave. Many disappeared into their private quarters, while Ezri was left to infuse her spirit with the tactile sensations of the enclave. In this, Hadeed envied her. He remembered that first hour when he ran his fingers along the sloping, hand-carved walls and portals. The precision-honed, hard-pack clay seemed to rise around him as a natural outgrowth of the planet. The walls came alive in a symphony of color, adorned by hand-painted murals in a palette featuring surreal infusions of shapes in yellows, pinks, and greens – the tones of the planet, they were called. Recessed solar lights played with the colors and created slow-moving shadows, allowing the stories of the murals to change. Hadeed had done as he was advised and laid upon the floor, listening for the echoes of all the generations that had inhabited this enclave. He could not make out the voices he was told many others could hear, but he felt a rhythm below, as if a mechanized heartbeat.

  Now, Hadeed felt a different rhythm – the tug of the pack. He slipped into his snug haepong tunic, gathered the stick he received for his seventh birthday, and threw on his shomba. He did not say farewell to his mother as he rushed from the enclave into the startling sunlight and chased the only dream that mattered to him. He raced through the dusty streets of Asra, oblivious to the Sweepers or the occasional personal Scrams. Even as he was still a kilometer from the clay pack, he could hear the screams and cheers of his teammates.

  Ever since he turned four and was handed his first stick, Hadeed’s blood surged with the very notion of chasing boys across a muddy clay pack, sliding ferociously to undercut each other, occasionally dropping their sticks and using their fists to pound each other senseless. All of them at one time or other were carried off the field bruised and bloodied, but only a handful – Hadeed prime among them – scored goals far more often than they lost blood. They were the most revered, those who pounded their way through the defense, who left moans in their wake – these were the warriors Hadeed admired.

  “You could be the best someday,” an elder once told him. “If you live long enough.”

  “I will be,” Hadeed replied. “I’ll be the name they whisper everywhere, even in Messalina. Even the Chancellors will come see me play.”

  They smiled when he mentioned the Chancellors, as if to humor him. Hadeed knew this, but he remained undeterred – even though he had only heard stories about the Chancellors, never actually seen one, or thought they might waste time visiting a back-desert town in southern Ashkinar. After all, they preferred life on the great Ark Carriers or, at the least, a large city such as the capital, Messalina. Or so said the elders, one of many legends about the Hiebim benefactors that Hadeed could not confirm.

  “Ah-rooh, ah-rooh, ah-rooh.”

  Hadeed shouted his team’s fighting mantra as he raced onto the practice pack, tossed aside his shomba, and joined his fellow warriors, who ranged from six to nine years old. He side-bumped each of them, gave his coach a thumbs-up, and blended into the defensive line drills. For an hour, they chanted and growled as they ran drills, their legs withering on the hard pack, but they did not slow down. Dozens of men – most in traditional, desert-style arbiya robes and all beard
ed – cheered from the stands. They were the usual attendees whose bodies had long since slowed to where haepong became but a vicarious experience. Hadeed, however, made a point of giving them a show, even during practice. On occasion, he broke from the line, turned to the retired warriors, and did a series of one-handed somersaults while holding the haepong stick in the hand that never touched the ground.

  “Ah-rooh, ah-rooh, ah-rooh,” he shouted, and they returned the mantra.

  His sweat drenched his tunic, which was a body-cooling fabric. Even as the sun reached its highest point and the coaches demanded water breaks, Hadeed continued full-speed, sipping less than his ration, determined never to need as much water as anyone else in a tunic.

  “You only need enough water to maintain clarity,” the great Asra warrior Harkem Benazir once told him during a private training session. “The true warrior knows how to walk the edge of the summit. He knows death is waiting, so he fights as if his life were nearly forfeit. The agony that fills his muscles is his liberation and his joy. Few men who scour the pack challenge death in this way. But they are the only ones who are remembered through generations.”

  More than anything the Trayem elders ever taught him, Hadeed embraced Benazir’s message. He whispered it every night before he fell asleep, choosing to blaspheme the elders who insisted that all children end their day with a traditional homage to the clan.

  Practice ended, and Hadeed embraced his closest friends on the team before striking out through the town, exhausted and stained by perspiration and clay paint. He was walking along a dusty road between the domed enclaves of the town, beaming with pride as he pondered his personal strategy for the team’s upcoming match. Then, just as he reached the center of Asra, they came. Suddenly and with brutality.

  The UG’s peacekeepers appeared from out of the sky as if flown in on clouds of dust. Hadeed couldn’t see or hear the Battle Scram that brought them from orbit, no doubt camouflaged by the dust and trapped within the blinding light of the midday sun. The peacekeepers were covered head to toe in crimson body armor – a sheer, glossy fabric that appeared to make them vulnerable to simple weapons but was known to be impenetrable to conventional ground fire. The fabric seemed to wrap around the contours of their massive physiques, making visible the hefts and ripples of their musculature. Hadeed thought they were giants even though he’d been told the Chancellors used fourteen-year-olds as peacekeepers. They sprouted enormous, multi-barreled weapons both hand-held and attached to arms.

  Immediately, they stormed the regional headquarters of the Agriculture Ministry, a rare steel-frame structure three floors high but towering over the rest of Asra. Hadeed flinched. He knew he shouldn’t be here. He glanced about and saw empty streets. The other Hiebim were smart. Yes, he had to duck inside with them. And yet Hadeed could not help himself. This was his first glimpse of legendary peacekeepers in uniform. These were the ones who had protected the Hiebim for a millennium, who were their guardians of justice and defenders against foreign threats – or so the elders had always told. Hadeed was in awe.

  And then, as fast as the dust could swirl into a small funnel cloud, Hadeed was no longer spellbound. He heard shots and screams from inside the ministry. Weapons bursts carried two signatures – short, shrilled pops followed by deep bursts of thunder. The frame of the ministry shook as internal explosions followed. A firestorm tore through a third-floor window, throwing out two bodies along with the concussion.

  A woman in a yellow business robe appeared on the roof. She looked down upon the street and in all directions. For an instant, Hadeed thought she made contact with his eyes, but then the second passed. She turned about, raised her hands and – so Hadeed thought – begged someone to stop. Almost at once, she turned back around and leaped. She smashed face-first into the hard-packed road and lay there crumpled, her robe wrapped around and hiding her face. Although this sight horrified Hadeed, he was more amazed when no one came to her aid. The few clansmen in the vicinity stood within doorways, offering no more than a curious inspection of the disturbance. Some of them disappeared casually inside their establishments.

  Just as Hadeed began to commit himself to doing the same, a shadow fell upon him. He looked up and saw a tall, lean man whose eyes were hidden behind blue glasses and his pale features shaded by a long-brimmed fedora, which hid most of the man’s golden and finely coiffed hair. He wore a beige two-piece tunic covered in part by a crimson cape. He lifted a tiny black pipe to his lips and inhaled poltash weed, the rarest cured leaf on Hiebimini. The smoke poured from his nostrils, its gentle aroma of rose petals and sweet milk blowing into Hadeed’s face. He looked at the boy and smiled, the pipe tucked in the corner of his lips. Hadeed knew only one caste could afford poltash. The Chancellor glanced at the siege across the road then tapped Hadeed on the shoulders.

  “Hoarders,” he said. “A danger to everyone. Yes?”

  The man tilted his head in a side-nod as if waiting for a response, the smoke petering from his nose. Hadeed stood in the shadow of a giant, a man who represented the mystery within the great Ark Carriers and the caste that oversaw the greatest empire in human history. Yet all Hadeed could summon was a shiver. He narrowed his eyes and frowned. As Hadeed trembled, the Chancellor let go of his shoulder. Hadeed sensed something unexpected: He was in trouble.

  He tried to soften his features, to play along, perhaps even smile and query the Chancellor about what was going on at the ministry. Yet nothing came forth. Everything about this was wrong. He remembered the words of his elder, Tariq, who once explained a mission of the Chancellors:

  “When we need help, they always dispatch peacekeepers.”

  Hadeed did not think this seemed like help, and this Chancellor seemed far less compassionate than he would have expected.

  Suddenly, the explosions stopped and rifle fire died to sporadic rounds. The Chancellor lowered his glasses and stared deeply into Hadeed’s copper brown eyes.

  “Let’s have a closer look,” the Chancellor said. “You would like to learn more. Yes?”

  When Hadeed backed away, the man nodded to someone behind the boy. A red-suited peacekeeper with a pulse rifle wrapped his free hand around the back of Hadeed’s neck, the thumb and forefinger poised at critical pressure points. Hadeed knew he dared not run.

  “There now,” the Chancellor said. “You would not want a spinal injury. Very nasty.” The man nodded to the peacekeeper. “Allow Lt. Gripphen to escort you.”

  They walked into the ministry together, at once encountering the acrid fumes of burnt flesh. Office furniture and CV ports were in disarray, and blast points scoured the walls. They passed more than a dozen bodies, most an unrecognizable, smoldering char. Hadeed did not dare slow down for fear of the peacekeeper’s grip. Just as they reached the top of a stairwell, they stepped over the body of a Harkem clansman who visited many haepong practices. The man’s chest had been all but blown out through his back. He lay crumpled on his side, his deep hazel eyes locked in a stare and his jaw dropped as if amazed by the very idea of his own death.

  Hadeed felt cold amid the smoldering destruction. He tried to speak. “I don’t …”

  “Hoarders,” the Chancellor repeated. “Scum. Traitors to your people. Yes?” The man took a puff of poltash and pointed toward the top of a flight of stairs heading downward. “If you would please …”

  “Why?” Hadeed mumbled.

  “For an opportunity to learn.”

  They descended three flights of stairs until the air became damp and cold. The peacekeeper marched in lockstep with Hadeed, never lessening his grip on the neck. They entered a damp, grey room, its only furniture a chair with hand and leg clamps. The peacekeeper released his grip and hurled Hadeed at the chair, ordering him to sit. The soldier in red applied the clamps, lifted his helmet to reveal rippled flesh and deep-set blue eyes above a wide, slow-forming smile unrecognizable to Hadeed. This soldier, despite his enormous physical mass, struck Hadeed as barely older than Hiebim boys upon completing P
assage of Summit. But the voice echoed with a deep, penetrating husk that terrified Hadeed.

  “Permission?” The peacekeeper known as Lt. Gripphen queried the Chancellor, who nodded while pulling on his poltash-filled pipe. The soldier set his rifle on the ground, removed the form-fitting crimson glove from his battle hand, and flexed his fist.

  “Time to learn, you clay slag,” the soldier boy announced a second before leveling his fist into Hadeed’s gut.

  Hadeed felt his stomach push upward through his abdomen and gurgled as he prayed for the opportunity to find a breath. The oxygen had barely returned through a meager inhale when the peacekeeper rammed his fist into Hadeed’s face, busting the boy’s nose and inducing a spray of blood. The Chancellor snapped his fingers, and the soldier retreated but for an instant.

  The Chancellor removed his fedora and held the hat against his own chest. Hadeed did not have the wherewithal to plead for mercy or ask why this was happening. Instead, he stared into the eyes tinted blue by glasses as the man stepped close.

  “You were not satisfied with my explanation,” the man said, poltash smoke drifting into Hadeed’s bloodied nostrils. “Your eye was cynical, unwashed, unrefined. Perhaps you simply do not understand. Yes?” He turned to the soldier and shared a half-smile. “No matter. Consider this day a chance to see beyond the veil and understand our wisdom. This is your first lesson.”

  The Chancellor stared for a moment then backed away and offered a side-nod to the peacekeeper, who resumed the process of reducing Hadeed to a punching bag.

  THREE

  BENEVOLENCE

  HADEED SAW THEM EACH evening, and he used to wonder what beauty they might hold. The Ark Carriers were the brightest stars, low against the horizon, twinkling against the backdrop of a purple and pink Hiebimini sunset. Sometimes, he became distracted during the evening Life Circle, and his elders had to snap him back to attention. The elders – especially Tariq, he of the long, equine face and the only man who showed a special interest in Hadeed – insisted on devotion to their lectures. Each word was canon to the history of the Arabis tribes, they said. These words would one day have to be passed down to another generation.